Living in New York City--Looking Forward to a Chaotic Winter

Wanting to Be in Archangel (Arkhangelsk (Russian: Арха́нгельск))

I was up early this morning and got a treat when I flicked on the teevee and up came an hour's worth of one of my fav teevee shows, "The American in Russia," with this dude Mark Ames. This morning was a repeat of Ames in Arkhangelsk. I'd seen it months ago. The second show was Ames at Mount Elbrus, the highest mountain in Europe: Mount Elbrus (Russian: Эльбрус) is an inactive volcano located in the western Caucasus mountain range, in Kabardino-Balkaria and Karachay-Cherkessia, Russia, near the border of Georgia. (from Wikipedia).

I have no idea why I'm so attracted to Russia. It makes no sense. Like Arkhangelsk. Arkhangelsk is a seaport on the startling White Sea (a gateway to the Arctic Ocean) that is white due to the ice and snow that covers it most of the year. Arkhangelsk was founded as a seaport by Ivan the Terrible who then allowed European traders access to it to the point it became a huge success as an international trading port.

Using nuclear-powered icebreakers, channels are broken through the solid frozen White Sea out to the warmer waters of the Bering Sea. Arkhangelsk has to survive through over 200 days of what I would call brutal winters with temps dipping down to 40 below zero; though in July it does get up to near 32 degrees Farenheit. At the time Ames filmed his show there it was 40 below zero. It attracted me. Yet, I don't think I could survive in such cold. But these Russians seem to love the cold--they thrive in it.

For some reason I like the looks of a solid white existence--snow covers even the city. The docks show huge cranes down a line of piers; huge cargo ships parked along the seafront.

And the Mount Elbrus area, near the Georgian border 1200 miles south of Moscow, WOW, what ice and snow beauty. The Caucasuses, the mountains and the people, the Balkarians.

All Russians look like tough motherfuckers. They all look wind aged. Their skin, even the women's, looks like the skin of a potato. Though they all look very healthy. As though being frozen most of their hours on earth has given them a slow life, an easy tough life--with plenty of time to reflect; of time to be alone in a wilderness world. Though, of course, even the isolated Arkhangelsk area attracts tons of Russian tourists who come to Arkhangelsk to be flown out to otherwise inaccessible islands in the White Sea, one which contains a sacred monastery that once forbade women from coming to their island to pray so the women congregated on this other island where they prayed and to this day that island is called "Women's Island" in Russian.

And Mount Elbrus is a fantastic mountain--unclimbable, the Russians say, though climbers have made it to the top, though it's a tough climb--it's mostly ice from its timberline on up the other 9,000 feet--the mountain has two peaks, both over 18,500-feet high--higher than anything in the Alps.

And I was freaked out by there not being heating in some of the restaurants and even some of the hotel rooms. Like being served a stack of hot blini served with a berry jam and a steaming hot cup of tea--and you're still wearing your parka and wool cap and the waitress serving you the steaming food is showing her breath in the ice-cold dining room's frigid air. That amazes me. Could I survive living in Arkhangelsk? Damn, I'd like to try it. Those wooden buildings--Arkhangelsk has a museum of Russian wooden architecture. Fascinating buildings, some very large, made of hard pines and maples, all dovetailed together; they used no nails on these buildings. All topped with onion domes that were made out of aspen wood to give these roofs the appearance of being made of silver. The only source of heat these wooden structures had were their ovens in their kitchens, which were simply one end of the big huge living area--ovens with no smokestacks; ovens whose smoke came out into the room to eventually exit via slots in the top of the walls leading outside. The rooms were smoky most of the time--yet, that smoke was a source of warmth, too.

The animal in me is yearning for the cold north. Siberia! Murmansk! Arkhangelsk! Russia...of all the places.

Here in New York City our Russian residents are hard to bear sometimes. A lot of Russian immigrants or naturalized citizens drive limousines. Riding with one can be trying, especially if you get to conversing with them. They will suddenly start telling you all about their lives. "I was civil engineer in Soviet Union. It was awful! Let me tell you, you don't know what it is like to live in Soviet Union. But I come here with my wife. My wife was doctor in Soviet Union. And I come here with my wife and we work hard, learn English, and we succeed, and we have two strong sons born here, they are good Americans. And my wife and I work hard, we pull ourselves up by our bootstraps, now I own my own limousine service and my wife is head nurse at Coney Island Hospital." "Alright, my friend," I say, "now let me tell you about me...." "Yes, you, of course, but first, let me tell you about my son Yerke. He's genius. He's smart boy. He's now senior at Columbia...." Blah, blah, blah and more blah.

And Russian chicks here in New York City, YIKES! Some of them are knock-down dirty good looking, with the right blonde hair, the right heights, the right bosoms, the right rear ends, the right legs, the right Whiteness--they're a bit of all right UNTIL you date one of them. Holy Nights in the Kremlin, they are first of all expensive. "I von't ride in subway. I only ride in big car." "OK, Natasha, how 'bout we get a cab?" "No! Absolutely not. I want big car--there like that stretch limo." And drink. Wow. They can drink. And then this guy I know who runs a "Marry a Russian Babe" site on the Internet tells me, "Yeah, Wolfie, they're all whores, too. They'll fuck you first date but it'll cost you something, like maybe a diamond necklace they know about down on 48th Street." A lot of Russian women work in the Diamond District here in NYC.

But here in New York City, out around Sheepshead Bay and Brighton Beach, we have a real Russian community. I've adventured out there only once. I was never really interested in the Russians except in terms of their literature and music and I was never certainly interested in the Russian way of life. There are so many "other worlds" here in New York City to be interested in: like besides that Russian world, there is an Albanian world; a fading Greek world; a fading Italian world; some parts of New York City becoming like Mexico City; in all the boroughs are the worlds of Jamaicans, Trinidadians, Dominicans, Puerto Ricans, Haitians, Cubans; and Queens is like a patchwork of worlds, worlds of Colombians, Ecuadorians, Mexicans, Panamanians, Southeast Asians, Chinese, Koreans, and Indians (both East Indians and Native Americans), and in Manhattan and Brooklyn are worlds of various African cultures: Nigerians, Senegalese, South Africans, Ghanians, et al.--HOLY MOSES, New York City is just a mixture of worlds that gel to form the world's greatest city--I THINK THAT--and believe me, if I got a chance to go live in Arkhangelsk, after the adventure wore off, I'd be homesick for New York City.

I've had a couple of chances to go to Russia. First when it was the Soviet Union. With the one I call "my real wife," (based on years together), #2, the Tex-Mex, Choctaw, Welsh one. Through my wife's multimillionaire boss, we got a chance to go to the Soviet Union starting first in Petrograd, then working our way over to Moscow. It was a tour the intentions of which were to get us to learn some Russian while also learning all about the Soviet culture and shit. A sociological tour of the CCCP paid for, ironically, by a huge Capitalist pig who was always looking for "an in road," as he called it, into a new market for his product, which was oil--mainly jet fuel.

This was at a time in our lives when our marriage was fizzling. We no longer slept together. I had already started cheating on her with my secretary at work. And she was obviously getting tired of me, though we were still strangely compatible and we didn't really fight, verbally, yes, though never loudly verbally. Why, even occasionally she'd let me sleep with her--especially after I'd impressed her--like by contributing some money to our rent and utilities. We lived on East 56th and Sutton Place in a one bedroom apartment costing us $450 a month (equivalent to $2,000-a-month in today's market)--though my wife made big bucks enough to cover it, it pissed her off when I didn't make as much money as she did and couldn't pay my share of that big load (I worked as a freelance editor--sometimes I made great money, but then there were dry spells--weeks where I made zilch). This division eventually led to our divorce (a divorce which may not have been a legitimate divorce (it was a Haitian divorce0--or at least that's what this woman worried about for the rest of her life--God help her if we were still married, after all that money she'd paid to get me out of her life and then there I would be still in her life when her will was read and I was declared due half her estate).

The day we were to leave for our Soviet Union adventure, we got to the freakin' Kennedy Airport and I couldn't find my passport. "I know I brought it, dammit." I poured one of my suitcases out all over the floor in front of the check-in point (we weren't afraid of terrorists on flights in those days, no Homeland Security bunglers or Patriot Act marshals to do a cavity search on you, though there were plenty of airplane hijackings in those days--usually revolutionary types wanting to go to Cuba). I looked everywhere for my friggin' passport but I couldn't find it. My wife was angry but quiet as I bumbled my way through my luggage. I kind of expected what she pulled next: "Well, I'm getting on the plane with or without you," and she plunged into her purse to bring out her passport and son of a bitch, out came hers, and with it, out came mine, too. She'd had my passport all along.

I loped along behind her to the plane. I had thought she had reserved a window seat for us but when the hostess took us to our seats, I was on the aisle and my wife was on the aisle seat across the aisle from me. I set up to bitching, a normal behavior for me when I think I'm getting screwed. "We reserved a window seat and the seat next to it." "I'm sorry, sir, but you did not reserve a window seat...." "Sorry, my ass, I'm the god-damn important person here, and I demand the god-damn window seat." My wife had not reserved a window seat; the hostess was right.

My wife eventually calmed me down when she got the person sitting next to her to change with me, though I was still pissed because that seat change put me next to this smelly European fat chick who was listening to some kind of rock on her earphones. I was sickenly pissed now, pouting, being belligerent, at one time telling the fat lady to fucking hold her fat slabs of fat meat in so I could sit in a little more comfort. She ignored me and kept reading her magazine and listening to rock.

We were headed for Paris, Orly, where we were to get an Aeroflot flight to Petrograd.

It was a miserable flight. Over 7 fucking hours. The fat lady smelled to high heaven by the time we landed at Orly.

My wife and I rushed over to the Aeroflot desk only to be told in sweetly broken English our flight was being delayed until tomorrow morning due to a bad storm hitting Petrograd and its airport being temporarily closed in--the storm to break late tonight--take off time 9 am tomorrow.

It was late when we taxied into Paris. The Lights of Paris were on already. My wife had called and booked us into our favorite hotel on the Place du Colbert, the Hotel du Colbert--a hotel whose furniture is all guaranteed from the time of Napoleon, and I was looking forward to being in our favorite room, Room 402. It's huge window opened onto a tight little dangling balcony from which you looked out over the Seine at Notre Dame, right there in your face, and City Island. We got to the hotel and Room 402 wasn't available, they were so very sorry, but we could have Room 200 instead. I hit the fucking ceiling. "Do you know who I am?" Of course they didn't know me from fucking Adam, but I loved going into my important person act. The worst thing I said was, "I hate you fucking Parisian bastards," and they spoke English, of course, and understood me and then they suddenly wouldn't speak anything but French, sarcastic French, too, I figured, and my wife didn't speak French either but she managed to quite the hotel clerk down enough he had a garcon take us to the room, me still steaming mad and hating Parisians with voluminous insults.

Once in the room, my wife sat me down and we had a serious discussion. "We're going back to New York in the morning. I'm not going to Russia with you like this." "It's just these Parisian bastards, Toots, trust me." "No, I don't trust you. I know you too well. I remember you in Mexico City how you treated those...." "They were little thieves, those cab drivers." "And you were cussing them out over a 3-cent overcharge--3-cents in American money, Wolfie, three cents! And we walked our asses off just because you arrogantly wouldn't pay an extra 3-fucking-cents to a poor bastard Mexican cab driver trying to make a little extra off a pompous norteamericano turista."

