We've got to stop Robo-Jesus

I'll Devito Your Schwarzenegger

So when I said, last week, that we are overconcerned with image, this is what I meant: that we won't go into Syria, that we won't try to do anything with Syria, because there's no reason for us to. What we will do is feign concern because that is the image we want to project, the story we want told; we are big daddy democracy and we want what's best for everyone. When someone like Manning or the pissing troops disrupt that, people get upset. And situations like the marine being demoted for killing innocents require very special image manipulation.



If you enjoy this podcast you should do several things. The first is listen to Writing Excuses available on Itunes. It's interesting and funny and talks about fiction in the same sort of way I do, only those podcast-ers are much smarter. The most interesting episode I've listened to is "The Hollywood Formula" (it's fairly recent) and it has a cool discussion of protagonists and antagonists in relation to the Dark Knight. I don't agree with their conclusion, but it's interesting as hell nonetheless.
Also, you should follow this blog, and recommend it to folks you think might like it.

Now Made with more Dark Gods

Titles Forever

Kinda hope you read that as "titties forever".



The James Earl Jones link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K_kGtQmvrVI

The sci-fi link: http://dailysciencefiction.com/science-fiction/disaster-apocalypse/colum-paget/inconstant-nature

Late Facts: I forgot to mention the '50s-on movie that doesn't have a "Watch for the mutant" mentality. That movie is The Day the Earth Stood Still (if you're thinking of the Keanu Reeves remake, I am ashamed of you). That movie picked up the "embrace the mutant" idea and displayed the inherent danger of the arrogant (and kinda narcissistic) idea of "watch for the mutant". 

Nerditry Within

Seriously. Dawg. I spend a few minutes making fun of Ron Paul, and then it's all about nerd bullshit. Awesome nerd bullshit, but I would think so.





Sorry I rant in the middle of the podcast. Normally I save that for the end, but I got worked up, and it is hella late as I record, so my brain isn't working right, and I only just thought of moving the track. It's not hard to do. Take me about ten seconds. But I saved and exported the file already. I take that as my point of no return (I don't really have such a point, but it's helpful when I don't want to do something). I hope you enjoy, and can understand, the podcast anyway (I refer to my notes several times, but I eventually gave that up), and that it's not just a bunch of incoherent rambling.

Late Facts: while recording this I had that song that goes "And it feels, And it feeeeels like, Heaven's so far away" ("Gone Away", the Offspring) stuck in my head. Listening to it now is like scratching the best kind of itch. 

Keep the Faith

The Podcast:



And since I didn't feel like doing a real post, here's an excerpt from my upcoming fictional book:

Raising Kids, or: So you’ve decided to share your home with a retarded wolf for 18 years.
Kids are like retarded wolves. They run in packs, have obvious alpha and omega positions, do not care for the laws of god or man, and hunt anyone not part of the pack. For the parent it is necessary to assert status as alpha continually; kick your kid over a lot when they are learning to walk, just to let em know what’s up.

They are retarded wolves because children are useless, understand nothing, but it’s a crime to leave them out in a thunderstorm. They can’t bring in food, bitch if you make grilled cheese “wrong”, and are horrible little
miscreants. While wolves grow quickly and can support themselves after time and get along with the pack (or get kicked the fuck out) you have to keep your kid alive for 18 years, during which they go from horrible, to okay, to awful, and during the first and last stage their “pack” is either other smelly, small, abominable beasts, or teenagers. And if the fucker gets hooked on drugs or booze, you look like the bad guy if you beat it, even if it deserves it.

So that doesn't sound very wolf-like, you say. Ahh, but they bite. And they are supremely adaptable, despite constant complaints that "this sammich has too much bread". They run in packs, greet new things with hostility until said new thing has proven useful, and despise baths. So they are wolves, just not useful like wolves. You can't put them in the backyard to thin out those damn deer that eat your garden. With that in mind, I wrote this book to help parents keep a handle on the monsters.

Do Not Eyeball the Bear

We have established stories/narratives. The invasion of Iraq. Often these stories are used to reach an end the people in power already know and want. We are seeing that now with the mounting pressure to “do something” about Iran. It is a dangerous place! We hear. They want nuclear weapons. Nevermind that America, Russia, and China already have nuclear weapons. Nevermind that during the Cold War we came again and again to the brink of destroying ourselves. That’s not the story.
The story is that Iran is a bad place run by bad people and nuclear weapons are bad things so we have to stop them. We do - the good guys. And anyone who says otherwise is, clearly, a bad guy. Which is where I bring up: the Senate voted to allow executive power to indefinitely detain American citizens. They did this because “we are at war” and when at war sometimes hard things must be done. You have to fight the bad guys.
The bad guys, however, are American citizens. You and I. The established story here is that Iran is a bad guy, and people who don’t want to invade Iran might be bad guys, because terrorists are bad guys, and maybe this isn’t all connected but it probably is with a big capital-e Evil. Got that? That’s the story. Now I’m going to talk about movies.
Kill Bill is the traditional revenge movie. The Bride goes on a rampage of revenge, and in the end succeeds. She at times seems just as bad as the people she’s after - she was one of them, until recently - but she turned her back on it, and is killing bad guys, so she’s a good guy. The Bride is how we see ourselves. Maybe not great - certainly not saintly - but on the side of the righteous.
We are actually closer to the plot of Old Boy. And we’re not Oh Dae-su, either (he’s the guy taking revenge for being kidnapped and held captive for what, ten years? A long ass time). We’re the captor. In Old Boy, Oh Dae-su is released after a lengthy captivity, and seeks revenge. He hurts a lot of people. He finds his captor. And he discovers why the captor did this to him. Sorry for calling him the captor, I looked it up on Imdb, but I can’t tell which was the bad guy (I am awful with names).
The bad guy did all this to Dae-su because, when both were young, Dae-su saw the bad guy fucking his own sister, and told his friend - not out of malice, but in an offhand way. He didn't see the bad guy (then just the sister-fucking guy) again, because Dae-su moved away. The sister killed herself. The bad guy dedicated himself to revenge. This is a disruption of an established story. It’s why the movie initially upset me so much. I expected an established story of revenge, and I got a disrupted story. Think of America in this context with Iran and Iraq. Recently there was a survey that discovered most Iraqis and Afghanis did not know why America was there. They did not know what 9/11 was. Our apparent revenge meant as much to them as the bad guy’s did to Dae-su - taken for a slight that Dae-su (representing the Iraqis, Afghanis, and hopefully not the Iranians) did not remember. The bad guy took revenge for something the hero didn’t actually remember. The whole goddam movie is about him trying to find the reason for his suffering.
This, as I said, is a disrupted story. It’s an uncomfortable story (with a lot of incest, besides). Disrupting an established story can feel akin to killing god. We know our stories, we like them. But after so many years at war, after the financial collapse, many people do not accept the established story. They don’t accept that we must go to war with Iran; nor that the “boom and bust” cycle of capitalism is the best thing for America. And that so many don’t accept the established story tastes bitter to those who do accept it. It's the comfort of the established story against the change of the disrupted story.
I don’t want to pull self-righteous bullshit here. I am often wrong. I may be wrong about the threat Iran poses, or about the financial reform I’d like to see. But I look. I examine the stories I hold near and dear, even about myself. Because you can’t move past the limits imposed by the established story, until you tear it down, disrupt it, and see the larger story - possibly the real story, possibly just another well-entrenched story that must be torn down in turn - until you are willing to destroy the things you believe, with no doubt, to be true.

The Civil War link: (http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2012/02/why-do-so-few-blacks-study-the-civil-war/8831/)