Living in New York City--thegrowlingwolf at the Grammys

Foto by tgw, "A Guitar Player," New York City 2009.
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I am playing my guitar and singing odes into the airs.
I was thinking that line as I watched one moment of the Grammys tonight. First, I watched Beyonce accept, what, her 500th Grammy Award of the night?--for a song she calls "Halo," which I'm sure in the song is around Beyonce's head. Yes, she is a striking woman. And, yes, she followed the script and came out in a dress that looked like it was made out of beer can pop-top rings, her tits conveniently spilling out of it, an almost nipple-slip on her right breast. What do breasts almost popping out a woman's dress have to do with her ability to sing, write songs, play an instrument, whatever? Like her husband, Jay Z (a form of the word "Jazz") has to take his shirt off and show off his amazing body in order to remain at the top of the kiddie charts. They are singing children's songs--all these 20-ish-going-on-30-ish stars are singing and writing high-school-romance songs. For the high school crowd. Chuck Berry knew how to work that angle for all it was worth--and so did the Ramones, if you remember their bevy of high-school rock cheerleading songs.

I flipped off Beyonce but came back later to find a foppy looking white dude playing an acoustic guitar--I immediately noticed he had his fingertips taped on his left hand--poor baby, did his little fingertips hurt him? He was singing a song that was a few notches below James Taylor at his worst-best (I am not a James Taylor fan/he's the male Joan Baez to me--too much quavering in both their high-pitched childish voices). The folky fop singing something about "the end of the world" and how "we're gonna be together"--a superdrab folky Hollywood-staged number--with this Donny Osmond-look-alike (I truly have no idea who the dude was--I'm sure he's probably in the Songwriters Hall of Fame and perhaps could have been the son of Louden Wainwright III--and probably is a superstar--multibillionaire--living in BelAir--driving a Ferrari) singing away at his juvenile-sounding-lyrics song--like what does a 30-something-year-old folk singer know about the end of the world! I think that young Haitian girl rescued after being buried for 15 days--drinking the blood of the dead around her to keep from dehydrating to death--I think she could better sing her own song about the end of the world and whose gonna be together than this Hollywood fop playing his acoustic guitar with his taped-up fingers and lyrics worthy more of Barney than being featured as a billionaire folk singer on the awfully vulgarly staged Grammy Awards ("Grammy," which stands for Gramophone Awards--the Grammy Award a little gramophone. A gramophone! How many of these cheesy stars even know what the hell a gramophone is?).

As is the trend of White folk-rockers these days, soon this guy was surrounded by a host of FAB-O Black musicians--a guy who oozed of Royal Crown hair gel who played a violin; one huge-huge (Bigger than Biggie Munn) man playing a trumpet; another one playing a saxophone--all of these dudes seconding as back-up singers, too. Then as soon as this droopy-drawer song grew even more droopy-drawer, a whole rack of Whites-Asian-American-mixed string players came sliding up (a stage platform on a track activated by a remote-control device off stage--or a computer program which was also running the background graphics) behind Donny-Osmond-lookalike, all of the fiddlers with big dopey smiles on their overperky faces, sawing away at their fiddles, one, the string bass player, a big older gray-bearded white dude. I immediately focused my attention on an all-teeth-unfurled smiling bippity-boppity enthusiastic Asian-American fiddler right behind Donny smiling so pearly white, playing so energetically--obviously only for the stage effect since even with that platform choking with string players you couldn't hear them.

As Donny's song evolved into the realm of the truly asinine, suddenly out came a rolling rack of more back-up singers, a whole host of them, a chorus of them--all smiling as though cobs were thrust up their asses to make their smiling more chimp-like in the teeth-and-gum-exposure shtick department. Soon the stage was jammed with the chorus, the White-Asian-American string orchestra, a row of Black back-up singers--including the big fat Black woman who is in every back-up group there ever was along with also the inevitable rather sprightly dapper Gayish Black man who sings with stars in his eyes, his mouth crowing open fabulously wide, his digging his role in an overbearing manner--he, too, being in every back-up group there ever was. THEN here came more Black men combo horn players/back up singers to join the huge Black trumpet player and the rather nondescript saxophone player and the White folky-taped-fingered-acoustic-guitar player-singer who by now was singing one line over and over--trying to wrap it up--COMING SOON: the big finale! Everyone looks forward to those big Grammy finales! One of those Vegas-style-Busby-Berkeley-invented finales! Oh the enthusiasm! Oh the talent! Oh the sham of it all.

I flipped this creepy folky-rocky bastard off before that big finale happened. Only Grammy diehard dunces ("American Idol" contestants) could have found verve and progress in that droopiest-of-drawers crap. I ended up turning the television off and doing breathing exercises for 5 minutes or so to get the residue crap remaining from the experience out of my fetid skull.

I am playing my guitar and singing odes into the airs.

thegrowlingwolf
for The Daily Growler

Living in New York City--As a Soothsayer

Foto by tgw, New York City, 2009.
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A Modern Times Nostradamus
I look in the mirror--a deceitful reflection I'll admit--and see a soothsayer. A prescient. OK, I've admitted I'm trained to observe matters and using the statistical tools of my profession from my noted observations determine probabilities and possibilities. But this goes beyond sociological guesstimating. Sociological thinking is based on playing with hypotheses composed of givens (random samples) and then writing an unbiased account of the determinations you reached with your statistical values and at what point on the continuum of societal existence we human monkeys seem to be. Methods I learned to use and expressed in my own terms in grad school through theses and dissertations and then suffering the scrutiny in abominable seminars with maniac fellow students and tenure-mad professors mincing terms in thinking you clearly observed as backwards thinking--like thinking in one of the cycles of history at that brief (in historical time) moment when as Hegel deduced the cyclical manner of history is repeating itself. Everything we are seemingly hidebound to do is a repetition of what we've already done--the only way we have realized how to do things--right or wrong. Human animals can't seem to walk upright without crutches.

I look in the mirror--a deceitful reflection again I'll admit--and see the future as if it were contained in a crystal ball (actually a see-through planet). I don't SEE DOOM. I see a MOOD.

We are in this MOOD now. This is not to say that we aren't DOOMED. We are. There's no way around that prophecy. Our true God, our Sun, according to George Gamow, the Odessa, Russia-born American cosmologist (involved in the discovery of DNA) in his masterpiece The Birth and Death of The Sun, is "burning out"--which means in human monkey language: it's dying. So as the Sun, our true God, dies, so die we and so die our animal relatives and our plant relatives and our bacterial relatives. THOUGH, not so dies the earth--the earth will twirl on, perhaps blowing a bit off course as it perhaps goes about seeking another SUN. Is the earth a living entity? According to my soothsaying abilities I say Yes. Does the earth have feelings? I'll let you figure that one out.
THE DEATH OF THE SUN





You say, "C'mon, Wolf Man, we've got 5 million more years before we have to worry about God dying...." I even have a theory of where the "sign [or image] of the cross" came from in religious legend. You ever notice how the sun makes a cross when it is shining through clouds? It's rays stretching out horizontally like the arms of a cross--the vertical beams short at the top and long at the bottom, just like the upright beam of a timber cross. Symbolism. Semiotics. L Hat and the linguists can give a literal meaning to that. Do I not make sense? Good, that's my purpose as a soothsayer. I don't have to make sense to get my point on the continuum across.

I once sat through a 2-hour spiel, you couldn't call it a talk, you couldn't call it a lecture, by one of the great brains of my time--actually the end of his time--I love ironies--Buckminster Fuller, the madman architect who invented the geodesic dome in the late 1940s because he had forecast in 1927 a housing shortage, which we did have in the early 50s, after WWII and soldiers with down payments for homes through the FHA and the GI Bill were gobbling up any little house they could find or any little plot of land they could afford to build a prefab home on. And up grew the prefab home business in this country. Companies that used to make trailer houses started making prefabricated homes. They'd truck these homes to your lot and next thing you know, you had a new house. Bucky meant for his geodesic dome houses to be moveable feasts.

And during this 2-hour lecture (it was at one of radio station WBAI-FM's "Free Music Stores" held in the station's old church studios in the East 60s during the early 1970s--so I'm sure there is a copy of his speaking in their archives), the only thing I understood Bucky to say was that the beginning of the universe had been like us picking up a cottonwood tree seed pod and blowing on it (like the Big Bang blew on the original neophyte cluster of exploding stars). When you do, those little cotton-covered cottonwood seeds go sailing off into space. Then Bucky continued by saying our earth was like one of those cotton-covered cottonwood seeds. In fact, Bucky expanded his thoughts, the earth was actually a spaceship onto which life spores attached, those life spores becoming over billions of years US, all us animals, all us plants, all us bacteria, all us fungi, etc. That stuck to me as certainly a possibility. I knew there were space winds and even still spores blowing in space winds. I used to listen to the songs of the universe; they used to be broadcast over short-wave radio by several radio-telescopes--the biggest bank of these listening-device dishes set on a mountaintop in Puerto Rico. They broadcast the sounds of the universe and those sounds were usually to my ears the sound of winds--and too there are solar winds. We are orbiting in the wind. We are blowin' in the wind.

We are spores who gained form and in this form we now call human beings we are still preaching escape from our spaceship earth--we are running out of room on it--besides it's old and getting a little wobbly as it sucks up its energy from its God, too, the Sun. Plus it's now under attack from outer-space barrages of asteroids (better weapons of mass destruction than our puny nuclear devices).

Another thing Bucky said that night that I understood. He said we were and would always be of the generation we were born into--which to Bucky meant the TIME we were born--you know the day, month, and year. He said we were trapped in the time we were born and the time we started realizing (attributing a personality to ourselves) and trying to understand everything from putting words to what we started seeing, then putting words to the sounds what we were seeing made, or putting words to the feelings we felt erupting from out of our instincts as we starting talking and working things out through words (identification of symbols) to then analyzing in a childlike way what was our reason for being (for me I almost know the exact time I started realizing and reasoning out existence--I was born a Sociologist--curious, wanting immediate explanations--explanations that a 2-year-old could understand).

Acceleration, according to Bucky Fuller was what propelled us; propelling us through what we've invented and named TIME. A time continuum in our invented space, too. Time the way of measuring our lives--and we are the only animals who do this--except elephants seem to know when it's their time to die and they accept it just as an old Native American Aleut grandma used to know when it was time to go out onto the far distant ice to await the coming inevitable. Out on the wind-swept ice.

All of this to ask, wasn't I right in my last post about Obama's State of the Disunion Address? Isn't he trapped in the backward thinking of his generation? Backward thinking also the thinking of our backward-thinking Congress.

