smoldering rubble of joy

happy birthday ...

2006-01-11T09:36:00.000-08:00

... to albert hoffman, who turns 100 today.

thank you for sixty-three years of sunshine, oh great rider of bicycles into paradise. yes, thanks to your intrepid accident, sir, i am awake. i can't imagine my life without the gift of your magnificent discovery.

my eyes are open. all three of them.

so ... thank you, dr. hoffman. a splendid centennial to you!

***

give 'em hell, alito!

sortie in 3 ... 2 ... 1 ...

2006-01-10T09:35:00.000-08:00

heh. iran has removed seals placed on its nuclear facilities by the iaea. to resume "research" for "electricity."

does iran need nuclear electric power? according to the cia world factbook, iran ranks as 25th in electricity production, out of a list of 214 countries. iran produces 129 billion kWh of electric juice, and consumes only 119.9 billion kWh a year (figures are from 2002).

so ... why does iran need nuclear power? and why is no one else asking this?

and netanyahu is already consolidating power in isarel.

last week iran began producing yellowcake.

seriously, folks. this year. maybe before spring.

i'm still smoking. still smoking less, but smoking.

munchen

2006-01-09T09:59:00.000-08:00

i don't have a lot of time to write about it, but i saw munich last night, and folks, it is really, really good. it stuck with me all night, it's stuck in my head this morning.

i've read more about the actual munich massacre than about the israeli reprisal actions that the film focuses on (all accounts of which have been disputed), but the qualms a lot of critics seem to have revolve around the notion that the film's portrayal of them is not "accurate."

but it seems (to me, anyway) that speilberg wasn't going for accuracy so much as he was going for authenticity - and on that tip, he nailed it. it's a film about men who are asked to become assassins - and who accept. these aren't trained killers or soldiers; these are professionals with specific skills essential to their tasks, who decide to kill the killers of innocents.

they are also israeli jews, from families decimated by the holocaust, from the fledgling israeli state, under attack and fighting for its very existence since its inception. these are jews who saw what happened in munich and experienced the very human desire to seek wrathful vengeance; and when the opportunity to exact revenge was offered to them, they took it. they took it with moral and ethical qualms, to be sure, but they did the dirty work assigned to them and they did it well.

so maybe the real israeli assassins were more hardened killers; maybe there were very few ethical dilemmas as they murdered those who have sought to destroy them, their families, and their nation. maybe there was no demand that the operatives keep receipts ... maybe a lot of what was said and done in the film have their basis in speilberg's mind and not in reality.

so fucking what? this is a movie; imagine, if you will, that the characters, perhaps, represent the state of israel; israel DID and DOES and WILL ALWAYS have ethical dilemmas to deal with. throughout history, jews have wrestled with such questions as the justification of war, of murder, of massacre, of revenge. munich, and the "wrath of god" reprisals, while ushering in a new, global era of conflict between jews and their enemies, are just another bloody chapter in the long, beautiful and tortured history of the jewish people.

anyway, it's a very powerful film, especially for those who know that history, and those who have been watching events in the middle east for the past five, ten, twenty-five, fifty-eight years. munich was a turning point that got the world's attention, but neither side has managed to reach a satisfactory, peaceful resolution since; indeed, the violence has continued at a steady pace, and in the last five years has been reinvigorated by yet another palestinian intifada - and by the israeli response.

other than the world watching, what did the massacre accomplish? what did the reprisals accomplish? those are the questions that the film attempts to pose - but not to answer; answers are left up to the viewer.

but here's my question: what could america learn from the jews of israel? and are we learning it?

quick and dirty: geoffery rush is outstanding. the woman who plays the main character's wife is astonishingly beautiful, and her performance superb. all of the actors playing the assassins are fantastic - the characters are very well developed, and the actors see that this comes through on the screen.

and a note: the violence ... the film is sprinkled with violent scenes throughout, and while violence is certainly not the film's raison d'etre, squeamish viewers should be warned that when munich is violent, it is very, very violent ... and very, very real in its depiction of violence. there are disturbing, bloody images that are simply unforgettable, particularly those depicting the terrorist attack on the olympic village in munich - which are, according to my studies, quite accurate: the shit you see the terrorists do to the israeli olympic team in the film is what the terrorists did to the isreali olympic team in real life. it's not all they did, but what you see is real. and ... you won't forget it, but you very well may wish that you could.

my two cents on munich. i'd be interested in comments from others who see/have seen it.

status report

2006-01-06T06:30:00.000-08:00

i smoked again. i'm still smoking. but ... i am smoking less. a lot less. i have aquired a shitty chest cold, so that helps a bit with the willpower, but i've got to do this without crutches if i really want to put these damn things down.

well, i think i might employ the crutch of a nicotine patch. i hear different things about its effectiveness, but i'm pretty sure that i'm going to need something to get me over the shock and withdrawals and pretty, curling whisps of smoke i so dearly love to watch as they float away into nothing.

and the stress. stress, to my mind and body, is even more of a trigger for nicotine cravings than beer or whiskey. and i never seem to run out of things i consider stressful.

and rarely do i run out of beer or whiskey.

if anyone has a testimonial or comment about using a nicotine patch, please leave it here. it'll be interesting, and it might end up helping me quit (or to decide fuck it! gimme cancer!). or tell me at the bar. or on my couch. or on your couch. or on jaxxie's porch. just tell me.

anyway. i'm not giving up. not just yet. for now, i'm "tapering." i'm going to try to start the patch next week. this, if nothing else, will be something to blog about.

but i haven't been to a bar since new year's eve. this weekend - tonight - it is time to have a few nips. and with that - cigarettes. but, i hope, fewer of them.

wish me luck.

***

ariel sharon is out of the picture? if so, things could get very, very interesting (i.e. fiery, bloody) in the middle east. i'm anxious to see what happens if netanyahu is made prime minister of israel. and that appears to be somewhat probable.

i'm telling you - israel is going to strike iran, soon. this year. iran's making its own yellowcake ... that means weapons-grade uranium in a matter of weeks, folks. and word on the street is that they already have a delivery system - thanks, putin!

israel will not let this situation stand, and will react quickly and decisively if it progresses any further. it astonishes me that the u.n. and the e.u. seem to be content to sit back and let that happen (i'm not surprised in the least that the u.s. doesn't mind).

and the kicker? iran knows this. iran, it appears, wants an act of war against itself. an airstrike, sure. an invasion, even better. it's the holy war bin laden and al-quaida wanted. afghanistan, iraq, and now iran - the decisive, expansive, apocalyptic holy war to end all holy wars.

apparently, iranian president ahmadinejad wants it, too - his audacious (and reckless) defiance regarding nukes, his comments about israel being "wiped off the map," and his glee at the news of sharon's stroke ... it's not like this guy doesn't know what israel does when threatened or provoked. he's asking for it. because he wants it.

dumbasses. you don't vanquish the infidel by inviting him - and his extremely powerful and massive army - to invade your land. oh, i get it ... they think the infidel will expend too much energy and too many resources dispatching muslims into martyrdom, and will plunge into terror and fear when the blood starts to flow, leading ultimately to a catastrophic and fatal implosion of the armies - along with the economies, governments and societies - of the judeo-christian west.

they could be right - empires do tend to fall, eventually - but i doubt very seriously that our engagements in the middle east will destroy western civilization. either way, it's a stupid gamble for islamists to take, because no matter who wins the "holy war," the islamists - and their nations, cultures, people, families, children - lose.

because even if the western "empire" crumbles ... the land, the cities, indeed civilization itself in the middle east will be left utterly decimated, and unable to recover for decades, maybe centuries, maybe forever.

while a war-weary and economically depleted u.s. and europe may crawl away to lick their wounds, and while they may be forced to accept a new pan-islamic caliphate across the desertified wasteland of a ravaged and smoldering middle east and north africa ... there isn't a chance in hell of any islamic army conquering judeo-christian civilization in europe or america.

(ok, maybe in europe. western europe. ok, france. just in france, really. the rest would actually put up a fight).

so this is just another bloodletting. like most, unnecessary, tragic, and ultimately, absurd.

and, to me, sublime. i have to admit it. (like you couldn't tell ... )

but it ain't over. far from it, friends. far, far from it.

***

um, yeah. world tribune is reporting that sharon is dead. at 77. a veteran of every last war israel has fought against the invading armies of its neighbors ... and a couple in which israel did the invading. so, he was certainly not loved outside of israel.

the muslims of the middle east, i'm afraid, will come to miss ariel sharon in the coming months and years.

***

this makes me want a cigarette. i'm going to get a pepsi.

***

on a lighter, but still disapointing note:

boo on broke-down vans, the bane of modern southern culture, the obstacle to our enjoyment of the sound and the fury that is mattrock and the powerboxx. we missed you last night, friends. and although oxford is not a bad place to find oneself stuck, may your journey not be delayed any longer than you're cool with. may your van roll again, when you are ready to roll.

and may it roll our way. we'd still be glad to see you.

***

ok, i think i'm going to have a cigarette with that pepsi.

***

now sharon's not dead, but close to it. it's like when arafat died. slow, painful, convulsive.

***

it just snowed. for like, two minutes. it was pretty.

***

don't rent the united states of leland.

***

shit! lou rawls is dead at 72.

***

i should work now. leave me comments about your experiences with the patch.

resolution

2006-01-03T08:16:00.000-08:00

i usually do not make new year's resolutions. this year, i did.

this year, i have decided that it is time for me to quit smoking. i have smoked for over thirteen years. and tobacco kills more americans than almost all other causes of death combined.

there are all manner of reasons i shouldn't smoke, but there is only one reason that ever sticks with a nicotine addict: i just don't want to anymore.

so. it's been about twelve hours since my last cigarette. and i was asleep for about eight of those hours. thus, it's very early in this test of fortified willpower ... of the ethereal vagaries of mind struggling to overcome the nagging concreteness of matter ... of a strange, new desire to live a longer, healthier life locked in mortal combat against a lifelong and familiar bent toward an epicureanism routinely taken to self-destructive extremes.

either i'll conquer this beast and leave it, smote and rotting, in the dust ... or i'll revert to a beady-eyed, clammy handed, shaky repetition of that well-familiar refrain:

can i bum a smoke?

and eventually ... camel lights in a box, please.

if i see you on a regular basis, help me in any way you can to confront, challenge, and slay this hideous monster that is nicotine addiction. and by "help me" i mean give me a fucking cigarette if i ask you for one.

thank you in advance for your cooperation and support.

in other news:

i got that new reigning sound live at goner records l.p. today when i returned to the office (it was delivered during the xmas holidays). it's lovely red marbled vinyl, very heavy stock (i'm guessing 180 grams) and has sixteen tracks.

of course, i have no turntable at the office, so i won't hear it until i get home - and i'm itchin' like a careless whore to hear this slab o' plastic. but at six o'clock this evening, jacktown's own melrose place is going to get blasted by a big, nasty dose of cartwright and company. i'm gonna shake the foundations, babies! here comes memphis!

you can come park in the driveway out front and have a listen if you want. or, you know, you can come over and knock on my door. just think: it'll be even louder inside.

but i've got to pick up annie stitches from the aeropuerto at just after seven, so it'll be a wham-bam-thank-you-ma'am kind of listening party. we'll get all electrified with the sound - and then we'll wander off separately into the city, with our respective buzzes humming nicely.

