The Cynic's Journal Edition of The Daily Growler

Cynics Arise!
The nutjobs around the world are going squirrelly--especially the wildass Israeli nutjobs--but then, let's be rational, it is election time in Israel and we do have a new US president coming aboard--and in the meantime, G.W. Bush is still somewhere on his watch and we should be watching that--we should be all along that watch tower checking out this "evil" bastard and his posse of pals. I'm being warned by more cynical than I that G.W. ain't no fool. Uh-oh. I gotta reference this--it's from a new book out on the Bush Family--found that out yesterday mornin'--an almost-tell-all book that really doesn't tell all, except it does bring up a story that happened with old Pappy Bush back on November 22, 1963. Old Pappy was asked over teevee later where he was on that day and Pappy shook his wimpy head and said he didn't remember where he was that day. Here's a quote from Russ Baker, the AUTHOR of this new Bushwhacking book:

I am very careful not to speculate. What I do is begin with the curious fact that G.H.W. Bush has said he could not remember where he was on November 22, 1963. That makes him just about the only adult alive at the time who has that memory defect.

-- Russ Baker, author, Family of Secrets -- The Bush Dynasty, the Powerful Forces That Put It in the White House, and What Their Influence Means for America

You can read an interview with Russ Baker here (from BuzzFlash--still begging for money):

buzzflash.com/articles/interviews/140

I remind my audience once again that I've always maintained that unless you grew up in the Texas oilfields, those amidst the vast cotton fields and Hereford cattle ranches out where I come from, you don't perhaps understand how powerful oil is in our politics. Check out the Texas Railroad Commission and the corruption in Texas government since Texas became a state; if you don't know Texas oil, then you can't really understand the Neo-Cons, or Pappy Bush, or Unka Dick, or Halliburton, or KRB or Exxon-Mobil (both originally Texas oil companies) or Junior G.W. Bush or even OPEC. The Texas Railroad Commission took over the Texas oil industry in a regulatory sense, especially since the Pennsylvania oil wizards slumped into Beaumont, Texas, back in the early 1900s and this bunch of voodoo geologists (they believed oil was present under salt domes) developed the Spindletop Oilfield and they developed it (accidentally really--but the oil industry is based on luck--drilling is a gamble--finding oil is pure luck) into so great a bonanza the area became the ruling center of Texas oil and gas production, the site of the largest oil and gas refineries in the world, Beaumont being a deep-river port and on down the Sabine River, the ports get deeper and deeper, at Port Nederland, at Orange (for the color of the air and not the fruit), getting ocean deep finally at Port Arthur (Janis Joplin's hometown) in Sabine Lake that channels through narrow Sabine Pass where it then issues on out into the Gulf of Mexico--and the Intercoastal Canal is deep water all the way from Port Arthur over to Jacksonville, Florida, the Intercoastal Canal starting in the deep channel running over from Houston (the corporate oil capital of Texas), where Big Daddy Bush and Lady Babs Bush live in privileged splendor--plus Pappy and Mammy have the Kennebunkport Estate hanging off the bluffs of Power Elite-Maine overlooking some of the most beautiful blue Atlantic Ocean I've ever seen. The Bush Gang are heavily protected at the Kennebunkport Estate--We the People of the USA pay plenty to keep the Bush Gang safe--now two of these bastards will get Secret Service protection and free mail and free office and staff no matter the cost of the rent--like Slick Willie's Harlem office suites--only the best for the Slick One in Harlem--though Slick Willie and Sister Hill would never in their backwoods lives consider living in Harlem--though I'll betcha Hill and Bill are heavily invested in the white gentrification of Harlem that is going on as I type on this--long-time Harlem residents being evicted from apartments where they've lived over 40 years in some cases--being evicted from their apartments by order of our little prick billionaire mayor who's decided his goal as mayor is to shake this city up, to take Manhattan over for the filthy rich corporate crooks and the filthy rich foreigners with stolen money to burn, rich privileged Power Elite foreigners who use imported slave labor to do the dirty work while they rake in the cash, like the prissy little prince who's building that outrageously vulgar playboy's hobby of a city in Dubai--what a waste of money, but then that's what the Power Elite does--they conspicuously waste money. Why? you ask. Thorstein Veblen says, they conspicuously waste money because in this way they are proving to the other Power Elite that they are living pure lives of unproductive leisure, which of course is dependent on CHEAP LABOR--and what's the cheapest labor there is (throughout history)?--if you said SLAVERY, you'd be right. Peasant (serf) and slave labor built all the wonders of the world--from the Pyramids to the Suez Canal to the Colosseum at Rome to the Battery in Lower Manhattan (they dug the canal that's under Canal Street in Manhattan), to the US rail system at one time the greatest in the world, to the castles on the Rhine, to the mighty Egyptian Empire--in fact, all empires. So the royal families of Saudi-Arabia, Dubai, Oman, and the Arab Emirates are buying up as many buildings in Manhattan as they can collect--these guys, being former British colonists, too, love building and running hotels and palaces; and foreign investors are pouring in from Israel, Great Britain, and the People's Republic of Capitalist China--and wasteful rich asshole Americans like Donald Trump (mostly rump) are ruining neighborhoods with their luxury hi-rise (very tacky architecturally) hotels and condos and the big Manhattan real estate owners and developers like the Tischmans are buying up blocks of Manhattan like mad and evicting the old-time residents so that developers can build a memorial city to some wealthy crooked asshole like one of the Tischmans, or Harry Helmsley, or Leona Helmsley (who left the Helmsley fortune to her cat--how conspicuously wealthy is that!--and our laws allow it and teevee talking heads talk about how lucky the cat is and teevee comics make jokes out of it--in the meantime worst waste than leaving billions to a god-damn cat is going on). This developer madness is wastefully building housing that is totally overpriced against the average New York Citian who made this city great, those who have worked all their lives in this fucking town, having three taxes jerked out of their earnings every two weeks, paying outrageous public transportation fares and tolls, paying outrageous utilities bills, paying outrageous property taxes--HELL, it is no longer an island of fascinating in some cases one-of-a-kind neighborhoods--now every neighborhood is gentrified in favor of the White Power Elite and their inheritors and foreign friends.

To show you how stupidly ignorant our New York City mayor is--he's so rich he believes he's our redeemer--this morning he was on teevee tooting about how he's behind Israel (hell yes he is, he's a Jew, dammit) 100% against the fleabitten Arab dogs in Gaza--and he was pledging his and the City of New York's support for Israel and the Chosen Ones--and he had his billionaire-serious look on his face--he despises anyone beneath him--he's a typical-acting Power Elite privileged, unblameable one--His Majesty--and when a member of the press asked him did he condone the killing of 450 Palestinians as opposed to 4 Israelis killed by Hamas rockets--Hiz Blessed Rich-Bastard Honor got extremely angry serious and he said, "Suppose Hamas was lobbing rockets into New York City, don't you think I would and Ray Kelly [our Shanty Irish crooked little police commissioner--check out the indictments against him when he was head of US Customs] and the New York Police Dept. would retaliate?--we would go after them, too, same as Israel...." I was thinking, "You almighty little-man jerk, you wouldn't have the power to have the New York City Police Dept. retaliate against a rocket attack on New York City? You stupid jerk. If that's the case, why didn't the New York City Police Dept.--those fat-bellied suburban cops--go after Bin Laden--you know, form up squads and go after al-Queda--with Commissioner Ray "Shanty Irish" Kelly and Commander-in-Chief Billionaire Mayor and Power Elite superstar leading the attack! What a cruel and unusual way to defend the actions of the mass murdering Israeli (American paid for) Army."

We keep following these rich fools? They got rich by inheritance or creative accounting, by tax loopholes, by investing in T-bills, by investing in land and capital assets, by creating tax-exempt foundations, and not by being smart. You think our Mayor Bloomburg is a smart man? He's a lucky son of a bitch, I'll give him that.

I am politically forced to rave on and on as though under a constant full moon, bringing out the growling mad wolf in my animal instincts. I feel like old John Brown must have felt back when he was one of the bravest son of a bitchin' hero Americans I've ever read about. Blacks should honor John Brown as a hero--a true American in the true American tradition--the tradition of the Transcendentalists like Emerson, like Henry Thoreau, like the Alcotts--human beings and their intelligent ideas about liberty and freedom of thought and expression--and about a caring for Mother Earth--and that most of all, if there is a god at all, it's the god of our own design--that emulating organ that dwells, as D.H. Lawrence said, in our solar plexuses.

