Sunday, December 07, 2008

Long ago...

I saw Run Home, Slow when I was 10 or 11 and it blew me away. My stepfather would often take us to drive-in movies (Louisville '68-'71) where I saw all the spaghetti westerns, Peckinpah's The Wild Bunch, The Abominable Dr. Phibes, etc. Most of what I saw clearly wasn't age appropriate, which is why it was so powerful. This film had a big effect on me, so much so that I would incessantly imitate the hunchback character to entertain (and creep out) my mother and brothers.

But I didn't know until today that Frank Zappa did the sound track. Cool.
h/t Aristocrats http://ristocrats.blogspot.com/



Friday, December 05, 2008

Malignant Narcissist

As George W. Bush performs a series of exit interviews on national TV, and in light of the minute to minute deterioration of the Bush economy, I was reminded of a post I put up on another blog back in May, 2006. I was thinking about foreign policy at the time, but I believe Bush's impotence, blame shifting and indifference (disguised as ideology) fits into the same frame.


For years I have been reading about the Bush administration's rationale for preemptive war, its claims to the mantle of global superiority as a (moral) nation state. The left, rightly and too easily, blasts large holes in this rationale, pointing out failing after failing. Currently, we are debating the wisdom of Iran as the next front for Bush's bellicose foreign policy. This has become my dark fear: the chaos, conflict and death of Iraq, and possibly Iran, are actually the goal. The neoconservative think tankers are millennialists. The me, the you, and the now don't exist for these guys. They are working for 3006; they are willing to write off the 21st century; at least the one that includes us.

I would like to find a bright spot here, maybe even some humor. We all enjoy watching Bush unravel as he is asked direct questions by a gathering of graduate students. His rambling answers, the idiotic mugging and giggles combined with his arrogance and impatience are truly disturbing. Increasingly, I get the impression that as he looks at his handpicked (or not) audience, he really doesn't see people with lives, interests, values...they don't register in his gaze. I really think he is running the clock down, halfheartedly pretending to govern as he waits for the next calamity, the next step in the millennial sequence.


We are currently experiencing that next step...ratbastards.

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