LAURAL'S DISH
Laural is our dog, my dog. Everyone else heads off to school, "people like me and Laural" stay home. He's a fine companion, but you have to understand. If he's having a really good time he tries to bite you, me, anyone. Not hard, just…similarly, if you're scratching his belly real good, but then shift to his (apparently less preferable) ears, he'll growl at you. The irregular spelling of his name results from the time that Alexandra and I were mulling the possibilities, in a tunnel in Newton Abbot, when we came across the graffiti: Laura L is a dog.
Laural loves to eat more than any living being ever created, and he will eat absolutely anything. We've weaned him from rocks but he once tried to eat an unopened can of Carlsberg Export. surprise! So his dish frequently has unusual things in it, bits of this or that, absolute treasures that others might consider slightly unfit for human consumption, for whatever stupid reasons.
Beneath please find my literary reflection of Laural's Dish:
Laural's Dish comes out on Fridays, before lunch, usually.
29 April 2011
Today's Laural's Dish is called on account of The Royal Wedding. This is noteworthy because in the past Laural's Dish has only failed to appear due to major illness. This is no exception. I had this week's Dish thrown together-to the extent that I could polish it and put it up-but the entire wedding bullshit makes me so fucking nauseous that I don't feel like it.
I understand that some people are so bored, or stupid, or weird, that they're bound to be taken in by anything so ridiculous. What amazes me is the people who diss it, and then spend the entire morning in enthralled amazement over the possibilities of the bride's dress, the exciting bus routes that the celebrities will take the to event or-best of all-the thrill that Prince Harry has put "product" in his hair, and may even be wearing spurs. A cartoon of a lame joke posing as a rebel. Authentic rebels being something close to my heart.
One of my friend's Facebook status reads, simply, "The Bolsheviks had the right idea." They went too far with it, and the wrong way shortly thereafter, but there's more poetic truth in that than idiocy in the entire marriage and coverage, and at that point we're approaching infinity.
I wish the bride and groom well. They seem like nice enough people, and I wouldn't wish their life on anyone. I wish everyone fascinated with a quick and thorough recovery.
22 April 2011
In England we have so much bad weather that it is only fair that a beautiful day should be more beautiful than anywhere in the world and this June evening was perfect.
-W Somerset Maugham, The alien corn
Yeah, well those days came a little bit early this year. And right in a row. And so in a week that found:
and
During such a week, what with the glorious weather, I've maintained a healthy distance from the idiocy and follies of the leaders of both Western and Eastern worlds. I have instead goofed off, detached, and become sustained within the Spirit of Siesta. And I think that this offering of Laural's Dish probably reflects that. That's ok, it's good for you once in awhile.
Enjoy the sun.
15 April 2011
Ohmigosh, the pierhead on Ascension Island (near my hometown that I've never been to, Two Boats Village) has gone wild! Just look at all that activity!!
and Theresa's school! (the Exeter Steiner School) was off on Dartmoor raising money abseiling off a Tor !!!!! 
[continuing in Batman narrator voice from 1960s series....]
...but Papa and Myles have a previous commitment.... 
but wait Batman, what is this wonder of nature...a mystery.? It is a quark come to earth?!! A strange weevil of extraterrestrial origin? 
http://www.truthout.org/peasants-need-pitchforks/1302073200
Robert Scheer quotes John Lennon, in a piece powerful enough to justify the invocation. Political essay of the week.
I once shared a pizza with a pop star on the New York city street
He was the most unhappy prophet you would ever want to meet
He said he really wanted to save the world he just couldn't imagine how
But he'd written a song about what's gone wrong and I'm singing it now
He said Nobody wants to play rhythm guitar behind Jesus
--"Rhythm Guitar," as most ably sung by Johnny Paycheck
That verse always evokes John Lennon, I guess it's the New York reference and the word "imagine." It paints a sad but pretty picture. John Lennon-more than damn near any artist or anybody else, and far more than any politician-understood what's wrong with Western culture in its Advanced Capitalist state.
