Boys Wear Pants, Men Wear Trousers -

I'm not sure where to start on this one. Normally, I can delve into the theme, character, arcs, and symbolism--blah, blah, blah.

This has been called the most important anti-war book ever written. It was also written by an admitted Socialist (back in the 1930s when Socialism was socially fashionable).

I'm not going to weigh in on that matter (I do think it's more effective in this manner than even Vonnegut's masterpiece Slaughterhouse Five); but I will say that the writing is superb and there are a few key points where the emotional narrative punches you straight in the gut.

I'll let Trumbo's work speak for itself. Consider this first section, which happens at the point that Joe Bonham discovers that his arms, legs, mouth, nose and eyes were blown off from a shell on the cusp of No Man's Land in the war against the Kaiser.

Oh no. No no no.

He couldn't live like this because he would go crazy. But he couldn't die because he couldn't kill himself. If he could only breath he could die. That was funny but it was true. He could hold his breath and kill himself. That was the only way left. Except that he wasn't breathing. His lungs were pumping air but he couldn't sto them from doing it. He couldn't live and he couldn't die.

No no no that can't be right.

No no.

Mother.

Mother where are you?

Hurry mother hurry hurry hurry and wake me up. I'm having a nightmare mother where are you? Hurry mother. I'm down here. Here mother. Here in the darkness. Pick me up. Rockabye baby. Now I lay me down to sleep. Oh mother hurry because I can't wake up. Over here mother. When the wind blows the cradle will rock. Hold me up high high.

Mother you've gone away and forgotten me. Here I am. I can't wake up mother. Wake me up. I can't move. Hold me. I'm scared. Oh mother mother sing to me and rub me and bathe me and comb my hair and wash out my ears and play with my toes and clap my hands together and blow my nose and kiss my eyes and mouth like I've seen you do with Elizabeth like you must have done with me. Then I'll wake up and I'll be with you and I'll never leave or be afraid or dream again.

Oh no.

I can't. I can't stand it. Scream. Move. Shake something. Make a noise any noise. I can't stand it. Oh no no no.

Please I can't. Please no. Somebody come. Help me. I can't lie here forever like this until maybe years from now I die. I can't. Nobody can. It isn't possible.

I can't breathe but I'm breathing. I'm so scared I can't think but I'm thinking. Oh please please no. No no. It isn't me. Help me. It can't be me. Not me. No no no.

Oh please oh oh please. No no no please no. Please.

Not me.(64-65)

Out of this desparation grew a terrible rage within Joe, a hopeless rage that targeted the men who started the ridiculous war that came to be called "The War to End all Wars."

You can always hear the people who are willing to sacrifice somebody else's life. They're plenty loud and they talk all the time. You can find them in churches and schools and newspapers and legislatures and congress. that's their business. They sound wonderful. Death before dishonor. This ground sanctified by blood. These men who died so gloriously. They shall not have died in vain. Our noble dead.

Hmmmm.

But what do the dead say?

Did anybody ever come back from the dead any single one of the millions who got killed did any one of them ever come back and say by god I'm glad I'm dead because death is always better than dishonor? Did they say I'm glad I died to make the world safe for democracy? Did they say I like death better than losing liberty? Did any of them ever say it's good to think I got my guts blown out for the honor of my country? Did any of them ever say look at me I'm dead but I died for decency and that's better than being alive. Did any of them ever say here I am I've been rotting for two years in a foreign grave but it's wonderful to die for your native land. Did any of them say hurray I died for womanhood and I'm happy to see how I sing even though my mouth is choked with worms?

Nobody but the dead know whether all these things people talk about are worth dying for or not. And the dead can't talk. So the words about noble deaths and sacred blood and honor and such are all put into dead lips by grave robbers and fakes who have no right to speak for the dead. If a man says death before dishonor he is either a fool or a liar because he doesn't know what death is. He isn't able to judge. He only knows about living. He doesn't know anything about dying. If he is a fool and believes in death before dishonor let him go ahead and die. But all the little guys who are too busy to fight should be left alone. And all the guys who say death before dishonor is pure bull the important thing is life before death they should be left alone too. Because the guys who say life isn't worth living without some principle so important you're willing to die for it they are all nuts. And the guys who say you'll see there'll come a time you can't escape you're going to have to fight and die because it'll mean your very life why they are also nuts. They are talking like fools. They are saying that two and two make nothing. They are saying that a man will have to die in order to protect his life. If you agree to fight you agree to die. Now if you die to protect your life you aren't alive anyhow so how is there any sense in a thing like that? A man doesn't say I will starve myself to death to keep from starving. He doesn't say I will spend all my money in order to save my money. He doesn't say I will burn my house down in order to keep it from burning. Why then should he be willing to die for the privilege of living? There ought to be at least as much common sense about living and dying as there is about going to the grocery store and buying a loaf of bread.

There's nothing noble about dying. Not even if you die for honor. Not even if you die the greatest hero the world ever saw. Not even if you're so great your name will never be forgotten and who's that great? The most important thing is your life little guys. You're worth nothing dead except for speeches. Don't let them kid you any more. Pay no attention when they tap you on the shoulder and say come along we've got to fight for liberty or whatever their word is there's always a word.

Just say mister I'm sorry I got no time to die I'm too busy and then turn and run like hell. If they say coward why don't pay any attention because it's your job to live and not to die. If they talk about dying for principles that are bigger than life you say mister you're a liar. Nothing is bigger than life. There's nothing noble in death. What's noble about lying in the ground and rotting? What's noble about never seeing the sunshine again? What's noble about having your legs and arms blown off? What's noble about being an idiot? What's noble about being blind and deaf and dumb? What's noble about being dead? Because when you're dead mister it's all over. It's the end. You're less than a dog less than a rat less than a bee or an ant less than a white maggot crawling around on a dungheap. You're dead mister and you died for nothing.

You're dead mister.

Dead.(114-119)

Out of this rage, Joe began his ascent back to becoming a human being. First, he had to recapture time and he does this by timing the nurse's visits, noting when his bedsheets were changed. Then he felt for the sunshine on his neck (the only exposed skin he had).

Finally, he discovered the only way he had to communicate with the outside world--tapping his head in morse code. He taps for weeks and months before someone understands what he's doing and when he asks them to be let out of his prison, they tell him it's against regulations and dope him up so he'll quit trying to communicate. This was his last chance and they shut him back in his coffin forever.

