Monday, May 30, 2011

From the Idyllic Village of Lake Flaccid, New York, Comes the The Daily Growler Jots & Tittles Man

http://bioweb.uwlax.edu/bio203/s2009/meinhard_jaso/polluted%20water.jpg
From the Spiny Shores of Lake Flaccid, New York, COMES thedailygrowlerjots&tittlesman, Barabbas Munn-Dayne
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What the hell kind of birds are those? Where's my shotgun? Just kidding, folks. I'm not the guntoting type, though I do have my old Betsy shotgun out there on my back porch...my porch on the Lake...and how I dread the coming summer...the stench at the moment is bearable...temps have hovered around the low 50s to the upper 60s up here--while it was 82 when I was in the City this past Friday. I was down there for a The Daily Growler gathering--the editing horse gave me a check for my bus fare. God, I hate buses. No matter how classy they make buses appear, still, you never know...like you never know who's going to sit down by you. Yep, it's always that one freak you see as the bus pulls into Podunk. You look up and down the chicken-bone-strewn aisle and see that there aren't any single seats you can see...except the seat by you! And sure enough, the freak's head pops up up at the head of the aisle as he steps up into the bus, his eyes adjusting to the darkness of the bus's interior, looking for a seat. You scoot over as far as you can so as to look like you're actually sitting in the empty aisle seat by the seat in which you are actually sitting.

Plus buses are supposed to be germ centrals. A lot of fecal matter on the seats at any given time. Plus you never know whether your driver is drunk or not. But, hey, when you're on a fixed income, you ride the bus.

Anyway, I was in New York City--we Upstate New Yorkers call it "the City"--even folks up in Buffalo talk about "When's the last time you were down in the City?" So I was in the City.

Cecil the Dog-faced Boy III is still missing...and presumed dead. The joke around town is of course an old joke and a cruel joke, but, hey, I have to admit it is a good old classic joke. Word is up that Cecil one day right smack-dab in the middle of Main Street, right smack-dab in front of Lem Koozer's Beauty Salon (Lem is a woman), suddenly had a desire to stop on the trot, lie down in the street, and start instinctually licking his family jewels. While performing this inhumane feat, poor old Cecil was hit by Old Lady Gizzbund's still-barely-running Gremlin. She'd forgotten to wear her glasses that day, she said. "That's why I didn't see that poor little doggie." Of course that's not true at all. Just a tale being plied around Lake Flaccid's center city. Poor old Cecil. I miss my old friend.

The City looked dirty. Tourists everywhere. Especially on Times Square. Times Square is still a cesspool of overcommercialization in its most dressed up fantastic dream state--an explosion of competition for tackiness in terms who can create the gaudiest outdoor graphic-arts-photo display--there's always at least one half-draped babe sign--with a half-naked babe looking like the Colossal Woman--and what a terrible movie, by the way. It starred Lou Costello. And Dorothy Provine as the colossal babe. As a native New York Citian, these new commercial display signs are trashy. The old neon signs of old Times Square had a bit of creativeness to them--commercially clever use of neon--objects moving in neon walks or leaps or other neon gymnastics.

The Growler gathering featured the same old bunch...drinking Irish ale and stout and bullshitting deep piles of useless personal knowledges--clashing among each other with swordfight-clanging noises for the attention of all who would listen. I love being wordy.
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Jots & Tittles

--how about all those tributes to OUR BRAVE men and women in uniform? How sickening was all that Memorial Day pap slicked out in front of us all this past long weekend. Teary eyed young goofs signifying in favor of WAR and going to war and getting weary at war and then finally getting to come home from war--getting to come home on the grounds they get up and witness and testify for the military--"I'm proud to have served my country--and thank my Jewish Big Daddy I only lost both my arms--I was lucky, but my best-friend buddy I volunteered with wasn't so lucky when he got truncated by a towelhead mortar shell--as he died he proclaimed how proud he was to have served with our vaunted and invincible military. Thank you, Jesus, for giving us these many opportunities to go to war against these multitudes of godless heathen."

--President Obama-- was fresh back from another one of his every-week world jaunts, this time to Ireland first, then over to Britain to kiss the old raggedy Queen's brittle old dried up ass and to hobnob with the royal newlyweds. I was proud to notice that in spite of all the complete coverage of Bonnie Prince Billy's audacious and extravagant wedding to the golddigging commoner, most people paid it no mind whatsoever. We the People were all too busy worrying over how the hell we were going to come up with the house payment this month or come up with the exorbitant interest on the credit card bills this month--those credit cards that are most Americans's only source of income these days. So the President was back home--this time, not only to do a little campaigning but to also stay on Air Force 1--he surely has a luxury apartment built into that airplane that We the People own--I mean he spends a hell of a lot of his life time on that Air Force 1. He's got to be one of the top two most-traveled presidents in our history--next to George W. Bush? Remember, G.W. Bush had never been out of the USA--except to go to Mexico, of course, for whores and coat-hanger abortions--until he became president and suddenly he and Pickles found it necessary to fly several times around the world between vacations at their faux ranch in Crawford, Texas. What happened to that ranch, by the way? Was it foreclosed upon?

--Our President in Joplin. It was interesting to me that the people who had survived the Joplin tornado were thanking God for saving them. Why them? I kept asking God or them. Why did God spare a withering looking older turkey-necked woman and yet right next door to her he had not spared a whole family. Were only fervent Christians left behind? Obama at least landed and went out among the folks of leveled Joplin--or at least his photo-op made it look like he was actually there--though it did remind me of G.W. Bush's photo-op set ups in Jackson Square--where he brought in his own generators since New Orleans had no electricity at the moment--and over in Mississippi, where his photo-op was set up on a street corner...fake photo-op sessions--or G.W. flying over New Orleans in Air Force 1: "Looks like a bloody mess down there...isn't that the Kneegrow part'a town? No need to worry 'bout them N-worders. Like my old Mammy Babs said when she walked through the Astrodome--it was packed to the gills with stinkin' N-worders--and declared that these refugee New Orleans jiggaboos were better off in the Astrodome than they had been in their 9th Ward homes before Katrina with the help of the Army Corps of Engineers blew those half-built levees down and drove all those jigs over to Houston. We did a heck of a job...." Brother Obama in Joplin made no reference to changing weather patterns--or the fact that there may really be something called climate change and the greenhouse effect.

--how exciting was it to find out G.W. Bush made 15 million bucks on the lecture circuit? Who the hell would pay that fool to lecture them? Fools like him, we assume. G.W. speaking to his foolish fans: "Now when I was president...er-ah, I was president, wasn't I, Pickles? And a damn good president, too. But, Jesus, the fuckin' lyin' I had to do. But then, I've been a damn good liar since I was knee-high to my mommy Babs--you know, when my pops went off to Mexico to buy up his worthless oil leases and would stay down there for months and leave me with Mommy Babs and having to listen to her cussing Pops out while I hid behind her skirts--'You're no good whorin' father!' I've heard her call my old Pappy. We used to love to tease Mommy Babs by asking her if we had Messkin blood in us. Hot damn, that got her to smokin'."

--Amanda Franklin...anybody ever heard of Amanda Franklin? Neither had I till she died Friday (the 27th) while performing at a Brownsville, Texas, air show.
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Wing walker Amanda Franklin dies

Airshow performer Amanda Franklin died late May 27. Doctors at Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio had been treating her extensive burns, injuries, and ensuing infections since a March 12 crash landing and engine fire during a show routine.

Amanda and husband Kyle Franklin were performing a wing-walking routine at Air Fiesta 2011 at Brownsville-South Padre International Airport when the engine of their Waco biplane lost power. Amanda was able to climb off the wing and into the forward cockpit seat before the forced landing, according to the National Transportation Safety Board’s preliminary report; she was badly burned in a post-impact fire.

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--Ironies in Amanda Franklin's Life:
“Her performances as a pilot and wing walker inspired thousands, and her loss will be keenly felt. Our deepest sympathy goes to her entire family and especially to her husband Kyle, who continues to recover from his own injuries.”

Kyle, who was also seriously injured in the incident, was discharged from the hospital March 28 and continued outpatient physical therapy, but Amanda remained in critical condition at Brooke Army Medical Center.

Kyle and Amanda began dating in 2004 and married in 2005, and Amanda began wing walking full time for the couple’s “Pirated Skies” act in 2009, the couple’s website said. The Neosho, Mo.-based Franklins are no strangers to tragedy. Kyle’s father, Jimmy Franklin, and Amanda’s father, Bobby Younkin, died in 2005 when their biplanes collided during an airshow performance in Saskatchewan, Canada.

http://www.eaa.org/news/2011/images/franklins_2010.jpghttp://www.franklinairshow.com/images/Crew/Amanda-PS1.jpg
Amanda Franklin wingwalking...and the lady herself.

--Pooh-poohing Doomsday. Fundamentalist Christians are all hopped up these days. A lot of their firebrand greedy ministers are dragon-breathing some Armageddon doom around liberally, flippantly predicting the "return" of their Jewish messiah, who is NOT the Jews's messiah--hell, the New York City Jews a few years ago rejected Jesus Christ in favor of Rabbi Schneerson Lehman, though Rabbi Lehman proved to be just as unpredictable and unreliable as Jesus Christ when it came to being a Messiah.

http://www.samliquidation.com/images/Schneerson.jpg
The Brooklyn Hasidics swore this dude was the Messiah..."Rebbe, whereforth art thou?" We heard a whole lot of Rapture bullshit from the cornball Oliver Hardy...oops, sorry, I meant Harold Camping, an idiot who is now saying his calculations were wrong, instead of May, God had said October--so now the good idiot reverend is saying October the World will end. Of course, we Growlers have our own sacred crew, led now by the Reverend "Doctor" Jack Van Impe. Where Pastor Melissa Scott is these days, we have no idea. They've taken down the analog Jesus teevee station in the Lake Flaccid area--Jesus was still broadcasting on analog teevee...but now my analog side of my teevee picks up no channels at all anymore. "Doctor" Jack and his semi-lucious wife, "Doctor" Rexella Van Impe, assures us through his direct conversations with God, the Jewish God Jehovah, that the world WILL NOT end. Instead, Jesus X. Christ, not only will not destroy the earth--or his Big Dad won't destroy the earth--but instead intends the earth as Jesus's new home--you know, his royal site, Jerusalem, the New Jerusalem, his Arab-free capital--oh God such bullshit! How could any half-civilized beast believe such unfounded bullshit?

