May 31, 2008

About FUBAR

“Freed Up By The Absence Of Rules and Fed Up By The Actions Of Republicans, that’s FUBAR!”
-- G. David Cavender, M.D.

Will Stewart from the Ann Arbor News is coming over tomorrow afternoon to interview me for a story on the Behnke Family Tragedy. The practical importance of this piece is that it gives the public a heads-up on a final benefit FUBAR will be hosting Friday, June 6th at the Old Heidelberg Club Above. All proceeds will benefit Bill’s dear wife, Martha.

Martha is about to walk out of the Kate Chopin story she’s been living for the last 40 years. You go, girl. Edna’s got nothing on Martha.

Altruism aside, I’m ‘focusin on ‘getting FUBAR its due props. We’re not a benefit band! We’re the full service, community minded, socially activistic, drama infused, tequila and wine drinking, kind buddian, allaboutusian, feel good band of the year. And that’s all we are. Well, maybe.

About FUBAR:

FUBAR is one heavy band. Our combined weight probably approaches a ton and a half sans clothes and instruments. We typically practice on Mondays.

I’m already there. Who am I? Just your average suave and debonair cool guy looking for adventure in all the wrong places, or is that “love?” Did I also mention I was born to be wild, or is that “alive?” I’m confused. It must have been the acid I took at that last John Kay, Patrick Hernandez, Borders concert. But seriously, when I play the guitar it’s like ringing a bell. Problem is, I’m talking literally. I get more out of one note than most people get out of two. I sing with a growl reminiscent of the wood chipper in Fargo, and I’m a back-door man, as well. And remember, if you don’t like my chickens, don’t shake my tree. That’s the way I roll. I simply can’t be topped, unless we’re talking in the Othellonian sense of being 'tupped,' you know, like your you, or me, or ewe, yeah, that’s it, ewe.

Jim, or Andy, arrives first. Jim’s infectious laugh and Andy’s jocular good humor always bring a warm smile to my face. Just mine. Beer and tequila, two critical components in the pre-ceremonial, dithyrambic rites that steady us for rehearsal, are then dispensed. Cacophonic discussions commence regarding world events (Rush Limbaugh’s chequered past), local gossip concerning the other members of the band’s weird foibles and strange quirks (mine and Dave’s snapdragon fetish, and Shadow’s litter eatin'), musical news (Prince’s blockage of Radiohead’s tubes), and other cool stuff. The British Columbians from next door often visit, bringing fresh Absinthe, Mushroom Quiche, and other world delectables.

Jim’s a pro. He’s a Tai-Chi master and garage sale guru. He knows what’s up, and how to keep it up there. Wanna know more? He regularly channels Gene Krupa’s ghost as a way of letting off steam. And what steam he lets off, sha-na-na-na, hey-hey-hey, goodbye. His drumming provides the perfect accompaniment to Sophia’s angelic warblings and my dust-devil leads. His maraca stylings have been compared with that of the world-renowned triangle ensemble, the Square Roots. But even this skill pales in comparison to his cowbell work. He brings a freshness to “Mississippi Queen” that only a true student of the Sixties could pull off. They don’t call him Mr. Tambourine man for nothing. I don’t want to say he likes hippies, but he plays in a band called ‘Deep Space Six.' Jim Rules (right on)!

Andy is the brains of the outfit. He puts the man in Mensa. His glissandos flutter and dive like deranged birds on a kamakazi mission from Beelzebub. He plays good, too. Black keys, white keys, he can play ‘em all. He’s callin' the rain as he walks down the road to ever ‘cos he’s an artist who don’t look back. His accordion work on “Brand New Start” is so strong he received a glowing endorsement letter from Myron Floren. I recall a funeral gig where his organ playing revived a dead man. The shocked widow demanded her money back. His effusive affection for fusion fandangos fuels the full-throated fanfares he serenades his fulsome bride with. He can make a half-note sound like eight notes. He’s that good. He’s a sauna-building family man, too.

Next come Sophia and Oni. I typically have a bottle of vintage white wine awaiting our diva, Sophia (that means “wise” in Canadian).


Sophia has a sparkle, a wit, a grace, a charm that is so, so exquisite as to be, be, be, beyond words. Her voice is like the Zephyrs’ breath in birth of a nation, I mean, Botticelli’s Venus. Her subtle countenance belies a passionate intensity that is infused with Celtic drenched Bjork-like undertones that embellish her Foundational overtones. This not-so-swirling chanteuse will build up your buttercups and tear down your snapdragon (not snapdragons again!). She’s like the Wal-Mart of femme fatale torch singers: “Best Voice, Always.” Her sensitive treatment of Joan Jett’s “Bad Reputation,” and Wanda Jackson’s “Let’s have a party””…well, they laughed, they cried, they fell on their bums. Need I say more? No? Okay, I will. Won’t! Psyche.

The sound Oni gets on the bass was first heard on ancient Mt. Olympus when Zeussy topped Callisto. Their hoochie-coochin' was so thunderous, Hera turned her into a bear. Imagine the mating grunts of walri combined with a sassy sousa-phone, and you begin to get a vague idea of the country-whale-like backbeat this guy provides. An imperfect analogy for Oni’s and Jim’s steady presence would be if the rock of Gibraltar and Pyramid at Gaza had a baby. Bruce Jack once studied at the feet of Oni, whose hands are like giant, graceful sausages poised to stoke your soul’s griddle. We be griddlin'. But seriously, Oni was playing the 13 string banjo-bass when Noel Redding was in three-cornered, or is that eight stringed, pants. He’s so good he makes Jaco sound like me. He’s a house-cleanin', Jamersonian, Huffington-huffin', hobgoblin that specializes in soul. He knows ribs.

Then doesn’t come Dave. That’s his real nickname, “Doesn’t come Dave” (not that kind of come, gutter-dwellers). This johnny-come-lately never got there. Why, because he’s above and beyond anything as pedestrian as practice. He’s that good. He specializes in the repair of torn retocillators, and he’ll adjust your valves of Houston with his monstrous flugelhorn. And what a joyous horn it is! Another of his various and sundry nicknames is “joyhorn.” Dave is the ambassador of drama at Queeny’s School of Massage (French goes there). There’s an anagrammatical sentence for ‘ya, Freudy. If Al Hirt and Miles Davis had a baby it would sound like Dave. His feedback shenanigans and microphone-under-arm bit have thrilled millions throughout the universe. Just ask him. His lip is like the Great Wall of China. His bizarre garb was a major influence on Sun Ra and Phyllis Diller. He’s formally trained and instinctively gifted. He makes ten notes sound like 3 notes. He once held up the last timbers in a Calumet mine cave-in, saving 50 men while playing “The Lonely Bull.” He likes ruttin', too. We love you, pasty eater.

FUBAR is probably the first rock combo in the world to have 5 band dogs: Mogli, Lucky, Sarge, Jackson, and Shadow. These noble canines are an integral part of our band chemistry. Sharing our knowledge in a collaborative way on the best methods of pet cares inspires an, at once, creative and synergistic kind of solidarity that most bands only dream of. According to Oni (he’s a human), Kirk’s Castille Soap is a must for every dog owner. I remember sharing my modest, yet vast, knowledge of how to facilitate user-friendly dog waste. The trick is to set up an early morning feeding schedule, and no table scraps! This creates a scoopable, nicely formed doggie-doo, leaving little in the way of pooch-slimy residue. These Baskervilian hounds also frighten off those who would steal our ideas. GRRRRRRRRR!



Oh yeah, Oni Werth plays bass, Andy Adamson plays keyboards, Randy Tessier plays guitar, Dave Cavender plays harmonica and trumpet, Jim Carey plays drums, and Sophia Hanifi sings.

Have a Nice Day – FUBARIAN MAXIMUS

PS: We can play either standing up or sitting down, and we guarantee that no song will ever sound the same way twice.
PHOTOS: Paul Engstrom

May 30, 2008

QUE SERA, SERA

“Anger would inflict punishment on another; meanwhile it tortures itself.”
-- Publilius Syrus, “Moral Sayings,” 1st Century B.C.

I’ve been told I’m a contentious smart ass (see photo).

Much of my long history of contentiousness was closely related to my being a type-A control-freak. I use the past tense, “was,” because dealing with serious illness inevitably requires ceding control to others, whether we like it or not. While it’s true that control-freaks typically exhibit an air of bravado and confidence, it’s also true that these qualities almost always belie deep-seated insecurities that, while not insurmountable, can be managed by self help strategies: like avoiding starving yourself, not drinking on an empty stomach, and getting plenty of healthy sleep. Where am I headed with this? I don’t know, but let’s see. One symptom of control-freak syndrome I’ve noticed in myself, and others, is anger.

With that in mind, today’s question is this: when is anger an appropriate human response, or defense mechanism, if ever?

