This video at TPM prompted me to haul out one of my old DJ flyers.
(Yes, that’s from 2007.) Over at Kos, there are a couple of posts spelling out the conflicting accounts citing the recent GAO report and other sources on whether the surge has really succeeded or not. Even as the White House and McSame insist the surge has succeeded, the GAO report also implies there is no post-surge strategy. And all that aside — if we have succeeded, why can’t we leave?
In which I shamelessly post in the style of This Recording….
I was watching Westworld (1973) a few weeks ago and a couple of images at the beginning of the movie struck me.
Obviously, they’re the same guy/robot and the implication is that they’re both robot pilots guiding the unsuspecting tourists to their doom at the hands of disgruntled robots. Even though Steve Vai believes his guitar is his personal window to his soul, the Hollywood tradition is that robots wear sunglasses to hide their eyes because eyes are the windows to the soul — and robots and governors don’t have one.
When Yul Brynner shows up in Westworld, he has creepy eyes with movie lights in them which is to say, this post is sort of about robot mythmaking. Oddly enough, in the movie, you differentiate the robots from humans by looking at their hands, not by the movie lights in their eyes.
(I was saddened when I realized that Yul Brynner had been reduced to a robot cowboy signalling the end of the Hollywood Western. The genre was briefly revived when Lawrence Kasdan did Silverado (1985) and then Clint Eastwood did Unforgiven (1992). Let’s face it: the genre will live on with a respirator the same way Elvis does).
People wear sunglasses in public, on the subway, and when they’re playing poker because they don’t want you to see their souls or their wandering eyes. Similarly, femme fatales and French film directors have souls of dubious provenance. Tut alors! They’re both (somewhat) French!
Celebrities wear the sunglasses and take their endorsements because even Republicans know that celebrities don’t have souls. And the whole history of sunglasses is wrapped up in celebrity culture and power culture. You can be an instant rock star by popping ‘em on!
I’ve recently watched the first two seasons of the newer Battlestar Galactica. The show has a giant fanbase and a lot has been written about it already but maybe…. not…. I’m the first to observe that the robots … well, “skin job robots” … don’t wear sunglasses because they have souls. The best mindwarp of the show is that the “skin jobs” are made by the “Danger Will Robinson” Robby Robots. Thank goodness.
There’s an old science fiction book the Jesuits made me read called A Canticle for Leibowitz where humanity is doomed to reach The Nuclear Age, destroy itself, then evolve back up into another Nuclear Age, ad infinitum. The stories and the sunglasses just keep coming, don’t they? Here’s me editing this post….
After hmm, 3 days of fallout from the New Yorker cover, Dowd today uses the opportunity to yet again call Obama an elitist for not having the required sense of humor to “get it.” Sure they could’ve reacted with a lighter touch but I’m mostly on the “what’s the big deal?” side. Yes, it’s remarkable the campaign has hired a Carbon Advisor to document and reduce the campaign’s carbon footprint but I would also call it spectacular. It’s refreshing to have the potential leader of the “free world” setting principled examples for behavior and this also includes taking the high road on a satirical attempt that ultimately failed. (For instance, cleverly incorporating the cover’s actual title, “The Politics of Fear” into the piece might have conveyed the intent better.)
Also, if you really think the Obamas are more elitist than the McCains, see this Sadly, No! post.
The Brothers Quay remind me somehow: always be blogging.
I saw a series of BQ movies around the time they came out and they had a profound influence on me. I feel funny recommending them to people for fear they won’t get it. Their films felt out of place in the 80s and today I feel I would have to KNOW that someone was at least into puppet animation before I would recommend the BQ to them. I’m disappointed they haven’t been very active lately but then, in my eyes, they are completely self-fulfilled artists and who would blame them having already achieved artistic nirvana.
Stadiums are fraught with bizarreness. Who’s with me? Obama planning on giving his acceptance speech in a sports stadium is apt. It will be a spectacle of magnanimous showmanship and extreme public investment.
