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Downtown San Francisco rally, 7/13/06
A REVIEW: SAN FRANCISCO ACTIVISM GETS FOUR AND A HALF YELLOW STARS!
A MESSAGE FROM THE COUNCIL ON AMERICAN-ISLAMIC RELATIONS (PBUH) TO THE STATE OF ISRAEL(No PBUH)
Good evening,
Should the Palestinians be given their own planet? Yes. I believe it is really the only way to peace.
By forcing the poor, oppressed and occupied people of Palestine to remain on earth, the US government is only creating more terrorists. You see, Jewish occupation works by Jews attaching themselves to the face of Palestinians and laying an egg in their throats. After a few days, a terrorist bursts out of the chest of the Palestinian, killing the host.
When will the Zionist Jewish Warsaw Ghetto Concentration Camp Hitler Zionist Wannsee Conference Final Solution State Of Israel learn that the only way to peace is to shoot the Palestinians into space?
The fact is that our government is in bed with the Jewish Terrorist Ethnic Cleansing Auschwitz Genocide State Of Israel and does not want Palestine to have its own planet.
When Yassar Arafat (PBUH, HUD, FDIC) passed away, Palestinian people the world over--even in America--wondered when the Heinrich Himmler Joseph Goebbels SS Jackboot Nuremberg Trials State Of Israel would bring him back to life. As of this date, they have not.Why?
Because Genocide Barbed Wire Smokestacks Schindler's List--that's why!
Now, if I could say a few words about Israel and what they're doing to members of the Arab World by allowing them to vote and hold office within their democratically-elected form of government: Third Reich Hitler Zionist!
Why stop there? Let's tell it like it is--Iron Cross Dachau Mengele!
And I'm sure I'm not alone when I say that the voluntary evacuation of the Jews from Gaza last year so that the Palestinian residents could finally begin building up their communities had all Muslims worldwide thinking "Desert Fox Leni Riefenstahl Arm Tattoo!"
What other religion besides Islam can claim a Holocaust in their past? None!
As if that weren't enough, the rights afforded to women outside of Islamic Theocracy (PBUit, R.E.S.P.E.C.T, 4H, Boys and Girls Clubs Of America) make all Palestinians want to say: "Swastika Charlie Chaplin Mustache Holocaust!" And yes, we mean it!
Did you know that the Anne Frank Bergen-Belsen Showers State of Israel is directly responsible for the preservation of freedom in the Middle East? Well, now you do!
As you probably know from seeing the documentary The United States Government And Israel Did All Of The Bad Stuff In 9-11, every Jew in the entire world was told not to go to work or fly in an airplane on September 11th, not to ride the trains in London on July 7th of last year, and not to be in India this week! Why is it that Jews live longer and explode less than Palestinians? The answer is simple: The Pogrom Death Camp Racist America is in bed with the Zionist Mein Kampf Hitler Youth Israel!
It's true! The Evil Satanic Backwards Record Exorcist Omen Stephen King America and the Luftwaffe Six Million Eva Braun Herman Goerring State Of Israel have worked together to portray Islam as a religion of explosions, ski masks, rockets, genital mutilation, and stupid white girls who stand in front of bulldozers.
In reality, Islam is very mellow. It's a groovy religion. It's got its own kind of unique hipness. It's a lot like early Miles Davis. Turn on to it. It's a religion of. . .peace. (PBUH, DEA, NEA, Lava Lamps, Bead Curtains)
The only hope for peace in the Middle East is to give us a getaway car, $25,000 in unmarked bills, and a helicopter to take us to Cuba. And no cops--understand?
Enough fighting and name-calling. It's time for The Ku Klux Klan Plantation Wicked Witch Of The West Confederate Flag Night Of The Living Dead Amerikkka to stop helping the Boxcars Yellow Star Kristallnacht Berlin Refusing To Shake Jesse Owens' Hand At The 1936 Olympics Zionist State Of Israel so that the innocent five-year old girls who make up 99.5 percent of all Muslims can have their demands met in full.
Also, bear in mind that in lieu of sending us to another planet, we will accept complete control of the Earth instead.
Respectfully,
Jane Fonda
PAST BLOG ENTRIES:
CAP AND GOWN: A LETTER TO GOV. SCHWARTZENEGGER FROM LILIANA VALENZUELA
Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons controversy
FOLK MUSIC WITH BLOOD IN ITS VEINS COME TO THE DU NORD
ISHMAEL REED DISGRACES RICHARD PRYOR
MORE LETTERS OF HOPE FOR TOOKIE
BLACK CHILDREN NEED MENTORS!: Rethinking Race in the Age of 50 Cent and Eminem
CAFE DU NORD: Calendar of Events
WHEN WORKING CLASS ELEMENTS AND UPPER-CLASS LIBERALISM COLLIDE
KATRINA: IN THE WAKE OF AN AFTERMATH
THE TRAGEDY OF SUCCESS: DAVE CHAPPELLE SPEAKS
WHERE DO MY MANNERISMS COME FROM?
REFLECTIONS ON A NIGHT AT THE MARSH: APRIL 20, 2005
AXIOMS FROM THE BOOK OF IDEALIZED BEHAVIOR
HOW ACCURATE IS THE WEATHER IN CLEAR CHANNEL LAND?
THE GREATEST FATHERS CHANGING PLACES WITH THEIR SONS STORY EVER TOLD
My name is Liliana Valenzuela and I am an senior at Richmond High School in Richmond.
As a student, i am always learning new things. Rescently, I learned that I did not pass the standerdized test which will allow me to gradate and wear a cap and gown and be with all my friends who did passed the standerdize test.
