Death of the Republican Party...

How ugly will it get?

My guess?

Pretty damn ugly.

Floats Like a Butterfly, Stings Like a Bee

Hey, in my book, the young whipper-snapper ran rings around the crotchety old dude once again.

And he did it with style and grace.

Is it possible such a completely screwed up country, going down the tubes at an accelerating rate, could actually do the right thing?

To be continued...

The Real American Idol

MONEY!

So is it the death of Wall Street?

The man who gave us Platoon, The Doors and Scarface tells us: "Money was worshiped and continues to be worshiped, maybe that will change now." - Oliver Stone

Maybe, maybe not. I wouldn't count on it, unless the money no longer holds the value of the ink printed on it.

Although I admire Mr. Stone and I did appear in one of his films (I was an extra on Natural Born Killers - I played a dead guy!), I recall he did make Alexander a stinker of epic proportions and he actually cast Angelina Jolie as Colin Farrell's mom. Poor Colin ran around in a little white toga with a really ridiculous blond hairdo.

So Mr. Stone's judgement is not infallible. Still, I think he may be right about the money cult. Maybe, just maybe it has run out the string...

"...And a lot of it is because people will have no choice."

This little profile of Chrissie Hynde in yesterday's New York Times is just the ticket. Chrissie is still the leader of the Pretenders one of the great bands out of Akron Ohio. Chrissie has always been a supreme rock and roller. She was in London during the punk explosion in the 70's hanging out with Sid Vicious and Johnny Rotten.

I saw her on tour with Neil Young a few years ago. She just exudes complete confidence and edgy cool. I was happy to find she's a fellow vegetarian, (TAX MEAT!), and she just just recently opened the first ever vegan restaurant in Akron.

Here she is on the rumblings in America. I agree a "A Change is Gonna Come." It's gonna be a rocky ride, but that's when the fun begins.

Chrissie Hynde: "Believe me I don't feature any false optimism, I'm very realistic about things. But I can sense that change is coming, and a lot of it is because people will have no choice."

Phoenix-Like

Last night our theater company Black Forest rose from the ashes. It was oh so Phoenix-like. We did the Thorn and the Rose our new performance piece at the Ravenswood Art Walk. Our goal was to present something beautiful, haunting, mysterious - slow, stately, shimmering. It's nice to have a target.

We played to a full house - the audience seemed to hang on every note and word. Rousing applause at the end. Maybe a free show allows an audience to just open the door to new things? It was all so unexpected and gratifying.

I do think our world is too stuffed with facts and prose and plot. We are bombarded with facts which come from every corner and these facts twist and turn and contradict each other. It's all so maddening - probably makes us number and dumber.

Maybe we need more poetry. Maybe we need more stuff that doesn't "make sense?" Someone said to me after the show - "That was so avant garde." Which doesn't really mean anything. And that was music to my ears.

Books

Okay, Melissa, here's my first attempt at the "making a sentence from titles of books hanging about the apartment" game:

The dream life healing back pain, rotten, naked, on the Rez.

I think this is a game that might appeal to militant librarians, former English Majors or anyone with lots of books laying about. Anyone else want to try? Paula? God? Kris?

A Nation of Dead-Enders? Balderdash!

Watched the Veep debate. I was looking forward to a complete train wreck. Kind of disappointed. But seems to me defending the Iraq war, modeling the VP job on Dick Cheney's shining example, and promising that every problem we have will be solved with more tax cuts is complete balderdash. I don't want to get over-confident but seems to me that the McCain/Palin freak-show is toast.

The Republican Party lies to us. Over and over. And I guess a lot of Americans want to believe the lies. The lies are just as death-dealing when they come from the lips of a well-prepped hockey mom. The final factor heading towards November is how many people will close their eyes and pretend that the lies are not lies.

Denial is an aphrodisiac. The Republican party has led a powerful political movement (get government out of the business of helping people and let the rich people party out of bounds!), that has carried us since the Reagan Revolution. It's a rear-guard movement based on the myth of who we want to pretend to be.

I do think Bush/Cheney have run out the string. The only true believers left are the type of people who cry when the dictator dies. I just hope those dead-enders don't out-number the rest of us.

