Happy Birthday Two-Buck Chuck

2-Buck Up Chuck is now five years old.

Here’s hoping it dies soon.

I’ve drank a few bottles of the sludge so it would be with personal joy to see that horrendous excuse-for-wine disappear from the shelves of Trader Joe’s and, more importantly, from the dinner tables I sit down at.

Although I doubt that is going to happen any time soon.

Last year, Two Buck Chuck — available only in the Trader Joe’s grocery chain and priced at $1.99 in California, hence its nickname — accounted for at least 8 percent of California wine sold in-state, said Jon Fredrikson, who tracks wine shipments through his Woodland-based company, Fredrikson, Gomberg & Associates.

Let me get this out of the way: I’m a wine snob. Well, not a wine snob, but I refuse to drink wine that is cheaper than a gallon of gasoline. I’m sure the gasoline is more expensive because it tastes better.

2-Buck Chuck is no exception.

A bottle of decent wine can be found for $7. Don’t make your gut and your taste buds suffer because you’re too cheap to shell out the extra 5 bucks. Still, I’m not on an elitist rant against the Chuck because I think I’m too good to drink wine that costs $2.

Believe me, artofstarving is all about cheap wine. Even if it tasted better I would boycott the crap because of what the owner of Charles Shaw has done to the industry.

He tries to sound like a hero to the working class for making wine affordable for the masses.

“We’re not out to gouge people,” says Franzia. “What I would like to see is every consumer be able to afford to have wine on the table every day and not feel insecure about it.”

What he’s done is actually grossly destroy the art of wine making by using cheap grapes from wherever he can get them to make slop. Wine is supposed to be a pure reflection of the grape used to make it, which done right is a pure reflection of the land and conditions the grape was grown in.

He does it cheaply, too, because he owns every step of the operation.

Making wine is expensive from the ground up, but Franzia owns a lot of ground — 40,000 acres is the common estimate. He won’t say. His Ceres-based Bronco Wine Co. also owns the crushing and bottling plants and has its own distribution company.

Until now, another company has supplied the bottles. But Franzia is talking about building a glass container plant near his Napa Valley bottling facility.

Yes, more people are into wine, and that’s good for all the winemakers, but the harm he’s done on the industry is to force his competitors to seek to make a cheaper product as opposed to a better product. He is able to do it inexpensively because he owns every step of the operation and because he buys the cheapest grapes on the market.

From Wikipedia: Franzia’s marketing methods contrast with those of his higher priced competitors, although he is also credited with introducing new consumers to the wine market and ultimately to the premium brands. His business model is based on the surplus of grapes that followed the collapse of the dot com market.

He is a smart businessman, no doubt about that. But it comes with one hell of a hangover.

Think about it in terms of a hamburger. Say McDonald’s came out with a 50 cent hamburger five years ago that was made of low-quality meat and tasted like garbage but people bought it by the billions.

Would that be something worth celebrating?

Water, Fire, and Ice

One thing that I do, and I don’t understand why I do it but I can’t seem to break the cycle, is to wash a water glass after drinking from it only once.

It doesn’t make sense.

We take a clean glass. Put water in it. Sip from it. Rinse it out with… water. Then put it in the dishwasher to blast it with soap and… water.

Are our lips that disgusting?

And I’ve always wondered why they put fire escape routes in braille on a little plaque on the wall that a blind person would never be able to locate under the duress of an emergency.

Shouldn’t they have recorded audio messages alerting the blind where the stairways are and to not take the elevator? Wouldn’t that be smarter?

Someone expects them to run their fingers along the wall untill they find the plaque and read the message in braille while the building is burning down?

I had a Humboldt Creamery flavored ice bar last night.

On the wrapper it read 0% daily recommendation of everything, except carbs, which were 8%. It was just ice anyway so I wasn’t expecting anything too nutritious. It was lemon-lime, so I was expecting sweet and tart.

And I wasn’t disappointed.