What is my point., yhou ask.? Mr. Swarciniger, my parents came to this country on a boat. I don’t know why, we are from mexico. But that is neither here nor then.
What is a standerdize test? I was told by a good techer, Mr. Juan Enrico Guitteriez, that the test is on 10th grade reading and writing and 8th grade math. Mr. Swarchinegro, I am in the 12th grade! What i do In the 8th and 10th grade is not revelant.
Mr. Schwartchinogro, my parents came to this country for a better life, not a chance to prove themselves. When we are a country that have difficult issue like immigraton and unjustice, what purpose is the standerdize test. There are only one purpose--to be rasist!
Mitter Sfarzenioagra, when the people who own the standerdize test told me i didn’t win and wont be able to gradate, i cried. Misty Sccharneegre, Can you imagine being a 18-year old Latina girl who cannot wear her prety dress to the gradation parade?
I spent all of tweflth grade fixing my hair for this big day and now because of a rasist test no boys will see my hair on gradation night! And becuase why? Becuase I dont know how many sides a pentagon has? So what! I am NOT A PENTAGON! I AM A LATINA!
Evan though I have not past the standerdize test, I am still prety. Prety enough to gradate! But becuase of rasist test, i cannot feel prety today.
Mishertier Sccorachoinoggeregger, as the presedent of cafilornia i am sure you know abot rasism. woud you have all you have if you had to take a standerdize test ? What if a techer told you “you cannot ware a prety dress and fix your hair prety and go meet boys?” You wold probbably do what I did--fall on the couch and bust yuor jaw open.
We are suing the world becuase of this rasistm. How can you except children to do good in shool when you test them. On what? Rasism!
Mikohotofter sChwooriniazeonriegoiriegger, On the top of everthing esle, this “qote” standerdize test is not evan in my navite langage. You wold’nt ask a conditoner to be a shapmoo. what wil i do with my prety hair.
Pleas misintitoerer sochrwarronoeazeoraeorgggnienzeaerrearer, help me get to gardutaion.
Scinerly, Liliana Valenzuela
Dear Ms. Valenzuela,
Thank you for writing and for the enclosed photographs. Yes, you are a young and beautiful Latina who will one day blossom into a glorious Spanish rose.
For a delicate and feminine young lady, however, you’ve got quite some balls.
As I understand your letter, you would like me to intervene and singlehandedly obliterate our already vastly withering educational system so that you can put on a cap and gown and mince around like a slut.
Trust me, Ms. Valenzuela, all this can be achieved in this country without either passing a standardized test or possessing a diploma. That is one of the many things that make our country great--the freedom to be a worthless whore.
Every year, I’ve been dumping wheelbarrows full of money into schools just like yours and from what I’ve observed, the administrators have used that money to buy newer, more sparkly computers. Unfortunately, given the tone of your letter, it appears that the school has yet to purchase a computer capable of teaching students how to learn without computers. Not to mention the concepts of personal responsibility, aspiring to excellence, and reading and writing.
I guess we should wheel in some more money until that time comes.
As far as the accusations that the standardized tests are racist, there’s an old Spanish saying that I’m sure you’re familiar with--”Go fuck yourself.” There, NOW you’re a victim.
Most sincerely,
Arturo Luis Guzman,
Special educational consul to Governor Schwarzenegger
I HATE FASCISM AS WELL, WHICH IS WHY I WOULD LIKE TO SAY A FEW WORDS ON BEHALF OF AMERICAFor those tired of the overly-didactic and sanctimonious side of big Hollywood, there’s a welcome antidote in the theatres now: United 93.
Don’t be deceived by the trailer. When I first saw the trailer, I was a bit taken aback as it seems to hint at a sort of “let’s win one for the Gipper” action movie. Nothing could be further from the truth. Unfortunately, marketing people have to put their own spin on a film in the hopes of selling tickets. These people are not artists. They are salesmen.
Director Paul Greengrass, however, is an artist. Using cell phone conversations, black box recordings, personal testimony, eyewitness accounts, air traffic control reports, the approval and help of every family member of the victims of United 93, as well as many of the actual people involved on the ground that day (several of whom play themselves in the film), he does the unthinkable: He tells the truth.
All the reviews have been glowing, and deservedly so. As many of them have pointed out, Greengrass does not take any artistic license in painting the victims as heroes and the hijackers as villains. Why not? Because there was no need to. The hijackers were villains. And the victims were heroes.
Strange, but true, that we needed United 93 to remind us of this.
Were the passengers trying to save the nation’s capitol? No. I’ve never believed that. And the movie does not say this, despite what the trailer or taglines may hint. They were trying to save themselves. And for that alone, they should be considered heroes. Greengrass and the actors (notice the welcoming lack of celebrities to evoke reality, as opposed to the upcoming Oliver Stone abomination, World Trade Center, starring Nicolas Cage) convey the terror, sadness, and instinctual desire for self-preservation that emerged on that tragic flight.
The few objections that have been leveled against the movie have been, predictably, from people taking offense to shots of the hijackers praying and reciting from the Koran before and during the suicide mission. If there is any offense to be taken, then it should be directed at radical and militant Islam and not at Greengrass or the film. Two cultures are simply presented—not artificially painted—in the film: a heterogeneous group of Western citizens on the one hand, and four psychotic practitioners of militant Islam on the other. Contrary to the tenets of the new multiculturalism, these two do not mix. And the film and the actual events of 9/11 serve to remind us of this. Moderate Muslims decrying radical Islam would do well to aim their criticisms at the practitioners of radical Islam and not at filmmakers for accurately portraying radical Islam.
