What's going on?

I've been writing again. For over a year after the completion of my first book, I took time off to rest and recuperate, it being a five year journey, and a solitary one at that. Some of what I've been working on is general research into future projects that are non-fiction, while others are short stories--most in early drafts, embryonic form--and one fictional screenplay that might end up being a short film of around ten minutes, one reel.

My feeling now is that I would prefer to work on fiction with some non-fiction essays and research on a few narrow topics. I'm not telling what they are right now for a variety of reasons. Pets, caring for my ailing mother, yardwork, work of all kinds, & helping my niece do homework. Life's pretty good right now. No one's fucking with that. Expectations require throwing money. In other words, serious enquiries only. I am very open to questions and comments about the DC Madam book. However, I know a waste of time when I see one and you'll be ignored if you ask impertinent ones or simply want to have some catharsis with me thanks to your bad childhood.

Speaking (more like writing-or "writhing") of that, as the world has become more hopelessly lost, I've become more obsessed with cinema, not really a surprise, but there it is. Because of that, I'm thinking of keeping this blog going but starting another one that's only about movies, therefore, it will have reviews and some commentary, observations, and whatnot, on the current state of cinema and where it's been.

Oddly, the hits to the blog have risen substantially while I've been fucking around on Twitter. Top three nations of readers are as follows, in order: USA, France, & the Ukraine, fancy that. Yes, the less you write, the more people want to read. Human beings are perverse like that.

And in the spirit of that thought, that's all you're getting for now.

Gimp of the Perverse II: Will the real Jack Burkman please stand up?

Ed.--I got an interesting comment from someone purporting to be a former girlfriend of Mr. Burkman. This one's juicier than the rest, but it corresponds to other communications I've received about him from others sources who I am certain did date him at one point. This comment--from October as OWS was gestating--went unmoderated for some time, I wasn't paying attention with the editing/revising work on the DC Madam account.

All the breaks are original, no edits, as with the others:

October 2011 comment: http://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=32294008&postID=6232334077798997076

I dated Jack for a considerable amount of time, and can say without a doubt, the man has SEVERE issues when it comes to women.

With respect to his dearly departed Mommie Dearest, Jack sure loves to have a daily chat with her in his mirror. At first, I thought it was a joke before recognizing that he considers it a "real" discussion. Thankfully, Mother gave her blessing for our relationship *shudder*

He believes that ALL women are whores and out to "get his money", yet he likes to buy his way into your life. And thus, Jack attends church in Tyson's Corner almost every weekend, in a laughable attempt to cleanse himself of his sins.

What would those be?!

Oh gosh golly gee, Jack likes to think of himself as a VERY dirty birdy.

Forget the DC Madam scandal---I'm astonished that no one has posted about his frequent trips to the Spearmint Rhino or the Red Rooster in Las Vegas!

Essentially, Jack must feel in complete control of his romantic relationships:

1) He needs a woman who will stimulate him intellectually. Bonus points if she can banter about about the declining moral fiber of America, and constantly praise his efforts to educate people about strong family values.

2) He insists "his" woman act as arm candy at the many DC hotel bars he frequents BUT you're forbidden from directly speaking to any other men... including bartenders, bellmen OR cab drivers.

3) He will withhold sex because he loves you (Madonna), yet he'll ask if it would be okay if he can satisfy his needs elsewhere (Whore). And you're possessed by the Devil himself if you even think about masturbating! haha

He has many great attributes, which is why I accepted most of the flaws. It was only after he threatened me physically that I called it quits, and severed all contact.

Oddly enough, Jack's brother is normal. Last I heard, he was a physician in Seattle.

A note to the lady in question: I would like to discuss more of this with you. Feel free to contact me at the email address on my profile. I will honor your wishes for confidentiality.

James Dobson, Jack Burkman & the DC Madam

The Rev. James Dobson, former founder of Focus on the Family, former human being, has been telling evangelicals that if they don't vote to the right that God's going to be angry at them, some such bullshit flowing from his sewer-shaped orifice. Normal people don't take to this swill, but then, there's Republicans, evangelicals, the Aryan Nations crowd, the Tea Party demographic (a very tiny one comprised mostly of middle-aged small business owners), and the Klan. In the backdrop of all this are the lobbyists, war profiteers, criminal banks, criminal management subcultures, speculators, lawyers--the criminals who have hijacked the system--doing their do while the rubes think they're accomplishing something. OK, they are: the dismemberment of their own rights, so there.

