EMAIL HIM

His Philosophy

show reviews
1. Immortal Lee County Killers, All Night, The Loners
Supersuckers Country Western Extravaganza, with Jessie Dayton

It was a miserably cold morning and I had gotten drunker than planned the night before, though I wasn’t the dizzy, lethargic, pisspant wreck that I was the previous weekend, with the pathetic Steelers playoff loss and a two-day binge which wound me in and out of an Elvis costume, and finally knocked me out cold on the floor of my living room with various bruises and blood to both knees, both elbows and my head, with weird half-memories of things that may or may not have occurred, among the displaced furniture. No. This morning it was only three hours of sleep and a little too much cheap beer, 100-proof Canadian whiskey and a spicy Mexican sausage called chirizo doing a number on me. But I’ve ridden Greyhound like a sadist and been drunk, hungover, and drunk and hungover again in a single ride across America. So it wasn’t bad.

Joann graciously awoke and dropped me off at Internationalist Books at 5:30 a.m., the morning of January 18, where I’d get a bus to D.C. I prepared everything the night before: some water, two sandwiches, a marble composition book which I ignored on the trip, a long yellow tablet I stole from work, two pens, two sharpie markers, a Bukowski reader, Ginsberg’s Howl, a little book of Zen quotations, Orwell’s 1984 which I ignored on the trip, and a notebook page full of quotations from Thomas Paine’s Common Sense, which was a pamphlet he wrote in the 1770s to drum up dissent against the English government. In my bag was a slimmed down library of books I’d bring to DC, which originally included Hunter Thompson’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Whitman’s Leaves of Grass and a King James Bible. I have no idea why I needed all those books. I’d only be in D.C. for eight hours. The whole time I only read Bukowski as I do almost every day. I usually skip his poetry but on that bus realized Buk had some great poems, perhaps even better than his short stories. Howl and the Zen book I used for reference. In the inside pocket of my leather jacket I had a hip flask filled with Jim Beam. The flask, of course, I did not ignore on the trip.

I found my bus and I got on. It was from the “Joy” bus company. It was a Greyhound only with happier paint and it had televisions inside which we didn’t use. My stomach was burning and the dude that sat next to me was tall and we were cramped. I was in no mood to make friends. Some old hippy lady riding had that nauseating voice, you know: it’s kind of nasally and it drags out and drones affectedly around the vowels and it conveys a sense of superiority, and desires recognition – basically the sound of inflated ego + a history of strong acid. Her mad-capped husband was writing slogans on poster board with a sharpie and showing them to his wife, and she read them aloud and made comments, and I guess I was supposed to care.

Then the organizers passed out information packets containing cell phone numbers of the “bus captains” which were organizers on the bus, a map of the march from the west side of the Capitol to the Navy Yard, a pamphlet on how to be nonviolent in protest marches, and song lyrics.

The song lyrics were the only thing I dreaded, especially in my state. The songs were “Give Peace a Chance” and “Peace Train”. Was this suggesting a possible buswide sing-a-long? Would I have had to ask the driver to drop me off on the side of I-95 and thumb my way home in the bitter cold to keep from vomiting on the mother and child seated in front of me? Sixties nostalgia is a gut-wrenching foulness that stinks up America in this day and age. Especially when people my age are passing it out in packets at 5:30am. Luckily no one sang.

A clean-cut computer programmer in his early 30s sat next to me. He brought along some goggles and a handkerchief with him in case the metro police decided to get nuts with the gas. The guy beside him on the other side of the aisle was the bus captain who, when handing out a list we were all to sign said, “Write down a number of a friend in case you get arrested or something.” It was as though they were almost hoping for violence… at least I was. It would have made this article much, much different, and certainly more entertaining.

Four and a half hours later we rolled in to the capital and there were all the departmental buildings with their grand white pillars and sculptures of naked babies and weird cryptic slogans among the vines in the entablature. And I always think about laying on my side between two pillars, naked and drinking wine and eating olives like some ancient Greek while an orgy goes on inside under a giant painting of Nixon or something. Maybe that’s how it’ll go down after the empire falls. I can dream.

There was the Washington Monument in all it’s phallic, bonerous glory- the ultimate celebration of the white American penis, and why not? The Man needs something temporal to fill the deep abyss where his soul used to be: skyscrapers, monolithic monuments, and tank-like vehicles. And there the Capitol, house of the royal government, breast-capped (tit-roofed?), where all the shit goes down.

