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Upon a Greasy Hill, Words in the Wind, as Arrows Come Down Like Rain

CEE

    “One last thought... There is no law in the arena. Many are killed.” —Best Supporting Actor (1959) Hugh Griffith, as Sheik Ilderim, to Judah Ben-Hur

    General George Armstrong Custer made a bad decision, and he and his men were stuck with its consequences. The payout of the gaffe, was a near-immediate, “oh, shit!”, then a demise not nearly as swift as Hollywood or mathematical odds would have us believe. Following too-fast an “oops!”, they stared into Death’s maw, moving backward, uphill and to their left, through a baker’s dozen retreat points, as this one died and that one was killed and another was picked off and more were cut down, over a period of time which, given the scenario and every painting we’ve seen, has the legions of Sitting Bull’s genius doggin’ it. Help which was notified in time and turned their way in time, dogged it slower. One Captain James Benteen, thought General Custer was pretty much like Richard Mulligan’s portrayal of him, in Little Big Man. And with no faith in Custer, no trust in Custer, no liking for Custer, and no allegiance beyond the uniform, James Benteen picked daisies and breathed good, territorial air, until the man whom he held in poor regard, was no longer breathing at all. So, a man unpopular in close association, no matter what position he held, got the same treatment as the boy who cried, “Wolf!”, when naked vulnerability was drawn from his deck.
    In 1876, one could turn away from any Other, blameless, with a silent, “Goodbye, Mr. Bond”, and sleep the sleep of babes, nearly always unfettered by fetters. Somewhere after Nagasaki, we supposedly tamped the dirt of the many graves in this nation, into a civil society—“civil”, meaning tasteless jokes and “Addams Family” cartoons in The New Yorker. A “making fun”, was where we set the bar. Laugh at Others, howl at them, reduce them to imbecile. Don’t kill them or cause them to die. And if they merely let you down or are full of hot air, tough. Selfimage is required to tend itself, but All must protect All. Especially those on high. A 7th Cavalry, with hidden Stallone and Banderas as hit men, must ring Olympus, but we as free may at least razz the gods, moon them, call names. Picayune diminishment. Keying on a proclivity or trait, or a short list of blunders committed by those in leadership roles. In the wake of Watergate, this became pop culture comfort for humanizing those we don’t trust. It didn’t have to be an American king. Any persons distant as image, fit the bill. Power, must be weakened, as seen. The Fonz, must say “I was wrong”. Edith Bunker must strike Archie, physically. Ditto, Halle Berry to 007. Michael J. P. Keaton, is yuppie and successful and brilliant and forward and sad and alienated and to be defeated, to “learn something”. As for 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, sound byte labeling. Actual Bush, an owlish effeminate. Bill Clinton, a walking penis. George Dubya, an eater of paste, simultaneously a foul mastermind. 2008-2016, No Commenting, Not Allowed. Ever thus. Throwing rocks of TV bricks, because if an ill wind of Real, one soldier uncaring if others die, the masses stop, and turn into Vampire LARPers. Paying far too grim an attention. So, let’s keep it smarmy and frothy. Jeering, that’s fun! It keeps We The People stimulated. As one-two, one-two DIY empowerment, it began in 1988, with the vice presidential choice of J. Danforth Quayle.
    Dan Quayle, whose key contribution to American legislation and jurisprudence, consisted of lengthening the faltering career of the star-crossed daughter of Edgar Bergen and by proxy, lending Johnny Carson a final, legendary Super Energy Pill of stage presence, was the youngest Indianan ever elected to the Senate. Elected indeed, with 54% of the vote, reelected with 61%, a man of (published, google it) genius IQ, who also, to his credit, was Jake LaMotta, in taking it on the chin. Power, formerly, was amazing at sucking abuse, as its essential admantium was, “I have ‘POWER’.” So, when everyone from Johnny, Ed and Doc, to subversive rags only available by subscription to homes with men in a car parked across the street, to a certain, “I’m obviously superior”-friend of mine in The Day, when any of these pronounced upon the subhumanity as characterized, of Vice President Dan Quayle, the man, I’m certain, had another brandy in the Halls of the Mighty, and spoke of things far from us all. My friend’s remarks, the grass roots Mein Kampf-ing of a one-man masses, was the trad ‘racial characteristic’ of appearance. Looking into the visage of one who committed bad plays on words or open mic blunders, Dan Quayle, to my friend, was the knuckledragger, ass at a party and little boy goofwad many condemned him as. He Was This, by God!, and incontrovertibly, as “You can just tell by lookin’ at ‘eem!”