--Bob Dylan is 60. Truth up? I never really got into Bob Dylan. I saw and heard him as a copycat. Mimicking almost effect by effect exactly the work of Woody Guthrie. I mean, Bob usurped that style and today when people hear that style they relate it to 60-year-0ld Bob Dylan and not Woody Guthrie or his copycat/imitating son, Arlo. Bob was a splendid songwriter--and, yes, I admit he wrote some true classic American tunes--but were they...well, I want to say original?...I hesitate in that I don't really know how original Bob Dylan is. His name is not his real name. So he's playing a character--Bobby Zimmerman playing a combo folksinger/poet who mimicks the musical style of Woody Guthrie and the poetic balladry of Dylan Thomas. I thought Bob was closer to 70 than 60. [Mr. Ed: You can't blame the horse for this goof. Dylan is closer to 70 than 60 because, as thewomantrumpetplayer points out so glaringly, Dylan IS 70 not 60. How boring life would be if all things were considered fact.]

--The Untalented Who've Made It Big: The #1 talentless big-timer in show biz: Oprah Winfrey. What is her talent? At best she's a good announcer. Gossipy Black Yenta? Show host? The ability to sit in an easy chair, getting fatter and fatter, and have serious spiritual bullshit sessions with your fabby friends, your gal pal (and the gal pal has blown up bigger than Oprah now), your favorite actors and actresses, promoting Celine Dion (another untalented droopy-drawer woman entertainer from talentless Canada. Upstate New Yorkers are hard on Canadians), giving people lectures on their weight while she blows up to big-time obesity--going up and down, fat, then back to almost thin, then shooting up to fat again, and finally, to hell with it--the good life just won't allow Oprah to be thin--she's doomed to be fat. What is her talent? White women accept her? She promotes bad writers who write bad books? But then what do you expect from an untalented lucky woman from Memphis via Chicago?

thedailygrowlerjots&tittlesman:barabbasmunn-dayne
for The Daily Growler

Saturday, May 28, 2011

Living in New York City: Lighthouses and Hot Times I Have Known

Foto by tgw, New York City, May 2010
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How the Old Times Died

Is Shorty Rogers a thing of the past? Bud Shank?

Can you answer this question? I can, but then I'm still a thing of the past.

This CD I have and am listening to as I type this was recorded by Shorty Rogers and Bud Shank in 1983, with a title the Concord recording company (now a subsidiary of a German company) called "Yesterday, Today, and Forever." It was rereleased in 1993 from Germany.

I first saw Shorty Rogers and Bud Shank on a Dave Garroway Sunday afternoon television show called "Wide, Wide World." Dave was into jazz and this edition of "Wide, Wide World" was a live feed from Howard Rumsey's Lighthouse in Hermosa Beach, California, featuring the Lighthouse All-Stars.

Sunday afternoons in the 50s at this Hermosa Beach drinking establishment were jazz jam sessions led by Howard Rumsey, a so-so bass player with a knack of knowing some of the greatest up-and-coming jazz musicians at the time, the time of the Cool Jazz movement led by Miles Davis and Gerry Mulligan in California, though most of the great West Coast Cool Jazz albums were recorded in New York City.

That Sunday afternoon on that Dave Garroway teevee show Shorty and Bud and fellow West Coaster Bob Cooper were on the front line--Howard Rumsey was the bass player and the drummer...well, the drummer was a very young Max Roach.

Wow! I was born at the very right time! I've missed all the wars due to my age being in the cracks when it came to being of the eligible age to go and give my life so that my country could go on ruling over the world as the world's policeman, which we still are in our outrageous collective imagination. And in missing all these wars, I've picked up the progressive best that was going on while all our young studs were off giving their lives so I could continue to live in the delights of the aftermath of wars in terms of music and literature and poetry and Sociology and Economics and readin', ritin', and 'rithmetic. [Shorty Rogers died in 1993/Bud Shank in April of 2009 at 82.]

Rocked in a cradle by World War II, my big brother left his record collection at home with me while he went off to fight the evil Japs (Nips, to be polite) in the South Pacific and China. He left his Benny Goodman and Count Basie and Woody Herman ("Bishop's Blues" by Woody's arranger Jerry Bishop, started me on my way to looking at a piano and knowing I could play it).

I learned to play the piano on a pump organ.
The image “http://www.thelighthousecafe.net/images/his_img_02.jpg” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.
The Lighthouse at Hermosa Beach, California, 1950s (look at the back of that Ford Woody station wagon--and is that a DeSoto ("It's delightful, it's delovely, it's DeSoto") sitting there to the right of the Woody? It is a Dodge product, that I know--and the more I look at it, the more I think it's a Plymouth).

In those days I was in the penumbra of a high school excavation--whaaaa? Yeah, I'm a poet by instincts, though I'm not at all glazed over by any kind of poetic illusions as to how the language of poets is a universal language. It isn't--poetry is simply an extension of our natural innate tendencies to carry our tools forward to such advanced arenas of usage they become gods. The confused though they know in their hearts they are above confusion in a world of avatars turn to poetry out of frustration, usually a life frustration, like being thwarted in love at an early age.

Poetic love is so different from common old ordinary everyday love. On Mother's Day millions of insincere cards go out to mothers simply because it's appropriate to honor mothers on Mother's Day (it's called "being caught on the wheel of tradition"). But what of those who have no mothers to honor?--no wives who bore children?--for Mother's Day is a male thing, isn't it?

What if you have no idea who your mother is or was? I went with an orphan girl one time whose adopted parents said she was Irish. She wasn't Irish, but her adopted name was--she was adopted as a baby--by a traveling hoofer--an Irish step-dancing tale-wrangling showman--she was his little piece of the feminine side of his precious Emerald Isle. But she wasn't Irish. I could tell by her lost existence. Lost existence? Think about it. Being born and abandoned and picked up cheap from some nuns in Denver--the little piece of Ireland this hoofing Leprechaun couldn't achieve through his kapoot sperm or numb-wombed wife. But this girl, a brilliant girl, too (OK, she was 25 when I met her though she was anything but a woman at that age), was a very fine artist, an artist with unique concepts in her head. Concepts that were of another world than that of the Irish. It was my opinion that this young thing was pure Americana.

I wrote a poem about her:

Who?
I stand in front of this tinseled mirror wondering.
I cannot be his.
I do not favor him at all.
My eyes look toward other voices for my movement forward.
My hair dyed Irish blonde knows no other color but that of its roots.
My real parents?
Who?
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Shorty Rogers? Well, he was simply a trumpet player. He got into jazz during his stint in the U.S. Army during WWII. A lot of early White be-boppers learned their jazz basics in U.S. Army bands--like the Air Force Band led by Glenn Miller. Black be-boppers were born like me, in the cracks between wars. Those just prior to my generation, Prez and Jo Jones and the Black pre-boppers, for instance, were forced to join the army. Lester Young and Jo Jones were both arrested in bars and dragged off to compulsory army service whether they were of that endurance or not. Certainly Lester Young was in no condition to be honorably giving his life for a White cause! Lester's time in the military was cruel. His Southern captain treated him like so much mule shit--assigning Lester to combat readiness rather than letting him do his thing, which was play saxophone--play his saxophone in a U.S. Army band so his music might give those soldiers who were combat ready the inspiration to continue marching on toward either certain death or a miraculous salvation and survival.

So when Lester was struggling with the "D.B. Blues" ("Detention Barracks Blues"), Shorty Rogers was learning jazz fundamentals in the U.S. Army Band.

Lester Young was even in L.A. at the time the Lighthouse opened its Sunday afternoon doors to jazz. He had his own group by then. He was touring the country. Then he had his best years when he joined Norman Granz's Jazz at the Philharmonic tour, a tour which kept Lester in tall-cotton money and also offered him a chance to do tons of recording (on Norman Granz's Norgran, Clef, and Verve labels (using Mercury Records as his recording studio)) and to also tour again with his own small units and a couple of Birdland All-Stars tours and Giants of Jazz tours [Lester's first-ever record contract was with Norman Granz's Philo label, a label whose name Granz had to change to Aladdin when the Philco people threatened to sue him on the grounds his name Philo was too close to their name Philco (Phillips Company), etc.].

So the young jazz pups were gathering out in Hermosa Beach playing their own new inventions. I mean, hell, Chet Baker was among these all-stars. Like I said, also a young Max Roach. Even Miles Davis is on some of those early Lighthouse All-Star recordings on the Contemporary label, one of the several progressive jazz labels that started up in California in those days: Contemporary and Pacific Jazz (later becoming World Pacific Jazz) were the two big-time West Coast jazz labels. The Lighthouse All-Stars having their own special Contemporary label while the Gerry Mulligan Quartet (Gerry Mulligan, Chet Baker, Bob Whitlock, and Chico Hamilton) hit the big time in jazz in 1952 with a gold mine of jazz invention on the Pacific Jazz label. Gerry Mulligan, by the way, idolized Lester Young, and was considered one of the Young copycats, like Zoot Sims, who Lester used to keep an eye on from his easy chair in which he sat in his Alvin Hotel room on Broadway that overlooked Birdland--named for Charles Parker, Jr., though Lester thought it should have been named Prezland. "All those cats playing just like me. Now how am I suppose to play?"

