Friday, September 23, 2011
Tony Bennett
I find it interesting that in this land of highly touted free speech and all, nearly ninety-year old Tony Bennett was required to affirm his patriotism because of a foreign policy opinion he expressed on a radio talk show. Where have you gone, Joe McCarthio?
Monday, September 19, 2011
9/11
After the media mourn-fest attending the anniversary of the United States' chickens coming home to roost, I am left with some observations. It is interesting that most Americans consider it an attack on America. In the cause of accuracy it was an attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, two building complexes near the eastern edge of the vast piece of land we call the United States, geographically insignificant. In the media parlance of today, the victims were not the targets, they were collateral damage. The United States then went ahead and attacked itself. And Iraq of course. This country in fact never has been attacked from outside. The bombing of Pearl Harbor, a military base in the South Pacific, was extrapolated into an affront upon the entire continental United States. Many historians believe the American blockade of Japan left the Japanese no choice. For Korea and Vietnam, of course, the U.S never was attacked, only her dominoes. So apparently there is an aspect of human nature that embraces catastrophe of people thousands of miles hither because we pay the same tax collector. Therefore some farmer in Nebraska feels attacked when really, he was not. No doubt the people running the show understand this and mine it to justify having a war.
Also noteworthy is no mention of domestic responsibility for the 9/11 attack, like the idea, for example, that American military activities abroad might make people angry enough to perpetrate such acts. As one American soldier in Iraq said on tv, “If we busted into your house and tore everything up and pushed you around, you'd be out there the next day planting bombs by the road. Unless you're a wuss.”
Americans might see things more clearly if they try thinking about them in an unpatriotic way. And then they might notice that this now media event was nothing to what the United States military did to the people of Iraq, a country which truly was attacked. The last body count I read as the result of the American invasion was half a million, a significant percentage of the population. It seems a bit indulgent to sit and watch 9/11 again and remember where we were and how effected we were when so many Iraqis can't remember where they were when they were attacked because they're dead. As Americans mourn, they might mourn the likelihood that their tax collecting entity operates in a way that would cause this.
Also noteworthy is no mention of domestic responsibility for the 9/11 attack, like the idea, for example, that American military activities abroad might make people angry enough to perpetrate such acts. As one American soldier in Iraq said on tv, “If we busted into your house and tore everything up and pushed you around, you'd be out there the next day planting bombs by the road. Unless you're a wuss.”
Americans might see things more clearly if they try thinking about them in an unpatriotic way. And then they might notice that this now media event was nothing to what the United States military did to the people of Iraq, a country which truly was attacked. The last body count I read as the result of the American invasion was half a million, a significant percentage of the population. It seems a bit indulgent to sit and watch 9/11 again and remember where we were and how effected we were when so many Iraqis can't remember where they were when they were attacked because they're dead. As Americans mourn, they might mourn the likelihood that their tax collecting entity operates in a way that would cause this.
Tuesday, August 23, 2011
Classical Gas
Against the advice of all higher cognitive functions I attended a film version the other day of Mozart's Magic Flute opera at the Enzian. How it delightfully surprised me, actually laugh- out-loud funny whenever this one big guy would speak gravely with a straight face in that goofy language. Why people didn't just crack up over Hitler with his Charlie Chaplin mustache to boot, I'll never know. Maybe you have to be German not to recognize stand-up when you see it. Also it was refreshing to get a heroine who could have picked her teeth with Twiggy. Far from requiring rescue, she looked quite capable of defeating the villain herself. Or being the villain. Since Placido Domingo's attraction to her was entirely skin deep, and there was plenty of it, maybe that's how it was in the day.
Wednesday, August 03, 2011
People are naturally inquisitive
People are naturally inquisitive, always hoping to solve the mystery, understand the hidden meaning, learn the back-story. Not satisfied with our sensory look at the world, we must analyze its composition down to atoms. Yet it is the fate of modern man, casually connected to all worldwide malevolence, that he is almost daily made aware of events he cannot bear to contemplate.
His office is to shoulder the burden of evil without even the luxury of understanding it. Imagine modern man of a mere few hundred years ago, aware only of his own travails and those in his immediate vicinity; unenlightened by news of the most recent depredation placed upon members of his species, of anonymous sadness he can mourn only, never console or prevent. He has not been afflicted by history lessons poisoning his outlook with the knowledge of every god-awful horror ever perpetrated on a scale grand enough to be remembered by strangers. He was not weighed down, his days drained of their sunshine, by hundreds of years of misery. Imagine how lovely to live unaware of genocides occurring halfway around the world to people unknown to us beyond their terrible fate. How delightful not to toil under the weight of World Wars, knowing that multitudes suffered yet ignorant of the actual suffering. How excellent not to measure our happiness by the millions outrageously denied it. How much finer not to live in the age of information. Let’s face it. Humans aren’t newsworthy anymore.
