That Sickening Feeling

Today and yesterday were basketball days.  Tomorrow will be as well.

Not much to do except to sit quietly in a corner and marvel at the fuckedupness of it all. With the landlord snooping around, I wonder if the hammer is about to fall?

They don't like my act.  My act is to talk about things that bother me about the building and conditions here.  I'm like Henry  with his "plights and gripes." I don't tell them how great they are.

I would have been beheaded in the French Revolution.

I would have been one of the European fascists' earliest victims last century.

But this is the American epoch, and the time is now.  The enemy works in subtler ways, a refined expertise.

Just a lot of crap to have to put up with when you can't buy them off. If you can't buy people off you're gonna get stepped on.

You're gonna get sucker punched.  I can almost feel the calamity building.

Piss on it


TS

A Long-Lasting Smell

How was it that during Vietnam bad ideas exerted such a perverse influence?  Why were those ideas so impervious to challenge?  Why, in short, was it so difficult for Americans to recognize bullshit for what it was?

The retired military man, like a modern Thucydides, calls bullshit.

A commentator rebuts: "I think there is a conflation on his part of intellectuals who embrace the idea of societal goals for the benefit of the society with those who are there to just put a rubber stamp on the narrow interests of the military-security-industrial complex."

I agree, but AB's righteously angry letter favors a vernacular we're very fond of here at RBPD, and he does present seldom-heard points overall from ex-military leadership, including the waffling Colin Powell, who said about Iraq, "If you break it you own it," and went ahead and helped smash it to smithereens.


TS

Must Be March

The latest in Lunardi's Bracketology.

He has Oregon visiting Charlotte to play VCU in the South section.

VCU beat Oregon handily earlier this season, so this doesn't look like a good matchup for the Duckies.

Second round would likely involve Duke.

Oh well, they've got a ticket punched and ready for the dance, and just getting there has been surprising for Oregon's faithful.

This bracket is not golden by any means.  Selection Sunday next week determines reality.

Here's an interview with a Portland lad who played at Jesuit High before going to Kentucky, flushing out, and transferring to Gonzaga.

ED:  Lunardi's revised bracket (for today) has Oregon moving up two seeds and playing LSU in Omaha.  That would be an Oregon crowd given Altman's roots.  I like this much better than VCU in Charlotte.


TS

Young Neil

One must be vigilant in reminding oneself of how powerful Neil Young was as a singer in his youth.


TS

Next

I'm gonna take my sweet time with my next project, a revised edition of my historical essays, "Alt-Everything."

The book, like everything I've done, is pretty ragged in places--in need of both rewriting and editing--alternative writing, you might say.

I've published a lot of stuff just to get it out there, because if I don't do at least that much I tend to let the entire project slide--sometimes right out of consciousness.  Terrible admission, I know.

My latest fiasco is with my newest collection of poems, wherein I dropped the period ending the second stanza of a poem and then featured it on the back cover, a glaring omission that I'll blame on my deteriorating eyesight.  Heh... I've fixed the error and a few things inside the book that I overlooked in my haste to finish it.

Well, stuff is never done I imagine.  I'm not too worried about the content of the new work--it is what it is, and it's likely not for everyone, but the little errors annoy me because I'd like to present something that at least has the appearance of being competent in its physical properties, if not as a work of art.

I always say I'm better at editing others' work than my own; I think everyone is like that.

If some of the poems don't work, that is one thing.  If one doesn't work because of lazy or unclear punctuation and spelling, that is something else.  That particular poem shortchanges itself from the get-go.

So I would say to anyone who has read the book and noticed these annoying items, please be aware that I've found some of the things that may have you ready to toss the book away--but probably not all.

Well, I know you wouldn't do that because you're big fans of mine. So just know that I'm aware of how things are.


TS

Good Old Days

This was shot in conjunction with one of the first ever (1972) "Renaissance Faire(s)" in Veneta, Oregon.  I once attended an organizing meeting at the University of Oregon, where Kesey and others presented the faire's agenda one year, though I think that was prior to the planning of this benefit concert.

My energy was short-lived, however, and I subsequently dropped any involvement.  I did go to the faire in Veneta later.  The first and last time I ever attended.

Funny thing is I don't recall seeing this show, so perhaps I was there on the wrong day--or even the wrong year.  The "faire," after many transmutations, is now known as the Oregon Country Fair.  Perhaps you've been there, too.

Clearly the filmmakers were trying to emulate the impact of "Woodstock" with the behind-the-scenes focus and narrative style.

Anyway, this is for Chris Pilon of Houston, who once lived in the old neighborhood in Portland and loves the Dead.