Who might show up at Hermosa Beach on any of those Sunday afternoons? Why besides Shorty Rogers, Bud Shank, and Bob Cooper, there was Jimmy Guiffre (who really was the start of it all), pianists Russ Freeman and Claude Williamson (damn, how I dug his "Atchison, Topeka, and the Santa Fe"); trumpeter Rolf Ericson; and drummer Shelly Manne.

Bud Shank and Bob Cooper experimented with oboes and flutes. It was this pairs's oboe and flute playing that later influenced a whole bevy of flautists from Jerome Richardson on down to Raashan Roland Kirk; and the oboe?--have you ever heard Yusef Lateef play the oboe?
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This is all off the top of my end-of-May head. It's going up into the 80s here in Gotham this coming week. A blast-furnace summer is headed our way. Who knows if the electrical grid is gonna blow sky high during this summer's record heatwave! I have no air-conditioning. I've always hated "artificial cold" and hated refrigerated air-conditioners after reading Henry Miller's fascinating Air-Conditioned Nightmare, which resulted from Henry's travellng around the USA. That became his title for the USA. Since reading that book, I kid you not (a Jack Paar catch phrase), I decided to live in the un-Air-Conditioned Nightmare. In the broiling heat of New York City summers I bask in my freedom from US cultural drags, of which I feel the air-conditioner (especially the refrigerated air-conditioner) is one.

Fans. Fans are OK. I like fans. They are based on the reality of wind. The early squirrel-cage air-conditioners were cool--wind blowing over troubled water--dripping water, water dripping down through straw--straw packed into the vented sides of this big bulky source of cool air. Not refrigerated air. Refrigerated air is phony chemically produced air. Think: what caused the famous Legionaires disease?

I have so far three fans in my big high ceilinged apartment with the overhigh windows facing the beating-down force of the from-noon-through-afternoon forced-on-us sun and absorbing in the hottest of that sun's through-a-glass-hotly presence and bringing the essence of these hot suns's souls right into my room with me. My room can on the hottest of hell-fire summer days literally look and feel like a Death Valley landscape. I've actually seen real mirages in my apartment--waves of watery air--especially back one summer when I had no fans at all and tried to survive one of the hottest summers on record fanless--three solid July and August weeks of holy hellfire! I remember clearly the day of the mirages in my room. I recorded that day and how it felt on my cassette recorder--the tape of which I still have--me talking about how it was so hot I was getting slow of wit and rationale; yet, out of sure mad determination, I made it through that egg-frying-surfaced summer whole but with one decision obtained out of it: never again will I try and suffer a New York City summer without at least 4 big-daddy fans--it takes at least four--in the four corners of the room--to keep the room sort of "cool," and believe me, that kind of coolness is the lowest form of coolness, though, dammit, it's true coolness and not enhanced or cloned coolness.

On the other hand, I was born in heat, in the early morning hours of a West Texas August. I was born in a city that had an annual rainfall some years of 0. This is an area of the US that a few years back went through an 11-year drought, with water supplies drying up to the point towns around the area were temporarily piping water from areas with plenty of water over to areas where they had none. Many a summer I've played with mud tiles--where the clay beds of dried up creeks and mud puddles would dry into huge baked clay tiles that you could throw like discuses--like sailing them off into the everyday sunsets.

One summer in Haiti, sitting out in the high-high Caribbean sun by the swimming pool of the villa at which I was staying, I wrote a whole Haitian novella--writing it by hand--luxuriating in the blistering, sweat-wrenching sun--with occasional quick escapes into the coolness of the outdoor bar for a slugging down of Planter's Punches or gin & coconut milks.

My first attempts at serious writing, I was 22 years old, just out of the U.S. Army (there was no air-conditioning at any army post I was ever stationed at), and it was summer, my last summer ever of happiness--in the sense I was carefree, free, unfettered by work, unfettered by needs--and that summer, in the air-condition-less heat--sitting at my grandmother's old 1925 L.C. Smith typewriter in my old room I lived in from the time I was 12 until that summer I was 22--I started writing on my first novel ever, a story I gave a title to--Hot Like Bread and Pepper--before I ever knew what the hell I was going to write about. I see nothing wrong with coming up with a title for a story before you even know the story.

The heat. I love the heat. That's why Hell won't bother me so much.

What I don't like is HIGH heat. Record-setting summers. Like 100-degree summer days in New York City--a concrete-floored sun's bowl--are as close to a true Hell reality as one will ever experience. Hemingway said you had to travel through a little hell to know the coolness of mind one experienced on exiting a little hell and coming out saner than before the experience.
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The Next Revolution Will NOT Be on Teevee
Damn, I'd just been listening to Gil Scott-Heron's "Living in the Bottle"--and NYC FM station, WBAI, is constantly running a station promo that features Gil Scott-Heron--in which he calls himself the "unknown bluesologist," and Gil was a bluesologist--a blues man--a piano player--a blues man out of the District of Corruption--so what a downer to read first thing this morning that Gil Scott-Heron had left the mortal coil--and he was only just 62.
http://images.newstatesman.com/articles/2010//20100323_gil_scott-heron_in_2009._photograph._adam_turner._w.jpg
Gil Scott-Heron (1949-2011)
The following is a 2009 interview with Gil Scott-Heron, the bluesologist.
blogs.westword.com/backbeat/2009/05/qa_with_gil_scott-heron.php

thegrowlingwolf
for The Daily Growler

Saturday, May 21, 2011

Living in New York City BUSTED!


Foto by tgw, New York City, May 2011
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Say goodbye to: "Tondo": Xavier Tondó Volpini, a Spanish cyclist; we had just seen him place 5th in the Tour of the Basque Country this year. His best finish was as overall winner of the 2007 Tour of Portugal. Tondo was killed when he was pinned against his garage door and his car and crushed to death. Tondo was riding this year on the Movistar team. [See PS on bottom of post.]
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From Bro. Ray Charles:
My bills are all due and the baby needs shoes and I'm busted
Cotton is down to a quarter a pound, but I'm busted
I got a cow that went dry and a hen that won't lay
A big stack of bills that gets bigger each day
The county's gonna haul my belongings away cause I'm busted.

I went to my brother to ask for a loan cause I was busted
I hate to beg like a dog without his bone, but I'm busted
My brother said there ain't a thing I can do,
My wife and my kids are all down with the flu,
And I was just thinking about calling on you 'cause I'm busted.

Well, I am no thief, but a man can go wrong when he's busted
The food that we canned last summer is gone and I'm busted
The fields are all bare and the cotton won't grow,
Me and my family got to pack up and go,
But I'll make a living, just where I don't know cause I'm busted.

I'm broke, no bread, I mean like nothing,

Insufficient Funds
"It is a feeling of relief, almost of pleasure, at knowing yourself at last genuinely down and out. You have talked so often of going to the dogs - and well, here are the dogs, and you have reached them, and you can stand it. It takes off a lot of anxiety" [George Orwell, Down and Out in Paris and London].

Being stone broke is a hardship, but as Orwell says, once you are on the level of the pariah dog, a lot of anxiety is shed and there's a certain calming effect to it.

When I moved to New York City, the place was crammed with bums, beggars, the mentally impaired. Once sitting in a window seat at Phoebe's on the Bowery with my wife #2 and a childhood friend of hers, yes, we were checking out the people, mostly down and outers, as they slumped by Phoebe's window on their ways to somewhere, more than likely to the city shelters located just up the street--the only other people on the Bowery in those days were hippies and East Village Other readers and jazz musicians and critics (I met Stanley Crouch after he'd first come to NYC in Phoebe's). Suddenly, my wife's friend went, "Holy Cow...." and he jumped up off his stool and ran for the door..."Be back in a minute," he said tossing the words back over his shoulder as he left the building.

My wife and I watched him as once out on the sidewalk he started hollering at someone, a man, a man in a fairly nice-looking overcoat and carrying a scruffy looking NYTimes--hell, the guy was well dressed, very intelligent looking.

Soon our friend was back with us. "That guy...I went to Penn with him. He eventually graduated from Wharton and went to work for E.F. Hutton as a stock-performance analyst. I was an usher at his wedding--he married a Jewish chick whose father owned half of Philadelphia--who as a wedding present gave them an apartment on Park Avenue--up in the East 90s."

"So what's up with him now?" my wife and I both asked. "What's up with him now? He's a bum. He's living up in the men's shelter. He's worthless. Broke. Adlepated. He says silly things without much reasoning behind them--and sure he's a bit screwy now, as you can imagine--from the Philadelphia Main Line to New York City and Park Avenue to the Bowery--and all in a matter of a decade. He talks a lot of gibberish--he barely knew who I was but then he became clear as a bell and talked to me like it was only yesterday we'd been out partying together. And that's a cashmere overcoat he's wearing, too--but value has no meaning to him. Like I said, he hardly knows who he is now much less who he used to be--I'd say he hasn't a worry in the world. I mean he had a dopey grin on his face, like he was happy--at least he doesn't look as worried now as he did when he was successful. And that was the Times financial section he had with him...did you notice? I think he can still tell you good stocks to buy." "How old was that paper, though?" my wife piped up.

I began philosophizing: "You know what Henry Miller said about being busted? He said,
'I have no money, no resources, no hopes. I am the happiest man alive'."

The reason for this post? I just checked my bank account. Cripes! I've only got $30 in there. I thought I had more than that--at least a hundred bucks. I called the bank and they explained it to me--their books always come out in their favor--my books never come out in my favor. I had forgotten I spent $50 at my fav Irish pub the other night while out on a date with this blissfully beautiful woman, a new woman in my life...well, she's not new really...I've known her for many a moon (speaking American Indian)--"a heap long time." I love watching old Westerns where the Indians are played by White guys made up with cordovan shoe polish or Mexican actors like Anthony Quinn or Frank Silvera, who as Mexican mestizos really were American Indians, though as Mexicans they were, I'm sure, considered Spanish--some of Cornado's many children.

