Monday, November 28, 2011

Existing in the Police State of New York City as a Compulsive Writer


Foto by tgw, "A Tabletop in NYC," New York City 2011
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The Burden of a Compulsive Writer

"Conformism, imitativeness, submission to rules and to teachings is the writer's capital crime. The work of a writer must be not only the reflection, but the larger reflection of his personality. The only excuse that a man has for his writing is to write about himself, to reveal to others the sort of world that is mirrored in his own glass; his only excuse is to be original; he must speak of things not yet spoken of in a form not yet formulated. He must create his own aesthetics - and we must admit as many aesthetics as there are original spirits and judge them for what they are, not for what they aren't." (Gourmont in his introduction to the first Book of Masks, 1896-98)
Remy de Gourmont is right. If you are a natural-born writer (I am), then his statement is what you are bound to--the only thing anybody really and truly knows is himself--you know who you are just like I know who I am. This knowledge coming from down deep. Like you are lying on Freud's couch [never lie on Freud's couch, by the way] and Herr Doktor is taking you back, back through the veils of your ego and superego and libido and right into the Holy of Holies that is your Id. Your being. And my being arrived on this earth at a place referred to as the "Lone Prairie." A flatter-than-flat space on this round earth. A place so flat you can't see any curve to it. You have to use your imagination to curve the horizon--to even curve the vertical. That's why focusing is so hard for us--like focusing on what we're doing or what we're going to do--we're focusing on a flat screen when we need to focus through the convexed eye onto a curved screen. [You don't think we live in an upside-down world--study how the convex lens works--the lens in your eye same as the lens in your camera. Upside-down reflections.]

I seriously know myself through a character I designed through years of experience, a character called thegrowlingwolf --a play on words reflecting the original me's hang up on the music of Chester Burnett whose stage name was The Howling Wolf. And we all first of all have to have a stage name. All writers are playwrights. We are writing "novel" plays is all we are doing.

As thegrowlingwolf, however, I am not really a real person. Explanation: see if you can think of The Daily Growler as a Work in Progress. A novel being written on a daily basis. A novel like Joyce's Ulysses. One day in the life of.... And there are many novels that are one day in the life of.... A newspaper is a journal. Bon jour. Diurnal reporting.

The Daily Growler
was originally conceived by a schizophrenic whose two personalities really like each other--why, they are the best of friends: one the Perry White of The Growler (he sometimes appears as Austin Highchew under the guise of Managing Editor) and the other the main character, a man conceived when George W. Bush announced he was against stem-cell research because he could foresee mad scientists using this unGodly research method to create what Georgie Porgie called "human-animal hybrids." Now, come on, folks, since we are all a part of what we call the Animal Kingdom (I call us all Jungle Aborigines--Children of Nature), we are all animals, then the phrase "human-animal hybrids" is kind of charmingly nonsensical, though to a natural-born writer it's a chance to write under a perfect pseudonym or stage name: thegrowlingwolf, the human-animal-hybrid son of Karl and Maria Wolfe of a place in West Texas called "Who Knows Where" out on that Lone Prairie.

The only excuse that a man has for his writing is to write about himself, to reveal to others the sort of world that is mirrored in his own glass; his only excuse is to be original; he must speak of things not yet spoken of in a form not yet formulated.

I suppose all people compelled to write feel the same way about it as I do though I'll bet you they're not as purely improvisational as I and my alter-ego are.

Writing like music is based on time and measures and sequences and beats. When I write on this blog it's the same way I write when I write a song lyric. Something just pops in my head and I film it through my convex lens and focus on how I as a character in a novel experience will handle it--let it pan out, evolve and grow, or peter out, wobble, and eventually drop dead in the middle of a paragraph (a road).

Handle it real. You must write what is real. The woman who writes the Harry Potter books is a fairy talest and not a novelist. Children's books are pathetically badly written. Whether the Harry Potter woman is a sincere writer is not my argument--no, her sincerity I'm not putting down, what I'm putting down is when you write fabulous stuff you must in your own make up be lost in fantasy. Like devout Christians who totally believe in the fabulous tale of this Jewish reformer who history doesn't know at all but who Dark Ages writers personified in their unspooled tales in the form of this Jesus, a man of childish parables and Yahoo adventure stories.

I can't write fantasy. I haven't lived, no matter which side of the schizophrenic fence I'm on, a fantastic life. I've lived a full REAL life. I have survived as my genetic make up has let me survive. A part of my survival depends on my writing. Cathartic writing. Yes. But then all writing no matter who's compelled to write it is cathartic writing. That's why when the well runs dry, as Hemingway always suggested and then ended up doing himself, there's only one thing to do: shoot yourself. Dr. Hunter Thompson came to that conclusion, too. As a writer he found himself that one day sitting frozen over an empty page--not even able to write nonsense--and then he began to contemplate shooting his own failing brains--blowing them out of his head--the same as Hemingway did. And I suppose it's why Faulkner drank himself to death. I know it's why Dylan Thomas drank himself to death. Maybe it's why Ambrose Bierce disappeared in the Mexican desert--he was down covering the Mexican Revolution looking for a story, looking for a book to write. Jack Kerouac hit the skids when that one day in Florida he woke up to the realization that as a writer he was burnt out--I mean his last stories and books are embarrassments--that's why he ended like Elvis, with his head buried in a toilet bowl.

I'm blessed in that I have music to fall back on should I find one day I can no longer fill a blank space with words strung together in such a novel way they tell a real story of human-animal-hybrid evolution and development.
Link
An improvisationalist writer has a tendency to ramble. To find it hard to control the brain as it writes on ahead in the direction his or her intuitions are showing it the way to go.

Elmore Leonard's 10 Rules of Writing
Back in the spring, our old pal, L Hat (www.languagehat.com) , sent us this Guardian article on Elmore Leonard's 2010 book entitled The 10 Rules of Writing.

www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/feb/24/elmore-leonard-rules-for-writers

Good advice from a fellow writer, though I've found most fellow writers don't often take fellow writers's advice seriously. Why do I need Elmore Leonard's rules; hell, I already know them, otherwise I'm not a writer...huh? And I admit, I am one of those writers that sometimes uses "suddenly" like an exclamation point! Scott Fitzgerald settled the case of exclamation points back in the 1930s when he said a writer using exclamation points was like a comedian laughing at his own jokes.

Writers are among us. I used to work for a vanity publisher. One year I edited over 300 manuscripts for this company. These were all, without exception, badly written; yet, you could tell from the writing that these people really thought what they were writing was literature. These people really believed they were writers and that their stories were so unique--as a real writer, I edited them lightly--left their worst in--I mean their worst writing was ironically their best writing.

thegrowlingwolf
for The Daily Growler

A Little Taste of American Art

http://www.sfvartclub.org/membersonline/Applegate.jpg
Approaching Juneau, by Eddie Applegate.
There is no reason for you to recognize Eddie's name--he's now a Southern California artist--but his fame came as an actor--especially as Patty Duke's boyfriend on "The Patty Duke Show"--back in the early 1960s--as television was evolving into the world of color.

Saturday, November 26, 2011

Existing in the Police State of New York City: Billionaires's Heaven on Earth!


Foto by tgw, "Shot Thru a Dirty Window," New York City 2011
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From Irish Turkey to the Mexican Barrio
I did eat turkey. At my fav Irish pub, just down the street from me. Hansy the chef loaded my plate with mashed potatoes and mushroom gravy; a pile of sweet potatoes to boot; a big heapin' of cranberry sauce; big slabs of turkey white meat piled over a sausage/sage stuffing covered in turkey gravy--I gobbled it down, washed it down with a trio of Redbridges!

I returned home as stuffed as the deadest Holy Day turkey and was rewarded by a two-hour-long Paquita la del Barrio (Franny from the Neighborhood) concert on Mexican television. I'm highly attracted to this woman's music. She sings rancheros--but she sings them with a dominant feminist attitude. In her songs she compares men to rats, to scumbags, and she liberally salts her performances with many salty put downs of men, though she admits in those same lyrics that women can't do without them--the thing being, women need men but they must learn to "capture" their men, "cage" them--a feminist-ruled zooful of would-be male lovers! Especially "whipping" men into shape so that they bring their women flowers and plenty of bling. What amazes me about her performances are her musical arrangements of the many tunes she sings during a performance. Rancheros (and Nortena and Bando, too) tunes are stuck to a simple structure based on the single-line rhythm of an electric bass and the broader but tightly strict modulations of an electric guitar, kept in bailando time by drums accented by bongo intrusions, all under a constantly Mexicanic squeeze-box accordion played with a swirling of quickly played keys and buttons via dazzling arpeggio runs--quixotic little responses to Paquita la del Barrio's perfectly executed verses--each line sent forcefully home by her precise pronunciation of the words. I mean, what's not to like about this true performer, this pure musical talent who has taken rancheros to controversial but definitely progressive heights in terms of making her style and performances so uniquely special.

http://www.radioformula.com.mx/images/notas/20110425_17_25_PaquitaLaDelBarrio_ntmx.jpg
Paquita del la Barrio ( Francisca Viveros Barradas from Veracruz)

And after two hours of Franny from the Neighborhood (her name is Francisca)--I admit that a part of my growing up in West Texas was influenced by the Mexican culture that surrounded me--and Texas was always part Mexican to me--and certainly La Musica influenced me--I grew up hearing it on the radio every day and every night--and though after I became a member of the jazz life I put it down, it is still with me in my memories and in my own musical make up. One of my own most famous (and that fame is fading daily) compositions is entitled "Rockin' on the Border," about a time I was in Nuevo Laredo during Labor Day--I was actually on a honeymoon with my Choctaw-Mexican-Welsh wife who looked so Mexican when we lived in Mexico City, men used to hit on her in Spanish--like, "Hey, senorita, ditch the gringo and come with me." And for a while in my life I was fascinated by Mexican women--my first crush on one coming in high school and her name was Trina and when I looked upon her the delight shone in my eyes.

thegrowlingwolf
for The "Saturday Evening" Daily Growler

Give a listen and watch to Paquita del la Barrio singing "Tres veces te engane" with a full mariachi orchestra:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=ru8Q60JXn54

Thursday, November 24, 2011

Existing in the Police State of New York City: What the Hell Is There to Be Thankful For?