But rich fools by robbing us blind have complete control over us now. And the Bush Family is a traditional Power Elite family that has robbed us blinder than any US Power Elitist branch since Herbert "Rich Fool" Hoover tried to bring the walls down on We the People back in the Wall Street Follies of 1929. Plus, these assholes are now showing We the People voters how they have complete control over us by being in control of our president-elect, Barack Obama. When asked about his feelings on Israel attacking Gaza City he said, "Hey, we only have one president...no comment." A Clintonista (probably David Axelrod) had Obama's nuts in a tight grip--moving him around like you give motion to a remote-controlled robot. Obama has had no trouble talking about his plans for the economy; he's talking openly about when he's president what his bailout plan will be concerned with. Yet, when it comes to Israel trying to wipe out the whole of the Palestine saying these dogs of humans have no right to toss half-ass Russian-or-Chinese half-ass rockets at Israeli settlements across from the Gaza Strip--land that at one time belonged to Palestine.

Soon as he's president, you watch, Barack Obama will redefine what he meant by change when he was campaigning so brilliantly. Blacks are beginning to question Obama--especially over this Israeli bullshit against the Gazan Palestinians. Two of the four Israelis killed by Hamas rockets were Arab-Israelis. That's how stupid all this is. Of course, that transplanted American Jew, Nutjobyahoo (Netanyahu), is right in the big middle of this. His Likud party is in the lead in the run for Israeli prime minister going on as this invasion is going on. And there, too, is old Simon Perez still spewing out his silly Israeli-fear-of-Arabs bullshit (and the Arab armies have never been effective against the Israeli (American paid for) Army in all the confrontations they've had since 1946)--and Nutjobyahoo says Israelis are scared to death of Islam because it says it wants to annihilate Israel, you know, wipe it off the face of the earth. So, old Ben Nutjobyahoo says, let's wipe out the filthy dog Palestinians as a start (like that old Israeli asshole that's in a coma wiped out several thousand Lebanese citizens in Israel's war on Lebanon).

Why not tax religions? There ya go!

And since OIL is our religion in this country, why not tax Exxon-Mobil, Texaco-Chevron, etc., big time--bring them down to earth?

Why don't we make these corporations (promoters of fossil fuel-combustible engines)--even Ford, GM, and Chrysler--report their offshore earnings? Why don't we put some kind of tax on foreign imported cars if we want to really help our automobile industry?--the industry that millions of hard-working po'ass Americans of all races helped to make the world's greatest automotive industry--and then Ronnie Raygun came along with his trickle-down economics (free market economy) (Voodoo Economics--David Stockman's failed idea) and the auto industry sold us out to its Japanese interests and then Slick Willie and Robert Ruben and Larry Summers opened up the gates to cheap foreign goods with NAFTA and our auto industry moved out of the country--moved their plants to Mexico, to plants called maquiladores on the La Frontera! And Barack Obama is a NAFTA supporter--I heard him say it. He's also a proponent of the wastefully built US-Mexican border security wall--I've heard him say that, too, while he was down near Brownsville, Texas, making a speech.

From Yahoo Answers--a damn good definition of maquiladores:

A maquiladora is a Mexican corporation that operates under a maquila program. This program is approved by the Mexican Secretariat of Commerce and Industrial Development. The maquila program entitles the company to temporarily import materials without paying export tax on the products they produce.

A maquila program entitles the company, first, to foreign investment participation in the capital -- and in management -- of up to 100% without need of any special authorization; second, it entitles the company to special customs treatment, allowing duty free temporary import of machinery, equipment, parts and materials, and administrative equipment such as computers, and communications devices, subject only to posting a bond guaranteeing that such goods will not remain in Mexico permanently.

How sweet it is, eh?

What I've been trying to say, the Texas Oil barons have been ruling this country since John D. Rockefeller heard about the discovery of oil in Oil City, PA, when he was an accountant in the woods of old Ohio and went down to Titusville and formed the Standard Oil Company of Ohio (Sohio), of Pennsylvania (Pennzoil), of New York (Socony-Mobil), of New Jersey--and the Texas Railroad Commission became the biggest oil production regulator (HAH!) in the US! Pappy Bush and his end of the crooked Bush Family became a politician due to his connection with the Texas oil industry.

From Wikipedia:

As is suggested by its name, the [Texas] Railroad Commission was initially created to regulate railroads, terminals, wharves and express companies within the state. Pipelines were added to the commission's jurisdiction in 1917, followed by the oil and gas industry in 1919 and gas utilities in 1920. It does not have jurisdiction over public utility companies; that falls under the jurisdiction of the Public Utility Commission of Texas.

The East Texas oil field’s [Spindletop in Beaumont, Texas; the Corsicana Field in East Texas] discovery sparked a boom in production that sent prices plummeting. After a lengthy battle, the Railroad Commission won the right to limit the production of oil to keep the price of oil from falling too low. Because of this regulation, the commission was important to the national and international energy supply until the 1970s. It also served as a model in the creation of OPEC.

____________________________________________________

There ya go, folks--the Texas Railroad Commission started the limiting of production of oil in order to keep the prices for crude oil and gas at the pump up! A model for OPEC! And Pappy Bush and his Houston oil cronies began messin' in Texas politics--an old old story that began back when a one-armed geologist convinced drillers there was oil in Beaumont, which then spread up East Texas all the way up from Beaumont to Kilgore, Texas.

Spindletop, Texas

The famous Lucas Gusher, 1901 click here to enlarge this picture and learn more. photo courtesy of the American Petroleum Institue

The modern oil industry was born on a hill in southeastern Texas. This hill was formed by a giant underground dome of salt as it moved slowly towards the surface. As it crept, it pushed the earth that was in its path higher and higher. This dome was known by several names, but the one that stuck was "Spindletop". Through the later half of the 19th century, Pennsylvania had been the most oil-productive state in the country. All that changed on January 10th, 1901.

Spindletop's Boiler Avenue, 1903

click here to enlarge picture and learn more
photo courtesy of the American Petroleum Institute

The Beaumont Building of The Texas Company, early 1900's. click here to enlarge and learn more photo courtesy of ChevronTexaco Corporation

After a short time, the frustrated and confused drillers set about to clean up the mess and see if anything could be salvaged. All of a sudden, a noise like a cannon shot came from the hole, and mud came shooting out of the ground like a rocket. Within a few seconds, natural gas, then oil followed. The oil "gusher" - greenish-black in color, doubled the size of the drilling derrick, rising to a height of more than 150 feet (about 50 meters). This was more oil than had ever been seen anywhere in the entire world. Captain Lucas had been hopeful that this well might produce 5 barrels per day. In fact, this well, "Lucas 1", flowed at an initial rate of nearly 100,000 barrels per day, more than all of the other producing wells in the United States COMBINED!

There was much money to be made at Spindletop, but there was even more money to lose. It is estimated that $50 million dollars was made from Spindletop, compared with investments equalling $80 million. As had happened in other booms, there were many frauds and cheats, and Spindletop was renamed "Swindletop" by some of the less fortunate and more cynical locals. The population of Beaumont swelled from 10,000 to 50,000 in a matter of months. Before the end of the year, Lucas's well was joined by over 200 other wells, all fighting for space on top of Spindletop. These wells were owned by more than 100 different oil companies. The gusher at Spindletop was responsible for creating several companies that were to become giants in the oil industry, including Gulf Oil, Amoco and Humble Oil Company, which would later become an arm of Exxon.

www.priweb.org/ed/pgws/history/spindletop/spindletop.html

It's all about oil--STILL--it's still all about OIL--even the bullshit going on in Afghanistan is about OIL! The American-goon president of Afghanistan is a former oil company executive.
Even the Israeli-Palestine conflict is about OIL, of which Israel has none!

The Power Elite in the USA is masterminded by the oil cartel--Wall Street, our banks, our government--our automobile industry--our utilities industry--our music industry--all regulated in terms of profits and losses by the price of OIL!

thecynicalgrowlingwolf
for The Daily Growler

AND BY THE BYE, HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!!

World War Three--the Beginning of Chaos

Bulletin: thedailygrowlerhousepianist just informed us that Freddie Hubbard, the Hub, one of the last of the young turk trumpet players who came to New York City in the late 1950s, died of a heart attack in L.A. last night.

