Dress in saturated sage, magenta violet canary seafoam circles. Lithe tan limbs. Strong smile, kind voice, sly grin worth knowing. Unpracticed poise from presence in the moment. Dirt is not dirty, it is loam, soil, potential. Plonger la main au plus profond d’un sac de grains.
Les poules couvent souvent au couvent. Take in your senses, children, slow things to remember them. Things you know in this time of life are growing all around you, take it in. Things will not always be growing, growth will slow all around you. Things you know will decay, more things, as you grow. Draw out the time and the life and the colors and the tastes as you can. Train yourself to observe, discover new measurements, new standards.
Alors, quand le moment vient, il faut sauter la barrière sans hésiter. Do not fear the quiet, impose it during a flurry, use it. Return to it. The quiet space may be empty, but empty is not hollow. Les temps sont durs pour les rêveurs. You can train yourself, in every place, to listen, see, taste, breathe. Remember in the stark times to laugh at the cold. That is your breath, your will. They are for you.
I’ve never owned a gun. Not a political statement or safety concern, just never been a part of what nearby family and friends are into. I have many responsible friends and relatives who are gun owners, and I trust them. Guns can be used responsibly for recreation, hunting, just-in-case safety. If I lived in an area where the local law enforcement was 30+ minutes away, I’d consider owning a gun. Except for time in the armed forces, to my knowledge no friend or family members have injured themselves or others with guns. No big whoop.
I believe in the 2nd Amendment. I used to be for the concept of “gun control” until the Bush Administration and Congress pushed its long-in-development (pre-9/11) PATRIOT Act and started breaking our civil rights on surveillance, absurd security policies, and interrogation (Obama Administration? Not much better). The concept of a government turning on its people became more vivid. So the wisdom of the 2nd Amendment became apparent and now I’m on board. Still deliberating on whether citizens should have the right to all types of firearms, and listening to all sides there.
But the National Rifle Association is a fear-mongering pusher of guns that sucks donkey dongs. I’m sure in the topsy-turvy world of many of their donors, where single-parented mixed-race corporate-friendly Barack Obama is a privileged elitist socialist who’s gotten way too uppity, their recent ad resonates. The NRA ad is way over the top, and it’s fun to watch/read the outrage. I don’t agree with all of the hand-wringing below, but some of the reaction is on-the-nose:
The U.S. President has a tough job. That job includes death threats from outside and within the U.S. It’s a job where there’s close to a 10% chance of getting shot and killed. And the President is the Commander-in-Chief, the head of our military forces. Armed protection makes sense. Do school employees have a 1 in 10 chance of getting shot and killed? No. Do the majority of gun owners think arming our schools makes sense? Probably not. Does the gun lobby the N.R.A. represents have an interest in ginning up more out-of-proportion fear to sell millions of more guns? Yes.
And the N.R.A. ads are losing moderates who might otherwise consider what gun owners have to say. If the gubmint does end up taking away guns from citizens, the N.R.A. will deserve much of the blame.
In ‘The Book of Mormon’ musical program, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (LDS = Mormons) had a series of full-page ads somewhat rolling with the humor of the show to invite people to delve deeper into their religion. Warm, welcoming, with a QR code! LOADS better than ads taken out by Scientologists, which tend to be prickly and defensive.
Bear in mind that for a hundred+ years the Mormons did not allow blacks to fully join the priesthood (in Mormonism, all males may become priests able to minister to their families and gain full entrance to the temple). Why was there supernatural racism in a book purportedly full of wisdom and love? Blacks took the wrong side in the war in Heaven, silly! There was a group of people who were less valiant in the God versus Satan war, and that group got their skin turned black as punishment
10th LDS President Joseph Fielding Smith (in the 1960s): “There were no neutrals in the war in Heaven. All took sides either with Christ or with Satan. Every man had his agency there, and men receive rewards here based upon their actions there, just as they will receive rewards hereafter for deeds done in the body. The Negro, evidently, is receiving the reward he merits” (Doctrines of Salvation, 1:61, 65-66; emphasis added).
With Look magazine in October 1963, President Joseph Fielding Smith had more ripe quotes, including:
“I would not want you to believe that we bear any animosity toward the Negro. ‘Darkies’ are wonderful people, and they have their place in our church.”
