Quote:

“A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.”--Martin Luther King

Thursday, December 31, 2015

Wag: The Boykin Effect

When in Texas do as Texans do. Brawl in the bar.

He'll play, because this is Texas after all and normative.

Helfrich would have sent him home with a sack lunch.  Boykin's coach Gary Patterson is of a sleek Texas breed, old school, and this won't matter.

Sure have been a lot of kids sent home from bowls early this year.

Clemson has sent three home.

Update:  I guessed wrong.  The kid has been suspended and won't play.


TS

Tuesday, December 29, 2015

Winter

As I suspected would happen, I've caught mere snatches of the bowl action to date.  It's all good. I'm looking forward to the weekend when the top teams play.

There ought to be a better playoff system, but short of that I like the games and the matchups that are set now.

Another year in the can.  I'm about to turn 65.  Doesn't seem possible. Damn...

TS

Sunday, December 27, 2015

Don't Get Sick

I visited the hospital ER today, and do believe I managed to annoy every nurse in the place by the end of the session.

They seemed all too pleased to see me leave.  They were nice and efficient to begin with, but it didn't last.  I know they got very busy around me.  I entered a nearly empty room, and then got lost in the shuffle as some seriously sick people arrived and the triage grew heavy.  I watched football and waited.

And waited.

There's a lot of stress in nursing, but by my usual standards I felt I was pretty mild with the situation this time.  I think I asked too many questions, made too many requests.

They essentially sent me home with a tube of medicine and said don't come back here.  The dermatologist I visited last week went on vacation Christmas Eve and is gone through the New Year's holiday.

Thanks for the warning, pal.  What happened to a followup?  If there is a rather too-late and untimely one down the road it'll cost me too much cash.  My insurance won't cover back-to-back visits to a dermatologist, which shouldn't have surprised me, I guess.

This is the American health care industry we're discussing here after all.  One, two, three.  Everybody get rich.  Four, five, six. Everybody else, get fucked.

I should have read the fine print.

The nightmare continues...


TS

Friday, December 25, 2015

Christmas, Or Just Another Day

It's just another day, a long and sluggish one at that.  It might have been a lot better if I could have traveled out to Minnesota to see my daughter and her family.

Her boy is 7, which is a good Christmas age, and it would have been cool to see him light up as he opened a few gifts.  Christmas is for kids.  All of us jaded elders can appreciate the day for gathering and swapping tales, but really it's for the innocents.

I'm not a Christian, but I have nothing against the holiday--except for its tedium.  I'm not a Christian but I'm all for goodwill and peace on Earth.

Too bad that's such an illusion overall.  One day of it annually isn't going to change anything.

When I was a kid I coveted a Lionel train set for Christmas the way the kid in the popular movie coveted a Red Ryder.

It worked out and I received a nice set, basic really with just a few landscape pieces to give it a little bump. It was solid and well made. I enjoyed that train during the long, housebound winter months in my home town.

I think my mother donated the set after I became bored with it a few years later.  After I graduated from high school my mom sold the shack we lived in and moved into town. Maybe she included the train set in the sale, if she didn't give it away outright.

Naturally I wish I'd kept it.  It really was a nice toy, and there's money in old toys today I hear.

But if I did have it I might not sell it.  I might set it up in my studio in a figure-8 and watch it roll with the same pleasure I did when I was a kid.

You could press an auxiliary switch and the dang thing would toot like a real train.

This winter, like all the others, will drag slowly on.

Merry Christmas to all.


TS

Wednesday, December 23, 2015

Stupidity



Yes, but there really are stupid people out there who cannot--should not--be taken seriously. The increasingly popular idea that we must listen to and appreciate the opinions of the terminally stupid makes no sense.


TS

Tuesday, December 22, 2015

Bugged

Not to be overly sensitive, but I may already have it. Something is seriously wrong, that is all I can say.

My newest doc suspects an allergic reaction, never an easy issue to isolate.

Unless it's obvious, as when a cat walks into the room and you develop hives.


TS

Saturday, December 19, 2015

Post-Racial America

Wall Street was founded on slavery. African slaves built the physical wall that gives Wall Street its name, forming the northern boundary of the Dutch colony designed to ward off resisting natives who wanted their land back. To formalize the colossal trade in human beings, in 1711, New York officials established a slave market on Wall Street.

