Friday, August 31, 2012

Existing in New York City: Where the Koch Brothers Reside

Foto by tgw, "The Oldest Building on Broadway," New York City, 2012
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Slogans

Definition:
slo·gan (slgn)
n.
1. A phrase expressing the aims or nature of an enterprise, organization, or candidate; a motto.
2. A phrase used repeatedly, as in advertising or promotion: "all the slogans and shibboleths coined out of the ideals of the peoples for the uses of imperialism" (Margaret Sanger).
3. A battle cry of a Scottish clan.

[Alteration of Scots slogorne, battle cry, from Gaelic sluagh-ghairm : sluagh, host; see slew1 + gairm, shout.]

The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition copyright ©2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Updated in 2009. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.

I could not watch the Repugnican convention...oh, I'll admit, I tuned in briefly, like to the turkey-necked Clint Eastwood's disjointed old-man babbling speech, laughing my ass off all during it as his brain kept slowing down to a crawl as he hemmed-and-hawed his way through a speech that made no sense except when he mentioned the Afghanistan War and how we should have asked the Russians about getting involved in it...Hey, Clint, you old actor fop, who got us into this our longest-ever war? You ever heard the name G.W. Bush? And the Russians did warn us that we were in for an endless inconclusive venture if we stupidly did as they did and invaded that country! But we've been trying to invade Afghanistan way before Little Prick Bush actually did it. We've been firing missiles into Afghanistan from the Khyber Pass for decades (even the Democrats precious Big Dog Clinton fired missiles into it) and sending our CIA goons, one of which was a dude named Osama bin Laden, in there for decades more to try and best the Soviets when they were the Soviets and then try and overthrow the Taliban when we gave Osama bin Laden orders to use his own militants along with the Mujaheddin to weed out the Taliban--I mean we don't like that branch of the Muslims--we like the Saudi-Arabian branch of the Muslims best of all, that branch Osama bin Laden belonged to. So dry up and blow away, Clint, which you seem to be doing quite well in your old age (you're rotting away).

What I did find interesting were the banners hanging about the Tampa arena. Banners full of hollow slogans, like "We Believe in America!" What the hell does that mean? Or "We Built It"--I know, that one refers to something President Obama said--but still, it's really meaningless when you try and get to the core of it. And Mitt "the Mormon" Romney's saying, "It's Time to Turn the Page"--what page are you talking about, Mitt, a page in the Book of the Mormon, that book written by a drunken fool?

I couldn't watch this big arena event of Yahoos...White Yahoos...drab White Yahoos...White Yahoos who looked like they were running low on blood. Racist Yahoos, like those of them throwing peanuts at the Black camerawoman and calling her an animal. Hey, you nitwits, we're all animals...human monkey animals...but, no, Repugnicans believe they are direct descendants of some God: the Jewish God, the God of our Foreskin Fathers, the God of Drunken Joe Smith...I always wonder what God they are talking about when they talk about God blessing America; is it the God in Whom We Trust? Of course these White fools are talking about the Christian God once called Jehovah and now called God Knows What by the Fundamentalist Neanderthal Whites. If I were President Obama, I'd'a had a field day with these monkeys. I would have showed up in Tampa and held a rally while these hare-brained jack-offs were jacking each other off.

Paul Ryan just out-and-out lied, but, hey, he got high praise from most of the commercial-pap-pulp press. He's a lyin' son of a bitch, but he's taken seriously by his party-ers.

I find it interesting that one of the big Repug contributors is a Vegas casino owner. Think of how many people this old fool has ruined while he's raked in billions of dollars for himself and his precious Israel and Newtie Gingrich. The fools he's chisled out of their life savings are the same fools who'll vote for Mitt "the Mormon" and Paul "the Lyin' Catholic." And these pompous Kochs. They are gods because they're rich and have millions to throw around...and they are throwing millions at that sleazy Karl Rove who follows these privileged pricks around with his nose deep up the cracks of their filthy asses.

thetrueindependentgrowlingwolf
for The Nonpartial The Daily Growler

I'd vote for Rocky Anderson IF I voted.

Wednesday, August 29, 2012

Existing in New York City: Trying to Avoid the Yahooing Hypocritical Yahoos

Foto by tgw, "The Oldest Building on Broadway," New York City, 2012
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The Whitest of the Whites

I couldn't watch it. The Republican clown show that is. I hit it several times Tuesday night as I channel surfed. Once I saw Rick "Man on Dog" Santorum making a speech. I shuddered and then quickly sped on by him. Then I checked on Channel 13, the PBS channel, and, dammit, they were showing the whole clown show. I saw some jellybean-looking guy standing on this jumping-off-platform making a speech. I didn't listen to what he said. Instead I just looked at the audience as the camera panned around the hall. White on white people everywhere. White people galore. White people around some old White fool and his shriveled up White wife. I didn't recognize him. They showed a gaggle of overweight White women wearing cowboy hats. They were all smiling and nodding. The jellybean-looking guy was sputtering away spouting something about family. He wasn't getting much applause. The White people in the audience were just gawking not applauding. One group of Whites were holding home-made signs that read "We Built It." There was no explanation what those signs were referring to. The enormous debt this country's in perhaps? No, these jerks blame that on Obama. The endless war in Afghanistan maybe? No. There was no talk of the wars. It was the anniversary of Katrina and the destruction of New Orleans; perhaps those signs referred to the levees that broke and flooded the lowest parts of that old city. "We Built It." What had the Republicans, the White Party, built? I surfed on looking for something more edifying to watch. There was nothing. I gave up and took my 20 pounds of dirty laundry over to the laundry I use on 30th. Fifth Avenue was packed with people. A lot of young White girls--sprite all-Whites and Asian White girls-- wearing shorts. Older White families I assumed were tourists. A bunch of younger men each with backpacks on their backs. What do these White people carry in these enormous backpacks? Then a Chinese bus pulled up on Fifth Avenue and a whole lot of Black folks bailed out of it onto the sidewalk. Black folks ride this plethora of Chinese buses that have invaded my neighborhood. My building has a Chinese bus station in it now. Buses to Albany, New York. Buses to Baltimore, Maryland. Buses to Wilmington, Delaware. Scores of Black people waiting all day long morning, noon, and night on the sidewalk outside my building for these buses that seem to come lumbering by every 15 or twenty minutes.

Back from the laundry, I surfed the Web awhile. Checked out Buzzflash. Read where Ron Paul's people had caused a riot at the Republican Convention. Turned on my television to see if I could see the riot but nope, there were just more of these yee-hawing white-on-white White people smiling goofily. Then suddenly, the star of the evening showed up. Big, huge, fat, blubberboy, Chris Christie, and there was a big sign being held up by the New Jersey delegation declaring Blubberboy "America's Governor!" And there he was. Fatter than ever. And in his little boy voice he started hooting about love and respect and something his mother told him about how you have to have respect before you can have love. All of these White Repugs have these wise mothers. I remember Richard "I Am Not a Crook" Nixon used to talk about his sanctified mother. I immediately thought of Philip Wylie's "Momism."

Philip Wylie wrote in his Generation of Vipers (1955): She [Mom] is Cinderella, the creature I discussed earlier, the shining-haired, the starry-eyed, the ruby-lipped virgo aeternis, of which there is presumably one, and only one, or a one-and-only for each male, whose dream is fixed upon her deflowerment and subsequent perpetual possession. ... Meanwhile, Megaloid momworship has got completely out of hand. Our land, subjectively mapped, would have more silver cords and apron strings crisscrossing it than railroads and telephone wires. Mom is everywhere and everything and damned near everybody, and from her depends all the rest of the U. S. Disguised as good old mom, dear old mom, sweet old mom, your loving mom, and so on, she is the bride at every funeral and the corpse at every wedding. Men live for her and die for her, dote upon her and whisper her name as they pass away, and I believe she has now achieved, in the hierarchy of miscellaneous articles, a spot next to the Bible and the Flag, being reckoned part of both in a way.