Before the speech I watched all these clean-cut, well-groomed, well-suited-and-tied, healthy-looking Congress people and their follow-along asskissing lackeys going around gladhanding each other. Then when Obama trotted out to give his speech all the lackeys lined up wanting recognition from him, wanting to shake his hand, one black woman wearing semi-African garb demanding he kiss her--then other District of Corruption babes wanting kisses--and Obama was grinning like the Cheshire Cat he is--once stopping to whisper something to his old pal Timmy Boy Geithner--I assume now, sociologically that is, the President was assuring Timmy Boy he would be renominated (did anybody think he wasn't going to be?) in spite of the phony grilling he got when he testified before Congress on his shady dealing with his old pals at Goldman-Sachs and AIG. (Have you noticed how Timmy Boy's head is huge?--it sits like a wrecking ball on his otherwise skinny-structured body.) Though Timmy Boy was made a total fool of by his Congressional opponents, it was obvious by his "set in stone" reply no one would dare not renominate him to continue destroying our economy--giving it over to his Corporate constituents, now considered individuals by our Supreme Court. Timmy's defense of his wreckless use of our Treasury is if we hadn't have bailed out these financial pirates we would have had another Great Depression. Timmy "Big Head" Boy responded in the way he was taught to talk at the Dartmouth Spoiled-brat Rich Sons School of Civil Service. By bailing out all these crooked sons of bitches, Timmy Boy chortled on, HE and OBAMA had avoided a failure of the whole fucking system; he and Obama had saved CAPITALISM. And, of course, this was followed by the bullshit that the economy had recovered, the stock market was dancing up and down making the rich richer, and, yes, unemployment has shot up another 10th of a percent, and, yes, housing foreclosures are up, and, yes, more people than ever are losing their jobs, and, yes, we are spending 20-million-dollars-a-day on two illegal wars--and how many more millions-a-day on the Military Industrial Complex's defense of democracy and freedom--yes to all of that, but still, at least we didn't lose Capitalism!

And speaking of repeating history--look how these creeps who are ruling us today totally ignore Eisenhower's warning about military spending (George Washington gave a similar speech). And, did you notice that Obama managed to get Reagan's name into his speech--comparing JFK and Reagan in terms of economics? Holy Christ this guy is a Reaganomics freak--we're doomed, folks--fuck the mood, we're just flat plain doomed.

Also, have you noticed these backwards thinkers avoid talking about the VietNam War? You notice that? Actually Obama was a kid during the VietNam War. But he lived in Hawaii. Hawaii was still a military base in those days--before the Japanese bought up all the beach property and built row after row of look-alike hotels all over the Hawaii Island coastline--like check out photos of Wikiki Beach in the late 40s and early 50s and then check out photos of it today. So now you see why Obama keeps saying he's refusing to look backwards and only think in terms of our future--of course that's a LONG-TERM future--but, hey, he's covering his disappointing ass.
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After one hell of a wonderful time out on the Gotham town last night (with a woman I wolfishly adore--a woman who had me wolfishly howling like a mad lover at that big full moon that hung over Manhattan last night)--I woke up this morning to see on the Firefox headlines we may be alas at war with China! China is really pissed at us. Why? Because the stupid fucking jerks in the Pentagon have insisted Obama send millions of dollars worth of military industrial complex arms to Taiwan--in payment for that phony nation's asskissing loyalty to Capitalism and the American way. After all, it was we who allowed old Chiang Kai-Shek to get his murderous ass out of the New China under a ruthless Mao Tse-tung and escape to the beautiful island of Formosa--thus its name. So what did old Kuomintang Chiang do? Why he massacred the Formosans, took over their island, and renamed it the Republic of China--or Taiwan for those of you who have no idea where Taiwan came from. History repeats itself.

We've for years used Taiwan as a buffer zone of thwart in an effort to get into a face-to-face military contact with the world's largest armed forces. We have been itching for a conflict with China since they as we said interfered in our efforts to massacre and eliminate the Viet Cong during the Vietnam War, Uncle Ho's true Vietnamese people's movement. We hate people's movements in this country. Have you noticed? Anything that has "people" in it we go after it to bite its head off. Yep, we are nation of geeks. That's why Dr. Hunter Thompson blew his brains out rather than try and exist in in this rotting society.

Me, I'm not going to blow my brains out. I love the challenge of living. I'm mean, if I'm dead, how am I going to enjoy and have such fun loving such an out-of-this-world woman as I had in my company last eve? Man, the real meaning of love goes a long way in combating backward-thinking-loveless-thinking living in a loveless society we are expected, on the verge of being ordered, to live loveless in.

I'm getting too romantic. Most Sociologists are romantics.

thegrowlingwolf
for The Daily Growler

By the Way: If you want the best analysis of Obam-bam's State of the U address, check out what Joe Bageant (he reads The Daily Growler, what do you bet?):

www.joebageant.com/joe/2010/01/the-annotated-obama.html

Living in New York City--With Only Thinking to Do

Foto by tgw, Gotham, 2007.
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"Sittin' Here Thinkin'"

Real talers have the same existence that the imagined gods have. Has a real taler any existence except in the imagination, if only in the general or rather common imagination of man? Bring paper money into a country where this use of paper is unknown, and everyone will laugh at your subjective imagination.

from Karl Marx's graduate dissertation, see: www.marxists.org/archive/marx/
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I am sitting here thinking on a colding-up-again Tuesday morning in Gotham. Nobody calls it Gotham any more. There aren't many Gothamites or Gothamic parts of New York City left. Washington Irving first called it "Gotam" or "Gotham" after the English city whose citizens were considered madmen, though, it was added, they were wise enough to pass themselves off as fools rather than what they really were. I'd say that fits a typical hardbound New York City survivor. While I'm here, let me quickly advise you not to confuse Washington Irving's Gotham with Batman's Gotham City. Batman's creators invented his Gotham City--it ran from 14th Street downtown all the way to the harbor. That city's center was centered around the area that housed the offices of DC Comics (or "comix" as my generational madmen used to spell it).

After my Haitian divorce and after a sabbatical that lasted almost a year--4 months in Haiti, a month in the heart of Texas, and then several months revisiting old haunts like San Francisco, Juarez, Mexico, and Santa Fe, New Mexico--I moved back to Gotham where I found myself homeless. I'd given up my rights to what had once been "our" apartment but that legally was now "her" apartment. So I had no legal New York City address. My Texas driver's license gave my legal address as one of my brother's old addresses in Dallas. I was 2,000 miles from that address but only a few blocks from my last address, East 56th and Sutton Place. Still I was homeless, with a sling bag of dirty clothes over my shoulder, but fortunately not totally wiped out, since I carried an active American Express card and a billfold full of cash in my back jeans pocket. Plus, I was determined to stay in New York City even if I had to sleep in the fucking street.

I'd come back into Manhattan from Kennedy Airport on the Carey Bus Lines. I had gotten off the Carey bus at their bus stop that was right across 42nd Street from Grand Central Terminal (I'm snooty, that's its proper name).

Grand Central can be a sanctuary for the homeless according to a homeless class system. If you're homeless because you're totally fleeced by the system and a little out of your friggin' mind then you head for the innards of this grand railroad station, its underground, its network of far under the station's lowest depths of apartment complexes for the hopeless homeless and Gothamites who've lost their madness and have become total fools.

On the other hand, however, if you were in my homeless class, the still-financially able, still decently dressed, kind of all-American looking, then you know to use Grand Central as a temporary terminus for getting your logistics together. So the homeless with some bucks on his ass goes into Grand Central and heads back to the terminal's bank of pay telephones just off the big room or the bank down on the second level by where you get the trains to North White Plains.

I went to the phone bank just off the big room, over at the back end of Zabar's. It was one of those banks New York Telephone had just put in that had a row of New York City phone books mounted in aluminum holders between the phone banks that when you pulled the phone book you wanted up out of its slot, it opened up automatically and gave you a solid base on which to sit it as you flipped through looking for that phone number you needed to save yourself.

I flipped up the Manhattan Yellow Pages--Wow! how long ago am I talking about?--remember when the White Pages and the Yellow Pages were simply the stupid New York City telephone books, published under the auspices of the phone companies themselves? Think of how many millions of phones there are among New York City's 14-million human population. [Do we have cell phones for pets yet? Hey, there's a good idea for one of you enterprising go-getters, one of you believers in Capitalism and the mighty taler.] The Yellow Pages housed information on and the ads of Manhattan's hotels, both the luxurious and the flea bag varieties. I trundled through those jaundice-yellow cheap-paper pages to the hotels section. Of all the hotels I found there, the closest one and the nicest one, I thought from its ad, I could afford was the Hotel Gotham. It's eighth-of-a-page ad said it charged 50 bucks a night for a single with a color teevee and big double bed. Plus the picture of the hotel in the ad made it look elegant and it was in one of my favorite Midtown Manhattan areas, the theater district just off Broadway on West 52nd Street. And West 52nd Street, once called "Swing Street" and later "Jazz Alley" in its riproaring days, still had a lingering-on of three or four jazz joints operating in the space off Sixth Avenue now housing the Equitable Building--once known as the Pink Elephant Building due to its huge cost overruns and the fact it turned out to be not a very attractive building.

So as a homeless man on a Grand Central pay phone called up the Hotel Gotham and asked them if they had a 50-buck-a-night room available. Yes, the reservations clerk replied, they had a $50 room available. By the week? I asked. Yes, they had a $50 room available by the week--one week in advance. How much for one week? $325 weekly. You mean I save only fucking 25 bucks with a weekly rate? No, you're right, I didn't argue. I took the room at $325 a week.

I ended up living at the Gotham for a month. It was great because it was situated right in the middle of the theater district plus it was just up the street from still-running Jimmy Ryan's Club where Roy Eldridge was leading the band. Next door to Jimmy Ryan's was Eddie Condon's, the old Chicago banjo-picker's club, where the house band was Bull Davidson or Jimmy McPartland on trumpet, Bud Freeman on tenor, Vic Dickenson on the trambone, Pops Foster the old New Orleans slap-stylist on bass, Eddie himself on acoustic guitar (by the 70s banjos had long been put to rest in jazz museums), and George Wettling on drums. Across the street from Jimmy Ryan's was the Half Note, which had moved uptown in the early 70s from down on Hudson and Spring streets downtown and featured the big names of the day like Roland Kirk or Dizzy Gillespie.

A Night at Eddie Condon's

The Gotham Hotel was a clean well-lighted hotel but a whorehouse just the same. Every time I got on the elevator some street glamor girls in high decor and perfumed beyond the atmosphere got on with me, keeping their decorum around me, batting their eyes and talking, if they talked, like, "Is it gonna rain, girl?" "I dunno. My teevee's broken in my room. I've told that son of a bitch at the desk about it and he just winks at me." "I hate that son of a bitch. I hate this hotel. I hate it when it fucking rains." If they talked that's how they talked. Usually, though, they just batted their eyes and stared vapidly up at the elevator's ceiling.

I can safely say every apartment building I've lived in in New York City, including the one I live in now, at one time or other had a quietly operating whorehouse floor within its premises--usually on the 1st floors or the very top floors. Landlords love having whorehouses in their buildings because the whorehouse proprietors pay exceptionally more rent than an average market-valued renter. In my building, the whorehouse was paying $6,000-a-month per room for four large rooms before they were shut down. Think about that? Plus these whorehouses are constantly being raided by the cops and put out of business leaving the landlord holding a big wad of cash (first and last month's rents plus security deposits and key fees) for his offshore bank account.

The landlords and the whores are still very Gothamite in this city.

Going into my second month at the Gotham, I realized I couldn't afford to keep living there. It was costing me $1300-a-month to live there and in those days that kind of money could get you a penthouse apartment in the best addresses in Manhattan.

