Flint: Stir Up The Stagnation
Oct 2k4
28oct04
Massive Semantics (1st burble)
Recently had a conversation with a friend that spanned politics (naturally), music, and travel when she brought to my attention, and not for the first time, that the name of this site frightens some folks who happen upon its links. I suspect that this is especially true in the workplace. Can't say I don't see this coming...all the time.
The short response is that this site is about Rome v. Carthage as opposed to severe elephantitis.
This site is about Nero playing The Devil Went Down To Naples as opposed to the Devil In Miss Jones
Themes regarding the height of blind hubris concern me, while moans and groans atop a horrible lite-jazz soundtrack do not.
Massive Sack might very well mean Pablo Escobar's largest shipment.
It might mean the end result of a successful evening of trick-or-treating.
Or too much garbage.
Or maybe, just maybe, it could all be a salute to those with the cajones to call things as they really see them and maybe even back up the verbiage with some action. This site could very well be about that. Who knows, I've been detoxifying myself lately and I'm starting to think that on top of all the terrible processed food-waste that's being purged from my body, some important stuff might be slipping away too. Anyway.
I decided to use Massive Sack fully aware that it was going to be both blessing and curse. Our society is pretty skittish about sex, yet we think about it all the time, and there are, to partially bite from Carl Segan, billions and billions of phrases out there that can be taken to mean something sexual, or worse, something sexually perverse. The internet, of course, does not help. The first online vehicle to really make money was not Amazon or AOL. It was porn. It was porn that turned early profits in film, in magazines, and now, in cyberspace. Twenty percent of all internet traffic is porn related. Twenty percent!
That means in workplaces, churches, and homes all across our libidinously suppressed land folks are surfing the net with one hand while with the other hand....
Yipes.
So, yeah, Massive Sack is most definitely an example of some simple syntax opening up a randy box of semantics. When we, as a society, get to a point where Islamofacsist snuff films cause more outrage than Janet Jackson's aging breast, then I may consider changing the name of the site.
Maybe.
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26oct04
Players only love you when they're playin - Stevie Nicks (Dreams)
Dang, Fleetwood Mac wasn't writing songs about politics at the time, they were too coked out for that, but it makes you wonder. This is the time of year, well, the time of every four years, when politicians wanna play with you.
The pundits are coming out en masse with their endorsements and I'm tossing in my two pennies of wisdom as well, and it was a tough call. When dire times conjure two second tier politicians for our highest office, one wonders if it really matters. We tend to muddle our way through in the end, and as I've often said, our species has demonstrated an erie and prescient capability to just get by, and since we're slaves to nature, why expect anything more?
Moving on to sports, I've watched Pedro pitch seven shutout innings in St. Louis, and unless the Cardinals figure out some serious magic mojo formulas, it looks like the Red Sox Nation will be drinking their asses off shortly. It's nice to see, and enjoy it while it lasts, because Detroit is on the cusp of being pro-sports central for the foreseeable future. Deal with it.
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25oct04
Once again, our WTF Detroit Lions
Any of you folks out there have a clear idea about what the Lions are about, please let me know, cause I'm confused, and a little frightened.
Joey Harrington and the Angry Kittens went to the Meadowlands and played 60 minutes of well-executed football to dispose of NY Big Blue, 28 to 13. Joey put on his stud face and went 18 for 22, 230 yards, 2 touchdowns...what's the fuss? Against a good pressure defense in a hostile environment, the Lions once again made me think that they can do some very cool things this year...though I don't expect the really cool stuff until next year. But I digress.
How does an up and coming team figure out how to master the trials and travails of the road before the get their act together at home? The Lions are 3-0 on the road, same as Philly, and better than everyone else. Yet last week at Ford Field they made the 04 Packers look like the 67 Packers.
I have no idea how this team is going to play from one week to the next, more specifically, I have no idea how this team is going to play in two weeks against the Redskins, a game to which I have 1st row club seats. I do fully expect Detroit to hit Dallas next Sunday and beat the living shit out of the Cowboys, I really do. I expect Parcells will be grabbing his chest before halftime, because Detroit is capable, I repeat, capable, of making the Cowboys endure 60 minutes of utter hell. Shaun Rogers might put Testeverde out of football this Sunday.
Joey Harrington might play well two games in a row...completing a game-winning hail mary to the Easter Bunny, I just don't know anymore.
However, the Lions are also capable of playing like a pack of jonesing junkies and thus making Vinnie T. and the gang look like Troy Aikman and the gang circa '93.
Oh we shall see.
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22oct04
Space Tourism: Good for Soul, Good for the Economy
To date, at least 7000 folks have pledged 210k apeice to take a ride up into space. That means commercial space flight is just around the corner, and that's so cool.
