March 04, 2011
15th-floor office, late morning
"Winners"
cjh
---
It's no fast and easy coincidence that everyone's hollerin' at their powers these days. It's part of the thirty-year cycle I'm always raggin' on about. Obama kicked it off a few years ago let's say. Really it was Bush, and Iraq, and Katrina, and the Ice Caps, and the Bubble, but let's keep this easy for the sake of digestion; I don't want to spend too much time writing this. Point is, once it's in the air, in the ether, it's up for grabs. Anyone can take a whiff and get high on their own righteous plight. Collectively unconscious.
So we're part of it. We elected a President on it. The Tea Party drinks it like moonshine. Tucson will never forget it. Folks in North Africa and the Middle East certainly have a taste for it. Even ask Wisconsin about it. Better yet, ask the half of their government that's taking political refuge in Illinois. While you're there, ask Rahm Emanuel to comment. He's probably just had a conversation with Charlie Sheen about it.
So there's an oily sheen of power hollerin' on everything these days. People wanted to know what all this Internet and Facebooking was gonna do: you're looking at it. Don't gotta have a good idea to be heard these days, or a good cause, just a good loud voice for hollerin'. Not to say there aren't good causes. There's both good and bad in this, like everything, always. It just takes different forms.
Toward the tail end of the previous thirty-some-year cycle, Paddy Chayefsky wrapped it all up in a beautiful film called Network. Thirty-five years later, we're wrapping it up in Charlie Sheen.
So...Sheen's gone full gonzo and it's really frickin' incredible to watch. To put it in somewhat obscure and sheenish terms, he has identified that the media has gone full Sheen, the self-reflexive feedback loop that is the Internet has swallowed itself, and he is more than happy to be the Sheen that shines a mirror in the face of TV.
There is real virtue in some of what he is doing. The other stuff, of course, will kill him. And it's not until then that we'll know exactly how to polish this story for posterity. So for now, I withhold judgment and opinion, and I continue to ride my own soaring comet toward the land of the warlocks, if only to have it fizzle out in a few years with a collective forgetting and beginning of the next thirty-year cycle.
Friday, March 4, 2011
Wednesday, January 5, 2011
On Facebook Privacy
January 05, 2011
15th-floor office, early afternoon
"Like a Hall-of-Fame 3rd Baseman, Facebook don't let nothin' past him!"
cjh
---
We're no idiots, and we know the blither we blather to and fro in this here FaceWindow is watchable, and usable, and valuable to those in the Big Commerce Picture. Even the tidiest of us--whether reaching for a career in politics or clenching tightly to the notion of some sort of hippie exemption from it all--are decidedly labeled and predicted and pitched to. Whatevski I say; it's always been this way. We're just making it easier for them.
The "them" have always known what people were doing, roughly. This just puts a finer point on it. If the MadMen were able to pin us down with a practical certitude back then, today they can be mathematical, and maybe save a little money. They're right here in our hip pockets, inserting their messages with stealth and cunning, but we get many fine rewards in return, by way of self validation and ego strokement, if not some genuine community building and Friendliness.
I say embrace it. Tread lightly if you will, take care, but no sense pretending they haven't always been watching. You might want to avoid those who attempt an overt takeover of your life though, as with many of these dreaded Apps.
I just saw one for My First Status or somesuch that checks your backlogs and finds what you first wrote. You must give it permission of course, and this comes by way of a series of requests that it makes to you. In this particularly fucked up scam of an app, permissions are requested for the usual personal info and wall postings, but apparently also it wants to BE you. And I quote...
Permission to send messages to your friends on your behalf...
Permission to create and respond to event invitations on your behalf...
Permission to log in as Admin of your pages and make updates...
Please everyone, have your fun, be yourself, but not if that means being stupid. Read carefully, and don't use Apps.
