Fear The Hillarump Walking

"Kill The Brain And You Kill The Ghoul"
-- George Romero's Original Night Of The Living Dead (1968)

So it's a Sunday; I've already seen very bad news this morning, and -- like you -- am looking for something, anything for a mindless, momentary distraction.

You found it with this blog; I'll switch on the teevee. Let's see -- politics? That's always good for a distraction, except I can't stomach any Talking Headless programs; I can barely stomach anything political In These Days.

Okay -- set's warming up; I can hear the tubes popping... what's this? Oh, cool -- it's Episode One, Season One, of The Walking Dead! No politics in here...

So, Rick Grimes stops for gasoline at  what's left of an encampment around a gas station somewhere in Georgia...

Wait a minute...  I don't remember this part.  My recollection is that TWD started in 2010... Oh, and check out how crisp and clean Rick's uniform and hat are: After the Apocalypse, laundries and dry cleaners are apparently still in operation. We will run out of food, medicines, gasoline, and televised organized sports or streaming music will disappear, but we'll be well-dressed. 

Zombies, on the other hand, don't care much for fashion or personal grooming. Their hair could use conditioner (or a good combing), the women neglect using even foundation makeup, not to mention eyeliner; and has anyone mentioned to them there are brightening strips for those teeth? I'm sure of all the things that weren't looted from pharmacies and supermarkets, those whitening strips are probably still sitting right on the shelves. 

And most importantly, the Zombies dress in tacky, stained clothing which, you know -- holds odors. Since they'll be wearing those clothes, uh, well, forever -- I'll bet they regret shopping at H&M now, since those items were never meant to last more than one season before falling apart.

All right -- that's just about enough of that. Too predictable.  The last time someone with a blog showed a presidential candydate being placed in harm's way was in 1996 -- the days of The Early Intertubes, when Yahoo! and AOL walked the earth and charged you by the minute for access. When there was dial-up and 33.6 Modems and rendering one frame of CG could take hours. It was before an infrastructure that could support the growth of digital tech. It was before Napster and Twitter, for god's sake. 

Websites were in their infancy, and Adobe Photoshop was still a new(ish) tool.  One enterprising Guy with a sense of humor decided to use a new Photoshop plug-in that someone else had made, which modified a digital photographic image to show people's head's exploding. The Guy decided to modify photos of the presidential candidates in that year, Then-Gropenator Billy Clinton and Senator BobDole, on his (pre-CSS) website.

A large number of people (and Dogs) who have their own Blogs and Sites are 21st century equivalents of the folks who build stuff in their garage and display it at crafts fairs: See what cool / funny / insightful things I made?

In this situation, The Guy thought that his ability with Photoshop Plug-In / Exploding Heads + Photos Of Candydates = Yeah, baby Teh Funny. So, he posted those modified photos of Dole and Clinton, and his friends sent him emails saying how cool it all was. The good time must have lasted all of twenty minutes, because it also earned the website's author an almost instantaneous visit from the Secret Service to "assess" him -- and provide the chilling effect such visits intend; an unspoken threat that anyone else shouldn't do things like that, or else.

So we'll leave the image above, with Hillaryombie charging Rick as he pulls something from a leather receptacle on his belt, alone.  Let's change the channel... gotta be something different out there...

Oh, Holy Mother Of God. What is this, Political Zombie weekend? It's 28 Days Later -- or, some version of it, anyway...

 

 

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Apotheosis

Down Here Everything Floats

River City's Gonna Get Its Boy's Band.  All It Takes Is The Think Method. 

(Original Photo: Reuters)

