Atheist Meditations

I got that mass email going around that slams Jane Fonda for her traitorous actions during the Vietnam War. This one was allegedly written by Barbara Walters and had that story about how Ms. Walters was visiting American POW's and then betrayed their attempts to communicate with her.

I'm going to hit Wikipedia on the topic next, but this was my reply to the letter, and since I took ten minutes typing, I thought I'd just ctrl-X my blog post today.

I suppose I should have included the original email, but I'm just not inclined to copy that one more time.



Hey X,

I'm sorry, but I'm uncertain about the truthiness of this email.

I've heard this story before, and I havn't looked into it personally. My father brought it up in a conversation about politics - the last one we ever had - and he was just shaking with fucking anger at the behavior of that 'bitch.' It's a powerful story, and it fits a model that we see a lot, that makes me suspicious.

I see Vietnam as a war in which the U.S. tried to support a puppet government in Asia for the purpose of strategic positioning against China, as well as expanding 'markets' for our international companies. Vietnamese chased out the French and their nasty colonial government, and that's a bad example in the third world - the masters of commerce in the world don't want the worthless poor in some ho dunk little jungle thinking that they can repeat the American Revolution and start owning their own land and resources. The U.S. Military has admitted that the Gulf of Tonkin incident, which was the WMD of the Vietnam war, was fabricated in order to get us into that war.

The notion in the Vietnam war was to 'bomb that country back into the stone age.' We killed over 800,000 Vietnamese in that war. We used really nasty weapons, like napalm, and tactics, like hunter-killer squads who moved like ghosts in the jungle and assasinated anybody who was 'suspected' of being part of the communist movement.

Ms. Fonda was caught up in the Revolution Movement. Neil Young, Bob Dylan, and countless others were writing songs that defined a new way of thinking. The Civil Rights movement was demanding a situation where all people are treated equally regardless of skin color, and a whole generation was determined to try something different than war.

As one famous Native American soldier declared - 'I realized that in Vietnam I was doing to those people what had been done to my own people.'

I was not alive during the Vietnam Era, but it was a fucking crazy time. According to the Pentagon Papers, famously leaked by the New York Times, the masters of the U.S. policy were concerned that they were losing control domestically. They were discussing deploying U.S. troops in the U.S. to stop the hippies. It was a crazy time.

A great deal of America thought that the war was the perfect example of a colonial policy that should be the exact opposite of how an America founded on Revolution and a Bill of Rights should be acting. Over a half a million soldiers - according to the Pentagon themselves - went AWOL rather than fight in that war.

You can't be a world super-power when nobody wants to fight for your goals.

So they had to stop that movement. Someone like Ms Fonda - like the Dixie Chicks today - was a popular figure so she became a valuable target to crush. This story may be real - but it's a fucking great smear campaign.

Nasty shit happening to POW's sucks ass. It happens in every war, and when times are desperate the shit gets really bad. Look at some of the atrocities that happened in POW camps on both sides during the Civil War - and that was against people who had the same skin color as the captors. Dehumanizing captors who look different is always easier.

Finally, I suspect this email because of the way it looks. I've seen a bunch of this sort of mass email - especially pro- GOP, pro- evagelikal stuff. This just has the look and feel of one of them. The type of html and formatting. The use of a title that grabs some serious attention. The by-line was given to Barbara Walters. Ms. Walters is busy telling housewives all over Amercia which new male actors are hot on 'The View.' She wants her public image to be friendly and safe. She's never been a firebrand, and I doubt she'd touch an issue like this with a ten foot pole.

For a propagandist, her's is a name that has a lot of cred with a lot of folk. Once you get to the juicy details of torture, you are going to forget that she supposedly wrote that email.

Hey I don't fucking know. I thought Monster-in-Law sucked. Just my thoughts.

Catch ya later,

Yesterday my work took me to a place that I never thought I would see - the inside of a nunnery.

As a survivor of catholic schooling, to be back inside an institution of the catholic faith was a trip on the way-back machine for me. The iconography, the silence so thick it clings to you as you soft shoe down the long hallways. There is something special about a convent, like the culture of catholicism has been taken to a whole new level. These women have devoted their lives to an Idea, and they have devoted their lives to a power structure that is decidedly top down.

The chapel in this convent really is stunning. We were working in the 'cloisters' (I don't know if we got the term right) which are the two hallways that slant up towards the balcony behind the chapel. The balcony is home to the enormous pipe organ, along with a built in risers for a legion of choir. A few rows of pews overlook the chapel proper. Down in the chapel, a small stained glass window brings a pure blue light of the Madonna down onto the altar, illuminateing a cavernous chamber of dark wood. There is nothing quite like the power of catholic architecture.

I've always been able to comprehend catholics. With ancient churches and the knowledge of the masons devoted to creating spaces that awe the soul, I can understand how someone might participate in a mass at St. Peter's cathedral and feel a honest connection to something bigger and more powerful them oneself.

That's why I don't get the evags - they just gather in some big warehouse space - now a MegaMcChurch - and watch their minister on a T.V. screen. Beware of any 'man of God' who wants to use television!

So anyways, I don't have any problem working for a bunch of sisters. One code to life that I've never had reason to question be 'Respect your elders.' I may not agree with their world-view, but the combination of receiving payment and elder status means that I'll be shutting my damn mouth for the next few days.

This was particularily difficult when I wandered down the wrong hallway and gazed at the collection of artwork generated by the sister's of the order over the last few generations. There was an innocence and purity in the subjects of these works; farms, pastoral woodlands, flowers, groovy seventies patterns. But Sigmund Freud would have had to let out a snicker when he walked by - the images were just goofily blatent. Penis, penis, vagina, vagina, penis, penis, vagina . . . Is that a farm's silo or is it a giant yellow dildo?

Consciousness sure is amusing.

