I remember when I first saw this Sports Illustrated cover thinking “Mental Note: Remember that cover. The editors are simply tempting fate here.” Yes… it now looks like this cover takes its rightful place in the Curse file.

ESPN analyst Michael Irvin recently said the Eagles would be undefeated if Favre were the starting quarterback.

“A number of commentators will say he’s a warrior, he’s played with injuries. I feel like him being knowledgeable about the quarterback position, I feel like we’d probably be in a better situation.”

Speculation exists that Michael Irvin has become a Terrell Owens mouthpiece… in this case this is sort of a Judith Miller — Ahmad Chalabi thing going on.

I will note that the team that Brett Farve is actually quarterbacking, the Green Bay Packers, is now 1-7. My desire for the team to win the division and thus make the playoffs, and do so with a record of no better than 7-9, is — alas– in flames. Further, it looks most probably that the Chicago Bears will do the honor of winning this division — and with a record exceeding 8-8. The NFL dodges that bullet, of watching in embarrassment as a Losing team eeks into the playoffs, once again. Nonetheless for the Packers, Brett Farve is considered by the NFL intelligentsia to be a good quarterback — still — (some say as good as he was when during his Superbowl years), with a team that is simply too bad to pull to any wins.

But… that “Brotherly Love” relationship between Terrell Owens and Donavan McNabb?

Reacting to a report in The (Trenton, N.J.) Times, ESPN and Fox confirmed that Owens brawled with former Eagles player Hugh Douglas in the team’s training room, before charging into the locker room and challenging McNabb and other teammates to put up their dukes.

I can’t figure out that Sports Illustrated Cover. It makes as much sense as the Ryan Leaf cover (the storyline of Ryan Leaf having been that he sucked up the joint the first time, was benched, and now was being given a second time because … whereupon, he resumed sucking up the joint.) Then again, this cover pops up at me once again — as we move through above-average (and frequently exceptional) statistical records that fall flat in the win-loss records which would measure him as “Greatest Ever”, and as he was injured with his replacement providing the team with a victory-lift, and as the current Sports Illustrated cover features the two quarterbacks currently playing most likely to be named “Greatest Ever”.

Sports Illustrated’s covers crack me up.

On a rainy Weekend day, I shrug about, staring at the sky with my shifty umbrella in hand. I head toward the public library, where I sit at a computer, and shift through the “Electric Library” database, looking up esoteric subjects.

Topic at hand: the major news stories of the 1990s. Or the major American news stories according to me, in a peculiarly paranoid frame of mind. The goal is to assure myself that things seemed to be falling apart in the world just as surely as things seem to be falling apart right this minute.

From the magazine American Demographics, I find an article about “Millennial Fever”, and how “marketers can take advantage of them by striking while the iron is hot”. Was the Y2K scare a Conspiracy dreamed up by the World Elite to sell us on bottled water and mass quantities of emergency supplies? Millennial Fever is driving consumer behavior in all sorts of interesting ways, which means it offers marketing opportunities. But it won’t last forever. If you want to strike while the iron is hot, you need to understand the symptoms of the fever and how you can turn them to your advantage. Hm. Well. Anyway. Buy Duct tape, everybody!

The Cultural Logic of Heaven’s Gate Tragic as it was, the Heaven’s Gate mass suicide was a completely predictable bit of cultural logic. It is Millennial Fever in its most virulent incarnation. Techno/apocalyptic episodes are an inevitable symptom of this century’s end. With the fierce economy of the truly crazed, Heaven’s Gate encapsulates four critical themes of Millennial Fever, and drives them to their logical (or illogical) conclusion: technology as disembodiment; mortification and malleability of the body; apocalyptic agents; death and rebirth. Technology as Disembodiment. Marshall McLuhan points out that every new technology involves a sort of “amputation”: The automobile “amputates” the legs, or the television “amputates” conversation. The Internet “amputates” the body, so to speak, as well as personal identity. These cultural realities will dictate the quality of post-millennial civilization.

The cultists killed themselves in order to hitch a ride on a UFO hiding behind the Hale-Bopp comet. In a tragicomic bit of American scientism linking up with a lunatic consumerism, the cultists bought a high-tech telescope, and then returned it to the store for a refund when it failed to reveal the comet’s flying-saucer companion.

Or hitch a ride on a UFO? The 1990s were full of stories of the people who dropped out of society in come manner or other. Oddly enough, I’d have to say the Heaven’s Gate Cult was the least tragic of the batch of stories I have in mind, in the sense that the Heaven’s Gate Cult kept mostly to themselves, and didn’t kill their kids. I can’t say the same thing about Waco or the Unabomber. I hope they latched onto that spacecraft that was trailing the comet!