I’m often accused of the proverbial “black and white” thinking and encouraged to see cultures and beliefs in “shades of grey.” It’s easy to do that in the free world, and for that we should be grateful. This is simply one of the many perks of living in a democracy. Rest assured, however, that when the four homicidal maniacs took over that flight, the free world no longer existed and all shades of grey went out with the plane wreckage. Aboard the doomed flight, it was all black and white. Evil versus good, fascism versus freedom, death versus life.
My personal remembrance of 9/11 is nothing spectacular, other than having lived in New York for a number of years and having to phone numerous friends the day of the attacks, all—luckily—only shaken, not harmed. But I do remember that feeling of unity. As one friend said, “This is the first time in my life I’ve ever felt patriotic.” Cynicism and selfishness seemed to go out the window. In many ways, it might have been one of the most beautiful moments in American history. For the first time as far as I could remember, actual Americans deserving of the epithet were being regarded as heroes—the crash victims, the firefighters, the police, the medical personnel, even the average American citizen who suddenly didn’t have to feel ashamed for feeling patriotic or at the very least grateful to be living in a free and—dare I say it—Western democracy. Hollywood, the pop mainstream, even the advertising industry, graciously stepped out of the limelight.
Almost five years later, it’s amazing to see how quickly all that seems to have disappeared. Curiously, with all the leisure time that living in the free world has provided us, we seem to have become fixated with “why” 9/11 happened and “who’s really responsible” in an effort to “understand” why certain fringe cultures would do something like this to America. Was it the United States’ support of another democratic nation such as Israel? Was it American interference in the Middle East?
When one is fighting for his or her life as a plane is heading towards the ground at 500 miles an hour, it’s doubtful one becomes too concerned about how much money the United States is giving to Israel. It’s equally doubtful that any passengers were deriding themselves at that moment for not working harder to achieve a better understanding of why the boys with box cutters were shouting “Allah Akbar.”
Militant Islam deserves no sympathy, no understanding, and no reconciliation. If US support of Israel, as many claim, was one of their motivations for murder (aside from their unique interpretation of the Koran), how does it logically or ethically translate into holding either the United States or Israel responsible for 9/11? Under this slippery-slope logic, we should be holding the Big Bang in contempt for creating this universe in which 9/11 happened.
And before these sentiments are attacked as being “Islamophobic” or “right-wing,” let me say that my motivation for these statements comes from the following core liberal beliefs:
1) I believe in freedom of speech
2) I believe in freedom of religion
3) I believe in freedom of the press
4) I believe in equality for men and women
5) I believe in equal rights for homosexuals, including the right to marry
6) I believe in separation of church and stateAnd most importantly,
7) I do not believe in fascism
Multiculturalism would be fine if all cultures could adhere to these criteria. Some do, and those that do can be successfully integrated into a free world. Militant Islam does not. And the juxtaposition of militant Islam against the free world is the story of United 93 and 9/11. Militant Islam is the story of infantile children, not—as they have often been morally inverted into becoming—freedom fighters.
To paraphrase an oft-heard quote, “In dictatorships, it takes courage to fight the evil. In the free world, it takes courage to see the evil.” There are many beautiful things that come with Western society. Contrary to current fashionable self-loathing beliefs, the West is not entirely bad. It will take courage not only to see this, but more importantly, to say this. And I would hate to see Western freedom compromised in order to accommodate those who spit on it.
But maybe radical Islam had nothing to do with 9/11. Maybe it was . . . a conspiracy?
The streams of lunacy in regards to 9/11 seem almost never-ending. Did a missile hit the Pentagon? Did George Bush shoot down United 93? I have it from a “very reliable source” that over 1200 Jews working at the World Trade Center were told not to show up to work that day. Hey, I even heard a small civilian aircraft hit the first tower.
With the genocide in Darfur, the recently elected pro-terrorism Hamas government now representing Palestine, fascistic imams telling the Western media through intimidation and violence what it can and can’t print in regards to satire, Zacharias Moussaoui’s touching expression of gratitude to his jury for sparing his life (“You lose, America!”), and the president of Iran actively lobbying for nuclear weapons and denying the Holocaust, I don’t know if there’s ever been a better time—other than 9/11 itself—to entertain the possibility that militant Islam may have had something to do with the attacks.
And this is the “groundbreaking new theory” put forth in United 93.
Hopefully this will explain to the uninitiated what the upcoming West Memphis Three Benefits for the month of May (6th & 13th at The Dark Room and the 11th at Cafe Du Nord) are about.
If you don’t know anything about the case of the West Memphis Three (Damien Echols, Jason Baldwin, Jesse Misskelley), check out a couple of movies called Paradise Lost and Paradise Lost 2. And visit the website—once again, it’s www.wm3.org. A quick summation: In May of 1993, the bodies of three 8-year old boys were found in a secluded grove of trees behind a truck stop in West Memphis, Arkansas. One of the boys was castrated. Not a drop of blood was found at the scene. In June, three teenagers, Damien Echols (18), Jason Baldwin (16), and Jesse Misskelley (17), were charged with the murders. No physical evidence, no motive, no connection to the victims, and no murder weapon were ever used by the prosecution to make a case against the three.
