Come Again?

Even among the many books on economics and transnational corporations that I do not agree with, there are some among them that are at least rationally argued and relatively factual. But I rather enjoy when they are not, it allows me to stay awake through the boredom, mumbling angrily at the page and marking exclamation points and question marks in the margins. And their own contradictions and prejudices always come to the fore…a few choice quotes from my recent favourite:

Ford also expanded mechanical parts manufacturing in the United Kingdom (such activities are less sensitive to labor disruptions) and body and assembly in Germany, where the work force was more efficient.

Ah, racial…er…national profiling? Grand generalizations? You have to love them, especially when they’re tossed into the argument like olives of unknown provenance into a greek salad.

Increasingly, these disagreements within the US Big Three made it difficult for the US government to intervene effectively in their bargaining with the Mexican government.

Long live free trade! I wonder who was more vexed, the big three or the US government?

The UAW’s failure to negotiate better with the auto makers that had recently established in the United States also accounted for the disadvantage that the US Big Three face vis-a-vis their foreign rivals…

Is this the present or the past, who can tell? One thing I know is that it’s those damn unions again, always letting the home country’s corporations down…but I suppose if you can’t blame the workers for not kicking some Japanese ass, who can you blame for the American corporation’s failure?

The maquiladoras became the most visible symbols of the threats that low-wage countries could pose to jobs…

Again, if you can’t blame those greedy low-wage countries for the threats against jobs, who can you blame? Oh wait…

US government policies that fostered automotive production in maquiladora plants also altered the negotiating dynamic between the Mexican government and the US vehicle producers. The US auto makers learned about the low costs and the high quality of automotive production in Mexico, and the Mexican government learned about the benefits of rationalizing Mexican automotive production on a North American basis.

This is an extraordinary thing to say by any standard (unless you’re a patriotic elementary school teacher reading directly from a company brochure). It is especially extraordinary if you’re aware of the fact, as the author states earlier in the book, that Ford opened its first Mexican factory in 1925 and GM and Chrysler in 1935. And all of them had been operating there continuously for decades.

Sadly enough, the ongoing silliness of this right-wing hodgepodge of contradictory imperialist and free-trade theories  kept me entranced until the very end! So I have now read a book in its entirety that I can never use as a source in good conscience, though I shall certainly find some of the original sources useful. I could have just read the bibliography…I suppose I know who has had the last laugh.

Clones

In the 10 minute walk between Oxford Street Station and Bond Street Station, you will pass three Zara clothing stores.

Terrifying.

Far more terrifying still:

Identical mannequins. The high-fashion ideal woman, no? Standardized in her slim form, perfect skin, perfect makeup, perfect hair (in a form possible only on a mannequin or briefly on a runway). Identical except in her outfit, it is only her clothes that set her apart (the presence or absence of accessories, the amount of leg she is willing to show). But of course even these differences must fit within the season and the latest style.

The most terrifying thing of all? That this should inspire anyone to buy these clothes.

Wheech

wheech

A scottish word, wheech means to remove quickly or rapidly.

• If you don’t gie me a puff oan that joint ah’ll just wheech it right aff yi.

• The mugger just wheeched the old ladies pension book from her and ran away.

• That guy is a real ladies man and loves nothing better than wheeching the knickers right off them.

Neverland in Beverly Hills

Michael Jackson’s home has been transplanted into the old Robinsons-May building in Beverly Hills, they’ve even brought the gates. The garden furniture and planters. His awards, his socks, his personal drawings. It’s one of the most extraordinary things I’ve ever seen, and one of the creepiest. And here is the splendour and the sadness.

The public information on the whole deal is pretty sketchy. Jackson was acquitted of the criminal pedophile charges of course, but owes a ton of money, I imagine for civil cases? So it seems that essentially all of his most personal things sitting in this vast space are the result of the repo man visiting his estate. Rather then just humiliating him in front of his neighbors, they have humiliated him in front of the world, stripped everything they thought they could possibly sell, and brought it on down to L.A. to sell to the highest bidder. The auction is now off, the money was raised and the stuff is going back to Michael, though it might remain in the public domain. You can read more on that here.