In 1984, for example, Applewhite’s followers were entranced by the film Cocoon, in which a boatload of Florida pensioners is lifted into a giant spaceship. According to an ex-member, the group’s leaders decided that the film was telling them how they were going to be picked up and taken to the Kingdom level. So some members moved to Galveston, Texas, to prepare a houseboat for lift-off. But then they changed their minds; presumably another movie had come along.

And one other factor should not be overlooked, although millions of Americans might prefer to do so. Put bluntly, a revived paranoia is sweeping across the United States, and perhaps Europe too. Conventional wisdom blames this on the unpoliceable Internet, which is why no one was surprised when Applewhite’s followers turned out to be website designers. Yet they weren’t really Internet buffs: they were entertainment junkies who mainlined on the conspiracy-obsessed films and television programmes of the Nineties. Cult entertainment, you might say, though it was more than that. This was how Heaven’s Gate “learnt” things.

We would hear about the destructive power of the Internet, and the dark corners in which the socially dejected can enter into, a couple years later with the Columbine Shootings. (I paraphrase Bill Clinton there, who was bumping around to the safest “Soccer Mom” ground he could find in his efforts to justify his presidency.) I note that we can easily transpose the sentence “A revived paranoia is sweeping across the United States, and perhaps Europe too.” to the current decade, and swiftly run ahead from there. (Care for some “Bird Flu?”)

Also keep in mind that the whole world is having trouble right now coming to grips with American Evangelical and its effect on politics and culture. Who are these “Left Behinders”, and why are people believing in the trans-death conversations held through the medium of John Edward (“Crossing Over”)… Has America Gone Mad? We all come full circle, and some things they never change.

(That batch of excerpting comes from “The Brainwashing of America: Analysis of Heaven’s Gate Suicides Has Missed one Vital Point Argues Damian Thompson: The Influence of Film and Television, Daily Telegraph, 8 – 9 -97.)

Against this backdrop, we have the Bill Clinton presidency, and The Nation assembling a panel of commentators to ponder its meaning.:

The presidency is a Jerry Springer show. The public is variously entertained, appalled and titillated by the smallness and coarseness of it all. Americans’ daily working lives have been transformed by the flows of global capital, by Alan Greenspan’s Federal Reserve and by the wonders of the Internet. But in the evenings, when the work is done, we’re transfixed by the perils of Bill Clinton. News has become an Entertainment Division, a diversion from the daily grind. No matter that Asian economies are imploding, the world’s poor are expanding, more than a fifth of our own children are impoverished, American schools are falling apart, a record 41 million of us lack health insurance and the nation is experiencing the widest divergence of income, wealth and opportunity in five decades. It is more fun to ponder semen stains.

Though the consensus view is that he was Grover Cleveland reincarnated:

What can we demand of good leaders in bad times? Clinton concludes that we should not judge Presidents like Rutherford B. Hayes and Grover Cleveland harshly. According to U.S. News & World Report, Clinton tells associates that they have been “under-appreciated as progressive reformers who tried to limit the power of big business and undercut the nativism and class hatreds of their age–stances he obviously considers parallel to his own.” Like him, they offered no bold initiatives, but, he suggests, they did all they could. If a President had a Depression spurring change, as FDR did, he could do more, but now… AND If he’s lucky, Bill Clinton will go down in history as the ablest President elected to office in the last third of the twentieth century. That would put him roughly on a par with the ablest President elected to office in the last third of the nineteenth century– the Gilded Age Democrat Grover Cleveland. […] The mixture of promise and disappointment continued into Clinton’s second term. A brilliant political counterpuncher, devastating in the clinches, he managed to get re-elected and, in his 1998 State of the Union address, to propose reasonably activist “third way” plans for strengthening Social Security, aiding education, raising the minimum wage and more. It all far exceeded Grover Cleveland’s policies (and was much friendlier to labor than Cleveland, the breaker of the Pullman strike, ever was). But as Clinton spoke, the Monica Lewinsky scandal was filling the headlines. …

Regretably, there could be no “Millennium Fever” in the 1890s for which I could parallel Cleveland with Clinton and finish the loop. “Centurian Fever” perhaps?… I will have to content myself in comparing Clinton with Bush and shrug away.

Once upon a time back in high school, I noticed a flyer (located in a place I rarely had reason to look at, and likely a day or two past the point where it would be relevant) for a “thing with Doc Hastings”. I didn’t think much of it — which is to say, it didn’t really even warrent a “hm”. I did not like Doc Hastings (oddly enough, considering it fits right into an issue raised by the 16 year old blogger that is for good or ill the subject of this post, for much the same reason as my Independent but Republican-leaning parents). Despite not having any good candidate to vote for he was the first candidate I voted against… but I did not consider him to be terribly relevant to my day to day life. (Oddly enough, so can the blogger Katey, who you will see is a Doc Hastings backer.)