Many prominent American banks including JP Morgan and Wachovia Corp made fortunes from slavery and accepted slaves as “collateral”. JP Morgan recently admitted that it “accepted approximately 13,000 enslaved individuals as collateral on loans and took possession of approximately 1,250 enslaved individuals”.

The story that American schoolbooks tell of slavery is regional, rather than national, it portrays slavery as a brutal aberration to the American rule of democracy and freedom. Slavery is recounted as an unfortunate detour from the nation’s march to modernity, and certainly not the engine that drove American economic prosperity. Nothing could be further from the truth.

A lot of serious thought and writing on American race relations is coming to the fore these days, including this lucid piece by Harvard scholar Garikai Chengu.

And this, selected by CP's Jeffrey St. Clair as one of the best books of '15.


TS

Thursday, December 17, 2015

Blockbuster

Was never a big Star Wars fan.

I saw the first one and it was definitely underwhelming, didn't bother subsequently.  I don't get it. Star Trek was another one.  I watched a couple of issues on TV, skipped the movies.

I guess blockbusters just aren't my thing. Neither are the super hero comic-book movies.

I wish I had Harrison Ford's hair, however.

I took a book back to the library today and came home with three works of fiction.  Camus' A Happy Death, Achebe's Things Fall Apart, and the lone Bukowski novel I haven't read to date, Ham on Rye.

Cheaper than the movies, and likely more entertaining.


TS

Bowls


The (Name a Company) Bowl and 39 others are almost here.

I'll probably watch most of them, even if somewhat passively until the better teams play.

I won't miss the Oregon/TCU Alamo Bowl, that I guarantee you.

Oregon found a QB for next year, grad transfer Dakota Prukop out of Montana State.  Good player, stop-gap to give two or three very talented young guys on Oregon's roster a chance to grow into the job. Oregon's dumbest critics are blaming Helfrich for not developing a roster QB this year, as if the old quarterback himself doesn't know what he's doing.

Christ, the coach found Marcus Mariota when nobody else was interested in the Hawaii native.  The real problem was that when Mariota came on the scene as a redshirt freshman everybody could see how good he was.  Nobody Oregon recruited the next couple of years wanted anything to do with sitting for two or three years behind Mariota.

Kids aren't that patient these days.  The recruits are coming around again, though.  Oregon has two good ones in line for next season to back up Prukop, and the second-ranked '17 product, a kid named Ryan Kelley, who is the highest rated QB to ever pledge to Oregon.

I was pissed all year at the "Fire Helfrich" crowd.  The entitlement and sanctimoniousness of a good portion of the fan base was purely ugly.

Amateur hour ruled in some circles.  Loudly.  Obnoxiously.

Helfrich and Scott Frost did a great job once Vernon Adams recovered from his broken finger.

The team's defense is another issue.  We'll see how that plays out post-bowl.  There could be a change, or perhaps not...


TS

Wednesday, December 16, 2015

The Battle

My new skin doctor told me I was a "real mess" yesterday, but ruled out cancer or organ failure.

I now have a new drug.  Hope it works.

TS

Poem of the Day












The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

 S’io credesse che mia risposta fosse
A persona che mai tornasse al mondo,
Questa fiamma staria senza piu scosse.
Ma percioche giammai di questo fondo
Non torno vivo alcun, s’i’odo il vero,
Senza tema d’infamia ti rispondo.

Let us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherized upon a table;
Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,
The muttering retreats
Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels
And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells:
Streets that follow like a tedious argument
Of insidious intent
To lead you to an overwhelming question ...
Oh, do not ask, “What is it?”
Let us go and make our visit.

In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.

The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes,
The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes,
Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening,
Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains,
Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys,
Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap,
And seeing that it was a soft October night,
Curled once about the house, and fell asleep.

And indeed there will be time
For the yellow smoke that slides along the street,
Rubbing its back upon the window-panes;
There will be time, there will be time
To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;
There will be time to murder and create,
And time for all the works and days of hands
That lift and drop a question on your plate;
Time for you and time for me,
And time yet for a hundred indecisions,
And for a hundred visions and revisions,
Before the taking of a toast and tea.

In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.

And indeed there will be time
To wonder, “Do I dare?” and, “Do I dare?”
Time to turn back and descend the stair,
With a bald spot in the middle of my hair —
(They will say: “How his hair is growing thin!”)
My morning coat, my collar mounting firmly to the chin,
My necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a simple pin —
(They will say: “But how his arms and legs are thin!”)
Do I dare
Disturb the universe?
In a minute there is time
For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.

