Up Next Yoko Ono

Two Days!...after 8 dreary sepia months, we crack the screen door open on Oz...if Oz had bourbon and smoked pigs....a four month Technicolor Southern block party. Actually, considering the emotional scars, the intractable grudges, the fact that we will get drunk and yell at one another ...maybe it's more appropriate to call it a family reunion.



I love the song on this one...but, the true beauty comes at the 1:09 mark.

 

I can't wait. There's a delicious irony to this time of year. Universities all over the US are gathered into athletic conferences...the Southeastern Conference (SEC) is really the only one that's still regionally and culturally cohesive.* So, when SEC teams play outside of conference we are more Southern than ever...we are one fanbase. It drives a lot of people crazy but, SEC football is a Southern institution and we are loyal people and we are not them. It's also one of the only times a goodun can celebrate being Southern without somebody screaming racism in your face...just before they go into the RocknRoll hall of fame in Cleveland, Ohio...to eat bbq and drink Cokecola in the café while finishing off the last chapter of Absalom Absalom. Uh-Hmmm Anyway.....

On the other hand, during Conference play, we can forget about all that and get down to what we truly and dearly love...beating hell out of the only worthy foe...one another.

That's Thursday...this is still Tuesday and we need to go ahead and get some things out of the way...maybe deal with a few recurring topics before things go pear shaped.

PAVEMENT



Other than the sweet sweet degeneration**....the best thing about this about this clip is the flippant political statement. Earlier during the set he said "We're here for turrets...I mean Tibet." Ha. I know a lot of y'all are true believers in the political power of music...y'all and hippies :)...but, many of us were horrified and scared, as young'uns, watching you punk rockers become hippies with mohawks...pestering us about workers and the sandinistas or whatever. We were dismissed for being willfully uninvolved with reality...as Slackers. Yeah. I guess. 



Speaking of politics spoiling everything....this bastard.

MIRO

Today, during my trials and tribulations on the road (I left home without a wallet...and had to wait for an hour at a gas station to be rescued by Martha with credit cards), I tried to listen to a series of podcast on Miro. These were put on by the Tate...good...they turned out to be on MIro and politics...bad, very bad. The stream of profanity that I unleashed on the windshield was so intense that it blocked sunlight for a nanosecond. Look up there...look at it. Who looks at that and thinks about politics? It turns out, people whose definition of politics includes every possible human activity...that's who. Then they set about explaining his paintings through politics...even when political statements, in the paintings, were vague at best.

It's one thing to say a storefront mannequin unavoidably evokes Plato...it's quite another to say the worker who put the mannequin together had Plato in mind. I'd rather be bit on the forehead by a mosquito than listen to this nonsense.

Rude Talk

Did y'all hear Richard Dawkins the other day? He said it was "immoral" not to abort a fetus with downs syndrome. That's nasty man. Then, under the guise of an apology, he doubled down. At least he didn't actually apologize. I'm sick of people saying something...something they've obviously meant to say...something they'd given some thought to...then coming out the next day and apologizing like they'd merely burped at the table. You said it...stand by it. Shit.

What I want to know is this...what did he mean by immoral? He didn't say it was undesirable. He didn't say it shouldn't be allowed. He said it was immoral...as if he had some absolute authority in mind. I'd like to know exactly why he thinks it's immoral to have a baby with Downs. Why it's wrong...and what authority he's drawing on? I could infer...but, that would just be rude. Where does a machine go for moral authority?

Adamparsons Hates on the Fall

An oldie but a goodie (as a topic on the blogs...the song is timeless)



Me

Who am I kidding...we gon' keep talking about me....but, this gives me an excuse to point you all in the direction of Hugh Marwood's blog. He is an artist...a good one. He has been kind enough to recount some of our recent conversations on his blog. He's also put some of my really fantastic photos on there. So go look at it. He talks about Tom Wolfe too...so it's actually worth a click. :). Hugh's work is really good.

