Month: May 2013

Earlier tonight on Youtube, I was watching one of those great antique performances from the classic English pop music show, Top of the Pops, which aired from 1964 through 2006.

The video, which I watched about 3,000 consecutive times, Germ Free Adolescents, was belted out lackadaisically by the now-deceased exotic crooness, Poly Styrene. The band, X-ray Spex, was a short-lived but memorable punk band that originated in 1976 London.

The song, as performed by Poly, is plaintive and wanting and smothered in alienated vulnerability. In other words, nothing you would find in today’s jaded and tattooed youth culture whose concept of metaphor extends only to automotive accessories. Kids and hipsters now must not only be wiser and wilier than their parent’s generation, they must display it ostentatiously in body art and “unprecedented” edginess. Back in the ’70s, things were different. Though we defied authority, we were not too proud to reveal our youthful weakness, and by extension, quirkiness.

A Youtube comment buried in the stack was interesting. It hit on a nerve regarding the sociological aspect of X-ray Spex’s archaic musical fashion.

That’s exactly it!

The modern hip-hop ghetto scene is just one big BLING garbage dump of White/Jew enabled cheap consumerist distraction that hypnotizes youth with the short-sighted appeal of a characterless existence. A void offset and diluted by the superficial realization that they are keeping up with the Jones’ despite their hollow sell-out souls. Black people are being used by the elites as bacterial cultures by which to spawn more diseased shallowness that calms the world down while the elites continue to run amok.

There is the story (perhaps true, likely not) of the blogger who became so convinced of the pervasive nature of BS in human society that he found he was unable to write. Not because he lost the ability or the urge, but because every time he had an idea or opinion he wished to expound on, he’d find himself sitting at the computer while sorting through his thoughts and slowly begin to retreat into a cerebral ping pong game of feuding ideas and the very post he planned on writing was sabatoged and neutralized by all the percolating BS he knew filled anything people touched. All motivation to write was ultimately neutered by the oppressive realization of the purely BS nature of his thoughts, and everyone else’s for that matter. He would invariably end up staring at a blank computer screen until he finally gave up and scooted over to The Onion, a great BS antidote.

BS.

This morning I had a work meeting which involved a lot of fluff and…BS.

I thought the meeting would be small so I didn’t dread it. However, when I walked into the conference room, it was packed with all sorts of people and everyone was talking and there was lots of BS filling the room. A real BS buzz. When you have that many people in a room, especially in a casual work environment, there is nothing but BS. People trying to impress and be pleasant and weirdly disconnectedly diplomatic but it’s all loquacious, utter BS. After the meeting began, the usual stream of unproductive BS began and I got bored. People bore me and their BS bores me silly. The seats were deep leather coffins that let you lean back pretty far and while the BS was mounting, I tested the range of the seat while slinking down as far as I could. A guy was talking, a chick, another guy, everyone just talking talking talking talking. BS. I leaned back really far! Those chairs have awesome range. I could see other feet around the outer rim of the table because I was leaning down so far, not quite upskirt low, but low nevertheless. BS, BS, profusely, BS. It is the lifeblood of human civilization. There is nothing but BS. It’s all BS. All of it!

Politicians. BS.
The news media. BS.
Churches. BS.
Political parties. BS.
Learned professionals. BS.
Bloggers. Definitely BS. Especially this one.

There is too much damn BS. It makes me disengage. I have no urge to participate in this idiot’s charade. I want to slither into my comfy leather chair and let the BS sail across the sky as it dots the rich blue sky with its moldy tan BS shade of decay.

There comes a time in a man’s life when the BS is so oppressive that it saps him of creativity and originality, but worst of all, humanity. He settles into the complacent BS lifestyle of a BS routine that is book-ended by BS left and BS right and any fantasy of escape is immediately extinguished by BS back and BS front. Buried by BS.

Buried up to our neck but we don’t care because we are too fond of BS as a culture. BS is the balm of humanity. BS is the Crisco of human interaction.

Everything is BS and it dies with us because our BS is manifestly disregarded by ensuing generations. Everyone’s BS is better than previous legacies of BS. This we tell ourselves. We know this! We happily disregard and shun the BS that we are heirs to. We reinvent BS and proudly call it wonderfully new, for it is our own, and no one else had a hand in it.

BS dies fruitlessly with each generation and this is why we have laws. Laws are man’s feeble attempt at cementing his BS in parchments of legal tender that must last through all time. Mankind realizes that BS is short-lived, so he codifies it in order to make his BS…eternal.

You realize this, right?

A storm is brewing. All the perfect ingredients are culminating.