And big fat Chris Christie started babbling on about his mother explaining to him that love was nothing without respect. And I'm thinking, what the hell does that mean? And then Chris says the Republicans aren't about love they're about respect. And I conjure up that means love is welfare and respect is rugged individualism and bums who depend on the government for their well-being the Republicans don't love or respect. And then big fat Chris Christie starts championing his governorship and how he's had three straight balanced budgets in New Jersey and where his predecessors, Democrats, I assumed, raised taxes 100-plus times on New Jerseyans, he lowered taxes and blah, blah, blah. I'm thinking, hey, why didn't your moms tell you to do away with all taxes! Which is maybe Gordon Norquist's philosophy. Let's do away with taxes. That will do away with government. It will put the largest workforce in the USA out of jobs and in the street. The largest workforce? U.S. government workers.

I turned off my television. Looks like a coming Winter of Discontent.

thegrowlingwolf
for The Daily Growler

Monday, August 27, 2012

Existing in New York City Where the NYPD Make This City a Battleground

Foto by tgw, Chelsea Pier, New York City, 2012
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Note:
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I'm Curious

I just watched a former Air Force trooper who served in Iraq who has written a book that he starts off by writing, "I am crazy...." His contention is that after returning from Iraq, he now has a mental attitude that is with him 24/7 that the only way he can explain it is to admit that he's crazy. He explains what he feels by saying sometimes when he's in an airport he has to head for an exit door and that his head is telling him he has to kill anything between him and that exit door because his "mission" is to get out that exit door. While I was watching this guy...and I know he's hustling his book trying to make a buck so he may be a little overdramatic in his promotion...I'm thinking, "Hey, dude, to me you were crazy for joining the Air Force in the first place. Nobody forced you to join the armed forces. You volunteered for duty. So, to me, a guy who had no choice when I had to join the U.S. Army back in the 'Nam days, you are crazy from the git-go...and, yes, OK, you were made even more serious crazy by duty in Iraq since you were brainwashed in the military 'Kill or Be Killed' philosophy of war."

The New York City Police Department's Military Attitude: Kill or Be Killed
Mark Ames in The EXile (see our blog list), and Mark to me is an excellent writer and thinker, has a great piece on poor old Jeffrey Johnson, the fired ex-ladies handbag designer and Central Park birdwatcher, and the bullying he received from his ex-boss, the guy he shot and killed Friday at the shop where he once worked on West 33rd Street in the shadow of the Empire State Building. This was an incident where Jeffrey shot and killed his ex-boss and the NYPD wounded 9 innocent bystanders in their effort to kill Jeffrey.

It reminded me that the NYPD is now considering itself a military tactical outfit and not a protector of the citizens of New York City it is supposed to courteously serve. Just recently the NYPD announced it had made a deal with Microsoft to install 3,000 cameras around NY City, very sensitive cameras (yes, Microsoft and Apple are now in the spy camera business) whose purpose is to catch NY City citizens either committing or looking like they may be prone to committing crimes. Our Billionaire mayor and his Shanty Irish police commish claim these cameras are necessary in order to keep "terrorists" from repeating 9/11 on us. Of course, these cameras couldn't have prevented 9/11 could they? Nor could they prevent a crime like that poor harassed boob Jeffrey Johnson committed. I mean, say you're walking down the street with a piece in plain view, walking fast and determined to kill, so one of the hundreds of screen-watching cops who are sitting in NYPD's private bunker somewhere are not going to prevent that perpetrator from carrying out his murderous intentions. Even if this perpetrator was wearing a towel around his head and sporting an al-Queda banner, these cameras wouldn't stop him or her from concluding their mission.

The Republican Clown Show
The Republicans have landed in Tampa, Florida. So have AT&T, Microsoft, the Koch Brothers, Karl Rove, the Chamber of Commerce, the NRA, and a host of other Teabagger and Republican angels of mercy there to spread the joy and frivolity that millions upon millions of tax-free dollars bring the right-side representatives of We the People. Soon big fat bloated Chris Christie will be spewing his bullshit all over a cheering bunch of half-drunk with their pockets packed with Koch dollars and Rove dollars convention attendees who now wish this overblown subject-to-a-heart-attack-at-any-moment Governor of the backward state of New Jersey was their presidential candidate instead of Mitt "the Mormon" Romney will be hooplahing like crazy for every word this blimp of a man sputters. All of these convention shenanigans going on while the City of New Orleans is readying to see if its fragile levees will hold as Hurricane Isaac eyes this vulnerable city, though Isaac is not Katrina...but still, who knows? Katrina wiping out New Orleans was the worst natural disaster in US history--G.W. "You're Doing a Heck of a Job, Brownie" Bush flew over it in Air Force One while scratching his ass and not giving one crap about the truth of what happened to the US citizens down below.

By the bye, I was reading where We the People of the USA are contributing several bundles of millions of bucks to the Republican Convention...for security and convention expenses. This to the party that claims it hates government spending and entitlements, the party that from Raygun Reagan (the B actor turned politician) until G.W. Bush has consistently raised our deficit to the point that we are now on the brink of economic disaster, a disaster these clowns will be blaming on Barack Obama, the N-word Kenyan Islam Muslim non-US citizen president, during all their ballyhooing during this convention. Note that G.W. Bush, the idiot child of G.W.H. "Pappy" Bush, is not invited to this convention, nor will his glorious "Mission Accomplished" achievements be mentioned by any of the speakers at this convention. The clown show will give us some good laughs--Big Fat Chris Christie will blabber away with bullshit that though scary as hell will be like full of laughable moments, especially if this big whale of a man gets in one of his tough-guy modes. Then the lovable Paul Ryan will get up and spew out his scary bullshit--Paul by the time he speaks will want to do away with the government all together, except of course he'll not want to get rid of Congress and how he makes his good living. And then Mormon Moron Mitt Romney will give his acceptance speech and oh boy the bullshit by then will be up near the rafters. A list of their biggest clown events will be: tax cuts for the wealthy; billions of more worthless dollars for the Pentagon, the Defense Department, the CIA, the FBI, the NIS, Homeland Security; doing away with Medicaid, Medicare, and Social Security; doing away with food stamps and whatever welfare is left; opening up We the People's vast public lands to private corporations--gold mining in Yellowstone, hydro-fracting in all fifty states, drill-drill-drilling in the Gulf of Mexico and in the Alaskan Wilderness, the cutting down of our old forests, the blowing up of mountains for coal; making Ayn Rand a Neo-Con saint, even though Ayn was an Atheist; promoting pay-or-die health insurance and for-profit hospitals; backing a nuclear strike on the evil Iran--giving billions more bucks to Israel...on and on it will go.

So bring in the clowns and let's get this party started...I'll be lighting my cigars with some Koch Brothers dollars as I get drunk and giddy with the Teabagging, KKK, NRA, Repugnicans. The Yahoos have landed in Tampa in the Backward State of Florida---Yee-Haw let the hateful fun begin...and it has.

thegrowlingwolf
for The Daily Growler

Tuesday, August 21, 2012

Existing in New York City: A Look at the Yahoos' Backward Thinking About Rape

Wild Shooting New York Police Responsible for 9 Bystanders Hit in Empire State Building Shootings: You should have known it. The wildfiring NYPD's finest it is now being admitted were responsible for the 9 bystanders injured in Friday's Empire State Building shootings.

