haha

2002-10-15T12:18:00.000-04:00

just when you thought is was safe to blog-hop... the semi-triumphant return of...Your Faithful Author!!!
that's right, through the waxing and waning of public consciousness of terror from the alleged axis of evil to the heinous DC sniper, i've stayed awake

2002-08-15T12:34:00.000-04:00

the funniest things happen when we try to suffocate our urge for human rights...they other day, i took a big, honest whiff of the rain-soaked sky after all the heavy grit washed out of the air, and was so relieved and thankful for one embarassing minute.
i mean, shelter, sky, food, water, easier access to healthcare--these are some of the things that avert suffering.

2002-08-07T11:27:00.000-04:00

stuff from haha's sistah site:

bacon

I could be very hip and down and say I hate the po-po, but it is more the root of hate, fear, that sums up the turn in my stomach when the sirens blare. I didn't use to feel that way. I used to think that most were nice men. I knew no women officers, but I did know ones of different ethnicities. They did some good things in the place where I grew up. Intellectually, I know *all* police aren't evil, although it is fun to say that. There are a lot ways that their roles are structured that allow civilians to wash our hands of things, so they can be the scapegoats. There are also a decently sloppy number of very bad apples that get caught and their rottenness is braodcast.
The role is such a macho/macha magnet, such a top magnet, such a butch magnet, and those things could be ok, but when class struggle, homophobia, racism, sexism and pettiness are mixed in, and the fact that being a top when someone sure as hell didn't consent to bottoming for them IS NOT OKAY, you get BACON.

No amount of September 11th nostalgia (wtf?!) can erase the years of overall problems. We can't go and schedule horrific, wrongheaded attacks to gather us all together---this is not *fiction*, this is NOT INDEPENDENCE DAY:THE SEQUEL, nor is it MEN IN BLACK 2!!!

THIS IS OUR LIFE AS A COUNTRY, HOWEVER ARBITRARY AND TROUBLED THAT CATEGORY IS, AND I DON'T WANT A POLICE STATE.

2002-08-06T08:34:00.000-04:00

OPERATION TIPS CONT'D ...
( I told you so!)

2002-07-25T15:26:00.000-04:00

07/25/02 @ 14:20 | omelet said...
Paul et al.: Good comments all round.

DON'T BELIEVE THE POLLS That poll nonsense is about as reliable as the poll results in Florida. He didn't win the election, plenty of people are sleepwalking through Your Civil Liberties On Trial, The Home Version (TM), and approval rating, asmooval rating, yeah, if you call Grandma, who's at home in the middle of the day when they call, and ask her if the president is good and evildoers are bad, what do you think will be the answer? Better yet, if you ask the progressive, worried folk among us whether we approve, perhaps we afraid that the Office of Homeland Security or the TIPS brigade will turn us in...

2002-07-23T13:41:00.001-04:00

2002-07-23T13:41:00.000-04:00

2002-07-23T10:29:00.000-04:00

from Real Life Rock Top 10

A lesbian wrote "America the Beautiful," Counting Crows sing about being rich and bored, and George W's cruel arrogance pops up in a Subway commercial.

- - - - - - - - - - - -
by Greil Marcus

9 and 10) "Reimagining July 4," New York Times (July 4) and "Dissent: The American Way," San Francisco Chronicle (July 4)

The contrast between these two unsigned editorials could not have been more complete. The Times writer spoke of the "breathtaking" renewal of "the principles behind" the country, adding that, "As principles go, they are generous to a fault" -- whatever that means. The writer went on to speak of the difficulty of "feeling one's freedom" ("a little like trying to feel the rotation of the earth"), while finding the notoriously resistant idea of freedom itself not at all difficult to define: "Freedom is the ability to choose whom and what you will become according to your own lights." How very New Age or, rather, Republican: It's up to you, you're on your own, and there is no such thing as society, let alone politics. Freedom certainly has nothing to do with citizens attempting to determine the nature and purpose of their community, their common predicament, their more perfect union.

The great historical struggle to create that union was the subject of the Chronicle's broadside, which one can hardly imagine running in any other major daily in the country. It pulled no punches. "Ever since Sept. 11," the writer began, "President George W. Bush and Attorney General John Ashcroft have tried to quash dissent by questioning the patriotism of people who seek to protect our civil rights and liberties." The writer went on to trace the history of our best-known patriotic traditions, rituals, sayings and songs, from the Pledge of Allegiance to the motto on the Statue of Liberty to "America the Beautiful," noting that the latter was written in 1883 by Katherine Lee Bates, a feminist professor of English at Wellesley who lived "for decades" with "her life partner Katherine Coman, an economist and social historian.. It's unlikely that those who sing the stirring words 'and crown thy good with brotherhood, from sea to shining sea' know that a progressive lesbian who agitated for a more democratic America authored these words." In other words, the writer was saying, the story of the country is a continuing story, and it starts again when you lift your eyes from the paper.

salon.com- - - - - - - - - - - -
About the writer
Greil Marcus' "In the Secret Country: Walter Mosley, Doo-wop, and '50s L.A." appears in the August issue of Los Angeles Magazine.

2002-07-22T17:01:00.000-04:00

2002-07-22T15:54:00.000-04:00

Check out this REALITY. Who needs Orwellian fiction when we've got W's reality? We need the ficition as a slant-shuffle toward healing our reality. I've read A Handmaid's Tale, I've read Parable of the Sower, I've read 1984. It's funny; so many of us think we are the first ones to "make the connection", but it takes that youthful fresh-mindedness lightly tempered by experience to make a difference-- to believe a difference is there to be made.

2002-07-16T11:40:00.000-04:00

what if the best civilizations have gone under
with the silent elegance of cold water suicides
or laid down to rest in the cool dark dirt
under the withering rays of time?

what lost wonders, primitive or high
have committed their secrets safe into roots
and cool streams underground,
secure in their triumphant balance--
no pyramids, no husks to pilfer
no gold, no etchings to decipher
no slaves' worth to propogate algebraic necessity--
rituals, plantings, sacrifices few
committed to earth and vanished from view

2002-03-21T09:17:00.000-05:00

1984
i hate these wars
or rather this war
continuous and oily
like blood on a battered scalp
picked down, scabby
from the white lice that swarm it
colonies of parasites hold
on to the curve of world they've known

2002-03-20T11:14:00.000-05:00

For literary leanings, see Promiscuous Parlance