Hey you'all , how's the Summer Solstice treat'n ya?

I wanted to have to groovy post all put together about the worship-worthiness (if that's a word) of the Sun, and how if there is any religion that makes sense, we might as well be worshipping the uncaring and obviously all-powerful star that burns at the heart of our solar system. Anyway, Civ 4, weird word problems, and general ennui got in the way. I know I got the kinda word burn out going on that beer can't dissipate, and I'm not feeling so keen on Blogmad right now either.

So I'm going to take 1 week off, sort of a vaction from trying to convice those stupid fucks to shift their brains out of second gear. (Information superhighway, douchebags?!?) Anyways, maybe I'll get the girlfriend's house painted.

So for the next seven days, here's some words of wisdom from my new favorite country singer Hank Williams III. Got these lyrics from an 'unofficial' site.

Well some say I'm not country
and that's just fine with me
'Cause I don't wanna be country
with some faggot looking over at me
They say that I'm ill-mannered
that I'm gonna self-destruct
But if you know what I'm thinkin'
you'll know that pop country really sucks

So I'm here to put the "dick" in Dixie
and the "cunt" back in country
'Cause the kind of country I hear now days
is a bunch of fuckin' shit to me
They say that I'm ill-mannered
that I'm gonna self-destruct
But if you know what I'm thinkin'
you'll know that pop country really sucks

Well we're losing all the outlaws
that had to stand their ground
and they're being replaced by these kids
from a manufactured town
And they don't have no idea
about sorrow and woe
'Cause they're all just too damn busy
kissin' ass on Music Row

So I'm here to put the "dick" in Dixie
and the "cunt" back in country
'Cause the kind of country I hear nowdays
is a bunch of fuckin' shit to me
And they say that I'm ill-mannered
that I'm gonna self-destruct
But if you know what I'm thinkin'
you'll know that pop country really sucks

And if you know what I'm thinkin'
you'll know that pop country really sucks


Stay groovy. . . 

This may come as a complete fucking shock to the dumbasses who call themselves 'conservatives', and who refuse to absorb any scrap of information that has not been sanitized for them by the Bush Administration, but yet another fucking memo has been leaked to the Washington Post that provides a much different view of life in Iraq.

The memo, signed by the US ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad (he may have a funny name, but he's got the best damn neo-con pedigree anybody could every ask for) and sent to the State Department in Washington on June 6th, sure paints a different picture of the 'situation on the ground' than Mr. Bush's last little photo op.

Here's the Democracy Now summary of it:

"U.S. Embassy Memo Reveals Dire Situation in Baghdad
An internal memo from the US embassy in Baghdad leaked to the Washington Post reveals that the situation in the Iraqi capital is far more dire than portrayed by the Bush administration. The memo mentions that one Arab newspaper editor is preparing an extensive study of how ethnic cleansing is now occurring in almost every Iraqi province. One Iraqi employee of the embassy said that he attends a funeral every evening. Neighborhoods in Baghdad are now mostly controlled by militias. Islamic groups are enforcing strict social codes. Women are increasingly being pressured to cover their faces. It is also now considered dangerous for men and children to wear shorts outside. Iraqis working in the U.S. embassy must now keep their place of work a secret even from their own family because anti-American sentiment is so high. For the past six months the embassy has been unable to call Iraqi workers at home or use them as translators for on-camera press events for their own safety. The memo from the U.S. embassy was sent to Washington last week ahead of President Bush’s visit to Baghdad."

Or, read the article over at The Independant.

Yep, we sure are spreading freedom over there.

Will the poor fools who call themselves 'conservatives', who listen to propaganda from the corporate media without the dozen functioning brain cells necessary to question that bullshit, will they never grab hold of their nuts and begin standing tall as Americans? I know, I know, the dozens of paid pundits who make a living manipulating the ignorant, tell them over and over that real Americans don't ever question the will of the leadership - but come on! You don't believe an audio tape by Donald Trump will make you into a slick salesman, or some Ax Body Spray will turn your downstairs neighbors into pole dancers - or maybe you do?

Americans don't let someone piss on their head and tell them that it is raining.

The Bush Administration has made it abundantly clear that they are not going to repeat the 'mistakes' of Vietnam. They are not going to let images get into the public sphere that might lead the public to question the war. Ain't no pictures of flag draped coffins in our newspapers - those soldiers died for our country - fuck 'em, showing their coffin might lead to a political problem. No national eulogy under the Bush Regime. A twenty two year old who got brain damaged by a roadside bomb - he can't remember his middle name, let alone provide the requisite 'pride' at having 'defended America' - ain't nobody gonna see him get interviewed on 60 Minutes. Is it not obvious that they care more about how the war is 'spinning' here on television than they invest thought in what is actually going on over there? Is that any fucking way to fight a war?

If the neo-conned and the evags don't start walking erect. If they don't realize that their dick's can get hard without someone's permission, nothing will ever change.

They are the fucking problem.

(But the content, the pros of premarital sex, is still going to offend the evags. . . oh, bother.)


Of all the tolls which theism imposes on its faithful, the willing surrender of sexuality has to be the most grievous. While a church like the Mormons might only demand 10% of your income as tithe, these same organizations demand 95% of your potential sexual partners.

Of the dozen or so evags I've met, all of them were married at age twenty or so. There is a simple reason for this. As they are completely convinced that sex before marriage is a horrible sin, they literally do not want to have sex before they are married. For a lot of us that just seems unbelievable, but they can be surprisingly committed to that delusion. They cannot extinguish the natural sexual needs of a twenty-year old, however, so the sex drive becomes the drive to find a suitable wife - and they settle. They settle for a girl from their same religious denomination and local area, youthful puppy love becomes 'God's Will', and the preachers win. What might be the greatest opportunity to grow as a human being, hooking up with a partner from a much different background than your own - bringing families and cultures together - is bypassed in the immature need to relieve the blueness of one's testicles.

