More like UNcivil WRONGS: Socially Quarantine the Jena 4006

I've read a lot about this. Of all people, a black sports columnist comes close to summing up the other thing wrong w/ all this. An excerpt:

Including the fact that not one witness — black or white, and there were 40 statements taken — connected the jumping/beatdown of the white student (Dec. 4) to the noose incident (Sept. 1).

No one mentions that a black U.S. Attorney, Donald Washington, investigated the "Jena Six" case and held a town-hall meeting explaining that there was no evidence connecting the jumping/beatdown to the noose incident.

Only after the prosecutor overreacted (or tired of letting Bell and others skate once the successful football season was over; Bell wasn't the only football star charged) did the "Jena Six" blame the attack on the nooses and the white shade tree.

And Michelle Malkin, a commentator who I'm pretty sure doesn't actually reason, but rather has been programmed at some point with an ideology that hits more than misses, summed up the question whose beggings to be asked have fallen on deaf ears:

I’m not going to join the knee-jerk race-hustlers in celebrating the “civil right” to beat white people unconscious to rectify institutional racism. Is this the legacy Martin Luther King, Jr., would have sanctioned?

Which is the problem all the contrarians like me have w/ this. The implicit narrative behind all the "Free the Jena Six" talk is this: "Whites in this town hate blacks and punished them too harshly, and any wrongdoing blacks might have done can be blamed on white racism." It's not too big a mental leap to remove the words "this town" from that notion-- especially if you don't think about the actual words that make up that thought, which no one is.

White doucebaggery-- and nothing I've read doesn't suggest every white person in that backswamp nightmare town is the worst kind of anachronistic scummy backwash, the sort of hyper racist Bad Sheriff caricature that most of us will only ever encounter in movies-- doesn't excuse black doucebaggery. Not even when it outweighs the black doucebaggery, as it does in this case. Every race represented in this whole affair needs to disown the participants.

Still not convinced the attack wasn't at least kind of justified? Consider the logistics of a six-on-one attack. Mychal Bell was a promising football star. He needs five other kids to beat some white boy's ass? How does that number break down? Four to hold each limb, one to hold the head, and the sixth to work the body? Or maybe four for the limbs and one for each nut? Or was there room for only six?

Plus, Bell had three assault convictions prior to this. If it's racist of me to just blindly assume, without looking into it at all, that none of those three beatings were administered in the pursuit of social justice, my bitterly, drippingly sarcastic apologies.

And among the many lies by omission told about the Jena Six now-fiasco, the downplaying of Justin Barker's medical condition makes me puke the hardest. The lightness of his wounds isn't further evidence of the harshness of the charges against the Six; it's lucky defiance of the already evident severity of his beating. He was punched and kicked unconscious. Have you ever hit your head hard on a cabinet or door? Imagine someone hitting you that hard on purpose until you can't stay awake. Because we see cats getting knocked out all the time in entertainment, and have never been beat so hard we can't remember getting beat ourselves, it's easy to laugh it off. But think about what goes into a fight that escalates that high. And think of Robin Williams in Insomnia defending his accidental murder of his girlfriend in what sounds like perfectly reasonable, though tragic terms, until pursuing cop Al Pachino drops some context on the audience by screaming that choking a girl out for five uninterrupted minutes does not constitute a heat-of-the-moment outburst.

Again, none of this is to defend, excuse, or rationalize the racist institutional abuse perpetrated by the whites. And even I think hanging nooses from a whites-only tree doesn't qualifiy as aggressively provocative social satire (although making the nooses the school colors almost brings it back). Really, this whole town is a petrie dish of human bacteria that needs to be sterilized and thrown out. I don't know if segregation was wrong by itself so much as it was wrong in service of racism, if you get my meaning. Why not keep this whole townful of idiot apes away from the rest of the world?

I know, when you average it out, that black people are nowhere near the sort of thug, ass-with-impunity BET likes to spotlight non-stop. I know most of the people in any group aren't represented by the terrible examples that get all the attention, and are decent and just want happy lives for they and theirs, and don't like being a shit to anyone, really. But speak the fuck up already, folks. And don't chose solidarity with those you should shun just because you think the other guys are worse. I can tell you whitey busts his ass letting everyone know his disgraceful cousins don't speak for him. Your turn.

I think that covers it. I skipped the Cavemen premiere to write this. You owe me so big.

The Life Trap (Brizoni)

Since working not working at McDonald's, I've met lots of people stuck in the Life Trap:




One guy in particular sticks out in my mind: Younger than me. Got off heroin, got off, then got on and off meth, currently quitting drinking, which he says is the hardest of all. Got screwed when his roommate when they moved out of his apartment (in my complex, even) so he has an eviction on his record, moved into his brother's house and got kicked out of there, now has lived in a hotel w/ his parents for 8 months. Life Trap.






Of course, not working at McDonald's myself means I too am not in a bit of a Life... wait, would that be "I too" or "I neither"? My self-respect-covering code screws me up if I stick too it too closely.