It was just funny to see zeroes across the board.

And I had to ask myself: why the hell I’m putting that into my stomach?

Up North

Artofstarving took a break. Went up north for a little visit.
Here’s some snippets of the trip. Digitally altered, of course.

This is the Big Sur river.

In that same body of water I watched a mama duck lead five babies upstream one morning, keeping a tenderly rigid line as they passed my friend and I without glancing over, carefully ignoring our presence.

The next day when I walked down to the river bank I saw the same duck, at least it looked like the same mama duck, but maybe it wasn’t. I hope it wasn’t.

There were only two baby ducks with her this time.

This is a poem I wrote when I got back to LA. It’s not very good but I don’t care.

The bark of a fallen tree.

Sitting in the dark around a campfire. Probably telling ghost stories or something. Staring at the fire. Truth be told, the ghosts were probably telling stories about us.

San Francisco. What the city looks like from a cab at 1:15am when you’ve drank a six dollar bottle of wine too fast speed-chatting with your friends about what’s changed in your lives, but mostly about all the things that haven’t.

The Panhandle. After Bay 2 Breakers.

Two Videos for the Price of None

If you missed it, Jimmy Kimmel filmed his show from a bus this week. I don’t know why, it’s kinda corny, but I like seeing how you can make an enjoyable hour of television anywhere.

Here’s a great performance by Feist on one of those buses.

The Santa Monica Big Blue line, by the way.

If you didn’t enjoy that and you want something completely random and insulting, check out this talking lizard voiced by electro-pop weirdo Dad Deacon.

It’s video day at artofstarving. Yay!

Seahorses forever!

Mother’s Day Brawl, American Fascism, and Mexican Coke: Three In One Combo

“Happy Mother’s Day. Now shut your screaming brat up.”

Things weren’t so cheery in Toledo this pass Sunday when a brawl broke out in a restaurant.

The sergeant said witnesses told him Christine Lewandowski, 56, repeatedly asked Sylvia Harris, 24, of Toledo to quiet her 1-year-old child, who was sitting in a high chair and screaming.

When the infant continued to scream, Ms. Lewandowski shouted at the baby to “shut up,” Sergeant Kikolski said.

That’s when Ms. Harris lunged at Ms. Lewandowski and began punching the woman, the sergeant said.

I don’t know who is the worse individual. The lady who screamed “shut up” at a one year-old? or the baby’s 24 year-old mother who responded by punching a 56 year-old woman?

Even before this incident, there is no greater hell than working a mother’s day brunch in a restaurant. The crowds, the yapping children, the flowers, the syrup and mimosas and butter ramekins, it’s endless. Especially after working late the night before, and drinking into the morning. There is no rougher day to be a sever in America.

If you’re a waiter or a waitress and you survive mother’s day brunch with a brutal hangover, without losing your temper once, you deserve some kind of reward. You deserve the box of chocolates.
This fight injects a whole new threat of violence into the brunch scene that I thought was limited to the surly servers mumbling stuff under their breath.

I never thought the mothers would start wil’ing on each other.

That’s just crazy!

and the rockets red glare.

******************************

Here in Los Angeles, the LAPD recently asked Phillip Morris to pony up the bucks to help fund a countereit cigarette investigation. They called it a $50,000 donation. The tobacco company said “sure” and forked over the cash.

Philip Morris USA has agreed to donate $50,000 to the Los Angeles Police Department to help pay for an investigation into counterfeiting of the company’s cigarettes, according to a published report.

The funds, which were solicited by police Chief William Bratton, have drawn criticism from ethics watchdogs and others, who worry the deal opens the door for better services to go to crime victims who can afford to pay.

Fuck Phillip Morris. If the LAPD doesn’t have the funds to go after counterfeit cigarettes then we won’t. Who are they looking out for here? The cigarette smokers?

This is the future of fascism, folks.

Hyperbole?

Yes… and no.

Fascism: It’s not all boot stomping and raucous speeches.