MVOHC:  You're a hater. You're just angry all the time; I ignore most of what you come out with, anyway. You always hated her, and by extension you're crapping all over the people who support her.
DOG: I believe we can begin to do better than elect another Chief Oligarch Fluffer.
MVOHC: Hillary stands up for minorities, women, LGTBQ persons and immigrants. If you don't support Hillary, this is who you're gonna hurt in November when you vote for Donald Duck or whoever you'll write in as a protest vote.
DOG: You really don't understand what's going on here, do you?
MVOHC: Oh, I do. You're just a hater. Who's to say if it's good or bad?
DOG:  I will. And it's the same misdirection that's been used for generations in America. When Ken Burns makes his documentary on Clintonia II: The Revenge, it will focus on hard-fought struggles for various personal rights in America by our First Woman President -- and people will Oooh! and Aaah! at that important, groundbreaking, historic work, and her uncompromising toughness in sending the military to Do Something (She will; trust me).  What Ken's documentary won't discuss is that Her agenda with Congress will be The Same As It Ever Was: Misdirection, and Fuck The Peasants. It won't detail how the wealthy will be enriched even further; how the rights of individuals versus those of corporations will be diminished, and the power of globalist corporate business will continue to be elevated to new heights... because she is just another Business As Usual politician.
MVOHC:  Can't you just take a longer view and rise above that?
DOG: No, because it's always been true about politics. Hillary will do a full court press to ensure that (for example) all public restrooms can be used by Transgender persons -- and that is an important step towards developing a compassionate social tolerance and establishing legal protections. But, put it in context: At the same time, She will make sure the Pacific and European trade agreements are pushed through Congress. She will make certain that global corporations and major financial houses will have more power than even the IMF, World Bank or the WTO currently affords them and by extension, the people who own them. She'll be making sure it's one more step towards a world run by and on behalf of global Oligarchs. It's fucking Rollerball. Somehow I don't see Senator Sanders as doing something like that.
MVOHC:  Do you hear yourself? Fuck you. You're so negative.
DOG: Better to die on your feet than to live on your knees, buddih. Oh, and I'll write in Thorsten Veblen, but never mind.

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MEHR, MIT NACHRICHTEN:  In response to your question; no -- the object behind which the Hillary is levitating is not a camouflaged Dalek.  But what if it were?

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Who You With?

Which Side Are You, Yawn

As a Dog, when I'm not reading, writing, doing art or sticking my nose into women's crotches (and it's a real plus for our species that we can get away with that, and in public, no less), I'm looking at things.We see a lot more than you think.

One item which pops up frequently on the Intertubes in These Days is a banner advertising graphic for Hillary The Inevitable !  showing a black-and-white photo of the Candydate, grinning, with her slogan-and-logo (which someone noted is very similar to a UPS ad campaign), shouting, "I'm With Her".

No. I'm not with her.  A lot of people are not "With" her.  I'm with these people, and if you'd like to post any of these in your own little slice of Blogtopia, feel free:

At the Soul Of America, another handy link to Ian Welsh recently reminded us that in the minds of some, the world is created for the wealthy and the powerful, and that you and I exist to serve their interests as chattel, as consumers of things, and to provide them with momentary amusements as they play The Great Game in pursuit of More.

A man like Obama or Bill Clinton (or, in the future a woman like Hillary Clinton) is far more likely to ruin your life than Osama bin Laden ever was. Bill Clinton pushing through Welfare “Reform” harmed millions of the poorest weakest people in America. The repeal of Glass-Steagall allowed the financial crisis to happen.

Unless you are an oligarch, or a retainer who is on the gravy train, people like Clinton, Obama, Blair, Cameron, and Thatcher are your enemies. They are a direct threat to your well-being, welfare, and even life.

The first thing anyone who wants to be realistic about politics and power needs to realize is this fact. They are enemies.

And they are. We should be voting for poets, painters, musicians, performers and Populists.

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MEHR, MIT DENKMAL: It is soul-grinding beyond words to have to vote for The Lesser Of Two Evils.  It's an admission that Reagan's Shining City On A Hill, the High School civics class view of America and the world is manifestly untrue. It forces people to confront the realities of the Company Town we live in -- that we are not a nation defending the principles in our founding documents; we're the paid help for Lords and Masters whose names we'll never know and whose faces we'll never see.

We knew this already, of course, but Ya can't fight city hall, kid -- the dichotomy couldn't be acknowledged. You can live with cognitive dissonance, but you don't sleep well. You're less civil in traffic, more anxious for no apparent reason. Then, after the financial Crashes of 2000 and 2008, more people understood that dissonance both intellectually and emotionally, and that makes things even harder. The popular media reinforces cliches about wealth, corruption and power (I just finished watching True Detective, Season 2; a perfect example).  

And on this Memorial Day weekend that cognitive dissonance can be hard. After WWII, a war against militaristic fascism (and yes, let's keep Gravity's Rainbow in mind as we say that, Slothrop), we fought "other" wars. Far from bleeding and dying in a noble cause, people you actually knew, even you yourself, apparently did so less to protect American citizens from an enemy, and more to provide a better position at a bargaining table for the interests of a few megacorps, and a handful of sociopathic, hereditary-rich halfwits.

The power structures that run the planet are too powerful to change. Nothing short of a a Zombie Apocalypse, a global pandemic or thermonuclear war, will dismantle them. Their predecessors were threatened by the Reformation, the English Civil War, revolutions in the 18th and 19th centuries (in particular, the American and French) -- and because democratic political structures promised an evolutionary change, TPTB believed they could be controlled and reluctantly accommodated them. 