Common interests are intersecting. All interests are ultimately commercial and materialist. Some bullshit quasi-governmental group called the “IP commission” has suggested (to the US government, of course) that content owners (garbage purveyors) be allowed to upload software to computers it deems to be illegally involved in posting, viewing or downloading its precious content.

There is an auspicious confluence of needy and sinister forces.

The US government’s need to watch and control as empowered by repeated “attacks” on its sovereignty (commercial interests).

And private industry’s reliance on the government to strengthen its capitalist mainframe, ie, commercial exclusivity. Or we like to call it, a monopoly.

The internet was once a vast, unencumbered wildscape without allegiance.

But like all things worth a damn, it outlived its triviality.

Music and cinema, so wrapped in their own egotistical bullshit, couldn’t see past their own hook-nosed perspective. They woke up and discovered there was this thing called “cyberspace” which acted as the medium they always assumed was their own birthright.

So complacent did they become that they never foresaw this would be questioned. And when it was, they resorted to their old trickery: lawyers and government.

And thus, Big Brother (government) was enlisted. Big Brother saw a way that collusion could work, at long last. Under the pretense of regulation. They could call it “defending artist’s rights” (which is really a bullshit misnomer). It was just a cloak and dagger illusion that allowed them to step up the intrusion into our living rooms, courtesy of the digital age. It is the ultimate form of plausible deniability on the part of the movie industry and government. We are “watching out for the other” but we take no responsibility for the totalitarian tactics required to achieve this end.

It’s not like we didn’t know this was coming.

I’ve written about it here before.

Totalitarianism does not happen overnight. It lurches forward in fits of incremental reaction and assaults. They throw out an outrageous suggestion. We proudly fight it off. We make a big deal that we defeated the “XXXXXXX” action or whatever you want to call it. But when the dust settles, the electronic oligarchs merely step back slightly. It’s the oldest psychological ploy in the book. They come back with a re-branded and softened version of their campaign and we are so spent from the previous “victory” that no one pays attention.

They know that artists live on emotion, not on sustained reason.

So they toy with our sense of vigilance.

The movie industry spits out global garbage that feeds off a concomitant diminishing global lack of keenness. I work in the Industry and there is one particular studio that is at the forefront of this censorious movement. It is a studio that produces garbage, but this is redeemed by profit and box office receipts. It doesn’t matter what you believe; only what you can pay.

The internet ultimately empowers the capitalist, utilitarian aim.

Our only only hope is the deep web.

The dark web.

Human excellence is only realized through the local community. Eschew the internet. The internet has become one big shitty WalMart.

Go underground.

Human language is ill-suited to uncovering the deepest mysteries of nature. Because language is merely our “interface” with perceived reality. It is limited to our mortal grasp and limitations of our inconsequential biological existence. Language is emblematic of our intellectual inability to behold and explain the universe in terms larger than our brains allow us to extend.

Yesterday I was watching one of those science shows dealing with physics and cosmology. It was narrated by the esteemed Morgan Freeman. No one seems to dislike him. I dislike his movies, but how can one not like the genteel old black dude? He exudes respect and dignity. Well, he was narrating this episode about our conceptions of the universe before the Big Bang. Naturally, in any discussion of that wickedly incomprehensible period before the Big Bang, the Big Bang becomes the main player and it takes center stage in all ensuing theories. All discussion about time predating the Big Bang inevitably involves physicists engaging in serious cosmological mind-games and excavation. Listening to this, one realizes that there are some seriously high-level mathematics at play, and a world of obscure and endless calculations and equations rules the dialogue, but ultimately, they describe what? It used to be philosophers had much to say about the universe and its origins but that role has been usurped by physicists because they have molded the discussion into one purely dictated by the counter-intuitive tools of physics and math, which of course are important, but once again, language, verbal and mathematical, is lacking in power. Language is an outgrowth of our mortally-limited concept of the universe.

Can an ant understand the concept of the color red? Can a dog understand the concept of human loyalty?

The physicists described “M theory” and branes as they conjured every sort of esoteric deviation in order to mold a mathematical model that would bolster their hypothesis that perhaps string theory afforded us dimensions beyond the familiar 4 we know, and hence, that an alternate universe might coexist just millimeters from our own and that perhaps every trillion years, one dimension, delineated by a thin membrane, which had spent the past trillion years ebbing and flowing toward the other membrane (ostensibly, our dimension or brane) would come in contact with the other and result in a “singularity” that would result in a “Big Bang.” The M theory school hypothesizes that rather than considering the Big Bang as the sole event that precipitated the creation of our universe, we should recast it as just one in an endless series of Big Bangs that occur when the branes come in contact.