HELP WANTED: ROCK STAR
(circa 1968): Talented musicians needed for contemporary role as prophet. Duties include leading a generational revolution to stop wars, save the environment; enforce, establish and engage in sexual freedoms, and generally champion individual choice in every matter. Extreme intellectual capacity and flexibility required; sympathy for extreme views, individuals and movements will follow naturally. Some musical training preferred, ability to give off-beat, interesting and insightful interviews a plus. Will work within musical paradigm so flexible as to allow anything. Your performances before adoring masses will be punctuated by your most avid fans, undulating, ululating and gesticulating in the front rows. Dullards need not apply.
(circa 2011): Compliant humans needed to fulfil societal rolls in entertainment wing of totalitarian corporate monolith. Strict adherence to musical limitations required, some encouragement and allowances for personal quirks encouraged so long as they amuse the huddled masses, without agitating them. Song overdubs and voice-overs provided as necessary. You will serve as a Dionysian totem for a terminally constipated enterprise, and will be replaced by like-minded counterpart with equivalent abilities just as soon as everyone realizes how boring you are. Compensation at mid-level management level, but without as many good tax write offs. Your choreographed performances will be largely defined by the Corporato functionaries who know little of your music or art-or anything beyond their little corner of corporato paperwork-clogging up the assigned seats in the front rows, offering subdued and token encouragement, and mainly hoping that somebody will notice their outfit. Rugged individualists wielding authentic beliefs outside the corporate paradigm need not apply, unless amenable to cartoon interpretation.
I wonder why our best and our brightest (Lennon, Morrison) don't bother going into rock and roll today. I wonder why the music's so…ok. There's a great line in Kazantzakis' Zorba the Greek about how "all of your religions, your politics, your beliefs and values…they're just a bunch of cafés…" I read it in the early '80s and hoped that rock and roll would never become a café, though MTV had already staked out the blueprint. I thought rock and roll was too strong, I thought my generation had more guts. I thought MTV would fail. And it did, but only aesthetically, which was never in doubt and much of the apparent goal.
Of course there are still damn good bands out there playing and meaning it. But I think Axl Rose may have been the last real Rock Star, in the fullest sense of the word. I guess you could make reasonable arguments for Zack de la Rocha, maybe Jack White or Courtney Love.
The problem with corporations is not that they are corporations. It is that they are ubiquitous, they have been let out of their cage and are running rampant and where they don't belong, way more so than militant terrorists. 9/11 was evil, horrendous, and resulted in the death of 3000 innocent people. The way that Corporato has used it as cover to seize Iraqi oil has already directly caused nearly 1,000,000 (mainly) innocent deaths, and that doesn't even count the inevitable results of the way their actions catalyzed al-Qaeda recruitment.
The great and alleged banking collapse that supposedly brought the world to the brink of total and absolute financial meltdown? The one that redistributed billions of dollars from your paycheck to corporate CEO bonuses? The one that got your neighbor's home repossessed? The one that cost your brother-in-law his job? The one that every politician assures you was the result of gross criminal mismanagement? Zero people have gone to jail for that. Zero.
The nuclear meltdown in Japan, the one that was impossible? It was impossible even after Chernobyl, they explained, because the Communists in Chernobyl couldn't do anything right, couldn't be trusted, didn't know jack shit about quality control; but now what do we hear when the cutting edge of Corporate genius in Advanced Capitalism suffers an even worse disaster….? They're thinking about making some study groups to come up with findings in a few decades, after everyone has presumably been either buried or forgot about it. The Nuclear Wing of Corporato continues unabated, only slightly miffed that this is going to cut into profits and they have to divert more money to the PR budget. Bail-out demands are already beyond the draft stage.
Solar energy? Viable, but you'd have to give the profits to people who aren't in the club. Wind energy? Thermal? Same problem. Old oil money, and those trustworthy nuke boys, that's who you want running things. If you're making billions of dollars and don't want to have to pay taxes, and instead want your workers to underwrite your own failures. That was Reagan's economic policy, and the Bushes two, and Clinton and now Obama. The Audacity of Bullshit.