The resolution of the novel comes with with this grim declaration:

...it will not be us who die. It will be you.

It will be you--you who urge us on to battle you who incite us against ourselves you who would have one cobbler kill another cobbler you who would have one man who works kill another man who works you would have one human being who wants only to live kill another human being who wants only to live. Remember this. Remember this well you people who plan for war. Remember this you patriots you fierce ones you spawners of hate you inventors of slogans. Remember this as you have never remembered anything else in your lives.

We are men of peace we are men who work and we want no quarrel. But if you destroy our peace if you take away our work if you try to range us one against the other we will know what to do. If you tell us to make the world safe for democracy we will make it so. We will use the guns you force upon us we will use them to defend our very lives and the menace to our lives does not lie on the other side of a nomansland that was set apart without our consent it lies within our own boundaries here and now we have seen it and we know it.

Put the guns into our hands and we will use them. Give us the slogans and we will turn them into realities. Sing the battle hymns and we will take them up where you left off...we will have the slogans and we will have the hymns and we will have the guns and we will use them and we will live. Make no mistake of it we will live. We will be alive and we will walk and talk and eat and sing and laugh and feel and love and bear our children in tranquility in security in decency in peace. You plan the wars you masters of men plan the wars and point the way and we will point the gun.(242-243)

Normally, I'm not given to quoting large chunks of text in my blog posts, but under the circumstances I felt it was warranted since many of you scrubs will never pick this book up. I felt you need to know about it for the same reason that Metallica wrote the song One about it--because it says some pretty simple things about how shitty it is that human beings can't get along with one another without blowing ourselves up at every stop. About how repugnant it is that we've built an economy that runs on the prolonged and deranged death of our own species. And about how pathetic it is that the word freedom has been hung in a sign above our social prison cell like the words "Arbeit Macht Frie" ("Work makes you free") hung above the gates of Auschwitz as the unbelieving shuffled through with the dim hope of reprieve. Like "INRI" hung above the crown of thorns on the first Good Friday. Joe Bonham said he was a new kind of Christ, an anti-Christ of sorts who leads the path to misery in absolute silence with the strength not of the coward but of the eternally enraged.

It is important to note that this book was written before World War II, so the moral indignation doesn't exactly carry through when applied to all great wars. But the simpler historical truth is that without the ridiculous first World War, there would have been no second. And without Woodrow Wilson, there would have been no Hitler and, ultimately, no Saddam Hussein or Osama bin Laden.

I can't say that I agree with the protagonist's conclusion here but I can understand it from his point of view and that's all an author can ask of their reader. It's amazing tha this book still carries the emotional impact that it had back when it was originally published. It's fascinating that it can still be a lens applied to any situation of war where the people are being asked to sacrifice while the government and the corporation by which it stands makes battle cruisers full of money, hand over fist, and feeds at a seemingly endless banquet table while "the little guys" are getting the full check delivered to their bar stools when all they had was a coffee and a donut (and maybe another beer).

I've never served in war, so I'm not qualified to judge the experience. But I can tell you that my life is almost as precious to me as that of my family's and I would do almost anything to protect them. And inside that statement lies the greatest danger to my life, to all our lives. It's the internal clitoris that politicians and the devils in men have been stroking for thousands of years in order to reap rewards while others do the dying. Therein lies the catch-22. And that conundrum, the fact that we are told we must sacrifice our lives in order to save them is what is worth writing (and reading) about because despite the fault in logic, we continue to do it willingly by the thousands.

This book is a classic for a reason. Now go read it.

LINKS:
JD's Review of Johnny Got His Gun

TAGS:
Johnny Got His Gun, Dalton Trumbo, War, Metallica

I love my job because I sometimes get access to some pretty sweet people--Tim Russert is one of them. He's great.

Yesterday the Senate voted to allow guest workers provided that they register, pay a small fee, pay their taxes, remain gainfully employed and get in line to become full citizens. A few prominent Republicans (Arlen Specter, inventor of the Magic Bullet Killed JFK theory, among them) broke ranks and lobbied for this bill.

The debate on C-SPAN got pretty heated this morning with Latino immigrants giving their American Dream speeches and crusty old white dudes giving their "these douches are taking up valuable space in our hospitals and schools" diatribes.

These arguments are nothing new. Post-Reconstruction northerners said the same thing about migrating black folk. And the second generation sons of Revolutionary colonists said the same thing about the Irish who were picked to do work deemed too valuable for slaves to perform.

It was Xenophobia then and its Xenophobia now.

But that's all theory because there is a greater issue at stake here. We have a government that has refused, for quite some time, to defend the borders of our country. And in my mind, the porous state of the American border and the laughable immigration tracking and enforcement was and is a far greater threat than Saddam or Al Qaeda ever was. In fact, it was the medium by which the latter was able to penetrate and attack us.

I believe that diversity is what made America strong and what will drive us into the future. However, there are two caveats to note about this guest worker bill. It must be coupled with a serious enforcement of the borders as well as a new paradigm of American culture, one written in the hearts of every citizen instead of in the pages of the New York Times or the podium of the White House lectern, both of which are serve as the foci of the liar's circle in my opinion.

The true America, like Rome, is a dream whispered in the hearts of the people and that dream is dying a slow, suffocating, and pathetic death while we assure each other with our fat bellies and amused to death minds that everything is quite alright.

Open your hearts. Open your minds. And clear the debating stage of the dolts and halfwits who have convinced you that monosyllabic sound bytes are the sure path to wisdom.

There is a greater goal to be obtained than a bottom line in the black.

LINKS:
Senate Votes to Pass the Guest Worker Bill
Tony Pierce's Take

TAGS:
Immigration, Republicans, Bush, Security, Democrats

OK, first of all, as for the episode title being mispelled--the only thing that I first came up with was the connection between "ham" and the ridiculous name for the "slasher flick" that the gang is considering investing in. Not to mention the fact that everything and everyone around him is falling apart without his leadership and influence.

Consider the three definitions of Mayhem which come from Dictionary.com:

Law. The offense of willfully maiming or crippling a person.
Infliction of violent injury on a person or thing; wanton destruction: children committing mayhem in the flower beds.
A state of violent disorder or riotous confusion; havoc.

