Not So Divine Bears

So few people ever read this blog, it's very humbling. Still, every once in awhile something/someone passes through. This weekend someone tried to change my blogger account password. When you do something like that and fail Blogger sends you an email, informing you this happened/didn't happen. In any case, whoever it was guessed to use my msn email as the login but failed on the password. No surprise there. I've been a computer guy for many years and have passwords that aren't simple or easy.

Still, it gives you pause. What could they want to do if they had logged in? Post to this blog? Have me saying terrible things that could get me in trouble? Or did they wish to edit posts already online? Take out statements about someone or something?

I have to say, I am all in favor of someone who disagrees with something I wrote sending me a rebuttal which I will post. Inevitably I would probably rebut that. So much is point of view. But I have to say, it is a wild week when even three other people look at this blog. Seriously. How can anyone think this even qualifies as a public statement? It's just Osburn, going on about his small opinions and the mild details of a middle class life. Good enough, you know?

Thanks to the Lady for Her mercy.

The Singing Blade

Details emerge in this time. I see the head of General Motors is asked to resign as part of the method of making yet another bailout palatable to the lumpen proletariat. I do not have a real opinion about whether GM should be allowed to fail or not. There are innumerable jobs tied to the production line, but can it be allowed to keep producing cars at a loss forever? I like whoever said that GM should be allowed to sell the US Government a million cars at cost that would then be distributed to the citizenry in a lottery. Now, that's a stimulus bailout we could all live with. Said cars should be available without an income tax levy also.

This will never happen of course. Even with Obama at the top the current reality is still pretty much all about the upper classes. They will never give up real control because they understand that the french revolution lurks in every popular movement and they are in no hurry to see their kind facing the modern equivalent of the Singing Blade that was/is the guillontine. That's why Rusty Limbaugh and the boys opine so singularly against "socialism". On some basic level he understands that most of those who listen to him, given access to the real truth of the situation, would march right down and string him up in an instant. Limbaugh may be a nasty awful little man with a huge gut and inability to see past his own ego, but he is also smart enough to know that the truth shall set him up for a lynching. That is why he so strenuously seeks to confuse his public with a bunch of stuff that is utterly indefensible. Luckily Americans are not much for thinking past their prejudices.

Meanwhile the Pope, gotta love the old bird, actually said that condoms spread AIDS. You know, because if you have condoms you have sex. And sex spreads AIDS. And people, well, golly, they just should never have sex. He never has sex and look how fucking holy he is.

This particular Pope is pretty much an evil little short dicked bastard who never got over the nationalist socialists losing the war. He turned himself to a different way of gaining control and he worked it hard. I wonder when most catholics are going to wake up to the fact that their church is being led by the equivalent of Dick Cheney. Although even Dick Cheney has been known to stick his dick in something (David Addington? Scooter Libby? Surely not Liz; in her books she is a les, right?). But who knows what secret masturbatory fantasies the Hitler Youth used to pull his pud in his younger days. Lots of those nazi boys always have that secret vision of uber mensch uncle Adolf lurking in their sexual psyche. Yech, as Mad Magazine would say.

I'm not reading much at the moment. I did some more work on transferring vinyl to digital. Unfortunately the computer I am set up to use with the turntable keeps turning itself off, usually two or less minutes from the end of the side. It's a Dell that has the classic overheating problem. Well, I do a little at a time. That's how it goes. Today was two Cat Stevens lps and Sandy Denny's Northstar Grassmen and the Ravens album. There's just so much vinyl to tap here. Lately has also included Charles Lloyd's Forest Flower, one of my all time favorite jazz pieces.

I have to confess I just could not get past the first couple of chapters of Watchmen. A lot of the comic book stuff just leaves me cold. I never had that super hero fetish going on. I think it's mainly about insecurity in the egos of post pubescent punkdom. And once you get into it it becomes a form of literature for you. I have naught against that. I think there is plenty of good stuff out there. But superhero stories are just so repititive. I did like X-men, mainly for the variety and the addition of some interesting female characters. But by and large the superhero trip is one that I missed out on. You could say that I was always clear I was never going to be able to relate to the super hero.

In thinking about it I understand that I have never really had that kind of relationship with a popular figure, that I wanted to be like them. I don't have a clue what that might mean. But I missed hero worship. Maybe Bobby Kennedy. But I didn't want to be like him. I just wanted him to be President. We got Nixon instead. Thanks for nothing, Sirhan. Another dumbfuck Palestinian, doing his people not a whit of good.

There was a story today about the Jenin Palestinian camp coming down hard on this kids' orchestra run by a an israeli woman who donated her time. She took them to a nursing home where they played for a bunch of holocaust survivors. And for this they and this woman were condemned by the Palestinian camp guy who is part of the PLO. Do these people not understand just how this makes them look? Why is it even important? Have they told themselves lies about the actions of the nazis? Probably. You know, I am usually not a fan of the Israeli government and I do think the Palestinians got and continue to get a raw deal, but they clearly do not know how to work through issues and actually get something good for themselves. They are so like Limbaugh's audience, preferring to stick with their prejudices because they are only comfortable in that reality. Even if it pisses in their very soup. Which this does.