"love ... is a funny thing"

oh, and happy holidays, bitches.

hiatus doth end here

2005-12-09T09:23:00.000-08:00

i have no real excuse for neglecting you, dear reader, for the last several weeks. there has been much that i have wanted to share with you, but in the last month i've always found a reason not to sit down and post something.

so i moved; i've been in the new place for a month now. and i love it. i had a fantastic house-warming party a couple of weeks ago, a small affair, but a successful one. the place was christened by the vapors of alcohol breath and cigarette smoke, and before the night was through furniture had been moved to make room for prostrate arm wrestling contests (as always, instigated by the diplomat). i still have a few things to iron out - i need to get my new couch from my folks, i need to get rid of my old bed, i need a dining table and chairs - but i'm in and it's proving to be a very satisfactory place to live and host.

thanksgiving was sure weird, wasn't it? jacktown folks know what i'm talking about. where the fuck was everybody? i don't know if a lot of folks decided not to come home, or if they came home and hearing about the demise of martin's left them all jaded and surly, but aside from a handful of returning jacksonites (all of whom, to be sure, were a pleasure to see), the bars were populated mostly with underage kids taking advantage of having two days off from school. besides that, my family's thanksgiving was surreal ... i showed up at my uncle's house in dinsmore thursday afternoon with the intention of making the rounds and saying hello, eating like an elephant, then cutting out. after the second kid burst into hysterical tears, i had to have a beer; because it took so long for the food to be ready, it was the first of many. so i got really drunk with my family ... they were all drunk, too, though, so it isn't like i had to act like i wasn't getting plastered. this is my new orleans family; they know how to have a good time, of course, and this year they were all the more liberal with the spirits because most of them had at least some damage from katrina. my cousin martha and her husband lost their house altogether. all of it, and everything in it. gone.

what else? the operation shoestring benefit at hal and mal's last week was really good; if you missed it, you missed an outstanding performance from bobby rush and carey hudson. i went to give my money to operation shoestring and to see bobby rush and his infamous "talkin' to the booty" schtick, but right after i gave the door ladies my money, i was informed that mr. rush didn't have his butt dancers with him this time. so i'm thinking, dude, this is gonna suck. does bobby rush actually have any talent? what the fuck is he gonna do, point his mic at the butts of women in the crowd? so field marshal elvin, the diplomat, animal, animal's cousin shorty and i grabbed a table in front of the stage and awaited whatever was coming.

bobby rush was on stage tuning a stratocaster, and next to him was carey hudson, tuning a hollow-body les paul. i thought this was kind of odd - why would two performers be tuning up at the same time? and then, of course, it hit me: they're going to play together, ace. suddenly, the universe came into a unique alignment and things began to make sense.

i was floored. i knew carey hudson was never a disappointment, but i had no idea that bobby rush could actually play the fuck out of some guitfiddle ... or that his voice is one that sings the real, old blues with fidelity and whatever they substitute for grace up in the delta. stripped down, quiet, but bursting with energy, bobby rush pulled off a performance on par with the greatest of mississippi blues players down through the years. carey hudson, a remarkable performer in his own right, took a backseat and let bobby shine - and when bobby thought carey was getting too flashy, he shushed him and pointed at himself: "just me now. quiet." and carey would chill out, in deferential humility.

it was a night that the yankee yellow journalist eric lipton could never appreciate: mississippi unbound, a heritage that gets its glory from its misery, in which we bask with melancholic joy.

inspired by a contest between d-trane and animal over who could write the better short story (they both wrote stories, in the span of only two weeks, and i hear they are pretty damn good), i have decided to give fiction a go again, and am writing a story of my own. the diplomat may be joining in on this as well. the idea is to have deadlines and a critiquing audience to aid in the development of our writing discipline and skills. and eventually, hopefully, we'll be able to get enough people and material together to publish a small-scale literary zine or journal featuring all local unpublished writers. if you want to get involved in this, contact me or one of the super cool awesome people mentioned above. but beware: if you suck, we'll tell you.

quickly: i found my box of books on the eastern front. it was in the room with all the other boxes. somehow i overlooked it at least five times. stupid.

i pre-ordered the new reigning sound record, on limited edition colored vinyl. greg cartwright is one bad motherfucker.

there is something truly remarkable and exhilirating happening in my little universe right now. and that's all i'm going to say about that.

i want this for x-mas, if anyone is wondering what to get me.

camp-o-rama III gets underway tonight - overnight lows are forecast to be in the mid-20s. so, i might die. props to team andershelt for arranging and hosting again. my vow: that fire ain't goin' out ... it's burnin' all weekend long.

hiatus

2005-11-17T14:55:00.000-08:00

play with this. mad props to jaxx and all the other contributors.

i'll be back next week to bitch about stuff.

yes ...

2005-11-01T14:16:00.000-08:00

... i am still alive. i found an apartment and i've been moving and all that fun stuff. it's a fantastic place, but i need some furniture to fill it up. i left my couch at my old hole because it is undoubtedly infested with fleas (some of the roaches from my old place managed to stowaway in some boxes and stuff and invade my new place ... but they haven't taken over and they WON'T! i've killed, with extreme prejudice, every one i've seen).

incidentally, i had to take my dearest suzi q. to the vet today because i noticed tapeworm segments in her crap. and where do dogs get tapeworms? you guessed it: from eating fleas. and she ate a flea because ...

*fumes with clenched teeth*

nevermind.

anyway, i tried to order a couch from ikea today, but they have to get back with me on the shipping charges - which could possibly be as much as the couch itself (or more) - before the order is finalized. we'll see what happens there. i imagine it'll end up being more than i can spend.

moving sucks. as has happened before when i've moved, i've managed to strain some muscles in my chest/lungs/back area that make it painful to do just about anything, including breathing, swallowing and belching.

i also managed to either mislabel or misplace a box of books - a small box, but a very important one. some of you have seen my collection of books ... i have a shit ton of them, so you'd think i wouldn't worry too much about a few missing tomes. however, this happens to be the box that contained my most prized books on the nazi/soviet conflict in wwii, particularly with regard to stalingrad and berlin. for those of you who don't know, these books are about my favorite battles in my favorite theatre of my favorite war. i would rather have lost just about any other box of books in my collection. cry a tear for me.

maybe it'll turn up. but i've looked everywhere, at the new place and the old. it eludes me still.

i hope everyone's halloween was as fucking weird as mine. i think it's a good thing that it only happens once a year. i saw enough leg and titties to make my head a splode.

on to punditry ...

glad to see harriet miers go ... ready for the showdown over samuel alito. it's got the democrats so freaked out that today they've forced a closed senate meeting over the pre-war intelligence blunders - prompted, oddly, by the indictment of scooter libby for his comments regarding valerie plame.

so. libby lied. maybe. under oath. how vile is this?

it wasn't so bad when clinton did it ...

(for the record - i never vilified clinton for that shit. i liked him.)

if the dems keep it up, maybe they'll win another "triumph" like they did with nixon and watergate.

dems - i know you hate scooter libby, and i know why you hate him ... well, those few who actually have any idea who he is. you're not getting him for what you want to get him for, though ... namely orchestrating the invasion of iraq. and because that wasn't a crime, you bucketheads are clutching at straws ... anything that will take down a man whose name you barely knew before last week. but he worked for cheney, so he must be guilty of something.

yeah! go get 'em! that's the spirit! save america from the vile scourge of white house leaks!

(which, incidentally, was what nixon was trying to do when he committed his indiscretions ... )

part of me can't wait until we get another democratic administration in the white house. you fuckers are gonna HATE the guns conservatives bring out next time. you'll forget you ever heard the word "lewinsky."

sorry, dem friends. feeling a bit fiesty today. i still love you.

well, most of you.

mississippi the beautiful

2005-10-14T13:36:00.000-07:00

i spent tuesday and wednesday of this week in belzoni, mississippi doing work stuff. on both days, i rode with a coworker up highway 49 in the early morning, as the sun was coming up and beginning to burn off the fog. and being that it was so early, with the weather so perfect, i was genuinely moved - again - by the majesty of the mississippi landscape.

there are cotton fields up that way, and apparently the harvest has just ended. so there were huge bales of cotton sitting in fields of plants shorn bare, with stray clumps of cotton littering the sides of the roads. occasionaly we'd pass a cotton truck, with little white tufts escaping and floating by in the wind. i saw a couple of farmers plowing down the remnants of their harvested crops in huge tractors, throwing dirt, sticks and cotton all into the air. who knew something so mundane could be so beautiful?

i also saw a lot of poverty - it seems nobody in belzoni has a job except the catfish farmers. but i also saw a way of life that is at ease with the circumstances which created it. with all the rhetoric about the misery of america's poor being kicked around in the wake of katrina, it was refreshing to see a community that seemed to thrive despite its profound lack of wealth. there was not hate in the air; we - white, employed, educated - did not feel unwelcome, as we might in other communities - big cities, mainly - where poverty is rampant. sure, the people of belzoni would probably be happy to have better houses, more money, a more secure future. but instead of brimming with hostility at the man or raising hell in the streets, demanding even more government assistance, they seemed focused on making the most of what they do have - namely each other, family, community. and the land; they are mississippi, and mississippi, in all its tragic glory, is them. the girls who worked at sonic were friendly, jubilant even. the people with whom we were working were sharp, dedicated and professional. all around us, people smiled, waved, said "hello."

i guess i have to point out that most of these people are black. black and poor. i only point it out to make this point: they didn't care that we were white, had money, had degrees. they did not expect us to be racist. they certainly were not racist. we all know mississippi's history - it's right there in front of us; these people live within miles of cotton fields once harvested via the slave labor of their ancestors. the plight of mississippi's poor, black population does not escape them; they continue to live it, and they know it's really not that much better than it was 200 years ago.

but are they bitter? it did not seem that way to me. it seemed to me that they were thankful to be alive, to be americans, to be mississippians. again, they may desire better than what they have - who wouldn't? - but they loved the land, their home, and their state more than they cared to bother themselves with fomenting dissent and placing blame.

i'm not saying that america's poor minorities should just suck it up and take it - racism and classism are real, and america certainly needs to take steps to bridge the economic and cultural gaps that feed racism. i am saying that america could learn something about how to do that from the poor black people of belzoni, mississippi. they are working toward a better, brighter future, no matter how long it takes. and it's taking a very, very long time. but it's happening, slowly - there was evidence of federal money in the area, as well as private economic growth - and these people draw strength from the knowledge that what they're doing is good - for them, for their children, and for their community. they have patience; they understand that history, their history - peppered as it is with hatred, oppression and violence - has come a long way in the last 150 years. they understand it may be another 150 years - or more - before they are where they truly want to be, where they feel they belong.

and they are willing to do the work and take the time. because they know that for now, they are where they want to be.

they want to be in belzoni, mississippi. and i don't blame them.

- if anyone would be interested, i was thinking it could be fun to get up early one saturday or sunday morning and head north for a hundred miles or so and take pictures, dine with locals, and drink up the splendor of early fall in mississippi. but i'm talking early - we'd have to leave by 7 a.m., earlier if possible, to see the sun doing its best magic. shoot me an email or leave a comment or whatever. if anything seems to be coming together, i'll post info here or send out one of those annoying mass emails.

on another note, this is one of the most amusing fark photoshop contests i've seen in a while: revamped movie posters that reflect the reality of the films. some really good shit. dig it:

other than that, it's friday, bitches! time to DRINK!

you know where i'll be ... beer me, jaysus!

it sounds worse than it is.

