Dicks.

On this day in 1973, school officials in Drake, North Dakota, burned copies of Kurt Vonnegut's novel Slaughterhouse-Five. Kurt Vonnegut had served in WWII, and he was captured by the Germans and held as a prisoner in Dresden when the Allies bombed the city. For years, he tried to find a way to tell his story. Meanwhile, he went to graduate school in anthropology, worked at General Electric, got married and had three kids and adopted three more, and struggled to find his voice as a writer. His stories kept falling flat -- too serious and straightforward. But finally he wrote his masterpiece, Slaughterhouse-Five, which was published in 1969. It was extremely popular and for the most part it got great reviews, but it has been banned many times, for being obscene, violent, and for its unpatriotic description of the war.

In 1973, a 26-year-old high school English teacher assigned Slaughterhouse-Five to his students, and most of them loved it, thought it was the best book they had read in a long time. But one student complained to her mom about the obscene language, and that mom took it to the principal, and the school board voted that it should be not only confiscated from the students (who were only a third of their way through the book), but also burned. Many of the students didn't want to give up their books, so the school searched all their lockers and took them, and then threw the books into the school's burner. While the school board was at it, they decided to burn Deliverance by James Dickey and a short-story anthology.

Kurt Vonnegut wrote a letter to one of the members of the school board, and he said:

"Dear Mr. McCarthy:

I am writing to you in your capacity as chairman of the Drake School Board. I am among those American writers whose books have been destroyed in the now famous furnace of your school.

If you were to bother to read my books, to behave as educated persons would, you would learn that they are not sexy, and do not argue in favor of wildness of any kind. They beg that people be kinder and more responsible than they often are. It is true that some of the characters speak coarsely. That is because people speak coarsely in real life.

If you and your board are now determined to show that you in fact have wisdom and maturity when you exercise your powers over the education of your young, then you should acknowledge that it was a rotten lesson you taught young people in a free society when you denounced and then burned books -- books you hadn't even read. You should also resolve to expose your children to all sorts of opinions and information, in order that they will be better equipped to make decisions and to survive. Again: you have insulted me, and I am a good citizen, and I am very real."

In recent years, several churches across the United States have organized public burnings of J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter series.

The Writer's Almanac for November 10, 2009
Listen: http://www.elabs7.com/ct.html?rtr=on&s=fj6,j144,dv,mjb,z6o,ddg7,fqwa

Me and media (online reports & radio), a conversation from last night. (or: the Day the Military Died)

A little more than twelve hours ago:

It’s come home. Again. But, maybe, only truly for the first-time. Finally, here, the meta-psychical costs are being paid, at the home front—the worst shooting at a military base, ever. They, whoever—some guy—were, are soldiers. The apparent antagonist is a psychiatrist. And he’s alive. I’d like to hear what he’s got to say. I don’t like the looks of him, his name. This might be a big fucking pebble in the pond. I can only imagine, since I’ve no access, in what way the cable news channels are tweaking-out on this. This is going to be, this is big.




[Headlines:]

Muslim groups fear backlash after Fort Hood shooting

Muslim, Arab Groups Condemn Fort Hood Shooting, Brace For Backlash

“At this juncture, again, there is no concrete reporting as to whether Nidal Malik Hasan was in fact a Muslim or an Arab. All that has been reported is that he served in the Department of Psychology at the Center for the Study of Traumatic Stress at the Bethesda Naval Facility in Bethesda, Maryland. He is believed to be 39 or 40 years old.”

“…his family is shocked by Hasan's actions and that Hasan was a "good American":

Both his parents are American, I want to make sure everyone understands, he was a good American, and we are shocked.

Contrary to prior reports, Hasan has "always been Muslim" and is not a recent convert.”




[Oh, this is fucked:] Stand up to the aggressors. Shooting at Little Rock. Bombs in Times Square.

Nidal Malik Hasan. Barack Hussein Obama. [This is not good. Not good, at all. It is] “horrifying,” Obama says.

