Tag: fun

How squeegees can help save America, and your sanity – going beyond blogging to the choir

I find the continued lack of visible, widespread, persistent, peaceful, effective actions by activists to be dismaying, if not depressing. (Please notice that I didn’t use the adjective “massive”. I have argued for a shotgun approach to reaching the public, where the activists can be in groups as small as 2 people. Or even go it alone.) Apparently, for some of us, when thing get tough, they either throw up their hands, or else call for more of the same (such as the “sternly worded letter/email/fax”), or else call for a complete failure of the system – hoping that a new Dark Age will provide a fertile ground for a subsequent Aquarian Age. (Say, now, there’s a plan!).

One would have hoped that political blogs would be a wellspring of encouragement for wider engagement with, and education of, the “unblogged masses”, but that is not the case. E.g., I was following the unfolding Obamacare fiasco, via FDL, and knew very well about Obama’s backstabbing deal with Tauzin, as well as other related healhcare betrayals. But at job where my coworkers were discussing Obamacare, I asked people what they thought about Obama’s deal with Tauzin, and nobody even knew who Tauzin was.

Not good. FDL had essentially no effect on the level of knowledge of most Americans. It’s effects are limited to a small sliver of the American public.

Well, a recent reply (#174) to ‘mymarkx’ in Call Members of Congress and Tell Them if They Cut Social Security, You’re Done With Them has prompted my to share an additional idea for exploiting public spaces, to both educate and develop political muscle. First, my post #174:

Obama to give America back to the Native Americans

Here’s the next month’s news today. The fastest rising meme on the right is now that Obama is an honorary Crow Indian he intends to give America back to the Native Americans. It’s all part of his left wing plot to destroy us. Fortunately, I am an anchor baby. So were my parents and three of my four grandparents.

I have no idea how they keep coming up with this shit but they do. And it never ends and they always top themselves! American Reality is a cosmic tragicomic absurdity written by morons for idiots with weekly Sunday morning critiques by flatulent gasbags who have learned to speak with their anal sphincters.

There’s a supposedly terrible movie made in 1978 called Americathon that is in danger of becoming reality. Actually, huge chunks of it have come to pass already. Here’s the Wiki on the people behind this and the premise:

Americathon (also known as Americathon 1998) is a 1979 American comedy film starring John Ritter, Fred Willard, Peter Riegert, Harvey Korman, and Nancy Morgan, with narration by George Carlin, based on a play by Firesign Theatre alumni Phil Proctor and Peter Bergman. Others credited in the film include Jay Leno, Meat Loaf, Tommy Lasorda, and Chief Dan George, with a musical performance by Elvis Costello.

The premise of the film is that, sometime in the then-near future (1998), the USA has run out of oil, and many Americans are literally living in their (now stationary) cars and either jog or ride bicycles to travel. The federal government, housed in “The Western White House” (a sub-leased condominium in Marina del Rey, California), is near national bankruptcy and in danger of being foreclosed by a cartel of Native Americans in control of Nike (which has been renamed “National Indian Knitting Enterprise”). President Chet Roosevelt (Ritter) hires television consultant Eric McMerkin (Riegert) to help produce a national raffle. Instead, they decide that the only way enough money can be raised to save America is to run a telethon, and hire TV celebrity Monty Rushmore (Korman) to host it.

The soundtrack features “It’s A Beautiful Day” by The Beach Boys, “Get A Move On” by Eddie Money and “(I Don’t Want To Go To) Chelsea” by Elvis Costello. Dorothy Stratten appears, uncredited, as one of the stage dancers. John Carradine was to have played “Uncle Sam” in this film, but his scenes were edited.

There is so much more:

Signs.

I’ve had better weeks.  But it’s about 4:40 on a Friday (Central Time) and I’m still breathing, so I’ll take what I can get.  To celebrate, after a fashion, I’m going to post this thing from my just-for-fun blog, LetsJapan.Wordpress.Com, something that I up and updated this morning.  It’s photo essay called . . .

                                                                          Signs

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No, it’s not a bunch of pictures of “funny English” signs, although there are some pretty funny ones in the group.  And, yes, I do have something of a collection of those.  These are just cool, or quirky, or weird, or uniquely Japanese.

             

 So pop open a beverage of choice, click on over to Signs, and enjoy.  I mean, after all, you’ve made it through another week.

 Note:  if you want to know what the hell it is with me and Japan (and to a lesser extend India and China), there’s an “About” page over at my site/blog.  Feel free to click away.

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A Day in the Life: A Winter Nature Cartoon

This is actually a repost of a week old diary but the tip jar is from today.

Somehow I got mixed op and in my confusion I decided that political blogging and Flicka are the same thing. I do many sunsets at Dkos and very often focus on the parks of New York City. My favorite being Van Cortlandt Park that was named after the city’s first elected mayor.

So I’m going to repost this little photoplay and see how it goes over here. Starting off with a picture from last week that has become my new favorite photo. This is the Van Cortlandt Lake in the afternoon sun.