15th-floor office, early afternoon
"Like a Hall-of-Fame 3rd Baseman, Facebook don't let nothin' past him!"
cjh
---
We're no idiots, and we know the blither we blather to and fro in this here FaceWindow is watchable, and usable, and valuable to those in the Big Commerce Picture. Even the tidiest of us--whether reaching for a career in politics or clenching tightly to the notion of some sort of hippie exemption from it all--are decidedly labeled and predicted and pitched to. Whatevski I say; it's always been this way. We're just making it easier for them.
The "them" have always known what people were doing, roughly. This just puts a finer point on it. If the MadMen were able to pin us down with a practical certitude back then, today they can be mathematical, and maybe save a little money. They're right here in our hip pockets, inserting their messages with stealth and cunning, but we get many fine rewards in return, by way of self validation and ego strokement, if not some genuine community building and Friendliness.
I say embrace it. Tread lightly if you will, take care, but no sense pretending they haven't always been watching. You might want to avoid those who attempt an overt takeover of your life though, as with many of these dreaded Apps.
I just saw one for My First Status or somesuch that checks your backlogs and finds what you first wrote. You must give it permission of course, and this comes by way of a series of requests that it makes to you. In this particularly fucked up scam of an app, permissions are requested for the usual personal info and wall postings, but apparently also it wants to BE you. And I quote...
Permission to send messages to your friends on your behalf...
Permission to create and respond to event invitations on your behalf...
Permission to log in as Admin of your pages and make updates...
Please everyone, have your fun, be yourself, but not if that means being stupid. Read carefully, and don't use Apps.
Wednesday, November 3, 2010
Post Election '10
November 03, 2010
Echo Country den, midday, politics got me tapping these keys again!
cjh
---
Thanks for voting y'all. Things aint all bad. Maybe this allows people to decompress a bit before the next one. Maybe this actually helps our friendly leader keep office, due to the perception of balance and all. I'd even go so far as to estimate that not many of these Tea Partiers will stick around very long. And the ones that do might actually turn out to be different than the Bush Clan Rovians we've been used to. Or maybe they'll even actually be good--or at least genuine, and somewhat pure of motive--in their own right. And of course some are here doing their part to keep the ole Hilarity Train chug-chug-chugging along.
---
Echo Country den, midday, politics got me tapping these keys again!
cjh
---
Thanks for voting y'all. Things aint all bad. Maybe this allows people to decompress a bit before the next one. Maybe this actually helps our friendly leader keep office, due to the perception of balance and all. I'd even go so far as to estimate that not many of these Tea Partiers will stick around very long. And the ones that do might actually turn out to be different than the Bush Clan Rovians we've been used to. Or maybe they'll even actually be good--or at least genuine, and somewhat pure of motive--in their own right. And of course some are here doing their part to keep the ole Hilarity Train chug-chug-chugging along.
The few victories the blue team squeezed out were actually pretty nice ones, and if you voted for the blues here in California you should be real proud--if relieved--that we don't have a couple of ruthless tech execs lined up to run things right now. Not to mention we've got our own slick Mad Man Gavin Newsom, still poised to push progressive positions, entering into Phase 3 of his Master Plan.
Pot didn't pass, but be honest, you're high right now anyway, and you can rest assured that probably more than 50% of the people around you are too. If folks had come out this time like they came out two years ago, it probably would’ve passed, but no matter, it will someday. Meanwhile, life isn't too roughed up for us here on the West Coast. You kind of have to be smoking a bong on the corner, stopping traffic, selling pounds of it from a hefty sack to get in trouble for it here as it is, if I understand the present law correctly.
Okay, don’t fret, walk on…
cjh---
Monday, April 20, 2009
Obama Wins
April 20, 2009
EEPCAL bedroom, mid-late night, taking in some writing and typing out some television, this has nothing to do with today's date
cjh
---
Obama won.
Yes, okay.
EEPCAL bedroom, mid-late night, taking in some writing and typing out some television, this has nothing to do with today's date
cjh
---
Obama won.
Yes, okay.