Observed: faux pool sharks in the bar drilling their cues into the chalk cube for a full minute before each shot and circling the table like a vulture hawk. What a waste of chalk.
Naomi Klein has a follow-up on her book The Shock Doctrine up at The Nation and Alternet. It’s funny to me that both the far left and far right sometimes criticize her for raking it in off her book and “the system” she decries. That’s not it at all. Good ideas and sound thinking should be rewarded by any system. That’s it.
Josh weighs in the Golly Ralphie Show. The media talking heads are becoming such an embarrassment. They have no problem either making shit up or regurgitating whatever pap the campaigns dish out. (Obama’s is not quite innocent either.) They’ll call a five-point lead in a poll a “statistical dead heat”. Sigh.
Happy 4th of July! Do the patriotic thing and turn in any terrorists you may know to the authorities. Listen to some Louis Armstrong and throw a touchdown pass. Please don’t wave your hot dog in the face of your vegetarian sister and say “Meat is murder. Tasty murder.”
I watched a great trashy noir movie from 1949 last night called Jigsaw. This was obviously made by a bunch of beatnik proto dirty fucking hippies. (Watch it for free.) That should be enough to get what it’s about without giving the plot away although even I gasped when 20 minutes into the film the special prosecutor started making out with the widow of an early murder victim.
In my googling, I also found this. Someone needs to make a movie called Jigsaw about an evil jigsaw. No, really.
Do “professionals” and “politicians” really think they can keep putting on this Golly Ralphie Show that’s supposed to be journalism and reason? Just give me folks with their heads screwed on straight and uh, necks that don’t make an “S” shape all the live long day.
The used computer I bought already died. I should’ve researched better but it turns out G5 iMacs were always a bit lemony. The seller nicely gave me a decent warranty so no big whoop.
I can’t make a knuckle sandwich with my right hand anymore because it’s messed up. Watch out for the lefty fake option.
This blog was down all day as I have one of the “cheap hosts.” That’s all I’ll say about it except that I’m glad it’s back as I was wanting to blog all day– except now that I had to be uppity with the tech support and I’m not going to blog about that, I’ve lost the essay steam.
I saw Teenage Jesus and the Jerks last week and Lydia Lunch blew my mind. I hung out with her and Cesar in New Orleans for a day or two in the early 90s. At that time, Lydia was a retired no wave punk and a poet. Holy hell. She hated New York then and I really don’t think there are words to describe what she feels about New York now.
I went to the Mermaid Parade at Coney Island. It was fun but the buttloads of tourists, the millions of muscle cars and classic cars, the billions of digital camera shot putt clicks, have placed it on a new plane. Development is coming. I want them to tear down the block on Beach Blvd with all the furniture stores and put the shopping mall there. Keep most of the cool Coney.
My nephew is in Ghana and my brother sent some emails that have been coming back. Almost half of one letter was about his iPod and how he could recharge it.
I can feel a more substantial blog with many links and feigned outrage coming soon…
I would love to post something personal. But…… dammit. Anyway, I love the band Killing Joke. I had posted all of the lyrics to “Requiem” below but it was too dismal at the time. I’m posting all of “Red.”
they’re dropping bombs again
and they’re doing it in your name
all the rational commentaries
in the papers that i read
marmalade and buttered toast
and smell of sunday roast
kiss the arse of uncle sam
oh to be an englishman
when you hear the sound of warning
when the only colour is red
red sky in the morning
everywhere i’m seeing red
dawn brings a day of hell
hours that we pawn and sell
a single magpie in the tree
one for sorrow one for me
kick it off the cliff i said
now the line fucks up my head
too late to change this mode
break all my moral codes
when you hear the sound of warning
when the only colour is red
red sky in the morning
everywhere i’m seeing red
running from myself again
and all i feel is shame
it doesn’t matter where i go
everywhere still looks the same
this sense of emptiness
as we create this mess
self-destructive tendencies
are what you mean to me
when you hear the sound of warning
when the only colour is red
red sky in the morning
everywhere i’m seeing red
Been there done that
I split my time between the moon and the water