Obviously, much of the taboos and rules of modern religion held useful roles back in the days of chariots and evil spirits who caused infection. From a biological point of view, the drive to reproduce (i.e. sex) should be the most powerful motive force in a lifeform. The modern world is a lot different from the jungle, and for a religion to be at all useful, it must have been able to tame that powerful urge to a certain degree. And, for a good deal of time the regulation of sex that the church was able to impose was probably a good thing.

Like take Islam and booze, a scenario that I've often thought about. Muslim's do not drink. Their culture has absolutely nothing to do with alcohol. I personally like beer quite a bit, and feel that it is a major component of our culture, but if I was some muslim Ayatollah a few hundred years ago, and I had the power to exclude alcohol - and all the domestic abuse, violence, and early death that such a substance inflicted upon my society - what would I choose? Young muslim men don't care too much anymore, they have no Idea what they are missing, and from the outside looking in, the perils of hooch far outweight the benefits. It's an interesting conundrum.

Sex often leads to pregnancy. In simple societies, where a daughter was a valuable commodity to be married off for gains in social status and personal wealth, accidental pregnancies would be really bad. We all are plenty familiar with the labels and punishments used to keep young women away from the high-risk behaviour of premarital sex. Plus, even before the AIDS, there were plenty of 'french diseases' out there. Conditioning children to avoid premarital sex did work like a tourniquet to slow their spread.

Then came the great lioness of Feminism, Margaret Sanger. She felt that women would never be able to achieve equality with men as long as they had little control over their pregnancies. 'The Pill', was born, and a generation was able to engage in sexual activity without the lurking fear of unwanted pregnancy and social shame. Women were changing in their position in the world, from being property into actual human beings. Dispite the outrage of the 'conservatives' of the day, they eventually won the rights to own property and get paid the same as a man for a day's work.

Beware the lies of the preachers! Feminism, like Liberalism, is a little more than a satanic urge to kill babies. It is a good and right thing, that has made our world better. Every condom does not break, a responsible couple using birth control has only a very slight chance of having an unwanted pregnancy. There are no guarantees, but you have some powerful technology at your fingertips, and to ignore it is stupid.

A common analogy that 'motivational speakers' use is to compare all the minutes that you will have in your life to money in a bank. Many of us squander the time we will have on this earth, but if you thought about it as something valuable - duh, money - then you might be loathe to waste four hours a night watching re-runs of 'Friends.'

This analogy works well for sex. Take porno for example. There are not a lot of 'actors' in porn that are over 35. Not that people in their forties and fifties aren't having sex, just that not too many people want to see it anymore. You will only be in your twenties for three thousand six hundred and fifty days. That's it, that a lot of days, but it is not infinite. They will come to an end, and you will enter the next decade. Most of us will have our best bodies, our most sensitive nervous systems, and our greatest thrill at the novel during that time. If your sexual peak is within those first two decades, why waste any of them - throwing away potential pleasure and friendship building - because you want to fulfil some dogmatic rule structure from thousands of years ago?

There is another reason for premarital sex that seems so obvious yet flys in the face of evag rules. Sex is fun. Sex is a powerful bonding experience. Sure, you can cling to a religious world-view where a woman is commanded to submit to your sexual advances, or you can grasp some of the basics of female sexuality and allow her to enjoy it. If you are in a religion that talks crap about 'every time you are with your wife it is a threesome with the Holy Spirit', and condemns as pornography anything involving the rudimentary mechanics of sex - you probably ain't gonna be very good at it. There is no better way to learn about something than some real world experience. Each lover you have will bring to the bed a whole new set of expectations, abilities, and skills. Explore them, explore sex. Grow as a lover.

They say that women most often cheat emotionally, because their husband is distant emotionally. They say that women most often cheat sexually when they are unsatisfied. Evags have the highest divorce rate in the country.

Not having sex before marriage is the dumbest thing I have ever heard. Some people have hang-ups, sexual acts that they just don't enjoy. Some people have fetishes - acts that have to be part of sex in order for it to trigger a release. I'm not a expert on why this is, but I'm pretty damn sure that you can have combinations of people who just ain't gonna work sexually. I've had lovers who just refused to do certain things. Certain things that I really like; it's a deal breaker. Imagine having a fetish for a certain sexual act, and a wife who refuses to even discuss it. That's a life of sexual frustration.

The great evag lie machine is trying to convince you that you are either in a wholesome marriage, or you are using women like objects - throw them in the gutter, and go score another. That's not the only two options. Many of us had girlfriends who we genuinely cared about, but who we only expected to spend about a year or two with. She gets that job offer in Dallas, 'good for you, damn I'm gonna miss ya, you're the best go get 'em!' We're just growing up in our twenties, if life deals you a pair of pocket aces, take you chances - I'm not holding you back.

Enh, I'm out of steam. Stay groovy,

In an effort to appeal to more readers, to perhaps save just one more soul, I will contain my vulgar tendancies during this latest appeal to the poor American's who choose to ignore the state of their world. Sometimes, I think the poor victims of ignorance need to be shocked into reconsidering how the world 'works.' Other time's I'll try patience and a reasonable approach.

I can blog blue, and I can blog contained. What I can't stand is the childish bloggers who insert *'s over the vowels when ranting about stuff. Like we don't know what word you mean. If you are going to swear, swear. Words have power, but they are not magic.

Anyways, I hope that all of my visiters go and follow the link to 'crooks & liars', that I inserted into the previous post. (Evags, please just squint so that you don't endanger your soul with the poisonious comprehension of vulgar words. Just click on the colored hyperlink.) Sure it could be a fake, but since the Army investigated it, I'd say it might hold more water than a video of crop circle being formed. I can't imagine what it has been like to be an average Iraqi over the last few years.

