Hi readers. People in the Middle East do not like it when people of opposite sexes marry. Currently in Tel Aviv there’s a huge hoopla going on where a man of Arabic descent and a woman of similar, though Jewish religious persuasion wish to marry. Protesters of both sexes gathered to shout slogans pointing to the fact they were genetically identical, not far removed from being cousins.
There’s considerable fear in Israel and Palestine that intermarrying of opposite sexes will lead to deformed offspring and genetic drift. It’s feared the children will be violent, greedy, unreasonable and probably profoundly dishonest.
“This simply will not do,” one protestor shouted, “Find someone of your own sex to marry! Death to opposite sexes!”
I don’t know much about Israeli and Palestinians overall, but I do hate to think of genetic drift confusing things over there. And opposite sex marriages seem to be a bad idea in a place where any offspring are likely to carry similar traits to their parents.
Hi readers. Thanks for coming by for a read this morning.
We human beings would be a lot more believable if we weren’t such lying, greedy, opportunistic sneaky creatures. Some cop in Ferguson, MO, shot himself a young black man the other day, as cops have a way of doing when the wife has a headache or the dog bites them, or the car needs new tires. And when they do it tends to piss off the black Native Americans who live in the communities where it happens.
Black Native Americans aren’t that different from White Native Americans or Hispanic Native Americans in that regard. They don’t like people killing their kids just for the amusement it gives them. If it were the kids of middle-to-upper-middle to upper-class White Native Americans the cop-bosses would be on the shooters like stink on crap if they couldn’t arrange for a throw-down weapon or construe some other excuse for the officer having a bad day.
But Hispanic Native Americans and Black Native Americans only enjoy the privilege of having cops beating their kids to death on pain of having the copshops shaking his hand and congratulating him, mostly. The copshop attitude toward those matters is generally that if the kid wasn’t doing something at that moment they probably owed him one from sometime they didn’t know about.
Which tends to raise the ire down in the hoods among the family and potential targets for police officer tension management moments. Down in the hood it’s not difficult to understand some mild frustrations exist as a result of the fact the problem’s lingered so badly, overall. They’d like to see something done about it. This time, every time. They’d legitimately like to see the officer beaten to death, or otherwise treated with reciprocal formality. Legitimate grievance.
So what the hell do they do? They smash and loot candy bars and free potatio chips out of the local convenience store. Owned by people who didn’t have a damned thing to do with killing the kid. Stand off in the distance and yell, throw rocks. Stupid.
It’s as though they’re taking lessons from Israel, going on a binge of killing and property theft and destruction directed at people who had nothing to do with firing rockets or kidnapping Israeli kids. Smash and grab for the property in Palestine they haven’t settled yet with good Israelis. Stealing candy and potato chips in the form of minerals in the Med off the coast of Gaza.
We human beings are surely sneaky. But we still have a lot to learn from Israel, and Israel doesn’t learn from anyone, even their own history and the long history of Jews worldwide. Same as the rest of us they’ve never been guiltless. But it would be a shame to see Israel screw things up for honest, only ordinary-level dishonest and greedy Jews elsewhere in the world. Jews who are behaving the way the rest of us barely believable and secretly greedy non-Jews behave. Which is about the best anyone could ask for from humans. But Israel going over the top with it makes everyone look bad in the eyes of people prone to hate Jews anyway.
We’d be a lot more believable, we humans if we weren’t so dishonest. And greedy. And mean as snakes.
You’ve got to admit, Israelis and the Black Native Americans down in the worst neighborhoods stealing anything they can get their hands on and mugging anyone weak enough to be mugged, are surprisingly similar. Both begging for handouts from the US Government, and Israel actually receiving a cumulative $130 billion or so for their efforts, though mostly in weaponry. Nobody buys guns for anyone in the hood, which is unfair any way you cut it.
Hi readers. I’d just about decided my memory played tricks. Two years in a row I remember the carnival at the Roosevelt County Fair having a flea circus a kid could see for a dime. Vivid memory because I somehow accidently went into the tent next door where a woman in a bathing suit who had no arms was typing on a typewriter with her toes.
