Tag Archives: George W. Bush

A planet called America, part two.

Posted by Marco Sparks on

This morning I walked into work and said something to one of my co-workers along the lines of, “So, is your life any better now that Osama is dead?” She looked at me said, “OMG, the President is dead?” And I said, “Huh? What? No. NO. Osama. Bin Laden!” And then she squinted, looked at me curiously, and said, “What the fuck are you talking about?” Just then another co-worker held up the front page of the newspaper which had a huge picture of the deceased terrorist mastermind on it and a massive headline that said “BIN LADEN DEAD.” Or maybe it said “BIN LADEN KILLED.” Honestly, I can’t remember anymore. But the headline was huge.

from here.

A week ago I said to a friend: “Dealing with your enemies is simple and easy. The best way to combat them is to simply make friends with them. Make friends with them so hard that it hurts.”

It’s so weird to me still that one of the time I felt most unified with this crazy, amazing, fucked up country was on 9/11. The wost metaphor I could use here would be: It’s like that girlfriend, the one who’s really fucking amazing, if a little weird, and way too good for you, and you just treat her like shit. She should really quit you and your bullshit. You just don’t appreciate her and for some reason she just won’t leave you. And you don’t realize how important she really is to you until someone else threatens here. Some clarity only comes to us on the precipice of great and terrible disaster. Life is funny like that.

Part of me is glad that Bin Laden wasn’t captured and forced to answer for his crimes to us and to the world in person, though I would have wanted that, of course. Part of me was glad to hear that this was finally over, that everyone who had been wounded by the tragedies that seemed to be dialed up at this man’s fingertips can now crawl just one more inch ever so slowly and painfully into the past. I wouldn’t really call this “justice “though because, well, there is no such thing as justice. Scales aren’t balanced because Bin Laden is dead. His life will never ever begin to be equal in worth to those lost on 9/11 or those who have put on an military uniform and defended a certain set of ideals and beliefs that we all take for granted every single minute. America is a brilliant, beautiful idea, but not a perfect one, and it can be hurt and it can be dented, but it’ll always be stronger than some cheap thug, no matter where he lives, no matter what he looks like, no matter what he worships. It can only be killed by those who give up on the idea, or who sell it out bit by bit in the name of “freedom.”

from here.

The death of what we consider to be an evil man on the other side of the world doesn’t bring back all those special people that we lost but hopefully it helps some people to breathe easier. Hopefully it reminds us why those people were special to us and hopefully we never forget what they meant to us. I’d like to say that hopefully it makes us appreciate each moment we have on this planet all that much more, but we should’ve been doing that long before now, and of course should continue doing that to the moment we draw our last breath. Hopefully someone like Bin Laden will never ever come close to challenging that idea every again.

I’ll admit to being conflicted or just confused about this news and how I should be feeling, but I’m lucky. Lucky to be here, lucky to be typing this in the land of the free, home of the brave. I’m lucky that I didn’t lose anyone ten years ago on that strange September day or in the fights and wars that followed. Who Osama Bin Laden is and what all of this means is something for you to decide. I can tell you that I don’t view this man’s death as closure, but honestly, I won’t look down on anyone who gets it from this news.

Thank you, mom. Thank you, God. Thank you, Barack Obama. Thank you, Donald Trump (with your stupid ass hair and head full of shit). Thank you, Pakistan. Thank you, India! Thank you, everyone who’s ever stood up for what they believed in and put that belief above themselves. Thank you, Bill Murray. Thank you, internet jokesters and “expert thinkers.” Thank you, Doctor Who. Thank you to the moon and to The Onion, both. Thank you, mainstream media. Thank you, “Mission Accomplished.” Thank you, those who agree with me, and thank you to those who would never agree with me in a million years. Thank you, Jack Donaghy, and thank you, Condoleezza Rice and thank you, Margaret Cho (for guest starring on 30 Rock). Thank you, strange new/old world that has such people in it. Thank you, post-Now. Thank you to everyone who thinks this matters and everyone who knows that it really doesn’t. Thank you to all those who never forget and especially thank you to those who are doomed to remember.

