American Guilt

There isn't much evidence of American guilt but it's there.  The perception of Texas is that it's nothing but goat ropers drunk on Lone Star who go out riding horses to shoot Mexicans ... but there are liberals all over the place here.  Austin is one of the coolest places anywhere.  So there's plenty of guilt in America, it's just lost in the noise from those with skin as thick as reptiles.

Lotho has got a bad case of Wanting to Save the World.  So do I.  That's why we bros.  In my lifetime Rock'n'Roll Fuck Fantasy, I would play guitar and then I could get houses for my family and friends and all of us could hang out, getting hammered, making music, and having a whole lot of sex.  There was never anything more to it than that as these were the sixties and we believed peace would one day come, we just had to prepare for it.

That didn't quite work out and Lotho didn't quite pull it off either but this isn't a story of regret as the world obviously still needs to be saved and neither he nor I are dead yet so that means there is still time.

Lotho has conservative guilt as he got sucked into the vortex of needing financial conservatism but not necessarily a formal Republican agenda.  However, it doesn't work like Catholicism as you can't pick and choose which parts you will heed and then ignore the rest.  Once tagged as a conservative, you, seemingly, own what they do and, oh fuck, I didn't ask anyone to go drone bombing children.

Conservative guilt is a bitch and I understand that as democracy is a fucked-up way to do business.  A whole lot of dumb asses get involved and then it's impossible to make an intelligent decision about anything.  That America survives isn't destiny, it's a fucking miracle.

The gigantic corporate behemoths concern everyone as to how they dominate various things in the world and they all have one thing in common:  not a single one of them is run as a democracy.  A good many of them are also stone evil (i.e. Nestle and 'we own the water', etc) so that's where you can argue the value of politics all night.  And I do mean you can.  I'll be playing tonight.

You're not going to lose your guilt in some ultra-dramatic revolution so the other choice is to make the democracy work.  The existing parties are useless as there's no difference between them.  They are all on the same team and they only argue over who takes home the Prom Queen.  The only other option is a Hugely Futile Gesture: create another political party modeled after the Greens in Germany.

There is a Green Party already so how about you take on those cement head politicians with something real.  Run Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders for real and take on the other parties straight-up.  This is using the same strategy as the Tea Party only this time for something that's actually useful (e.g. rationalizing student loans, rationalizing military spending, etc, etc.)  Even if the Greens cannot win, they can force these matters into the front of a campaign and there is no way in hell they will come up if you run tired old wankers like Clinton and whatever dregs the conservatives can find (e.g. Jeb Bush).

If you think that's stoner fantasy, take a look at Germany where the Greens are a significant political presence and you bet they pull their weight in determining policy for the country.  They are not a majority but they are heard.  You can be too.


One area in which there seems to be a huge conflict is in what constitutes financial conservatism.  There is great left wing enthusiasm for regulating the tax tables to prevent the capital shift that has taken place and to rationalize the economic model as a whole.  Conservatives typically get wild at this point as any thought of this will destroy capitalism, etc, etc.  Moreover, taking all the money from the ultra-rich and giving it away to everyone else would only buy each one a cupcake or some such.  However, that thinking is the flaw.

There is no intention of taking all their money and giving it away, even if for no other reason than it would be a ludicrous waste of resources and bad business.  The actual left wing intention is not to give anything away but to make that money work.  Build the schools, the factories, all the damn things that countries need get along, do business, have good lives, etc.  This isn't charity, it's doing business.  As we've seen in every developed nation, the birth rate drops as the standard of living goes up.  In time, populations stabilize or even decline and, what do you know, which economic stratum do you think will dry up first (assuming the world is functioning according to a rational business model instead of one driven by combat for regime change).

Always I hear this can never happen, no way people can agree, no way we can do it.  Um, yes, you can do it and it's not even that hard.

Yah, you're still thinking stoner crap ... but you aren't thinking of the Marshall Plan.  This was the use of American tax dollars to help Europe rebuild after World War II.  Boy, you sure lost your ass on that one, didn't you.  Those tax dollars helped grow some of the most dynamic economic entities on the planet.  Tax and spend, tax and spend ... are not bad things ... so long as you spend right.