Perhaps it is a key problem with the Internet that a 16 year old who usually blogs on subjects of no interest to anyone past the age of majority — and for that matter, of no interest to the 16-year old me — blogs a political opinion just once — and that can easily be picked up the partisan blogosphere. Is this comment a little bit mean?… Honestly, the thought of anyone over her age looking around her blog beyond the politics angle is creepy, and honestly, in the case of this robbery — the circumstances suggest that her help is not needed in apprehending the brazen robbers.)

So, I guess Jesus General has “Doc Hastings” logged in as a key search at his blog-congealer, because I don’t see how else he would find the blog of the young Wenatchee High School student named Katey. Is this comment a little bit mean?… (In the case of this robbery — the circumstances suggest that her help is not needed in apprehending the brazen robbers.)

So, stick to the political entry. In the end, I’m stuck at one reference point… “went to the thing with Doc Hastings today” where she observed the difference between the “conservative kids” and the “liberal kids”.

That does not compute. Is there that huge a difference between late Clinton era – Mid-Yakima Valley and mid-Bush era in the burning metropolis of Wenatchee? Have the kids today suddenly become political, and more than political, partisan? (I guess it’s the goddamned Iraq War. Which is a bit funny… any Democrat nominee who would have had a theoretical chance of winning the fourth congressional district in 2002 or 2004 would have been a backer of the Iraq War, like it or not. Geez Louise… at a Doc Hastings event circa late 1990s — what contentious topic would I be yelling at him about? There’s nothing like the Iraq War that is on the radar screen back then.)

As a teenager, I guess I was more politically aware than most. Heck, I listened to talk radio. (And if my listening habits tended to sway toward Art Bell, you have to consider the reality that the whole of talk radio consisted of your Rush Limbaugh echoes. I was a fan of Jim BoHannon, who at the time I thought of as remarkably Centrist and today view as small “C” Conservative.) And I read the various political magazines in the school library. (I liked Harpers. I don’t think the school library had The Nation — it was National Review, Mother Jones, and The New Republic.) But I can’t say that there was much of a hotbed of political discussion amongst the student body… and what of it there was tended not to go into “Donkey versus Elephant” land.

Freshman year. A couple of pot-heads (of sorts) talking up material likely dredged up from NORML or High Times Magazine (likely procurred at the store that advertised on the radio as “a place for the cigar conoisseur to pick up — er — various artifacts”, in a faux-stoner version of an intellectual manner… which was shut down by the DEA a number of months after opening) about how safe marijuana is. This is in Art Class, and our Art teacher shakes his head and throws out “the facts” of marijuana. And we’re off and running. I’m not going to say that this was the focal point of politics at my high school, though to the degree that a small handful of students took the issue of the legalization (or “decriminialization”, if you will) of this herb seriously, it was a thin veneer toward conversations about easy it iss to get pot past their parents.

(Disclaimer: I never inhaled; nor did I exhale.)

For the purpose of a “debate” project in an English class, I was part thrust with and partly chose the issue of “school prayer”. My two partners ended up derelict, and even though one of them was recused from his in-house suspension to join me in class — he had nothing. Largely because I was alone, and had some conviction to my belief in the seperation of church and state that maybe the other side lacked, I destroyed them in the debate.

A number of conversations with a fundamentalist Christian about the “debate”(?) between Evolution and Creationism, and various items of what passes for “social issues”. These were always fun. I can’t see that these converstions went anywhere near resolution (how could they possibly?) — though I’ll always be glad to know that there were dinosaurs on the Ark. He also had biblical explanations for the debate on the Normalization! (You know, the Body is a Temple.) I once slid him a print-out of this Onion piece, which aggrivated him to no end. Later, I found out he had tossed it in the back of his truck, and while driving around with his youth pastor, his youth pastor found it and he had to explain the thing to him. Funny stuff… amusing story… good times… Misty Water Colored Memories of the way we were.

The Election of 1996. DECA teacher teaching how Political polling fits in the field of Market Research. The teacher puts up the three candidates — Clinton, Dole, and Perot — and goes through the Gallup poll on “which candidate best fits your opinion on the issue of — [fill in the blank]”. Somebody calls up, saying “But there are more than those candidats in the voting pamphlet.” The teacher says, “Yeah, but it’s like anyone’s going to vote for the Libertarian candidate!” Chalk this one up a defeat for the third – party movement, I guess. (I personally would not have voted for any of those three candidates, and probably should have not rasied my hand when asked the final question of “Who would you vote for?” — and if asked why I’m not raising my hand, simply state that I’m leaving the ballot blank.) The final polling results through the various classes were all over the map: my class chalked up a narrow victory for Clinton with no support for Perot, another class had a modest victory for Dole, and still another had a landslide for Perot. How the heck did Perot pull that one off?)