The story of Western politics has been a struggle to maintain and expand concessions forced on the ruling elites. Since 1945, Western political leaders have been bought -- and so cheaply --  to serve long-term interests of those elites, while pretending to be guardians of Democratic Principles.

Hillary is just another Emptysuit front person for The Powers That Be, and having to vote for her is a Kulturschande. It's a visible symbol of our collective dysfunction as a nation -- whose leaders mouth platitudes in Hiroshima but kill with drone strikes, allow torture; place its citizens' communications under mass surveillance; and push trade deals which allow global capital the power to ignore any laws it finds inconvenient. 

Having to vote for Hillary is an admission that we're powerless Rubes and Sheep -- that Business as Usual is the best we can hope for. One more step towards Orwell's image of a boot, trodding on a human face, forever. 

But what makes casting that vote soul-grinding is, unlike Orwell's Winston Smith, a large number of us know history. We know that it could be different, that we could do better. It's one reason Sanders' campaign, even the promise of one from Elizabeth Warren, enlivened so many people, Left and Center (and, from a much different perspective, why Trump appears popular with the Right). 

We need a rebirth of real Democratic principles in that party, or a third political party, to represent the People in that ongoing struggle against the few who control so much. And on this holiday, if anyone were to ask what I served or fought for, it's that Americans, and others, have some kind of Puncher's Chance in that fight. 

That, and for Absent Friends.

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Reprint Heaven Forever: The Unspeakable

Packaging The Crazy
 (From July, 2010)

Yes, Virginia; there are sandwiches in a can -- joining the noble canned ham, the Schlitz and Rolling Rock and Budweiser; the deviled ham, and even the little Sardine as items sealed with a shelf life for future generations to wonder at, and bring to Antiques Roadshow.

EXPERT: Well, what you've got here is, obviously, an item known as a 'Candwich', manufactured at the beginning of the century and is -- well, it's a sandwich, in a can. What can you tell me about it?

WOMAN: My father received this in exchange for some work he did during, you know -- 'The Unpleasantness' -- right before the aliens and all that. I don't remember it very well, but when the government came through during the mutant roundups, my father was taken away and we kept his belongings but never looked through them.

EXPERT: So you've had it all this time?

WOMAN: Yes. And we don't do anything with it except sniff it a little.

EXPERT: Okay. Well, this is really quite an item -- I was showing this to some of my Roadshow colleagues, and we were all quite excited. Most material manufactured prior to the alien incursion and the mutant wars either didn't survive, or was heavily contaminated and had to be destroyed. But this one stayed in your family's possession, and we have to presume you were in a Federal shelter? And it was scanned, of course.

WOMAN: Oh, yes.

EXPERT: So this one is quite safe to bring to the Roadshow. And in almost pristine condition -- a little oxidation there around the top, but that's normal; it doesn't affect the value, and we wouldn't recommend cleaning it. The colors are bright and clear; a few, small dents on the rear near the bottom -- but, again, for something this unusual, that's not an issue. We were shaking it a little while ago, weren't we, and --

WOMAN: -- We could hear the sandwich inside!

EXPERT: Yes, we could! (Laughs) I wouldn't want to eat it, though. So, do you have any idea of its value? Have you ever had it appraised?

WOMAN: No, not really. My sister thought we should have it placed in one of the memorial ships that are fired into the Sun, but we never did.

EXPERT: Probably a good idea that you didn't. Now, I know of only three Candwich cans in existence -- and only one of them still has the sandwich inside! Another thing is that this appears to be the only Peanut-Butter-And-Strawberry Jelly Candwich anyone has ever seen.

WOMAN: My Beck! For fun, now; no; really?

EXPERT: Really really. Two of the three sandwiches in a can are in museums in Paris and Jerusalem, and the third was sold at auction just after the 25th of Cunegonda this breeding period -- for six point eight Trillion Quatloos!

WOMAN: Oh! Oh! Oh!

EXPERT: Yes; and I would estimate this, in a retail setting, if it were sold, to be worth at least that much, probably closer to nine or even ten Trillion. I would use that figure for insurance purposes, and it easily qualifies for Class Two security coverage as a cultural relic.

WOMAN: I'm just so thrilled. I had no idea.

EXPERT: Yes. Not every day you find out you could buy yourself whaling rights in the Sea Of Japan, eh? Well, we're just so happy you brought this to the Roadshow. We'll provide you with an armored 'bot to take this back to your breeding compound.

