Seen today

On a car in traffic: A black ribbon like the pink ribbons you see all the time. This one bore the legend, "Support Zombies."

I think the zombie thing is about over.

I do not need glasses

Goddamnit. The D-A-W is always going, "You want to use my [reading] glasses?" when I'm reading something just fine, if at arm's length. A couple of years ago I was in the doctor's office reclining on the table or whatever with my book and the nurse comes in and says, "You know, we could probably rig something up to suspend your book from the ceiling so you can read more comfortably."

Bitch.

See, back in the day I could have been a fighter pilot, if they went only by eyesight and not eyesight, intelligence, reflexes, intelligence, mathematical-type skills, good looks, engineering skills, intelligence, and George Bush.

Actually I could still be a fighter pilot, except for the above, and the fact that I've shrunk to 4'9" and couldn't see over the plane's dashboard (that's what it's called, right?).

There's only one thing I have trouble reading: the two-point type on the various bottles of yard poison a householder naturally accumulates. This has led to many comical episodes involving dead dogs and Peter Coyote in a hazmat suit.

But I do not need glasses.

Update: Yeah, I stooped to an easy "Bush is dumb" joke, though I know perfectly well that the smartest man in the universe, the SCoaMF, is, at best, exactly as smart, IQ-wise, as Chimpleron-X7, and that John Kerry was dumber. No links, look for yourself.

Fatso, Fatso Rizzo!

King of the Lard Countreeeeeee!

So what's been up with the gigantic mouldering mound of corruption? Who cares! The LAT, that's who.



Hot, hot, hot.

Update: Remember, the camera adds ten pounds.

"The whole world is--zzzzzzzz"

The Occupy Denver camp is no more.

Talk about goldbricking, maaaaaan

The Post: "Medical Marijuana workers unionizing":

The state's largest labor union today announced that it has hundreds of new members from the medical-marijuana industry.

Local 7 of the United Food and Commercial Workers union said in a statement that the new members come from a "comprehensive cross section" of the industry. The union, which has 25,000 members statewide, said it would announce more details at a news conference Monday.

The union put the total number of jobs in the medical-marijuana industry in Colorado at 8,000, though it is unclear how it came to that number. . . .

Sunshine, lollipops and rainbows, everything . . .

Oh, and just for completness' sake, JWP's favorite vid, that "modern spiritual by Gale and Dale":

Lane sounds off on Occupy Denver

On KHOW. Ward Churchill's attorney David Lane weighed in on whether the state (city, whatever) can lawfully clear out the occupods. He doesn't think so, of course, unless typhoid or cholera is "sweeping" the camp. Craigie reads him the law. Lane questions what the meaning of "camping" is. Christ.

Lane also mentioned (as PB did today) that Patrick O'Rourke, the lead CU defense attorney in Wart's 2009 suit against the school, is one of the finalists for a state Supreme Court post. No chance (as PB also notes), but Lane added that if O'Rourke did indeed secure the spot, he would have to recuse himself (as two SC justices, according to Lane, already have) from the Churchill case, leaving only four justices to decide it. Bad for Lane: tie goes to the appellate court, which voted unanimously against Chutch.

"Police action imminent"

To get the occupods out of Lincoln Park across from the Capitol. "No details." Well, except that navy reservists are scheduled to have the park Saturday, some campers say they'll "fight" any attempt to get them out, and: "This morning was the first time the governor visited the growing tent camp from which the stench of urine has begun to waft onto adjacent Broadway."

That's odd. Not the urine stench, but the claim that today was the first time the Gov. visited the place. He at least strongly implied (see post immediately below) that he visited on Tuesday, saying he "went down there this morning," and saw only "eight or ten" tents.

In any case, what a (government-created) mess. If Hick had sent the cops in when there were just three tents, no prob. Now, no matter how things shake out, it's going to be nasty.

Update: KHOW's Dan Caplis, a law and order guy if there ever was one, thinks (and, obviously, hopes) the cops will move in tonight.

Burgeoning

The Post today: "Hickenlooper unsure about what to do about Occupy Denver protesters at Capitol":

Should they stay, or should they go now?