Foto by tgw, New York City 2011
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Say Goodbye to:
Paul Motian (pronounced "Mo-tion")--
I knew Paul from his years with Bill Evans (1957-64), and he's on the greatest of Bill's 50s and 60s albums with the great Scotty LaFaro on bass. First time I remember Paul was with the Jerry Wald Orchestra (Bill Evans is the pianist). He's also on a lot of the great experimental albums of the 50s, with George Russell, with the Don Elliott albums (with Bill on piano, and my friend Tadd Kotick's father, Teddy Kotick on bass). I lost track of Paul after Bill replaced him with Larry Bunker during Bill's time in California. He reappeared in my life in the Charlie Haden Liberation Orchestra. After the 60s, I'm sorry to say, my jazz appreciation had been boiled down to what I call "my taste" in jazz, losing track of Paul as he went on to perform right up until the time of his death. Paul, unfortunately, I remember, made an album on the music of Elton John--that was enough to turn me off of Paul (and I sadly admit that). Paul Motian, 80, American jazz drummer, myelodysplastic syndrome.

Russ Garcia. If you're asking, "Who?," just check this guy out. At 12 years of age he was arranging scores professional enough to have one of his scores performed by a symphony orchestra. He went on to work in Hollywood, wrote scores for movies like The Time Machine, etc. But also to be an important figure on the West Coast jazz scene. Russ worked with Louis Armstrong and Ella Fitzgerald--their Porgie & Bess album on Verve. His orchestra, too, made several jazz albums. Plus, Russ lived to be 95 years old. Russell Garcia, 95, American-born New Zealand composer. Russ was born in Oakland...why he's considered a New Zealand composer...ya got me.
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Thanks for What?
It is so funny to hear White people planning for Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving is a Christian holiday, one that justifies the European Whites who "landed" at Plymouth Rock--is the Plymouth Rock monumentalized in Plymouth, Mass., authentic? Probably not since everything about this White Man's USA is phony, from the get go. White invaders and occupiers only believe in equality among themselves--Whites have equal rights...others? Like, why would a Black family participate in Thanksgiving? I live in a building with Asians throughout--Chinese, Koreans, Vietnamese--I asked a Korean woman on the elevator the other day if she celebrated Thanksgiving and she replied that "they" had a similar holiday. I asked, but you guys take our Thanksgiving day off as a Holy Day, right? She replied that damn right they did. Funny how Christian Holy Days become just regular ole holidays to us--like Christmas--I've been using X-mas since I was a kid. The celebration of the birth of the fictional Jesus Christ (Joshua ben Joseph from a Nazareth slum) has become our biggest commercial (Atheistic) holiday of the year--how ironic is that? Muslims, Buddhists, Zoroastrians, et al., all take Christmas off; yet, are they given paid time off to celebrate their similar Holy Days?

Every year at Thanksgiving, the The Daily Growler joins with our own concentration-encamped aborigines in celebrating this time of year as a Day of Mourning! Aha! I like that, a national day of mourning, which White folks should get behind, too.

And look where these White men have taken us. What the hell do any of us in the USA have to be thankful for except for the fact we may still be alive and we may not be branded terrorist combatants and sent from this "Land of the Free" off to do some "pure" time in Guantanamo, a former US Naval training base now turned into a horror prison, ironically on the Island of Cuba in the Communist nation of Cuba under the dictatorial rule of the Castro brothers, with whom We the People of the USA have a 99-year lease deal with the Castro Brothers on Guantanamo--most of the civilian staff there are Cubans--it's income for the Cuban government--and back in the early days of Castro we castigated him for running his infamous prison on the Isle of Pines--why how dare this little Latin prick treat prisoners so meanly. The White man was pissed off at Castro for winning his revolution (his war of independence) and then "stealing" all of our large sugar refiners (Imperial, Domino) properties (nationalizing them) and "stealing" all that property in Habana from the US Mafia! Why, we even had a President assassinated over his handling of the Cuban Missile Crisis and the insane Bay of Pigs invasion. John F. Kennedy was his name. The national hero JFK of whom no one can speak evil even though he was a man who cheated on his wife with the mistress of the head of the Chicago mob, Gilorma (Sam) Giancana (remember how we made Sam's daughter a celeb?) while he was our darling president. A dude who had Mafia connections in Hollywood and Vegas through his father, Bootlegger Joe Kennedy, the good father who would bring his mistress, Gloria Swanson, home to the Boston mansion from Hollywood, bring her in through the front door, take her past his large family sitting at dinner in the mansion dining room, up the winding stairs to his private bedroom where he then began to bang Gloria like a Zeusian bull while down below his big family--under the eye of the sainted Mama Rose sitting there so nunly pristine--the passionate screams of Gloria getting fucked hard wafting down into that dining room. "Pay attention to your food, children, your father is simply doing business as usual," explained Mama Rose in her sweet soothing Catholic girl-school-proper voice.

Here's a cool scathing article on Thanksgiving in Native American history by Gilbert Mercier at News Junkie Post:

newsjunkiepost.com/2010/11/25/thanksgiving-celebrating-the-genocide-of-native-americans/

By the way, that butterball turkey you're chowing down on today--it's full of antibiotics and god-knows what kind of growth hormones--these ain't wild turkeys--and drinking a quart of Wild Turkey whiskey would probably be a healthier substitute.

thegrowlingwolf
for The Daily Growler

A Little Taste of American Art:
http://www.alaskanativeartists.com/Origins_of_the_Killerwhale.jpg
Origins of the Killer Whale, a drum head, acryllics on deer hide, by Alaska aboriginal artist, Michael Dangeli [See more drum art at www.alaskanativeartists.com/drums.htm

From Space Weather.com: Here's what a solar plasma explosion into space looks like--this one not a threat to us--BUT! One never knows, do one?

The eruption hurled a cloud of plasma (a "CME") into space but not toward Earth. Because of the blast site's high-northern location on the sun, the cloud flew up and out of the plane of the solar system; no planets will be affected.

Monday, November 21, 2011

Existing in the Police City-State of New York City: Reading Balzac

Foto by tgw, New York City, 2011
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Reading the Amazing Balzac

I have heard praise of Balzac all my life but, for some reason or another, I never got around to reading any of his books. Last year, however, thedailygrowlerhousepianist returned from a gig in Switzerland, and at the next meeting of our quorum at an uptown Irish pub, he handed me a copy of Balzac's Lost Illusions--he'd bought it to read on the flight back to the US and he said he knew I'd like it if I ever found the time to read it. Almost immediately on getting home with the book, I soon found it calling to me to read it. You know how a book sits among other books but stands out, as if animatedly appealing to you to read it? Thus I soon picked up the hefty Lost Illusions and began reading it. I read almost 200 pages in one sitting. I found the book not only very up-to-date in terms of its description of the Parisian leisure class but also in the many schemes and delicate scams those entering into the entertainment of that class (books, theater, opera, etc.) had to adjust to in order to find success as writers, philosophers, playwrights, lyricists, publishers, agents, etc. Soon I was lost in Lost Illusions and totally under Balzac's spell.

Honore de Balzac (he really didn't have the right to use the participle de with his name. de being the same as von in a German name, meaning your family has a connection to royalty or wealth) was born in 1800 and died 51 years later of what we assume was a heart attack. He had physical problems all his life, but his biggest problem was with his heart. Though his family didn't have the right to place a de in front of its name, Balzac's father had risen from poverty to a high societal position. A high enough social position that when he died, he left his wife (there was no love in their marriage) fairly well off and totally well off when you considered her own personal wealth she inherited from her family. Balzac was a master of starting failing businesses, from printing, typography, to going to Sicily and trying to recapture value from the slag of ancient Roman mines, and from traveling to the Ukraine in order to buy acreages of forests in order to cut them down and take the timbers back to Paris and sell them there. These business adventures, like I said, failed utterly. At one time before Balzac had a best seller (Eugénie Grandet), he was 50,000 francs in debt to his mother.

Lost Illusions (Illusions perdues) was published in 3 volumes from 1837 to 1843. It, to me, is amazingly well written and does constitute what the literary crowd calls a realist novel. It is so real, I find it quite easy to exist in its time even though I am sitting here 168 years later in a contemporary world that really hasn't changed that much in basic terms of politics and doing business and making a living. I can easily inhabit the time of this novel and find it amazing how up-to-date the book's concerns are. I read in the introduction how Balzac had direct influence on the writing of Marcel Proust, Edgar Allan Poe, Dostoyevski, William Faulkner, and of all people, Jack Kerouac--ironically, the above list consists of my fav authors, especially Poe, Dostoyevski, Faulkner, and Kerouac. Unfortunately, though I have read Proust, I am not so thoroughly familiar with his work as I am that of the other four men.

