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Back in the day, one of my favorite comic strips was Sam Hurt's Eyebeam. It initially ran in the college newspaper of The University of Texas at Austin, but was later picked up by a few other newspapers. I can't remember what newspaper I saw it in -- perhaps The Dallas Observer?

Wikipedia tells me that in 1982, Hank the Hallucination, a character from the strip, won the student presidency at UT-Austin. That is news to me, but I can't say I'm surprised. The quirky comic had great appeal, and I clipped new strips whenever I saw them. When I lived in student housing at The University of Tennessee at Knoxville in the early '90s, I taped the old clippings to my cinderblock walls.

Anyway, Sam is still creating Eyebeams. All of them -- old and new -- are online here. Years ago, he created a video for Brave Combo, the world's coolest party band. And, finally, here's Sam Hurt's main site.

P.S. After putzing about trying to re-enable comments, I harassed the site admin. He doesn't know what's up, either. So, huh, at least for now. You can still email me at teades@bit-o-nifty.org.

Suddenly, a couple of weeks ago, our traffic jumped ten-fold. Visitors from all over the world inexplicably took great interest in Bit o' Nifty; it's been like Yellowstone in summer.

Naturally we were flattered. Our perserverance and talent finally paid off. And if fame was imminent, then fortune must be right around the corner.

I even decided on the color of the jazzy Jag that soon would be parked in my driveway.

But. (There's always a but.)

These guys, and for reasons that soon will be clear, I know they are guys ... these guys didn't come here to read our stories, poetry, political rants, and personal tribulations. They came for sex.

In one or two of our posts, we mentioned the name of a certain actress famous in the adult movie industry. And the search engines, doing what search engines do, decided that Bit o' Nifty had some nifty bits to stoke testosterone levels.

Nifty bits on a site in which we publically agonized over using the word "breasts" and calling Ann Coulter a ... well, let's not go there again.

Sorry wankers. Although the internet is a cesspool, we're only mildly filthy.

Once a guy stood all day shaking bugs from his hair. The doctor told him there were no bugs in his hair. After he had taken a shower for eight hours, standing under hot water hour after hour suffering the pain from the bugs, he got out and dried himself, and he still had bugs in his hair; in fact, he had bugs all over him. A month later he had bugs in his lungs.

      ----Philip K. Dick, A Scanner Darkly

That's the first paragraph of A Scanner Darkly, Philip K. Dick's darkly comic novel of drugs, insanity, friendship, reality, and identity. Nominally a science fiction writer, PKD uses the detritus of SF to examine the nature of reality, the strength of societal bonds, and the possibility of redemption. Over the past couple of decades, PKD has received the critical acclaim he's due. And naturally I pat myself on the back for appreciating PKD way back when no one outside of SF had ever heard of the guy.

The occasion is the release of a trailer of Richard Linklater's upcoming movie based on the book. PKD, of course, has had more novels adapted to the big screen than any other "SF" writer, but most readers of his work know that Blade Runner, Total Recall, Minority Report, Paycheck, and other "PKD" movies take an idea or device from PKD's work but don't attempt to adapt plot in any comprehensive way. This is not to say the movies are necessarily bad; Minority Report, in particular, is a very accomplished film. Linklater's A Scanner Darkly is purported to be the first faithful adaptation of a PKD novel.

Unknown by the wider public during much of his life, PKD is now the subject of much critical study. Fredric Jameson, one of the more influential Marxist critics working today, published on PKD as early as 1975. The best critic of PKD, though, to my mind, is Stanislaw Lem, whose "Philip K. Dick: A Visionary Among the Charlatans" and "Science Fiction: A Hopeless Case -- with Exceptions," both collected in Microworlds: Writings on Science Fiction and Fantasy, are penetrating analyses of PKD's work. Many science fiction writers hate Lem for claiming, truthfully, that most science fiction is garbage. (I speak as a well-read fan of the genre.) It's always been curious to me that few SF fans are even aware of Doris Lessing's Canopus in Argos series, which is among the best SF ever written. Regardless of the myopia of many SF fans, good SF can be found if you're willing to sift through all the trash. PKD (and Lem, for that matter) prove that SF isn't a completely hopeless case.

PKD may have been nuts (he apparently believed we are all living, in truth, in Biblical/Roman times), but if so, it was a special kind of insanity that allowed him to write strikingly original fiction. Unfortunately, PKD died relatively young; for his biography and for details of his life-changing "2-3-74" experience, check out this link.

Anyway, the trailer looks interesting. Linklater, by all accounts, is giving the book its due.

Update: I just came across a nice overview of PKD's career and influence; check it out.

Another Update: Robert Crumb's famous "The Religious Experience of Philip K. Dick," first published in Weirdo #17, is available here.

One of the interesting things to develop after this election is an increase in communication among progressives (activist or not) around the world. Certainly, this is happening on the larger, political and organizational level, and, no surprise, on thousands of blogs. But one of the simpler ways it's happening is through scrawled and photoshopped messages on two websites:SorryEverybody, a site set up by Americans, and ApologiesAccepted, a site created by a few Dutch citizens who wanted to respond. There are thousands of entries on each—browse liberally. I really can't say much about the two sites except that I find them extraordinary and moving. They give me some hope and show me that I'm part of a huge community of humans who can see beyond a horizon defined by nationalistic fear. If you're a cynic or a lout or just don't get it, I'm really, really sorry for you.

Yesterday was our national day of Thanksgiving, hearkening back to a feast marking the first harvest of the Pilgrims in 1621. George Washington proclaimed 26 November 1789 a one-time day of national thanksgiving and prayer. Lincoln made it a national holiday on the last Thursday of November. Unfortunately, this on occasion became the fifth Saturday, thus making it far too close to Christmas. Finally, in 1939, President Roosevelt set it at the fourth Thursday in November.