Notwithstanding Publilius’ sage advice, Malcolm X has a point in saying, “Usually, when people are sad, they don’t do anything, they just cry over their condition. But when they get angry they bring about change”(“Malcolm X Speaks,” 1965). I suppose MX is right, in social relationships, private and public, anger has affected more positive change than sadness. The implication is that sadness is a passive state and anger active. But what of the smoldering anger divorced from action. Is this healthy? Does this not produce stress? And isn’t stress that dreaded thing that breeds sickness and misery?

Perhaps, but I like to think stress, happiness, contentment, anger, desire, all those things that make us human, are not what ultimately prove our undoing. Angry people survive, and the contented die. But we like to think that terms like attitude (Western) and karma (Eastern) can really affect fate’s outcomes. Maybe fate is genetic? And maybe states of mind are like dreams. We like to think they have some bearing on what is, but what is, is, and wishful thoughts, dreams, and attitudes have no bearing on the nature of things.

“The actual tragedies of life bear no relation to one’s preconceived ideas. In the event, one is always bewildered by their simplicity, their grandeur of design, and by that element of the bizarre which seems inherent in them” (Jean Cocteau, “Les Enfants Terribles,” 1929).

As Oscar Wilde would have it, “One of the many lessons that one learns in prison is, that things are what they are and will be what they will be” (“De Profundis,” 1905). But for every Oscar Wilde there’s a Henry Miller, “We talk about fate as if it were something visited upon us; we forget that we create our fate every day we live.” Perhaps Henry, but Edward Dahlberg’s stoic council that “We are ruled by chance but never have enough patience to accept its despotism” makes more sense to me (“Reasons of the Heart,” 1965).

But is there a middle ground between fate and choice? Can the winds of reason shape the randomness of happenstance? Can the existential dread of ceasing to be, be overcome by faith in the illusion that we shape our circumstances? Much as Camus saw Sisyphus as happy in that downhill trudge towards his inescapable task, E. M. Forster saw a glimmer of hope in the star’s rule: “Failure or success seems to have been allotted to men by the stars. But they retain the power of wriggling, of fighting with their star or against it, and in the whole universe the only really interesting movement is this wriggle” (“Abinger Harvest,” 1936).


And what of this “wriggle?” Does this “wriggle” refer to work, contemplation, or fun? And how to we reconcile this with Wilde’s contention that, “To do nothing at all is the most difficult thing in the world, the most difficult and the most intellectual” (“Intentions,” 1891). And how would Wilde respond to Schopenhauer’s dictum that, “Men need some kind of external activity, because they are inactive within” (“Parerga and Paralipomena,” 1851)?


As you can see, the “anger” question generated intractable philosophical questions as old as history: how do fate, determinism, and autonomy figure into the way we live?

“Whoever is not in his coffin and the dark grave let him know he has enough” (Walt Whitman, “Leaves of Grass,” 1855-92).

“No never forget!…Never forget any moment; they are too few”
-- Elizabeth Bowen, “To the North,” 1932

May 29, 2008

UPPER PENINSULA DIARY: SULFIDE MINING ON THE YELLOWDOG & LAND MINING ON THE EUPHRATES

“Since barbarism has its pleasures it naturally has its apologists.”
-- George Santayana, “The Life of Reason,” 1905-6

POLITICS

Recall that the 1997 Ottawa treaty banning land mines, a pact rejected by a small cohort of military powers, including the United States, was meant to protect innocent civilians from harm after the battles were fought. Now comes a Dublin conference proposal that would ban cluster munitions. The term “cluster munitions” refers to aerial guided weapons that contain hundreds of bomblets that remain lethal long after their initial release. They were deployed in the invasion of Iraq in 2003, and by Israel in its temporary occupation of Lebanon in 2006. According to Amnesty International and other Human rights organizations, children playing with these unexploded bomblets account for one in four of the casualties. Countries opposed to the ban include, the US, China, Russia, Israel, India, Pakistan, and Brazil.

Bush administration spokesman, Tom Casey of the state department, said “Cluster munitions have demonstrated military utility…their elimination from US stockpiles would put the lives of our soldiers at risk.” What’s key here is the American moral hierarchy on how human life is valued, positions non-Americans, and, more insidiously, children and civilian lives, as having a lesser worth than us.

Speaking at the Dublin conference on Tuesday, Senator Patrick J. Leahy, the Vermont Democrat, and chairman of the senate Judiciary Committee, said this: “The first task of our next president will be to reintroduce America to the world. We need to reject the ‘Us versus them’ unilateralist approach that has so diminished our image and our leadership.”

What, America’s image, diminished? Preposterous!

THE ENVIRONMENT

UPPER PENINSULA DIARY: SULFIDE MINING ON THE YELLOW DOG PLAINS

The modern sulfide mining process pulverizes solid rock and exposes it to chemical processes that facilitate the extraction of the desired metal. Nickel, for instance. It’s really quite simple, take the nickel and leave the rock. What’s the big deal? Okay, so there’s a big hole in the ground, and it looks bad; but given the small area mined this is a small price to pay for the boon to the surrounding area. Big Bay, for instance.

Here’s the problem. Imagine yourself holding a rock in your hand about the size of a baseball. The exposed area is about 30 square inches. Throw it in a puddle, river, or lake, and what happens? Not much. Slowly, over a long, long period of time the rock will eventually dissolve. Why, because this is nature’s way. Normal chemical reactions erode the rock according to natural physical laws. Mineral bearing ores in solid rock erode slowly, and pose no threat to the environment.


Imagine that same rock, however, crushed into a fine powder. Now we measure the rock’s surface area in acres rather than inches. Also, the normal chemical reactions involving the minerals in the pulverized rock will be greatly accelerated by the manmade alterations to that rock.


In sulfide mining, after the pulverization and extraction of the desired nickel, other problems, like the residues of sulfuric acid and other toxic heavy metals, pose dangers to the environment that aren’t easily predicted. Different animals have varying reactions to
Toxic exposure. Salmon, for instance, die from much lower concentrations of copper than do other animals.

What, you may ask, is the connection between sulfide rock and sulfuric acid? Exposing sulfide rock to air (oxygen) and water (H2O) invariably results in a chemical reaction that produces massive amount of sulfuric acid. Sulfuric acid is used in manufacturing automobile batteries.

One last point: Sulfide mining also requires that massive quantities of other dangerous toxins be shipped in, such as sodium cyanide, which further exacerbates the dangers to the ecosystem. Why, because these toxic carcinogens must be transported in, put to use, and inevitably left behind.

SUGGESTED READING: "The Buzzards Have Landed," Roscoe Churchill with Laura Furtman

Best Regards – Randall the Vandal

PHOTO: Potential child victims of land mines.

May 28, 2008

a pErSoNaL mEsSaGe to MY DeAr FRIENDS

“That man is Happiest
Who lives from day to day and asks no more,
Garnering the simple goodness of a life.”
-- Euripides, “Hecuba,” 425 B.C.

Dear readers:

Some blog facts.

That's my mom in the photo, c. 1953.

Given my lack of cyber savvy, I thought it might be helpful to point out that a CLICK on any of the EMBEDDED IMAGES will ENHANCE them. For example, the photo of my dad and crew in front of their B-24 fills the entire page when clicked upon.

If you read from present to past, I get sicker and sicker.

Some of you have asked about my health. Since I haven’t written on medical matters for a while, here’s some stuff.

On May 19th I had a CT scan that showed no cancer present. Yesterday I had a follow up visit with my Doc. She said my blood work, liver function, etc., were fine. FYI, in terms of liver function (not that I would know anyone who’s been hard on their liver), the biliruben numbers are a critical indicator of how well your gizzard is working. My next visit is in late August.

After spending much time at the UMCC (University of Michigan Cancer Center) in the Fall, this was my first time back in a while. Among the many sights and sounds of the clinic, one that always gives me pause is the arrival of sick prisoners. Yesterday, two armed guards wheeled in a Stryker frame with an inmate so sick that I had to help move him from the prison gurney to a hospital transport. Why do I mention this? In a country where the poor can’t get adequate health care, our prisoners, and, as Michael Moore points out in “Sicko,” those alleged terrorists incarcerated at Guantanamo Bay, receive the best treatment in the world. What this says is this: if you’re poor, commit a crime and go to prison, then you’ll have access to adequate medical care. What’s the message? It’s time for universal health coverage.

Whether it helps or not is anyone’s guess, but my strategy in holding the malignancies at bay is to exercise (daily swimming, weightlifting, and yoga) and limit myself to beer, tequila, and herbal remedies (Tee-Hee). Remember those Suboxone posts? Well, it’s been 114 days since I’ve taken any meds, and that includes anything. No more pills and powders. I’ve put enough chemicals in my body for two lifetimes. My voice and playing are better than ever. I have a passion for everything I do, a passion that’s been missing for years. In this regard, I think of the cancer as an epiphanous experience, a blessing.