The state's evidence consisted primarily of notebooks owned by Echols that contained quotes from Alistair Crowley and a few pentagrams, the fact that Echols had dark black hair and often dressed all in black and the testimony of two little girls who claim Damien was bragging about the murders a few nights afterwards—which Echols denies. As far as Jason Baldwin, there is absolutely no evidence against him other than that he was best friends with Echols. And as for Jesse Misskelley—which is where the West Memphis police started in their investigation—the police interrogated him for twelve hours, denying him parental contact or legal counsel, only choosing to record forty-six minutes of the conversation. The transcripts of this alleged confession from Jesse—which led to the conviction of himself and the other two—contains numerous errors in which Jesse consistently gets the time and other specifics of the murders wrong whereupon the police remind him of the facts and he simply agrees. On top of this, Jesse has an IQ of 72. Keep in mind, he’s seventeen years old and has been interrogated by the police for twelve hours. According to Jesse, he concocted a story in which he subdued one of the victims while Echols and Baldwin committed the murders in the hopes that the police would finally let him go home and talk to his parents, get a lawyer and try to straighten everything out.
Using this blatantly forced confession from Misskelley, a few notebooks from Damien Echols, and a bunch of wild talk about a Satanic ritual sacrifice—the prosecution managed to get Damien Echols a death row sentence, Jason Baldwin life without parole, and Jesse Misskelley life plus forty years. Having grown up a few hours away from West Memphis, I understand the type of small-town backwoods idiocy which can lead to a corrupt incarceration like this. As you can see in the documentaries, it didn’t take much talk about a possible “satanic” influence to the murders to get the town riled up enough to put away three teenagers because one of them wore black. Yes, people really are that stupid in Arkansas.
One of the problems is that Damien Echols—(the supposed ringleader of this non-existent cult)—is too smart for his own good. On the stand, he attempts to explain the differences between Wicca and Satanism. Unfortunately, for a jury of twelve Arkansas Christians, knowledge about Wicca and Satanism translates into an admission of guilt.
I can’t get into the side story of John Mark Byers—the stepfather of one of the victims, Christopher Byers (the only child to be castrated)—but let’s just say he figures in very prominently as a possible—and infinitely more plausible—real killer. However, by the time evidence began to emerge in mid-1994 which pointed towards Mark Byers’ guilt (most importantly, a knife he owned that had his son's blood on it), the trial against the West Memphis Three was at the halfway point. So it’s understandable that the judge, the chief of the West Memphis police, and the prosecution weren’t interested in stopping proceedings to examine other suspects. Had they done so, the West Memphis Three might be free today.
Here you have a small-town backwater community like West Memphis filled with mostly fundamentalist Christians who still believe fervently in this entity called Satan and the "powers of darkness". You then have bloodthirsty cries from the community to find the killers—(led of course by the morbidly insane stepfather John Mark Byers)—and the police are in a hurry to wrap this thing up. This case was chief of police Gary Gitchell’s last case before he retired, so he himself had a strong motive to “solve” the case quickly and end on a “winning” note. Furthermore, you have a judge who allows ridiculous items like a pentagram written on a notebook to be entered into evidence. And lastly, you have a prosecution team who incredulously has no problem with the fact that there is not a single drop of blood found at the crime scene—which would seem to indicate that this was not a sacrifice in which three children were led out to the woods and ritualistically murdered, but that somebody had murdered the children in a different location, washed away the blood and dumped the bodies afterwards. Yes, this was a cult killing—and the cult was Christianity.
The West Memphis Three have been locked away for twelve years. In ’99 Echols appealed his conviction, asking for a new trial. Sadly, the same judge from the original trial was presiding over these proceedings. Despite new forensic evidence indicating a bite mark on one of the victims which none of the bite impressions from the three defendants match—(coupled with the fact that John Mark Byers even had his own teeth removed sometime after the killings)—the presiding judge determined there was not enough reasonable doubt to demand a new trial. That judge, David Burnett—as well as the local law enforcement and the prosecution—DO NOT want this case to go to a higher court. They are doing all they can to keep it internal to West Memphis. Why? Because anybody on the outside looking in can see that the West Memphis Three are being unjustly held.
PS--Please follow the link below to read a plea from Jason Baldwin and write the Governor of Arkansas in defense of the West Memphis Three
WRITE TO FREEDOM: AN IMPORTANT MESSAGE FROM JASON BALDWIN
http://www.wm3.org/live/newsevents/newsitem.php?index=1&news_Id=113
Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons controversy
A possible theory as to why the cartoon renditions of Muhammad and the writings of Oriana Fallaci are being systematically squelched by Borders, City Lights, N.Y.U., and other institutions supposedly dealing in “free speech”.
Here are the cartoons—start a violent protest, won’t you?
http://www.zombietime.com/mohammed_image_archive/jyllands-posten_cartoons/
How sad it is that the birthplaces of free speech are the very places that free speech dies.
If Hitler were just coming to power today, I believe that—at best—he would be considered an “ambiguous” figure.
When I express disdain for the ghetto gangsta rapper lifestyle, I’m invariably presented with this little bit of ammunition from the politically correct —“But you don’t understand what they’ve been through.” The same appears to be happening in regards to Islamic extremism.