I've written on Jack Burkman more than I cared to. He's a good argument for sterilization. What I have concluded is that as a golden tiered lobbyist, media pundit for the right, and whatever hat he's wearing this week attached to his utility-belt, this guy is no good for America or the world. He's not just typical folks, he's up there at the summit, part of the problem, a threat to the Republic. We're all entitled to freedom of association, but these fuckers take it to the breaking point into organized crime. I don't really give a shit if it gets a free pass from all the other criminals in office, it's a subversion of the rule of law. Dobson is telling his flock and anyone foolish enough to listen to him seriously that if they don't vote Republican, forget it, God's going to be angry, watch out, eek, oh, aw. Does this shit ever get tired for these jackapes? Do they think with the primeval part of the brain underneath the cerebellum more often than not? Hey, were it not affecting the rest of the world, fuck if I care, but it is. Burkman is just one more cheerleader on the runaway train called Western capitalism. These clowns have taken us to the edge of the cliff now, whatever's coming is coming sooner rather than later, and it will be big, nothing will ever be the same again. Their reaction? To try to clamp down on the rest of us because they know intuitively that they're the problem, a source of dysfunction, and that this dysfunction is going to wash them out of power soon. They send out the usual clods like Burkamn to distract, divide, to demoralize.

Nothing he or they have to say is going to wash with the majority, however, so they wrap it in religion and patriotism, nationalist iconography, so the rank tasting pill will go down for the slack-jawed crowd. Rawstory had a recent blurb on Dobson, his recent utterances on how we're all supposed to be voting. I posted a comment relating to the cynicism of the Burkman/Dobson relationship since the former has spoken as a representative to the phony preacher man, the founder of Focus on the Family, which in turn created the Family Research Council. It's more right wing attacks on the separation of church and state, but also to get evangelicals to vote stupidly, to vote Republican.

Burkman is a well-known pussyhound who loves fucking almost anything in sight. He's not exactly the model of behavior that Dobson's advocating either. Why would he care? Burkman has promoted him and his agenda, a mutually beneficial one with the GOP, he gets results. Caring about the behavior of others is for the flock--with exceptions like these. Dobson has never come out criticizing Burkman for this behavior.

To believe in nothing is nihilism:

Dobson only cares about temporal power, he's ashen inside. His mouthpiece Jack Burkman was found by multiple researchers in the DC Madam's phone bills--he did a callback to her escort service, so it wasn't a mistake, especially with each instance years apart.

Burkman was given incredible cover by the mainstream press, it was extraordinary, suggesting a media campaign to contain the scandal generally, to contain the damage to the GOP. They couldn't keep a lid on Larry Flynt with Senator Vitter, but they could with Jack. Burkman goes out spouting the same family values garbage as Dobson--for Dobsons in fact. Vitter got an award from the FRC for his work in promoting family values in the Senate, in hotels, with hookers, you know...

Bill Maher had him on his shows so often I question whether they might be friends, something over two dozen. He's not just spouting GOP swill on Fox, hardly. He's all over the place as a "voice of the right." He was a high level campaign adviser to the 2004 Bush/Cheney campaign. The media ignored his presence in the phone records because of his other job, a pattern you will find in the phone records: lots of lobbying related entities, individuals, most in defense/intelligence or related contracting, like SAIC or Qualcomm. SAIC is all over the phone records. I think the whole scandal was about influence peddling being uncovered in Hookergate with investigations turning up a lot of stones with the escort services in DC., finally accelerating the investigation in Palfrey. It didn't help that the November 2006 midterms were coming, so someone interim appointed (for other reasons too) Jeffrey Taylor...now at Ernst & Young, who have a revolving door relationship with their executives and those at Qualcomm. There's something major there with Burkman for almost all of the press to uniformly go silent on it. That's because they could with him, not Vitter, not Tobias, etc.

There are more phone records out there, she didn't release all of them. It's possible I have everything, however, as I was a member of the defense as a general researcher, hired at Palfrey's request. I've seen Dan Moldea's findings. There are quite a few more names in them of significance, but patterns are what matter most. That doesn't really fit Flynt's format, he wants hypocritical office holders, they're the ones in his sights. Burkman isn't an elected official, he wouldn't stand up to the scrutiny--probably wouldn't know he was doing something wrong, heh. Word in the Beltway is that he's chasing women all of the time. Then there was the anecdote about him walking around DC (he's a gimp) coming to a Gay Pride parade and propositioning a lesbian couple for sex. The girl put story up on her Myspace page with a scan of his business card, but it was yanked. Wonkette's story on it was also taken down, or at least one or two of them, and so on.