My favorite White guy playing an American Indian in a movie is Burt Lancaster's playing a starting-off-peaceful redskin who turns renegade when the White man trick bags him trying to get his ass on his proper Great-White-Father-approved reservation. This is Burt in the 1954 movie, Apache. Another civilized God-worshiping Whites vs. the savage heathen Indians plot--and, yes, even though they are more evil than Burt's renegade Apache character, the White men still end up putting him in his place. This movie is an extension of the Whites vs. Geronimo story--Geronimo was an Apache chief who said he'd rather die fighting the White devils than humble his proud self in respect of the Great White Father to a worthless life on a White man's reservation (concentration camp)--so Geronimo resisted until he was arrested and put in a Fort Sill, Oklahoma, stockade, where he remained a "savage curiostiy" on display for many years. (You can read Geronimo's own story as linked in our "My Blog" list to the right of this post.)

Obama compared Osama bin Laden to Geronimo--an insult to American Indians. Geronimo was an American Indian freedom fighter, fighting for his and his peoples's rights to the whole of the USA--the intruding invention of invading and occupying White renegades from Europe--Europe's unwanted--Europe's religious nutjobs--Roger Williams and his Anabaptists ; the weirdo stoning and burning-at-the-stake Pilgrims and Puritans; the Huguenots; Lord Calvert and his Maryland Catholics; William Penn, the power-elitist Quaker who ruled Pennsylvania like it was his private estate--all the White-makes-it-right hopped up seekers of freedom for their warped way of life thinking--a dependence on a White God, a God the American Indians always knew wasn't in the far-off heavens somewhere practicing perfect Judaism, a God who wasn't White at all; a God whose existence to Native Americanos already existed in Nature--in the Earth--heaven being the planet Earth--our mother and father combined.

We the people come from Nature--from the Jungle. All of our reasons for being revert back to the Jungle. Everything We, whether White, Black, Yellow, Red, Albino (and I just saw Edgar Winter doing quite well in L.A.), do is based on instincts we genetically experienced when living in the treetops of the jungle, where our closest relatives still live--those that haven't been exterminated or zooed.

We were never broke while living in the jungle. The jungle provided everything we needed in terms of housing, food, vistas, sounds, reactions, tribal existence. All our modern societies are are enhanced jungle tribes. And, yes, there are differences in monkeys--wide differences--internal monkey hatreds galore--why, Chimpanzees, our closest monkey relatives--they are almost 100% matches to our DNA and genetics--love going on cannibalistic meat hunts where they attack lesser monkeys, like Gibbons, and on catching them, tear them limb-from-limb while eating them raw. Animals, including humans, love raw fresh-killed bloody-drenched meats and innards--flesh. We kindly claim modern monkeys are vegetarians. Yeah sure. Are termites vegetables?

One was never broke in the jungle. Or if you were, you'd be eaten by a stronger species--like an African eagle--a bird of prey that can easily swoop down and claw up a baby monkey for their offsprings's daily sustenance. There are currently around this country eagles's nests Webcams --especially one in Iowa where recently viewers watched mom and dad eagle's three eggs hatching. Then it was bloody fun time when these human gawkers got to experience watching the parents bringing sustenance to the nest every so often around the clock--treats like whole rabbits that have to be torn limb-from-limb so the baby birds can feast delightfully, getting their white down all bloody red with their gorging of their bloody meals. Yes, eagles have poor seasons but they are seldom broke--and even if they do have a bad season--maybe they lose a couple of chicks (eaglets)--still they don't divorce or commit suicide because of a downswing.

Humans, however, in their civilized state, have discovered suicide. Only an artist can survive being down and out in any locale--being lower than a dog--Charles Mingus's "autobiography" was titled Beneath the Underdog, meaning that a Black American can find himself relegated lower than a worst-case-scenario in a dog's life.
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Obama's Speech on the Middle East
This silly goose we have as a president. Who the hell is doing his thinking for him? His out-of-nowhere speech last night on the Middle East situation sounded exactly like George W. Bush's Middle East policies and how Israel and Palestine should resolve their differences--especially almost exactly word-for-word G.W. Bush's solution to the Israeli-Palestinian bullshit situation (a religious one; Israelis see Palestinians as "lower than dogs"--same as Pure White Germans saw the Jews during Hitler's Christian-Vegetarian reign--lower than dogs).

I have said many times in this unwell-read post that President Obama said after meeting with G.W. Bush that he was a very likable and easy-to-get-along-with fellow--and now it is obvious to me that Obama is purposely extending what powers he knows he was handed over by Baby Bush, whose mechanical movements were the result of all the hands up his ass manipulating him. I think some of these same hands are up Obama's ass manipulating his mechanical movements.

As to "this unwell-read post," truth is, we here at the Growler have about 2 people (though we do get over 100 hits a day on the site--a lot of that Spam, of course) who read this blog on a regular basis--which is OK with me. Two readers is better than one or none. The Growler now has 7 followers--and, I must confess, I have no idea what this "follower" concept is all about--except that I know it has to be a data-mining scheme or a Google advertising mechanism. I don't trust "following" at all; just like I don't trust Google searching; Yahoo emailing;Facebooking and Twittering. I see them all as corporation advertising schemes--datamining--just like the Google satellites can pinpoint your ass while you're sleeping or rolling a joint or maybe communicating with al-Queda. I find it curious that the minute Obama announced it had taken his CIA goons and Navy Seal goons 10 years to locate Osama bin Laden and lay him to rest, Google had satellite images of the "mansion" compound in which the Evil One was "hiding out" up immediately after the assassination was announced. Notice, we are now coming down hard on the Pakistanis with old G.W. Bush's man, Bob Gates, saying surely these evil-nuclear-bearing Pakis knew the Devil of all Devils was residing just a few hundred yards from their West Point. Surely they did. Afterall , they are evil Muslims--when Christians terrorize, it's OK; God's behind it; but when the Muslims terrorize, it's bad wrong; it shows Muslims are truly children of the antiChrist, the horrible Christian Frankenstein invention they call Satan (isn't it odd, too, how Orthodox Jews reject any knowledge of Jesus and certainly don't respect this "fictional" character as their Messiah?--nor do Jews believe in Satan--isn't that odd?).

President Obama's plan for an Israeli-Palestine separate state bullshit is almost word-for-word exactly the same as G.W. Bush's same speech on the same matter.

As long as we allow privatization of our land and resources, we are going to have territorial conflicts, which is what WARS are essentially--the control of the land, the air, and the seas that surround us. Doesn't all of this reflect our jungle past?

I just read a blogger pundit coming up with a NEW idea: the earth as a spaceship. Come on, I've already posted that Buckminster Fuller came up with that concept back in the 30s, 40s, and 50s of the last century. He illustrated it by holding up a cottonseed tree seed ball and blowing on it. The result is that the cottonseed ball explodes and its tiny seed pods fly off out in the direction the blowing air is blowing them--off into space--until they land on earth that either accepts them or rejects them. If they land on fallow soil, they bear children and societies of forests; but, if they land on desert or on concrete, they die--though occasionally you may see a cottonwood seedling growing up through a crack in a concrete slab. I always wanted a tree planted directly over my grave so the roots could shoot down into me and eat me and make my flesh a part of the tree's growth--me in that tree--but, now I want to be cremated--so? My ex-wife #2 had herself cremated...so what did she have done with her ashes? Thinking just like me--she lived with me 10 years--got to know me pretty well--she requested a tree be planted in the yard of the house she had built with her own hands and her ashes be ingested in the soil around that tree.

Concrete does not bear living things. Buildings, for instance, aren't living things. They are merely decaying containers that are obsolete the minute they are finished--subject to be imploded and destroyed after 10 or so years of containing matters that are dead the moment they are conceived. Even our most reverentially and riskily built edifices to our bigger-than-we-are gods are eventually left in ruin with the vines and bushes and high grasses of Nature taking over after they are abandoned by humans or else destroyed by humans as they go about waging raging wars amongst themselves--killing one another in the names of their gods who force them via holy writ mandates to go ye about conquering the world in the name of your god--wars the competitions of human males trying to steal one another's power back and forth from each other--most of the tribal chieftains incestuously connected--and here I go off on a tangent again, though as a writer, I must explore all tangents when they appear just ahead of me on this road of life I was conceived and birthed to travel on.

I used to blame my parents for giving birth to me--a result of a night of hot sex probably, the story told that I was the result of my old man returning from one of his prowls at just the right time--calculations would make that right time just before Thanksgiving nine months before I stuck my head out of the safety of my mother's womb--a precious womb that bore three sons, two of which lived, and one of those living going on to fame and fortune and the other of the living, which was me, has ended up as of this moment in human-conceived time absolutely broke. Though, I must parenthetically add, not helplessly broke, though pretty damn scary broke, down and out in New York City...while all about me my fellow New York Citians seem to be living quite well--new cars all over the streets. When I first came to NYC, you seemed to see more older cars on the streets than you do today--more beat-up and obviously very used cars on the streets--cars with smoking tailpipes; cars stalled from overheating; cars with motors dying in intersections and having trouble restarting them--with the scores of cars stacked up behind them extending their rage against them by literally sitting on their loudest horns...but not these days. Most cars I see are relatively "brand" new. You see more older more-used-looking trucks than you do cars of the same state.

The restaurants, also, seem to sit empty most of the day--avoided by the workingclasses, doing most of their business during happy-hour times (4 to 7 pm) and then later in the evenings when the people come out of all these new luxury hotels looking for food they can afford.