Gov. John Hickenlooper didn't give a clear answer to that question Tuesday when asked about the growing Occupy Denver tent camp on a grassy lawn along Broadway that is part of the state Capitol complex.

Interviewed on radio station KOA-AM's Mike Rosen Show, the Democratic governor and former Denver mayor said he was concerned about the illegal encampment on state property but didn't indicate that he was prepared to order the State Patrol to clear out the park. Patrol officials said Sunday that they had no plans to remove the tents. . . .

The governor seemed conflicted on the question of what to do about the tents, saying that he has "always supported the First Amendment" but had concerns about the camp.

"I will confess I worry about the precedent," Hickenlooper said. "If suddenly we have a park where people can camp out whenever they want, why not the next park and why not the park after that? And then suddenly, you don't have any rules."

In any case, the governor said, there weren't many tents on the lawn, saying: "I went down there this morning, and there were like eight tents, 10 tents. This is not a burgeoning metropolis of tents."

I was down there a couple of hours after the Gov. There are a few more than eight tents:






I counted about 50, and a guy calling in to Rosen right now says he counted 80 tents today.

Burgeoning. Not that I give a rat's ass, except for one thing: The occupods are getting special treatment. During the DNC when Chickenpooper was mayor of Denver, he vacillated on whether to allow those protesters to camp in city parks, but ultimately made the right decision, followed the law and banned them. Wonder what the diff is here (he asked rhetorically)?

Anyhow, pics:


Unusually coherent









Didn't finish the thought.






Left over from the Columbus Day protest Saturday.



Zen around the fake Liberty Bell.



Construction workers eating lunch and getting ready to kick some hippie ass, but mostly eating lunch.

Update: Rosen keeps referring to the gathering as a "shantytown," which, since there are no shanties, is inaccurate but appropriately scornful.

Occupy somewhere or other

Had to be doontoon today, so brought my camera to check out the Occupy Wall Street spinoff protest at Denver's Civic Center Park. It was, um, sparsely attended. One thing must be said: However misguided their various beefs, these people were nice. Friendly. Sincere-seeming. And if Soros is funding this particular protest--what a cheapskate. Pics, por favor!


Three tents. That was it. Still, how come they get to camp overnight in a city park when even R!ecreate !68 wasn't allowed to?


"This is recycled!" he said. I think it was an old feedbag or something.



Occupy my face.



Where's the peroration?



Radical doing the Frug.



This duffer told me he'd been there for three days. "When the snow comes. That's when we'll know how strong we are."



No Tina.



They had some stuff, and handed it out to bum and protester alike. (There were far more of the former than the latter.)



Bum.



The medic station seemed to consist mostly of those toothbrush-'n-paste combo packets, which, again, they cheerfully handed out to all--even the toothless.



The word "divided" seems to have caused some problems, while what we get when we mess with them was apparently left to the imagination.



Focus!



Don't think so. More like Day Five.



Protester reading material.



Dale Carnegie was there in spirit.



This guy was proud he'd snagged the Boy Scout Handbook.







Of course, I had to force Billy Bob to wow the rubes:


Hardly anybody noticed.

Update: The Post has lots of pics of the various protests around the country.

BTW, see how I'm linking to the Post? That's because they've ended their contract with evil copyright suit-filer Righthaven.

Update II: There's supposed to be a march tomorrow. The D-blog may or may not attend, he said wanly.

Update III: Forgot about this card a guy gave me:


What do you want to be when you grow up, Johnny?

Update IV (8 October): No way I'm going downtown. First, there's the "Rock and Roll Marathon" wending its way around town and which the Post claims will draw more than 17,000 masochists (doubt it; it's 40 degrees and cold-drizzling right now); then, to my shock (well, ennui) there's the Columbus Day Parade and Protest, which, who knew? Anyhow, forget it. What a clusterfuck.

How do they know me so well?

Three spam e-mail headings, the first from one "Solitair Hutchins": "My willie in your jaw, jgm!" The second, from Kwaku Anokye, makes nearly the same statement: "My penis in your jaw, John." The third, from "Lucja Piejko," probably explains the first two: "John in fancy girl stockings?" (Why the question mark?)