Last Thanksgiving, President Bush visited the troops in Iraq; this year, having little to celebrate in Iraq but much to give thanks for in the States, he stayed at home for leftovers in Crawford, TX. Perhaps he prayed some too—maybe for the Middle East, but more likely that the country will continue to go along with the frightening and frenetic shift to the right he's either allowing or implementing in this country's government.

Speaking of the Middle East, Turkey is an interesting country interestingly positioned. It's the most peaceful Muslim country with a secular government in the region. However, it borders Iraq, with which it shares a volatile Kurdish population. The Northern Iraqi Kurds have become increasingly involved in military options against Sunni rebels in Mosul. This can't bode well, stoking rumors of civil war in Iraq. Can the Turks avoid becoming somewhat involved if their Kurds decide to start crossing the border? Turkey also borders Syria, a country we accuse both of harboring terrorists and of allowing them to leak across the border into Iraq. Turkey shares its eastern frontier with Iran, whom we accuse of developing nuclear weapons. Could we, would we, should we choose to use Turkey, who has stayed out of the war for the most part so far, as a staging ground for offensives against one or both of these countries? Turkey has its own radical Muslim fundamentalist population, which has shown its ability violently to challenge Turkey's secular government.

If that's not enough, Turkey is across the Black Sea from Ukraine, which just held elections that kept the incumbent government in power. Much of the world, including our government, has accused these elections as being rife with fraud. Ukranian journalists who had supported the incumbent and members of the opposition have joined with much of the population in questioning the results. Progressive journalist Greg Palast makes a few pertinent observations:

Greg Palast
REPUBLICAN CHALLENGES PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION BASED ON EXIT POLLS
Tuesday Nov 23, 2004
from the New York Times

An international election observer mission - from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, the European Parliament, the NATO Parliamentary Assembly and the Council of Europe - released a preliminary report on Monday declaring that the election did not meet democratic standards.

The observers' findings were seconded by Republican Senator Richard G. Lugar of Indiana, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

Citing the disturbing fact that official results diverged sharply from a range of surveys of voters at polling places, Lugar said, "A concerted and forceful program of election-day fraud and abuse was enacted with either the leadership or cooperation of governmental authorities."

Other prominent Western observers were unsparing in their criticism of the state's conduct of the election.

"Fundamental flaws in Ukraine's presidential election process subverted its legitimacy," the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs, sponsored by the Democratic Party in the United States, declared in its preliminary report. The institute, cited "systematic intimidation, overt manipulation and blatant fraud" that were "designed to achieve a specific outcome irrespective of the will of the people."
-- New York Times

This reporter was unable to reach Senator Lugar regarding the inconsistency of official election results and exit polls in the USA; the intimidation of minority voters in Florida and Ohio; nor the failure to count two million ballots cast, half by African-American voters, in America's first post-democratic election held earlier this month.

Eastern bloc observers noted that balloting in Ohio, New Mexico and Florida did not meet Ukrainian standards, but applauded America's attempt to restore democratic institutions after the overthrow of elected government in 2000.

I suppose any ironic, hypocritical connections to our own flawed elections, especially in Ohio, aren't on the table of leftovers served cold in Crawford.

And so Thanksgiving, a day to give thanks, based on the arrival and survival of the Puritans in the Americas. They're still here, but it seems as though their desire for religious freedom, as it was in their violent suppresion of Thomas Morton's colony, is a cloak for their desire to stifle dissent and wage war against those of other faiths.

Though my parents, quite nearly Puritan, and I share many differences, we found a place to meet at the dinner table. My Mom and I cooked up the following:

• fresh Turkey with cornbread, chestnut, and sausage stuffing
• sweet butternut squash, roasted with onions
• cranberry and tangerine aspic
• peas sauteed with garlic, shallots, and prosciutto
• wheat, rye, and oat bran yeast rolls
• giblet gravy
• apple and cranberry pie

You want any of the recipes, let me know.

Trent and I watched the VP debate tonight and gave some points to both men for hitting hard on both the facts and on each other. As the debate ended, the two of us gave it to Edwards. We thought he aquitted himself well against a real hard-ass who has spent many, many years in (read "fucking up") government. Cheney certainly had a few facts at the fingertips, and he went after the soft midsection of Edwards, his inexperience, just as he should have. But Cheney, in addition to looking like a mortician, didn't do himself any favors by sticking to an extremely tired public presentation, like that of a man who had little time for this nonsense and had to be somewhere else. To my mind, Edwards appeared the confident first-term senator with an appetite for the debate and the office of Vice President while Cheney seemed to take the attitude of swatting away a particularly pesky horsefly. As with Bush in the presidential debate on Thursday, I don't think the standard image of Cheney is terribly appealing to the public.

The MSNBC pundits we were listening to gave the debate overwhelmingly to Cheney. Joe Scarborough predicted that tomorrow's news will tell the story of a Cheney victory. (I read that CNN's crew called it nearly a tossup.) I think Scarborough's wrong on this one. Many folks are tired of the Cheney demeanor—they associate it, quite correctly, with the face of an investment banker who just told you that even though the stock he advised you to invest in crashed and burned, you should continue to listen to and invest through him because he has years of experience in the market, and more, you shouldn't be piddiling around by asking to read the fine print of the deal he put together because he knows better than you. The guy is a chronic, very effective, malicious, straight-face full of gravitas liar who attempts to take his opponents out with calmly delivered lectures on their inadequacies. But I think the majority of Americans have seen it from him one too many times and are, again correctly, suspicious that Cheney is doing the same to them.

Edwards presented the Kerry for President case well and scored some major points on poverty, jobs, and healthcare, which sadly was never introduced as a major topic. Edwards clearly delivered indictment after indictment on job loss, health care catastrophy, education underfunding, and the mismanagement of Iraq.

The pundits I listened to gave it to Cheney for putting the little boy in his place. In an effort to highlight Edwards' absence from senate votes, Cheney, who as VP is president of the Senate, said he hadn't met Edwards. Could have been quite a zinger, but fact is that Cheney had mentioned him by name at a February 2001 prayer breakfast both men attended.

