yeah, there IS a goddamn difference

Posted on July 17, 2016 by greg

137

I keep hearing comments like this:

“There’s no difference between Trump and Clinton. Both major political parties are corrupt. The only way to force change is to vote for a third party. The only way to express my disgust with the current political system is to vote for a third party. The lesser of two evils is still evil. To think there’s a choice between Trump and Clinton is an illusion; they’re both the same.”

You know what this is? Twaddle. It’s nonsense; senseless; silly bullshit. And I’m hearing this twaddle multiple times a day. I’m mostly hearing it from former Bernie supporters who now believe Bernie is a traitor for doing what he always said he’d do — support the Democratic nominee.

I’d intended to write a thoughtful, well-researched analysis detailing exactly why those sorts of comments are twaddle. Hell, I was even prepared to discuss the etymology of twaddle. But bugger all that. I just want to rant, because there’s some bullshit that just doesn’t deserve a serious discussion.

“Trump ou Clinton, je choisis ni l’un!”

No difference between Trump and Clinton? Are you fucking kidding me? That’s not just stupid, it’s stupid at a cellular level. It’s metabolically stupid. Seriously, if you believe this your cytoplasm must have been replaced with stupidplasm. Jeebus fucking Tinkertoy, just consider that one of them actually wants to construct a physical wall across the border with Mexico. That’s medieval thinking — and not in a good way. If you tell me there’s no difference between Clinton and Trump, then I have to assume you’re either lying or you’re a fucking nitwit (which is like 50% as stupid as a total fuckwit). There are flatworms that can distinguish between Trump and Clinton.

And no, voting for a third fucking party is NOT the only way to change the political system. It’s not even a viable way of changing the political system. The fuckwits who make this claim are almost always electoral locusts — they show up every four years to piss away their vote, then bury themselves in the earth until the next presidential election, during which they complain loudly and insistently about how their vote doesn’t count.

You want your vote to count? Vote in local elections. Vote in County and State elections. Elect your third-party candidates to the School Board, or the Board of Supervisors, or any sort of local elected office where shit actually gets done. Get your third-party candidates into your State legislature. It’s not as sexy as a presidential race, sure. But if you really want change, you do that — and you do it in towns and counties and Statehouses across the U.S. That’s how you begin to build a political base. Then you nurture the shit out of those candidates you get elected. Support them with a small donation of time and/or money. Nurture it, and your third-party will grow.

Even those shit-for-brains Tea Party asshats were smart enough to do that — which is why there are states that keep passing stupid laws against the teaching of evolution. If you allow your County and State to elect people who believe idiotic shit like the Bill of Rights is based on the fucking Bible because you think only presidential elections are worth your time and effort, then fuck you and the “no difference between Trump and Clinton’ horse you rode in on. You’ve got the government you deserve.

You support a woman’s reproductive freedom? You want to implement effective gun safety legislation? You want to see more bike paths and more art funding and renewable energy sources and an end to fracking? You’re not going to get any of that shit by voting for GaryJohnson or Jill Stein. Because they’re NOT GOING TO GET ELECTED. You get that shit by voting for progressives at the State and County level. That’s where the laws that shape the lives of regular folks get written.

You want to see real change? Then grunting isn’t enough. You want real change, you have to do the actual grunt work.

gibson got there first

Posted on July 11, 2016 by greg

William Gibson was there first. Of course he was. He almost always seems to get there first. I’m talking Pokemon Go, folks. Not the Pokemon part, but the Go part. The use of augmented reality for the enjoyment and/or education of…well, anybody.

In his 2007 novel Spook Country Gibson describes an art project referred to as ‘locative art’. Art that’s meaningfully tied to a specific location.

“Cartographic attributes of the invisible,” she said, lowering the bowl. “Spatially tagged hypermedia. The artist annotating every centimeter of a place, of every physical thing. Visible to all, on devices such as these.” She indicated Alberto’s phone, as if its swollen belly of silver-tape were gravid with an entire future.

Granted, what Gibson created in his head is a LOT more cool than Pokemon. His fictional locative artists created geo-located scenes depicting the deaths of celebrities — River Phoenix outside the Viper Room, Helmut Newton in the driveway of the Chateau Marmont. These scenes were invisible to anybody not using the tech, visible to those who were.

The concept of Pokemon Go is much the same — it’s not actually there, but it’s there to be seen. And in the case of Pokemon, there to be caught. I’m sure at some point Gibson will comment on Pokemon Go, but I wouldn’t even try to guess what he’ll think about it. It’s certainly not the sort of augmented reality he had in mind; he said he wanted locative art to be lowbrow, “almost like graffiti.” There’s nothing highbrow about Pokemon, but they are exceedingly commercial.