Random memory trace(s)

Is this possible? I have the distinct memory of my father, Michael-Jackson-like, hanging me out over the parapet or whatever it's called on the observation deck of the Empire State Building. I was seven or eight, so it must have been 1965 or 1966. I'm not googling or binging to find out what security measures, if any, were in place back then. But I remember it. Despite my dad being a very determined drunk, I wasn't afraid at all.

The reason I ask is, just the other day I was forced to watch Sleepless in Seattle (actually I rather like the movie--yes, mancard revoked) and I noticed that all the security fencing on the ESB (curved spikes included) was bolted on the original masonry. When did that happen?

One more trace, which I may have mentioned before. Daddio took the fambly to a circus that gave a tour of the animals if you showed up early. We were looking at the elephants when one of them wrapped his trunk around my neck, picked me up, gave me a look, and set me back down. This, according to witnesses, happened.

Memory traces?

Papers, please

Some halfwit at OpEdNews uses Ward Churchill as a lead for a column remarkable only for its flight of ideas, clumsy writing and rabid anti-Obamaism:

Professor Ward Churchill was fired from his teaching position at the University of Colorado for his comments surrounding September 11 attacks. Professor Churchill described the financial and technocratic corps of government as well as the commercial financial interests of America as "Little Eichmann's."

Yes, I know, "Eichmann's." Even Wart didn't screw up that one. But at least the guy's going after the SCoaMF:

I no longer see this government as an entity which represents me or my interests nor do I see it as representing anyone that I know personally. What has taken place is a melding of state and corporate interests to where one can no longer tell where one ends and the other begins. Tens of millions of Americans have faced the terror of losing their homes in this land and this President, this corporate pitchman, pushes for a continuation of the investment tax credit so that corporations can take yet another tax deduction on research before off shoring the manufacturing process.

From the left, of course.

Officially nearly one quarter of America's children live in poverty and the political class proposes only budget cuts. At a time of catastrophic national unemployment the political class calls for cut backs on unemployment compensation and healthcare programs. Are they mad? Do they not know the lessons of history? Do they believe that Rush Limbaugh or Glenn Beck can override the reaction to an eviction or foreclosure? Do they honestly believe that guns or laws will protect them from a hungry, struggling population?

Guns or laws? Lemme think on that. And I'd love to hear what "lessons of history" he's talking about.

I feel as if I've have been immersed in a bad dream from which I cannot awake. I've witnessed the changes in myself which unemployment and homelessness have wrought while I have witnessed the playback on our society as a whole. I no longer feel at home anywhere, I no longer have home town; I am from wherever I am at the time. I've lost my connection to a national identity and found a connection to these people like myself instead.

But I thought losing your connection to a national identity was a good thing. The guy (David Glenn Cox) goes on like this for awhile (he's particularly pissed that he had trouble getting an ID, though it sounds like he's lying about it--I mean, c'mon, a birth certificate won't do it? Maybe he didn't have the long form), but it's his bio you should read.

Bet she understands THIS hand signal

Angelyne the Amazing DEAF Cattle Dog (and her companion-person Eric Melvin) recently visited Boulder!

Yeah, more dogs. Angelyne allegedly knows 40-plus hand signals and "non-verbal commands" she will do tricks to, and Melvin hauls her around for such functions and activities as (according to Melvin's web page, feyly titled "A Unique Character and Compassion Development Presentation"):

Schools and education

Youth programs

Churches

Senior care centers

Developmentally disabled

Chronic and terminal illness

Deaf/hard of hearing

Morale-raisers

Fund-raisers

Children’s parties

and MUCH MORE!

From the Gamera's acknowledgement of Angelyne's recent visit, it appears most of her tricks involve Hula-Hoops. Almost makes me wish I were still an elementary school student, or even chronically or terminally ill (oh, I am, I just don't know it yet).

Actually the only reason I bring it up is that back when Billy Bob (another cattle dog) was a young'un, I taught him tricks (about eight of them, IIRC, the standard stuff--no Hula-Hoops) that he also would do from hand signals alone. And at the time, he wasn't even DEAF! The D-a-W and I used to gig (for free, natch) at coffee shops and housewarmings and the like (me on classassical git, her on that noted instrument of revolution, the Irish harp), and whenever possible I'd weasel BB in to do his stuff. Wowed 'em. At least, more than we did.