There’s been a not-so-subtle corporate influence in American politics for quite some time now. On many fronts we’ve let the fox in the hen house. Almost every major lobby firm is stacked with politicians, and correspondingly, government agencies that are meant to watch over industries are run by representatives of those very same industries.

If you want proof of the axis of corporate America and government look no further than Mr. Dick Cheney, who was CEO of Haliburton (which one could argue was a higher position of power) before becoming vice president of this country.

That big business runs American politics, and thus our major laws and institutions, is no surprise to anyone.

This corporate connection, allied with the nationalism that’s been thrust upon us with by freedom’s over-zealous, sloppy friends at Fox News and the Republican Party, is an American form of fascism; instead of state-enforced, it’s broadcasted for free by willing accomplices and used as a political tool by a party that’s staked it’s existence backing Elmer Fudd’s quixotic hunt for terrorist-wabbits.

The LA Times has an interesting read about government being given away by those that didn’t want it in the first place, those grand ideologues on the right.

How has this come to pass? As the old adage goes, when the gods want to punish you, they give you what you want. Conservatives talk a lot about government failure, but over the last few years, it’s really we who have failed government, depriving it of the revenue, the conscientious management and the attention needed for it to succeed. Undercapitalize a pizza joint and your customers will taste the poor ingredients, become frustrated by the long waits and grow repulsed by the grimy environs. Staff it with your unmotivated drinking buddies and the service will falter, as will the quality of the product. It’s no way to run a pizza place, and it’s certainly no way to run a government.

We need to start funding our government again and start paying our own bills, we’re worse than teenagers when it comes to managing our money.

This is not just about Phillip Morris paying the LAPD to chase off the competition. This is about America being sold off piece by piece.

Apparently there are about a dozen jails throughout California that offer pay-to-stay “upgrades.” Inmates (or “clients,” as they’re known) who pay an extra $75 to $127 a day get a cell with a regular door, located at some distance from violent offenders, as well as the right, in some cases, to bring in an iPod, a cellphone or a laptop. The rich no longer need patronize the same jails as the rest of us.

We don’t need private prisons in America. If there’s not enough funds to house all our prisoners, there’s either something wrong with the laws, our government, or us.

I would argue all three; but mostly it’s the laws that are wrong (war on drugs), followed by the government (tax cuts amid endless war). If we solve those two, then maybe we can discuss if there’s a reason why so many Americans are imprisoned, instead of asking the pertinent question: why does America lock up so many of its citizens?

How can we be the world’s richest country and have a broke government? And always when we elect the guys that say government is a waste of time. The recent failings of government have nothing to do with the inability of government to perform, but everything to do with the Republicans ineptness at running it.

How come the Roman Coliseum can exist for almost a thousand years and they never once had to sell the name and call it the Ferari Coliseum, or Vivendi Coliseum?

the bombs bursting in air

******************************

Mexican coke tastes sweeter.

Actually, any soda in a bottle tastes better to me, especially if that bottle is beaded with moisture dripping down the outside.

Coke-Cola swears that there is no noticeable taste differences though.

According to Mart Martin, a spokesman for Coca-Cola’s North American division in Atlanta. “We believe that the appeal of Mexican Coke is as much about nostalgia as it is about anything,” says Martin. “It’s like getting a piece of home in a bottle. You can’t deny the fact that it’s in a tall glass bottle, something you just can’t find in most parts of the United States.”

But it’s the “same exact product,” and Mexican bottlers are buying the ingredients straight from the company, says Martin. “It’s not like they’re stirring it up in some backyard,” he adds. “Coke is Coke is Coke.”

[...]

Instead, the company line all along has been that there is “no perceptible taste difference” between Mexican Coke and the American-made Classic Coke.

Coke is coke is coke. Something to ponder.

So, if it’s the same product, why does it taste so different?

Is it the bottle? Is it all in your mind?

