dumbfounded
you know, at this point, what can even be said about the state of u.s. government? when this site was started a story or two would surface every week which warranted comment. as it stands today, there are too many awful things happening on a daily basis for an essentially non-political, or at very least, non-expert site like the nonist to keep up with. how did we manage to get to this point? and more importantly why, in the face of an exponentially growing body of damning evidence, is the populous of this country not clamoring for, if not blood, at very least impeachment? there are angry people, that much is obvious. but these understandably pissed off and worried people seem to be a minority. begging the question, what the fuck?!
as stated, we are no experts. we get our information from the same places you do, and in truth we can not offer any special insight into the bizarro world which we find ourselves in. but at the same time how can we not acknowledge our awareness? the barrage of news lately has gone mostly uncommented on here, mainly out of exhaustion. really, we find ourselves dumbfounded. how many exposed lies can people really stomach? how much smoke fits up a human ass? how nefarious and full of shit does a government have to be before something is done about it? in any case it seemed to us that to make no comment at all might imply either a general apathy on our parts, or worse a silent consent. though we feel, as i’m certain many folks do, that we’ve been severely beaten about the neck and head into a quiet stupor, we’ll try to serve up a few more stomach turning items for your consumption.
in the past weeks the administration’s already suspect reasons for waging war have been shown for the trumped up, 3 card monty that they were. as everyone is well aware at this point david kay came forward after resigning from his position as chief weapons hunter and plopped his findings down in america’s livingrooms. there are no stockpiles of WMD’s. now this, in itself, comes as no surprise really. the claims were dubious from day one and elicited many scrunched up “i small dog shit” faces, but in the fog of fear and anger that hung over us all no one spoke up (you might remember that 10 million people world wide seemed to speak up by taking to the streets, but here at home no one spoke loudly enough evidently). since then a “he who smelt it dealt it” mentality has prevailed. the person who speaks out, gets the “treatment”. much as o’neil did, after he spoke out.
for david kay this will play out a bit differently. even though he flatly stated what the administration has been dancing around for months (which you might assume would get him strung up and publicly tongue lashed) there is enough grey area in his report that he will likely survive. there were in fact small weapons found, which helps reduce the WMD argument to semantics (bush quote “i said in the run-up that saddam was a grave and gathering danger - that’s what I said. and I believed it then, and I know it was true now. and as mr. kay said, that Iraq was a dangerous place.”) in that if these are the weapons we invade a country over, we would be invading every country on earth. the term weapon of mass destruction, though initially employed to evoke the obvious nuclear / pox visions in the minds of an already jumpy populous, can now be massaged to encompass much smaller threats. also, and importantly, kay specifically raised a red flag over the intelligence that the administration drew upon to bolster it’s war plans. this gives bush the backdoor he needs, and, as if on cue, the buck is being passed. bush is now calling for investigations of the investigators, saying “i want to know the facts”. which poor sucker will end up the oliver north in this little witch-hunt? aside from the public, of course, who will fund it. the reasons will be searched for, deadpan as ever, as if the true reasons, the ideological ones, were not plainly evident all along.