Gibson uses locative art as an example of the eversion of cyberspace. Turning cyberspace inside out. The ubiquity of cellular connectivity allows what used to be an activity located only in the “consensual hallucination” of the online world to filter into the physical world. In the novel, this sort of augmented reality artwork required a ‘visor’ and a phone. Niantic, the makers of Pokemon Go, have eliminated the visor. That means you — and anybody else — can now wander around your neighborhood and discover the shared hallucination of Pokemon lurking in the neighbor’s azaleas. Or on the sidewalk in front of a shop.

(photo by Kora Foto Morgana)

In 2007 Gibson, through one of his characters in Spook Country, says this:

“The most interesting ways of looking at the GPS grid, what it is, what we do with it, what we might be able to do with it, all seemed to be being put forward by artists. Artists or the military. That’s something that tends to happen with new technologies generally; the most interesting applications turn up on the battlefield or in a gallery.”

Gibson left out gaming. Clever guy, Gibson, but not 100% prescient. The gaming industry sometimes seems to exist at the intersection of the military and art, and they’re quick to embrace new technologies.

Regardless of Pokemon Go’s long-term success or failure as a game, this mixing of the real and the virtual is very cool and has a lot of potential for creative work. I hope this sparks a lot more uses of augmented reality by the gaming industry, by artists, and maybe even writers. Why the hell not?

William Gibson. I declare.

proust – pivot – lipton

Posted on July 7, 2016 by greg

There’s a semi-interesting article in The New Yorker titled How the Proust Questionnaire Went From Literary Curio to Prestige Personality Quiz. I say ‘semi-interesting’ because it takes what I think is an interesting idea — the evolution of a questionnaire a lot of folks are familiar with — and turns it into a fairly pretentious exercise (which is a thing most of us love and hate about The New Yorker). The New Yorker is one of the few places where you’ll find a line like this:

It’s safe to say that, today, the Sainte-Beuvian paradigm has triumphed—if not among literary critics, then certainly in the culture at large.

I guess that IS safe to say, if only because hardly anybody would know what the fuck you were talking about, unless they’d read the article in The New Yorker. And maybe not even then. But despite that, it’s actually interesting to have some glimpse into the origins of the questionnaire.

I became familiar with the questionnaire because of James Lipton’s odd talk show, Inside the Actors Studio. Lipton interviews actors (or directors, and an occasional screenwriter) about their craft. It began in 1994 as a sort of filmed seminar for students in the Actors Studio Drama School — a one-one-one informal but intensely personal interview with somebody who actually works in the business. Over time it’s become a popular show in its own right. The show often reaches a pretension level that can rival The New Yorker, but I’ve never seen an episode that wasn’t worth watching. That said, I wouldn’t entirely disagree with the Sunday Times critic who described the show as:

“[J]ust a chat show on satellite, but the veil of education and posterity is held decorously high, so everybody turns up and talks with a smile.”

Each episode ends with Lipton asking a series of ten questions that he attributes to French television personality Bernard Pivot, who did a similar show devoted to writers. Pivot said his list of questions was inspired by Marcel Proust. Proust got the idea from a popular 18th century parlor game he learned from Antoinette Faure. And the green grass grows all around, all around. If you’re really curious about all this, then you’re probably the sort of person the article in The New Yorker was written for, and you should probably go read it.

Most folks, though, are primarily interested in the questionnaire — the actual ten questions themselves. Some of the questions are pedestrian, some are silly, some are insightful, but it was always interesting to see how various actors/directors/writers would answer them.

Obviously, I’m going to give the questions and my own answers — but I’m genuinely curious to see how other folks would answer them as well. So, here we go:

What is your favorite word? Ownself. It’s a Southernism, I think. At least I’ve never heard anybody outside of the Deep South use it in the same way as Southern folk do. It means ‘yourself’ or ‘myself;, of course, but in a more deeply personal and possessive sort of way. Saying “my ownself” or “your ownself” emphasizes the ownership of whatever the hell you’re talking about. For example, saying “I’ll do it myself” doesn’t carry the same level of investment or commitment as “I’ll do it my ownself”, which is less invested than “I’ll do it my own damn self.”

What is your least favorite word? Any hateful slur — kike, nigger, faggot, pick one.

What turns you on? Smart people.

What turns you off? Willfully stupid people. You know, folks who are capable of learning and understanding, but either can’t be bothered to learn or refuse to learn because it would make them doubt something they believed. Willfully stupid people can fuck right off.

What sound or noise do you love? Water rippling around stones.

What sound or noise do you hate? Leaf blowers. I fucking hate leaf blowers.