So one day I left the Gotham and just started walking crosstown over back east toward my ex-wife and my ex-apartment, that area. I was, I think, maybe going back and begging her to let me shack there until I could find a place. I mean it was a big enough apartment I wouldn't bother her staying there a week or so. I swayed a bit off course on the way over to East 56th and ended up on East 57th and Third Avenue. I spotted a bar on the far side of where I was on 57th and I went in there and ordered a Heineken. A Spanish fellow was sitting next to me at the bar drinking rum. The drunker he got the more friendly he became with everybody around him and then especially me. Son of a bitch, he was chortling, there are no kinder people in the world than people from Argentina. Viva Argentina! And then he started saying how the most beautiful young girls in the world were chicas Argentinas, the most voluptuous, the most sexual, the most romantic. After awhile, he asked me, "Why do you look so sad, my friend? If we were in Argentina now, my friend, I would cheer you up, but since we are not in Argentina, what can I do for you?" "Nothin', dude, unless you own an apartment building with an empty apartment in it for about $200 a month...." "How about $250 a month? How 'bout $250 a month with a one month free rent incentive if you take a two-year lease?" "You know of an apartment?" "Yes, I'm the superintendent of that building right over there--come here." He took me over to the plate glass window and pointed toward a regular-looking tan brick apartment building, about 18 or 20 stories, with an interesting blue-tile-designed front. "Come with me right now. You fill out a standard lease agreement, give me some references, a 50-dollar security deposit, which I'll give you back after you pay your first monthly payment, which will be your second-month's rent." "Shit yeah, I'm game, let's go do the paperwork. These apartments have showers?" "You bet, nice tiled showers; plenty of hot water, too."

We went across the street and in less than an hour I had rented and occupied a very tiny, cramped, and drably dark and narrow studio apartment. It was clean however. It had a nice "modern" kitchen, a closet-like space but a nice range and good fridge. And it had a one-holer-small bathroom but with a glorious big brown porcelain tub with a powerful jet-like shower head--and before I even looked out the apartment's only window, I had shed my clothes and was boppin' away in the shower cleansing both my body and my soul (with Hotel Gotham soap). I was no longer a homeless Gothamite. And, in case you're asking, was there a whorehouse in this apartment building? Turns out there was--on the 18th floor--all Argentinian chicas--snobbish girls who wouldn't speak to tenants. Also, after I'd lived there a few months, a black woman moved next door to me. Our beds shared the same thin flimsy sheetrock wall (typical apartment wall in NYC apartments no matter the luxury status--no soundproofing in any wall or ceiling at all)--and one night action in her bed was like it was in my bed--it woke me up--and she was moanin' away like an owl fixed on LSD tabs--whooooo, ooooo, whooooooo, ooohh. The bed banging the wall. I met her on the elevator one day. She said her name was Sweet. And yes Sweet turned out to be a high-priced whore. And, yes, for many a night I suffered through Sweet trying to please one of her paying customers. One night we had a fire in the building and we were told by the firemen suddenly on the spot that we all had to use the stairs and get down to the lobby immediately--no we couldn't use the elevator. I knocked on Sweet's door as I passed thinking maybe she hadn't heard the alarm or the firemen.

When I got down to the lobby, Sweet was already down there. She was sitting on the lobby floor wearing a mink jacket and all cuddled up with a young-looking boy toy who was wrapped in a pink blanket. Suddenly I realized looking at Sweet, she was naked under that fur jacket--as she caught my eyes realizing that realization, she opened the fur to flash her very nice perky breasts at me--accompanied by a very SWEET and advertising smile.

I am just sittin' here thinkin' this morning, about that past time when there was still a Gothamite air about NYC...and still a Gotham Hotel. And I was young, stupid, horny, totally unambitious, as irresponsible as G.W. Bush was with our lives, my mission in life to be a character in a novel of my own generating, directing, and putting into words, a character who was a writer and whose work was to sit all day and night in a room of his own and write in schoolboy notebooks what he called "dream scenarios"--which I copy-catted after having reread F. Scott Fitzgerald's Crack Up, but really after reading Jack Kerouac's Book of Dreams, a used copy I'd bought at one of the used book stalls in Bryant Park.

--and, whoaaa, let's bring the dray to a halt at the steps leading up into Bryant Park off Sixth Avenue (when I first came to NYC, the city was still trying to promote 6th Avenue as "the Avenue of the Americas," originally a Robert Moses effort to promote his 1964 flop New York World's Fair, the one he built on a land fill out in Flushing Meadows under which is still buried centuries of Queens, New York, garbage) [Mr. Ed: Our pal, L Hat, has corrected our spontaneously remembered Wolf Man's contention that Robert Moses trumped up the "Avenue of the Americas" tag as a promo for his 1964 New York World's Fair. L Hat set him straight laying the Avenue of the Americas name change on good ole Comix-reading Mayor Fiorello, for whom La Guardia Airport is named. Wolf Man is notorious about his being "almost" right on some things--not totally right, you understand. A half-truth is still a truth, eh? Come on, folks, that's good horse sense.]

At that time you could buy used books in Bryant Park's many book stalls that sat Paris-parc-like around the park's big marble Gothic fountain. Bryant Park in those days (in back of the Public Library) was still a leftover part of the Gotham scene. It was still a People's Park. A great expanse of open lawn--a space for usually closet-bound and sardine-can-packed New Yorkers to lose themselves solo out in this lawn's lap that was filled with startling sunlight on cloudless days--that lawn framed by a rectangular ring of two great huge-tree tree-lined rows of interlacing walkways lined with old-timey-type park benches, some facing 42nd Street, but most facing that great lawn--the park always full of people--free spirits, rabble rousers, lost generations, strivers, all jammed in among themselves--the hardworking masses. And those wonderful old-style wooden green-painted bookstalls were jammed full of just the used books you were expecting to find--plus you inevitably would always also find a book you hadn't been expecting to find but for which you may have been looking for for years...

And then I hear in my noggin a huge CRASH: BAMMMMM...SPLAT!

You see the problem I've run into here? New York City is no longer anything like the New York City I'm sitting here remembering and beginning to get nostalgic over. Such thinking begins to seem a big waste of time when I suddenly return to the real-time earth--and suddenly the wolf in me starts looking forward to a full moon again--and I'm hungry for some fresh bloody meat, dammit, and once again my wolf NOSE is on the prowl for rich, fat, conspicuously wasteful, plump, Plutocrat belly meat--I can smell the wild odorous stench of it from miles away.

Whew. That fall back to earth was sudden, a little jolting, though I landed on all four paws upright. And just as I landed, my old Philco tube radio sprang to life and the next thing I know I'm listening to Michael Moore talking to good ole Amy Good(wo)man on Democracy Now about how fucking depressed he is about the recent horrifying Neo-Con-emerging events going on in the District of Corruption and also by the Dumbocrat Party goof in Massachusetts that led to the Teabagging Daddy takeover of old Unka Teddy's Kennedy-claimed Senate seat. Seems rather naive Martha Coakley wasn't prepared to have those slimy and smegma-covered balls of nude-model Scott Brown hanging over her tensely puckered lips. The Dumbo heads thought she was a shoo in...how depressing that she wasn't it was for Michael Moore. And Michael's also deeply depressed over Obama's "changes"...and how disappointed Michael's been with Obama's first year in the White Man's House...and what wimps Michael thinks the Dumbocrats are--and then he starts talking about how he's hoping when Obama gives his State of the Union address he's a man about everything and apologizes to the American people and admits he failed at holding out the olive branch of peace to the opposition and he failed at everything he promised...but the main thing for Michael is that Obama apologizes...and by that point I'm screaming, "Michael, Michael, I know you're right--I know you know exactly what's happening--but the solution doesn't lie in Obama apologizing--Obama will never lower himself to the House Negro level--no, on the other hand he will continue to defend his intentions and he'll continue to tell us he trusts his advisors and that they are keeping him well advised and blah, blah, blah. Ya hear me, Michael?"

Like our own Austin Highchew so empirically and astutely related in his post where he analyzed how President Obama uses his brilliant speeches as shields against attack--and also to deflect the arrows of contention flying at him, some of them flaming, and divert attention away from his failures and onto his made-up successes. Like he'll tout the "recovering" economy based on Wall Street statistics and January consumer reports--you'll see.

I like Michael Moore. I appreciate his humanist approach to filmmaking. Plus, he's making his home in Flint, Michigan, and some of my best friends are from Flint, Michigan, like our own thedailygrowlerhousepianist...plus I also used to daily interact with Michael Moore's wife's best friend who was from Flint, and I know his frustration and the truth of what he has scripted, set up, and filmed--I saw "Sicko" and found it very powerful from my point of view but too controversial for our white ruling majority's insistence that God and country right or wrong is the ultimate DECIDER in these matters--and the White God is a Capitalist god--a for-profit god--a aod you cannot tax! And saving souls to this god means making those souls rich enough so they can live well above the average scumbag everyday everybody who's lucky to live an average of 6 months or at their fittest maybe 35 years unless he's able to "Strike It Rich" "Eureka!" and suddenly find himself basking and fornicating among the gods.

One of my ex-wives was right: all of us should start our own churches--she made that comment as we attended a wedding in a huge Gotham-Gothic Catholic church in Uptown Manhattan. As she said, "Look, with your own church you get to live in a fucking castle--look at this place--and look out back there, that's a garden out there--what a life!"

But, back to Michael Moore's depression, I really haven't been keeping up with Commander in Chief Obama and his US Army of late. But I can assure Michael Moore he's gonna be more depressed after the President's State of the Union address fails to give him even a dash of hope. Flint's gotta go down a little further toward the bottom, Michael, now that the Neo-Cons totally control Obama through the Supreme-Court-of-Jerk Offs's decision giving Corporations First Amendment rights (they were made citizens back in the days John D. Rockefeller ruled the world)--the free-speech amendment, a decision, I now learn from Michael Moore, that was partially decided over a free-speech case brought before the Court based around a teevee commercial slandering Hillary Clinton and not allowed to run and Michael Moore's "Farenheit 911," which was backed by Mickey Mouse's corporate behemoth, the Disney Co., a corporation, being allowed to run in theaters ("Farenheit 911" slandered Goofy Ass G.W. Bush as being representative of the C-minus dumbass intelligence that was letting this country drift towards economic hell and forcing our ways into boxed in canyons of unending wars. Moore says he does suffer from Catholic guilt over his role in this Supreme Court decision).

I did, however, see some encouraging news coming yesterday out of the Great Democratic Islamic Republic United Tribes of Iraq. The Iraqi Freely Elected Democratic Christianized Islamic Republic Parliament announced they had finally executed Chemical Ali. Remember Chemical Ali? Whew. we're finally rid of that creep. Now let's remember, what was he guilty of? Let's see, it says here he was guilty of gassing 30,000 Kurds back when Donald Rumsfeld was his best buddy--oh, that's right, and Ali was one of Pappy Bush's former best buddies, too--and these birds were all best buddies with Saddam Hussein. AND WHO SENT SADDAM AND ALI ALL THAT GAS THAT KILLED THOSE KURDS?

