God Bless Kathy Griffin

tv--Yeah, I was watching this--because I'm aware that CNN producers have a sense of humor and touch of genius in pairing her with the annoying Anderson Cooper™, who referred charitably to an accurate statement someone made that he's "the Carrot top of news journalism." That he is.

But some assholes were heckling Kathy, and she let them have it as any self-respecting seasoned comedienne would have: "Shut up! ...You know what? Screw you! I'm working! Why don't you get a job, buddy? You know what? I don't go to your job and knock the dicks out of your mouth!" Amen.

You have to lover her irreverence, her brutal honesty, and her unwillingness to take any shit from anyone. Her comments on receiving awards and thanking Jesus are spot-on: "A lot of people come up here and thank Jesus for this award. I want you to know that no one had less to do with this award than Jesus. Suck it, Jesus. This award is my god now."

So mote it be. I would marry a woman like this tomorrow, just without the plastic surgery scars. Kathy would agree, and violently.

But what's so enjoyable about the Griffin/Cooper dyad is that she knows what scares him, likely half the reason she made a comment about oral sex. Yet, he's starting to go along with her, he "gets" it, and I think they're both starting to enjoy the interplay. Yes, he reported rumors in New Orleans as truth--he's no journalist, which is OK--but he at least has a sense of humor about himself. Good show for both of them, and here's to a coming decade of Jacobean irreverence.

America could use more women like her, the kind who stir shit up for all the right reasons. Prudes and Puritans everywhere are running for cover, and you gotta love that.

http://www.kathygriffin.net/

Goodbye, 2008

And so comes the death of another month and another year. It was a year of incredible revelations and stunning inaction from Congress, a time when a woman--among many other defendants, I presume--was run to her death by federal prosecutors and the Court, and warrantless surveillance was legalized allowing 60s radicals to say, "We told you so, we weren't paranoid."

It was a year when the economy began crashing as it would inevitably do under the GOP, and we can thank whatever deities we worship that it hit on their watch. Curiously, Americans never blamed the Bush II administration for its failure to prevent 9/11, but that's just too complicated for most folks to understand, I guess.

2008 was also the year that Alex Constantine made peculiar legal threats towards me after calling me a liar several times on his own site, not giving him very solid ground to stand on, and a year when I angered a few thousand readers and subjects (often the same thing!) with my writing. This is ironic, considering the number of liars and barracudas I've encountered in the whole Palfrey saga, it didn't paint a pretty picture of most of them. Somehow, I'm not supposed to have opinions on such things, at least according to some out there. Too bad for them, because I'm not going away anytime soon.

What's interesting is this: they're just my opinions, ostensibly my right as an American. I got a right.

Have hope, we're about to be freed from the shackles of consumerism and overwork, my strong belief of what's to come. It won't just happen, however. We have to make it happen with demands, very strident ones. I believe Obama is going to be an improvement only because there's nowhere else to go but up.

America is being pushed very far leftward by events birthed by very right-wing individuals and institutions who have wrecked their own blessed "market economy." This pleases me to no end: the GOP has potentially pushed us closer to being a socialist economy than FDR or LBJ ever could have.

This gives me a great deal of hope. Why? Because if we had kept going down the road we were before our economic problems began, we'd truly be doomed--there would be no hope at the end of that. Additionally, economic and political elites are now going to be forced to deliver on the promises of prosperity and a reaffirmation of the social contract. They know the options are few and more unpleasant.

On that note, have a happier new year, and make a new friend, someone who has your back for real. If they don't, they aren't a friend.

--Matt Janovic

Thank you Secretary of the Treasury Hank Paulson, for saving us all

Washington D.C.--The man who looks a lot like he's headed for multiple-strokes (and why not) misspoke this week. No, he wasn't lying about some crime he had direct-involvement in...OK, I guess he did, but that's not the point.

Earlier this week, Paulson said we "have turned the corner on the economic crisis...and averted a financial collapse." Wow, does he like tempting the fates and the goddess called Providence.

Today, we're seeing the market react rationally to his Mesopotamian comments: the market's DOW Jones industrial standard went down below 8,000, or 7, 997.28, the lowest in at least five years. Yep, those comments are really having an effect on the market alright.

Consumer spending has hit a monthly-low in October with the biggest drop since 1947 (see the article a few posts below on lame-duck President Bush's comments on this at Federal Hall last week for yucks), a stunning 1%. Thanks Hank, keep talking, and see your doctor about your health, you look like shit. Such are the permutations of history overwhelming the scoundrels who have been on our necks for ages.

Maybe he'll hit some luck and contract Lou Gehrig's disease, but I heard it died with him. Were I Paulson, I'd emigrate somewhere very remote before Americans start burning him in-effigy. "But why not burn him in Washington?" says my cat. Indeed, why not?

Bush attempts human speech--as opposed to Cthuloid--at Federal Hall:

http://chickasawpicklesmell.blogspot.com/2008/11/bush-ruminates-on-failure-of-60-years.html

A'murka

The Right of Rule: "Drill baby, drill, and mine, baby, mine" and other yucks from the 2008 unelection

The GOP Campaign Trail of Tears--Those catch-phrases worked so well, didn't they? "Joe the plumber," "Bill Ayers," "pals around with terrorists," and all the rest we'll be happy to forget, didn't work so well this time. We know why.

The economy is a mess because the GOP held the White House and most of Congress for several years, and the Democrats stood down and let them run amok. They also won't hold the Bush administration truly accountable for what can only be described as the greatest political and corporate crime wave that this nation has ever seen.

It would more-than-behoove President-elect Obama to at least call for the creation of a massive independent investigation into the crimes committed by the Bush administration and her allies from 2000 to their last day in office. But there are a number of problems with this, namely logistical ones.

President Obama will have his hands-full in his first 100 days in office. Only FDR faced the kind of daunting challenges that the President-elect faces today. Is he up for it? We don't know this, but if he isn't, nobody is, and does he really have the will to do it? It doesn't matter. I personally don't think that President-elect Obama is going to have any choice on a whole swath of issues, except to address them directly and constructively. But it's also unlikely that he's going to have the time to go after Republican--and numerous Democratic--criminals who aided-and-abetted George W. Bush and his agenda. It's also not exactly his job, but that of Congress. There's another very specific problem.