[I’m scared to turn on the radio. But I do. It’s not any better.]

A psychiatrist on his way to Iraq. A motive? Yes. Two others? High kill count, begs more shooters. Still on lock down. Someone in your own mist…. And on Wall St., today. Shortage of seasonal flu vaccine because of swine flu vaccines priority. Bernard Kerik screwed. Global warming bill held up by Republicans. Such people will go to hell, says Taliban leader. Militants in Yemen.

Same day as Saddam Hussein sentenced to death 3 years ago today.

[Looking to be a serious case of shooting one’s own foot.]

Palestinian parents. [Oh, that’s great.] Looking more and more like only one shooter. From Virginia Tech, [ha. Lee’s, his former co-worker, is beginning to get fucked.] Why didn’t he come forward before?

Born and raised American. When do we hear about the religion of murderers? …Naval oranges. [Hassidic construction tips. Catskills.] Absorption. A huge, huge problem. [Hassid-lish. He’s hawking tiles. He says, he doesn’t usually do this. Sure.] These tiles can withhold heat or cold.




[Why didn’t they let him out?]

Why didn’t he shoot up the chain of command? Why these servicemen? This is gonna be white-washed, says military psychologist, the MI screwed up.... Eventually, we’re just gonna say enough of it, and treat them all like the enemy. Muslims need to step up, or they’ll be suspect. We’re just gonna get tired of it. –I like him. He's a psychologist, but he talks real: doesn't make excuses for abhorrent behavior.

Nine Bodies

About Australia's Black Saturday wildfires, earlier this year.

The Inferno by Christine Kenneally
The New Yorker, October 26, 2009

"The death toll rose from fifteen to a hundred and seventy-three. It was clear that some bodies would never be recovered, having been effectively cremated. Others were found unburned in positions that suggested that they had simply dropped dead while running from the flame; the radiant heat from a bushfire, which can ignite mattresses and curtains through closed windows, can kill at a considerable distance more or less instantaneously. Survivors with even more excruciating stories. As people had escaped, they had seen they neighbors bodies lying in the streets. A few days after the fire, police found a house with the remains of nine bodies: eight adults had formed a protective huddle around a baby."

Kowabunga, douche.

Education For Extinction:
American Indians and the Boarding School Experience
by David Wallace Adams

Classroom

"Probably more significant than the specific content of the science curriculum was the deeper message being transmitted. Traditionally, Indian children had been taught to look upon nature in ecological and spiritual terms. To know nature was to recognize one's dependence on the earth and its creatures. The world of nature was inseparable from the world of the supernatural; gods and spirits inhabited the earth, sky and lakes just as every living creature--the deer, the eagle, the mountain lion--possessed its own distinctive spiritual essence, which, through rights and ceremonies, might be incorporated into one's being as a sustaining source of personal identity and power..."

Sounds like Halloween to me.

"...In the end, the Indian's knowledge of the physical and natural environment was inseparable from how they approached it--intimately, harmoniously, and with reverential respect for the mysterious. Whites, on the other hand, objectified nature. Western science was ultimately the search for "laws of nature" and scientific principles that, once established, could be put to the service of technological progress. Nature was to be controlled, conquered and, finally, exploited."

Kind of like how the Indians themselves were to be: controlled, conquered and exploited.

"Science too was an expression of the white man's power."

The Sum of Man by Norah Pollard

In autumn,
facing the end of his life,
he moved in with me.
We piled his belongings--
his army-issue boots, knife magazines,
Steely Dan tapes, his grinder, drill press,
sanders, belts and hacksaws--
in a heap all over the living room floor.
For two weeks he walked around the mess.

One night he stood looking down at it all
and said: "The sum total of my existence."
Emptiness in his voice.

Soon after, as if the sum total
needed to be expanded, he began to place
things around in the closets and spaces I'd
cleared for him, and when he'd finished
setting up his workshop in the cellar, he said,
"I should make as many knives as I can,"
and he began to work.