I didn’t grow up in Mexico so I’m not sure what nostalgia would have to do with Mexican coke tasting better to me. I think it has to do with the magical word “perceptible”. It’s not that there is no difference, it’s that we’re not supposed to notice it. Legally, it’s close enough to be called the same product; but those who have had both can testify: Mexican coke is sweeter.

You can’t argue semantics with your taste buds.

gave proof through the night
that our flag was still there…

Mitt Takes a Hard Stance Against Polygamy

I know Romney is a Republican and that comes with a stricter “moral code” than the rest of us, that whole ‘my shit don’t stink’ bullshit they’re inhaling over on the right, but Romney’s comments tonight concerning polygamy was really going over the top. Even for an elephant.

Now he’s blowing smoke up all of our asses.

From Rueters: The former Massachusetts governor, whose great-grandfather had five wives and whose great-great-grandfather had a dozen, said in an interview to be broadcast on Sunday that the practice banned by the Mormon church in 1890 was “awful.”

“That’s part of the history of the church’s past that I understand is troubling to people,” he said, according to comments to be aired on the CBS network’s “60 Minutes” television program. Excerpts were released on Thursday.

“I have a great-great grandfather. They were trying to build a generation out there in the desert and so he took additional wives as he was told to do. And I must admit, I can’t imagine anything more awful than polygamy,” he said.

That quote looks more phony than a green Spiderman on Hollywood Boulevard.

It goes back to Romney’s entire campaign, his hunter gaffe, the flip-floppity on abortion, his carefully enameled smile, the guy stinks of pandering.

Really, Mitt? You can’t imagine anything more awful than polygamy? I know you’re just trying to dispel any ties to the practice, and trying to show how mainstream you and your faith are, but don’t you think that’s a little much?

First, there are many things worse in the world than multiple wives. War. Poverty. Environmental calamities. All things that your party seems to take appallingly lightly. I won’t get on some Maxim, Frat-boy rant about how you could even argue that polygamy, maybe just for a night, might even be fun. I’m just saying, the argument could be made. Point is: spare us your mock penitence, your holy outrage.

This is what you should do.

Tell the reporter that what your great-great grandfather did out in the desert with all his wives is none of his business. While you’re at it, tell him to forget the fact that you believe in a religion founded by a con man too, the L. Ron Hubbard of the 19th century.

I wonder if Mormons consider it bigoted to compare their religion to Scientology, and I wonder if Scientologists would consider the Mormons’ complaint bigoted.

I see their ideological quibbling unfolding in vaudeville fashion. The two sides expressing their umbrage at being compared to the other and defending their religion with “facts” at their disposal, the rhetorical arguments growing evermore outlandish, snowballing, ending with proclamations about Joseph Smith’s magic rocks and Xenu’s alien space ships.

I would pay money to see them debate the merits of their “faith” on a stage.

What a show it would be.

They’re both wasting their breath, anyway. We know what the one true faith is.

TV is Dead (stunted wonderment killed it)

Two million people stopped watching television this last year.

In TV’s worst spring in recent memory, a startling number of Americans drifted away from television the past two months: More than 2.5 million fewer people were watching ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox than at the same time last year, statistics show.

I say good for them. Let’s all stop watching TV. Kill the bastard.

Actually… I don’t really mean that.

You see, this is coming from someone employed by the television industry; so either I’m stupid for endorsing that idea or I’m in the wrong business.

Probably both.

But television has been so diluted over the years that’s it already a staggering, wounded version of its former self. Few programs create water cooler conversation anymore, Idol being the possible exception. Television is no longer the gate keeper to the national discourse.

Now, cute otters holding hands can build a media dynasty.

The expansion of cable. Competition from the Internet. TiVo and file sharing networks that enable viewers to watch on their own time. There are many reasons Television doesn’t have the impact it once did.

The ad men are trying to figure how to price their products. I could care less. I’m more interested in the cultural aspect of the death of TV and the new ways people are receiving their information, their stimulation, and their entertainment.