Two of my friends died of late, Bill Behnke and Jim Degroot. Bill lived down here, and had suffered mightily for a long time. A couple of years ago FUBAR, George Bedard, and the Macpodz, did a benefit for his family, now he’s gone. Too many cigarettes. His wife Martha has to be out of their long-time family home by July 9. A Texas holding company foreclosed on the property. Just a bit of closure, we’re doing a final benefit for Martha on June 6th, 5:30-8:30 at the Heidelberg in Ann Arbor. One note of interest in all this is the cool LP I found in a dusty stack of albums in their barn. The FUGS, 1966, Ed Sanders, Tuli Kupferberg, and Ken Weaver. Liner notes by Allen Ginsberg, cool.

Greg Mingay shot me an e-mail yesterday, informing me that Jim passed on in Marquette on Monday. Too bad. I remember when he and Jackie lived on the dump road in Big Bay. Jim loved music and was always smiling. Rest in peace, dude. Here’s a shout out to his longtime confederate, Vinnie St. John. Be well, Vinnie.

What else have I got? Oh yeah, here’s another tale from Labby’s garage. You may recall my story about getting out of the draft by telling 'em I was gay. One of my dear friends in the late 60’s who wanted to join up was Al Robertson. Well, Al enlisted and quickly decided the military wasn’t for him. So, he deserted. Knowing we couldn’t stay in Marquette, we headed for Lansing and got jobs on the line at Fisher Body Plant. I hope you never owned one of the Oldsmobile Cutlasses I helped assemble. I think we used glue and baling wire on those sad jalopies. I guess we performed a social service by throwing the business to Japan, and, in turn, forcing the US to get their act together. Anyway, after 3 months, we realized the line wasn’t for us, so back to Marquette we went. We decided to start a group, make it big, and go on to bigger and better things. So, Rob is on the drums, and we’re practicing in his garage. Here come the cops. I think it was Wild Bill Lasich and Levandowski (a real Pig). They pull up, jump out of the cruiser, and say they’re looking for Al Robertson. Knowing they’re going to ID us, I tell 'em I’m Al. With no further ado, they throw me in the car and we head for the cop shop. You can imagine how pissed they were to find out they had the wrong guy. After a lot of bluster and threat, they let me go. Al finally turned himself in. They busted me 2 years later.

Yesterday, on my dog walk behind Pioneer High School, I found a small strip of paper a student had obviously used as a prep sheet for an exam:

“1095-1099 First Crusade

The First Crusade was an attempt to re-capture Jerusalem. After the capture of Jerusalem by the Muslims in 1076, any Christian who wanted to pay a pilgrimage to the city faced a very hard time. Muslim soldiers made life very difficult for the Christians and trying to get to Jerusalem was filled with danger for a Christian. This greatly angered all Christians.”

And so it goes.

May 27, 2008

THE VIETRAQ WAR: FROM TACTICAL TO STRATEGIC ABSURDITY

Oooooo…that smell,
can’t you smell that smell…
the smell of death surrounds you.
-- Lynyrd Skynyrd

Today in class we watched Peter Davis’s 1974 documentary “Hearts and Minds.” Anyone who doesn’t think Iraq is a rerun of Vietnam should watch this film. The cultural construction of a faceless, anonymous ‘other’ fosters an unconscious racism. Recall General William Westmoreland’s now infamous statements: “Well, the Oriental does not put the same high price on life as the Westerner. Life is cheap in the Orient.” Creating this less than human “other” facilitates the demonization necessary to justify a technological war where collateral damage is a non-issue. Perpetuating the idea that those facing the onslaught were racially, and ethnically, expendable, made it much easier to implement ‘Operation Sideshow,’ the illegal bombing of Laos and Cambodia in 1972.

Unlike the Vietnam War, the media presence in Afghanistan and Iraq has been so tightly controlled as to negate any public outcry generated by on the ground reportage. What the graphic war photography of the 60s missed that Davis’s film provided was footage of everyday life in Vietnam. What the public in the present conflict has not been exposed to is representational war photography and media footage of everyday life in Iraq and Afghanistan. This lack of media oversight is, no doubt, what allowed the incidents at Abu Ghraib prison and Haditha to go unnoticed for as long as they did.

What follows are excerpts from an interview between Charles Hawley and David Gordon Smith of the German Magazine, “Der Spiegel” (10/07), and Seymour Hersh.

HERSH: The Surge means basically that, in some way, the president has accepted ethnic cleansing, whether he’s talking about it or not. Wwhen he first announced the Surge in January, he described it as a way to bring parties together. He’s not saying that anymore. I think he now understands that ethnic cleansing is what is going to happen. You’re going to have a Kurdish north. You’re going to have a Sunni area that we’re going to have to support forever, And you’re going to have the Shiites in the south.

SPIEGEL: So the US is over four years into a war that is likely going to end in disaster. How valid are the comparisons to Vietnam?

HERSH: The validity is that the US is fighting a guerilla war and doesn’t know the culture. But the difference is that at a certain point, because of Congressional and public opposition, the Vietnam War was no longer tenable. But these guys don’t care. They see it but they don’t care.

SPIEGEL: If the war does end in defeat for the US, will it leave as deep a wound as the Vietnam War did?

HERSH: Much worse. Vietnam was a tactical mistake. This is strategic. How do you repair damages with whole cultures? On the home front, though, we’ll rationalize it away. Don’t worry about that. Again, there’s no learning curve. No learning curve at all. We’ll be ready to fight another stupid war in another two decades.

SPIEGEL: Of course, preventing that is partially the job of the media. Have reporters been doing a better job recently than they did in the run-up to the Iraq War?

HERSH: Oh yeah. They’ve done a better job since. But back then, they blew it. When you have a guy like Bush who’s going to move the infamous Doomsday Clock forward, and he’s going to put everybody in jeopardy and he’s secretive and he doesn’t tell the Congress anything and he’s inured to what we write. In such a case, we (journalists) become more important. The first amendment failed and the American press failed the Constitution. We were jingoistic. And that was a terrible failing. I’m asked the question all the time: What happened to my old paper, the New York Times? And I now say, they stink. They missed it. They missed the biggest story of the time and they’re going to have to live with it.

Hersh is right, the Times does STINK. Witness the sad fact that they employ William Kristol as a regular columnist.

May 26, 2008

The old Lie: DULCE ET DECORUM EST PRO PATRIA MORI

“I do like to see the arms and legs fly.”
-- Colonel George S. Patton


Futility

Move him into the sun-
Gently its touch awoke him once,
At home, whispering of fields unsown.
Always it woke him, even in France,
Until this morning and this snow.
If anything might rouse him now
The kind old sun will know.

Think how it wakes the seeds-
Woke once the clays of a cold star.
Are limbs, so dear achieved, are sides
Full-nerved, still warm, too hard to stir?
Was it for this the clay grew tall?
-O what made fatuous sunbeams toil
To break earth’s sleep at all?

-- Wilfred Owen, 1918

The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner

From my mother’s sleep I fell into the State,
And I hunched in its belly till my wet fur froze.
Six miles from earth, loosed from its dream of life,
I woke to black flak and the nightmare fighters.
When I died they washed me out of the turret with a hose.

-- Randall Jarrell, 1945

Collateral

Are those wet
red,
blossoming petals mine?
Am I laid-out,
on this glistening wreath?
The next cortege of cordite, burries
a dirge of unanswered questions:
as I take root.
Yet one more poppy.

-- Eric Morrissey
Iraq, December 2004

Bottom row middle, Oliver L. Tessier, Belly Gunner, B-24
(Age 18, 1943)

May 25, 2008

memorial day

MORPHEUS: You have the look of a man who accepts what he sees because he is expecting to wake up. Do you believe in fate, Neo?

NEO: No, because I don’t like the idea that I’m not in control of my life.

MORPHEUS: You’ve felt it all your life, that there’s something wrong with the world. You don’t know what it is, but it's there. The truth.

NEO: What truth?

MORPHEUS: That you are a slave, Neo. Like everyone else you were born into bondage, born into a prison that you cannot smell, or taste, or touch -- a prison for your mind.

In “On the Genealogy of Morals” (1880), Nietzsche writes, “It seems to me that…modern man…resists a really vivid comprehension of the degree to which cruelty constituted the great festival pleasure of primitive men and was indeed an ingredient of almost every one of their pleasures….To see others suffer does one good, to make others suffer even more: this is a hard saying but an ancient, mighty, human, all too human principle to which the apes might subscribe; for it is said that in devising bizarre cruelties they anticipate man and are, as it were, his prelude” (462, Princeton).