More from Smith, including the Old Testament “mark of Cain” meaning an entire person’s skin was pigmented dark as a curse:
“Not only was Cain called upon to suffer, but because of his wickedness he became the father of an inferior race. A curse was place upon him and that curse has been continued through his lineage and must do so while time endures. Millions of souls have come into this world cursed with black skin and have been denied the privilege of Priesthood and the fullness of the blessings of the Gospel. These are the descendants of Cain. Moreover, they have been made to feel their inferiority and have been separated from the rest of mankind from the beginning… we will also hope that blessings may eventually be given to our Negro brethren, for they are our brethren–children of God—notwithstanding their black covering emblematical of eternal darkness” (The Way to Perfection, 101-02).
Contemporary racist rhetoric for the 60s? Sure. But based in allegedly holy writ. This stuff doesn’t have the excuse of being culled together by flawed, dumb human beings thousands of years ago, or 1,500 years ago. The Book of Mormon was written in the 19th century under hilariously shoddy & scammy circumstances by a twice-convicted con man (Joseph Smith). Actually, it was not written by Smith. It was dictated. Speculation is that Joseph Smith could not write, but could ape the verbal rhetoric of the King James Bible. He read aloud, translating from golden plates from behind a curtain (Smith never let anyone else see these golden plates).
Lo, and behold! Haters, attend! Deliverance is nigh! Among growing social pressure, in 1978 the Mormon President Spencer Kimball received a call directly from God that black people are a-okay and can become full members of the Mormon Church. And there was much rejoicing. A PBS account of how this revelation (blacks are nice, and definitely not eternally cursed for decisions their ancestors made in a fantasy some dude made up!) swept through in a wave of relief is amusing. Thank god?
Okay, I passed out and suddenly find another few hundred words I’ve typed up about the flaws of believing in magic books written by fellow primates and blind faith in magic institutions run by fellow primates. How does this keep happening? Is it Satan? Odin? An instrument of Shiva? Shake it off. Concentrate.
Mormons, on a personal level, can be really nice people. But so can everyone else.
The Mormon Church contributed millions to the Prop 8 campaign in California, banning same-sex marriage. It learned nothing from their “black” experience on wanting to ban civil rights. Their millions of dollars poured into California hurt thousands of families, inheritance rights, ability to see spouses/partners in the hospital. If “traditional” marriage is meant to create children, should we ban marriages that don’t produce children? Of course not. History will judge Mormons and anti-gays harshly. Good.
Scientology remains the most annoying western religion. Is anything more annoying than dim-witted people thinking they are super-smart because they repeat it to themselves, and pay thousands to have it said to them, over and over again? Tom Cruise thinks he’s smarter than all psychiatrists, for Christ’s sake!
For the record, my gut instinct remains that Tom Cruise is a genuinely nice guy, but worried about holding on to talent and success and wanting routines and rituals to maintain and build on that success and praise.
On a whim in late summer, I hung out in a hospital cafeteria to try writing there. It was very productive. I’ve gone back two more times and had similarly good spells.
Snacks and drinks abound, but a sense of mortality suffuses the environment. Science as our only true bulwark against amoral nature. And it feels good to be in a hospital out of whim instead of necessity or vigil.
On a December walk the rain was steady and the clouds gray. The spirit of blue above the gray made the grass and weeds and flotsam leaves lush. Standing water made for a small swamp but the water was clear and fresh. Translucent glass that dimmed the view of a world just as saturated away But brittle. I feared my fingers might not break through. Might freeze and turn blood and flesh to ice and I would lose the fingers. Or get stuck, and the placid scene I saw would be ruined for others Left to wonder why the man in the rain jacket complained and could not move.
Photo linked to the awful article, read at your moral peril!It’s ignorant, muddled, terrible, and awful.
I understand some people feel there is a correlation between violent media and violent actions, and believe in the free choice people have to not see violent entertainment. Hundreds of millions of people in the U.S. take in these entertainments and do not behave violently.
Watching violence is cathartic, whether in theater, song, movies, video games. They are scapegoats for our fantasies, and for opportunistic politicians not wanting to look at true root causes. We’re not far from the days of blaming Catcher in the Rye or Ozzy Osbourne or Marilyn Manson for the acts of people who have severe mental breakdowns or illnesses. In our Western history we had public executions, hangings, and gladiatorial combat as everyday occurrences. Shall we talk about human-written magic books promising eternal bliss to suicide bombers? No? Video games are easier political points? Uhm, yeah, okay.
The author compares marketers targeting the young male demographic to what the Taliban does. He pretends to be pro-free expression, but this section speculating on how a movie reviewer may soft-pedal a scene with a movie theater massacre smacks of Carry Nation hysterics:
And so the critic would end up writing something like this: “The movie contains a disturbing yet highly effective scene of violence transpiring at a movie theater.” Forget any mention of the insidiousness of inserting such poison into the national mind, of the morality or decency of feeding audiences crack.
