Here’s my second interview since 2002. It’s with bassist Joe Burcaw. We have a lot in common, and we would likely disagree on nearly everything if we got into it politically and socially. But why would I do that to Joe? I like his playing. That’s all that matters. There was one question that I…
How did we come to this?
May 3, 2014
Soylent Green is one of my favorite movies. It takes place in 2022, eight years from now. When Charleton Heston brings fresh food to elderly Edward G. Robinson, for a few seconds Robinson is ecstatic, and then he breaks down and sobs, “How did we come to this?” What he means is how did we…
A monster turns on its creators
April 28, 2014
By now you’ve probably heard that Los Angeles Clippers owner Donald Sterling was allegedly taped telling his mistress to not bring black people to the games and to not post photos on Instagram of herself with black men. The woman goes by several aliases, including V. Stiviano. She’s said to be part black and part…
The Wahabbist bravely ran away
April 27, 2014
I’ve acquired a fan on YouTube. Well, not so much a fan as a foam-spewing Canadian cartoon made flesh. He’s now following me around and commenting when I comment. I challenged him to a debate, but the Wahabbist bravely ran away. It all started when I was looking for a specific video write a post…
The sword is mightier than the mouth
April 27, 2014
Yesterday a writer got angry at me for pointing out that her Facebook post opposing the canonizing of the late Pope John Paul II was a waste of time. And I was right. The canonizing went ahead. The writer said that her task is to speak out against the Catholic church because of the ongoing…
Estrangement
April 23, 2014
Today I read of two things that underscore my estrangement from what I guess would be called the mainstream world. But they also show how far I’ve come in my drive to banish the rage that shackled me. First, I saw a piece about a writer whose story is being covered by most of the…
Gibberish and massive bags. And free e-books
April 18, 2014
Thomas Piketty is a French economist who’s here in the US on a tour for his new book Capital in the Twenty-First Century. He’s a professor at the Paris School of Economics and a purveyor of gibberish and massive bags. When I saw his photo, I was reminded of an e-mail I got from a…
How screwed are we? THIS screwed.
April 14, 2014
This isn’t the same country it was when I was young. I lived in Tyler, Texas, from 1972 to 1975; Portland, Oregon, from 1981 to 1985; San Francisco, California, from 1991 to 1993; and Los Angeles from 1993 to the present. I’ve never seen such publicly expressed insanity as I’m seeing now. We are screwed….
Knowledge is power
April 11, 2014
Today I got a frantic message about an article by the execrable Seymour Hersh, one of the most dishonest “journalists” in the business. Titled “The Red Line and the Rat Line,” the piece claims—without presenting any evidence whatsoever—that Turkey provided the sarin nerve gas that was used in the Damascus suburb of Ghouta on August…