And isn't it interesting, while I'm on the subject of these assholes's old buddies, that General Noriega, remember him?, was also at one time one of Pappy Bush's best buddies. That was when it was scandalously alledged that General Noriega ran Pappy's surplus cocaine business down in "our" Republic of Panama (see Monroe Doctrine).

By the way, We the People created Panama out of land we stole from Colombia in order to takeover the building of the Panama Canal and eventually the Isthmus of Panama at a time when we thought the way to rule the world was on the high seas and with a big bad big-guns-aimed-at-all-the-landlubbers navy. This is the time old weakling-at-birth Teddy Roosevelt created the Great WHITE Fleet, which he sailed around the world with pompous glory, painted all white as though it were appearing out of the heavens as the sun reflected off of it on a bright sunny day or how threatening it stood out blaring WHITE on a stormy thunder-rolling-fierce-cloudy dark day. Steaming full-speed ahead, the Great White Fleet carried a banner waving madly under the US flag that carried Teddy's Bull Moose motto, a weakling's motto, a bully's motto, "Speak softly but carry a big stick." The Capitalist US has followed this motto ever since Teddy created it. We the White People of the USA, we who own and rule the USA, "speak with forked tongue" (as our Native American citizens clarified it), sweet talking your ass out one corner of our mouths while planning your demise out the other corner. As soon as we gain your confidence, we hit your ass over the head with one of our big sticks!

I think Obama is carrying forth that "Speak softly and carry a big stick" philosophy. He knows full well if he were to apologize and admit he's been wrong-directional with his trying to neglect the past in favor of the future in his State of the Union speech he could rise back up to the populist expectations of the voters who put him into office...EXCEPT...Obama's problem is, he was really elected by the biggest voter of them all, the Corporations. Their votes and their contributing hundreds of billions of dollars to the largest spending campaign in the history of presidential elections in this country are what really put Barack Obama in office--you comprehend? He can't admit that in his speeches but that's what has him shackled--in bondage--as our first Black President. How easy is it to figure out from this what President Obama's going to say in his State of the Union message.

Do I have to parody it? Hell no. Just think this way. Whatever way you are hoping he will go in this speech, he will go the reverse of that way. Dig? That's what backwards thinking is. He knows we're right! Obama's no fool like Bush was. Obama was no C-minus student. He was certainly no C-minus Black lawyer. The only place for a C-minis Black lawyer is on the Supreme Court of Fools, i.e., Clarence "Long Dong" Thomas, Pappy Bush's choice as his Black replacement of Thurgood Marshall.

I try to reminisce, but what does it get me? It just leaves me as frustrated, angry, and hopeless as Michael Moore is. I can't ignore it. I try. When I'm not writing on this post I'm not at all concerned about what's going on outside my world--that's the way I was the day the Saudi-Arabians brought down the two tallest buildings on the Manhattan skyline--tacky, but you wouldn't think they'd tumble down so easily--not with 20th-Century architectural engineering skills that for instance allowed Frank Lloyd Wright's Maya-temple-style Imperial Hotel in Japan to be one of the only structures left standing after an 8.0 scale earthquake hit Tokyo in 1923. [Yes, the hotel did sustain damage during the earthquake--its middle sagged and some floors buckled, but as a whole structure it stayed upright. Wright later admitted that the big problem the hotel endured during that earthquake was foundational. Wright had originally intended to float the hotel on the ancient muds on which it sat--"like a battleship," as Wright put it--though that wasn't the way it ended up.]

PS: nice to see thewomantrumpetplayer commenting again. She's a brilliant one. And we praise the brilliant ones!

thegrowlingwolf
for The Daily Gothamite Growler

Filler Fact: With the death yesterday of actor Pernell Roberts (pancreatic cancer--WATCH OUT, folks, the BIG C is out to get you--you should be more afraid of the Big C than the phony Osama bin Laden tapes that always surface after a big Red Alert from our Office of Homeland Dopey Security!)--anyway, back to our story: with the death of Pernell Roberts, we are sorry to report that now all of the Cartwrights are dead. First Ben, then Hoss, then Little Joe, and now Adam.

Pernell Roberts was a weird bird. A Gawjah boy who made his acting debut in New York City as a Shakesperian actor. Pernell showed up at the Selma, Alabama, Civil Rights March. Was active in talking the studios into not using Whites to play Black characters--duh, of course, why wouldn't you use a Black to play a Black--oh, we forgot, RACISM in Hollywood. Pernell quit "Bonanza" after six seasons because as he put it, he just didn't feel right playing an Eastern-born, well-educated character who referred to his father as "Pa." So he quit "Bonanza" and went back to stage acting. Raise a glass to the departure from the mortal coil of old Pernell Elvin Roberts!

A The Daily Growler Jots & Tittles Edition

From the Fetid Green Waters of Tarnished Lake Flaccid, New York, Comes the thedailygrowlerjots&tittlesman: Barabbus Munn-Dayne..................................

Now where in the heck did you get that photo? Is that an aerial shot of Charlie Hooch's cigarette boat churning up the crap at the bottom of our dearly beloved lake?

Cecil the Dog-face Boy III is back home. I had a lovely fresh crab dinner with him the other night. He doesn't suspect anything improper that went on between myself and his sister while he was down in Miami judging that freak show. He was in good spirits since he'd cast the deciding vote for this year's "Best Freak in the Business" Award--a gold image of one of the pinhead girls from Todd Browning's freak's favorite movie "Freaks." "I thought Donny the Swan Man was the best damn freak I'd seen in many a half-moon. Wanda Lumbodowsky was a close second--she's the girl whose head was twisted around somehow in the womb to where it looks like its growing out of her back...." I showed awe. "No, seriously, it looks as though her head is growing out of her backbone. She has to walk backwards to see where she's going." "I would think," I injected, "she could easily outfreak Donny the Swan Man." "Oh, you'd be wrong there. You have to see Donny to believe him. He has bird feathers for hair!"

The fresh crabs--Cecil had 'em flown up from Louisiana--were absolutely wonderful. We washed them down with a crispy cold Sauterne. One thing I can say about old Cecil, he puts on a good feast. Nothing but the best for him. "How much did they pay you to judge that freak show, Cecil?" I asked him casually. Like I'm trying to find out how Cecil lives so conspicuously consuming like he does. He looks at me and doesn't answer me. I don't ask him again. His business is none of my business.

But I'm still curious. I mean, come on, how many of your friends have the facial features of a dog (though, remember, I've never seen Cecil without his custom-made hood), live in a mansion built out of logs, and have a Rolls Silver Cloud sitting in their garage with a Chinese-American chauffeur living in a huge apartment on the back of the property, and their own chef on staff who flies up from New York City on request to prepare their special meals? None I'm sure. That takes beaucoup wheelbarrows of money. It's even more curious when you think that no one gets invited to Cecil's special feasts except me. When I'm not there he dines alone.

I'm Cece's best friend here in Lake Flaccid--hell, I'm his only friend here in Lake Flaccid--most of the people around here consider Cecil a weirdo--they consider him a freak, what the hell am I avoiding saying? However, I have to be very careful with actions and words and gestures and facial expressions around Cecil. He is a bit more dog than man in the sense of getting his feelings hurt or tucking his tail (no Cecil doesn't have a tail--not one that I know of) and drooping his eyes--dog like, you understand.

I sit here this Saturday morning sipping on a green tea while eating my morning breakfast--stale Cheerios covered in honey--Native American style--with a bowl of fresh raspberries (though it says "Product of Chile" on the carton here so I don't know exactly what the word "fresh" means on the label).

Not much happening up here in Lake Flaccid except me and Cecil the Dog-face Boy III. I haven't seen Charlie Hooch in over a week. I saw Mrs. Thompson-Pinch, the Canadian diplomat's wife who lives up near John Brown's old farm just south of Lake Placid, the other day, buying rock salt up at Mooney Lou's jot-'em-down store. The Lake Flaccid center city is pretty much shut down--winter sends all the nonnatives packing to warmer climes--it gets cold as hell up here--though it hasn't snowed snow-plow-deep yet. Buffalo had a couple of snow storms, one bad one last week and we soon get Buffalo's weather, so I'm chopping some extra wood--got to keep my cabin warm. Gets 20 below up here sometimes.

The local teevee weather people are smiling broadly and talking about what a mild winter we're having this year. "At least we're not in Haiti tonight," I heard one of them chirp the other night before the Letterman Show came on.

A little drab news from Lake Flaccid, so I'll move on to some serious jots & tittles:
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Jots & Tittles

--First of all, I hadn't heard that Ed Beach had died this past X-mas Day until this morning. He died out in Oregon where he had moved after the radio station, WRVR in New York City (RVR standing for Riverside Radio--it being the radio station of the Riverside Church), over which he had broadcast a show called "Just Jazz" for dozens of years was sold to the commercial radio folks for many millions and became a "Lite FM" station.

Growing up in New York City and beginning to dig jazz when you were a teenager you had access to many a jazz program, but none was as much fun as old Ed Beach's "Just Jazz" shows. Ed was one of the cool school of jazz dejays. He was laid back. Soft spoken. Very deliberate in his statements. Very hip to the bends and turns and trends of jazz, a young art at the beginning of Ed's jazz broadcasting career, an almost dead art at the end of his jazz broadcasting career. He started as what is called in the biz a "Classical" announcer, meaning he was qualified to host classical music shows--you know, he could pronounce all the many different language titles phonetically correctly and artists names correctly--with the proper clip in his way of pronouncing these "foreign-to-Americans" words all that iced over with a learned history of the music he was playing. He brought this classical radio attitude with him over into his love of jazz in his cool radio show--"Just Jazz." So Ed's left the control room for good.

--Another death caught my attention, too. Bobby Bragan died yesterday or so. He was 92. I remember Bobby as a Brooklyn Dodger in 1948--I was just a bambino but old enough to be into baseball and remembering the following incidents quite clearly. Bobby Bragan, a "hind catcher," was a pet of the Brooklyn General Manager Branch Rickey. Bobby was an Alabama boy who'd been playing most of his minor league baseball down in Texas. When Branch Rickey decided to break the color barrier and bring Jackie Robinson from Montreal to the Brooklyn Dodgers, Bobby was one of the Southern white boys who signed a petition asking Rickey not to hire Robinson. Then when Branch said sorry, boys, I'm bringing him to Brooklyn whether you like it or not, Bobby ask Rickey to trade him but Rickey wouldn't do it and forced Bobby to play with Robinson. Bobby later, after a week of playing with Robinson and seeing what a truly great baseball player he was, repented the sins of his racist heart and retracted his petition and wanting to be traded. Branch Rickey, however, sent him out of Brooklyn anyway and took a chance and made Bobby manager of Brooklyn's Texas League farm team, the Fort Worth Cats (they originally were the Panthers). Rickey's intentions in sending Bobby to Fort Worth ironically were in order for him to replace Bobby as Brooklyn's catcher with Roy Campanella.