It occurred to me that some very intelligent physicists are fearlessly adept at creating obscure theoretical and absurdly incomprehensible self-enclosed schools of thought that can ultimately be whittled down to a ridiculously simple notion, such as pairs of branes approaching each other. It’s intriguing, but I wonder if much of the physics community, in the midst of trying to “figure” out the origin of the universe, has undertaken an overly ambitious journey that can only lead back to where it began.

Perhaps the concept of “origins of the universe” is indelibly hidden from our humanly comprehension, just as the ant can’t understand the root cause of the color red. Perhaps the twists and folds that separate the “truth of the universe” are so extensive and confounding as to be incomprehensible to our puny existence.

Which would explain why, when listening to physicists conjure theories of Big Bangs and levitating dimensional branes, one must wonder just how much of the bullseye presages their theories. It’s as if we know what the bullseye is, but scientists shape knowledge around the abstract depictions that they are masters at cloaking over the bullseye with science, but ultimately, the bullseye is not budging.

Do we really know anything?

Edit, 6/2:
I just discovered a piece that appeared in The Guardian entitled Philosophy isn’t dead yet. It echoes some of what I wrote here, on the same day (more or less). I was not aware of this article at all! The timing is strangely synchronous.

The latest video example of aggressive policing now comes from Sacramento.

These have become old news and kinda tiresome, really. Sadly. Exposure breeds complacency.

We are just piñatas designed for police amusement. The poorer and less societal influence you have, the larger your piñata target grows, and the slower the rope puller becomes. You are a fish in a barrel. We are here for police amusement. This is important to realize.

The identities of the suspect, officers, and camera witness in this video are unknown. The incident is too fresh. All pertinent info is embryonic.

What we do know is that a crazy scary black dude began to act up, and for most civilized people, this signals danger. I will give them that. The woman who worked in the metro PCS was legitimately frightened. Civilians are not accustomed to dealing with crazed black dudes, so the first thing we all do is call the cops because they will protect us.

And then some.

In many cases, we are calling them to a piñata party.

A Little League game.
Let the girl bat!

The “reporting party” from the metro PCS store on Folsom Boulevard initially called the police because the black man was acting overly savage. And there came Sacramento PD to the rescue. They found the savage lurking around the store and details are very sketchy at this point. He apparently tried to barricade himself in the store, a genius move. Anytime you make police enter by force, they are already pissed and impaired. That’s lesson #1 to all you boys and girls. Something mysterious transpired between their “97” (arrival on scene) and this flatulent beating of the prone suspect while throngs of cops (ostensibly) looked on while the suspect appeared to flail harmlessly.

A man taken into custody by the Sacramento Police Department has died, according to the police department.
Video obtained by CBS13 of the arrest on the 8300 block of Folsom Boulevard shows a suspect being restrained by a male officer’s legs, while a female officer strikes him 10 times with a baton.
According a statement from Sacramento Police Department, a man in his early 40s entered the Metro PCS store and made unintelligible statements to a female employee. She called 911 fearing for her safety. The man left the store, but went back in when officers arrived and attempted to barricade himself inside by trying to secure the front door.
Officers say they forced the door open and when they tried to contact the man.
That’s where police say the violent struggle began. Officers then called for backup when one of the officers was physically overpowered.
According to the police press release, pepper spray and multiple baton strikes were used to free an officer that was in the suspect’s grasp. In addition, the release notes bystanders kicking the suspect, a security guard also using a baton on the suspect.
The suspect was eventually restrained and brought into custody after backup officers and a nearby off-duty Sacramento County District Attorney investigator arrived. After the subject was in custody, officers noted he wasn’t breathing.
The suspect was taken to a nearby hospital, where he later died. A police officer and the investigator were also taken to the hospital for medical treatment.
Sacramento Police disclosed the death via Twitter.

It’s almost as if the suspect’s death is not the key here. He appears to be whacked. Of course the cops had their hands full. But this video also clearly shows that the sense of urgency on the part of the police was “recreational” at best. More are watching than subduing. The “commander” type standing on sidewalk appears to look at everything but the arrest. An officer rests on the subject’s back which appears sufficient to keep the suspect from continuing with his rampage. Seems like the situation is under control, more or less. One of the other cops in the yellow shirt, or whatever he is, leans in and applies the finishing restraints.

Oh, but in between this, they stand by and let the female officer have 3 (edit: accounts now say she hit the suspect 10 times) good whacks. Those were superfluous and had no effect. They were window dressing. The 2 male cops could have restrained the guy before she went on her little Barbie retribution. No, they waited.

Let her go at it.

Let the girl bat!

If the coroner’s report tells us the suspect died from an embolism or heart attack, I think we can safely blame the police for allowing this redundant beating. If drugs were in his system, the law wins.