official reaction to the gathering dismay over the lack of weapons have ranged widely within the administration. powell admits to the “possibility” (wink wink) that the weapons never existed, cheney resolutely sticks to his guns saying no-matter what is said, seen, or found, they do exist. and bush, the talking head, reads speeches with adjusted wording, changing what was an itemized list of deadly weapons in last years state of the union (which, let’s not forget, included this none too subtle doosey “the united states must not ignore the threat gathering against us. facing clear evidence of peril, we cannot wait for the final proof—the smoking gun—that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud. . . . we have every reason to assume the worst, and we have an urgent duty to prevent the worst from occurring”), to this year’s laughable “weapons related program activities”. bush has since said that weapon hunters must be allowed to finish their jobs regardless of what kay does. if these were not issues of such importance, it would almost be funny. the assertion that people appointed to the highest positions in government (o’niel or kay for example) are somehow not reliable, that their opinions are not the most informed opinions... implies what? also, shouldn’t we be allowed to assume that a decent leader would “know the facts” before he led his country into a preemptive war? before he helped sink us in trillions of dollars of debt? we can expect the other supposed reasons for war to be emphasized as the WMD’s fall flat, but those will come apart at the seams in turn, as the humanitarian reasons are right now. the merry-go-round of rhetoric goes round and round, nothing substantial being said, no one in positions of true authority ever being held over the coals. ho-hum. will we ever get to bask in the flash bulb warmth of a deserved impeachment
you might wonder why the press has not done it’s fucking job and pummeled these guys with the difficult questions, or simply gone ahead and leveled accusations at the administration in words every “nascar dad” can’t help but understand. (why not? they have no problem shading celebrities and other members of the wretched huddled masses accused of crimes as guilty without ever looking deeper. sure, martha stewart might be guilty of insider trading, but in the scope of things don’t you think their are MUCH bigger fish to fry in corporate america? like who? we don’t know because they only get blurbs while stewart and kobe and other goats clutter up the front page). aside from questions of media ownership look to our allies in brittian for answers. the bbc’s recent accusations about blair’s government “exaggerating claims about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction to bolster support for war” and their involvement in the suicide of weapons expert david kelly, resulted in resignations at the bbc’s highest levels, and a public bitch slap by the judge (appointed by blair, of course) presiding over the inquiry. now whether the allegations were founded or not, it seems a bit insane for heads of a free press to be basically railroaded out of their jobs for simply raising the question, while the questions themselves get lost in the hoopla. is this the same kind of thing that might happen here? sure, it would be, except i don’t think from what we’ve seen in the past three years that any major news outlet would even get as far as printing or broadcasting the story. cbs couldn’t even manage to air a crappy melodramatic mini-series, that cost them millions to produce, about an EX-president. so because of the conglomerate nature of modern news outlets, intimidation, or just simple secrecy, forget any incisive, thorough, investigative news stories about the bums sitting in the white house right now. after all have you heard much about the republican theft and leak of democratic party computer files? probably not. wasn’t there once a president who stepped down because he recorded stuff on tapes in some hotel somewhere? geez.
questions about the press lead directly to questions about the public. namely, is it the lack of in-your-face, “when administrations attack” type news that allows for apathy to lay like a wet wool blanket over the land? is it a “as long as my cable still works” mentality? or is it rather that people actually do approve? that’s what boggles the mind, really. the notion that yes, people are aware, yes, people understand the implications of what’s going on, yes, they read between the lines and simply… are o.k. with it? is it possible? in our annoyance and anger their is an assumption of majority. we feel somehow that what is evident to us must be evident to all. is this just totally wrong? how do the majority of americans feel about imperialism or an american empire? what about totalitarianism? do people just think of it as a cliche plot device for action movies? or how about the environment? do people think it’s no big deal? seriously. don’t people worry that the pentagon is running simulations to help get prepared for a catastrophic climate shift? these are not rhetorical questions. we truly wonder. are we, the pissed off people, simply among a minority, and have to deal with it? love it or leave it? the coming elections will most likely answer that question pretty definitively. but even in that respect, there are serious questions. you hear all the “we’re tired of politicos, insiders, blah blah, we want honesty” sentiments that are supposedly out there, but here we are with kerry storming toward the democratic nomination and no independent candidate to date ever managing anything other than spoiler status. it’s said that the true shape of american political apathy is not so much an “i don’t care” as a “what can i even do about any of this spiraling, festering, complex, crazy shit?!” or the simpler exhausted, “i just don’t know.” that is exactly how we find ourselves feeling. all this endless terrible shit flowing down from on high with so little sanity present to counter it, so little real reaction. though we offered some links here, and some words, the tiring truth is, we just don’t know either. how the hell did we get here?
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the printer with street cred
wow. this thing is so damned cool. hektor the graffiti printer. now if they can just invent a robot that stands down the block and warns hector when the police come driving by… make sure to watch the movie to see hektor action.
the rosetta disk
a new project initiated by the folks of the long now foundation (the same people responsible for the 10,000 year clock) aims to create a modern rosetta stone. the rosetta project as it’s called is really cool (here is the concept, here is how they are doing it) and will undoubtedly help the strange post apocalyptic mutants, who roam the earth after our self inflicted demise, understand the strange gibberish on the ruins around them. that is once they manage to re-invent the electron microscope. in any case these things are poetic, and great conceptual art, whether they are ever put to their intended uses or not.