But Tony has changed. He has lost and recaptured his identity. He has been metaphorically been hacked into little pieces which have somehow reassembled themselves and are about to come looking for revenge from those who betrayed him. I believe that we are about to see his maxim about family being the only thing that one can trust be tested to the limits.

The questions, "Who am I? Where am I going?" were only the beginning of this quest. Tony's true identity (Kevin Finnerty--did they change the spelling of this since last week?) is under attack from the most peaceful worshippers on earth--all because he failed to provide them heat. And this begs the question of how would a man who had worked so hard to make the world so cold become a flaming sun unto himself, a presence that lit the world on fire and warmed the hearts of his fellow man? Is that not the inner seed and call of every sacred religion before the charlataans, criminals, and salesmen get ahold of them?

One wonders what it would take to light a match and destroy his entire mob family? What would the world be missing out on if Tony Soprano became the Christ figure for decent society--and put out the lights of the vermin he has been supporting his whole life, denying his true nature and refusing to light a fire in the heart of his fellow man? The answer is probably that the New York family would move in to Jersey and business would continue as usual, but Tony and his family might be in a better place.

Or they might be Six Feet Under--but that's another show isn't it?

PS: The highlight of this episode, for me, was the scene where Tony was banging the wall, telling the neighbor to "shut the fuck up!" and we could hear Paulie's voice mumbling from the outside--that was pure genius.

I have a feeling that a lot of people aren't going to be happy with this episode because it wasn't straight forward mob killings and double crossings like last year. But David Chase has never written low-brow television (just watch the last couple seasons of Northern Exposure if you don't believe me). The man has mastered the use of metaphor in the one-hour television drama and he will be remembered as an artist who redefined the medium. He is the William Faulkner of the airwaves and he lives by the Hemingway maxim that you must kill your darlings.

Another fantastic episode. I welcome all comments.

TAGS:
The Sopranos, Mayham, Tony Soprano, Episode 68

Related Posts (on one page):

I have a good friend whose father is a General in the United States Army and he is currently stationed in Iraq and I was lucky enough to catch up with him at a funeral last week.

He has always told it to me straight even back when I didn't give a shit about politics or the global economy--back when I was doing bong hits and dating bisexual strippers who liked to get nude in public just to tease all my friends.

Eventually we got around to the topic of the war and the President. See, unlike Tony Pierce or the Daily Kos or whoever out there, this man has actually sat in audience with the President of the United States and speaks daily on the phone to the Secretary of Defense. The bottom line is that I shook the hand of the man who has a personal Presidential nickname and that makes his opinion on the matter of war far more valuable than anyone in the blogosphere (including yours truly).

We were sitting with him in a group of four at a table at the dinner following the funeral and someone asked him if he would be happy when the war was over. Normally, the General is a very happy go lucky guy--always positive and always looking for the best in people (most successful people share these two traits above all other attributes).

But when he was asked that question, the smile left his face and he put his large hand over that of the girl who asked the question. He said, "Honey, this war won't be over in our lifetimes."

He said, "I know the American media is caught up on Weapons of Mass Destruction and whether it was right or not to invade Iraq. Let me tell you that if the citizens of this country could see half of the classified documents and sat in a quarter of the intelligence briefings that I have been in, they would be in full support of doing whatever it takes no matter what it takes to secure the Middle East from falling into the hands of some of these people."

Then, with an afterthought, his eyes far away for a moment; he said, "These are some evil son of a bitches we are talking about here."

The banter went back to the mundane for brief period of time when the President's big mug shot up on the 10-foot wide television in the sports bar and the same girl asked him what the President was like.

Without hesitation, the General said, "He's one of the smartest people I've ever met and he can read a person down to the bone by the way they walk into a room."

Another guy at the table said something about his poor public speaking skills and the General said, "Well, I can tell you this--that's not how he is in person. He could sell Siamese twins another asshole in their forehead if he wanted to."

Appetizers and beer were brought over and everyone went quiet until the waitress left, looking back at the General to finish up his statement about the President. He said, "Mark my words. In fifty years, this President is going to be known in world history as the man who preempted World War III and kept it contained the part of the world that it was threatening to break out from and destroy us all."

I don't know if I'll ever see the General again because he was flying back to Iraq the next day and the next day George W. Bush crucified and burned that old witch Helen Thomas at the stake and good riddance, may we dance on the crunch of her brittle bones, the digested old hag!

But I find it disconcerting when I hear Tony (who I now consider to be an independent thinker, willing to take all sides to task based on his core principles) say things like:

I'm still waiting for one of them to rise from the ashes and be a new sort of turd blossom. a not so fat or gay or treacherous one, but a clear shepard of peace and prosperity.

I immediately think of Nicholae Carpathia from the Left Behind novels. A prophet who speaks of peace during times of war is as useful as a guitar with no strings--something to bash over the heads of those who have only come looking for sweet music.

My friends, like the Allman Brothers aid, it ain't but one way out baby and that way is through the muck. I do believe that this war is being fought to secure the future of our species and our way of life. I understand the evil that lurks in the hearts of men and know that most of them believe they are doing good as they exact murder and death upon the life that dwells on this simple blue planet. But there is so much more than evil that lives in the heart of man, so much more sunshine to see.

And despite everything dumb that this administration has done (and the list is exhaustive, like that of every administration); I still stand firm that the right thing is happening for the right reasons.

LINKS:
Tony Pierce

TAGS:
Iraq War, President Bush, Tony Pierce

JM: The other day, we were talking and you mentioned something you had read about Chris Cornell in an interview where he said, “I used to create fiction around me and then write about that.” And then, you go from there because I can’t remember what else you said.

JP: Well, the point of it was—and actually, it was an interview from 1998 or something like that, right when he had broken away from Soundgarden and was getting back into the scene, that kind of stuff. And his whole thing was, “Yeah, you know, I use to write images shrouded in images and now I just kind of write where I’m at in the moment…” Which I agree with that stuff and I understand the dynamic of that and why that would be beneficial to someone. My problem is when people use an art forum to do that. It almost sounded like, and this may just be what I was projecting, but it sounded like he was saying that it was more appropriate to do this. You know, “Now, I’m not full of sh** like I used to be.” Well, fine but the art forum, like we used talk about all the time—a pure image is a pure image. And you can’t replace that with something that you can only identify with. I mean that, on the whole, you can’t just sort of float through the imagery and leave with your own interpretation.