I consider the neo-conned to be anyone who does not have access to alternative media, and who does not see the problem with that lack of perspective. I read a blog this afternoon where the author was honestly trying to say that Alan Colmes is the last voice of reason in the neurotic Democratic party - valiantly struggling to present a rational face in spite of the fact that he is dwarfed by Sean Hannity's superior intellect.

Ever since the beginning of civilization, a small group has occupied the elite position, dictating the direction of that society, and reaping the lion's share of the wealth and benefit of that position. Medieval Europe had a small aristocracy and a huge peasantry. So did feudal China and Japan. Early America was built by slaves. 'Fathers', sat at the heads of households, managing their lands, families, and resources of slaves. (That's where the term, 'founding fathers' comes from.)

The point here, is that for the most part, inequality is the model for society. The ruling elites used a wide variety of methods to protect their status. In particular: violence, religion, and limits on the education of the masses. Thus a feudal knight had a church that told him the King ruled via God's will, and that any uprising by the peasants was a resistance to God's order and must be put down violently. The culture supported the inequality.

The cracking into the gift of the hydrocarbons, along with the printing press, changed a lot. The industrial revolution required expensive machinery that was too valuable to be exposed to slave labor. A greater level of intellectual capacity was required, and a larger percentage of the population became literate. From this Liberalism was born. The same rights that nobles granted themselves to protect their assests from a King, lower born men began to envy and demand similar rights for themselves.

I'm drifting off point here, perhaps a few neo-conned will have begun to wonder about their simple world view, but I doubt it. Lets skip over the next three hundred years, the founding of America as a Liberal Democracy, and make a hasty segway into the current situation. I figure I only have a few more paragraphs, and any neoconned will have lost interest and scrolled down to the comments to tell me I have small testicles.

Propaganda is an overused word. Overloaded might be a better term. For those of us who have actually bothered to consider that being a good citizen might require one to understand how it works, it is still a very good descriptor for the current media environment. Propaganda does not tell you what to think. Instead, it limits the information that you have access to, controlling the number of selections, so that in the current media world, one is lead to believe that there is a 'conservative' view and a 'liberal' view. Thus, the sly dogs who control the media don't really care which side you choose to believe, cuz neither of them are at all problematic to their continued position in the drivers seat of our economy. Alan Colmes may call himself a liberal, but I call him a candy ass. The point is, true Liberal Thought is almost impossible to find in mainstream media - they don't want you exposed to it, cuz it will lead you to challenge an arrangement that is almost rediculous in the inequality of it. Noam Chomsky is a representaive of real Liberalism, you will never hear him on Public Radio (which is not liberal, it is part of the propaganda machine. It's like the Alan Colmes for the college educated)

So let's focus on the War in Iraq, and apply some of the insight we can take away from understanding the manipulation of media. We are in a war in the middle of the Holy Land with a military that is predominately christian and a Commander in Chief who is obstinately so. This Commander in Chief hired an advertising firm to 'sell' (their word) this war to the American people, and so far the justifications of this War have been rather wishy-washy.

The point is, ask yourself, 'how many images of dead and wounded Iraqi children have I seen?' We know that the Bush Administration is going to great lenghts to make sure you never see a flag draped coffin come off a military plane. Have you ever seen an interview with a Marine who lost almost a quarter of his brain to a roadside bomb? Or how about any camera shots of the almost a thousand bodies a month that show up in Baghdad morgues with their hands tied behind their backs and bullet wounds to the back of the head?

Sure you have seen chanting 'Islamo-fascists' thousands of times, pictures of beheadings and other atrocities more times than you can count. Obviously, the images you are being given by the mainstream press are being selectively managed.

Are you ready to wake up yet? Are you prepared to be a citizen, to be willing to admit that occassionally the most powerful country in the world does not act for the noblest of reasons?

There are other takes on reality, other interpetations of war and injustice than the ten largest media conglomerates on the planet want to spoon feed you. Interact with the bigger world. You can live up to your responsibilities as an American. You can take the time to learn more than what Fox News thinks a fifth grader can understand. You should.

Sometimes when I'm driving into work I get this weird feeling, something akin to self-doubt, where I suspect that perhaps my latest blogged rant might be too irrational, too filled with sundry 'fucks' and 'fuck-yous.'

My last post was just crazy. I'm fairly seasoned in vulgar rants against Bush's Crusade in Iraq, but the play in G-bay is just so insane. I hate it, but I can't blog about it well - the average American is just too fucking ignorant of what is going on there, and the implications of that are so terrible that it drives a seeker to seek the hard liquor. That was last night.

Then I saw the 'trophy video'

U.S. Navy Rear Admiral Harry Harris, the commander of the detention center, described the suicides as an "an act of asymmetrical warfare waged against" the United States, arguing that detainees at Guantanamo Bay are "smart, they are creative, they are committed [and] they have no regard for life, neither ours nor their own."

If I did not surf through the occassional right-wing blog on blog mad, I would have to wonder who in America can be stupid enough to buy this shitload of spin? Unfortunately, I read these poor dumbasses who have an understanding of war that no adult should possess - these childish lame-asses still cling to the comic-book, black and white, teenage boy view of war as a noble conflict between warriors. They profess shock that the insurgents in Iraq might 'hide like cowards behind women and children', dispite the simple fucking fact that such a minimal profile stratagies have been seen in all modern conflicts. What do these stupid children expect the insurgents in Iraq to do? Go line up like redcoat rifleman in the middle of the desert and wait for the American military to bomb them into a fine red dust?

I can't help but think about the 'Suicide Squad' from the final scene of Monty Python's 'Life of Brian.' They run up, they stab themselves in the chest, as they die they mutter, 'that'll show 'em.'