Attempting to put the kid in his place. . . . Edwards isn't a kid, as he showed, and this isn't the election year for such a tactic to work. Several unscientific online polls and a couple of quick polls done by CBS and ABC give the debate to Edwards. I (and I think Trent agrees with me here) give it to Edwards on points but think it will generally be seen as a draw in the media with a several point victory for Edwards in the polls.

We'll see.

Update, 10:54 a.m.: The Cleveland Plain Dealer, hometown newspaper for the site of the VP debate, calls the contest a tie. Also, a correction: in quick polls done immediately after the debate, CBS and FOX, polling undecideds, gave the debate to Edwards; ABC, polling a group composed of a majority of Republicans, gave the edge to Cheney.

—

In an extremely odd bit of news, the Michigan Republican Party has asked county prosecutors to file suit against Michael Moore for "offering underwear, potato chips and Ramen noodles to college students in exchange for their promise to vote." Um. I don't think it's in the Republican party's best interest to bring up the topic of tampering with voters. Ramen noodles to get someone to vote vs. the attempted purge (again) of African Americans from the voter rolls?

Was a time I'd do anything for some chips and ten packages of Ramen noodles. Toss in the underwear and it's dinner and clean laundry for a week.

The Star Press, an east Indiana newspaper, tells in a series of articles a familiar story of the inroads being taken on academic freedom around the country. The story begins with an equally familiar recitation of student complaint against a professor with "liberal bias." The students plastered the campus with posters decrying the professor's "funneling money to radicals," among other accusations. Yes, I know of a few professors who abuse their academic freedom—I knew one in grad school who went on and on about environmental issues in a freshman composition class and I reviewed one adjunct professor who teaches poetry by having students express their feelings about a certain poem by drawing pictures in crayon—thing is, the former was never accepted as a serious academic and the latter was evaluated by me and another professor, found wanting, and no longer teaches at our institution. The tenured faculty did their duty and removed the problem. The academic community, by and large, is well-govered by its own—this is the nature of tenure, and for the most part it works.

The students' assault on academic freedom is grounded in the push for an interestingly titled Academic Bill of Rights, a hierarchical model for instruction which would effectively put a damper on a college professor's right to make contemporary correlatives to historical events, political themes, literary work, and so forth.

Witness student Brent Mock's full article where he writes:

The class [at Ball State], titled “Introduction to Peace Studies and Conflict Resolution,” was the introductory class for a Peace Studies and Conflict Resolution minor that I took as a supplement to my major. I quickly learned that [in] this course, the phrase “conflict resolution” as used in the description of the course was not to be taken in a literal sense. The only studying of conflict resolution that we did was to enforce the idea that non-violent means were the only legitimate sources of self-defense. In other words, the class was designed entirely to delegitimize the use of the military in the defense of our country altogether. This seemed to me to be indoctrination rather than education.

Mr. Mock also notes that he was "forced to read a book he disagreed with" and that he objected to Professor Wolfe's use of the 9/11 attacks and aftermath in Afghanistan and Iraq as contemporary examples from which to establish a point of view on conflict resolution, the nature and advertised content of the class.

Mr. Mock seems to have forgotten a major tenent of education (along with a definition of "peace," part of the title and thrust of the course and minor), that we must confront the world of ideas in the course of establishing our own stance. I ran into a simliar if not so radical situation when a student of mine refused to write a required essay on the stories of Raymond Carver, claiming that they were "vulgar," preferring to write on a "Christian" writer instead. I refused, thus setting off a chain of complaints. She was a declared English major headed to Bob Jones University, but a declared English major nonetheless. How did she expect to engage the world of literature without reading stories that engaged the contemporary world in its complexity—how might she respond to Flannery O'Connor?

When the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) objected to the activities at Ball State and the student posters became news, right-wing idealogue and muckraker David Horowitz, who endorses the Acdemic Bill of Rights and encourages on his website student protest, wrote a response calling for removal of the posters and claiming his even-tempered approach to the issue. However, his real agenda is exposed both in other comments quoted in the Star Press, as well as on his website, Front Page online magazine. One can see that Horowitz is pursuing a radical right-wing agenda, complete with a recent assault on Eric Alterman and an embrace of the newly cast Christopher Hitchens, once a long-time contributer to The Nation recently turned to the right. (Would to god former Nation contributing editor and Hitchens colleague Alexander Cockburn was around for this--I could use a little of his "Beating the Devil" to address the issue right about now.)

Further evidence of Horwitz's distinctly non-academic approach, one completely without rigour, is his list of featured books, neatly arranged down the left side of the Front Page website. These include heavyweight scholarly tomes by such well-balanced writers as Sean Hannity, commentator for Fox News, a "fair and blanced" network on which Horowitz has been featured as a guest. Horowitz has published numerous syndicated articles by Ann Coulter, one of this country's leading pushers of reaon-free, neo-conservative blather: unscholarly is far too kind a word for her, but as I have already used stronger language to define her on Bit-o'-Nifty, I'll limit my comments here to her lack of integrity and credibility. That Horowitz has felt moved to support such hack writers as these is evidence of his own inability to judge scholarship and the lively debate of a college classroom.

And so the fight on the Ball State campus is an attempt by a right-wing idealogue to establish false credentials as a viable academic voice, worm his way into the academic community, and begin passing off neo-conservative rhetoric as scholarship and informed instruction in a college curriculum.

Studs Terkel's comments on Christopher Hitchens' turnaround could equally apply to Horowitz, a professed civil rights activist:

My point is a simple one: vanity. It's probably the least of our seven deadly sins; all of us have a touch of it, more or less. In some cases, more than less. . . . It is the manner in which he has behaved toward those who differ with him: his ad hominem assaults on their intelligence and integrity. It is his vulgarity of language, so unlike the guy I knew, that knocked me for a loop. . . . I'm afraid that his psyche is now more possessed of vanity than of fairness.

Tennesseans: Today is the final day to register for the November presidential election.