But essentially, you are looking at things most people were never meant to see. It is there by force. And it just adds an edge to the voyeuristic element, a frisson of violence and transgression. It only adds to the immense creepiness and unsettling nature of the things.

The creepiest thing by far, these figures that were so lifelike and who were everywhere. They were all white.

The woman in the background with the curlers is holding a copy of Women are From Venus, Men are From Mars. Butlers were everywhere, there were more than 5 of them, I didn’t think to count but now I am really curious. They were ubiquitous the way a good butler should be. Below you can get a sense of the scale of the exhibit, and the personal taste of the man himself.

There are also four or five life size wax figures of Michael Jackson himself. But somehow, that to me is a sign simply of colossal ego which I can understand, the rest of them I just cannot. An attempt to never be alone? Imagine sharing a huge mansion with them, it gives me chills. So to move smoothly from the mannequins to the paintings…

Creepy woman who looks like one of my older family members, with a Michael Jackson Triptych in the background. Michael Jackson’s poems are everywhere…written on the paintings that were commissioned, on Neverland’s kids menus, on slabs of marble out in front, on story book sculptures. This one reads:

I am the thinker, the thinking,
the thought.
I am the seeker, the seeking,
the sought.
I am the dewdrop, the sunshine,
the storm.
I am the phenomenon, the field,
the form.
I am the descent, the ocean,
the sky.
I am the Primeval Self
In you and I.
I am Michael Jackson

There are paintings of him everywhere as royalty, with crown and scepter. He has the crowns and sceptres as well, the ermined cloaks. And there are the paintings of him leading long lines of little children to the promised land and happiness

There are paintings of him surrounded by cartoon characters, the Marx Brothers, Peter Pan. And this, which essentially leaves me pretty speechless.

So there’s too much really, to convey. The kids. The kids are everywhere and are frankly terrifying. Dolls and furniture for children that…well, it’s hard to tell where the creepiness comes from, it doesn’t even lie in the pedophile charges though I’m sure that adds a dimension. It’s like Louise Bourgeois’ red rooms.

And the statues

There’s original art on the wall by Michael Jackson and Macaulay Culkin. There are drawings of children. An incredibly terrifying clown. Bikes and trikes and little cars. Collectible stautuettes in china and pewter and whatever else. And then the playroom stuff, filled with video games, pinball machines, his disney collection.

And some really cool stuff. The prop of Hans Solo after he’s been cryogenically frozen, an R2D2 and C3po, a lego Darth Vader and lots of Star Wars stuff. Arcade games you’ve been dying to play again like Super Mario and Digg Dugg and Pole Position. Edward Scissorhands’ actual hands.

He has a painting of Marlene Dietrich that she has signed and dedicated to him. His books are all there, almost all Hollywood with a smattering of Children’s classics and Black History. He has a letter from Ronald Reagen:

“I was pleased to learn that you were not seriously hurt in your recent accident…

All over America, millions of people look up to you as an example. Your deep faith in God and adherence to traditional values are an inspiration to all of us, especially young people searching for something real to believe in. I know from experience that these things can happen on the set…

You’ve gained quite a number of fans along the road since “I Want You Back,” and Nancy and I are among them.”

He has another Inter-Office memo to Tom Jones from Walt Disney…don’t ask me how. But it is HILARIOUS.

“Dear Tom –

This is just to let you know how much I appreciate your efforts in trying to keep all the English people happy … I know many of their requests were unreasonable, but your stepping in and handling these things were a help to me and the others concerned with the making of the picture.”

So perhaps in some kind of context this wouldn’t be so funny, but possibly even then. I have no idea what the context is, but the idea of Tom Jones trying to keep “all the English people” happy is pretty amusing, I wonder what film that was? It’s from 1963.

