Queens for Summer

Catch a free listen of the new Queens of the Stone Age cd. It doesn't sound like anything else out there right now. This is a good thing. I don't pump bands as a matter of course because most bands that are popular now are not worth it. They are just trying to fit into some Gen Y fantasy that I can only imagine smashing with big heavy objects. QOTSA seems to not actually give a fuck what anyone thinks. That is a big step in the right direction.

The lens of deceit

The United States lost the Vietnam War not because we didn't kill enough or weren't committed enough or got cheated somehow. We lost because we saw the war the the lens of the Cold War and we were convinced that the conflict was more about a global ideological struggle rather than the nationalist inspirations of the Vietnamese people. When Robert McNamara sat down with the foreign minister of Vietnam, a fellow named Thach, in 1995 he asked why the Vietnamese had fought so doggedly losing 3 to 4 million people to expell the Americans. To our way of thinking it seems so stupid and McNamara said as much to Thach. Thach replied:

"Mr. McNamara, You must never have read a history book. If you'd had, you'd know we weren't pawns of the Chinese or the Russians. McNamara, didn't you know that? Don't you understand that we have been fighting the Chinese for 1000 years? We were fighting for our independence. And we would fight to the last man. And we were determined to do so. And no amount of bombing, no amount of U.S. pressure would ever have stopped us."

In the last week I have read a couple of op-ed pieces by Henry Kissinger, Peter Rodman and William Sharcross. They point out what a disaster pulling out of Iraq will be and they lament that they real history of the Vietnam War and the American pullout has either not been written or has been missed. I honestly wish them suffer in hell for their words. Kissinger no doubt will be consigned to that imaginary place. But what galls me to no end is the willingness of our leaders to denigrate the idea of democracy and freedom. These bastards do not believe in democracy. They are fixers, like McNamara, smarter then you and I about the realpolitik world that matters. Fuck them. They hate all commoners. They give elitism a bad name.

The lens of deceit that motivates those who argue for our extended presence in Iraq was minted in the lying regime of the Bushies. Stupid is as stupid does and here again we have been sold a story about what Iraq means in the larger global war on terror. Iraq is not about terrorism. Terrorism is about war and terrorism is certainly taking place in Iraq but the terrorists in Iraq are not the one's we need worry about. Why would we allow our enemies to define the time and place of our battles? Why would we encourage the weak minded to become fundamentalist bombs? The lens that we see Iraq through will be proven in a generation to be as clouded as the Cold War lens that we saw Vietnam through. The problem is not in how the question is being defined as much as who is doing the defining. The proles do have enemies. They are here at home and it is these homegrown devils that we have the most to fear from. They are working, whether they want to or not, to deliver us a terrorism war here in America. They don't believe in freedom and they don't believe in anything but power. They will bring us nothing but pain.

Grumpy

A long fine weekend turned to shit in my mind in seconds. Whatever the fucking disease I have that prevents me from accruing bonus points for the positive things in my life in such a way as to ameliorate those exiquisite moments of mental breakdown when faced with a few perfect seconds of frustration, I need a damn diagnosis. On the plus side I have better dreams when I am basking in my own urines of angst. A fine yellow haze of malcontent envelops and I feel strangely liberated to not give a shit-whisker about the daily grind. Which may in fact be the name of the disease I am harboring.

My blessed wife can ascertain an iota of grumpiness in the timbre of my voice and I in turn can and do sift through the inflections of her comments like a Right whale pulling the krill of her judgements forth with my big stupid tongue. Something like that. This last weekend I dreamed I was decapitated and tortured which was not nearly as bad as it sounds and I dreamed Hunter S. Thompson was telling me something important around the time the pain generated by an nights worth of bladder juice was jabbing me to my feet to face yet another damn Monday. Fuck mo. I'd like to just get away or get into something that feels like it has nothing to do with me. I guess what I'm trying to say is that everything is totally fucking perfect right now. Like I am a perfectly perserved artifact of myself in the museum of my life. Better use those white gloves when handling the artifact . . .

Today's highlight had to be when I got a breakfast burrito from my usual spot and with my last bite I came down hard on a molar-sized piece of pee gravel that found itself in wrapped happily in that meatless sublime cholesteral delivery device. If the burritos start going bad in San Diego what is next? Closing the zoo? Padres position players who can hit? My daughter breaking up with her boyfriend? God only knows. Or would, if he existed.

We want your kids to be fricking robots

I read an article today in the New York Times magazine by Ann Hulbert that reminded me just how stupid we have become as a nation when the words "standards" and "education" are mentioned in close proximity to each other. My daughter just got back her SAT test scores and while I am proud of her for achieving the 97th percentile overall on her scores, the lack of serious talk between her and I over what counts for something in this world depresses me. Part of it is her decision to (for good reasons and bad reasons) to become involved with her boyfriend's family who are members of a mega-church. This means that my irreverance is not very welcomedby her because it causes her to feel like she must pick and choose. Which of course is the meaning of Christianity in the first place. Pick a side. Now arm yourself and get ready to kill.