I saw this picture posted on the internet a little while ago…

…and I had a might good chuckle.

The terrorists are always winning. And the terrorists are always losing. And the battle will keep raging and hopefully we’ll never forget what we’re fighting for or who we should actually be fighting.

It’s doesn’t even matter that Superman’s no longer an American citizen or that The Rock had the #1 movie at the box office this weekend AND knew that Osama was dead before you did because…

Well, because the story’s not over and the dream is never ending.

And like PKD said, Maybe the Empire never ended?

Like fake MLK said, “I mourn the loss of thousands of precious lives, but I will not rejoice in the death of one, not even an enemy.”

It’s been over 24 hours now and tonight when I go to bed I’ll be thinking the same thing I was thinking last night, “Okay, so Osama’s dead. And what will tomorrow look like?”

Remember, remember…

Posted by Marco Sparks on

…it’s the 5th of November. It’s Guy Fawkes Day. The Gunpowder Plot. Not a huge deal here in America and, well, actually not a deal of any size here in America, but I forgot about it and then was reminded of it by the internet today, thanks to several individuals’ mini salute to the V For Vendetta film adaptation from a few years ago.

And it’s not an outlandish movie to watch so closely to our midterm elections from a few days ago. What a bizarre, strange, curiously odd bit of America that was.

What a strange time we are in currently in this country. Everything is emotions. There’s a phrase I keep hearing bandied about: “post-fact America.” Scary true. Most people get their dish on politicians from stupid email forwards than they do from the honest, serious media, and it’s all bullshit. Of course, there is no such thing as the honest, serious media anymore, is there? You can say anything and it gets reported, which is great, but does it get checked for a basis in reality? No. And why should it? Reality has no basis in our lives anymore, does it?

People are frustrated and upset and with good reason, especially given the precarious financial woe we’ve been in for the past two years. We want someone to blame and most folks don’t even care if if they’re upset at the right person. Tell them anything. Lie to them! Just turn their anger and their fear and heir sadness into something that’ll keep them warm: Hot, irrational anger. They want a rebellion. They don’t know what that means and they don’t care. Just articulate their feelings of uselessness into something that’ll fit onto a sign that they can hold up in public and we’ll worry about the damage we’re allowing to continue to be done in the morning after. And who cares? That’s a million years from now.

Our former president says that Kanye West calling him a racist on TV was the low point of his presidency. Not 9/11, not the lying about WMDs, not Iraq or Afghanistan, and not allowing our economy to slowly fade into shit. Not even the fiddling around and poor management post-Katrina, not even that was the low point of his years in the highest office in the land. No, it was when a rapper said what so many of us were already thinking.

Benjie Light were talking the other day, having a post-election pow wow and just sighing in exasperation at this place we now all inhabit together here in this age of conflict vs. compromise. “Probably less than a thousand people in this country really understand what went wrong with the economy,” he said to me and while I question the exact percentage he uses, I fear that he’s right. Hell, I don’t even fully understand the full intricacies of it – but reading The Big Short is on my to do list! – but I do know that we are better now than we were two years ago.

Not terribly better, no, but we’re on the right track and it’ll be a slow one, and a hard one. Now is the time for serious people to take serious action and leave some of the rhetoric behind. The Tea Party had some amazing victories this past Tuesday, regardless of the facts behind so many of their claims, but it’s fascinating how the real winners within that collective were the ones who went back to the center at the last moment, leaving the nutjobs like Sharron Angle and Christine O’Donnell flapping in the wind. And that’s a good sign though. America can only handle morons to a certain degree and I’m thankful for that. Obviously I don’t agree with something like 95% of the beliefs of your average Republican, though I certainly understand where a lot of their feelings and overreactions come from, but my hope is that if they’re going to control something as goofy as the House of Representatives, then, please let’s have the serious people step up to the plate. The Democrats were lucky to retain the Senate, and guys like Harry Reid should be getting down on their knees and thanking his lucky fucking stars for having not lost (or having had such a ridiculous opponent), but what I’d like to see next is some understanding of how important it is that he actually does something with this second chance.