Don’t mistake my schendenfrued for loathing of television. I think there is a lot of worth to the medium itself, and being able to chose what you want to watch and when is a beautiful thing. I hope to tell some stories on television one day.

It’s the antiquated delivery system I have a problem with.

I’m very select.

I mostly only watch TV late at night. When my eyeballs are sick of looking at a computer screen, I look at a TV screen. Then at the very end of the night I read a book. My eyes are constantly feeding on information.

They’re hungry little fish.

Unless I have company it’s impossible for me to eat a meal without some sort of distraction. I’ll leaf through an apartment guide or even a magazine in Spanish, and I don’t speak Spanish, rather than look at nothing when I eat, than not do something with my brain.

Buddhism tells you to be in the moment, to slow down and appreciate the present. When you eat; just eat. Reminds me of a story, of which I just remember the gist:

A monk was chased off the edge of a cliff by tigers, and as he is hanging on to a vine, at the bottom of which was a half a dozen snapping alligators, he notices growing out the side of the cliff a small patch of strawberries, and the monk reached out and ate a strawberry, and noted that it tasted most beautifully precisely because of the situation, not in spite of it.

I guess he survived to tell this tale, anyway, the point, how it relates to television and the decline of viewership, is that perhaps there is a mini-awakening happening, people are chosing to live their lives, they’re going outdoors, they’re spending time with family, their reading more books. They’re plucking the proverbial strawberry from the cliff, and relishing it. This is good news. Great!

Except it’s more likely, thanks to modern technology, that we’re just watching TV at different times or on different formats that Neilson doesn’t track.

This year, for the first time, Nielsen is measuring viewership in the estimated 17 percent of homes with digital video recorders _ but it only counts them in the ratings of a specific show if they watch it within 24 hours of the original air time.

Is it any coincidence that the shows with dropping neilson numbers are ones that have continuous storylines. Shows like Lost and Heroes, even Desperate Housewives. The type of pulpy, on-going plots that make people not want to miss an episode, or compels them to skip the commercials — in other words, record the suckers and watch it on their own time.

So television shows aren’t dead, just the old concept of TV — the custom, centered around certain nights of the week, specific times, the whole family home at 8:30 sitting on the floor in front of the “boob tube” like leave it to fucking beaver, held captive in Madison Avenue and Corporate America’s commercial loop, then everybody yammering about it the next day at work like trained seals clapping their fins for the beach ball — that TV is dead. It just doesn’t do it for us anymore, it’s not as immediate.

The Internet has a Wild West aspect to it, the ability to throw down your stake and lay your claim, build your own little community in the wired-world. We can make our own TV shows too. Youtube has hundreds, thousands of homemade videos for songs, most of them horribly wretched-emo; nevertheless the power to create our own waste of time is now in our hands. Blogs multiply while you’re not looking, when you’re asleep. Self-expression has never been so cheap.

We are a nation of Lonelygirls55.

So scram, America!

Go. Be. Create.

Be Bohemian.

Carry with you Buddha’s dying words.

Everything that is born is subject to decay. Since their is no external saviour, it is to each of you to work out your own liberation… These are my last words.

It’s nice that Buddha even goes to the trouble of noting his last words for the record, but I wonder what he would have done if he wanted to add something. “oh, oh, oh, wait, and be chill and all that, you know, like, don’t be all ugly to each other. Okay, that’s it, those are my last words now. “

Look at that! I can’t even contemplate the death of Buddha without turning it into some kind of sitcom scene. Something is wrong with me.

I can’t sit still.
I need to be constantly titilated.
Endlessly captivated.
I belittle things people cherish, for fun.

I have stunted wonderment. These are the symptoms:

• I don’t know if I can’t cry because I’m hollow, or if I’m hollow because I can’t cry.
• I can only look at a sunset for 7 seconds then I get bored.
• I have a slightly higher threshold for babies, of which I can goo-goo-ga-ga for 16 seconds before I turn away.
• Puppies can elicit almost half a minute of my adoring affection before the ennui returns.
• I get mad when I see someone on a reality show talk about their feelings. I find it selfish, like I give a fuck.