Note also the tax rate on the rich in the post-War years was still what the rich currently consider too high.  And yet it was one of the world's greatest periods of prosperity and out of it grew the European Union, no longer warriors but partners.  This isn't preaching, it's fact.  It doesn't seem it should be a tough package to sell to do the same thing that was done previously and has been seen to work.


One of the first things you need is to get your religion out of politics.  There's time enough to deal with prostitution, prayer in schools, smoking reefer, etc.  There is no time at all to wait for dealing with the matters that drive such things and these are the anger and despair that rampage around America.  This isn't hyperbole as you can see it anywhere.

Kennedy said he wanted to go to the Moon.  OK, America did that.  Johnson said he wanted to end poverty.  He made his steps toward that.  Maybe you don't agree with them but that's not the point as these things defined direction.  Right now there seems to be no more direction than killing Muslims and, regardless of your political persuasion, life probably needs to be more than that.  In my view, they also kill America in their hunger for killing Muslims as there is no other direction and then people fall to ennui.

Even if the direction is to build a road under the Atlantic, so what.  It's a direction.  Right now if someone wants to get big into solar power then someone else will try to stop it.  Saps the energy of the Sun, don't you now.  Well, no, I don't know that.  (It's rubbish)  When everything comes down to yet another sparring contest, nothing can ever get accomplished.

If you want to lose some guilt, find a direction that means something and make it happen.  You won't even have to sell it that hard if it's any good as America longs for it.

When you want to save all the babies, I know it hurts your heart but you can't.  It's the same mistake America makes in coming up with Radin China 4 which was some type of high-production rice (i.e. matures fast, feeds many, etc) or sending food trucks to the middle of the desert.  None of these things go to the problem which is too many fucking people.  Some type of Marshall Plan approaches the problem altogether differently and, as we've seen, populations typically decline behind that.

The biggest population problem in developed countries isn't from internal growth but rather from immigration and, what do you know, a huge percentage of that comes from people trying to get out of Places That Suck.  It's mystifying to me that people see no business sense in assisting them in the same way as Europe as everyone comes out golden from it.  Population pressures moderate around the world if people just stay where the hell they are and most of them want to do that anyway.  It seems nothing more than good business sense to help them do it.

A neo-Marshall Plan isn't direction, it's just doing sensible business.  Finding the direction is on you.

A Story on Dog-Eating ... by Request

If you are not expecting strange when you come to visit here, your best bet is to revise your expectations.  I do not have 'strange guilt' as I enjoy being strange but I don't enjoy the level of the strange of one of the most annoying constructs of the electronic world:  the mommy blogger (i.e. I am Woman.  I make Babies.  And so on).  In today's example, we have one who was playing Munchausen by proxy with her little boy so she could write about his manufactured illness on her blog.  It worked too as many came ... but the boy didn't.  He died.  We don't do that level of strange here.  That's more strange than we want anywhere.

(Ed:  please don't forget some other electronic highlights of the blog world such as the always popular unemployed musician blogger, the wannabe philosopher blogger, and the absolute most stupid and irritating of all, the Texas global economics blogger.)

So Lotho sent me a clip to an article about people eating dogs in China.  Perhaps he is screwing with me.  He knows I am hungry here.  He knows there is Tobey the Dog.  Therefore:  eat the dog.  It's true that it has an algebraic elegance and he is a crazy ass dog but I still can't see eating him and it would definitely be a good idea to keep him out of China.  (AP News:  China dog-eaters dodge activists with early feast)

I wouldn't have a problem with eating a dog, just not that one.  I've eaten a McDonald's Synth-o-Meat cheeseburger with the bland, grey hamburger patty that's so heavily-processed that you can't tell that half of it comes from recycled hotel mattresses.  This is arguably the worst food product in the world and I have eaten it ... but I have never eaten dog, at least not to my knowledge.  What do I know, tho. I have eaten tacos on the streets of Juarez so I could have had dog many times.  The only thing that makes me think this might not be true is that generally they were chicken tacos.