2005-10-10T09:50:00.000-07:00

wow, that post from last friday sounds so gloomy and pissy. it's really not that bad. i mean, yeah, my life is still an "existential nightmare," but shit, that's the way i like it. and i know that all of the little problems and snags i gripe about will eventually be resolved ... to be replaced by new ones, no doubt, but that's why i have a blog. right?

anyway, my housing dilemma just isn't that big of a deal to me anymore. i've just accepted that it's going to be a while before i get to where i want to be (and yes, i've got to find it first; that, too, will take a while). my reserves of patience, depleted though they may have been in the course of last week, have now been replinished. and so i carry on.

and as far as the craziness of my lady friend, the princess (the finger-cutter-offer) is concerned - bah. i love her nonetheless. she is a very special friend to me, for better or for worse. i'll stay away from her fingers, but i can't abandon her. she deserves better.

i had a good weekend. friday night we discussed muppets at don's: which muppet are you? i'm sam the eagle ... because i'm so militant and have some conservative values (which, incidentally, is the same reason that the giant, when bartending, draws a swastika to represent me on his tab sheet, as he informed me this weekend). we decided the giant is the swedish chef. jaysus is cookie monster. l'archie ("WHAT?!") is ms. piggy. the diplomat is one of the old guys in the theatre box seats, whose names i forget. i can't remember the rest of the muppet-dopplegangers, either; folks who do remember should post their identities in the comments section.

spent sunday afternoon in laurel park with l'archie and the diplomat and the professor; l'archie and i brought our dogs, who had a big old time. we had some beer, threw some frisbee (my skills need sharpening). it was a beautiful day, with blue skies, green leaves, and a perfect temperature of around seventy degrees. i could have stayed all day, but i needed a nap after brunch at julep and a couple of beers in the grass ...

i saw a history of violence last night. it was pretty good, but very slow and at times contrived. the scenes of violence and sex were graphic and intense, but less shocking than they were perhaps meant to be. the plot was rather predictable, but taken as a whole it's a well-crafted film with something more to say than, "bang! bang!" the actors were all good, especially viggo mortensen and ed harris. i recommend it with the caveat that guns do really, really horrible things to people.

i'll just mention briefly that saturday night, at the bar and then at a late-night brannigan at my place, i had a very important reconciliation during the small hours. it felt very good, and i just want so say, once again, thanks for listening, spider. you're beautiful and i will love you forever.

so stop smoking. please.

i'm at work, so i've got to get back to the joerb.

oh, i also learned something new about hitler in the rise and fall of the third reich this weekend. i'll go into that later. maybe.

oh yeah ...

2005-10-07T08:32:00.000-07:00

my jucifer pics are posted here.

the diplomat's much better pics can be seen here.

and yeah, it fucking owned. thank you, ed and amber.

(above pic courtesy of the diplomat. not that i asked, but you know ...)

fucking half-assed bullshit

2005-10-07T08:16:00.000-07:00

so i didn't get the apartment - foiled by nepotism, as it were (and as most of you around me know). i don't know what i'm going to do. the whole mess just makes me sick; i'm tired of even thinking about it. i've resigned myself to the bad luck from which i just can't seem to fully escape. whatever. i'll just stop trying.

and i've been rebuffed by a someone i thought might do something different. that's what i get for thinking. i'm a sucker, and she knows it. but what do you do with a woman who contrives to have you wrapped around her finger, only to chop her own finger right the fuck off so that she might get a kick out of seeing the look of shock and incredulity on your face?

you leave her alone. because she's fucking crazy. that's what you do. even if you love her.

bye bye.

this post sucks. i haven't posted anything of substance lately; i guess this is no different. oh well. i'm still here. and i'll be back with something better to say. eventually.

i wish the israelis would go ahead and take this shit to the next level. distract me from my obsession with the vagaries and shortcomings of my own existential nightmare.

who loves the devil? who will sing his song?

what'd i tell ya?

2005-09-30T06:08:00.000-07:00

i knew it.

didn't you? they'll do it, too. just watch.

more later. work.

um, what the fark?

2005-09-23T14:43:00.000-07:00

anybody care to comment on this?

seriously. i'm going to look more closely at this over the weekend and try to form a rational opinion. but i want your input too. i want a discussion.

discuss, dammit!

ed and amber bring the pain

2005-09-23T11:06:00.000-07:00

hell fuckin' yeah! jucifer is coming to don's next friday night, and i can't fucking wait. for those of you who don't know, jucifer is one of my most favoritest bands, and indeed one of the most exhilarating live shows i've ever seen.

amber is beauty and fury, grace and power; she knows that volume is sexy. ed is ... ed is a fucking force of nature all unto himself. this man probably works harder on stage than any other single musician playing gigs anywhere on earth; his performance is simply amazing.

i will release a megaton of pent-up stress and frustration when ed and amber come barrelling through our bar. friends, get ready to see me scream like a schoolgirl.

jucifer official site.

jucifer's myspace profile.

some recommendations

2005-09-21T00:42:00.000-07:00

quick and dirty:

the great lake swimmers. saw 'em at don's last week. excellent show. quiet, too quiet, almost. but great music by great musicians and great performers. they did a bitchin' cover of tom waits' "innocent when you dream." jaysus got the disc ... i want to hear it.

the eagles of death metal. i mentioned a coupla weeks ago that chubb burned me a copy of this record, which has been out for a while. a lot of folks have said, "yeah, it's alright," but in case you haven't heard it, let me just say it is the rawk.

the excorsism of emily rose. in spite of its courtroom drama overdose, a great american film that follows in the footsteps of the excorist by keeping the notion of demonic possession at top of mind awareness.

these speakers. got 'em at wal-mart for twenty bucks. worth every penny. now i got all my jams in my office. long day? no problem.

this complaint letter. its from a brit dude to a local cable company, and it's a smashing slice of great writing. ganked from fark.

and naps. i recommend naps. yum.

i'm on the nightrane

2005-09-17T01:17:00.000-07:00

a good friday night, though we missed the dexateens. i heard they rocked. shoulda been there.

but instead, we were here. the usual suspects, engaged in a most intense game of speed quarters.

here is the evidence.

jaysus lost a round.

l'archie lost a round, too.

the killer thought it was all quite fucking hilarious.

then the d-trane got served. jaxxie thought that was mighty fine.

the d-trane got served again. and dominick began to feel sick.

diplo took a moment to laugh between gulps. gulps he had to take because he lost.

this is the d-trane accepting defeat. and tasting it.

d-trane didn't realize bucky had the fingerpistol stuck up against his noggin.

the giant wasn't sure what to do ... but tay tay knew what was up.

l'archie had gotten used to chuggin' the brew by this point. there is actually a dollar in quarters in the bottom of that glass. jaxxie showed some sympathy for her soul sister.

take a close look at this. one would think this would mean it's time to go home. but no.

this meant it was time to go to the bar.

and we went to the bar.

what happened?

oh, yeah. nevermind.

the hair of the dog that bit me

2005-09-15T18:49:00.000-07:00

i think i'm getting a new apartment. i'm waiting on confirmation, which is slow in coming but appears imminent. i hope so, because it's ideal - no deposit, no lease. it's going to take a little while before i'm ready to buy or build, so i'll just stay there until i get my shit together. the oakwood compound won't be the same.

actually, it probably will be the same. drunk people eating grilled meats and listening to indie music.

it's still my ultimate goal to build a house here, but that'll be a pretty long time coming, i think. but l'archie has graciously agreed to my request that she help me design a house - or rather, designing a house and letting me look at it and tell her what i like and don't like, then going back and redesigning it.

sounds like fun. i'm looking forward to it.

the new job is fucking great. great company, great products, great people. i have near-total autonomy. a woman tells me what she wants and needs in terms of documentation, and i go do it. in my office. listening to music. keeping up with the news online.

the hours are taking some getting used to, though. like today, i was an hour and a half late because last night i forgot that drinking beer until two a.m. would make it difficult to get out to madison at eight a.m. i was pretty wobbly until the coffee finally took hold, and i had to sit in on a conference in a dark room with other people doing all the talking, making it very, very difficult to stay awake.

but i had things other than work on my mind while drinking last night. the attorney and i hopped about the bars, dug on some vernongrass, jawwed with that bastard, other patrons and jaysus. i like the attorney. she is whip-smart, vibrant and unafraid.

i like the attorney.

i guess i should start doing some packing. but i really, really don't feel like it. it's been a long, overhung day. i feel more like giving my nerves the beer for which they have been screaming since the coffee wore off.

just a couple, you know?

congrats, george w. bush. your speech tonight may just have planted the seed of your administration's recovery from the extremely poor leadership shown in the immediate wake of katrina.

i hate to say it, but you've got a long, long way to go, buddy. you dropped the ball. best of luck.

jackson ...

2005-09-11T00:54:00.000-07:00

... i love you ...

with the new job, and the new circumstances of suckness regarding my current living situation, i have reached a watershed moment in my life ... a life that has been shaped and molded and corrupted and distorted and discombobulated by this city we call jackson, mississippi. i have to make a choice: fight or flight.

jackson is my home. and in recent years i have come to the realization that jackson, mississippi is the place that i will forever want to call home, and not just in a figurative sense. i don't want to leave jackson. i want to travel, i want to see other places and other things, but i want this strange, marvelous and savage place to always be my home ... the home i come back to every time, not just the home to which i will one day return.

fuck living anywhere else. i know this town ... i know this town. i know jackson, and she knows me.

i've always wanted to travel. to see europe - especially eastern europe and western russia. to see all those fantastic cities surrounding the great mediterranean. and lots of other places it'd be boring for you to read about. but more intensely, i want to see america - our cities, our towns, our rural hamlets; our mountains, our valleys, our rivers. i want to see it all, live it all to the fullest (i.e. finding a dive in every city and getting wasted ... ). i want to talk to people. i want to see how they live and work, how they spend their days, how they unwind. all that good shit.

but i want to come home at the end of my trips to wherever i go.

and where is home?

jackson is home. belhaven is home.

i should make my home here, right? it's always been home, and there's no good reason to leave it, even if i leave knowing that i can always come back someday.

what this all means is ...

i'm ready to buy a house here. actually, i'm ready to build a house here. in belhaven, my emotional and physical refuge for most of my adult life. my home. i'm ready to plant roots, build equity, and settle down in this beautiful neighborhood, with all of these fucking awesome people that live in this town and are determined to see it flourish.

speaking of awesome people ... i've lived in this town my whole life, and i've been swinging about the social scene here for around twelve years (with a considerable absence during the 1999 - 2004 era while i went back to school). i've known a lot of good folks and had a lot of good times here, but right now - this time - seems like a new golden age for jackson. this little (little?) crowd we've got going on is truly something to celebrate. it's remarkable; it's amazing; it's unique.

sure ... as always, it's got its drama and its bullshit, but it's got an energy and a vitality that i haven't seen in all my years of kicking up dust in jacktown. we are all lucky to be here during this time.

we deserve a pat on the back, all of us. to all of those i've clinked drinks with in the past year, here's another one. we rule.

our town rules. because of us.