What is your favorite curse word? I don’t really have a favorite. I’m sort of partial to ‘cocksucker’, though it’s not an expression I use. I like it because it was used beautifully and creatively in the HBO series Deadwood. HBO’s The Wire did something similar with ‘motherfucker’, but The Wire‘s motherfucker lacked the deep, profound sense of commitment to obscenity that we saw in Deadwood‘s cocksucker.

What profession other than your own would you like to attempt? Architect, maybe. Or investigative epidemiologist.

What profession would you not like to do? Anything to do with accounting.

If heaven exists, what would you like to hear God say when you arrive at the pearly gates? I always have trouble with this premise. It’s like saying “If you had your own personal dragon, what would you do with it?” But you have to play the game by the rules, so IF heaven existed and IF there was a god waiting to greet me, I guess I’d like to hear her say “Hi, come on in, we have an extensive library. And there are no leaf blowers.”

So that’s me. What about you?

hillary fbi scandal omfg you guys

Posted on July 6, 2016 by greg

Hillary is NOT going to prison, you guys! Who could have predicted this? Nobody could have predicted this! This was totally unpredictable! Nostradamus on his best day could not have predicted this!

Well, okay, anybody who read actual news accounts of the email scandal rather than all the opinion pieces could have predicted it. The facts are surprisingly clear. Hillary Clinton became Secretary of State in 2009 and almost immediately asked for a secure phone like the one the National Security Agency provided for President Obama. The NSA said no.

Clinton and her staff said, “Oh, c’mon, let me have a secure phone.” The NSA said, “Nope, sorry.” The Clinton folks said, “Okay, how about if you just give a few high level staff a waiver, like you did for Condi Rice and her staff?” The NSA said, “Yeah, no, we don’t do that anymore.” The Clinton folks got a face-to-face meeting with seven senior State Department staffers with five NSA security experts, and said, “Guys, we really need a secure phone system.” The NSA said, “What, you guys are still here? Okay, you can give Hillary one of these.”

Sectera Edge

The Clinton folks said, “Are you fucking kidding me?” The NSA said, “Sure, it’s clunky and weighs almost a pound, and yeah it’s so awkward our own IT techs think it’s difficult to use. Oh, and the trusted display–the one you have to use for secure communications is really, really, really tiny. Also, it runs on Windows CE, which is a wee bit slow (because the operating system was already 13 years old in 2009). And by the way, the State Department will have to buy and install a whole new secure server infrastructure in order to actually use it.” The Clinton folks said, “Yeah, I don’t think so.”

Here’s a question: have you ever tried to cook a new dish while reading the recipe? It’s a fucking nightmare. You’re trying to caramelize the onions, while slicing up the peppers, and you know you bought Mexican oregano recently–where the hell IS it? It’s chaos. Now try to master a new communications device that has a notoriously steep technological learning curve while conducting negotiations with world leaders in crisis situations and simultaneously maintaining timely, sensitive international communication. You’re going to end up scorching some onions.

And remember this: Hillary Clinton is a grandma. Did you ever have to help your grandma with technology? You know what that’s like.

This is NOT to excuse Clinton. She chose convenience over security (and also, what the hell is that pin she’s wearing? Looks like some sort of Star Wars medal). Her reasons for choosing convenience may be understandable and her decision might have been naive at the beginning, but Jeebus Krush at some point she and her staff had to realize they were taking ridiculous risks with security. What she did was stupid and probably negligent, but it didn’t rise to the level of criminality.

So no, anybody who’d paid attention to the actual facts of the situation couldn’t have been surprised by the FBI’s findings. Still, a lot of folks are upset that Hillary wasn’t charged with a crime. Okay, maybe upset isn’t the most accurate term. Let’s go with livid. A lot of people are livid. No, not emotional enough. A lot of people are fucking furious. There we go. A lot of people are fucking furious at the FBI, at James Comey, at the entire government of These United States of America, and at the whole combustible universe.

The folks who are most upset? Conservatives, of course, but also the Bernie or Bust folks. Yesterday I spent a bit of time scanning the reactions of those two groups: the right-wing cranks at FreeRepublic and the Facebook page for The People for Bernie Sanders.

So here’s a little game. I took some verbatim comments from each group and I’ve included them below. You try to guess which quote came from which group:

Yesterday we celebrated our Independence from a tyrannical government. Today we were reminded that those in charge are above the law. Nice.

After today I can carelees how the corrupt FBI director can or cannot say. He is a sell out.

this is the last straw. We WILL NOT accept that woman for President. Absolutely, positively not, under ANY circumstances.

Any idiot can see that the fix is in and this whole damned thing stinks to high heaven.