The problem with Corporato isn't that it doesn't do good work, or that corporatists are all bad people (or even so greedy that it leaves no room for any other characteristic, including "bad"). I have lots of Sony stuff that works great, and I have friends who have been effective inside the machine. I can't remember the last time I wore a pair of shoes not made by Puma or Adidas. I even joy a Double Whopper now and again-it's not the best burger in the world but you know what you're gonna get.. The problem is that making shoes and hamburgers shouldn't qualify you to run the world, limit political options, and enforce a global conformity, replete with little boxes for nonconformists to fill as window dressing (Lady Gaga, anyone?) The problem with Corporato isn't genetically modified products (though some of them are), so much as it's destroyed the family farm.
The family farm is an honourable way of life enjoyed for thousands of years. There is no "alienation of the worker" as Marcuse described the problem with production lines. You grow it, you see it, you get it, you sell what you don't need. It is difficult to envision a world in which everyone works in cubicles wearing the "dullest uniform in the history of mankind" (Ayn Rand's description of contemporary men's dress suits) as progress. The problem is not mass production, the problems lies in limitations relating to means and opportunity of production, and hegemony of the global economic and political system…and all of the implications of that.
Remember baseball games, with little kids paying $2 to sit up in the bleachers? Gone. The problem isn't corporate boxes filled with diseased minds, synthetic hookers, and foul smelling fish eggs…if that's what they want to do, that's their business. The problem is that the kids are gone. Can't afford it. Going to a baseball game is one of the few "cool" things Corporato can think of to do, so everyone else gets priced out of it. Sure, a construction worker can take his kid and sit in the bleachers and get a hot dog and a beer...for a day's wages. Corporato gets the good seat and the smelly eggs and it's a tax write off...which is another way of saying that the construction worker's taking Corporato to the game whether he wants to or not. Which is another way to say that the construction worker can't take his son to the game because he's already bought tickets for Corporato.
Imagine that you are a young Egyptian-or Libyan-in these days of turmoil. Imagine that your religious beliefs and spirituality is relatively pure (probably but not necessarily Muslim), that you believe strongly in the equality of women and in equal rights and freedom of choice…how different is what Corporato's offering to do than what the nuttiest Mullah's are about? On the face of it Corporato is offering something more benign-but also more permanent. Much of world culture has moved beyond religious fundamentalism, and through natural spiritual and intellectual evolution the rest will, eventually. The parts that have fallen for Corporato have only fallen deeper in. It must look like a Black Hole. The asinine devil you know, or the courageous new devil who blows up the marketplace with drones while he acts like he's playing video games?
Former German Green Party leader- and '60s streetfighter- Joschka Fischer-once said of the WTO that it would "be easier to get them to do what they should be doing [e.g. workers rights, environmental protection] than destroy the entire thing altogether." It seems an open question, unless you consider the wholesale destruction of Corporato an impossibility,or until such time as Fukushima or some such destroys everything above ground and we have to rebuild from scratch anyway.
So, as President Obama lethargically and symbolically battles to get the tax on billionaires above 0% (down from 91% just a few decades ago, and frankly that was at least 8% too low on earnings over $5 million/year-who needs that much? really), forgive me for not getting all excited and busting out my flag as he glows heroically and waxes ever more excitedly about himself and his accomplishments..
But wait, here's something interesting Batman (why can't the Corporatos at least dress up cool, like Batman?)...
Ahh mystery solved (or as Clousseau would say, "sol-ved"), back to normal
...aaaaaaaah.....life does exist...beyond the concentration camps of Corporato, Rock Star...enjoy it!!!!!
8 April 2011
I was susprised to receive this surprisingly witty piece of propaganda from the Labour Party. Unfortunately I could give the project no higher than an "incomplete" as it failed to canvass their own two previous leaders, and so I helpfully add...