I'm sure I'm forgetting some things but, that should hold us over for now.

*If the money grubbers keep expanding the Conference we'll have Yankees in it...at that point we will seriously be looking to immigrate...it'll all be over at that point.

**If only Pavement had given this much "effort" in covering The Classical.

Tersanctus

"When I'm rushin' on my run...I feel just like Jesus son." Heroin - Velvet Underground.



Yesterday, I spent the afternoon listening to Perfect Prescription over and over again. I think. It's hard to tell in a loop...of glorious loops.

They are glorious.

Hard drugs and Jesus. They come up a lot together and the connection is probably not unwarranted...not entirely.

"If heaven's like this, then that's the place for me." Spacemen 3 Confusion/Walkin With Jesus.

 

Bernini's Ecstasy of St. Teresa. The sculpture is a depiction of the nun's experience with an Angel who was delivering God's love with repeated thrusts from a spear...

 

"When he pulled it out I felt that he took [my organs] with it, and left me utterly consumed by the great love of God. The pain was so severe that it made me utter several moans. The sweetness caused by this intense pain is so extreme that one cannot possibly wish it to cease..."

 

I think most readers today would see a sexual allusion in this. That's what the 18th century smart ass, de Brosses, saw when he sassed..."If that is divine love then I have a lot of experience with it." Bernini was no stranger to that kind of experience either. In fact, as a young man, he seems to have been consumed with carnal passions. He is, you'll remember, the one who, upon discovering that his mistress was making time with his brother, had a servant slash her face to bits and pieces. He couldn't do it himself, of course, because he was busy trying to murder his brother.

 

There is no better illustrator for the need of Christ than a Christian.



A heroin addict might see Teresa in a different light though. Like those that see sexual gratification, he would not be that far off either. For Christians, the great hope is not an eternal spiritual existence in the clouds...not, as Orwell hilariously described, "choir practice in a jeweler's shop."  It is for a renewed material creation...a place for the senses in full.

Surely being in the presence of God, physically, is a greater sensual experience than even heroin...which is merely a hint of a taste.



You don't have to be a Christian or even believe in God...you don't have to believe that Jesus actually existed at all, as I suspect some of you don't...adamparsons and Muj once had a running dialogue here about the historical evidence for his existence. Even if he is just an amalgamation of various cargo cult figures...rumors of an eastern mystic...whatever...Christianity's narrative exists. It exists and has it's own logic. We can imagine, even if we can't fully comprehend, the existence of an omniscient being that is pure Love...and we can imagine that being in the presence of such a creature would have a physical element to it...a euphoric element.

 

I'm not saying go find Jesus in the curve of a spoon. I'm just saying that the desire to push the potential of sensual experience...probably comes from a genuine urge...a pure prescribed desire.

Loathe It or Hate It.

We have almost exactly two weeks before you all start to ignore this blog. Long time readers should already have a nagging sense of what's coming...newer readers will soon find out.

I have tried for years to generate some interest among you fine people. Last year, I even offered up a gift package (which included Moon Pies and a pristine copy of John Shelton Reed's "My Tears Spoiled My Aim: And Other Essays on Southern Culture) to the reader who would pick a team and talk the most trash...the team didn't even have to win. It's not that you should care about SEC Football but, during this time of year, I care about little else. It's merely been an effort to keep people involved.

This year?  The Hell with IT! You don't want to hear about it?

:)

You'll be missing all this....



but, we already know you don't care...even if Johnny Cash did.



Do you know why he hollers out "Sooie"? No you don't....and you never will.

How about a little Otis Redding



No...none for you.

I am willing to offer a little Rocky Top...for Gronmark (no, right now you don't get a first name or a mister...it's tough love for the next four months)...he did make a comment or two last year.



Cute innit?  This is even cuter. That's Courtney Haden as Allistar Cooke explaining the meaning of Rocky Top.

There's a reason, even as Gator fans, we have a cat named Herschel-Walker...