(i mean that in the most selfless way possible)

- huzzah!

you are like a hurricane

2005-09-06T23:10:00.000-07:00

it's late, and i don't have much time to say all that should be said here.

katrina. is. a. bitch. goddamn her for what she did to new orleans, the most american of american cities, the one city that truly has a place in my heart. and to the people ... there are no words. goddamn you, katrina. goddamn you straight to hell.

although my annoyance with her is minor compared to those who are now without homes, loved ones, or anything resembling the life they knew a week ago, katrina did manage to delay my starting my new job because of the gasoline situation that followed her attack. i simply didn't have enough juice to get out to madison on thursday, the day i was supposed to begin. friday told the same story. so we put off my start date until today.

i found gas on saturday - waited just ten minutes - and was ready to commute this morning. it was a great day. i got my own office, with a huge window looking into the woods, and a fat-ass, fast computer. apparently there are no blocks on websites we can visit, although i'll have to snoop around a bit to determine how much of employee internet traffic is actually watched and/or recorded. today i just visited drudge a couple of times ... i didn't fuck with fark. gmail is apparently safe; i heard some dudes talking about our servers accessing it today like it was a good thing. so at least i can check my mail.

i'm stoked about the job, about the money, about the freedom - i worked from eight to five today without interruption. and at the end of the day, my boss person was ecstatic about what i'd gotten done. i am comfortable and feel like i've earned it.

but i'm still reeling over the devastation i've witnessed over the past week - without working much (i did a little time at the record store). new orleans, sure. but the mississippi and alabama coasts are hardly in better shape. the water may have receded, but there are still people stuck without food and water, looking for parents, spouses and children - not to mention pets - all across the gulf coast.

it's a bittersweet end to a year that has been nothing less than insufferable, tortuous and completely ridden with anxiety.

the worst is over. and i hope the best is in fact yet to come. this is good, but it better get better.

goddamnit.

god.

damnit.

the sun came up, and it was blue and gold.

to misappropriate a quote from michael stipe: "congratulate me."

2005-08-24T17:45:00.000-07:00

the agony is over.

the ship has come in.

it's raining pennies from heaven.

i am coming back to life.

i. have. a. mother. fucking. job.

a good one, a really good one. if you want details, ask me, because i've learned through the mistakes of others not to talk about the company i work for or the people i work with on the intarweb. but it's a good company - been around fifty years - with seemingly great people, so suffice it to say i couldn't be happier.

the money's good, too. and the benefits. all of it. and the work - i can say this: i'm going to write technical manuals for two gargantuan software packages created by the company. i'm sure it sounds boring to most readers of s.r.o.j., but i'm thrilled about it because i'm just that weird.

as many of you are aware, i have been working for the past week at the record store that shall remain nameless - for $6.50 an hour. it's ok work, the people are great, but it's retail, which i deeply loathe, and it requires hours of sustained standing/walking. and i'm just not used to that. it makes me very, very tired.

i'll probably keep working at the record store part-time for a while, at least until the company i'm going to work for ups my salary (after two months, as promised). so come by and see me. i get bored.

there's a lot of other stuff i'd love to jaw about, but most of it is secret stuff. sorry, princess. i know you wanted juicy dirt (that sounds yum) but this is all i have right now. i'm too fucking stoked about finally finding a job, after two long, depressing, and destitute months of unemployment.

besides ... ah, never mind.

daniel johnston said:

true love will find you in the end
you'll find out just who was your friend
don't be sad, i know you will,
but don't give up until
true love finds you in the end

this is a promise with a catch
only if you're looking will it find you
cause true love is searching too
but how can it recognize you
unless you step out into the light?

don't be sad, but i know you will
don't give up until
true love finds you in the end.

a link

2005-08-18T01:19:00.000-07:00

north korean news

enjoy.

the bonnie situation

2005-08-17T22:50:00.000-07:00

so i passed on the first job.

it just wasn't enough, and there was no negotiating salary. thank you all for your insightful suggestions. i ended up taking the advice of my folks: "fuck a job that isn't going to pay you what you're worth."

well, they didn't express the sentiment in that exact language, but you get the drift.

by the way ... "librarian" ... were you at the laurel blues bash? sounds like it. i didn't see you. did you see me? if so, i'll just have you know that the young hottie i was hanging out with was my sister, not some jailbait ho. and, if you saw me, why the fuck didn't you come say hi?

but enough about the laurel blues bash.

interviewed with the second job people today. i think it went pretty well, although i know i could have provided more smashing answers to their questions (i interviewed with three people, all at once. totally intimidating).

but if it doesn't come through ...

i'm on the schedule for next week at a job that pays six bucks an hour. it'll do. there are good fringe benefits - especially eye candy - but it's a temporary solution.

a solution, nonetheless. at least it's hip.

in nitelife news ...

that bastard fucking slaughtered my ass at a game of darts tonite at don's. i came back and beat him the second time around, but i didn't put the hurt on him like he put it on me. he's gettin' good. next time, i want him on my team. fuck all y'all bitches, bucky and the bastard are not interested in taking prisoners. prepare for the halex holocaust, niggas!

would anyone be interested in reading a long post about my political roots and the current status of my political beliefs? after this past weekend, during which i tried but utterly failed to articulate my standpoint on certain issues (attributable to my two months of languishing in unemployment and neglecting my intellectual and political prowess), i feel a need to clarify, but only if you farkers will read it.

so let me know.

and get your tongue out of my sandbox. that's just gross.

all your base are belong to us

2005-08-16T13:22:00.000-07:00

is that still funny?

i may have a job. actually, i have a job if i want it, but i'm not sure i do. i am finally in the running for another, better job, but it hasn't yet been offered to me and i don't know that it will be. so i can either turn down the current job offer and hope for the best at my interview with the other one; of course, if the second job doesn't go my way, i'll be back to looking for birds with none in the hand. or i can take the current job offer and continue looking.

the problem is that the job i'm being offered does not pay dick. it's ridiculously low-paying, barely better than retail. but it's a job, and i need a fucking job. if i hold out for the second job but don't get it, then i will have to leave jackson by the end of september (if i can even manage to scrape up enough cash to pay the rent for that month). i don't want to do that, but nor do i want to be stuck in a low-paying job, living at or below poverty level.

the second job would also give me better marketable experience, better insurance, and a brighter possibility for advancement. so maybe it's worth the gamble. if i crap out, i can go home and regroup. but that means moving ... again. i've moved three times in less than a year and i'm fucking tired of it. plus i've finally got most of my books in order and on shelves and i don't want to fuck with that. plus i'd have to move to fucking laurel, where there ain't shit going on. i've told some of you about what i saw there last weekend.

well, at least if i end up in laurel, i'll be highly motivated to find a good job and move on.

suggestions are welcome.

more to come later. (yeah, yeah, promises, promises) ...

don't fuck with the dog

2005-08-11T01:46:00.000-07:00

she's my bitch. she earns my love without trying.

did milan kudera make the term "unbearable" into a cliche?

2005-08-09T01:50:00.000-07:00

a great night tonight. for the most part.

i pulled bathsheba into the commerce street area at the same time jaysus was rolling in. i had puggy and the killer in tow, along with ed, that bastard. so we all stroll in and chubb - that napoleonic soldier of jacktown nightlife - is overjoyed to see us. he's already got a little crowd, he's got his laptop out playing sweet melodies, and he's got the booze flowing like magic.

after several drinks all around, jaysus is given command of chubb's itunes playlist, and things get interesting. jaysus plays some good stuff and some gay stuff, then decides he is so drunk that he must go home. he should have stayed.

i took over the songs, and rocked the joint, old skool style. r.l. burnside. guns 'n' roses. the ponys. zappa. and more.

right after jay left some dude - apparently a friend of chubb's - walks into the state street side of martin's, smacks himself down onto the toadstool, and slams his head down on the padded edge of the bar. i'm talking to ashley about something mundane, and, although i try to ignore it, my remarkably acute sense of hearing picks up a sound that can only be interpreted as a thick, chunky liquid slamming against a plywood floor at great velocity.

yes, dude was puking the fuck out. he did it twice.

then, he ordrered another beer. he seemed fine.

ah, i've been there. and chubb didn't seem to mind.

martin's felt like home again tonight; different, but still mine. hell, it's been mine for a long time, and a lot of things have gone down there over the years. i suppose it's to be expected. it ain't what it was, but it is what it is, on monday nights at least. i'm likin' it.

we can't stay away. we won't allow ourselves to. and neither will chubb. tonight, i think, he realized that. i hope y'all did too.

i went home and got some disturbing news.

god, i hate violence.

more stuff about don's

2005-08-07T00:47:00.000-07:00

there were two fantastic bands at don's tonight. they were pit er pat and need new body. they were ... um ... well, awesome ... but the sound was bad. even though, i fully expected frank zappa to walk through the state street door at any moment. it seemed like the mothers of invention broke off into two bands and played a show at the bar.

which is to say i liked it much.

now there are a bunch of people in my bedroom.

american stars 'n' bars

2005-08-02T23:20:00.000-07:00

the first bar i ever went to was george street.

i was like seven or eight years old. my mom had met my future step-father through some friends, and their first date was there (no, she didn't take me on her first date).

my mom and step-dad went to george street for a while once they'd started dating in earnest, and sometimes they would drag me along.

i was a kid. i loved it. i loved the wood, the stools, the bricks, the noise, the music, the staff that treated me like royalty (especially the buxom girls, who thought i was just the cutest thing). and the drunk people; i loved them the most. that was when i learned that a good buzz makes adults smile and laugh like children (not that i got a buzz; my mom did not get me drunk at eight years of age. she waited til i was twelve).

i went to george street off and on during my underage years, but it wasn't until i turned twenty-one - i spent my 21st birthday there getting drunk with higgins - that i started going on a regular (read: daily) basis.

i worked as a runner for a law firm downtown, and everyday i would be there by 5:15, plopped into my seat at the bar, with chesley hooking up the happy hour drinks. i'd stay til about seven, sometimes til nine or even later. it was my first "watering hole," the first place i felt like was "my bar;" cheesy as it is, george street was like cheers to me - everybody knew my name. there was billy goat, an old friend of even older friends, who would get into insane existential debates with me ... or talk about titties, whatever. he was there everyday, just like this dude who's name escapes me but worked for habitat for humanity and could put away draft beer like bukowski on adderoll. he once passed out while competing with another patron over who could take the most consecutive drops of louisiana hot sauce on his tongue - without drinking anything.

i will love that place until the day i die.

which is why i was so excited when, fleetingly, it seemed that our crew was going to get to set up shop on george street. i'd love nothing more than to create new, hazy memories of debauchery in that space - the lovely bars, the lynchian stairwell, the grafitti-ridden bathrooms - especially with the awesome new jackson jet-set that only needs a home in order to become legendary.

when we were in there for those brief moments, i found shit i'd carved into the wood in the bathroom ten years ago. "two turntables and a microphone." "forkboy." "faust." "punks not dead." the skinny puppy logo. a skull. yup. that was me. it's still there.

seriously, this - right now - is one of the best times i've known in roughly thirteen years of involvement in jackson's nightlife / social scene. and now ... we're stuck ... with ... don's.

