Power Down

We really make me sick.

I used to think we were all a bunch of clowns.

Where did I get the arrogance, the audacity, the sheer chutzpah to believe we were equal to clowns, who after all, are entertainers, in their own way, make-up artists, acrobats, performers who get paid at the end of the night, scrub off their grease-paint, twist off their rubber noses, and sleep well, while we, we are merely children in the audience bedazzled and beguiled by the clowns while outside the big top, under the benevolent watch of the Strong Man, The Knife-Thrower and Lobster Boy (“support our freaks”) our parents are signing away the family farm, our inheritance, and that of our children, to the Ringmaster, who orders the Strongman to bugger Dad while Lobster Boy and Knife-Thrower do unspeakable things to Mom, for after all, they got paid for the gig, gotta make ’em earn their freak. Otherwise, it just wouldn’t be natural.

That we dare flatter ourselves with such attributes as clown, buffoon, jester, jackanapes, lummox, oaf…another testimony to our unmitigated gall.

Communication Breakdown in the Great Beyond (Apropos Fox, not Cox)

How telling that the television ghost-hunters (all right, we’ll go along with it: “there are more things in heaven and on earth, Horatio,” yadda yadda yadda) were worried about entering the haunted basement because of the POWER PROBLEM. That is, there was no place to hook up their fancy high-tech ghost hunting doo-dads, so they had to bring down a generator. Interesting that even in the “other world” communication depends on non-renewable – or re-incarnationable – energy sources.

Cox Says “No!” to Unmarketable Drugs

We paranoids don’t do well with hallucinogenics. Then again, maybe it’s the epoch; it’s not like I’m hanging out with Grace Slick on a warm June night in San Francisco, circa 1967. The sixties had pot and acid; the seventies had heroin and Quaaludes; the eighties cocaine and Ecstasy; the nineties anti-depressants; and our current era a mishmash of anti-depressants, benzodiazepams, and highly caffeinated “soft drinks.” Booze and nicotine throughout, of course; the timeless “legal” drugs we are actually encouraged not to “say no” to — don’t let the anti-smoking ads fool you; besides encouraging smoking as an act of rebellion via corn-ball reverse-propaganda, the hardest drug of all to kick is Nicotine gum. It’s like chewing cocaine.

We’re All Better Now: The Post-Election Irrelevance of Cox

The modern president is like a systems administrator of a system that’s been fixed for years with minor “patches” and “upgrades,” only making it even more complex and subsequently closer to chaos, a system that can only be “fixed” by a complete “power down” and rewrite of the kernel and OS code; no matter how colorful and dazzling the screen-saver, it’ll only save what it’s meant to save – the screen; thousands of lines of code between pressing a key and the instant appearance of a letter or number on the screen.

I wouldn’t be surprised if The Board of Trustees (whoever they really are) sat McCain and Obama in a room and said,

“We need an articulate, relatively young, black man to take off some of the heat, ease tension, bring back that Kennedy/MLK sense of hope and ‘change.’ Sorry, John, you represent the so-called ‘old school.’ Barrack, you’re in. Congratulations. No hard feelings, John. Our men at Diebold have been instructed to give you a number of ‘red states’ so it won’t be an embarrassment.”

“Yes. I understand, sir. Congratulations, Barrack.”

“Thanks, John. If there’s anything I can do, you let me know.”

Comedians as Letter “C”

Ten pies-in-the-face, “to-go”, for the clowns who managed to take a once outrageous weekly (5 minute) skit on the real Saturday Night Live 1975-80 (imagine if, after 1970, they hired a four new guys every couple of years to write and play crappy music and called them The Beatles or The Doors? What’s in a name?) into hour-long ACTUAL mainstream “news shows” with ACTUAL mainstream guests (who they josh around with with all the investigative chops of Jay Leno) and call it “comedy.” For some reason this pisses me off even more than the fucking election, which is at least a “sort of” funny joke. This “Fake News” using “actual mainstream news” with some limp, sponsor-approved “satire” would make Lenny Bruce, George Carlin, Richard Pryor and the real “SNL NEWS” satirists WISH they were dead, if they weren’t already dead, and therefore, most of them being dead, damn proud of it. What did I just say?

Modrun Media Medicine: a Possible (Mis?)Reading of Cox

Actors, formerly lowest of life forms, became icons — literally – once their owners had the technology to reproduce their images so they could earn money off the actors not merely from one or two stage performances a day, but thousands of movie screenings a day throughout the world, not to mention magazines, memorabilia, free media publicity etc. Unfortunately, the actors, never the brightest of the lot, took this to mean that they themselves were somehow more important.