Update: Did you know that the Telegraph has a "Pets" page? It's a subcategory under "Families" which is a subcategory under "Lifestyles," and it's chock-full of cute-animal videos and stories ("Can my rabbit have a brace for its teeth?"; "Chihuahua foils armed robbery"), including this one: "Hitler cat 'overlooked for adoption because of markings.'" "Kitler" is cuuuuute (and I am emphatically not a cat person). Heil, Fancy Feast!

Billy Bob at 13

Actually his birthday was a couple of days ago. He's deaf as a post (if you happen to have a post that can hear a little), he's got fatty lumps all oooooover his body, and he sleeps even more than I do. Here he is sneering at the paparazzi (me) after waking up with a severe kibble hangover this morning:



But he'll still go get that frisbee:






And catch it:














(Note grass blade, center-tongue.)

Update: Aftermath:



Update II: Teenagers. Just caught BB with two of the neighborhood ne'er-do-wells smoking cornsilk cigs behind the garage.

Wart to speak at "Black August" memorial dinner

Wart Churchill is scheduled to speak at something called the Denver Anarchist Black Cross's "Black August Dinner" next month, along with Robert King Wilkerson. According to the press release:

Black August began in the 1970′s as a way to honor fallen Black freedom fighters George and Jonathon Jackson, William Christmas, James McClain and Khatari Gaulden. The practice of Black August has since grown into an important moment to reflect on the history and current landscape of struggles against imperialism, colonialism, and white supremacy.

Never heard of the Anarchist Black Cross before, though they claim to have been around since "the beginning of the 20th century," which, if this wiki can be believed, is true, sort of, beginning in Czarist Russia. The Denver ABC "About" page says the "most previous incarnation of an Anarchist Black Cross chapter in Denver was snuffed out of existence quite quickly in 2004, after a full scale FBI investigation into the organization was launched to coincide with the security efforts protecting the Democratic National Convention that summer."

Wonder if they mean "2008," since the DNC wasn't here in 2004.

Anyway, nothing special, besides their longevity (not counting the usual infighting and resulting splits). More from their "About" page:

Historically, the Anarchist Black Cross has played a crucial role in mass movement defense; organizing support and defense of political prisoners and prisoners of war, maintaining physical solidarity against the police during factory and school occupations, organizing self defense and armed defense of social movements, and fulfilling a broad range of roles within the defense of social movements.

Yeah, yeah. Free this guy, free that guy. With guns and stuff. Right up Wart's alley.

Gere's sum funy st5f

Sorry for the garbled heading: cut myself trying to slit my throat this morning. Anyhow, Tim Blair has been on fire recently, and his latest column is truly funny. He makes me sick.

Update: My lead-in reminds me of a story Jim Bouton tells in his immortal Ball Four. A young pitcher trying to stay in the bigs gets hit in the face with a comebacker. Somehow he gets the third out even though he's gushing blood. He comes off the field and tells the manager, "I'm going back in. I'm going back in." The manager replies: "Not with two mouths you ain't, Meat."

Update II: Ball Four, 40 years on.

Update III: Why am I getting into this? The wiki on Ball Four says that after it was published Pete Rose "took to yelling 'Fuck you, Shakespeare!' from the dugout whenever Bouton was pitching."

TMI

A still from John Woo's Hard-Boiled:

Fourth of July skiing at A-Basin; first time in 14 years

That's all. No link to the Post story, of course. And, oh yeah: AGWMA.

Fourth of July at the Radio!

Pathetic attempt to get the taste of those abstracts out of my mouth.

Pat Novak: For hire. "Agnes Bolton" (4 June 1949). I keep saying this, but nobody listens: Jack Webb was a hell of a writer. For a while. In PN:FH he plays a private dick on the Frisco (as natives call it) waterfront who makes ends meet, some shows imply, by selling bait. Opening lines to this show:

Around here a set of morals won't cause any more stir than Mother's Day in an orphanage. Maybe that's not good, but that's the way it is. And it wouldn't do any good to build a church down here, because some guy would muscle in and start cutting the wine with wood alcohol . . .