The softer weather that everyone has been enjoying broke today. Before this morning’s snow it was some great walking weather.  While I’m always taking walks on the nature trails of the Bronx and by the Van Cortlandt Lake, I’ve had some company lately.  Some days the trails were as crowded as they are in summer.

Last week I photographed a father and daughter enjoying themselves feeding swans and below the fold is what I watched last Thursday.  It was a very enjoyable sight and would have made a nice moving picture.

Do you remember William Marshall “Let…the cartoooon…begin!”

 

20,000 Years of Memory. 20091202

I have not told you very much about myself, actually.  But I will tell you what it has like to have been a woman for untold centuries.  It sucks.  Not because that I do not like my sexuality, in fact I really am comfortable with it (I would not be a man for anything), but how we as an important part of society have been treated.

With the gift, I have been able not only to be an historian, but actually wrote down much of it (we Neanderthals DID have the written word) and remember it.  Part of the gift is complete memory.  By the way, NEVER wish for that.  There are thousands of things in my memory that I would prefer to extinguish.  Give thanks for putting bad things out of your mind.  If you ever get the gift, not only will those memories come back, but the ones of those in my lineage, or of the half a dozen of my kind.

Twenty Thousand Years of Memory 20091127

I mentioned the memory thing.  That is the strangest, other than living for so long, thing.  Those of us who have been given the gift hold memories, or at least fragments of them, from our predecessors.

I have not been specific about how this gift is transferred, but suffice it to say that it is nothing like a “bite on the neck” that does it.  I requires hours of extremely intimate contact, some, but not all of it, sexual.

Twenty Thousand Years of Memory 20091125

You do not know what it was like.  What you now know of as central Europe was cold as cold could be.  My people lived there.  We were Neanderthals.  Most moderns think that we were stupid.  We were not.

Nor did we look “odd” to you.  The skeletons that you moderns found were from our elders, and after three or four hundreds of years, of course they look primitive.  I assure you that they were not.  They were our elders that passed on the genetic trait of longevity that I have.

Not uncomfortably bald…(photo diary)

Here’s a little candid photo series about something some consider not so fun. Losing hair while undergoing chemo. At least, most folks seem sad about it as regards a few of the responses I’ve gotten when I’ve mentioned the passing (temporary?) of my hair.

In preface to those who don’t understand the chemo reference, here’s how I got here:

Roy Rogers is riding tonight. Cancer and me

And I thought to myself, how odd that a couple of months ago, when it was summer, I drove with the windows down and my hair was blowing, but I had two feet of it then and it was such a hassle because it was blowing across my face and getting in the way and I had no hair tie in the car and it was hot, hot, hot. Today, the bits of hair flying were not a hassle; the sensation was rather oddly liberating.

That’s how I still feel. Will I still feel this way as time progresses? Don’t know. Don’t care.

(crossposted at Dailykos)

Famous

So I google myself tonight and I find my DocuDharma entry second only to my Cliffs Notes.

Not only that, but the two top image results are from What’s for Dinner.

Impact is funny sometimes.

What is famous?

Now frankly, I don’t often think of myself as famous.

buhdy is much more popular than I am and while he admires my writing on certain technical levels (or at least has said so).  I don’t like any of it except for particular turns of phrase.

Cheap theatrics I can teach anyone.

Fortunately good writing is the least of your problems if you want to be famous.

Persistence and Regularity

Whatever success I have is entirely due to persistence and regularity.

Well, isn’t that what you expect a writer to say?  It’s as big a cliche as thanking Touchdown Jesus.

Eat some fucking bran if you want to be regular.

Establishing a reputation

C’mon, let’s all take the Poet’s Pledge-

I, [the Poet’s name], do hereby solemnly pledge:

To be peculiar in the most unusual way I can cook up

To write excellently, or more especially to be known to write excellently

To master bards of old and bards anew, or at least never give on that I haven’t

To advance in gestures of my own and not in the stirrings of a majority, except where money is at stake

To be perceived as morally suspect, no matter what the truth

To sniff at adulation and pooh-pooh honors no matter how much I crave them

To obey whim and eschew duty, or at least appear to

To rove ruffian-like across continents of poems with ease, or at least make them think so

To engage in ridiculous arguments, all hot and sweaty for my own position

To be judicious only in the judging of my own merits and mean about the others

To die young, or if I linger, to be ignored and abused well

To write tons of crap for every good poem I do write, and obfuscate the difference with rhetoric

To suck up to important editors with honeyed words, and cuff the assistant editors often

To bemoan the sorry state of poetry in my country and do not one damn thing about it

To speak so incoherently that everyone thinks I am a genius

Oh-

“Batter my heart three-personed God, for you as yet but knock, breathe, shine and seek to mend.”

That was my thirteenth diary, not that you should be jealous because like a cesspool only the biggest pieces of crap rise to the surface.

Did I mention that only my Cliffs Notes are more famous than I?