Say what you want about the costs of space exploration, and more specifically, what Dubbya had said about establishing a permanent base on the Moon, and later, on Mars, but exploration is crucial to the growth of humanity, literally and spiritually. I love the notion that in my lifetime, hopefully, we'll be able to shuttle back and forth from various points of the Solar System without much afterthought. If I had 210k to burn, I'd be one of the 7000 space cadets.
Richard Branson, of Virgin fame, and now regrettably with his own reality show, is bankrolling a good part of this embryotic commercial space program...now off the ground with a viable vehicle, thanks to the Ansari X Prize, and growing interest. The growth potential is tremendous. Just think, when we establish a permanent base on the moon, which is inevitabe given the vast mineral resources up there and the cheap cost of travel once you're beyond Earth's atmosphere and strongest tug of gravity, folks will be lining up to pay handsomely to kick it up in space for a few days. What's happening now is the opening shot for all that.
What's better is that this is being done privately, so we won't hear as much whining about governments spending valuble public dollars for space travel...something the granola crowd has been vocal about. The money, and taxes, generated by a viable commercial space travel program will go a very long way towards making things better on our native space of real estate.
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21oct04
I love the fact that elections are held so close to Halloween, especially in this day and age when Halloween has morphed into a serious adult-entertainment holiday. The best parties in the best cities happen around Halloween, and some of you weirdoes know exactly what I mean...no need to resort to glory holes to get your anonymous freak on. Looking at that last line I see that I need to get with a good therapist or a bottomless bottle of good bourbon. These are stressful days, with too much crap information and too little time to wade though the nasty partisan hackery of established media to extract the nuggets of knowledge we need to prosper for real. It sucks and it's maddening (btw: big up to John Stewart for his Crossfire crucifixion last Friday)...well not so maddening for me because I know were to go for content and I don't mind paying for it.
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19oct04
Watching game 6 of the ALCS, and well, what can you say about Curt Schilling? Dude is pitching right now with a gimp ankle tendon, something that's really important to power pitchers, and through 5-plus innings, he's been money. Sox are up 4 to nada. I'm sick of the Yankees, in fact, I'm always sick of the Yankees, even though I know they play hard, or as Pistons sensi Larry Brown would say, they play the right way. They are the best team money can buy, and fits the notion of world's center of capitalism to a tee...so at least the Yankees are true to the spirit of their city, can't diss them for being fake. No matter, I'd love to see those bastards lose to a bunch of rumpled unshaven self-professed 'idiots.'
Staying with sports for a moment; what in the hell is Joey Harrington trying to do to my nervous system? Just when I think he's pretty much figured out the NFL QB basics, and is ready to be at least a mid-tier starting quarterback (i.e. against Houston and Atlanta), he pulls a Vinnie Testeverde (rookie year), and looks like me on the Pop Warner team when I got demoted from QB to O-line...sure it was elementary school, but the sting remains. Steve Mariucci must be pulling his hair out over this guy. Against the Packers, who were on their last legs coming into Ford Field and thus ready for a season-deciding kill-job, Joey and the kittens looked like such utter poo that half way through the third quarter I tossed a seat cushion at the TV at the end of one in a long series of broken plays. All the sudden it was the Marty Morningwig era again. This has got to stop: good teams don't let struggling teams look great...these Packers were not of the 1967 mold, except Brett Farve does look like he's been playing for almost 40 years. Christ, play well two great games in a row...is that so much to ask?
That said, I wouldn't be at all surprised if we roll into the Meadowlands this weekend and make Tom Coughlin bite off his own head from watching Detroit administer a pro ass-beating to his overrated Giants. In fact, I may make some bets on this. The Lions have learned how to win on the road...so weird.
Discovered a sushi place in Flint, and I feel like my quality of life has ticked upward because of it. Best of all, the sushi is really good, surprisingly so. I know it the fish itself has been frozen at some point, but the freezing process must be a good one, because the salmon and yellowtail nigiri I snarfed down, at two-fiddy a pop, was better than fully half the sushi joints in San Francisco, and I've been to dozens of them. Of course, Blowfish Sushi circa 2000 still makes what I discovered last week taste like rotting chum, but I'm not complaining...any and all options that steer me away from the evil temptations of fast food are welcome. I want to avoid reappearing in California looking fully like a midwestern fatass. I don't need that in my life.
Schilling has pitched six scoreless. I have no idea how this game will end, nor do I have any idea if Boston can pull off the miracles of miracles, after being down three - nada in a best of seven, and take this series. However, I've noticed that even the Yankee fans are starting to show some appreciation and respect for what Schilling is doing, and more importantly, they are basically out of the game. Some folks are just better and tougher and that other stuff and if Schilling and the Sox can pull out this game...a legend will emerge from it.
Addendum: Boston 4, NYY 2. You all knew that by know.
Boston has done what no one in baseball has managed to do, come back from a three to zip deficit in a seven-game series to tie. Game seven starts in about 20 hours, and New York is nervous.