Freddie's Dead/"Red Clay"
__________________________________________
Laughing Like a Hyena
Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha.... You can't stop war. War is what keeps the USA going. The Military Industrial Complex rules us. We the People are currently paying for Israel to attack Palestine--oh, wow, the Hamas and the Israeli Army are equals--that's what an Israeli commander says--G.W. Bush says Hamas are thugs, and he should know since he's one of the biggest thugs in the world, and should be "abolished." And this is abolishment, a form of the final solution, which is, of course to wipe out the Palestinian people--especially those in Gaza. Israel wants the Gaza strip; remember, they won it and then had to give it up. The Gaza strip connects to the Red Sea and borders Egypt and means the Israeli Navy could patrol that whole coastline all the way up almost to the Suez--so there ya go, someone has to be noble enough to eradicate these filthy dog Palestinians. Even the other Arabs consider the Palestinians as dispensable.

The Israeli Military is totally supported by We the People of the USA's tax money--to the tune of several billion-a-year. We the people and wolves and bears and other almost extinct species are under the thumbs of our military Power Elite--we have no choice but to let them give us orders--and these male military/skinhead bullshit creeps are masturbating their war-hard-ons like monkeys on LSD in anticipation of World War III--or at least the chance to use nuclear weapons--nuking the Palestinians--so 20,000 or so die--it's like slaughtering wild dogs--there is no human element involved. At the same time, We the People must know, our Military Industrial Complex uses the Israeli Army to test potential weapons and weapon improvements. Israel, for instance, in this all out attempt to abolish the Gaza Palestinians, is testing cluster bombs and on-target computerized missiles--missiles set on a computerized course to hit what Israel is calling Hamas "security" areas throughout Gaza City--thereby Israel says they are not purposely hitting civilian targets--like the Islam University in Gaza City--yep, Israel bombed the shit out of it--hitting a girls's dormitory and killing several women students--but that's OK, folks, because these are humans lower than the lowest dogs. Charles Mingus's autobiography was called Beneath the Underdog, where Charles said he was being the unwanted child of a Mexican whore and a black soldier boy from Nogales, Arizona, and where Israel considers the Gaza Palestinians--beneath the world's underdogs.

Probably Israel could right now get away with nuking Gaza City--killing thousands of Arabs, pronounced "dogs" by Israelis. The Israeli Army is a cruel bunch of fiends. You see, Israel claims its people live in constant fear of being attacked by Muslims. This, of course, is a religious war--Islam vs. Judaism (Zionism in the case of Palestine). Everybody used to hate the Jews--so then you gotta expect the Jews to project their hate back on somebody and in this case it's on their Semitic brothers and sisters--the children of Ishmael, according to Middle East legends--the legends of God's Chosen People seeking salvation in the desert so scared of broiling alive in the waterless desert and its hot kiss of death. Religions have divided this world into waring states!

Most people make their best livings off war. The Power Elite gets filthy rich off war and selling arms and bombs and nuclear devices and building nuclear plants and building nuclear submarines, aircraft carriers, missiles--so far you haven't heard of any of the MICs going under have you?--like General Electric--times have never been better for good old GE; Lockheed-Martin? I'll bet they're doing fine and dandy, too.

But have you ever thought about how when our armies are weak and worn out that we will have the Israeli Army to take our place in doing our Middle East dirty work, like trying to blow away the Arabs and Persians and all those desert tribes who believe that Allah is the Biggest Daddy of them all....

As I've always said, there's no difference in Yahweh and Allah--no difference in Jehovah or Elohim or whatever name you give the Hebrew Biggest Daddy and Allah. Both are god-derivatives of the Sun, our only real living god--unless you prefer darkness, like a blues musician.

Obama [notice I haven't mentioned the Israeli war lord commander is named Barak] has already said he's ready to sacrifice human existence in defending Israel. Obama, too, has already said he's for extending the invasion and occupation of Afghanistan by adding troops and trying some of General Petraus "surge" tactics--and Old General Petraus (pronounced "Be-tray-us"--note, the general is always in very clean starched fatigues as though he were going out to direct our troops in the thick of battle) believes the "surge" has worked in Iraq, and Obama has already admitted he thinks Petraus is an impressive man--and I notice Obama is a workout maniac--and he smokes cigarettes, too--what about his heart! speaking of "surge." Both men have said these "surge" tactics have been successful in our invasion and occupation of Iraq--an invasion based on lies and a continued occupation based on our desperate attempt to conquer the current Holy Grail, the oil of the world.

I still to this day can't understand how all three of our automobile manufacturers are suddenly broke? And why then aren't their overseas plants broke, too? How come they are going to shut down all US and Canada plants, go bankrupt as an American corporation, then become an importer of cars to the US, like the big Japanese and German car companies are?--except, hot dog, look at Toyota losing for the first time in their sordid history--sales down 31%--and all because of those GOD-DAMN illegal invasions and occupations and our mad dash for all the oil in the world--us versus the mad Arabs, the rich Chinese, and the Mafia-like Russians--confronting nations all over the world and claiming rights to oil through countries like Georgia--and through the Central Asian nations, like intolerant Uzbekistan where we now have a huge military base, too, all of which are Islamic, by the way--ain't that ironic? Pakistan we have by the balls and they're Islamic--except I just read that Pakistan has blocked the US for bringing military equipment into Pakistan out of Afghanistan--and Indonesia is the largest Muslim population ever! Amazing. We support Islams as long as they're under royals and military dictators, but let them try and go their own way--oh NO--our military might is ready to take humanity to the brink of destruction just simply because it is of the POWER ELITE, and guards and protects and goes adventuring for the wealthy. General Smedley Butler said this back in the 20s and 30s when he was leading US troops all around the Caribbean in protecting the pirating US corporations like Chiquita Banana and her United Fruit banditos and US banking interests and making sure they got their ways in countries like Nicaragua, Colombia, Panama (our military stole Panama from Colombia in order for us to build the Panama Canal), the Dominican Republic, Cuba, Haiti. Butler said the US military was not protecting the freedoms of We the People but was working for the US corporations who had Capitalist interest in the Caribbean's rich crops and oil and gold and silver and...and, isn't this all about Capitalism anyway? That's the religion that's ruining the good ole "God Blessed" US of A. And didn't Marx tell us all exactly where Capitalism would lead us? Our own sociological science of Economics has theories that explain exactly what happened to our financial and banking sectors--and we have two Nobel-Prize-winning Economists, Joe Steigler and Paul Krugman, both Dumbocrats willing to serve Obama and instead he picks who? Two ex-Goldman-Sachs bandits, Robert Ruben and Larry "Use Africa as a Nuclear Waste Dumping Ground" Summers--and these greedy criminals, these Wall Streeters and bankers and loan sharks, are robbing us blind--and we have to keep having to keep in mind that these men are criminals--they are robbers--and that they really have robbed us blind and are continuing to rob us blind right now as I type on this post--and I'm talking about these Wall Street geeks like Hank Paulson, Robert Ruben (an Obama advisor), Larry Summers (an Obama advisor), this creep from the New York Federal Reserve (Obama's next Sec'y of the Treasury). These big shots are all low-life CROOKS! These are the most sophisticated professional crooks in the world. INTERPOL should be investigating them. Instead, they're investigating themselves and giving themselves bonuses for being so god-damn slick and brilliant at stealing all of We the People's money--just think, Hank Paulson and Power Elite dickboy G.W. Bush have to date stolen way over a trillion dollars from We the People--and Bush Baby's old Pappy is in on this bullshit, too--we can't let that old crooked asshole off the hook, that old swindling crooked business failure--check out his Zapata Offshore Drilling's record of going under due to Pappy Bush's spoiled rich brat Power Elitist kid attitude--his grandpappies and old Mammy Bush's wealthy daddy had to bail old Pappy Bush out of his debts--remember, Pappy was also a WWII hero sham--remember, Cap'n Bush flew his plane, a la Nutjob John McCain, into a nose-dive crash landing, pitching to a stop in a clump of trees, then bursting into flames--and who was out of that plane first--why old Cap'n Pappy Bush--as a result one of his crewmen was trapped inside the plane and died. Have you ever noticed how truths about the Bushes are always hushed up somehow--remember the Texas journalist who wrote the tell-all book about Georgie Porgie and Pappy Bush's shenanigans in Texas politics and the Bush Family Empire blocked publication of it?--Macmillan was going to publish it I think--and then this writer ended up dead of a gunshot wound a few months later--no more reporting on that incident. Like Unka Dick shot a man in the face and never even had to go to court over it. Now that's power, folks--and Unka Dick Cheney, folks, is one of the richest men in the world--he's Power Elite privileged--and he's political and oil-money Power Elite--a man of great leisure--like even after the crisis of 9/11 just like G.W. took his 3-month-long vacations on the faux ranch in Crawfull, Unka Dick kept huntin' his doves and huntin' his judges and fishin' off the yacht of the Royal Family of Oman right in sight of Iran! What a life! And he's got several devices shocking his old saggy heart every few seconds to keep that old buzzard alive--this a dude we need to have a massive coronary a la Jerry "Fried Chicken Eatin'" Fallwell (who fell straight to hell we hope) or die in a small plane crash like Mike Connell just did but instead old Dick lies on heartier and more wealthy than ever. Hell yeah, he admitted, he authorized waterboarding--so what are you gonna do about it? "Fuck you" is Unka Dick's motto.