Barf. Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds had a movie theater massacre as its climax. It was a fantasy piece about mowing down Nazis and the power of cinema. Jewish soldiers got to kill Hitler and other Nazi leaders years ahead of time. A hail of gunfire and a blazing inferno and it felt shocking and great. To my knowledge, no one tried to replicate that in real life. It was not treated as poison in the national mind. Art should not be required to have a moral or social obligation. When it does, people become tightly wound and societies get even more twisted and weird. Catharsis is necessary, imagination is necessary, otherwise we get sick inside.
I recently rewatched the Michael Moore documentary Bowling for Columbine, which tries to get at why the U.S. seems to have so many more violent gun deaths compared to other nations. The film doesn’t get into per capita statistics, but other things I’ve read still show the U.S. as significantly higher per capita, even though gun ownership rates are comparable in Canada. The movie throws a bunch of ideas into the air for consideration, fair enough as there aren’t any tidy solutions, but compellingly speculates that heightened social anxiety drummed up by the news media may be a factor. Overrepresentation in the news of crimes by minorities, especially compared to white collar/corporate crimes and environmental crimes, makes us fear incipient personal criminal attack from the mysterious Other.
My feeling (the truth may be different) is that there’s something to the movie’s point about the news media. I make a distinction between social violence in the news portrayed as “real life” resonating differently with people and how those same people engage with art/entertainment, something they know is fake and not an imminent threat.
Growing up I remember adult media debate over whether television should air violent cartoons like Bugs Bunny and Road Runner on Saturday mornings. I don’t recall anyone I knew ever dropping anvils in real life, or playing with dynamite, or running off a cliff to see whether flapping their arms could hold them up in the air. However the news media has recently flapped its arms over the “fiscal cliff crisis” as a real thing we all need to be concerned about and panic over. And we did.
One of the best moments of the year was the leakage of the video of Mitt Romney’s “47 percent” speech. Whoever took that video is a hero. It’s the only time I’ve really respected Romney – he was finally speaking as himself.
Good commentary by Stewart here as Fox News tried to show that Romney was deliberately wise and delivering pearls of wisdom BETWEEN the divisive language. Crazy like a Fox … News.
I was texting (in a parking lot) then accidentally set the phone into an audio dictation mode and turned on a podcast. Later, looking at my phone, there was a kooky long text ready to send. I did not send it (choosing to not seem insane – this time) but have pasted it in here. The dictation barely resembles what was playing in the car. Maybe the phone is writing on its own behalf and asking for friendship:
“This dive deeper down the cabin then other people will always be around refuge the end of the day so you like what you like to do movies and TV shows I can picture of you do women I love you might actually like you can’t like what I like to know what would you say next something is going terribly wrong and that the man did you feed trying to run into the ground”
Tough to find someone who was authentically anxious the turnover from the 13th to 14th b’ak’tun of the Mayan calendar, calculated to begin December 21, 2012.
While it’s all silly, each supposed end time passes, and the level of mass mockery rises. Sort of amusing, sort of tedious. But I take the mockery as a sign of collective mental health. It wasn’t all that long ago when we were often broadly convinced and end time/judgment was a-comin’ and we’d prepare ourselves circumstantially and emotionally. “Take me home, ye sky gods! (But let me see the toys of mine enemies smashed and their bodies crush during my beatified ascension!)”
Second trailer for the upcoming Star Trek movie is out. Lots of speculation Benedict Cummerbundsnatchenhosen will be playing Khan. I hope not. Hope this tells an original story.
I liked the first movie. It was clever and inspired, giving itself a lot of license to veer into new directions. Lens flares all over. Looks like they’ll be in the sequel, too. Too many lens flares to count in the theater. SPOILER: someone, eventually, will post online the total number of lens flares.
And that metallic “BWAAAAMP” that happens in every action trailer nowadays. It’s a cliché. Especially with footage of people’s bodies being knocked around by stronger forces, or feeling “Uh oh.” The new cliché of trailers that have voiceovers that say “beyond imagination” or “In a world…”. What is it about a house-sized rattling tuba fart noise that makes us think “Yeah, shit’s about to get real. Better see THIS movie.”? Machine-phobia? Whatever. Stop using it, Hollywood. PFFFFT.
Dress in saturated sage, magenta violet canary seafoam circles.