    If, fighter in the ring, I’m set into the next punch of this combination, you, noncontroller of the means of production, parry, expertly. “Welllll, that’s just the ignorance of one person.” Ignorance, of course, being 50-50, everywhere, despite the best efforts of Maher and YouTube mouth bloggers. It’s understood, every demographic of every sort, down to worldview, POV and thought process, is, all of humanity together being equal, equally limited. If we concede any smaller or larger grouping, though the scope or (pardon me) spectrum of said group’s thinking be the factor, you have created a caste of ‘betters’, the ‘obviously superior’. The Deciders. And, we’re no longer speaking of Power smirking and turning away from our assholery, toward What Work Power Does. Power as “this is the group of the right-thinking” and making damned certain we grasp that, proscribes and determines, it changes, destroys, creates, recreates, edits and fixes as it wills. That’s “wills”, not “will”. “As it will”, means there is random chance as aspect to Life, the Shit Happens of existentialism; “as it wills”, means Power as These Are The Betters and We Accept This And Bow And Do Not Fight. Meaning Orwell. I hate to cop to Orwell as the bottom line, it’s tired. But, I dare you to find me something better, without blood and porn in it. Winston and Julia, are like a sad, hopeless Harlequin Romance.
    Are there determinable ‘betters’, and can they be corralled, so to corral Us? Is there, as my same, superior, simply condemning friend used to pine for, a panel of the greatest of each, larger, Rollerball Murder-divided field, to speak and caucus on a worldwide screen, then be able to tell us, in the end agreed, “the answers to all this stuff”? ...and, what you’re thinking right now? Yeah. I know. But what you’re also thinking is, “it’s never going to be that simple”. Not a panel, not a quorum of professors, not a state house of experts, not Hesse’s Castalia and glass beads flying. If there were 8 million people on the ball, let alone 8 billion, these things—the deplorable imponderables, what I’ve ever called “the mysteries of the universe”, what an acclaimed scribe called, “life, the universe and everything”, the lives of each and every, day by day—these things, cannot be determined so to have set definitions which don’t bleed past the boundaries of customizing. No group of thinkers or the rational, nor the archetypes of Donovan’s “Atlantis”, not fists, not praying hands, not those with hammers and bells, has any “solution”, which is anything beyond Persons Other Than You Know Best. Which brings into play the power play of a kind of finitude begging the “Fuck You”. At a near point, the children of the LCD, know, and they choose. Some to turn away, in hate of hope stolen, and some to drown in the things that make them “feel good”. Some, actively join sides or “teams” or groups of thinking dark, as that amazing little girl at The Magic Kingdom did Vader, drawing far more from Power which obeys itself, and which does not pretend.