I’m not sure that syncretic politics is exactly the ideal or should be the goal, not always, but it’s what (and not the “noble idea” of anarchy [in the UK]) I think about when I think back on V For Vendetta. The film was one of the few examples of taking original source material, in this case the graphic novel by Alan Moore and David Lloyd, and taking the elements that worked from it and crafting a slightly different story from it. Or just telling the same story, but much better. The original graphic novel is a bit on the immature side, but I think that’s how reactions to the politics of the 80s feel to us now, despite the similarities to the world then and now.

And granted, the movie features Natalie Portman, whom I always like, for a lot of reasons, but part of that is because she has an eye for good films to appear in. And V For Vendetta is an ambitious tale, and kind of a poetic one, an action movie about this romantic idea about the vox populi, and the gentle tether that connects people with ideas and governments and control. “We the people” aren’t always right, I don’t believe, and more often then not the vox populi is woefully misinformed and complacent and lazy.And it’s not always about the level of control you maintain or that you manage to avoid succumbing to. Isn’t part of the point of Jonathan Franzen’s Freedom that you sometimes have to give up the idea of freedom to instead find happiness? Either way, it’s about a balance, one that you can flourish under, and that others can as well, one that people can live with.

The other thing that Commander Light said the other day that was incredibly interesting to me was that this election just a few days ago could be about anything you wanted it to be about. Whatever your point is, whatever your thesis statement is, you’ll find something in your analysis to back it up. It’s a multi-layered thing and whatever is being said about America in those polls and votes and turnouts and wins and losses and bullet points from the mouths of babes and talking heads is whatever you want to be said. But what really matters now, the thing that we really need to find some kind of meaning and purpose in is what happens next.

I want to go there.

Posted by Marco Sparks on

Yesterday was 23 things and today it’ll be shorter, though not necessarily sweeter, with a mere five things…

1. This:

from here.

Oh, that Nic Cage. Amazing and strange as usual. And totally an animal lover.

2. Molly Lambert’s piece about Tina Fey/Jon Hamm on This Recording today. It’s a wonderful, honed bit on comedians and characters and gender politics and objectification, and it’s brilliant. And aside from that, as she frequently is, so is Molly Lambert, who stands out amongst most internet writers for me in that she writes in quick bursts of sharp, insightful thought on a subject, but also survives in the long form where as so many other writers on the interwebz only seem to generate a few decent pull quotes to be linked to and reblogged ad nauseam. She tackles issues both old and new in a fresh way, in a smart way but one that’s also accessible to all the various levels of the hoi polloi, and she has that quality that you loathsomely envy: She writes in a way that feels like it’s resonating both with the thoughts you had on an issue, but are always worded better through her view on the matter, or, more honestly, she says the things you wish you were thinking/saying.

3. Praising Molly Lambert isn’t exactly a new thing, nor should it be, but the post about Jon Hamm/Tina Fey/Don Draper/Liz Lemon is really that good. And I love that it tackles how weird these characters are in so many ways, but refreshingly weird, but also that these are sex symbols for smart people, or for anyone with eyes, sure, but also for us sapiosexuals in the audience as well.

And she mentions something that I’ve never thought of before, but the idea that masculinity is basically a performance, not just between “bros,” I wouldn’t think, but in general. All the world’s a stage, I suppose, and all the men and women on that stage are players in a game of some sort. Especially those of us with the Y chromosome, which I feel. I mean, it’s not something I really considered before, though I kind of did, but now I really feel it. Never mind, that sounds stupid, but you get what I’m saying?

3A. Can we ever talk about just how fucking weird Jon Hamm the real life person seems? I kind of love the impression that I’ve gotten that he’s the exact opposite of Don Draper, not stupid (but more than a little dorky maybe)(but endearingly dorky, you know?), of course, but closer to his character on 30 Rock. Is Don Draper the ultimate vista to the wider landscape of manhood?

from here.