How far we had come by 2001. It wasn’t sufficient that our craving for tragedy be met by the spoken word, we had to see it televised: the plane endlessly circling the vast Atlantic, providing the comforting illusion that we knew the spot where our prince of Camelot, JFK Jr., and his beautiful princess, met their demise in a watery grave. And even while we pondered Gary Condit’s role in the disappearance of his comely young intern, we vicariously gawked at the cruel mouth of the Parisian tunnel that swallowed up yet another perfect princess. But media pandering is an insatiable beast. We need more, always more.

So we rent “Faces of Death VII” for the third time and settle back to watch parachutes fail and gruesome car wrecks, then switch to cable and succumb to staged pseudo-realities, like failed cosmetic surgeries and rescued ugly ducklings. But we need more. Our Jackassian pursuit of the absurd is temporarily satisfied by Tom Green pretending a situation where a child seat is thrown from a car top. He positions us as insiders to a cruel joke. We watch the shock in the unsuspecting faces of the terrified onlookers, and then smugly record their horrified reactions to the joke before them. Our eyes are glued to these telegenic pawns, the bit players who feed our need to ride above a mayhem that could never happen here.

“Then I learned that all moral judgments are ‘value judgments,’ that all value judgments are subjective, and that none can be proved to be either ‘right’ or ‘wrong’….There is no ‘reason’ to obey the law for anyone, like myself, who has the boldness and daring—the strength of character—to throw off its shackles.” Nietzsche? Raskolnikov? No, this is from a taped conversation between the serial killer, Ted Bundy, and a court psychiatrist, in which Bundy attempts to justify his murders. For Bundy, all moral values are subjective. Horrifying? Yes. Does Bundy intrigue us? Yes. But why? Is it a coincidence that “Silence of the Lambs” was such big box office when the receipts were tallied at the local metroplex?

And then came 9/11, a televised reality so gruesome that it trumped all that that had come before. In the grimmest of ironies, the only available analogy for the believable happening before our eyes was the unbelievable. Since 9/11 was unprecedented in terms of what had been televised before, we could only compare it to a movie. And even this fell short, in that no comparison would suffice. We turned to fiction to describe the factual. It was a life-event so real that art could never imitate it. And yet we turned to art to explain it. It was like a movie.

9/11 revealed the immediate past as an American fantasy—a time when we were racing headlong toward a precipice we couldn’t see, or perhaps better, didn’t want to recognize. This unpredictable event loosed a violent wheel of fire that has given us Afghanistan, Iraq, and who knows what to come. Should we fail to engage with the ominous significance of where we’re headed, the next abyss we approach may swallow us all.

May Peace be with us on this sad Memorial Day -- RT

May 24, 2008

America's Great Man Whores

“The Bible is a history of wickedness that has served to corrupt and brutalize mankind.”
-- Thomas Paine

I don’t know about you, but next time I buy a car I’m headin’ for Missouri. But unlike Brando in “The Missouri Breaks,” I ain’t wearin’ no dress. I just hope that Max Motors in Butler Mo. keeps their offer open. If you purchase a car you get a free handgun. General manager, Walter Moore, had this to say about the deal, “Down here, we all believe in God, guts and guns.” Praise God!

Speaking of God, finally, there’s someone who knows what she means. That’s right, good ole boy, Johnny Hagee. According to the reverend, Mr. Hitler “operated on God’s behalf” in herding those Jews out of Europe and back to the “promised land.” If only Borat had known about Hagee. Anyway, Hagee says the Holocaust served God’s purpose. So just how exactly was she gonna do this? Simple, as the Bible ordained it, there were fishers and hunters. I guess Hitler wore plaid, “A hunter is someone who comes with a gun and forces you. Hitler was a hunter.”

But don’t blame Hagee, he didn’t say it, God said it. “That will offend some people. Well, dear heart, be offended: I didn’t write it. Jeremiah wrote it [Wasn’t he a bullfrog?]. It was the truth and is the truth. How did it happen? Because God allowed it to happen. Why did it happen? Because God said, ‘my top priority for the Jewish people is to get them to come back to the land of Israel.’”

I think Hagee's strategy was to divert attention away from his calling the Catholic Church the “great whore.” Given the Pope’s stand on abortion, the church better not be a great whore, or any other kind of whore.

Eight years ago, during his unsuccessful presidential primary campaign, John McCain excoriated the Christian right’s Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell as “agents of intolerance” who were an “evil influence” on the Republican Party. I’m glad he’s seen the light. McCain has now rejected the endorsements of two nut jobs that make Robertson and Falwell look like fundamentalist amateurs: Rev. Rod “spare the Rod and spoil the child” Parsley, whose virulent anti-Muslim rants claim that America’s purpose is to see “this false religion destroyed,” and Mr. “hagus eatin” Hagee, the Lord of hate mongering sermonizing.

The pressing question is, what took him so long?

May 23, 2008

"HE IS RICHEST WHO IS CONTENT WITH THE LEAST, FOR CONTENT IS THE WEALTH OF NATURE." - Socrates

ENVIRONMENTALISM

“The universe is wider than our views of it.”
-- Thoreau, From “Walden,” 1854

The human mind shapes the world according to its subjective anthropomorphic prejudices rather than seeing nature as a thing-in-itself. The universe, or natural world, is seen through a prism that constructs the world according to an order and equality that bestows fixed human sensibilities to a fluxive, and randomly chaotic universe. Our perceptions refer to man and not the universe. We generate systems of understanding not objectively, but according to our passion for finding explanations that support those theories we prefer. We find what we look for, and what we look for is dictated by what we want to find. Our beliefs are shaped by a desire for agreement with our abstractions of nature, rather than what nature is. That we see the world in our own image is a convenient way to not see the world at all.

Francis Bacon saw this seeing the world in our own image as a constraint on human knowledge. These constraints led Bacon to formulate his doctrine of the four Idols. One of which is the “idol of the Tribe.” Curtis White describes Bacon’s idol as, “a truth based on insufficient evidence but maintained by a constant affirmation within a tribe of believers”(Harpers, 8/07). Once these systems of belief are in place they are difficult to displace. This difficulty arises from the all too human habit of holding an unquestioning belief in the idea that traditional paradigms automatically make sense. It is as if because they once made sense they will always make sense.

One such belief is that our possibilities as the highest animal are “limitless.” It has long been held that we will always have more, that the environment is self-renewable, and that the perpetuation of “limitlessness” as a viable concept can be sustained by a faith in science and technology. But this long held belief based on “insufficient evidence” is now beginning to rapidly crumble. Concerning this myth of human limitlessness, Wendell Berry writes, “There is now a growing perception, and not just among a few experts, that we are entering a time of inescapable limits. We are not likely to be granted another world to plunder in compensation for our pillage of this one” (Harpers, 5/08).

What Curtis White and Wendell Berry both call for, and what I agree with them on, which may surprise some of my readers, given my strong anti-religious views, is an appeal to a rhetoric of religion and spirituality as a way of thinking about the environment. White and Berry cite American Transcendentalism (Emerson and Thoreau), Christopher Marlowe’s “Faustus,” the Bible’s “Exodus,” Milton’s “Paradise Lost,” Dante’s “Divine Comedy,” and Shakespeare’s “King Lear, as alternative ways of seeing our relationship to nature.

But within the secular post-enlightenment zeitgeist that surrounds us inheres a deep suspicion of spiritual discourse. As a result, as White puts it, “we are forced to resort to what is in fact a lower common denominator—the language of Science and bureaucracy. These languages have legitimacy in our culture, a legitimacy they possess largely because of the thoroughness with which they discredited Christian religious discourse in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries” (Harpers, 8/07).

In White’s view, environmentalism must shed its unquestioning belief that the language of science can save us. In a similar fashion, Berry believes that, “To deal with the problems, which after all are inescapable, of living with limited intelligence in a limited world, I suggest that we may have to remove some of the emphasis we have lately placed on science and technology and have a new look at the arts. For an art does not propose to enlarge itself by limitless extension but rather to enrich itself within bounds that are accepted prior to the work.” (Harpers, 5/08) White, like Berry, calls for an expansion of environmental discourse to include a spiritual rhetoric that demands “a recognition of the mystery, the miracle, and the dignity of things, from frogs to forests, simply because they are” (Harpers, 8/07).

May 22, 2008

FICTION


Torrents of sleeting rain began to fall as Dr. Alan Olsen reviewed the medical records from the Petoskey Clinic. A nurse read from the charts. "This is a six-year-old girl diagnosed with marrow failure brought on by myelodysplasia or aplastic anemia. Doctors from upstate recommend that she receive a bone-marrow transplant as soon as possible." Olsen frowned. His examination of the marrow biopsy confirmed Dr. Hackman's findings that Nicole Merryweather's marrow was severely depleted of cells, thoroughly scarred, and inadequate to the production of healthy blood; but Olsen had a radically different opinion on the cause of her condition. Examining the specimen under low magnification, Olsen had discovered that the few marrow cells he had found were atypical in terms of the characteristic features of aplastic anemia. They also lacked the telltale distortions associated with myelodysplasia. In departing from Hackman's diagnosis, Olsen believed that factors extrinsic to the marrow's stem cells were inhibiting Merryweather's capacity to produce viable blood. Olsen found her marrow cells to be healthy.