hey, ol' butley deserves applause for making the effort, for being there when the shit hit the fan, for putting up with a bunch of grumpy artfags and intellecutals and miscreants that can't find anything better to do than drink every fucking night. he's opened his supremely humble venue for the only good live music that comes through town, not to mention the best of the local band scene - which, i can attest, is better now than it has been in at least a decade.

and jaysus, of course, along with bubba (again, of course), are our real heroes, diving into the muck headlong because they knew we needed something, somewhere to go and hear good music and be treated well. they, through their example, have made it possible for us to grin and bear it.

a friend from jacktown who moved to nashvegas a couple of years ago had her first encounter with the don's "kubrick in tha hood" experience this weekend ... and she was horrified. i made all the correct appeals to her - "hey, none of us are especially happy about it;" "at least there's the music;" "shit, bubba and jaysus are here, man!" - but she wasn't exactly moved. but think about it - think back to the first few weeks we had to go there, in lithe acceptance of our cruel fate. her revulsion was an unsettling reminder of the uncanny shivers that place sent down our collective spine when first we crossed its cold threshold.

we can't forget that. we've gotten comfortable, but we all know it can't last. horror awaits us there. we have to move on to a space that deserves our revered company - all of us. the punks, the perverts, the intellectuals, the drunks, the nihilists, the communists, the rock stars, the creeps, the freaks, the jealous, the disenchanted, the idealists, the sexy, the barbarians, the infidels, the philistines, and the violently unstable. we are all romans, doing what romans do.

we've been there before ... it was as close to utopia as i've ever been, closer than i ever thought humankind capable of ... not that that's saying much ...

i'm glad we have don's. but i miss martin's, i miss the red room, and i lament deeply the failure of the george street putsch. more than anything, though, i miss the old crowd - remember? there was a time when that motley, disparate and at times hostile bunch of little cabals all loved one another, in the small hours at martin's, with sabbath blaring through busted speakers and monkey business going on all around.

we can have it again. if only.

with the great bar schism of march '05 (the diplomat's apt title for the event), the little cliques are a little more divided, the good music spotty at best, the neighborhood dive something less than even that name implies.

what are we doing here? don't just do something, stand there!

just in case

you don't

remember ...

dark clouds

2005-08-02T14:03:00.000-07:00

read this article and be thankful we don't have "crumbling military industrial complex." the author points out that many see the sino-russian military junta as a "marriage of convenience." sure. just like it was when we were allied with the russians against germany, and with china against japan.

taiwan may yet spark a war.

still chasing job leads ... and getting a faceful of dust. an interview tomorrow a.m.

digging shirer's rise and fall of the third reich. being written so soon after the events, there are some interesting differences between shirer's account and that of kershaw, written nearly thirty years later. shirer repeatedly refers to hitler as a genius, albeit an "evil" one; kershaw goes to great length to dispose the myth of hitler's alleged "genius" (i'm with kershaw). shirer says that s.a. men were in on the reichstag fire; kershaw rejects the notion of any nazi involvement.

one thing i like about shirer's book is his extensive quotes from hitler's speeches, conversations and, in particular, mein kampf, which i read a couple of years ago. shirer's quotes have helped to refresh my memory on that long, jumbled and rambling - but utterly fascinating - book. shirer gets one thing absolutely right: no one can say that hitler didn't tell the world exactly what he intended to do with power once he attained it. it is all there in mein kampf.

and ...

went to marty's last night to see ol' chubb and drink in some comfortable lighting. it was quite nice. chubb played some built to spill, and puggy and the killer (my new moniker for ms. murder) and i chatted it up, jawed with books. there was some drama involving a toad, but it was minor and the night was a good one. books even bought my unemployed ass a beer. thanks, dude.

alas, it looks like chubb may be leaving marty's after all, having been made an offer he apparently can't refuse. i'll let him tell you about it.

damn. no more monday nights. the snowglobe swirls still ...

anheuser busch, st. louis, missouri

2005-07-30T01:50:00.000-07:00

working on a great new post. but it's not ready yet. cuz i been drinkin'.

until ... here's this ... a picture of the mississippi sun shining through a fig tree.

and then there's this here nail-bomb, meant to kill those lucky human beings who, like you and me, ascribe to the values and traditions - however disparate - of western culture:

sleep well, cracker.

minutiae

2005-07-28T18:11:00.000-07:00

here are pics from the last gasp of the planet weekly, a magnificent celebration of our demise thrown for us by butley terror and the boys and girls of w.c. don's.

dj premier

puggy j. jones and ms. murder

the old block pissing

fuck yeah!

i watched t.v. for four hours last night. two episodes of the jerry springer show (which i dearly love), an old that 70s show, two episodes of malcolm in the middle (ah, memories), and a classic seinfeld - "the nose job," which features one of the most hilarious segments in the history of that great show: jerry's penis playing jerry's brain in a chess match. and the kicker? the brain wins.

more later. i'm tired.

bang! bang! bang!

2005-07-26T11:07:00.000-07:00

please read this article from today's clarion-ledger; this is my cousin jeff's unit, and this is the raid he mentioned in the email from him i quoted last week.

July 26, 2005

Mississippi Guard praised for capturing insurgents

By Holbrook Mohr
The Associated Press

A group of Mississippi Army National Guard soldiers in Iraq is being credited with the capture of more than 100 suspected insurgents in raids that also yielded explosives, rockets and ammunition, the Department of Defense says.

The soldiers from the 150th Engineer Battalion, 155th Brigade Combat Team captured the insurgents during sweeps last week near Owesat, Iraq, just south of Baghdad, according to a news release from Maj. Erby Montgomery, a public affairs officer for the 155th.

Montgomery said the soldiers also seized a weapons cache that included 186 mortar rounds, 65 hand grenades, 500 pounds of explosives, rocket-propelled grenades and other weapons and ammunition.

"Some from brigade have said that this was one of the single biggest, if not the biggest, raids in Iraq," Sgt. 1st Class Kevin Kelly said in an e-mail from Iraq. "Over 100 insurgents in one single mission wasn't that bad ... and the boys from Mississippi did it."

Kelly said no soldiers were wounded during the operations, even though a five-ton armored vehicle was disabled by a roadside bomb. He praised the teamwork among the soldiers from several different companies that make up the 155th.

"Everyone was involved in this mission and they did an outstanding job," Kelly said.

The 155th Brigade Combat Team is made up of 3,500 Mississippi Guard soldiers from 49 communities in the state and others from throughout the country. The 150th Engineer Battalion, which is part of the 155th Brigade Combat Team, is headquartered in Meridian, with companies out of Lucedale, Carthage and Okolona. The soldiers are assigned to the 2nd Marine Expeditionary Force.

The 155th trained at Camp Shelby south of Hattiesburg and spent a month of desert warfare training at Fort Irwin in California's Mojave Desert before being deployed to Iraq in January.

Thirteen members of the 155th have died during the deployment.

odd that it doesn't mention the ten insurgents killed in the raid. anyway, whatever you think of the war, these are our boys and girls doing this dirty work. and like ol' jeffro said, they're doing it for us.

again, thanks.

on another note - i forgot to mention in my last post that, after being insulted by the old block at don's and feeling quite disgusted, i went over to marty's for the first time since the commerce street shakeup a couple of months back. it was good. chubb, jovial and generous, was back at club baby seal (although his sign was gone), the drinks were served in real glasses and the music rocked. chubb even burned me a copy of the eagles of death metal record on his laptop.

i think we should all go show chubb some love on monday nights. marty's is a little different now, but it's always been our bar; it can be so again.

i'm hungry.

the scent of the dung of cows; slamming the old block; hitler is, at last, dead

2005-07-26T00:25:00.000-07:00

there is apparently some sort of convention going on at the fairgrounds involving beef rancher dudes and their families ... and their cows. just the other day, my friend kitchen invited me to have some free food with him at the trade mart, where "grazefest" - a propaganda campaign meant to convince cattle ranchers that grass-fed beef is ordained by god - was going down. kitchen works for a deli chain that had donated tea to this bovine function, so he had free tickets to what for the other half cost $25 a pop. we figured, "hey, free beef," so we went with enthusiasm and aplomb down to the trade mart, anticipating an evening of delicious meat, free of charge.

well, it was free, and it was meat, but it was only remotely delicious. we had envisaged a veritable smorgasbord of widely varying cuts and preps of steak and roast, but what we found was sorely disappointing: some butterbeans and a couple of cuts of brisket ... unseasoned, tough, and entirely lame as far as delicious meat goes. and plastic silverware.

the tea was good.

as we ate, there was propagated a prayer from some neck that basically said, "god, we know you wants us to feed our cattle only grass." i don't know if any of the cattle guys fell for it, but i suspect some did. at any rate, it went on for far too long. i stared at my beige fork.

anyway, i guess "grazefest" is not the only cattle event going on this week. is the rodeo in town? it seems like the cowboys never leave now that they've finished fashioning all those fancy tin buildings at the fairgrounds; used to be that the rodeo came a couple of times a year, and just for those few weeks we locals had to tolerate wrangler butts and dualies infesting the hotspots on high street - taco bell, texaco, shell. now they never seem to leave.

and now, tonight especially, the unmistakable stench of cowshit pervades the high street area ... which is not far from my backyard. i walked suzi when i got home and yes, you can smell cowshit from my house. and it's not like a cow patty in the grass; this is obviously the scent of mounds of cowshit wafting in industrial quantities through the humid summer in the city. it's wretched.

i do like scopin' out the rodeo/cowgirl chicks at the gas stations, though. there is something wholly pure - if not entirely wholesome - about those women.

of course, any one of them would wreck me. i can count the number of times i've been on a horse on one hand.

please. cowshit. leave. soon.

other stuff:

don's was surreal tonight. karaoke. yeah. the old block did most of it from behind the bar. incidentally, that punk motherfucker managed to insult me, through the mic, twice before i got my first beer from his overgrown ass. it was a party for the carpetbaggers and their local buddies - which means few if any conservative-minded folks were in the bar; i walk in and the old block announces, "the man that just entered the bar voted for bush!"

those who know me know that i make no apologies for my political views, but few who know me know the intracacies of why i vote the way i do - least of all, the old block. of course, i'm always more than willing to discuss politics with my drinking buddies, but the thing is that, these days, i run with what is for the most part a liberal democrat crowd; we all get along great as drinking buddies becasuse we don't discuss a lot of politics when, you know, drinking. i know better than to antagonize them with such blather, and they are likewise keen to avoid conflict by avoiding such topics, especially when drunk.

but the old block laid out the most superficial and, frankly, unsophisticated characterization of my political being for everyone at the bar - not least the carpetbaggers, who i don't even really know but who now probably think of me as part of the problem they're here trying to fix.

thanks.

but wait, there's more. then, when i go to get a beer from the old block, the bastard announces, again over the mic, that i have to pay up front because i "walk out on my tab."

granted, i walked out on a tab last week. i never intended not to pay it; don's is the only bar i really go to anymore, and i consider the old block a friend. i had an "emergency" of sorts. none of your business. but later in the week, i ran into the old block, apologized profusely, explained the situation, and even offered the cash i owed the bastard. he refused.