Capitalism. That's our problem. Capitalism demands profits. Profits make the Power Elite richer and richer and gain them more unproductive leisure time. "Them that's got and them's that's not...." Greed. Read Frank Norris's great novel McTeague, from whence came Von Stroheim's movie Greed. What a novel and what greed is in that novel. I've never seen any copy of Greed--and maybe the film was destroyed, though I do think there's some clips from it on YouTube--what isn't on YouTube by now?

From www.vonstroheim.com/

Erich von Stroheim left Austria in 1909 for New York and by 1914 he was in LA crewing on DW Griffith's Birth of A Nation.

During WW I, Von Stroheim played dastardly German officers in the heavy-handed anti-German propaganda films then being churned out in Fort Lee, New Jersey. At the time anti-German hysteria was turning sauerkraut into "liberty cabbage" and schools were abolishing German language studies.

And then suddenly in 1917 Von Stroheim found himself out of work, blacklisted, a victim of the jingoism and hysteria his own screen portrayals had helped to fuel. It was an era of legal repression of unofficial thought, and concerned citizens had questioned his Americanism.

Out of work, on the skids, and holed up in a dingy West Side rooming house in New York City, Von Stroheim found a copy of McTeague that a previous tenant had left behind. The story touched a chord, and Von Stroheim experienced an epithany of sorts.

Luckily for Von Stroheim --- and us --- DW Griffith then returned to New York from France with footage to finish a humanitarian film cast against the war. Griffith needed Von Stroheim, and they went to LA, where in a few short years Von Stroheim was directing his own feature films with artistic and box office success.

In 1923 Von Stroheim filmed Norris' story on location in San Francisco and Death Valley. He renamed it Greed, and it was his masterpiece.

Then for business, political, and personal reasons Von Stroheim's bosses, Louis B. Mayer and Irving Thalberg, took the film away from Von Stroheim and released an amputated version.

But their deliberate debasement did not tarnished its luster, and Von Stroheim's gem is still one of film's premier works. However after watching the 1999 restoration version, you'll quickly realize that a landmark creative work of the 20th century was cut and mangled beyond recognition by some very short-sighted people.

And that's greed for you--and Louis B. Mayer was a numbskull shoe salesman who only had a 3rd-grade education--but you don't need much of an education to steal successfully.

thegrowlingwolf
for The Daily Growler

Males Penetrating Women, a Form of Possession

Franny & Zoe Cruise the Feminine World
thegrowlingwolf--he peacockily vows Lesbians love him and don't fear him--has recently been in his C. Wright Mills/Thorstein Veblen mode--his Sociologist context, as he likes to put the very aspects of his abstract human-wolf-hybrid life--animal thinking at its highest level--Einstein was a monkey, wasn't he?

First off, I found Andrea Dworkin online. Remember her? Hidebound feminist bitch par excellence. Here's a review of her book Intercourse by Giney Villar:

Intercourse, Dworkin's monumental book on the complexities of sex, now on its tenth anniversary edition, remains as forceful today as when it first appeared in 1987. In her new preface (1997) Dworkin describes her book as "…a book that moves through the sexed world of dominance and submission…" and rightly so.

In this book, the author questions and challenges the value and meaning that men and women attach to Intercourse. While it is "easy" to read having been written in a lucid, scholarly manner without being highbrow, the book is difficult to comprehend. Intercourse compels its readers to rip open their bodies and minds and examine them under the stark illumination Dworkin beams. It is disturbing light, and she makes no excuse for casting it. Dworkin stops being female in this book and suggests that all women must begin to stop being women as constructed by men, for their integrity and survival.

Intercourse opens possibilities. It can be interpreted in many ways. This is what the book exactly aims to do. To pose questions, spur action and in the author's own words, "Intercourse is search and assertion, passion and fury; and its form—no less that its content—deserves critical scrutiny and respect."

The book is divided into three parts. The first part, "Intercourse in a Man-made World" illustrates the way men perceive women and themselves, as they sexually relate to women. In the section "Repulsion," Dworkin tells of the repulsion men have against women's bodies, sexual intercourse and their unbridled desires, as exemplified by Tolstoy's life and works. In Tolstoy's The Kreutzer Sonata, a man kills his wife to end his own torment and pain about the possibility of losing control over her. The man reasons that with her death, his wife could no longer be capable of defying him, and he did not have to bear the responsibility of subjugating her and desiring her.

Dworkin asserts that men are obsessed with protecting their own vulnerability and they use women to draw attention away from this "nakedness." Men resort to violence against women for it is a way of getting what they want without exposing their own vulnerability. Sexual intercourse is likened to being "Skinless" where men and women merge and lose boundaries to become one flesh- male flesh.

Intercourse has also been understood as a form of possession. Women are being penetrated and thus conquered and dominated as objects. In so doing, men possess women but both experience the man being male. In the process, women essentially lose themselves when they are taken over by men. This is necessary for intercourse to be successful. Amazingly, men are not possessed even if they are literally enveloped by women during the sexual act. Women have been constructed by this type of sexuality. As the author puts it, "This being marked by sexuality requires a cold capacity to use and a pitiful vulnerability that comes from having been used." And because of the social context, women have learned to equate sex with love and desire. Thus, male possession has become an affirmation of desirability, womanhood and existence.

For a full read: www.isiswomen.org/wia/wia398/vaw00006.html
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I don't think I agree with Andrea that women have learned to equate sex with love and desire. I don't feel it when I'm having sex with a man. Sex is sex not love. In fact, what is love anyway? A second-hand emotion, like Tina Turner sang? Men think women fuck for love, but that's silly--women fuck for the same reasons basically men fuck, to procreate, whether they realize it or not--a woman can't fulfill her "mother" desires without getting some male seed planted in her ovum.
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How about Christianity and its explanation of a female being a male HELPER! Here's a great little study of Christianity and its role in the oppression of women:

Oppression In Christianity

@ female oppression » by religion » oppression in christianity

Traditional Roles

In Genesis 1:26-27, Adam and Eve were portrayed to be equal, for both were created out of God's image. Despite this, the many allusions to the word "man" in the Bible were, in earlier times, said to be because women were unimportant. Yet in Gen. 5:1-2, God calls both genders "man" – and hence it is understood that such disparity in treatment was actually not what he had intended. There are other references in the Old Testament regarding the status of women - namely in Genesis 2. God looked at a sleeping Adam, and decided that he needed a helper. This helper was created from Adam's rib, and was named "woman" by Adam. These references that women are helpers and were named by Adam however, contradict the earlier presented views that both had equal status. This was especially so in older times, where one was believed to have authority over any item/individual by naming it. Adam’s downfall is also credited to the creation of Eve - for Eve was the one who persuaded Adam to eat the forbidden fruit. This was another excuse for the discrimination against females. For example, Tertullian (known as "Father of the Latin Church") said to his female followers: "You are the devil's gateway". In fact, other than the earlier references that God intended both genders to be equal, and a minimal scattering of passages that seemed to suggest this (eg. Exodus 21:15-17), the Bible's stance can be seen to fiercely biased towards male dominance over females.

Thus, females were considered possessions of males (usually their fathers or husbands) - like any house or oxen - as seen in Exodus 20:17. Rape was also considered a less severe crime than homosexuality, and there are multiple passages in the Bible describing man who offer their virgin daughters to others for rape. (eg. Genesis 19:7-8 and Judges 19:23-26) Even Aristotle (a renowned Greek philosopher who was the student to Plato and the teacher to Alexander the Great) thought that women were inferior beings. He famously commented that women were defective because they could not reproduce semen which was the seed of life. He also believed that men were naturally superior by virtue of their greater intellect. Such misogynistic views and remarks depict that society was biased against the favour of women.