JM: Right. It makes sense. And it’s funny you say that, because it leads us right into proper and improper art which we’ve talked about a time or two but I think we can take a couple of minutes to explain a little bit about. And of course this comes from James Joyce in his A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and was filtered to me through Joseph Campbell. And then you and I have discussed it at various times; your head had already been there and I kind of put the references to it so you had a reference point.

But basically he talks about two different types of art: proper and improper. And I remember having a discussion with these two moops down the hallway about pornography and whether pornography was art. And, of course, it was at a keg party we were all just drunk off our ass, but you know how those conversations go. I mean, these guys were burnouts, so it wasn’t too intellectually in-depth. But it basically came down to the point of one of them saying, “I think pornos are art because they make me want to get up and act.” But that’s a good point because most people think that is what art is.

He described it perfectly because improper art moves you. It moves you to go somewhere. It either moves you to move toward it or move away from it. Whereas proper art is, just like you said, a pure image. You can see right through it; you don’t get caught on the image.

JP: Right. It’s almost a hologram of sorts. It does exist, but you have to look at it from the corner of your eye.

JM: I gotcha. It’s like the Pink Floyd song where he said, “…out of the corner of my eye.”

JP: Exactly.

JP: I don’t know if I’m saying this correctly, but A.H. Almaas. Well, basically what I took away from him, is that he’s saying that to have a sense of self and to try to identify with anything, you’re sort of frozen in time if you do that so you’re not a self. A self moves forward, experiences new things, does the self-exploration and isn’t afraid to try new things and new relationships. Whereas the person that needs to identify with one aspect of themselves, they sort of get trapped and blocked and pigeon-holed into that. And when you do that with art, it’s the same thing with the images that you can’t see through them. You will be stopped and will be directed.

JM: But wouldn’t you say that’s 99% of art today? Well, what’s marketed in pop culture is that. The experience of moving someone is what most people consider to be art and I believe that it is detrimental to the soul.

JP: See, my take on that (and this is probably semantics), but when they say “move,” I sort of think of—that’s the goal. But the goal is not to move someone in any given direction; it’s just to move and cause a shift, period. It doesn’t have to be, like you said, you’re not moving them to “hate Bush”—so, “Love Bush.” So, it’s just, “Here it is. What do you think?”

JM: I was always enamored with the concept when Joseph Campbell talked about proper art and when it really holds you still in place in the moment. That’s not really standing still, it’s really moving in all directions at the same time, both inward and outward.

JP: Exactly.

JM: I mean, it is standing still, but it’s essentially cutting through time.

JP: You’re traversing through the experience instead of moving through it. There’s a difference.

JM: That is very true. If you look at Cosmology and Astronomy, you see that The Big Bang wasn’t an explosion of matter into space; it was actually an explosion of space itself. So you can’t think of as something exploding inside of a self-contained item; it was actually an explosion of space and time itself. And that is, in effect what happens when a human being, individually, sees a piece of proper art.

JP: Internally, they do that.

JM: Yeah, they lose themselves psychologically. They die. If only for a few minutes, for a few seconds even. They’re gone and something new comes into being. And Krishnamurti always called that “The Awakening of Intelligence.”

JP: Right.

JM: When that new universe explodes inside someone’s mind, when they step outside of the moment. And you don’t even need art for that. I mean, art’s just a tool to get there, just like religion is.

JP: It’s supposed to create that process.

JM: Exactly. But meditation, in Krishnamurti’s mind, was getting to that still point. So, I made an analogy between a birth of space and not a birth of the universe into space, but an actual birth of space itself that the universe exists within.

JP: It’s an expansion.

JM: And that expansion happens to the individual who has seen a piece of proper art or who has touched the source within themselves and has experience that kind of an explosion, in all directions at once both internally and externally. So you have the macro universe with the planets and the galaxies and such and you have the internal universe with the neurons and the quarks and all that shit.

JP: That’s very true, it’s a similar structure. They’re basically constellations.

JM: It’s a brain. The universe is a brain. Let’s just come out and say it.

JP: A.H. Almaas was talking about personality disorders and narcissism and all that type of stuff. He was basically saying that you’re not caught up with yourself until you can allow who you were in 1984 because you’re in there still, you’re still wired, you’re just a collection of your experiences.

JM: Right.

JP: And depending upon how integrated they are, sort of all melted together and you’re moving forward with this sort of “snow globe of self” instead of fragmented shards. I really think that, and this sounds like insanity and I don’t mean it to come out this way. But I really have been thinking about how I think there is a physical relationship between consciousness and what we perceive as external reality.

I think there is a lag time in thought. What I mean is, I think that what we see as reality is sort of a by-product of spent thought. So, whatever you’re viewing, no matter what it is, no matter how recent, it’s no more.

JM: Yes.

JP: So, I think if you could interrupt whatever we’re doing to perceive that; you could, in theory, alter it without tampering with it on the outside.

JM: That is an absolutely perfect segway back into Krishnamurti who says that every single image is composed of the past. It can never be in the present because the mind is of the past, it’s structure is of the past, and it can never know the present and from that it has projected the uknown future. And inside that projection of the future, all fears lie.

JP: And it doesn’t have anything to do with the real reality.

JM: That’s right. It’s actually a rejection of reality.

JP: Yeah it is.

JM: And by rejecting that reality, you’re embracing the fear present in the projection of the future.

JP: Keeping it alive.

JM: The loss. The loss of self. Death because ultimately that’s what it all comes down to. It’s the fear of death.

JP: Of annihilation.

JM: Total self-annihilation, but that’s exactly what has to happen in order for true freedom to be in place. And you can’t drag freedom from one moment to the next, right?

JP: Exactly. It’s like trying to bring an ice sculpture into a heated house to observe it. You have to be in the cold.

JM: That’s a great metaphor. Frosty the Snowman.

JP: Exactly. That’s a good analogy. Real quick, just with that, the space and time and consciousness—I think that, very similarly, we have a black hole of consciousness too. I think that trauma—oh, okay, it’s too much to contain.

Note:This audio on this part was bad but Jason made the analogy that psychological wounds are actually ruptures in the ego and Josh made the connection that black holes in space were punctures in the space-time continuum

JM: So a hole was poked in but it just went it, it wasn’t a shining hole; it was a dark black hole.