(Ed:  that means they were probably pigeon tacos)

Good point.  (Question for another time:  why don't poor people eat pigeons and solve two problems at the same time.)

There is one 'food product' that I don't think anyone will eat and that's when you sit down for a monkey brains feast as in "Indiana Jones and the Lost Temple of Doom."  I could get hungry enough to eat a dog but I don't believe I could get hungry enough to eat that.  However, there are many who fry up brains and eggs for breakfast in the morning.  I will not be one of them.  It is not known if there are different kinds of brains one can purchase at the market.  Some of you may need to know if there is a qualitative difference in the taste of a pig brain such as those of the Koch brothers or a monkey brain such as those of most musicians, etc.

The big problem is the Law of Eating Ugly Animals which says specifically that no-one, no matter how cool or how rich or how pretty, is allowed to eat cute animals.  You go immediately to Hell for killing crickets, eating lemurs, or, especially, for eating Spotted Owls.  However, the LEUA does not preclude eating pit bulls as that is one ugly-ass dog.  They look like someone put them in a microwave and their faces partially melted.  So, OK, that's the compromise.  I can't say I would like a meal of Shih Tzu but if you want to roast up a pit bull then, hey, what time is dinner.


So, uh, Lotho, does this answer your question (laughs).

Michi and Aldo on Synth Night at Cat's Art MusikCircus

You have read about Maestro Michi Renoir playing previously at Cat's Art MusikCircus ... but ... you haven't seen a show like this one.

For some people, if you throw them a fake book (i.e. a music book with chords but no notes), they can play all night as they will make up their own melodies.  That's how it goes with Maestro Michi ... except he doesn't need the fake book.  There's a constant stream of music and it's fascinating as this isn't something for a cocktail lounge.  He may get extreme and then make some groove to get you all wrapped into something and then branch out to get extreme again, there's no telling and that's the fascination.


Reis was not feeling well last night and could not sing but Aldo did a solo instrumental set instead.  My purpose is not to compare Aldo's work with that of Michi but it's important to note a huge difference in that Aldo plays from his compositions rather than improvising them in real time.  The results of both techniques are the same as again the Circus exploded.

When Aldo Brizzi sets out to experiment, he doesn't screw around.  You can find more of his work on his Aldo Brizzi Web site.

Last night Aldo was working a great deal in different types of percussion and rhythm along with a most extraordinary set of sound samples, some of which I couldn't identify.  This was music from way out on the edge.  You won't sit around snapping your fingers but you get drawn into it trying to find what is it doing, where is it going and what are all these strange sounds.  Maybe that sounds unpleasant but Aldo's genius is making it work.

Reis and Aldo will be in Paris until August and will not be able to perform at the Circus from there.  We hope first that Reis feels better soon and that they have a wonderful Summer in Paris.

To Video ... or Not

There will be a show on Thursday and I'm thinking this might be the best time to shoot video of some guitar playing and whatnot.  That also shoots all to hell any considerations of the grand Zen of things as it would be yet another imperfect record of something that isn't supposed to be recorded.

My thinking is to set up a camera on a tripod and then leave it to record for the hour.  Maybe Yevette could come in to take it off the tripod and do something more interesting with it.  Doing it this way is the easiest for syncing the audio after the fact.  It's much easier to do it once for one very long video stream than multiple times for each song within it.  Sync it first and then chop it as you like.  Use the full-res audio captured from the stream software, match up the waveforms between that audio file and the one the camera captured, and then throw out the camera's audio track.  You're done.

It's a week until my procedure so I will be playing for this show and also for RacerX on Saturday but those will be the only ones.  I don't know what comes for playing on the 26th but I'll assume it's off until I know better.  Cat will know what's happening as she is connected with Yevette via Skype and I believe Lotho is as well.  This is not drama, this is systems programming.  With adequate preparation there should be no drama at all.  (That was always the irony of systems programming in that the perfect job was when no-one noticed you had done anything.  The bigger the job you could do without anyone seeing it the bigger your coolness as a systems programmer.)