At any rate, there are also a huge number of awards, plaques, pictures, and his clothes, gloriously reflective and shiny clothes. Thriller was the first album I ever bought, my brothers and I pooled our Christmas money to get it. And I love Michael Jackson, as Celine said while we were watching youtube videos, he has the moves that Justin Timberlake and all the rest of today’s performers only dream of. And he invented them. And the clothes look a bit ridiculous on display now, but he carried them off, he was that good. So that part of the thing I could enjoy without remorse or nausea. Though the body suits were a little disturbing.

I don’t even know how to wrap up what going was like. It made me incredibly sad mostly, thinking of the little boy singing ABC with the Jackson Five, and wondering how he has grown into … what? There are no words for Michael Jackson really. Or a million of them. A lost childhood, the ability to buy himself anything, indulge himself anything. The desire to create … what? I don’t know what. You could possibly boil it all down to sex but I hate boiling everything down to that, refuse to really, life is complex. But there is a wrongness to it all that lingers in your mind. And, well, sadness.

Should be, could be April Fools

Circle Stones tm (Crop Circle Flint tm) – Please note that these terms have been copyrighted by the Metaphysical Guide to the Tucson Gem and Mineral Show. I encourage you to respect copyrights. I do.

Circle Stones are pieces of native Flint that have been found within Crop Circle formations in England. They seem to differ markedly from other Flint, on the energetic level (that’s the only possible level that can be argued I’m afraid)–even Flint from the same fields but outside the Crop Circle. The phenomenon was first noticed in 2007, in the three Crop Circles pictured above (sorry you can’t see them, they are pretty. I guess neither Dave, nor his tractor, were as drunk as I thought they were. I didn’t make Dave up, the fossil guy gets that distinction).

Flint is a sedimentary rock composed of entirely of silica. It occurs as concretions, in band or nodule form, in limestones, espceially chalk….(and it is a curse to British gardeners everywhere. Everywhere. It is ubiquitous)

Robert Simmons writes (someone told me he also wrote this article… why deny yourself the  joy of quoting … yourself? ) “Like Azeztulite, it is not so much what the stones are that matters, but rather what is being expressed through them (In my opinion, buying Azeztulite is also a pretty dodgy idea). We have found Flint which is not from crop circles to be a solid and helpful ally, and even the Circle Stones, as we call them, hold the qualities of Flint. Yet they also carry the currents of the crop circles themselves, and as such lead human beings into conscious communion with spiritual worlds and beings which are beyond our current imaginings. As a beginning I sat with one of he Circle Stones and worked meditatively to find the “voice” of the stone itself, and the intelligence behind it….(there doesn’t seem to be much intelligence in its physical proximity for certain)

Later that same night I slept with one of the Circle Stones (get your minds out of the gutter), I dreamed a great deal, and woke about midnight with my whole body tingling inside and out with a pleasurable current that seemed to be the life force itself…(all right maybe you were right to be in the gutter, and how much is that stuff again?)

And I haven’t much more to say about this at all…but at $1 a gram, this guy is pure genious.

Shocking Split Rocks Comics World: Alan Moore Abandoned by His Beard

In a shocking development that has left the international comic book community gasping in disbelief, acclaimed author Alan Moore has parted ways with his famous Beard, long rumored to be the source of Moore’s celebrated genius, as well as the driving force behind some of his more eccentric behavior. While the circumstances surrounding the split remain shrouded in mystery, reliable sources have speculated that The Beard was awakened to a state of heightened consciousness either by Moore’s exceptionally impassioned reading of Gogol’s “The Nose” (possibly during a full moon), or by a mistranslated passage in an incantation offered up to the author’s favored deity, the Macedonian Snake God Glycon.

Yeah yeah, I guess this is a proper April Fools, and I didn’t come up with it either, I just wish I did! Bridget McGovern did, you can finish the story here.