Beyond that. We shuffled through opinions on the Clinton Impeachment Effort. We had to. In any number of classes. My take was fairly contrarian and left everybody with a confused look on their face: I was mostly upset with Clinton’s apology, because I believed it violated the post-modernist construction he had created where everybody knew he was lying, but he had to go straight ahead as though they made any sense in order not to unsettle the delecate political and legal issues at play here… and to apologize would be to throw up another funny looking-glass mirror, and this is one looking-glass mirror too many… the symmetry has been destroyed.

There are students who were obviously Republicans (like their parents) and others obviously Democrats (like their parents.) Okay… there was one student who was obviously a Republican, and another who was obviously a Democrat. And I never understood who the student who was obviously a Republican was talking about when she said that “I even know some hard core Democrats who are just tired of Clinton and the whole thing.” Because the girl who was obviously a Democrat wasn’t tired of Clinton, you see.

And so one of these politically activist parents comes in for voting education and takes over two of my classes (though in the case of the partisanship matters not one iota, so much as the fact that she obviously cares about the civics part of the equation… two classes because they could both be used for the same required course), in large part as an underheaded way for the school to get students out to vote for a school bond measure. The second time around, she invites me to teach the thing, which really can be shortened to “Pull the level.” I decline. The first class was large enough (a collection of a few classes) that we didn’t actually do anything with the ballot. The second time was small enough that we “voted”. the ballot in the machine is for some funky King County contest of a couple years past — and features a member of the “Socialist Workers Party”. I play along, and loudly and proudly vote for him… muttering about the Imperialist Jackals, and how it’s time for the Proletariat to rise up and throw their boots at the Bourgeoise Jackals. On second thought, I should have taught the thing… see, this way, I can veer off topic and also teach Voter Intimination — ordering everybody who comes up to the booth to vote for this Socialist Workers Party figure.
……………………

Come to think of it, I note that I’ve seen political figures do this civic-requirement “thing” with the youth of America on C-SPAN. Bernie Sanders came across particularly well, not talking down to the kids he was talking to. (As Matt Talibi’s book suggests, Dennis Kucinich was just as good, discussing Ghandi and such with the kiddies.) Other politicians come across as pareening yahoos when talking to teenagers… the “Future” and “Tomorrow”.

The local “alternative rock” station, 94.7 KNRK (sigh… an “Entercom Station”) has a feature at 5:00 where they play a selection of five songs suggested by a listener. About a week ago, I was listening in and getting a weird fuzzy feeling as I pondered the meaning of the song selection that was unfolding before my ears.

Song #1: Angry Johnny, by Poe. Lyrics sample:

Johnny, Angry Johnny, this is Jezebel in Hell
I wanna kill you, I wanna blow you…away
I can do it you gently
I can do it with an animal’s grace
I can do it with precision
I can do it with gormet taste
Chorus:
But either way
Either (way), either way
I wanna kill you
I wanna blow you…
Away
I can do it to your mind
I can do it to your face
I can do it with integrity
I can do it with disgrace

Okay. So far so good. Next song! It’s… Smashing Pumpkins with Disarm:

I used to be a little boy
So old in my shoes
And what I choose is my voice
What’s a boy supposed to do
The killer in me is the killer in you
My love – I send this smile over to you
The killer in me is the killer in you

Well… you can read into this “killer” whatever you may, but … it’s there. Okay… what’s the next song?

Why… It’s the Latest Single by the band “The Killers”!! (The song itself doesn’t really matter.) Okay. There’s a theme here. I imagine this to be the “Perfect Playlist” suggested by Kleebold and Harris or whomever before going on their shooting rampage as a little signal of what they’re planning. Or something to this effect. What are we supposed to hear next? Pearl Jam’s “Jermey”? Maybe I’ll get to hear Talking Heads’s “Psycho Killer”?

For what it’s worth, the next two songs are some depressed lullabye by Depeche Mode, and the Garbage song “When I Grow Up”. Shrug it off… scratch your head… turn the station… move on.