WOMAN: Thank you; now I can buy my sister back. All praise to the Leader!

EXPERT: All praise to the Leader.

---

Random Barking: A Walk Into The Mime Field

No Big Apple Big Hug Mug For You

Oddly Familiar

(New York Times Online) For years, Jermaine Himmelstein, 24, has held a sign offering “Free Hugs” in public places like Times Square and Washington Square Park, a seemingly kind offer that could brighten the days of tourists and lunch-breakers.

For years, it hasn’t worked like that. The sign is a lie; Mr. Himmelstein has frequently accosted people who don’t tip him, in some cases assaulting them. Far from spreading joy, he was described in a 2013 profile in The New York Times as “a creepy legend.”

On Thursday, he was arrested and charged with robbery after punching a 22-year-old Canadian tourist, a woman, in the face at 46th Street and Broadway in Times Square, sending her to a hospital with severe swelling to her face... She had taken a photo with Mr. Himmelstein and refused his demands to pay him, the police said.

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Get Busy Livin' Or Get Busy Dyin'

Form And Void
 

RUSS COHLE:  I tell ya, Marty -- I been up in that room, lookin' out them windows, thinkin' -- it's just one story. The oldest. 
MARTY HART: What's that? 
COHLE: Light versus dark. 
HART: Well...  I know we ain't in Alaska, but (looks up at the night sky) -- it appears to me the dark has a lot more territory. 
COHLE:  Yeah, you're right about that... but you're lookin' at it wrong.  
HART: How's that? 
COHLE: Once, there was only dark... You ask me, the light's winnin'.

-- Matthew McConaughey, Woody Harrelson / True Detective (Season One, 2014)

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Yes; recently went through a True Detective / Season 1 marathon (which explains the previous post, too, also). Days like these: Work = bad; experience of daily living = not a great deal better -- and I find myself drawn back to the lines Nic Pizzolatto had written for the character of Rustin Cohle as delivered by Matthew McConaughey: Existence as bearing witness to the Unsolvable, the bottomless and apparently no-limit ability of humans to fuck with each other; the unfathomable What of all and everything. Let's just say it's not a period when I choose to watch musical comedies.

(One of my favorite quotes: Episode 7, 'After You've Gone'; Hart and Cohle interview an older black woman who winds up spouting about Carcosa and death is not the end, another link in the investigative chain leading them on, upriver, looking for Kurtz, madness hiding in the Bayou.

(McConaughey lights a cigarette, looks off into some far distance and says to Harrelson, "Sure hope that old lady's wrong."  Puzzled, Harrelson asks, "About what?"   " 'bout death not being the end," McConaughey replies.)
 

McConaughey's character looks at the Daily Monster and doesn't flinch; he wants, and doesn't want, an answer to the What question (an old Suicide Club acquaintance once said, preparing to do a handstand on the summit of the west tower of the Bay Bridge, an age ago, now: "You're scared but you do it anyway"). In the end, he has an epiphany of a kind -- in my imagination he comes to some understanding that some days the universe is that bottomless, reductive, time-in-a-circle-eternal-recurrence, Dantean pit. Others, it isn't.

And that line penned by another writer, Frank Darabont (yes, he of TWD), keeps resonating, too: Get busy livin', or get busy dyin'. That's absolutely goddamn right.

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If This Is Tuesday, It Must Be

Photograph Of Glen Fleshler For Absolutely No Goddamn Reason

 (Photo: Somebody)

Slow news day, relatively.  Good actor, though.

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All Aboard For Somewhere

With Stops In Soiled, Illusory, And New Normal

'Overturned School Bus';  © Gregory Crewdson (Clicky ! Tasty And Fun !)

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Reprint Heaven Forever: Victory

( Fifty-one years ago, now.  Another annual repeat. )

Victory In Europe (V-E) Day; May 8th

May 8th, 1945; Kaiser-Wilhelms Church, Kurfurstendamm, Berlin

San Francisco, May 8, 1945

May 8th, 1945; Times Square, New York City

Canadian Troops, German Refugees Outside Hamburg, May 8, 1945

May 8th, 1945; Ebensee Concentration Camp, Bavaria

May 8th, 1945; Russian Soliders At The Reichstag, Berlin

May, 1945; Russian Soldiers Near Führerbunker Show Location

In Chancellery Garden Where Hitler's Corpse Was Burned

May 8th, 1945; Berlin

May 7, 1945; Survivors Of Mauthausen Concentration Camp

May 8th, 1945; Winston Churchill At Whitehall, London

May, 1945; Bomb Damage Still Being Cleared, Central London

May, 1945; Berlin

May 8th, 1945; Paris

May 8th, 1945; German Refugees, Juchen (N.Rhein-Westphalia)

Memorial, Mamayev Kurgan, Volgograd

Memorial, The Cenotaph, London

Memorial, Near The Mall, Washington, D.C.