Thursday, September 11, 2008
Future of Mankind to Barack: "Let's get serious now man, my life is on the line."
September 11, 2008
EEPCAL den, late night, tired and watching TV, this has nothing to do with today's date
cjh
---
Widely observed is the global devastation that lies in the wake of our current President. This man has brought the world to its knees by nearly every measure of health, wealth, peace and progress we have. Even so, sometime during year five or so of his shit reign, probably as part of our coping post-Neglection '04, we The People (via the media and vice versa) made a shift in our perception of "GEORGE W. BUSH" from that of hapless, arrogant, dimwitted player in a crooked game, to that of cartoonishly idiotic, impossibly ignorant, embarrassingly unaware pawn in a fundamentally evil game. With that shift came laughter, and that laughter held our hands and numbed our brains and carried us through these last few years. In short, we went dormant, and we put Loony Tunes on a loop, and we pretended that our President was Elmer Fudd.
And we're lucky, and it looks like he and his string pullers haven't had enough time to deliver the death blow, and it looks like we have an opportunity to protract our extinction by another couple decades.
BUT WE NEED TO PLAY THIS GAME.
Obama, kind hero, please step away from the podium, quit with the coolly delivered facts, quit with trying to make us all feel better, and knuckle up for a beat down. Our enemy has hired the same old dream team, and that crew spins The People like cotton candy on their fat little fingers. Remember we thought the last two were surprises. Remember these are the guys who can explain very clearly to us that the sky is, in fact, not blue on a sunny day, not gray on a rainy day, not black at night. The sky's white, they say. And if you say it's not, you're wrong, and gay.
More to come, but posting for now...
cjh
---
EEPCAL den, late night, tired and watching TV, this has nothing to do with today's date
cjh
---
Widely observed is the global devastation that lies in the wake of our current President. This man has brought the world to its knees by nearly every measure of health, wealth, peace and progress we have. Even so, sometime during year five or so of his shit reign, probably as part of our coping post-Neglection '04, we The People (via the media and vice versa) made a shift in our perception of "GEORGE W. BUSH" from that of hapless, arrogant, dimwitted player in a crooked game, to that of cartoonishly idiotic, impossibly ignorant, embarrassingly unaware pawn in a fundamentally evil game. With that shift came laughter, and that laughter held our hands and numbed our brains and carried us through these last few years. In short, we went dormant, and we put Loony Tunes on a loop, and we pretended that our President was Elmer Fudd.
And we're lucky, and it looks like he and his string pullers haven't had enough time to deliver the death blow, and it looks like we have an opportunity to protract our extinction by another couple decades.
BUT WE NEED TO PLAY THIS GAME.
Obama, kind hero, please step away from the podium, quit with the coolly delivered facts, quit with trying to make us all feel better, and knuckle up for a beat down. Our enemy has hired the same old dream team, and that crew spins The People like cotton candy on their fat little fingers. Remember we thought the last two were surprises. Remember these are the guys who can explain very clearly to us that the sky is, in fact, not blue on a sunny day, not gray on a rainy day, not black at night. The sky's white, they say. And if you say it's not, you're wrong, and gay.
More to come, but posting for now...
cjh
---
Saturday, September 6, 2008
Sarah "Hockey Mom" Palin Pushes Filthy Lies, Twisted Views, Gets Fact-Checked into the Boards
September 6, 2008
East Echo Park Center of Arts and Leisure, mid-afternoon, backyard, drinking COLD beer, listening to Hawaiian Gold and some Congolese party music, two lizards dancing on the tree next to me
cjh
---
McCain and this Alaskan have chilled my September like a pair of feisty high speed, low IQ glaciers. Already this barely waning California summer had me dreading the coming days when the dark and cold take hold, and that was before the dynamic duo of Temper Johnny and the Arctic Fox united in arms against America.
