Enough Already.

Words of Wisdom




Here. Have a cogent, well-informed piece on firearms and their place in our society. Me? I'm gonna be out back, practicing.

Have YOU Learned to Love Big Brother?

Serving and Protecting

Now, I'm not going to get into the criminal charges they are actually accusing this man of-

Yes, he violated NYC's draconian firearms laws by possessing a Deadly Weapon (a .22 revolver, for those of you checking in)

Yes, he disguised his activities.

Yes, he most definitely had a point, as the hamfisted response of the NYPD demonstrates to perfection.


It isn't just California, people. It isn't just D.C.

This crap is everywhere we have allowed it to happen.

Things I'm Thankful For

1. I've got a job. It's not a massive earner, it has no benefits to speak of, but it's steady and mine for as long as I want it. That ain't no mean thing.

2. I'm not homeless. Big one.

3. Nobody is shooting at me- and to date, no one ever has.

4. I'm a citizen of a nation which still at least pays lip service to the notion of personal liberty.

5. I have the best group of crazed survivalist redneck buddies a guy could ask for, even if I haven't seen 'em in over a year.

Not the longest list, but you know what? Long enough for me.

On the Election

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As the Election Heats Up, Some Wisdom-

"You want to know about voting. I'm here to tell you about voting. Imagine you're locked in a huge underground nightclub filled with sinners, whores, freaks and unnameable things that rape pit bulls for fun. And you ain't allowed out until you all vote on what you're going to do tonight. You like to put your feet up and watch "Republican Party Reservation". They like to have sex with normal people using knives, guns and brand-new sexual organs that you did not know existed. So you vote for television, and everyone else, as far as the eye can see, votes to fuck you with switchblades. That's voting. You're welcome."
- Warren Ellis, Transmetropolitan

You want a catchy summation of my view of the world situation? Fine.

Courtesy of The Rolling Stones:


"Yeah, a storm is threatening
My very life today
If I don't get some shelter
Lord, I'm gonna fade away

War, children, yeah, it's just a shot away
It's just a shot away
War, children, yeah, it's just a shot away
It's just a shot away, hey, yeah

Oh, see the fire is sweepin'
At our streets today
Burnin' like a red coal carpet
A mad bull lost its way

War, children, yeah, it's just a shot away
It's just a shot away
War, children, yeah, it's just a shot away
It's just a shot away, hey, yeah

Rape, murder, it's just a shot away
It's just a shot away
Rape, murder, it's just a shot away
It's just a shot away
Rape, murder, it's just a shot away
It's just a shot away"

Happy now?

Riding the Endless Treadmill

So, as often happens, I got to looking about at my circumstances. And heaven help me, I haven't caught myself treading water like this in YEARS. I work a job that eats up enough time to sap my energy, and pays just enough to make me feel like it's worthwhile... while I live with my parents in a perpetual cycle of work (which pays plenty for a freeloader but would probably be difficult to live on) and slacking. If there's a light at the end of this particular tunnel, I fear it's simply a train called "Reality" coming the other way, and I'm certainly too damned blinkered to do anything as rational as getting out of its path. Not rightly sure what I propose to do about it, either- the last time I boldly and impetuously moved out and abroad, I did it without having a fucking clue what I was doing, and the ensuing debt rode me like a fucking spastic jockey for the better part of seven years. Now? Now I KNOW I haven't got a clue, and it's paralyzing. Once bitten, twice shy, and all of that. I'm petrified to make a move without having something stable to land on, and that won't happen as long as I'm slinging pizza 28 hours a week. I need to develop some ambition. Of course, at 30 years of age, it's a little late to start cultivating basic impulses...

Further Truth-Bombs of T.R. Fehrenbach

From the same book as the previous entry:

"Americans, who cannot understand or even communicate with peasantry, are growing lonelier in a world where the great majority of men are peasants."

"Americans, he found, tend to take pride in doing things in a big way. But they had no interest in fighting a half-ass war like this one."

"It is admittedly terrible to force men to suffer during training, or even sometimes, through accident, to kill them. But there is no other way to prepare them for the immensely greater horror of combat."

"As Americans discovered during 1861-1865, sustained land warfare is extremely costly in blood, and there has been a pronounced American distaste for such since."

"If war is to have any meaning at all, its purpose must be to establish control over peoples and territories, and ultimately, this can be done only as Alexander the Great did it, on the ground. But because after the Civil War America's Allies again and again took the terrible losses required to bleed the enemy, Americans gradually developed a belief in cheap victory."

"Thus, again, it cannot be considered accident that in 1950 the dominant power of the world was barely able to contain the ground attack of an almost illiterate nation of nine million- nor could it have done so without the enormous manpower sacrifices of its Korean ally."