The United States of Corruption.

No indictment, No Justice!

That FBI ruling was a joke. It’s obvious the rules don’t apply to Hillary Clinton. No punishment for enemies getting a hold of top secret information because of you? No punishment for lying under oath? It’s so obvious the system is rigged for her.

Hillary needs to go to court and be tried by the people!!!!

How about outrageous, scandalous, corrupt beyond belief? The entire upper echelon of our government is composed of oath-breaking traitors.

Comey goes through the facts, finds the evidence, shows her lies, says that top secret information was left unprotected, and then says not to prosecute. The follow through was not congruent with the set-up. She’s guilty of negligence, she put top secret information at risk, which was illegal, they could easily bring charges. And who cares if Clinton has a ton of lawyers to fight it, she did this crime as Comey stated, and doesn’t deserve the presidency.

Is there not ONE HONEST person in this government?? I am beginning to think NO! GOODBYE AMERICA!

If Hillary is elected this November, then there is NO DOUBT this country is over.

Can’t have a racist or corrupt wall street WHORE as president!!!

SHILLARY FOR PRISON

Because of Hillary E-mails she can be Blackmailed as President from our enemies who have already hacked her server.

It’s not a very fair game, because I don’t recall which comments are from which group. I deliberately mixed them up. But the level of vitriol against Hillary is pretty much the same from both groups.

Here’s the thing (well, the thing as I see it): most of the ‘scandals’ directed at Hillary Clinton (and her husband) are bullshit. Republicans have investigated the shit out of any rumor or suspicion that touched the Clintons in any way. Seriously, back in 1997 when Bill was still in office, Republicans launched an investigation into the Clintons’ Christmas card list. I am NOT making this up. They held hearing for days, they called more than thirty witnesses to testify under oath, demanded 40,000 documents about the Christmas card list. Nothing came of it, of course. I don’t even remember what the hell the point was. But it allowed Republicans to spend a month of so on television, talking about yet another Clinton scandal that was being investigated by Congress.

You spend a quarter of a century launching bullshit investigations and claiming Hillary is the devil, some proportion of the public is eventually going to start believing there must be horns or a forked tail hidden away somewhere. This email business is one of the few incidents grounded in actual behavior that merits actual criticism. The criticism has been massively amplified and exaggerated, but this time some measure of it is deserved.

That doesn’t make it criminal. The FBI made the right call. And the furor over the FBI decision is less about national security than it is about twenty-five years of raw, partisan vilification, and the willingness of some segments of the public to believe bullshit just because it’s repeated often.

And can you guess what the Republicans are going to do in response to this? I’ll bet you can. Go ahead, you guys, take a guess.

Right. Good guess! They’re going to hold investigative hearings to find out if the FBI is part of the conspiracy to keep Hillary out of prison. Watch the news, hear all about the New Hillary FBI Scandal. They should be able to keep — oh, let’s call it FBI-gate — in the news cycle until the election in early November.

(Stay tuned for Clinton Voter Fraud-gate, due to be released in mid-November!)

nobody cares

Posted on July 1, 2016 by greg

“Sometimes I feel like I should just give up.”

One of my writing students recently said that. In fact, I hear that with distressing regularity from my students. (As an aside, it still occasionally strikes me as improbable that I’ve become a Person Who Has Students.) That statement is almost never posed as a question, but the question is always there as a not-very-subtle subtext. Should I just give up? And that question always masks another question, which is generally phrased as another statement: I’m never going to be good enough to get published, am I.

The question at the heart of all this is an awkward question. It requires a graceful answer. It also requires an honest answer. As a Person Who Has Students, it’s my experience that honesty and grace don’t always dovetail together.

The graceful response is easy. “No, of course you shouldn’t give up. If you approach your writing with diligence and sincerity, you can become good enough to get published.” There’s some measure of truth in that. If you work hard at any craft — writing, cabinetry, weaving, brick-laying, pottery — you can improve. Most of my students have the capacity to be good enough to get published.

But most won’t. That’s the honest answer. Hard work doesn’t guarantee mastery, and mastery doesn’t guarantee success. The unwelcome Truth is that while most of my students have the capacity to improve, relatively few will actually fulfill that capacity; they either lack the necessary persistence or are prevented by circumstance from achieving it. And even whose who ARE good enough, may still not be good enough. Even if they produce excellent work, the first publisher to read it may reject it. And so might the second and third. And the fourth and and and.