Too Much Too Soon

Global System Shocks...

John Robb is one of the few people talking about the fundamental flaws of our interconnected global system. Robb tells us it's sort of like the New York Dolls second album.

Death by algorithm. An algorithm sitting on a computer somewhere in New York can instantly trigger a meltdown in Moscow and London. And then the human beings who designed the system scratch their over-loaded noggins and dither in the houses of debate.

We were worried about the avian flu, we were worried about a wayward meteor, we were worried about a planet without ice, and now we've been mugged by the SHADOW BANKING SYSTEM! Beware the Shadow Banker!

Too Big. Too Fast. Too Complex.

Our success is killing us. It's an old story. Happened to the Dolls first...

Fun Bucks!

One wonders if this reality has any reality behind it. Is it all just funny money?

And what is money anyway? To J.S.G. Boggs it's more than just a lark...

100 candy-colored, acid freaked-out, monkeys.

Remember, I started out as an English Major...

I've sometimes thought that life (specifically my life) is like a novel.

I've read lots and lots of novels.

When I was much younger, life seemed sort of like a Charles Dickens novel. Lots of colorful characters, multiple plot-lines, little surprises along the way. Nice neat ending.

Later it seemed more like a Kurt Vonnegut novel. Time travel, circular time, sequences out of sequence. No clear cut ending.

Which then morphed into Philip K. Dick land. Unreliable narrator. Reality as fog. Bizarre happenings. Time slips. Paranoia. Justified Paranoia.

And now I'm convinced that there's a room somewhere, a room with 100 monkeys on acid and they are madly typing away on old Remington typewriters. Our lives are the resulting output (the rambling, shambling chatterings) of 100 candy-colored, acid freaked-out, monkeys.

The monkeys are having the time of their lives...

I Wonder

I wonder what's going to happen next...

Paul Newman, Jackie Gleason, George C. Scott

Fast Eddie and Minnesota Fats - the final game...

"How can I lose?"

"Fat Man, you shoot a great game of pool."

Dreams

I got onto this line of thinking from something Bruce Springsteen said in a documentary. He was talking about writing and recording his great album "Born to Run." He said that the songs were mainly about two things:

1. What happens when your dreams come true?

2. What happens when they don't?

And there is something about that album that makes you think of the times you've connected, and the times you've missed connecting. And it's kind of great and kind of sad too.

And actually there is just one answer to both questions: You make new dreams!

Two Kinds

It turns out there are two kinds of socialism.

Taking money from rich people and giving it to poor people is the bad kind.

Taking money from poor people and giving it to rich people is the good kind.

A Really Large Number

This is all just a con game.

And the "confidence" has taken flight.

I know I live in a bubble, there isn't a Wal-Mart anywhere near me, but in my daily sojourns I must report that the NATIVES ARE RESTLESS. Confidence is vanishing and has as much value as one of those sub-prime mortgages, or one of those wacky credit default swaps.

What happens when no one believes? In anything?

I guess that's when the new game begins. Once upon a time...

UPDATE: Our political landscape has entered the Woody Allen "Bananas" phase. From today forward our new language will be Swedish, and everyone must wear their underwear on the outside. Check out this interview. This woman gives "clueless" a bad name. Scary Funny.



UPDATE NO. 2: Ok. This is freaking ridiculous. Pity. Finally, you have to pity the poor woman. There's that "deer in the headlight" thing going on. Everyone knows what it's like to try to bluff your way through something you have no clue about. But jeez, she's right, Alaska is right next to Russia! So what's the problem?! Holy shit!


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Thorn and Rose

The Lovely Carla and I collaborated on a video. It's gonna be part of our performance piece premiering at the Ravenswood Art Walk in a couple weeks. It's kind of slow and stately. Not as slow as Andy Warhol's famous 8 hour Empire State film, but still in this jump-cut, over-saturated media world this is a little contrary.

The Lovely Carla provided the inspiration and embodies the whole thing. I wrote and tracked the music (my grand opus!?), and pointed the video camera. Thanks to the sun and the beach and the flock of seagulls for all their assistance.

It's too long for YouTube, so I posted it at our MySpace site. If you have some time, and patience, give it a try.