What I find fascinating in reading Lost Illusions is not only the story itself and the thorough descriptions of life in Paris in the 1820s (and it really is hard to believe that this novel was written that long ago) but also in the way he writes--long thorough descriptions of the novel's many actions--but also in the many deductions he comes to--aphorisms galore--wonderful ways of wording things--and his use of words I've never before in my life heard of (and of course I must give most of this credit to the translator, Kathleen Raine [en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kathleen_Raine]. As one of www.languagehat.com/ commenters answered one of my comments about translators, linguist scholars consider translators as co-authors of the books they translate).

Here are some quotes from Lost Illusions [from Modern Library Edition, Random House 2001] that impressed me enough to jot them down in my notebooks as I continue reading this tome--I'm up to 400 pages already:

p. 51: "...for young people always begin by loving exaggeration, that infirmity of noble minds."

p. 52: "...they treated him with the overwhelming politeness that well-bred people use towards their inferiors."

p. 56: "Great minds always tend to see virtue in misfortune" [and Balzac knew all about misfortune].

p. 60: "Genius is answerable only to itself; it is the sole judge of the means, since it alone knows the end; thus genius must consider itself as above the law, for it is the task of genius to remake the law; moreover the man who frees himself from his time and place may take everything, hazard everything, for everything is his by right." [I find that an extremely deep consideration.]

p. 61: "He wrote one of those wild letters in which the young point a pistol at a refusal, a letter full of childish casuistry and of highminded irrational reasoning, enchanting verbiage, embroidered with those naive declarations, spoken unawares from the heart, that women love so much." [How can you not like such writing? And women do love such letters.]

p. 62: "Nobility of mind does not always go with elegance of manners. Racine may have had the manners of a courtier, but Corneille behaved more like a cattle dealer."

p. 72: "Like most young people, these two attributed to the world their own intelligence and virtues. Youth who knows no failure has no mercy on the faults of other people; but it has also a sublime faith in them."

p. 87-88: "If poetry is to be spoken aloud in such a way as to be understood, absolute concentration is necessary. There must be complete sympathy between the reader and the audience, in the absence of which no electrical communication of emotion can take place. If this sympathetic atmosphere is lacking, the poet finds himself rather in the position of an angel attempting to sing heavenly music against a background of the mocking laughter of hell." [Powerful stuff; I myself know of singing heavenly music against that background of the mocking laughter of hell.]

p. 103: "...but before the world recognizes superiority of any kind it demands brilliant achievement." [This could be the reason We the People of the US so admire the members of the Power Elite--we consider being rich as "brilliant achievement."]

p. 103: "Now literary success can only be won in solitude by persevering labor." [Balzac stuck to the guns of this statement by practicing what he preached. He was a constant rewriter--actually rewriting whole chapters after his books were already published.]

p. 103: "...idleness--the bane of poetic souls."

p. 130: "Some women have a horror of contracts that does honour to their delicacy; they would rather submit to a living impulse than to a dead convention."

p. 150: "A man must be very sure of a woman before he allows her to see his emotions and his thoughts as they arise....Some women carry their devotion to such lengths that they must always see their idol as a god and only those who love a man for his own sake, rather than for their own, love his weaknesses no less than what is great in him."

p. 170: "'Intellect is the lever with which a man can move the world.' But another voice replied that money is the fulcrum of intellect."

p. 198: [enthusiastic success, according to Balzac] "...an enthusiasm, if it is to succeed, must be reinforced by the fierce energy of real talent or the grim determination of ambition."

p. 215: "'A great writer is nothing less than a martyr who does not die.'"

p. 217: "But woman brings disorder into society through passion."

p. 217: [Balzac's advice to writers via his character Daniel d'Arthez]:
1) "Woman brings disorder into society through passion" therefore a writer must "portray the passions" with a) "Great originality," b) "Avoiding single ideas in favor of contrasting ideas."

p. 220: "...but love has been his undoing, for it not only makes inroads into his heart--it shoots its arrows into his brain, and upsets his life, precipitating him into the most erratic courses."

p. 223: "True talent is always straight-forward, simple, and open, and never formal; epigrams in that circle, stimulated the mind, but was never aimed at self-respect."
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Words and Phrases From Balzac I've Never Heard of or Used Before:

1) Superfoetation (p. 56)
2) "the Phocion's axe" (p. 61)
3) "flatfooted as a Welshman" (p. 63)
4) Nankeen as in "nankeen trousers" (p. 78)
5) Cockchafer--"M. de Bargeton buzzed about the house like a cockchafer...." (p. 128)
6) Toques (togs?) (p. 160)
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Around the Town
Wow, our billionaire mayor today was all over television, on every channel, especially his own channel, announcing how his military police under Ray Kelly had undercovered a plot by a discontented Dominican Republican (under al-Queda influence, as our billionaire mayor put it) to blow up libraries (Huh?), police buildings (though originally the report said "police vehicles" and didn't mention buildings--why, Ray Kelly even had a simulation filmed that showed how this poor bastard planned on blowing up police cars--though the latest newscasts have turned their focus on his intending to blow up buildings). They showed a video this dude put on the Internet explaining how to make these bombs he was going to use to blow up these police cars. Then, as is the case in most of these Bloomberg/Kelly terrorist busts, they said they had been tracking this guy for over a year! So why arrest him all of a sudden today? Ironically, the FBI said they weren't interested in this guy. How strange is that?

All afternoon today (the 21st) there have been sirens in the streets and helicopters in the air. As I went down Fifth to get my beef terriyaki (I love it), there was a cop helicopter hovering over Madison Park. I haven't heard yet what new terrorist plot the NYC Military Police were uncovering.

News From Europe
Guess what the new head of Greece and the new head of Italy have in common? First of all, they both were not elected to office by the people, and second of all, both men formerly worked for Goldman-Sachs Europe!

We now live in a corporate world. The militaries and police of the world are to protect this corporate world from TERRORIST attacks. Such an insane world; such a cruel world-domination concept; making profits off bank scams, wars, and inner fightings in Africa, and threats aimed at one of the world's largest oil producers, IRAN.

Expansion of US Military Presence
President and Commander in Chief Obama proudly announcing we will now have a military presence in AUSTRALIA!!! Why? Let me tell you why: because Indonesia, where Obama recently traveled doing some arms selling, just a few miles away from Australia, is the world's largest Islamic nation! We now have nearly 200 military bases around the world. Only Ron Paul is saying if you elect him president he will shut those bases down and bring the troops home where Constitutionally they are supposed to be protecting our perimeters (borders) from invasion, something they failed to do back on September 11, 2001.

Do you see signs of fear of We the People building up in our Power Elite and government lackeys and government executives?

thegrowlingwolf
for The Daily Growler

A Little Taste of American Art:
The image “http://www.oilpaintingsframes.com/images/099-copy.jpg” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.
Volcano, Georgia O'Keefe

No explanation needed.

Friday, November 18, 2011

Existing in the Police State of New York City: Expecting a Winter of Discontent


Foto by tgw, "The Atlantic Ocean," Coney Island, New York 2010
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Commander Mikey "El Billionario" Bloomberg and Ray "Shanty Irish" Kelly Rescue Wall Street From a Flooding in of "Terrorists" Occupiers

All over New York City commercial-pap television for the past two days, the scroll-reading pretty heads are reporting a triumphant victory of our billionaire mayor and his military-police force under his little man police commissioner, the mighty Ray "I Spy" Kelly, a pair of little men (short people), in their rescue of Wall Street from these "out of control" punks who have the nerve to believe that We the People of the USA have the power to disrupt and overthrow a system that HATES We the COMMON People of the USA--a system that is WHITE CONTROLLED, a WHITE REVENGE MOVEMENT, the wealthiest WHITE MEN in the world live here in New York City (including the Koch Brothers). And these wealthy WHITE MEN have no mercy on those they screw in order to cover their bankrupt ideals. How dare the common herd think this country, this city, this or that neighborhood, or this or that home and land belongs to them!

And early yesterday morning (Thursday), I got up with intentions of moseying down around Wall Street to check and see if the Occupy Wall Street effort to shut down Wall Street had any validity--their intention being to encircle the area and keep the stock market from opening on time and hopefully not at all. This turned out to be a great idea! It pissed off our divinely inspired mayor (if you are as rich as Mikey "Shorty" Bloomberg, you feel absolutely divine, surely blessed by the higher beings)--I mean, this little prick originally from Boston, a small town compared to New York City, owes his divinity to his Wall Street gods and benefactors--especially those gods at Merrill Lynch and Goldman-Sachs and J.P. Morgan-Chase (these Rockefeller-Morgan pirates contributed millions to the New York City Military Police Department)--I mean, come on, all these divine bastards know each other. They all belong to the same clubs and breakfast groups and luncheon groups and real-estate combines and hedge-fund and private equity pools (as do their siblings (the mayor's daughter is NYC's ambassador to the UN) and wives and brothers and brothers-in-law)--they all can call each other up on their personal private phone numbers and arrange back-room dealings, all of which are aimed at fucking the common man, the millions and millions of New Yorkers who these idiots divinely believe have NO FUCKING POWER at all. Especially these upstart occupiers with the gall to intentionally disrupt WALL STREET (invasion and occupation being the good old American way).