The next morning we didn't speak at all. I had slept in the same bed with her but when I tried to catch a little feel, she rejected me fiercely and froze me out the rest of the night. It was after 9 when we got up, so we had missed our Soviet Union flight. When we got back to Orly, I went to the Aeroflot desk but she went to the Pan-American (remember them?) desk. At the Aeroflot desk I was told that the plane was still delayed and wouldn't now leave until the afternoon, around 2.

I ran back to the Pan-Am desk. My wife was waiting for me with her hands on her hips. "Toots, we can still make the Aeroflot flight. It's delayed until 2, so you want to get some breakfast...." "No, we're going back to New York...in one hour we'll board. You can go get breakfast. I'm staying here with our luggage."

I was full of sarcasm but I kept my mouth shut. If she left me in Paris, I had no money, just an American Express card on which I already owed thousands of dollars, and a ticket to Petrograd...but I didn't even have my ticket to Petrograd either; she had those. So what was I to do? I did what I had to do. I got on that Pan-Am flight and that night back in New York City we went to dinner at our favorite Greek restaurant, had a great time, she was in wonderful spirits, but when we got back to the apartment and I tried to get a little lovin' from her, she slammed the bedroom door on my ass and I slept in my normal place, on my couch in the living room (yep, we had our own couches--hers a French provincial thing and mine a lemon-yellow moderne thing I loved and she hated). The next morning she wouldn't talk to me. "We'd be in Russia by now," I said sarcastically while sipping a cup of coffee in our dining room whose big casement window overlooked the East River and the 59th-Street Bridge.

One night later, my wife had gone to California on business, my best friend came over and we drank all night and the next dawn we wobbled our ways up onto the upper-level walkway of the 59th Street Bridge (I don't think that walkway's open any more). And while the sun came up slowly over the Pepsi Cola sign in Long Island City on the opposite shore of the river, we looked off down the river toward the Brooklyn Bridge--my friend was born under the Brooklyn Bridge in the Cherry Street Projects--he said, "You know, I understand why people jump from these bridges." "I couldn't do it," I said. "I'd rather take the shit of life than snuff myself out by leaping into that Hellish cesspool down there." "Remember old Percy Mayfield singin' 'the River's Invitation'?" "Hell yes, what a song, man, and I know what you mean. The river's calling us home--there's salvation in that river--I know, but I can take life, man, it don't bother me enough to end it all down there." "Yeah, me, too. Besides, jumpin' off bridges is a coward's way out." "I had a relative who took a leap off the highest building in my hometown." "What good did it do him?" "Well, he's remembered for that...or at least he was when I was a kid. Nobody there now probably knows who the hell he is or cares...." "Yeah, that's the trouble with time. It erases 'all things lovely'...." "E.E. Cummings, right?" "Or T.S. Eliot." "Those guys didn't commit suicide." "They were obstinate bastards." "That's what I want to be from now on, an obstinate bastard." "You gonna stay with your wife?" "What choice do I have? She's got the money." "You still bangin' your secretary?" "Yeah, and she's a great girl, man, she's real. I mean, after we've fucked, she's like a child in my arms, thanking me for giving her orgasms! Can you imagine?" "No. Women orgasming, what's that?"

So I stayed with this woman and tried to make the marriage work. Our spoiled trip was in January. By the end of February she told me one Sunday morning--she was on my couch reading the Sunday Times and I was listening to Bach under my headphones (in stereo)--that she wanted to divorce me. I simply said, "OK," put my headphones back on and returned to listening to Bach. Fifteen days later I was in Haiti staying in a Villa owned by a good friend of mine's good friend, and one day I woke up in bed with the Haitian salad woman at the Villa restaurant and I was divorced and the room was in a mess and there were two empty champagne bottles on the floor by the bed and I was naked and sweating and she was naked and truly beautiful asleep and then she jumped awake and screamed and said something in French, screamed again, and then bolted out the door still half naked. Then next night at dinner she had a black eye. She'd forgotten to tell me she was married to a very jealous man who worked in the fields with a machete all day. In spite of that threat to both me and her, she managed to be with me for a couple of hours again that night, though she did manage to get home on time.

I've often thought that if I hadn't of fucked up and had of gone on to the Soviet Union on that wonderful chance of a trip, Wife #2 and I might still be man and wife.

How many people can say they wrecked their marriage in Paris?

My second chance at a trip to Russia (in the 90s after it was Russia again) was due to my being a customer and friend to a Chicago ancient coin dealer. He had decided to start tours of Russia through a travel-agent friend of his. He wrote me a letter excited about starting these tours. This one, he wrote, was to start off first in his native Saint Petersburg--a meeting with the Saint Peterburg Coin Club and then we would all go to his home and get a real homecooked Russian meal from his mother. From Saint Pete, we were to go on to Moscow where we were to take a special privilege trip through the Hermitage, especially with a chance to go through their fabulous ancient coin collection with some leading Russian numismatists.

The whole trip was costing $3,000, so I sent him my reservation and a $1500 deposit and he sent me back my reservation and a receipt for my deposit and the itinerary. I was truly looking forward to this trip. Limited to 10 of us, all of us numismatists, me specializing in Central Asian coins, the others Russian coin collectors, one of whom was president of the US-Russian Numismatic Society.

It wasn't but about two weeks later when I got a form letter from my dealer friend. It read: "Due to a heart attack, I've had to cancel the Russian tour. Due to my condition after the heart attack, I'm sorry, but the tour will not be rescheduled. Your deposits will be refunded immediately. I appreciate your interest in the tour but unfortunately one cannot control one's fate."

I watch this Russian teevee (produced by Russian RT Television) show with this American guy--he seems real to me--he speaks great Russian and says he's been a Russian nut since he was a kid in San Jose, California--and I marvel over how damn interesting and beautiful the far reaches of Russia are, and I do long to just suddenly be like in Arkhangelsk or Murmansk or Tula or in Balkaria, but in reality, no, I will probably never ever see Russia in what's left of my life. Sad but true. In fact, I don't think I will ever be able to leave New York City, no matter how unlivable Mayor Bloomberg and his tourist industry seem determined to make it. [What's a New York City Middle Class to this little prick Mayor Bloomberg? According to his sweet and puffy campaign ads it's anyone who makes over $115,000 a year. All of his campaign ads that are trumpeting the necessity for his running for an illegal third term for mayor emphasize how Mayor Billionaire Bloomberg is concerned about "protecting our hardworking Middle-Class," which implies the other classes are not hardworkers? He's really saying he hates the fucking POOR--who rich people definitely believe aren't hardworkers and instead are a drain on New York City's tax base, the base that keeps this most-expensive city government keeping the rich in power and in control of this city's buildings, land, and great wealth). This pompous asshole, pretender aristocrat, wants to rid New York City of anyone who makes less that $115,000 a year, which means all the scumbag poor Whites, most all Blacks, most all Latinos (except crooked assholes like Pedro Espada), all fucking Haitians, all Puerto Ricans, Nuyoricans, Colombians, Ecuadorians...it doesn't matter your race, if you make less that $115,000 a year, the Mayor is going to ignore you. His affordable housing his lying ads refer to are apartments renting for $2000-a-month per room or selling outright for around 1 million dollars for a hi-floor one bedroom--up to 6 million bucks for a 3 bedroom. You've got to be rich to either rent or own an apartment in New York City now--even a fucking rathole apartment--and you have to show proof, through your income tax filings and all your credit ratings that you have substantial enough income to afford to rent or buy a New York City apartment or it's fuck you, you're in the gutter. Mayor Bloomberg, a really cocky little son of a bitch, is a natural-born liar, who got rich by pure chance, he was in the right place at the right time with the right product, who is a "ladies" man and feels all women are his to choose from since he's so bloody fucking rich and powerful! Why would a guy worth 65 billion dollars want to be mayor of New York City for? The power of course! What else? This mayor actually considers New York City "HIS" city.

Still, anyone who's lived in New York City as long as I have is nailed to the cross of this rigorous city. No way of getting down off that cross either, nor do most of us want one.

thegrowlingwolf
for The Daily Growler

Bird Lives

Charles Christopher Parker, Jr. Born August 29, 1920

Life in New York City--Too Many Saints and Not Enough Action Figures

foto by tgw, 2006

In the Street Life Is Either Fine and Dandy Or Pretty Fuckin' Hard
"No, I'm not fucking abnormal," I screamed running from the orifices of my friend the psychiatrist--Hah-vard Medical School, too, and I'd just dropped by for a little conversation, a sip or two of his always good Scotch, and this bastard ends up trying to analyze me. "I'm not fucking abnormal. Quit trying to pin that on me." We had drank maybe several too many Scotches when I happened to mention women and how enigmatic they are and different from men and the trouble I've been having distinguishing the animal from the humane part of me--the animal in me, like the wolf I am, an Alpha Wolf, and that alpha animal in me is always a slave to an Alpha Female Wolf...subservient...shy...with the "trained" (from Mark Twain) human side of me trying to tame my libido--trained in the past to be cavalier when it comes to women as ladies. Trained to be mature when it comes to loving women--or should I say mating with them? Then talk turned to why marriage is so fucking sacred. Why a man can't lust after another man's wife? Who invented morals? Who wrote the book on why we aren't animals and shouldn't act like animals--wild animals--not trained animals? But the animal side of me is trained. I'm a circus sideshow: "Come see the Wolf Man, ladies, gents, and cover the eyes of the kiddies unless you want them to develop the disease of Lycanthropy, the disease of the Wolf Man's evil intent. Look within his eyes, if you dare, and see the animal lust boiling in him as he licks his chops over the ample deliciousness of your charming wife...or, even worse, perhaps your own innocent daughter."

Suddenly my psychiatrist friend was making me as paranoid as the man who played the Wolf Man in the old black & white movie, Lon Chaney, as Lawrence Talbott, and Maria Ouspenskaya creeping through the full-moon-lit jungles of your instinctual mind warning you of your coming hirsute wickedness!

And my psychiatrist friend, and he's read Jung, I know he has, says, "Wolfie, you are having trouble dealing with this split personality you're watering with such concern to the point its grown around your brain like a vise-like vine and is perhaps driving you a bit, how can I put it simply, like 'cuckoo,' like you are flying over the cuckoo's nest."

I barged out of there shouting about my sanity. I'm like Henry Miller, I'm too sane to be insane. Perhaps insanity is salvation in my case. I've always said my older generation pioneer matriarchs when they knew they were going to die went totally "out of their minds" so when they did finally die, they died in a fantasy world, a chaotic nightmare of a world to some of them but a light rather limerick-bound fairyland to those like my poet-minded poet grandmother who went comically out of her mind right before she died.

Yes, I've been hiding out. Yes, I am into a musical in 4 acts based on one tune of Lester Young's--and that's all I'm sayin' about it. Never talk about your work in progress, Hemingway warned, or you won't have anything left to write about or create from. What I'm into now is creative stuff. A panoramic staged picture running 'round my mind's theater.

Plus, I've had to confront some out-of-bounds urges within me--especially night before last when love swept itself into my life for 3 or so hours and I had to jig between my mature composure and the horny little kid who is also madly active within my hodge-podge of personalities--none of them split, all of them a whole, just like Allah is All, so are my personalities--all for one and one for all--hey, I like that as a motto....

All for One; and One for All.

I can run for president on that slogan--YES I CAN!

And let me step further outside my psychiatrist friend's office and say, "I'm already sick of President Obama." I just read where our seniors depending on Social Security to survive are not getting a cost of living increase this year even though Social Security a few years back guaranteed seniors on Social Security a 4.5% cost of living increase for years to come. What a shame! The reason? Obama's Administration is jacking with Social Security. Hell, his old Clintonista advisor Larry "Let's Dump Our Toxic Waste in Africa" Summers, yep, he's gettin' rich of We the People's earnings, said only a few months ago that they were still planning on privatizing Social Security. How cruel are these two-faced bastards? The White Males who rule us like they're royalty! Like they're divine royalty.