    When a young Fidel Castro, speaking at the United Nations, paid off a good, rhetorical flourish by underscoring “...the right to live, and to work, and to eat”, it was the true reaching across the aisle—agrarian, pushing an atheist politick, in harmony with what Christian chautauqua king, William Jennings Bryan, knew. Life, butt end, is to be born and to live and to procreate and to die. Hanging other things upon Everyman, when there exists or can exist any nurturing Power which nods to him, is muddying the base upon which man sets his feet, the foothold base of Earth, with an acid. The march into cell phone zombiehood, as well as where you sit, nonfriend, eyes upon a tablet, was no victory. It proved only the flip side of an anarchist-friend, ca. 1988, “I see destruction as a form of creation.” Technology as Man become a new creation, let alone it be his voice and a greater one for Power, is creation as a form of destruction. And the next step, is unity, indeed, and yes, of a thinking, and yes, of One Voice. Ein volk. Does this register at at all, or are you just going to quote Godwin at me and squinch up your face? Cliche doesn’t matter, default thinking does not matter. The entrapping of practicality, transcends even practicality as understood. MOUSETRAP as a board game, symbolically shows us that, slapass and jerryrigged, what holds together, simply does, and that fate for those lost, is, at their end, inescapable. You’re not going to jumpstart anything, without whole C.W. McCall convoys of guns in hands. Methinks the moment has passed, even for that. Implosion, is imminent, and Castro’s words, the inner yearning, the base drive to live, work, eat, as used for individual thinking (the only sort I believe true, Laertes), are for survival in a real game of “Lifeboat”, or hoarding for the moment Quiet has come, or knives into those who splintered hopes, or knives into random offenders. Self. I keep telling you. It doesn’t make a good stone soup. Like Q of ‘Trek’s TNG, put it, “It’s difficult to work in a group, when you’re omnipotent.” And You as focal point of the universe, is great, imagined godhood, but all but those who haven’t yet melted down know at medulla oblongata, Self is Self’s own “safe place” (you realize Joel Chandler Harris and the now despised “Uncle Remus” mythos, began the “safe place”, don’t you? Remus, called it your “happy place”, but it’s the same thing. You might try calling it a “cry until you get backlash from your hiccups buffet”, in order to avoid flash mobs). Until one mounts the Greyhound or drives to the far city or is hiding in a closet or basement or warehouse or park, waiting for anOther’s unwariness or sleep, the selfcontained universal Self of One as actually equalling a “Me”, is as Miyagi said of karate, “for defense, only”.
    Oh, no!, say those committed to formless Utopias or slinging topical opinions like a hay thresher. All Axis, All Allies, All The Time. Up and at ‘em, the war never ends, the struggle is all, your own inertia devalues the sweet goodie for which we fight...where, 300 years from now, your kids’ kids’ kids, will enjoy what you never will. They’ll have their own issues, of course, nothing will ever be perfect, it’s what South Park’s Mr, Hanky might nod to as part of “The Cycle of Poo”, but, hey! Stop! Halt! It’s not about Us, no, it’s Life and the circle and the uncaring universe, and that isn’t bad, say Maher and the scientist sporting the outdated moustache, it’s just FINE we are nothing but a moment where we help to no end and no reward with no Self Power, always lost within All and Group and Army and Team and the thick of it where no matter what, the Voice as Power, really isn’t our own...and even better Caterpillar Moustache smiles, that there’s no God, not an afterlife or beingness or continuation, and after a time, not one memory we were here. It’s ALLLLLLL GOOOOOOD. It’s certainly isn’t bad. C’mon! Let’s get on board, join up, Kumba-fuckin’-Ya and fight the...uhh, we the...the Other thinking that we...right now, I mean, you won’t, it...your kids’ kids, though, they...gotta...gotta Fight, this is Better. “Better” is just better! What We’re Sayin’, ya know. It’s the Truly True Truth that’s True. We can give you links! Subscribe!!
    [Undead Vampire Emoticon Not Currently Available]
    Gee. I can’t imagine why someone would rather live a quiet, selfish, selfindulgent life, drown in group sex, or murder for closure. The Above sounds so much more noble! And well-defined. Dudn’ i’?