For I have known them all already, known them all:
Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;
I know the voices dying with a dying fall
Beneath the music from a farther room.
               So how should I presume?

And I have known the eyes already, known them all—
The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase,
And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin,
When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall,
Then how should I begin
To spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways?
               And how should I presume?

And I have known the arms already, known them all—
Arms that are braceleted and white and bare
(But in the lamplight, downed with light brown hair!)
Is it perfume from a dress
That makes me so digress?
Arms that lie along a table, or wrap about a shawl.
               And should I then presume?
               And how should I begin?

Shall I say, I have gone at dusk through narrow streets
And watched the smoke that rises from the pipes
Of lonely men in shirt-sleeves, leaning out of windows? ...

I should have been a pair of ragged claws
Scuttling across the floors of silent seas.

And the afternoon, the evening, sleeps so peacefully!
Smoothed by long fingers,
Asleep ... tired ... or it malingers,
Stretched on the floor, here beside you and me.
Should I, after tea and cakes and ices,
Have the strength to force the moment to its crisis?
But though I have wept and fasted, wept and prayed,
Though I have seen my head (grown slightly bald) brought in upon a platter,
I am no prophet — and here’s no great matter;
I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker,
And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker,
And in short, I was afraid.

And would it have been worth it, after all,
After the cups, the marmalade, the tea,
Among the porcelain, among some talk of you and me,
Would it have been worth while,
To have bitten off the matter with a smile,
To have squeezed the universe into a ball
To roll it towards some overwhelming question,
To say: “I am Lazarus, come from the dead,
Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all”—
If one, settling a pillow by her head
               Should say: “That is not what I meant at all;
               That is not it, at all.”

And would it have been worth it, after all,
Would it have been worth while,
After the sunsets and the dooryards and the sprinkled streets,
After the novels, after the teacups, after the skirts that trail along the floor—
And this, and so much more?—
It is impossible to say just what I mean!
But as if a magic lantern threw the nerves in patterns on a screen:
Would it have been worth while
If one, settling a pillow or throwing off a shawl,
And turning toward the window, should say:
               “That is not it at all,
               That is not what I meant, at all.”

No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be;
Am an attendant lord, one that will do
To swell a progress, start a scene or two,
Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool,
Deferential, glad to be of use,
Politic, cautious, and meticulous;
Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse;
At times, indeed, almost ridiculous—
Almost, at times, the Fool.

I grow old ... I grow old ...
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.

Shall I part my hair behind?   Do I dare to eat a peach?
I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.
I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.

I do not think that they will sing to me.

I have seen them riding seaward on the waves
Combing the white hair of the waves blown back
When the wind blows the water white and black.
We have lingered in the chambers of the sea
By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown
Till human voices wake us, and we drown.

T.S. Eliot

Source: Poetry (June 1915).


TS (the other one)

Modern Insanity









The "debate."  As the kids say, LOL.

Only, like, it ain't funny.

I don't think HST would have minded.  Too bad he wasn't there to fill in the gaps.


TS

Saturday, December 12, 2015

Exceptionally Stupid

By now, it is taken for granted that a perpetual war regime like the one we now live under needs wars to fight, and that they can’t all pass under the radar like Obama’s quasi-secret wars in Yemen and in Africa. Every now and then, the military-industrial-national security state complex needs a war that excites the public and themselves. If none exist, it is necessary to create one. With servile media in tow, that is easy enough to do.

Andrew Levine examines one of our exceptional qualities--the most prominent one.


TS

Friday, December 11, 2015

Landays
















“When sisters sit together, they always praise their brothers.
When brothers sit together, they sell their sisters to others.”

“In my dream, I am the president.
When I awake, I am the beggar of the world.”

Sounds like a good read.


TS

Wednesday, December 9, 2015

One Mother, Two Voices



John Trudell died of cancer yesterday, exactly 35 years after John Lennon was murdered by a madman.




TS

Tuesday, December 8, 2015

Threats























It is always something, isn't it?


TS

Sunday, December 6, 2015

Thursday, December 3, 2015

Tuesday, December 1, 2015

Frost to Central Florida

I think this guy is a good coach and hate to see him leave the Ducks.

But he is ambitious.  Chose a real challenge in rebuilding a recently decent Central Florida team that fell on hard times this season and finished winless.


TS

Tuesday, November 24, 2015

The Best Gift in the World

There is Black Friday and then there is me, the ultimate shill.  Jumping the gun again.