Bobby became a very successful player/manager at Fort Worth. Bobby was also sent by Rickey, after Rickey left the Dodgers, to play for the Hollywood Stars of the old Pacific Coast League--the year the Stars came out wearing uniforms that sported Bermuda shorts for pants. From there Rickey took Bobby with him to Pittsburgh. Bobby ended up managing at Pittsburgh, Cleveland, and finally the Milwaukee/Atlanta Braves (he was Atlanta's first manager) (Bobby managed Eddie Matthews and Hank Aaron when the Milwaukee Braves who had once been the Boston Braves became the Atlanta Braves). Bobby's Major League managerial times were all short lived. Bobby was fired midseason from all three MLB manager jobs. Bobby ended up moving to Fort Worth, Texas, for good, managing the Fort Worth Cats--one of the most successful teams in the old Texas League--and to eventually become President of the Texas League. He ended up his baseball career as a Major League coach. Quite a character--and from quite a family of baseball players, check out the Five Bragan Brothers:

BOBBY - Played in big leagues (as a catcher) with Philadelphia Phillies and Brooklyn. Coached for LA Dodgers and Houston Colt 45s. Manager for Pirates, Indians and Braves. First Manager of the Atlanta Braves. Established the Bobby Bragan Youth Foundation in Fort Worth in 1991, providing scholarships for 8th graders.

JIMMY - Spent 44 years in pro baseball (1950-1993). Minor league player and manager. Served as major league scout for Reds, Expos and Indians, coach for Reds, Expos, and Brewers. President of Southern League 14 years. Now retired and enjoys visits to his small farm from children, grandchildren and friends.

PETER - Semi-pro player in Birmingham and Philadelphia before entering Army in WWII where he served in General Patton's 3rd Army in France and Germany. Operated car dealership in Birmingham 35 years. Has owned Southern League Jacksonville Suns since 1985.

FRANK - Attended Mississippi State on baseball scholarship where he earned his BS. Later received MBA from Texas A&M. Commissioned 2nd Lieutenant in US Army. Played proball for AA Memphis Chicks where Hall-of-Famer Luke Appling was his manager.

LIONEL - Signed pro contract with Pittsburgh Pirates organization after graduation from Phillips HS in 1939. Reported to Valdosta of the Alabama-Florida League. Drafted into Armed Forces where he spent 3 1/2 years in US Navy. Lionel retired as Chief Deputy of the Birmingham Jail in 1987 after 35 years of service.

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Old Lionel Bragan, think about it, was there when they put Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., in the Birmingham jail! Old Lionel, think about it, worked for Bull Connor! Ironies galore in the Bragan family history. Remember, Jackie Robinson and Roy Campanella's coming to the Brooklyn Dodgers made it possible for Bobby Bragan to be launched on his very successful baseball career.
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--Speaking of death, I did happen to watch an old PBS special on Charles Schulz last night. Come on, the "Peanuts" creator. What a weird dude. And oh what ironies pop up all over in his life. He was a "good Christian." Why he taught Sunday School and tithed and was faithful to God. Yet, God consistently let him down regarding the innermost problems going on in Charlie's brain since early childhood, but especially since he'd been by his mother's bedside when she died of colon cancer--a horrible death--and little Charlie had to suffer it--his mother's dying in front of him heckling him the rest of his life in terms of his faithfulness to God. Like why did God allow his mother to die in such a wretched way?

This show was also interesting in that it related what old Charlie drew in "Peanuts" to his own problems. He related all the characters in "Peanuts" to children in his past. He expressed his problems with life in the character of Charlie Brown--the whole scenario of the whole cartoon being Charlie Brown never being able to kick a football. This morbid sense of Christian devotion with a gut full of doubts led to a divorce in the 70s and then a remarriage to a younger woman in 1973--a very pretty young woman who looked even younger around old graying Charlie. Charlie moved to Santa Rosa, California, after "Peanuts" took off and started making him money. At the end of his life, it was stated, Charlie had amassed a fortune estimated worth a billion dollars! Yet, Charlie lived frugal and didn't get out of the house much. His wife said when he wasn't working, he would just sit in front of the teevee flipping through the channels--flipping from one to the other--showing love only to his dog. His wife said Charlie was so in love with his dog that if the dog got up on his lap and fell asleep, Charlie wouldn't budge or do anything as long as the dog slept. He'd sit paralyzed until the dog woke up and hopped off his lap.

Then one day in his 76th year, after a major stomach ache, Charlie did something he hated to do; in fact, he did something he'd never done: he went to see a doctor. He had never worried about his health--and he was 76 years old--he had never gone to a doctor--had never had any kind of check ups. Sure enough, Charlie's first-ever trip to the doctor was a fatal one. The doc after doing all kinds of tests on Charlie said the billionaire "Peanuts" cartoonist had an incurable cancer! What kind of cancer? The same kind of cancer that had killed his mother: Colon cancer. And, the cancer was too far along to operate on him. The doctor dryly told Charlie he was dying and that was that, the End, Charlie Brown.

Old dying Charlie Schulz was interviewed by NBC's Al Roker out in California after the cancer was killing him and he'd even suffered a stroke. The interview was held in order for Charlie to announce he was retiring from drawing "Peanuts." The interview is very raggedy. Schulz is obviously medicated. He's blurry eyed, hesitant, etc. Then at the end Schulz breaks down and starts crying. There would be no more Charlie Brown--alas, Charlie would NEVER get to kick the football.

The question that was lingering in old Charlie's mind as he lay dying went with him to his grave: "Why, since I have been such a faithful Christian is God doing this to me?"

It was a sad documentary of a man most Americans thought was this wide-eyed wonderful brilliant family man who understood children so well and whose depictions were so real and natural and all-American. But he really was a man in turmoil, a man with his troubles nestled in his gut. His stresses centered in his colon. The cancer cells swarming hungrily to that stress spot, eating at it for 77 years--finally taking the final bite in 2002 when old Charlie Schulz left the mortal coil.

Charles Schulz near the end.

It got me, unfortunately, thinking about my own death. It's coming. I know it's coming. How will it come? I want to be surprised. Like Charles Schultz, I, too, don't go get check ups. I feel fine. But unlike Charles Schultz, I don't have any past haunting my gut. I am perfectly contented. My mother died of natural causes. She was 80. My father died of a heart attack. He was 85. That's a pretty good track record for my parents. I'm confident I'll make it to 80 at least.. We'll see. If I wake up one morning with a terrible stomach ache, well, we'll see then if I get to kick the football or not.
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--Down in Haiti they've announced they given up searching the rubbles for people still alive. Fuck them. If they're still alive under all that crap after two weeks, then, it's more dangerous looking for them due to the stench of the rotting corpses--they are saying maybe way over 200,000 dead in this 7.0 earthquake. Just think, that's a few less than were killed in that devastating tsunami back in 2008 was it? The Wolf Man's been writing about Bill Clinton and George Herbert W. Bush being palsy-walsies. That's when I can testify to hearing Bill Clinton say GHW Bush was his new best friend at the time they teamed up with the Tsunami Aid Fund--they gathered in several hundred million. Right after that, Bill started his own foundation and World Peace Forum or something like that, which Bill says he started with money he made on his great tell-all (yeah sure) bestselling book. Now Bill is teaming up with GHW's rascal son G.W. Bush with President Obama's insistence to overseer and give critique to the Haitian disaster situation. Both Bill and Hillary were in Haiti at the same time. You notice, they don't do photo-ops together. I assume Bill since his heart condition can't hump around on Hillary any more--yet Bill looks healthy as hell--well-coiffed in the hair department--well-heeled in the "nice" clothes department--plus, remember, at his big birthday bash in Lost Wages he was eating $250 Kobe steaks with his bigshot friends--come on, there must have been some whores giving old Bill a little company while he was in Vegas.

Since they've quit rescuing people from the rubble, they are moving Haitians in droves out of Port au Prince and into tent cities they've set up in the level fields outside Port au Prince. Instead of Port au Prince they're now living in Port au Pottyville. When they are all out of Port au Prince, then the US developers and contractors including Halliburton and KBR and Boeing and Latino cheap labor shipped in (they can't use Haitians because of "security" problems), along with Blackwater and Dimecorp will be down their leveling that old city--leveling it to the ground. The Haitians no longer have a capital city--hell, 2,000,000 of them no longer have homes or property. By the time the Capitalist Pigs get through razing Port au Prince, there'll be no property lines or proof of property ownership left--all the records were destroyed in the National Palace we assume. So Haiti is no longer even a nation--except Cap Haitien is a large city--so there are places in Haiti still in place. Northern Haiti--except that's close to the Dominican Republic--and they are not the closest of friends.

So what's next for Haiti? Statehood maybe? Naw. Like Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, Guam, American Samoa, it'll become a Territory. Hot damn. We've finally found a way to own Haiti outright. I love the way the IMF right after the earthquake hit was right there handing Haiti a bill for their debt and saying the only way the IMF would give up any money aid was as a loan, adding that onto Haiti's already unpayable debt to the IMF, the US-controlled world organization that is criminally going about the world getting Third-World countries into debt and then selling those debts to private hedge funds and equity funds to collect--like the private equity bunch that bought South Africa's debt and then sent them a bill for twice what they owed.

Bolivia recently told the IMF to go screw itself when they refused to pay any more on their IMF loan bill.
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[Mr. Ed: I wouldn't call the above entries anywhere near a Jot or a Tittle. Come on, Munn-Dayne; you're getting prolixy.]
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Instead of "beating a dead horse," let me continue with MY POST! Here's a little tittle that should titilate your broke and hungry and overcharged situation. I call it, "A BOO-HOO (without the Hoo) for POOR LITTLE OL' EXXON-MOBIL." From Reuters news:

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Exxon Mobil Corp (XOM.N) said on Thursday rising profits from gasoline sales and its chemicals unit drove its first-quarter earnings up over 10 percent, offsetting lower oil and gas prices.

It was yet another massive profit for Exxon Mobil -- the world's largest publicly traded company -- which has seen its coffers swell due to soaring oil prices over the last few years.

The company earned $39.5 billion in 2006, the largest profit in U.S. history.

Net income rose to $9.28 billion, or $1.62 a share, in the quarter, from $8.4 billion, or $1.37 a share, last year.

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Hey, President Obama, how about an excess profits tax on these Capitalist Pigs?

--Has anybody but me ever asked what the hell oil is in terms of the planet's make up? We know what causes oil but why is it where it is in the belly of the earth? And what are huge underground water reservoirs for? And why don't oil and water mix? And what happened to G.W. Bush's hydrogen car? Rhetorical questions? Whyever the earth produces oil, surely it was not for humans to suck out and burn up and thus ruin our atmosphere, pollute our air, or for us to make plastic bags out of it and plastic cups and all those petroleum-based products that we can't live without. OIL. That spells disaster. Thomas Gold, by the way, is the nut scientist who said that the earth reproduces oil all the time--Abiotic theory, I think it's called.

--Here are two new companies I'd never heard of before this week:
1) The General (they use a cartoon-character general as there mascot)--an auto insurance
company--a brokerage house I suppose;
and
2) how about this one whose commercial I saw while watching the Big East basketball game
of the week--Connecticut beat #1 Texas--easily. The UConn Huskies. Come on, that's so
collegiately clever--so during the game I saw a commercial for Quicken Loans.
Wonder where Quicken Loans gets its capital?