The NYC commercial-pap teevee puppets were especially proud of showing over and over this one Wall Street junior exec-type who was inconvenienced getting to his hi-floor corner office t'other morning who was shouting at the Occupiers, "You're the terrorists...you are terrorists!" Shouting this at people getting their faces bashed in and being shoved to the concrete and then having their faces rubbed into that concrete or having their throats being choked by a hard hickory wood or solid hard-rubber (probably lead filled) baton--yes, New York City's Finest (big fat Irish-red-faced bulls) were doing their best to please the FBI and Homeland Security and Billionaire Mayor Bloomberg by cleansing our most sacred of Capitalist streets, that street too big to fall, of these heathen, these anti-American punks, these little spoiled brats, these ingrates, these TERRORISTS.

And yep, folks, the New York City Military Police did a good job and they should be proud--especially those cops who were beating a bunch of school children trying to get to school--or those brave blood brothers who were wailing away and knocking to the concrete old grannies and stomping on 'em a bit to make their vengeful point.

Cops hate citizens because they themselves aren't citizens of New York City, most of them living outside the city proper.

Besides, it was a dundrearied lousy day here in NYC. Rainy and getting colder by the hour. A chilling kind of weather, a fooling kind of weather--it lures you into wearing thinner clothes since it was in the high 60s for the past few days and then once you're out in it, it chills you to the bone.

As For Me: All at once this past Tuesday, I was on-line most of the day but then in the afternoon, I suddenly kept getting "Authentication Failed" in the pop up that tells you why you can't connect to the Internet--over and over I kept getting this bloody pop up, to the point I called my ISP--and son of a bitch, I was told by this ISP I have been with for 10 years now my account had been canceled and they were no longer providing me with Internet service. I was the last of the dial-up accounts, I was told--me and one other poor obsolete jerk were the only dial-uppers left in the New Jersey, New York, Connecticut area, so being cost-efficient finance majors, they dumped our accounts and left us evicted from the 'Net.

When you've been living on the Internet for 20 years as I have (my first computer was an IBM PC running DOS) and suddenly you are DEAD to the Internet--can't get on it--and trust me, I'm too arrogant to go to an Internet cafe--you suddenly realize how absolutely embedded your life is in virtual reality rather than real-time reality. Without the Internet to "play" around on for hours, I found myself sitting here totally bored. Television was totally boring. I tried playing Free Cell on one of my laptops--Free Cell and Hearts--but that got boring, too. I kept coming down to my big computer and pulling down the Internet Connect icon and trying to dial up only to get the "No Dial Tone" pop up. So I did something I'm ashamed of, which I capitulated to--I called Verizon and signed up for their special offer of high-speed Internet service for $19.99-a-month (trust me, by the time they add on the taxes and surcharges and connection fees and extemporaneous fees, the bill's gonna be up over $30.00-a-month). Finally, after three days of being off-line, I got my $35 router and hooked everything up and the Verizon people called me and told me I was ready to connect and I clicked on my Ethernet connect and BOOM, just like that, I am back on line. Able once again to start spewing out my diatribe--glad to be back embedded on this marvelous piece of virtual reality called the Internet.

My reality space. The Daily Growler. Possibly with only a handful of readers--one never knows, do one? I know of 12 regular readers; I know of 2 consistent readers; and according to this blog's statistics, we get over a thousand hits a day--most of them, we assume, being the 25 or 30 spammers who try and infiltrate us through the comments section but which Blogspot (Google) has so far effectively filtered out--mostly Russian and Chinese sex sites--sex being the most popular subject all around this virtual reality world.

SEX. That verboten subject that our ignorance and repressing of are causing frustrations galore--if you can't fuck anymore, what do you do? Go to war maybe? Become a serial killer maybe? Become a common whore maybe? Become a cold housewife/mother maybe? Become a cheating husband/father maybe? On the other hand, say you are a superstud or object of great sexual attraction--think of how frustrating that must be--like our Hollywood fops and darlings are represented to us--my point being, these Hollywood affairs (marriages, couplings, studio-designed hook ups) aren't based on supersex--these couples hate each other and are most of the time impotent--they marry and divorce or just simply fuck around with impunity, every little admiring fool believing these men and women represent our highest form of sexual glory. Can you imagine a drunken drug addict like Charlie Sheen being good in bed! He plays superstuds in his grade B roles; yet, it's obvious this pretender isn't that at all--he's a frustrated impotent. Wanna bet me?

Idolatry is so stupd.

thegrowlingwolf
occupying The Daily Growler

A Little Taste of American Art:


Frank Stella’s “Severinda” (1995), mixed media on Fiberglas, is part of “Frank Stella: Painting Into Architecture,” at the Met.

Friday, November 11, 2011

thegrowlingwolf Too Sane to Go Insane

Foto by tgw, "Prez Off the Wall," New York City 2011
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Say Goodbye to:
Easy Ed Macauley--
as a kid I got into basketball when my brother became sports editor of my hometown newspaper. One of my favorite players--I first heard of him when he played college ball for the U of Saint Louis Bilikens (in the Missouri Valley League), from college going on to the NBA and the Saint Louis Bombers--then the Boston Celtics, where he was a star until he was traded to the Saint Louis Hawks and was replaced by the great Bill Russell. Ed Macauley, 83, American basketball player (St. Louis Hawks, Boston Celtics, Saint Louis Billikens)

Joe Frazier--How could I have missed Joe Frazier's dying? I didn't catch mention of it on any news--certainly nothing on teevee about it. I mean Joe Frazier--second greatest boxer of the 20th Century--dying before Mohamed Ali did--who'd a thought it? Joe Frazier, 67, American boxer, World Heavyweight Champion (1970–1973), liver cancer.

Jimmy Norman--Jimmy had an r and b hit back in the early 60s, "I Don't Love You No More"--then he hit gold in 1964 when Irma Thomas wanted to use Kai Winding's "Time Is on My Side" as a B side but thought it needed some extra lyrics and her recording company hired Jimmy Norman to do the job. Later, "Time Is on My Side," was on the single that was the Rolling Stones first single to hit the Top Ten...read Jimmy's sad story--it ends up Jimmy was saved for a while from a tragic ending by of all institutions, the Jazz Foundation. Jimmy Norman, 74, American rhythm and blues and jazz musician and songwriter.

Being Too Sane in an Insane World
I'm sitting here a self-abusing animal. Banging my head against the wall. Recalling Henry Miller writing that he was too sane to go insane, I, too, sense that I'm in that same boat. And Henry was put to the test more times than I have been and he lived very sanely for 89 years.

That's probably why I'm banging my head against the wall. I'm pissed off that I can't go insane. Insanity is salvation in my family. Sanity means you must face life's facts in full awareness. Too aware. Total sanity is total awareness. Total awareness is too damn scary for the average human-elevated-monkey being--all of us really just a notch below the jungle treetops. Tree houses. Did you ever stop and consider what we live in as tree houses? In our collective primate instincts there is a safety-in-height factor. Like if a wild boar or a pissed-off bear is chasing you what do you do? You look for a tree to scamper up. In order to survive, we understand naturally that we have to get as far up away from Nature as we can get (escape to). And then we realize halfway into building our towers of Babel that Nature's rule--Nature's domination, as Alfred North Whitehead called it--extends far beyond our means to escape it.

Yes, we do have the capability (and its many potentials) of building rocketed vehicles that can whisk us out beyond the reaches of earth's Nature. But so what once we're out there? Ironically then we run into another form of Nature, a very alien Nature, a Nature in which we cannot survive. A Nature in which order is just now advancing out of Chaos. I know, I'm writing philosophically and some might say I'm grasping for philosophical straws, but I'm not grasping at straws; I already have a bale of straws tightly possessed in my mental hands.

You see, sanity reveals evolution has "survived" us to a point where we realize our only HOPE at ETERNAL EXISTENCE (the direct cause of what we call "civilization")--our instincts (most untamed) still driving us in that hopeful direction--is somewhere in the future--if not in the immediate future, at least in the long-run future (like we've been waiting for all these religious salvations to arrive for thousands and thousands of years now).

There is no guarantee in natural law of any kind of substantial future. In fact, most of our natural laws lead us into Chaos. Like the Second Law of Thermodynamics leads us into entropy.

The Chinese yin and yang attitude is to me the logical key to Nature's domination over us. It really is a binary situation, a two-sided-coin conflict: where there's one thing and then there's that thing's opposite. Where there's a healthy naturally easy-born child happening there's a super-difficult birth happening at the same time or a death in birth happening at the same time. Both sides of this kind of reasoning lead us into the same future--a future of mystery. A future of surprise--except, that surprise is always going to be dressed in black and carrying a scythe and hooded and masked like our traditional executioners and speaking all languages clearly, by the way. Death is a progressive concept in Cosmic terms.

I mean everything is so clear to me. Yet, when I spew out my reasonings--all dialectically crunched--even my closest friends "pooh-pooh" them--and I use so dainty an onomatopoeia--perhaps it is better put using "blow me off"--even my closest friends blow me off--which also has a dainty ring to it. You see how our use of language can throw us off--innuendos ruling us toward insane deductions?