But I’ve told a lot of people who grew up in Portales at that time about the flea circus and none remember it. Most think I just dreamed it up, or remembered wrongly, which can happen.
Only the reason they thought so, and the reason I’d begun to thnk so, was that I came to believe no such thing as a flea circus ever existed outside imaginations.
The magic of YouTube doesn’t prove a flea market came to town with the carnival in Portales, New Mexico circa 1956, but it proves beyond doubt it might have.
Secrets of the Flea Circus
Secrets of the Real Flea Circus Revealed! National Geographic (Professor Oddnaught)
Genuine Flea Circus
No shortage of flea circuses were making the rounds those days.
So all you people who went to school beside me and don’t remember attending the flea circus I, think there wasn’t one, I say, “Horsefeathers!” If you hadn’t been spending all your money on the steam shovels and cotton candy you’d have seen it too. Playing bingo with pieces of corn on a checkerboard never got anyone into a tent where a woman with no arms in a bathing suit typed with her toes.
I’m not a person who toadies to celebrities. I couldn’t care less what they say or think about anything, what they do with their genitalia, what they eat, drink, or snort. If I like something they do on stage, on audio, on screen, that’s what gets my attention. I mostly don’t read biographies, autobiographies, mostly don’t watch interviews.
With rare exceptions. Leonard Cohen interests me. Louden Wainwright III interests me, Guy Clark interests me, and Tom Russell interests me. But Guy Clark and Leonard Cohen are the only ones I’d ever seen interviewed until now.
But I got to wondering whether Bob Dylan is still alive. I first was introduced to his music at a place on Bleeker Street in Greenwich Village during the summer of 1964. McDougal’s might have been the name of the place. And same as everyone else at that time and place, I was blown away.
So I went to the miracle of YouTube and started searching, thinking at least to hear some good music. And there they were, interviews with Bob Dylan, interviews with other people talking about Bob Dylan. Dozens of them scattered over half-century. So I picked a few, beginning with back when he was my age, 70 times around the sun.
Bob Dylan Interview and a very revealing one at that
For Bob Dylan it is Always the Same Interview 42 Years in 24 Minutes
Bob Dylan.Funny Interview.
I don’t care what the Beetles think, or thought about Bob Dylan, nor about anything else for that matter. But they did have a few good songs, and maybe what they say about Dylan will interest someone.
The Beatles talk about Bob Dylan
John Lennon and Bob Dylan Conversation
Bob Dylan and John Lennon on God and Religion
Bob Dylan: San Francisco Press Conference (Dec. 1965) 1/6
Bob Dylan – After The Crash – 1966-1978 (Part 1 of 12).mp4
I never knew Dylan got religion, or whatever it was he got, but I’m glad for him, though I don’t care whether he did or not from the perspective of knowing about it.
Bob Dylan – The Gospel Interview
Bob Dylan 1966 Interview, WBAI
Bob Dylan – Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award – 1991 Grammy Awards
Dylan and I didn’t know it because we never got around to discussing the matter, but we shared a lot of respect for Johnny Cash. Johnny Cash, I suppose, might qualify as another person I’d have possibly cared what he thought about some things. If I’d ever met Dylan we could have regaled one another with Johnny Cash respect, I suppose.
Bob Dylan on Johnny Cash. NDH outtake
I’ve mentioned Loudon Wainwright III is one of the people I’m mildly interested in what they might say about something outside the context of a song. Well, in this instance I didn’t have to look outside Loudon Wainwright’s music. He wrote this song to Dylan on Dylan’s 50th birthday.
Loudon Wainwright III – Talking New Bob Dylan.wmv
The Simon and Garfunkel thing about Dylan has always seemed to me to be a cheap shot. Dylan wrote the song that launched Simon and Garfunkel into fame. Sound of Silence. But when Dylan left ‘folk’ behind to invent ‘folk rock’ Simon and Garfunkel got offended enough to personally attack him in song: Bastards, both of them. Screw them, though they did one-hell-of-a-lot of great songs. If they’d kept their nasty little comments off their albums I’d never have known. Pricks.