As to video, it could be interesting as the objective would be to capture what the feets are doing with the foot pedals.  There must also be some dazzling finger work and then some crazy hat, all in the same frame.

Maybe this is a marketing opportunity for a DVD but, given the circumstance, who knows how much of that comes from sympathy sales so still I would learn nothing at all about what anyone actually thinks of the jams.  I understand this is psychotic thinking.

Or

If I make the video, I can get it to Yevette and I believe she has a DVD burner.  Maybe there's a mechanism we could establish that would let her sell them and mail them.  My general projection is that they will do radiation or chemo as what else will they pull out of my lung.  It's not the golden egg or the key to the city.  Therefore, I will probably be feeling less than entertaining at times and this would be something Yevette could do without bugging me all the time to ask if I want chicken soup.  She knows she would too!

I'm not sure what to tell them about radiation or chemo.  I never know what to tell them in the market when they ask about paper or plastic.  These are complications life didn't really need.  I'm not looking for advice as this is more whimsy than anything else.  My only thinking is, ok, I know it's going to suck ... get on with it.

It appears the answer is shoot some video so I'll try some experiments.

The Middle East World Cup (updated)

After beating Ghana and thinking that actually means something, John Kerry has now advanced to being diabolically stupid as he is suggesting cooperation with Iran to combat ISIS.  (RT:  Desperate times: Kerry says US ready to turn to Iran, drone strikes, to fight ISIS)

Let's review:  last week the Iranians were the terrorists and the Iraqis were the associates.  This week the Iraqis are the terrorists and the Iranians are the associates.

Some days ago I suggested that it would be best for the U.S. to pull back to let Iraq and Iran murder each other.  That wasn't enough for Kerry and we see his latest idea as a result of it.

We can work with this as there's another good plot twist even with a demented plan like what Kerry suggests.

So ...

The U.S. and the Shi'a Muslims of Iran coordinate on blasting the hell out of the terrorist Sunni Muslims in Iraq.  However, the Sunni Muslims in Saudi Arabia will not be diggin' this too much so now there's the opportunity for a showdown between Iran and Saudi Arabia, even better for a World Cup than Iran vs Iraq.  What gives this a novel twist is how will the Bush family suck back up with the Saudis after killing a lot of them.

If we play it out a little more then we see Iran getting more bold with the Saudis because they figure they have Uncle Sugar helping now.  He may be playing both sides but he at least isn't planning a nuclear strike on Tehran.  This could make them very brave as Ayatollah Sandunomeini starts thinking of the New Persia and how he is the New Mohammed who will reunite the warring Muslim states.  New Persia will be ruled by the Shi'a overloads and their minions will be Sunni caliphates which would then comprise most of the Middle East.  While this seems a formidable force, it seems unlikely in a culture which in a thousand years contributed little more than the legitimization of child brides and the near-extermination of orangutans.

Chop Off the Head of Steve Forbes First

Forbes has given us what may well be the most insufferable, self-serving, tripe-ridden excuse for the world-destroying parsimony of his filthy-rich brethren.  He lauds their generosity in the 13%, yes, THIRTEEN PER CENT, that the ultra-rich contribute to charity and further lauds the efficacy of the spend as not only does he consider this enormously generous but he also thinks it is changing the world.

What they have done has not significantly affected what War Child has to do for the children.

You can read about Forbes and his brethren in the Washington Post: How billionaires are fixing philanthropy

Yah, they're fixing philanthropy ... the same way Margaret Thatcher fixed the coal miners' union.

Any graph you want to review will show you how wealth has been shifting to the right for decades and this has nothing to do with hard work but rather in manipulating the systems to ensure the money cannot flow back down again.  Money is largely useless if it does not circulate and you can easily see everywhere in the world there is chaos as a result of it shifting to the right.  Unless chaos is a desired product, it seems obvious to me the rich do not use their money very well.  In the current model, there doesn't seem to be any more purpose to money than to get more of it.  If there is a product, then what is it?