I mean this admiration of Ted Kennedy that's ballyhooing all over all our media. Obama bullshitting us by saying Ted Kennedy was the greatest Senator EVER! Get the hell out of here! [Now President Obama says he's going to do Uncle Teddy's eulogy at his big "Off to American Glory and Sainthood" funeral.] [Here's a family, the Kennedys, that President Obama at one time had he have tried to approach a Kennedy house front door would have been driven by a Black butler around back to the servant's entrance of whatever Kennedy mansion, compound, or wherever he'd a tried to "visit." Old Bootlegger Joe, I guarantee you, would have never let a Black man come anywhere near any of his many front doors.]

And Uncle Ted is going to be buried by his fucking up brothers in Arlington Memorial Cemetery [JFK killed by a combination CIA/Mafia effort (JFK failed at the Bay of Pigs invasion) and Bobby killed by maybe the same bunch--those who didn't want him to be president since he was Attorney General and had been actively going after the Mafia with his Justice Department--check it out: the REAL Bobby Kennedy story]!

A fucking saint: Uncle Teddy, Daddy Joe the Bootlegger's least-favorite son--Teddy was dumber than Joe, Jr, JFK, and Bobby--like his father, Teddy wasn't the brightest pup in the litter.

Here's a man who when he ran for President was booed and castigated by his own Party! Here's a man who was driving while very drunk, and made a bad turn onto a Chappaquiddick bridge, drove his car off into the ocean waters there, miraculously escaped from the car, then claiming he lost his memory, he wobbled up as if dazed to one of his fabby clubs there on Martha's Vineyard...still drunk, after partying hearty with his office staff and security goons--what a sordid fucking life. And because he's a Kennedy and a Massachusetts Senator, he's forgiven for killing this innocent girl who was so excited at being at one of Uncle Teddy's wild parties and maybe perhaps getting to shack with old Teddy--can you imagine her bragging around the office back in the District of Corruption? "Jeannie, listen, I gotta tell somebody. I slept with Uncle Teddy Kennedy this weekend on Martha's Vineyard." "Oh girl, I gotta hear all about it. How was he? A Kennedy! You go girl." Instead of getting laid by Uncle Teddy, she got killed by him. She was dead and he got to live on another whole bunch of years in privilege and splendor, earning his wealth off the backs of the US workingclass. Go back and read the story of that 1969 incident in our Greatest-Ever Senator's life (the Vietnam War was still going on, too). Here's a man who married a woman named Joan Bennett. Being married to Uncle Teddy drove Joan to the bottle; drove her so far into the bottle that she got to going out at night to bars and picking up dudes and eventually who got busted from driving while drunk (now ain't that coincidental) and was facing jail time. What does Uncle Teddy do? He divorces Joan. It's OK with the Boston Catholic Diocese, old Bootlegger Joe paid enough tribute to that Diocese they weren't about to condemn his least-worthy son, Teddy, to a secular grave just because he broke a Roman Catholic law, he got divorced. Also, whatever happened to Teddy and Joan's one-legged son? Strange how there's no mention of any of this shit in all the glorious Teddy the Greatest Senator Who Ever Lived Tributes--though there didn't seem to be that big a line passing old Teddy's flag-draped coffin at the JFK Presidential Library, which We the People own.

After Uncle Teddy shucked and jived his way out of the killing of Mary Jo Kopeckne, the son of a bitch had the nerve to run for reelection to his Senate seat and winning it back! The insane people of Massachusetts had forgiven this native son and Kennedy of murder. The Sacred Kennedys. The family of a potato-eatin' Shanty Irish father who got wealthy in Boston Irish Society, enough that his weak-eyed sonny boy, Joseph, bought his way into Boston Latin and then Hah-vard (where he didn't make very good grades). After Hah-vard, this potato-famine Shanty Irishman's son went on to do some stock brokering and through his father's political connections get involved in some real estate schemes; legit schemes that got him ahead enough he got up next to John F. Fitzgerald the mayor of Boston enough to marry his sequestered virgin daughter and begin immediately bopping babies out of her virginal womb like a good potato-famine Irish Catholic--and soon Joe Kennedy was making tons of money--especially off his bootlegging during Prohibition, though, like all the Kennedy bad stuff, it's swept under that golden carpet that protect divine royalty like the Kennedys assume they are.

Daddy Joe went on to work for Bethlehem Steel--then went on to buy the Chicago Merchandise Mart, at one time the largest building in the world--yep, old Bootlegger Joe was tight with Chicago politicians and BOOTLEGGERS! Why, during this time, Bootlegger Joe became a legitimate liquor peddler:

From Wikipedia:
Allegedly these [financial investments] included bootlegging, the illegal importation of alcohol into the United States during Prohibition, though these allegations have never been proven.^{[1][not in citation given]} (It has been substantiated that toward the end of Prohibition, Kennedy and James Roosevelt traveled to Scotland to buy distribution rights for Scotch whisky. In addition, Kennedy had purchased spirits-importation rights from Schenley, a firm in Canada.^[2])
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After becoming a big buddy of President Frankie Delano Roosevelt (an aristocrat), through his connections with Bethlehem Steel and FDR's being head of the Navy Department (they contract ships to be built), FDR made Joe Kennedy head of the SEC! Wow, look how connected even the Kennedys are to Wall Street.

I tried to flee this chaotic reality that is boiling around me. I tried to get away by reading. I tried to get away by writing poetry. I tried to get away by ignoring it all. Like President Obama wants to keep on keeping on with the very criminal doings of the little spoiled rich brat prick, G.W. Bush, who's brought to us by another divinely royal American family, the God-damn Bushes--all of 'em crooked as snakes at night all the way back to old Sam Bush and his iron foundry in Ohio. We the People's hard work made these worthless chiselers fabulously wealthy.

Uncle Teddy is reposing for two decaying days in JFK's Presidential Library in Boston. Guess who paid for that library? Do you know how many presidential libraries around the country We the People own? Did you know We the People own 85% of the whole State of Nevada? Do you know how many buildings in the USA WE the People own? Do you know how many cars and trucks and ships and airplanes We the People own? How wide a swath of wilderness lands We the People own? How the hell are we in debt? Why not sell the Communist Chinese Nevada? I wouldn't miss Nevada. Vegas? Reno? Well, maybe Lake Tahoe, but, Carson City, Henderson, Hoover Dam, hell, sell 'em to the Commie Chinese.

I liked where my fellow Growler said they should push old Teddy off that bridge in Chappaquiddick--burying him in that evil water. Instead, he'll get the glory burial with his divine brothers amidst all those poor slobs who gave their lives for WARS started by nearly every fucking president we've ever had--WAR. Boy, do our presidents love WAR.

And oh boy how much is President Obama enjoying being Commander in Chief! WAHOOO. Just taking over where G.W. Bush left off. I read where over 500 American troops have now been killed in Afghanistan.

And today this son of a bitch Obama has brought John Brennan back into our government. JOHN BRENNAN. Do you know who this little scoundrel is? And Obama has giving him a post.... I can't believe this son of a bitch! Obama may be insane, but I'm not, dammit.

Freud could tell me--the many personalities of Barack Obama--the half white man.

You see, folks, the trouble is, we are all living within a Plantation Economy. The White Male still rules the fields and the Big House and Miss Ann is still the Queen on the real Throne. A Plantation Economy needs CHEAP LABOR to make its Massuhs filthy rich and able to send their sons to Hah-vard--or if they're really whacko rightwing, then send their sons to Yale where they only have to make Ds to pass Yale Business (Clown) School and go on from Skull and Bones and maybe sucking some S&B member's dicks to become President of the USA. Or, you can follow the Kennedy boyz and go to Hah-vard Law (even Blacks eventually got to go to Hah-vard).

Anarchy, please! Yet, an anarchist in this country is the same as a Muslim or an Atheist or a Socialist--the scumbags of the earth--the evil versus the GOOD--and you get GOD from GOOD but you get LIVE from EVIL. Give me LIFE, fuck Liberty, and I'll handle the DEATH end of the bargain.

I'm sick of President Obama and his now-canned-sounding speeches. He's TRAINED. He was trained by Hah-vard Law School how to declaim, how to exhort, how to deliver a closing. Obama is TRAINED. "Yes We Can" is beginning to look like "NO WE AIN'T."

I am not insane! So why am I said to be so WRONG...it seems.

thegrowlingwolffromoutofexile
for The Daily Growler

A GROWLER ERRATO: Our copyeditor--he's a horse remember--missed a biggy. It seems the bank president our President was playing golf with on Martha's Vineyard wasn't from USB, but UBS--HOLY JESUS, the Swiss Bank who hid all those hidden corporate bank accounts--remember--and they were also receivers of bail out money from Brother Obama.

Here's Amy Goodman (from rabble.ca) writing about it:

It looked like it was business as usual for President Barack Obama on the first day of his Martha's Vineyard vacation, as he spent five hours golfing with Robert Wolf, president of UBS Investment Bank and chairman and CEO of UBS Group Americas. Wolf, an early financial backer of Obama's presidential campaign, raised $250,000 for him back in 2006, and in February was appointed by the president to the White House's Economic Recovery Advisory Board. Economic recovery for whom?

Interestingly, Wolf's appointment came in the same month that UBS agreed to pay the U.S. $780 million to settle civil and criminal charges related to helping people in the U.S. avoid taxes. Not to worry. UBS, an ailing bank with a pre-existing condition, had great insurance coverage. It was actually receiving $2.5 billion in a backdoor bailout from bailed-out insurance giant AIG. Sen. Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, said, "It looks like we're simply laundering this money through AIG." UBS, this bank that shelters wealthy tax dodgers, was actually being bailed out by hardworking U.S. taxpayers.

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So there ya go, it wasn't the CEO of USBancorp, a man named Wilson, it was Robert Wolf--isn't that ironic--another Wolf Man. How crazy is President Obama?

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Here's Wikipedia on John Brennan:

John O. Brennan is the Assistant to the President for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism under United States President Barack Obama. An "Assistant to the President" is the highest rank that any White House staffer can hold. He was interim director of the National Counterterrorism Center immediately after its creation in 2004 through 2005, and since 2005 has served as CEO of The Analysis Corporation.^[1] He advised Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama on foreign policy and intelligence issues.^[2] Since 2007, Brennan has served as Chairman of the Intelligence and National Security Alliance. It was assumed early on by some that Brennan would be appointed next Director of the Central Intelligence Agency by Obama.^[3] Brennan withdrew his name from consideration in November 2008, however, over concerns that his nomination would be a distraction, due to his previous associations with controversial harsh CIA interrogation techniques.^[4] Brennan's responsibilities as Deputy National Security Advisor include overseeing plans to protect the country from terrorism and respond to natural disasters.^[5]

from Wikipedia

The Daily Growler Tribute to Uncle Ted Kennedy

All Along the New York City Watch Tower (Which Is Actually in Brooklyn)

foto by tgw, 2006

Doin' Some Trackin' in the Jungle
thegrowlingwolf has taken off to points unknown--probably to celebrate his and the Prez's birthday--out to Kansas City?...except it's hot in Kansas City right now...up to Harlem? it's Charles Parker Jr's time of year, too; August 29th, 1920--the Charles (they call him Charlie) Parker Jazz Festival is coming up the weekend of August 29th here in New York City up at Mount Morris Park in Harlem. It started down in Tompkins Square Park on the Lower East Side back in the who knows because Parker once lived on Tompkins Square Park (he lived there with Chan and her kids), so they had the first of many Charles Parker Jazz Festivals down there. Now they're up in Mount Morris Park. Yes, Parker did live in Harlem. He lived in the same building with Lester Young one time and used to hang out in Lester's room jivin' and playin' and listening to records--Lester talks about knowing Charles in one of his interviews. thegrowlingwolf has been studying Lester Young's life for the past 2 years with the intentions of writing a screenplay on Lester's life and death and destruction but those intentions were throttled by time, money, and inability to hire help so the screenplay never panned out. Now we've heard rumors that he's working on a new thing about Prez--a staged presentation. That's what we've heard through our Gladys Knight and the Pips Grapevine--yes, we have a Marvin Gaye Grapevine, too, but it's for spiritual rumors while Gladys's is for current, up-to-date rumors.

