10:48 PM email joke via my Dad:

A group of executives from several beer companies were getting together to have some liquid refreshments. The exec from the Budweiser company ordered a Bud, the man from Miller had a Miller High Life, the guy from Pabst asked for a Pabst Blue Ribbon, the exec from Coors asked for a Coors, and the man from Guinness asked for a Diet Coke. The other execs asked him why he wasn't having a beer. His reply was, "Well, nobody else is having one so, I didn't want to be the only one drinking."

Hey, if you're interested, there's a whole lotta goofy rock to be had this coming weekend in Bloomington. Friday night I'll be taking the place of the oh-so-charismatic Freeda to guest-drum in Gentleman Caller at Vertigo. It's a benefit. We rock. Then on Saturday I'm rocking out once more, this time with Catharine and Clint in addition to Jimmy for Southapalooza (at South High School, natch). I think both nights will be fun. If we don't rock out, the terrorists have already won.

Okay, I wasn't gonna go there, but let me just say that I long for days past. When Reagan was pres, we knew that goofy bastard hated all things Red, and he'd take any opportunity to bitch about the commies. Trust him? Of course not, I hate the bastard, but he didn't pretend to be something he's not. Then came G.H.W. Bush. In hindsight, the man was a master statesman (compared to his son, that is). Nuff said (okay, that's not enough, but I'm not going into it right now). Then came Clinton. I wouldn't trust that guy to feed my cats, much less date my daughter. But remember how bent out of shape people got about his lies? "As far as I know, Monica's a virgin," he said with a grin, "if you know what I mean." He was a jerk, okay, yes, and he threw some missles about. But he didn't look us in the face and tell us that starting WW3 was in our best interest. Rumsfeld, Cheney, Bush junior; how long do we have to wait before someone takes these apocalyptic thugs out?

Remember when Paul Reubens was arrested the first time, and there were those newstories about how to talk to you kids about PeeWee? And then the president was busted for getting a hummer from an intern, and there were all those newstories about how to talk to your kids about the president's sexual peccadillos? What I wanna know is, where are the articles that address how to explain to your kids that the US has been taken over by war-hungry amoral pricks who want to take over the middle east? When little Timmy asks "why [and when] did we become an expansionist imperial monarchy?" what are we supposed to say?

Sigh.

Shari was in Portland when this mess started. She spoke to me via cell phone, and she mentioned that Bush was gonna be on TV, that the war was probably starting now. I hadn't been paying attention. I'd just come back from Portland myself. I'd met Heidi's husband for the first time, I'd hung out with some old-school buddies, I'd tromped around the misty hills and mountains. Prick Bush had dropped out of my conscienceness. (And I'm sorry for the language, but I really do hate that prick right now.) And then he was back. He came on TV and lied about the reasons for invading Iraq again, and he fumbled through the English language and scowled and pretended to be a "statesman," and I'd like to spit on him. In hindsight, the first Gulf War seems like a grand humanitarian exercise compared to this mess.

Man, riding in Pat's car back to his house, the press conference before with Bush was on the radio, and then we turned on the tele and watched him for a little while, and we heard the lapdogs ask their tepid questions. Grrrrr. It didn't bother me that much at the time - it was par for the course - but looking back it makes me angry to think about it. The empire is being run by a shithead. I'm sorry, but it bothers me. It's dangerous.

I can't help but think of Chechnya, how the Russians are still trying to calm that mess down, and how the Analysts were saying just a few weeks ago how the Iraqis would welcome our troops as liberators. Let's play imagine just a moment: what if a real democracy decided to invade the US and tried to tell us that they were killing our troops for our own good. Would we all welcome them, or would every last American with a gun die trying to kill those murderous expansionist invaders? Hmmmm.

At this point, I don't know what I want to happen. I guess I want a quick victory for the US, because US troops are there for the long haul regardless of the result. But there's no way that victory can be a simple affair. There's no "victory" to be had when you're talking about overwhelming civilian populations with military force. God, we live in screwed up times.