My theory is this. People have a genuine fear of violence and hatred. As well they should. When a rap artist screeches diatribes about popping caps in asses and blowing some niggers away—as when Islamic extremists fly planes into buildings or wage violence over cartoons—I believe the only appropriate reaction from people on the outside of these groups looking in should be one of fear. If it weren’t, I would question that person’s sanity. But most people don’t want to admit that fear for a number of reasons, chief among these reasons being possibly 1) exhibiting cowardice and--in the Bay Area especially--2) exhibiting racism or xenophobia. So what does one do, then, if one is afraid? Seek to understand these objects of (what is often secret, unacknowledged) fear. And so we begin to understand that a lot of these ignorant ghetto thugs—thugs who use “art” to glorify robbing and murdering people at random—do what they do because they have had “very few options” in life. We begin to understand that Islamic extremists wage violent acts of jihad because they have had “very few options” in the face of a growing Western presence.Now, there are two kinds of understanding. The first involves comprehending the nature of a phenomenon and grasping its significance. The second involves being tolerant of or sympathetic towards a particular viewpoint. It is absolutely essential that we comprehend the nature of Islamic extremism and grasp its significance. But I would argue that this form of understanding—the primary dictionary definition of understanding--is in fact rare among certain sympathetic and tolerant denizens of the Bay Area. In fact, the primary meaning of understanding has been all but effaced by the second. One can no longer “understand” something without also feeling the deepest sympathy and support for that phenomenon. But this is dangerous. I, too, can understand the reasons behind the actions of an Islamic extremist or a ghetto gangsta, but my understanding ends on a purely intellectual level. It does not entail sympathy or support; it merely allows me to comprehend how we got from point A to a very undesirable point B. The problem with understanding in the sense of the politically correct is that it absolves the very behaviors that any sensible person should be deploring.
What would be the motive for this type of insane moral reconciliation with these deplorable acts? There are a few—
1) It provides the sympathizers with a sense of depth; they begin to perceive themselves as enlightened individuals, free from any racist or xenophobic thoughts; and thus, to their minds, free from the potential wrath of these violent groups.
2) It adds to a growing erroneous and highly improbable sense of idealism, fueling the belief that if enough people understand the thuggish behaviors of the disenfranchised, eventually everyone will lay down arms and embrace.
3) Most importantly, it can be ironically pawned off as bravery—brave for “standing up” against the fascist right-ring ideologues in our midst. Except that, in the Bay Area, such villains are so scarce as to pose no real threat at all. So one, in essence, receives the best of both worlds: they don’t have to courageously stand up for what’s right AND they get to call themselves heroes.
Again, I’ve often heard the “you weren’t taught these behaviors” retort when speaking out against ghetto gangsta lifestyle. But the fact remains that this excuse can’t be uni-directional. For every ghetto gangsta that was taught not to trust the white establishment, there is a white person who was taught (be it ever so implicitly) to clutch her purse a bit tighter when walking through the projects or by a group of young black men. Excuses dealt in one direction could just as easily be dealt in the other.
So depictions of Muhammad appear in cartoons in Danish newspapers; one of the top news stories of the day—yet almost no American (or British) newspaper runs the cartoons so that the public can see for themselves what has caused the outrage.
Well, in that case, our last bastion of hope would be the historical epicenters of free speech: the bookstores and the universities. No luck there, either. City Lights, with its big murals of the beat pioneers, doesn’t “. . .carry books by fascists.” And NYU refuses the cartoons to be shown during a panel discussion on the topic. Borders has declined to carry the April-May issue of Free Inquiry magazine, because of that magazine's decision to publish some of the controversial cartoons.The effects?
Imagine, if you will, book burnings in 1930s Germany. Imagine a thug with a baseball bat standing in the corner of an NYU class promising to crack heads if he doesn’t like what he hears. Imagine intimidation, scare tactics, violence—and you might get a pretty good picture of not only the true nature of misunderstood cultures, but of the vomit-inducing cowardice (posing as bravery) that prevents us from taking a hard, critical looks at what these cultures are really all about.
Piss on freedom of speech. The leaders of the free speech movement already have.
By the way, check out Lars Von Trier’s Dogville for a good examination of the hazy line between understanding and moral capitulation.
And then check out The Sorrow and the Pity for some historical documentation of what actually did happen in France under moral capitulation.
UNDISCOVERED WRITERS SERIES:
VOLUME 18: Silenced Voices
PART 3: Exclusions From The Literary Canon
Chaper XII: Poets
Verse D: Robert Louis FeverhaverPOEMS
(What follows is an excerpt from the following)
Poem 1:
“My Bones” (1811)
I look at
my bones sometimes and I
say
“where did my skin go?”
and then I wonder how I,
a skeleton with no tongue
can say
anything
at all. . .
The poet Robert Louis (or Louis Robert) Feverhaver (pronounced “Fever-haver”) was born sometime between the years 2500 B.C. and, if our predictions are correct and he hasn’t been born yet, 2500 A.D.
Little is known of R. L. Feverhaver other than an awful lot. Besides his poems and counterfeit coins bearing his image discovered near Sumia in Ancient Thraxcylonia, there are numerous books, essays, articles, motion pictures, and home videos about people other than R. L. Feverhaver which have enabled modern scholars over the centuries to piece together through extensive process of elimination (P E) a more-than-accurate (in fact suspiciously accurate) summation of who the man (if indeed he was a “man”) R. L. Feverhaver might have, (if he hasn’t already) been.
Widely regarded as a stick of butter after his birth in the Year Of Bad Object Recognition (ca A.D. 1-A.D. 33), the young Feverhaver spent the first ten years of his life fighting to avoid being spread on wheat toast.
Using consummate guesswork and grueling stabs in the dark, anthropologists have been able to scientifically and accurately pinpoint without a doubt the location of Feverhaver’s birth as Smearninthia in the province of Gracias Minor sometime after the reign of Bibbinanthium the Laser and sometime before the downfall of the XoxoxoIoveyoutoo Utopia.
He first put pen to paper sometime in his sixth year and let it sit there for three months until his brain finally sent a signal to the legion of neurons stationed in his right hand to start moving the pen up and down along the paper while applying slight pressure to the shaft of the pen. By the end of that day, young Robert had written the letter “I”, the first among 26 he would continue to use throughout his career.