JP: Exactly. It’s a wound almost.

JM: Whereas, like a religious awakening or through artistic vision, there’s a light that comes on but it’s still a puncture.

JP: A black hole sun, yes.

JM: It’s like the brightest star that you could have whereas a black hole is the absence of that completely. But both make a puncture in the ego, right?

JP: Yes, they interrupt the flow. And what happens is, the brain, you know, the information comes in, the ones and zeroes—you’re three years old and you see your Dad hit your Mom or whatever people go through. And the brain goes, “Hmm. I know 101 and this is trigonometry and I’m not going to do this right now.”

JM: Think of that man, you know a planet warps space and time. So if you think of it as a sheet being held tight and you put a big ball in the middle, the sheet warps down to hold the planet [or ball]. What if those puncture wounds that you were talking about, those emotional puncture wounds act like, you know, super gravity modules…

JP: …and they do. They annihilate…

JM: And they suck all of your fears into them and that’s where your consciousness goes, that’s where your mental energy goes.

JP: And by the way, I think that’s the original archetype of Satan.

JM: Oh yeah, I could see that.

JP: No matter how cunning he sounds, no matter what, sort of the myth is that he can always get around what you think is reality and trauma does that because you can’t control how your brain is wired. And no matter what thoughts you have, until your brain shifts, it doesn’t matter because they black hole is going to suck it up and spit it out.

JM: Right. That’s brilliant, Dude, I love the merging of cosmology and psychology.

JP: I think they’re related. I really do.

JM: They’re the same thing.

JP: And I think humans have relationships that we don’t understand and I think that the whole one mind—I’ve been thinking about higher powers and higher selves and what that means. And I really that its’ like a bean stalk of mind and if you went to the very top, it’s one mind and we’re all tentacles of that one force. To get a healthy human being, you integrate the brain and move forward. I think that the idea maybe is the trauma and what we perceive as external reality is really internal reality projected outward. So, outer space is in our brain.

JM: There you go, bro. There you go.

JP: And that’s why we can’t explain what’s out there—because there is nothing. We haven’t done it yet.

JM: I actually wrote a paper, a year or so ago, called “Living Between the Points.” And my whole argument was, okay the black hole or the Big Bang quantum singularity is a point in outer space where time and physics and the laws of the universe as we know it break down completely. We don’t know what happens after that. Whereas, when we’re born, there’s a before that doesn’t mean anything to us because we have no frame of reference. And the same thing for after we die. It’s a big blank spot. That too, is a place where time breaks down and the laws of the universe. And I will argue that they are actually the same point. You know, while we’re living between the points in space and time, the two points are actually the same point and when you step out of it, either through a religious experience or proper art…

JP: …they come back together! A schism shift.

JM: Oh, that’s great, it’s a schism shift! That’s perfect! The Tool album Lateralus.

JP: I went through a personal experience like this. I’ve been seeing a therapist for like five and a half years now, once a week. And the shifts; it’s bizarre because when I walk in there, it hurts for no reason. And it’s because, oh, here you go! It’s because he doesn’t take an opinion of me either way and it’s a perfect image. No matter what I do, he’s the same. And so I am forced to change by definition.

JM: So, he’s like a mirror that you’re looking at your own psyche in?

JP: Yes, exactly. He basically just plays whatever role I project onto him but says what that part of me should say.

JM: Wow! Wow! What a novel view of, I guess that’s what psychology is all about.

JP: Yeah, it is. It’s a way of putting a Rubik’s cube back together from the outside without seeing inside.

JM: And think how complicated these egg heads have made it. And that’s with everything. These egg heads get a hold of it and they take a simple idea and they stretch it out into endless calculations and complications that nobody even gives a shit about anymore by the time they’re done with it, you know? They spend eight pages filled with all kinds of nomenclature about something that it really takes a sentence to write out, if they were thinking correctly.

TAGS:
Blogcast, Joshua Minton, Jason Patterson, Art, Psychology, Cosmology, Spirituality, Philosophy, Pink Floyd, Tool

There are times when I am speechless and I've been patient waiting to watch the movie that tells the Enron story.

I am normally not a viscious man. I don't believe in overpunishing.

But when it comes to Ken Lay, Jeffrey Skilling, Andy Faustau, and whoever else was at the helm while Enron deliberately caused rolling blackouts and energy shortages in California and then resold the same energy that was there back to the state to the tune of 30 billion dollars while the Executives set up false side companies to hide debt and while they put fake profits on the books, profits that would never surface--the Executives started looking for a way out and dumped all their millions in stock while the assets of those far below them were frozen, leaving them to rot in the poor house--I tend to get a little upset.

I am so upset after watching this that if there was a public crucifixion of these men, I would probably attend it and cheer when they cried out for mercy.

Watch this movie. Get pissed off. Start paying attention to what your company is doing because chances are that this evil is alive everwhere in corporate America.

There is something so insidious at work in the traders who caused blackouts in California in order to reap windfall profits. Some kind of humanity gap occurred that I immediately refer back to the Holocaust to find a commonality.

Now, I am given to believe in Adam Smith's thesis that the quest for personal gain in an open market place tends to yield the highest social good. But I do have to admit that this type of freedom also opens the doors for situations like Enron. Now, I'm questioning where the lines are and where they should be.

What do you think?

LINKS:
Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room
Enron Trial Watch Blog

TAGS:
Enron, The Smartest Men in the Room, Kenneth Lay, Jeffrey Skilling, Andy Fastau,

That bastard has sucked another ten bucks out of me.

Mark my words, people--he's going for another twenty before the year runs out.

Ricky Gervais is one of the funniest men on this planet right now and he doesn't even try. You can say that Chris Rock and Dave Chappelle are funny--but they have to work at it; they have to prepare material or even arrange circumstance.

Ricky Gervais, on the other hand, is an organic comedian and he turns mundanity into pure brilliance.

Of course, he doesn't do it alone because Stephen Merchant is his cohort in comedic crime and is a comic genius in his own right.

And don't get me started on Karl Pilkington.

For those that don't know who Ricky Gervais is--he and Steven Merchant created The Office and scored a triple touchdown and made comedy legend in only fourteen episodes of some of the most brilliant work ever put on television (and this was long before the American version of The Office hit NBC).