That is unless you happen to he a pig-jowled sleaze-bag ex-IMF big shot (the IMF is actually broke and can only exist through subsidies given it by We the People of the USA--some Economists say the IMF is actually a branch of the US government) staying in a $30,000-a-night pasha suite at one of my fair city's newest chiseler-priced Chinese, Israel, or Arab private-equity-built "luxury" hotels. Come on, folks, it stands reasonable to me how any horny dude, and especially a horny Frenchman, using his privileged expense account to spend so outrageous amount a night for a suite (paid in full for him by We the People probably) could surely feel such extravagant spending (conspicuous consumption) gives him the right to a free can of macadamia nuts and the right to rape the maid when she comes in to clean his room. Especially if that maid is a good-looking little cute jutting-assed hardworking single Black mom from the Western African nation of Guinea, the poorest nation in Africa thanks to the IMF. Besides, this sleaze bag is a superman Frenchman, God's gift to women. Besides, too, this cute little woolly booger maid was once bootheeled over by a French Colonial government when her country was French Guinea--Power Elite Frenchmen who had the right to rape their sexier female subjects as members of the Master Race. I mean, couldn't this sleaze bag have been thinking in those terms when he approached this hardworking single mom whose cute jutting round ass was teasing him as she was bent over cleaning out his hotel shit can--"Hey, little mamma, check out my old gnarly cock...I fuck your people through the IMF; now I fuck you!"

Who was in doubt that this pathetic human being would get bail, which he did? But then the Power Elite males feel a part of that power is to fuck any damn woman they god-damn please, but especially babysitters, nannies, governesses, and maids--like Governor Groper--he feels the same way--not only does Arnie wave his big dick out of his pants every time he sees a sexual-assault prospect--hey, that dick-waving and all his Hollywood millions got him Maria Schriver, a Kennedy girl, who ain't that bad looking a babe--or she was before she got those Schriver wrinkles--but, Arnie, nope, this horny bastard couldn't resist the maid--and this maid! "Holy Siegheil, Arnie, she's mug-ugly--why her? Holland Tunnel vagina maybe? Also, I'd be curious to know was she legal?" And to think, at one time Repugs were touting Arnie as our first Nazi-born president.

Oh well, or should I say Orwell? The world goes on a turnin'--time keeps on spinning itself out--lives are unwinding--even digital clocks stop running when the energy disappears--and human energy is disappearing.

thegrowlingwolf
for The Daily Growler

From Velo News:

SIERRA NEVADA, Spain (AFP) — Spanish cyclist Xavier Tondo was killed in a freak accident on Monday in which he was crushed between his car and a garage door at a ski resort in southern Spain, a police source said.

Tondo said he enjoyed making the move to Movistar. | Andrew Hood photo

Tondo, 32, was in his car about to leave the garage of an apartment building of the Sierra Nevada resort Monday morning to continue training for the Tour de France.

For reasons that remain unclear, he got out of the vehicle and became trapped between his car and the automatic door of the garage, a police source in the nearby city of Granada said.

The source said “it appears” that Tondo died instantly.

The manager of his Movistar team, Eusebio Unzue, said another Spanish professional cyclist, Benat Intxausti of the Euskaltel team, was in the vehicle at the time.

Tondo was one of a number of cyclists who have been training at altitude in the resort.

Tondo, who turned professional in 2003, won the Vuelta a Castilla y Leon last month, succeeding his controversial compatriot Alberto Contador.

He also won the Tour of Portugal in 2007, a stage of the Paris-Nice race in 2010 and finished sixth overall in the Vuelta a España last year.

Wednesday, May 18, 2011

Living in New York City: Where Nobody Seems Worried

Foto by tgw, New York City, May 2011
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Say goodbye to: Harmon Killebrew, one of the great home run hitters of all time, hitting his 573 home runs in the dead-ball-nonsteroidal era--7th on the all-time HR list--check it out:
40 Major League players have hit 400 or more home runs. Hank Aaron--755 Babe Ruth--714-- Barry Bonds--708 Willie Mays--660 Sammy Sosa--588 Frank Robinson--586 Mark McGwire--583 Harmon Killebrew--573 Rafael Palmeiro--569 Reggie Jackson--563 Mike Schmidt--548 Ken Griffy Jr.--536 Mickey Mantle--536 Jimmie Foxx--534 Willie McCovey--521 Ted Williams--521 Ernie Banks--512 Eddie Mathews--512 Mel Ott--511 Eddie Murray--504 Lou Gehrig--493 Fred McGriff--493 Stan Musial--475 Willie Stargell--475 Dave Winfield--465 Jose Canseco--462 Carl Yastrzemski--452 Jeff Bagwell--449 Gary Scheffield--449 Frank Thomas--448 Dave Kingman--442 Andre Dawson--438 Manny Ramirez--435 Juan Gonzalez--434 Cal Ripken Jr.--431 Jim Thome--430 Alex Rodriguez--429 Billy Williams--426 Darrell Evans--414 Duke Snider--407
from Wiki's answer.com
Harmon Killebrew, 74, American Hall of Fame baseball player (Minnesota Twins), esophageal cancer
And say goodbye to: Bruce Ricker, 68, American film documentarian and producer. Producer of one of the great jazz films, Thelonious Monk, Straight No Chaser.
And say goodbye to:
Snooky Young, 92, American jazz trumpeter--ex-Basie trumpeter; ex-Tonight Show Band trumpeter.
And say goodbye to: Mel Queen, 69, American baseball player (Reds, Angels) and pitching coach (Blue Jays)
---------------------------And that's enough about DEATH..................................................................

Not a Worry in the World
My landlord has three worthless sons who have now managed to get themselves involved in "property management," and the property they are managing is my home. One of them is gay and double worthless. One of them has a beer in his hands 24/7 and is relatively worthless. The other is the youngest. He's at least the least worthless of the three. Of course they all have apartments in their daddy's building plus they run the basement business office for daddy.

My landlord? He worries all the time. His face is measured in worry. The pressure is on him. He's got back trouble. He's got a hip problem. He talks about money 24/7. He's constantly saying he's broke; yet we then find out he's bought another building here in Manhattan. He now owns 4 buildings in Manhattan and several buildings in the Bronx. So he's not broke. Well, he may be on paper. I'm sure his buildings have all been remortgaged several times by now; plus this building is a landmark building and he gets all kinds of landmark society aid money to restore the building to its original "grand" glory.

His worthless sons? They haven't a worry in the world. Fathers always bear the sins of their fathers. Successful fathers have worthless children. When successful fathers die, their worthless children get the spoils. When this landlord dies, I'm quite sure his worthless sons will destroy the property in terms of divesting themselves of it.

The other night I was at a party in the Bronx. Some of the guests were members of my family. Two young kids included, a boy and a girl. Nice kids. I'm proud to say they are of my bloodline. I see the handsomeness of my mother's brother in the boy's face, after whom he's named, by the bye. I see the same family traits in the girl, too. Such bright and open kids. Open to learning. Open to knowledge. Open to inspirations. Open to what they discover through curiosity. They know nothing at all yet about what awaits them in terms of reality and existence.

All at the party were optimistic. EXCEPT me. I kept wanting to talk about the fact that for the first time in the history of this nation, We the People of the USA may be reneging on the payment of the loans we've borrowed from more successful Capitalist nations, like Communist China. I still can't get over the irony of that oxymoron. Oxymoron (it sounds like something from the Urban Dictionary ("an Oxycontin-taking freak")) comes from the Greek, ὀξύμωρον, which translates into English as "sharp dull." And, yes, the sharp can be dull and need resharpening.

Ironies. From ironies comes ire. From ire comes contradiction. From contradiction comes our current dilemma. False beliefs. Like the belief in gods and holy scriptures and ancient history being prophetic! Nothing is prophetic. Nothing is discernible in terms of the next minute much less the future. Even beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

The party was full of optimists. EXCEPT for me. Optimism to me is like hope: there's no such thing. Optimism is like being high on drugs or self-esteem or power. Pessimism is natural. Without pessimism no one is safe. As I kept trying to bring up the fact We the People were for the first time ever going into default on our loans, I was shouting things like, "Will the Communist Chinese foreclose on us? Or the Japanese, who now need money so desperately?"

And speaking of Japan, isn't it interesting to note that the greatest nuclear disaster in the history of the world is now relegated to the forgotten pages of world history? Maybe in Japan they are still involved with the nuclear tragedy, but in this country--hey, ironically, we claim our nuclear facilities are all like our gods: omnipotent and omnipresent. We deny any of our nuclear facilities, no matter their age, are in big trouble. Such denial leads to paranoia. And our pill-pushing psychiatrists know how easily neurotics can become paranoid and thereby easily controlled--like you control a bull by putting a ring in his nose and attaching a lead rope to it. Then when he tries to pull away from your control, the pain of his ripping that ring out of the deep flesh separating his nostrils in which it has been clamped shut brings him back to the reality that his ass is under your control.

One way we deny our problems is to ignore them. Like New Orleans. Does anybody care about the current situation in New Orleans? Now down on the old Mississippi (it has been naturally overflowing its banks for millenniums--only man takes offense at this river acting naturally), the powers that be in order to save the cities and wealthy people that border on the reaching-toward-the-delta end of the Mississippi, they are having to blow open flood gates that will flood out several thousand acres of adjacent lands and farms and towns and villages and residences and businesses--most of whom are poor people--poor Cajuns.

Ironically the Corps of Army Engineers (the worst) had just reopened the broad channel that lets these huge tankers trundle up the Mississippi to the refineries and chemical plants around Baton Rouge (a filthy city). This is the same channel hurricanes Katrina and Rita rumbled down with unimpeded progress since this channel has murdered the natural marshes and naturally protective channels to the wide mouth of the Mighty Mississippi.

Currently there is flaming lightning scattering about the dundrearied sky over Manhattan this morning. The weather girls say we're in for five days of dirty cold rain--and this in the merry month of May.

Nobody I know is at all concerned about the weather and the changing weather patterns. "Hey, the weather is God's business, not ours." "But, what if you don't believe in God? What if you only believe in Nature and that man is an animal, an extended branch of the monkey family, and as an animal man must conform to Nature rather than rise up against it?"

Nature is omnipotent. Nature is omnipresent. Why, what do you think? Could Nature be our God?