The bus dropped us off and I walked a couple blocks before I got to the huge gathering of people opposed to war against Iraq. Of course there were all kinds of people there, very sober, frighteningly sober, in fact, from all walks of life. Students, a sizeable amount of old ladies, trad Jews Against Sharon with the beard and hats and the whole get up, Buddhists who were wearing some sweatshirts under their red cloth getups beating on drums and chanting, mostly white suburbanites and college students in the hippie getups. It’s Halloween and the Forth of July rolled in to one every day in 21st Century America – and here was the proof. A guy dressed as Uncle Sam with his wife dressed as Lady Liberty, was yakking on a cell phone. Uncle Sam had a red bucket and was asking for money for International ANSWER, the sneaky fucker. It’s all just a sham. That’s the 21st Century American Way: pride throwing the mind into fear and confusion with it’s many voices speaking at once, signifying nothing, eating everything.

I walked in a meandering path through the sea of people, some dressed oddly, almost circus-like, and there were drums sounding in the background. So many people, like anything could happen. But didn’t. Everyone was too obsessed with their costume for there to be any real human wail of dissent. They were devouring their own image like it was a happy meal with extra grease.

I wanted ravenous naked weirdos and loud drunkards like myself – what was I thinking? That my people were going to be here? I think to anyone with any vision at all beyond the bells and buzzes of our current military-industrial complex, the buying and selling of the American dream went down so long ago that this inevitable, terror-fueled Armageddon we currently find ourselves comes to no surprise.

I couldn’t see any of the speakers for the sea of people and their signs. The first speaker I heard was a yelling, screeching woman with a thick Brooklyn accent. She’d yell, the people would cheer, drums in the background. Later they got another screeching witch who didn’t even know what the hell she was saying. She was just angry at Bush. Good to know, now shut the fuck up and put some effective speakers on. Most of them were throwing out clichés like “Weapon of Mass Distraction” and “Regime Change Begins at Home”. Sharpton was big with the slogans.

Here’s Al Sharpton’s speech in a nutshell:

“Doctor King, Doctor King. Weapon of mass distraction. Doctor King. Regime change begin at home. Doctor King. No war.”

Thanks Al.

It’s lets-let-any-asshole-speak hour here on the west side of the Capitol.

Jesse Jackson was one of the only good ones among them. He’s a fairly intelligent man. Talking about using civil disobedience all the dissenters like Moses, and Jesus, and all those involved in the American Revolution, Gandhi, and Martin Luther King had the balls enough to do, and got assassinated for it. But there would be no messiahs here today.

Civil disobedience. Reinstate the draft and I’ll show you some fucking mass civil disobedience. And better speakers too. The soul doesn’t speak through any of the protesters because when the belly is full, the soul is unnecessary. Sure, doom is on the horizon, but fascism comes with a smile and a happy meal these days, and every poor fool eligible for a couple grand on a credit card is eating it up like a starving Afghani. The kings of America are beating the shit out of all of them with the pillow of comfort. Comfortable people with layers of fat on their bodies and in their minds (useless information, pointless entertainment, Prozac) are easily manipulated.

But not even the defiant child president will reinstate the draft. I don’t think he’s that crazy. Not for this war, anyway. If he does my brother is going to take an extended vacation in the north country.

Then that screechy whore from International ANSWER gets on the mic again and blows out the eardrums of everyone in a certain vicinity of the PA speakers, the whiney bitch. Then ANSWER is asking everyone for money and I’m thinking fuck this- just another religion, just another extension of the ego wanting to suck people dry for power. A small, whining Ego wanting to defeat the larger, more powerful Ego. That’s the bullshit associated with this rally that I saw, and by anti-war famous people. Within the movement they want to be recognized and heralded. That’s for the monarchy, drunk with the illusion of superiority. If you’re going to protest the Ego that sucks the life out of people, that sucks the blood out of the earth to feed the machine, that is fearful and pacifies it’s own fear through destuction, that will knock over your grandmother with no remorse, you must live as its antagonist. There are so many layers of bullshit that it’s close to impossible for any well-fed American to be a crazed revolutionary any more. For America to survive for its original purpose at all, you’re going to have to defeat all kings and all governments, and the idea of the superiority of one man over the other. Good luck with that. Jesus tried, Gandhi tried, Martin Luther King tried, and, for the most part, they all failed. Mankind is destined to destroy himself. I don’t know of any evidence that would suggest the opposite.

I was walking on the street outside the mall grounds and the drums were going on in the background and I heard the drums of the Buddhists and what I thought was the deep-throated chanting but I looked up and it was a helicopter surveying the crowd, estimating the size I thought, or getting some shots for The Ministry of Truth. What I thought was a human song was just the humming of the machine, again.

I started in with writing quotations on a yellow piece of notebook paper and hanging it up for everyone to see. They weren’t anti-war or pro-war or even neutral statements. I hung them and took off quickly so no one would see me. The argument is the important thing and not the arguer. That idea is an enigma in America in 2003, because people, from politicians to protesters on down to Joe Blow on the internet seem to think debate is nothing more than screaming and ad hominem attacks. People who attack the arguer and refuse to engage in the argument, and Rush Limbaugh’s career is based on this, are like male cheerleaders. They shout from the sidelines, they have nothing to do with the game, and they make you sick when you look at them.