Register today--NOW! Download a voter registration form and make sure it gets postmarked today by taking it to the post office straightaway or, better yet, drive to the nearest Kroger and look for the tent out front--they'll register you on the spot.

Michigan now requires that the driver's license address match the address on the voter registration card.This isn't, to my knowledge, the case in Tennessee. But why take any chances?

Stuff to do:

• If you're not registered, DO IT TODAY--see above.
• Get a current copy of your voter registration card--contact your local county election commission to order one.
• Make sure all of your personal identification information on your driver's license matches that on your voter registration card.
• Spread the word about Kerry's vision for a stronger America
• Take your voter registration card, your driver's license, and your birth certificate if you can find it to your polling place on November 2.

I'm not ready to concede Tennessee; every university, college, and community college prof. I've talked to across the state says the same thing: the student Democrats are taking charge of the political debates on campus. Check out John Zogby's analysis of the race, then consider the post-debate response, and an analysis of Kerry's "turnaround". Talk it up!

In times of crisis, legislators must act boldly (or at least stride evenly on the flooring). It's encouraging to know that we're near to proclaiming a national tree.

Oak floors have played a significant role in my life, featured in nearly every dive and rathole I've lived in over the past 20 years. The moderately nice 40's two-bedroom rancher I live in now has 'em in every room. Even, I've discovered from the gradually peeling linoleum, in the kitchen.

Hanging on the office wall, above my computer, is this Lord of the Rings poster created in 1973 by Jimmy Cauty. Ever since I was a teenager, I've had a copy of this poster. Last night, Keith and I, after surveying our most recent wrecked relationships (see...oh hell, just about any entry) -- anyway, afterwards, we got to tracing the minutia in his Cauty poster, which of course led to getting online and looking stuff up.

Jimmy Cauty was born in Devon in 1956; when he was 17, he designed the poster for Athena. Since then, more than six million copies have been distributed worldwide.

Cauty, aka Rockman Rock, is a quite the character. He was a co-founder of The Justified Ancients of Mu Mu (The JAMS, earlier known as KLF), an art-music band that had seven consecutive Top 10 singles. Iconoclastic to the core, Cauty's been involved in a number of subversive hoaxes, pranks, and public statements.

But for me, Cauty's the kid who created the coolest Lord of the Rings poster. Yes, it looks like student art; yes, it's kind of crude. But the sheer obsession that went into its creation -- that I can appreciate.

Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld continues to pump out both blather (by confusing bin Laden and Hussein) and bluster (by promoting the nonsense of achieving fair Iraqi elections in January) rather than anything approaching a cogent understanding of the mess in Iraq. Even the now quite discredited Colin Powell understands the problems.

Meanwhile, Bush's adopted hometown of Crawford, TX has endorsed Kerry, calling Bush's proposals a "smoke-screen agenda." This from a small town newspaper deep in the heart of Texas that endorsed Bush in 2000. I think the word is getting out. I've said it before but will echo Clinton again many times before election day: there are more of us then there are of them. If we vote, if folks from the erroneously supposed Bush supporters in Crawford, TX to the nearly disenfranchised in Orlando, FL, go to the polls, Kerry will win and we'll have four years to repair our democracy, our image around and relations with the world, and our self-esteem. If we can get enough folks to see the truth and get them pissed off enough to vote, Kerry's election is assured. Sounds obvious, eh?

—

The Time cover is by Boris Artzybasheff, a mid-century illustrator who had immense range, from anthropomorphized helicopters in advertisments to bawdy line drawings in the Balzac Droll Stories volume I have on my shelf. The Balzac is one of many books that Trent and I haul off the shelf to amuse ourselves after we've looked over this or that theorist and offered the same opinions we always do. Take Fredric Jameson: the only valuable Jameson is his first chapter of The Political Unconscious. The rest of the book (especially that crap on Lord Jim) is unreadable; subsequent volumes put the reader off and don't offer much for the effort. I first encountered Jameson some fourteen years ago in a Political Theory class, which occasioned relations with a fantastic woman that were more than theoretical and might just have been Balzac farce if they weren't so imperative as to bring me to tears fourteen years later.

U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft, the man who lost his Senate seat to a dead guy, who covered the statues the Spirit of Justice and the Majesty of Law with $8,000 drapes, and who fancies himself a singer/songwriter, recently had his only jury conviction on a terrorism charge thrown out of court. It was the only terrorist conviction arising from the detention of 5,000 foreign nationals since 9/11.

Here's more about Ashcroft's assault on civil liberties.

This morning, there here have been new bombings in Baghdad; freedom seems a long way off. In The Nation, William Greider examines the actual and metaphorical body count from the war, including a strong indictment of the Bush Administration's gradual destruction of the U.S. military, while Noam Chomsky evaluates the global implications of our decision to use force. Both Greider and Chomsky see the invasion of Iraq as a conscious move on the part of "Bush and colleagues" to establish a U.S. hegemony—security through enforced "democracy." Many have compared this to empire building of the Spanish-American "splendid little" War. War. War.

According to soldiers from Fort Carson who were interviewed by Rocky Mountain News in Colorado Springs, Colorado, members of the Army's 3rd Brigade Combat Team were told to re-enlist or face deployment to Iraq.

The soldiers who spoke out, anonymously for fear of reprisal, said many members of the 3rd Brigade Combat Team have already spent a year in Iraq, believe they've done their duty, and look forward to returning to civilian lives. If short-timers do get sent back to Iraq, the Army can keep them past their active duty requirements.

Here's the story.

A U.S. intelligence report prepared for Bush in July but just now getting talk in the press paints a depressing picture of Iraq, including the real chance for outright civil war. Which shows, it pays to listen to your elders. Bush Sr. told his kid that an impulsive war on Iraq would cause ... well, the mess we have now.

It's hard to keep the faith. Do those who like Bush know something I don't?

------

In brighter news, Bush, intelligence report be damned, tells voters that freedom is on the march in Iraq!