So I'd like to see Al Jazeera run some of the holocaust documentaries in the middle eastern world. Then we would see if they could get past their own holocausts that they have done to each other for the past thousand years. Fools, really. This is what Mohammed wrought? I have to wonder what Mohammed would think about all this? If he truly is on the side of such stupidity than it is clear that no one should go near his ideology. Of course his theology was always a fantasy, much like the Pope's. And the Jews have the biggest fantasy of all, their Messiah, leading them back to being on top, a situation they have never really had. But there is something in their genetic makeup that needs that special chosen people crap and uses it to justify all sorts of stupid rules. Like who exactly is a jew. We are all a great deal more alike than different, but what counts for ideologies and religions is the difference. It's what makes me special and you a loser. Jeez Louise, to quote the Bobster.

Now I veering off into the babble again. And I understand that pretty much no one got this far. So it goes. Thanks to the Lady for Her mercy today.

Swimming

Lately I feel like I am swimming toward some distant shore. It never seems to get any closer. I know the anxiety I am experiencing is systemic; everyone has it to some real extent. Things are actually better for us on a day to day basis with Piper. She is much better than she was last fall. And I attribute this mainly to the no gluten/no dairy diet. It's been hard, but she is now such a sweet and loving child. She is still capable of slipping into the dark mode, but it is more a rarity these days. I think it also has helped the way they have structured her day at Wiley School.

The consultant the school district brought in expressed it thus: Like trying to force a square peg into a round hole. It just was never going to happen. Then this makes me think about my own childhood and my school experience. I was often told by my mother that the teachers at my school said I would do so much better with just a tutor. That may be. what is certainly true is that my school experience was a failure right down the line. I made lousy grades in grade school and high school and I have a low tolerance for bullshit so didn't do well in college either.

Leaving me here in my late 50s with few saleable skills, and no real future in the world of employment and finance. So I struggle along, another loser from my generation, simply trying to get some little money and keep things going. There for awhile, in the 90s, I seemed to have found a useful skill, doing this computer stuff. But after moving here in 2001 I never had the opportunity to keep up with the technology. And the technology moved on. So I can figure things out, but I don't have a degree, and I no longer have an organization invested in me, like at the Illinois State Museum.

So, did I have, do I have a learning disability? When I told my sister Diane about Piper she immediately attributed it to my mother, Margaret, and said something to the effect that there must be some sort of genetic defect at work. Mother was definitely a weird person. I often thought of her as mainly very naive about the world. Not that I was much better, it turns out. Mother seemed to think one could be successful and a good catholic, but I think we are all clear on that one. Cognitive dissonance there.

So today I am swimming, still afloat, still a mile away from shore. All this AIG stuff is hurting my belly. All those people, with their business degrees, sneaking out of the wreckage with serious money, leaving us ordinary and poor people that much worse off. I don't really think Obama can do too much to fix things.

And I see the world headed down. That guy in Israel, Lieberman, is essentially a racist thug. And he is part of Bibi's new government. The spiral downward continues in Israel. And those that surround them, they are still the pitiful shortdicked loser they have been for centuries. That's really the problem with islam; it produces people who are so run by their egos and their emotions that they can't really think their way clear to a modern world. I suspect this will go on for centuries. I do have to wonder if the species really will survive. Or if the planet will survive.

My friend in the 70s, Gary William Adkins, wrote an early novel entitled Celestial Popocorn about a presidential race in which the more moral candidate campaigned on the notion we should kill ourselves so nature had another chance. Pretty dark stuff. Sort of like swimming in the oilslick that is modern life.

May the Lady have mercy on us.

Poetry As A Release Mechanism

I've posted a poem that tries to make sense/defends my stirring up the accumulated mud in the bottom of this aquarium that is my life. Trying to put the best light on what I have done here, still it is only a little more intellectual than masturbation. Not to knock self abuse, as the Cat-lics like to refer to it. What was it Woody Allen said? "Don't knock masturbation. It's sex with someone I love."

So the production of thousands of self-serving words, however self-critical I might think them to be, can certainly be said to be rather an onanistic device. I've even used this metaphor before in a poem. It is certainly true that the single greatest aspect of consciousness one can attribute to the natural world is its ability to over produce organisms in such numbers that they guarantee survival of some aspect of species or some trait/psychology/talent that is ultimately that which creates the phenomenol world.

Hey, I know it's a silly way to look at it, but you gotta keep yourself entertained. In any case it's at Homage & Apology, along with a commentary a little less opaque than this post.

Venus Envy: Rita Mae Brown

Been reading some Rita Mae Brown books. Mainly her mysteries. The ones with the cats and dog (Mrs. Murphy, Pewter, and Tee Tucker, the Corgi). Also I read one of the Fox hunting books, with the powerful character Sister Jane. Finally I just finished a novel called Venus Envy, which came with a bunch of RMB books I bought off of ebay. It's a look at a woman, coming out in her mid 30s after being told she had terminal lung cancer. She writes a bunch of letters to everyone in her life and tells all. The next day she finds out the hospital got the wrong x-ray report and she's just got bronchitis. Too late, of course, for the letters.