Gunfire at the Empire State Building: Yeehaw, right around the corner from me on West 33rd, a disgruntled ex-employee of the Hasan Ladies Apparel sweatshop came and shot and killed his ex-boss...no big deal; the shooter had a right under the 2nd Amendment to own a rifle or shotgun and have plenty of ammunition to go with it. Maybe he was a deerslayer. Maybe he was a duck hunter. Whatever, when he got pissed off at his old boss, why not grab that rifle and go to Midtown and plug the old bastard. Then after you've shot and killed the intended, why not run on around the block and shoot it out with the cops? Only one innocent bystander got wiped out in the confusion--whether the perpetrator, as Billionaire Mayor Mikey Bloomberg called him, or the cops killed the innocent bystander, no one's for sure. The Mayor in his photo-op with our Police Commish Shanty Irish Ray Kelly and the President of the City Council who was there, too, said all they knew about the incident was the perpetrator's name, Jeffrey Johnson, and that he was a pissed off ex-employee and that's all they knew and the reporters were asking stupid questions anyway--photo-op over, case closed. I got a big kick out of reading some of the over 4,000 comments already posted on the Yahoo News--there were the usual Liberal replies--"America the land of the killers"..."Why can't we stop this idiotic gun violence?"--interspersed with the more sensible comments, "Gun laws are no good; criminals always have a way to get guns while law-abiding citizens are forbidden to have guns" and "We have drifted away from God and until this nation comes back to God ...." Americans are so idiotic...yes, all of us are neurotic, but, dammit, there are psychotics among us, too. If you fire a guy after he's worked for you 6 years, and you leave him economically bankrupt, broke, unable to find another job, drinking heavily, having trouble with his wife and family perhaps, pissed off, hopeless, and he owns a rifle or shotgun and he looks at it and he thinks, "Fuck, I'm a dead man walking, so why don't I go and show that son of a bitch who fired my ass," the consequences be damned. The issues of unemployment and poverty in this country are being totally ignored by our President and the two rich boys running against him in this stupid presidential election going on right now. And our politicians will give us the old "this is a shame and we're praying for the victims, but there's nothing we can do about it...hey, the Second Amendment gives us the right to bear arms, so our hands are tied." I was taught as a rebellious youth, if you own a gun you're gonna have to use it one day. That's why I've never owned a gun. Besides, too, I've never found it necessary to go out and shoot and kill animals. The only time I did have a gun was when I was in the U.S. Army...and they were teaching me to "Kill or be killed," for that's the idea behind having a gun of any kind.
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Foto by tgw, New York City, 2010
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Backwards Thinking

Christians, especially Catholics, really do believe if a woman is raped she should lay back and enjoy it and then suffer the consequences if she gets knocked up. Why? Because she evidently brought the rape on herself. This is why ultraconservative states are trying to make fetuses citizens with rights. This insanity was started by the Right to Lifers many years ago now. It's basically a set-in-stone creed among White people in this country. Among White religious nuts, abortion has always been taboo. You see, even if your rapist knocks you up, you are obligated by God's holiest of edicts to have the baby. The holiest of rollers among the White crowd believe that women are pure sin, which they deduce from the Adam and Eve fable, the invention of the first White man and woman. White to these White people is purity. Therefore, this is the same insane crowd of Yahoos who still believe Blacks are the cursed sons and daughters of Noah's son Ham whose mortal sin was that he looked on his father while old Noah was drunk as a Lord and naked to boot. Isn't that insane? But Mitt "the Mormon" Romney and his running pal, Paul "the Catholic Cheesehead" Ryan truly believe these fables and feel as real men, they are God's special earthly representatives and must enforce his holy edicts.

This Missouri (Mule) joker, this Akin fool, truly believes, he's worked it out in his moronic head, that when a woman's raped if she holds back her orgasm, she won't get pregnant. If she however orgasms, then, hell, she's enjoyed the rape and has accepted the rapist's seed into her fertile egg and therefore has to bear the resulting little bastard, according to the Holy Big Daddy's law. This stems from the curse of original sin, don't you see? A woman's vagina is the source of all evil. Children are born in sin. Because fucking, though necessary to procreate, is an evil act, especially fucking for just the pleasure of it. Rapists are lured into rape by the allurement of certain women--women who wear too much make up or who wear revealing clothes. We men in the USA are so sexually immature.

Onan was condemned to death by the Holy Big Daddy for spilling his seeds on the ground. Onanism has become another word for masturbation or it could be conjured that Onan spilled his seeds while enjoying a forced fuck. You know, he pulled out before he shot his wad and spilled it on the ground instead of risking having a little bastard with a heathen woman. Perhaps Onan was raping a heathen woman. Or maybe one of his wives. Who the hell knows.

Women in the Christian Bible and the Torah are considered as low as dogs. Women are trouble unless their men keep them under control--outfitting them with chastity belts or keeping them knocked up and in the kitchen where women belong most of their lives. Because, you see, men can't trust women because of that vagina.

In the Christian Bible, most of the holiest of men, like old sordid Abraham or the lusty King David, either had a harem of wives or they fucked around like crazy, Abraham banging his servant girl and King David banging all the women in his kingdom, one of whom was his own daughter. Oh, but you see, these profligate men repented and the Big Daddy God forgave them. And remember the Holy Big Daddy's only child happened after he banged old Joe ben Joseph's young wife as she was walking home to Joe's shanty in a Nazareth slum from her job as a waitress in a Judaic cantina that served wine to Roman soldiers [Ernest Hemingway wrote a parody of this situation].

The idiocy of all of this bullshit, and that's what it is, pure-dee bullshit, is so beneath me. It astounds me how in these modern times these fables still rain down such influence on our freedom. And look at President Obama's response to this...yes, he made a cool statement about rape being rape but then he turned around and tried to prove to these Repugnican goofs that he's a real Christian and a believer in God and Jesus X. because the Teabagger nutjobs and Ayn Rand idolizers and Conservative idiots, remember, call Obama a Muslim. Obama seems to kowtow to these fools when really all he has to do is condemn them as idiots.

First of all, how did Arabs (which most White people see as Muslims, even though Muslims come in many ethnic forms including Chinese, Indonesian, Persian, and Indian) come to be according to the Holiest of Christian fables? The tale goes: Abraham was so desperate for a male heir that at 180 (maybe I exaggerate, though not by much) he tried to knock his 180-year-old wife, Sarah, up and on failing to do so, with Sarah's permission, he trotted out to the servants' quarters and banged a hot minky little servant girl, Hagar, an Egyptian slave or so it has been said. As a result of Abe's certified fucking around, he knocked Hagar up and conceived through her womb the true heir to his tribal wealth and power, Ishmael. Soon, Abe's wife, Sarah, got extremely jealous of Hagar and sent her packing. Hagar headed back to Egypt but gave up in the wilderness of Shur and came back to Abe and Sarah and their Hebrew tribe. Sarah then, still 180 years old, miraculously got pregnant herself via Abe and thus begat Isaac. Again, Sarah expelled Hagar and Little Ishmael, blah, blah, blah. The fabulous genealogy of all this biblical bullshit is that from Adam descended Noah and from Noah descended Abraham. And from Abraham descended both Ishmael and Isaac and from Ishmael descended the Arabs and from Isaac descended Israel. It's an amazing story, though as one Christian site admits, it was probably perfectly normal in those polygamous days of that ancient age, an age when tribal leaders such as Abraham, had to have male heirs, males being so much more important in life than females, a way of thinking still in effect around the world today.