live vicariously
stupid link sure, but there have been times when, if you are still in posession of a soul, you have wanted to do this (minus the costume of course). watch the clips and laugh, go ahead.
art on the brain
interesting article about the burgeoning field of neuroesthetics, which seeks, in its clinical way, to describe exactly what art is by studying how the brain reacts to it. evidently art which you find beautiful tickles the bliss centers of your brain while art that you find ugly fires up the same area responsible for handling anger. it’s not quite so simple of course.
sartre’s cookbook
before no exit, before being and nothingness, there were sartre’s existential adventures in cooking. this long lost diary was found in between the cushions of an office couch (actually it was written by a guy named marty smith in 1987). one passage dated october 4th goes as follows: “still working on the omelet. there have been stumbling blocks. i keep creating omelets one after another, like soldiers marching into the sea, but each one seems empty, hollow, like stone. i want to create an omelet that expresses the meaninglessness of existence, and instead they taste like cheese. i look at them on the plate, but they do not look back. tried eating them with the lights off. it did not help. malraux suggested paprika.”
happy birthday (part deux)
continuing rich’s thoughtful birthday wishes for what is, as stated, our favorite computer, i offer some additional apple related goodies today, belated though they be. ok, let’s see…
1) let’s soak up some of the retro future visuals via these vintage apple adverts, circa back in the day.
2) now some serious historical info, via stanford university’s making the macintosh. LOTS of info, photos, etc, like this boss drawing of an “exploded” mouse.
3) need some apple fan boy ephemera? how about some retro lapel pins and tie tacks? or apple logo sneakers? don’t want to wear your apple love? don’t worry there is lot’s of other stuff to choose from. my favorite? the out of print apple industrial design book, which they ought to update and reissue.
4) question: how can a company famous for it’s beautiful design and savvy visuals have issued t-shirts as god awful as these? i guess it was the 80’s, but damn.
5) for some apple history, facts, timelines, images, and the like, check out the apple museum, or applefritter.
6) for some more generalized, leisurely, old computer browsing check out the very nice old computers dot com, or the obsolete computer museum.
7) a related semi-oddity i’ve found is the mac only search engine called macinstein.
8) and just for good measure, celebrate steve, the apple icon… the non-turtleneck wearing steve that is, steve wozniak, at woz dot org.
i’m going to spend some romantic, quality time with my lovely G5 now, so bye-bye.
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lives of the saints (3)
“i’m sorry.”
it may as well be his mantra he repeats it with such frequency. she hates it. it totally beguiles her.
“why? you have nothing to be sorry about.”
where other people habitually light a cigarette, or collapse into sleep after sex, he goes on a apologizing jag, then gets sullen and quiet like he’s twelve and just got caught playing with himself in the bathtub. she can’t begin to understand. result of some earlier trial and evident error? she pets him, kisses his shoulder.
“don’t apologize ok? you don’t need to.”
he usually molds his self hatred into a more palatable self depreciating humor, gruff and curmudgeonly but ok for public consumption. after sex though, it’s another story all together. he is totally bare. he’s like a skeleton in a cold wind. he stares at the floor or off into space, not a shred of funny on him.
“yeah.” he snorts and closes his eyes.
it’s hard for her. she can’t seem to help him and can’t get him to stop. his apparent joylessness scares her and pisses her off alternately. “does he even like me?” or “what the fuck is his problem?” neither one a nice post-coital sentiment to come away with. as the months in his bed have rolled by she’s started to visualize them in her mind as sheets peeling away from a desk calendar.
“you want some strawberries? i want some.” she attempts, sweetly upbeat. but no answer.
she’s responded in different ways, testing the waters to ascertain how best to pull him from the undertow. initially, in their first month, she would try to address it head on, pushing a bit to better understand his reasons. she’d say something forthright but good natured. “it’s all mind games babe, you’re doing this to yourself, i had a great time.” he’d only become indignant, shifting the direction of his anger with surprising ease, sneering, “thanks for that assessment dr. freud.” later she tried preemption, telling him it was “great” and “amazing” before he had a chance to slip into his funk. she’d be rewarded with a tirade about not patronizing him. there was no winning and no helping. she got up, the strawberries wouldn’t wash themselves.