I've communicated with a few of the girls that Jack has...well, fucked. He's not remotely in the Dobson mold in his real life, a very sexual one at that, and he has purchased birth control for at least one of them, the morning after pill. Does James Dobson give a shit? Of course not, Burkman is his hire, his media mercenary, his spokesman, his lobbyist. Burkman cut his teeth working as a congressional staffer during the GOP's endless assault on the also corrupt Bill Clinton, another political operative. Now he's a golden tiered lobbyist. Results. Those are what Dobson wants, gets, and so, he would never admit Burkman was this way unless he had no choice. These people are the lowest form of life on the planet, below the amoeba, lethal mutations. There's a presidency on the cancer...

Expect more on Mr. Burkman in my upcoming account on the DC Madam.

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/11/08/dobson-we-are-in-serious-trouble-with-god-if-we-vote-wrong-in-2012/

From a recent Yo-Gabba-Gabba! show in Chicago...

Happy Thanksgiving to everyone, even PETA!

WWW--Have a warm and safe holiday, don't eat too much causing a food buzz and vomiting and be sure to tell the chef that everything's great! Also, whatever you do, watch the PETA ad that they won't be showing on television but are showing on television and making my head hurt. I'm not a vegetarian, so I'll be enjoying the full effect of this holiday, thanks Squanto!

C'mon, most card-carrying PETA members wouldn't want me to hunt and eat the wild turkeys around our house either. Yes, factory farming is bad, family farms were much more environmentally sound, and if you want to attack it, fine, do ads. But not like the ones they do. Grossing people out isn't going to accomplish a lot and most of us aren't as neurotic about what's at the end of a fork. You can tell from most of the material that PETA puts out that they used to think meat was made at the grocery store and someone burst their bubble. Don't preach, nobody wants to hear it's "immoral."

Yes, I find the conditions of those facilities horrific--that's what government regulations are for, go get a bill sponsored. Better yet, how about some suggesting some alternatives, like a decentralized farming model that moves away from monoculture? But nobody wants to hear that "it's wrong" to eat animals, it's not a moral argument and more a religious belief.

My favorite photo, and the turning of the wheel...

This is a photograph of my mother and grandfather. He'd just returned from WWII, from the European theater, having served under that nut General George "Blood and Guts" Patton. My mother looks so thrilled to see her daddy coming home. WWII was necessary.

Military-style fascism had to be crushed in Germany and Japan and all of the occupied territories. But this same fascism still infects America, and it must be crushed. Luckily, it's extinguishing itself.

My grandfather never fully recovered from his experiences in the war. For the rest of his life, he was very nervous man with a hair-trigger temper. He couldn't connect very well with my mother because she had been born in 1944, after he'd left to serve in the Army. He wasn't a dumbass, he was drafted, he didn't enlist. I respect him for this greatly. He had sense. When he came back, the economy was far worse than it is right now (just wait). What can I say? He was a good man who found it hard to express his feelings to his family, but we loved him just the same.

Today, I dug-out some of these old photos to show to my three-year-old niece, Zofia, to show her what her grandma looked like as a baby (exactly like Zofia, since we have non-recessive genes). She's a precocious little baby with a big heart and a mostly peaceful temperment. She rarely cries. She's a joy. When I showed her this and other photos and told her "This is grandma," she said, "No--this is Zofia!"

Rollie and Billie, father and daughter, finally united--it was 1946, and the Cold War had yet to be invented by the politicians (mainly the utterly corrupt GOP). When the wars have ended, when tyranny has been smashed, when people finally learn to live amongst one another in relative peace, and when we realize that we're all a family, we'll have the same moment of love that Rollie and Billie lived 62-years-ago. That moment was--and is--love. Love for ourselves and each other, because it really is that simple. The circle is unbroken.

My Garden, Our Garden

The Family Homestead--This is my first year cultivating a garden on the plot that my grandparents had for around 40 years. When they first moved to this house in 1963, the soil was sandy and rocky--almost barren. But for all that time, they enriched the soil in our 2 acres of land with their composting, giving it a richness to be envied. I miss them so, and so do our neighbors here who knew them. My grandfather died in December of 2003, and until this Spring, I was just too depressed and reluctant to start a new garden here.

But this year, it was time, and with a new life in our family (my niece), that time had come to bring more life into this world. There's something spiritual about growing your own food, it's a feeling that I cannot fully describe. It's not only emotionally-liberating, but it gives you a sense that everything is possible again, that life begins anew every year and that little else matters (except love and friendship). I know, what the hell is he gibbering about on a site that's filled with a lot of ugly themes about an ugly era?