Pat's not a happy guy, 'cause 1) he gets the shit kicked out of him roughly twice an episode; and 2) nobody appreciates his hard-boiled similes.

Okay, one more quotidian: "She was at least fifty, because you can't get that ugly without years of practice. She was wearing a green woolen dress and her figure wasn't any worse than a bale of cotton somebody's cut the wire on. Her fat hung down from her arms and there was so much of it you knew even her bones were plump . . ."

Not exactly PC, huh? Hard to figure how Webb, so talented, became a humorless law-and-order robot on Dragnet (the TV series).

Abstract(s) of the week!

For this Independence Day, a leftist patriotism edition.

Remember Michael Yellow Bird? He's the brainiac who said, at the trial of Wart Churchill's suit against CU in 2009, that it was common for historians to lie, and that that was okay, because such fabrications promote the truth.

Here he is around the same time, "defying the lies" of others.

Canadian Review of American Studies

Michael Yellow Bird

What Is the Highest Form of Patriotism?: I Say Acknowledging Our Addiction to Patriotism

Abstract:

Since the United States’s illegal invasion and occupation of the sovereign nation of Iraq on 20 March 2003, I have published papers that critically interrogate the participation of the “sovereign” US Indigenous nations in this unjust, illegal, imperialistic war. Due to my writings, on 24 June 2007, I was invited to make a presentation at a peace vigil and rally focusing on “What Is the Highest Form of Patriotism?” The speech that I gave is provided in full text in this article, where I probe the United States of America’s addiction to patriotism by interrogating and “defying the lies” of some of US patriotism’s most cherished ideas, documents, leaders, and slogans. I end with a slight twist of the words of the third Buddhist noble truth, freedom from the addiction to patriotism is possible in this lifetime.

God, he loves himself.

Social Text

(Good ol' Social Text.)

Puar, Jasbir K., 1967-
Rai, Amit, 1968-

Monster, Terrorist, Fag: The War on Terrorism and the Production of Docile Patriots

How are gender and sexuality central to the current "war on terrorism"? This question opens on to others: How are the technologies that are being developed to combat "terrorism" departures from or transformations of older technologies of heteronormativity, white supremacy, and nationalism? In what way do contemporary counterterrorism practices deploy these technologies, and how do these practices and technologies become the quotidian framework through which we are obliged to struggle, survive, and resist? Sexuality is central to the creation of a certain knowledge of terrorism, specifically that branch of strategic analysis that has entered the academic mainstream as "terrorism studies." This knowledge has a history that ties the image of the modern terrorist to a much older figure, the racial and sexual monsters of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Further, the construction of the pathologized psyche of the terrorist-monster enables the practices of normalization, which in today's context often means an aggressive heterosexual patriotism. As opposed to initial post-September 11 reactions, which focused narrowly on "the disappearance of women," we consider the...

Rhetoric and Public Affairs

Roger Stahl

Why We "Support the Troops": Rhetorical Evolutions

Abstract:

This essay tracks the genealogy of the contemporary call to "support the troops," a rhetoric that includes but goes beyond the strategic and argumentative use of the phrase itself. Support-the-troops rhetoric has two major functions: deflection and dissociation. Deflection involves discursive trends in play since Vietnam that have redefined war as a fight to save our own soldiers—especially the captive soldier—rather than as a struggle for policy goals external to the military. As such, this discourse directs civic attention away from the question of whether the particular war policy is just. The essay explicates these trends through an examination of the POW/MIA, war film, and the symbol of the yellow ribbon. The second trope, dissociation, quarantines the citizen from questions of military action by manufacturing distance between citizen and soldier. Dissociation often goes further to define civic deliberation and dissent as an attack on the soldier body and thus an ultimate immoral act. This essay explores this trope through executive rhetoric, an analysis of the particular phrase "support the troops," metaphor for war, and John Kerry's run for the presidency in 2004. Both deflection and dissociation work to discipline and mute public deliberation in matters of war. The essay concludes by considering strategies for reopening spaces for democratic deliberation.