All the more surreal because it's so distant.

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12:57 PM Sounds like it might be rained out, but does anyone know about the Pow Wow this weekend in Bloomington? (make that "safe and sexy" Bloomington [HT link; will die soon])

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12:58 AM Ah, the cluttered thoughts; why keep them to myself? Why not just blog?

There's madness, and then there's madness. Who knows what might show up there?

Down on Creation ended so cleanly it left me wanting to follow Man and Robo-wife to the next stage of their relationship. Ah well, my imagination must suffice. Good stuff, Clint.

Slice of life: This weekend J/D/Diego stopped by Shangri-la for a pre-birthday party-potty break, and I'm holding Nice Guy Eddie up to the little man. He pets him with little hands, patting his furry head and smiling. He says something that sounds to me like "Mama." "Mama?" I ask him. Dani explains: "He's saying 'meow, meow.'" Aha! Yes, Meow! Neat stuff. I ask him a question and he answers. I expect the next time I see him he'll be forming sentences.

I'm looking forward to spring now. Or maybe this is spring? I'm not good with the dates of these things. I stepped about the grounds of Shangri-La with Matt and Jim this weekend. I have plans for the garden, plans for cutting back the hedge and trying to stay ahead of the poison ivy that returns every year. For now all of the cats are indoor kitties, though I know it will drive them mad not to go outside. I'm looking forward to the farmer's market. I'm looking forward to the weddings that are coming up. I haven't posted about Heidi's wedding yet; it was grand. I'm looking to the fine things. Eddie is purring as I type this.

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1:06 PM Just stepped into the back room and turned on the TV. I've been half-watching CNN for the past few days, so that's what came up. There's no commentary running, just live footage of Baghdad being bombed. It took me a few minutes to realize that there wasn't any running commentary, something I take for granted on tv; just all these images of flashes of lights and plumes of smoke and things exploding in the distance, behind buildings and palm trees illuminated by streetlights. And the sounds: roars and dull pounding.

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9:02 AM Dack's Warblog becomes The Rational Enquirer.

How 'bout that speech, eh? [insert impotent hand-wringing here].

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7:40 AM Self-induced sleep deprivation continues.... Gotta love those drives into work where I'm promising myself that I'll get to sleep at a decent hour tonight. Dave's recent computer purchases inspired me to pick up a pretty cheap replacement for my buggy video card, an Asus V7100. No more sitting in the dirt at the drive-in, as they say.

Good beginning to CoC last night too....

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5:58 AM Back from Portland, had a great trip, sleep pattern slightly out of whack. More to come....

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12:37 AM Okay, Spab, I'm sitting in the Fine Arts building last Thursday watching stag flicks with Phil: It's a packed house, standing room only, and the seats are even smaller and more cramped than I remember, which is not perhaps the most comfortable way to watch this stuff, but it was okay after all. So there's four films, all black and white and made before sound, so that's how we watch them (silent). The audience is pretty quiet throughout, laughing occasionally but mostly just watching the little plots unfold. There's nudity, and then every so often some sex (but not too much). No svelt supermodels here, just regular looking people. I think the oldest film was from the 1910's.

Thing is, the movies they've picked to show that night were all picked because they had plots where women were sorta in charge rather than the more common "porn" theme of women being controlled/dominated by men. They seemed quaint, friendly. When Linda Williams (guest speaker and author of Hard Core) spoke afterwards, she had some footage from a documentary about early stag films and the porn industry in general, and it included an interview with "Candy Barr," one of the earliest "stars" apparently, she described her experiences a little differently, with terms like "white slavery"; she was "bought and sold."

It's interesting to think of the Kinsey institute archiving and saving this stuff. In the case of stag films from the early 20th century, I'm sure that if someone wasn't saving it this stuff would eventually disappear, lost in the flood of porn that's made possible by modern technology and communications. I can't imagine that Kinsey could keep up with all that's produced in contemporary times, much less make sense of it; the idea of wading through that seems like it would be a dreary, soul-numbing experience. But the stag films, like I said, seemed pretty tame.