So with the Wolf Man gone, we here at the The Daily Growler's ostentatious, outrageously designed ultra-floor offices, with hallucinating views of industrial-smoked Jersey off in the distance of our sunset-staring eyes, and nothing to do and not wanting to do anything, we decided to do some cruisin' through our fav sites at the right of our blog...links...the links, and writing a blog is like playing golf.

And Speaking of Playing Golf
President Obama is back from vacationing at the Grand Canyon...so now he's vacationing on Martha's Vineyard, Oak Bluffs settled originally by Black Freemen back in those good ol' Colonial days, so Martha's Vineyard is a cool place for a Black family to visit and mingle--except now Martha's Vineyard is swamped with the upward and ever drifting up even higher and owned mostly now by celebrity billionaires like Diana "Married a Rich Scandinavian" Ross; Dan "Phony Blues Imitating White Brother" Ackroyd and his ilk; of course Uncle Teddy Kennedy and his old District of Corruption swingin' party crowd used to boogie-down over on Chappaquidick...and we're sure the President and the Mrs. will go over on one of the Kennedy jets--don't let a Kennedy fly the damn thing--to visit Uncle Teddy and the Kennedy clan--is Uncle Teddy dying at Hyannis? Wouldn't it be cool if they took Uncle Teddy over to Chappaquidick and dumped him off the edge of that famous bridge. Maybe that would release the poor old Mary Jo Kopeckne's revengeful spirit that must haunt the place. We're sorry, but we just can't get respect up for old Uncle Teddy--sorry. Not if you pull up the wool our legends pull over our eyes and look at that old sorry specimen with a principled eye; he doesn't measure up to us as being much of anything more than a Kennedy. He wasn't very affective as a senator, was he? Most of his life he was drunk--he and his wife, Joan, were stone alcoholics--sloppy drunk in bars all over everywhere. Remember Teddy and his Chivas Regal at the Palm Beach bars? Down around the time when one of his nephews went out one night with Uncle Teddy and ended up being charged with rape after he picked up one of the Palm Beach striver drinker/dancer/hustler girls at one of Uncle Teddy's fav bars. Oh yeah, what a life Uncle Teddy got to live--on We the People's gracious giving of 30% of our earnings--what we work our asses off for--to these crooked deceiving asshole bastards! We the People have supported the Kennedy clan and the Bush clan since way back when the first one of them got a high-paying government contract or got a high-paying, high-ranking, powerful government job--and the privilege of running their children for public office in order to put them on the dole.

So President Obama is on Martha's Vineyard today (Tues. the 25th of August). And guess what he's doing, speaking of playing golf. Yes, he's playing golf. And guess with whom...no, not Tiger Woods; no, not his wife and kids--not with Good Ole Asskissing Joe Biden--no, our President is playing golf today with the CEO of USB, Richard Davis, USB meaning US Bancorp! Poor old Middle-Class Dick Davis only made 5 billion dollars with his little chartered in Delaware (Hey, Joe Biden, there ya go! Why are so many of our corporations and credit card companies chartered or located in Delaware? Why is that, Joe? Explain that to us) banking company. This on the same day President Obama says he's keeping Georgie Porgie Bush's goon as head of the Federal Reserve--this little Bernecke asshole--and President Obama is buttering up this banking-industry crook as being the man who has steered our economy away from a Great Depression and back on track toward recovery. Based on what, you ask? Not on the rising employment rate. The employment rate is dropping daily. Jobs are being wiped out daily. So based on what this recovery? Dropping foreclosures? But foreclosures are up 37% since the banks and financial bums ripped us off with the help of old wizened Allan Greenspan, this Ivy Leaguer crook Bernecke, the solid crook Hank Paulson, the evil sidewinder Robert Rubin, and the other Goldman-Sachs good ole boys who are swarming around President Obama--hey, the Chicago Southside Community Organizer is now working his organizing magic on Martha's Vineyard with Bancorp Pirate Dickie Boy Davis. What a disappointment this Obama character has become. Don't bank on his ass. If you do, you're doomed. George Bush and the Bush Family Empire and the New World Order lives on--"Yes We Can" no longer has any meaning. Now Obama's loyal are shouting "We Still Can, So Why Can't You?" Obama ignores them; he's playing golf with a banker and Wall Street gambler, his kind of White man. By the way, President Obama also announced we will continue to kidnap innocent people who look too much Muslim for our taste off the streets of anywhere in the world, including the USA, and ship them off to foreign countries to be interrogated. Except now President Obama says these solid democratic countries, like Syria and Egypt, where we send these poor devils to be incarcerated and tortured are now swearing on the Christian Bible that they will no longer torture these prisoners but instead will make their stay in their countries like being at the Martha's Vineyard Country Club where our President is playing golf today with the CEO of US Bancorp. How brazen is that?

Which brings us to a very interesting typically stupid, Yahoo lawsuit they say's developing in here in "make your fame" New York City. The New York Daily (Kitty Litter Box Liner Paper) News--oh no, someone has already thrown our copy away--either that or we have no "bathroom" tissue in the art nouveau office crapper and The Daily News is being frightfully utilized in a substitute roll back there. Anyway, according to the NY Daily News, a Fashion Institute student named Amy Pork, if we recall her name correctly (or incorrectly, we don't care), called an upward striving young potential NYC potential almost-model (not yet a supermodel--a striving model means she's not really a model yet--but she's out in the social elite circles playing a model (with a lot of humping in her hips)--hanging at "in" joints like Cipriani's down on 42nd Street in the once cathedral-like Bowery Savings Bank that is now a chic-chic phony ooooh-so-private club--you know the kind, where the big shaved-head black guy wearing a Guinea teeshirt showing off awesome pythons blocks you at the door; or it's a little rat-fink punk kid from Canarsie Queens, you know the kind, with the motor-oil greasy hair and the "The Spilled Guts of a Cat" [a punk rock band we invented just then] teeshirt with the pack of cigs roll-pocketed in one sleeve blocking your way at the door. Nobody here at the Growler in their "right" or "left" mind would ever want to go in that rip-off joint. It's owned and operated (he's just opened another one in Lower Manhattan) by the young fool son of the original Cipriani family that Hemingway made famous in several of his books--especially Across the River and Through the Trees, Cipriani's in Venice being one of his favorite watering holes. Later, the Ciprianis ran Harry's Bar in Harry and Leona Helmsley's Helmsley Hotel--the famous Cipriani in Venice was named Harry as well as old Harry Helmsley--the Helmsley Hotel the one on Madison Avenue that is built over the old mansion that used to house Random House Publishers when Bennett Cerf was the publisher--the Modern Library was created in that old mansion--and also housed the Catholic Diocese at one time, we think--now it's an overpriced crummy hotel (full of bedbugs probably)--we haven't treaded that way in years--not since some of us worked on Madison Avenue, right across the street from it in one case.

So, back to our story: this Fashion Institute student wrote on her blogger.com blog that this striving model was a "skank" and a "ho." Those two words really pissed the striving model off. Then Amy Pork added with sweet vixeny venom that the striving model had been posing very "explicitly sexual" for sexy-photo-alert photographers that hang around the party bars, especially an "on all fours with her sweet rump high in the air for easy entrance" shot that was taken of the striving model while she was out partying hearty at Cipriani's (obviously these broads have money--we here at the Growler assume they get money by doin' a little ho'n on the side; what say? Otherwise, how the hell can they afford to hang at a dump like Cipriani's?). Anyway, the striving model got so double pissed at Amy Pork, she forced Google to reveal to her who the hell Amy Pork was--never give your right name on a blog, we add as advice--just like Fats Waller said--"Oh no, don't ever give your right name! Oh no!" Google, however, kowtowed to the striving model's insistent bitching and revealed to her Amy Pork's real name--and the striving model released Amy Pork's name to the press--can you believe this bullshit? This bullshit is going on while you perhaps are wondering how you're going to survive until your next paycheck. Or maybe while your knocking back a handful of Oxycontin because the doctor just told you you have operable cancer but since you don't have the right healthcare, you're not going to be able to afford to live. While this is happening to you, a New York City striving model is out partying hearty at Cipriani's with the fabby party crowd--not a worry in the world with these folks--or maybe she was ho'n with a politician--oh boy, what fun goes on here in New York City while thousands are dying, thousands are homeless, thousands just today lost their jobs, thousands are without enough money to eat, thousands are on the verge of suicide, but then, too, thousands are making another million bucks today, thousands are making tens of millions of bucks a day, and the inheritance youth are out in droves blowing daddy and mommy's Baby Boomer inherited and "worked for" money--oh, we're sorry--most people are rich because they're honest, we forgot.

So, listen to this now, Amy Pork now turns her venom because she is so pissed off away from the striving model and onto those rich bastards at Google. She's pissed because Google released her name to the striving model after they swore in their blog privacy policy that they didn't do such stuff, though of course they obviously do do such stuff because they damn sure gave up Amy's real name about as fast as they turned over those names to the Commie Chinese when the People's Republic threatened to throttle Google out of the huge China marketplace--Google and Yahoo caved.

Darlin' Amy Pork has now threatened Google with a 12.1 million buck lawsuit! Hot damn. And this article ends by saying the Fashion Institute student and slanderous blogger has hired one of the nation's leading attorneys to handle her case. Again, we ask, how does a nobody like Amy Pork afford "one of the nation's leading attorneys"?--it must be pro bono we suppose, signifying that Amy must have a pretty good case. Amy Pork, in case you're male and interested in such stuff, is a fierce-faced Asian-American young woman, pretty, thought hot we're sure by male students--except some might argue that male students at the Fashion Institute aren't interested in anything about women except their clothes. Good luck, Amy Pork, on getting your 12.1 million--well, let's see, it won't be that much after the nation's leading attorney takes his cut--or after the state, city, and Feds take their cuts--poor Amy, she'll have...oh, hell, she'll still be able to start her own fashion industry with what's left--so soon, folks, look for the Amy Pork label in your clothes. Also, the striving model will certainly get an offer to jump in bed with old Heff out at the Playboy Mansion--or maybe she'll prefer to go the Larry Flynt Hustler route!