This is a mixed bag of a book. Paige and I have been reading the Mrs. Murphy books for at least the last ten years. Most of them I bought when they appeared, often in hardbound at significant money. When Paige first was reading them I did too because I tried to read whatever she was reading, listen to whatever she was listening to, and the same with movies and tv. Eventually I couldn't keep up and there are many places Paige has gone that I haven't. Likewise I am sure.

In any case, this book is way different than the Mrs. Murphy mysteries. Those books talk about sex and love and relationships, but this novel is quite explicit and out front about sexuality. Rita Mae was originally famous in the 1970s for a novel called Rubyfruit Jungle. It was perhaps the first widely popular openly lesbian book at a time when gay people were rebelling against the way things were. I never read it. I had no problem with it, I just never read that particular book. I have always in my life had at least one close friend who I knew was gay, going back to grade school. Why it is such an issue for the religious folks I do not know. I suppose if you think that sex is only about procreation then gay sex simply doesn't fit into your cultural plans. But the days of few people are way way past and most of us understand that sex and sexuality is more a question of mental health than anything else.

Venus Envy. Good title with its mild joke. The heroine of the book is from an upper class Virginia family. Her mother is a terrible nag and her father is quite removed. Her brother is a drunken loser. She herself runs a successful art dealership that specializes in paintings of hunting and sportsmanship. She has an african-american assistant who is one of the few people who actually care about her. She is closeted but has her 'boyfriend' who goes to events with her. And his boyfriend goes to events with one of her girlfriends. A way of doing things that has existed for many centuries.

Coming out in upper class Virginia (and this is 1995 folks) is apparently not a good thing to do. Particularly among the women. There are the usual incidents. And Frazier's relationship with her mother goes from pretty bad to far worse. Interestingly enough her coming out ultimately helps both her father and her brother repairs damaged lives and confront their own failings. So the men get better and the women turn into dark, mean figures, intent on hurting her.

What does this mean? I liked this book in many ways. Frazier's internal dialogue as she tries to figure out why it worked this way and what she is actually about, are good stuff, the kind of stuff we should all be telling ourselves. I thought this book was valuable for this aspect. Where it gets weird is a complicated several chapters episode at the end wherein Frazier, having fallen from a ladder, passes out and ends up spending some quality time on Mt. Olympus with the greek/roman gods and goddess. To the extent that she has a hot time with Venus and Adonis. In explicit detail. There is some very 1960s ruminations on the nature of sexuality in the human animal (you should be able to fuck anybody any time if it is good for you and for them, never mind the externalities of it all). This is mainly just weird, though as a fantasy sequence it does allow you into Brown's mind. I found it odd, not because of the sex, but because I couldn't really see what she was striving for, using this imagined sequence.

What happens when things turn supernatural? I have struggled with that question myself in my novels. I can't write those Steven King things, because I can't really justify the supernatural. I think it does have something to do with growing up Roman Catholic and hearing all those superstitious stories along the way. Now I tend to the rational (and I know I have the Goddess trip, so sue me). So the use of the device doesn't quite work for me. If she hadn't done the ground work of making it be real and not imagined, then maybe. But she has scenes in which the painting these figures are in seems to come alive not just for Frazier but for her assistant as well. So you don't get to write it off as merely a bump on the head induced vision.

In any case I don't envy Venus here. Brown's stories are often set among the upper class. They are all in Virginia. She uses her books to whine about the government and taxes although she never actually grasps the problems there. She's socially liberal, but she wants to keep "her money" because she worked hard for it. It is an irritating feature of her work. She complains about being poor but she has numerous horses and she's the Master of a foxhunt, not a cheap enterprise. I know she's not rich rich, but it is kind of a pain in the ass to read this stuff. It is the stuff of right wing radio, though she is a lesbian and an arts person. It shows the depth of penetration that self-interest has in this society of individuals. Of course, she's also a gay person who never had children. She's not really connected though she says she is. Or maybe she doesn't understand that being connected means paying your fair share and even more if you are doing well.

Finally this book, set in 1995, talks about present economic conditions as if the world is falling apart. It reminds us of the savings and loan scandals of the 80s and it goes on and on about how it can't last (the economic health of our society). This is 1995! I just wonder how she's feeling these days?

So, it's a mixed review from me. Worth reading for the introspection. You can skip through the tirades about wealth and power. I do agree that being gay in that kind of society must reek. She does always talk about how great Virginia is, though it doesn't sound that great to me. It reminds me of the kind of "pride" that Texans have about Texas and that most of the south seems to need. You know, it is so great here. Better than up north. People don't talk like that in Illinois or in New Hampshire. I really think it is a confidence thing. I think the southerners are defensive, post Civil War. As for Texas, they gave us George W. Bush, but they also gave us Molly Ivins and Ann Richards. No place is that great and no place is that bad. Still, Mississippi is the most racist state in the Union. Can't wait for my next visit.

May the Lady's Mercy see us through this terrible time.