The rights of women were severely limited as a result of such subordinating views of women. Some of the limitations placed on them include:

• Unmarried women could not leave their fathers.
• Married women could not their husbands.
• Married women were subject to any punishment her husband inflicted.
• They could not hold any public offices.
• They were often considered in the same class as minors, slaves, criminals, the dumb and the mute etc., or in other words, incapable of sounds judgement or worthy of consideration.
• They could not testify in court.
• They could not speak to strangers.
• They needed to wear a veil when not at home.
• They could not inherit or hold any property.
• They could not even write or receive letters in their name.

library.thinkquest.org/07aug/01443/fo_religion_christian.html
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I look at Barack Obama being such a sweet family man with such a loving wife and two lovely daughters and I think, yeah, sure, but Obama's marriage is portrayed as a "perfect" marriage--and Michelle Obama is Barack's possession--I can tell how possessed she is by Barack by the way she talks back to him, with snippets of tease--it's not an independence. Let Barack get caught cheating on her, however, and I believe she will then become her independent self and strike back same as Hillary struck back at her philandering husband. You can still possess me but you owe me a big favor now! I can see Michelle Obama as a future New York State Senator.
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Out of nowhere came the following--read this--I was amazed by it--I'd never thought of ventriloquism like this Italian dude has gotten into it--the writer as a ventriloquist! The oracle at Delphi's oracles coming up from the slit (her clit her tongue) in the ground through her sex organs--"the voice from the belly"--which this guys says is a euphemism!

An interview with Massimo Gezzi, conducted for the publication of the La voce come medium. La storia culturale del ventriloquio, trans. Massimo Gezzi (Rome: Luca Sossella, 2007), Italian translation of Dumbstruck: A Cultural History of Ventriloquism.

---

Before writing Dumbstruck, you wrote about Beckett, Joyce, Dickens and contemporary English novel: literature, above all. Dumbstruck, instead, is a book which uses theoretical instruments from different branches of learning: history of literature, anthropology, history of technologies and so on. How did you have the idea of writing such a book, and why?

The idea for the book arose when I was writing an essay about the many ‘voices’, both of human subjects and of inanimate objects that abound in James Joyce’s Ulysses. The metaphor of ‘ventriloquism’ was, and remains, a very common one in literary criticism, to describe such things as the ways in which authors ‘speak through’ characters, or the ways in which characters are made to ‘speak’ with the voice of others. At the same time, I knew that ‘ventriloquism’ meant literally ‘speaking from the belly’, but I couldn’t put these two things together. So I decided to do what I tell all my research students to do at the beginning of an enquiry, namely to look closely at the history of the word ‘ventriloquism’ as it is recorded in the Oxford English Dictionary. Though accustomed by then to the multitude of miracles which that extraordinary work has hidden within it, I was staggered to find uses of the word, and its Greek equivalent, ‘engastrimism’ going back into the sixteenth century, and references to Latin and Greek versions of the word. I suddenly saw that the page or so of citations provided by the OED provided me with an encapsulated narrative of this bizarre word and concept. All I had to do was to write it out (though it took me six years of work, partly because I was having so much fun that I couldn’t bring myself to stop)

The main topic of the book is voice, in all its historical appearances. To study the powers and symptoms of voice in history means to study our anthropological foundations and imagination as well. In order to write a history of voice, you say, we need before to write a history of these kinds of different and strange voices. Could you explain why?

The voice has two distinct and contradictory aspects. On the one hand, I feel my voice to be not just something about me, but as essentially me, as carrying or instancing my essence. In a number of European languages, the word for a voice is the same as the word for a vote, for it signifies my will. At the same time, the voice is something separate from me. It is in its nature to be detached or apart from me, and to be able to go beyond me. Indeed, at the beginning (the beginning of human society and the beginning of an individual life, the voice is the principal power of affecting things in my vicinity which I cannot touch. So the voice is both intensely embodied, and also a kind of disembodiment. In exploring the nature of the disembodied voice, the voice apart from its source, such as it is found in the instances of ventriloquism I discuss, I was attempting to put something of the strangeness back into the notion of voice, familiar as it is. For this counterfactual strangeness, this capacity of the voice to be where it is not, turns out to be one of its most essential features.

One of the most surprising things is that the idea of ventriloquism, i.e. the idea of someone speaking from his or her belly, mostly comes from a translation mistake. Is this correct?

‘Ventriloquism’ means, literally, speaking from the belly. In fact it turns out that there were a number of prophetic or ecstatic speaking practices that involved the seeming\production of voice from different parts of the body – including the belly, the thigh, the chest (‘sternomancy’), and even the armpit. But during the early Christian era an obscene rumour began to circulate among the early Church Fathers about the allegedly appalling manner in which the pythian priestess at Delphi delivered her oracles. The story, as whispered in tones both hushed and excited by writers such as Origen and St. John Chrysostomos, was that the priestess squatted over a gash in the rock, and was entered through her genital organs by a demon (for the early Christians, Apollo, who was supposed to inspire the priestess with the spirit of prophecy was nothing but a demon). Having thus taken up residence inside her, the demon trumpeted his oracles through her genitals. Details of this belief survive in many accounts of alleged spirit possession through the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. So ‘speaking from the belly’ is not exactly a mistake in translation, but it is certainly a euphemism.

www.stevenconnor.com/dumbstruck/interview1/

How about a radio station that only plays music by women?

www.amazonradio.com/

Fuck me good, but, please, whatever you do, my male friend, don't fall in love with me.

franny&zoethedailygrowlertwoheadedgirlreporter
for The Daily Growler

The Daily Growler Sunday Funnies

A Batch of Jots and Tittles From Lake Flaccid, New York
The world is a silly-ass place. India and Pakistan are gathering their troops on their mutual borders. They are being encouraged by US interests. Oh how glorious will the next World War be! Finally, our military Power Elite will get to maybe use nuclear weapons again! Their fingers are crossed. Plus they are currently testing weapons using the Israeli Army that is finally doing something about those scumbag dog-like Arabs cluttering up the Gaza Strip. The Israeli Army represents the army of the Chosen People. Hamas continues to lob homemade hand-grenade-like missiles over into Israel--actually onto territory that used to belong to Palestine. Israel knows all about the final solution--it's been used all throughout world history when one race of people decide they want to wipe the earth clean of another race of people. The great butchers of history are like Attila, like Tamerlane, like the Turks seeking a final solution for their Christian Armenian problem during Ottoman Empire days, and of course our own Hairy Ass Truman and his final solution for the citizens of Hiroshima and Nagasaki--or how about G.W. Bush? Wouldn't you consider him a butcher? So I didn't mention Adolf Hitler. I'm just trying to show you that he didn't invent the final solution. Zyclone B and throwing Jews into ovens weren't really Hitler's ideas--he was too busy designing the Volkswagen bug--though hating Jews was a passion that boiled heartily in his, some say, half-Jewish chest. Hitler, however, is no more heartless than Unka Dick and Georgie Porgie and General Petraus and Robert Gates--show no mercy in war has always been a theme behind the true believers in their particular races and the religions built up in legendary proportions to keep a particular race sparkling with desires for emulation. Sorry. I'm beginning to sound like thegrowlingwolf--I'm just as furiously antipolitician and Power Elite as he is--I was a Sociology major at New York University, Class of '75--when I was a kid and loved basketball, I idolized the NYU Violets--and New York University has always been political as well as literary. But, hey, now I'm just a proprietor of an Upstate New York deer jerky business who wiles away his time looking for ironies among the piles of leftover news, info, facts, and fictions.

--First off, did you know that most of our wind-generating machines are made in Viet Nam by a Dutch company?--you know, those superwindmills that one day are going to clutter up our fields and seasides and near-shore seas and lakes and farm lands and our mountaintops when like we went wild for fossil fuels we're going to go wild for windpower--at least that oil crook T. Boone Pickens is already going wild for windmill farms around the bare prairies of his Pampa, Texas, home.

Windmills in the middle of Lake Erie--help building up the economies of the Netherlands and Viet Nam--tacky, aren't they?