Most women who get raped--at least 100,000-a-year in the good ole USA--don't file charges due to the male-dominated police forces and the male-dominated court system or if they do file charges, the male-dominated police forces usually decide against their evidence based on male attitudes toward raped women. Here's an interesting overview of rape and rape statistics from a 2011 Ms magazine article:

msmagazine.com/blog/blog/2011/05/02/25-facts-about-rape-in-america/

My 2nd wife was a charter member of the National Organization of Women (NOW). At one of their first meetings in New York City, I attended and the topic for the evening was abortion and a woman's right to an abortion. I and another male present said we didn't think an out-an-out campaign for abortion rights would work in this country--it would turn a majority of Americans against feminism. That night, the NOW leaders, Betty Friedan and Gloria Steinem, led a vote to not let men into any more of their meetings. I at that time was a promotional genius and thought a better way to approach abortion was to simply keep it as a sober platform of the Equal Rights Amendment and not make it a rallying cry for the whole movement. Women like Betty Friedan, Gloria Steinem, Germaine Greer, Kate Millett had the power in the movement and they got the abortion rights passed through Congress after the Supreme Court ruled in favor of a woman's right to abortion in Rowe vs. Wade. This was a time when it looked like this country's politics were moving progressively left, which turned out to be a misconception as soon after this the rightwing nutjob Repugnicans won the presidency with Richard "I Am Not a Crook" Nixon and his babbling idiot VP, Spiro Agnew. and they took over Congress and we've been burdened with backwards-thinking in this country ever since.

thegrowlingwolf
for The Daily Growler

We note: that in a promo on Truthout.com for Chris Hedges and Joe Sacco's new book, they use the following quote: "'[A] growling indictment of corporate America,' says the Financial Times."

Monday, August 20, 2012

Existing in New York City in a Swarm of Memories

Foto by tgw, New York City, 2003
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Memories

They are like photographs. Mental photographs. The earliest to the latest. And there can be dream memories, too. Frightening memories. Pleasant memories. Necessary memories. Vexing memories. Sad memories. And, of course, happy memories.

What are memories? They are tools. Tools we need to survive. In particular the functional memories. Like remembering that if you put your hand in a fire you're going to experience extreme pain. Or like remembering your phone number. Or remembering how to add up a column of figures. A column of figures that may represent debt. Then the memory of how you got into debt can be either one of "in spite of going into debt, what a damn good time I had" or "Damn, why the hell did I let myself get into such debt?"

I've been remembering since I was 2 years old. That's what I claim. I can easily trace my memories back to Enid, Oklahoma. Memories of being a little boy. Memories of my little girl playmates. A sandbox out behind the garage. A driveway. A sidewalk leading from the front door of the tiny apartment in which I lived with my mother and father and brother. I remember riding my brother like a horse. I remember him encouraging me to pull his red hair, "Harder," he would say, "Harder!" I remember my one-eyed uncle giving me a knife shaped like a key one Christmas. And I remember almost slicing my thumb off with that knife, the scar still visible after all these years. Scars are identified by memories.

I remember the first snow I ever encountered. A deep snow. A snow that piled high up above my head. Three feet of snow one winter in Enid, Oklahoma.

I remember my first spring, also in Enid. There was this fantastic park (Spring Park) that was right down the street from where we lived in the tiny apartment in a house owned by a Mrs. Thorpe. I remember Mrs. Thorpe as a face in an upper window. That face remembered from a photograph. Photographs are replications of our memories. We take photographs to remember. I remember family gatherings where the photographic albums were hauled out and members of my family went over each photograph giving the story behind it. And stories are made up of memories. There is a story behind every memory. Even those memories we must retain to function.

I remember teachers. Remembering quirks in their method of teaching; quirks in their physical presence; quirks in the way they answered my juvenile questions. Like Mr. Robbins, my high-school math teacher I so quickly and easily remember. "When am I ever going to use algebra, Mr. Robbins?" "You'll use algebra when you go to the grocery store...." And that's the answer to that remembered question I remember him giving. I can't remember the rest of his answer. And there are X and Y factors in memories. Like, when was it we got Tinny the family dog? "Let's see," the rememberer says, "you were 5 when we got Tinny and that was 19__...or were you 6?" [Ironically, I am the only member of my family left who remembers Tinny.]

I'm amazed at how many memories I contain. It could be a phenomenal number. Millions.

My brother once told me he couldn't remember when he first started remembering. He thought it was around when he was 5. I easily remember when I was 5. And what I remember from being 5 are what Freud referred to as anal memories. I first remember the bathroom and my excrement, which fascinated me before I was taught to disgust it. These memories gradually elaborate into my remembering my identifying images in the linoleum that was on the floor of my parents' back bedroom in which I slept on a military cot my dad brought home from his job at the Army Air Force base located 10 miles outside my hometown in Tye, Texas.

I wrote a novel entitled Linoleum Boy based on memories of those images I concocted out of the patterns in that linoleum. Floral patterns. Thus my fascination over the years with gardens and forests and jungles and nature, fascinations out of which I further concocted that I was simply an animal. An animal using my mental energies (remember I'm Freudian) to enable me to extract my self, my Id, from the jungle, which was the theme of Linoleum Boy. Extracting...or extirpating...my Id from the jungle and converting it into my Superego that propelled me into civilization. I remember my brother saying civilization was "a too muched overused word."

I remember being amused by patterns. I remember my first airplane rides and looking down on the various patterns of the land far beneath me.

I can still remember patterns of women's dresses. I remember my mother's dresses, especially the one she bought that was a copy of Rita Hayworth's wedding dress. Hey, I even remember Rita Hayworth. And I remember the dresses my girlfriends wore or the clothes they wore from my first girlfriend when I was 5 going on 6 whose name was Tinker Bell. I remember not only Tinker Bell's dresses but also her curly hair. And, after moving into the sexual stage what her vagina looked like. And yes I remember the Christmas I got the army PUP tent and a doctor's kit and she got her Navy nurse cape and cap and I remember us getting in that PUP tent and playing doctor and nurse. I remember us as normal kids.

Repressed memories? I don't recall any repressed memories. I remember people dying in my family. I remember funerals very clearly. I remember a photograph of my dead step-grandfather in his coffin, an 8x10 glossy of him as a stiff.

I clearly remember the horror of visiting my maternal great-grandmother after she flipped her lid and my grandmother put her in a nursing home and as a kid I was forced to visit her there and she was in a dank, dreary room lit by a single light bulb hanging down from the high ceiling of the room, and my great-grandmother, born in the time of Lincoln, laying there naked before me and telling me to get rid of the dogs she saw in the images on the walls of that room. And later I remember it was impossible for me to repress the image of that old witchy woman naked. I never have and never will, though cathartically I've written about that occasion in many different forms.