Also in the New York Daily (Birdcage Liner) News is a photo of our New York State governor--yep, good ole David Patterson--out in the Hamptons--"Partying in the Hamptons" the caption under the photo says--with his arm around--and he's smiling at the camera like a Cheshire Cat--guess who? If you said Paris Hilton's MOTHER, you are correct. Partying in the Hamptons with Paris Hilton's mother. Holy SHIT, as the Wolf Man would growl, what a worthless bunch of shitheads we elect to lead us. How dare these politicians be living it up out in the Hamptons at the same time claiming New York State is broke, is raising taxes, is closing down human services, is adding tolls to bridges that are supposed to be free. Plus, these sorry Dumbocrat bastards in Albany (New York's Capital City) have BRIBED this outright criminal Pedro Espada character, truth out saying David Patterson and the bigwig Dumbos paid that little asshole creep & criminal from Dah Bronx by giving him 500,000 bucks and giving his worthless son a state gig paying $150,000-a-year in order to get this Latino weasel to come back over to the Dumbocrat side so the Dumbos now have a tie vote against the Repugnicans. We were happy to read, by the way, that old fucking fool Joe Bruno, former State bigwig Repugnican, has been held over for trial in State court--it has to do with Joe Bruno misusing the millions of play money these assholes receive from corporations, the Mafia, the construction industry, the real estate developers (one of whom is the ex-Senator from Long Island, a real crooked little weasel, Al Dimato, who now deals in building unwanted malls around New York State--you know, where the state condemns a neighborhood as a blemish on the countryside and gives it away to Al and his gang to develop as a mall.) FOOLS. And how big a'fools are We the People of the USA? We keep electing these sidewinders, the tricksters, these clowns with the constant put-down smirks on their faces, always talking down like a stern parent to We the stupid people--God, it's enough to turn you revolutionary.

Please Google, don't reveal all our names to the world because we're slandering so many great patriotic Americans and by openly backing revolution! Here, one of us will confess to you: "My name is ARNOLD SWARZENEGGER. I am Guv-ee-knor uff Callie-forn-ee-yah, und I am married to auf Kennedy. Ja vol. And, yes, I work for The Daily Growler." There. Now everybody knows.

Or...what if Amy Pork sues The Daily Growler! We bailin', folks. See y'all in Guantanamo.

thestaff
for The Daily Growler
-----------------------
from the Existentialist Cowboy

It was not sufficient that GOP policies had enriched only the very, very rich. As a result, just one percent of the nation now owns more than some 95 percent of the rest of us combined! But the greedy bastards wanted to own all of it! They wanted your retirement! They wanted the monies you paid into Social Security over the course of your lifetime! Joe the Plumber recently called Social Security a joke --not because he understands why it is coveted by the GOP. He is merely the recipient of the 'memo'. Stealing your Social Security is still very high on the GOPs list of great things it wants to fuck up permanently! We should take Joe and Palin seriously. The world is endangered by its idiots.

From theexistentialistcowboy over on the right side of this blog--we can't make the link here; we're too dumb.
-----------------------------------------------------------------

The Prez--born 100 years ago, August 27, 1909; died 50 years ago in March of 1959.

Charles Parker, Jr. born August 29, 1920; died March 12, 1955.
Both were born in August and both died in March.
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Charlie Parker Jazz Festival 2009

The Charlie Parker Jazz Festival annually assembles some of the finest musicians in the world who reflect Parker’s musical individuality and genius, to promote appreciation for this highly influential and world-renowned artist. The two days of FREE concerts take place in neighborhoods where Charlie Parker lived and worked, in Harlem’s Marcus Garvey Park and the Lower East Side's Tompkins Square Park.

On both days, the music starts at 3:00 PM.

Marcus Garvey Park
Saturday, August 29
Frank Wess Quintet
Gary Bartz
Jose James
Aaron Parks

Tompkins Square Park
Sunday, August 30
Cedar Walton Quartet
Papo Vazquez & Pirates Troubadors
Pyeng Threadgill Dred Scott Trio

Who?
Gary Bartz has been around since kingdom come; so have Frank Wess ("Big Shiny Stockings") and Cedar Walton...BUT, who the hell are Jose James, Aaron Parks, Papo Vazquez & Pirates Troubadors (is that the right spelling, Papo?), Pyeng Threadgill (Henry's daughter?), and Dred Scott?

How lame is the current jazz scene in NYC that that's the best bunch of bands they can pull together for a Charlie Parker Jazz Festival? Frank Wess can't cut the Bird...neither can Gary Bartz--Cedar Walton's a Hank Jones-type pianist--can he cut a Parker tune like say Bud or say Dodo Marmarosa could? Of all that bunch, we'd listen to Wess and Cedar Walton--the others, who cares?

thestaff
for The Daily Growler

Living Open-Eyed in Chaos in New York City

A Wet Blanket Over the World
It is as though a wool blanket was thrown over New York City yesterday, it was suffocatingly hot, August 21, 2009. Wow! Zowwie! Yikes! Eight years after Little Boy Bush started his faux presidency's gift to us, TWO economy-draining, morale-draining, polarizing, dark-side-of-the-coin WARS. WARS he combined into ONE big WORLD WAR, after Unka Dick Cheney put his manipulating hand up G.W.'s ass making the decision for him, which he declared a WAR ON TERROR! Wow! Zowwie! Yikes! [I steal "Yikes" from the late great Bugs Bunny--and I say "late great" because I think Bugs died when Mel Blank, Bugs's voice, died. Mel's son tried to keep the Blankness in the voices but he failed miserably--his voice just didn't hit these characters square on the head like his father's had. Bugs just wasn't Bugs anymore. Porky wasn't Porky. Daffy Duck wasn't Daffy. Yosemite Sam wasn't Yosemite Sam.]

So here we go again, WOW! ZOWWIE! YIKES! According to President Obama in his Afghan WAR speech, and his ex-Bush Baby military staff (Gates, McCrystal, et al.) agree with him, the WAR on TERROR hasn't been very successful at all. Obama plays the WAR on TERROR down, though I'm sure his advisory staff, both civilian and military, still believe that the world is full of terrorists chomping at the bit for a chance at blowing away another New York City skyscraper or to attack our sacred Pentagon, with the White (Man's) House always in their sights, too. Are you scared shitless yet?

Right after 9/11 here in New York City you should have seen the politicians and the cops all wearing their American flag lapel pins (did you notice how quickly the Communist Chinese mass produced those American flag pins and had them on the market so immediately?) I mean it seems to me like by the very next day Mayor Guiliani and his gang of thugs had their American flag pins on. Even Bernie Keric had one on. (I've often wondered if old Bernie had his on when he gave celebrity publisher Judith Regan the "greatest fuck" she'd ever had in her life! Remember, Judy spread 'em for Bernie while laying up on a dusty window sill in a Battery Park City high-floor apartment (paid for by We the Citizens of New York City) overlooking Ground Zero, which was still smoldering. How's that for high livin' at the public's expense! Think of that--and I'm not being vulgar, I'm being real-- Judith Regan had her celebrity vagina being ground into that Ground Zero contaminated dust, full of Saturn knows what, including the dust of obliterated human beings, by old lusty lunging and raunchy panting Bernie Keric--his faithful little wife at his home in Jersey watching as the construction workers were finishing adding on to Bernie's house there courtesy of We the Citizens of New York City!)

So President Obama (along with his White mother-figure (yep, Freud; I apologize) replacement, Hilary Clinton) agrees that they should put a hush on the WAR on TERROR...let's see, also, they have to take our attention away from the mess we've created in Iraq, where we are now suffering big time again in terms of lives lost and Iraqis blown to bits all over the streets and the marketplaces. Everywhere overthere except in the billion-dollar largest embassy in the world, the US Embassy in the highly protected Green Zone (walled off from the fenced off hostile neighborhoods of Baghdad)--though we are still sending out patrols over there and we're still sending our troops out to ride shotgun on the contractor convoys--and there are still 100,000 contractors in Iraq and we are still employing Blackwater (they've changed their names so many times over the past month it's hard to really peck them out any more but it can be done and has been done) militia men and snipers to ride along with and protect the many diplomatically enabled visitors that are pouring into Baghdad daily (like Joe Biden might decide to drop in unexpectedly on Air Force Two or whichever one of We the People's airplanes he decides to fuel up and fly over to Baghdad--a trip that probably costs We the People at least a million--no problem for Joe Biden from Du Pont-owned Delaware--where money grows on the Agent-Orange-burning trees of Vietnam--but the Du Pont Family are considered very patriotic (even though one of the patriarch's of the family was a Nazi sympathizer) and enviable human beings--actually, their privilege has lifted them slightly above the human-being designation--"You Go, Joe!").

God-damn, I'm out of breath ranting--growling mad at the stupidity of my brethren and sistren (is that a word?) Amuricans. Like those who don't see now that President Obama is forced to have us focus on the WAR in Afghanistan, a WAR already, as set up by G.W. Bush, our only ever faux president, felt nationally to be a "sort of" righteous WAR--and it is Obama's righteous WAR--why G.W. "Not Guilty" Bush passed it on to President Obama--but rather than flinging off that WAR as disgusting and saying he was ending even that WAR immediately (like he said he was going to do in Iraq (has he done that yet?)), President Obama has accepted that WAR as a righteous WAR, as if accepting it as a serious WAR in the first place, a WAR against the Afghanistan people who've not done one god-damn terrorist thing to We the People of the US. The 9/11 "terrorist" attack (some still say it was an inside job) didn't originate and come from Afghanistan! Nor did the Taliban have anything to do with it. Afghanistan's sin? Under the Taliban government, they gave safety and protection to Osama bin Laden! [The alternative to "Osama" on my ABC spellcheck was "Obama."] Osama the dissident Saudi-Arabian (where have I heard Saudi-Arabians in relationship to 9/11 before...hmmmm?) who before 9/11 was an employee of the CIA working with the Mujaheddin in trying to help the Taliban kick the Ruskies out of the place. Afghanistan, a land once so great and powerful in ancient times--home of the Hephthalites (the White Huns), the nomadic Yu-Chei, the Mongols led by Genghis Khan; Timurid; the Kushan; the Bukharans, the Chaghatayids, the Chach!

Obama's WAR in Afghanistan is also now a "search and destroy"-Vietnam War-type of WAR. Blackwater militia it is now revealed are running our drone plane air force not out of a base in Nevada, nope, but out of a base in Afghanistan--drone planes carrying missiles that are computer-targeted by Blackwater goons--then flown toward their designated targets--one yesterday hitting a Pakistan village and of course missing the Taliban and Al-Queda terrorists and killing 15 mostly women and children. Hey, but our president shoots back, "Though we've killed probably way over 500 innocent women and children with this drone program, we did last week, I believe it was, kill the keiko-muckity-muck head of the Taliban. So to me, and I do offer my sympathies to those 'accidentally' in the line of fire who perhaps did lose their lives, though my generals tell me you can't believe Taliban claims any more than you could believe General Colon's Pal's casualty numbers during our Vietnamese Victory, I believe that one Taliban leader killed is worth the accidental loss of whatever other people were accidentally killed in these successful, I feel, and General Stanley McCrystal agrees with me, attacks on the Taliban...er-ah, that's weird, Richard Gibbs, I didn't mention Al-Queda...I said 'there are still FORCES here'...that's good, 'forces here who want to attack America and kill Americans'...Richard, that is good, man."

The total of US troops killed in these two sorry worthless WARS is currently, the records aren't clear, over 5,000 (and this figure does not include contractor deaths; nor Blackwater deaths--or are Blackwater troops invincible?). The number of US troops being killed in Afghanistan now daily is on the rise. Plus our worn-out troops are still being blasted along with those poor fucking Iraqi people everyday now in Iraq.