Echidnas!

They have spines, a long snout that combines the function of nose AND mouth, and they eat ants and termites. That’s the boring stuff. The fun stuff is here from wikipedia.

The long-beaked echidnas have tiny spines on their tongues that help capture their meals.

Echidnas and the Platypus are the only egg-laying mammals, known as monotremes. The female lays a single soft-shelled, leathery egg twenty-two days after mating and deposits it directly into her pouch. Hatching takes ten days; the young echidna, called a puggle, then sucks milk from the pores of the two milk patches (monotremes have no nipples) and remains in the pouch for forty-five to fifty-five days, at which time it starts to develop spines. The mother digs a nursery burrow and deposits the puggle, returning every five days to suckle it until it is weaned at seven months.

Male echidnas have a four-headed penis, but only two of the heads are used during mating. The other two heads “shut down” and do not grow in size. The heads used are swapped each time the mammal copulates.

Yep, I don’t think I need add anything to that. No nipples but a four headed penis that can switch-hit (they should have called THAT a puggle, but it’s a good name for a baby I guess)…wow.

Simon Bolivar

No, I’m not mocking Bolivar. Well, except for the fact that his full name was:

Simón José Antonio de la Santísima Trinidad Bolívar Palacios y Blanco

I just think that’s funny for some reason.

Why Must I Cry (Crunk Remix) (You’ll never know, but it does inspire tears)

Yeah, I really wish this were a joke…I started out laughing and then was just more and more disturbed, though the “running away” scenes were pretty awesome. And the soap. In the shower. Dear God. Why indeed?

And I feel like I need a finale. That’s a lot of pressure, there’s so much good stuff in here. I’m going to think about it. Wait…

Nick Frost!

Was accidentally infected with the very real zombie virus while making Shaun of the Dead, and has been hiding his zombie nature since with the help of powerful friends of friends….

Good Omens

I’ve always really liked lying on the floor when I need to think things through. It helps me…think things through. I see everything from an entirely new perspective. I’m comfortable, but not too comfortable. And when I’m wearing blue, I’m camouflaged nicely to blend in with the carpet in case of possible attack. Zombies, horseshoe crabs…you never know who or what is out there. Apart from the truth, but the truth is pretty damn slap-happy, so I’m content to curl up and blend.

You also can’t get any lower than the floor, and so I have spent a lot of time there this year through this long and constant process of great humbling, the loss of one happiness after the other, the reduction of my ideals and years of love and work to specks in time and space that could not and did not last. I know history, why did I think it would turn out differently? And people? I utterly misjudged them. And myself. I’d like to think it stops now and I’ve figured people (and myself) out, but in my new humility I doubt it, though I won’t say I haven’t learned a thing or two! I haven’t many illusions about LSE, though I am still happy about that! And moving to London makes me want to sing (and I do). I definitely feel finished and done with LA.

I read Good Omens last night and this morning, and it restored my ability to laugh and love the world and even the people in it, and the only downside was the sadness that arose from the knowledge that I will never have a job interview like this one:

“Mr. Shadwell’s  accent was unplaceable. It careered around Britain like a milk race….” (This is just to set the stage. Here are the interview questions for the ancient, yet current, position of witchfinder.)

“Have ye all your own teeth?”
Check.

“Are ye fit?”
Check.

“How many nipples?”
Two (check).

“Have ye got your ane scissors?”
Yes!

And I’m hired! It would be almost as good as ornamental hermit…I’d read papers all day looking for

1. Witches.
2. Unexplainable Phenomenons. Phenomenatrices. Phenomenice. Things, ye ken what I mean.

I think even if I hadn’t just hit a rock bottom of sorts last night, that this would have brought me extreme joy!

Collectible horrors….