Nobody cares about your zombie novel

Instead of responding directly to my student, I asked a question: “What matters most to you — writing a good story or getting published?” Everybody wants both, of course — and logically one should follow the other. If you write a good story, it’s got a better chance of getting published. But knowing which of those matters most changes your approach. If getting published matters most, then you let the marketplace direct the work. If the marketplace is hot for zombies, then you write zombies. Some folks will sneer at that, but there’s nothing wrong with it. It’s a professional approach Getting paid for your work is a wonderful thing, and the best way to get paid is to give the market what it wants. And down at the bone, a good zombie story is first and foremost a good story — just with zombies.

If it’s the writing itself that matters most, then your approach is different and the reward is different. In that case, story takes precedence over the marketplace. You might still write a story about zombies, but it’s the story that’s driving the process, not the zombies. And I’m going to repeat myself: down at the bone, a good zombie story is first and foremost a good story. It’s an issue of whether you’re writing a good zombie story or a good story that has zombies in it. In either case, it’s got to be a good story.

A few days after my chat with the student, I came across this video by Ted Forbes. You should watch it. Not right now, necessarily (because c’mon, I want you to keep reading this, don’t I) but at some point take a few minutes and watch it. It’s called Nobody Cares About Your Photography.

I don’t know Ted Forbes; we’re ‘friends’ on Facebook, which just about the most tenuous sort of human connection possible. I don’t think I’ve ever exchanged a word with him, but I watch his Art of Photography videos. I don’t always care about the subject matter, but it’s always worthwhile to listen to anybody who’s passionate about something talk intelligently about it. I’m pretty confident that if you listened to somebody talk passionately and with intelligence about lawn bowling, you’d learn something you could use in writing. Or in photography.

Forbes says nobody cares about your photography — and he’s basically right. In the same way, nobody cares about your writing. There are SO many writers out there (and so many photographers or lawn bowlers) that it’s easy for you, as an individual, to be ignored. And if you’re proficient enough to care about your work and intelligent enough to wonder about your place, you’ll almost certainly at some point wonder if you should just give up.

Forbes, I think, makes two important, related points. He says No more easy shots and The world needs work that matters. What the hell does that even mean? And how does it translate into writing?

I don’t think he’s saying you need to be trying to create work that will be of historical importance (if he IS saying that, then the poor guy is delusional — but still worth watching). I think when he says No more easy shots he’s basically saying not to do the same old shit you’ve always done just because you’ve always done it. Do different shit, or do that old shit differently. Don’t relax, don’t sit down, don’t do it in your sleep.

And when he says The world needs work that matters I don’t think he’s saying the work must be Very Important Work. I think he’s saying to think about what the work actually means and how it fits into our culture. That sounds impressive as hell, doesn’t it. But consider the works of P.G. Wodehouse. It’s fluff. But it’s incredibly well-written fluff. It’s not easy to write comedic fiction that light-hearted.

Does the writing of P.G. Wodehouse matter? I’d say it does. People need a bright, witty escape from the world. They need it and deserve it. The question isn’t whether the world needs another novel about zombies — or about elves, or former special ops soldiers, or a sharp-witted nanny who is kidnapped by Barbary pirates. The question isn’t whether anybody really cares about your elven special ops zombie romance novel. They don’t.

But they do care about stories. They care about what stories do. About what stories make them feel. About the things stories inspire them to think about.

The world needs good stories. Stories matter. Grace matters, honesty matters, passion matters, intelligence matters. Stories will always matter. You may not write one that finds its way to an enthusiastic reader. But you can try. If you can approach your work with grace, honesty, passion, and intelligence, then it might matter. It might.

Lawn bowling

If it doesn’t — well, there’s always lawn bowling.

two stupid things & a smart thing

Posted on June 30, 2016 by greg

Sweet Jeebus of Cold Brew, people, I declare. There are two (2) stupid things — no, not just stupid things, but things possessing a quality of stupid that’s actually sufficient to lower room temperature — Bernie supporters keep saying. They are as follows:

Stupid Thing One: it ain’t over.
Stupid Thing Two: Senator Elizabeth Warren is a traitor.

First, it’s over. Hillary won, Bernie lost, and as painful as it may be to accept, it’s the reality. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it’s technically not over until the convention officially nominates Hillary — but unless a fucking meteor plummets out of the sky and vaporizes her, she’s the nominee. And that business about ‘but wait, they’re still counting ballots in California’ is moot (moot — adj. A discussion of a hypothetical case as a form of academic exercise). It’s time to call in the dogs and piss on the fire. The hunt’s over.

Second, here’s what some Bernie supporters have been saying about Elizabeth Warren on her Facebook page. She’s “a traitor for supporting Hildamort.” A “sellout for endorsing Shrillary.” A “trained monkey” and a “prostitute for Killary” as well as “a disgusting person” who is supporting “an inauthentic millionaire war criminal.” She’s “a scumbag” who “betrayed Bernie” and “stabbed him in the back.” She’s “a modern day Judas” and “a snake” who’s undergone “some MK Ultra treatment” that turned her into a “puppet for Hellary.”