--thegrowlingwolf mentioned yesterday that Mrs. Noam Chomsky had died. That got me to checking in the obits for those others who died who weren't like Paul Newman, Sid Pollack, Odetta, Harold Pinter--the recent ones--but in case you've forgotten, here's a list of some others who died this year: Arthur C. Clarke; Paul Scofield; BO DIDDLEY; Mary Meader--she took aerial photographs of South America back in the 1930s; WM F BUCKLEY!!!; Cachao--he invented the mambo; Richard Widmark; Dith Pran; Albert Hoffmann--the discoverer of LSD--he lived to be 101; Yves St. Laurent; Johnny Podres--the Brooklyn Trolley Dodgers's pitcher who beat the Yankees in the 7th game of the only World Series the BROOKLYN Dodgers ever won; Jim McKay--one of the worst sportscasters ever--Brian Mussberger has taken his place; Cyd Charisse; Jesse Helms; Jimmy Slide; Alexander Solzhenitsyn; Jerry Wexler; William Claxton--he said, "Photography is Jazz for the eyes"; Killer Kowalski; David Foster Wallace--wrote Infinite Jest; Levi Stubbs--of the Four Tops; Dave McKenna--one of the great tried-and-true jazz pianists; and last but not least, Bettie Page, a fifties "pinup" queen of the horny male (boy and man) masturbatory society of the day. Missed some others, like the Wham-O guy, two of the Kingston Trio, and Earle Hagen, the dude who wrote the "Andy Griffin Show" theme song, but I caught most of them--at least the ones I kind of enjoyed.

--Sorry, Helen Highman-Klein-LaCloos, but I couldn't resist putting this afore yere eyes:

Daddy's Little Girl

by Punkin

If I had my life to do over, I'd have chosen you to be my dad once more. Even if it meant losing you again, It's worth all the tears in the world. You were my sunshine when skies were gray. I loved you and honored you; You took all my tears away. I was happy to be with you, Proud to be your little girl. Sometimes we would argue, But to me you meant the world. Your love was always pure; You treated me as your own. Your time seemed all too short and I feel so alone. What can I take from this? My heart is completely crushed. But nothing loved is ever lost - And you are loved so much.

--I mean, come on, you have got to find a lot of humor in Punkin's stupid poem! Daddy's dead and Punkin says she'd pick Daddy again if she had it to do over again--wow, Love Me, Daddy! But I thought a jot of a death poem would be appropriate following a tittle about who died this year.

--Having breakfast at the Grinding Gears Truck Stop in Lake Flaccid--out by the gun range--I heard to my great surprise on the GG's house radio--tuned to WIMP, 890 AM radio in Lake Flaccid--Casey Kasem--and he was doing his "America's Top 40" rock 'n roll show--and I was shocked--who'd'a thought old Casey was even still alive, much less an 80-year-old dude doing a rock 'n roll Top Forty show.

Casey Kasem--looking like death warmed over. Still rockin' 'n rollin'.

--thegrowlingwolf revealed his love of teevee "monkey shows" and seeing his ancestry in monkey faces--but he didn't show any monkey faces to prove his pagan-evolutionist point. Check out this monkey face. I think it proves the Wolf Man's jest.

Come on, you Creationists, explain that face to us heathen evolutionists.

--From the world of nanotechnology comes maybe some miracles that will outdo Jesus by several country miles--though turning water into wine is a tough miracle to top:

an international nanotech collaboration of American and Korean scientists, funded by the Korean government, has developed multifunctional gold-coated nanowires that are designed to swim through the blood stream and attach to cancerous cells via antibodies against the cancer cells. Exposure to an electromagnetic field should heat the nanowires and destroy the cancerous cells while sparing nearby normal cells.

Nanotechnology is amazing stuff--very difficult to understand like the String Theory, but it could possibly revolutionize all aspects of our lives.

barabasmunn-dayne
for The Daily Growler
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Tribute from thegrowlingwolf
I just learned today that saxophonist Johnny Griffin died in July of this year--yes, I got curious after reading Barabas Munn-Dayne's jots and tittles today all about folks dying in 2008--and I found Johnny's obit on The Boston Globe's Website. Johnny Griffin was a fascinating jazz saxophonist in the style of Sonny Stitt and the great Prez. Griffin was a master of the complicated line and the stringing together of complicated lines into a ferocious but cool unleashing of notes and improvisational brilliance. To play with Little Johnny Griffin meant you'd better be at the top of your game in terms of chops, keepin' up, keepin' the beat swift and fluid. I saw Johnny only once. Before I moved to New York City, Johnny had joined the expatriate jazz guys and had moved to Europe, working out of Paris. He came to the U.S. once a year and played at the Village Vanguard--and that's where I saw him--and he was backed by a WOW band, Ray Bynum on bass and Ronnie Matthews, an overlooked jazz great, on piano, and Kenny Washington on drums. They grooved hot and heavy for a solid hour--especially solid on "Groovin' High" and Monk's "Bright Mississippi"--Little Johnny Griffin has passed on and left his music still playing behind.

Here's Johnny Griffin's NYTimes obit in July 2008:

Johnny Griffin, a tenor saxophonist from Chicago whose speed, control and harmonic acuity made him one of the most talented American jazz musicians of his generation yet who spent most of his career in Europe, died Friday at his home in Availles-Limouzine, a village in France. He was 80 and had lived there for 24 years.

Skip to next paragraph

Steve Berman/The New York Times

Johnny Griffin at the Blue Note in New York in 1997.

His death was confirmed by his wife, Miriam, who did not give a cause. He played his last concert on Monday in Hyères, France.

Mr. Griffin’s modest height earned him the nickname the Little Giant; his speed in bebop improvising marked him as the Fastest Gun in the West; a group he led with his fellow saxophonist Eddie (Lockjaw) Davis was informally called the Tough Tenor band, a designation that was eventually applied to a whole school of hard-bop tenor players. And in general, Mr. Griffin suffered from categorization. [Bullshit]

In the early 1960s, embittered by the critical acceptance of free jazz, he stayed true to his identity as a bebopper. Feeling that the American marketplace had no use for him (at a time when he was also having marital and tax troubles), he left for Europe, where he became a celebrated jazz elder.

“It’s not like I’m looking to prove anything anymore,” he said in a 1993 interview. “At this age, what can I prove? I’m concentrating more on the beauty in the music, the humanity.”

Indeed, Mr. Griffin’s work in the 1990s, with an American quartet that stayed constant whenever he revisited his home country to perform or record, had a new sound, mellower and sweeter than in his younger days.

Johnny Griffin was born in Chicago on April 24, 1928, and grew up on the South Side. He attended DuSable High School, where he was taught by the famed high school band instructor Capt. Walter Dyett, whose other students included the singers Nat (King) Cole and Dinah Washington and the saxophonists Gene Ammons and Von Freeman.

Mr. Griffin’s career started in a hurry: at age 12, attending his grammar school graduation dance at the Parkway Ballroom in Chicago, he saw Ammons play in King Kolax’s big band and decided what his instrument would be. By 14 he was playing alto saxophone in a variety of situations, including a group called the Baby Band with schoolmates, and occasionally with the blues guitarist and singer T-Bone Walker. At 18, three days after his high school graduation, Mr. Griffin left Chicago to join Lionel Hampton’s big band, where he switched from alto to tenor. From then until 1951 he was based in New York City but mostly on the road.

By 1947 he was touring with the rhythm-and-blues band of the trumpeter Joe Morris, a fellow Chicagoan, with whom he made the first recordings for the Atlantic label. He entered the United States Army in 1951; stationed in Hawaii, he played in an Army band.

Mr. Griffin was of an impressionable age when Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie became forces in jazz. He heard them both with Billy Eckstine’s band in 1945 and, having first internalized the more balladlike saxophone sound earlier popularized by Johnny Hodges and Ben Webster, became entranced by the lightning-fast phrasing of bebop, as the new music of Parker and Gillespie was known. In general his style remained brisk but relaxed, his bebop playing salted with blues tonality.

Beyond the 1960s his skill and his musical eccentricity continued to deepen, and in later years he could play odd, asymmetrical phrases, bulging with blues honking and then tapering off into state-of-the-art bebop, filled with passing chords.

In the late 1940s he befriended the pianists Elmo Hope, Bud Powell and Thelonious Monk; he called these friendships his “postgraduate education.” After his Army service he went back to Chicago, where he worked with Monk for the first time, a job that altered his career. He became interested in Monk’s brightly melodic style of composition, and he ended up as a regular member of Monk’s quartet in New York in 1958. In 1967 he toured Europe with a Monk octet. [Johnny Griffin is the saxophonist on Monk's Live at the Five Spot album on Riverside--with the great Abdul Malik on bass--"In Walked Bud" is one of the greatest jazz tracks ever recorded--and it's live--and Little Johnny Griffin takes one of the hottest solos ever!]