...and obviously as a patriotic American it only seems fair to include the disappointing but obvious...
http://www.truth-out.org/nowhere-man
"A great many of those who gave willingly the last time are two and a half years older today, two and a half years poorer, and two and a half years wiser. They will not be as quick to reach for their wallets and checkbooks when the piper calls them to campaign charity with his well-worn cadence. The Obama 2012 brain trust seems to know this, and are preparing a financial strategy far more dependent on big money than last time. They aim to raise a billion dollars this time. Thus, the political DNA of campaigner Obama and President Obama will even more closely resemble the CEOs and bankers that tore this nation to shreds and tatters."
Was it one of the Three Stooges or W.C. Fields? Anyway he was really hugging this gal, and she was going "closer, closer" and he said "If I hug you any tighter you'll be behind me."
Yeah, ok, that ought to about do politics for today.
One of the most difficult questions for me is, "Where are you from." Which really helps, living in England and sounding like I do...fact is I have an accent that unquestionably identifies me-anywhere in the world-as obviously from somewhere else. So every person I meet cleverly opens with "You don't sound like you're from around here..." Born in Mildenhall, Suffolk, on the other side of the island. More than a decade in three places in Germany, a few years in Guantanamo Bay Cuba, quick North Carolina stint, a bunch of years in Louisiana, mainly in Baton Rouge but with a few months of New Orleans thrown in, Ocean Beach San Diego, Topanga Canyon, the San Fernando Valley, The Haight, the McKenzie River Valley, Orcas Island. I've now been in Exeter for nearly ten years, which is almost twice as long as I've ever been anywhere else. And, as wonderful as Exeter is, I do see the day in the future when the children have all left...and so Theresa and I leave, too. Don't know where. I want to live on a boat and float around for a few years or decades, and then figure it out. I guess Northern California, near Eureka or Yreka or one of those places or something, but there's plenty of time for that. I guess my geographical spiritual home is New Orleans, but I can't see living there except for maybe on the other side of Lake Ponchatrain, and Theresa can't see living anywhere with cockroaches.
So the problem of what to list as "home town" in my all-important Facebook profile confounded me to no extent, leading to the following Status and exchange...
All of these fine photos, incidentally, aren't from my newly adopted hometown that I've never been to....Two Boats Village. They are instead from the livecam at the pier in Georgetown, which is also on Ascension Island. So I imagine it's pretty much the same. I think it kind of looks like where I must be from.
And what would any half-assed, thrown together Friday morning offering of Laural's Dish be without a half-baked film update?! ...how about one!?? In order of how cool they are, understanding that "cool" is an attribute that can be affected, but is most potent in its natural form...though it suffers not from knowledge-and even exaggeration-of itself.
1 April 2011
Good news on nuclear power: the Germans are against it. Even the conservatives are running away from it as fast as they can, this made somewhat more difficult by the extent and duration of their previous and intimate embrace.
But never mind that, the Germans get it, they've finally come to the collective conclusions reached by Die Grünen in the 1970s.
I grew up in Baden-Württemberg. I lived there from 1964-1977. It's a conservative place. Most people, particularly of a certain age but including me when I'm around, greet strangers and each other with "Gross Gott!" (translation: God is great. Admittedly this bewilders some, given that all you have to do is look at me to understand that I'm a shameless atheistic anarchist of some particularly abhorrent stripe, but I think it's a cool greeting)
So this is kind of like a Green getting elected governor of Alabama, though there may be something further to be said about the relative quality of education in the two states. Anyway, it's very good news on a week where the world could use some.
Tremendous final piece by Bob Herbert:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/26/opinion/26herbert.html?_r=1&src=ISMR_AP_LO_MST_FB
But I think William Rivers Pitt may have been even better this week, on the same subject. Of course he doesn't work under the constraints of the corporate media and-ahem!-hasn't been paid so much by them before really opening up his mind:
http://www.truth-out.org/the-new-american-dream68847
ON MUAMMAR GADDAFI AND EDWIN EDWARDS
This is not intended to be an academic essay. I'm not going to bother looking anything up, it's from memory and perhaps in some instances shaky memory of sources lacking the traditionally desirable modicum of credibility. Think of it more along the lines of a guy talking to you over a few drinks in a bar, or over a latte in the coffee shop, or wherever it is that you tolerate people to elaborate on their half-baked opinions.