Somehow there is a huge segment of the American population that finds dogs, pigs, and babies dressed up as flowers, vegetables, and movie stars adorable. And they find sentences like “To gnome you is to love you” clever, when scratched charmingly beneath a fat plastic doll with a long white beard and red sunglasses. Gnomes gnome how that hurts my soul.

And beneath those you end up with collectible horrors like these, of which, nothing more really needs to be said. Chihuahuas are always ridiculous

A bull dog as Chinese take out? WTF? Only slightly better as a pea pod or a chile pepper. But really, words fail…

I’ll take my laughs where I can find them

And the comics in the paper, apparently, are a good place to go for a good bitter-sweet laugh on all that is wrong with the world. I don’t know when they made the move from Kathy to stuff like this, but it makes me happy, and so I’ve started actually reading this strip instead of single-mindedly focusing on the crossword…

Sorry it is crooked! But this one made me laugh. I’m not sure if you boil the geo-politics, structural poverty and greed of war all down to their essence that this is what you would get, but it is an essential point. And the mouse is hilarious. Far too much like me I think. So I am now part of the throng that thinks Stephan Pastis is brilliant. Pearls Before Swine, read it.

Ridiculous bar conversation

The scene? My favourite dive bar in Echo Park. The people? A tall hipster (HIP) wearing something exceedingly tweedy that went down to his mid thigh, and a beard. I don’t understand the fashion for beards, but since I don’t kiss hipsters, I really don’t mind. The girl he was with (G) was cute, and I believe he was aiming pretty high, though you never know with girls. Sometimes I’m sad when I think that if all girls boycotted hipsters, we wouldn’t have any more of them…

HIP: I’m going to go get a beer.

G: Oh. Hey! Here’s money for a shot.

HIP: Oh no no no, thanks, but REALLY I shouldn’t…

(G stares at HIP)

HIP: Oh, you mean for YOU! Sure.

The absurdity of mass repression

Documentary after documentary. It is how I have been spending the tail end of my nights lately, after long days of work and time with friends. Some we have published, some are submissions for us to consider publishing, a few I throw in as reminders of what is already out there.

They are all of struggle, so at some point every night I have sat here with tears pouring down my face. Sometimes they are indefinable tears. I don’t know why masses of working people in the streets and facing down riot police always make me cry, but they always do. Perhaps for the hope they give me where there is so little hope left. Too often they are tears of sadness, for those who have been injured, tortured, killed. The worst was Black and Gold, where there is a mother grieving for her son shot by the police. I have heard that grief before, it is hoarse and raw and rending, it shatters everything in you to hear it. It flays you to bear witness and be able to do nothing. It takes me back remorselessly to the burial ground and the huge machine already covering the coffin and tamping the ground even as the mariachis still played. Maria almost screaming, if she had had any voice left. I cannot understand how this can be the world that we have created.

And I cannot understand how these things continue. Chicago, Alabama, Buenos Aires, Oaxaca, Burma, Greece…these are just a fraction of the confrontations where governments have turned on their own people.  Intellectually, of course, I understand the intertwining of government and capital, the need to retain power at all costs, the strength and cunning of propaganda combined with media silence. But fundamentally, everything in me revolts at its very possibility. Everything revolts at the idea that a government that turns its army and security forces onto thousands of its own people could retain the slightest shred of legitimacy. With anyone.

What is a government for, and why does it exist?

How can a legitimate government defend itself from its own citizens with police bearing clubs, tear gas, pepper spray, pistols and machine guns? With helicopter attacks, secret and open raids, illegal arrests, disappearances, torture, assassination, bombs?

How is it possible that we have come to accept that a government can repress a mass movement of its own people? Who else do we think it is accountable to?

In my cynicism I know that’s a beginner’s question. Of course they are not accountable to the masses of their people; they are accountable to the few, the wealthy, the elite that they themselves are part of. They hold the money and power, and if persuasion does not work, they will use force. I understand all of this, but even so. I rage at the fundamental absurdity of this being the universal system that defines the lives of all us.