Simon & Garfunkel – A Simple Desultory Philippic (or How I Was Robert McNamara’d into Submission)
The Sound of Silence (Original Version from 1964)
Peter, Paul and Mary got pretty pissed when Dylan drifted to folk rock, too. I saw an interview with one of the guys several years later in which he said it was the only really nasty attack song they ever recorded, and that they all regretted it. Something about what he said made me thing it was directed at Dylan. Listen to the words carefully to hear the sarcasm “between the lines”. But at least they did it with some class. They made a lot of money and miles off Bob Dylan creations.
I dig rock n roll music
So I think I’ll just toadie to Loudon Wainwright’s birthday tribute to Bobby Dylan and make a wish when I think he’s blowing out the candles in the wind: “Here’s hoping you outlive me Bobby Dylan. I’d like an excuse to begin my next lifetime in time to hear what you do after I exit the vehicle.”
Hi readers. Someone female sitting in the lobby late one night tossed The Bell Jar aside and groaned a curse. Headed for the wagon yard, I reckons. So I picked up Plath’s tome and read enough to remember everything else I ever knew, ever wanted to know about Sylvia Plath. Most vividly I remembered a poem, Daddy, by Ms Plath. Some University of Texas poetry course caused me to write a ten page paper about it once.
I learned to hate the thought Sylvia Plath and her lot shared this planet with regular human beings. And after reading a while on Bell Jar, chunking it, I wrote this:
Virus of the mind
The drumbeat litany of hatred
And blame;
Of smug mindless naiveté
Numbs the mind.
Alienation is a welcome gift
From the universe
When it involves the inability
To identify with THAT.
The preoccupation with death
As though death is an unnatural state,
Created by a dark maker for the shallow purpose
Of providing a source of terror and sadness
For tiny humans;
Leaves me with a yearning:
Just once I’d like to see a poem
Just once.
A poem full of truths:
“I gave you permission
to hurt me and make me angry;
because of my illusions and expectations
you never agreed to satisfy
and didn’t
now I’m angry.
“I wanted you to behave a certain way.
Because I wanted it, I demanded it
In my expectations of you
without saying so.
“I wanted you to give up your choices.
I didn’t want it
because giving them up would make you
happier
Or more fulfilled.
I just wanted it because I wanted it.
“I’m used to getting my way.
I’ll hate you if I don’t get it.
“I’ll hate you fiercely
and if that doesn’t work
I’ll threaten to kill myself
Just to get you back.”
Or,
“I’m angry. I’ve always been angry.
Life isn’t fair and it pisses me off.
I haven’t gotten everything I want.
Sometimes my parents weren’t kind to me;
Didn’t give me what I wanted.
“I talk to my friends and they’re angry, too.
The more we talk the more we realize life isn’t fair
And it pisses us off.
“We talk among ourselves
About how cool it would be
To kill some of those flawed bastards
We don’t like.
“We savor our anger; our hatred
We wallow in it
And think of different ways we’d like to kill
The bastards we don’t like;
How much we’d enjoy killing.
We all know
Because took a voice vote.
“Some nerd who wears his glasses crooked
And isn’t cool;
Some football jock who gets all the girls
We’d like to get;
We hate the girls and the jocks.
“Some sarcastic adult who isn’t cool
And doesn’t respect our views
About how the world is.
“We’d like to kill them all.
We took a voice vote
And we all agree.”
“We haven’t studied much
Nor read much
Nor lived much
Nor listened much
But that doesn’t keep us
From knowing how life is;
How life should be.”
“We’re angry and we’d like to kill them all!
We took a voice vote.
“And by God you’ll see
You’ll be sorry
When I kill myself!”
And the Ted Hugheses of the world , the Daddys
Sort through selective memories to avoid the truth
About this creature they loved.
From Poems of the New Old West, copyright 2003 Jack Purcell
Hi readers. Shortly after I came back to town after The End of Life As We Know It and the Y2K I gave myself [you can probably find the stories of that by searching the blog for Y2K] I went to work graveyard shift. Travel Lodge, maybe, or Motor Inn, night clerk. 11pm-7am. That story’s here somewhere, too.
Those nights in that motel were always long, sometimes interesting, never boring. At least not to me, but I don’t recall ever having been bored this lifetime.