Buy! Buy! Buy!

Seriously, I reread this the other day for the first time since its revision, and I gotta tell ya...it veritably soars.

I have no idea how I wrote it.  Got lucky, I guess, and I can only vaguely recall the ideas flowing at the time like good beer between me and the muses.

Was I drinking at the time?  Good God yes, but never during the actual writing.  I thrust it into the face of every barroom bookworm I knew.  I was delivering furniture at the time and attending PSU on the side, unloading my baggage concerning the Iraq War.

I knew far too many people who blindly followed that savagery, verily seemed proud of it, too.  I wanted to kick ass, place their stupidity under the heavy bombs of my own version of "shock and awe."

I gave it to a coworker who called me an "idiot savant."  He was that impressed with the prose! Amazing!  He was a real-live idiot calling me a savant.

Rare air, indeed.

"Impressive, but you know I don't agree," said an ultraconservative friend whom I secretly hoped to piss off with its politics and polemical breadth.

Score one for RBP.

It is mostly smooth sailing as the actual writing goes, no matter its clumsiness in places (I've reworked it as much as I care to, I'm done with it).  Like any great tome, its ideas resonate.

Before it was done and polished to its present sheen, I gave it to the editor of the online journal, Oregon Literary Review.

To my astonishment, CD published the manuscript in its entirety.  I had hoped that at best one or two of the essays might strike the right chord.

To this day, I am grateful for the man's largess and belief in the work.

It happened at the right time, as such thing tend to do.  Until then my writing had mainly been a matter of starts and stops as I struggled with both my discipline and voice.

Then it spewed forth, attended by the rigors of academia.  So thanks to you as well, PSU. (Now where is my honorary PhD?)

So I say to you, Buy!  Buy! Buy!

You talk about giving?  There can't be a better gift sent by you with a cold eye to someone you know who needs a thrashing this Christmas.

With love, of course.

The title essay at CounterPunch.


TS

Monday, November 23, 2015

Crazy, Mixed Up Kids

This is the song, Otis Day and the Knights' cover of the Isley Brothers' "Shout," that Oregon football fans sing at every game.  The much revered (by Oregon students) Belushi movie "Animal House" was filmed on the Oregon campus and featured the song.

This is a better melody from Tears for Fears of their song with the same title.

I prefer the latter and only wish that Oregon's students could get with it, man.

Well, the truth is that both songs are lyrically stupid, but the TfF song would play better in a crowded stadium.


TS

Bullshit



Here is an appeal to sentimentality that should make you think twice about being an American.


TS

Don't Laugh, Cry



















Don't laugh, but football is just like war.  It really is, because Nike has designed these cool camouflaged unis for Oregon's Civil War football game with OSU Friday afternoon.

You see, in the real world we're fighting wars to protect Nike and other major corporations from the Muslim rabble, the communists, and the union organizers in Third World manufacturing centers where workers are paid pennies on a dollar.

Which is how we like it right?  How it should be?

So you and I can dress in Nike, mind you.  So Oregon can win football games and look like warriors while doing it.  Just doing it, I mean.

This is called "freedom."  All the boys and girls who would like to go to college or find a decent paying job are after all free to join the US Army and play out their football dreams on a battlefield of our government's choice.

There's plenty to choose from, too.

Everybody knows war is just like American football.  Only, you know, more people die in an actual war.


TS 

Our Town


For Henry Wise and Cindy Cedeno, at least, the Portland they moved to from Tacoma half a decade ago no longer exists. Their neighbourhood – in the city’s inner south-east – used to be cheap and filled to the brim with other young musicians and students. “It’s already so different in so many ways. Everyone we know has been recently pushed out of their homes.”

Housing dilemmas.  The story of my life.  I even wrote a play about it in 1989 titled "Litany in a Trumpeter's Bog." The protagonist is a jazz trumpeter facing eviction.

It's in my Four Absurd Plays.

My old neighborhood, which had for 10 years been a fantastic refuge, had started to change into a shopping mall.  By then nearly all the artists I knew were fleeing Northwest Portland.  I hung on for another 10 years until I too became homeless, just like the character I created, and like so many others in the flesh.


TS

Sunday, November 22, 2015

Doc of the Day



TS

A Sliver of Light















(Thomas Boyd Photo)

Oregon's offensive line dominated USC and gave Vernon Adams plenty of time to throw for six touchdowns yesterday in Autzen.