Memories. I cherish the million or so I have. I especially cherish the memories I have of special family members. I double especially have cherished memories of my best friends only a few who are still alive. I cherish memories I have of my second wife, now deceased. Memories of her when we were together tightly and happy and flying about North and South America without any worries in the world. I remember a time with her when we were rich, though those times I don't cherish, though I do cherish the memories of my three special dogs at that time, Skookum, Skigor, and Queenie. I cherish the memories of my cars, my MG 1600A, my Jaguar XK-120, my Jaguar sedan...even my first car, my 1953 Chevrolet that I still have fond memories of driving from Texas to California and back. And fond memories of my second wife and I driving the Jaguar sedan from Santa Fe, New Mexico, to Key West, Florida, and then back across the US from Key West to San Francisco, and then from San Francisco to Victoria, British Columbia, and then ending up right back where we started in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

And memories beget memories and memories come tumbling out of memories and one memory leads to a hundred other memories...and this past week alone I garnered some wonderful memories, like the memory of playing a successful gig in a high school auditorium in Yonkers, New York, before a packed house, a memory packed full of memories of some individual people I had not known before this gig, memories of some beautifully talented flamenco dancers and some old friends who are into flamenco and who thought enough of me to put me into a flamenco mix--blues and r and b giving rise to flamenco dance interpretations, memories that will stay alive in my thoughts for the rest of my life...and will stay extant even after I'm a memory myself given the volumes of writings based on my millions of memories I will leave behind.

thegrowlingwolf
for The Daily Growler

Tuesday, August 14, 2012

Existing in New York City: Where 3000 Cameras Keep a Close Eye on Us

Foto by tgw, New York City, 2011
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The Repugnican Thicket

The choice of Paul "the Catholic" Ryan as Mitt "the Mormon" Romney's running mate was no surprise to us here at the Growler, though I was sort of rooting for Condo-Leasing Rice to be the choice. We predicted it would be Paul Ryan weeks ago. Paul the Cheesehead backwards-thinking clown who idolizes Ayn Rand, a true female buffoon...I mean, the Repugnican Convention is going to be a convention of clowns and buffoons and backward-thinking poor little rich boys and this is not to say that the Dumbocrat convention isn't going to be any more progressive or serious.

What worries me is that the Dumbocrats will take Mitt and Paul as a big joke and relax their campaigning (Obama has already started pulling his compromise bullshit by saying he and Paul Ryan are good palsy-walsies and that Paul is a family man, etc., that typical "I don't won't to offend the White man" bullshit that Obama is so god-damn frighteningly stuck on)--but the Dumbos had better be careful. I still contend that the White backlash is coming and though Mitt Romney is a fool, he's a White fool; and though Paul Ryan is a spoiled brat dumbass Catholic fool, he's a Cheesehead fool from the backward-thinking state of Wisconsin, Joe McCarthy's home state, a state that loves White fools and elects them with fervor to their highest offices.

President Obama in his first term in office has proven himself also a fool. Here's a man elected by a hopeful majority who could have become our greatest president ever but who gave up that chance in order to pay for his billion-dollar campaign and kiss the White asses of his Wall Street crooks (but benefactors) and Clintonista creeps who obligated him to their politics rather than the "Yes, We Can" politics that got him elected. Allowing all those Clinton power-hungry bastards, like Larry Summers and Robert Rudin and David Axelrod and Rahm Emanuel (who bailed out on him to run for mayor of politically crooked Chicago) and who kept the same old military jerk-offs that had served under G.W. Bush in power and who then kept on Bush creeps Ben Bernanke and Little Timmy Geithner and then put back into power Clinton jerks like Leon Panetta--I mean, I'm sorry, but I don't get this man's thinking...which of course is backward thinking, a coward's way out, a man with no balls, no progressively girded loins, a man who went from a Southside Chicago community organizer, whatever the hell that is, back to his Harvard-Corporate law intentions, who suddenly found himself a new millionaire--I mean I knew this guy was a phony the minute for his inauguration he bought a fleet of Cadillac SUVs and gave center stage to a right-wing nutjob evangelical preacher and honored old wobbly Pappy Bush and Bill "I Did Not Have Sex With That Woman" Clinton ("Pappy Bush is my new best pal"). I mean, here's a president that had the solutions clearly in front of him and yet being obligated to the global-world-dominating corporations, he jived us and turned Reagan Repugnicanism and bullshit Free Trade set ups on us. But then....

...and the "but then" continues when you as a voter have to decide between the two evils again in this election. In 2008, Obama wasn't considered an evil, but this year, I'm afraid, millions of White voters are going to turn on him...White backlash...and begin agreeing with Mitt "the Mormon" Romney and Paul "the Catholic" Ryan who are currently, same as Obama, not mentioning G.W. Bush, and actually blaming Obama for our economic crisis, a crisis started by Ronald "Grade B Actor" Reagan and made worse by Pappy Bush and his cowardly dumb son, G.W. (Georgie Porgie Puddin' & Pie, I call him). Obama doesn't respond to these clowns. He thinks their records will bring them down, which may show that Obama doesn't really know who votes and how they vote in this country. Repugnicans have been in power since Lyndon Johnson goofed and got us involved in a Repugnican-started Vietnam debacle, a war we lost by the way. Lyndon was being forced by Progressives Democrats to fight a War on Poverty and a War on Racism and leading us into the Great Frontier, and in those years the Democrats had a 4-to-1 majority over the Repugnicans, a bunch of flippies who became powerful due to the White Racist backlash against Harry Truman integrating the U.S. Armed Forces and the effectiveness of the 1950s and early 1960s Civil Rights Movement under powerful leaders like Martin Luther King, Jr.

I quote Gore Vidal:
Any individual who is able to raise [enough money] to be considered presidential is not going to be much use to the people at large. He will represent...whatever moneyed entities are paying for him.... Hence, the sense of despair throughout the land as incomes fall, businesses fail and there is no redress.
- The Decline and Fall of the American Empire, 1992.

There, my friends, is the truth about this year's presidential election. Whichever person is elected has a personal agenda and obligation to cater to and that agenda and obligation has nothing whatsoever to do with We the Stupid People of the USA. The only redress We the People Have is to take our money out of the big crooked banks...but we won't do that; to quit buying Made in China goods at Walmart of China or Apple of China, which we won't do. There are other candidates running for President, but we have no idea who they are; the commercial media won't give them air time. Jim Lehrer is fixing to moderate (and that's a genuine term in this case) a debate between Mitt "the Mormon" Romney and Barack "New Millionaire" Obama...and I suppose a joke debate between Paul "the Catholic" Ryan and Joe "the DuPont Asskisser" Biden.
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mod·er·ate

[adj., n. mod-er-it, mod-rit; v. mod-uh-reyt] Show IPA adjective, noun, verb, mod·er·at·ed, mod·er·at·ing.
adjective
1.
kept or keeping within reasonable or proper limits; not extreme, excessive, or intense: a moderate price.
2.
of medium quantity, extent, or amount: a moderate income.
3.
mediocre or fair: moderate talent.
4.
calm or mild, as of the weather.
5.
of or pertaining to moderates, as in politics or religion.
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Jim Lehrer is not a dumbass. I happen to know; I've known the guy since he started in televised news in Dallas, Texas, in the 1960s. But now in his successful late seventies, Jim is a coopted prop as a moderator and is not about to rock anybody's boat in a debate. He's too down the middle of the road to bring out any controversy between these corporate-favoring and -obligated candidates. Trust me, he won't ask these two candidates anything outside of the moderate. He won't for instance say to Barack Obama, "Hey, Mr. President, you had a chance to be our greatest president ever and yet you practically followed in the footsteps of G.W. Bush, the coward who had Unka Dick Cheney's hand up his ass working his brain. I'm puzzled as to why you did that? I'm also puzzled as to why you don't mention G.W. Bush at all...I mean, it's as if this little sniveling rich-boy coward never existed...what's with that?" Or, "Why, Mr. President, did you take on so many of Bill Clinton's backward-thinking goons as your advisers? And why in Holy Hell, Mr. President, did you keep the same old military creeps from G.W. Bush's administration as head of your military...and Zbigniew Brzezinski
, why did you keep that creepy dude on as a military affairs advisor?" Nope, I guarantee you Jim Lehrer won't ask those questions. Nor will he put Mitt "the Mormon" Romney on the spot. Jim knows on which side of the bread his career has been buttered. It's too bad Gore Vidal up and died before this debate; I would have loved to have seen Vidal question these two corporate-ass-kissing ninnies.