Mr. Griffin joined Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers for a short stint in 1957. The following year he began recording a series of albums as a leader for the Riverside label. On “Way Out!,” “The Little Giant” and other Riverside albums, his rampaging energy got its moment in the sun on tunes like “Cherokee,” famous vehicles for testing a musician’s mettle.

A few years later he hooked up with Davis, a more blues-oriented tenor saxophonist, with whom he made a series of records that act as barometers of taste: listeners tend to find them either thrilling or filled with too many notes. The Griffin-Davis combination was a popular one, and the two men would sporadically reunite through the ’70s and ’80s. [Eddie "Cleanhead" Vincent had first made Lockjaw Davis a star--Lockjaw was one of the dude's who was in the Minton's House Band that Monk was the pianist in back in the early 1940s--Charlie Christian was the guitarist in that band--and Prez and all the sax cats used to go up to Minton's and "Blow the blues away" into the early morning hours--"breakfast jams" were the thing in those golden days of jazz]

Mr. Griffin left the United States in 1963, settling in Paris and recording mostly for European labels — sometimes with other American expatriates, like the drummer Kenny Clarke [trumpeters Bill Coleman and Benny Bailey were expatriates, too; so were Eddie "Freedom Jazz Dance" Harris, Bud Powell, and Sidney Bechet], and sometimes with European rhythm sections. In 1973 he moved to Bergambacht, the Netherlands. He moved to the Côte d’Azur with his second wife, Miriam, in 1980, and then in 1984 to Availles-Limouzine, near Poitiers in midwestern France, where he lived thereafter.

In addition to his wife, Mr. Griffin’s survivors include four children: his daughters Jo-Onna and Ingrid and a son, John Arnold Griffin, all of the New York City area, and another daughter, Cynthia Griffin of Bordeaux, France.

Mr. Griffin stayed true to the small-group bebop ideal with his American quartet, including the pianist Michael Weiss and the drummer Kenny Washington. The record he made with this group for the Antilles label in 1991, “The Cat,” was received warmly as a comeback.

Every April for many years, Mr. Griffin returned to Chicago to visit family and play during his birthday week at the Jazz Showcase. During those visits he usually also spent a week at the Village Vanguard in New York, before returning home to his quiet house in the country.

Saturday Night Fishfry

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Twas the Night After X-mas

And All Through the House, No Creature Was Stirring, to the Gills They Were Soused
I woke up early X-mas morning. Santa Claus was sprawled all over my floor. I kicked at him but he merely snorted and rolled up into the fetal position and began snoring. What a snore! The floor was rattling underneath my stocking feet he was snoring so stentoriously. Then I noticed the two dead soldiers caught within the scragglings of his tattered beard. Empties. One my bottle of Jameson's Irish 12-year-old and the other what had been a half liter of Baker Beam's Best, that special Tennessee bourbon 12-year-old. Those 12-year-old whiskies leave you flattened like a 12-year-old kid after a wild masturbatory session. God, Santa just farted. A fart of horse-fart proportions. I had to flee the room.

I left out of the house around 1:30 pm to see if I could score some food. My favorite Irish Pub closes one day a year and guess what day that is? It was closed. Brother Jimmy's Bar-b-cue over east of me was closed, too. No food, dammit. And I was starving. All I had the night before was a prissy salad from a Hale & Hardy soup joint. A packaged salad. Hope the teenage punks who made it wore gloves.

I knew one place on Third Avenue would be open. It's always open. So I dog-trotted over to Third. The joint was open but it was packed. There was a line waiting to be seated. Fuck this, I bellowed. I stopped this good-looking chick--Third Avenue has some good-looking babes living along it--and I asked her if she knew of a place open--I offered to buy her lunch--she shot me the bird and runwayed her way on down the street.

I was getting overheated. Suddenly it was hot. I unzipped my Mongolian-made winter coat. I was stifling. I walked all the way back from Third over to Broadway--a long way--a tiring way, and by the time I got to Broadway I was discombobulated and worn out. Shit. A god-damn Subway sandwich joint was open. God-dammit. I went in and bought a foot-long ham & Swiss cheese, dressed with spinach (the virile kind I assume), pickles, olives, mayo, oil & vinegar--I got the full meal--a foot-long sandwich, a 16-oz Barq's root beer, and a package of Lay's chips. A crap meal. My X-mas lunch and dinner. What a bummer! I couldn't eat the god-damn thing. I ate half of it and then threw the rest away. A waster of food on X-mas. Now I'm fingering out big lumps of whipped Philadelphia brand cream cheese with blueberries in it my gal pal left here for me. Disgusting stuff really, but dammit I'm hungry--mucho hambre!

I went back to bed at 5 pm. Santa Claus was gone. He left a huge puddle in the middle of my floor. I mopped the floor. The stench was overwhelming. I lit some newspaper afire in my toilet bowl. The scent of the burning newspaper wiped out the Santa smells, though I let the fire in the toilet go on too long and cracked the bowl; there's a big long crack in it now.

The Chinese in my building burn newspaper in their apartments to drive the ghosts out. Yes, they do do that. They do. Plus they spit a lot and the men smoke cigarette after cigarette washing their smokes down with cans of Budweiser (no longer an American beer, can you believe that?).

What presents did I get for X-mas? A: NONE. I was totally jealous when I read www.languagehat.com and L Hat was tooting about all the great gifts he got and how his wife cooked filet mignon for him and uncorked a bottle of wine for his ass--what a lucky son of a bitch--though I knew L Hat when he wasn't so lucky. I remember going to a Mets playoff game one cold-ass September late-month night--but I won't go into that story--my intentions are to praise L Hat and not remind him of those days he's excised from his memory--he does now have a fine wife (that's how I compliment a woman--by calling her fine), a smart woman--and you better be smart to live around L Hat--and this woman is a smart woman--and that's enough about the glorious side of X-mas.

Obama's still bothering me with his conservative choices for his cabinet. None of them very bright in my eyes; a lot of them out and out nutjobs, like this Gates character and that General Petraus character, both men who Obama seems to genuinely like and trust. I don't get it! You have a chance to be a truly great and honest and progressive president and he seems like he's determined to drive in the ruts the Clintons made in the muddy road that is our current government, a government of cronies, leftovers, has-beens, people who aren't progressive at all. Some of these goons, like Bill Richardson, for instance, are backwards thinkers--Bill Richardson is a big backer of nuclear energy--uranium is a New Mexico mineral--big uranium deposits out around Gallup, New Mexico.

And choosing a totally hairbrained rightwing pastor to give his invocation (and what does this invocation symbolize--and don't you have to have a rabbi there--and now an emir?)--a fundie Christian dude who hates gays and blacks--what in the hell is wrong with Obama?--on the other hand, he is putting the right-wingers who made him shed his black preacher and teacher because he was too RACIST--he simply said the honky was responsible for the black man's condition--on the spot. What do you think? I still don't see Obama's strategy. And putting the people he's put in his cabinet. They're mostly Clinton henchmen--Gates is a Bush henchman--wouldn't you want to clean the White House out of those chiselers and backwards thinking Neanderthals--throw 'em all out in the street (or better, put 'em in jail)? I just don't understand Obama yet--or if I do, hell, I see him as a nutjob Conservative. You could almost call him half-a-Neo-Con with some of his administration picks.

I did hear one interesting proposition over X-mas. A guy on the radio said how come we don't lay an excess-profits tax on Exxon-Mobil, Halliburton, KBR, etc.--make them pay for rebuilding our nation's roads and railroads and superstructure, you know. Obama's gonna put money into public transportation, which is a ploy--new public transportation means more bucks for real estate developers.

I said I'm out of the political concept for good, but then politicos keep trying to bring us down; we have to somehow stand up to them.

I watched that dweeby Arnie Schwarzennazi talking about how Cal-ee-forn-y-ah was broke--not just broke, but broke by billions upon billions--so broke, the Guv is thinking about emptying the prisons--he can't afford to house prisoners anymore--thank god, however, he did get same-sex marriage outlawed--God made Adam and Eve not Adam and Bruce (though I interpret God as a homosexual). What poppycock. What stupid reasoning. Believing in God. Believing in gods. Believing in Holy Babbles. Have you ever read the Christian Bible? It's insane reading--almost as insane as the Book of the Mormon.