I'm truly incensed by this notion that the shit for brains in my country keep eating up, the notion that liberal resisitance to war and Islamic terrorists are somehow singing from the same fucking playbook. Yeah, Osama told these guys that they should try to get captured by Americans, held in an illegal detention center in some sort of legal shadow-land, wait for five fucking years of forced feedings and subjected to torture regimes personally individualized by teams of psychologists - then, after five fucking years, with no contact from the outside world they should kill themselves right as Bush's approval rate dips below 29%.

Earth to stupid motherfuckers: do you really think Osama bin Laden gives a flying fuck about which political party wins in November? He has very few stated goals. U.S. (christian) forces out of Saudi Arabia. An end to U.S. support for oppressive (and not quite radical islamic enough) regimes in the Middle East, and unilateral support for Israel in particular. A democrat in the White House ain't gonna change a fucking single thing about U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East.

For the most part, U.S. foreign policy serves corporate interests. Dems and the GOP, they all know how to deep throat the corporate cock. Ain't nothing gonna change about that policy until more American's take their citizenship seriously and fucking learn something about how our U.S. Military is used in the modern world.

One of the suicides in Gitmo was fucking 21 years old. That means when he was picked up and thrown in there he was fucking 16! Now I know they grow up fast in fucking war zones, but just how 'in the know' can a fucking sixteen year old terrorist be? Unless he was Osama's personal boy-toy, just what sort of actionable intel can he possibly have? Or is a sixteen year old who 'really hates America' such a threat that he needs to be gitmoized?

Yet the worthless Americans, the ones who think that their participation in politics should strongly resemble a football hooligan's 'participation' in the World Cup, have almost certainly never read any of the details of gitmo. They must live in blissful ignorance of the fact that we have held fourteen year old 'terrorists' down there. Yeah, holding a man down and forcing a feeding tube down his nose cuz he's on a hunger strike, not an image they need to bother their beautiful minds with.

Personally, I think there might be a few fuckers down in Gitmo that are actual threats to some American somewhere. But extracting intel from these guys is perposterous after five years. The more reasonable purpose of gitmo is to test the latest theories of psy-ops. They know that sleep deprivation and endless stress-positions (where the victim does not have a specific torturer to blame - if he'd only co-operate the pain would be relieved. I doubt most folks can comprehend the agony of having to squat for four hours - it's nothing new, it's as medieval as torture can get) is the most effective means of breaking down resistance. Muslims are a new breed, experiments with using their religion to torture them are novel and quite productive.

Ah fuck it. I'm sorry my country drove three men to suicide. I'm sorry that one of them reached maturity in gitmo, told daily that he would never see his family again. At least the suffering that I choose to let happen to them has ceased. I fucking doubt a single one of them died with secret information about the next terrorist attack still hidden in his brain.

An Ode to the Lost Souls


I don't mean to be impolite, to disrupt thy life and cause termoil or trouble,
Could Occham's scapel of reason only pierce your stupidity bubble.

If only we could awaken you from the tragedy of a lockstep nation,
Don't feel bad, the illness affects all sorts; I'd say at least 60-75% of the American population.

You listen to, without a scrap of a defense, the mainstream media,
A product designed to turn you into a fucking moron.

The sort of eduction, the boredom and repetition, that they have made compulasary,
It is designed to fuck you up, to make you into an unworthy class adversary.

A debate about nothing by two pundit slaves. The war and economy's sure on a roll,
Living in that make believe world where cause has no effect, it's hell on your soul.

You can always be regenerated, a caring artist can get you back on track.
But the years that you've spent there, that's part of your life you will never get back.






This post is entirely for my own selfish benefit. I just need to light a bit of a fire under my
ass, and a vulgar proclamation of my indomidible determination for all the world to see
might be the e-ticket. Readers who are unconcerned with my personal motivations, please
feel free to skip this one.


I've always wondered about the tendency in myself to look towards a 'defining moment.'
It's probably just some bullshit side-effect of the entertainment/climax based society I was
subjected to as a developing critter. Protagonist gets introduced, his character is given
enough flesh that we identify with him, he has a 'defining moment' - brother dies in war,
loved and lost, kills a lion with his bare hands, has a wacky drug experience, whatever the
fuck - then he is changed forever; galvanived as a new man with a new mission.

So as a dumb as fuck twenty-something, I was always looking for that moment. Lets put
ourselves in somewhat dangerous situations, lets make some rather irrational decisions,
and see what sort of powerful effects life can stamp upon us. I let myself be a seduced by
dangerous philosophies. I woke up next to some crazy women. I smoked a lot of pot and
watched stunningly violent japanese anime.

Yet that one defining moment that should change a man's life forever never seemed to
occur. I may have dumped a perfectly good companion, shaved my head, and moved three
states on a whim, but the transition from wanderer to driven writer just didn't seem to
take place. That mystical archetype of the 'artist' - that fuck who forgets to eat because he
just has to create! I think that archetype might be a load of shit. Like the writers who talk
about all the drug use and alcohol abuse they use to aid their writing - they are just lying
motherfuckers, they tell that to the younger generation to lead them astray, to keep the
competition down.

Then the other night I was finishing off a six pack and watching the UFC reality show on
Spike. That show could use some better editing, but all in all it's quality. I've been
obsessed with martial arts ever since I was a little kid, and played judo at a pretty good level
of competition until I got way too anti-social in high school, so the rise of jujitsu as a
'must have' skill in the UFC just seems like a validation of my understanding of what
happens when two men fight.

Anyfuckingways, I'm watching that program and the two fighters a damn evenly matched.
They are into the second round, there's blood on the mat, each guy's taken a fucking
beating. They've landed some solid stand up hands and feet. They've used up a shitload of
energy on the ground. One guy might have a cracked rib.

The shout from the sidelines that I keep hearing on this show is, 'Come on, want it! You
have to fucking want it.' That's what my wrestling coach always used to tell us: The guy
who wants it more is the guy who is going to fucking win.