It is likely to to contain unintentionally erroneous information, and entirely questionable matters of opinion. It will be-though-I'm certain, more accurate than, and offered in something more akin to the virtue of good faith, than Fox News.
Edwin Edwards was, several times and with my vote, the Governor of the State of Louisiana. An ordained Nazarene preacher, Governor Edwards was a populist, a fondness for the common folk that must have in some way reflected on his reputation (never denied) as an enthusiastic womanizer. He was not a drinker, but he understood that lots of folks in Louisiana enjoy a drink or ten and so the path of his inaugural parade was emphasized, every few blocks, with kegs of beer that the celebrants could access without paying. But no one ever called Edwin a communist and he was nothing like it. He was a wheeler-dealer in the finest capitalist tradition. He made Donald Trump look like he was standing still.
Edwards' honesty was never in question. His supporters-and in the service of historical accuracy I must again concede to having been a member of this group-rallied behind the slogan "He's a crook, but he's our crook." Meaning, of course, that his policies benefited the common man rather than the old-style social and political machines that ran (and run) much of the Deep South from some time pre-dating Abraham Lincoln. And that was all about right.
It is fair to say that Edwin kept big business at bay at some benefit to himself. No one was ever confused if the governor's salary was all he was getting out of the deal. He was under constant federal investigation, and regularly on trial. The best one (in some sense of the term) was when he passed laws that no more hospitals could be built in the state, and then awarded a multi-million contract to his brother so that he could...that's right, serve the state by building hospitals.
Somehow Edwin's lawyers got the trial to be held in New Orleans. As a Cajun, Edwin was a highly popular man in that area, and I'm sure in many circles continues to be held in an even more benevolent ambivalence than my own. The evidence was clear, fraud was unquestionable, the defense didn't even offer a defense, and the jury unanimously acquitted.
Edwin stood proudly on the courthouse steps. "Put on your hat," he said to his brother, "we're going home." And then, to the gathered international press, "I'm an American! I'm free!" I guess that was the high point.
In one of my all-time favorite pieces of journalistic investigation MTV uncovered the fact that every single juror had stolen the towels from their hotel rooms.
Unfortunately, like so many great personalities (and I don't think greatness is a prerequisite) Edwin had a dark side. He appointed a great head for the Environmental Department for this third term, but she resigned once she saw what he was up to, and took a job teaching at a somewhat unaccredited institute of higher learning whose instructors were advertised as including "great minds, both living and dead." Louisiana is a unique place, and New Orleans stands out, yea like a beacon for all the world to admire. You've probably seen something of this, on Scooby-Doo...
During Edward's third term-and the medium's absence-the Mississippi River south of Baton Rouge became so polluted that cancer rates soared for miles inland. It earned the moniker and description, "Cancer Alley." The feds finally figured out how to try him in a venue outside of South Louisiana-on something entirely unrelated I think-and Edwin Edwards has been in jail-where he arguably belongs, but he wouldn't be doing much harm elsewhere as long as he's out of power-for many years now.
Muammar Gaddafi is probably about as interesting as Edwin Edwards in a lot of ways. Similar in some, he threw the old guard of imperialists out. He instituted programs-within the framework of a relatively relaxed brand he called "Arab socialism"-that greatly benefited his country. In relatively short time Libya had an economy, healthcare, and a standard of living that was the envy of the region. It retained that primordial desert charm, but with equal rights for women.
Like Edwards, what Gaddafi enjoyed in competence and effectiveness, he lacked entirely in humility and restraint. He generally went around saying whatever happened to come into his head, which pissed people off, particularly when he was well-grounded and accurate. Which, it must be said, wasn't all the time but more than often enough to make him dangerous...