“so do you want some, or not?”
“whatever.”
she stops and just she stands over him, looks at him. looks at his greasy hair, his slumped shoulders. she wants to smack him, scratch his face. “asshole!” she thinks. “what a fucking jerk. what am i doing here?” he looks sour faced, crumpled, pathetic. he is either unaware or just uninterested in the poison he spreads.
“whatever?”
she realizes suddenly that this is him. this spiteful, childish, behind-closed-doors personality is the real one. this is the person she has been fucking these last months. this is the person she’s cooked meals for, whose
toothbrush is next to hers, who she shares a towels with. the funny, confident guy she met at the japanese bookstore is not hers, he exists only for strangers and acquaintances. it is this surly lump who is her boyfriend. the lump looks up at her. he is red faced, sad.
“listen, you have to stop doing this. you have to stop apologizing every time. it’s ridiculous. do you understand? it’s beyond baggage. it’s beyond performance anxiety. ok? you HAVE to stop acting like this or we’re going to stop fucking. and then what? it’s no fun.”
he does not look away. does not answer. just keeps looking at her.
“you have to just relax. i want to have fun. i want us to have fun, like normal people.”
he’s silent but it’s plain she’s gotten through. his eyes soften. he looks away. she feels better, having said it, getting it off her chest without having to resort to threats. without having to pack any bags.
“honey?” she wants a response. needs one.
he grabs her around the calves, looking sheepish. embarrassed at the truth of it no doubt. the room’s small. their shared collection of books rising above the low shelves and stacked high in corners. her cosmetics are piled on the windowsill. his stinky gym clothes are scattered by her feet.
“your right. of course your right. i’m sorry.”
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aw crap, it’s hellboy
not to be confused with hellman, hellkid, hellgirl, or hellchild, hellboy, the brain child comics veteran mike mignola, is soon to make the perilous jump from comic to big screen. it is a path strewn with the fetid corpses of awful failures. it’s a high pile, most recently added to by the wormy shells that were the league of extraordinary gentlemen and the hulk. for every ghost world their are not one, but two punishers. if you’ve never seen the hellboy comic, (which has some of the best artwork around) you can get a taste with the multimedia versions here. now check out the movie trailer and place your bets. will it be another stinker? the plot is laid out here. i think it looks pretty decent actually, nice art direction, and hey, fangoria agrees with me. can’t argue with their good taste can you? wonder if it will be able to hold its own against the 30’s pulp inspired sky captain and the world of tomorrow with it’s fantastic retro robots? we shall see.
united they smirk
do you devour the onion each day only to find you are still hungry? well, look no further for that precious sarcastic sustenance you crave. the internet satirical newspaper association is a site which serves up more presumably literate scoffers than you can shake a stick at. can’t vouch for the overall quality as of yet, but certainly a lot to check out.
we are the majority (and we are screwed)
read the progressive today which i enjoyed. it is about the ever shrinking middle class, the president’s allegiance to the upper 1%, corporate greed, and how the majority of a democratic nation manage to get screwed to spite their majority status. it’s nothing you haven’t heard before, or have not experienced first hand, but it is put very succinctly and is good reading.
nothing to see here, move along
seems there is just nothing happening lately. or rather nothing i can muster even a grain of interest about. yes there was the state of the union and the iowa caucuses, yes people are kicking around ways to save hubble from it’s scheduled space death, yes the knicks are suddenly more fun to watch and are on a 4 game winning streak… but the truth is i’m dog tired and grumpy today and just don’t give a damn. so nothing to offer from this quarter today. what can i say? play the fucking drums if your bored. or read the history of the labotomy if the drums don’t do it for you. or build a city, i don’t know. whatever turns you on. meanwhile i’ll be ordering some of this stuff from the champion of the disenfranchised, loompanics. particularly this one which includes sections like how to live as a nomad or on an iceberg. goodnight.
artisan exodus?
very interesting article about u.s. politics and the policies that are pushing creative types to look elsewhere for a livelihood.
promises, promises
“10 emerging technologies that will change your world.” interesting stuff, but i’ll believe it when i see it. from MIT technology something or other.