In writing or discussing politics I get to growling so hard and deeply I feel like going for a young baby elk's belly meat, tasting some hot blood gravy with my fresh meat. I get provoked. Of course, if I were voting I would have to vote for Barack Obama...I mean the Repugnican choices are both backwards-thinking fools...at least Barack Obama is half-Black and it's his Black side that has the hope (and those who know me know I don't believe in HOPE only faith in myself, though my family's motto is "Anchored in Hope") the only hope we have left in this nation.

That's enough growling about politics. Whichever one of these candidates is elected, life will go on down the tubes here in this Land of the Free and Home of the Brave...the White Power Elite will continue to drain us dry of our jobs, money, land, possessions, water, clean air; our military economy will continue to roll about the world following the empirical rules set down by the Neo-Con Christian Soldiers back in Ronald "Raygun" Reagan's administration. It's the Crusades all over again. The Wars for the Holy Grail of Energy. The Wars for OIL. OIL our true USA official God. Not the God of the Fundamentalist Christians. Not the God of the Joe Smith-invented Mormons. Not the God of the Jews. Not the God of the Islamics. Not the God of the Nihilists. Our true God is Mammon, that god-mask worn by our true Lord and Master CHAOS.

thegrowlingwolf
for The Daily Growler


Tuesday, August 07, 2012

From Lake Flaccid, New York, Comes the Daily Growler Jots & Tittles Man

http://media.treehugger.com/assets/images/2011/10/rainbow-oil-slick-water-pollution.jpg
From Lake Flaccid, New York, Comes barrabusmunn-dayne, The Daily Growler Jots & Tittles Man
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Hey, it's been a while. I've been repairing my cabin on Lake Flaccid. Plus, what the hell, I ran for mayor of Lake Flaccid on the Moe-Dern ticket. Yep. Almost got elected, too, though a part of my campaign promise was if I got elected I'd resign immediately. I lost by 29 votes to Gladys Barnside, Major Carl Barnside's wife.

The first thing Gladys did as mayor was organize the First Annual Lake Flaccid Gun and Military Weapons Show. It was a big affair. Brought in gun kooks from all around the Adirondacks. It was rumored Gladys benefited nicely from an NRA contribution to her personal bank account. The show was held in a big tent. To highlight the event, Lake Flaccid wafted that tent with odoriferous delights of foul airs. It didn't seem to bother the gun enthusiasts. I went over there, and, yes, the smell was unbelievably hard on the nostrils and lungs, but gas mask sales were heavy and a lot of the attendees, all dressed in their best military guise, camouflage outfits and army fatigues the fashion of the day, put on their new gas masks to thwart off old Lake Flaccid's worst flatulence. I saw a lot of Soldiers of Fortune teeshirts and, of course, NRA logo-ed tees. One banner declared if the citizens of Aurora, Colorado, had been packing heat, there would have been less deaths and injuries. I don't suppose you can argue with that. One table, it had a sign in both English and Russian, was selling Class 3 weapons, like machine gun kits and what was claimed to be an "unworking" bazooka. Another table featured "Sid Mosca, the Israeli Lover of Big Guns and Zaftik Women." Sid was doing a strong hand-gun business when I sailed past his stall. I ran into Chief Little Jesus Moses at Sid's table. "I'm buying a Ruger, baby, so I can shoot White bastards if they try and penetrate my property." The biggest seller at the show, according to the NRA statistics booth was the
Mosin-Nagant M91/30 7.62X54R, billed as "Everybody's Favorite Gun."

Most of the talk I heard around the show was about the Aurora shooter and how citizens carrying guns could have prevented him from killing as many as he did. There was a lot of huzzahs going around for George Zimmerman, too; one guy was taking up money for George's legal defense fund. The Sikh shooter was also defended, on the grounds that Bin Ladin wore a turban so it was easy to mistake a Sikh for an al-Queda terrorist. One discussion forum led by the NRA was entitled, "Your Constitutional Right to Kill a Criminal or Be Killed by a Criminal: Obama vs. Romney" and was hosted by Matty "Bring 'Em On" Groznovich from over in the Finger Lakes region, a certified member of the Syracuse Blow the Bears Away Society, or so the sign explaining Matty's expertise stated. One booth's sign I thought was interesting, said, "When Duck Season Opens Will You Have Enough Fire Power!" That booth had relevance to me since though I've never seen a duck on Lake Flaccid, when duck season does open, my cabin gets blasted by a lot of misdirected shotgun fire. I often wonder if my cabin looks like a giant duck from a certain distance. And lastly, Cecil the Dog-Faced Boy III's log mansion is still boarded up and given over to the local fauna. I've not heard a whelp from him, though I did try to call his sister in Florida to no avail. Strange. But then, life is pretty damn strange, isn't it?

Jots & Tittles
---Say Goodbye to: Johnny Pesky,
one of the greatest Boston Red Sox; the famous Pesky Pole in right field at Fenway named for Johnny; an infielder during the Ted Williams era. Johnny Pesky, 92, American professional baseball player, manager, and coach (Boston Red Sox).
---Interesting to me how suddenly Obamacare is the greatest healthcare reform in the history of Pay or Die Healthcare. I mean it was written by the Pay-or-Die Hospitals-for-Profit gang, the Big Pharma greed jockeys, and the Pay-or-Die Health Insurance pirates; yet, the liberal and pseudo-liberal and Neo-Con Democrats are touting it as the greatest...well, I mean, what's ironic is that it was originally Romneycare in Massachusetts. I'm confused. Single-payer healthcare or a National Healthcare program seems so much more logical and money saving; yet both parties are dead-set against such truly progressive programs. Makes no sense to me; does it to you?

---Gore Vidal's death: I'm one of those persons who just can't believe when certain people die. Like Gore Vidal. I guess I thought he'd just be around forever. William F. Buckley's death was a good thing (quoting successful felon Martha Stewart); but Gore's death really was a bad thing. No sharper mind around during my lifetime...unless it was Bertie Russell's...but then Bertie was a world thinker while Gore was a USA-Republic thinker. Does that make sense? But then, a lot of things make no sense, like the guntoters interpretation of the 2nd Amendment to the Constitution.

---Gore Vidal said:

“As societies grow decadent, the language grows decadent, too. Words are used to disguise, not to illuminate, action: you liberate a city by destroying it. Words are to confuse, so that at election time people will solemnly vote against their own interests.”

“Today's public figures can no longer write their own speeches or books, and there is some evidence that they can't read them either. ”

“The genius of our ruling class is that it has kept a majority of the people from ever questioning the inequity of a system where most people drudge along paying heavy taxes for which they get nothing in return.”

“The idea of a good society is something you do not need a religion and eternal punishment to buttress; you need a religion if you are terrified of death.”

“Traitors who prevail are patriots; usurpers who succeed are divine emperors.”

“Because there is no cosmic point to the life that each of us perceives on this distant bit of dust at galaxy's edge, all the more reason for us to maintain in proper balance what we have here. Because there is nothing else. Nothing. This is it. And quite enough, all in all.”

“I believe there's something very salutary in, say, beating up a gay-bashing policeman. Preferably one fights through the courts, through the laws, through education, but if at a neighborhood level violence is necessary, I'm all for violence. It's the only thing Americans understand.”

“There is only one party in the United States, the Property Party … and it has two right wings: Republican and Democrat.”

All the above Gore Vidal quotes come from www.goodreads.com/. Thanks for a good task.