Obama was one of these congressional enablers of the Bush White House, though as far as we know, not criminally. Obama voted for the FISA rewrite that now allows for widespread surveillance of the American public (and retroactive immunity for the telecoms that participated), essentially every major appropriations bill for the endless occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan, and a lot of other issues that don't instill trust in those who want the public good addressed.

Cabinet picks like Rahm Emanuel (a man reminiscent of Dutch Schultz) don't bode well either, but it has to be stated again: what choice are they going to have but to drawdown in the Middle East, and what choice are they going to have except to mandate sweeping political and business reforms and social spending? Yes, they could just do nothing, the wrong thing, and even the opposite of what the electorate voted them in to do. But these aren't normal times. They could act--or not act at all--but there are consequences for "business-as-usual" during a major crisis. Besides, President-elect Obama has already given the GOP the ammunition they wanted in another form.

By breaking his promise and not taking anymore government funds for his election, Barack Obama decided against a grassroots election with transparency and threw in his lot with corporate America. Knowing this as more than a little of a mistake tactically, the GOP is already making their own narrative of this new era, and they're going to attempt to steal the Democratic Party's "outsider" card away from them. It won't be very difficult, sad to say. Propaganda has to have a kernal of truth to it, but this time, when the GOP accuses the future Obama administration of being backed by "special interests," they'll be almost entirely correct.

This isn't to say that they're any different, but this time they assiduously kept the McCain campaign on-track for the aforementioned reasons--it gives them a lifeline for their survival and a comeback. This back-and-forth between the two party system doesn't have a lot of milage left in it before a real collapse, and if the new Democratic majority doesn't deliver in a big way, we could see riots and general strikes across the nation.

It's very possible that our economy is going to go into a genuine free-fall, a depression. Without radical reforms and unprecedented government response, change is going to come from below anyway. You could bring back every single American solider, sailor, and pilot, to the continental United States, and it wouldn't quell the disorder.

The question is, will it be constructive or destructive uprising if things reach that point?

My feeling is that it's going to be constructive. Granted that if we have a tragedy, it's going to be all of our faults, but Congress and a future Obama administration will be shouldering a great share of the blame. They directly created this mess by abrogating their responsibility of oversight and checks and balances, and that's for starters.

Yes, "Drill, baby, drill," might sound like the title of a Russ Meyer movie, but equally empty rhetoric came out of the Obama campaign. None of this matters. There is a time when the same old lies don't work anymore, and that time is now. Without a total rollback of the last eight years, we may as well have voted McCain/Palin. Then--at least--we could get this collapse under our belt. Many of the same reforms would come anyway. Reality trumps hope.

Reality: They're only in there because we tolerate them.

This can end when they no longer have the ability to provide. That time is here, now.

If Obama becomes president-elect

A'murka--Look, you have no idea how thrilling the idea of a Black American president is to me. The only single group of Americans that I've consistently had respect for besides Jews are Black people. Not Poles, not German-Americans, not anyone else.

But the problem is, we're probably all going to hate Obama after he's done very little in the social agendas we all need expedited. We're going to have to fight and pressure him to do what's right. Even if the Democrats somehow win a veto-proof and filibuster-proof majority in both houses of Congress, most of them are going to do their best along with the Republicans to derail any substantial social-dividend.

That's right: I'm saying that if Obama wins, in three-years you're all going to hate him and think he's the same kind of son-of-a-bitch that's leaving office on January 20th, 2009. Why do I think this? My knowledge of American history and its trends and cycles, especially regarding the last 30 years. That said, I wouldn't dissuade many voters from casting their votes for candidate Barack Obama, and would never advocate them voting for a Republican in any lifetime. Obama's record is hardly sterling or pure on a social agenda, let alone on the wars in the Middle East, nor regarding the obvious crimes of the Bush administration.

Obama has voted for funding for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq without exception, and there are troubling-signs elsewhere. For a former professor of constitutional law, he has some very peculiar viewpoints on what's acceptable behavior by a presidential administration. He has not called for the prosecution of a patently criminal administration, let alone for its impeachment. While it's true that he didn't vote for the authorization of force in Iraq, it's even money that he would have, his only out being that he wasn't a member of Congress at the time.

Mark these words: you're going to hate this man if he wins, and in a very short time...unless you apply extraordinary pressure on him and Congress to push for a more social agenda for all, a genuine redistribution of wealth that's unprecedented in our history. Only then can we be a viable nation that can compete on the world stage, bringing-back a nation that was once an innovator in so many areas.

This requires breaking the logjam of concentrated power, that greatest threat to ingenuity, spontaneity, and inventiveness that really did make this a great nation at one time. My feeling is he's going to blow it because he's going to be told to by his handlers. He shows all the warning-signs. I'm voting Nader/Gonzales so I can sleep at night.

A new plan for Seward's icebox, by Len Davinny

Below is the logo for Alaskan Independence Party.

Now listen carefully: First we help them secede and achieve nationhood. Then we declare war on a made-up pretext like destruction of the international ecological balance (don't worry about us being more to blame than anyone else, truth has never stood in our way in the past, trust me on that), invade, and take possession of mineral rights though not admitting it as usual, and then we deal with their former Head of State. Just like in Iraq.

Only we feed her to a lovable AIP mascot, just like the one on the romantic, maverickishly- inspired logo. Case closed.

"Poor Old 'Joe the Plumber' " line being parroted by mainstream press

WWW--Yes, "poor" old Sam is getting his ass kicked all over the terra because he felt compelled to make inane comments towards Barack Obama, on taxes, lied about his occupation and name, and why he has such a stupid haircut. The abuse came, as it tends to, from the late night shows like David Letterman, Conan O'Brien, and the Tonight Show.