"no thanks. i'll just insult you publicly when the opportunity is ripe."

nice work, shitface.

i still love the old block, but i'll say this: he's got a lot to learn about being a bartender. and a buddy, for that matter. points taken off.

i'll bet the carpetbaggers loved him.

next:

i finally finished the second volume of kershaw's biography of adolf hitler. superb and magisterial. a great work of historical discipline. a few notes:

hitler did not have only one ball. he had them both. the russians made that shit up.

the assasination attempt in 1944 at the wolf's lair would have succeeded had the two conspirators on the premises not been interrupted for a phone call - from a fellow conspirator in berlin, ironically enough - and forced to pack their two bombs into two separate packages, only one of which was destined for the military conference which they hoped would be the last in hitler's germany. the one bomb, despite killing nine others, barely fazed hitler.

the wehrmacht officials involved in the assasination attempt were summarily executed by firing squad the night of the attack on hitler's life, without hitler's knowledge. hitler was pissed when he found out; he wanted them hanged, not given the "honor," however dubious, of a military execution. such treacherous snakes, in hitler's mind, deserved the most dishonorable method of dispatch. one general offered to kill himself while in custody. the ss guards holding him said, "have at it." he shot himself in the head, but only grazed his skull. the ss men said, "try again." he did, this time severely wounding himself. he writhed on the floor, in the presence of his fellow conspirators and their ss captors, until he was dragged away and riddled with bullets by the guards.

my praise for the work as a whole stands, but the final chapters leave troubling questions. kershaw says that, after hitler retired to his bedroom with eva braun for the last time, his fellow bunker-mates waited ten minutes before entering, not hearing a sound. but, upon venturing into the room, they found eva dead from eating poison and hitler with a bullet-hole in his head. there was a guard at the door. but the report of hitler's pistol went unnoticed?

also, kershaw says that hitler's relationship with eva braun was a closely guarded secret, kept from the german public until after the war. but he also says that russian soldiers, upon infiltrating the reich chancellery / bunker complex, were consciously on the search for the bodies of both adolf and eva. perhaps the russians knew to look for her because of clandestine leaks, but kershaw doesn't state such, and it's hard to believe that russian soldiers storming the citadel would have had access to such information, even if it was in fact available to russian intelligence officials.

in the bunker, as the red army closed in around them, goebbels had one of hitler's doctors administer to his six children - aged six to twelve - doses of morphine sufficient to put them to sleep, and then break vials of poison in their mouths, killing all of them. harsh. goebbels and his wife also ate poison. ss guards pumped two rounds into each to make sure that the deed was done.

some 35,000 civilians died - disemboweled or burnt to a crisp - in the fire-bombing of dresden alone, over less than twenty-four hours in february of 1945. considering the atrocities of the nazi regime, it's hard to say that it was a completely unjustified orgy of carnage, but there's no denying that by this point germany had obviously lost the war. it was at the least unnecesary. british r.a.f. admiral "bomber" harris pushed hard for this act of retribution (along with others throughout germany), which even i consider over the top.

the rate of suicide among hitler's party and wehrmacht leaders in the closing weeks of the war is astounding.

it is unkown whether hitler knew of mussolini's disgraceful fate - strung up, stoned and shot, along with his mistress - at the hands of italian mobs just before the end of the war.

france sucks.

in keeping with my determination to do some "scholarly systematic reading," i've cracked open william l. shirer's the rise and fall of the third reich, published in 1960, a scant fourteen years after the fall of berlin. despite its age, the volume is still considered a seminal source for nazi history, compiled as it was from the meticulous combing by shirer of the vast stores of nazi documentation captured by the allies and stored in virginia, unopened and unexamined, until 1955.

it should be good. i'll let you know.

is that enough? it's 3.30 a.m. it'll have to do.

i have a gun, too, you know ...

2005-07-23T17:13:00.000-07:00

a couple of weeks ago, i went out to my truck and noticed a small dent in the doorframe, right next to the driver's side window. the dent was just about the size of a b.b., and i thought maybe some neighborhood kids had fired an errant round in the direction of my house.

but then last night, i got in my truck and as i was driving off towards the 721 i noticed a new peck on my windshield - one that had obviously come from a quite concentrated force. i started looking around and noticed three other pecks. so i got out and ran my fingers over the cracks and felt little impact holes in the glass - again the size of b.b.s

so ... some piece of shit coward motherfucker is shooting at my truck with a b.b. gun. while it's innocuously parked, causing no one harm and, more importantly, without me there to determine from where the b.b.s are coming and confront the assailant.

maybe it's an islamofascist; the m.o. is familiar.

it appears that the b.b.s are coming from somewhere down the road to the east, most likely from across the street. and with the impact they seem to be making, it can't be from very far away.

this angers me.

a lot.

fight crime. shoot back.

mine is not a b.b. gun, fucker.

i don't have a job; all i have is patience and time. keep shootin', chump.

family at war

2005-07-22T15:51:00.000-07:00

moms just forwarded me an email from my cousin, jeff huffmaster, who is currently deployed with the u.s. army in iraq. we aren't sure where exactly he is, but he's been in iraq since january.

here is an excerpt, edited for spelling and punctuation (because i am a neurotic bastard):

its been hot here, 144 here two days ago. had a raid on the village day before yesterday; killed 10 and arrested over 100 known terrorists - a good haul. 13 of them were on the black list. these people don't have a clue. all they know is hate. that's not my problem. and i have no respect for a coward that can't stand and fight me, face to face. i will not hesitate to kill them. i know that the bible says you're not supposed to kill, but this is a different story. i know that this is where civilization began, but it is also where we can take it. they don't realize that they are messing with the greatest military on the planet, and we are not cowards. we take the fight to them. we will not give up. that is the american dream, defend our freedom because it ain't free.

you guys at home are the reason that we do what we do. and if i die protecting that freedom, so be it. i am a warrior and protector of millions.

indeed, jeffro, you are a warrior. thank you.

check out my latest blog buddy, the blue meany, another soldier stationed in iraq and writing about the perils of being a soldier - and a woman - at war. and other stuff. it's funny. you'll like it.

hasta ...

watch your mouth ... er ... blog.

2005-07-22T13:11:00.000-07:00

yikes! looks like the blogging bubble may yet burst. dig this article, and try to come up with clever new code names for people so you don't get sued or fired for writing about them on your blog.

then there's this, which i find absolutely terrifying, considering my current circumstances. anybody need some plasma?

on another note - the band last night at don's, the solace brothers, was indeed badass. but something else interesting happened: while awaiting the commencement of the jams, several of the usual suspects (many of whom do not yet have nicknames and therefore i refuse to name them in the interest of avoiding a lawsuit or being blackballed by the local business community) actually ventured to the second floor and played some pool and some ping pong. it was ... hot, but it was also kind of fun. there ended up being like ten of us regulars sitting around up there, shootin' the shit and bein' drunk. puggy and i discovered how fun ping pong is when loaded (and puggy discovered my vicious slam).

i like ping pong. and pool is fun. darts ain't the only game in town ...

might have a job - temporary, retail, but in a good spot with good "extras." more as it develops.

gonna go read now.

oh yeah, one more thing ... jaxxie joined myspace! go add her and then leave her lascivious comments. you know how she loves lascivious comments.

da band at don's

2005-07-22T00:32:00.000-07:00

tonight there was an awesome fucking band at don's.

what is their name? i can't recall.

but they sounded like the grifters on really good coke (the grifters were usually on mediocre coke or ecstasy), plus a dash of built to spill stoned, with a little butthole surfers action in the background. oh, and the spirit of medeski, martin and wood was in the air, but only in a very figurative sense.

what is their name? oh yeah ... the solace brothers. rock.

they were fantastic. the bar was on fire. literally. (joe dunn put a cigarette out on a copy of the new jackson free press). but it was more than that. really.

great show. thanks, jaysus.

woo-hoo.

will work for money

2005-07-18T16:52:00.000-07:00

dangit, i really, really need to find a job. bills have come due, my entertainment budget has eaten away at what little reserves i had stored, and i am staring destitution and homelessness in the face. today i applied for three jobs at random house; time warner/little, brown didn't have anything in which i was interested; harper collins' website is all fucked up, which sucks because they have a couple of jobs that are ideal and i can't apply for them online for whatever retarded reason. pisses me off.

fuck. i'm gonna end up having to mop floors or ask people "may i help you?" if i don't get gainful employment this very week.

if not ... jackson may soon have to lament my defection to laurel, where my thirty year old, divorced, unemployed ass can move back in with mom and dad, just like all awesome, successful and responsible adults.

my. god. that. would. suck.

this is making me feel entirely and unremittingly pathetic. who's got some drugs? hard drugs. now.

in other news, let's see ... i've had little or no appetite lately. i sleep either way too much or way too little. my foot still hurts from my run-in with hez's table. i have a lot of laundry that needs doing. i cleaned my gun over the weekend. i have a horrid fear that my teeth are going to fall out. puggy's friend putty told me i look like a young frank sinatra; this i find baffling.

at any rate, here's evidence that ol' blue eyes was on to somethin'.

That's life, that's what all the people say
You're ridin' high in April
Shot down in May
But I know I'm gonna change that tune
When I'm back on top, back on top in June

I said that's life, and as funny as it may seem
Some people get their kicks
Stompin' on a dream
But I don't let it, let it get me down
'Cause this fine ol' world it keeps spinning around

I've been a puppet, a pauper, a pirate
A poet, a pawn and a king
I've been up and down and over and out
And I know one thing
Each time I find myself, flat on my face
I pick myself up and get back in the race

That's life
I tell ya, I can't deny it
I thought of quittin' baby
But my heart just ain't gonna buy it
And if I didn't think it was worth one single try
I'd jump right on a big bird and then I'd fly

That's life
That's life and I can't deny it
Many times I thought of cuttin' out
But my heart won't buy it
But if there's nothing shakin' come this here July
I'm gonna roll myself up in a big ball and die

prescient motherfucker, that chairman of the board. he even got the months right.

i really liked risky business

2005-07-17T21:51:00.000-07:00

what a weird day; i've posted like five times already. this ought to be the last one, though.

go here. it rules.

tomcruiseisnuts.com

war all the time

2005-07-17T18:32:00.000-07:00

according to this article, the recent spate of bombings in iraq is pushing the nation "to the verge of civil war."

um, newsflash - iraq is already in the thick of civil war. and it's a cardinal rule of armed conflict: you don't get involved in other nations' civil wars.

of course, bush knows this, and he knew it all along. this is how he will rationalize, at least to himself, if not the world, our withdrawal in the next year or two.

and of course, iraq has been poised for civil war since before saddam hussein came to power; his vicious rule was all that prevented war breaking out there for the past thirty or so years.

the bush administration knew toppling saddam would ultimately spark a civil war; perhaps there was some faith in the notion that our armed forces could prevent it, but if so it was likely a very weak faith, not shared by many within w's entourage. at any rate, the bush administration was undoubtedly prepared for this eventuality. you can only hold back a civil war for so long - and it's been a long, long time coming in iraq. it has to happen, and saddam's methods of preventing it could no longer be tolerated.

war moves civilization forward; the u.s. military opened the door to the future. there's a lot of viscera and gore to wade through first, though.

so here it comes, folks. our troops will soon begin pulling out, and iraq will proceed to become a bloodbath state. and when the iranians start moving in - as they most certainly will - the west will again be forced to intervene, this time more decisively.

i say we pull most of our forces out of iraq by winter, apply pressure - not barring military action - against north korea, bow up to china and perhaps sabotage their nuclear sub program through clandestine operations, and await developments in the middle east. israel will prevent iran from becoming a nuclear threat, but once iran invades iraq - threatening the world's access to the region's oil - there will be more war.