I’m trying to break out of it. Trying to fight it, you know. Do what the Buddha said: be chill and all that, you know, like, don’t be all ugly to each other.

– Tune in next week for my daring report on the death of radio. Good night, artofstarvers.

******************************

How many of you TiVo? Who doesn’t watch TV at all? Thoughts on anything: what the heck to make of Jacob? NBA Playoffs? Paris going to Jail?

Fire in Griffith Park, Bambi in Los Angeles

Once again, fire is burning the hillsides of Los Angeles.

Once again, smack dab in the middle of the city, in Griffith Park; near the much-hyped Hollywood fire from a month ago.

I saw it live before I heard it on the radio. I got on the 101 and saw the smoke towering over Burbank and got a whiff of deja vu big time. There was no doubt about it: that smoke, tall and billowy as it was, was being caused by brittle, tinder brush going up in flames, and fast, a lot of it.

Four measly inches of rain this year. That’s all we’ve gotten. Scary.

Those hillsides must be like matchsticks, so dry and flammable, just waiting to explode.

It’s time for a massive rain dance, Los Angeles.

Where a month ago they threatened the Hollywood sign, the flames this time raced towards the Griffith Observatory, iconic landmark that was the location for such classics as Rebel Without a Cause staring the inimitable James Dean and Paula Abdul’s video reinterpretation, “Rush Rush”, featuring the insult-to-actors-everywhere Keanu Reeves.

The park and observatory is named after, no joke, Griffith J. Griffith, a real estate mogul who owned it and most of Los Feliz, a man also convicted for shooting his wife. At first the city turned down the donation on ethical grounds.

In 1912 he offered to donate $100,000 to the city of Los Angeles to build an observatory, but the city refused the offer and responded, in part “On behalf of the rising generation of girls and boys, we protest against the acceptance of this bribe … This community is neither so poor nor so lost to sense of public decency that it can afford to accept this money.”

Then again, this is Los Angeles.

However several years after his death the city did accept the offer and the Griffith Observatory was built.

It’s not something they put on the trail maps.

The fire only got worse at night. Instead of dying down the fire jumped canyons and began to spread down the hillside towards Los Angeles.

They had to evacuate parts of Los Feliz.

Orange flames roiling from the rugged wilderness in the midst of the nation’s second-largest city eerily lit up the night sky as winds suddenly stoked the blaze at dusk, hours after it erupted in the hills above Hollywood.

Helicopters flew dangerous water-dropping missions after dark and no homes had been lost by late evening.

Police officers drove through the parkside Los Feliz district ordering people out. “You need to evacuate, you need to evacuate your houses immediately,” one said. “The fire is coming toward the neighborhood.”

Tom Lebonge, city councilman for the district, was on the television with tears in his eyes. He lay witness to a deer running across the hills with a look of panic and terror in its eyes, he said it reminded him of Bambi. The reporter then spoke of a coyote fleeing across a golf course.

I once saw a coyote running through West Los Angeles, far away from any mountains or canyons. Already a strange occurrence, I followed the coyote for a few blocks until it stopped to rest on none other than the science fiction writer Ray Bradbury’s lawn. He lived in the neighborhood I grew up in and I knew his house from trick-or-treating. (yes, it’s a lucky kid who gets to trick-or-treat at Ray Bradbury’s house) I pulled the car over and sat there watching the coyote watch me. I had the very real sensation that I was a character in a story and so was the coyote and this meeting meant something profound, something life-changing.

I stayed in my car for five, ten, twenty minutes trying to figure it out. The coyote laid down with its nose between its front paws and stayed like that, too, the two of us taking notes on the other.

Then I got bored first and drove off.

Weird.

Life is.

As is Los Angeles.