Olsen called Dr. Hackman. "Well I'm sorry to say I disagree, Paul Hackman said, courteously but unequivocally. "Your hospital may be world famous, but the senior man up here is as seasoned a pathologist as there is in the mid-west. I've tracked the Merryweather girl for 6 months. The longer the transplant is put off, the dicier it gets. She needs aggressive treatment, and she needs it immediately." I've seen enough severe marrow failure to know it’s lethal--a fatal disease. Listen, Olsen, her situation is critical, it requires radical intervention, implemented swiftly and in no uncertain terms. She is in desperate circumstances."

Olsen paused. His years of training had taught him to be skeptical of having an undying faith in technology. While this sensibility ran counter to his clinical training, years of practice had shown him the wisdom of a cautious approach. "Hackman, I will advise Merryweather's guardians to hold off on the transplant." After a slight hesitation, Hackman coldly advised Olsen that he could no longer be responsible for the patient's outcome.

After hanging up, Olsen ordered a high dose of growth factors to boost Nicole's blood counts. She was given G-CSF, the white cell growth factor, and erythropoietin, a red-cell growth factor. Olsen knew there was a risk of sparking full-blown leukemia, but this was a chance he was willing to take. For 10 days, Nicole Merryweather hovered near death with a raging pneumonia. Then the growth factor therapy began to take hold. Her white cell count slowly began to resist te invading bacteria, and the infections that had plagued her for the last year slowly abated. Finally, after a week of terrible uncertainty, Nicole was taken off of the respirator.

3 weeks later, Nicole had lost 15 pounds and was too weak to walk without assistance. But there was no sign of acute leukemia, and she was allowed to leave the hospital. Slowly, Nicole Merryweather's energy returned. She put on weight and regained her appetite. By early October it was apparent that Nicole was cured.

On that cool leaf-blown autumn day, Nicole realized the benefit of the second opinion Don Merryweather had so badly sought for his daughter. There is an irony in the fact that, although they never made it to St. Ignace, the drive had saved her. As fate would have it, her father's death delivered Nicole to a Doctor that proved to be her salvation. She was destined for greater things.

May 21, 2008

NATURAL BORN KILLERS

“The American people, taking one with another, constitute the most sniveling, poltroonish, ignominious mob of serfs and goose-steppers ever gathered under the flag in Christendom since the end of the Middle Ages.”
-- H. L. Mencken, “Prejudices,” 1922


“In Huckabee Joke, Gun Aims at Obama

By Elisabeth Bumiller
and Sarah Wheaton

LOUISVILLE, Ky. –Mike Huckabee, the former Arkansas governor, was known for his sense of humor on the presidential campaign trail, but on Friday he startled listeners with his latest improvisation, an imagined gun pointed at Senator Barack Obama. Speaking at the annual convention of the National Rifle Association here, Mr. Huckabee, a Republican, was interrupted by a loud noise from backstage. ‘That was Barack Obama,’ he said. ‘He just tripped off a chair. He’s getting ready to speak and somebody aimed a gun at him and he – he dove for the floor.’” (New York Times, Saturday, May 17, 2008)

What a card. I mean that is so funny. Ha! Ha! The article went on to say that “his remark prompted some murmurs from the crowd.” Wow, murmurs from this crowd? Even these rubes can recognize an unconscionable remark by an educated, well maybe, idiot. But it shouldn’t be surprising that a man of ignorance can run for president, since our brave Commander-in-Chief at present fits this profile to a T. Move over Alfred E. Newman; “what, me worry,” or should I say, “not so curious,” George is at your service.

The Ann Arbor News reported yesterday that one of Michigan’s proudest sons, Erik Prince, founder of Blackwater Worldwide was in Grand Rapids “to shed some light Monday on the activities of his company, which is being investigated following a deadly September shooting that left 17 Iraqi civilians dead, saying [Blackwater] hadn’t lost a client in more than 18,000 personal-security missions.” Since we all know that non-Americans don’t count as human beings, it’s good to know no one has died on Blackwater’s watch.

I’m surprised the patriot in Prince didn’t move him to fly a squadron of jumbo transports into Louisville. He could’ve loaded up the Huckabee (sounds like a good name for the next line of Hum-vees, yea, that’s it, the Hucker, soon we’ll all be driving ‘em, maybe the hybrid Hucker, or, mother hucker) and the rest of those gun-toting flag wavers and dropped ‘em off in Anbar province. Problem is, these drugstore cowboys might have a problem with an enemy that wants to die. That’s a difference these John Wayne, Hollywood wannabees don’t seem to understand. While they may be WILLING to die for their country, these guys WANT to die for Allah. Praise God!

The News went on to say “Security was particularly tight for the [Grand Rapids] event.” What’s the deal? Did this coward think he would be attacked by a cell of peaceniks wielding thorny snap dragons? Or perhaps he feared an assault on his flank by a brigade of Tiny Tims manning scalding cappuccino catapults.

When asked about the Sept 16th shooting deaths of the civilians, Prince had this to say,” “If we don’t serve our customers they fire us.” It’s the American way, people, the customer's always right. You’ll love this, when asked to show compelling evidence that Blackwater is not a “cloak-and-dagger operation with something to hide,” Prince’s response was, “The idea that we are a secretive facility and nefarious is just ridiculous.” Okay Eric, we believe you.

As soon as the same-sex wedding ban is overturned in Michigan, I think Eric Prince and Richard Thomas should get married. The newlyweds could honeymoon at Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore.

May 20, 2008

iNtErvieW WiTh mYsELf

“The human race is a race of cowards: and I am not only marching in that procession but carrying a banner.”
-- Mark Twain

I: I spoke with someone at the gym yesterday who she said she was unsure of what was going on in some of your interviews. She wanted to know if there were really people like Buster Hackaloogie, Toivo Beefeater, and Ed Gein. And further, if the interviewer was really you, or representative of your views?

RT: I guess you could call me an existential ironist. What this means is, for better or for worse, I find humor in everything. Sometimes the laughs are joyous, sometimes grim, and sometimes sad, but life is funny. We get up knowing we will eventually suffer and die, yet we find our merry way through the day. This is cool, and, because our demise is inevitable, should be embraced. Lenny Bruce, Bill Hicks, Mark Twain, Stephen Colbert, those South Park guys, these are my philosophical heroes. So it follows that my “Me” narrator adopts these hilarious personas as a way of poking fun at the human condition. One aspect of that condition is ignorance. Satire is a way of using ignorance to fight ignorance, sort of like a stupidity vaccine. As an aesthetic exercise in creative writing, constructing layers of representation--framing a conversation between a moderately intelligent right wing narrator and a totally moronic boob—is great fun. And while it may come as a shock to some of my readers insulated by living in the Ann Arbor, Zardoz bubble, yes, there really are people like this. Next question.

I: One of your girlfriends’ friends was offended that you compared her optical handicap to a Cyclops, do you see this as over the top, or pushing the envelope?

RT: The Cyclops entry, which is based on an actual near fatal collision we had, is, in my humble estimation, one of the funniest posts on the blog. One trick I’ve learned from Twain is to never place yourself above your own criticism. We’re all bozos on this bus, so why pretend otherwise. I’m not a show dog, but I don’t tailgate. She does look at the passenger rather than the road when she drives, ask Jimcee. I am a Samurai of the superficial. And yes, she does have ear-vision. So there, Kelly (get well soon).

I: One of your readers was appalled that you would post personal letters to and from Trainee T.. Their feeling is that you’ve breached privacy boundaries--and I hear you’re an expert on this--that should be inviolate.

RT: I think the correspondences I selected are particularly moving in what they say about love and relationship in trying times. My daughter was in prison boot camp while I was undergoing chemo for a cancer. Our outcomes were equally uncertain. Fall was rough. But this blog gave me a chance to share my sorrows and elations with others. It gave voice to my solitary hope and anguish. I think of it as free therapy. Sharing the isolation of Trainee T.s’ confinement, and my solitude of pain and joy, has been a great help.

I: What about those Nancy stories? Did you really write her dissertation?