When he went on diplomatic forays he insisted on taking over parks and sleeping in a tent. He is, after all, a desert man, and damn proud of it! The voices of the wind and stars, the poetry of moving sand...all that. Deeply moved by the combination of an entertaining, morally dubious but seemingly just tale, in splendid company and without ever really mastering most of the facts, he sent a ship of weapons from Tripoli to Ireland, that would have made The Troubles a fair fight if the British hadn't intercepted it.
Sure, he engaged in acts of terrorism, but not of the magnitude of the Vietnam War or the occupation of Palestine. He bombed us, we bombed him, but never much in earnest. Collateral damage and all that, you know, justification for murder. Nietzsche was on to something when he said " Everything a man does in the service of the state is contrary to his nature."
In case you hadn't already noticed one, these last few weeks have brought out Gaddafi's dark side. Faced with losing power, he did what most totalitarian despots do and started off at methodically murdering the dissenters. Kind of like Tiananman Square, which gained China Most Favored Trading Status in Washington.
But unlike Bush the Elder, who muttered briefly about Tiananman on his way to sign contracts-and instead like Clinton who intervened in the Balkans under similar circumstances-President Obama has jumped in and started bombing.
I support that, to an extent. To make myself sound worse, by being more clear: I support the bombing of Libya and the inevitable death it has brought, to a limit that we are now rapidly approaching. Death had become impossible to evade or ignore. Our ancestors made it like this, and so have we. The concept of Original Sin seems hardly necessary in such a species. Gaddafi is probably smarter than he is crazy or evil, but he has to be backed off from wholesale massacre, or it's clearly going to happen.
Regime change supposedly isn't the issue, though many insist that it is. That's a tricky one. Regime change, into what? An American puppet government, like Afghanistan? That's one way to pull al-Qaeda into Libya (remember, they weren't in Iraq until we got rid of Saddam) and keep the arms industry pumping into the 22nd century. Let 'em just kind of vote and sort it and see if a more respectable kind of civil war breaks out? It is difficult for me to envision positive regime change in Libya, despite what I believe about the evil currently calling the shots in Gaddafi's soul and head.
Did Louisiana benefit from regime change? The current governor has just earmarked millions of dollars of BP clean-up money to throw a big party, and that after effectively taking the side of the polluters. They create jobs, you know, drilling and spilling and cleaning it up. Then you get big campaign contributions from them. Then you get federal money, and can throw a party. From a certain limited perspective, none of this is a problem.
Edwin Edwards would have been throwing every BP CEO he could find into the Angola Prison, if only to get himself on tv. So it's difficult to identify the benefits of regime change in Louisiana. Edwin sold out to polluters, but for Corporato politicians it's an essential plank of their platform.
I don't think that President Obama has a clear plan for how this Libya business is going to resolve itself. President Clinton certainly didn't, when he started bombing in the Balkans. Clinton said the boys would be home by Christmas, an obvious lie. But while the Balkans haven't exactly turned into Switzerland, they have calmed down to an extent that justifies Clinton's intervention. And I think Obama is right to proceed the way that he has, and particularly without any overly-defined strategy that he intends on imposing: scare Gaddafi back into sanity, and set up a road map that leads to democracy after a sensible period of reflection, and one that not incidentally allows his sons to set up one of the major parties. One that would give Libya the opportunity to build on the good works of their father, and not have the opportunity to re-enact his most egregious wrongs.
So I'm just sitting here, you know, listening to the Doors. So, what are we doing in Libya? I hope it has something to do with this:
http://www.truth-out.org/samantha-power-the-voice-behind-obamas-libya-action68773
There are some epic and heroic things going on in Japan at the moment. I nominate this for all-time most courageous and poignant text:
Please spend any time you'd reserved for the Top Ten list reconsidering it.
---------------
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/ap_on_bi_ge/as_japan_earthquake
It CAN happen here. It shouldn't have to be a matter of counting the ways...it should be a simple matter of voting the bums out, like in Baden-Württemberg. And Baton Rouge. And Tripoli.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_us_japan_nuclear_blackouts
http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/2011/0328/Traces-of-Japanese-radiation-detected-in-13-US-states
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