“Only when the illusion of good and evil is dissolved will Truth be realized” - I made that one up, another impossibility, and wrote it down under a tree in the mall and as I was writing it a girl approached me and asked if she could borrow my marker and on the back of her sign wrote “Bush is big oil’s bitch!” and I was ignoring her and laughing at the weird sayings in my head having nothing to do with the current situation and because I started to get a buzz off the Beam and she was telling me about how she had a dialogue with a bulletin board in her college in Mississippi, and she said “Ain’t it true though?” of her message and I just laughed.

“Government, like dress, is the badge of lost innocence; the palaces of kings are built upon the ruins of the bowers of paradise.” – Thomas Paine, Common Sense. I hung this up on a lamp post facing the Capitol so you could read it and have the Capitol as a back drop. Ten minutes later I went back to the site and there were some photographers from the media taking shots of it.

“America when will you be angelic? When will you take off your clothes?” – Allen Ginsberg, “America”

“The world is holy! The soul is holy! The skin is holy!
The nose is holy! The tongue and cock and hand and asshole holy!
Everything is holy! everybody's holy! everywhere is holy! everyday is in eternity! Everyman's an angel!” – Ginsberg, “Footnote to Howl”. This one was ripped down almost immediately – I guess they didn’t approve of the cock and asshole part or they were too afraid to believe it. I’m sure if I substituted the word “shit” for “holy” the sign would have remained a while longer.

“it is the pride of kings which throws mankind into confusion” – Thomas Paine, Common Sense

Then I started to get drunk and people asking me for money to fund their Ego was starting to get to me, so I made up some of my own, less enlightening quotes. Let’s watch:

“Sloppy drunx 4 piece” – I made this sign after most of the speakers on the west side of the Capitol were done and the march was on and the street was clogged with 100,000+ people, so that no one could move for about 10 blocks. I got up close and watched Patti Smith sing a song and shake her arms and smile at the crowd and all that gray hair flailing. I got kind of off track and ended up behind a fence. The protesters were standing on the street on the other side of the fence so I held up my little sign. Some of them cheered. One dreadlocked chick in the neo-hippy costume yelled “Bullshit!” and her and her neo-hippy costumed friends booed me. I’m not sure what their point was. I guess they have something against alcohol. I laughed.

“I like to get fucked up”

Some signs I saw that had the finger on the pulse of all this bullshit: “Mainstream white guys for peace”, “Your add here: $2.99”, “I’m socially conscious, and stuff”

By now the flask was empty. I needed more to drink.

I followed some people down one of the side streets hoping to find a liquor store. It was a richy looking area, like Senators and diplomats might hang out here, but then, on the horizon… the most glorious and beautiful apparition mine eyes ever witnessed! “LIQUOR!” in black and gold! Beckoning me! And I KNOW there is a God, and he looks like an enormous vertical sign, calling me to come in from the cold.

So I got a fifth of Beam, in a plastic bottle in case I dropped my bag. I went to a nearby, crowded restaurant where people were waiting for a table, slipped into the men’s room, found a stall, and filled my flask with Beam, careful not to spill one precious drop.

And I take a draw from my flask among the people and their slogans, and think about how many of my friends in the military, many active reserves, one an army lieutenant, going off to war, sent by a child king who proclaims the cause of freedom, never having tasted a drop of it in his life. It is easier for a camel to pass through a needle’s eye than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. And I think of all the 9/11s that will come to us in the future, from the fanatics who still believe in good and evil, in retaliation against our own good-and-evil believing fanatics. The kingdom of heaven is within you.

Then I walk down to the crux of the argument. Ten people standing on a small street corner blocked off by police line and waving flags, holding paintings of George W Bush, the child king, adorned with large biceps and dressed as a silver-wigged colonial patriot, chanting “Radical Left hates America! Radical Left hates America!” through a megaphone, against thousands of protesters yelling at them and them yelling back, all ad hominem attacks, from the Ego, whose mother is Fear. No dialogue there above chimp-level – and I took out my camera and took a few shots, knowing this is America. A babbling tower of absolutist idiots formed that way by the grip of Fear, never waning in their beliefs, never wanting knowledge, just sensation and comfort- tvs, suburbs, gated safety, fast food, big tanks to drive, buying into the fallacy that the other side is evil, and they are God’s children.

Government is like dress, indeed. And so is the political discourse of the Average American in the 21st Century. The thickest and most outter layer of bullshit which begins, at its core, and is maintained, by the Fear in every one of your nervous, easily intimidated and self-conscious Egos.