I almost asked a question during the Q&A, but decided against it. There was footage in the documentary clip prof. Williams showed of one of Candy Barr's films, in which she has to sort of fight off a guy who wants her to perform for him. Williams mused that there's no way to know if her onscreen refusal was scripted or not, and that got me thinking about film as an artifact of crime. It got me thinking about stuff that I haven't really given much thought to since my film class days. The movie is "fictional" and yet we see "real" things happening. We see a film from the 20's and while what we're seeing is artificial we can still learn things about the 20's from watching it; at the very least we can learn a little about how films were produced back then. I wanted to ask Williams to comment on the idea of porn as a record of criminal activity, where someone is coerced and recorded against their will, or at least in unsavory conditions. But my thoughts on the subject were, and continue to be, pretty vague.

So I decided to hunt down a copy of Hard Core, because I'm sure she's covered most of that angle already. I considered just ordering it from Howard's, but decided that was a little much (how much porn-studies-theory would I really want to read, anyway?) so I looked it up at Monroe Lib and sure enough they have a copy.

And sure enough, someone's pilfered it, apparently.

Their catalog says it's on the shelves, but it's not where it should be, so I got to go to the reference librarian and ask her with a straight face if she can help me track down the book on porn I'd like to check out. "It's called Hard Core," I tell her, and I give her the author, and she acts like every librarian I've ever encountered: totally neutral as to the subject matter. I could have been asking about Thai cooking or middle eastern politics or movies starring Cory Haim; they don't ever let on what they think about your interests unless you prod them a bit. I wasn't looking to prod directly, though I couldn't help mentioning that the author had spoken recently in town, and that mayhaps someone had picked it up recently. Yeah, right buddy.

Have I mentioned how cool the library is recently, by the way? I'm repeating myself, I know. I've taken to checking out the Monroe Lib online catalog when I hear of an interesting title, and while they don't have everything (how could they?), they've got plenty. Ted Rall's To Afghanistan and Back? Sure, they've got it. (It's good, yes, but I was spoiled by Sacco's Palestine; in terms of artwork, depth, story-telling, Rall's work, while interesting, pales). Two other recent finds are Pollack's The Threatening Storm (mentioned recently here) and Kristina Borjesson's Into the Buzzsaw. I've only read a little of Buzzsaw, having gotten sucked into ThreateningStorm, but it's a collection of essays by journalists whose careers have been hosed in one way or another because they've told the "wrong story"; in Borjesson's case it was investigating TWA flight 800. Viva la stacks!

I went searching for Evan S. Connell last night and sure enough, they've got him as well. I went to my bookshelf and made sure that I hadn't gotten rid of Diary of a Rapist or White Lantern (the first being a creepy first-person narrative, the latter a collection of historical essays, both recommended). I think the next thing of his I need to read is Son of the Morning Star, a historical account of Custer's last stand.

re: Connell: "The output and the range of his work have been impressive: six novels; three collections of short stories; two book-length poems; two collections of essays on arcane historical subjects; and Son of the Morning Star, a long historical work combining an account of the Plains Indian wars with a study of Custer and the battle of Little Bighorn. Through it all, he has remained essentially a writer's writer careful, conscientious, word-obsessed, never sensational, meticulous in his craft. Not all of his books are great, but not one of them is dishonest or slipshod or showy. Several are, in fact, great: the Bridge novels, the poems, and the Custer epic; two more novels, Diary of a Rapist and The Connoisseur, fall just below these. Taken together, Evan Connell's fourteen books show a consistent quality, a quiet excellence few authors of his generation can match." [link]

"That's the night I decided to...." If you haven't been following "Down on Creation" on B-Student, you should check it out; it's good stuff.

returning...

Big trip to Portland coming up - it's down to days, now....

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