---The Clintons--the Clintons get high praise all across the liberal Internet; yet look at the damage Slick Willie Clinton's administration did to this country. NAFTA, repeal of Glass–Steagall Act, gave us the Patriot Act, put drastic restrictions on habeas corpus, involved us in the Bosnian-Serb absurdities, absurd treatment of Haitian refugees and Haiti in general, using Guantanamo Naval Base as a prison complex, bringing Osama bin Laden into our lives, also getting away with having his dick sucked...but, sorry, he did not have sex with that woman did he?

---Judith Crist just died. She was 90. I was never into her because I was never that much into films that I needed some old gal from the Bronx to tell me which ones were this or that. The most interesting thing I found out about Judith was that she was the mother of Steven Crist, thoroughbred handicapper and publisher of the Daily Racing Form.

---Being a racist is legal in this Land of the Free. Being able to buy firearms with intent to massacre your fellow human beings is perfectly OK in this Home of the Brave. Our overall White belief in a White Big Daddy God justifies our killing millions of our fellow human beings in our undeclared wars that are still raging around the world.

---Did it ever occur to you: that the CIA started the Civil War in Syria?

---Manila, Philippines, is totally under water as I write this.

---Yee Haw! Country-hick music star, Randy Travis, found drunk and naked down in Yahoo Texas---why he even threatened to kill the Po-lease---but that's OK, boys will be boys. He was jest havin' a little fun.

---Mitt Romney is a spoiled brat poor little rich boy who believes in the drunken writings of Old Joe Smith and whose great-grandfather believed one woman wasn't enough for a god-fearin' Mormon man...but, hey, this fool could be our next president. White people love his worthless ass...especially racist White people...but then aren't all White people racists?

---There really was a dog-faced boy...one of my friend Cecil's relatives: Fedor Jeftichew (Russian: Фёдор Евтищев, Fyodor Yevtishchev, 1868 - January 31, 1904), better known as Jo-Jo the Dog-Faced Boy (later Jo-Jo the Dog-Faced Man), was a famous sideshow performer who was brought to the United States of America by P.T. Barnum.

Jo-Jo at his handsomest

---Dumbass:
I was just reading on Holy Hell blog on Spinner, the rocker music revelation site, that Jonathan Lehrer has lost his cushy job at The New Yorker because of invented Bob Dylan quotes in a book he wrote that Harcourt Brace (or whatever their new conglomerate name is) is now pulling from publication. An online mag, The Tablet, caught Jonathan's stupid ass rigging Bob Dylan quotes. I find the idolization of Bob Dylan as a mysterious type kind of stupid in itself. If you are aware of a music pre-Bob Dylan, you know Bob's a copycat musician. I mean check out Woody Guthrie's music and there you find the "original" Bob Dylan. OK, so Bob is clever, and, yes, he did write some sterling lyrics, still he's a copycat, a Woody-imitation. Poor old stupid Jonathan Lehrer saw stars in his fiction-writing eyes...so he made up some Bob Dylan quotes. Here ya go, I'll make up a Bob Dylan quote (I overheard Bob saying this while we were fighting over who was gonna bang Joan Baez that night): "Hey, man, I never denied I'm a Woody Guthrie copycat...I mean, hell, man, I sound just like Woody. Couldn't that have been my intention all along? So what if I ripped off old blues lyrics and a Civil War poet...so what?" Hey, New Yorker, how 'bout hiring me to replace Jonathan Lehrer? You can find me up here in Lake Flaccid, New York; just ask for Barrabus; everybody knows me up here.

I wonder if the gun show is still open? I feel like bombing a church...whoops, I just ripped off Bob Marley...by the way, was Bob Marley a Bob Dylan copycat?

---Another dumbass does the same as Jonathan Lehrer: from Yahoo News:

NEW YORK (AP) — Columnist and TV host Fareed Zakaria has apologized for lifting several paragraphs by another writer for use in his column in Time magazine. His column has been suspended for a month.

Zakaria said in a statement Friday he made "a terrible mistake," adding, "It is a serious lapse and one that is entirely my fault."

In a separate statement, Time spokesman Ali Zelenko said the magazine accepts Zakaria's apology, but would suspend his column for one month, "pending further review."

"What he did violates our own standards for our columnists, which is that their work must not only be factual but original; their views must not only be their own but their words as well," Zelenko said.

Media reporters had noted similarities between passages in Zakaria's column about gun control that appeared in Time's Aug. 20 issue, and paragraphs from an article by Harvard University history professor Jill Lepore published in April in The New Yorker magazine.

Jesus, what has happened to originality? Don't these unoriginal dupes know there are buzzards everywhere looking to catch you ripping off ideas?


barrabusmunn-dayne, thedailygrowlerjots&tittlesman
for The Daily Growler

Sunday, August 05, 2012

Existing in New York City: With a Light On and the Radio On

Foto by tgw, New York City, 2006
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From the Ironies of Life:
NEW YORK (Reuters) - "In a rare move, New York's top bank regulator threatened to strip the state banking license of Standard Chartered Plc, saying it was a 'rogue institution' that hid $250 billion in transactions tied to Iran, in violation of U.S. law."

While openly crooked banks like Bank of America, Wells Fargo, Goldman-Sachs, CitiBank, J.P. Morgan-Chase, Barclays (they just named the new Brooklyn basketball arena after Barclays), HSBC go on totally unpunished while they steal monies from the poor, wreck economies all over the world, are too big ('a crooks) to fail--and I'll guarantee you, they do business with Iran, too. Wanna bet?
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Say Goodbye to: Ruggiero Ricci, one of the great violinists of the 20th Century. Ruggiero Ricci, 94, American violinist, heart failure.
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Where in the World Is Hillary Clinton? She's in Malawi being swarmed by bees. What's she doing in Malawi? That's a secret. I'm sure she's giving Malawians the shaft whatever she's doing there (We the People of the Good Ole USA just gave the Malawians 200 million bucks). Maybe she's trading them nuclear secrets for one of their products.

Travelin' Hillary: "
Clinton's visit to Malawi comes in the middle of an 11-day tour of Africa that has already taken her to Senegal, Uganda, South Sudan and Kenya. After Malawi, she will travel to South Africa, Nigeria, Ghana and Benin" (from Murdoch's NYPost).
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Dreamland
I used to never dream. Then I had a heart attack and was put on 7 medications. Now the dreams unspin like television programs. On a regularly scheduled program basis. And, to put it bluntly, since I keep the television on while I sleep...and that's a result of not a dream but a reality. A reality explained to me by my first girlfriend's uncle. Uncle Clinton. Clinty his family called him. Clinton was an artist who had left my hometown as a daring-do young man with intentions of studying art in New York City and becoming a successful artist in the age of American impressionism.

I first met Uncle Clinty one sizzling Christmas in my hometown. By this time I had fallen for his niece, a dream girl who I never had dreams about. I never had dreams. I know, the Freudians and Jungians say we have dreams and don't sometimes know it. But I used to rationalize it as: if I don't remember dreams, I must not have dreams.

On this sizzling Christmas, when I was dumbstruckly in love with Uncle Clinty's niece, he arrived. And what a character he was. I had already decided that New York City was my dreamland destination due to my finding a Coke bottle from New York City on an abandoned interurban track in East Dallas, Texas, when I was a kid. I believed in premonitions in those days. This probably came from my growing up with a mother who truly believed in Jesus Christ as the only son of the living God, a dude she referred to as Jehovah. My mother had a friend called Birdie who I used to hear say many a time that she dreamed of Jesus almost every night of her life and I remember this rather spacy woman saying one time she was awakened in the middle of the night by this Dream Jesus appearing at the foot of her bed. I knew nothing about apparitions at that time so I marked Birdie's visions of Jesus off as her having bats in her belfry. That's how I described "crazy" people in those youthful days.