4. This article here from the BBC, about how scientists have made a breakthrough in “artificial life,” developing the world’s first synthetic living cell. I saw this at work today and shared it with this guy that comes in sometimes, my local atheist friend. He and I have bonded over the years over our hatred of intolerance towards scientific exploration and a favoring of antiquated notions like “organized religion” instead of advancement of all the wonderful aspects of the human race. This phenomenon reached something of a fever pitch during a particularly turbulent period in our country called “The Bush years.”

Anyway, so my atheist friend and I were talking about all of this as we tend to do and laughing and riffing on it and basically griping about how science (especially things dealing with like stem cells, for example) is held back or considered not interesting in America or, my favorite, the work of the Devil. We had a good laugh about that, talking about science as “the work of the Devil,” and because I have a vivid imagination, I literally imagined a guy who looks like this…

…in charge of a lab somewhere, ordering scientists around, approving budgets, and demanding more breakthroughs. “We’re trying to save them, but they refuse to see!” the Devil would say (as I said in my beast throaty demon voice), shaking his cloven hoof/fist angrily, and then they head into the break room to celebrate the birthday of one of the girls in the geophysics department, ha ha.

5. Today I had to make a nearly impossible decision, but also an incredibly mundane one. All the same, it was a tough one. It was the eternal debate of which movie to watch over my lunch break, and the choices came down to…

When Harry Met Sally vs. You’ve Got Mail. I know, I know. Fucking ridiculous, right?

But I do like them both. I appreciate them both. And, well, I kind of hate both as well. But I put it to you, gentle readers, before I say which one I picked, I’m a bit curious, which would you have picked? Metaphorically, the lady or the tiger?

K-ville.

Posted by Marco Sparks on

Don’t forget that tonight is the premiere of David Simon and Eric Overmyer’s Treme on HBO.

Both men are especially famous from The Wire, a show that I’m ashamed to admit that I’ve only seen roughly half of, but have fully drank the kool aid on. I’m hoping and expecting for the same kind of brilliance from Treme, a show about the residents of New Orleans three months after 2005′s Hurricane Katrina. It’s really about how people rebuild their lives and homes and culture after something so devastating and it features some all stars from The Wire, like Wendell Pierce and Clarke Peters, as well as excellent actors like John Goodman. I don’t have HBO, so I’ll be looking for tonight’s 80-minute pilot episode out there on the internet in the next few days and I’m severely excited.

And, this is definitely a discussion for another time, but at some point we should really sit down and discuss things like 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina and what kind of stories are inspired by these cataclysmic events or set within them. Obviously there’s been a lot of bad 9/11 stories, and bad post-Hurricane Katrina stories as well, and lots of preaching down, but can great stories inhabit these landscapes as well? And is that part of our collectively “coming together” after such tragedies?

The time is now.

Posted by Marco Sparks on

 

from here.

I woke up this morning and turned on the news. Old white men were screaming “FOR WHAT!?” and it took two minutes before I found out what they were so upset about: Barack Obama won a Nobel prize for Peace. Such an antiquated notion, but he won it for talking, for getting people excited, getting them hopeful, and, yes, because the rest of the world hated GWB that fucking much. On top of it, Jim and Pam got married on The Office, there’s a sequel to Phantom Of The Opera, NASA is bombing the moon (which I believe we talked about before, yes?), You can get strawberried M&Ms, and Marge Simpson is appearing on the cover of Playboy.

You’re wide awake, the time is now, and we’re all living in the future. Up next: Liquid hard drives, jetpacks, giving extraterrestrials reality shows about breaking into the music industry, and death rays!

NEVAR FORGET!

Posted by Marco Sparks on

In honor of New York and the Pentagon. In honor of families and lives torn apart and fallen off the edge of the Earth. In honor of beer, barbecue, and children wrestling with each other in confederate flag diapers while their parents film it and make money on the internet. In honor of underage couples that get knocked up on shitty beer in the back of pick up trucks while listening to Toby Keith songs. In honor of those who think you shouldn’t elect a President with a middle name of “Hussein” because it marks him as a terrorist. For all of you patriots and winners… Continue reading →

Apex Predator…

Posted by Marco Sparks on

…is a predator that has no predators of it’s own, and resides at the top of the food chain, with virtually nothing or no one to fear.