Stray Thoughts at a Late Hour

I like to think that I would have answered Poncho Villa’s call and riden with him in the Mexican Revolution. Of course I can’t ride a horse and I’m opposed to guns, but perhaps he needed a person to roll his cigars for him or take notes during their meeetings.

I can do that.

There’s no good causes anymore, none worth dying for at least. Of course, I don’t know if Poncho Villa was worth dying for either.

To tell you the truth, I’m not sure I would have risked my life to avoid paying a tax on tea either. Contrary to popular perception not everybody in 1776 was jumping on the Red Coats’ bayonets.

Twenty percent of the population were Loyalist and a bunch were just waiting it out to side with the winner. After spending two years at college in Boston, I learned to be weary of the public proclamations of priveleged men gathered in pubs and boasting of revolution.

If the minutemen lost they’d be referred to as insurgents in the history books.

For a time Philadelphia couldn’t sell the Liberty Bell off for scrap metal.

The photo from Iwo Jima was just some grunts on a routine mission to right the flag, the hill had been long conquered.

Jessica Lynch herself admits to being no GI Jane.

History is full of beautiful lies and ugly truth.

******************************

2am in the morning
stalking my thoughts through the high grass
quietly as a leopard
till I sense weakness
then I lunge!
******************************

What can one man with one measly blog, sixteen fingers, a blowhole, and a dancing monkey do to find himself some truth in this world?

Hell, I’d settle for a small dose of enlightenment.

Fuck it! Just happiness. Just mind-crushingly dull, satiated happiness.

What is happiness?

It’s all about your perspective, your vantage point, how close you are to zero.

They say three is a magic number, but they’re wrong; it’s zero.

Everything starts at zero. You’re nothing and then you’re something and you don’t know any words and then you do, but you can’t read any words and then you can and so and so and hopefully, eventually, you’ll learn how to write and write well and possibly even one day know what a run-on sentence looks like.

Anyway, you get it.

Because of this everything is judged against zero, depending on the index, up is good and down is bad, or down is good and up is bad.

Your bank account: you hope the numbers go way higher than zero, your phone bill: as close as possible to zero.

But zero doesn’t always mean nothing. If you start with a million dollars in the bank that’s your zero. If by some financial misfortune, that sum is reduced to $800,000, oh boy, are you crying buckets!

It’s all about where you start.

What you start with.

But to answer my own question, what is hapiness?

A deep fried love twinkie, baby!

******************************

Thursday at the Republican debate, (yes, I’m that disturbed that I even watch the elephants go at it) a very revealing question was posed to the candidates by that babbling blond babboon Matthews.

By a show of hands he asked them who doesn’t believe in Evolution?

Fair question.

Three of these monkeys raised their hands. Is it any shocker that these three candidates are in the lower tier? Out of the running.

Out to left field, you could also say.

Huckabee explained the nuance of his position.

Huckabee, in a conference call with reporters, complained that the debate format didn’t give him a chance to elaborate on his views about evolution.”

And the main thing … I’m not sure what in the world that has to do with being president of the United States,” said the former Arkansas governor.

Huckabee said he has no problem with teaching evolution as a theory in the public schools and he doesn’t expect schools to teach creationism.

I like how Huckabee laughed off the question, as if it has nothing to do with being president. Your belief about how the world came to be and man’s place on the planet might infuence or affect your performance as leader of the most powerful tribe of humans on this planet. It affects the rest of us whether you place your trust in science and reason, or in “faith”. We like to know exactly what level of delusional primate we’re dealing with.

So, yeah, it matters.

But at least he’s sticking to it. Watch the other 7 candidates unfurl God at every campaign stop like a worn-out hankercheif but when they have to admit to what this naturally implies at the other end of the argument, that evolution is false, they all clam up like broken garage doors.

Our current president doesn’t believe we came from the sea, and come to think of it, one of his most famous and ditziest of supporters isn’t quite what sure chicken of the sea is.