Okay, I like that MK Ultra bit. Nice touch. But seriously, what the hell happened to you people? Elizabeth Warren is a treasure. She’s the best thing that’s happened to the Democratic party in recent memory. The difference between Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders is…well, I’ll come back to that in a bit.

This ridiculous Warren-bashing is the sort of frenzied, agitated bullshit that caused me to stop supporting Bernie’s campaign. Note that I didn’t say I’d stopped supporting Bernie — just his campaign, which turned paranoid and irrationally outraged toward the end (yes, I said end, on account of his presidential campaign is over). I still prefer most of Bernie’s political positions to Hillary’s, but the scent of burning martyr offends me.

Does that mean I think Bernie should fold his tent and go home? Hell no. I don’t think he needs to concede, though it’s clear he’s been beaten. I have absolutely no problem with him continuing to make speeches and hold rallies and press home his policy points. I do wish he’d stop grousing about how some of his policies aren’t in the Democratic party platform — not because they’re bad policies, but because it’s one of the realities of losing. The winner’s positions carry more weight. I’m okay with Bernie continuing to make a fuss, but I wish he’d stop acting like he’s the only person who really gives a rat’s ass about working people.

Does it hurt the Democrat party for Bernie to continue making a fuss? Yeah, maybe, a wee bit. But why should that matter to him? That difference between Bernie and Elizabeth Warren I mentioned earlier? This is where it comes into play. She became a Democrat in the mid-1990s because she believed the Democratic party more closely aligned with her political beliefs. Bernie, on the other hand, became a Democrat about nine months ago. Not because he believed in the Democratic party, but in order to run for president. He’s a Democrat of convenience. He simply used the mechanisms of party affiliation to promote and support his candidacy.

That’s NOT a slur on Bernie. He’s smart enough to know that if he’d run as a third-party candidate, hardly anybody would have paid any attention to him. Running as a Democrat gave him access to a massive fund of voter data, guaranteed him a spot on the debate stage, granted him credibility on a level he’d never have attained running as a socialist. He’d have been stupid NOT to take advantage of that, and Bernie Sanders is anything but stupid.

So if his reluctance to acknowledge defeat and his unwillingness to endorse Hillary hurts the Democratic party, he’s okay with that. He hasn’t any real loyalty to the party — which, of course, means the party doesn’t have any real loyalty to him.

Bernie has lost the Democratic nomination — but he may be setting the first stones of a foundation for a viable third-party. IF his followers participate in this and future elections. IF they get involved and run for local, county, and state offices. IF they don’t pout and whine and decide they’re too pure to participate in the grunt and squeeze of actual politics.

Now that would be a smart thing.

michael herr — there it is

Posted on June 25, 2016 by greg

Michael Herr died a couple of days ago. There’s a pretty good chance you won’t be familiar with the name, but if you’ve ever seen a movie about the war in Vietnam — hell, if you’ve even heard there was a war in Vietnam — then Michael Herr has shaped your understanding of the world.

He was a correspondent for Esquire magazine who covered Vietnam from 1967 to 1969. Well, covered isn’t the right term. He didn’t report the news from the war; he reported the experience of Vietnam — and in 1977 he turned all those experiences into an astonishing book called Dispatches. It’s not a history of the war; it’s not a morality tale, it’s not one of those ‘war is hell’ stories; it’s a semi-hallucinatory account of what one war was like for one correspondent. Herr sort of dolphined through Vietnam — sometimes dancing lightly across the surface, and sometimes diving so deep that light barely penetrates.

Going out at night the medics gave you pills, Dexedrine breath like dead snakes kept too long in a jar.

That’s the first line of the first chapter of Dispatches. The entire book is filled with lines like that — lines so beautiful you read them two or three times, lines so full of dread and horror you wish you hadn’t read them at all because you know they’ll stick like cockleburs in your brain — and if you’ve already got a head half-packed with memories you wish you didn’t have, you don’t really need any more. And yet you’re grateful for the beauty and horror of those lines because they ring true, all the way down to the bone.

Herr wrote the voice-over narration for Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now, and helped write the screenplay for Full Metal Jacket, the film by Stanley Kubrick. But nothing compares to Dispatches. Michael Herr was one of the writers who revealed to me the actual power of good writing. Dispatches had a profound effect on my life — on how I saw the world, on how I related to my family, even on how I’ve done the various jobs I’ve had.

Vietnam is what we had instead of happy childhoods.