RT: Every word of it. But first let me say that all of these blog-tales are firmly grounded in truth. Sometimes I conflate disparate real experiences into a single narrative thread, but what happened is based on real people, places, and events. No, the kids weren’t building al-Jazeera 9/11 modeling kits, and yes I chaperoned a middle-eastern group of kids to Cedar Point just days after 9/11, an interesting story, and one that becomes something more once you make it funny. The character who confronts Pickles is my brother, the invented niece is my daughter, and the guy that goes to jail is me, not Me. Indian Joe, in the cabin story, was an actual pedophile in Marquette around 1970, and the facts were accurate. Although French tells me it wasn’t a case of Pabst, but rather Phieffer G.I.Q.s.

I: Okay, but those Nancy stories often have a misogynistic, sexist tone. What’s the deal with that?

RT: I’m not sure of what to say here. Had you been a fly on the wall at our meetings, you might understand the low humor in my descriptions. What I wanted to convey, in as hilarious a way as possible, was the idea that someone who is functionally illiterate can secure a professorial position in higher education. All it takes is money. Of course, there is also a veiled indictment of a system that has become based on the model of a corporate cash cow. Because Nancy is a pseudonym for the person I actually helped, I took the liberty of giving her the Andrew Dice Clay treatment. All apologies.

I: What about the academic stuff, medical research, news reports, and other miscellaneous weirdness that appears?

RT: One of the positives of falling ill was the impetus it gave me to write, to start a blog. I have Brigitte to thank for this. She encouraged me to write as an outlet for my fears, uncertainties, frustrations, and opinions. But what started out as a form of personal catharsis, quickly took on a life of its own. In the beginning I hoped to share what I found out about cancer (lymphoma) with others that might benefit from the information. But as I picked up readers along the way, it became a stage: a place to show off my intellectual sophistication, wit, and general knowledge of the world, but above all else, a political forum where I could expose people like Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter, and champion those like Michael Moore and Jack Kevorkian. So, it really morphed into something different than a pathography (illness memoir). I think the appeal of the blog is its unpredictability. I’ve made a conscious effort to mix academic writing with satire with fiction with memoir with medical research, as a way of keeping the reader guessing, and hence coming back to see what the hell kind of craziness is coming next.

I: What do you see as the blog’s greatest weakness?

RT: I guess I would have to say the excerpts from my unfinished attempt to write a mass-market novel. I usually try to flag these posts with the “fiction” warning.

I: So, where are you going, and where have you been?

RT: Given that I’ve had 12,484 hits as of 2 minutes ago (The blog has been up for 9 months), I feel I have a duty to my readership. The more it’s read, the more obsessive I become about coming up with something interesting.

I: One final question, who is your readership?

RT: I get hits from all over the world. But I have a core readership of Yoopers and former Yoopers.

I: Thanks for speaking with me.

RT: It’s been my pleasure.

May 19, 2008

THE SKI-DOOS LIVE! ("Neap," 9/11, and that Sad day after)

THE SKI-DOOS LIVE! (“Neap,” 9/11, and the Sad day after)

Just before I was asked (told) to leave town in 1971, the Ski-doos were in their heyday. In some ways, I think the Ski-doos thought of themselves as a Captain Beefheartish, U.P., alt-Detroit-garage band whose mission was to counter the pretentious, long-winded, cliché, protest jam band that reigned as “the” hippie band in Marquette from 69-71. If Zappa was right, that every town must have a place where phony hippies meet, it was the Walrus (I was a member of the band) that played those psychedelic dungeons. Way before the think globally, act locally, liberal dictum held sway, the Ski-doos were writing crazy songs like “Action 8,” and “The Prom,” that parodied small town parochialism and terrorist greasers, “Eddie’s Lookin’ Fer Ya.” Writing songs about the absurd, sometimes surreal, people and events that made up the Marquette experience, they were really a low-budget performance art band that featured Rabelaisian lower body humor lyrics, and spontaneous drunken dance routines. They were a breath of fresh air that blew over most people’s heads. I wish I had known Sudsy better then. I think my wiseass ways and his ironic persona would have been a good fit. Of course, the Walrus’ pseudo hipness, a blind spot we never could overcome, always prevented us from achieving what really counts, and what the Ski-doos always were--COOL!

Date:
Fri, 16 May 2008 21:42:17 -0700 [05/17/2008 12:42:17 AM EDT]
From:
Robert Glantz
To:
rlt@umich.edu
Subject:
Re: Rob Labby Memorial Page

Randy

I read your post about Rob’s films. You’re right; Neap is an absurd morality play in which the greaser played Steve Pomeroy gets his comeuppance from a couple of other cartoon characters. Peter Balwinski, the guy in the straw hat, is the archetypal techno-wimp, the AV Club president who always gets pushed around by testosterone- and-Pabst fueled greaseball. After being humiliated by Steve, Peter then pleads before a blue-screened temple. His prayers, if you will, are directed to an avenging god. And they’re answered by the appearance of an alien in a papier mache “spacehat.” Played by Danny Belmore, the alien produces two small rockets, the Alpha and the Omega.

It’s Revelation 1:8, Yooper-style: “I am Alpha and Omega,
the beginning and the ending, saith the Lord.” The bombs fall, the world ends. The AV Club prevails.

It’s cartoonish as all get-out, but prescient in a weird, Labby-esque sort of way when you consider that Rob slipped into terminal dementia on Sept. 11, 2001. The guy went out watching the ultimate special effects sequence on TV, the twin towers exploding in flames, from his home hospice bed. He died the following day, Sept. 12, about ten hours before I was scheduled to land in Green Bay to visit him.

Meanwhile, I also read your post about your troubles with Pickles, et al. I hope the hell the snub-nosed .38, Oxycontin and methadone are from your checkered past. Not that I’m anti-gun. I have the Glock 19 on the desk as I type this. It’s usually in the gun safe, but I break it apart and hide the pieces around the property whenever I leave town. Nor am I anti-dope. But the combination of the two can lead to trouble. You know what I mean. Keep the dream and yourself alive.

Sudsy

May 18, 2008

Robert Glantz

“We are the Ski-doos, we do as we choose.”
-- Sudstermaki, 2013

“No! No! No! No! “We are just a band, we do what we can.”

I think I wrote that, much cooler, hipper, more FUCKING profound.

“I’m mad as hell, and I’m not gonna take it anymore.”

That’s either Bob Dylan or Peter Finch, or, Howard Beach.

FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFuck it!!!!!!!!

Uh-oh, I’m starting to sound like Herzog’s version of “Grizzly Man.”

Anyway, my chemobrain is kickin up its heels, silver heels at that, Chemosabe.

I’ve got a big problem. Charlton Heston keeps channeling me from Heaven, or Hell, or Purgatory, or wherever the Limbo he is. Boy, am I clueless, I thought it was supposed to be the other way around.

What this means, is that I need a, let me see, one, no two, day vacation.

So move over Rover, and let Sudsy take over! (Foxy Man - doo-doo-doo,doo,-doo)

Date:
Sat, 17 May 2008 12:53:08 -0700 [05/17/2008 03:53:08 PM EDT]
From:
Robert Glantz
To:
rlt@umich.edu
Subject:
Re: Coulter, etc.

Randy,

Sure. Please feel free to use any of this e-mail chain on the blog or wherever. I'd be honored.

Regarding the Coultergeist, I saw your pickup of my letter to the Mining Journal. Way cool. After learningthat NMU had booked Coulter, I worked myself into a lather, sending out a flurry of letters to various people and organizations. Here's an April 12th letterI sent to Morris Dees with a copy to the president of Enema U:

Mr. Morris Dees
Southern Poverty Law Center
400 Washington Avenue Montgomery, AL 36104

Dear Mr. Dees,

Thank you for your team’s ongoing efforts to teach tolerance in this great nation of ours. And thank you for your personal courage to take out more than a few bad apples with civil litigation. Like balky mules, they tend to pay attention when you smack them in the wallet with a 2x4. To help with your efforts, I am increasing my donation this year by sending you money that might otherwise go to my alma mater, Northern Michigan University. At a time when tolerance is needed more than ever, NMU is spending $23,000 to engage the services of Ann Coulter as a speaker. I support free speech and believe that universities should encourage open, honest and vigorous discussion and debate of all ideas and issues. But I am appalled that the university would give a pulpit and thus its implicit endorsement to a speaker whose public record shows her to be, among other things, an anti-Semite, a misogynist and an advocate of terrorism. (“My only regret with Timothy McVeigh is he did not go to the New York Times Building.") Ms. Coulter has made a career of fostering hatred, fear and division among people of different religions, races and political views. Four decades after the murder of Dr. Martin Luther King, those are not values that any university should be transmitting to its students and the world at large

Enclosed please find my donation in the amount of$X,XXX. Three generations of my family worked their way through NMU. To a person, we are ashamed of our alma mater’s actions in this matter. I promise to do what I can to encourage other Northern alumni to send their dollars south to the Southern Poverty Law Center.