This square-jawed, pageant runner-up of a vixen from American Siberia has been forced on us like an avalanche of nature clubbing, freedom thumping fertility, so I feel it's important to ask: What do we know about, and as a result of, this scary and tragic Veep pick?
1) John S. McCain, while independent maverick by propaganda, was given no choice with this pick. Of course, this is consistent with the overall choicelessness campaign theme that he's now stuck with via his lack of backbone and her God-fueled lack of care or concern for the lives of women and all mainlanders.
2) John S. McCain really wanted fellow maverick Joe Lieberman to join him for that unholiest of possible political pairings, but we don't think he sought this for the typical political reasons. We hear, in fact, that McCain's doctor thought the Lieb might be a good donor candidate for the skin grafts Johnny needs every six months when the melanoma revisits. What better way to get a man on your good side, after all, not to mention the golden opportunity to literalize bipartisanship: John S. McCain, Republican Presidential Nominee, short on face skin, shares ticket with Joey the Lieb, "Independent" douchebag with jowls like his face lost a bet with gravity.
3) The Democrats, unfortunately, DO speak over the heads of the American People. The American People, unfortunately, DO have low asses, so when those heads are in there, they're pretty low too, and easy to overshoot.
The Republicans, unfortunately, DO have it right when it comes to marketing. Animal yelps of "U-S-A" and "Country First," unfortunately, ARE perfectly hearable from inside an ass.
4) Slippery Sarah is apparently some sort of Alaskan Secession Sympathizer. Her world champion "snow machine" (is that right?) racer of a husband is pretty hot and heavy with this Alaskan Independence bullshit too - though, I don't know why I say "bullshit," since it's impossible for me to imagine anyone outside the ice box having the necessary passion or interest to drop the puck one way or another on this issue. Anyway, he and his goatee are pretty into it and she's a loyal supporter. Why care? I believe the powers behind that movement would like the American mainland to dance with Satan in hell's eternal fire if I understand them correctly.
5) You can see anger in McCain's eyes, and he likes his women that way too. I don't know about soul, but anger, now that you can see in the eyes. Johnny, Cindy and Sarah all suffer from the politically unfortunate inability to hide their angry motives from their crooked faces.
Look at Cindy when someone's interviewing her hubby and irrationally demanding impromptu verbal responses that are also coherent. Those journalists and their questions confuse John, and she gets mad like a good little protective younger second wife should.
Look at Sarah when someone - wait, we haven't had ANY access to her yet, but anyway, her eyes squinted with anger for about 60% of that speech the other night. And when they weren't, her nose took up the slack.
And finally, look at Johnny when he's forced by reporters and their damned desire for accuracy in rationale to distinguish between the different types of towelheads. He has bigger fish to fry than to worry about such subtle details - Muslim fish.
But McCain will contend, and the contest will be close, and we'll all live in fear. Why? Because evil and anger and rage, while all quite easily readable on a face, are not too easily seeable from inside the giant ass of the American People.
There's more, but I'm tired.
cjh
---
East Echo Park Center of Arts and Leisure, mid-afternoon, backyard, drinking COLD beer, listening to Hawaiian Gold and some Congolese party music, two lizards dancing on the tree next to me
cjh
---
McCain and this Alaskan have chilled my September like a pair of feisty high speed, low IQ glaciers. Already this barely waning California summer had me dreading the coming days when the dark and cold take hold, and that was before the dynamic duo of Temper Johnny and the Arctic Fox united in arms against America.
This square-jawed, pageant runner-up of a vixen from American Siberia has been forced on us like an avalanche of nature clubbing, freedom thumping fertility, so I feel it's important to ask: What do we know about, and as a result of, this scary and tragic Veep pick?
1) John S. McCain, while independent maverick by propaganda, was given no choice with this pick. Of course, this is consistent with the overall choicelessness campaign theme that he's now stuck with via his lack of backbone and her God-fueled lack of care or concern for the lives of women and all mainlanders.