"Under the Constitution of the United States, Congress holds the power of life and death over the military, and no one would have it otherwise. History has shown very clearly that for democracy to continue, the people and not the generals or even the executive authority, must have control over the military. The people must dictate its size, composition and its use- above all, its use."

(Commentary by Your Humble Blogger- Yeah, funny how that little proviso has pretty much evaporated, no?)

"And with victory, as it had always come to Americans after a war, came the determination to force their will on the enemy, to punish them for the crime of aggression, for starting the war. If the fighting, with its resultant death and destruction, its loss of American lives, resulted only in the return of the status quo, then almost all Americans would feel cheated."

"Americans have always accepted checks and balances within their own system of government, but never without, in the world. Because in the world such checks have never been achieved with votes or constitutions but with guns, and Americans have never admitted that guns may serve a moral purpose as well as votes. They have never failed to resort to guns, however, when other means fail."

"Actually, the Communist world had not broken the law, for one of the continuing tragedies of mankind is that there is no international law."

"Military intelligence, quite competently, can determine the number of divisions a nation has deployed. Military men can never wholly competently decide, from military evidence alone, whether such a nation will use them. Such a decision is not, and will never be, within the competence of military intelligence."

"It is obvious the MacArthur's reliance on air power was almost absolute. Whatever the weaknesses of his ground forces, whatever their difficult and exposed positions, U.N. mastery of the skies was complete, and air would be the decisive arm. It was a typically American viewpoint. MacArthur and the men around him had a great deal to learn about Chinese Communist armies."

Home Truths from 1963

T.R. Fehrenbach, writing a history of the Korean War in 1963, saw clearly some crap that we are a long, long way from grasping as a nation- mostly because the truth is unpleasant. Suck it up, people. The universe owes you nothing, least of all truths that are pleasant.

"The problem was that America had fought the war- as she had most of her wars- as a crusade, while Russia had fought first for survival, then for power. Crusades are usually inconclusive; it was no wonder Russia won the peace."

"It was hard for a nation and a people who had never accepted the idea of power, not as something immoral in itself, but as a tool to whatever ends they sought, to fight and die for limited goals. In short, it was hard to grow up."

"The United States could not be bought, or even intimidated, but it had a long history of looking the other way if not immediately threatened."

"Citizens fly to defend the homeland, or to crusade. But a frontier cannot be held by citizens, because citizens, in a republic, have better things to do."

"Korea was an infantry war, essentially no different from any infantry war of the twentieth century. This was one of the factors, along with the political, that made the fighting so distasteful to a people who had subconsciously come to regard infantry warfare as obsolete."

"Revolution and terror are synonymous; only with the passage of time does any revolution become respectable."

Fehrenbach wrote these words as Vietnam started to suck in more and more men. It is nearly half a century since he wrote them, and the lessons have not been internalized.

History. Read it and weep.

Musings on Renewed Poverty

So I, after attaining the lofty rank (and pay) of teacher last year, find myself living in my parents' house and slinging pizza this winter.

Worse things have happened. But it's funny- this shit seems to hit I and mine in waves. Not that everyone's rise and fall have been as radical, but still... this time last year I was pulling down bank, and my scuzzy cohorts down south were well on their way toward making an offer on buying some property.

Now? They are renting an apartment. Again. And getting reamed by their former landlords.

In point of fact, neither is terribly surprising- I'm a shiftless layabout whose only passions do not pay well, and my cohorts have a child to care for and, as basically broke-ass motherfuckers, an endless series of unexpected expenses that they cannot simply float.

It is frustrating, to say the least.

But on the other hand, we've always got each others' backs. When you have eaten sandwiches from the dumpster behind Arby's with a motherfucker (after standing lookout while those sandwiches were retrieved), when you have had the use of damn near anything a homie owns, not because he can afford to loan it, but because he knows you can't afford to buy it, when you have never wanted for a couch to crash on and a meal when you wake up... You may not be rich, but damned if you aren't lucky.

Of course, that doesn't mean I'd turn down a high-paying job... you know, if any of you bastards happen to have one you feel like giving me...

For London Youth, Down and Out is a Way of Life

It ain't just London, and it ain't just 18-24 year olds.
Indeed, the problem isn't even confined to people who haven't finished college- BAs are a dime a dozen these days.

Worst of all, a lot of people have no idea how many jobs actually exist out there- there are entire fields of work that go basically undetected.

Cultural Insensitivity and Me

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-india-16676254

So apparently Jay Leno (Unfunny Motherfucker) displayed the holiest of holies of the Sikh faith in a skit mocking Mitt Romney. This has several Sikhs quite pissed, to the tune of starting a petition.

The Sikh community has launched an online petition and an Indian minister called the comments "objectionable".