Oh and look at the glorious democracy we've created in Afghanistan. I notice both candidates in the big bad Afghanistan Democratic Election are claiming victory. So why not let 'em both be President of that country? What would that matter? Why do We the People of the US need a President? Why is it societies love to be ruled by ONE person? Look at the power the US president has. G.W. Bush, for instance, literally sent our troops into lose/lose WAR situations, lying like a cowardly dog about the reason we were sending our troops into lose/lose WAR situations. Look at all the freedoms this asshole (and Bill Clinton, too, the originator of the Patriot Act) took away from us and gave himself and the presidency! Look at how as Commander in Chief of the armed forces (instead of overseeing them and having them do their real job, defend our borders) our President can actually stage WARS behind our backs and then suddenly spring them on us and justify them with lies based on the advice of old worn-out military potentates and Neo-Con WARMONGERERS.

Another question that bothers me is why did G.W. Bush hang Saddam Hussein by the neck so fast? Hussein knew how to control his people. Look at the mess we've created in Iraq at the moment. Look at it. One hundred and 20 people killed and another streetload of them injured or maimed yesterday (Thursday) in a car bombing. What kind of Democracy is that? As an Afghanistan friend of mine says (he sells me my coffee every morning--Thursday he was wearing a cool teeshirt that read, "I Am American-Afghanistan!" scrolled over crossed Afghan and US flags), "We had no car bombings in Afghanistan until the US forces came. We want peace, not bombs and death."

Couldn't we have learned something from Saddam? Well, of course, we could have except what we could have learned from him was dangerous to G.W. Bush, Donald Rumsfeld, Old Pappy Bush himself, Unka Dick Cheney--by damn, it makes sense to me now, that bastard had to be killed and thereby SHUT UP! There ya go. Just like he executed Black men when he was Governor of Texas ("The Death Row State"), he executed poor old sad-eyed Saddam who his search-and-destroy special forces had found living in a hole in his homeland's earth, wearing a tattered teeshirt, unshaven...but, hey, I'm getting nostalgic here--I think most Americans would have throttled old Saddam to death themselves if given the opportunity he was portrayed as being so EVIL.

Believe it or not, our Supreme Court of Court Jesters recently stopped the lynching of an "innocent" Black man down in Savannah, Gawjah (the Jungle). A Black man accused of shooting a precious White cop [did anyone ever think of the mentality you have to have to become a cop?], a Black man who was convicted on the testimony of another Black man who most folks in the Black community down there say did the shooting and immediately thought to blame it on this Black dude. They arrested him, put him on trial and convicted him of killing the precious White off-duty cop working as a security guard at a fast-food joint though they had no gun and no physical evidence this man had done the deed. Later 9 witnesses who had originally testified for the state against the dude recanted their original testimony by saying that testimony was controlled by police questioning and pressure to answer the way they wanted to hear the answers and now these folks were saying they never saw this guy do anything much less shoot the cop.

So the Supreme Court of Court Jesters in a 7 to 2 decision granted the dude a new trial that must allow this new evidence to be introduced. The 2 descending opinions on saving this Black man's life were by those two clowns of supreme justice, Sweet Tony Scalia and Clarence "Long Dong" Thomas (both Pappy Bush appointees). These two clowns argued that the Constitution doesn't guarantee an innocent man who has been convicted by his peers in a court of law and sentenced to death in a proper criminal trial a new trial based on the fact the man now is claiming he's innocent. Even if he is innocent, Scalia said, that's still not the Constitution's problem. Look at the power these presidentially appointed goons have over We the People. Therefore, there's another huge power granted one man--the appointment of Supreme Court justices! The appointment of Federal Court judges!

The Prez
It's the one-hundredth anniversary of the birth of the Prez, Lester Young, on August 27th. Prez was a Virgo, and so am I.

Celebrate the Prez....

thegrowlingwolf
for The Daily Growler

GREAT LORD CHAOS! OH HOLY CHIEF; OH HOLY BOSS

"Good Mornin', Blues, Blues How Do You Do?"
I found I didn't have enough money to bid on a Bumblebee Slim "original" 78 rpm record I found on eBay. I really wanted it. Bumblebee at one time was the biggest blues star, in the 1930s, during the Great Depression. His name was Amos Easton. He was from Gawjah. He joined the Ringling Bros. Circus to get out of Gawjah and from that experience hit the road and went to Indianapolis where he became friends with blues greats pianist and songwriter Leroy Carr and guitarist Scrapper Blackwell. Bumblebee was popular because he sang streetwise blues in a lighthearted easy-going way. He sang them with high humor in his delivery. He blended Gawjah country style with Indianapolis and Chicago urban styles; he sang blues with a sweet honey voice--he was the Bumblebee, "...always buzzin' 'round your hive...." He made a ton of records in the 30s, was the top blues singer of that era; yet the business end of the blues was where the deep, down, dirty, motherfuckin' blues were--and Slim though a big star wasn't a rich star because his record labels, Paramount, Vocalion, etc., shafted Black artists, paying them nothing for any of their original songs, most times giving themselves writing credits, and paying them chickenfeed in terms of royalties.

The Bee in 1940 gave up on the blues and went to L.A. hoping to get into the movies as a comedian and songwriter. Nope. It wasn't to be. The blues idiom was the only idiom the Bee knew and understood. So he tried once again to "buzz around some hives" in L.A., but it wasn't to be. By then the slick electric blues dudes and the new white fasthand-showoff blues dudes had taken over the blues scene and young blues original cats, like Chuck Berry, were inventing rock 'n roll, a new form of blues, or they were inventing r and b out of jump and swing and blues, and White wannabe Black dudes were taking over rock 'n roll and rock'a'billy--and Bumblebee Slim sang the blues in the back-alley bars of South L.A., making some albums, but they didn't sell. As a last ditch effort at a comeback, Bee tried to become a jazz singer and recorded his last album for the Pacific Jazz label. And then one day somebody in L.A. asked, "Whatever happened to old Bumblebee Slim? I used to catch him over on Figaroa but I haven't seen him playing anywhere in what seems like over a year or more." "I heard he's dead, man." "Yeah, when did he die? I don't remember reading about it." "I think he died a couple a'years back, 19 and 68 I think, but I don't know for sure." For sure it was April of 1968 in Los Angeles. He was 63...and totally lost and forgotten in the music world. Of course today there's tons of Bumblebee's stuff available--I think one of those "complete works" labels (Document CDs?) has done Bumblebee's complete works. I was trying for a Paramount copy of "The B&O Blues," said to be one of the first "railroad" blues. But, sadly, I couldn't bid on it because at the time I was slip-slidin' towards the rock bottom of my bank account--well, I did bid $20 on it, ready to pay my bank a $50 hot-check charge should my balance not even have $20 in it, but it sold for way over $60, so that was that.

While I was listening to Bumblebee sing "No More Fattening Frogs for Snakes" on YouTube (a guy plays a 78 rpm record on his Caliphone all-purpose "record player" (phonograph)--I have one of these Caliphone record players and love it--it plays 16, 33 1/3, 45, and 78 rpms in mono and stereo with an auxiliary jack where you can record off of it onto CDs--marvelous for us old record-collecting geeks who used to holler when CDs were taking over the music-storage business that nothing stored sound like vinyl--and we kept our vinyl albums and we bought new vinyl pressings of old vinyl albums, reprocessed and repressed by these studio engineer loonies who are into reengineering things having to do with sound)--so you see, that could have been me playing my Bumblebee Slim 78 on YouTube. I did once produce a "Rare Record Review" teevee show where I filmed myself playing my 78s while a slide show showed the featured artists in flash-bys. I would occasionally step in on the record to give out some vital information at a certain point in the record that needed the viewer/listener's attention, then replay it again so they'd note exactly what I wanted them to hear and delite over--like in a Sir Charles Thompson Apollo 78 ("20th Century Blues"/"The Street Beat" (the Street is 52nd St. in New York City and the Beat is Bop)) I have where out of nowhere comes an alto sax solo that blows your mind..."That sounds like fuckin' Bird, man"...and, yes, it is Bird, with the Sir Charles Thompson All-Stars on the Apollo label...or it could be I introduced the fact that on the Chu Berry 78 on the Commodore label I was about to spin, you could actually hear old Chu Berry talkin' everybody into a jam--which may be the only time his voice was ever recorded.

Then in yesterday's mail came a 78 rpm record I did have enough money to buy from my favorite 78 record dealer up in Massachusetts. I opened it up and to my surprise it was even better than I expected. It was a 1941 RCA Victor recording of the Metronome (magazine) All-Stars (the magazine's jazz poll winners) that included the White King of Swing, Benny Goodman; Count Basie; Mr. Cootie Williams; Gene "Boom-Bang" Krupa; Alvino Rey (the band leader and steel-guitar player); Tex Beneke (a Goodman band tenor man who made "Pardon me, Boy, is that the Chattanooga Choo-choo?" a Hit Parade hit for several years [Hey, now, come on, yes, Tex was a Texan, but hey, back in those days, that's what you said in Penn Station when you were White and leaving New York City for points wherever because all the "red caps" in Penn Station back then were Black men who White men and women and children could call "Boy" with social impunity]--Tex milked that little "racy" diddy for all it was worth up until his death just a few years ago); Harry James (Harry was born in Gawjah but grew up in Beaumont, Texas, playing in his father's circus band when he was 10. His second wife was Betty Grable who was noted as having the "finest ass" of all the WWII Hollywood starlets [my brother, a gyrene, thought Barbara Stanwyck had a better ass]--Betty Grable did a pin-up poster in which she is facing a wall wearing a tight one-piece bathing suit, looking back over her shoulder, smiling, to see if you are checking out her fine bottom that she has conveniently allowed to protrude out double roundly enticingly invitingly toward you. It's a poster US soldiers, sailors, and marines kept on their barracks walls or their quarters walls or in their action rooms, anywhere, any place where they could as they passed it by give a little pat on Betty's ass for good luck. That good luck didn't apply to either Betty or Harry James--both were big cigarette smokers and were in cigarette commercials all the time. Betty died of lung cancer at age 56; Harry died of lymphatic cancer in the 1980s when he was 67], etc., etc. (too many all-stars to name right now). The Metronome All-Stars are doing a fiery "Bugle Call Rag" on the A side of this record and on the backside is a faithful rendition of the Count's "One O'Clock Jump." I already had two of this same record, one of which had a crack running clear through it--you could play it, but that's hard on your diamond needles-- and the other one had arrived with a large chip out of it. This one yesterday arrived unscathed and to my surprise was in Excellent condition, which to an old record buff means it hasn't been played that--not factory mint but still showing shellac lustre, probably used as a demo record in an old record shop. You used to could go in a record shop and take a demo record of the record you were interested in into a glass soundproof booth where there was a record player and a speaker and you could listen to the demo record and see if you wanted to buy it or not. People in those days didn't just buy a record because one of their favs put out a new record. You judged it on whether you liked it or not; whether it was any good musically or not. We knew the best talent in our world made hokey records occasionally--like "Chattanooga Choo-Choo," for instance.

Betty Grable on the left; Barbara Stanwyck on the right.

Yes, I Heard President Obama's Afghan War Speech
I'm ignoring it. I heard it. It was trick-baggy as hell, but then I've already given my opinion on the matter. I've said over and over this country's only hope of salvation from this spiraling out of control economy according to Dumbocrats going way back to Frankie Roosevelt's first term is WAR. The Repugnicans ruin the economy--the Dumbocrats try first to bring the economy back with National Welfare--and then when that doesn't work, they look for WARS. Check it out.