The months plowed on through a cold winter.
In the evenings, we'd share supper, some tale
of family, some laughs, perhaps a walk in the snow.
Then he'd nip back down into the cellar's keep
To saw and grind and polish,
creating his beautiful knives
until he grew too weak to work.
But still he'd slip down to stand at his workbench
and touch his woods
and run his hand over his lathe.

One night he came up from the cellar
and stood in the kitchen's warmth
and, shifting his weight
from one foot to the other, said,
"I love my workshop."
Then he went up to bed.

He's gone now.
It's spring. It's been raining for weeks.
I go down to his shop and stand in the dust
of ground steel and shavings of wood.
I think on how he'd speak of his dying, so
easily, offhandedly, as if it were
a coming anniversary or
an appointment with the moon.
I touch his leather apron, folded for all time,
and his glasses set upon his work gloves.
I take up an unfinished knife and test its heft,
and feel as well the heft of my grief for
this man, this brother I loved,
the whole of him so much greater
than the sum of his existence.


"The Sum of Man" by Norah Pollard, from Death & Rapture in the Animal Kingdom. (c) Antrim House, 2009.

Aww, that's too bad (or: One step foward, two... um, I forgot what I was saying because I'm really high right now.)

After the buzz wore off from the Obama administration's decision for the Justice Department to back up off a state for gettin' down, those damn Yankees go and thwart the will of the people. Or at least of pot smokers.

I've recently started getting these updates to keep up with all the different fronts of the War on the War on Drugs, or at least the war on pot, from theses guys at the Marijuana Policy Project. Now that things are truly, seemingly, in the hands of states, let's hope for a wave of different types of legalization/decriminalization to sweep the land. Okay, maybe not sweeping, that seems like a lot of work; maybe just, like, by osmosis...

Marijuana Policy Project Alert:

...New Hampshire legislature came just shy of voting to override Gov. John Lynch (D)'s veto of the state's proposed medical marijuana law. Two-thirds of the votes were needed. Although we cleared the House with 67.6% of the vote (240-115), it lost in the Senate, 14-10.

The bill had passed the legislature in June, by 232-108 in the House and 14-10 in the Senate. But on July 10, Gov. Lynch vetoed the bill, after refusing to meet with 15 patients and after failing to give input to the legislative conference committee, which amended the bill to address each of the eight concerns he had voiced in April.

...To override the veto and pass the bill into law, we needed supportive votes from two-thirds of voting members of the House and 16 votes in the Senate.

But the bill faced strong opposition from the state's attorney general and chiefs of police.

...71% of New Hampshire voters support allowing seriously and terminally ill patients to use and grow medical marijuana for personal use if their doctors recommend it, according to a 2008 Mason-Dixon poll.

The above is an infographic depicting the percentage breakdown of all crimes in the U.S. for last year. Any guess what's the #1 single most-arrestable offense? Gettin' mean with a little weed (or other drugs).

It seems the attorney general and the chief's of police wouldn't have much to do anymore if their were no drug users (mostly pot smokers) or sellers (who would vanish upon changing the laws) to bust. Do you know what it's like in winter up there? No, me neither, but for some reason The Shining comes to mind.

Though, if pot was legal, they could all just sit around and get stoned. Then, maybe there'd be less hunting accidents. Because there'd probably be a lot less hunting. And less drinking and fighting and car accidents and road rage and child abuse and spousal abuse and bullying and reduce a whole lot of the other crimes on the graphic--wait, why is pot smoking still illegal, still considered a bad thing?

Once was douche, but now he's found.

At least he knows how to give props when deserved.

The administration's recovery efforts [for hurricane Katrina] have drawn praise from Republicans, too, including Gov. Bobby Jindal. Jindal has credited Obama's team with bringing a more practical and flexible approach to the process. "There's a sense of momentum and a desire to get things done," he said in August.