2) John S. McCain really wanted fellow maverick Joe Lieberman to join him for that unholiest of possible political pairings, but we don't think he sought this for the typical political reasons. We hear, in fact, that McCain's doctor thought the Lieb might be a good donor candidate for the skin grafts Johnny needs every six months when the melanoma revisits. What better way to get a man on your good side, after all, not to mention the golden opportunity to literalize bipartisanship: John S. McCain, Republican Presidential Nominee, short on face skin, shares ticket with Joey the Lieb, "Independent" douchebag with jowls like his face lost a bet with gravity.
3) The Democrats, unfortunately, DO speak over the heads of the American People. The American People, unfortunately, DO have low asses, so when those heads are in there, they're pretty low too, and easy to overshoot.
The Republicans, unfortunately, DO have it right when it comes to marketing. Animal yelps of "U-S-A" and "Country First," unfortunately, ARE perfectly hearable from inside an ass.
4) Slippery Sarah is apparently some sort of Alaskan Secession Sympathizer. Her world champion "snow machine" (is that right?) racer of a husband is pretty hot and heavy with this Alaskan Independence bullshit too - though, I don't know why I say "bullshit," since it's impossible for me to imagine anyone outside the ice box having the necessary passion or interest to drop the puck one way or another on this issue. Anyway, he and his goatee are pretty into it and she's a loyal supporter. Why care? I believe the powers behind that movement would like the American mainland to dance with Satan in hell's eternal fire if I understand them correctly.
5) You can see anger in McCain's eyes, and he likes his women that way too. I don't know about soul, but anger, now that you can see in the eyes. Johnny, Cindy and Sarah all suffer from the politically unfortunate inability to hide their angry motives from their crooked faces.
Look at Cindy when someone's interviewing her hubby and irrationally demanding impromptu verbal responses that are also coherent. Those journalists and their questions confuse John, and she gets mad like a good little protective younger second wife should.
Look at Sarah when someone - wait, we haven't had ANY access to her yet, but anyway, her eyes squinted with anger for about 60% of that speech the other night. And when they weren't, her nose took up the slack.
And finally, look at Johnny when he's forced by reporters and their damned desire for accuracy in rationale to distinguish between the different types of towelheads. He has bigger fish to fry than to worry about such subtle details - Muslim fish.
But McCain will contend, and the contest will be close, and we'll all live in fear. Why? Because evil and anger and rage, while all quite easily readable on a face, are not too easily seeable from inside the giant ass of the American People.
There's more, but I'm tired.
cjh
---
Thursday, May 22, 2008
Volume One, Chapter Two: Letters from the Campaign Backlines
May 22, 2008
Los Angeles
cjh
---
JOHN MCCAIN & JOE LIEBERMAN ARE NOT FULL-SIZE PEOPLE
Up at 4:04am with a toothache and thinking about a few things:
1) Beer and cigarettes are a helpful guide at this early hour.
2) Robert Altman made really good movies, and he imbued his last - A Prairie Home Companion - with a touching and pleasantly haunting awareness of his own coming death.
And perhaps most relevant to the title...
3) John McCain and his press conference sidekick Joe Lieberman are small men with crooked mouths, inauthentic ideas and dark souls who will say and do anything in their losing struggle to maintain the veil of political relevancy. I could throw the rest of the GOP in there, along with Hillary, but I'll save those for future posts.
The perception that John McCain and Joe Lieberman are not full-size people, for me, is fueled by some plain realities. First, they are, in fact, not very tall. Their age has left them with compressed spines, which must bear added stress considering a lifetime in politics has left them without backbone. For McCain, the effect is amplified by the unfortunate fact that his broken arms have left him looking a bit like a marionette with invisible strings whose master hasn't quite got the illusion of realistic human locomotion down yet.