I never served in Vietnam. I did my four years in military harness toward the end of the war, and I did every fucking thing I could do to keep my ass in the States. Both of my older brothers went through Vietnam, though. Marines, both of them. One completed a full thirteen month tour and came back physically whole, but emotionally fucked up. The other brother was only there for about five months, then spent about twice that long in the Great Lakes Naval Hospital getting rehab for the leg he nearly lost. He was in Recon; his team was essentially inserted into an ambush; they were hit even before they could set up a perimeter. Now he has a chunk of steel instead of a thigh bone, receives a disability check every month from Uncle Sugar, and the State of Iowa gives him a license plate that gives him a preferred parking space.

Herr wrote a great deal about the Marines. He spent a lot of time with them. Marines re-taking the city of Hue, Marines under siege in Khe Sanh. If those names aren’t familiar to you, and there’s probably no reason they should be, just imagine the worst combat scenes you’ve seen in movies, then add some 60s rock. Reading about Marines in Dispatches helped me understand my brothers; it helped me love them.

Herr also wrote about LURPs — the guys who did the Army’s long-range recon patrols. That was helpful because I eventually ended up working with a former-4th Division LURP. We were both private investigators specializing in criminal defense work, and sometimes that meant going to scary places and asking nosy questions of scary people. This guy was a little crazy and a little scary himself, so he fit right in. We worked as a team — he’d be armed; I wouldn’t (I didn’t like carrying a firearm — not because I object to them, but because I felt a gun would make me over-confident and less situationally aware; being frightened kept me alert).

Being a LURP had taught him two things in detail. First, how to keep watch. When we’d go someplace dangerous, he’d sidle off quietly to one side and just keep watch while I’d approach the subject and do the talking. He’d take up a position, silent and relaxed and vigilant, and he’d sort of blend into the woodwork. It also taught him about violence — to avoid it when possible, and to commit to it when it was necessary. Overwhelming, sudden, sharp violence.

Knowing he was there never stopped me from being scared, but there was tremendous comfort in knowing I wasn’t alone. I learned to trust him totally. Trust is a word folks toss around a tad too freely, I think. When I say I trusted this guy, what I mean was I was confident that if things went Oh Shit, he’d step up. No hesitation. He might not be able to save me from getting hurt, but I knew he wouldn’t leave me — and that means a lot.

I don’t think we’d have become friends if Dispatches hadn’t allowed me to peek into the experiences guys like him had gone through. In fact, I’m not sure we were really friends at all; we had very little in common. Just that bond of trust. I think it meant a lot to him that I trusted him so much.

I guess Dispatches served me as a sort of guidebook, offering insights into people I loved and relied on. The book is almost 40 years old, and it still helps me keep the horizon line fairly straight. When I have my own terrifying PTSD moments and nightmares, it actually helps to know mine are a mild version — that I’ve had pretty good luck to limit my own personal horror show to the occasional moment of panic and sweaty, gasping nightmare.

Hell, it even helps me just to remember this brief passage from Dispatches. Herr wrote about the practice of saying “good luck” to somebody:

…and though I meant it every time I said it, it was meaningless. It was like telling someone going out in a storm not to get any on him, it was the same as saying “Gee, I hope you don’t get killed or wounded or see anything that drives you insane.”

Obviously I haven’t been killed. The only physical wound I’ve received came from a rather aggressive Rottweiler. And I’ve only seen things that wake me at night, occasionally leaving me too afraid to go back to sleep. That’s unpleasant, but it truly counts as good luck, and because of Dispatches I’m able to be thankful for it.

Michael Herr

I wanted to include a photo of Michael Herr from his Vietnam days — but I couldn’t find any that are worth a damn. He describes one, though:

Dana [Stone] used to do a far-out thing, he’d take pictures of us under fire and give them to us as presents. there’s one of me on the ramp of a Chinook at Cam Lo, only the blur of my right foot to show that I’m not totally paralyzed, twenty-seven pushing fifty, reaching back for my helmet and the delusion of cover. Behind me inside the chopper there’s a door gunner in a huge dark helmet, a corpse is laid out on the seat, and in front of me there’s a black Marine, leaning in and staring with raw raving fear toward the incoming rounds, all four of us caught there together while Dana crouched down behind the camera, laughing. “You fuck,” I said to him when he gave me the print, and he said, “I thought you ought to know what you look like.”

That’s the photograph I wanted to show. Not this trench-coated guy in a suit and tie. It’s not that the Michael Herr on the ramp of that Chinook is the real Michael Herr, but it’s the Michael Herr who exists in my imagination.

jacking the rainbow

Posted on June 21, 2016 by greg

You guys! Have you been wondering just what Barack Obama and the homosexualists that control the executive branch of our federal government have been doing lately to piss off Jeebus? No? Me neither!