Is this mere coincidence?

I think not. Everywhere are wires.

******************************

99.9% of all kings and queens, prince and princesses across the world, I am unable to recogize.

The Queen and Charles are about it.

And Fergie, if she still counts.

******************************

When you’re from California, where do you flee for some sun?
——– ARTOFSTARVING

LAPD Went Bananas on the Press: What’s Up With That?

So what happened yesterday?

Suddenly at the end of a peaceful rally a commotion flared and the police began marching and clubs started flying and cameramen and women were dropping and rolling around in the dust.

That we know.

Why the police felt the need to get all buck-crazy is still unexplained.

For those that didn’t catch the news, LAPD used excessively strong tactics to clear a street of protesters at the end of yesterday’s march in Los Angeles. The police say there were bottles being thrown at them. Word is anarchists were provoking the police. As someone who has been to many protests I don’t doubt that.

The clash at MacArthur Park started after 6 p.m. when police tried to disperse demonstrators who had moved off the sidewalk onto the street. Authorities said several of the few thousand people still at the rally threw rocks and bottles at officers, who fired rubber bullets and used batons to push the crowd back onto the sidewalk.

Their response, however, was neither justified nor reasonable. What I saw was a police force going wild, taking advantage of the provocation to unleash a little whup-ass. It’s almost as if they were trying to send a message.

I didn’t see many anarchist getting hit.

“They were pushing children, elderly, mothers with their babies and beating up on the media,” said Angela Sambrano, director of the Central American Resource Center. “The aggressiveness against the immigrant community is unbelievable.”

Video of the conflict shows officers pushing women down to the ground, whacking the back of people walking away from them, shooting rubber bullets at close distances to women and children. In one, all-too-symbolic, image the police are swinging their batons at the legs of an immigrant holding the American flag while trying to help another protester that had fallen in front of the police and was trying to get up.

If you haven’t seen any of the footage, go to Youtube to check it out.

You can see that Christina Gonzalez, the reporter who was attacked in the footage, is royally pissed as she broadcasts from MacArthur Park, the scene of the clash just hours before.

What I find troubling is the rather sloppiness, the dumb brute force, the LAPD showed. This was not a necessary action to quell a riot, this was a human battering ram mowing down everyone in its path, mostly journalists and innocent protesters that didn’t get out of the way fast enough.

Stranger that they seemed to be discriminately attacking journalists.

That’s just not good PR.

The Radio and Television News Association of Southern California called for an investigation.

“There is evidence that officers knocked reporters to the ground, used batons on photographers and damaged cameras, possibly motivated by anger over journalists photographing efforts by officers to control the movements of marchers,” the group said in a statement.

At the end of the video you can sense Christina Gonzalez’s frustration and indignation as she reports that the LAPD told her to get in their truck and “shut the door”. I find that portion of the story especially troubling. They weren’t ordering them inside their vehicle for their safety but to restrict their ability to cover the actions of the police.

Not lost to irony: this brutal crackdown on freedom of the press happening in a park named after a war general. A soldier that first distinguished himself going after Poncho Villa, who was fighting an American-supported Mexican government.

I don’t think it would be too childish and snide to point out that history is just one big riot.

Back to 5/1/07.

Why would the LAPD overreact so aggressively? Attacking innocent people and the news media, where they must have known they would come under fierce criticism?

There are only two reasons I can see:

1. They’re stupid.
2. It was an intentional assault on the immigrant movement and the media covering it.

Crowds were down, the media attention was low, it had been a long day, a provocation flared up, once the order was given officers seemed intent on exterting their power with violence. Christina Gonzalez herself heard the cops announce as they passed, “double time it’s tussle time.” (whatever the hell that means)

It seems at worse this was an authorized tactic to intmidate immigrants, their supporters and the press. At best it’s a case where a good number of cops lost their heads and went overboard, waaaaay overboard.

Here’s another chance to watch the video and decide for yourself.

I’m spent.