The money focuses to a tremendous extent on the preparation for war in a world in which only one country wants one.  It has been repeatedly kicking Putin in the shin trying to start another one as this keeps the whole business moving.

It's really not clear to me why people put up with it.  Why people will just roll over after being insulted so mightily by Forbes and say, that's ok, honey.  You didn't give me an orgasm but I still love you.  It's embarrassing, it really is.  The German hippie kids yanked all the second-string Nazis out of public office in Germany and there was uproar when they did it.  The American kids stopped the Vietnam War and that was uproar too.  Cops cracked heads all over the place but the changes happened.  And now Forbes spits in our faces.

(The Nazis were still in-office in Germany after the War as they would after any type of military defeat as the administrative infrastructure is impossible to replace altogether no matter where you do it.  These weren't the hardline Nazis but rather the middle-ground administrators who operate the Water Works or whatever.)

Nuke Me Another One, Just Like the Other One

The START talks make it seem like a bunch of serious penguin suits are going to talk to Jesus and deal with this rascal of a problem of nuclear weapons.  I'm not sure how much they got paid but it would have been a good job to have as there would have been big bucks for salary, flashy hotels for dealing with dignitaries, and all the photo ops you like with suck-ups like Kim Kardashian.  Best of all, you don't have to deliver much of anything.

There are fifteen hundred live nukes on each side of the ongoing Cold War but what is left out of this horrifying figure is that these are the strategic nukes, the big ones that take out entire cities or states.  They are typically delivered via ICBM or submarine although the latter would be more accurately classified as tactical weapons as Captain Ramius could shoot one at Washington D.C. or Moscow with equal ease.

Where you hear nothing at all from the people who are pretending to deal with the problem is in the context of tactical nuclear weapons.  There doesn't appear to be any international treaty on their accounting or their distribution and there are many of them.  They can be shot from tanks, artillery weapons, and there's even one that a single soldier can operate.  The most demonic of all is that they have designed and built nuclear mine weapons.  There is nothing clever about them as they work just as would any other mine:  run over it and it blows up.  In case you view this as wing nut politics, read for yourself (Wiki:  Tactical Nuclear Weapons)

Among the many things unclear about tactical nukes is which ones are in service and where.  According to the Wiki a good many of these weapons have been retired but the fissionable material is carried forward into other weapons so it becomes a ludicrous nuclear Where's Waldo.

Tactical nuclear weapons do not reduce the risk of nuclear war but rather they increase it.  The risk of an accidental firing goes up proportionately with the number of deployments and it only takes one Captain Ramius to start something that will trigger the START weapons.  As we've seen with the Ukraine situation, there isn't just one Captain Ramius in-motion but rather there are many of them and you think you know which ones are commanding nuclear weapons.  In fact, you have no idea.  It might be a surprise if anyone has any idea.

You Have a Family at Cat's Art MusikCircus

The show didn't start out too well last night or, more accurately, it didn't start at all.  I couldn't find Cat but that isn't terribly uncommon as the first thing that happens in a thunderstorm in Bavaria is the Internet goes down.  I can carry a show along until she arrives so I started looking for Untolerable Bohemian ... and I could not find him either.

However, I did find Sister Julie the Poet.  She sent me a message to tell me she has now got a job.  This has been quite an emotional situation for her.  If you lose your job in America, there are only two options:  move to Fort Worth or be sold off to human traffickers.  She was exceptionally happy that she no longer has to consider those options and now you know too.  Happy Day, Sister Julie.

After some time I was thinking, hmmm, no-one is here ... my guitar is here ... I am here ... and that's when Bo showed up.  Cool ... let's get on with it.