Buzzflash offers this image in postcard form as one of its premiums, but the graphs are so telling, I had to steal it and post here. That said, go buy some for yourself.

After giving those pictures a good, long look, I wonder, is there anyone who can benefit from a situation dictated by the numbers in those four categories? Any group that benefits from a net job loss, floundering stock market, massive budget deficit, and rising unemployment?

• My retired uncle Billy doesn't
• My single-mom, two-job student doesn't
• My self-employed brother doesn't
• My elderly parents don't

Major Corporate CEO's and officers do just fine with those numbers. Their salaries are large and their stock options plentiful.

How many of us make the salaries? How many of us have the options?

• My retired uncle Billy doesn't
• My single-mom, two-job student doesn't
• My self-employed brother doesn't
• My elderly parents don't
• Over 1,000 dead American soldiers don't

Thanks to the American Civil Liberties Union, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled that Texas prison officials can be sued for sexual discrimination based on sexual orientation. This ruling also establishes that the case of Texas prisoner Roderick Johnson, whose pleas to prison officials for protection from assaults by other prisoners were ignored, can proceed under the Eighth Amendment's "cruel and unusual punishment" clause.

Here's an excerpt from the ACLU press release yesterday:

For 18 months, Johnson was housed at the James A. Allred Unit in Iowa Park, Texas where prison gangs bought and sold him as a sexual slave, raping, abusing, and degrading him nearly every day, the ACLU said in legal papers. Johnson filed numerous grievances, letters, and complaints with prison officials and appeared before the unit’s classification committee seven separate times asking to be transferred to safe-keeping, protective custody, or another prison, but each time they refused, telling him that he must "fight or fuck." Prison officials moved Johnson out of the Allred Unit and into a wing designated for vulnerable prisoners only after the ACLU intervened on his behalf.

I joined the ACLU today. I'm ashamed I didn't do it years ago.

I thought it would be nice to get something beautiful up -- pictures of Dick Cheney give me the creeps. This is a still from Hero, a Chinese movie made two years ago but just released in the states.

The movie is lyrical color, a visually gorgeous, beautifully told fable on an epic scale. It's been compared to Akira Kurosawa's Rashomon, but it brings to my mind Italo Calvino's Invisible Cities or even a good version of 1001 Arabian Nights. Pure hypnotic cinema, why film was invented.

That's about all I can say.

I heard it again today.

Fahrenheit 911 is a pack of lies.

I'd have thought by now that everyone knew the truth, that Michael Moore's documentary underwent more fact checking than perhaps any documentary in history, that while you may disagree with the conclusions derived from the facts, that the facts themselves are a matter of public record.

I remember after Keith and I saw the documentary, we wondered, where were the so-called lies? As reasonably informed observers of current events, we already knew from standard news sources most of the stuff in the film.

Why do you think the White House has not challenged the facts in the documentary?

The report of the 9-11 Commission, itself, confirms its essential truthfulness.

Don't believe me? Read about it yourself.

------

Check out this conservative review of the movie.

Looks like The Onion had a crystal ball in January, 2001.

Take a look at the hyperlinked version of "Bush: Our Long National Nightmare of Peace and Prosperity is Finally Over".

This may take a moment or two or more to load because it's linked at Kos and a dozen other places, but it's worth it.

If weirdly prophetic parody won't load, or if you don't have time to catch the links, perhaps plain ol' numbers will do. They tell a pretty interesting story.

Vice President Dick Cheney, snarling yesterday in Des Moines, Iowa, warned that a victory by John Kerry could lead to a devastating terrorist attack on the United States. Read the Associated Press story yourself.

This from an administration that ignored the now-famous CIA memo titled "Bin Laden determined to attack inside the U.S." The White House tried to explain away its inactivity by saying the memo did not discuss the threat of Al-Qaeda using planes in a terrorist attack. But now we know the memo specifically addressed the threat of airline hijackings. Read the CNN story yourself.

This from a vice president who, in 1989, explained his five deferments from service in Vietnam this way: "I had other priorities in the '60s than military service." Read The New York Daily News story yourself.

This from a party that during its recent convention mocked John Kerry's combat wounds and the shrapnel he still carries in a leg by passing out "Purple Heart Bandages." Read the damn CNN story yourself.

You know, I understand Keith's attack dog mode. I really do. It's frustrating how many don't know the facts, who get their "news" from right-wing talk radio, who swallow the lies and distortions of this administration without question.

Yesterday, my mom made the mistake of telling me that some cousin or other supported Bush. I asked, "What, is she evil or just a moron?"

Damn it. Get informed. Or another pit bull is going to get rabid.

----

I can't resist mentioning that this photo of Cheney was taken by Eric Gay, a Pulitzer Prize-nominated photographer who, 20 years ago, served with me on the The North Texas Daily.

News is that Bush's Guard record is going to take a hit in Wednesday's Boston Globe and on Sixty Minutes this weekend.

Good. That's just for starters, I hope.

Wanna join in? Tom Schaller offers some excellent snarling points.

In case you missed it, the number of U.S. war deaths in Iraq has now surpassed 1,000.

When George W. Bush declared "mission accomplished" on May 1, 2003, 138 Americans were dead in Iraq. The reason for invading Iraq given to us by our president was that there was a link between the horrible regime of Hussein and the terrorist threat to our country. We know that now to be false.

Where is our reason? Where is our need? Why are we still dying there?

Seen it, heard it, felt it. . . . the gut-churning experience of the progressive political candidate getting screwed as hard and as fast as possible by some well-paid and extremely gifted believer employed by right-wing money men. I get physically sick. I really do. I threw up this morning it's that bad. And you, HEY YOU. You asshole right-wing jerk reading this and laughing and getting ready to say something smarmy about "having a stomach for politics"? Fuck you, okay? If you want to listen for a minute, fine. And I'll be happy to have the free-for-all with you later, but for the moment, sit your sorry white-bread ass down and listen. Rest of you too.