I checked out the first season of The Office from the library, thinking I'd watch a couple episodes and send it back. But something happened--Ricky Gervais stuck his farging claws in my brain and hasn't let go since.

I ended up buying the entire series on DVD. And now he's back with his own podcast. I have always refused to pay for a podcast--until now. That bastard gave 12 free episodes away and got me hooked. I've listened to each of them at least three times and highly recommend you checking them out as well.

This man is a genius and it pisses me off because it's costing me money.

LINKS:
Ricky Gervais Dot Com

TAGS:
Ricky Gervais, Steven Merchant, Karl Pilkington, The Ricky Gervais Podcast, The Office

I'm going to have to watch this one again because there was some seriously weird shit going on. I don't know if I would call this a "dream" episode because Tony is fighting for his life and "living" a false identity.

It's very interesting that when he starts off the episode, he is in a hotel room. Traditionally, Tony has been relegated to nice hotel rooms when he is distanced from his family by marriage (except, of course, the College episode from the first season when he was traveling with Meadow. And then we get the actual Gandolfini's voice as Tony loses his accent (along with his wallet and briefcase, where his "life was in that briefcase"). It's a bit odd thinking about Tony's life fitting inside a briefcase.

The woman's voice on the phone, supposedly his wife, was definitely not Carmella's. It sounded more like a cross between Gloria Turillo and Charmaine Bucco. The kids sounded happy, also an anathema in The Sopranos.

Tony is a patio furniture salesman in this delusion (the best in the business) and this is interesting because in season 2, I believe; he told Melfi in one session that he should have been a patio furniture salesman. He takes things as they come, he doesn't push--he's easy going. He's AJ without Tony's influence. He even gets smacked in the mouth by a Buddhist monk (now that's just some funny shit).

As for his name, Kevin Finnity; obviously "infinity" can be drawn from this, but I'm going to have to rack my brain to figure out what "KEV" stands for. I don't believe those three letters were chosen by accident.

Traditionally, in dream episodes, Tony's subconscious is trying to tell him who the rat is and who he has to kill in order to keep his power and position. Now, this time, his subconscious turned back on itself and he is his own target. Note the main questions of the episode: "Who am I? Where am I going?" This is the very question that Tony has been dealing with since episode 1 with the ducks. It's the same question that Holden Caulfield alluded to in Catcher in the Rye when he expressed his desire to be the one who catches the little kids as they fall off the cliff, setting them back down onto safety (or, adversely becomes the one pushing them off).

They say that near-death experiences inherently change someone from the inside out. Perhaps we are seeing this change internally, a small glimpse of Tony's hell or purgatory where his soul will linger in a lonely hotel where he has lost his identity (and his mind from Alzheimer's), where there is nothing left but the charred and cold remains of a beast that was all at once consumed by fire.

The real world irony of the situation is that; in his lunacy, Uncle Junior committed the very act that would have ended the show early in the first season and consequently set off a chain reaction that will likely alter Tony's entire paradigm forthwith in the show.

Next week, I have a feeling that all hell is going to break loose--both inside Tony's dying mind and outside his hospital bed.

TAGS:
The Sopranos, Tony Soprano, Season 6, Join the Club

Related Posts (on one page):

...is actually three books.

I just completed the British campaign for France in Call of Duty 2 on the XBOX 360 and I'm telling you what, the AI in this game is very, very good--like to the point of pulling out your nutsag hairs. I was stuck on the same farging board for an entire week and finally got past it tonight. The checkpoint placed me in the corner of a shed with fourteen Nazi pricks with MP40s in a huddle, just waiting for me to show some shadow. I died more times that Kenny and that was just getting out of this little toolshed. Then, after that, there was about a 200 yard trek across a Yerman sniper infested field where I then had to take out three machine gun nests climb a low wall and run another 100 yards to put a sticky bomb on a Tiger tank.

Fuck it was hard!

But I finally did it and that leads me to one of my favorite books which I plan on treating myself to before summertime. Easton Press publishes a gorgeous, beautiful, and radiant five-volume set of William L. Shirer's historical masterpiece The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich for about $300. These are the nicest books made by man. I have The Lord of the Rings six-volume set and am currently reading my son The Hobbit.

But R&FotTR was a book that my father gave me when I was twelve years old and told me I needed to study and learn from. I heeded the advice, emphasizing the period of Nazi rule as well as the American Colonial period in my undergraduate minor.

But this set actually includes Shirer's personal diaries from the time as well as each of his CBS broadcasts (he was the Berlin corrrespondent for CBS from 36-45). I am one of the people who truly believe that you must learn from history in order to prevent bad shit from happening again (or at least being aware enough to draw other people's attention to bad shit happening).

And I believe I'll purchase these books for myself as a reward for virtually crushing the Nazi army.

LINKS:
Easton Press's Edition of The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich
The Second Most Important Book I've Ever Read
The Third Most Important Book I Ever Read

UNRELATED LINKS:
Tony Linked to BWP Today

When in doubt...blow it up!

Links:
Watch the video

Hat tip to Fantastic Bastard

Author's Preface: This story was written nine years ago and was workshopped by George Looney's entire Creative Writing Workshop class at BGSU. This was a rather bold experiment with the second person narrative that didn't go over too well--partly because of the radicalism of the ideas expressed, partly because of the drug references, but mostly because it took someone with balls as big as the world to even attempt to write something like this. [Editing Note: This was scanned in OCR and there is likely some mistakes that will be fixed in the coming days--please forgive these in the meantime.]

He leans across the front seat and rolls the window down. “Get in. Throw your bags in the back.”

From the back of the green station wagon, you see him run a hand through his gray hair and extinguish a cigarette in the ashtray. You walk to the passenger side and get in. He shakes your hand. “My name is Joseph Cooglias.”

He looks you up and down, you feel as if your clothes are being scanned and catalogued. You are sure that he has noticed your tongue stud and he’ll never see the nipple ring. “You’re not running from the law are you?”

You shake your head and say no, my name is Crystal Noman and I’m just trying to get a ride to Cincinnati. My best friend from high school has Pink Floyd tickets for me, but I have to be there two days ahead to claim them. And since it’s the middle of the week, nobody at school’s leaving till’ the weekend, so I had to hitch. Let me ask you a question, you’re not one of those freakrapist-sickfucker’s that you hear about on the news are you?