Because: we all need to return to our own private gardens, a return to the arboreal, to our personal Edens. Plants have always held a fascination for me, and I sometimes have visions of a better life, and they're always there in the images. They're dreams of my childhood, when I used to wander through forests, through the ruins of the House of David in Northwestern Michigan (and its environs), and through nearby forests here in Indiana. Nature was always my asylum, a place of mystery and of joy. It still is.

This garden has healed my soul in ways I could never have imagined, and has helped me understand what I'm capable of. It hasn't just been an empowering experience, it's been one of self-actualization. So has this blog, but it can never do the work that my--our--garden has.

I've grown: leeks, cauliflower, eggplants, peppers, red and green onions, maize, four varieties of tomatoes, cantaloupes, and yellow squash. Not only has this helped lower our food-costs, it's made me feel very whole, more alive than I've ever felt. The feelings of accomplishment are beyond words--it just feels good. I and my family aren't eating so much processed-food because of it. My German ancestors did this for countless millennia--my mother's maiden name is "Blough, which sometimes has been spelled "Plough"--and I have to wonder if this knowledge is somehow passed-down in our genes, because it was so easy, so natural.

That's not to say it wasn't a lot of physical work, but it came simply, without very much trouble. I literally only had to dust for insects a couple times, and don't believe in using pesticides that much. That's it. You can go now. Try growing a garden sometime if it strikes your fancy, I couldn't recommend it more highly.

You didn't ask for it, but you're getting it: Baby Zofia!

South Bend, Indiana--Here's an older photo of my niece, little baby Zofia (we had no-choice in the spelling of her name, I would have used an "S"). This is the first-time Baby Z played drums ever! She was just one, now she's two.

I didn't and still don't care about the death of my father's mother, who could best be described as an undiagnosed psychotic. Conversely, when my grandmother and grandfather died (my mother's parents), it was devastating to my family and still is. Family is family, and not purely by blood, but also through behavior. Cruelty has its price: alienation. "Lil" had no friends left before her final descent into madness and dementia, and she earned it.

But this baby is the best consolation we could ever have for those we have loved and lost, and she looks so much like a Blough--like my mother and brother especially--that it's uncanny. Babies are such a joyous occasion, the good-side of life, and her coming helped me understand that life goes on and that mortality is necessary. She's the sweetest little baby I've ever had the honor to know, and this blog is my humble contribution towards making a better world for her to live in. Getting your hands dirty is part of the job, and there's a lot of work to do. How do we begin making a better world?

A first-step means taxing the ultra-rich out-of-existence and ending the legal existence of corporations. It's our world too, including Zofia's.

All I can think of is this baby's smile and her giggles. A natural musician? We'll see, it runs on my mother's side of the family! My great-grandmother played barrel house and juke-joint piano, ragtime, etc., like a charm. And girls can play drums now, it's safe to come out! We're all going to live together or die together, and babies are why we must have peace in this world, forget the adults.

Revised 10.13.2008

My Mother's Father (1922-2003) Part I

My grandfather was such a good man, but he was troubled by the world that he lived through. He never found a good way to express this until the very end of his life, which I find sad. His was a life that is no more and an America that is long-gone.

In many respects, this is a good thing, but it's impossible to say that I don't miss him or the generation he was a part of, now receding into the twilight. I won't say that my grandfather's generation was the " greatest [American] generation"--it wasn't. Most of the racists who beat civil rights activists, and even murdered them, were of the WWII generation. They were as wrong as one can be, but they weren't the whole story.

There were and are many shades of racism, and it's a part of our basic anthropology, almost innate to us. This isn't to say that people cannot overcome it, but it's a tendency within all of us as human beings. I think of racism as the greatest tragedy of the human experience. Were it not for the fact that I was shunted into the worst classes with the Black kids, I might not understand this. I understand discrimination well, and Black Americans have my admiration and empathy for the crap they have to put-up-with. I hate most White Americans myself, they're generally pigs. That said, it doesn't excuse reverse-discrimination or a racist response.

My grandfather was bigoted to-a-point, and I lament this fact, but he still saw Black Americans (and other so-called minorities) as people. God, the times he would bait me with racial-comments--he was a teaser, he loved to pick. But he didn't hate Black people, and he was a friendly man for the most part. He worked with them at his factory job at a ball-bearing plant (Torrington) for decades and had a few Black acquaintances. For someone like Rollie, this was a very big step indeed.