I want to reason with folks. I really do. I want to point out that Kerry's vote on authorizing the President to take action in Iraq was a vote to give a trust to the president and that having issues with the way the president handled that trust is not "flip-flopping." I want to make that case and have a discussion. I want to talk over party positions on tax policy, about how scaling back some of the recent tax cuts, specifically those for the wealthiest individuals in our country and for corporations, makes good sense when we've got a record deficit and two ongoing wars with no end in sight.

But no. Before I can clear my throat to begin clear-headed argument and debate, I'm interrupted and overwhelmed by mean-spirited assholes who have no interest in this Republic's political process nor its democratic heritage. Asshole advisors like Karl Rove and Lee Atwater in it for the power, asshole commentator cunts like Ann Coulter in it for the celebrity, asshole pseudo-intellectuals like some of my colleagues who want to sound knowledgeable about something, assholes like the bubba two doors down the street who just want to be assholes. . . .

Ok. Then.

I and many other progressive thinkers, for the most part, use reason to make our points. We think that a well-argued point has power.

And it does.

But this fall, for the next two months, if you want the well-ordered point, the intricate argument, the fine-tuned analysis of the issues leading up to a structured response, you're going to have to ask. Nicely. Twice.

Because starting right now, my primary mode is progressive attack dog.

Here's a start. Republicans and Independents who support this current President: I think your man is a shrewd and calculating candidate backed by a small minority of the very powerful. I think you have been conned into thinking that the administration of George W. Bush is something positive for our country. The only thing that this administration has to offer is the equivalent of a protection racket. They ratchet up the fear, then come exthort your vote. You believe in a strong America? They're capitalizing on that belief by offering war as a first answer. Are you so dumb to think that it is? Are you so very dumb to think that this isn't what they're doing? Are you simply refusing to see the connections between big-money oil and arms and a war in the Middle East?

What else is there? Tax cuts? Are you really that naive and stupid? OK, when you're alone and no one is watching, THINK ABOUT IT. Where, precisely, are those tax cuts helping you? Where? Don't tell me what someone else has said. You say it. Where? Now, who'd that tax cut really help? Who? The cuts provided no relief for the middle-class American.

So essentially this is it, then: you've voted for someone who has taken us to a war for dubious reasons, who abuses your strong committment to protect this country by cranking up war as the primary response to terrorism, who has offered no relief to the middle class. Is this not enough?

Bush and Bush's co-conspirators (Cheney, Rumsfield, Wolfowitz, Rice) are connected to some of the biggest mega-corporations in the world. Ones that punish the American worker and the taxpayer with price-gouging and price-fixing, exporting of jobs overseas, explotation of the tax system, insider trading, war-profiteering. Halliburton and Enron. Halliburton and Enron. Halliburton and Enron. That's who these people are.

And so I think you've been duped. And I think many of you are too proud to admit it. Most of you are men. Get over it. It's OK to be wrong. Go tell your wife or your girlfriend that you're concerned about the state of our nation and that you are no longer certain in your previously held opinion that George Bush is the right man for the job. I bet she doesn't laugh. You might even get laid.

In his recent address to the Democratic Convention, Bill Clinton said that "strength and wisdom are not opposing values." That means that we can have BOTH! George Bush is a strong, swaggering, stubborn man permanently in the hip pocket of the richest conglomerates in the world; Kerry is a strong, thoughtful, wise man who wants to serve the American people.

If you cast your vote for Bush, you are casting a vote against your own well-being. Thing is, I don't want you to. You want to vote for that liar? Go ahead, but I don't think you should. You want to cast your lot with a belligerent, war-mongering coke-head who plays upon your worst fears and best hopes in order to exact orders from you? That's your choice, and I'm a liberal so I'll still love you, but I'll think you're a stupid dumbass.

You want the nice stuff? From now on, you'll have to ask.

--

Michael Moore says that we progressives shouldn't be scared. I agree.

Susan Estrich, former campaign manager for Dukakis, professor of law at USC, and a very gifted writer, is spoiling for a fight. So am I.

The love affair started during a history of film class in 1984 at North Texas State University in Denton, TX.

After learning from the unbearably slow and silent Potemkin that bad meat sparked the Bolshevik revolution, and after delighting in the iconic Stagecoach that featured the rifle-propped-against-cocked-hip first film appearance of John Wayne, we settled in to watch the strangely titled Rashomon, the subtitled 1951 film by Japanese director Akira Kurosawa.

I was prepared for another bit of Potemkin-esque agony, one of those experiences we’ve all had suffering uninspired sermons, enduring droning lectures, or, because you want to get laid, stomaching insipid chick flicks that go on and on and on about finding, 50 years too late, misplaced love letters, when all the guys in the theater just want the stupid old geezers on the screen to hurry up and for god's sakes die.

How was I to know, then? The lights dimmed, the students sank back into their seats, and, sometime during the next 88 minutes, I fell in love.

Rashomon, the movie that made Kurosawa an international figure and pushed Japanese cinema into the world's spotlight, is a tale of love, murder, rape, betrayal, all told from four different irreconcilable points of view. In one sense, it's classic courtroom drama; in another, larger, it's philosophical meditation on truth and humanity. Oh, how I tried to make the varying accounts of the crimes fit together. My friends and I spent hours trying to work it out. In the end, though, that exercise was not only fruitless but also pointless. Kurosawa wasn't about to cheapen his movie by making it a detective thriller an observant audience could piece together.

After that, I was mad for Kurosawa. Fortunately, Denton had a funky old video tape store on The Square, and I found quite a few of the master's movies: The Seven Samurai, Ikiru, Throne of Blood, The Hidden Fortress, Yojimbo, Dodes'ka-den, Kagemusha, Ran, Akira Kurosawa's Dreams.