His first poem “no good tryin’ tah bake beans when the suicide of the colored girls/ain’t enuf to taste like okrah near the dancing rainbow/sho nuff” was an outright plagiarism of every post-Toni Morrison African American Studies graduate student thesis he had ever read. Indeed, Feverhaver’s pre-teen rampant plagiarism was so notorious that it eventually led to the nickname “Faggot”--a title that Feverhaver ironically bore proudly in the predominately anti-homosexual milieu of ancient Judea. Proscripia the Elder (Bcadadbcc 1.2.-Bcbaadaa 3.1) writes of an early confrontation sometime during 34th Street and 8th Avenue between Jobranpra, then empress of Berkeley, and Feverhaver through the characters of Schizophrenicus and Bipolaricus in his Early History Of Modern Women ($5,015-$6,712).
SCHIZOPHRENICUS: What’s the matter, Bipolaricus? Don’t you like girls?
BIPOLARICUS: I do. I like girls a lot.
SCHIZOPHRENICUS: Then why do you let people call you “faggot”?
BIPOLARICUS: For the same reason that I do not let them call me “faggot”.
SCHIZOPHRENICUS: Are you saying that for every action that one takes in this tangible universe, there is an opposite action taken
simultaenously in an alternate universe by an alternate self and that by allowing one’s self to be called “faggot” in this reality is to foster and therefore permit an alternate version of one’s self not being called “faggot” to exist within the parameters of that hypothetical reality? But this is heretical and blasphemous to the Holy Roman Catholic Church! (pp. 56-112)
Feverhaver was brought before the pope and asked to recant not only his homosexuality but also his recent endorsement of the Copernican conception of the solar system. Fearing torture by the rack, Feverhaver explained that his statement that the sun was the center of the universe which the earth merely revolved around was meant as a harmless joke intending to explain the empirical and incontravertible workings of the known universe in the midst of pervasive religious dogma. As for his homosexuality, it would not be until 1979 when a group of Christian archeologists, digging in the ruins of Feverhaver’s skull, would discover a “sinning” gene.
After the church slapped him on the wrist and called him silly, Feverhaver went as far back in the closet as he could and found an old wife. Jarvia Nancia Anastasia, a son’s daugter from Illyricia, was wed to R. L. Feverhaver sometime in the Year Of The Curious George Books And Not The Movie.
The marriage was a fruitful one, yielding two pineapples (Robert Jr. and Louis Jr.), four pears (Belinda, Aphra, Cleopatra, and Milf), a pomegranate (Jeff), and two plums (Abbot and Costello). Only two (Robert Jr. and Abbot) would survive past ripeness.
Feverhaver’s family life is reflected in his poetry around this time throughout such works as “Home Improvement” (1455) “Mad About
You” (1798) and “That 70s Show” (Fox) Throughout these poems, Feverhaver attempted to bring together elements of allegorical free verse with a studio audience and a season finale. Though this is unarguably one of Feverhaver’s most creative and prolific periods, there was a considerable lull in output following the criticisms of several female college dorm roommates concerning Feverhaver’s decision to end his epic poem “Friends”. Sophomore Courtney Wilcox, a business major at State Western, lamented in her Diary:“. . .alas a mortal hand and pen do not stretch out to infinity for this night we have seen the end of our Friends.”(hellokitty)
Such criticism by young female co-eds would often send Feverhaver into blind rages where he was observed on more than one ocassion
climbing onto the ledge of a public building and cutting himself with razor blades as he lay naked in the bathtub that he brought with him
out onto the ledge. It was during one of these “bad days” (as he himself referred to them) that he is reported to have conceived the genesis of what would undoubtedly become his greatest literary project to date. However, that idea was soon forgotten once the idea to stop cutting his wrists and get off the ledge before he killed himself replaced it. Though not as grandiose as his original idea must have seemed, the resulting work at least characterized his emotional state at the time.
razor hurts
when not used
to shave.
water cold. . .high on ledge. . .
if I fall I fall
alone. . .that would be a lot
to ask someone
to do. . .
die with you. . .
stop cutting
go back through
the window.
While scholars are still sharply divided in half at the sternum, there has been a recent trend in literary theory for these separated bodily halves to come together and unite in agreement that the works of Robert Louis Feverhaver have some nominal, if not altogether pointless, place in the canon of Western Literature. His poetry has often collectively been referred to by such archaic monikers as “parsley” (in that parsley in the context of a plate of food is not actually eaten along with the other food but serves in a merely decorative capacity) or “dialysis for the mind” (referring to Cicero’s famous comment that Feverhaver’s works reminded him of “watching his father die”).In 1905, Feverhaver finally achieved recognition when he was awarded the Award Of Recognition in recognition of his achievements. In a tearful ceremony that some contemporaries hailed as the “birth of modern narcissism”, Feverhaver reputedly stood in front of his bathroom mirror and told his reflection that he deserved an award even if nobody else thought he did. This self-affirmation proved to be its own reward as Feverhaver leaned in and kissed the mirror for agreeing with him. Our primary source for this event is of course, Feverhaver’s mirror image (Revahrevef) who at that time had the closest access to Feverhaver’s most private and intimate affairs.
As a narcissist, Feverhaver could now devote his energies to various celebrity causes. He initially invested much of his focus in championing the AIDS cause until science revealed that AIDS was a disease. By the late 80s, Feverhaver was desparately backtracking in an attempt to disassociate himself from his prior pro-AIDS stance and he vowed, along with other idiots like Susan Sarandon and Tim Robbins, to start reading petitions before singing them. With egg on his face both figuratively and literally (Feverhaver often fell asleep at the breakfast table) he retired to Compton where he spent his remaining years trying to understand inner-city African Americans. He never did. This complete and utter lack of understanding is evidenced in his last major work, “Ebonics”.
what are you saying?
please speak English. . .
i understand that some
horrible things befell
your great-great-great
great-great-great
grandfather.
that must have been very hard. . .to lose somebody so distant from you
but if you learn to speak
properly. . .
maybe I could relate better. . .for
I also know what it is like
to lose somebody
whom I have never met and who has no direct bearing on my life whatsoever
like my slave-owning
great-great-great
great-great-great
grandfather. . .