This would be like an Arsenal supporter having a dog named Jimmy-Greaves. Why did we do it? Don't pretend like you care.

:)

Really I just don't want y'all to be around to see me sob like a toddler as the Gators hobble through another season under muschamp.

Cracker!

Fireworks Stand. Columbia, Mississippi.

 

 

 

Men's Bathroom Door, Hal and Mals. Jackson, MS. 

 

 My office wall.

I don't really need to say anything here do I?

Bop Bop Bopda Ba Debris Fries

Debris Fries from the Fillin' Station in Biloxi.

 

Last week we ran down to The Coast for a few days vacation. It was a real rocknroll party.

 

 





You see what looks like a pair of glasses layin' next to the Boy as he sleeps...they're actually night vision spy goggles. He got 'em for his birthday just before we left....but, why he would need to see anything after dark I don't know. Him and his Momma go to bed around 6 in the evenin'...just after Wheel of Fortune.

Fortunately, for The Boy, you can find love in the light of the day...at The Shed.  This girl, who is not his girlfriend OK, is a recording artist....between her own songs she hosted an open mic. It was fun...some of 'em kids. So, not too raucous for these two.

I'm sorry. What was that? Did we hear Give Me One Reason to Stay Here by Tracy Chapman?

Stop being a smartass.

We did manage to make it down to the water every day. These "beaches" along the Coast are man made...sand dumped over what would be marshy shore. They're not the powdered sugar "World Most Beautiful Beaches" along the coast in Alabama and the Panhandle of Florida. Give it another 10,000 years and maybe the pulverized quartz, that came down from the Appalacians, after the last ice age, which make those beaches so impossibly white, will work it's way to Ocean Springs. I don't know if that will have any effect on the murky water though. You get glowing turquoise in Destin...here you get Lipton.

There is Ship Island...a sliver of a barrier island about 11 miles south of Gulfport. There's a group of these islands that run parallel to the coast but every hurricane takes a big chunk out of them.

 

I was looking for pictures and this one popped up from here. *

 



Very pleasant out there...clear water and sand. You can walk probably a quarter of mile when the tides right.

Fort Massawhatever is out there. It started life as a Confederate post but, the island was impossible to keep supplied and the Yankees took it over and built this in 1867. Nothing much happened out there unless you were one of these unfortunate few...

It's about an hour by ferry out there. It's a pleasant enough trip...dolphins usually come around.

It was a good time.  Look forward to doing it again.


*Mail readers...ha. You'll never get that off your computer.

What the Shabbat?!

Gentle readers...it's right there in my profile. I kaynt spell. If it doesn't get a redline I don't look back...yeah, autofill presents problems and dangers for me....being in a blind rage doesn't help either.

I would just like to set the record straight Spliff, Scott...I am not Jewish. Martha is not Jewish and nothing that has happened has anything to do with the misconception, started by me, that we are.

What I meant to say was that I don't come from a GENTLE background....reasonable, peaceful, etc. I come from red-clay red necks and my immediate response to a situation like the one we are in now is to experience a raging almost poisonous surge of testosterone....burn something down and piss on it.

Buuuuuut.....while we're at, why not see if there's any plausibility to the claim. Maybe we can add anti-Semitism to the list of grievances.

Bartlam is a Midlands' derivation of Bartholomew. Bartholomew was one of the original apostles. He had to have been Jewish.

I am not a dispensationalist. I don't believe God has special deals with the nation of Israel (or any of the other wacky stuff that sometimes comes along with this belief).  We'll skip the theological setup and just get straight to the punchline...Christians are Jews. Since we are dealing with a soulless entity that can't genuinely claim Judaism or any other religion...

Now I'm even more madder...fightin' mad.

For the record Martha is Scottish and Irish...My family is almost entirely English (North west and  West Midlands to put a finer point on it)...but for the rare rouge Irish or Scottish branch sprouting crookedly from the tree.