Hornbeck’s character is static. He is as opinionated and iconoclastic, attacking institutions and firmly held beliefs, and he does not change throughout the course of the play. His character is also shallow and one-dimensional.

How do you survive?

Well if people had only understood how much I inhabit my character they would surely have strangled me in my cradle because I can’t dance nearly as well as Gene Kelly.

But stories?  I bang on the keyboard every day.  I average 40+ comments and 4.5 recs per (when I keep track of such things which I never do).

Attempts to silence me fail on the sheer volume of my record.

It also has this additional benefit which is not to be despised-

People know me and are interested.

On becoming the Paris Hilton of the inter tubz

Have you met my dog Frenchy?

Alas he has passed to a 72 coke bottle fucking paradise.

You can try Pooty Pics.

DD Writer’s Jam Fest: Round Robin 14_01

JamFestlogoOTB4

The difference between fiction and reality? Fiction has to make sense. ~Tom Clancy

I want to try something different today. And I should mention I will be here intermittently as I have some errands and adventures to attend to. (Did I mention I’m on vacation? 😉

rrdd

Your RR challenge today, if you should decide to accept it, is to craft-write something from the prompts below. It can be a story or a poem or song lyrics or whatever. Or you can jumpstart a Round Robin with one, if you want (make sure you tell us if that’s what it is).

Shall we begin?

DD Writers Jam Fest: Mothership UPDATED FRI

JamFestlogoOTB4

We be jammin’ now, dharmanuts. Are you having fun yet? I am. This is my vacation. I know, I should Get A Life, but… heh. Okay.

I’ll maintain this Essay as a “Mothership”, meaning, I’ll add with UPDATES all day today, as Essays arrive. Links to DD Writers Jam Fest essays from Day One (yesterday) are below.

DD Writers Jam Fest… a five days Docudharma exclusive (!) Writer’s… uhm … focus group? no… er, Workshop? well, sorta, maybe. Free For All? hmmm, yah.

DATES: Wednesday through Sunday, August 12 – 16th, 2009

WHERE: Here, mostly, but also in your Brain, CPU or Journal

WHO: You. Everybody. Dharmanoids. Whoever wants in, jump in (as long as you play nice). You don’t have to be a “Writer”, no ID card or credentials art the door required. No Registration Fees either

HOSTED BY: moi but it’s a community thing

REWARDS? PRIZES? MEGA BONUSES? Er, no. Free ponies though!

Basically, the idea here is twofold:

ONE is… just write. Put “DD Writers Jam Fest” in your tags. You can also plop the Jam Fest image Banner into the body of your Essay if you like. Creative writing, or Instructional Essay or Op-Ed or whatever seems suitable to you. Have at it.

NOTE: Please drop a comment here to alert me if/when you publish a Jam Essay so I can link to it here.

TWO is the Round Robin.  The very first Round Robin is going on now! I’ll post a new RR for today in.a.bit…. this afternoon.

UPDATE: OKay so I spazzed out yesterday and didn’t post one. The All New and Improved Round Robin for today is now up. Come on over and jump in. You know you want to.

Here’s the links to the previous brainstorming, which might give you a little of background of how this Jam Fest came about: Part One and Part Two.

I’d like to add that Docudharma has some ongoing Series for writers (and readers) here … in particular, Robyn posts Muse in the Morning every morning. Robyn celebrates the Muses and encourages everyone to contribute their talent there anytime.  

Deliver me from writers who say the way they live doesn’t matter. I’m not sure a bad person can write a good book. If art doesn’t make us better, then what on earth is it for?

~Alice Walker

DD Writers Jam Fest AUG 12 – 16: Part Deux

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Hey who wants to work up a cool banner? UPDATE! Done! Yay! Thank you, On The Bus!!

Okay Part One of the brainstorming of this was here yesterday. I’m picking up with Part Deux today to give everyone a week’s notice in advance, and get into some details. Don’t worry, it’s not that big of a deal, it’s just my OCD showing. heh.

DD Writers Jam Fest… a five days Docudharma exclusive (!) Writer’s… uhm … focus group? no… er, Workshop? well, sorta, maybe. Free For All? hmmm, yah.

Okay the main thing we’ve agreed to do is a Round Robin.  We’ll see if some of the other stuff comes together…. it’s up to us, you. Shake it up in the comments.

DATES: Wed through Sunday, August 12 – 16th, 2009

WHERE: Here, mostly, but also in your Brain, CPU or Journal

WHO: You. Everybody. Dharmanoids. Whoever wants in, jump in (as long as you play nice). You don’t have to be a “Writer”, no ID card or credentials art the door required. No Registration Fees either

HOSTED BY: moi but it’s a community thing

REWARDS? PRIZES? MEGA BONUSES? Er, no. Free ponies though!

So what’s this Round Robin thing? Fun. Da Rulz below. Well. I forgot where I was for a minute. “Rules” are just the standard issue Rules of Docudharma: “be excellent to each other”. The rest (below) is more like Guidelines really.

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