One night a guy came down from his room and sat in the lobby, just wanted to talk. He was in town as part of a team cleaning up a particularly messy suicide. That’s what he did for a living. Travelled all over the place where suicides happened and left a terrible mess, maybe a hazardous one.
Interesting guy, with a perspective about suicide and life that I mightn’t agree with, but am glad I encountered anyway. So sometime one of those long nights later I wrote this thing I might have once called a poem:
Industry
Brain soup on steel rails, Creosote and gravel Is tasteless and inconsiderate.
What a waste, you say. It keeps people employed I say.
Lawsuits, insurance forms Police reports Accident reports For a non accident.
Clerks, cops, lawyers Funeral directors Morticians And the little guy.
Someone has to clean up Those brain and bloodstains On the walls and carpets; Pick the bone fragments Out of the doorframe With a pair of needle nosed pliers; Plug the holes Re paint. Mop up those Sidewalk body fluids Untangle the lariat Or phone cord From the light fixture Scrub bathtub crimson rings.
Someone has to manufacture Sleeping pills Bullets Razorblades Ropes.
And hospital beds For the faint of heart.
Some of that’s still Made in America (Good quality, too And I’m damned proud To say it.)
It’s hard times. A man has to go where the work is.
What a waste, you say. It keeps people employed I say. It’s commerce.
From Poems of the New Old West, copyright 2003, NineLives Press, Jack Purcell
Hi readers. Thanks for coming by for a read this morning.
I noticed on the television down at the Olathe Community Center to be stared at by people on treadmills and other torture machines that some big name celebrity killed himself. Guy who was in an amusing movie once about a house that an airplane crashed into and he bought it because it had been pre-disastered.
I don’t know. Maybe the guy was terminally ill, or maybe just depressed. That crap can surely happen. Back in my younger days I used to go into a black pit of depression there seemed no way out of. Where it seemed the Universe was trying to drag me into the hole a person doesn’t come back out of, the way this Williams guy exited.
I was lucky in a lot of ways, though I’m not sure what all of them were. I had a name for the ‘entity’ that seemed to take possession of my mind and spirit during those times. I called it the blue demon. Because it seemed to be a real being.
And the way I eventually got it into my past so’s I have to work to remember about it, was by treating it as a living, thinking creature with a will I could do battle with, wrestle it to the ground. Banish it from my psyche.
And once I discovered I could do that and did it successfully and thoroughly one time, afterward it was a lot easier. For decades afterward anytime I sensed that blue demon out of the corner of my perceptions I’d immediately jump in and do battle with it again, drive it out before it got a foothold.
It worked so well for me that I’ve sometimes gone years, maybe decades without ever sensing it, doing battle with it. But it’s still there, lurking, waiting for things to happen in its favor. When my health began the slide down the slippery slope the old blue demon tried whispering to me out of the wings a few times.
Interestingly, I think I have a lot of the symptoms of clinical depression right now, today, minus the blue demon black pit and the anguish that goes with it. I’m a happy, lucky man, grateful and congratulating myself for it a thousand times per day.
But I can’t force myself to open my mail. I don’t answer the telephone unless I’m confident who is calling. Have to force myself to do anything that falls into the arena of acknowledging one hell of a lot of life that would love to come in and say hello.
I’m probably going to have to do something about that. Maybe give it a name, shake hands with it, and do battle. I’m just not there yet.
Probably there’s no other conclusion to reach: Middle Easterners don’t like other people as much as we do.
You’ve got all those wossname, Kurds having whatever is happening to them, or doing something to someone else.
You’ve got Israel doing a slick ethnic cleansing and land-grabbing against their cousins in neighboring Palestine.
You’ve got Sufis killing someone somewhere, Sunnis killing other people somewhere else, and you’ve got Shiites squeezing into the act killing someone else, possibly Sufis or Sunnis.
And now you’ve got women in Syria being stoned [with rocks, not marijuana] for adultery.
You’ve got the lot of them sneaking around killing, discriminating, not liking Christians when they aren’t killing someone else.
But of course those people don’t believe in the Bible. They never learned to stay home and peacefully mind their own business, relax about human diversity, and forgive others for being different from themselves. They never learned not to get too worked up about having a lot of extra possessions, big houses, gewgaws, cars and cosmetic surgery.