So, it looks like he decided to play nice and except some help from the federal government, after all. I gave Bobby a hard time back when he gave us all a laugh at a dorky looking Indian-dude with a Louisiana accent and cheesy smile (see below) trying to out-pimp Obama, after the president's speech. Well, Bobby, I know how to give props too. Enjoy it, though, I doubt there'll be much more.

Columbus, what a prince.

"They...brought us parrots and balls of cotton and spears and many other things, which they exchanged for the glass beads and hawk's bells. They willingly traded everything they owned.... But they were well built, with good bodies and handsome features.... They do not bear arms, and do not know them, for I showed them a sword, they took it by the edge and cut themselves out of ignorance. They have no iron. Their spears are made of cane.... They would make fine servants.... With fifty men we could subjugate them all and make the do whatever we want."

--from A People's History of the United States, by Howard Zinn

Charming.

The Odds on Obama (or: Things that creep me out)

Weren't very good, but then again he was as safe a bet as Bill Clinton. Regardless, both were better off than MJ or W, as well they should have been--if only because Obama would be hard-pressed to fuck up as royally as George Jr. But, that's also why it was a stupid move (in the words of some diplo-type "Absolutely stupid"--thanks M.) to give Barack the award: he hasn't really done anything yet, and the few things he has done aren't worth the approbation. And, perhaps not as importantly but more annoyingly, this is just the kind of thing the Right will use to support their horror that the world is sucking at the teat of Obama-nation.


Still, what's most disturbing about the whole affair is this creepy graphic The Economist used in their reaction piece about the award.


Heard George Packer (of The New Yorker) on the radio say Obama should not accept it (didn't know it was an option), that they should put it on hold, so to speak, until he has accomplished something. I completely agree.



Otherwise, I've mostly been creeped-out by science. Like the oncoming war of man versus machine ala Terminator. There's the singularity that Ray Kurzweil talks about, explained on this podcast from Future Tense, a weekly science/tech show. Basically, the rate of technological advance will increase so much that soon we'll be able to live indefinitely, if only virtually. But first computers are just going to get smarter than we are, hence the possible catastrophe. According to The Economist, it will be here soon.

"How soon before evolvable machines become cleverer than people? Little over a decade is the current consensus. One such machine has already been awarded a patent for something it quietly invented on its own."

Crap.



Alongside the computers outsmarting us, not only will medical technology increase, but we'll be incorporating computers into our biology, like some of us already (or soon will) have. Though for now technology only tacks on a few years, eventually it will allow us to live a really, really long time. Ready for that?

"'Very long lives are not the distant privilege of remote future generations -- very long lives are the probable destiny of most people alive now in developed countries,' Kaare Christensen of the Danish Aging Research Center wrote on Friday in a study in the Lancet medical journal.

Many governments in developed nations are already making moves toward raising the typical age of retirement to try to cope with aging populations."

What? As soon as people start living a little longer they talk about making us work more? Screw you Reuters.



"The researchers said this was an important strategy, and added that if part-time work was considered for more of the workforce, that could have yet more benefits.

"If people in their 60s and early 70s worked much more than they do nowadays, then most people could work fewer hours per week.... Preliminary evidence suggests that shortened working weeks over extended working lives might further contribute to increases in life expectancy and health."

Oh, okay, I like the sound of that. But still:

"'People younger than 85 years are living longer and, on the whole, are able to manage their daily activities for longer.'

But for people older than 85, the situation is less clear, the researchers said. Data are sparse, and there is widespread concern that exceptional longevity -- with ever larger numbers living to 100 and more -- could be grim for the people themselves and the societies they live in."

Crap.

"Keep in mind: I'm rich, I already have health insurance, and I don't care about other people."

Ah, Stephen Colbert. God bless his honesty. Check out his interview about health care reform. On the same episode watch the interview with Corey Booker, who is one of the stars of a Bravo documentary, Brick City, about Newark, the city of which he is the mayor. While you're at Colbert Nation, hear the new Flaming Lips album streaming live, and see them perform. After that, watch the interview with Wayne Coyne, the singer, in which Colbert accuses him of trying to "expand his mind" through the band's music. How dare they.