Memorial, The Neue Wache With Kollwitz Pieta, Berlin

Memorial, Deportees And Prisoners; Lyon, France

Memorial, Yad Veshem, Jerusalem

Kaiser-Wilhelms Church; Kurfurstendamm, Berlin

European Union Headquarters Building; Brussels, Belgium

---

Roads, Woods, Divergence

The Winners

(CHEESE STAR NEWS) Senator Bernie Sanders came from behind in some polls run by some who wanted to influence the outcome, to deliver a smart, stinging slap to the flabby, botoxed features of Hillary The Inevitable in today's Indiana primary, emerging as the winner of the Democratic contest.

Meanwhile, Republicaner Trumpo swept to a commanding victory in Indiana on Tuesday, making it all over but the shouting (and there will be much of that) that the Capo Di Buffoono Capo will be the party's presidential nominee -- and not 'Crazy Ted' Cruz, who finally ended his stuttering, wheezing and increasingly erratic campaign...

After retching convulsively for over an hour at a Motel 6 outside Indianapolis, Republican National Committee Chairman Reince "Nancy" Priebus declared that Trumpo was "Il Duce", and dressed in an off-the shoulder silver lame evening gown by Okki DeLa Renta, told an audience of three reporters and a cleaning woman, "We all need to take that learning annex course about what to do with a sow's ear, and lemons. Oh, and we gotta defeat Clinton."

Greg Stillson Cries While Our Savior Shoots Rubber Bands At The Innocent

As the vote returns flowed in, Cruz alternately sobbed like a little girl and screamed in an unknown language ("Talkin' in them tongues again," observed a campaign aide). With his wife and helpmeet at his side, Cruz announced that his campaign was over. "Together we emptied ourselves across the fields in Indiana," said Cruz, "So be careful where you step. I am shamed, tired, and all of you will pay when the godly take this country back."

Dashboard Jesus, Cruz's principal campaign advisor, gave everyone a Thumbs-Up, Who's-Awesome-You're-Awesome series of meaningless gestures, shot rubber bands at random passers-by and laughed, fit to bust.

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This is hardly an original observation -- but this presidential election is about the large number of people who are casting votes to reject the political system in America and (even if less obviously) that part of our population which benefit from it. Amorphously, it's a kind of unspoken Populism.  

Trump and Sanders' popularity is an obvious expression of disenchantment with America's political system, the most serious challenge to Business As Usual politics since Ross Perot's outsider candidacy in the 1990's -- except both 'outsider' candidates in 2016 are still members of the two dominant parties. That Sanders' and Trump's popularity might also indicate disenchantment (or something more) of the Peasantry with how Our Fabled Wealthy have rigged the game is less often mentioned.

People appear to be voting against something this season, more than voting for anything specific (possibly a feature of the primaries; less so in a general election, where specifics matter). And even if that rejection isn't fully understood by the people who experience it -- not everyone pissed off about things dresses in black on May Day and marches in Seattle under the "A" banner -- people understand we could be facing Fifty Miles Of Bad Road. Many are frightened of what our future holds. 

We're living in a country on the cusp of a robotics technology revolution that could make entire classes of employment obsolete for humans within the next decade, just as it will enrich Silicon Valley's wealthy still further. Issues of race and equality are as starkly apparent as they were in news films from the early 1960's, but now with The Fire Next Time : a more ugly, in-your-face edge.

The reach and power of corporations (who now have the same legal rights as human beings) has never been greater. 'Business' is touted as The Great Game, and business "leaders", avaricious and narcissistic, are held up as heroes, role models. And not since the Gilded Age of the 1880's and 90's have the gap between The People who Matter and the rest of us been more apparent.

People always vote about the future, even if we're not certain what that future will be (e.g., people voting for JFK in 1960 didn't know he would be responsible for avoiding a general thermonuclear war with the Soviets two years later. Good pick, that).  On the Left and the Right, we look for leadership who will help to navigate it, or throw the brakes on and delay it as long as possible.  But what seems different about this election season is --whether frightened or optimistic, a large number of people seem to be casting votes which say they don't trust the Powers That Be to run that future for anything but their benefit.

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