A satisfying win in a tumultuous season. Many of the Ducks' loudest, most abrasive, and quantifiably stupid fans were calling for a coaching change after six games.

Oregon is 8-3, with a chance to finish with 10 wins by beating OSU Friday and winning a middling bowl, likely in December.


TS

Friday, November 20, 2015

Wednesday, November 18, 2015

Clownish

CHARLESTON, SC—Declaring that opening the nation’s doors to displaced Syrians posed a major security threat, GOP leaders warned Tuesday that any refugees who resettled in the U.S. would most likely be driven to terrorism by the way America treats them.

The rest of the story.



TS

Odetta/The Staples/The Roots

Tuesday, November 17, 2015

Friday, November 13, 2015

Saturday, November 7, 2015

Troubles

A lot of computer problems these days.  Can't blog or access email very easily.

Can't really do anything about it for a couple of weeks.  Oh well...


TS

Thursday, November 5, 2015

Sports and Militarism


One of my pet peeves, another aspect of popular U.S. culture that I find abhorrent and shallow.  I like sports, but I loathe much that surrounds them.  It has worsened over time, too.  I didn't like the jingoists on the teams I played on in high school and college in my youth; I certainly wouldn't get along with those types these days.

This attitude is coming from a guy who once had the entire PCL's Phoenix Giants (Triple A) bull pen threatening to climb into the bleachers and kill me at old Civic Stadium in Portland during a Beavers game, because the players noticed I wasn't standing for the national anthem pre-game.

Not standing for the anthem was a habit of mine, cultivated as my personal, lonely protest against jingoism and the rule of militarism in American sports and society in general.

The Giants started yelling at me mid-song, which I thought more disrespectful than anything I'd done.

Ha!


TS

Wednesday, November 4, 2015

Funds














Support CounterPunch today.  Be generous.


TS

Saturday, October 31, 2015

Friday, October 30, 2015

Good Fun, Bad Vibes

Oregon beat ASU in an amazingly entertaining football game last night on ESPN.

Much of Oregon's fan base is in a bitching mood.  The win wasn't good enough.  That places Oregon in new territory for sure.  I can't recall the last time, if ever, the Ducks started a season at 5-3 and had so many clamoring for a hatchet job on the program.

It's sad, not my cup of tea.  I enjoyed the game and would gladly watch more like it.  Well, in fact I do every Saturday throughout the college season.

Talk about misplaced priorities.  The fans more so than the team are turning into a joke.  The sense of entitlement is off the charts, a Nike-induced miasma.

When people can't accept change it makes for a lot of misery.  The whole blame-it-on-the-coaches mentality that prevails right now is, frankly, stupid.  Central to that is the misguided notion that Oregon's talent is superior to all others.

Reality doesn't suggest as much.  The inability to understand that Oregon is not beyond the beyond is sort of funny.

Oh well...


TS

Thursday, October 29, 2015

Tuesday, October 27, 2015

WS

The World Series finally begins tonight.

Zzzzzz...I may hibernate instead.

Heh.


TS

Monday, October 26, 2015

Skin

Off to see the doctor again.  Skin conditions.  Driving me nuts. First appeared 40 years ago, getting worse with age.

Diet and topicals, both of which tame the conditions but never cure them.

I'm out of topicals and the doc wants to see me before prescribing more.  Guess he wants to rule out skin cancer for the umpteenth time.

Jesus, at this late stage just give me the damn prescription!


TS

Friday, October 23, 2015

Drink Giroux















George Orwell’s nightmarish vision of a totalitarian society casts a dark shadow over the United States. As American society has moved from a welfare to a warfare state, the institutions that were once meant to limit human suffering and misfortune and protect the public from the excesses of the market have been either weakened or abolished. With the withering, if not evisceration, of the social contract, the discourse of social responsibility has been removed from the principles of democratic reform.

I don't link to articles here often, but when I do I prefer to link to Henry Giroux.

Quite simply, the tastiest link in the world.  Stay thirsty my friends.


TS

Thursday, October 22, 2015

Entertain Me

A good one tonight at 6 p.m., Cal and UCLA.

UCLA mirrors Oregon a little, having lost some good players to injuries.

Two solid quarterbacks.

Should be entertaining, and you know that is all I'm looking for these days.


TS

Tuesday, October 20, 2015

Hedges on Bernie



On...the giddy celebration of war and violence...

TS

Song of the Day



Thanks to CL.