Shortly after the release of this poem, Feverhaver was put to death for expressing his opinion in the vicinity of a Bay Area University (a felony at the time) . When asked by the warden of UC Berkeley if he had any last words, Feverhaver simply responded “. . .only that I was born, for birth has made the prospect of death all the more intolerable.”
Today a monument to Feverhaver exists at the House Of The Seven Houses near Kaarlstadt in the Rice Plaza. An inscription at its base carries the legend “Sol Invectus, vici Britannicus”. Unfortunately, since Latin has been supplanted by Ebonics at the university level, no one has been able to translate this to English. A fitting end to an individual who himself had an ending.
David Boston Wiedegger, ph-balanced,
Hooters University
David Wiedegger is professor emeritus of antiquities and late nights over at her house. In between his wife and mistress, he is also worshipped as a Sun God in the ancient city of Ephesus. He is the author of several signatures including his own.
BY AN EXTREME SOCIAL MISFIT--CUT OFF FROM THE SUN, HIS REPRESSION IS AN ICE-HOT PULSE THAT KEEPS HIM FROM SINKING HEADLONG INTO THE ABYSS OF BLIND EPICUREANISM--DROWN THE OTHERS MAY, HE'S STILL THE FIRST TO SAY GOODBYE WHEN IT'S TIME TO JUMP INTO THE PIT
THE AUTHOR : I was about five years old when I discovered I had a fetish for my own cum. To be sure, I hadn't even ejaculated yet at that point, not having gone through puberty. I was imagining my cum in the future--and what it might look like. I still don't know--having never ejaculated. You see, the only thing that turns me on enough to get an erection is my own cum. . .but since I can't get erect, I can't cum and therefore the object of my desire always lies just out of reach.
Other people are into bodies. I've never been into bodies or even the minds and souls of other people. I'm not even into myself. I'm only into the idea of my potential cum. And how it could help this city.
I did have one date a long time ago. It was a girl (I should say "maiden") that I met at the Renaissance Fair. She was an elegant, spritely gnome-like thing with whom I shared a goblet of mead with one afternoon near the stocks. She said her name was Sarah, but for the purposes of the Renaissance Fair, she was Gwendolyn.
Our relationship begin with a lie. I continued to call her Gwendolyn long after the fair had ended that day just to test her own knowledge of her name--and/or her commitment to the compartmentalization of "Sarah" with reality and "Gwendolyn" with fantasy. Not once did she correct me. I believe that once she got to know me, she decided that she was okay with me addressing her by her fictional name. This was bad news for me, you must understand. For she was tacitly projecting a Renaissance Fair image of herself for me to converse with rather than allowing the visage to drop. . .
I spent the entire afternoon telling her "you'll reject me in the end, you'll reject me in the end, you'll reject me in the end."
And in the end, she rejected me. . .
THE STORY:
"Ugh! Ugh! Squirt!" the man said as he finished.
She put on both of her panties and left the room, forgetting both the rest of her clothes and the fact that there was no way back into this particular room once one left it. It was one of those disposable rooms that people used for doing sexy things like squirting. When a couple or a threesome or an orgy or an individual masturbator left the room, it would go back to being a wall.
She licked her lips. Strange, she thought. She had tasted this cum before.
It had been her father all along! Damn! She knew there was a reason she wanted the lights left on. . .
Just then somebody with a man's voice--perhaps a man--said "I notice you're only wearing your panties."
She turned. It was DJ Astor Place. He was smiling lasciviously. She could make out the words "Property Of Burning Man" tattoed on his right forehead. That's where she remembered him. From Burning Man. In fact, that's where she remembered everybody--from Burning Man. Even her father--who had raised her in a strict Burning Man household under the principle of love for incestuous community--came from Burning Man.
"So do you have any left to give?" DJ Astor Place said as he asked her. "I've got twenty minutes before DJ Herald Square runs out of other people's records."
She thought for a second before speaking. What a new experience, she thought before she formed the words that she was about to speak, I'm thinking right now. Where do clouds come from? she thought as she continued to think, I wonder if you could cook a bus if the oven was big enough. . .
I think I'm going to speak now, she thought. And then she spoke: "Yes, I might as well. After all, I'm only wearing my panties and the room with the rest of my clothes has become a wall again."
"Come here." He carefully set down the milk carton crates filled with other people's records that he played on two different turntables and got paid for and even articles written about him with. "I want to do something to you."
"Oh, I love it when things are done to me."
He pulled out a corkscrew and drilled a hole in the back of her skull wide enough to accomodate his lips and tongue. She let out a soft and enticing whimper. He bent over and licked her medulla oblongata.
"Wow," she thought in a way that requires quotation marks and not italics, "he's kissing that part of my brain that regulates my sense of balance." She fell over and landed in one of his milk carton crates filled with other people's records that he played and actually received money for on ocassion. "Double wow. That knocked me off of my feet."
"But you're not wearing any feet," he said via his tongue which was now piercing that part of her brain that comprehends speech. He now moved his slick pink tread all over both hemispheres of her soft, drippy, mushy, and relatively unused brain.