But nobody here in New York City seems worried about much of anything that has anything to do about anything. But then there have to be some people down and out in this town, though Giuliani's and Bloomberg's ridding the streets of our homeless has been pretty successful--for instance there is now only one bum living in my neighborhood where there used to be a multitude of them. Plus the unemployment rate in NYC is above the national average. Among Blacks the unemployment rate is around 20%. But where are these people?

I see people of all races everyday flocking to this apartment building in which I've resided for 30 years eagerly seeking a place to live, either coming on their own in response to a newspaper or Internet ad or with a real estate agent. These people seem eagerly willing to plop down $1850-a-month per room for an apartment ($22,000-a-year for rent)(that also includes a high deposit and a key fee and a real-estate-agency fee), which means the people taking apartments in this building had better at least make $50,000-a-year. It is hard for me to believe that the people I see taking apartments in this building make $50,000-a-year.

As to complaints about these high outrageous rents, if there are any, I don't hear them. And are these rents outrageous? That $1850-a-month apartment in this building is a room that may be as tiny as 10' x 10'--or some are maybe 7' x 20'--whatever, they are tight little boxy studio apartments, some with only one window, some inside apartments with windows though they may be blocked out by the hotel that is still being constructed next door to us--a building that has been under construction for over 4 years now and is still several months away from being completed. The construction business in this town is supposed to be almost nonexistent. Most of the construction sites still active are using nonunion illegal immigrant labor for the shit work and roving nonunion foremen and specialists (like plumbers) who travel the country looking for nonunion work.

Here in New York City you walk around and no one seems worried at all. If they are piled with troubles enough to maybe force them to commit suicide you'd never know it. Last night the trendy wine and chocolate tiny restaurant just up the street from me was packed to its pricey gills--even with a white boy singing white-boy blues under an outside awning to the outdoor crowd--and it was pouring rain but the outdoor part of the restaurant was packed with chattering posing pompous pretenders--pretending that not a god-damn thing was wrong with the world.

In New York City (and all over the US) teachers are being laid off by the thousands; yet teachers aren't protesting. New York City schools are being closed or the ones still open charterized or privatized; yet parents aren't protesting. New York City's government is closing fire houses and firing firemen; yet there is no protest from either the firemen or the police, who are also losing monies and jobs. Andrew Cuomo, our new Dumbocratic governor, the son of the prison-building Mario "I Married a Mafia Daughter" Cuomo, a worthless piece of shit governor when you check out his record compared to his flowery promising speeches, is currently lowering taxes on the rich, a class to which he and his family belong. Why do we think millionaires are going to raise taxes on themselves?

Taxes are shackles that keep the workingman working. Taxes are unfair and always have been. Yet, we have under all the gobblygook legalese and creative accounting loopholes a progressive tax system--the poor taxed the least; the rich taxed the most. At one time the rich paid 50% in income taxes. The poor paid more like 18%--paying progressively more as you earn more or reap more capital gains. The capital gains tax at one time was around 30%--now it is around 15%. New York City once had a stock transfer tax--a penny of tax for each share traded on the New York Stock Exchange. This is a tax Good Ole "How'm I Doin'?" Ed Crotch (Koch) repealed when Wall Street was threatening to move to Jersey City, New Jersey. I said let 'em move to Jersey City; but they never had any intentions of moving to New Jersey. But old quivering Ed gave in to Wall Street and did away with that tax.

Every new building in Manhattan gets tax breaks and abatements that excuse these sites from paying taxes for dozens and dozens of years.

Everybody around me is whistling Dixie as they breeze past me in their BMWs and Lexuses and Caddy SUVs and Jeep Cherokees (what do the Cherokees have to do with the performance of a Jeep?). The trendy Euro-trash bistros are packed with junior execs and twentyish babes who seem to be taking life flippantly fooltishly and who seem to be doing cell phoning and text messaging 24/7--eagerly racing their prize toy rats in the big seriously imposed upon us all rat race.

Am I jealous? No. What pisses me off is I'm condemned as a doomsayer or a conspiracy freak. Even serious progressives pooh-pooh conspiracy theories--like the assassination of Osama bin Laden. There is no body. Yes, one of his sons says it was him. He's suing the USA in the name of his branch of Osama's widespread family--this extended family due to the evil bin Laden's bevy of young wives and the many offspring they've bounced out of their wombs after being inseminated by his wrathful seed--assuming Osama still had the vim and vigor to keep his bevy of babes preggers and in the kitchen. But can we trust the word of one of his sons? Or one of his widows? Can we trust the word of the Navy Seals who are now crybabying about their needing heavy protection since they are now a target of Taliban and al-Queda revenge schemes--though there is no proof that Osama didn't have a twin like Saddam Hussein--remember when Bush claimed that Saddam hired actors who looked like him? Such bullshit, and, yet, if I call all of this crap bullshit, I'm called a conspiratorial nut.

B.B. King sang, "I don't trust nobody but my mother/And sometimes I wonder about her, too." That's the way I operate. Not distrust. Just no trust at all. Everyone is out to beat paying taxes, bills, dues, penalties, etc.; yet in a capitalist system...that's how you make profits. The Neo-Con conspiracy's intent is to drive the economy down--and the dollar down with it--to the point where every worker in this country will eagerly work for near slave wages. CHEAP LABOR! That's the whole idea. It could be as soon as August. What?, you ask. The beginning of the next Great Depression! When our government takes us into default on the repayments of our many loans--from China, India, Japan, Israel--those who have bought our debt to keep us afloat.

For instance, is it conspiratorial to claim G.W. Bush borrowed all the Social Security money and that Social Security is now a pile of IOUs?

I retreat into my carapacial mansion.

thegrowlingwolfasaturtle(mr.tur-tell)
for The Daily Growler
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Please Note: Our own Growler pal, Nicholas Egon Jainschigg, a master painter, illustrator, and teacher, has started back up once again his Painting-a-Day efforts--
this is where Nick takes a small canvas, puts it on an easel, gets his paints ready, sets a kitchen timer to 30 minutes, and then sets out to painting a painting, which finished or unfinished, bad or good (in his eye), he stops working on when the timer goes off. It'll amaze you what this contemporary master can do to a blank canvas in thirty minutes. Best thing is, YOU CAN BUY THEM FROM THE MASTER for $100 each. Very much worth the money. Get there in a hurry, however, because these little paintings sell like hotcakes once the word gets out. See Nick Jainschigg's Website and Blog listed in the The Daily Growler "My Blog List" (ooooh, what a cutesey-wootsie title). Go to: NickJainschigg.org


In other news: the Jalopy Theatre and School of Music in Brooklyn has just released on their Jalopy Records label, a vinyl LP--33 1/3 rpm--it imitates the old Smithsonian LPs of the distant vinyl past--entitled Folk Music of the United States: American Songs with Fiddle and Banjo. This album features Growler musical friend, Pat Conte (once known as Major Contay of Canebrake Rattler fame--also proprietor and director of the Secret Museum). We're sure you can order these unique LPs via the Jalopy's Website--Google: Jalopy Theatre and School of Music, Brooklyn, New York--and we're sure you'll find it there--and all about Pat there, too--and his art.


Wednesday, May 11, 2011

Living on an al-Queda Bull's Eye Lost in Illusions

Foto by tgw, "Photographic Illusion: Lobster on the Wall," New York City, 2011
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Dick Stump Is No More
I had started writing a detective story what seems like a dream or two ago. Two friends, one a newspaper reporter, the other a ne'er-do-well, are drinking beer and BS-ing when the ne'er-do-well asks the reporter how his novel's coming along. The reporter says not so well and the ne'er-do-well says something like "Why you wastin' your time on a great American novel that more than likely won't sell even if it gets published...like, dude, why don't you write a romance novel...or better yet, why not write a detective novel?" And that character's revelation of himself to me got me to thinking why not a novel within a novel? The writing of Dick Stump's detective novel and another novel on top of that about Dick Stump's Detective Agency, "It's Hard to Stump Dick Stump," blah, blah, blah, that to which always leads me into the temptation of starting another writing project. As I recently put it to a friend, "I'm great at conceiving but truly unreliable at delivering."

What happened was, I was working in Open Text on one of my laptops and somehow the highlight got hung up and I highlighted all but two pages of this Dick Stump, Private Dick--and no it wasn't meant to be facetious but real in an antihero sense. Angry I promptly tried to exit the file only to get the prompt "Save or Cast Asunder." In frustration over why I couldn't dehighlight--the tool froze I suppose--I hit the "Cast Asunder" button and sure 'nuff, all that had been highlighted in the novel was deleted. "Crap!" I cried as I threw up my arms in defeat.

I raise high the roof beam of my losing an attempt at a dual-purpose detective novel in order to avoid having to humble myself before the throne of the mighty. This an allusion to my own beliefs in what I believe to be my natural ability to render truth from fiction--or one could say I use fiction to boil out the fat of truths.

I'll be honest. To me this whole Bin Laden uncovering and the ensuing assassination was as trumped up as the Jessica Dawn Lynch rescue by the rough-and-ready U.S. Marines back in the early bullshit stages of the lied-our-way-into invasion and occupation of Iraq--remember that farcical use of this innocent dumbass young girl for propaganda purposes?

From Wikipedia:
Jessica Dawn Lynch (born April 26, 1983) is a former Private First Class (PFC) in the United States Army Quartermaster Corps. Lynch served in Iraq during the 2003 invasion by U.S. and allied forces. On March 23, 2003 she was injured and captured by Iraqi forces but was recovered on April 1 by U.S. Special Operations Forces, with the incident subsequently receiving considerable news coverage. Lynch's was the first successful rescue of an American POW since World War II and the first ever of a woman.[1]

Initial media reports on Lynch's recovery in Iraq were incorrect. Lynch, along with major media outlets, fault the U.S. government for creating the story as part of the Pentagon's propaganda effort.[2][3][4][5] Jim Wilkinson is credited for fabricating the government narrative.[6]

On April 24, 2007 she testified in front of Congress that she had never fired her weapon; her M16 rifle jammed, as did all weapons systems assigned to her unit, and she had been knocked unconscious when her vehicle crashed.