There's text that goes along with the visuals. This will be the background for some foreground antics from both of us - live in real time. The main refrain: "Everyone knows, there's a thorn with every rose."

Thorn and the Rose

We all Woke Up and Found Ourselves in "Shaun of the Dead"

T.S. Eliot wrote about The Hollow Men:

We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw.

John Robb writes about The Hollow State:

It is merely a shell that has some influence over the spoils of the economy. The real power rests in the hands of corporations and criminal/guerrilla groups that vie with each other for control of sectors of wealth production. For the individual living within this state, life goes on, but it is debased in a myriad of ways.

And Wall Street's Men of Power and Influence put a gun to our collective head and tell us if we don't give them lots and lots of money, right now, they will MELTDOWN, I SWEAR!

Woody Guthrie once told us:

Yes, as through this world I've wandered
I've seen lots of funny men;
Some will rob you with a six-gun,
And some with a fountain pen.

Are these people freaking kidding? This is all totally insane. I say: Let it melt. Let it melt...

Then lets make a new world.

Money Ate the Money, Honey!

Why do we paint and write, and put on plays, and dance and sing and play music?

So we have less time to think and fret about all the other crazy ass shit human beings do!

Anyway, this morning I'm thinking isn't it interesting that recent history seems to be showing us this picture:

CAPITALISM DEFEATED COMMUNISM!

AND THEN

CAPITALISM ATE ITSELF!

Shit Pile America!

I've been bouncing around the blogosphere this morning and it's all abuzz with the big 700 billion dollar bailout plan floated by the same people who basically stood by and watched Wall Street bankrupt America. This is certainly not my area of expertise. Check out this narrative from an insider if you are interested.

If you want to talk Telecasters and Stratocasters I have lots of informed commentary, but when guys like Paul Krugmen and Atrios tell me this deal stinks to high heaven I kind of give them the benefit of the doubt.

Maybe I simplify? That is my stock in trade...

The Big Money Boyz having been making oodles of money with money for years. The old fashioned way of making money, by doing work, providing real services, manufacturing goods, etc. was oh so old world.

The greed and corruption was a self-supporting vicious circle floating on a shit-pile of toxic waste (bad debt). The whole house of cards started collapsing, and the amounts of money at risk world wide turns out to be multiples of staggering.

This is the kind of thing (Black Swan) that could change our lives for a long, long time. And now, people in high places, are asking for the power and the money to make it all right. The same greedy bastards now tell us we must trust them to fix it.

And as John Robb reminds us, most of us were left out of the decision loop. The average American didn't reap the benefits, (Robb: "From 1974 onwards, the rewards of productivity growth (economic expansion) went exclusively to the capital markets and not into income growth for individuals. This was likely done, although the mechanism is unclear, under the assumption that the discipline of capital markets produced better investment decisions than individuals.") but will pay the piper.

Iraq, Katrina, Bailout. There does seem to be a pattern here.

Dancing on Needles

I've been engaged with some real sleaze-buckets. The dregs of the dregs. Real bad actors. Who knows maybe they are just a figment of my imagination?!

And they make me laugh, and make me stronger. And whatever they were trying to accomplish, I say "Hah! What fools! And thanks for showing me the way!"

Sometimes it is amazing and awe-inducing to see the depths of degradation a human being will gladly sink to. So very instructive. It is evident in the larger context and in the smaller context too. And then, well, we live in the context of no context.

Anyway, an interesting subject kind of came up in this context. Who is it that actually writes this blog? Is it dumps? is it sunny? Is it the one called "which one is dumps?" Are these words the result of the existential battle between two mythological characters: dumps and sunny?

Is it all the doing of the nameless flesh and blood apparition that fuels up on coffee and types into the void?

Is this "I" that "I" refer to just a fictive construction? Is every "I" a lie? Is this all just a fruitless branch of Epistemology or just pissing in the wind?

How many sunnyjimmy's can dance on the head of a pin? And once you get them all up there, is there any room for dumps?

I imagine the ideal blogger. "I" am not that blogger. I mean I'm not even sure I exist. Although I do believe God exists and he is the ideal blogger. But I imagine being him, and just like those Arthur Murray dance lessons, I tentatively try to follow the steps.