So when I met Uncle Clinty, I was already fascinated by my one day living in New York City. Brought on, too, by the fact that my step-grandfather (my maternal grandmother's second husband) was a native of New York City and I had during adolescence heard this vile old man spew out many an alluring story about his heyday in at that time the world's largest city. Earlier, too, my father, who had a habit of running off on his own sometimes, had during World War II, when I was but a babe in arms, ended up in New York City and had sent a postcard from the world's largest city, a special postcard of at that time the tallest building in New York City, the Empire State Building, with an "X" extended by a line just off the observation deck and accompanied by a note saying "I'm here." On returning home after a lengthy stay in Gotham, my profligate dad brought me a little packet of tiny photographic reproductions of all the startling sites of this great city, my favorites of these miniphotos being one of the Flatiron Building, a building, just around the corner down Fifth Avenue from where I live, that to this day fascinates me, and one of the Empire State Building, a building I now live in the shadow of.

And Uncle Clinty, after many years living there had soaked up the culture and style of New York City, though in particular, he considered himself a dyed-in-the-wool Manhattanite. "I would never live anywhere in New York City but Manhattan," he said. "All the other boroughs are not really the City I dreamed of coming to...like Thomas Wolfe said, 'Only the dead know the other boroughs.'" [A misquote I found out later after I became a stone-solid Thomas Wolfe fan [the original Thomas Wolfe and not the white-suit-wearing fop from Richmond, Virginia] and had come across the Wolfe short story about Brooklyn entitled, "Only the Dead Know Brooklyn," titled such because of that borough's housing the largest of New York City's many cemeteries. Though really if you die in Manhattan you could be buried in Queens, the Bronx, Staten Island, or on Hart Island out in the middle of the East River--there could be more dead than living in New York City at any given time--who knows?].

At the time Uncle Clinty was in town, I was panting heavily after his niece--she was still in high school while I was in college. And, yes, I was panting after her with eventual marriage on our trembling minds. The night I met Uncle Clinty she had called me over to her place excited that I should see the sketches of a wedding dress he had designed for her. As best I can remember those sketches, the dress was styled in Old West chic, you know, short burnt-orange skirt with black Navajo-looking lace trim, the skirt intending to show her magnificent legs. Atop that skirt Clinty had designed a burnt-orange blouse with a low bodice, tight waist, and frilly sleeves, also displaying this black Navajo-looking lace trim. The outfit was topped off with a black Stetson-style Western hat that had a bridal veil (I kid thee not). I found the dress gauche but I didn't dare tell the niece or Uncle Clinty that. Besides, he had also brought with him the first John Cage LP I had ever heard, this before I had even heard John Cage on a late night talk show, the Les Crane Show, where he had a table full of kitchen appliances, alarm clocks, and such which he turned on all at once after introducing it with a title as his latest composition.

That night, we cracked open the usual bottle of champagne I had brought from college with me--every time I raced home to see this girl I brought a bottle of good champagne (Moet was my favorite). I had read somewhere or heard from some of my college dandy associates perhaps that if you plied your girl with champagne and then held her head between her legs she was at your mercy--you could do with her sexually (get in her pants) as you wished--and over glasses of bubbly Uncle Clinty's tongue loosened and he began talking a blue streak about life in New York City. At the time, he was working as a window dresser for Bonwit-Teller and Tiffany (along with his young artist friend Andy Warhol) and living alone in a studio apartment down around 10th and Hudson streets. The drunker he got the more precise he got and the one thing I remember him saying was he found it impossible to sleep in NYC without a radio playing and a small lamp burning all night long.

That fact stuck with me as I experienced life across a path of years and when I finally did move to New York City---without the niece---the little strumpet took advantage of my absence while I was serving this republic in the U.S. Army to bang another guy and get herself knocked up, a story I've told in a previous post---and my first night in a studio apartment on Manhattan's Upper East Side, sure enough, I found it impossible for me to sleep without the radio going and a small lamp burning all night.

To this day, I still can't sleep without a light on and the television has replaced the radio as that which is playing all night long.

Like I opened this post with, before my heart attack and this bevy of meds I now choke down twice daily, I never dreamed...or if I did, and I concede to have had very rare dreams, sketchy ones at best, before---maybe one every ten years. In college I was a student of Freud and read his books on dreaming and as a kid working in my brother's magazine stand, I read the King Solomon Dream Book, at one time a standard source when it came to checking on one's luck based on what dreams you commonly had. And I used to try like the devil to dream, but I never could.

The one dream I had in my late teens in college that stuck clearly in my mind for a number of years--which was probably due to what Jack Kerouac called a "beermare"--was one in which I found myself in Cuba (understandable since at that time I was writing letters to Fidel Castro offering him and his Grandma revolutionary army my services) lost in the space of a palace-like structure's long endless marble hallway. In this interminable hallway, I was 27 years old and was quite aware that at the end of this hallway I was facing death. I awoke without dying, but until I was 27 and older, that dream haunted me. Like at times, like I said, I believed in premonitions, I really was afraid the dream had predicted my early death. I certainly would not have gone to Cuba at that time. Only after I was in my early thirties and married to a "revolutionary" wife, did we discuss venturing down to Cuba--and when we lived briefly in Key West, Florida, and I watched Havana teevee all day while drinking tons of beer, we both considered sneaking across that ninety-mile stretch to see first hand what Cuba was all about.

Uncle Clinty returned to New York City and I continued going after his niece for another several years, our affair ending, like I previously said, after I returned home from the U.S. Army on a furlough and found out she was knocked up and that was that for her. I meanly started dating her best friend, a lovely creature who had aspirations of being a children's book writer.

Ironically, I was at my first girlfriend's wedding. She did not wear the Uncle Clinty original wedding dress but a plain-ole white typical wedding dress.

I never saw Uncle Clinty again. And though I thought about him often when I finally landed on Manhattan Island, I didn't go to any trouble of looking him up. Only in the early 2000s when I was cruising around the Internet looking for that first girlfriend's whereabouts (I've always held a special place in my life's adventures for her)(I knew she had ended up in Nevada, divorced from that cad that had knocked her up and stolen her from me, and remarried to an English professor at a Nevada college) that I happened across an obituary in my hometown newspaper's online edition. The obituary was Uncle Clinty's. It seems in poor health (he was a chain smoker), he had left New York City and had moved back to our hometown, where the air is dry and the days pass slowly and the sky is high and runs on forever into the universe, where he had set up his art studio and was painting and creating to his heart's delight an enormous body of work in his final years.

And I am still living in Manhattan in now my final years and yes, Uncle Clinty, I still sleep with a small lamp light on and now the television on low voice all night long. The only difference now is that I now have dreams, complicated ones involving a current lover of mine who is married and in these rather Hollywoodish dreams (inspired by what's running on my television when I pass out--I keep it on an "ancient" movie channel) I'm chasing this woman through many marble hallways, her husband blocking my every advance, her husband an artist who once was a chain smoker and who was born on Manhattan Island...his wife, guess what? She's almost the spitting image of my first girlfriend, just taller, but with the same dark black hair and the same lovely face highlighted by the same black-rimmed glasses. As a matter of fact, these women characterize all the women I had "gone after" in my long adventurous life here on my beloved Manhattan Island.

For a look at Uncle Clinty's (his name was Clinton Hamilton) influence on my hometown, check out
www.texasobserver.org/postcards/prairie-renaissance

And also Hannah Capra's blog, read her interesting blog or scroll down to her post: "My First Art Teacher" at
http://hannahcapra.blogspot.com/

thegrowlingwolf
for The Daily Growler