TS

Friday, October 16, 2015

Thursday, October 15, 2015

Watchable


And so another football weekend begins...

Looking forward to UCLA v. Stanford tonight. Somebody needs to beat Stanford or they'll walk off with another PAC title eventually, unless...

Unless the dreaded Utes of Utah take them out in Santa Clara, Dec. 5 in the PACCG.

Lots of football left though, including Alabama and A&M in the SEC.

Notre Dame and USC will be interesting for obvious reasons.

Washington will be sky high for Oregon Sat. night, savoring a realistic shot at beating the Ducks for the first time in twelve tries. Washington is favored, so maybe struggling Oregon will play better as the disrespected underdog...

Or, if a guy had a few extra bucks and a yen for live ball, PSU hosts Montana State Sat. at the perfectly reasonable 12:30 hour.  PSU is playing well this season and a nice crowd will likely materialize at Providence Park.

Go Viks!!

Much else, including more baseball is on tap as well...all of it more enticing than televised "debates" or their inane cousins, the television sitcom.


TS

Wednesday, October 7, 2015

Look Again



This is a  well-drawn and specific evocation of the Israel/Arab wars.


TS

Teach the Children

Once again this year many schools will pause to commemorate Christopher Columbus. Given everything we know about who Columbus was and what he launched in the Americas, this needs to stop.

Bill Bigelow's annual reminder.


TS

Tuesday, October 6, 2015

Doc of the Day



I can't honestly say I understood every word of this, but perhaps you can take something from it.


TS

Tradition
















Oregon's newest helmet design is in the planning stage at Nike, borrowing liberally from Garcia/Kesey.

Meanwhile, this sounds like a book I might enjoy.


TS

Friday, October 2, 2015

Storm Warning

But of course some fools won't listen to this sage advice from the NWS.






TS

Thursday, October 1, 2015

sheesh.....

This is bizarre, my computer is letting me open  this site and Yahoo mail (albeit slowly) and nothing else.

My first confrontation with this particular glitch...hmm...


TS

Wednesday, September 30, 2015

After Midnight/Goddamn You, America










I am $7.79 richer today
an automatic deposit appeared
unexpectedly in my account

Goddamn you, America
you are a tough sonofabitch
a drag for most of us

As a writer I could give a fuck
about the popular culture
and Tom Brady's politics

Radicalism is my forte
an oyster free from the saline
of packaged and frozen dinners

I have $7.79 that is on you my
inert and disinterested America
Goddamn you and the GOP

All the money in the world
boils down to two books I sold
in the summer when a reading

Frenzy must of taken hold and
my words cast a spell of absolution
on the entire universe Amen

I needed something that $7.79
could buy like a new brain and
a real estate license and meatloaf

Goddamn you, America I never
considered working for the state
or one of your contractors etc.

I worked for 50 years on poetry
and here I am with $7.79 in
the bank thank you Amazon

Goddamn you, America $7.79
isn't a lot of money but
what the hell I'll take it


TS 

Tuesday, September 29, 2015

Just the Facts, Ma'am



Listen closely to Eugene Puryear, author of Shackled and Chained.  At the tender age of 30, Puryear signals hope for the next generation of American socialists/activists who must carry on if this country is ever to recover from its post-Kennedy abuses of power.

And for all of you lefties who are even older than I am I reference Kennedy because he is my first personal vantage, and thus barometer, of experience.


TS

Apps Aren't for Everyone

Ha!

Celebrity culture and other nonsense, yes.

Reality?  Not so much.


TS

Essential Giroux










In the United States, the extreme right in both political parties no longer needs the comfort of a counterfeit ideology in which appeals are made to the common good, human decency, and democratic values. On the contrary, power is now concentrated in the hands of relatively few people and corporations while power is global and free from the limited politics of the democratic state. In fact, the state for all intent and purposes has become the corporate state. Dominant power is now all too visible and the policies, practices, and wrecking ball it has imposed on society appear to be largely unchecked. Any compromising notion of ideology has been replaced by a discourse of command and certainty backed up by the militarization of local police forces, the surveillance state, and all of the resources brought to bear by a culture of fear and a punishing state aligned with the permanent war on terror. Informed judgment has given way to a corporate controlled media apparatus that celebrates the banality of balance and the spectacle of violence, all the while reinforcing the politics and value systems of the financial elite.[3]

Henry Giroux on the transformation of pedagogy.


TS

Needed













Oh, and a QB.