Second, they speak with small ideas and that essential political inauthenticity that reminds real thinking humans (of whom there are a sad few) of why we don't follow politics. They represent what I hope is becoming the old way to campaign for the hearts and minds of the desperate American "mainstream" - manufactured, taglined deception. For McCain, the effect is amplified by the fact that his age has left him too slow to keep consistent with his own lies (a crucial political talent), and too stupid to have bothered to put together a clean team that is capable of doing so. In short, just as age leaves the elderly oblivious to their own public gas passings and bowel movements, it has so left John McCain oblivious to - or worse, unconcerned by - the putrescent embarrassment that his own political life has become.
Like with many, for me, there was maybe one minute when he was running for President in 2000 where I thought I caught a glimpse of a real person in there. But that was before he realized that he couldn't win that way. It was before the election of 2000, and it was before the infamous September day that launched him into misguided, misbegotten battle. Since then he turned Baptist (a common age-70 conversion), distilled his talk to strictly Islamofascist rhetoric, and heavily courted the endorsement of the first evangelist he could identify, who just happened to be the over-the-top, entertainingly evil Pastor John Hagee.
I'm now basking in that one minute where I think I see a glimpse of a real person in Barack Obama. He is trying to win in what looks like a new way, and it seems like he's got a good shot, though I don't underestimate the power of the GOP or the Clintons to squash their foes through deception and distraction. Their's is a time-tested approach, and time selects for that which works, so it will return to fashion. But I'm enjoying this minute.
cjh
---
Los Angeles
cjh
---
JOHN MCCAIN & JOE LIEBERMAN ARE NOT FULL-SIZE PEOPLE
Up at 4:04am with a toothache and thinking about a few things:
1) Beer and cigarettes are a helpful guide at this early hour.
2) Robert Altman made really good movies, and he imbued his last - A Prairie Home Companion - with a touching and pleasantly haunting awareness of his own coming death.
And perhaps most relevant to the title...
3) John McCain and his press conference sidekick Joe Lieberman are small men with crooked mouths, inauthentic ideas and dark souls who will say and do anything in their losing struggle to maintain the veil of political relevancy. I could throw the rest of the GOP in there, along with Hillary, but I'll save those for future posts.
The perception that John McCain and Joe Lieberman are not full-size people, for me, is fueled by some plain realities. First, they are, in fact, not very tall. Their age has left them with compressed spines, which must bear added stress considering a lifetime in politics has left them without backbone. For McCain, the effect is amplified by the unfortunate fact that his broken arms have left him looking a bit like a marionette with invisible strings whose master hasn't quite got the illusion of realistic human locomotion down yet.
Second, they speak with small ideas and that essential political inauthenticity that reminds real thinking humans (of whom there are a sad few) of why we don't follow politics. They represent what I hope is becoming the old way to campaign for the hearts and minds of the desperate American "mainstream" - manufactured, taglined deception. For McCain, the effect is amplified by the fact that his age has left him too slow to keep consistent with his own lies (a crucial political talent), and too stupid to have bothered to put together a clean team that is capable of doing so. In short, just as age leaves the elderly oblivious to their own public gas passings and bowel movements, it has so left John McCain oblivious to - or worse, unconcerned by - the putrescent embarrassment that his own political life has become.
Like with many, for me, there was maybe one minute when he was running for President in 2000 where I thought I caught a glimpse of a real person in there. But that was before he realized that he couldn't win that way. It was before the election of 2000, and it was before the infamous September day that launched him into misguided, misbegotten battle. Since then he turned Baptist (a common age-70 conversion), distilled his talk to strictly Islamofascist rhetoric, and heavily courted the endorsement of the first evangelist he could identify, who just happened to be the over-the-top, entertainingly evil Pastor John Hagee.
I'm now basking in that one minute where I think I see a glimpse of a real person in Barack Obama. He is trying to win in what looks like a new way, and it seems like he's got a good shot, though I don't underestimate the power of the GOP or the Clintons to squash their foes through deception and distraction. Their's is a time-tested approach, and time selects for that which works, so it will return to fashion. But I'm enjoying this minute.
cjh
---
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