His job was building the equipment and tools for the machinists, and he did it for about twenty years. Before that, he and my grandmother worked in other factories and munitions-plants like many in their generation. Interestingly, he was discriminated against at his job for a variety-of-reasons (some due to his personality!). South Bend is a town that is almost predominantly Polish and Hungarian, with the rest falling-off from there. However, with the influx of Hispanics, it's changing rapidly as it is in many places in the United States. Most of these ethnic groups had (and have) one thing in-common: Catholicism, and the cold, cruel, Old world exclusionary version of it. America is a very primitive and tribally oriented place. Tribalism is for the birds and needs to go the way of organized religion. It needs to die. If that's community, you can have it, and I'm glad that the modern world is crushing it.

Like in most American cities that have ethnic enclaves, each group really just takes care of its own. South Bend has been, and is, no different in this. Each group tended to discriminate, especially when one wasn't Catholic. In truth, my family has probably been discriminated-against on this basis more than we'll ever know. This is ironic, since I was baptised a Catholic! My grandparents weren't very active religiously, which I still admire. They taught me from an early-age, "Don't ever trust the preacherman, he doesn't know anymore than you do. He just wants your money." This is pure prairie Populism, a tradition I am more-than-proud-of. After being forced to attend congregationalist churches with my father, this belief was only reinforced, what hollow, meaningless-crap. If Jesus showed-up, they would turn him away because he would be in-rags, they wouldn't recognize him if he was glowing.

My grandparents didn't trust authority of any kind, a lesson for us all, because they saw authority abused during their lives. I believe that the time has come again for prairie Populism's resurrection, only this time it won't be agrarian, and just a simple expression of the will of the people in different times. What could be more beautiful and sacred than the unprompted assertion of humanity by ordinary people? My family comes from this tradition, and our familial culture extends-back to our Anabaptist ancestors in Germany and possibly Switzerland. Somehow, it survived organically within our family's culture.

The Anabaptists were the first religious group in Western Europe to call for a separation of Church and State. I suspect we've always been anti-clerical, and anti-war (excepting defensive wars of survival) in some ways, but WWII was necessary. Few would argue this, and fascism had to be stopped. It really was the good war to my mind. It was the aftermath that the politicians and big businessmen screwed-up, and keeping them in-check is the role of the people. The "world's greatest generation" tried to do this, but I believe the postwar economic-boom caused many of them to lapse into forgetfulness--they forgot who the enemy really was, namely concentrated wealth.

My grandfather was from Kansas, while my grandmother was from Arkansas. Her family were literally dirt-farmers, and she was a mountain-girl, and such a lovely and warm woman. She was a real-life Cinderella. When she died, I nearly went with her, the shock was so overwhelming. She was literally my second mother. My grandfather's family moved to Arkansas (Marshall, I believe) during the late-1920s, and this is how they met.

His father was insane--he was both a Freemason (Masonry teaches universal brotherhood!) and a member of the KKK during the 1920s (probably because of the movie "The Birth of a Nation"), and one of the earliest Jehovah's witnesses. He'd had a good-paying job with the railroad as an engineer, but he was basically an abusive asshole who felt he was always right. So, he quit his job, and moved his family to start a farm during worst period in American history to start one (except now), right before the Great Depression! I was told many stories about the dustbowl and the dust storms that blanketed parts of the South, Southwest, and plains states, as a child.

They were stories of an apocalypse, a wall of death that smothered everything. Entire families were found suffocated-to-death in their shacks and farm houses according to my grandparents and the historical record. The Bloughs nearly starved-to-death, and eventually the hothead had to get another job. He was also a physically-abusive man, and rarely spoke to his children.

Things got better for them, gradually, in Arkansas. My grandfather was one of the only young men in his town with a car (a 1929 model A Ford with a rumble seat--I've ridden in a rumble seat! Fun!). My grandparents met at a dance that could have been out of a John Steinbeck novel, and they knew the life he wrote about intimately. They were poor, but luckier than many. They had food. My grandparents met at a public dance in Arkansas in the late-1930s.

There wasn't much work to be had, so my grandfather joined the CCC (Civilian Conservation Corps, public works jobs provided by the New Deal). He always talked fondly about his experiences with the CCC and said that we should do it again as a nation. This was no Leftist firebrand, no radical, but a unionized worker who slaved his entire life. He was no fool, which is what America has been overpopulated with for some time.

I heartily agree with his sentiments about public service, and I think that it should be compulsory in our society, and mandatory for all economic strata. This goes for war. The draft should be reinstated as a first-step towards ending our love affair with overseas meddling, and our bloated military budgets must be slashed for all time. The time for beating our swords into plowshares has come. We should look to past wars as they're instructive of what not to do.

The invasion of Poland on September 1st, 1939 dragged the world into a global conflict. The world was aflame. This takes us to 1940 in the lives of my grandparents...

Revised 10.13.2008