--Did you know that in 1941 an earthquake destroyed Cap Haitien, Haiti?
--Did you know that there were 587 earthquakes registered in California and Nevada this
past week? Check out this site: quake.usgs.gov/recenteqs/latest.htm
--Largest earthquake in New York State history:

This severe earthquake was felt from Canada south to Maryland and from Maine west to Indiana. It caused property damage estimated at $2 million at Massena and Cornwall. Many chimneys in that area required rebuilding, and several structures were unsafe for occupancy until repaired. Residents of St. Lawrence County reported that many water wells went dry.

At Massena, in northern St. Lawrence County, 90 percent of the chimneys were destroyed or damaged and house foundations, plumbing, and masonry were damaged severely. Similar effects were reported at Cornwall. Cracks formed in the ground at Hogansburg, and brick-masonry and concrete structures were damaged. Chimneys were downed in several towns in New York, including Fort Covington, Keeseville, Malone, Norfolk, Ogdensburg, and Waddington.

From USGS Website
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--Old farts on SupremeJerk Court have simply reinstated the old known fact that a corporation is the same as you or I--a corporation is considered a citizen--and the old farts simply underlined the fact by saying they had first amendment rights same as you or I do--in fact, they have more rights than you or I have. Campaign financing will still go through the roof whether We the People deny corporations individual citizenship or not. They'll get the money to these chisling criminals one way or another--or by "hook or crook" as the old hustlers (Republicans) around here are fond of saying.
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--
Actress Jean Simmons is dead at 92! She the Aimee Simple McPherson character in the movie "Elmer Gantry"--that great vehicle for the great Burt Lancaster.
--
And the great old pianist Earl Wild died just today at 94. Earl could play the piano, brother. I heard him play a Liszt recital once--he played Chopin for an encore.
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A lot of DEATH this week in the Jots & Tittles...

Death makes me thirsty. I think I'll pop a Genessee Ale and lay back in my easy chair and enjoy a rapture.

barabbusmunn-daynethedailygrowlerjots&tittlesman
for The Saturday Evening Daily Growler Post (Toasties)

Our God Is a Vengeful God--a Christian Daily Growler

And Noah began to be a husbandman, and he planted a vineyard: And he drank of the wine, and was drunken; and he was uncovered within his tent. And Ham, the father of Canaan, saw the nakedness of his father, and told his two brethren without. And Shem and Japheth took a garment, and laid it upon both their shoulders and went backward, and covered the nakedness of their father; and their faces were backward, and they saw not their father’s nakedness. And Noah awoke from his wine, and knew what his younger son had done unto him. And he said, Cursed be Canaan; a servant of servants shall he be unto his brethren. And he said, Blessed be the Lord God of Shem; and Canaan shall be his servant. And God shall enlarge Japheth, and he shall dwell in the tents of Shem; and Canaan shall be his servant. And Noah lived after the flood three hundred and fifty years. And all the days of Noah were nine hundred and fifty years: and he died.
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That's from the Journal of Southern Religion, it's the verse from Genesis in the White Man's Christian Bible that is a continuation of the Noah story--the Christian's version of the old Mesopotamian legend (see the Gilgamesh link over in our Blog List) of the King and his little boat that safely carried him across this sudden huge lake, blah, blah, blah. That's Ham's Curse--Canaan was Ham's son--he bore the curse of servitude--while Ham was turned black and sent into exile in the Land of Kush--maybe that's why there are Jews in Ethiopia, you think? Maybe that's why the Ethiopians claim they have the Ark of the Covenant (what the first Indiana Jones movie was about) in their possession after the Christians lost it in 6 BC. [By the way, can you imagine living 950 years like Noah did? What, you don't believe the Word of God? You don't think men of God used to live those unbelievable amounts of years? How did they determine years in those days you think? Did an old dude sit in a tower counting suns up and suns down--leaning out the tower every 365 sun ups/sun downs and shouting "Happy New Year!"?]

So down in Haiti, Holy Christ, they just had another earthquake this morning--6.0 on the old Richter Scale, 10 miles south of Port au Prince on the harbor there. And yesterday my Christian commercial White man's news reports were telling me that the godly Haitians in the streets, among the dead bodies, themselves dying of thirst, starving to death, burning up in the Hellish Haitian sun (it's in the high 80s in Haiti these days) were praying to God and singing hymns, asking God for help. So what kind of help does God send the poor damn Haitians?: the US Army and another earthquake.

President Obama, on the grounds that somebody's got to get down there and put these people under arrest is sending in 10,000 US troops--and why not?--after all, we have had our mitts in Haiti's business since Woody Wilson sent the US Marines down there in 1914 to occupy it until 1934. It's a hangover from Monroe Doctrine days. You see, the stupid, imperialist Monroe Doctrine is still our covenant with God that we have dictatorial authority over the Caribbean and Central America and theoretically South America.

We bring you: The Monroe Doctrine! From Wikipedia:

The Monroe Doctrine was a United States policy that was introduced on December 2, 1823, which said that further efforts by European governments to colonize land or interfere with states in the Americas would be viewed by the United States of America as acts of aggression requiring US intervention.^[1] The Monroe Doctrine asserted that the Western Hemisphere was not to be further colonized by European countries, and that the United States would not interfere with existing European colonies nor in the internal concerns of European countries.
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Now we bring you: The Roosevelt Corollary! Again from Wikipedia:

The Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine (added during the presidency of Theodore Roosevelt) was invoked to intervene militarily in Latin America to stop the spread of European influence^[5].
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Monroe aimed the Monroe Doctrine at the former colonies of Spain. We the People of the US represented by Monroe joined with Great Britain in fear that European countries (France was one of them) would rush to takeover the old Spanish colonies, thus the Doctrine of our Right of Divine Intervention in Latin American affairs. (Great Britain, remember, is our White Foundation Motherland who White Anglo-Saxon Protestants (our Founding Fathers who we are so Holy about) have long ago forgiven and long ago reaccepted Tory stances based on Great Britain philosophy, economics (Capitalism), and parentship.)

The problem with Haiti was, it was a French colony and France backed us with money and troops during our Revolutionary War with Great Britain. Britain and France, though cousins in relationship (the Gauls), have hated each other forever, so we have mixed loyalties under the Monroe Doctrine in terms of Haiti--the "right testicle of hell" as Greg Palast calls it. The other testicle being the Dominican Republic, Haiti's Hispanola neighbor--who they've had conflict with for ages, too. EXCEPT: We the People own the Dominican Republic so we have no worries about the Dominican Republic wanting its independence from us. They tried it when Lyndon Johnson was president, electing Juan Bosch, a left-wing reformist type who We the People can't stand--reformers to us now mean "Socialists" or at the extreme "Terrorists." But in Johnson's time it meant "Communists" and that's what Juan Bosch really was and that's why Lyndon under his Monroe Doctrine divine authority sent the U.S. Marines to Santo Domingo to restore democracy to these crazy half-Indian-half-Spanish heathen! [Santo Domingo in the good ole days was called Cuidad Trujillo--our boy in the Dominican Republic was Raphael Trujillo; same as the Duvaliers (Papa and Baby Doc) were our dickboys in Haiti (the Duvaliers ran off with the Haitian treasury (Haiti was a fairly rich country during Papa Doc's rule) and left the country stone broke)--poor people get tired of dictators after awhile--unless you live in Chile, where they seem to want to be enslaved, just electing a billionaire as President, a former Pinochet asskisser. Dumb. But then the USA didn't like the last Chilean president--he was a reformer--we hate reformers, so we brought the Pinochet crowd back into power there. The Monroe Doctrine at work. At work in Honduras, too, don't you know. The popular reformer president, an Indian to boot, now in asylum in the Brazil embassy, was too risky in a Capitalist sense for us to back--long live the dictatorial Power Elite.]

[Due to Communist China now holding us by our testicles, have you noticed you don't hear We the People accusing dissidents of being "Commies" anymore, no "Red scarce" shit going around any more. Instead "Socialists" is back in vogue. The Christians call them "Humanists." Pat Robertson condemned Haiti on his bullshit session the other day as being duped by a Catholic reformist priest, Aristide, who Brother Pat says brought God's angry wrath down on Haiti. Remember now, Pat Robertson has a direct line to the Big Daddy himself--Pat gets messages from God, so it's the Christian God giving Pat all this exclusive information. Did you know in Sociology if you study the ancient Christian society it is a communist society! For years up in Canada there was a colony of Christian Communists. Yeah verily.

But surely all this religious bullshit has taught us that Marx was right when he said all religions had an opiate effect on human monkeys--took their attentions totally away from reality. Made them easy targets for the Capitalist CHEAP LABOR pools--the cheapest of which is SLAVERY.

These devastating earthquakes have left the Haitian people totally helpless. They are now slaves to whoever takes them over. They have nothing anymore. Their National Palace has been flattened into pancake rubble. Their oldest church has been destroyed. All their museums and art galleries are gone. All their hospitals are gone. There water supply is broken and contaminated. Their air is full of the odors of the decaying dead. They are helpless. The president of Haiti is a babbling idiot now--unable to say anything of an authoritative sort without getting a PR script from Hillary Clinton first, both she and her husband down there--yep, folks, your tax dollars have made life pretty simple for Bill and Hill now--old Bill's down there glad handing around and shedding crocodile tears. [I just read where Obama has said he'll allow no Haitian immigrants into the US at this time--so forget about fleeing Haiti if you're a Haitian--It's OK if you a White Christian woman, though.]

So Obama has signed an executive order giving the military power of takeover in disasters (or terrorist attacks) whether in this country or elsewhere--the Obama Doctrine--using his Southern Command as his enforcement unit, which is the Command currently saying it is in command in Haiti.

Remember, there's POWER in the White Man's House only really by being Commander and Chief of our armed forces--Obama has no power in Congress--he has no power in the Corporate World--but he has POWER as Commander and Chief! Georgie Porgie Bush taught him that. Fuck Congress. Fuck the American People. As Commander and Chief Obama can write executive orders all day long taking control--and that's exactly what he's doing in Haiti. He's using his military to wield his Power around the world--he's the Kill Power Peace Man. He's using the Navy in Haiti same as Slick Willie did when he interfered in Haitian politics during his free ride on the backs of We the People--he used the US Navy to blockade Haiti. Obama has a huge aircraft carrier just off shore from Port au Prince--you can see it out there from the Port au Prince airport--now like Baghdad Airport (remember when it was renamed the George W. Bush International Airport?--oh yeah!) and the Kabul Airport--under the control of the U.S. Army--the 82nd Airborne--not bringing aid--but bringing as Obama calls it "SECURITY." That, under the Monroe Doctrine means MILITARY TAKEOVER. A Kill Power move--to take over Haiti, stabilize it, and then turn it over to the private equity funds and hedge funds and Halliburton and Blackwater and Donald Trump types and soon Port au Prince will be the Paris of the Caribbean! They'll have plenty of condos and spas and offshore banks and gambling casinos--AH! DEMOCRACY is headed to Haiti.