After WWII we suffered what was called a "recession." Harry Truman was president. He immediately started looking for a WAR. First he sent the Marines to Greece to force a King on the Greek people who really wanted self-control, though the way they were getting it was through the Communist Party in Greece. "NO WAY," said Commander in Chief Harry. That was a skirmish and didn't do much to pump the economy up, so Harry decided it was time he stopped Communism in Korea! Remember, this little prick of a common man, had just dropped two Fat Boy Atomic Bombs on Nagasaki and Hiroshima killing close to 300,000 innocent of war men, women, children (unborn and just born), pets, anything living--zilching them alive; leaving them like photo negatives on the crumbled walls of both cities, scarring survivors for life--Harry saying defiantly he did it to save the lives of brave American boys--yassuh, Harry cared for his canon fodder, so he was hot to trot with power. A simpleton of a man from Missouri, a state that worships mules, suddenly told us that this WAR on Communism he was gonna get us into was not a WAR, but simply a bully of a little "police action," a United Nations-sponsored police action. Oh yeah. That little police action is best dramatized if you watch the very well-done old teevee series called "M-A-S-H" (it came out first as a movie), a series that used actually doctors and nurses who had served in MASH units in the Korean War as advisers. The Korean War (that's its official title now) was devastating to the Korean people. It split their nation in half and they've stayed split in half for 59 years now and the North Koreans, still a Communist government, is still a thorn in the side of the US's world-dominance efforts.

After the Korean War and because Harry Truman had desegregated the US Armed Forces, the Southern Racist Dumbocrats who had split off from the Dumbos in 1948 and went first to being Dixiecrats, running Strom Thurmond for president (remember good ole boy Trent Lott saying it would have been better for us had Strom won the presidency back then?--remember Trent's house's porch was one of the first FEMA repair jobs after Katrina blew it off his We-the-People-paid-for Mississippi mansion?--and remember G.W. "Stolen Elections" Bush joking about how he hoped old Trent's porch was fixed so he could sip some bourbon with him on that porch when he came down a few days too late to overview (fly over) New Orleans and the Gulf Coast and do his photo-ops and phony care shit?) So thanks to this revolt of the Southern Racists Dumbocrats in 1948 (the year Truman desegregated the armed forces), in 1952, these turncoat Southern racist Dumbocrats swung their allegiance to the Repugnican Party and got behind sweet old lovable dumbass military-trained Dwight David Eisenhower. [DDE was so out of it that when he was told they were thinking about him as president he thought they wanted him to be president of Columbia University when Columbia really wanted his brother Milton as their president, an educator who was then president of the U of Penn. The Repugnicans at first tried to get Douglas "Old Soldiers Never Die" MacArthur to run as their candidate, but he turned it down saying he was "just going to fade away," so the Repugs turned to Eisenhower, who at the time, was either a registered Dumbocrat or an Independent--I don't think he was a Repug--in fact, he may not have voted for a bunch of war years, who the hell knows? Eisenhower easily beat egghead Dumbocrat candidate from the crooked state of Illinois, Adlai "Till Hell Freezes Over" Stevenson, especially after Strom Thurmond and the renegade Southern racist Dumbocrats started calling themselves "Dem-Ike-Crats" and began voting Repugnican exclusively at that time. Pappy Bush rode into Texas politics on the backs of these Southern racist turncoats.

Eisenhower got us out of Korea but soon he announced we were in a recession and his career diplomat Sec'y of State, John Foster Dulles (his brother Allan founded the CIA--and Allan had the Washington National Airport named after him until the rightwingers changed it to Ronnie Reagan Airport (from whence those 3-hour flights to Tokyo take off daily)) started talking about his "Domino Theory" of Communist takeover of Asia and how the US Police Force had to stop them and arrest them all or like a string of dominos standing on end side by side sequentially when the first one is tapped over so go the 140 rest of them or however many of them there are. Dulles said that's the way the Commies were take over the Asian world, knocking over countries like you knocked over those dominoes. And then rumor started talking about us getting involved in yet another WAR--which is when Ike warned us about the Military Industrial Complex and how under its bootheel we were becoming a War-dependent economy. The MIC was hungry for another WAR, but Eisenhower who'd lived through both WWI (the WAR to end all WARS) and WWII (our only truly righteous WAR, according to WAR apologists) was afraid of us getting into another WAR because he knew the cost of WAR in terms of flesh and materials. Still his old French buddy Charles DeGaulle was getting his French ass kicked in a place called Indo-China; in fact, his French forces had been humiliated by Ho Chi Min and his pajama-- and underwear-wearing Vietcong freedom fighters (considered Commies by our military experts) at Dien Bin Phu. The French were begging the US to interfere and bail them out and save their colony from these independence seekers, the bastards, which Vietnam was, a French colony, with Saigon the Paris of the Orient.

Eisenhower left office--he got two terms--and at the end of his second term there were scandals in his party. One of his cabinet guys (Sherman Minton) was getting mink coats as "special booty" in return for "special favors" in the White (Man's) House (built by slaves). Then Richard Nixon had to go on teevee and say for the first time, "I am not a crook," regarding, he said, a puppy named Checkers that had been given to his daughters. Plus, the country was sinking deeper into a recession when John Fitzgerald "New Frontier" Kennedy became Commander in Chief by whipping "I Am Not a Crook" Nixon's old evil ass in the 1960 Presidential election, carrying into the White (Man's) House with him the last of the old-timey Texas "liberal" Dumbocrats, Lyndon Baines Johnson. The New Frontier depended on a strong economy if it was to work--and even JFK knew a strong economy needed a WAR for stimulus.

Well, at first, JFK said we were in Vietnam solely as advisers. At the same time, that sneaky bastard started duking it out with his Soviet Union counterpart, the shoe-pounding Russian peasant with power to kill off millions of his people with a purge a la Joe Stalin, Khrushchev, who threw JFK a right cross to his glass jaw by sending some Soviet ships to Cuba. Ships which a US spy plane supposedly showed through its aerial photography were loaded with ICBMs (missiles) that would be aimed at the USA from 90 miles away--though these things they called missiles were long unidentifiable objects covered up by tarpaulins out in plain view on the decks of these Soviet ships. These photos reminded me of the evidence drawings Colon's Pal showed to the United Nations General Assembly when he had to stand there and lie his ass off about Al-Queda and Saddam Hussein being asshole buddies and ready to fly drones over here to our sacred shores carrying nuclear weapons (Weapons of Mass Destruction) and defend the US's obligation to invade and occupy that nation on a preemptive strike basis! These photos didn't really show any missiles. Then later when another spy plane's photos showed what the CIA said were missile silos being built in Cuba, again, those photos were so grainy and iffy they were no proof of those being missile silos at all. Besides, even as a kid I knew there was a US Army missile silo being built just north of my hometown--I wondered if that missile silos's ICBMs were aimed at Cuba or maybe Moscow?

The Cuban Missile Crisis diverted our attention from what was building up in Vietnam as out-and-out WAR! It also covered up JFK's involvement with the Mafia and his part in the Bay of Pigs fiasco. And soon, JFK was waving the WAR flag while he was fornicating with the Chicago mob boss's mistress (Judith Exeter) and a bunch of Hollywood starlets his brother-in-law Peter Lawford was obtaining for him and his brother Bobby--party time nightly out at Peter's fabby Malibu mansion.

Thus came about the Vietnam War. Oh not to worry, we were arming the South Vietnam Army and they would do most of the fighting (sound familiar?). NOT SO. The South Vietnamese Army was worthless--they were ill-trained, some of them unwilling to fight against their brothers and sisters from up north, some of them arrogantly cocky and fuck you about it so that soon Colon Pal was giving out rigged casualty figures so his boss General Westmoreland could keep asking for more and more troops. And then Robert McNamara kept seeing "a light at the end of the tunnel" and 50,000 dead US troops and maybe as many as 4 million dead South and North Vietnamese (men, women, children, grandmas, grandpas, babies--all were Cong to our troops) later, and after we'd dropped more bombs on Vietnam than we had dropped in all of WWII, and after we had drenched their forests and crops with Agent Orange (made by the good people at Du Pont (an Amurican corporation highly praised and defended by our vice president and corporate owners of the great state of Delaware--our vice-president's adopted state) (check out how much We the People of the US have had to pay out to our own troops who developed cancer from their exposure to Agent Orange in Nam; then compare that with how much money Du Pont has had to give up for being the creators of Agent Orange, a true Weapon of Mass Destruction).

And we ended up leaving Vietnam with our tails tucked between our legs and by then President Richard Milhouse Nixon had gotten himself elected in spite of his being a crooked son of a bitch and began illegally bombing the bejesus out of Cambodia and wanting to drop a nuke on Hanoi along with his asslicking dickboy Henry "Heil Henry" Kissingassinger warmongering like crazy until the Cong kicked our asses in the Tet Offensive and we had to turn real tail and run (I saw that old fool (Hank Kissingassinger) still being pampered and seriously listened to the other day on a teevee talk show--amazing how people take that old geek seriously)--then finally caving in and creating the Paris Peace Treaty Convention where at first they argued over the tables, whether they should be square or round--no kidding...in the end, the Peace Treaty was a JOKE.

WE lost the Vietnam War--same as we lost the Persian Gulf War after Ronnie "Raygun" Reagan had wrecked our economy and put us into a huge national debt and we were in a bad RECESSION again and under Pappy Bush's New World Order Army we launched an attack on a Muslim nation from another Muslim nation, which is the real reason Osama Bin Ladin took a dislike to his employers--yes, Osama worked for us (hired by the CIA) in our taking up where Russia failed in trying to "control and own the wealth of" poor old constantly invaded and occupied for centuries Afghanistan--so check out Britain's experience in trying to invade and occupy Afghanistan back in the late 19 Century--one time invading and then being driven back out in a huge loss of Brit life--you know, it is my cynical belief that Britain (and the other colonialist nations--France, Italy, Belgium, Germany, Portugal, Spain) is responsible for all the current world WAR problems--the WAR between Palestine and Israel; the Iraqi situation; the Iranian situation; the Afghanistan situation; the Pakistan situation; the Indian situation; the problems in Indonesia; the problems in Kenya; the problems in Nigeria; the problems in the Sudan; the problems in Zimbabwe; the problems in Egypt; the problems in Bangladesh; the problems in South Africa; the problems in Burma, etc. Am I too harsh?

Pappy Bush's using Saudi-Arabia, where Mecca is, as a take-off point to invade Iraq set off a lot whacky Muslims inside Saudi-Arabia, where Osama's from, and where most of the 9/11 invaders and Al-Queda-said members were from--none from Afghanistan; not one a member of the Taliban, who aren't Al-Queda in case you've been trick-bagged by our government's huge big lying machine into believing they are. This shit was once called "propaganda," and the US always accused its enemies of using "propaganda" (read: enemy lies) against the good ole "Honest Abe" USA.
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prop·a·gan·da (prp-gnd)

n.

1. The systematic propagation of a doctrine or cause or of information reflecting the views and interests of those advocating such a doctrine or cause.

2. Material disseminated by the advocates or opponents of a doctrine or cause: wartime propaganda.

3. Propaganda Roman Catholic Church A division of the Roman Curia that has authority in the matter of preaching the gospel, of establishing the Church in non-Christian countries, and of administering Church missions in territories where there is no properly organized hierarchy.

---

[Short for New Latin Sacra Congregti d Prpagand Fid, Sacred Congregation for Propagating the Faith (established 1622), from ablative feminine gerundive of Latin prpgre, to propagate; see propagate.]

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.
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So I'm not surprised to hear President Obama taking over his role as Commander in Chief, keeping in place all the "executive privileges" that Commander in Chief G.W. "Georgie Porgie" Bush forced on us, and leading us deeper into WAR--on the advice of Slick Willie Clinton and his wife now our Sec'y of State, who, I believe, is now running for president in 2012. She'll be dishin' out the dirt on Obama come 2010 when they all start running for President again (hey, that's next year already).