And that's the point. The gate's open-- it's just "'"off limits"'"

OJ: The Movie

I know OJ is a common and therefore uncool topic, but how interesting would an all-true biopic of this guy be:

- Football star out of college
- Tries his hand acting, enjoying genuine success in the field in 1974, with the smash hit The Towering Inferno., and a TV-movie of his life wherein he plays himself, entitled Juice on the Loose.
- Also, Wikipedia says "Simpson was considered for the lead role in The Terminator, before it was decided audiences might not accept him as a relentless villain, due to his "nice guy" image."
- Then stars in the Naked Gun series.
- Kills his ex-wife and her boyfriend.
- Flees police in a highly-watched chase.
- Goes on trial for a year, every minute of which gets televised, and by the end the only 12 people in the world who can't figure out he did it all happen, in the sort of statistical fluke mathematicians call an "Omniverse Vanisher", to comprise the jury.
- Three years later, is found guilty of "Wrongful Death". Logic dictates every thinking man and woman abandon all faith in the American legal system; crime rate plummets due to suicidal nihilism.
- Ostracized, plays golf for 12 years.
- Writes a thinly-veiled confession called "If" I Did It, detailing in detail what he did and how he did it, and when, using what. The book is pulped in a last-minute attack of the publisher's conscience, only to be reissued a year later, this time the proceeds going to the families of OJ's victims.
- Breaks into a Vegas hotel room to steal "back" from an auctioneer the suit he was acquitted in.
- Will probably go to jail and spend at least some of the time he should have spent to begin with.

Tell me that wouldn't be a badass 2 hours. And who knows what crazy crap he'll end up dying during doing? Zeppelin attack? Betrayal by a trusted associate in a counterfeiting ring which'll make 100-dollar bills w/ his face on them? "Re-animating" Nicole Brown's corpse Weekend at Bernie's-style to restore his good name, complete w/ mimicking her voice while hiding his head behind her head?

Hurricane Tiger killed President John F. Kennedy, with a tiger.

Hurricane Tiger began to swirl in the exact geographic center of the Bermuda Triangle, whipping across Cuba and that other Spanish-speaking country that's around there-- but "miraculously" sparing Haiti, save for a tiger it lifts from a budding Haitian zoo, carrying the feline across half the United States, all the way to President Kennedy's motorcade.

Using the tiger as a swinging mace, Hurricane Tiger slashes the president three times, fast enough to slip between the frames of Abraham Zapruder's under-cranked Kodak film. Managing to scoop up half the president's brain matter, Hurricane Tiger, now 7 feet wide and 100 feet tall, flew in a mathematically straight line back to Haiti, where the tiger and JFK's brain, now swirled by thousands of "G" forces into the tiger's head, combining the two brains to make a JFK/tiger hybrid, a "TFK", if you will, where deposited with palpable tenderness back into the tiger pit. The occurence made front-page headlines in Haiti, but was dismissed as unbelievable folklore in the rest of the world.

Driven half-mad by gravitational stress, TFK's newly electrified tiger claws tore the bars of his cage like paper mache and promptly went on a prolonged killing spree, lasting months. While to this day no one knows how TFK was able to stay incognito for any period of time, rouge Haitian researchers-- any inquiry into the TFK case was outlawed by a traumatized Haitian Aristocracy in 1979-- have deciphered the killings were a kind of Morse code; each killing taking place either one, three, or twelve hours from the last, to the second. From this knowledge, and interpreting the twelve-hour gaps as the ends or sentences, those reseachers were the first to receive this message (note there are no commas or other punctuation in Morse code):

"We in this country in this generation are by destiny rather than choice the watchmen on the walls of world freedom. We ask therefore that we may be worthy of our power and responsibility that we may exercise our strength with wisdom and restraint and that we may achieve in our time and for all time the ancient vision of peace on earth good will toward men. That must always be our goal and the righteousness of our cause must always underlie our strength. For as was written long ago except the Lord keep the city th"

Lead researcher Paco Sanchez recognized the text immediately: It was the final paragraph of the speech President Kennedy intended to give the day he was assassinated. Minus the last 5 words, that is. In the middle of Haiti's long, hot summer of 1964, a hot dog vendor named Juan Ramirez bravely fought off TFK w/ a pair of electrified hot dog tongs, sparing his fate as the letter "e" in the word "the", and effectively ending TFK's blood-soaked message to humanity as it (presumably) neared its close.

Following the foiled attack, TFK ran for 40 miles, not stopping once, sinking his claws in a major metropolitan power grid, killing his body but somehow sparing his head. The resultant electrical catastrophe caused storm clouds to swirl into existence from seeming nothingness, and a flash flood began in 7 seconds.

For seven long days, the whole of Haiti experienced floods as high as 10 feet. TFK's body bloated and dissolved in the waters, but his head, just above the floodline, didn't stop blinking normally until a lucky lightning bolt-- the only one recorded in the storm-- struck it, causing the clouds to dissipate immediately.