My good friend thedailygrowlerhousepianist still defends Obama, though he's pretty pissed off at the dumbness of the Middle Class (progressives supposedly--Liberals supposedly) in this country. The ignorant who get their information from Fox News and CNN. Like those voters in Massachusetts who just turned on Obama by electing a goofy ass Repugnican to replace old Unka Teddy, who by the way wasn't a Liberal in my eyes! And Obama and John ex-D.A. Kerry both campaigned for Ms. Cloakley, but, the power of fear won out--Massachusetts people really believe that a National Healthcare Plan managed by themselves (We the People who are the Government acc. to our Declaration of Independence) is what? Anti-American? Anti-Christian? Anti-Catholic (isn't Mass. a Catholic state?)? It's a government for the people by the people, dammit--that's why we have the right to overthrow these bastards--look out, here comes Sarah Palin, our first woman president. And God I hope that's a big joke and not a reality, but hey look at reality today--all things are possible, said old Jesus X. Christ.

I'm growling up the wrong tree, I know. But it's all so clear to me. Why's that? Why isn't it clear to the Majority, the dumbasses? thedailygrowlerhousepianist says Obama has no choice but to send in the Army and Navy to restore order there before any humanitarian aid can be distributed with any kind of fairness. G.W. Bush sent the military to New Orleans after Katrina, when local whites were going about shooting black people with impunity--continuing to do so after Bush let Blackwater into New Orleans. [Did you know Cuban doctors were in Haiti setting up inflatable triage units almost immediately after the earthquakes had subsided?]

Who the hell knows what's really going on? I'll admit I don't.

thegrowlingwolf
for The Daily Growler

Chaos in Prime Time

Foto by tgw, New York City, 2010
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[Jan. 2010 Deaths That Should Be Noticed:
Ed Thigpen, 79, American jazz drummer, after long illness.
Teddy Pendergrass, 59, American soul singer, complications from colon cancer
Bobby Charles, 71, American songwriter ("See You Later, Alligator", "(I Don't Know Why) But I Do").
Carl Smith, 82, American country singer-songwriter.
Willie Mitchell, 81, American musician and record producer,
Beverly Aadland, 67, American actress, girlfriend of Errol Flynn, diabetes and heart failure
Dick Johnson, 84, American big band clarinetist (Artie Shaw Band), after short illness.
Art Rust, Jr., 82, American sports commentator, Parkinson's disease.


The Prime In Terms of Chaos
L Hat, our pal at www.languagehat.com, had a post on the prime yesterday:

PRIME.

I knew the symbol properly used for a foot (measurement of length), as in 5′, was called a "prime," and I occasionally vaguely wondered why, but it's one of those things I never got around to investigating. Now I have, and here's what Wikipedia has to say:

The name "prime" is something of a misnomer. Through the early part of the 20th century, the notation x′ was read as "x prime" not because it was an x followed by a "prime symbol", but because it was the first in the series that continued with x″ ("x second") and x‴ ("x third"). It was only later, in the 1950s and 1960s, that the term "prime" began to be applied to the apostrophe-like symbol itself. Although it is now more common to pronounce x″ and x‴ as "x double prime" and "x triple prime", these are still sometimes pronounced in the old manner as "x second" and "x third".

Mind you, this is followed by "[citation needed]," but it's plausible enough I'm willing to accept it provisionally. If anyone knows of a more dependable resource on the subject, by all means speak up. And remember, it's not 5'10" (with apostrophes or end quotes), it's 5′10″!

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L Hat's editorist approach got me to thinking about the primes in my life. "Prime time" on teevee first pops into my mind. Then I recall in the army a certain truck was called a "prime mover." Then of course from my ancient West Texas past comes "prime the pump before you git the water." Then of course there are "prime cuts of meat." And there are: "He's in the prime..." or "He's at his prime..." or "He's reached his prime." And of course there's the prime minister. The old schoolbook called the primer. And there's a primer in painting a house or a room--there's the prime coat. Man, my life is full of primes. And that gets me playing a curious game with myself--my dumb self really--and I start wondering does "prim" as in "prim and proper" come from prime? God, how questing the human mind is. You must keep your mind questing. You must play mental games like tracing words throughout the various aspects of your life. You must stay in prime condition no matter your age and wear, unless you're one of those unholy ones who can drink, smoke, fornicate, take steroids, etc., and who live what seems like good long lives--like our recently departed Uncle Teddy Kennedy.

Here, in fact, let me save your life--keep you in the prime! Here's a recipe for a priming drink that will be all you need to eat even it's so savioristic--just three of these a day and you'll live longer than that old dawdling fool Senator Robert Byrd, the ex-Ku Klux Klanner of West Virginny, or old Heavy Humping Hugh Hefner (Heifferner):

Blend the following:

A half a beet (or throw a whole beet in there)
5 carrots
4 stalks of celery
half an orange
half an apple
a hefty plug of fresh ginger
you can also add a tad of fresh pineapple if you wish
or I've even thrown a banana in the mix--makes it like a smoothie.

Man, you drink three of those a day and you'll be maneuvering tons better under the prime directive of life: "Live long and prosper."

So there's prim, primary, prime, primate, prime rib...off into the depths of the prime--' x' x'' x'''--but then double X is ok, 2.
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What Are Obama's Prime Motives?
Obama is fascinating me more and more each day as I sometimes find myself standing dumbass with my jaw dropped open in disbelief at some of his "actions." He's backwards thinking, yes, he is; he's showing himself to be just as backwards thinking as G.W. Bush was. But then there is something very devious about Obama's use of backward thinking. I mean, I was appalled to hear Obama appoint Slick Willie Clinton and G.W. (YES our EX-TWO-TERM-FAUX-CRIMINAL-PRESIDENT) Bush as his ambassadors to the devastated nation of Haiti in its time of tragic need. And then I got to boiling when I heard Old Georgie Porgie give one of his little slurring speeches about how "We'er-ah gonna do all we kin fer those wooly-boogers in Hay-tea--those crazy fuckin' field kneegrows whose Catholic-Commie duly democratically elected president I had my Marines kidnap and fly his worthless ass off to Central Africa--so who better to aid these motherfuckers than ME?...and my old pappy's best pal, Mister Billy Jeff Clinton...How's yo mama, Billy Jeff?"

G.W., by the way, is looking in his prime these days [as is Billy Jeff Clinton]--he's diggin' the good life, folks, the good life We the People are providing for him, and his whole fucking family, I might add. There's also no telling how many millions this little prime asshole stole out of our Treasury--remember he misplaced 40 billion dollars or was that 40 trillion dollars out of the budget and also remember all that oil he and his oil pals siphoned off those Iraqi oilfields and shipped out through Israel before the Turkestan and Iraq oil workers cut the pipelines and went on strike--but think of the millions this little crooked creep probably packed away in his own USB Swiss tax-evasion accounts (and We the People bailed USB out--remember Obama playing golf on Martha's Vineyard with the big dog at USB?) or socked away in the Cayman Islands or perhaps hidden in one of his father's offshore accounts or one of the Bush Family's foundation accounts or maybe in Pappy's Tsunami Tax-Free Aid Account he cofounded with his new best friend Slick Willie Clinton--though I must admit, Slick Willie didn't look so happy when Obama forced him up on stage with Georgie Porgie.

I sat there still jaw-dropped watching as G.W. made his little pipsqueak statement--I was watching Obama. He seemed to be having a ball pushing these two clowns together and forcing them to FIX Haiti since they're the ones who fucked it up during their administrations--they are the ones who forced Haiti under Slick Willie's FREE TRADE bullshit--his turning us over to GATT and GAPP and the WTO and the IMF and the bullshit of NAFTA. Here again, Slick Willie stepped into Pappy Bush's shoes in his dealings with Haiti. It was Pappy Bush who first gave Aristide hell when Aristide was duly elected the first democratically president maybe in Haiti's whole history--I'm not certain. Pappy Bush and the Power Elite hated Aristide because he was a reformist. In pure meanness because of Haiti's attempt at becoming a democratic nation, Pappy Bush's Power Elite started pulling our factories out of Haiti--i.e., the Rawlings Co. pulled their baseball factory (where Haitian women made baseballs 12 to 14 hours a day for a dollar a day--WHAAAAA! CHEAP LABOR. Always keep those two words in mind when you consider the prime motive of our unprimed government) out of Haiti and moved it to Costa Rica.

Though Pappy Bush pulled back his opposition of Aristide and allowed him to stay in power, Bush forced Aristide to give an exemption to US corporations shipping their goods out of Haiti inspite of an embargo on the rest of the world. Then under Slick Willie's free-trade bullshit and deregulation bullshit the WTO told Haiti their successful sugar industry could no longer compete in the Global Marketplace with the USA's sugar industry. In fact, under the new WTO rules (GATT and GAPP accounting), Haiti was forced to plough up their sugar cane fields and buy Louisiana and Texas sugar. By doing this We the People of the USA ruined the Haitian economy. Things got so bad as our corporations moved in and enslaved the Haitian workforce--the Haitian farmers lost their farmlands--a big IMF-backed dam project in Northern Haiti wiped out 1000s upon 1000s of acres of fertile farmlands...we drove the Haitians off their farms and into the Port au Prince area and into slum cities like Cite Soleil--we restructured Port au Prince from a city of 200,000 tops to a city of 2 to 7 million.

It was Pappy Bush's insane presidency that put us in the record hole in terms of US debt, even deeper than Reagan's Voodoo Economics had taken us (even then old Pappy Bush had Haiti on his mind)--this is the economic debt that got Slick Willie Clinton elected--remember when the weakening economy was the big item? And Slick Willie the White Obama got elected by promising to bring down our debt and deficit spending, to even-steven up the budget, give us an open-door White Man's House--and, he, too, promised us a National Healthcare Plan, which we all suddenly knew was bullshit when he announced after he was president he was making the head of his National Healthcare Plan "Mah very capable wife." Remember Bill and Hill standing together and Bill holding up a credit-card-size card and saying "Now, ever-body's gonna have one of these here National Healthcare Cards, blah, blah, bullshit, blah, blah, blah." To me, putting your wife in charge of something as important as a National Healthcare Plan means you're not too serious about keeping that promise.

After Hillary caved in to the Corporate thugs, then Slick Willie convinced us through his mouthpieces, Robert Ruben and Larry Summers (and probably Pappy Bush), that with great creative bookkeeping trickery the Slick One had not only bailed out the economy but by God he had ended up with tons of bucks left over. Old Bill had not only evened up the budget, but he had billions of bucks left over, a blessed miracle. Hot damn! We were on our way to world domination! Thus the Global Marketplace took over the world. That takeover meaning that now Neo-Con principles ruled We the People and not our Bill of Rights or Constitution and not our Congress and not our Supreme Court--if anything, those institutions became distrustful of all of We the People, and I do mean all of us, People of Color as well as White folks.

What a sordid history, right? The Neo-Cons became like a cancer in our political gut--their agenda has always been, and we keep reemphasizing this: CHEAP LABOR! Don't we get it? NO.

The prime objective of the Neo-Cons has been CHEAP LABOR beginning with the Ronnie the Raygun Administration (what a fool Ronald Reagan was--with his died hair and jellybeans and depending on Jeanne Dixon for advice). The way to achieve CHEAP LABOR on a Global Playing field these ex-Trotskyites admitted they intended to drive our economy down ("toward the bottom") so that our high-end-lifestyle (Middle-Class) expectations could be driven down to a Third World level. Our reengineered USA-chartered corporations were turned into Global Corporations that said "FUCK national laws, we're bigger than any nation on earth, so fuck nations, WE ARE OUR OWN NATION!"