The sanest of you who read this blog know exactly what I mean. As well, the sanest of my friends know what I mean--and all of my friends are sane though one or two of them seem to desire to be insane; however, they are realizing like Henry Miller and myself that they are just too damn sane to go insane. Which is my point.

I've admitted over and over in this blog that I consider myself a soothsayer--a seasoned predicter. Not a fortuneteller. Of course, I don't believe anybody knows what's gonna happen tomorrow, much less a 1000 years from now. But as predicters I can see brainy characters among us with the chess-master kind of reasoning that lets them strategically see moves ahead and who can throw up huge piles of suppositions a ton or two of which might prove in the future to be on the money, BUT...and that's the big BUT of life--that opposing BUT. You think you're on the right road...BUT are you? Otherwise, why do we need maps? Why do we need GPSs? Why do we need Google satellite cameras that supposedly can infrared now clean through into our most sacred areas of our private lives, our Corporate Big Brother at his cleverly meanest.

All of this diatribe because I didn't watch the goofball Republican goofball insane debate last night (Wednesday, Nov. 9th). I did, however, see a lot of quick clips from it and I heard several excerpts from it--those mainly covering Herman Cain's continuing to deny-deny-deny his macho need to impress young women with his sexual prowess and that great Texas bullshit idiot Rick Perry's sticking all three of his left feet in his BIG DUMB TEXAS WHITE TRASH MOUTH!

Mitt Romney, the billionaire Mormon fool, came out, according to the commercial-pap teevee pundits, the big winner! Though the right-wing-nutjob audience seemed to beam with much affection still for the Koch Brothers in Black disguise, Herman Cain. Herman was obviously being his most Kingfish self as he babbled out his bullshit, avoiding any kind of logical response to any serious questions in terms of what kind of a President he would make. So he becomes President and diddles a young government babe worker with an illegal Cuban cigar in the Oval office--who cares?--what kind of a President would he be?--more hat-in-hand than Barack Obama? Herman did manage to reveal how he'd like to prick-tease Nancy Pelosi--calling her Princess Nancy--and Princess Nancy is a pretty hot White woman for a mid-life-crisis billionaire Catholic-girls-school political-daddy political parasite! I keep screaming, these bastards and bitches all know each other--they are all certainly politically akin--they are all from the same clubs from the same fraternities from the same law firms from the same colleges from the same stock from the same backgrounds from the same philosophies from the same in families.

And I'm listening to these lower-than-dog idiots blowing us sane folk off with so much hot-air--hot-air stenched with the methane deposit eruptions from their rectum-babbling bullshit assmouths--that gas that's been hydrofracted out of their minds that have been shoved up and jammed into the rock-like formations in their lassiez-faire (property rights over human rights) gas-filled asses! Can I get any plainer? Or daintier?

And these same kind of rich-ass fools are currently bringing down Europe and the European Union. Italy has been led down to the bottom of the financial garbage dump by its billionaire divinities, like this crooked-as-a-pit-viper-at-night Berlusconi, called by Forbes magazine (the Malcolm Forbes publication of Capitalist Pig worship) the 21st most powerful man in the human-monkey universe. Italy's richest criminal. And look where his bankers's ass-kissing and derivative-buying-and-selling scheming has taken the Italian people. And, of course, the stupid Italians put him back into power over and over--he's now the longest-serving prime minister in Italy's grand political history that includes their once future hope Benito Mussolini--"Hey'a, com-onna', he keep'ah duh trains runnin' on time." Pardon my attempt at imitating a stupid Italian. And, people, I swear, I love the country of Italy and have always wanted to end life there, especially along the Amalfi Coast...though as Gore Vidal said, eventually you get too old for a continuous adventure in living in Italy and have to move back to the USA and buy a home directly across the street from the best hospital in Los Angeles, as Gore had to do when he developed leg and hip problems while living in Italy.

Gary Null when asked to comment on the Republican debate said he had no drive within him to listen to these Republican idiot debates they were so far beneath him. And Gary's right, the only reason for a progressive thinker to listen to these fools is for comedic fodder to use against them. Like what a laughable fool Newtie Gingrich is, this big Gawjah fool who is totally in bed with the Military Industrial Complex--this immoral wretch who divorced his wife as she lay in bed dying of cancer so he could marry a young open-legged-to-his-love-me-daddy-charm piece of ass--Newtie a constantly re-elected Gawjah flip-flopper who always flops toward the money side of matters. And then there's scary Rick Perry, a cartoon-character type of fool. And for a feminine fool, the Repugs are offering us Michelle Bachmann, a woman perhaps going through "the change" and an Oral Roberts Law School (now the Pat Robertson Law School) graduate married to a Christian true-believing fool who has super-Christian powers that enable him to convert Gay men to straight and counsel young boys against the sins of Man--those background points alone enough to categorize Michelle as an idiot.

In the meantime, I'm becoming more and more inclined to go along with these Occupy Wall Street movements that are popping up like poison mushrooms all over the contaminated political scene these days. Methinks they are scaring the hell out of the heavily protected Power Elite--especially the bankers and the Goldman-Sachs pirates and the Bank of America thieves. Bank America thieves who are now running teevee commercials trumpeting their helping Americans regain their homes and their humanitarian ways saving just plain people from foreclosures and helping small entrepreneurs develop their start-up businesses, this bank the biggest foreclosing bunch of pirates in the US, these banks foreclosing on 10-more million homes this year, meaning they have foreclosed and thrown out of their homes now over the past several years 80 million Americans, if you consider each home foreclosure affecting an average of 4 family members--thus 20 million homes foreclosed upon kicks 80 million Americans into the streets--into tent cities--sending them into instant poverty. And the Republican candidates and our own current President are saying "Let these lazy people eat cake," our richest assholes are too wealthy to tax. That's laissez-faire Economics: protect property and not humans.

And President Obama is still trying to tell us we are so desperate for oil and gas (remember, the biggest user of fossil fuels in the world is the US military!)--for that reason behind closed doors our President is once again giving out drill-drill-drill rights to British Petroleum and Royal Dutch Shell (the Hell oil company)--BP back drilling deep wells in the Gulf of Mexico--the U.S.'s largest ever oil spill miraculously, soaked up by the Christian God, one assumes, just suddenly all gone--no more oil contamination to our Gulf Coast region--WHY, hell, folks, British Petroleum is sponsoring ads showing Black and White people from Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana saying, "Hey, you all, come on back down heah to the Gulf Coast. Why, we are back to cookin' up our famous seafood--our famous shrimp dishes, our famous oyster dishes, our famous ocean fish dishes--maybe they have a little oily twist to them, but, hey now, they're perfectly safe to eat now thanks to the wonderful people at British Petroleum...and while we're braggin', check out our wonderful white sand beaches--they're open again for fun in the Gulf Coast sun--from Florida all the way around to Louisiana, the Gulf Coast is clean and safe and proud once again--again thanks to the wonderful benevolent folks at British Petroleum." And British Petroleum is now forgiven enough by President Obama that he's giving them permission to start drill-drill-drilling like wildcat hell back in the same area of the Gulf in which they fucked up that deep-water well. And they are even forgiven enough to be allowed to drill-drill-drill on the Northern Slope of Alaska. So we have another huge oil spill! It looks now like British Petroleum has enough miracles left in their miraculous way of cleaning up their major spills that they'll be allowed another couple of disasters--and still We the People of the USA will trust them to drill-drill-drill anywhere in our pristine wilderness they want to as long as we continue to have enough oil and gas and petroleum products to keep our multiple wars going on, an invasion and occupation of Iran certainly looking definitely eminent--using our US-created Israeli military to attack them first, with our great NATO troops right behind them. Why, hey, folks, Iran is once again "proven" to have the potential for making Weapons of Mass Destruction--all they need are some aluminum tubes of yellow cake from Nigeria--where's Valerie Palme when you need her? Where's Colon's Pal--he's good at convincing just plain folk that countries DO DEFINITELY HAVE WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION that they are aiming toward the good people of the good old USA.

I saw a film on Anarctica t'other day and how different nations are staking out claims to land down there--Chile and Great Britain in some cases claiming the same land--Russia a big land claimer down there, too, as well as the USA, who along with Great Britain claim rights over the whole continent. Why this rush for staking out claims? Why when all that ice melts, just foresee all the oil under all that ice--all the diamonds and minerals and wealth under both polar ice caps. Fuck that ice. Let it melt. Corporations are prepared to tow icebergs to areas that need fresh water. Why some corporations are already melting icebergs and collecting their water in huge plastic balloon bags that they then tow over to say Japan where after Fukushima, no one over there can trust their fresh water supply.

A lot of futurists say the next World War will be a War for Fresh Water.

I predict, too, that one day we'll all have to wear oxygen tanks full of clean air that we'll need prescriptions for in order to breathe the one-day overcontaminated air. That is if we survive the coming Solar Plasma Storms. Today, November 11, 2011, two blasts of Sun-ejected plasma will glance off the earth and affect our electro-magnetic system to the point the experts are saying on the night of 11-11-11 the Aurora Borealis (the Northern Lights) should be spectacular, especially across the northern skies as some of this exploded out plasma will shoot in through the huge hole in our skies over the North Pole. Our Achilles Heel when it comes to getting hit and injured by Solar Plasma Storms.