Surgeries don’t matter anyway, especially for women, who once they pass 40 have to wait till they’re over sixty or so to play 40-year-olds and such. Cheaper for celebrities to dress in diapers as a means toward regaining lost youth and more effective than surgery; also, they can “grow into them” as they age…

But the surgeries made them look like teenagers strung out on heroin. So the Owners began to harvest real old people, the ones who still had enough memory left to remember lines (not that it mattered much; in film, you only have to say one or two lines between ‘takes’); also, the old people died before they became annoying; so the owners told the filmmakers to make movies about old people; but the young people weren’t interested in seeing such films; so the Owners had Big Media churn out magazines, websites, television shows etc. portraying the old people as desirable, THE PEOPLE to be; so the young people began buying fanzines and going to films starring old people. Soon the young people wanted to be like their heroes. They tried heroin, but that didn’t work well for more than a few weeks, or minutes, for most; so the stores began selling old people masks and props to make the young folks look old with sagging breasts and low scrotums like melting wax; and the wealthy young people had this done via surgery; so everyone, even the doctors who lost so much business making old people look young — which was way passe — were happy….

To Paraphrase Cox…

Capitalists and their “enablers” cannot be reasoned with or “talked to.” There is no dialog. If there were enough space, and a lot less people, that would be fine with me. They stay where they are, I stay where I am, and we’re happy as pigs in poop with our own peculiar notions about what “is” is. However, Capitalism, which began as a malignant tumor some 500 years ago (some would say “Civilization” itself which began around 8000 years ago), has metastasized to engulf the globe. There is no “escape” unless you’re rich enough to buy a temporary Disneyland off the coast of some third world “paradise” which will, ultimately, be engulfed by the tidal waves of climate change “inspired by” industrialism and post-industrialism – whatever that is. We are what we eat, (i.e., the planet).

The ultimate goal of capitalism is one “legal” Man – the Chief Executives and Board – celebrating absolute monopoly over the wasteland, all the while eying each other hungrily and wondering “gee, who will ‘we’ exploit next?”

…and Add My Own Two Cents

That said, once someone crosses the “line” into my “space,” and worse, threatens to eliminate me in order to occupy said “space,” I don’t think “love” or “tolerance,” as preached by capitalist clergy, are the affectations that are in my “best interest.” In such situations, an absolute devotion to defending “one of god’s creatures” (i.e. moi) BY ANY MEANS NECESSARY, is in order. Just a thought.

American Bards and Cox Reviewers

Of course, Cox’s Sick Planet , if it’s read, as it certainly should be, will probably generate all sorts of “opinions” among the millions floating around “the information super highway that’s gonna bring us all together” these days, including this one. But I prefer to think of opinions not “like assholes, but like original minds; not everybody has one.”

Beyond Cox and Evil

Maybe all that mumbo-jumbo (see Ishmael Reed) mythopoaeic poppycock about the “dead king” sacrifice which culminated in Jesus appeasing his mean old dad for the sins of mankind in order to save mankind was not as wickedly conceived as the mind of mankind is capable of and consistent in conceiving.

Men hate and fear god. The way they hate and fear THE CORPORATION. But like THE CORPORATION, the old testament god, Yahweh, is invisible, immortal, untouchable. But Jesus, his “representative” on earth, was quite mortal, visible and touchable. Better yet, he was capable of being harmed.
Men nailed him to the cross in vengeance, their only means of redress, against the merciless, implacable, unreachable Yahweh.

So what might this mean in terms of seeking “redress” against THE CORPORATION?

In an EMERGENCY SITUATION, such as ours, one must come to terms with whatever interpretation of the cosmic order one may have, then put a lid on it and let’s get down to brass tacks – and use them…

Concluding Unscientific Post-ItTM

those who can’t do, leach
those who can’t sing, preach
those who can’t grab, reach
if
   agent manage sale
then
   go to beach
else if
   agent manage fail
then
   prayer (pitch) = beseech

Adam Engel lived for your sins -- and he lived well! -- in Fear-and-Trembling, Brooklyn, one of the last gangrenous toes of NYC not yet severed and replaced with a prosthetic gentrification device. Engel has traveled the farthest regions of cyberspace, where Dark-matter meets Doesn't-matter; and Anti-matter, despite its negative connotation and dour point-of-view, excercises rights of expression protected by Richard Stallman's GNU/Free Software Foundation and CopyLeft agreement, if nobody and nothing else. Having spent many years studying Boobus Americanus (Summum Ignoramus), allegedly the most intelligent mammal on earth -- after its distant relative, Homo Sapiens -- in various natural habitats (couch, cubicle, bar-stool, ball-game -- televised or 'real-time') -- Engel has thus far related his observations of and experiences with this most dangerous of predators in three books -- Topiary, Cella Fantastik, and I Hope My Corpse Gives You the Plague (the combined international sales of which have reached literally dozens, perhaps as many as seventy, with projected revenue to top three digits by decade's end! Truly a publishing phenomenon). Engel is Associate Editor of Time Capsule Books, a division of Oliver Arts & Open Press, published in limited editions for a tiny, highly specified, though eclectic, target-audience: people who actually read books. He can be reached at adam@new.dissidentvoice.org Read other articles by Adam, or visit Adam's website.

One comment on this article so far ...

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  1. bozh said on November 24th, 2008 at 9:19am #

    the piece offers a broader view than most posts or pieces. it also includes deleterious effect all? religions have on humans.
    it always sides w. the ruling class;approbating may kinds of crimes perped by the ruling class. thnx