TS

Beheaded

The description of the death of Robert-Francois Damiens, the man who attempted to kill Louis XV, is not for the faint-hearted.

On March 2, 1757, in front of a crowd of spectators, Damiens was drawn and quartered, which means that his limbs were tied to four horses that were then urged to gallop toward the four points of the compass.

To discover why six horses were needed in the end and why various additional tortures were inflicted on the convict, you need to turn to the detailed description that opens French philosopher Michel Foucault’s Discipline and Punish, perhaps the most blood-curdling beginning to an academic book ever.

In this 1975 masterpiece, Foucault argued that punishment, which was public and dramatic for much of recorded history, became progressively more hidden during the construction of the modern penal system. As part of this pivotal transformation, Foucault noted, “it is the certainty of being punished and not the horrifying spectacle of public punishment that must discourage crime.”

Institutions, in other words, replaced the theater of cruelty. What was once spectacle has become hidden from our eyes.

The rest of the essay by John Feffer.


TS

Talk

Mr. Johnson passed away in 2010, age 79.

Meanwhile in Washington, it's business as usual.

While this stigma festers.


TS

Tonight's Blockbuster

The Story of India.










TS

Doc of the Day

This was an interesting doc from the BBC a couple of years ago.

Just watched it for the first time.  Very well done.


TS

Ducks and Beavs

Oregon vs. OSU tonight!  From Gill.

If Oregon wins it's most assuredly guaranteed a spot in the big dance. If OSU wins, new coach Wayne Tinkle may lock up the Round Bend Coach of the Year crown.

I'll be on the edge of my seat as usual.


TS

One of Many?

Amazing story from the extended Charles Deemer family annals. (This is a link to a link, for context.)

CD told me about this yesterday over coffee.  Quite an American story.  CD is the adoptive stepfather of San Francisco artist Aaron Levi, the biological son of Wilt Chamberlain.

Aaron's adoptive mother is CD's wife, Portland artist Harriet Levi.


TS

Wanted: Another War

When Netanyahu addressed Congress on May 24, 2011, to embarrass President Obama and cut down American criticism of the most recent illegal Israeli settlements, Congress gave him 29 standing ovations. That was a gesture of thoughtless servility, and a mistake that should not be repeated. The difference between George Washington and Benjamin Netanyahu marks a real choice. In the matter of the proper judgment of American interests, Washington and Netanyahu stand at opposite poles. They cannot both be right. On March 3, before awarding Netanyahu another 29 standing ovations, or 19 or even one, let the members of Congress ask themselves whose advice they will heed on the danger of "passionate attachments" and "inveterate antipathies." Netanyahu and his backers in Congress are an existential threat to the independence of American foreign policy.

Yale professor David Bromwich on threats, real and imagined.


TS

Confronting Economic Apartheid

The battle between popular will and the demands of corporate oligarchs, as they plunge greater and greater numbers of people around the globe into poverty and despair, is becoming increasingly volatile. Ali noted that even those leaders with an understanding of the destructive force of unfettered capitalism—such as the new, left-wing prime minister of Greece, Alexis Tsipras—remain intimidated by the economic and military power at the disposal of the corporate elites. This is largely why Tsipras and his finance minister, Yanis Varoufakis, bowed to the demands of European banks for a four-month extension of the current $272 billion bailout for Greece. The Greek leaders were forced to promise to commit to more punishing economic reforms and to walk back from the pre-election promise of Tsipras’ ruling Syriza party to write off a large part of Greece’s sovereign debt. Greece’s debt is 175 percent of its GDP. This four-month deal, as Ali pointed out, is a delaying tactic, one that threatens to weaken widespread Greek support for Syriza. Greece cannot sustain its debt obligations. Greece and European authorities will have to collide. And this collision could trigger a financial meltdown in Greece, see it break free from the eurozone, and spawn popular upheavals in Spain, Portugal and Italy.

The cost of open defiance, which, Ali pointed out, is our only escape route from corporate tyranny, will at least at first be painful. Our corporate masters do not intend to release their death grip without a brutal fight.

Chris Hedges on Tariq Ali.


TS

Sunday Hoops

It's tipoff time for the big game between Stanford and Oregon.

The winner is most assuredly in the big dance; the loser could be out, depending on many other possible scenarios nationwide and how things play out in conference championship matchups, etc.

Gonna try to stream it.  Hope it works.  I have a hard time with bball on the radio these days

Later:

Ducks win!  Ducks win!  Ducks win!  Victory includes a first round bye in the PAC tourney, which is gold.  Ducks going to the dance, even if OSU beats them in Corn Valley.


TS