Yeah, you're tired. Yeah, you fucking hurt. If you don't just push through and fucking
take what you want, your going to lose.

I think that shit is finally starting to sink into my thick skull.

I'm gonna write my fucking novel. I don't really give a shit about too much else. Those
guys want to be Ultimate Fighters, and no matter how much pain and damage to their
bodies they endure, that's the goal and they fucking want it. I want to have a finished
book. I want to have something more than just a fuckload of Ideas in my head, when
someone asks me about my writing I'm gonna have something to fucking show them, not
talk about showing them.

Blogging has made me hard. I don't care if somebody tells me my writing sucks, that I
havn't got a scrap of talent, that my dramatic action makes their dick soft. The world's full
of critics, and I'm no longer the sensitive new-age guy who shys away from the potential
for criticism.

I'm gonna write the first of a whole load of fucking novels. I'm gonna write a book about
my post-apocalypic world, where a young woman learns the hard way about how societies
most often run on violence and fear. Where the art of making an example of someone is
discussed by murderous motherfuckers who might think they are vampires, and maybe
they are. Some people are going to say that it's pulp fiction, and that I use the word fuck
way too much. All sorts of people are going to hate what I write, maybe it'll get banned.

That's what I'm gonna do world. I don't need to be transformed by the Muse and changed
forever by some great moment. I just need to want it bad enough, and fuck-me-running, I
do.

Tonight Cindy and I traveled over the river to the historic State Theatre in Minneapolis to join Al Franken at his fundraiser for his new Midwest Values PAC. The show included a reunion of the Al Franken and Tom Davis comedy team, as well as some of the best damn guitar playing I've ever witnessed thanks to Leo Kottke. It was really something.

The second half of the show featured a speech by Mr. Franken after a rather lenghty - actually cut short - introduction by a family friend. I was fascinated to learn that his childhood was not the alcoholic tragedy we had to suffer through in 'Stewart Saves His Family' (definately, one of the worst movies ever made.) I was in the audience when he announced for the first time that 'he may well run for the Senate in 2008.' Hey, that's more than he said in his interview in the February Playboy.

He said some strong things. I'm still a registered green, but I could support a platform for democrats that Mr. Franken outlined tonight. I'm fine with having made a financial contribution to his Midwest Values Pac. He obviously cares about America, he's got some good points to make, and he's damn funny. I'm sure nobody at a $1000.00 a plate Bush fundraiser has a good of a time as we all did tonight.

I'd like to blog more, but I TiVo'd UFC reality, and I gots to go watch somebody get their ass kicked. I'm also dying to know if Matt's o.k. after his last fight.

I've been flirting around the notion of giving evag a formal defintion for a while now, and since there is not too much noteworthy in the news this very second - (Mumia Abu Jamal gave a heart touching eulogy for Octavia Butler, and some dumbasses in America are still twitching every time their masters mention gays attacking marriage) - I thought I'd try to lay down some framework. Any comments helping to refine the notion are, like, totally welcome.

My first point would be that not every theist be an evag. Although, strictcly speaking, as an atheist I should be opposed to all notions of a diety, in practice I'm not such a hard-liner. For a fairly large percentage of theists, their sytem of belief is a source of insight and inner strength. Their faith does not make them inaccessible to reason, and often they are involved in some of the 'good works' that too many of the secular society seems to never get around to. The type of folks who look at the world and want to make the same criticisms I want to make, who want to make the same changes to society that I'd like to make. We may disagree about what empowers us to make these criticisms and make these changes, but we quickly choose to put aside any arguements regarding dogma until we have saved the world.

Enough, I will not define an evag by who they are not.

Evags are fundamentalists. I hate, pity, and oppose all fundamentalists. There have been times in human history where it was 'us or them', 'win or die' time. Perhaps for some groups that time is still ongoing - in America that time is more or less over. With freedom of speech and the press, we now have the opportunity to resolve differences in a much more reasonable manner. Fundamentalists are intolerant of this. They want to believe that the world is black and white, that I am wrong and they are right.

The American Heritage Dictionary defines Fundamentalism as: 1. a Protestant movement characterized by a belief in the literal truth of the Bible. 2. a movement or point of view characterized by a rigid adherence to fundamental or basic principles.

I know there are Islamic Fundamentalists out there too, and I don't like those wankers either, but I'm going to focus on the christian ones, since there are mainly the ones I'm going to encounter and one needs to focus on the problems in one's own country, not in countries on the other side of the globe. At least in this instance.

A second characteristic of the evag is their misogyny. Most evags like to pretend they put women up on a pedestal, but when you look past the b.s. it is all about control and security. <>

Finally, when I think about evags I think political ignorance. If I could find a more offensive word to describe how little they understand about how history has played out in the last few hundred years (without entering a new vulgarometer level) I would. Evags have been none to utter, 'but, the President of the United States (except for that secular hedonist liberal Clinton) would never lie to the American people!. They are also prone to take their views from religious leaders who spoon feed them their political information. They have absolutely no structures in their lives that help to protect them from propaganda and slanted reporting. Since they never trust anyone who does not preface their reporting with a personal story of how Jesus has changed their lives, they insure that the views of dissedents and third parties never enter into their 'beautiful minds.'

work in progress, what else do I need to add?

So I'm fucking reading up on how the U.S. government be declining to pony up intel about some swiss sumbitch's who were part of Pakestan's Khan's nooclear tech trade scam.

So, what the fuck?!?

We have these pretty good reports on how these european motherfuckers had deployed their monies to set up a factory in Indonesia that would produce centerfuges for countries like Iran and North Korea.

So, what the fuck?!? What can be a greater crime in the eyes of the international community than selling nooclear tech for profit? We live on a planet where 'criminals' had themselves buried to their neck, anf their mouth's stuffed with salt. Of all the crimes tat deserve a horrible death, what could been more deserving than the spreading of nuclear tech?