That's what this bin Laden assassination reminded me of. And certainly it is now being used as propaganda. To get us ready for another invasion and occupation...maybe of Yemen? And I just heard that Obama also tried to assassinate the Iman who is an American citizen, a New Mexican, al-Awlaki, this time using one of his famous drones to do the dirty work. Well, the drone missed al-Awlaki but Obama proudly boasted his drone had killed a couple of al-Queda children perhaps. I just read a blogger who calls al-Awiaki a traitor who deserves to be assassinated. In fact, this blogger believes Obama is finally showing some "balls." So there ya go, folks. The Nobel Peace Prize winner is now the world's greatest assassin.

[I was reading Robert Parry today and he's claiming Bush protected bin Laden from getting caught in return for bin Laden sending in his video threats at times Bush needed them to scare the American people into reelecting him--Parry claiming John Kerry was on the verge of whipping G.W.'s worthless ass until bin Laden came through in October before the election with a big fat warning of how his al-Queda were building up massive intentions of once again invading the USA and killing hosts of Americans--thus Osama helped Bush get reelected (along with enough stolen votes to seep him over the top) in 2004--Osama helped him by putting Bush down and leaving the impression he was backing Kerry for president. Parry's main point in his article is that the Bush and bin Laden families were very close in several ways including both personal and business relationships. He says Obama recognized this and when he became president he told his CIA and military stooges that he wanted them to find and capture or kill bin Laden--that that was his first priority on becoming president. HOW 'BOUT THAT SPIN? This is puting Obama in a spotlight full of glory and praise and full of political all-starring on the grounds by killing bin Laden, Obama has gotten rid of the Devil and is now our Lord and Savior; therefore, a political ploy of Hall of Fame proportions. Read the article at:

www.consortiumnews.com/2011/050711.html]

Plus, I'd seen the Navy Seals in action before. In Somalia under the reign of another "Peace through War" president, Slick Willie "Big Dog" Clinton (a man who knows the truth about bin Laden but ain't talkin') during that Blackhawk Down fuck up...who fucked it up? The Navy Seals, that's who. When you digest who the Navy Seals are you'll see these are poor dumb young men--the dumbest being those who follow orders the best--these are gung-ho Navy dudes who are the instigating end of the U.S. Navy, the intelligence end--well, just ask yourself, what the hell are Navy Seals?--human/seal hybrids like I'm a human/wolf hybrid as a writer?

From Wikipedia:

The United States Navy SEa, Air and Land (SEAL) Teams, commonly known as Navy SEALs, are the U.S. Navy's principal special operations force and a part of the Naval Special Warfare Command (NSWC) as well as the maritime component of the United States Special Operations Command (USSOCOM).[3]

The unit's acronym ("SEAL") is derived from their capacity to operate at sea, in the air, and on land – but it is their ability to work underwater that separates SEALs from most other military units in the world. Navy SEALs are trained and have been deployed in a wide variety of missions, including direct action and special reconnaissance operations, unconventional warfare, foreign internal defense, hostage rescue, counter-terrorism and other missions. Without exception, all SEALs are male members of either the United States Navy or the United States Coast Guard.
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From AntiFascist Calling:
In order to do their best to "keep us safe," Team Obama is busily building upon the criminal legacy bequeathed to the administration by the Bush regime and even asserts the right to assassinate American citizens "without a whiff of due process," as Salon's Glenn Greenwald points out. [Read the rest of this well-written article (linked in our blog list in the right margin) about the billions of dollars We the People are wasting on our incompetent and outdated spying agencies.]
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Being Commander in Chief of this huge complex military regime that We the People have let spread like an amoebic force into the very bloodstream of both our fiscal and physical existence is more powerful and glamorous than actually being president. Military geeks can be ordered around by this president. You see the power in President Obama's face as he speaks about how HE ordered the "capture" of Osama bin Laden (once beloved by our CIA). You see the most frustration in his face when he's trying to be the great compromising president and running up against the forces of internal evil (who are to me traitors), forces of White Citizens banking up like the driven snow to block his every compromising move. [Question: has Obama vetoed anything yet?]

But as Commander in Chief, Obama can secretly call his military pig-fat cats into secret meetings where he is solely the boss and is respected by his generals and sidebar lackeys or these obedient goons know he'll retire their asses like he did General McChrystal(meth), the Bud Light-swigging Afghan commander who made light of his Commander in Chief and that was it for him. Yet, McChrystal(meth) is being given credit as being the conceiver of this assassination of Bin Laden way back before the Bud Light binging on the French bus or was it a German bus on his way to a wedding anniversary party in Paris paid for by We the People (AIN'T WE A GENEROUS BUNCH!...and we are...we are suckers, that's what we are).

G.W. Bush was the (faux) president who figured this executive order and commander-in-chief shit out to a tee. As Commander in Chief he had a power over all of Congress--a power that Congress had no way or will to stop. With his executive order privileges added to his role as Commander in Chief, it was fucking easy for Baby Dumbass Bush to start two unnecessary wars and sink our economy into what looks like irrecoverable doldrums (the dollar diving deeper into the worthlessness the more trillions of worthless paper Ben Bernanke is printing up and readying to dole out).

Obama, no dummy by any means--I'd say Obama is the greatest politician we've ever created--how about that? By using his Commander-in-Chief power, he has with this capture of whichever bin Laden this is--no body, no positive identification--become the balls behind our aggressive forces, the prime mover of our killing machines and methods and our vast world-wide-reaching killing abilities--oh yes these special forces (like the CIA) are bunglers by nature of their education and training and purpose--but with Obama in control of them; therefore burns his power.

Did anyone wonder about the sudden revelation of the discovery of videos and other bullshit evidence of Osama bin Laden's still being the world's mastermind terrorist, still in the leadership position of the vast and great military power we have dubbed al-Queda--an invincible force that even though rumor has it that only 100 al-Queda are left in Afghanistan, those 100 are weapons of mass destruction to Obama and his assassination troops, representing still justification for staying in Afghanistan and sending drones and CIA assassin squads into Pakistan. These discovered bin Laden videos show what a pompous and evil bastard he was and also they claim they found in his laptop elaborate plans to blow up the New York City subway system--and here in NYC, our mayor and his shanty Irish police commissioner once again are warning we New Yorkers that we are now subject to another al-Queda attack even though their primary object in their original miraculous attack was the World Trade Center and the wrecking of our economy, an objective that looks like they carried out with perfection. Proof of this is that big hole down at Ground Zero (even though several other buildings fell that day and there is no accountability as to why those "other" buildings fell) and our sinking economy and dropping-toward-the-bottom worthless dollar.

Obama last night on CBS's 60 Minutes was meanly vicious as he talked about how this whole assassination plot had been carried out. His big point was that We the People of the USA never forget. But, Brother Obama, we do forget--remember you taught us to not be interested in what's past and to only conscentrate on the nonexistent future, which no one can predict.

Obama's solution to terror is terror. He tried in his suave way to convince the American people that there is still an enormous al-Queda force out in the world and he's saying these remaining al-Queda are the meanest and most unruly bastards of this mighty military force that dresses in rags and seems to be encamped in desert-flat areas like Afghanistan and Yemen, which now, according to Obama, is the home of the next bin Laden, the American Muslim al-Awlaki.

This huge world al-Queda military force was still being commanded by this Pakistani bin Laden, this Evil Devil who all Americans are now agreeing joyously and pompously proud that yes this bastard was an equal to Hitler and Stalin and deserved to be assassinated--his head blown to smithereens--his body shot to pieces--a body now whose only evidence of it being a body is in a photograph that our Commander and Chief says is too graphic to release, though his new sidekick assassination expert, Leon Panetta (a Clintonista), wanted the photograph shown. [What a smart move by our Commander in Chief putting one of his gung-ho lackeys, General David Betrayus, as head of the CIA--and now, in effect, President Obama as Commander in Chief is head of the CIA.]

So, yes, now we're all in American unified agreement that this Devil bin Laden was still masterminding his vast and mighty al-Queda forces on their next possible terrorist mission against We the People of the USA and New York City from this seedy mansion hideout right in the backyard of Pakistan's West Point. You see, it was Osama bin Laden who commanded the mighty shoe bomber to fuck up his blowing up of an American airliner, or the mighty printer bomb, or the master terrorist mind who commanded the African dude, the son of a rich banker, to board an airliner to the US without a passport--let's see you or I do that--the underwear bomber: "Fuck passport; you don't need a passport to get on American airline--we, al-Queda control American airlines. So get on American plane without passport and before you do, in airport restroom, put firecracker bomb in underwear and blow up American airliner going to Detroit, that unholy American city I want wiped off the map."

I'm sorry. I've lived too long. I've lived in several aftermaths of fake captures and phony incidents. Like suddenly I think, why didn't we use the Navy Seals to assassinate Fidel Castro instead of the bumbling CIA assassins who brilliantly tried to kill him by sending him exploding cigars?--the same bunch that made fools of themselves and this nation in the Bay of Pigs incident whose attempt almost got us involved in a nuclear war.

I had been thinking that the Navy Seals were a bunch of supertrained killer men (there are no women in the Navy Seals (you see, you don't send a woman in to do a man's job)) who, and I thought I remembered this correctly, fucked up big time in Somalia with the Blackhawk Down incident--a downed helicopter--why, isn't that interesting? The 60 (you read it right: sixty) Navy Seals who assassinated this Pakistani bin Laden got into the area off two crashed helicopters--evidently that's the way the Navy Seals operate.