So what? You knew the cameras were around, and you knew your own past...or did you? Get over it. Grow-up. "Sam the plumber" deserves no defending whatsoever, and he decided to open his big mouth, chasing-down the candidate and the news crews with his predictably unimportant comments on the state of America. With luck, he and others like him will never vote again if they plan on it always being for the GOP.

Lesson: people with storied pasts should watch what they say regarding issues like taxation when they have their own questionable behaviors surrounding said issues. Wurzelbacher is a 34-year-old blowhard and a tax-cheat.

Nuff said, but even (even?!) CNN's Lou Dobbs is out there asking with unbelievable temerity: "Has Plumber Joe been treated unfairly by the media?" No. How about asking yourself, Lou? Stupid, just stupid. Quit embarrassing me, America. Nice try, GOP, it didn't work. Pathetic.

$700 Billion bailout plan online!

Washington D.C.--Now quick kids, go get your Dick Tracy decoder-ring, some 3-D glasses, and some very strong hallucinogens, or the plan won't make any sense.

Listen to what the critics are saying about this exciting new motion picture:

"This is the same politics of fear we're hearing from the financial fat cats on Wall Street."
--Rep. Ted Poe (R-Tx.)

"The $700 billion bailout is driven by fear, not fact."
--Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Oh.)

"We've made great progress."
--House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Cal.)

"These criminals have so much political power they can shut down the normal legislative process."
--Rep. Marcy Kaptur (D-Oh.)

"I think we're there."
--Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson

"This morning we should be very much alarmed."
--Rep. Scott Garrett (R-N.J.)

"I think the devil is in the details."
--Rep. Eric Cantor (R-Va.)

That's right, there is no fucking deal on the Wall Street bailout. In just moments, the Asian markets will open with no solid deal in either house of Congress because you have both parties throwing the hot-potato back at each other, back-and-forth. This makes sense when you understand that both parties are to blame for the mess. Meanwhile, the effect on global markets will continue unabated. Belgium's financial giant Fortis is soon to go the way of WaMu, Merrill-Lynch, Wachovia, Ameribank, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and all the others coming soon to a theater near you.

But you have to hand it to the GOP, they pushed for all of this deregulation so that we could all be Socialists sooner, though the wealthy in America were the first on the block with one. And boy, aren't the McProgressive ™ sites becoming shriller and shriller as they sink? Hey, would-be power brokers who wanted to be Henry Kissinger or Ari Emanuel aren't going to have their day.

Sad, I know, but perhaps some of them will finally understand that the internet, the blogs, e-mail are replacing them--it's all a push towards a democratization of information that they all despise and loathe. And why would academics be quiet on this front either?

Now, the public can easily find-out and access most of the same information they had almost exclusively at their fingertips not so long ago. Yes, it's sad to come to the realization that it's not about ourselves--dummy--but the entire human family. Not the career, not the moronically narrow lifestyles, not the greed, not the "stuff," or even how many people you had sex with. No, not even that, tricks are for kids of every age.

But what is all of this...really?

That's right: it's that proverbial "invisible-hand of the marketplace" shoving itself up your conceited asses, free marketers, right where it belongs. It's come home to roost. All hail the Great God Pan.

The High Cost of Deregulation:

http://www.fdic.gov/bank/individual/failed/banklist.html

The Nader/Gonzales campaign on the current economic downturn, September 21, 2008

September 21, 2008 www.votenader.org www.officialnaderstore.com

William Greider put it best yesterday when he called Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson's upcoming bailout of Wall Street: "All sugar for the villains, lasting pain and damage for the victims." "As I have been saying for several months, this crisis has the potential to bring down one or both political parties, take your choice," Greider said. And investment analyst Christopher Whalen chimed in: "The joyous reception from Congressional Democrats to Paulson's latest massive bailout proposal smells an awful lot like yet another corporatist lovefest between Washington's one-party government and the Sell Side investment banks." Strip aside the rhetoric of the two major parties. And what is left is one party devoted to Wall Street. Who represents Main Street? Nader/Gonzalez. So, why is that when the Presidential debates open this Friday, only Wall Street will be in the ring? And the man who predicted the disaster of deregulation is out? Because the Commission on Presidential Debates is controlled by the two parties and funded by the corporations. That's why we're sponsoring a National Day of Action to Open the Debates. This Thursday, September 25, 2008, the day before the first debate. Once again the Commission intends to silence the majority of Americans by shutting out Nader/Gonzalez from the debates. We're asking all of our supporters to get ready. Because on Thursday, there are four ways you can take action to Open Up the Debates. 1. Write Letters to the editor, to your friends, family and anyone in your address book, companies and corporations who sponsor the presidential debates. 2. Phone The Commission on Presidential Debates, Obama and McCain Campaigns, Talk Shows, Newspapers, and National and Local Media Outlets. 3. Create Posters, fliers and literature to pass out and hang up at college campuses and other high traffic areas and banners to display to morning and evening rush hour traffic -- Check out our "Open the Debates" section on the website for downloadable materials. 4. Protest Outside the Democratic and Republican headquarters in your community, at corporations that sponsor the debates, at radio stations, newspapers and media outlets not covering Ralph Nader. (Phone numbers, e-mails and addresses will be available tomorrow at votenader.org/debates.) Many Americans believe they are getting the full story when they tune into the televised and highly publicized debates. What people don't see is that behind the scenes the debates are controlled by a corporate funded entity. Third party and independent candidates are arbitrarily required to be polling at 15% according to five national polls in order to participate in the debates, even though these third parties are forced to devote all resources to get on the ballot in all 50 states during the months leading up to the debates -- costing well over a million dollars! Who decides who gets into the debates? The so-called "non-partisan" Commission (as described by the New York Times today). Non-partisan? Headed by Paul Kirk and Frank Fahrenkopf, the former heads of the Democratic and Republican parties? Since the media blithely adopts the framing of the corporate parties, we must take it upon ourselves to expose the Commission on Presidential Debates as the real spoiler of the democratic system in this country. Just recently Green party candidate Elizabeth May was included into the debates in Canada. Why? Massive e-mailing, phone calls, and letters to the editor, including one from former Prime Minister Joe Clark, displaying public outrage prompted the debate commission to invite Elizabeth May to participate. We can do it too! So on Thursday, take action. And then send us your videos and photos and we'll post them on our Open the Debates page. And here is something you can do right now. Donate to Nader/Gonzalez. We're in the middle of our Three Way Race fundraising drive. And we need to hit $150,000 by the end of the month. And if you donate $100 now, we'll ship to you a copy of The Ralph Nader Reader, a 441-page collection of Ralph's writings on Wall Street vs. Main Street, the battle for democracy, the corporate state, and our hyper-commercialized culture. If you donate $100 now, we will send you this historic collection -- autographed by the man himself -- Ralph Nader. (This offer ends at 11:59 p.m. September 30, 2008.) Onward to November Emily Przekwas The Nader Team