see? i told you it's far from over.

oh, shutup

2005-07-17T18:30:00.000-07:00

haven't you ever seen a bitter, cynical and disillusioned drunk before?

i looked up and saw the truth

2005-07-17T10:55:00.000-07:00

in the men's room at w.c. don's, right above the stinking, busted urinal, there is much graffiti. most of it ... well, all of it is juvenile twaddle, but last night while i was utilizing the "facilities" i happened to notice a line that struck a mystic chord within me:

"let this town fuck itself to death."

indeed. i like jackson, but i don't think i can survive here much longer. i have lost my wife and i have lost my job; everything about this place is painful, and every time a smile comes across my lips or a laugh falls out of me is a moment of deception and dishonesty. i am miserable.

time is supposed to heal all wounds, but i've discovered that to be a lie.

it's all lies.

i don't trust anyone. it's a very lonely place to be.

fuck you, spider. fuck you. let this town fuck you to death. or me. it doesn't really matter.

run, rabbit, run

2005-07-17T00:10:00.000-07:00

kill da wabbit ... kill da wabbit ... kill da wabbit ... kill da wabbit ... kill da wabbit ... kill da wabbit ... kill da wabbit ... kill da wabbit ... kill da wabbit ... kill da wabbit ... kill da wabbit ... kill da wabbit ... kill da wabbit ... kill da wabbit ... kill da wabbit ... kill da wabbit ... kill da wabbit ... kill da wabbit ... kill da wabbit ... kill da wabbit ... kill da wabbit ... kill da wabbit ... kill da wabbit ... kill da wabbit ... kill da wabbit ... kill da wabbit ... kill da wabbit ... kill da wabbit ... kill da wabbit ... kill da wabbit ... kill da wabbit ... kill da wabbit ... kill da wabbit ... kill da wabbit ... kill da wabbit ... kill da wabbit ... kill da wabbit ... kill da wabbit ... kill da wabbit ... kill da wabbit ... kill da wabbit ... kill da wabbit ... kill da wabbit ... kill da wabbit ... kill da wabbit ... kill da wabbit ... kill da wabbit ... kill da wabbit ... kill da wabbit ... kill da wabbit ... kill da wabbit ... kill da wabbit ... kill da wabbit ... kill da wabbit ... kill da wabbit ... kill da wabbit ... kill da wabbit ... kill da wabbit ... kill da wabbit ... kill da wabbit ... kill da wabbit ... kill da wabbit ... kill da wabbit ... kill da wabbit ... kill da wabbit ... kill da wabbit ... kill da wabbit ...

if i had a job ...

2005-07-13T08:53:00.000-07:00

... i'd be posting here more often. as it is, the whole drinking, sleeping and reading thing monopolizes my time. but if i had to actually, you know, get up and go to work every day, then maybe i'd be more motivated. unlike when i was working for the planet, i am not getting paid to write this here blog entry. hopefully i will soon find a gig that WILL pay me to play on the internet (yes, i know, i haven't done dick on myspace in weeks. i'll be back).

i interviewed for a part-time position at millsaps this morning. i think it went well. the job sounds cool, something i could get into. details will come if i get the job.

still reading kershaw's hitler, still fascinating. i've now read about the bogging down of operation barbarossa in the fall/winter of 1941, and read an outstanding chapter on the circumstances leading to the mentality of total, unrestrained genocide among the nazi leadership. wow.

saw that ali g punked the guys over at wapt yesterday. that's fucking hilarious. you'd think that people who work in television might have seen an episode or two of da ali g show, or at least know who he is. ah, mississippians. the heart truly is a lonely hunter.

still loading up my mp3 player. it's quite astonishing how much music can be fit into 40 gigabytes; in fact, i have no idea how much can fit, because i've only put about 175 albums on there (about 1700 songs) and i haven't even cracked the 10 gig mark.

jaysus: i need to raid your cds. not boots: thanks for letting me raid yours; i'll bring them back to you presently. eunuch: raiding your collection has been most bountiful, but there is much left for me to rip from your hard drive. and you are gay.

oh yeah. i need a woman. do any of you smart, pretty girls out there need a boyfriend? yeah, yeah, i know i don't have a job, but i will soon.

ok more reading now.

i must get cable and stop sleeping til noon

2005-07-07T23:51:00.000-07:00

damn. i just read about the london bombings. damn. damn. as of now forty or so dead, over seven hundred injured. civilians. going to work.

this is one weird, dirty war. today proves yet again that it is far from over.

tonight i fly the union jack. londoners: some resilient motherfuckers. god be with you. i am.

missing

2005-07-07T19:58:00.000-07:00

yes, i know i have neglected my duties as a blogger this week; apologies to those who have genuinely missed it (all two of you). being that my official week of vacation from the planet began with the publication of the last issue, i've been busy drinking, sleeping, reading books and watching movies, which has left little time for the tedium of blog posting.

reading:

i am charging through ian kershaw's magnificent two-volume biography of adolf hitler, and i am now in the thick of hitler's preparation for the invasion of the soviet union in 1941 (about halfway through volume ii). i am eating it up; it's utterly fascinating. in the past i have read a wealth of material on the actual military campaigns of the german army in wwii, but i am only now gleaning a clear understanding of how inept hitler's military strategies really were. his logic in invading the soviet union centered on his fears of british military might and the latent resources of the united states, which he knew would eventually be drawn into the war. hitler believed that by delivering a knock-out blow to the east - one that eradicated the soviet union both as a military threat and as political entity - britain would thus stay out of the war; there was no way britain could take on the wermacht without the red army pushing westward - this much was true. he also counted on the destruction of the soviet military threat to free japan from concern over russian pressures regarding southeast asia, enabling japan to continue its imperialist drive in the region and to focus more of its military and economic resources in japan's ever-growing conflict with the united states - effectively keeping the u.s. out of europe's war as well.

this logic is sound enough, except for one gross oversight - the soviet union, despite the shortcomings of its military (inferior weapons and materiel, an officer corps filled with inept leaders in the wake of stalin's purges), could not be crushed in the matter of months - six at the most - that hitler confidently believed it would take. even if the germans weren't already engaged in a war in western europe and could focus solely on the eastern front, defeating the red army decisively and rapidly was never really a possibility. what hitler - and most of his generals - believed about soviet warmaking ability was a great underestimation of an enemy which had for six years been listening closely to the virulent anti-bolshevism of nazi rhetoric, while at the same time nervously observing germany's militant expansion in both eastern and western europe - and had made preparations accordingly. above all, the soviet union had one decisive advantage over the german military: millions and millions of men who were either steeped in patriotism or thrust into the front with rifles at their backs. in either case, hitler's greatest understimation was of the tenacity of the soldiers of the red army, who would ultimately repel - then descend upon and destroy - nazi germany.

hitler would have done well to let the soviet union be. most historians seem to agree that neither britain nor the soviet union would have made any real effort to counter germany's ambitions in europe for at least another year or two. but hitler was obsessed with decisively preventing britain's further interference in the war, even when britain was still far from capable of a showdown against the mighty wehrmacht.

why?

because ultimately this all played in to one of hitler's lifelong political obsessions - the destruction of "jewish bolshevism." once hitler's mind came up with the notion of invading - and crushing - the soviet union as a deterrent to british involvement in the war, it was but a short step to the realization of his ever-present ambition to forever rid europe of the "red menace." his flawed military strategy only fed his ideological fanaticism - by late 1940, the two fell into a slipstream leading directly and rapidly to the planning of the german "war of annihilation" against the u.s.s.r.

by this time, with hitler wrapped up in military planning and diplomatic sparring, his even more venemous rhetoric against jews had subsided somewhat; hitler had for the most part ceased speaking publicly in terms of "annihilating" european jewry, even entertaining notions of forcing jewish resettlement in colonial africa as opposed to outright extermination. but hitler's cronies - most importantly himmler and heydrich, respective heads of the ss and the reich security police - were steeped in hitler's long-espoused hatred of jews, and each knew he was free to implement anti-jewish policy in the east in the harshest possible manner. the chaos and confusion that characterized the actions of the ss and sd in poland showed the leaders that the severity of their tasks - destruction of jews (along with catholic clergy and poland's power elite), not resettlement - required tighter control over the methods of mass murder and a more efficient organization of resources; here began the conscious planning of outright genocide. himmler and heydrich implemented these plans without hitler's express authority, but most certainly with his approval.

and of course here the most sinister aspects of nazi rhetoric and racial ideology came into the full light of day, becoming the most horrid reality with which the world has ever had to reckon. the invasion of poland - with its large jewish population and supposed ties to the soviets - had been excessively brutal, but was only a sort of dress rehearsal for what would come in the soviet union. hitler's war in the west, violent and destructive though it was, did not have the racial and ideological roots that fueled the war in the east. once hitler unleashed the wermacht - and behind it, the ss - into the soviet union, all bets were off.

one of kershaw's central theses in the biography is the notion of "working towards the fuhrer," a socio-political strategy employed by the nazis within germany that encouraged germans - from hitler's closest confidants down through the party elite, the ss, the wermacht and the millions of ordinary german citizens - to aid in every way possible the realization of hitler's world-view. and ever since the beerhall putsch and the publication of mein kampf in the early 1920s, germany had been consistently made aware of just what that world-view entailed. by the time war erupted in 1939, "working towards the fuhrer" was heavily ingrained in the hearts and minds of millions of germans - and most of all, within the leadership and the ranks of the ss and sd.

um ... so ... i hope you've found this interesting, though i doubt some of you have. sorry if this is boring. for those of you who are unaware, military history and biography - particularly with regard to wwii - are my intellectual obsessions. and, as i try to determine what content is suitable for a blog, i thought writing about my intellectual obsessions might be quite well suited for smoldering rubble of joy.

the fact is, i could go on and on and on about this - and about many other wars, battles and warmongers - for days on end. i am never more in my element than when discussing matters of military history; however, most of my "war buddies" are no longer in town or have lost interest somewhat in the discipline.

i, however, have not. i enjoy writing about this stuff; let me know if you enjoy reading it. and, by all means, if you have something to add or dispute or whatever, please do.

come on, it'll be fun!

but don't worry; i'll still post other stuff, like gay cucumbers and pornographic european exploitation movies, here on s.r.o.j. it won't become a blog devoted exclusively to history and serious stuff like that. but there will be more of that in the near future.

i'm also into the history of religions, which is the discipline in which i earned my undergrad degree. so, i'll probably talk about some of that as well (although i've decided to do systematic reading regarding the war between the nazis and the soviets for the next little while).

i take requests, but cannot guarantee that i will honor all of them.

in other news, briefly:

i bought an mp3 player; 40 gigs, lotsa lotsa fucking music. so far i've uploaded about fifty albums to it. now i can hear music other than lynyrd skynyrd while driving around in bathsheba.

i really effed up my foot yesterday when i stepped on a wrought-iron knot protruding from a patio table. last night i could barely walk. today it's much better but still rather sore.

i'm hungry. i guess it's been all this talk of genocide.

vacation

2005-06-30T11:07:00.000-07:00

i am on vacation. i have no responsibilities, nothing in particular to do ... other than, you know, try to find a job. but i'm not doing that today. today i sit around smoking tea and noodling around on the interweb.