Schilling wound up pitching seven brilliant innings, all heart and balls, and it didn't go to waste, the ghosts of Yankee past didn't screw the Sox, actually, Boston played like they were up to snap the curses and jinxes. But it's not over, and these are the Yankees...bastards who know how to break hearts like that girl in high school who always made you stutter whenever you tried to say something clever.
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14oct04
Thank God for fair and balanced debates. Cause you need to know where the candidates really stand. Right? Unscripted? Off the cuff? Heart and soul of the matter (atoms?)?
No matter what the format, no matter the issue, be assured that every goddamned soundbite has been factory tested and Rove approved.
I didn't actually hear the 3rd debate as it went off last night, but I saw a good portion of it, and with the sound off, the whole presentation somehow becomes more illuminating: This is what we have to choose from...out of a nation of 280-something million souls, this is it, Bush and Kerry...who wants the keys to the armored jeep?
I couldn't hear the debate itself because the butch-drama-queen exercise also known as Yankees v. Red Sox was playing at a strong volume on two other televisions, and there was some pseudo heavy metal Caribbean outfit making a ton of crunching rhythmic noise about 10 feet from my table. By the way, you can employ the steel drum as a substitute for the electrified lead guitar. Sounds impossible, but it's not.
Nor is it impossible for the remarkably average among us to snag a seat in the White House so long as we possess the right amounts of atonement, southern-God, and money-soaked family pedigree. Really, policy positions have so little to do with it. Bush is not as anti-environment as you might think, nor is he as simple. It's just that he is a true believer in the evangelical sense, and I've learned that carries a lot weight between Las Vegas and the Appalachians...so much weight, that being around it too long wrenches my neck.
If it were not for the fact that that the fourth world war is coming at us in a hurry, I'd go hard-core libertarian and say screw the government, not one dime more. After all, those bastards had a good portion of the 60s to show what government activism could do and they fucked the pooch royally. About the only decent initiative to bear fruit in the 60s was the Civil Rights movement, and that was put together by a coalition of southern preachers...brave ones at that. Government just passed some legislation once it became apparent where the wind was blowing.
We need the government to kill people and make sure the old and decrepit don't starve. For the most part, our government has tackled the former prodigiously, and the latter passably. Unlike, say, in the Philippines and Indonesia, beggars 'round here have quite a lot of meat from their bones (save the crackheads), and have the energy to create witty or morose signs explaining their plight. Speaking of crack, the city government San Francisco has done more to make crack dealers wealthy than possibly the crackheads themselves...400 hundred a month, no questions asked, and here's some food stamps.... Ah, government.
Education and the environment will take care of themselves, to the benefit of the cockroach, I imagine.
But as I was saying, we need the government for killing, and there's a lot of killing to be done. It is what it is. But here's my point, Bush really believes that we are approaching the rapture, or the apocalypse as it were, and in that context, the way he's guided foriegn policy makes complete sense (i.e. dissing Europe to the point that they are about to re-arm themselves...which will produce predictable results). Evangelical groups everywhere are sending money and support to Israel, because scripture tells them that's where the deal goes down, at first. Tens of millions of evangelicals think this way, and Bush is their guy. I, I have not the words. I wish I was making this up like I wished I still believed in Santa.
Vote John Kerry, our Donkey-Kong...and pray he's concocted the formula to prove the libertarians wrong.
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11oct04
A few things:
Got mondo otras projects in the kitchen right now, so:
1.) In case you're wondering, not all text-heavy sites these days are blogs, and blog-text is itself something thrown together on the fly, while essays and other measured forms of respectable prose are the products of pre-planning, careful thinking, and much editing.
2.) If you're thinking about moving to Flint, please reconsider. The cheap crack is not worth it.
3.) The Lions have heart...maybe the most stunning revelation I've had this year.
New content...of the non-blog variety, coming 'round the bend.
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9oct04
If you're still undecided...
Bush looked like a high school football coach half-crazed on bad whiskey. While Kerry constructed arguments and wrestled with his inner nuance, Bush said the same things over and over again. Whatever, we'll get what we get.
New Donkey and Andrew Sullivan both have write-ups and links for debate number two, all kinds of leads, opinions, and smokescreens to sort you through the particuars. I think it's pointless, in so far that I have a tough time accepting the fact that there are fifty million people who will vote for Dubbya in three-plus weeks. I can't get my head around it, and not because I'm liberal or pro-first-amendment or any of that. Bush's very possible re-election blows me away for the same reason that millions were stuned by Nixon's stomping of McGovern in 1972. No that's not right, because Nixon was only over his head towards the end, when he was ordering break-ins and constantly modifying his enemies list. However, Bush has been in over his head as commander and joke from this get-go. Worse, he makes up for it by stonewalling the world with a gnarly mix of rightousness and blissful ignorance. Nancy Reagan's astrologer has a better mind. At least Nixon was smart...a crooked bastard, but a smart one.
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