"Lindsay Lohan to marry [DJ] girlfriend" : Homfauxsexuality?

WWWhy--Yeah, some people go a very long way to anger and embarrass their bad parents, but why not? Will it last? Of course not. Do I think Lindsay's gay? Nope. Bisexual--perhaps, but so are all of the kids these days--but not full-on gay.

Her g-fren Sam Ronson, certainly, but Lohan's sexuality is easily in-question here. A small number of people are "gay" simply because they're fucked-up.

Embarrassing, true, but it has entertainment value! Who cares? Aren't we a happy human family?

If there is a God--and I sure hope that there is--shim's got a strange and sadistic sense of humor.

And hey (Ann Heche): if I'm wrong, I wish them both well, but considering their age and occupations, we're just seeing some very public mutual-masturbation here.

By-the-way: DJs aren't musicians, they're aren't what they play. They spin wax, but they don't tend to create music unless they're a turntablist. Big-diff, but most music fans and audiences don't even know what they're watching or listening to. There are at least two-dozen garage bands called "Lindsay Lohan's Girlfriend" at this moment. We know who wears the pants in this family. I don't miss being that young, not at all.

GOP convention's closing music...

St. Paul, Minnesota--What was that music? It wasn't Aaron Copland. It wasn't George Gershwin. Was it John Williams? It wasn't good. It wasn't inspiring. It was boring, but at least it wasn't that dumbass Fleetwood Mac song the Clintons picked several-years-ago. Daft.

I know, I know. It wasn't like either party is going to pick something like Phil Ochs, Benjamin Britten's "War Requiem," or something inspiring like John Lennon's "Working Class Hero," or something from Woody Guthrie--that wouldn't kitschy and meaningless, like most life lived under the (not-so) New Fascism of consumerism.

But hey, it appears this order is dying anyway. Adam Smith's "The Wealth of Nations" states that all countries have their time at the top power-wise. That time is ending for America, and nothing can stop it. That doesn't mean it has to be a catastrophe either, yet if we keep fighting this reality that Smith wrote of, we'll ensure it. That's what the GOP's for--wrecking things in the service of the "big money." Why wouldn't they have shitty taste in music? So did Hitler. Ever try to sit-through an entire opera by Wagner? It's excruciating. Boring.

Suggestion: play the Three Stooges theme next time.

Don't tell Alex Jones: Journalist Ike Pappas, witness to murder of Lee Harvey Oswald, dead

WWW--Ike Pappas was a longtime journalist for CBS. He as sent to Dallas after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy on November 22nd, 1963 (45-years-ago).

Pappas was shoved-away from Lee Harvey Oswald's path as he asked him a question by Dallas nightclub owner (...and a mafia courier, Jew, and FBI informant) Jack Ruby. What was really going-on? Who knows? To say you do is ignorant and a gambit for money.

It doesn't appear that Alex Jones is claiming he was "suicided"...yet. Perhaps he can sell some more t-shirts and mugs if he does. Why not? For those who think Jones is anything but a clown and a huckster: you're a simple little man/woman/transsexual.

And, if you stew cranberries like applesauce, they taste more like prunes that rhubarb does. Ike Pappas: 75, Greek-American, dead, and taken by poor health. Rest in peace.

Ike Pappas, dead by natural causes: http://enews.earthlink.net/article/ent?guid=20080902/48bcba40_3ca6_1552620080902-1891201945

An Open Letter to GOP Vice Presidential Candidate Sarah Palin

Gee-Oh-P--It appears that you had no problem--or is it idea?--that your daughter was having premarital-sex, so I have to ask you this: did you sign a letter-of-consent, or are your going to go after the father of your daughter's child? Nah, it looks like it's shotgun wedding time. By the way, she's cute (WINK-WINK, NUDGE-NUDGE). Welcome to real world politics, by the way.

Yeah, OK, I've heard she's gonna marry this little twit, but did you ever stop to think that she did this on-purpose because she thinks you're an asshole? How many teenagers would love to be in her shoes, having the capacity to totally screw-things-up for a parent whom they think is full-of-shit (all teenagers do, the majority of them are right).

Again: did the boy have a signed-note? Of course your youngest isn't hers, the child has down's syndrome which usually comes from a woman having a child too-late in life.

And don't think we don't know you've been in-tight (pun intended) with the accused Ted Stevens, that other crook from Alaska. The remainder of the functional press is digging deeply into your life, talking with everyone you ever screwed-over, all your past comments you should have kept to yourself but had to say in-front of journalists and enemies, and-then-some.

The picture--I predict--will not be a pretty one. That's gonna leave that shell-shocked McCain in a real pickle if enough hammers drop. Luck? You're gonna need it lady, and that's not even bringing "troopergate"into the picture. You were a cheerleader, right? Correct, women can be fascists too.

yours-in-Christ, Matt Janovic

On the Exhumation of Indiana Serial Killer Belle Gunness: New Questions Arise

LaPorte/Indianapolis,Indiana--The
more digging in the case of Belle Gunness, the more questions there are. In a piece that I wrote on the matter way back in November 16th , I commented that there appears to be a human skull in the photo to the right. That might be because there is one, but everyone's an expert (I'm not) and an anthropologist (ditto). From November 16th's comment from someone who wandered into the store:

Anonymous said...