"Cut the president some slack," requests Obama. And though I completely agree about Kanye West--I hope he gets crabs--it's never a good sign when someone refers to themselves in the third person... this bloggist would never do that.

I was more afraid he was going to start swatting heads, "c'mon guys..." remember the last pest he dealt with in an interview.

Last week: 2752

It was at least a bracket on which to construct memory and, more so, a place of departure—perhaps the wrong way, like an elbow bent backwards. It became context: a way to delineate and map New York’s, and my, existence.

It’s my A.D. she said. Yeah, everything is before or after. After is when it all started to go bad.

Did you loose someone? No, luckily. Not that day, but soon enough. At the time, I thought I could have lost anyone, everyone. Or I was lost, and others were mourning the loss. For some, close enough to the epicenter, all those in the falls were our loss, and, too, something that had been collectively all of ours before was now lost with them. Physical proximity can in part explain this discarnate connection between strangers, those remained and those gone; the ripple effect that dissipates as it moves outward from point of origin.

For weeks the smoke, ill-defined, crawled slowly out of lower Manhattan; crossing the East River onto Brooklyn, hanging in the sky over apartment buildings, like mine. Enmeshed with the afternoon sun of that clear day, the amalgam of the smoke and ash of paper and plane and body went on to hue the sunset a beautiful, if unnatural, charcoal-red blood orange.




This was from the Writer’s Almanac last week.

D.H. Lawrence: 'Be still when you have nothing to say; when genuine passion moves you, say what you've got to say, and say it hot.'

It was on this day in 2001 that two hijacked planes crashed into the Twin Towers in New York City.

The first rule of Health Care Reform is you don't talk about Health Care Reform. (In honor of Teddy-bear Kennedy, R.I.P.)

The second rule of Health Care Reform is you DON'T TALK ABOUT HEALTH CARE REFORM!

No, I still will not talk about health care. But below is a surprisingly, from The Nation anyway, funny piece we all might enjoy in the current tumult.
















Your Questions About Health Care Reform Answered

by Christopher Hayes on 08/11/2009

Ok, so there's been a lot of misinformation about proposals to reform the health insurance industry and provide (near) universal coverage. Understandable! It's complicated stuff. Herewith, I'll try to answer some questions

1) Is it true that all of the bills currently proposed would end the practice of "rescission," whereby health insurance providers refuse to treat customers who've paid their premiums simply because they've become ill?

No! That's a common misunderstanding. Actually, all of the bills would ban incisions, that is, they would legally bar surgeons from performing surgery until a panel of twelve gay illegal immigrant government bureaucrats unanimously signed off on the procedure.

2) Is it true that health care reform would ban insurers from refusing to insure people because of pre-existing conditions?

Wrong again. To get rid of health inequality, the bills actually mandate that every American be given a pre-existing condition. A National Illness Commission, with academics appointed from Harvard, Reed College and Berkeley, will evaluate each citizen, and based on their demographic profile, choose their malady. Each disease or syndrome is scored on a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being the most severe. White christian men will receive pre-existing conditions of 8 or higher. Black people, "wise latinas," and ACORN members will be exempted.

3) I heard the proposals currently under consideration provide seniors with option of free counseling sessions under Medicare, where they can discuss a living will and end-of-life care.

That's a huge misconception. The bills require all senior citizens (who are non union members) be euthanized on their 70th birthday. Under section 278(c)ii all last rites will be performed by Jeremiah Wright using a Q'uran.

4) I've heard the bills being proposed would require insurers to provide preventative care, like mammograms, free of charge.

No, but all lactating mothers will be forced to breast-feed poor children.

5) Will the current bills plug the "donut hole" in the Medicare prescription drug benefit so seniors don't have to pay exorbitant out of pocket expenses for their medication?

Absolutely not. The legislation will ban donuts.