yesterday, of course, the last issue of the planet weekly hit the stands. congratulations to the vigilant eye of the architect, who is the only person who found the hidden bee gee on the cover. she emailed me yesterday before noon asking if that was the hidden surprise i mentioned on my blog on monday, which means she didn't have to look too long. good work, ms. smith. you win ... nothing.

anyway, being that yesterday was the real terminus of the production, i got drunk last night. started early, like before nine, at don's. met the new bartender - april. she's very nice and has never had a hangover. i played some darts with madame murder and puggy and puggy's friend - madame murder and i slaughtered them. later some other kind electric folks showed up, but where the fuck was everybody else? i mean, we were there to try to flush the last little bit of newprint from our bloodstreams with beer and liquor, and most of you selfish bastards decided that staying in to watch beauty and the geek and jay leno had more merit. or was cheaper. or whatever. i wanted a party. i got some good company, but we might as well have been at a bar mitzvah (i heard an interesting story about a bar mitzvah last night, incidentally).

i went home and watched a movie: tobe hooper's (he directed the original texas chainsaw massacre) remake of the 1978 slasher flick the toolbox murders. um, it was pretty awful as a slasher/horror/scary movie, but it did have some interesting points. it starred angela bettis, who kicked ass in 2002's may and is a pretty good actress. and the whole thing centered on an old building, "with lots of history," that was all creepy and noisy and broken. watching it reminded me a lot of living at the 721. anyone familiar with the 721 and henry would appreciate the film - and the character of the super who is henry larose if he lived in L.A. and smoked dope all day - he's the "henry that could have been." oh, and sheri moon has a cameo as the first victim. why can't i be rob zombie?

i'm still enjoying the fuck out of the kings of leon's aha shake heartbreak. and the new white stripes record.

there. there's a new post. my amazing life.

b.t.b.a.y.b.h.

2005-06-28T13:10:00.000-07:00

eunuch and i came up with a new slogan while watching this movie last night. it would be interesting to see if anyone can figure out what the letters above stand for. seeing the movie would help, but i don't recommend it, even if you like brutal movies with explicit penetration scenes.

actually, i hope none of you can figure it out because it's pretty fucking disgusting and juvenile. but it really, really made us laugh once we started repeating it over and over again, as we are wont to do when a turn of phrase strikes us as amusing for whatever reason.

anyway, it's a pretty effed up movie. tarantino has thrown a nod to it when mentioning influences, particularly the eyepatch on darryl hannah in kill bill. but this is much more disturbing. and i'm not kidding about the hardcore porn; it's the full, gooey monty. the chick was sure hot though.

today we are lazily sloshing together the last issue of the planet weekly, which will include surprisingly decent swimsuit pics and my most scathing review of the new billy corgan album. i have never given a record one star before now, but this one is truly a crapfest. i fucking hated it. i will never listen to it again.

we also have farewell columns from ali greggs and nick bridger. i was gonna write one, but apathy consumed me. i'll do my venting here.

there is a surprise on the cover as well, which readers of sroj will greatly appreciate. it's cleverly hidden and may turn out to be hard to detect, but it's there. if you can't find it, remind me to show you sometime. p.p. gets a high-five for coming up with it and making it happen.

and to clear up a bit of confusion - eunuch didn't put the gay cucumber in the yard. i linked to his profile because the true culprit has posted a comment in which we see a photo of his arm holding the gay cucumber. see for yourself:

clearly, that is the arm of mr. valentine, a self-proclaimed "shitfucking monkey." we also suspect his partner, boobarella, to have been involved. they were seen in the area the night before the violation, saying, "gay."

tonight we egg his home and car. i'm looking for accomplices. you in?

discrimination!

2005-06-27T20:10:00.000-07:00

after volunteering at the soup kitchen and rescuing a little girl's kitten from atop a tree - and after going to church - i get home tonight to find this in our yard:

yes, that is a cucumber wearing a condom, with a sign reading "GAY" in glittery letters.

who, you might ask, would do such a hateful and evil thing? i have an idea who it may have been (check out the comments section). the incriminating evidence is all there. it's like he wanted to be caught. such is the pathology of the sociopath.

but know this: blood will be shed this night. we shall hold vengeance in our hands, over your wrecked, bloodied and defiled bodies.

all of you.

the bee gee said

2005-06-27T12:11:00.000-07:00

word on the street has it that the bee gee has been proclaiming himself the new "owner" of the planet weekly. not only that, he has also been reported to have expressed that he is sick of the "amateurish" look of the planet, that the current editors (i.e., eunuch and myself) are "idiots," and that the "old owner" is a "jackass."

first of all, the "old owner" is also the "current owner." the bee gee doesn't own dick (and yes, that means he doesn't have a dick; he is dickless). i think the current owner might find it interesting to know that his new golden boy thinks of him as a jackass. of course, if i told him that, he might just think, "oh, it's sour grapes." but the fact is ... i don't care. not a flying fuck. i think it will be much more interesting and amusing to let this little fiasco play itself out.

watch and learn, watch and learn ... learn how not to spurn those on whom your success depends, how to avoid earning a nickname such as "the bee gee." watch this fuck take a dump and try to sell it to you.

on another note ...

perhaps you have heard a song called "if you can't give me everything" by a band called reigning sound. i have recently been awed by this track's abundant kick-assness. i would like to share it with those of you who may have yet to hear it; those who are familiar are welcome to dig it again, too. just click below.

kudos to ed, that bastard, who is not gay today, because he made the link possible.

memories of war

2005-06-27T08:11:00.000-07:00

so here is the new layout. i like it. a lot. so should you. if you don't ... eh.

it's monday. eunuch and i are in the office, scrapping together the last issue of the illustrious planet weekly, which of course will be our second (and final) annual swimsuit issue. wait til you see my lanky chest and hairy chicken legs!

last night we went to jaxxie's for the diplomat's birthday cookout. jaysus did monkey burgers again - and they were magnificent, as always. we drank, cussed, stumbled around ... the usual. i wonder if anyone ever fell into the kiddie pool in the back yard. it seemed such was imminent throughout the evening, but we left a little early to go watch some movies.

saw land of the dead saturday. not bad. LOTS of exploding heads, which is to say that as a zombie film, it delivers the goods. there was lots of cheese and the script was kind of lame, but overall it was a good movie experience. eunuch has written a bit about it on his new blog, all the colors of the dark. go dig it and leave him comments saying that he is gay. because he is.

i think i'm going to new orleans later this week.

what do you think of my new layout? the fotars are all from the battle of stalingrad, 1942 - 43. one of my favorites of all time.

fun with templates!

2005-06-23T13:35:00.000-07:00

i've found a fun template, but it needs a little attention to detail to spruce it up.

i think i'll change the image at the top, but i'd like to keep the busted up typewriter on the page somewhere.

i'll see what i can come up with.

you don't care about this at all, do you?

layout

2005-06-22T11:54:00.000-07:00

this layout is gay.

i'm a gonna tweak it. do somethin' differnt.

today, we are having our final staff meeting at the planet weekly. wow! it's about to begin!

...

um ... we're not really talking about anything. we're not accomplishing anything.

oh well.

there's some hos in this house

2005-06-21T09:34:00.000-07:00

to all you link whores ...

i'm trying to figger out how to put links on my blog. i'll get 'em there eventually.

of course, if any of you have recommendations, i'm listenin'.

16 page paper this week. next week's swimsuit issue is on the skids.

we're goin' out with a whimper, folks. buy me a fucking drink.

the ballad of your planet

2005-06-20T19:17:00.000-07:00

so yeah. many of you are aware of this, but some of you are not.

the planet weekly is going down, folks. that's right. no more war against the laddites; no more right-wing political commentary; no more of ali g's compulsive sexual adventures and lunatic ravings; no more of dominick dehaven's impeccably charming gayness; no more nightlife; no more aural pleasures; no more cd reviews.

the owner of the planet has decided, after losing money on the paper consistently (hey, we're writers and editors, not salesmen!), to let someone else take the reins and do with it what they will.

makes economic sense. sure. if what you're doing ain't workin', try something else.

trouble is, he's handing the paper over to a man who has already failed miserably at at least two attempts to enter the publishing business. jacksonians may recall razor, the bi-weekly crapjob of a "newspaper" that appeared in town a couple of years ago - and lasted for all of six issues. yeah. that's the guy. and you should meet this tool. he is over forty. he has long hair over which he obsesses (jaxxie actually heard him say, "how does my hair look" when once posing for a photograph with him - which, incidentally, she sought because of his stupid beegees-style mullet; think barry gibb, with even less talent). he wears leather bracelets and pseudo-tribal bling, visible amongst the hair on his chest due to his stubborn refusal to button the top two or three buttons of whatever shirt he has on. his complexion is ruddy and pitted. he's ugly. he has a big fucking nose.

but enough about the superficials. this guy is a certifiable idiot. he met with us, told us some of his "plans" for the paper ... the man has no fucking plans. he's banking on good luck and ... shit, hair gel, i guess. he thinks everyone loved razor, and that people will be glad to work for him for free - writers, photographers, graphic designers (p'shaw). he thinks advertisers will eagerly scratch his back if he scratches theirs; apparently he is blissfully unaware of his reputation in town - mention his name to a few random people and i bet at least half of them puke; the rest will at least gag, cuss or spit.

anyway. the beegee is going to attempt to make the planet into a glossy, regional bi-weekly magazine. what will the content consist of? it is apparent that the shyster chump has not yet considered this little detail; he has only thought so far as "pictures of hot chicks" and "fashion spreads" designed to cater to advertisers (not unlike another shitty rag in town likes to do - before bitching about a lack of "ethics" in the local publishing community).

the beegee did, however, mention what the content will not be: material of local interest such as nightlife, music, art, politics.

he also made it clear that he thought we, the current editors of the planet, were a bunch of dimwitted children playing a game, and that we would not be kept on - unless we wanted to work for free (which he proposed as if we would accept with gratitude and zeal). then he actually said, "we are prepared to deal with any sabotage or destruction of software that you guys may do when you leave."

that alone was enough disrespect for me to want to bypass sabotage and destruction of software and skip right to the cutting out of his fucking tongue. with a circular saw. a rusty one, with gears that tend to jam.

so there's that. after two more issues, i will have no job, and jackson will have no planet. here is my personal appeal to you, my sexy, witty, elite group of readers, not to pick up the new planet (he's keeping our name but dropping the weekly) when it hits the stands, which is supposed to happen on july 15. honestly, i'll be surprised if they even publish one issue. but if you see it, and you really, really want to pick it up, fuck it - take the whole rack. throw them in a dumpster. you'll see soon enough that that's where they belong.

in other news: cseunuch and i went to sportsman's lodge for dinner tonight (shutup edyesed; it was not gay). it hella sucked. the waitress was apparently deaf (i asked for mild wings, got hot; said i didn't want another coke and she brought one), the menu lied (said i would get 16 wings; i got 8). i think eunuch liked his poboy alright, but how bad can a sandwich with roast beef and shrimp be?

who knows where i can get a job?

now it begins

2005-06-20T12:27:00.000-07:00

i started a blog. the first news is:

i need a job.

writer that i am, i have yet to complete touching up my resume because i have to use a bunch of boring words like "created" and "organized" and "well developed."

thanks for stopping by. there will be more to come, no doubt.