So I leave you all with SANE HOPE, though I don't believe in hope, only faith in oneself and one's sanity.

thesoothsayinggrowlingwolf
for The 11-11-11 Daily Growler

Wednesday, November 09, 2011

thegrowlingwolf in an Apologetic Mood


Foto by tgw, New York City 2011
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An Apologetic Wolf Man

I was not so much surprised as stunned when on awaking this morning I learned that the people of Mississippi, who I sort of referred to in Sunday's post as imbeciles all, had arisen in a new dress of progressive glory and had defeated overwhelmingly the "embryo's a human being" (with a right to life) anti-abortion legislation White racists with deep-rooted Old South White habits of thought tried to ram down their throats.

And there can be ironies galore in a Chaotic society--like as I tooled on down the information dial lo and behold it was revealed unto me that the mentally healthiest people of Ohio had arisen en masse to land a solid right jab on the glass jaw of their newly elected Teabagger governor, ex-Fox News commentator, John Kasich. After gathering over 1 million signatures on a petition to veto a governor's imposed wacky law through a referendum vote (the people's right to veto via referendum), in this case Kasich's Teabagger legislation to do away with state employees's right to collective bargaining, progressive Ohioans got their referendum and yesterday they threw out old Tea-Party Turkey Kasich's law and restored collective bargaining rights to state workers.

And as I said, there can be ironies galore in a Chaotic society--out in Arizona where the White Power Elite is openly racist--especially against Messkins (using White pronunciation of "Mexicans")--the White dude, Russell Pearce (president of the Arizona Senate) who wrote the state law that forces Arizona police to stop anybody on the street they suspect as being an illegal immigrant (a Messkin) and making them prove they're not or arresting them on the spot was thrown out of office on his ear via a recall election in which he was defeated by a fellow Republican named Jerry Lewis.

And there were other political and Sociological ironies, too, last night--in Maine and in Kentucky...but still, they shocked me--can I have faith in them, though, that is now my cynical question.

And that Big Black Numbskull, Herman Cain, is playing the deny-deny-deny game with his best male superiority attitude regarding the several women who have recently popped out of old Herman's political woodwork to accuse him of practicing that male superiority by trying to tease them out of their panties and into his big King-size magic miracle bed. Herman's pleading loss of memory as his first superiority move--using the Bill Clinton method of "I did not have sex with that woman" categorical lying, Herman puts it "I did not sexual abuse these women"...why, Herman, says, to do that he would have broken precious American values he stands for as a serious presidential candidate. What a fucking joke.

I just found out from reading EXile (Yasha Levine's article) yesterday (Tuesday) that the Koch Brothers, those billionaires who have their arms up Herman's big Black ass thereby moving his brain and mouth like Paul Winchell used to give life to the wooden dummy Jerry Mahoney, were born in Quanah, Texas [named for Chief Quanah Parker who had a White wife named Cynthia], to Herman Koch, a Dutch immigrant, who owned and operated Quannah's first newspaper. The Koch Brothers are Texans. From Quanah, a railroad-founded town. Founded by the Fort Worth & Denver City Railroad, a Colonel Dodge railroad that I found out in this same article was heavily financed by Dutch investors. Old Herman Koch was a pro-corporate-state man who was laissez faire to the bone--the whole idea of America to this immigrant Dutchman was to grab as much wealth as you could grab while the grabbing was good--in the case of his newspaper editorials, old Herman Koch, by promoting the Ft. Worth & Denver City's corporate desires and grabbing up as much land as he could afford along that railroad right of way, soon amassed a fortune in real estate and railroad stocks and bonds. Greed was good and an honorable way to accumulate wealth in this New World White nation that became the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow to these desperate Europeans who flocked to this country to provide a work force for the advancing British-Empire-designed Industrial Revolution that was tumbling into existence in this once agriculture-based economy.
Matchbook from Quanah, Acme & Pacific Railroad (courtesy The Daily Growler Historical Society Collection)
So think about it this way--the Koch Brothers are backing Herman Cain not only in order to mock Barack Obama's campaign but also to promote their father's politics, which is all their politics is, a continuance of what they learned growing up under their father's politics and philosophy. Remember, Holland gave us Calvinism (anti-Catholic/anti-Lutheranism), which is what all this Libertarian bullshit is rooted in--"Work your ass off now for the night is coming when you'll work no more." Hard work brings success; accumulation of wealth brings fame; fame brings fortune; and fortune brings heavenly gain. All divinely procured. Calvinists are very charitable, as are the Koch Brothers--here in New York City, one of their homes, you go to a New York Philharmonic Concert and you see their names as leading donators--and in terms of the whole Lincoln Center project, you see them as board members and heavy contributors. At several of our hospitals, you see the Koch name on boards and on buildings.

It's Milton Friedman Economics--Phenomenonological thinking--like even if an Economic system isn't working but you say it is, then therefore it is working. One of the problems in Sociological study has to do with a school of Phenomenologists--they let their own ideals determine their Sociological results paying no attention to the actuality of the society in which they are imposing their fantastic intuitions.

The Occupy Wall Street people are buying heavy-duty tents preparing for a winter vigil in Mayor Bloomberg's girlfriend's realty-company owned park on Wall Street in downtown Manhattan. Kindly old billionaire little man lady's man (he's had his share of women accusing him of sexual harassment in the office place) Mayor Mikey Boy Bloomberg has allowed them their generators back. They are also putting together a two-week long march on Washington, District of Corruption, via stop offs in Newark, Philadelphia, and Baltimore before arriving en masse in Washington for a protest rally--though occupiers will be left behind to continue the Occupy Wall Street efforts now all over the country and in foreign cities, too. The Bank Transfer Day move must have been phenomenal, though it's not reported much on Wall Street Week in Review or other corporate-sponsored infomercials on commercial-pap television.

And in Italy, guess who ain't gonna come to dinner anymore? Why old Silvio Berlusconi, that Power Elite criminal, has resigned and has retreated to one of his many hillside villas to sweat out his being arrested by the Italian people who at the moment are facing a bigger financial bust than anything the Greeks are coming up with. Ah sweet Capitalism! Thy death has such a sting!

MARX WAS RIGHT AFTER ALL! It is all about workers's wages.

thehumblethegrowlingwolf
for The "Humble" Daily Growler

Sunday, November 06, 2011

Existing in New York City on a Beautiful Sun's Day

Foto by tgw, New York City (Looking East) 2011
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Who Are These People?

The dumbass backward crowd in Mississippi, our 51st state in terms of progress and humanitarianism, a position it has held for decades now, has just passed a state law [Mr. Ed: Actually it's a referendum to be voted on--AND IT IS WORSE THAN WE IMPLY because what it does is declare an embryo a human being with a Constitutional right to life. OH HOW UTTERLY HUMANLY STUPID! All the Mississippi Republican candidates (all Southern Republicans are racists) are promoting this legislation. Praise the Lord, you dumbass Christian fantasizers] that says if a woman, white or black, is raped and gets knocked up, SHE HAS TO HAVE THE BABY...if she gets an abortion, then she's breaking the law and she'll be subject to prison time, while, in most cases (and I'm thinking via habit of thought now), the rapist will beat the rap on lack of evidence--I mean, a rapist now can always refer back to New York City's recently allowing the big-shot French rapist, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, to go Scott Free while turning the tables on the victim and making her the rapist in the case.

And I'm dumbfounded and sit and puzzle over who the hell these vicious human-hating Power Elitists are in Mississippi first of all who propose such brutal Dark Ages punishments...and I stop in mid-thinking and start remembering my Southern upbringing and how these even modern-day Mississippians are still following the White Christian rules on sexuality. A White interpretation of which can be satirized as follows: White Mississippi lawmaker (a protege of Trent Lott perhaps) stating the facts of this new law: "Hey, if the women folks allows themselves to get themselves raped, then, hey now, it's God's will she bear that little bastard.
And I must emphatically add, this law applies even to a sweet virginal White gal--and I pray to God Almighty that a pure Christian White woman never has to face this heah reality, who lets herself git knocked up by the ugliest, meanest Kneegrow, yep, mah friends, she's gonna have to bear that little N-worder bastard--that thar's the sacred law of God first and the great backward State of Mississippi second."

So you gals down thar in Mississippi, you all be careful when you're out there at some honky tonk playing the Devil's game and shakin' your booty all up in the faces of them thar horny men, boys will be boys, you all know, you don't git some man so hot he has no choice but to rape you. How 'bout if you stow a diaphragm in thar 'fore you venture out for a night of Satanic fun? Would that constitute an abortion in the sight of Backward Mississippi law?