He shakes his head, smiles and offers his hand again. His hands are rough with calluses that dig into your own soft skin. When you close the door and roll the window back up, he accelerates slow and smooth back into the traffic of 1-75. No one says a word until the first rest stop. He buys you and himself a Coke and Butterfinger. “Crystal, what are you studying in school?” You look at his face and tell him you’re an economics major with a minor in marketing.

He chuckles inside his mouth without making his obvious condescension into a public statement. Butterfinger crumbles from his mouth and falls into his lap. He brushes it onto the floorboard. “You know what kid, you might as well go buy a safe, lock yourself inside and wait to die.” You recoil in surprise and your face becomes hot, your hands begin to sweat. What the fuck are you talking about mister? student graduating with honors next semester.

He pulls a Marlboro medium from the pack, lights it and rolls the window down halfway. “What I mean Crystal, is that what this world needs today are not pimps and pornographers, but intelligent people that are sensitive enough to free themselves from this nightmare of chaos that the state of the world is in today.”

You ask what he means by pimps and pornographers?

He glances at you serious and pulls a silver flask, engraved with the initials IC, from his jacket pocket. He fills it with a bottle of Jack Daniels that he takes from under the seat. “All advertising art is pornography since it’s intended to make the observer possess the object being represented. A pimp is someone who pushes something on another person by using this pornographic method. Crystal you are in school learning how to be pimp, selling shit to people with pornographic methods and that’s a fact.”

You’re pissed. Your hands clench and sweat more. He takes a drink from the just filled flask and winces, while screwing the top back on. You ask what gives him the right to pass judgement on you. “This isn’t about me Crystal, this is about facts. And the fact is that propaganda and belief rule this melodramatic world of human affairs. Belief is the only thing that could possibly separate the human race.” You cock your head in confusion; the insult is slipping away. You say, what do you mean Joe, there’s lots of things that separate people; things like race, religion, and what economic or political society you belong to?

He laughs, staring at the passing farms. You notice the roof of one barn has a huge rebel flag painted on with a “Member of the Local Klan” sign by the fence in the yard. “Crystal, who or what is it that acknowledges those differences you listed?” His question intrigues you and throws you into a wall at the same time. You say, what do you mean, I’m the one who acknowledges them?”

He puckers his lips and blows a breath of disapproval. “Crystal, were you born knowing how to talk or how to drive a car?” No but I don’t see how that... “That means that not only those differences you listed, but the very way that you think has been acquired by your mind through experience and time. That is the essence of belief. Belief is of the past and the past is experience of suffering, so the mind, acting through experience of the past, carries suffering into the present moment of life.”

You switch your weight to lean against the door. You say, that makes sense but what’s so wrong about it? e takes another drink. “Beliefs separate human beings. The Christians say they believe in God, the Muslims say they believe in God, and the Jews say they believe in God, but at the same time they’re all fighting each other because they each have different metaphors for the same idea.”

You realize that this is correct and you ask if he is an atheist. He shakes his head. “No, I’m a very religious person, but the word God is a belief, an idea that has been created out of fear, and it has been used to exploit people.”

You say, but you do believe that God exists? He looks into your eyes.

“Crystal, whether you believe that God exists or not has absolutely no relevance to the fact that human beings all over the world suffer. You don’t ask if the Sun is shining or if London exists, it’s there, it’s a fact. And as long as one human being on this planet suffers, the word God is an illusion brought about by insecurity and fear.”

You say damn, I guess that means that something’s wrong with the way that human beings think. You look ahead to the stretching highway that lies before you. Clouds are gathering from the south.

He nods his head. “That’s right, children in school aren’t taught how to think, they are taught what to think. Now Crystal, you’ve got to understand before we go any further in this conversation that I’m not trying to prove something to you. I’m not trying to be some damn genius or make you think that I’m this savior come to heal the world or any bullshit like that, I mean heaven knows I have my vices.” He holds the flask up. “I just want to have a discussion with you, as a member of the generation that will inherit control of this ecopoligious madness. I wonder how you, a child of the democratic dream, plan to govern the affairs of this world?”

His long wind stimulates you in a deep place, possibly a door in your mind that you didn’t even know was there.
You nod without expression and enter Joseph’s head. His movements, his gestures, the energy behind his words are tempting your morals, questioning your beliefs, opening you up, perhaps even causing you to consciously mutate into a state of open inquiry. You are completely alive.

He takes another swig from the flask, winces again and offers you some. You refuse and pull a joint out of your own pocket. You push in the car lighter and wait for it to pop. “So, you’re going to see the Floyd huh? I saw them in 77’ at Riverfront Coliseum during the Animals tour. I sat in the fourth row.” Yo ‘re intrigued agaiir this man has to be about fifty years old. You ask what a guy like m was doing at a Pink Floyd concert, mald a mental note that at the time he stated, Roger Waters was still in the band and the Animals album was a concept derived from the George Orwell book Animal Farm. You pass the joint and he takes a hit, holding the smoke in his lungs for a few seconds and then exhales through his nose, dragon-style.

He passes the joint back to you. “When I was a priest, a member of my parish operated the ticket sales for the amphitheater. Now this was back before Ticketmaster made a monopoly on concert sales.”

You’re amazed that this guy used to be a priest, but after a few seconds you see that it fits, but there has to be more to this story.

You look at him closely; his black sport jacket with the flask pocket on the inside, his black suede boots, black silk slacks with business socks and a button up white silk shirt. He has a violent scar running from his ear to his lower chin. He catches you looking.

“I got that in Vietnam. I was a chaplain in the Marine Corps, and the VeeCee attacked our unit in the middle of the night. The soldier that did this told me just before I passed out, that the only reason that he left me alive is because I was a religious man and he considered it a bad omen to kill a holy man the first time they met in combat. The Vietnamese are a very deep and proud people Crystal, but you’d never know that living here in rural Ohio.”

He shakes his head in what appears to be dismay. “You don’t hear much of anything about reality around here.”

In a flash of memory never experienced--you can imagine, you can fantasize and speculate about the miles that this man has walked and the light years he has traveled inside his head. You say, if you don’t mind me asking, why did you leave the priesthood? He clears his throat and looks at you serious again, probably attempting to ascertain if you were ready for what he was about to say.