Economic records show no Haitian purchased any batteries for 4 months afterwards.

All the animals in The Haitian Zoo, abandoned a month prior due to an "unbearable static electricial [sic] charge", died in the flooding. All, that is, except for three tiger cubs, sparks periodically sparking in their young fir. The brave Haitian researchers were initially at a loss to explain this, but it is now believed TFK electrically passed on his exact brain pattern onto his offspring, embuing them w/ the knowledge necessary to escape their father's (their own) unholy wrath.

Sadly, nobody realizing this in time, the tigers were later released into the wilds of southeast Asia.

The oft-lamented near-extinction of many types of tigers has, in fact, saved millions upon millions of human lives. It is now estimated that 99.9 percent of all tigers living today have their brains occupied by perfect electro-chemical duplications of TFK-- in essence, they are TFK; a Jacob's Ladder sizzling between each of their unnaturally polished metallic claws.

Why haven't they sent mankind another message in blood? Tiger-murder statistics are woefully incomplete. Perhaps they already have...

couple leftovers

1. I have this image in my head of a big barrel of worms, all writhing around in every direction. Freedom is a hole at the top, about worm-level. One or maybe a few happen to be writhing in generally the right direction, towards the hole, but in light of the rest of the worms, it's hard not to look at those correct few as just a function of statistics.



2. Theory and Practice: Lesson Ω

Theory:


Practice:

Creaky door, cobwebs, echoing footsteps, blow dust off keyboard in great cloud, blog

(Brizoni sez):

Al Qaeda to target embassies. Embassies? That's the big threat? Have I fallen into a time-warp, landing in an alternate 1993 with slightly worse pop music?

Or has the war on terror been such a thundering success that the Jihadis have scurried back to the terroristic equivalent of TP-ing houses? Has attacking essentially random Middle Eastern countries in retaliation for a homeland assault sent the message to the [I need an epithet as or more caustic than "sand-nigger" that doesn't have the collateral damage against other cultures I don't have as big a problem with] constituency that provoking the US is like playing Don't Wake Daddy with a hammer?

OR, it is just the opposite: Has the war on terror been such a bloom-off-the-rose disaster for the specter of US military might that the Tusken Raiders think they can just slack at this point? Will we really capitulate after they bomb a few embassies in African countries even Rand McNally forgot were there? Have we so lost our stomach for a fight we'll let any A-holes spread whatever clitoris-ripping-out-with-pliers religion they feel like wherever?

Here's the big thing the Western world has going for it: We've taught ourselves to be ashamed of what dicks people naturally are. So many other doucebag cultures have yet to do that math, and we have to live on the same planet as them. We think of this as the super-shiny future, only 5 or 6 generations away from Utopian abundance and security, each man and woman armed w/ toys that can rearrange atoms into whatever tickles our future fancy, but in the grand scheme, we're a select few chimps who've built elaborate twig structures, surrounded by a lot more chimps who passionately hate even that meager achievement. (No, I still can't get over what a savage goddamn time I was born in.)

Feh. Nothing I can do about it tonight. Maybe writing more Robots vs. Zombies will cheer me up. Or maybe everything I come up w/ in this mood will (barely) covertly say how shockingly, overwhelmingly high the top of the mountain looks from here.

The Health Care Thing

Brizoni here. The Ransom Note was "kind" enough to let me use their account (I ran this blog, once upon a time, but they've appropriated it, I think just to shut it down, but who knows what plans those guys have until their sprung) to post. They're not pleased I used as many swears as I did, but, well, whatever.

Watch video of Michael "I Don't Talk in Soundbites" * Moore shit his fat. I haven't seen Sicko, and other than this evisceration, I don't know what the movie claims. I do know the political spectrum is littered w/ doucebags whose disingenuous populism can be smelled readily by their use of the phrase "the American People". Whenever someone goes on and on about "the American People", they're trying to sell you something (Moore) or get you off their backs (the President). I don't know that you'll ever hear that expression out of sincerity. It's kind of code for "you assholes".

I don't know if we just deserve free health care. I don't know that we don't, either, although I'm inclined to think that, given where we're at as a species and a culture right now, we actively don't deserve a damn thing. I do fear turning hospitals over to the government will turn them into DMVs, and that old jokes about skeletons in waiting rooms will start hitting too close to home**, but again, I don't know for sure. I want to know why exactly health care costs so much. What's the actual reason(s)? Anyone?

I've decided not to let either group of cumrag get me agitated about this one way or the other, until I've had time to think it through for myself. If that's still allowed.

What do you think?





*Actual goddamn quote.

**Want your drugs invented and open-heart surgery performed by the people who gave us FEMA, Amtrak and the CIA? Does the Post Office do a better job than FedEx? I can't mail a package via the federal government without waiting in line 20 minutes--and the Post Office is the best-run federal agency." - same guy