Overseas Indian Affairs Minister Vayalar Ravi told reporters: "It is quite unfortunate and quite objectionable that such a comment has been made after showing the Golden Temple."

Mr Ravi said the Indian embassy would take up the matter with the US state department, the Press Trust of India reported.

He said: "The Golden Temple is the Sikh community's most sacred place... The American government should also look at this kind of thing.
Golden Temple The Golden Temple is the holiest Sikh shrine

"Freedom does not mean hurting the sentiments of others... This is not acceptable to us and we take a very strong objection for such a display."

Mister Ravi, on behalf of the people of the united states... Get fucked.

The right to make fun of shit, no matter what it is, is one of the American people's most sacred joys... The Indian Government should also look into dealing with real problems, as opposed to the lame attempts at humor of a fucking hack.

Respect for your religion does not extend to legislating what comedians, however unfunny, can say... This not acceptable to us and we take a very strong objection to your fucking whining.

Petition signatory Simran Kaur says: "Jay Leno must apologise and promise not to make any direct or oblique references to Sikhs or their places of worship."

Mister Kaur, if you dislike Mister Leno's material, do what I always do- Don't watch it. Seriously, he sucks, it's not like you're giving anything up.

I try to remind myself that this kind of religious bullshit is largely brought on by human context,but the fact is, as insensitive and culturally blind as Leno's stupid joke may have been, the Sikh response shows a marked lack of respect for one of the few identifiable North American cultural imperatives, one we inherited from either Europe or a romanticized notion of Europe- the Jester's Prerogative.

Hands off, motherfuckers, or I'll unleash the hate-reanimated corpse of Lenny Bruce on you. And he will show you no mercy.

Dune-isms For Our Times

In honor of the general state of affairs, I present the following:



From Dune Messiah:



"Empires do not suffer emptiness of purpose at the time of their creation. It is when they have become established that aims are lost and replaced by vague ritual."



From Children of Dune, that paean to collapsed empires and failed dreams:



"A large populace held in check by a small but powerful force is quite a common situation in our universe. And we know the major conditions wherein this large populace may turn upon its keepers--

One: When they find a leader. This is the most volatile threat to the powerful; they must retain control of leaders.

Two: When the populace recognizes its chains. Keep the populace blind and unquestioning.

Three: When the populace perceives a hope of escape from bondage. They must never even believe that escape is possible!"



"Governments, if they endure, always tend increasingly toward aristocratic forms. No government in history has been known to evade this pattern. And as the aristocracy develops, government tends more and more to act exclusively in the interests of the ruling class-- whether that class be hereditary royalty, oligarchs or financial empires, or entrenched bureaucracy."



"In all major socializing forces you will find an underlying movement to gain and maintain power through the use of words. From witch doctor to priest to bureaucrat it is all the same. A governed populace must be conditioned to accept power-words as actual things, to confuse the symbolized system with the tangible universe. In the maintenance of such a power structure, certain symbols are kept out of the reach of the common understanding-- symbols such as those dealing with economic manipulation or those which define the local interpretation of sanity. Symbol-secrecy of this form leads to the development of fragmented sub-languages, each being a signal that its users are accumulating some form of power."



"People, not commercial organizations or chains of command, are what make great civilizations work. Every civilization depends upon the quality of the individuals it produces. If you over-organize humans, over-legalize them, suppress their urge to greatess-- they cannot work and their civilization collapses."

The Holy Books Of A Northern Jackass

All right, as anyone with the capacity to read and the colossal poor judgment to be wasting it on this should know, I've got Dune and Art of War quotations liberally slapped all over this bastard.

There is a perfectly sound reason for this- As a somewhat irritable agnostic, I haven't got a sacred text to refer to for either philosophical underpinning or obnoxious evangelism.

But damned if I'm going to be left out of getting my worldview from books!

What follows is a list of books from which I derive either philosophical insight or basic guidance I can apply to my life-

The Art of War- Sun Tzu. I favor the Samuel B. Griffith translation because the man is a Marine. A linguist might translate the classic Chinese correctly, but a fighting man is more likely to grasp what Sun Tzu (Or Sun Zi for you latter-day pedants). As a basic "how-to" manual, it's something of a mixed bag- yes, it has profound wisdom, such as the advisability of living upon the enemy's supplies as much as possible, but it also has detailed advice in how many chariots you should deploy to take out a rival warlord. Fortunately, the chaff is pretty easy to sift out. I refer to this badboy a lot when confronted by a stressful situation or an opponent in any sphere.