"Oh, that's right--that's probably why I fell over."
"Speaking of 'over', why don't you roll over."
He produced a container of Zippo lighter fluid and squirted it up and down her sexy, uncovered, naked, and nude backside. Pulling out a match from a matchbook that bore information about Burning Man Community College, he struck it forcibly against that little dark strip that is indicative to most matchbooks living in America today. He dropped the Burning Man match onto her back and licked his lips as her skin did burn.
"Oh yeah," she moaned. This is what she had been looking for all of her life. Somebody who would lick her brain as if it were her pussy and set fire to her back simultaneously. But something was bothering her. . .
Her back was burning! "Ouch!" she screamed.
"Does that hurt?" he asked as he had a goatee with little ringlets and braids.
"A little," she cooed, "go slower."
He pulled out a flask of holy water from his earth-colored loincloth and poured it in a semicircle around the edge of the flames to contain it. Hot sacrilegion.
"Now that's nice," she osteopathed. "It's just. . .you know, this is the first time I've been set fire to and had a hole drilled into my skull."
"Ah, so you're a virgin. That explains why the back of your head is bleeding."
"Yeah," she said as she died. What a waste of last words. She was going to regret that most of all about dying. She should have said something about Burning Man or the community or at least written a poem about what it was like to be burnt to death and skull-fucked.
She lay there, dead. And with her death, she tacitly gave him permission to continue inserting his tongue in and out of the hole in her head. Soon, tongue was replaced by penis and he fucked steadily and earnestly until at some point shortly thereafter, he ejaculated.
And then even that room disappeared and everything turned into a wall again. . .
Folk Music with Blood in its Veins at the Du Nord
The Jonah Kit plays Cafe Du Nord Thursday, Jan. 5 (9pm)
Folk music is a tricky entity in San Francisco. Despite the fact that there’s such an enormous glut of folk musicians in the Bay Area--or perhaps,because of it--there’s little to be found in terms of originality, legitimate passion, and just plain talent.
Too often, the folkies in this area fall into one of two categories. There arethose who weigh their lyrics down with pretentious and embarrassingly overt political messages until discerning listeners begin to feel that they are in the middle of a seminar on leftist politics instead of a folk performance. Then there are the folkies who have honed their delivery into a calculated and smooth, hip swaying, and slightly raspy voice (males) or a throaty warble that leaps octaves like an equestrian show-jumper without any apparent purpose other than to say "Look what I can do!" (females).
On their guitars, they seem to pick a note per minute, dragging out their stylishly tortured mini-epics to upwards of twelve minutes hoping their studied attempt at conveying passion will bely their lack of musical talent.
But Jonah Daniel (and his band, The Jonah Kit) barrell along on the highway of musical innovation, knocking these two camps into ditches on either side, stopping long enough only to switch on a neon sign that reads: "This way to the future of folk." Will they follow? Most likely no. Because Jonah Daniel doesn't use sexuality, self-pity, or politics to sell his music, which are undoubtedly the calling cards of his competition. With a voice like Carol Channing, lyrics like Lou Reed, all served up with a steady rockabilly rhythm, The Jonah Kit has only one overt purpose: to have fun.
Whereas the message musicians want to burden you with thinly veiled references to the war in Iraq or the plight of third-world countries, The Jonah Kit wants nothing more than to shed all these pretentious accoutrements that folk music has gathered over the years like so many barnacles. We're right here at this moment--his music seems to say--we don't want to change the world. We want to change this MOMENT. This moment is stale, it's stagnant, I'm bored to tears--give me the fucking guitar. And for that quiet minority who are likewise disgusted with the endless local parade of musical benefits aimed at "bringing together the community" and "raising social awareness" and other such ego-driven drivel, we applaud
vigorously when The Jonah Kit takes the stage and reminds us all that there is something deeper and more spiritually resounding than current events: the human condition. Consider the closing refrain to what is fast becoming The Jonah Kit's signature piece: "I?ve Got Something In My Eye":" We've all got something in our eye.
Each in our own way.
Sometimes it lasts for years,
sometimes a few days.
Sometimes it's a blessing.
Sometimes it's a curse.
Some wind up at the altar,
and some end up in a hearse."And there you have a truly universal theme--one that transcends the whims of politics and current events--the tragicomedy of human existence. Something that those who invoke the trendy lyrical crutches of George Bush and Iraq are incapable of--or simply not interested in--conveying.
And where the current crop of younger folk musicians plead in strained arias over wandering dissonant chords for the audience to sympathize with their tragic heartbreak and their "struggles" of being an "artist" (imagine the entire lyrical catalog of Bob Seger, but less Detroit) Jonah Daniel directs his lyrical focus outwards. Not to the lofty concepts of war or capitalism, but to slice-of-life picaresque tales of downtrodden characters. Don't pity me--he says--pity these characters. Pity the sad-sack junkie in his song "Something In Me Takes To Damnation" who proclaims proudly, yet ironically that he's ". . .got hookups in Truckee!"
When Jonah Daniel does step outside of his characters, which he frequently does in his concluding verses--he doesn't turn the attention to himself. Instead, he addresses us, the audience. With verbal dexterity, he makes the connection we've all been waiting for: We're all in this together. We've ALL got something in our eye.
And if you can't--or won't--make this thematic leap with him, it doesn't really matter in the long run. Because the music is good. It's aggressive and economical. And it's a reason for those barroom customers who might get up and go out for a cigarette whenever the latest clone of Ani DiFranco or Dave Matthews takes the stage for yet another ten-minute long uninspired ballad of self-indulgent self-pity to sit back and have another beer.Don't leave. The real show is just getting started.