lies, supposition, and truth…
all depressing. tonight is the state of the union address. yippie! if watching it does not have you washing down your pills with whiskey here are some more downers for you. 1) lies. yes, lies can be funny, in this case, however, they are not. 2) supposition. your brain has fun when you think of things. if it’s having too much fun think about this. 3) truth. money makes the world go round. how would you know? you don’t have any. other people do maybe you can do something about it, but probably not. but hey, don’t get depressed, i’ve got just what the doctored ordered (pilfered from boing boing), guaranteed to make everything super duper.
lives of the saints (2)
“doves don’t chirp, so i cant very well be yours or any one else’s chirping dove. now get off me!”
she was like this sometimes, would initiate erectus and then unceremoniously interrupt coitus. it was within her rights she told herself, no matter when or why. a woman’s body is her own. he’d just have to deal with it.
“i don’t care if your hard as the fucking blarney stone, we’re done.”
she had reasons, or so she told herself. she considered it a mental condition which the pharmaceutical industry had, uncharacteristically, not managed to medicate yet. she called it severe context anxiety. she reminded herself to write a letter to pfizer.
“but honey, c’mon! i mean…”
“forget it. playtime is over. get dressed.” she tossed his boxers in his general direction, not looking to see where they landed.
“what the fuck? what did i say?”
he had taken it in stride thus far. but he was beginning to get fed up. that was clear enough. he never swore. she never bothered to explain because she knew it sounded ridiculous. she just couldn’t help it. it was context anxiety and it was defiantly severe. she couldn’t even look at him.
“honey, please…”
he approached her, his pants not yet zipped, she could see the softening lump under his boxers. she felt guilty. how many times had she done this to him in the past year? the words still flashed in her mind, chirping dove, chirping dove. christ.
“what is the problem? you have to talk to me.”
the problem was simple, she was ultra sensitive during intimacy to anything cliche. music was never allowed because it almost always illicited one of these fits. an ounce of prevention. but there was nothing she could do to prevent dialogue that sounded like it was ripped off from some shitty b-movie script. chirping dove was beyond bad movie, more like bad theater in the round. it was too much.
“i feel sick, o.k.? i have diarrhea. my head hurts. whatever. you should go.”
“no, i’m gonna stay. i don’t want to take the train all the way back. it’s like a blizzard outside.”
but she knew coitus-interuptus had to be followed this time by a swift homo-ejectus.
“do you mind?”
she liked him a lot, didn’t love him really, but he was a good guy.
“honey?”
he loved her, she knew that. he put up with her shit, and when he kept his mouth shut he was a great lay. if she sent him out into the snow he might never come back, she knew that too. the lump in his boxers was long gone, his hair was messed up. he stood there, finally silent. she wondered if the trains even ran this late on the weekends.
“yeah, i mind.”
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lives of the saints (1)
“who loves you?”
it’s a rhetorical question, sounding like baby talk no matter how flat and even a voice it was spoken in. they went through this routine with the timing and practiced nuance of an abbot and costello.
“my mom.” he answers.
“no not your mom.”
“but my mom does to love me.”
as repetitive as this dialogue had become after 10 years, hearing the words “does to” spoken by a man of 40 still seemed to amuse them both. it was warm and uncomplicated. qualities the outside world could be very stingy with.
“but who else loves you?” she asks in a sing song.
why she always initiated this exchange after she had removed her bra but before her panties he never knew. maybe to distract him with those perfect brown nipples? maybe to simply put a carrot at the end of the stick.
“god”
“yes god loves you, but that’s not who i’m thinking of. who else?”
it was at this point that he would inject a variable, a constantly changing response to keep the mating ritual fresh. he imagined the quality of his answer would influence the quality of the lovemaking to come. a particularly clever reply might result in something special, something out of the ordinary.
“um”
once he’d answered “my mother-in-law” and gotten a decidedly disinterested hand-job as reward, so now he thinks it over striking upon an answer that surprises even him for it’s simplicity. “why has it taken ten years for this answer?” he thinks to himself. she peels his socks off and holds them aloft by two fingers like a dirty pamper. she is beautiful, his wife of 7 years. she pokes at his thigh.
“c’mon, who loves you?”
he waits; watches her thin hands as they unclasp his belt buckle. he grins and she knows he has a good one, she knows tonight’s is a command performance. she’s laughing almost before he answers.
“telly savallas.”
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