CHEAP LABOR being the way to continue profits beyond belief. For every dollar of profits made, somebody has to lose a dollar. It's the same in the rigged gambling casinos (and all gambling casinos are rigged in favor of the house--who once was the Mafia), for every dollar you win, some poor bastard's lost his whole paycheck. Plus, don't worry, you'll keep taking chances and soon your winnings will be wiped out and the casino will implode that casino and build and bigger and gaudier casino in its place and then the stakes go way up.

Another prime example of Global Corporation skulduggery is found in the "win-win situation." This is a term invented by the management consulting firms (formerly accounting firms) in their creative bookkeeping (book-cooking) departments in the "bridging the gap" 1990s. This is where you are constantly chipping away at your loss columns until you get them to a point where you find yourself in what they call a "Win-Win Situation." This was the creative bookkeeping that came up with those PRIME mortgages PRIME loans PRIME property schemes, those PRIME real estate deals! This is the Win-Win situation making us all eventual LOSERS.

Backwards Thinking has backed us right back into the dumps and has left us dependent upon a Communist country for our future. At the same time, the absolutely toeheaded stupid Repugnicans are flinging the "commie" accusation all around the Beltway when it comes to progressive politics, the politics of We the People. We want fucking affordable healthcare! We are told that's not the American Way. The American Way, according to Pappy Bush, Bill Clinton, Bushy Boy Bush, and Barack Obama, is the "Pull Your Fucking Self Up by Your Bootstraps and quit depending on the government for your safety nets" way.

Why the hell shouldn't we at least have FREE BASIC HEALTHCARE?--free clinics backed by both city, county, state, and Federal monies? OK, if we find out at the free clinic we have cancer, then OK, we should be prepared for that sort of tragedy--on the other hand, why are cancer treatments so fucking expensive? And why is there so much cancer? And why are drugs so expensive? It doesn't take but about 3 cents to make a pill--so why by the time that pill is supposedly saving your ass does it cost $40? Because of PROFITS. Because somebody's bank account has to be drained in order for the bigshots and investors in HMOs and our criminal insurance industry and the big pharmaceuticals to keep on making more and more bonuses, high salaries, paying out big dividend checks, making big venture capital investments, and more growth in their private (PRIVATE) equity schemes.

All of those trillions of dollars that Obama and Bush gave away to the Pentagon, to the Financial Industry, to the Healthcare Insurance Industry, to those criminal wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, came from We the People's pockets--from our checking accounts, from the monies they gouge out of us through taxes and fees on our credit card bills and telephone bills, etc.--from our 401Ks, from our savings accounts, from our pension funds, from foreclosing on our homes and property--from lowering salaries gradually--or stopping giving raises--no more overtime--forced overtime on regular salary--stock optioned workers's stock losing value--while the stock market does a heathen dance back and forth between 10,300 and yesterday it fell 100 points down from 10,600. They'll shoot it up over 11,000 again when the 2010 elections come around. Obama will make a flowery well-worded speech on how the stock market back at 11,000 proves the "recession" is over. Praise the damn Lard--and pass me some of those holy groat clusters over here, please.

My best guess is that President Obama is pitting his enemies against each other now, which perhaps was his strategy all along. Because, trust me, I think Obama doesn't trust Slick Willie Clinton and Pappy Bush anymore than I would--I think he knows that G.W. Sonnyboy Bush is a criminal and really only a pimple on his political ass, but I think he's very watchful of Clinton (Obama captured Bill's wife right out from under him) and old Pappy Bush (have you ever thought about Pappy Bush appealing to Obama to not go after his criminal son?)--nor can he possibly trust the followers of the Neo-Con policies in both parties; yet he seems handcuffed to them by the prime chaotic situation at hand he inherited.

Is this Obama's own Black-White feelings emerging? As a Black man he has to know these scoundrels have no love of black people in their fetid souls. Bill Clinton said Obama should be serving him coffee! Hey, old Willie was jest joshin'--don't you know? I remember when the Slick One ran for President the first time how they spread the rumors he had a little black bastard baby out there in the world somewhere. I'll bet you a worthless dollar that down deep Bill Clinton grew up hating blacks and Latinos--Arkansas had wetbacks in its cottonfields--you bet it did. Yes, he probably loved their sense of humor and he probably did check out the sweet asses and perky titties on the black gals of Hope, Arkansas, but I doubt if he considered marrying one or bringing one home to his trailer-house momma as his new girlfriend. I'm also pretty sure that when Governor Slick Willie was leisurely playing a little golf out at the restricted Little Rock Country Club his association with blacks was where he feels most comfortable with them, with them serving him coffee--plus popping him open a cold one when he signalled for one--or maybe having some of big black males standing around him wearing black suits and dark glasses as his body guards (that's a servent role, isn't it?)--or certainly having them carry his golf clubs and jive with him as he played golf with his White racist associates.

Besides, god-dammit, Slick Willie was governor of Arkansas during the Contra-crisis when Pappy Bush was VP and was said to be in charge of the cocaine for arms flights that were almost daily in and out of that airfield in Mena, Arkansas, the arms going down to Nicaragua and the cocaine coming back to Arkansas. Oh yeah, Slick Willie's full of primo information about that era. Hillary, too, has a lot of skeletons in her Arkansas closets, though Obama easily put old Hillary out of his way by making her Sec'y of State, getting her bogged down in PR problems, which is what the Sec'y of State does--PR work--explaining why we are continuing to bankrupt our asses with these two and a half (the new war in Pakistan) wars and the potential future wars (Iran, Yemen, the Sudan (G.W. Bush armed the Ethiopian Army and then had them invade the Sudan with our blessing and drive out the Sudanese Muslims into the desert)--possible wars brewing daily on our sun-sinking horizon!

One can only imagine the cross-prime-objectives clashing in President Obama's head--his Black side, supported by his wife and kids; but there's also his White side--the trainings of his mother and his grandmother, who I declare, trained Obama to think of himself as an International character--a worldly man with a worldly vision that turns its back on the past and thinks only of what he should do every morning when he wakes up and finds out what the hell next chunk of heavy bullshit he faces on yet another day. His black side is proud, able to defy criticism and threats; his white side is weak--that's the side of him that has trouble justifying risking his life being a humanist warrior--for the sake of what, the White Power Elite still taking over anyway--and his political career probably down the tubes.

Obama's Administration is as basically broke; even broker than George W. Bush's ruthless Administration ended up. We as a nation are bankrupt. We have no industry, only industry headquarters buildings--these billion-dollar towers still springing up like mushrooms around Manhattan--the big new Bank of America Building up and running and AIG's new fabby headquarters glass-menagerie skyscraper is partying hearty--I'm sure Goldman-Sachs is considering building a new skyscraper with their bailout bonanza. I heard a New York City real estate woman say this morning on local teevee how New York City isn't an American city anymore; it's an International city. She went on to say the New York City real estate market is the most resiliant in the world because of foreigners coming here to take advantage of the good prices of real estate in this city. She said, the bitch, that "When the market drops and say the Japanese pull out of the market, why here will come the Taiwanese to start buying and the market starts going back up again. Wow. Isn't she an enemy combatant. Allowing foreigners to takeover New York City real estate--foreigners who don't move here and live, but just invest in buying up New York City property. New York Citians haven't got the money to buy their own property. Such a shame. A crying shame. But it does no good to cry.

Repugnicans are very scared of Obama so he does has some power over them--a power they are afraid of--I mean, White Repugnicans have been openly RACIST in dealing with Obama and his future and the power he has to do something about our future with from the very beginning. Could a Democrat protester have shown up at a George Bush Town Hall meeting packing a gun and gone on home without even a slap on the wrist? Hell no, that son of a bitch would be one of the "What ever happened to old so and so?--he just disappeared from the face of the earth after I saw those Federal guys visiting him that day."

My prime way of thinking sees clearly a Chaotic situation continuing on for many years to come though in my imagination, I hope Obama surprises me--sometimes I think he's getting the picture--and then he does something like accepting a peace prize while he's the waringest son of a bitch in the world right now. We killed nay a hundred or so more innocent Pakistanis this month with our backwards thinking KILL POWER drone attacks on the sovereign nation of Pakistan. Can you imagine our reaction if the Canadian Air Force sent drones into Minneapolis and bombed a school saying they had information that an anti-Canadian al-Queda or Taliban bigshot was suspected of hiding out at that school and they're sorry if 30 school kids were blown to bits by the bomb, but they have to act quickly when given information that a threat to the lives of Canadian citizens is being organized and planned in that Minneapolis school?

I think we've forgotten to PRIME our pumps--that's why we're coming up bone dry in the progressive watering department. Our energies are too busy explaining why backwards thinking is locked in so tight in our instinctual attitudes that we can't break out of it--I mean, if this is all God's will.... In the meantime, I'm sadly reading that Haitians are still screaming for help in the ruined streets of ruined Port au Prince--still screaming for help in the dark at night and fighting for water and food during the day--and still I read where 8 senior Haitians were simply left to die in the street--no one had any means to save them. Now they are reporting Haitians are praying to God and singing and chanting religious songs into the stale and sullied air. They are breathing death in Haiti tonight.

As an example of how our billionaire mayor and his ass-licking city council have sold our city out to developers. The nonunion building site next door to me is noiseily at work today, Martin Luther King, Jr., Day. A man who fought for oppressed workers, the sanitation workers of Memphis, Tennessee, who were getting screwed from all sides, with only the power of their union and the strike on their side. Martin Luther King knew how effective a boycott was. Why We the People aren't using our individual boycotts--like stop shopping a fucking WalMarts--drive them out of business--or how about boycotting stores that sell Chinese goods--or how about stop shopping a process-food-and-rat-infested grocery stores and shop at farmer's markets, buying locally grown products--if you don't have a farmer's market, then form a coop and start one in your community. There are local farmers who would be glad to drive their products in and sell them at your coop market. And why not boycott the big banks. Pull your money out of them. Here in New York City we still have some local banks holding on--like the Apple Bank or like the Ridgewood Savings Bank out in Queens. Yes, the big hooey banks are on every corner--a huge new Bank of America just opened up in what was once a controversial building owned by Ferdinand Marcos, the Philippine dictator We the People gave special privileges to--he and his shoe-hoarding wife, Emelda!

My telephone bill just arrived. There are fees, taxes, surcharges, a 911 tax (that's me having to pay for the 911 emergency number) totaling $22.00. Verizon is robbing us, folks, with these fees and taxes and that weird no-use surcharge on you if you don't use your long distance--I get charged $3.95 cents whether I make a long-distance call or not. If I make a long distance call and it comes out to say $1.50, these scurvy bastards will charge me the $3.95 for the call plus the $1.50, making my one long distance call now $5.45. How's that for robbing your ass? My hackles are up. Watched a PBS Bear-Wolf docudrama last night. Wolves aren't afraid of bears. Me neither--especially bear-like human beings or corporations.

thegrowlingwolf
for The Daily Growler

If You'd Like to Contribute to Haitian Relief, Here's Wycliffe Jean's Website:

www.yele.org