TS

Friday, September 25, 2015

Hello and Goodbye


The weekend begins!

Nothing but football and suspect notes on the future of the GOP!

Enjoy yours.




TS

Wednesday, September 23, 2015

About Right















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Football Follies















As Yogi (R.I.P.) might have put it--if it's not one thing, then it must be something else.

First it was the struggle with Vernon Adams' math test from hell, which he finally passed.  Now it is the case of the mysterious broken finger that plagues his presumed All-American year.

Oregon can't escape the drama at this stage.  Play the damaged Adams, or the less-than-gifted backup Lockie?

Tough call.  I wish the staff best with this one as the Ducks prep for Utah on Saturday evening.

There is one thing I've noticed about Oregon's legion of football fans/experts, however--they will not be happy, no matter the outcome.


TS

Tuesday, September 22, 2015

D-Man's Birthday



















(Dylan learning to fish a few years ago already.)

Today is my grandson Dylan's 7th birthday.  Doesn't seem possible.

Hey, happy birthday D-Man!

I know you can read this because, well, you're already in the first grade!


TS

Eight Days a Week











For all of my football-loving readers out there (and you are many, I know), here is a cool site that replays the weekend's best games over the course of the season.

I'm working on the Alabama/Ole Miss game that I eschewed live for something insignificant, I'm sure, in the Pac-12 on Saturday.

I've reviewed parts of the Oregon/MSU game, and Vernon Adams Jr. still didn't complete that wide-open throw that might have given the Ducks a victory! Blame it on The Finger.

Hi-def, commercial free, full or condensed games, NoonKick beats my FirstRowSports site mightily, but alas a day late.

I laugh.  Later in the college season games will broadcast live on Tuesdays and Wednesdays as the mid-majors vie for the ESPN television money.  Then you essentially get football seven evenings a week if you want to count the NFL as a viewing option, which I have done recently.

Perfect for a bored, escapist old guy with "plights and gripes as bad as Achilles"* who can't concentrate on much else.


TS

*Thanks to John Berryman

Friday, September 18, 2015

Essay of the Month













In the current historical moment in the United States, the emptying out of language is nourished by the assault on the civic imagination. One example of this can be found in the rise of Donald Trump on the political scene. Donald Trump’s popular appeal speaks to not just the boldness of what he says and the shock it provokes, but the inability to respond to shock with informed judgement rather than titillation. Marie Luise Knott is right in noting that “We live our lives with the help of the concepts we form of the world. They enable an author to make the transition from shock to observation to finally creating space for action—for writing and speaking. Just as laws guarantee a public space for political action, conceptual thought ensures the existence of the four walls within which judgment operates.”[1] The concepts that now guide our understanding of American society are dominated by a corporate induced linguistic and authoritarian model that brings ruin to language, politics and democracy itself.

Henry Giroux lights up the latest forms of U.S. totalitarianism, with a little help from Hannah Arendt.


TS

Yep




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Wednesday, September 9, 2015

Obey


Not sure if I've shared this one with you before.  Anyhoo, it's based on a work by Hedges, and I have no idea whether he sanctioned it or not.


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Tuesday, September 8, 2015

Vedder and Anang



In celebration of Cheney's speech today before the American Enterprise Institute, which is, believe it or not, the most highly organized and well-funded fascist organization in the U.S.  And in this country that's sayin' sumpin.'


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Doc of the Day



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Monday, September 7, 2015

Angry Entitled Mama


This from the message board at DuckTerritory:

Quackmama said... (original post)

Been a life long die hard Duck fan. And the talent we have now compared to what we used to have, should play a helluva lot better. They don't have the discipline, desire and attitude that they need. And yes, that pisses me off. If a player has the talent, then find a way to get it out of him. Don't know if this team doesn't have the heart or just didn't give a damn last night, but I do. As a DAF member who pays a shit ton to watch them, I want to see some damn desire and emotion out there. Not some half hearted, run through the motions, attempts by our defense. They should play a lot better and they themselves know it.

A sensible retort by Bowerz...

Well aren't you the self-entitled Duck fan we all know and love. You pay money to the DAF and now you want answers! Right? I mean...how dare they not come out of the gate fast enough after a national championship appearance!

Some of the comments on here after the first game are just laughable. Get over yourselves.

Ha, ha, ha...Clearly Mama has more money than sense, a not uncommon reality among Oregon's "elite" fans.

Those elites are in mid-season form, even if the team isn't.


TS