He puts the roach in his mouth and swallows. “I left because of a difference in expression of belief that I and the Cardinal shared. About twenty years ago at the beginning of the New Year, a young boy in my parish testified in court that the Cardinal had molested him on several occasions during private communion conferences. When I confronted the Cardinal about it, he threw his position in my face, saying that if I understood how much power the Church had in the world, I would keep my mouth shut and help to maintain the integrity of the only institution that keeps order in the midst of chaos.”

His index finger punctures the air as he’s speaking, emphasizing the Cardinal’s blasphemy. You put your own fingers up to your face and rub your lips, the warmth of contact feels good against the cold flesh that this mans story inspires. You ask what happened. He lights another Marlboro and continues, “Well, I told the Cardinal to stick his position up his ass and I testified in court to what he threatened me with. The evidence was only circumstantial, but the Cardinal was still defrocked and banished from the Church. He now rut boein Lexington. I was rewarded for my effort by the Bishop, who I also told to stick it in his ass. It was soon after that I became a freelance writer and that’s what I’ve done ever since, just travel and talk.” He nods, marking the end of his story. He flicks the butt out the window and lights another cigarette, looking at you for your response. You are completely silent.

You just passed the halfway mark of the journey and rain begins to pelt the car in fat droplets that spread across the windshield. You will be approaching Dayton and soon after the ride will end. Now that you’re good and stoned , you can concentrate more on the conversation without regards to the conclusion or the arrival.

You say, Jesus how do you feel now about the Church? He looks down to his lap and brushes the remaining Butterfinger crumbs away, then looks back to the road.

“I've thought about that for many years now, through drug experiments, through drug addictions and through drug withdrawals. I’ve thought about the Church and the Bible through my stages as an alcoholic and a womanizer. And even though I’ve been down, lying in the gutter, soaked with my own vomit, I’ve never been low enough to step one foot back inside a church, mosque, or temple of any kind, and I never will. No matter what drug I’ve been addicted to, no matter how desperate I was for a fix, I always knew that the addiction to religious ritual and metaphor is the deadliest vice a human being can hold! Religion has killed more people than any war, disease or natural disaster ever.”

He puts out the cigarette and you can feel your beliefs begin to smolder and ash.

You stare at nothing, your head swaying to the rhythm of emptiness as it pulses inside you. You feel as if you’ve touched the other side of a mystery beyond comprehension. It’s all one big confusing mess. When you recover, you ask if he still considers himself a religious person.

He smiles and grips the wheel tight. “Yes, but to me the truly religious person isn’t the one who goes to church faithfully and worships some god created by man. To me the religious person is the one who steps completely out of the stream of information. The human being that thinks independently of any system of thought or particular ideology, to me that’s a truly religious person.”

Your thoughts gather and you follow the lead of insight by asking him about people like Adolph Hitler who also stepped out of this so-called stream of belief? “But did Hitler step out of the stream completely, or did he merely change the direction of the stream? If he stepped out completely, then his actions in the world would not have been reflective of securing knowledge or territory, because these are things in the stream of experience called time. Jesus Crystal, Hitler’s not the one you should be scared of, it’s the minds of the automatons that followed him that’s really scary.

You ask how he knows all of this. “Have you ever read Mien Kampf?”

You say no.

“It should be required reading, not for worship, but to understand the mind of a deluded individual. Hitler had a limited vision, he was even a very dogmatic person, but the passion that he developed for ritual is what led to the horror of the holocaust. If no one would have followed Hitler’s lead, he would have been a crazy artist with deluded ideas, and he would have died broke and alone. When you can really see the Nazi ritual that millions of Germans worshipped, you’ll understand what happens when people limit themselves to a particular method of society or system of belief.”

The point is well made and leaves you silent. After a few minutes you look back at him and ask how he compares Nazism with his experience of the Church?

He seems almost surprised at your question and a smile invades his face. “There is no difference at all, only for the historian and the fool.”

You ask him to explain.

“Well, the expression of ritual is superficially different, but the source is still the same, fear. All over the world human beings may have different skin color and come from different environments, but underneath this flesh we are each bundles of skin, nerves, muscles, beliefs, desires, fears and conflicting emotion. We are power hungry security fiends. The frightening thing is that some people are more passionate about their suffering than others and seek to blame something or someone, which leads to exploitation and ultimately to the hiding of truth under the veils of lie and belief, which in my book are the same goddamn thing!”

His hands grip the wheel tighter and the whites of his knuckles are exposed, as what seems to be years of penned up aggression come spewing from his mouth. You can almost feel his frustration as if it was infrared radiation and you were a radio telescope. He needed this conversation as much as you did.

You are aware of his bitterness and ask if he is a pessimist?

He shakes his head, “Oh no, not at all, but I am a fan of the observation of reality. I know now that when I began to understand the limitations of my own mind and I dropped all of the beliefs that I had been taught to cling to for security, that’s when I became a sensitive and therefore a religious human being.”

He nods the release of his personal truth to you.

You ask what he considers to be a sensitiv person?

“To me, a sensitive human being is one that listens very close to what is happening around them. Alert and conscious of everything with the eyes, ears, nerves, senses and the brain operating in the most acute fashion, each alert to the slightest stimulus while at the same time understanding their own limitations. To me, only such a serious mind can understand what truth is and what the meaning behind the metaphor God is!”

There is something so empty in what h&s saying, something so final in his words that it creates a void deep within you, a hole that used to be filled with religious scriptures and belief that has been passed down in your family for generations. All of that false security is burning away and the feeling it leaves can only be described as cold. You say that not all priests rape little children. He was a good priest, so why should he condemn all organized religion for the mistake of one human being?

He taps the odometer shield and the needle swings back to the left. “I simply came to a point one day when I realized that throughout recorded history, the human race has created religion only to relate with an environment of constant death. That’s all there was in the beginning of human time, was death and life. There was no word of god, because first man had to think the word to worship it.”

You finish your Coke and lay the can on the floorboard, asking him to go on. “Well, in the beginning of human worship man was a hunter and the animal, Sun and Moon were the primary objects of worship. This worship of nature was carried through when the cultivation of farming brought with it the worship of the Earth Goddess and eventually the territoriality of the human animal brought about the worship of the tribal war deity, or deities, to allow the mind to relate to the constant invasions by barbarian-nomadic tribes on these farming communities.”

You bring your left leg up on

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