From the opening chapter of the 1965 book Night of Camp David, by Fletcher Knebel… the setting is the annual Presidential Gridiron dinner (which, in case you’re uncertain of what is, is most recently famous for Laura Bush making a horse-fucking joke and George Bush joking about those missing weapons of mass destruction)…

“I am delighted to be here this evening,” said President Hollenbach, “and hear the nation’s leading newspapermen tell the truth about me — for a change.” More laughter. “I was especially heartened to see my friends, the Republicans, laughing, … They don’t often succumb to attacks of good humor, you know. Of course, tonight, they never quite got around to laughing at themselves. For a Republican to laugh at himself requires a severe psychological upheaval. Still, tonight, they laughed at me — and that’s a start. After all, they have to begin somewhere. I have faith in this country, and I’m confident that someday, somewhere, somehow, a Republican is going to break out in a big, hearty guffaw, just for the fun of the thing.”

“Mr. President,” he said slowly, “I’m no civil liberties fanatic, but I do understand our basic freedoms. This thing of yours could be an awful weapon for evil in the wrong hands. Who knows what type of men may succeed you? And then, there are the political repercussions. A proposal like that could murder you this fall.”
…………………………………………….

I suppose the author, in 1965, was looking around the political landscape and seeing Nixon on the horizon. (Or, let’s face it, even looking deeply into the soul of Lyndon Johnson.) But it occurs to me just how quaint this reads. Here in Portland, some group or other has taken it upon themselves to plaster onto public pay phones “This Phone Might be tapped, by Regulation # bibbleybop diddley do of the Patriot Act”.

There is no Fourth Amendment to the Constitution, for all practical purposes. Don’t believe me — next time you’re pulled over and get asked by the police if they can search your car, say “No”, and see what happens. (There’s a circular firing squad in this equation, where the Supreme Court ruled long ago that an answer of “no” to such a question does indeed constituate that probable cause standard by which they may search you.)

Maybe I’m pushing it a little too far here, but maybe I’m not. There is this advertisement on the radio that has annoyed me for the past couple of years…

A 30-second national radio advertisement used the voice of a 20s male with music throughout: “All right, everybody knows “seat belts save lives,” I mean we’ve been hearing that for years – I’m just tellin’ ya your seat belt can save your money and a whole lot of hassle too. Because from coast to coast, cops are cracking down. They have this whole…campaign—“Click It or Ticket.” Pretty simple, you buckle up…or you pay up. Consider this a friendly warning, because cops won’t be giving warnings. Remember, Click It…or Ticket.

The line that chills me regarding this ad, and I’m not entirely sure the Police Association behind the advertisement even realize that they slipped this suggestion through: I’m just tellin’ ya your seat belt can save your money — What this suggests is that the DEFAULT POSITION has you giving money to the government, the police state, what have you… and you get a reprieve from this if you follow through the government’s orders / requests. Otherwise, how are you “saving money”?

Bill O’Reilly:

Stripping off her bathing-suit, she walked into the huge shower. She pulled the lime green curtain across the entrance and then set the water for a tepid 75-degrees. The spray felt great against her skin as she ducked her head underneath the nozzle. Closing her eyes she concentrated on the tingling sensation of water flowing against her body. Suddenly another sensation entered, Ashley felt two large hands wrap themselves around her breasts and hot breathe on the back of her neck. She opened her eyes wide and giggled, “I thought you drowned out there snorkel man.”

Tommy O’Malley was naked and at attention. “Drowning is not an option”, he said, “unless of course you beg me to perform unnatural acts – right here in this shower.

With Bill O’Reilly, we can compare and contrast his prose style with his phone sex style, thanks to that sexual harrassment suit that was tossed his way a couple years back. The sex life of Tommy O’Malley really does mirror the sexual fantasy life of Bill O’Reilly.

Anyway, from the gripping world of Tabloid Television to the political intrigue found in 1903 Japan… Lewis Libby wrote a novel.

He could feel her heart beneath his hands. He moved his hands slowly lower still and she arched her back to help him and her lower leg came against his. He held her breasts in his hands. Oddly, he thought, the lower one might be larger. . . . One of her breasts now hung loosely in his hand near his face and he knew not how best to touch her.

The breasts don’t properly match? Whose fetish is that?

At age ten the madam put the child in a cage with a bear trained to couple with young girls so the girls would be frigid and not fall in love with their patrons. They fed her through the bars and aroused the bear with a stick when it seemed to lose interest.

Life in rural Japan in 1903 must be pretty similar to the life that Neal Horsley lived growing on the farm in Georgia, as evidenced by:

He asked if they should fuck the deer.

As That New Yorker article tells us, the answer is “yes.”

We can put aside shower scenes and Japanese provincal bestiality and, thankfully Lynne Cheney contents herself with Frontier Lesbianism, which we all know about by now.

What does this all mean? I don’t have a clue.