Where do you see a skull in the photo? Most of the light-colored areas are the zinc which lined the casket. Sorry. No skull.

Mrithi

And yet there is a skull in the Gunness plot in Forest Park, Illinois photo [click-to-enlarge]. It's never easy to admit when one's wrong, but this isn't one of those moments. In late-February, the Post-Tribune did a piece that--lo-and-behold--there were bones of children found in the grave of Belle Gunness, along with the expected find of an adult-skeleton minus a skull. Yet, there it is, and in other photos--what could be a child's skull above the adult-skeleton. The forensic team even found another human skull at the former location of the Gunness farm:

But [University of Indianapolis lead researcher Andrea] Simmons, who speaks about the case Saturday at the Memorial Opera House in Valparaiso, has found a problem. The deeper the case gets, the more questions arise. Why were the bones of children found in her casket? Whose skull was found on the property? "We're finding every time we investigate something, it opens up a whole new question," Simmons said. ("Cracking the Belle Gunness Mystery," The Post-Tribune, 02.28.2008)

And that's how investigations like this play-out. It's possible that there will be no answers, it being 100 years since the Gunness farm burned-to-the-ground as a mob of authorities and vigilantes rushed to the residence to arrest the portly serial killer, the black widow of LaPorte. It was 1908.

In case you don't know, the charred-corpse identified as that of Gunness was found in the remains of the cellar of the ruined farmhouse...without a head. Ever since that time it has been a source of wild speculations, namely that she got-away and started a life elsewhere. One good theory has the "Lady Bluebeard" chopping-off the head of a female maid, and there is evidence to support this. There are a good number of theories, which isn't that hard to believe. A century ago, people didn't have social security cards and photo identification was a rarity outside of passports, criminal and military records, and the like. Gunness lured her widower victims to her farm through Norwegian-language newspapers in the big cities, the myspace or facebook directories of the ass-end of the Victorian-era.

Some individuals were social ghosts in 1908, and the "Wild West" was just ending. Back then, it was easier to be someone else, a strange echo of today's phenomena of "identity-theft." Forget being ripped-off. Someone could murder you, take everything you owned, and simply vanish becoming you or someone else. 100-years-ago, it was far more widespread, and vice and labor, criminal and social violence were rampant. If Gunness recalls anything-at-all, it's the danger of almost no regulations in our society. It's a reminder of what a lawless society looks like, and what can happen when nobody is looking.

So here's what we have kids: an additional-skull found on the original site of the Gunness farm, and the bones of children in the grave of the serial killer along with what appears to be a headless skeletal-corpse, presumably that of the killer or a luckless ringer.

http://chickasawpicklesmell.blogspot.com/2007/11/theyve-dug-up-indiana-serial-killer.html

http://laportecountyhistory.org/

http://laportecountyhistory.org/belleg1.htm

Lucio Fulci's The Eroticist (1972) review

Cardinal Maravigli: "You can make the presidential palace a brothel as far as I'm concerned, just do it once you're president!"

Most movie fans cringe when they hear the name Lucio Fulci. They think of rotting zombies and guts spilling everywhere in a lake of gore and putrescence. Fulci made around 58 individual motion pictures from 1959 to 1991, and it's only in the final quarter of this body of work that he made the horror films he's known for throughout the world. But what about the earlier ones? Few ever made it out of Italy at the time.

What's surprising--or not considering one's take on comedy and horror--is that the great majority of Fulci's output were comedies. He also directed a number of spaghetti westerns, a Jack London story (White Fang with Franco Nero, and some of the best giallos ever lensed like A Lizard in a Woman's Skin, The Manhattan Ripper, and Don't Torture a Duckling.

The truth is, there were many sides to Lucio Fulci.

"The Eroticist" is one of those movies whose images never leave you, which is quite an achievement for a social and political satire wrapped in a sexual farce! But it's not that difficult in the hands of such a skilled director as Fulci and the flesh parade of Laura Antonelli, Anita Stringdberg, the handsome and hilarious Lando Buzzanco (as the senator), Agostina Belli, and a gaggle of nunsploitation sex-pots. It doesn't need to be repeated that the 1970s were that "decade of violence" in Italy, but the Eroticist is a good reminder of how absurd and explosive Italian politics were at that time.

Fulci created this story and co-wrote the screenplay with two other writers, Alessandro Continenza and Ottavio Jemma. Making this film in Italy in 1972 took guts, something Fulci had plenty of, he was unflappable. The Eroticist is a film that's both blasphemous and sexually redemptive besides being a very pointed political satire. You don't have to be familiar with Italian politics to understand it.

The story is fairly simple: an Italian Christian Democrat (as in Germany, the party the fascists joined after the war) senator named Gianni Puppis (the square-jawed Lando Buzzanco) is heading for the "highest office in the land," the presidency of Italy. Puppis has been so caught-up in his rise in politics that he's never had sex--and yet he's still Italian. This being a slam on Italian politics and politics in general, viewers might think that senator Puppis might seem demonically possessed as part of this delicious sexual farce, but he's not, and that's what makes this a movie that speaks loudly to our own scandal-ridden era or any other modern era. Hypocrisy is universal.

Senator Puppis is, simply-put, just a very horny man in a profession that doesn't allow for it. His only alternative is to head towards life, leaving the old one behind. This is something he struggles with, and the results are uproariously funny. Fulci even patterned Buzzanco's appearance after a real Christian Democrat senator!

Yet, the senator isn't possessed by anything unnatural--we find--it's just that he needs to get laid. He begins by subconsciously engaging in some grabb-ass at public events he has to preside over! On one occasion, he grabs the ass of the president of India! Enter Fulci's favorite target: the Vatican. For anyone even mildly acquainted with Italian politics, one knows that the Church is that constant irritant blocking as much progress as possible and that they still meddle in the elections and the ways of life and government of a nation.