Sincerely, Robert G. Glantz
cc: Dr. Leslie E. Wong, President, Northern Michigan University

I posted the Dees letter and some other ramblings to the NMU alumni website, including this snippet of a book review from the San Francisco Chronicle:

Re: Ann Coulter at NMU

Coulter, Huffington writes, is "the right-wing punditry's equivalent of crack or crystal meth. She's highly addictive - giving users the delirious, giddy high of outrageousness. But then the buzz wears off and they come crashing down, their spirits shriveled, their souls poisoned." - - -

Book review: Arianna Huffington on the 'lunaticfringe' By Joe Garofoli, San Francisco Chronicle Staff Writer Saturday, April 26, 2008

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/04/26/DDG910BH8F.DTL&type=books

Apr 27 08 5:57 am - - - Back to guns, drugs and typewriters for a minute, given that you are a prof at U of M, I didn't think it likely that you were strung out on hillbilly heroin. But looking back 20 or 30 years, many of us are so lucky that we dodged the bullet. I see some poor lost soul stumbling along on Sixth Street, our wino alley, and I think how easily I could be in his shoes today. Life is fragile, fortune is fleeting. Beyond that, we lucky ones have to keep up the good fight to share our collective good fortune with those who start out life with fewer chances than we've enjoyed. In the words of that famous newspaper guy(whose name I'm too lazy to look up), we have to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable. You have a good running start at it with your blog.

Keep slugging.

Pax,Sudsy

May 17, 2008

tHe LaKe oF fiRe

“And the devil that deceived them was cast into the lake of fire and brimstone where the beast and false prophet are, and shall be tormented day and night for ever and ever.”
-- The Bible

“The California Supreme Court, striking down two state laws that had limited marriages to unions between a man and a woman, ruled on Thursday that same-sex couples have a constitutional right to marry.” (5/16/08 NYTimes)

What sorry times we live in. How can we give fornicators and Sodomites constitutional shelter? The Bible strictly forbids homosexuality. It’s a perversion and a sin. Of course, what would you expect of California? Its cities are infested with degenerates of every stripe. It’s no accident that God’s wrath was first directed at San Francisco. That the Gay Plague began there is God’s will. As a man of the cloth and eminent theologian, I thought it best to solicit an opinion from a layman, a common man. And so I, Father St. Jezebel, sought out and interviewed Toivo Beefeater, a pasty miner from Baraga, and staunch anti-abortion advocate.

FSJ: Mr. Beefeater, what’s your opinion on the constitutionality of same-sex marriage?

TB: The what?

FSJ: You know, should two men be allowed to marry?

TB: That ain’t right! They’re sure goin to hell, and they’ll be swimming with scaly serpents in the lake of fire. It’s like a sea of volcanic lava with people in it. Satan’s gonna barbecue 'em good, and there’ll be a host of demons serenading 'em with them rap songs and other devil music. It never ends, dontcha know. Just burnin and howlin and knashin teeth. That’s what it sounds like down there. And it’s forever, which is a real long time. They might get away with that filth here, but not after the rapture.

FSJ: What’s the rapture?

TB: That’s when everybody, ya know, the sinners, gets outta their graves and start howling for salvation, like them Orks in that Hobbit movie. Then God comes down and sends 'em to Hell. All the good people go to Heaven.

FSJ: What, Mr. Beefeater, is Heaven like?

TB: In Heaven, everybody’s happy. And the best part is Jesus is there.

FSJ: I know you think abortion is abominable, but what about birth control?

TB: They’re murderin sea men.

FSJ: Well, I think you mean semen -- that’s the fluid the sperm swims around in. One of the sins men commit is getting a vasectomy. This is a perversion of man’s purpose on earth, to go forth and multiply.

TB: No, sea men. The way I heard, these little sea men, what yer callin sperm (ain’t that a whale?), swim around lookin for eggs. When they find 'em, they cubate 'em inta little tiny babies, so small ya can’t see 'em. Say’s in the Bible it’s a sin to spill yer seed on the ground, too. Do that, and yer murderin sea men. Sectomies, same thing -- white stuff's there, but it ain’t baby batter. Ya gotcher gun, but it’s shootin blanks.

FSJ: And if that’s the case, those who sodomize each other for pleasure are twice sinners. They are fallen homosexuals, and wasters of God’s precious seeds.

TB: I don’t know bout all that, but it ain’t right, period. Baby killers and queers are goin to hell, and they’ll end up like the guy in the picture.

May 16, 2008

Autonomy, Dignity, and Contingency

“’Faith. n. Belief without evidence, in what is told by one who speaks without knowledge, of things without parallel.”
-- Ambrose Bierce, “The Devils Dictionary,” 1881 - 1911

Here is an excerpt from an essay by Leon R. Kass. Kass is one of a group of scholars assembled by the current administration to investigate policy decisions involving the ethical implications of biomedical research. This council, created in 2001 by George W. Bush, named the 555 page report, “Human Dignity And Bioethics.” It was published this Spring.

“Worst of all from this point of view are those more uncivilized forms of eating, like licking an ice cream cone—a catlike activity that has been made acceptable in informal America but that still offends those who know eating in public is offensive….Eating on the street is offensive—even when undertaken, say, because one is between appointments and has no other time to eat—displays [a] lack of self-control: it beckons enslavement to the belly….Lacking utensils for cutting and lifting to the mouth, he will often be seen using his teeth for tearing or chewing portions, just like an animal….This doglike feeding, if one must engage in it, ought to be kept from public view, where, even if we ‘feel’ no shame, others are compelled to witness our shameful behavior.” (excerpt from Steven Pinker's article "The Stupidity of Dignity" in The New Republic, 5/28/98)

But what is ‘dignity’? That individual freedom must be respected is the hallmark of a working democracy. Since all of us share the capacity to experience pain and happiness, and to think and choose, it follows that individual rights, contingent on a respect for others, is intrinsic to an enlightened society. Personal autonomy, as a concept, is separate from the issue of dignity.

Why, because ‘dignity’ is a slippery term. Having a woman enclosed in a burqa with caged eyeholes is considered ‘dignified’ in some cultures. The Victorians thought it undignified for a woman to show an exposed ankle. The point here is that dignity is historically and culturally contingent. If dignity were an absolute, sacred value, how would we negotiate doctors’ visits (digital rectal exams), sexual interactions (fellatio and cunnilingus), travel (airline frisks), and gyms (mutual, and often unsightly, nakedness)?

Writing in “The New Republic” (5/28/08), Steven Pinker, Johnstone Professor of Psychology at Harvard, had this to say about dignity: ”We read that slavery and degradation are morally wrong because they take someone’s dignity away. But we also read that nothing you can do to a person, including enslaving or degrading him, can take his dignity away.”

We like to think ‘dignity’ is a sacrosanct value that should never be compromised. Wrong. Religious fundamentalism and totalitarianism base their authoritarianism exactly on the premise that they uphold the dignity of their citizens. Appeals to the dignity of this or that ideology are fundamental to secular and religious repression. Consider the caning some years ago of the American graffiti artist by the Indonesian government, or Kim Il Jong’s decree that all North Koreans conform to a rigid dress code. Dignity certainly has a place in one’s individual moral value system, but its claims are not, nor should they be, universal. Dignity is relative to subjective judgment. So, is malt slurping, beer swilling, smelly farting, and loud burping, something we need to police?

The report is heavily laden with Christian doctrine. This should give us pause. Kass’s essay relies on the divine authority of the Bible as evidence of why we should respect human life. He also quotes Aldous Huxley’s “Brave New World” as gospel in decrying the inherent dangers of bioethical progress. What this amounts to is citing fictions as secondary sources in arguing against the idea that individuals have the right to control their own bodies. If Kass wants to believe in the literal truth of scripture, that’s fine, but these kinds of private beliefs have no place in twenty-first-century public decisions on government biomedical policies.

At the heart of this is the question of whether life is a possession or gift. Kass sees a “mortal danger” in the idea that individual citizens should be able to do whatever they choose with their bodies. The idea that life is a gift rather than possession has long been an issue in the euthanasia debate. Citing Kant’s idea that individual autonomy has a duty to treat humanity as an end-in-itself, the argument is that this duty precludes suicide, abortion, and the taking of human life in general. And this sensibility should be honored. But while we should respect those who choose to see their existence as an episode in a larger scheme of things, the counter idea that personal autonomy implies a right to choose what we do with our own bodies should be equally respected.
Whether we have an immaterial soul or not should be immaterial in an enlightened society.