His office is to shoulder the burden of evil without even the luxury of understanding it. Imagine modern man of a mere few hundred years ago, aware only of his own travails and those in his immediate vicinity; unenlightened by news of the most recent depredation placed upon members of his species, of anonymous sadness he can mourn only, never console or prevent. He has not been afflicted by history lessons poisoning his outlook with the knowledge of every god-awful horror ever perpetrated on a scale grand enough to be remembered by strangers. He was not weighed down, his days drained of their sunshine, by hundreds of years of misery. Imagine how lovely to live unaware of genocides occurring halfway around the world to people unknown to us beyond their terrible fate. How delightful not to toil under the weight of World Wars, knowing that multitudes suffered yet ignorant of the actual suffering. How excellent not to measure our happiness by the millions outrageously denied it. How much finer not to live in the age of information. Let’s face it. Humans aren’t newsworthy anymore.
Thursday, July 14, 2011
In the Footprints of Bartram
It was the best of times. It was the worst of times to go outdoors. Yet she did it, barely considering the consequences of her action. Yes, from the middle of our society ridiculous with people afraid to walk beyond the front door to the driver door, scared to drink non-plastified water, loathe to breathe unconditioned air, a hero has risen.
I found her in the unlikely pages of Lifestyle Magazine, which the mailman had shoved unsolicited into my box. This publication is a local horror that usually features gripping cover stories like "Orlando’s Ten Best Dentists." She is the editor but not for long. I believe Tarre Beach soon will be getting a call from OUTSIDE Magazine.
I would like to quote from her front piece: “Inspired by our piece on local waterways, I decided to check out the lake in my own backyard.”
Here we have it. Just like that, after living there ten years, well, let me quote again the source: ‘Without really thinking about it, I just put on my sneakers and walked myself down to the water’s edge.”
No sooner does she notice the lake in her backyard, then BAM! She’s thrown off the gum boots she stalks the perimeter of her house in and applied mere sneakers for swiftness and agility that she might survive the trek, but still guaranteeing nothing.
Standing amidst the shin-high grass, the intrepid woman posed jauntily for one final photo in her bright-white pants and blue top, before …once again, in her words: “Moments after the photo you see here was taken by remote release (Absolutely alone she was forced to use ‘remote release’), I fell in.”
Heavens to Betsy! One would expect this photograph to be the last we see of Ms. Beach, yet she fights for life though “scratched up by nasty thorns, bitten by mosquitoes and had a near panic attack when I heard a big splash behind me.” She writes so casually about a big splash behind her. How many of us would keep cool as she did, avoiding a full blown panic attack? In the entire account not once does she tell us she shat herself, in this day of confessional writing, admirable in itself whether she did or not. The thing is, she didn’t subject us to the image of it. Again…”Back on shore and cleaned up I decided to learn more about Trout Lake.”
She did what most of us would have done in the first place and Googled it, learning that the lake “is 80.5 acres large.” Largeness pretty well tells it all anyway.
Finally, this magazine editor ventured toward a lake with no regard for her own safety that she might save us: “Stick to known waterways”, she warns, “that have parks and boat rentals and other amenities. Let my wet, itchy, scary water adventure be a lesson to you.”
I found her in the unlikely pages of Lifestyle Magazine, which the mailman had shoved unsolicited into my box. This publication is a local horror that usually features gripping cover stories like "Orlando’s Ten Best Dentists." She is the editor but not for long. I believe Tarre Beach soon will be getting a call from OUTSIDE Magazine.
I would like to quote from her front piece: “Inspired by our piece on local waterways, I decided to check out the lake in my own backyard.”
Here we have it. Just like that, after living there ten years, well, let me quote again the source: ‘Without really thinking about it, I just put on my sneakers and walked myself down to the water’s edge.”
No sooner does she notice the lake in her backyard, then BAM! She’s thrown off the gum boots she stalks the perimeter of her house in and applied mere sneakers for swiftness and agility that she might survive the trek, but still guaranteeing nothing.
Standing amidst the shin-high grass, the intrepid woman posed jauntily for one final photo in her bright-white pants and blue top, before …once again, in her words: “Moments after the photo you see here was taken by remote release (Absolutely alone she was forced to use ‘remote release’), I fell in.”
Heavens to Betsy! One would expect this photograph to be the last we see of Ms. Beach, yet she fights for life though “scratched up by nasty thorns, bitten by mosquitoes and had a near panic attack when I heard a big splash behind me.” She writes so casually about a big splash behind her. How many of us would keep cool as she did, avoiding a full blown panic attack? In the entire account not once does she tell us she shat herself, in this day of confessional writing, admirable in itself whether she did or not. The thing is, she didn’t subject us to the image of it. Again…”Back on shore and cleaned up I decided to learn more about Trout Lake.”
She did what most of us would have done in the first place and Googled it, learning that the lake “is 80.5 acres large.” Largeness pretty well tells it all anyway.
Finally, this magazine editor ventured toward a lake with no regard for her own safety that she might save us: “Stick to known waterways”, she warns, “that have parks and boat rentals and other amenities. Let my wet, itchy, scary water adventure be a lesson to you.”
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