Sometime in the late 1980s, I invited friends over to a little trailer shack where I was living just behind the big white house on Fry Street where I had lived before. Five us crammed together on my dinky bed and watched, on an itty bitty television, Akira Kurosawa's Dreams, a collection of eight hypnotically beautiful stories, all presented in exquisite, bold color. (When Kurosawa finally went color in Dodes'ka-den, he did it in a big way.) For two hours we sat on each other's laps mesmerized. When it was over, my friend Brendan said, "That was the best fucking movie I've ever seen." While I didn't share that opinion, I understood the sentiment.

Not all my attempts to share Kurosawa were fruitful. Years later, while teaching freshman English students at The University of Tennessee at Knoxville, I showed The Hidden Fortress, the classic black-and-white adventure that inspired George Lucas' Star Wars. But the 139-minute movie, edited with an aesthetic far different than the fast-cut MTV video-style editing so prevalent today, tortured the students beyond their endurance. Two of my friends and fellow teachers came at my invitation to see this fabulous movie, and we watched as, one by one, the students slipped out. Finally, only one poor soul remained, squirming in agony, until with a jerk he stood up, muttered something about a frat party, and rushed past us and out the door. We teachers glanced at each other, one of us snickered, and then we all roared with laughter, not recovering for minutes. I had stumbled across my students' Potemkin.

Over time, I've managed to see most of Kurosawa's films, though a few still elude me. It's been almost 20 years now, but sometimes, late at night, when the house is quiet and even the cat is asleep, I pop in my dusty videotape of Rashomon and experience again my first real cinematic love.

A friend recently recommended for my listening pleasure Lucinda Williams. There was a time I often listened to music, when I had music for every occasion. Somehow, with a new job, a new wife and child, a new life, I had lost that. But then I listened to Lucinda, an alternative country singer and songwriter who oozes soul. From the first track on Car Wheels on a Gravel Road, I was a goner.

Not a day goes by I don't think about you
You left your mark on me it's permanent a tattoo
Pierce the skin and the blood runs through
-- "Right in Time"

Good god. Rough and weathered, her voice is beautiful because anchored by pain and passion; her songs are edged with hard-won experience. My tastes generally run to blues and early jazz, but much of what turns me on in, say, Lou Rawls or Louis Armstrong or Ella Fitzgerald is here, now, in Lucinda's aching songs.

In a yellow Camino
Listening to Howling Wolf
He liked to stop in Lake Charles
Cause that's the place that he loved
--"Lake Charles"

This stuff plucks heart strings you forgot you had. Sometimes wistful, nostalgic, other times raw, angry, Lucinda gives you both barrels.

I don't want you anymore
cause you took my joy
I don't want you anymore
you took my joy

you took my joy
I want it back
you took my joy
I want it back
--"Joy"

My poet buddy writes in crisp prose about matters evangelistic. Check out the follow-up posts to learn about the sharp edge of the Bible and vacation Bible school mnemonics.

It's terrible how beautiful women are objectified in order to sell products.

Case in point: St. Pauli Girl (Click "Past Girls.")

For the last 27 years, St. Pauli Girl has created posters juxtaposing attractive women with bottles of beer. This disgraceful use of sex to sell alcoholic beverages has always deeply offended me, and from 1977 on, I tacked these posters on my bedroom wall so that I could never forget what some companies were willing to do in the name of capitalism.

Particularly appalling, in my eyes, were 1983, 1985, 1989, and 1999.

Update: My musical friend from Denton frequently astounds me with the stuff in his head. He just sent this:

The Origin of the St. Pauli Girls
They worked in Hamburg, Germany in the 19th Century, in cabarets, clubs, and dives near the docks. Sailors would come in to be entertained. They did three things -- served beer, wine, food, coffee, whatever; sang and danced with piano accompaniment (a young Johannes Brahms supported his family this way) or other musicians; and took customers to back rooms to service them more intimately.

So they were combination waitresses-singers-dancers-prostitutes. And you know they had to be alluringly dressed. So why shouldn't their images be used to sell beer? The beer-drinking public is famously sexually frustrated.

Had a wonderful time last night getting enthusiastically blasted with my poet and technogeek buddies at an Old City tavern. I remember we came to marvelous conclusions about life and passion but, dammit, no one wrote them down and I suspect they're lost in the post-fun brain cloud.

Later, we retired to the poet's house, listened to the wonderfully evocative Lucinda Williams, and watched Some Like it Hot, my nominee for greatest comedy ever, slapstick division. ("Like JellO on springs," oh my dear god.) We had to create lots of divisions because, heck, Breakfast at Tiffanys is the greatest something or other, and Roman Holiday takes the top spot on some sort of list.

Some Like it Hot sparked intense debate amongst us regarding what's sexier: beautiful women clothed or unclothed. Generally, I'm in the clothed camp (I mean, come on, that incredibly slinky dress Marilyn wore in the last third of the movie, virtually transparent in the front and wafting gently in the back). But the famous calendar photo of her nude on red satin sheets that got reprinted in the first issue of Playboy -- that image is just iconic and has fueled many a fantasy for decades.

The dialogue in the movie just sparkles:

Tony Curtis: "It'll take awhile to get to the yacht" (or something like that). Marilyn: "It's not how long it takes, it's who's taking you."

Lecherous old millionaire: "Do you use a bow or do you pluck it" (referring to the bass fiddle Jack Lemmon, in drag, brought to the Florida resort). Lemmon: (with a wicked gleam in his eye): "Sometimes I slaaaaap it."

Anyway, great conversation, great friends, great fun. It was a blast, guys; let's do it again.

The American Civil Liberties Union reports that the federal government is using gag orders and secret evidence to keep the public unware of the use of the Patriot Act to investigate Americans.

Recently, the ACLU pointed out that General Attorney John Ashcroft's report to Congress on the government's use of the Patriot Act neglected to provide key information and any mention of the many controversial provisions of the law.

Still, there is hope. Four states and 338 cities and towns have passed resolutions urging the government to remove unconstitutional provisions of the law.

Many liberals and conservatives alike are deeply distressed by the Patriot Act, which they see as an assault on many civil liberties. Some good background on the Act is here.