And then I accidentally Sunday morning flipped on some blah-blah-blah-bullshit commercial pap teevee politics show and there were all these high-paid talking-head pundits spewing out tons and tons of hot air over this Neanderthal Black pizza king bozo from Kansas City, this Herman Cain. Their heyday discussion was totally centered around the gaggles of babes coming out of the woodwork to testify that Herman Cain has trouble controlling his Johnson's taking over his brain when it gets erect--but then Herman's also the victim of the White Man's stereotyping--remember, to White males (especially in Mississippi) all Black men have trouble keeping those big black snakes inside their dens (pants) where they belong when they're around hot chicks--especially hot White chicks, who all White males know are the victims of all Black males's lusts. Like Clarence Thomas (he has a White wife), Pappy Bush's token Black gift to our Supreme(ly dumb) Court, was excused his teasing hot, shy, little vulnerable Anita Hill, who ended up being the castigated one in that "electronic lynch" attempt. And after listening to these White pundits, a couple of bimbo women, one from this Politico on-line site that is so respected these days, go over and over this idiot's "charges of sexual harassment," I'm thinking, all this bullshit and not one intelligent question or intelligent report on why is this baloney-packing Black man being given all of this evaluating? Of course, this fool would make a horrible president. He's got the Koch Brothers hands up his ass working his brain and mouth. They're using him to mock Black Obama--remember, these rich White men hate Blacks and Latinos. They are White racists--and that I guarantee you. I do know my people. Like even Herman Cain, who got rich off selling fat-globbed pizzas to his own high blood-pressured people and overweight White folks--naming his company after his favorite film, I assume--even Blacks admire Mafia characters, can't come in the front door of one of the Koch mansions--"Herman, this is David Koch. Come on, Herman, we see you at the front gate--you know your place is back there at the alley gate--you know, Step-in Fetchit has to let your Black ass in this White man's castle--and then I'll see you hat-in-hand in my master bedroom, and I emphasize that Massuh part, Herman, while Beulah my maid serves me my breakfast in bed--and, by the way, Herman, don't get any ideas when you're checkin' out Beulah's big fine booty. She's my property, Herman."

Idiots. Mitt Romney's an idiot; yet he gets so much god-damn attention. Mitt Romney's George Romney's son. They are Mormons. I'm sorry, folks, but I gotta be front and center on this since I've actually tried to read the Book of the Mormon once, but, folks, Mormons are oddities. Oddities are eccentrics. Eccentrics are fantasizers. The Mormon theology is pure fantasy. The fantasy of a stone alcoholic--they said Joe Smith was drunk most of his life--and Mitt Romney is a true believer in the Mormon fantasy of a drunken self-proclaimed prophet.

And Rick Perry...he's so idiotic even the Tea Party freaks find him alarming.

So another Sunday's over. We start yet another week. Blue Monday, how we all hate Blue Monday--except, one bit of cheer, people all over the US of A on Bank Transfer Saturday transfered millions out of the too big to fail banks and into credit unions in amounts never before seen in credit union banking! I'm safe, I bank at the Apple Bank, a New York City bank at which NYC's working class banks.

thegrowlingwolf
for The Sunday Daily Growler

A Little Taste of American Art:

Winslow Homer Civil War Drawing: Thanksgiving-Day In The Army. After Dinner : The Wishbone

Winslow Homer (1836-1910). The above was an illustration that appeared in Harper's Magazine during the Civil War, which, as my grandmother said, wasn't civil at all.

Saturday, November 05, 2011

Existing in New York City: "When's the Next Bookburning?"

Foto by tgw, Atlantic City, New Jersey, 2011
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The Burden of Having to Write

I have been a very lucky man from Day 1. That I admit. First of all, I was lucky in birth. The members of the immediate family from which I'm from were oddities in the midst of a community of same-thinking-and-acting folks. Oddities? Yes. And the oddest of them? The ones who were writers--even the ones who were would-be writers.

First of all, I was lucky to have a grandmother, my mother's mother, who was a writer--a poet and a novelist--and, yes, she was published, so I guess I could call her an author.

As a writer, she loved to read. As a reader, she loved books. In her room was a book case. A tall wooden book case stuffed with books of all kinds. It was a small library but it had the right kind of books in it. Art books, fiction and nonfiction books, but especially a set of "big" books: two large compendiums of English literature from Chaucer to Joseph Conrad and one of poetry from Spenser to Stephen Spender.

My grandmother loved books so much, when her millinery shop failed in the 1920s, she went and got a job at my hometown's Carnegie Library. She became so popular a part of that very active library she soon rose to head librarian--my hometown was on Highway 80 and the Texas & Pacific Railroad, both avenues leading directly from the East Coast straight across America to the West Coast, Highway 80 known as the Bankhead Highway (after Tallulah Bankhead's daddy) and running straight across country from New York City to Los Angeles.

And my hometown was a highway stopover point and a railroad and bus stopover point, as well...and it was a place full of "motor hotels," later shortened to motels--motor inns they were called, too, and two big hotels, the big clumsy Hilton Hotel (it became the Windsor later) and the taller and more stately Hotel Wooten (a seventeen-story landmark whose big red neon sign could be seen for miles and miles all around my hometown's location on that flat prairie known in song as the Lone Prairie).
http://users.nac.net/mgreene/images/Wooten_at_night.jpg
The other writer in my immediate family was my brother; an older brother, 15 years difference in our ages. After graduation from college and a stint in the U.S. Marines (in the South Pacific and China during WWII (the last war we supposedly won)), my brother, a history major, had no idea what he wanted to do for a living. He assumed all he was qualified to do was teach history, so he started looking for teaching jobs though in all his looks, he had no luck.

He, too, had grown up under the influence of my grandmother. He had been more intimately involved with her than I would ever be since while he was a freshman in college (he started college when he was 16), my parents moved up to Northern Oklahoma and left him behind to live with my grandmother.

He grew up in her library, too. While my mother and father both worked during the Great Depression, they would leave him with my grandmother at the library. He later would write a book about growing up in a library.

Both my brother and I knew library stuff and book stuff long before we went to even grade school. As a pre-schooler, I loved to be dropped off at the library and then allowed by my grandmother to go up to the children's reading room on the second floor and sit--I don't remember ever any children being there when I was there--and look at the wonderful old slides from all around the world through the library's stereopticon [Mr. Ed: This word stereopticon was red-lined by our ABC spell checker and when we clicked on the yellow highlighted word for the alternative it gave us "stripteaser"] and to look at all the wonderful picture books.

When I went to college and had to take Library Science, I whizzed right through it. I'd known how the Dewey Decimal System worked since I was a child. I'd even watched my grandmother's bookbinder, an old Scottish gentleman from Edinburgh, binding and re-covering books--I also knew about papers--like fly leaves and end papers and title pages and quarto and verso and copyrights and who the most famous authors were from several periods of literary time.

When I was 11 years old, living in Dallas and going to junior high, my grandmother, she had retired from the library, had remarried, thus my stepgrandfather from New York City, and had moved to Dallas, to a quaint little house on East Grand just across from Tennyson Park, that was enclosed by huge overtowering elm trees, had a goldfish pond in the back yard, and in the far corner of her back yard was a Model T Ford motor that sat there like a sculpture piece in that jungle-like back yard. Though I lived several miles southeast of my grandmother's house, where I went to junior high school was only a few blocks north of it. I was bused to the school in the mornings (yes, we had busing way before the Civil Rights Movement made it a controversial political matter) but in the afternoons I got to purposely missing the bus home so I could go by my grandmother's and then walk home from there.

Being a writer, my grandmother owned a typewriter, something very special in those days. Most families didn't have anyone with a typewriter in them. The typewriter, same as the piano, fascinated me (keys that you played with your fingers). My grandmother was very protective of her typewriter. She kept it on its special stool-table, a table with real tree limbs for legs. She kept it covered with both its original typewriter cover but also with an Italian-made cloth wall hanging depicting the Statue of Liberty in New York Harbor.

Every time I was around her on those afternoons after school, I would beg her to let me "play" with her typewriter. I got so persistent that one afternoon she caved in, though in caving in she told me, "No, you can't play with my typewriter, but you can learn about it, how to treat it special, because it is special. It's what I write on; it's like my assistant, like a member of my family." And that day, she began teaching me how to type. It took me about two weeks of lessons to finally get her permission to type something up by myself. I still had that sheet of schoolboy notebook paper throughout my life until my last wife sent all my possessions, including 7 completed novels, to the Westchester County dump. On this sheet of ruled paper, I had typed my name and address, my age (11), and then a list of what I wanted to be and accomplish in my life (one being a professional hockey player, due to the fact my dad had just taken me to my first-ever hockey game (a Dallas team vs. a Tulsa, Oklahoma, team)). One of the very first things I wanted to be was a writer, "like my grandmother," as I put it.

And thus began my writing career. And thus also began my true deep appreciation of books.

In the meantime, back to my brother. After failing to get a teaching position, running out of his Marines GI Bill pay and mustering out pay, in desperation one day he walked into the offices of our hometown newspaper, got an interview with the managing editor, and told this man he wanted to be a newspaper reporter. Experience?, he was asked. My brother had worked on his college's literary magazine in which he had published several essays and one short story. The managing editor wasn't impressed much with the writing but he was impressed with my brother's gall--or "balls" as we would say today. Due to this "nerve," this managing editor gave my brother a chance. He assigned him to do a story. He was to take a ride on a new branch of the Abilene & Southern Railroad that was extended just after WWII to reach Ballenger, Texas, some 30 miles south of my hometown and then write a report of the trip (I still have a copy of this article in my collection of my brother's writings and books (my brother published 30 books during his long writing career and literally thousands of newspaper articles and magazine pieces)). The managing editor was so taken with this reportage, he hired my brother. Though not first as a feature writer but as a sports reporter. My brother's first column in my hometown newspaper was on sports and was called "Seein' Red," because my brother had red hair and was very out-front in his promoting the local athletic teams, of which we had many with a high school that had a state-championship football team and three colleges all with full athletic programs, two of those colleges sporting nationally acclaimed athletic teams--one Hardin-Simmons University with a nationally ranked football team during World War II and in the early 1950s led by their great quarterback John "Model T" Ford; and one Abilene Christian College that had one of the world's finest track and field teams, especially their world-record-holding relay teams--culminating in world renown during the Melbourne Olympics in 1953 when ACC's amazing Bobby Morrow won three gold medals and anchored the relay teams to two gold medals and two World's Records.