Whenever you see a zombie in a later Lucio Fulci horror, it's a reference to the "dead hand" of the Church, the Italian curse. Fulci--to his credit--hated the Vatican as most reasonable people do, and they get special treatment here. Puppis is the Vatican's and the Sicilian Mafia's man. The Vatican is represented by Cardinal Maravigli (played by American actor Lionel Stander, the guy with the croaky-voice from tv's 'Hart to Hart'--he was also in Polanski's forgotten "Cul-de-Sac" and Spielberg's "1941").

And so, we get one sexual escapade after another, a kind of "what's he going to do next?" comedy. Will the senator be able to control himself? Will his handler, Cardinal Maravigli be able to watch him and keep him out of trouble until after Puppis has won the presidential elections? Sending Puppis to a convent filled with German nuns doesn't work--he has sex with all 21 of them, and why not? Far from being the sexless "fag" that his political rivals thought he was, il senatore is making up for lost time in a big way. Embarrassing? Si! Better for the body and the body politic? Si!

There are so many hilarious and embarrassing moments of sexual humor here, and as usual, the photography and composition are as luscious as they are in even the goriest of Fulci's work. Will senator Puppis win the presidential election, or will he decide to be a normal man with a normal and healthy sex life? He cannot have both. Fulci seems to be saying that one cannot truly live when one focuses their life purely on the pursuit of power and influence. Sinning, then, is normal and human, a better path.

Regardless of religious repression, the forces of life prevail. The Eroticist also says a lot about why we think our politicians shouldn't have a good sex life (considering how they behave, it could be a torture that is earned ), but attitudes towards this have changed substantially in Europe, and certainly in France. Still, the Church has its undying influence...

English Accents and American Advertising

"Well, you speak better English than I do."--Byron de la Beckwith, deceased convicted murderer of civil rights activist Medgar Evers, from the HBO/BBC documentary 'Southern Justice: The Murder of Medgar Evers,' 1994 . Beckwith was convicted the same year of the broadcast of the documentary of Evers' murder. He mercifully croaked in 2001.

USAHHHHHHH, Fuck It...--Say what you will, but for a developed nation, we're the red-headed stepchild of the Western world. We've always been a dowdy, poorly-dressed lot of malcontents, but it's getting embarrassing. Compared to the average slob in most other 'modern' nations, we're incredibly fucking stupid and boorish.

Thanks to our lousy miseducational system and corporate owned mainstream media, many Americans have an pathetically low vocabulary and are not very well-spoken. Nonetheless, it's the fault of the individual, and it takes two to tango.

You have to have someone willing to be a poverty beforehand. But just look at interviews with average individuals in the U.K.--the differences are stunning, we sound like the cavemen that many around the world (rightly) think we are. Ignorance is hip, sounding 'smart' is out, and it's well known we're a decidedly anti-intellectual anti-culture. Enter the usage of voice-talent from the U.K. .

If you even watch television casually in the United States, it's inescapable that you'll see and/or hear an actor or actress from Great Britain doing the voice-over for any number of ads. Why? Because of the aforementioned: their voices sound 'authoritative,' while ours...like apes. Watch a young American woman speak: it's like seeing a baboon's ass pulsating from being in heat, which is pretty nauseating, I can tell you. Cockney flower girls in Victorian England were more well-spoken, while most of us are simply ignorant bores (well, not me...).

It's not just the American South either, it's everywhere in this country. This is about rednecks entirely, or even about machismo--it's about willful ignorance and mental laziness. There's no excuse for it in the modern world, none whatsoever. But it's not just about inherent intelligence--it's an attitude that being and sounding smart is somehow threatening. Well, yes, if one is stupid and lazy, and materialistic. Some of us never needed to be corrupted by the outlying society, we already were that way.

As a result of how incredibly stupid we are as a culture, we get the vocal-talents from another English-speaking country because they sound smarter than most of us, so therefore, they must know better (my targets cannot read this article--isn't this thrilling?!!). The most glaring example are these retarded ads on gold investments with the British woman (who could be an Aussie or a New Zealander, but I detect a British accent here).

The ad is definitely aimed at the perpetually frightened elderly reactionary who has some money to be deprived-of by the company paying for the advertisements. Or there's the one with the silly poof in the pond with the laptop, showing us how wireless works. Great. Recently, a LOCAL ad attacking a Republican mayor in Michiana had an English woman's voice-over. Bully for you. Face it: an English schoolgirl sounds more authoritative than the voice of most American politicians.

When will it end? When we (mainly you) aren't so fucking stupid. Probably when all of us are dead and buried. The very little kids will wisely grow-up and reject our ways...at least, that's my hope. As the "greatest generation that ever lived" croaks-off, we're going to see some very rapid change. We already are. It will become even more rapid with the baby boomers--particularly the male demographic in America--since they were a larger generation.

Whoever said mortality was a bad thing was assuredly wrong, it's natural and (thankfully) inevitable. I'm looking forward to my well earned rest, you can take immortality and shove it. Would you want George W. Bush to live forever? Would you want to be around all these pseudo-Christians forever? Right, you're nuts, but I'll welcome oblivion when I'm at its door (Never Mind the Bollocks).

Playing the Dozens: Your momma, your poppa, and your greasy-greasy grannie.

--Yo momma is so fat, when she jumped into the air she got stuck.
--Yo mama's so ugly, when she looks in the mirror, the reflection ducks.
--Yo mama's so ugly, well.. look at you!
--Yo mama's so ugly, she looks like you.
--Yo mama's so ugly, she could only be Yo mama.
--Yo mama's so ugly, they filmed "Gorillas in the Mist" in her shower.
--Yo mama's so ugly, they push her face into dough to make gorilla cookies.
--Yo mama's so stupid, she got stabbed in a shoot-out.
--Yo mama's so stank, that her shit is glad to escape.
--Yo mama smells like hot ass on a cold day. (from pimpdaddy.com)

1982: my eighth-grade year in our blunderful educational system in America. This was when there was a lot of court mandated school busing (due to Brown vs. the Board of Education, 1954), and our school was no exception. In the case of my experience, all of the rich kids from Jefferson School got bused to our crappy little Edison Elementary, away from much better teachers and resources. The reaction of many Jefferson parents--most of whom were doctors, lawyers, business owners, etc.--was incredibly vocal and racist.