The other reasons why we don't have the kind of debating society I had with my folks (mostly my dad) when I was growing up is that there is no value placed on debate by my lovely wife given the fact that her folks were not formally educated. This is no knock on them but debate is not something they really get. They take everything absolutely personal and they needed to given that they had to fight for everything they got in this world. They are winners, and they are honorable people. Just don't try to debate anything you really care about with them our you might end up missing some vital part of your psychological anatomy. Or you might get a knuckle sandwich.

As for that last reason, the fucking public school system has decided to make "No child left behind" into "we want your kids to be fucking robots." Behave, test, behave, study, behave, conform, drug test, conform, lick the boots of death, etc etc etc. So my good decent brilliant daughter has busted her caboose to make grades and learn her stuff and she will be rewarded, as will I, with bills the size of a Ferrari so she can learn something in the University that very well might make her take SSRI's or a heavy dose of Jesus to try to make sense of the fact that conforming to an insane society makes one insane. Rebellion is the normal coin of the realm in the free world. We are training our kids to be robots in the corporate world of profit and greed. To hell with all of us who think this will make us happy. And fuck those who sell it knowing it for the poison it is.

Death of a Bigot

I'm remiss in not writing about the death of someone I use to imagine dancing happily on after they were placed in the ground. There's a lot to dislike about Jerry, and there's not a lot new to add to the cacophony of derision and false respect thrown in the direction of the dead pompous windbag. I had an interesting evening with a friend of mine in the week before Falwell died, and it had to do with he and his wife's late conversion and "mission" to Africa to help talk black folks out of fucking and getting HIV. I pointed out that I was only mildly ashamed that my daughter goes to church, which got some eyebrows raised. I pointed out that the part of Christianity I couldn't abide was the bigoted part, which while heavily denied by "true" Christians is as American as segregation. As the conversation went and as the evening developed a little confrontation had to occur whereby my friend had to call me to carpet about my apparent hypocrisy (as I had cut down my own brother he felt comfortable to do as well, which I pointed out was something of a no-no in the backhanded compliment department). I said something like "I just love when people tell me that they can't believe those are my kids" which is sotto voce for "how can somebody like you who is irreverent and profane" raise such decent humans. Exactly because is of course my take on things. But this could not stand. And the reason is the same as the reason why people gravitated to that shitman Falwell. Because Americans will compete over anything and their eternal souls are no fucking different. "My soul is cleaner than your's sinner" ought to be burned with acid onto the tailbumper of every motherfucker who puts his little Christian fish or Jesus slogan on the back of their fucking car. I shit in your general direction seems to be something Americans and everyone else too scared to be without a get out of jail free card must have. Whatever gets you through the night is actually fine by me. But if you lord it up over me then join Falwell in hell. If only I believed in that place.

The Feminization of American Culture

I had an interesting back and forth with a student in class last night. Men and women have been sold such a sorry bill of goods about how they are the same or how they are different in history that discussing what has changed in the relationships between the sexes has become mostly a collection of agitprop phrases, repeated at various volumes with fervency and obedience. I have spent most of my time in historical study trying to avoid picking the easy fruit of feminism where the rotten pears of men are bad women are victims lay on the low branches of self-righteousness and certainty. Whenever you start talking about the advantages of a more feminized world you open yourself to the oft-repeated “men and women are the same” phrases of happy thinking. We are not the same, and thank goodness for that.

What went well in class was I managed to fairly describe gender as a continuum of masculinity and femininity that does not adhere directly with our genitals. And over the centuries we have witnessed a shift in the amount of femininity that has entered our culture, politics, and society. The historian Ann Douglass calls it “The Feminization of American Culture.” I won’t go and try to defend American Culture as a progressive phenomenon of ultimate transcendence. We very well may find ourselves at the bottom of a dark pit of despair if we continue doing dumb as we so clearly have been doing for decades now. But if something does wake us up and leave us with a future with having and a society worth lauding, I’m going to bet that it has something to do with the fact that year over year women and their subjectivity strengthens the Republic. But no way in heck am I voting for Hilary.

Support our Troops . . .

So the President's veto was supported by idiot congressmen and women who are afraid that their masculinty is being questioned or some other weak-brained self-lascerating bullshit. America is not simply the sum of her fighting forces. Whatever guilt folks feel for the reception that soldiers returning from Vietnam received, it helps this country not one wit to hold fast to stupidity by leaving the military in Iraq. If you want to support the troops stop tying your damn reality to war as the central means of defending American freedom. If the only way we can live this type of over materialistic lifestyle is to war on others and kill hundreds of thousands of people who we think might try destroy our abilty to drive dually pick-up trucks to our office jobs, then fuck it. All the kings horses and all the kings laser-guided munitions can't put Iraq back together again. We lost. We voted for a guy who managed to steal at least one election and we went along and he got us into a evil war. And we lost. We are losers this time. What is good for America is to learn how to learn from losing instead of blaming others for our faults. God bless somebody else because all those stupid prayers we are giving are not helping. Support our country, not just our troops.