But guess what, you guys. Pastor Scott (of the sad but desperately wanting to be famous Scott Lively Ministries) has been paying close attention to what Barack Obama and the homosexualists that control the executive branch of our federal government have been up to. And guess what again. Pastor Scott says Barack O and the H that control the EB of our FG have been totally using the Orlando massacre to escalate their push to install the LGBT agenda globally! Globally, you guys!

Okay, okay, I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking What the hell is a homosexualist? Right? Me too! And guess what. It’s a practitioner or supporter of the distinctive and formal set of ideas, principles or beliefs of homosexualism. You guys, I didn’t even know gay folks HAD a distinctive and formal set of ideas, principles or beliefs. I thought gay folks were just people. But I guess they do have a distinctive and formal set of ideas, principles or beliefs on account of would Pastor Scott just make shit up? Would he, you guys?

So now you’re wondering HOW are Barack Obama and the homosexualists that control the executive branch of our federal government escalating their push to install the LGBT agenda globally, right? Me too!

It’s the flag, you guys. You know, that rainbow flag? Pastor Scott says gay folks have totally jacked the rainbow.

[W]hen it comes to LGBT arrogance, nothing tops the spiritual crime of blaspheming God by hijacking His rainbow.

Hijacking god’s rainbow, you guys! It turns out — and okay, maybe you guys didn’t know this — it turns out god totally owns rainbows. Pastor Scott says rainbows are “intimately associated with the divine presence and authority” of god on account of the what god did after he destroyed the entire world and just about everything in it (except for Noah and his fam, and most of the animals) by soaking it repeatedly.

Noah and the First BBQ

But then after the Flood Noah took some of the animals he’d saved and he killed them and burned them in order to…no, seriously, I’m not making this up. Noah burnt some animals and then god said “Dude, sorry about killing everybody and making you do this whole ark business. I won’t do that again, honest. Look, here’s a rainbow. Oh, and by the way, you can eat meat now. You know, if you want. Okay? Are we cool? We’re cool, right?”

And Noah builded an altar unto the Lord; and took of every clean beast, and of every clean fowl, and offered burnt offerings on the altar.

And the Lord smelled a sweet savour; and the Lord said in his heart, I will not again curse the ground any more for man’s sake; for the imagination of man’s heart is evil from his youth; neither will I again smite any more every thing living, as I have done.

See? Like that. It’s not entirely clear to me why god tossed in that eating meat business, but he did. Apparently folks were vegetarians before the Flood. Noah basically invented the barbecue. Oh, and getting drunk…that was Noah too. Getting drunk, getting naked, and getting embarrassed by the whole thing. Noah was a bro.

And Noah began to be an 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.

I mean, sure, I get it. Nobody wants to even imagine their parent naked, let along drunk and naked in a tent. And yay for Shem and Japeth for tossing a blanket over the old guy. But backing into the tent so you don’t have to see his wizened unit? I don’t know…seems like over-compensation to me.

But back to the rainbow business. Since god owns rainbows and since Jeebus was the firstborn male child of god, he is/was heir to…well, I guess to everything? Maybe? I don’t know, I’m not an estate lawyer. But it seems pretty well established to Pastor Scott that Jeebus has property rights over the reflection, refraction and dispersion of light through airborne water droplets. So rainbows totally belong to Jeebus. Got it?

Okay, so B Obama and the homosexualists that C the EB of our FG are installing the gay agenda globally by letting (or forcing? it’s not clear, is it) several U.S. embassies around the globe (see, this is what makes it global, you guys, the earth is round) to fly the rainbow flag above the embassy during Pride month. And that has Pastor Scott and a whole lot of conservative Christians are so mad they could spit.

It is the responsibility of Christians (and Torah-believing Jews) everywhere to speak out against this defilement of God’s rainbow, and to demand that the LGBT movement cease and desist cloaking itself in His flag.

They’re flag-cloaking, you guys! The gays done jacked the flag and are cloaking with it. Like those Star ~~Wars~~ Trek guys. Not the Klingons, but the other ones. The ones that look like Vulcans with hemorrhoids. Romanians? That doesn’t sound right. But you guys, there is definitely cloaking taking place. Globally. And it’s Obama’s fault.

And he’s doing this globally.

And Pastor Scott wants that to cease and desist. Not just cease, you guys, and not just desist. Cease AND desist. If you send him money, Pastor Scott will probably help Jeebus find a good tort lawyer and sue the pants off the gays. So to speak.

gregfallis.com

it's this or get a real job