The upcoming presidential election is vitally important for a number of reasons. Before you vote, educate yourself. Freedoms can be lost--have been lost for many already. Don't trust any one source, particularly those with an ideological bent. Don't trust me. Do your own research. What is at stake is the essence of America.

Former Labor Secretary Robert Reich points out that the huge tax cuts for the rich that Bush pushed through with the help of a Republican Congress do more than simply shift tax burden from the upper to the middle and lower classes. They actually change the way the government finances itself.

First, some salient facts from a recent Congressional Budget Office analysis:

*One third of the tax cuts went to the wealthiest 1 percent of Americans.

*Two thirds went to the wealthiest 20 percent of Americans.

*The nation's debt grew from $5.7 trillion four years ago to $7.3 trillion today.

As Reich explains,

As Bush famously (and before cameras) told a group of wealthy supporters, "Some people call you the elite; I call you my base."

No kidding.

We've all had the same experience. We see some hot number in a bikini and think,

Damn! She'd look good in a space suit!

Update: Apparently the crappy AOL server hosting the pics of space-suited women has bandwidth issues, so you might have to try again later. AOL ... spit!

In 1985, while an undergraduate in the journalism department of North Texas State University (now The University of North Texas ) in Denton, TX, I worked on the copy desk of The Denton Record-Chronicle. I had applied for and been offered the job after serving as editor of The North Texas Daily, the NTSU campus newspaper. It was a great part-time job for a student -- all I had to do was edit copy and lay out pages. I occasionally picked up the cop beat when the regular beat reporter was out, and I could write any features I wanted.

Of course, the first feature I wrote was about Fry Street. Every Friday night, Fry Street was hopping. At one end of the street were the bohemian poets, artists, and musicians hanging around the used bookstore and the coffee house; at the other were the young frats and sorority girls hanging out at The Underground, a slimy dive of a night club if you ever saw one. The story, complete with photos of street denizens, took the front page of the Chronicle's features section, and made me a very minor celebrity on the street.

However, one of the true celebrities of Fry Street, and perhaps its most notorious denizen, was Crazy Richard (unbelievably, I just found a story about Crazy Richard, though the writer calls him Weird Richard, published by The Red Cedar Review). Crazy Richard was an old, big, shambling guy who never bathed or washed his clothes and who had a penchant for pinching girl's butts. My photographer friend Sal Sessa took a sequence of photos showing Richard setting up a pinch, performing the act, and then shambling off, while the startled girl with the pinched butt looks the opposite direction. No doubt, while shambling away, Richard was muttering his trademark heh, heh, heh. I'd give anything for copies of those photos.

He also composed verse about his love obsessions on band flyers ripped off telephone and light poles. They were surprisingly funny and accomplished, a fact that adds credence to the legend that years before he was a brilliant foreign language student until something made him go nuts. I wish I had some of these compositions, but they are lost, and all I remember are a few lines:

"What I lack
is Monica in the sack."

and

"Monica Antonelli,
come lie on my belly."

My friend David Taylor tells the story of Crazy Richard attending Victorian literature lectures conducted for the community by one of NTSU's English professors. Little old ladies, all prim and proper, would attend to revel in the wit and wisdom that was the professor's, who was a gnomish, funny, lecherous man always wearing a vest and a bow tie. When Crazy Richard showed up, they'd hold their index fingers under their noses and wave litte fans, trying in vain to block the stench that surrounded Richard like a cloud of flies.

Crazy Richard lived in a house on the north end of Fry Street, not far from Flow Hospital, where I was born. Legend has it that it was his mother's house. After she died, he continued living there, but neglected to pay utility bills or perform basic maintenance. In the summer, when Denton got very hot, he'd sleep on an old mattress lying on his porch. Street bums also called the delapidated structure home.

Crazy Richard was a fixture of Fry Street for decades. My late grandfather, who attended NTSU and later delivered mail in the area, used to tell Crazy Richard stories. I moved away from Denton in 1990, but I understand he remained in the area for several years afterward. I don't know what became of him, but I think I heard he died. Perhaps my musical friend in Denton can add some details -- if so, I'll post them.

I don't have any photos of Crazy Richard, but I do have a copy of an underground newspaper with an incredibly accurate depiction of Richard shambling past Jim's Diner. Someday I'll scan the cover and post it.

None of us begrudged Crazy Richard, though he stank, pinched butts, mumbled incoherently, and ripped band flyers off poles for stationary. He was there long before we.

Update: I've contacted and exchanged emails with the writer of the "Weird Richard" story I mentioned above. He'd like to hear any comments anyone has about his story, which I consider a well-written, evocative, and soul-searching piece that captures a time on Fry and the surrounding area slightly before mine. I don't want to post his email address here without his say-so, but I can forward any comments you have.

Now that I think about it, I believe I have heard Crazy Richard referred to as Weird Richard -- any confirmation?

I've been digging through old comic books lately, and I always pause when I get to Hate. Starting in 1990, Peter Bagge's Hate, which chronicles the life of average guy Buddy Bradley, ran through the '90s, finally ending with issue 30. I was in on the series from issue 1. It was a sad day when the run ended.

They may be the best 30 comic books ever created. Peter Bagge's outrageously exaggerated drawing style combined with an absolutely spot-on depiction of the life of a 20-something slacker -- it's an amazing thing. Hilariously funny, heart-wrenchingly truthful, this bitter, angry, resigned, and, at times, hopeful series became one of the most successful "underground" comics of all time.

You can still buy the original comics online; they've even been compiled into softcover trade books (I tell you this because you ain't getting mine). For everyone who's ever lived in crummy apartments, had insane loves, and woken up drunk on strange lawns, Hate's got your number.

Update: My poet buddy KSN brought intoxicants over last night and, under the influence, I agreed to let him walk out with my entire Hate collection. I did win a concession: when he's plowed through the stack, he's got to write an extensive piece on the art and wonderment that is Hate. Look for it.