    Though, even as I write, the Get ‘Em, Get ‘Em, Get ‘Em-journalists, video activists and trickle-traffic bloggers, are shrill, as Selves break away, a natural San Andreas Fault of sociopolitical thinking. Their reasons, are a Family Feud of percentages, but are rooted in only one (possibly genetic) thing, ironically what my superior friend knew, as he believed he knew Dan Quayle’s very soul. When speaking of a zealous Christian friend momentarily at odds with me: “Fanatics, don’t understand. They don’t understand being a fanatic, doesn’t work for anyone but them.” As existentially based, as humanistic, as Life, day to day, living, working, eating with mindcarved memory of You, Other, Have Not Helped Me, no one but the fanatical can sustain focus as a furnace engine of drive. I can tell you by comparison, using a life experience personal as fuel, only one who stands apart from human, fully—the misanthrope, not the altruist—can sustain the bestial long enough, over Time of months into years into a life, for action to remain viable. Causes and issues and a felt need to march, even to bludgeon perceived foes, burns often brighter, sometimes blinding (metaphor), but not long. Not for most. There is laundry in the dryer. I want Fill in the Who or What. I now hate you; You’re a liar. Show me the money. What have you done for me lately? The latter 3 and maybe memory of the second, are Presto logs, in personal experience; in the Wednesday Meeting’s minutes of “We Want...!”, you wind up with Life of Brian and The Peoples’ Front of Judea.
    Bread and circuses, pacify open sores of broken hearts, dull perception, put blood to sleep. They salve. They lead away. And in the capitalist system, torn from the agrarian, bums are not in seats to stand for Tomorrow, as caring competes with playdates and all manner of “grrr, you don’t understand!” Again, magic was desired, and most saw the milk go all over the floor. Those fanatical, no matter impetus, no matter agenda, no matter their hearts be as Mary Pickford’s in Tess of the Storm Country, are left with some bats and their own balls, yelling, Charlie Brown, at uncaring uncontrollable—knees together in the pee-urge which goes with it. To watch the faces of those “you can just tell, by looking at” who clearly, sincerely care, faces freaking, manic of eye, hands gesticulating, voices edging to within dim memory of Beverly Sills, “C’mon, People...!”, the plea of The-Next-Guy-To-Get-It-In-A-Slasher-Film, “Guys? Hey, this isn’t funny...!”, has me barking, heckler, more and more, at the screen (as Mom did at Take Your Pick and Gram at Gorgeous George). These idealists, are clueless. Hardly the builders, they’re the kids who get sent home the first week of kindergarten, for soiling. They soil themselves, with good reason. Only their close fellows, want them around. I don’t mean as Voices of Dissent. I mean, as voices still with breath.
    Professor Frank Wu, author of the essential missive, Yellow, is quite correct in mirroring back the error of a nation where “‘American’ means ‘White’ and ‘minority’ means ‘Black’.” Agreed, this stated simplicity obscures, but the default distortion hides more than you know. Let’s take it away from big bad, “I never knew what ‘supply-side economics’ were, anyway, I’m just mad!”-America. Let’s consider China, and the generational exclusion/foul treatment of Manchurians. The rape of Tibet, atheist to Buddhist. Or if we look South from there, the ongoing oppressions suffered by the Muslim minority, in India (I’ll kind of guess the Mahatma never embraced them). Probably, I don’t have to recall the Rwandan genocide, 100 days of internecine slaughter to the stage-kicking of Michigan J. Frog. Or every aspect of meticulous, tribal dividing in the Arab world. It happens, spinning globe, in every type and caste and group. Racial, Gendercentered, Religious. Political. ...and Now, we Here, in a place no longer free to push Others away because of how they look or where they were born...we may still attack, terrorize and even murder, feral, based upon The Vote. And maybe the killers stand tall before The Man, and maybe they go free. Live free, full lives. Die old, in bed. It matters little to those driven, remains or ashes, beneath the Earth. Their deaths, were for being Yankees before Red Sox, or Red Sox before Yankees, and admitting it. Or unable to shield that truth. Often, in a moment, a second of “oh, shit!” Fate as Whack a Mole. Custer’s Last Stand and The Alamo, were drastically separate bursts of heroic, orchestral sound. Unlike the Travises, the Crocketts and Bowies, most in 2017, are deer in the headlights, deep in greasy grass. As a field general of blond locks, John Q stumbles into The Moment, perhaps is comp’d a “WTF?!”, and is gone. Conversely, every person with a minor take on Warriner’s and an opinion, has San Antonio-time to make a choice. To fold their banner, strike their tent, slip off with Moses Rose...to leave William Wallace to his fate, to live and to work and to eat...or, to leap at The Big Face Thing of Tron, sabre drawn, and with the machine confidence of Mike Tyson before buster-ing...or, sabre drawn, knowing the truth, and standing before the tsunami of 2004 rolling back in to cover all screaming, with Quiet to come. All but Iron Mike in this list, stand only for Truth, their drug of choice. They know they will die—and the Tyson of our list probably knows, too, and doesn’t care. Champions of POV and their antithesis, serve The Game.