Bo was in one hell of a state after a particularly sucky day.  I'm not going to relate the specifics as those are in his story to tell but the fact was that he was scrambled.  The one part that wasn't scrambled was that he thought if he could just play then it would bring focus and help make things make some kind of sense.  He wasn't playing any song but rather he was trying to start one and he was also talking along with it.  The words came as jazz, a stream of consciousness from someone in turmoil, and it was sad and beautiful at the same time.

lefty arrived for his set before Bo really even got started but he recognized the situation and was very cool about it.  He told Bo to play all night if he likes.  Bo may not have known it but lefty was giving away his own set as lefty can't play very late because it may upset his neighbors.  Lefty is a very generous man and I say it again as it shows you what family means at Cat's Art MusikCircus.

Bo isn't trying to find himself, he is trying to find his music and that is much, much harder.  One thing I know for sure:  he's coming to the best place to do it.


I have since heard from Cat and can tell you she is ok.  The space aliens did bring her back to Bavaria and the reporters and news cameras have now gone home.  Cat said it was ok but the space alien music wasn't very good because they were so preoccupied with minor blues progressions.

"Destino" - Collaboration between Salvador Dali and Walt Disney (video)

Synopsis from YouTube:

The film tells the story of Chronos, the personification of time and the inability to realize his desire to love for a mortal. The scenes blend a series of surreal paintings of Dali with dancing and metamorphosis. The target production began in 1945, 58 years before its completion and was a collaboration between Walt Disney and the Spanish surrealist painter, Salvador Dalí. Salvador Dali and Walt Disney Destiny was produced by Dali and John Hench for 8 months between 1945 and 1946.

Dali, at the time, Hench described as a "ghostly figure" who knew better than Dali or the secrets of the Disney film. For some time, the project remained a secret. The work of painter Salvador Dali was to prepare a six-minute sequence combining animation with live dancers and special effects for a movie in the same format of "Fantasia." Dali in the studio working on The Disney characters are fighting against time, the giant sundial that emerges from the great stone face of Jupiter and that determines the fate of all human novels. Dalí and Hench were creating a new animation technique, the cinematic equivalent of "paranoid critique" of Dali. Method inspired by the work of Freud on the subconscious and the inclusion of hidden and double images.

Dalí said: "Entertainment highlights the art, its possibilities are endless." The plot of the film was described by. Dalí as "A magical display of the problem of life in the labyrinth of time."

Walt Disney said it was "A simple story about a young girl in search of true love."

The film is extraordinary and it's not clear from the description as to who did what.  The influence from Dali is obvious but did he do that or did someone else do it based on his lead.  Maybe it doesn't matter who did what.

The Peenie Pocket Weenikini

Geez, this is as prissy as the current nipple obsession. You can see every little itty bitty bit of my boobie but, noooooo, not any part of the nipple. That's an arrest.

And, dude, your wimbly wombly isn't that interesting. Either flash the fucker out or get dressed, ya wimpy weenie wanker.

Euros must see this and think, ach nein. Amerika, I never go there.

America is a damn sexual Rubik's Cube and hardly any of them know how to solve it.

What It's Really Like

My friend said she couldn't wait until she would get off work and go home.  I said that third shift really sucks but she said she would just take a shower when she got home and then go to her other job.

I told her that I hoped she wouldn't have to do too many hours at the other job but she said she would work a full shift until afternoon, she does this every day / night.  When she gets home from the second job, she will clean up, cook dinner, etc.  I have six kids, she told me.

My first thought was that I hope you have some help and she said her husband does what he can.  He is a bricklayer trying to get his own business started but this is the really rough time when not so many jobs are coming yet and times are tough.  She works these two jobs to help him in her way.

I told her you are one tough lady and that gave her a big smile as she could see I meant it.


I really don't know who she is but she's a big girl who works in a drive-thru in a Burger King on third shift.  Big girls don't get much respect anyway and a big girl working a drive-thru is just furniture.  If you are nice to these girls, they will light right up.

"The Outback Story" - Reverend Silas T Sasquatch (video)

He's back and he's still going to Hell ... but hopefully first with a steak.


YouTube synopsis:  The good Reverend Silas T Sasquatch talks about getting lung cancer and going to Outback for a steak, neither of which worked out very well.  Language is NSFW.