When their kids came to our school, they'd boxed-up some of those resources, while shunting the rest of us away from them. This escalated when we all went to the same high school, where you basically had two separate educational-paths that kept most all of us from having a decent learning environment (while the rich kids got an excellent one). I can remember skipping-classes to go home and read something relevant, and it was common for us to be taught the same thing year-after-year! But they couldn't do it with every required class, either at the elementary level, or high school.

That was when the fun began, and we'd pillory the lone punks and the jock-stragglers. Our school had more Black and poor kids (like myself), and Edison could be seen back in the 1970s-1980s as a dumping-ground for lousy teachers, so-called administrators, and "problem students" (meaning "not white," or from poor or "broken-homes"). The best part of all this was that many Black kids got to go to the better Jefferson!

But many of us "problem children" stayed at Edison, both Black and White. The mix of White rich kids, poor White, and poor Black kids was pretty explosive, with most of the Jefferson kids constantly complaining at how they were getting shafted at our shitty school. Well yeah, welcome to our world assholes.

Every morning--it seemed--there was a major fight between Blacks and Whites when everyone was getting off of the buses, and it was repeated when they got back on at 3 PM. Almost all of the fights surrounded the waiting-time at the buses. The racial tension wasn't just palpable, there were parents coming out and yelling racial-epithets at Black students, their children doing likewise, and the Black kids sending it right back at them (and more stinging).

You had Polish-American students (an extremely racist group at this time in Michiana), Hungarian-American (a little better), Irish-American, all the WASPs, and me and my little brother (German-Czech-American). Where did we fit in? Nowhere really, but most of the Black kids knew we were getting shafted too, so we got treated better by them. To this day, I can say Black people have generally treated me and my family better than White America ever has or ever will.

Naturally, President Reagan, the GOP, and even many Democrats in Congress were opponents of both providing adequate funding for predominantly-Black schools, and mandatory busing as a cure for that lack-of-funding. We heard tales of the single-parent Black families (headed by mothers) being the cause of Black poverty, and other such ridiculous arguments. It was all just racism and racist-assumptions about Black Americans.

It was this kind of racist wrongheadedness that created the need for mandatory crosstown busing, and yet what he really wanted to give Black Americans was nothing. He just couldn't get away with it at that time. Reagan was truly a horrible human being, and he wasn't alone in his racism, it was (and is) still deeply-rooted in White mainstream thought. What was so exhilarating about all this busing though is that we got to have first-hand experience fighting those lily-white motherfuckers from Jefferson in every possible way.

There was some real unity between groups of us Black and White kids who fought these scum. The fights were verbal and physical (I'm not one to duke, so I had to use my wits). It was literally a front-line class war that had all the shades of race and class that typify the American experience. Of course, there were sell-out Blacks who were already bourgeois-types before all of this, but the worst ones were the White sell-outs who were basically working-class--the suck-ups, the sycophants, and the social-climbers. All of us Black and White kids would endlessly attack these morons and ass-lickers. The best way was by-insult: Playing the dozens (also known as cutting or snaps).

Compared to the Black kids, I wasn't shit at this, but they were ingenious in their comebacks. You couldn't top them, it was impossible. How could you? They invented the dozens, it comes from West African traditions. It's older than old. The rich kids couldn't cope with it at all, until the lure of sports hypnotized everyone, and George Lucas united a divided nation (snicker). However, the fights continued into High School anyway, and the real divisions never went away. Playing the dozens was frequently the prelude to a fight, but it was also a way to avoid all of that. As brutal and vulgar as playing the dozens is, it's more civil than kicking someone's ass.

And so, J-7 is really a part of this tradition: I'm belittling people with power because there's no choice in the matter. One of the best approaches to taking-down the abusers of power is to confront them and denigrate who and what they are, it works. There is a tradition of this in our own history, and Black Americans are a part of this, they more than compliment it.

From the Ranters' written attacks on the monarchy and the aristocracy, to the Levellers and Diggers and their communalism, from the pamphlets during the run up to the American Revolution, to the Abolitionists, the rise of the unions, to the attacks by cartoonist Thomas Nast on Boss Tweed and Tamanny Hall's corruption, reviling and mocking power works.

NEA (National Education Association) school integration timeline: http://www.nea.org/brownvboard/integrationtimeline.html

Your home for the dozens: www.pimpdaddy.com

The Ranters (brief histories): http://www.exlibris.org/nonconform/engdis/ranters.html
http://www.british-civil-wars.co.uk/glossary/ranters.htm

The Profoundly Racist Moynihan Report (1965): http://www.blackpast.org/?q=primary/moynihan-report-1965

Dave Mustaine is an Asshole.

Call me biased, but I never liked this asshole and his shitty non-music. Call me crazy, but it was always Black Sabbath (Ozzy-era, the only good one). The Sabs wrote "War Pigs" ferchrissake! In the lyrics of "Master of Reality" and "Sabbath Bloody Sabbath," they challenged God himself as a hypocrite, and so they challenged all authority. That's fucking cool! Heavy music began as a music of protest, but I never thought Megadeth was anything but pandering crap. Megadeth is a cop-out to thinking. Slayer has been the same over the years, though I'd take their early-period any day (River's Edge!).

Megadeth: Did the MC5 and the Stooges suffer for this shit?! Did Deep Purple? The Sex Pistols? Blue Cheer? Motorhead? Leave it to metalheads to misinterpret something done better by someone-else. Take the New York Dolls--how did that become Poison and Motley Crue?! The irony is that those bands made glam more homoerotic. The shitty music is bad enough, but do you have to make a clumsy attempt at politics too? If you polled all the metalheads in the world, I guarantee the vast majority would be reactionary conservatives. Real rebels. Neo-nazis like Megadeth, too. Do a google-search for "Aryan Nations Megadeth," and tell me what you find.