    CEE as Self, thinks oceans of words are the public toilets of Man. Our 21st, Stables of Augeas. As foolish as my lunch partners in high school, Admiral, you’re wasting precious time. Socrates was cool, but he’s dead. Do you recall how? Micro-puling, is isometrics against The Mausoleum at Halicarnassus. “Born, Live, Procreate, Die.” Hey, what was that last one? This is Beat the Clock as your heartbeat. Tickety-goddammed-tock, nonfriend. You’re using the time, yelling at Power that it’s “bad”?
    Don’t misquote me. I stand as example, transparent. I’ve made my choice. I will proclaim my Me, before all oppressors, and I will fight and I will die, before I will betray my own interest—because it’s MY INTEREST. I will not have my freedom stolen, up to and including through happenstance—if you’re in a gas ‘n gulp with me when it gets held up, expect the focus to shift and the bullets to spray, because I’m leaving the store, it’s nothing to do with Me. I’ve been followed part-way home, btw, following a bit or bauble of Lottery luck. I live on a Dead End (‘that surprise ya?). I’ve prepared my last words, just in case, the sound byte ending with my very best Cartman (including physicality), “Screw you guys, I’m goin’ home.” I do not have time, for foolishness. The issues and machinations, interruptions and whines, petitions and guns and noise of The Other, are foolishness. As are their red herrings, presented by the fewest of voice. The “C’mon, People”-people. Nits, now, but with raspy teeth. Those masses uncaring, due to numbness or Life’s gluttony, have grown deaf to them. Those who cut the widest swath of Power in The West, consider them “lesser”, and say so. In such a marginalized position, one who baby-oinks to point of being noticed, encounters a Lenny Bruce stage-fantasy, the fate of Borscht Belt comedian Shelley Berman, insulting made men in a Mafia-run club. Power, very soon, will Openly Not Care, if it even does by your reading this. And if corporatist wars are but circle jerks and others drown in sweetbreads and circuses, if small, paramilitary squeaks are crushed with a pauper’s portion of horror at the crushing...if many who could have stood no longer comply because they’re sick of Eternal Decision 2000, and didn’t live in Palm Beach County, Florida, anyway, so what the Hell would their vote have done...? A pass of parrots laden with cool glossaries, “false equivalency, changing the narrative!”, that friend you thought seriously about hiring better goons to stomp than Nolte did for De Niro...if the small, petulant voices remaining, are become all which remain, then, the long nights of an Alamo choice, no longer apply. The clear, tinkling temple bell of your words, summon Little Big Horn by way of Hemingway. Again, this is You, Not what you mouth. Shove your sociopolitics. History as numbers, doesn’t change. No matter who wears the blue or the buckskin jacket, it ends the same.
    It’s easy to mock. Others, are loyal to their own need. You have to get it through your ass-fucking-heads, You Are Doing This, For YOU. I’m Not saying “Don’t Speak Out.” I am saying we are walked back, Toynbee, and not metaphorically, to a timeline where it’s going to cost something. Maybe a whole Johnstown Cemetery-full. Words as Web, are pixels of wind. They’re piss, in it. They mean nothing. Nothing, means anything, in a WWW-world, not even to catch the eye. Only, at the convergence to zero, blood.
    Decide now, each of you.



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