Dune, Dune Messiah, Children of Dune, God-Emperor of Dune, Heretics of Dune, Chapterhouse: Dune, all by Frank Herbert. Yes, it's a science fiction. Yes, Herbert was clearly out his damn mind (God-Emperor is AWFUL as fiction- as a study in tyranny, of course, it's great), but a lot of his observations on human behavior and the nature of hydraulic despotism are spot-on. The cynical political creeds of the Bene Gesserit are infinitely more applicable to what you're going to experience than anything a talking head on CNN will have to say. Also has some nifty ecological pointers.

Watership Down by Richard Adams. The actual story of the rabbits founding their new warren is, at best, okay. But the underpinnings of the rabbits' mythology are phenomenal. Frith's advice to El-ahrairah is a must for anyone who isn't the strongest, deadliest, or best-defended- and let's be honest people, that's most of us. Be cunning and full of tricks, motherfucker, because you will die in a straight-up fight.

The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling. Mowgli of the Seeonee Wolf Pack becomes a model worthy of emulation by the end of the tales, and even his youthful follies are instructive. He also leads a damn nasty guerilla war against the dhole.


So there you have it. I draw most of my guidance from stories about talking animals, far-future posthuman badasses, and the martial code of ancient China.

Not too bad in the grand scheme of things.

Election Year. PIG and ROT

So, in keeping with the finest traditions of modern U.S. democracy, the Party In Government (hereinafter PIG) is free to sit and watch as the Rest Of Them (ROT) thrash it out amongst themselves.

Has anyone realized how fucking stupid this process is?

In the primary system, fringe and undecided voters are ignored. No, the ROT need to galvanize their base. This leads to progressively more insane and asinine claims and statements revolving around whatever in hell their narrow pool of voters care about.

Right now, objectively, what are the biggest problems in this country?

From where I sit, we've got three big 'uns.

1- The Economy, Stupid. Really, a true shitshow. The Occupy movement amuses, rather than fires me up, but they're addressing a very real perception that things are not working like they should. Then there are basic numbers like unemployment figures and home ownership. They ain't good.

2- The steady erosion of civil liberties- To be fair to the PIG, this has been going on for a long time, with some of the most precipitous damage happening in the last eleven years or so. Still and all, from both major political entities in this country, it's quite hilarious how clear they've made it that they do not give a shit about the rights of the average citizen. One sides with corporate kelptocracy. The other... sides with corporate kleptocracy with a big pretty bow on top claiming they care. Neither cares about you, fool. They care about their personal power and fortunes, about shoring up their own faction. And frankly, no alternative party would be much better once they got on top. They won't stop this on their own- they need to be scared. Neither PIG nor ROT has really had their snouts whacked on this in far, far too long- hardly surprising, when this is one area where they appear content to cooperate. Thanks, assholes.

3- Foreign Adventures- You know, there was a time when this country was inclined to let the rest of the world get by without us. I blame our shattering sense of triumph in World War II- we came out of that one on top, unquestionably the best-armed nation on the planet. But it seems that no one has taken a good long look at our track record in major conflicts since 1945- Korea was more or less a draw, Vietnam was a strategic loss and a horrible waste of life (come on, a bunch of raggedy-ass half-trained guerillas with Kalashnikovs stood us off for HOW long?), and then.... then we entered a long series of brushfire bullshit in keeping with our imperial legacy, propping up regimes and looking after our own interests- success in a lot of limited objectives against weaker foes. And then there was the failure to rescue the hostages in the Tehran embassy in 1980. In 1983, we steamrolled Grenada. Air strikes on Libya in 1986 in a bid to kill Qadaffi (which may have only strengthened his hold on power), 1989's invasion of Panama was business as usual, 1990-1991 we, with other nations, slapped Iraq upside the head but changed nothing of import, insuring that we continued to have occasional live-fire incidents with Iraqi forces from 1992-2003 as the no-fly zones were enforced. In 1995, we went into Bosnia. In 2001, we went into Afghanistan (we're still there, by the by) to repeat the lessons we should have learned in Vietnam and Cambodia. Not content with that, in 2003, we formally re-invaded Iraq, and, in the following eight years, have had victory declared twice by two different Presidents. And then there's our recent Libyan intervention. Hail, victory.

We haven't been militarily inactive since... about 1935, apparently.

So of course, rather than dealing with any of these three lingering headaches, the ROT know what we really care about... that our sitting President is a "Socialist." That he is "soft on terrorism" (Good thing for him he has Osama bin Laden's bullet-riddled corpse on his scorecard for that one). That he is "at war with Christianity." That homosexuals can openly serve in our armed forces.

Hey. Assholes. The PIG ain't going down if that's the best you can do- and by the time the ROT have chosen their boy, the PIG will know all they need to know about 'em. And they'll also have a whole primary season's worth of stupid, extremist base-flacking bullshit to throw in the public's face.

The fix is in. Bend over.