May 15, 2008

The 20th Hijacker

“You’re not drunk if you can lie on the floor without holding on.”
-- Dean Martin

NEWS ON THE MARCH

“Susan J. Crawford, Convening Authority, a title given the Pentagon official who oversees war crimes, dismissed the charges against one of the detainees charged with the 9/11 attacks. The alleged Saudi terrorist, Mohammed al-Qahtani, was held in secret CIA prisons before being transferred to Guantanamo in 2006. Pentagon officials described his treatment as “degrading and abusive." His case was dismissed ‘without prejudice.’” (NYTimes, 5/14/08)

All we did was force em to wear a bra and a leash while we made em perform a few pooch tricks. What’s wrong with that? If it’s good enough for Shadow, it’s good enough for Sheik Turban Boy. Shadow likes her doggie bras. Why, because they’re edible, made a dried pig ears.

Don’t that just frost your but? They let em go, the guy who’s the 20th hijacker, scot free. I guess that means were back to 19 Jihadis. What kind of number is that? It’s like in that movie, no one’s gonna buy seven minute abs, it’s eight minute abs. Fact is, I know where number 20s’ hidin out. My buddy, Hackaloogie, say he’s the guy that hijacked our civil liberties, whatever they are, our economy, that’s money, our health care, that’s doctorin, and our young sons and daughters, must be an abortionist. He said try Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington D.C.. What country’s that in?

Is there no God? Have we no shame! This Godless Sodom where unborn babies are being slaughtered daily will pay for its sins. The last judgment's coming, and when it does those little chopped up baby parts are gonna reassemble and throw us sinners in the lake of fire. Praise God and repent now!

I’ll tell you what scares me -- Charlton Heston’s gonna be there, and he’s gonna force the damned to eat that soylent green jello. Hey, Ann Arborites (that’s code for Sodomites) might just eat it. Why, cos it’s got soy in it (Can I get that at ‘Whole Foods?’).

You know, they auctioned off Chucky’s stuff today. Yep, the faux granite tablets he cradled in “The Ten Commandments,” his five-piece Ben-Hur outfit (which I propose be given to the Charlton Heston of rock), everything’s up for sale, over a thousand items. Say what, the Charlton Heston of rock? That’s right, we’ve got the King of rock-n-roll, the Godfather and Prince of funk, and the Queen of Soul, so why not the Charlton Heston of Rock!

I propose we get a clue from them West Virginians, they’re real Americans. They may not like women, but these banjo playin deliverance voters know white people when they see em. God bless the caller who told Victoria Switzer, a retired social studies teacher (I hate them socialists) manning an Obama phone bank, “Hang that darky from a tree.”

I noticed some a you readers are takin yer time and writin real good. Praise God!

God Bless America – mE

PS: That’s not Me on the Right.

May 14, 2008

alL tHe siGHtS wEreN't iN tHE pAraDe

“Men have never been good, they are not good, they never will be good.”
-- Karl Barth, 1954

What follows was written in the late nineties. The [Bracketed] asides were written this morning.

Cabin Days

Phil liked to sleep in the basement. The fact that the broken water pipes had flooded it to the point that the legs were encased in 6 inches of ice never seemed to bother him. At the time, his psychosis was perceived as a kind of cool iconoclasm rather than small tragedy. Only later, when his return to town coincided with a series of unsolved rapes, did I suspect an awful truth about him.

That affectations of character are less markers of identity than masks that obscure an honest glimpse of the self seems obvious in retrospect. We couldn’t know at the time that out convictions and prejudices had less to do with the times we grew up in than who, or better perhaps, when, we were. In short, our youthful naivete had more to do with moral shortsightedness than politics. The notion that difference is always good is as historically intractable as its counter myth [This is questionable, hasn’t ‘difference’ always been a source of suspicion?], that deference to the collective is the most sublime expression of ethical awareness. But what person ever reveled in their anonymity?

So Phil’s madness was cool. Now he was back, surrounded by chaos and hounded by insanity. I was Phil’s best friend in those days of icy dreams. We would hitchhike to the city and steal albums. Upon returning to Marquette, we would sell them to our friends. Our method of subsistence, petty crime, was nothing new; but it was peculiar to the Sixties [No it wasn’t, many so-called hippies were self-styled rip-offs]. We foraged in the early morning. Following the milk truck on its appointed rounds we would steal [stole] cottage cheese and juice; thus sustaining the delusion we were modern day vagabond Robin Hoods.

I can’t speak for Phil, but I fancied myself a provider; but of what, and for whom? Well, for Bruce and Kim, and John and Natalie, and Cathy and Sandy. You see, they were occupants, or better, denizens, of the cabin, dwellers rather than inhabitants. Seeing that their minds and bodies were fed was as noble a purpose as I could muster at 17. Trouble was, like all defenders of the faith, I confused protection with direction, and tolerance with prescription.

Projecting one’s values onto others is, after all, the first step in applying what Buber describes as an I – it relationship to what should be an I and Thou world. Too philosophical? To be sure. But remember, dear reader, my limited experience as a writer precludes that style of savviness that expresses itself in the wizened bard as the capacity to imagine a world apart from their prejudices. One might suspend their disbelief, but never their values [Bullshit]. But what are the dangers of prescription? Consider this story.

Three years after those cabin days, sitting at the bar in the Sportsman Tavern, I overheard a stranger to my left remark that his cousin, Charlie Potatoes, had been picked up for questioning in connection with a series of unsolved rapes in the Marquette area. As he tipped the shell, I noticed the middle fingers of his right hand were missing. Suddenly that sensation of hyper-awareness that accompanies the realization of our worst fears, a feeling that now overwhelmed me, brought forth a memory of our last meeting.

The cabin was nestled amid the stumps at the end of a cul-de-sac on the Dead River basin. It was down this lonely lane that Bruce and Joe came, staggering drunk and with a case of Pabst. Notwithstanding the fact that our grinding poverty was self-imposed, we viewed their arrival as a windfall, a stroke of good fortune. After thanking Joe, we proceeded to get pie-eyed. As I got drunker, my self-appointed stewardship, no doubt some inherent, and insidious, male trait, a masculine quality of character essential to the curse of patriarchy, perceived Joe’s generosity as a threat rather than boon.

Suddenly, my egalitarian ideals, like inclusiveness and tolerance, were displaced by a rush of reptilian superiority. I began to notice a certain affection between Bruce and Joe. Such are the sins of pseudo-enlightenment. Now witness how cruel irony ensues when the homophobic beast rears its ugly head.

Under the influence, my revolutionary ethic was no match for a lifetime of learned prejudices. “You can’t see God with a dick in your mouth,” I snarled. The room froze. Think tableau. Uh-oh? Joe began to mutter softly: “So what, I’m and Indian! So what!” As his voice got louder, it took on a tone menace, of threat. Having far more integrity than I, Joe grabbed the remaining beer and got up to leave. Slamming my foot down on the case, I coldly told him that the beverage would stay. While feinting a move that said, “I’m leaving,” he grabbed an empty jumbo and smashed it against the wall. With the crown of glassy shards firmly in hand, Joe was now a wrathful Jeremiah wreaking havoc on the scourge of the Ojibway.

How quickly I recognized the menacing perfection of this chingichcookian throat cutter! Mayhem commenced, and panic ensued. But not in Joe’s mind. With graceful precision, he wheeled and grabbed Bruce, pinning his neck against the wall between his pinkie and index finger. Joe’s angry mutilator now hovered over Bruce’s tender white face. I shrank, my diminution swift and inexorable. On an epic scale, in terms of Twentieth century pop-culture, I felt like Mick Jagger at Altamont. I looked at Joe, he looked at me, and I was afraid, very afraid. We scattered.

That is to say, we quickly exhausted the possibilities of where one might scatter in a one-room shack. I immediately barricaded myself in the closet-like cubicle that passed for a kitchen. The rest, John, Natalie, Cathy, and Kim, locked themselves in the bathroom; the site of an ungodly stench so overwhelming as to instantly cause an uncontrollable fit of gagging. This undoubtedly had to do with our decision to drop the lid and close the door once we discovered the toilet no longer worked. At some point in the chaos, Bruce broke free and ran out the door. As he disappeared into a heavy northern squall, I cautiously peered out through the yellowed blinds, squinting with a kind of cowardly hesitation born of willful ignorance.

At that time, I heard Phil was in town, staying at either the Brunswick or Jansen hotels. He had san-paku eyes: dark and round, mesmerizing and penetrating, sometimes menacing. A composite Marilyn Manson, Rasputin visage might aptly describe him. His hair was black, and he wore it in the fashion of Einstein, or Dylan. His lips were small and tightly, perpetually pursed. His every word was uttered in such a way that it took the form of an unanswerable question; of a profound uncertainty that doubted not the intent, or better, content, of language, but its very relevance as a concept—as a practical form of communication.

It was as if Phil was always trying out the words for the first time; doubting not so much what they meant as what they were; as if skeptical of their very existence as he spoke them! I suppose this is typical of psychosis; the afflicted constructs, and hence lives, in a world at odds with some assumed objective reality. But what do we say in those cases where there is a void rather than imaginary world?