And guns. They have too many guns. Where the hell do they get all those guns? Those people in the Middle East have more guns and rockets than we have IPODs and SUVs. Especially the ones who are trying to be like us.
In countries over there where they’re not all Mexicans the white people try hard to be like us. Israel is a good example. But although they’re simple, God fearing folks, they aren’t Christians. They don’t believe in the Bible. So they can’t understand they need to quit slaughtering their neighbors and stealing their land. They’d like to be like real white people, but they can’t get it right. And that’s just Israel. A few miles in any direction the places are full of Mexicans who aren’t even trying to be like white people.
Hi readers. Hells bells. Hugh Hefner started the sexual revolution back in the 1950s because he thought we were holding back, stuffing things back down inside. Psychologically repressing ourselves and generally, because sex could make Hugh Hefner a pile of money.
Mutantes: Punk Porn Feminism 2009 NR91 minutes This documentary maps the evolution of the “post-porn” movement, featuring interviews with pioneers like Annie Sprinkle, Carol Queen and Lydia Lunch. More Info Starring: Norma Jean Almodovar, Maria Beatty Director: Virginie Despentes Flowing on Netflix.
But if Hefner had seen this stuff coming down the pike I believe he’d have been shocked, maybe he’d have to ask himself if what he began was an unmitigated blessing.
Also streaming on Netflix:
Fuck for Forest
(Fuck for Forest) 2012 NR 1hr This documentary lays bare an unusual Berlin-based NGO that uses proceeds from homemade adult films to fund the restoration of Amazonian rain forests.
I’m sure it’s just me, but saving the planet by screwing just doesn’t make a lot of sense as a motivation.
Also streaming on Netflix:
Danland 2012 NR 88 minutes This documentary examines the psychology of amateur porn-film creator Dan Lear and what prompted him to choose such an unorthodox profession. More Info Starring: Dan Lear Director: Alexandra Berger
Orgasm Inc. 2009 NR 79 minutes Orgasm Inc. is a funny and sobering look inside “big pharma” and the marketing campaigns associated with a pill for female sexual dysfunction. More Info Starring: Elizabeth Canner, Kim Airs Director: Elizabeth Canner
Then there’s what’s happening in the courtesan industry. Streaming on Netflix.
American Courtesans 2013NR 86 minutes Follow 11 sex workers through massage parlors, brothels, strip clubs and New York high-rises in this documentary about their choices and fears. More Info
Sheeze man. I don’t object to any of this, but I’d pay good money to avoid being a part of a fair amount of it. And not only because it would likely bring on the big one.
This one’s still in the US doing duty for a fried chicken joint in Kerrville, TX. But the next lifetime for it might well be Guatemala.
La Camioneta: The Journey of One American School Bus
(La Camioneta) 2012NR1hr 11m You rated this movie: 5 stars – Average of 25,249 ratings: 3.5 stars Follow the journey of a school bus from the United States to Guatemala, where it’s resurrected as a vehicle that transports Guatemalans to work.
The murderers are killing the bus drivers and anyone else who strikes their fancy. Thousands of orphans from homicided parents. And trekking to the US with all the risks is their best chance, even with legions of pedophiles waiting every step along the way. And a welcome from the Statutes of Liberty and a citizenry with a motto, “I got mine!”
I love old school busses. Maybe I’ll get to be born in Guatemala next lifetime. Or better yet, maybe you will, my fellow Americans.
74 years old, a resident of Leavenworth, KS, in an apartment located on the VA campus. Partnered with a black shorthaired cat named Mister Midnight. (1943-2020)
Since April, 2020, this blog is maintained by Jeanne Kasten (See "About" page for further information).
https://sofarfromheaven.com/2020/04/21/au-revoir-old-jules-jack-purcell/
I’m sharing it with you because there’s almost no likelihood you’ll believe it. This lunatic asylum I call my life has so many unexpected twists and turns I won’t even try to guess where it’s going. I’d suggest you try to find some laughs here. You won’t find wisdom. Good luck.
So Far From Heaven 