It's a cryin' shame, as old Bumblebee Slim would have sung about it. We are fattening frogs for snakes and President Obama is proving himself just as backward thinking as Junior Jumpshot Bush was--as backward thinking as Unka Dick Cheney--as backward thinking as Slick Willie, and Hillary, and Johnny Boy ("Wife Cheater") Edwards, and John (ex-DA/Vietnam Nutjob) Kerry, and John (Cap'n Fly Boy of the Failed Mission) McCain, and Sweet Sarah Paleface.

Notice the Dumbocrat Party bigwigs, Nancy Pelosi and Dr. Howard Dean, are trying to say public option healthcare is still an open subject--though We the People know that's bullshit. Howard Dean and his wife are successful doctors--you don't get to be successful doctors without hooking up with an HMO and learning how to turn in phony Medicare bills for a little extra income. These doctors rip off Medicare both Plan B and Plan D every year and still Medicare is the most economical way to give "beneficial" healthcare to every citizen.

My question to these Dumbocrat Town Hall Meetings on Healthcare? Why do you keep holding these stupid things? Or why, if you're gonna hold them, don't you throw out idiots who get up and try and distort the whole matter with backward thinking (Yahoo reasoning) that is 360 degrees away from the "truth" of the whole lie-entangled mess. Why don't the cops arrest these nutjobs like they used to protect goofball spoiled rich kid G.W. Bush when he spoke at a Repug party functions and We the People who hated him tried to protest his deadly nonsense? Like if you wore a teeshirt with Georgie Porgie's picture on it showing him wearing a Hitler moustache and a Nazi uniform (as Repugnican nutjob babe brought to a Vermont Town Hall Meeting and actually asked old Bernie Sanders a stupid Yahoo question) to a AntiBush Rally, you'd'a been arrested by the cops, beaten pretty badly, detained without charges for four or five days before finally being released, except on release you did have to make a court appearance where you were subject to jail time or having to pay a fine.

Give us the fuckin' National Healthcare, dammit. You've been promising it to us since the 1960s and the days of the New Frontier and Lyndon Johnson's Great Society! And then I remember, this is not a democracy! This is a Republic. This is a republic ruled by aristocrats and a Power Elite comprising 1% of us yet owning 99% of our wealth (our land, our waters, our skies, our capital, our Capitol); thereby controlling the USA while We the People get poorer and more Third World every day.

Here's my point. The whole cause of our current trip down Chaos Lane are the two WARs that were started by an idiot man, a spoiled rich brat son of a crooked oil man, himself the son of a Connecticut politician who actually did business with Hitler while WWII was going on and was later investigated by Congress for that reason, both men business failures, G.W., the worthless son a failure at everything in life in everything he did except drinking bourbon and beer and snortin' cocaine with his marijuana-toking wife and going AWOL like the coward he is to avoid having to go to a WAR the Dumbocrats had started--and who became President when his brother Jeb (named after a Confederate general) threw out thousands upon thousands of Dumbocrat votes, thousands upon thousands of Black votes that went to the Dumbos, and forced over onto folks voting machines that were so crooked people were hollering, "Hey, I voted for Gore but this stupid machine said I voted for Bush Baby." And then it went to the rebel-yelling Supreme (Dunce) Court where those political-picked numbskulls decided, unConstitutionally, that G.W. had won, fuck whatever else was proven. Shortly thereafter, right after the Neo-Con Manifesto was shown to have the Neo-Cons saying we needed another "Pearl Harbor" to get we peacenik (Beatniks, Hippies, Yippies, Black Panthers, the Black Liberation Army, Black Muslims, Commies, Unifiers) Amuricans beaten back so they could foment another World War, we were attacked by 21 or so box-cutter-toting, still hungover from a night of drinking and whoring, Saudi-Arabians. Military geniuses evidently--goofball Saudis (yes, one Jordanian and another same-area dude) who didn't know how to fly 747s managed to like clockwork precisely fly two of these jumbo jets exactly directly at the right spots into the two World Trade Towers of over 110 stories--the right spots that brought these giant buildings straight down flat as a pancakes into the ground, amazingly straight down as if imploded--even the huge teevee tower on top of the one building coming straight down like an arrow with the falling building--an amazing military feat--a successful attack on the continental US, the first such since the Brits preemptively invaded us in 1812 and burned down the White (Man's) House! Actually, the third such since Pancho Villa successfully preemptively struck the USA by shooting up and burning down a bit of the burg of Columbus, New Mexico, back during the days of the Mexican Revolution and the days of the US Army under the command of a prig of a dude they called Black Jack Pershing. [New York City has a square named after Black Jack, but I doubt if many New Yorkers even know where it is--millions of them passing through it every morning and afternoon.] We were hoodwinked then and we're still being hoodwinked now.

I'm amazed to see old-fart (chicken-fart) Republican seniors at these Town Hall meetings shouting about how old people are going to be left to die by Obama's Socialized Medicine scheme--old farts who I guarantee you are on Medicare and couldn't afford any other healthcare without going back to work at Wal-Mart--I'm sorry, Wal-Mart now spells its name Wallmart (it should be named The Chinese Junk Shop).

So I'm trying to ignore President Obama saying that the Taliban and Al Queda were still out to kill Americans, to attack our cities, and do us harm. This man is supposedly highly intelligent--why he was editor of the Harvard Law Review or Journal or something or whatever--Hah-vard! Harv-vard! Where Southern racistsplantation families sent there sons--Hah-vard--no Jews or Niggers allowed until, hell, not that many years ago. Hah-vard. Yay-ell. The Eli. Dahrt-muth. Prince-maker-ton. Penn snobs. Aren't you sick of these schools training us! That's what Mark Twain said was wrong with us Americans. We were all trained monkeys. We were trained from birth--by our trained parents, by our "training" teachers in our training schools. Training us to be proper monkeys. Ready to jump through the hoop of flames at the trainer's command!

Yes, I heard Obama say we were seriously warring against the Taliban and Al-Queda and Pakistan and Afghanistan and ironically I read today where in the upcoming Afghan elections (Thursday), there is a proposition they'll be voting on which if passed will ask the US to withdraw its forces from Afghanistan's soil immediately. Isn't that a reason for the US to declare we're staying there for another decade. And each of those two WARS, listen to this, are costing us 220-million smackers A DAY! Amazing isn't it? It's a WAR economy, folks. And we have a President who approves both these phony WARS imposed on us by the WORST President in the history of this country; worse than Martin Van Buren and U.S. Grant or Warren G. Harding or Hoobert Heever--putting us the deepest ever in debt--deeper in debt than Reagan left us--DEEPER IN DEBT THAN HIS OWN FATHER GOT US--old jitterbug-shuffling Pappy Bush, still scootin' along at 89 along with his upperclass wife who just got the best damn healthcare We the People's money could buy with her little heart problem--the very best of healthcare thanks to We the People's generous healthcare plan we give our politicians whether we want to or not.

Sociology and Chaos
I recently sneaked a peek at the progress my Sociology intellectual pals have made over the past 40 years in deducing through natural science what the hell is going on in our society currently. I came across a book on Google entitled Chaos Theory in the Social Sciences. I jumped for joy.

By a pair of empiricists named Kiel and Elliott, the book starts off saying that new discoveries in natural science have led Sociologists to reconsider the Newtonian Paradigm (that things are predictable because there is a measurable (mathematically formulated) discipline to natural matter) through the emerging field of chaos theory. This field of chaos theory, Sociologically questions apparent certainty [I've never believed in certainty], linearity, and predictability that were previously seen as essential elements of a Newtonian universe. [I am paraphrasing Kiel and Elliott, two pretty brilliant dudes.] "The chaos theory is a means for understanding and examining many of the uncertainties, nonlinearities, and unpredictable aspects of social systems behavior" [from Krassner, 1990].

This is really old thinking as far as Sociologists go. Talk of the chaos theory started back in the 1960s when even economists like Von Hayek were writing about the unreliability of random sampling and certain measurements that before we'd thought were fairly correct, off by only say an .03 differentiation. In the chaos theory, i.e., through the butterfly effect, measurements can be off less than a millionth of a degree and still throw the whole of probability (estimation; prediction) in the garbage.

It's fascinating shit, but difficult shit, too; but then Sociologists have to be deep thinkers--they look backwards, yes, but only by going through past records and recordings and statistics and histories and piles of measured information including history and literature and language and perception and behavior and body motions to gain insight on the coming problematics wrought by this maze-like web we have woven ourselves into! Sociology is advancing (or evolving as Sociologists like to say) boldly into a very dark unknown--this chaos--and we better hope they can shed some light on what's going on in there--in that world of Mandelblot fractals, which are very chaotic--so there, Chaos can be beautiful as well as catastrophic.

Then these Sociologists, Kiel and Elliott, get deeply serious about their subject and start talking about "Cellular Automata," and I've got to put this damn book down--it's getting too deep for me. They are using statistical methods I've never heard of, though I can still read their formulae in terms of time and space and frequency distribution and plus-or-minus this or that or either more or less--little sigma and Big Sigma, the summation--and it's a'gettin' to be'a all'a Greek'a to me. That's from an old comedy record by Ernest and Billy Hare--"Hey, Nick'a, you gotta any German mustard?" "No gotta." "Well, have you got any English mustard?" "No gotta." "Well then what kind of mustard do you have?" "It's'a all'a Greek'a to me," Nick replied.

Get ready for perpetual WAR...no healthcare of any kind...and wonderful, wonderful Chaos! It'll give us all something to think about.

thegrowlingwolf
for The Daily Growler

The book is: Chaos Theory in the Social Sciences: Foundations and Applications

By L. Douglas Kiel, Euel W. Elliott

A The Daily Growler Sports Extra With Our Own marvelousmarvbackbiter

I feel like a god-damn fool. The Yankees are going hogwild--kicking American League ass all over the place--hitting like maniacs--getting 14 wins out of big fat C.C. Sabathia--finally putting Jabo Chamberlain in the 8th inning relief roll he should have been in all along--and son of a bitch, the Yankees are right now the best team by far in the majors.

The Mets. Forget 'em. They're finished. They're wrecked. They're 12 1/2 games out of first--though all serious Mets fans should remember them coming from many games back to overtake Atlanta years ago.

And another thing that's maybe making me look like a fool is that Joe Torre and the Dodgers are slipping badly lately--only 4 1/2 games up on the Colorado Rockies who are currently coming on like firecrackers--the division heating up--even though the Dodgers stopped the Cardinals win streak last night.

The Yankees aren't home free yet, they're now just 7 games up on Boston, with Boston coming into town this weekend for a series--and also, believe it or not, the Tampa Bay Exorcised Rays are showing a little streak-intent right now--Toronto and Baltimore--forget 'em; they'll be up for sale soon.

I still love baseball--like it's still the greatest game there is, but I'm still reeling from the bullshit that happened two years ago--with both the Mets and the Yankees--it's too bad such a great baseball city has to endure the amateurish actions of their teams's owners, both filthy rich spoiled brat sons of fathers who built successful businesses, which their sons then inherited and don't really give a shit about except it keeps 'em socializing in the realms of the Power Elite (sitting like Caesars in their luxury boxes, drinking that fine champagne and brandy with chippies on their laps while smoking those big thick illegal Cuban cigars which kill the ordinary workingman but not the pompous rich fools).

Oh well, my only hope this year is a Yankees-Dodgers World Series--though like the Wolf Man said just before my column began: nothing's predictable anymore.

marvelousmarvbackbiter
for The Daily Growler