From being a reporter on our hometown newspaper, my brother was launched on his writing career, a career that carried him to a national fame that I could never duplicate--in the 1980s he hit his greatest fame as a commentator on the McNeil-Lehrer News Hour, Jim Lehrer once being my brother's protege.

My grandmother, my brother, and I weren't "educated" writers. In other words, we weren't "taught" how to write. Writing just simply came natural to us. My grandmother's son, my Uncle Uncle, was a good writer, too, though nobody knew he was until after he died and his wife sent my grandmother a portfolio of short stories he had written, the best one one about being a barnstorming pilot in an open-cockpit bi-winged Curtis Jenny--the best part of that story about his trying to fly over a 14,000-foot Rocky Mountain peak when his plane's altimeter only show the plane capable of going 11,000 feet.

Being around a library that was run by your grandmother inscribed you with literary ambitions; growing up hearing that grandmother and watching her typing day-in and day-out, usually writing poetry, but also I remember her at an advanced age tackling another novel (her first novel was published in 1944) also definitely influenced me toward writing. And she would talk writing with me when I'd ask her hundreds of questions about how she wrote.

And then one day in the 1950s, my brother sold two articles to The Atlantic Monthly, moved from my hometown paper over to Dallas, where he got a job as Book Editor of Dallas's largest newspaper, the Times Herald. As a book reviewer he received in the mail daily advanced copies of all kinds of books, nonfiction and fiction, to a point where at one time, right before the Kennedy Assassination (his editorials on the Kennedy Assassination gleaned him national attention and won him a several national awards), he was receiving hundreds of review copies a week. At that time, he claimed he was reading a book a day--7 books a week. Many a time I went to his house and he would let me go through his piles of books and pick out the ones I wanted--his only specification was that I read what I took. From those piles of books I found my writing heroes at the time, Ernest Hemingway, Gertrude Stein, and my special writing hero, Thomas Wolfe (the original from North Carolina and not the white-suit-wearing fop from Richmond, Virginia). The Sun Also Rises for Hemingway; Gertrude Stein's Making of Americans, and my first Thomas Wolfe, The Web and the Rock, a posthumously published novel that arrived in Maxwell Perkins's office at Scribner's in a huge wooden crate, the original manuscript thousands upon thousands of pages long, Max Perkins himself editing the book down to a readable length. That book inflamed me--and along with my appreciation of Hemingway's and Gertrude Stein's simple let-flow way of writing--and after reading it, I set out to seriously become a serious writer.

And all of this review of books and their importance in my life was instigated after my pal, L Hat (www.languagehat.com) sent me an article on what libraries do with the overwhelming amount of books they sometimes have to cull off their limited shelves. Here's that article Bro. Hat sent me: http://www.cracked.com/article_19453_6-reasons-were-in-another-book-burning-period-in-history.html

Such an article makes me want to puke. How insane is burning books, especially rare Shakespeare editions, just because of rules and regulations? Every institution has its rules and regulations.
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New York City's Little Prick Billionaire Mayor Defends His Wall Street Brothers and Sisters
Occupation Wall Street here in New York City is driving our fair city's Plutocratic Mayor Mikey Bloomberg absolutely insane. This little-man prick--Wall Street's buying his stupid stock-analyzing software made him rich (Merrill-Lynch the first to buy into it), so hell yes he has to defend Wall Street, which makes him an accessory to piracy and thievery. This little rich prick recently warned us stupid-ass New Yorkers--he's divinely anointed you know, otherwise, how did he get so rich?--that HE will not tolerate the "wildness" of the Occupation Oakland--the pissed off Oaklanders had started a bonfire near the Port of Oakland, which they shut down earlier in the week, which led to some cars being set on fire and some bank windows broken and that reminded me of the "agent provocateurs" during the anti-Vietnam War protests. "That sort of violence will not be tolerate here," the meanly serious mayor said, that serious more-pious-than-thou look on his dumbass face, "I won't allow that to happen here."

I'm listening to this little privileged jerk lecturing We the People of New York City on what we should or should not do, a divinely inspired attitude of his that correlates with the idea that since he's so fucking wealthy, he must be directly connected to the Divine One. Mayor Mikey is Jewish, so we assume he does consider himself one of the highest of the Chosen Ones. Occupy Wall Street is a force against this little prick, who is supposed to surely be in his last year of office as mayor after he forced HIS City Council (whose female head is head-over-heels in love with this little prick) to authorize him to run for an illegal third term--an election he only won by 50,000 votes over an unknown Black man (Bill Thompson)--an election Little Mikey spent $100 million dollars out of his own pocket to buy.

Mayors! How did these pretenders get to be so fucking powerful? This little billionaire prick has been the same-ole-same-ole New York City mayor We the Citizens of New York always elect, i.e., Ed "How'm I Doin'" Crotch (Koch), Jimmie "Phony" Walker, Abe "Crybaby" Beame, Rudolph "Mussolini" Giuliani, William "Pampered Bill" O'Dwyer, John "Playboy" Lindsay, David "the Black Mayor" Dinkins. I mean why would a man worth billions of dollars (recent statements say Mikey's only worth 12 billion (I've seen estimates he's worth many more billions than that given he's still raking in millions a year from Bloomberg Ltd.) be interested in a job that pays at best a couple-a-hundred thousand a year, chicken feed in terms of our billionaire mayor's worth? The reason: POWER. This mayor has increased his wealth since he was first elected as a replacement for Rudi "Mussolini" Giuliani, who himself tried to rig it where he was our perpetual mayor--though the City Council denied Rudi the opportunity to run for an illegal third term.

Mayors. Who the hell needs them keiko-muckity-mucks? A city as large as New York City should be run by the citizens of NYC--like Mayor Bloomberg's rezoning this city in favor of his real estate developer pals--like Mayor Bloomberg's wrecking our public school system in favor of his charter-school-chartering pals. Truth is, Bloomberg hates Blacks and Latinos just as he also hates poor Whites--and he's rezoning Manhattan so that he can drive Blacks and Latinos and poor whites off the island but especially out of Harlem proper and East Harlem where the Latinos live--Harlem being a well of wealth for real estate developers, EXCEPT, first they've got to drive those god-damn N-worders and Spicks out of that real-estate-developing goldmine. Bloomberg has also rezoned the shorelines of the East River so his developer pals can build 40 hi-rise luxury apartment buildings and executive hotels and luxury condos all up and down that river's shorelines.

Pardon me while I rinse my mouth out with soap to get my profane dislike of this Plutocrat mayor off my immoral mind.

In the meantime, the presidential election bullshit is being flung far and wide, Obama now appealing to his grass-roots base for funds again---Hey, Obama, I thought you favored those thirty-five-thousand-a-plate dinners over the stupid grass-roots idiots who you say you understand their frustrations over these Wall Street crooks and their continuing to be criminals without any fear of being punished but things ain't gonna change so We the People might as well get used to Wall Street crimes to continue full blast and with guaranteed funds for them should they get too big to fail again.

Sorry, folks, but I can't get US politics out of my hair these day! I mean politicians like Mayor Bloomberg feel because they can raise billions of dollars from us to run for a job that pays at most $400,000-a-year they are our dearest Big Daddy figures--we the stupid, the poor, the unsuccessful, the unambitious, the lazy, the ex-slaves, the illegal immigrants--the unpatriotic, the would-be terrorists, the friends of Palestine, the promoters of an Islamic takeover! Of course, they run for these positions because with multi-million-dollar campaign coffers whether they win or not they are elevated, these rather common-ordinary-already-rich men (and women)(the collected worth of Congress, I read last week, is now 4 billion dollars) to the entrance hall to the headquarters of the World's Power Elite.

Ah, Chaos! And when those solar flare storms hit us (starting they say for real in 2012) and all that projected plasma shoots down through this huge hole in our protective ozone layer now expanding widely over our North Pole and shuts down all electrical power it will leave We the People of the USA in the dark, in the cold or extreme heat, without any water, without any fresh food, without a chance in hell when all the nuclear power plants begin blowing up, unable to get any money out of our electric-dependent banks, unable to flee the Chaos since when our cars run out of gas and can't be refilled and the streets and bridges and highways will be jammed with escapees anyway--WHY, what writer isn't hopefully rejoicing over this coming disaster! Something to write about!

Claude Levi-Strauss said: " The world began without man, and it will end without him."

Henry Miller wrote: "The world dies over and over again, but the skeleton always gets up and walks."

Heinrich Heine wrote: "Wild, dark times are rumbling toward us, and the prophet who wishes to write a new apocalypse will have to invent entirely new beasts, and beasts so terrible that the ancient animal symbols of St. John will seem like cooing doves and cupids in comparison."

Kurt Vonnegut wrote: "
What's going to happen is, very soon, we're going to run out of petroleum, and everything depends on petroleum. And there go the school buses. There go the fire engines. The food trucks will come to a halt. This is the end of the world."

thedoomsdaygrowlingwolf
for The Daily Growler