What happens to these thousands of trained mean and vicious killers when these wars are finally over and these birds are released into "civilized" society again (though isn't war and its evolution in terms of progress a part of the civilization process?)? These Navy Seals are dumb-ass kids with maybe high-school educations. These men are chosen from among the most gung-ho members of the Navy and Coast Guard, those men who are taught to sneak kill with their special service weapons, like the knife OJ Simpson used to slit the throats of his White wife and her poor dumbass White boy lover or like the AK-47s those 60 superpatriotic SEALs carried with them as they blew into this Pakistan Osama's private residence and blasted away with their AK-47s, making up stories as they went about their killing business--killing first and asking questions later.

All over the Internet the Navy Seals can now do nothing wrong. There is brag about what a deadly force they are and how even the gyrenes (Marines) won't even mess with a Navy Seal they are such ferociously dedicated killers--the Marines once a part of the U.S. Navy hate all other branches of the armed forces because they are trumped up and hyped up to believe they are invincible in terms of killing teams and wiping out 50 or 60 towel-headed Muslim creeps (re: savages) with automatic weapons in fell-swoop sweeps that take out men, women, children, as long as they have towels on their heads and the women are wearing burkhas and hopefully they are begging for their lives in a language the Navy Seals never heard of before, praying to that antiGod-God Allah for salvation. "There," the young dumb gung-ho Navy Seal says as he blunders his way shooting wildly into the bin Laden hideout (in plain view), "you slimy devil bastards, take this from Jesus Christ to you Muslim heathen, you uncivilized sand N-worders!" [I wonder, did the Navy Seals cut off some fingers as trophies?]

So I must humbly concede that Obama has pulled off a momentary political coup...and I emphasize that "for the moment." With all the fol-de-rol around all of this, Obama's ratings have only gone up about 11% and I've read some teabaggers-goofs who are saying the credit for this capture really goes to G.W. Bush and Unka Dickless Cheney (still alive; that bum ticker of his so full of vile and evil (out of which you can make "vile") it refuses to die and go and take the deserving Unka Dick straight down to the holiest of the lowest depth of Hell) for their renditioning towelhead-looking al-Queda helpers and sending them to ruthless countries like Syria, Egypt, Morocco--why those are all Muslim countries aren't they?--to be tortured--the man the government originally said was the mastermind behind 9/11, Kahlid Sheik Mohammed, was waterboarded 183 times--and this man was not Osama bin Laden--and the waterboarding made him spew forth tons of fabrications--in otherwords, he gave the torturers fake information.

So I creep back into a shadowy corner. My knowledge of who the hell Bin Laden really was and where al-Queda came from seems to be WRONG--and my knowledge of the deceitful tactics that led to this former Commander in Chief G.W. Bush's made-up War on Terror that was totally based on LIES...OR WAS IT? Will Obama now find those Weapons of Mass Destruction G.W. Bush and General Colon's Pal said were in the evil hands of that once White Devil of the Desert who G.W. Bush was more afraid of than he was Osama bin Laden, Saddam Hussein? The White Devil G.W. Bush gave up hunting down Osama bin Laden to rush to Iraq to get revenge on because as G.W. put it, "he tried to murder my daddy."

LIES lead to illusions. And allusions. And collusions. Once you are trapped in these webs of lies, it's hard to struggle free and find any truth anywhere. One must believe the lies...but, er-ah, that's what I've been saying all along, how the hell do we anymore separate real (reality) truths from these cosmic LIES? Obama's a liar. I know that. G.W. Bush is a bigger liar. Bill "Big Dog" Clinton is a liar. Come on, Clinton knows who bin Laden really is. All the presidents know about him and his relationship to the CIA. Clinton and Pappy Bush and Big Donald Rumsfeld (who's back on the scene again working for of all people, the Blackwater Gang, who now hide behind their new brand: Xe) all of them know whether or not bin Laden died years ago. There are still pundits out there on the Internet range who believe bin Laden died while traipsing about Tora Bora and his adventures in the caves that the US forces bombed to smithereens--yet, dialysis-machine-toting bin Laden managed to escape into Pakistan--first it was said he was living in a "mansion" in Peshawar. Then, remember, there was mention of the Royal Family of Dubai or one of those sheikdoms visiting Osama in his Tiger Hunting Camp in Pakistan. Now you tell me the CIA hasn't known all along what happened to this character? Come on, they probably put a chip in his forehead or something.

I now truly believe we have invasion and occupation intentions in Pakistan. My closest friends call me a wild speculator when it comes to this intrigue. But, I tell them, I was born under the banner "Remember Pearl Harbor." Later, we all found out, a U.S. Army forward observer warned of enemy planes flying in formation toward Honolulu and this warning was held up and not acted upon. Why? Because Franklin Roosevelt wanted us involved in the both the European War and the Pacific War in order to finally quell the Great Depression, which, if fact be known, the New Deal didn't quite put an end to but WWII did.

Later, though Japan was sending signals they were ready to surrender, Truman bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki back to a Stone Age anyway. He killed 300,000 Japanese in order as he said to save the lives of 2 million brave conscripted very young American men.

Later in a secret move, Truman sent the Marines over to invade Greece--because Greece was going Commie and we and Britain wanted them to have a king.

And then Truman again as Commander in Chief got us involved in the Korean Civil War, an unwinable war we now call the Korean War, except since it wasn't declared a war by Congress Truman said it was a "police action." After that stirred up some controversy, he then declared the war under the flag of the UN (like the Bush Baby shuffled his Afghanistan venture off on NATO).

Then came Eisenhower fucking up by sending a spy plane over the Soviet Union, which they shot down and arrested Francis Powers, the pilot, and sentenced him to death. This is before our Military Industrial Complex with the help of the Pentagon came up with drones--high-altitude spy planes had to have human monkey pilots in them in those early days of wonder planes and superman spying.

Again, We had to stop the Commies who to the mind of John Foster Dulles (his brother Allen was the first head of the CIA (formerly the OSS)) were planning to attack South Asian democracies and using communism knock these countries down like one knocks down a line of dominos set on end in a long chain of linear sequence--one knocked over and they all fall. And thus started the Vietnam War--Eisenhower sending in assassination squads first--remember the "Search & Destroy" missions, led by that man who would later become head of the Armed Forces and then G.W. Bush's Sec'y of State, our own Colon's Pal, also the phony casualty counter for General Westmoreland?...oh, but why go over these so many wars that have been instigated by lies--like the Gulf of Tonkin incident--total bullshit, and yet this lie was the basis for us getting shit-deep in that Vietnam folly that we lost; that in which we got our asses put in slings by a bunch of pajama-wearing Vietnamese patriots--wanting their nation united after being under the bootheels of the French Colonials for so many years when it was known as Indo-China.

Before the Vietnam War came the Cuban Missile Crisis. After the CIA goons fucked up the Bay of Pigs invasion (some say this fuck up got President Kennedy assassinated by the CIA and Mafia forces combined), the Soviet Union retaliated by sending Fidel, the White Devil of the Caribbean (like Ho Chi Minh, Fidel tried to work with the US), some ICBM missiles, an incident that almost led to World War III, the nuclear war.

And then we had the Watergate bullshit. How many lies are still told about that scandalous happening within our government? A president OK-ing criminal actions against his political opponents.

Then we had Commander in Chief Jimmy Carter's fuck up in attempting to rescue the Iranian embassy staff hostages and the following intrigues between the Reagan forces and the Iranian ayahtollah (that moment's White Devil).

Later, Commander in Chief Ronald "Raygun" Reagan sent his military goons (the U.S. Marines) onto the small island of Grenada where the Cubans were extending the runways on that small island's airport in order that it could accommodate large jets. Reagan's goons assassinated the young Commie-leaning Prime Minister of Grenada, Maurice Bishop, and the members of his government. Here's a comment about it from a Caribbean commentator:

Reagan’s legacy in the Caribbean proved that the United States violated all the rules in international law in its invasion of Grenada, and of making a mockery of the concept of national sovereignty. It broke the elementary rules of international law regarding the recognition of states; it broke the U.N. charter of the Organization of American States (OAS), of which it is one of the founding members. The Charters of the OAS states explicitly: “The territory of a state is inviolable, it may not be the object, even temporarily of military occupation or other measures of force taken by another state, directly or indirectly, on any grounds whatever.” Some international lawyers argued that even when the U.S unjustly invaded the Dominican Republic in 1965, it at least procured “legal cover.” At that time it claimed that it was called by the military government of the Dominican Republic to “restore order”. A claim, which it rammed through the OAS after the fact. In Grenada, on the other hand, the United States destroyed the legitimate government.

And then we had Pappy bombing the hell out of Panama in order to capture and put in irons his old cocaine-peddling business partner, General Noriega, bombing a Panama City neighborhood that killed hundreds of innocent Panamanians. And soon after that Pappy started the glorious Persian Gulf War, Pappy's big moment, the only war Pappy said we had won since WWII.

Then came Big Dog Clinton and his wars--the botched invasion and attempted occupation of Somalia--and then the US intrusion into the Kosovo-Serbian conflict--the mastermind of a man more evil than Osama bin Laden ever hoped to be, a man named Zbigniew Brezhinsky, a man who calls himself an advisor to 5 Presidents (Jimmy Carter; Pappy Bush; Slick Willie Clinton; G.W. Bush; and now Barack Obama)--he advises them on how to kill enemies.

I'm sorry, folks, but there are so many lies involving our open wars and secret wars and war on drugs and war on terror and war on Mexican crime lords (a mess that has cost the lives of 35,000 innocent Mexicans since it began in 2006--8,000 murdered in one year in Cuidad Juarez!) and war on whistleblowers and war on Mexican immigrants, etc.

Me, I don't believe a word any of them say except when they say they are going to raise their salaries every time Congress meets or takes a vacation or takes a week off. What a bunch of imbeciles. I consider them all on an equal stance with Osama bin Laden as terrorists!

Am I on my way to Guantanamo, that horrible place in Communist Cuba that Obama promised to close during his last bullshit billion-dollar run for the presidency?

thegrowlingwolf
for The Daily Growler