That's my bottom line. You be pro-nuke in 2006

. . .

I'm just doing the blogmad thing, and I've come across a few of the neoconned bloggers who are posting about the recently publicized problems in Haditha. I like how they all act like this is something new, when the alternative press covered it within a month of the allegations coming to light. Just because this atrocity has only just pierced their 'stupidity bubble', does not mean that us liberals are 'rushing to judgement.'

Anyways, I spent about forty-five minutes trying to explain to this young man some of the errors in his logic, and then was left with the unsatisfying realization that he may never approve it for publishment on the web. Hey, it's his blog and he can do whatever he likes. I needed to post today anyway, so I thought I'd just paste it here. If a few of my statements don't make much sense, just assume they'd be great insights into his flawed understanding of how war operates in the real world.

I began by addressing some of the previous commentators on how liberal blogs are wacky rants that delete 'the truth', then tried to address his three points on why terrorists in Iraq are bad cuz they don't follow the rules of war. This is the link to his blog.

ctrl-v:

I find things are quite the opposite, many of the conserative blogs I find don't allow any comments, or delete them. Usually, they talk about some set of 'rules' they enforce, then use them to justify their selective editing. It is part of the definition of Liberalism, that we not only permit points of view we dislike, we actually take some time to engage them and try to understand them.

Your 3 points about the rules of war may be rational, in that you provide justifications for them, but unfortunately they expose a rather simplistic view of war.

Yes, the wearing of uniforms does have some bearing upon the Geneva Conventions and an army's responsibilities. To say that that's the reason a state dresses up their military, however, is laughable. Far more important than any potential protections that might be gleamed from said conventions is the need for an army to be organized and obedient. Advertising campaigns about 'An Army of One' notwithstanding, soldiers need to supress their individuality and act as a group - uniforms and shaved heads are part of that process.

Secondly, far more important than following rules of war is the need to win. Armed groups that confront the U.S. military are so unbelievably out gunned that they have to be more than a little crazy - or desperate - to take up arms. If using a mosque buys them any tactical or strategic advantage they will do so without hesitation. The Irish resistance used churches when fighting the British. The history of our own revolution contains numerous examples of civilian, religious, and other 'off limits' structures being used to house supplies and provide military infastructure.

Your third point, that one someone surrenders the fighting is over. Come on! We're not talking about a game of checkers here. How many groups of confederates adopted terrorist tactics and continued to fight after the 'official' surrender in the Civil War. Or take any example from the Indian Wars, when a tribe was crushed not every brave shuffled off to the reservation to starve to death. Many adopted guerilla tactics, after all they really had nothing to lose.

My main point is not that you might not have the most developed understanding of how armed conflict works, my point is that our military leadership does. The kind of warriors who graduate from West Point have studied historical battles and wars to a level that makes both of us look like ignorant children. When they planned for the invasion of Iraq then never expected to fight an insurgency that wore uniforms, they knew the enemy was going to use every aspect of Islam to shield their activities, and they bloody well knew that things would not be over once Saddam fled to a spider hole. They had an extensive plan for the occupation of Iraq, Bush and Rumsfeld threw that plan out and came up with a new one. One that placed more of an emphasis on how they could sell this war, and less on what the realities were going to be. Remeber the whole, 'they'll greet us as liberators with flowers and candies' line of crap. Nobody with even a rudimentary understanding of the middle east believed that.

So now we have a christian army (that's how the insurgents are going to play it) in the heart of the muslim holy land. These kids are raised on stories of Salidin kicking out the Crusaders like we watch cowboy movies and Rambo.

We never had a chance of making that country better with a military intervention. We just didn't. Liberals were saying that for months in the lead up to the war, but not the liberals someone like you listens to.

You have to realize that a corporate media - one which will profit from a war - is going to find it much easier to provide you with dork liberals (and sell you on the notion that liberals want to kill babies or root for terrorists - damn that's offensive ) than to allow their ideological opponents an actual opportunity to confront their spin. I may well be the first real liberal you have ever interacted with. Liberalism is a complicated, and noble ideology.

Finally, if you want to focus on the rules of war, you should understand that an occupying army has a responsibility to provide security. The Bush administration chose not to send even a quarter of the troops necessary for that obligation, and their refusal to prevent looting or even leave the Green Zone permitted these terrible things to begin in the first place. Death squads are active in Iraq, with killings that sometimes number 1000 a month. Hands tied behind their back, tortured with power tools, gunshot to the head. This is the Iraq of today. Not the Iraq your going to see on MSNBC.

Sorry to take up so much of your time, but I've wandered across your blog quite a few times and been bothered by it. I finally got a typepass or whatever, so I finally have a chance to try to save your soul.

Stay groovy, and remember that the world is not that complicated, you just have to get out of the mainstream press to get a more accurate view.

Ever have one of those short conversations where you only realize a few hours later how offensive the other person's statements were? I'm still a bit worked up over something that happened to me almost a month ago, so perhaps I've got a hair trigger. Men can be quite irrational when we feel that our honor, or that of our women, has been disparaged. Allow me to elucidate, since I gleamed significant insight into the lives of evag women yesterday afternoon.

Towards the end of the work day, I was working alongside co-worker K. Shooting the shit, we rambled from movies we had seen lately, to a dislike of Sarah Jessica Parker (on K's part, not mine), into the DVDs for 'Sex in the City.' Here's where things morphed into the twilight zone.

"Yeah," K said, "my father-in-law came over the other weekend, saw those DVDs and just flipped. He just chewed me out. 'You're the man of the house now, and it is your duty to keep filth like that out of your home!' I mean he just chewed me out."