During Operation Desert Storm (Bush War I), some Air Force pilots contacted the band Slayer and told them how great it was listening to their music while they were bombing-and-strafing Iraqi civilians. Naturally, Slayer was thrilled! That is a far cry from the glory days of Black Sabbath, the true cornerstone of metal. What happened? They got fat and lazy, dumbass--just watch that pussy Mustaine crying his eyes out over how lousy his career has been in "Some Kind of Monster." He sucks, and he knows it. So you can play fast? How juvenile is that mentality?!

It's scary to watch people parading their unwillingness to grow up, kinda like Grateful Dead fans used to be. It just gets creepy after awhile. With metal, it's CREEPIER. But anyway, look at some Megadeth fans, it isn't pretty. You've seen them at the County Fair, and you've seen them leaving the parking-lots out at the drag strip. But when there's a sports-riot, or a carnival and cheap-beer...they are there. I know this, because I have lived my entire life in a museum dedicated to the childhoods of these kind of turds.

You might even know them, and I'm sorry if you do. My next-door neighbor definitely is, but I won't let him borrow anything and he also likes Lynyrd Skynyrd. Unlike Dave Mustaine, I don't think my neighbor was a supporter of H.Ross Perot. Dave's grandstanding for Perot must have been during the "cocaine period" at MTV, which would be his only excuse. But did he freebase it? Did he ever do crack? Crystal-meth? Maybe this is why he's such a spastic-idiot.

Yes, my Northern Indiana has East Chicago where John Dillinger was assassinated by the FBI, the dunes, and Notre Dame has her fans...but the rest is Mennonites and ass-rockers in tights. There was a time when Chicago gangs could hide around the country lakes, hiding in their safe houses. Hoosiers have never been that skilled, but nowadays slobs abound, people who were genetically programmed for factory work. Maybe they're just mentally lazy. It doesn't matter. They're simply dull. Some of them resemble "Z-man" from "Beyond the Valley of the Dolls," only they're faggier.

Maybe this whole machismo act in metal is about overcompensation? Lenny Bruce nailed it when he said, "There's nothing sadder than an aging hipster." That's Michiana, the place I live, filled with aging white trash rockers who hate culture. And THAT, is Dave Mustaine's audience, the people who think that their years in Middle and High School were "the best years of their lives." Yes, and then we all had to grow up and work, and do whatever.

During my Senior year of High School, the person who told me, "I'm so glad to be graduating. Now I'll never have to read a book again," was a Megadeth fan. Frankly, you have to be a reactionary idiot to be a fan of this band. So, today, it was with little surprise when I happened to see Megadeth's new album cover. It features the UN's NYC building exploding, with the title "United Abominations". Yeah. It says nothing, just like everything Dave Mustaine has ever touched. OK Dave, you say you think the UN is ineffectual (as he implies on the cover of "Peace Sells..."), and who knows what the hell the new-cover is saying? You have two Jack Kirby-era Marvel supervillains on the cover, and these explosions dotting the UN's headquarters coming from...what? Who did it? Or is it the World Trade Center? What the fuck does this yearbook-drawing cover say, you Libertarian asshole?! Pay your taxes, chumpzillas, tax cheats.

You see, this is what's so annoying about Dave Mustaine. It's his political-posturing, as though he were the mental equal of a Joe Strummer or a John Lydon. He's not, he's a dumb-fuck who should shut-up and not-not play guitar. But he's not alone in metal, that domain of the sub-intellect. But first, understand that I'm a fan of most of the classics of heavy metal. I even like early Judas Priest and Motorhead. At one time, metal was populated with reasonably intelligent people. It didn't last long.

But take Black Sabbath's bassist, Geezer Butler: he was the mastermind of the most- mportant of Sabbath's lyrics during the Ozzy era (part of why Ozzy can't remember them?), and his lyrical points were always clear. War Pigs is obviously an antiwar song. Sabbath even had lots of anti-drug songs, though that is another story! But you always knew where they stood as a band from their lyrics:

Politicians hide themselves away
They only started the war
Why should they go out to fight?
They leave that role to the poor

Mustaine's lyrics never make any sense, his postition is usually unclear, and his vocals make Ozzy Osbourne sound like Pavoratti:

What do you mean, I dont believe in god?
I talk to him every day.
What do you mean, I dont support your system?
I go to court when I have to.
What do you mean, I can't get to work on time?
I got nothing better to do.
And, what do you mean, I dont pay my bills?
Why do you think I'm broke? huh?

Sounds a lot like a moron with no credibility, doesn't it? Oddly, it's almost like a weird metal version of Stan Ridgeway and the Wall of Voodoo. He sounds like a politician, using a lot of words, but saying nothing. At least Ridgeway said something with his lyrics. That's OK if you're doing art-rock! Mustaine literally sounds like he's whining the lyrics, a kind of preverbal grunt/whine of a rat. He has had the worst haircuts I have ever seen, forget mullets.

Mustaine's guitar work: a lot of multi-layered crap with bad guitar tone. It has too much treble and not enough mid-range or bass for heft. It's thin. Solos: the usual unexpressive scale-exercises for beginners, with lots of grandstanding. Worse than mullets. Not even Steve Jones could save their disastrous cover of "Anachy in the UK," it's awful. The Shocker soundtrack--what a classic. In fact, Mustaine's entire catalog is spectacularly bad. He has bigger problems.

Wearing glasses actually made Mustaine look stupider. We can be assured that "United Abominations" lives up to its title. Now we hear that Dave has a fixation on the number 11. Yes, 11, as in 9/11? The CD/MP3/8-track/Reel-to-Reel/Mini-disc will have 11 tracks (12 in Japan, which means WHAT DAVE?! WHAT?!). The artwork was the 11th entry in a contest for the best cover. Get it? Me either, and thank God for that.

[ED.-OH WAIT!! WOW! SHIT! I get it, like in Spinal Tap!! You got me, the 60s-70s weren't worth this shit.] http://www.cnn.com/2006/SHOWBIZ/Music/08/24/music.megadeth.reut/index.html