More Bullshit....Cube Style

3/18/2005


Some thoughts on the passing scene:



1) I think the rebirth of the strangulated oppression we got going on today comes partly from the hollowness of the 70s and the failure of hedonism to satisfy the human quest for spirit and soul. I see the 1970s as “too much of good thing” meaning our decade long urination on a few hundred years of our cultural history is going to create a backlash (Reagan). As usual, we go from one extreme to another. After years of sexual repression and intellectual lock down we decide the answer is a 24 hr a day drug fueled orgy which, of course, leads back to repression and a yearning for the non existent “good old days.” Let’s stop thinking in black and white and embrace the beauty of gray.


2) A recent quote from George W about Syria:

I don’t see how you can have a fair election in Lebanon with Syrian troops and Syria’s secret service embedded in the society.

If you replace the words “Lebanon” with “Iraq,” “Syrian” with “American,” “troops” with “liberators” and “secret service” with “contractors,” evidently it is very possible to have a free election, one which is an example for the whole world to see and follow spreading democracy and freedom across the Middle East.

3) Did you see that we caught or killed the 6 of Diamonds the other day? He was like an in-law or stepson or something to Hussein. When the story was reported the “news” guy threw in that “probably he was funding a lot of the insurgents over the last year.” The implication is clear; the Iraqis are fighting our occupation because this guy was giving them money and NOT because they pretty much hate our guts.

4) Ann Coulter represents all of the basest emotions mankind has: jealousy, hate, greed, sloth etc. With that being said the bio that was included on the inner flap of her latest book could have been easily edited down to, “Ann Coulter is a person who is standing in the way of a better world.”

5) John Lennon was shot and killed at the age of 40. Ann Coulter will probably be in her early 90s still spreading her poisonous shit. This is not a fair world but it is the only one we got. Why do we continue to make it uglier than it has to be?

6) Imagine if the “good” people in the world were allowed to focus their energies on making the world a better place instead of being checked and countered by dogs like that bee-atch Ann Coulter, Dollar Dog Rush Limbaugh or Shallow Sean Hannity, etc.? It might not work out but we’ve seen the results of this bunch’s wisdom so how could it be worse? But again I turn to John Lennon for Solstice…

Instant karma’s gonna get you
Gonna knock you right on the head
You better get yourself together darling
Pretty soon you’re gonna be dead

7) Can you imagine ANY WORKING person thinking these things:

Universal Health Care is a bad thing.
Why should I want to see a free doctor?
Social Security is a bad thing.
People don’t deserve a safety net.
We should rely on the alms of the Bushes.
Trial Lawyers are a bunch of scum although they are the ONLY line of defense against corporate greed run amok.

8) Dick Cheney goes on and on about how bad trial lawyers are and yet never once mentions the batteries of corporate lawyers working 24 hrs a day, 7 days a week, trying as hard as humanly possible, to find some loophole to screw working people out of their money. How come those attorneys get a pass in the vilification game?

9) If there really is a liberal bias in the media, wouldn’t scenes and point of views depicted in Warren Beatty’s Bulworth (1998) be a pretty much regular occurrence on the nightly news or in local newspapers?

10) Woody Allen’s earlier career can be summed up with three milestones. The first being Take the Money and Run(1969) which I believe can be credited as the first “mocumentary.” The second being the Napoleonic Era comedy, Love and Death(1975) which I happened to see again over the weekend which had many moments that were laugh out loud funny. Finally his masterpiece the Best Movie Oscar winning Annie Hall(1977) which was a timeless piece of mature observation about relationships. There is an evolution in his work, like a child who does anything for a laugh then becomes a teenager/young adult that knows everything and thinks of himself as so clever and lastly as an adult who realizes that the answers are not so cut and dry.

If his career ended there his name would probably be on a very short list of great directors But his career did not end there and although there have been some very good movies over the last 26 years (“Manhattan” (1979) “Hannah and her Sisters” (1986) and “Husbands and Wives” (1992) come to my mind) Woody’s work HAS decreased in quality and this fact is not because of the audience’s expectations.

I am not going to tell a true intellectual like Woody Allen to retire, but if his next movie came out 10 years from now and was on par with his earlier work he would have a chance to be remembered more prestigiously then the way he currently is. But probably Woody doesn’t care about any of that.

As the man himself put it:

I do not want to live forever through my films.
I want to live forever in my apartment.

11) I think Achtung Baby (1991) is Hall of Fame inductee U2’s last real quality work. I am sure they have a song or two that is OK since but they have become what can be described a group who has outlived their shelf life. The sad part is that branch of music (Rock and Roll) has no one to pick up the mantle because the last 5 (maybe more) years has no record company developing anybody. I am sure there are good musicians/artists out there to be discovered but I don’t have the time or inclination to search the web for them.

So I guess I represent the worst of both worlds: A Snobbish Sheep.

12) From the movie “Love and Death,” rated PG in 1975:

I was walking through the woods, thinking about Christ. If he was a carpenter, I wondered what he charged for bookshelves

13) Can you imagine the soulless creep who listened to John Lennon’s “Across the Universe” and said this would be a great song to hawk Hewlett Packard Printing products?

Sixth Army