I have to say that I couldn't tell if he was joking or not. Just like when I first meet young evag men I can't always tell if they are gay or straight. They tend to stand a bit too close, and make eye contact a bit too readily. That's totally another blog. I told him that the nearest I've ever come to strong words with Cindy's father was when I caught him cheating at cards. Anyways, that should have been the end of it, but us seekers just never know when to quit.

"Dude, that's just so far out of my realm," I rhetorically jabbed, "Sometimes when I talk to you guys I just can't get my head around what totally different worlds we live in. Like, when Cindy was in college, if she brought a guy home for the weekend, her father would ask her, 'one bedroom or two?"

I had to explain it to him a bit, then after a fair pause he said, "Wow. Can you imagine how embarassing it must be for a Father to have to say that?"

"Um," clearly needing to clarify, "I don't think you are seeing it from his point of view. I think he might have been pleased to be able to say that, it was a clever way to show how liberal and open-minded he was."

His final statement be where I felt the knife of religious dogma twist in my guts.

K continued, "I think if a girl's father said that to me when I was visiting from college, I'd loose all respect for him. You have to stand up for your daughter. You have to show that your daughter is worth something."

Like all amateur philosophers, I'm a bit slow on the uptake. Or, perhaps a better way to put it is that I'm too distracted from my immediate emotions by the abstract analysis of how the world works. Third try; I'm too conditioned as a 'good worker' to upset the workplace environment by knocking this guy on his ass.

The best I could do was to assure him that if he had met Cindy back during her college days, she would certainly not have been taking a guy like him home for the weekend.

Many critics of the religious right in America identify the oppression of women as a key component of the movement. I guess I've always spent more time dwelling on the irrational stupidity of their dogma and their hyperfocus on 'feeling good' rather than critical thinking. This aspect to how they treat their daughters and their wives - and that's a big fucking point, there is no other role for women in that weak culture, they will live their entire obedient lives under one of those labels or both.

The father did not yell at his daughter for liking content such as 'Sex in the City,' which clearly lies outside of their puritanical world-view. He yelled at K, stating in no uncertain terms that he as the 'man of the house,' needed to control what she had access to. When he made that comment about 'showing that your daughter is worth something,' he implied that she was property that had to be protected from depreciation. A human being either has inherit value - like we stated in our liberal founding documents - or they don't.

The parallels between this thinking and the bass akwards tribalism of the cornors of the world where a rape victim is murdered by her family for being 'damaged' cannot be underlined enough. This is a pathetically childish view of the world.

When Cindy's father would make his quip about 'one bed or two,' he was showing respect for his daughter. She was an adult, and she was raised with enough wisdom to now be able to make her own damn decisions. If she felt that a guy was one bed material, that's her descision to make. It's her body, and it's her life.

There are a great number of 'big lies' out there that just piss me off. Evag's have produced a whole crop of young women who think Feminism means dedicating your life to murdering your own babies.

I hate to speak for Feminism; I'm just so manly of a man, I always feel absurd. But the bottom fucking line of that movement is that women are human beings, not property. Just like a young man at 18 can tell his parents to get stuffed and join the navy if he wants, a young woman has the same rights to control their own life. If she wants to be sexual active, that's her choice. If she wants to get married and spend her next two decades perpetually preggers, that's also her damn choice. They have the same rights to vote, own property, and exercise free speech as those of us with testicles.

I'd say that raising a daughter to accept that level of authoritarian control of her life will some day be considered a form of child abuse. A woman who not only has had her access to the world cut off and controlled, but a woman who willingly submits to that kind of treatment - that's not the kind of woman I want to spend my life with.

Hi. My name is Aurelius and I'm a Civaholic.

My enjoyment of Civ began when I was just out of high school. A my roommate had a PC (when they were still pretty uncommon) and showed me his CivII game and told me I could play it when he was at school. I was totally drawn in. 'I think it must be the feeling of power,' he once remarked, when we were debating why it was so damn addictive. I didn't like the implications of that, but I kept playing anyways.

Over the years I've played may video games, and somehow I lost my feel for the icon intensive type of play that the civ franchise was so known for. The learning curve on the games got to be too much for me, so I stuck with Max Paine and Masters of Orion II. My machine is mainly for word processing, so I tend to buy the games that are a few years old, but have been heaped with accolades.

Then I became a half of a couple, and the red-haired half holds a degree in 'software engineering.' She would play Civ 3 sometimes, but it looked dumb, and my computer wouldn't run it anyways.

Then she started talking about Civ 4. Its got this amazing zoom feature. Its AI be so smart you will learn from the tactics they use to crush you. Nobody is going to beat this game of deity. Within a month she had ordered it online. I watched her play a few games, offered a bit of advice as a student of strategy (after all, I have read Sun Tzu.)

I swear, she was the one who encouraged me to give it a try.

Gosh dang with a freight train, that game is soo coool. You now have seven different religions, each which can be founded (and thus has a holy city.) The technologies and units are so well balanced - with individual promotions for each unit that accentuate their individual roles. Everything is so well worked out and balanced. If you build temples and wonders, so that your cultural influence is threatening to subvert another enemies cities, then you have done so at the expense of your science and your military. Bismark may just blow past you with tech, while Ceasar may just take your cities by force. It's so damn cool.

The only computer in our house that can run it is Cindy's candy-apple red hypersonic laptop. So every night when she goes to bed I pretend I'm not tired and then stay up til two trying to wipe the Aztecs from the face of the earth.

I'm so tired I can't think straight. I've been neglecting me blog. When I do get elected leader of the U.N. - so what?!?. Has that time been worth anything?

I can't help but think that many guys watch three to five baseball games a week, and when they are over have they really accomplished anything? Sure they can talk baseball with some of their friends, but I can talk civ with some of mine. . .

No, I'm rationalizing. The game is a helluva game. I've said before that someone can learn a lot about how nations interact by playing civ. This one is soo coool.

I can stop anytime I want to.