And the music over the holidays! God awful. And Mannheim Steamroller keeps manufacturing that god-awful crap they do every X-mas out of Omaha, Nebraska, a cornpone state. But, by God, at the very last minute, just as I was flipping the teevee off for maybe good, there he was, Jose Feliciano, and oh holy shit, he was singing Felice Navidad--oh holy bullshit!

Jose Felicenavidadiana still trying to light his fire.

What a pobrecito Navidad for poor ole me, who'd rather have been chasing baby elks up in the northern areas of Yellowstone Park...but alas, I must obey the human in me and HO-HO-HO.

I used to be a regular at the Ho-Ho Restaurant just outside of Rockefeller Center in NYC...just like most of my old haunts, Ho-Ho's is no longer with us--and Jimmy Chin the bartender told me Ho-Ho meant good luck in Mandarin--and I once had a statue of Uncle Ho, from China--Uncle Ho's the little smiling dude with the big fat belly that you rub for luck.

HO-HO-HO,

thegrowlingsantaclauswolf
for The Daily Growler

Goodbyes to Eartha Kitt and Harold Pinter.

Eartha wearing her sable from Santa Baby

Hal Pinter, no more birthday parties

Judaism, Christianity, and Paganism

Bah Humbug, From The Daily Growler
Yahoo, roll out the barrel, roll out the yule log, hell, roll old Uncle Ewell out from under the house--the Jews are dredling; the Christians are "Oh Holy Nighting"; and the Pagans are swilling down wasselbowls by the dozens--and mulled ale--and eggnogs made with tequila, rum, mescal, worm and all--and The Growlers have all spun off into the ethereal somewhere--near the sun--getting to know themselves better by staring into the crimson eye of the sun--the royal master without whom we ain't no more.

Helen Highman-Klein LaCloos, the The Daily Growler Poetry Editrix: "Christmas means presents worth more than the presents I give. My ex-husbands so hate me they send bombs and Anthrax in the mail...I poetically josh, of course. Like the late Phyllis Diller, I use my ex-husbands for comic relief; and like that late, dried up, and forgotten comic, I, too, could have been comedically successful on a comic's stage. I'm not a believer. I'm a Sarah Lawrence grad; I'm a true believer, yes, but in the Power Elite this rag is so often blaming for every world ill. Being from the Power Elite, I laugh at such criticism hurled at me from such humble sources! Anyway, I'm sure my contribution to Sally Struthers's Save the Urchins non-profit will get me into the Heaven I'm wafting up to one day--an all-woman Heaven. Men are only good for expensive Christmas presents--and paying their alimonies on time--my lawyer's playing Santa Claus this year at my fabulous Christmas party to which none of YOU are invited."

Franny & Zoe, The Daily Growler Two-Headed Girl Reporter: "Franny loves Hanukkah, which to me is a nonsense holy day." "Zoe loves to just contradict me. I suppose this is natural among two-headed people." "I'm less romantic than you. You're the one that get's fucked all the time...." "Damn you, Zoe, if I could bite you...." "Go ahead, bite me, you skank." "Hey, Zoe, can't we at least be civilized with those who read The Daily Growler?" "Fuck all three of them; they represent civilization. I'm stranded in the jungle." "Well, Seasons Greetings at least from me." "Bah Humbug from me."

Walter Crackpipe, The Daily Growler Elder Statesman Journalist: "Christmas is such a joke. As a religious holiday it's a joke since all it is is the time of year when Pagans--and Jews come out of ancient pagan religions--celebrate the Winter Solstice, when the true god, our Shining Star, the Sun, is furthest away from us--when this sun is away refueling getting ready to spew out its seeds again anew in the Spring Solstice, when everyone should go out into the fields and fuck, making the fields fertile--planted--blessed. The act of humans fucking symbolizing the new birth in the Spring--that same period of time when the Jewish Jesus supposedly died and then was resurrected--the seed buried the erected again up through the grave--and Resurrection by Leo Tolstoy is one damn good book--easy readin', too, the way old Leo meant for his words to read, though how do we know that? Did Leo know English? French? Surely he knew French. Those were the days when the Czars were trying to culturalize the boob Russians who preferred potato vodka to fucking French wines--who preferred hard black bread to fucking prissy French baguettes. So, anyway, whatever one does these days is OK by me. Me, I see Christmas or Hanukkah or Ramadan as just another day in another week. So I send you all an existentialist seasons greetings. As a P.S., that damn Franny & Zoe are one hot looking babe, let me not kid thee!"

Barabas Munn-Dayne, the The Daily Growler "Jots & Tittles" Editor: "I spend this time of year alone in the woods--crucifying deer--I have a home business--I make deer jerky. Everybody up here in Lake Flaccid, New York, make something out of all the deer we slaughter up here this time of year--Uncle Manny Asphaldo makes lovely little baby Jesuses sausages out of ground deer haunch packed in the guts and firmed up with coagulated deer blood--or hell a little of Uncle Manny's blood if his knife slips while he's mixin' the batch...oops--'Son of a god-damn bitch!'--look out, there'll be a gushing or two of Uncle Manny's blood in his baby Jesus sausages this year. Too many deer anyway, nearly everybody up here in this area agrees. The buggers are everywhere. I caught one caught in the screen of the screened-in porch of my lake cabin--had to slit his throat the little bugger was in total whacked out state from his boiling nerves--his feeling like he was caught in the jaws of a predator all night--best to cut his throat, dress him out, and make another ton of jerky to sell to the tourists--except the snow's so deep up here there are no tourists this X-mas--and I went to a lot of trouble to put up my neon sign showing Santa shooting a reindeer--cute sign--yeah, you fire it up and this deer jumps across the road and Santa lifts a deer rifle, sights down the barrel, and BANG, blows the bugger away. Of course this is an X-mas joshing. I'm not a cruel man, this a guy who lives in a log cabin out in the woods by Lake Unnameble--a very intelligent Garrison Keillor--oh my God, no, I'm not a hick; I was born in New York City, dammit! Keillor's a hick! He likes C&W and Blue Grass, Cracker stuff--but not me, it's Hindemith all the way with me. A very Anarchy type of X-mas to each and every one of you who dare read and endure the continuing novel that is The Growler and its barrel of characters. Selah."

Elmer Snowedin, the Current The Daily Growler Poet Laureate: "I dreamt of you caught in a snowstorm:

Darling, cast away
adrift
on wedding white
piles
upholding
the pier
to which
the Snow Queen
docks

Elmer Snowedin, Christmas 2008, Correctionville, Iowa, USA."

Mr. Ed., the The Daily Growler, Editing Horse in Chief: "Christmas means nothing to a horse--just another day--like Crackpipe said--I'm left alone--and that's a gas--I jest, of course--horses are very anal. Don't joke! You ever had a hot young human monkey girl riding and humping you up high on your back? Makes me unmistakably male horse when I consider such a perverse situation. So choke on a yule log, ye Christians, Jews, Muslims, holy roly boogie blowin' knee-bending ninnies! Doesn't having a Master mean you're a slave? Horses have no masters. Eat hay not turkey!"

marvelousmarvbackbiter, the The Daily Growler Biff Burns Award Winner Sports Editor: "Baseball season left me in a funk. You notice I didn't write much of anything much about the god-damn Yankees this year. I couldn't become a Mets fan. Both teams fucked up. Both teams made stupid trades and treated their managers like total shit and then hired replacement managers who couldn't cut the mustard. In the case of the Yankees--they fire Joe Torre, L.A. hires him immediately, and Joe takes the low-life Dodgers all the way to the National League championship series. The Yankees hire Joe Girardi--and what does this otherwise beer distributorship owner do? Why he leads the Yankees to their first missed-playoff season in many a year--they ended up way out of both league race and wild card race--losing out to the pathetic Tampa Bay Christian Rays--sorry but they were lousy in the World Series--and the Bosox, who turned out to be a paper tiger this year.

"Poor baseball season for me. Lousy football season for me, too. I'm not a Giants fan, but they look good. I'm a Jets fan, of course, and those fools--a 45-year-old quarterback! And Brett Favre ain't no George Blanda or Slingin' Sammy Baugh--both who played into their 50s--and the Jets coach is an amateur--junior league coach.

"But, alas, I'm not into basketball, so I'm off to Florida to meet the Spring Training crowd coming up in February--in the meantime, I'll be doing some frog giggin' down on the Apalachicola. Keep on shakin' 'em off."
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Seasons Greetings from tgw in New York City