A prime example of an apex predator would be…

The Great White Shark. Of course.

Of course.

Aesop’s Fables may be true.

Nic Cage and mega sharks.

Mash up artists scratch old favorites.

Robin Hood in the future!

“President George W. Bush told French President Jacques Chirac in early 2003 that Iraq must be invaded to thwart Gog and Magog, the Bible’s satanic agents of the Apocalypse.”

Where I Write.

Don’t fuck with Blackwater. They’ll fucking kill you.

…and pimp out  young Iraqi girls.

Terry Gilliam likes Dick.

Learn how to text.

The most spoiled child in Britain.

Sharks being driven to the edge of extinction?

A comparison of the megalodon shark, the great white shark, and a human being. From wikipedia.

A size comparison between a few apex predators and a human being, again from wikipedia.

I find Beyonce to be completely overrated. That said, this Shakira video does weird, scary, wonderful things to me.

What’s driving divorce.

“Grounds For Divorce.”

The Raw Shark Texts.

Can Sarah Palin ever come back?

Ben Stein lose NYT column over endorsement.

Busted having sex in library bathroom.

Legalized pot a tough sell in Governor’s race.

The Time Traveler’s Wife is a lovely novel, but the movie looks kind of horrid.

Shark vs. Octopus.

8 internet things to throw into a black hole.

Birthplace of Roman Emperor Vespasian found in Italy.

We’re going to need a bigger blog!

The politics of the here and now.

Posted by Marco Sparks on

from here.

I like that Obama can get away with moves that we’d all hate Bush for doing. Yeah, it’s a kind of double standard, but it also goes back to this: Who would you rather get a beer with, Obama or Bush? If you answered “Bush” to that question, then keep it to yourself.

Fathers pass on pretty faces to daughters, but not sons.

Posted by Marco Sparks on

Studies found that obese women have as many sex partners as non-obese women, that obese men have fewer sex partners than non-obese men, and that men will spend more money on a date with a lady in red. Researchers discovered that handsome fathers pass on pretty faces to daughters but not to sons, and that facial scars make men more appealing to women for short-term but not long-term relationships, with women preferring scars that suggest violence or trauma rather than acne or chicken pox. Roosters that have had sex recently make more noise at dawn, and male antelopes click their knees loudly to demonstrate sexual prowess. Entomologists found that sex between male flour beetles may allow the males, by dribbling semen onto their partners, to impregnate the females those males later have sex with. San Francisco scientists grew a new prostate in a mouse from a single stem cell. Monoga mous male mice were found to be less likely to suf fer from diabetes than were their polyamorous counterparts, and an elephant in Texas came down with a fatal case of herpes. After thirty-six years of celibacy, George, the last living Pinta Island tortoise, mated. Dutch researchers identified a premature-ejaculation gene.

from here.

Severely depressed pregnant women are twice as likely to give birth prematurely, and infants warmed in incubators are less likely to be depressed as adults. Proto-humans may have learned to create fire as early as 790,000 years ago. Middle-aged white Americans were killing themselves at a higher rate, and a third of heart attacks worldwide were blamed on unhealthy Western eating habits. Computer scientists who hijacked part of a large spam network established that one in 12.5 million junk emails results in a sale. Neurologists found that many people’s brains contain a designated neuron for identifying Jennifer Aniston. Scientists studying a stalagmite in Wangxiang Cave linked the fall of China’s Ming, Tang, and Yuan dynasties to weak monsoons. An Indian probe, Chandrayaan I, landed on the moon, and NASA’s solar- powered Phoenix lander on Mars went dead with the coming of the Martian winter. Global warming may stop Norwegian lemmings from jumping off cliffs.

The passages above are from the “Findings” section in the January 2009 issue of Harper’s and were written by Rafil Kroll-Zaidi. The image at the top of the page is Untitled (three men standing), 2007, by Johannes Kahrs, and was also used in that issue of Harper’s.

from here.