Gran Torino

Tonight we saw Gran Torino.  Clint huffed and puffed is way through a standard, but somewhat sweet, potboiler.  His work is pedestrian, but certainly better than that of Ron Howard.  

I don't think there's been a really good movie in the last year.  The best movie in the last several years was Before the Devil Knows You're Dead.  Philip Seymour Hoffman was magnificent; Ethan Hawke played a sniveling rat better than anyone since Dustin Hoffman in Midnight Cowboy.  Excellent writing and direction, and a story that plumbed the depths of human behavior.  That's baby fatt's kind of movie.  

A new day

Finally, the stain from Texas has been removed from our national fabric.  Let America finally understand: Texans are mean, spiteful, arrogant, hateful people.  They get everything handed to them, and then imagine that they earned it all.  They understand  no one but themselves, and consider that to be your problem. 

God save this nation from Texans.  Of course, there is no God.  Oh well.  

The Bush Idiocy, Part Duh

George Bush is a war  criminal, and must be prosecuted and jailed.  He is an evil, dumb tyrant (think Kim Jong Il, but taller).  He and his idiot gang must be sent to prison for their many crimes against humanity.  

But of course this won't happen.  All those who worship at the altar of Law and Order (the Nixonian ideal, not the television series); all those who fancy themselves Christians (who tremble with delight when thinking of the torture of the many Muslims tortured in our name--Jesus was pro-vengeance, right?); all those who cry "liberty" and "freedom" while supporting Cheney's ideal of the "unitary executive"; all our our idiot nation will never allow for a full accounting of our crimes--our crimes because they were committed in our name and we don't even  care.  How ashamed one is to be called "American". 

Ill mannered boors

Went to the movies the other night to watch "Doubt" (it did not translate well to film, Philip Seymour Hoffman was impeccable as usual, Meryl Streep chewed the scenery).  During the entire film people all around me--respectable enough looking people, middle-aged and middle class--carried on numerous conversations.  Were they raised in a barn?  Have they no sense of propriety?  Of course they do not, they are proud members of the great mewling Herd that is Amerika, entitled narcissists who have no compunction about despoiling the environment, gorging themselves on sodium grease and sugar, waddling around in comfortable clothes (elastic), all the while making things generally unpleasant for the rest of the world.  

They have no choice but to verbalize every tiny thought that runs through their head, because they assume that the rest of us really care--and need to know--about what they think and feel.  Every shallow sentiment must be given voice, every brain fart translated into speech requiring acknowledgement of their eminent specialness.  

Meanwhile, baby fatt's plan continues apace: slowly saving money, gradually getting everything paid off (last quarter wasn't much assistance with regard to either), for the dream of emigrating, far away from here, far from these idiots who treat every public place as an extension of their sofa (once again, elastic).  Calgon, take me away. 

A nation of idiots (and prisoners)

We are a nation of idiots.  We have more of our population incarcerated that any other nation on earth, and yet we think that we live in freedom and democracy.  How stupid we all are, how utterly worthless.  

We have neither freedom nor democracy.  We live in a police state.  

Some idiot program on the history channel is based on the precept that Nostradamus and various other con artists (Mayan priests and such) predicted that the world will end on 2012. Well, we can only hope.  

Of course by "the world" they mean humans: the world that is shared human consciousness, whose house is language (Heidegger).  For the real world (i.e., nature) humans can't end our idiot race soon enough.  The only ones who will miss us will be those who most depend upon us: rats, pigeons, and cockroaches.  

 

annus horribilus

What a terrible, wicked year finally gone.  And yet one whose end was more imbued with hope than any other.  Perhaps the hoi polloi have had enough of Reaganism (the philosophy of the rich against everyone else, which everyone else willingly tolerates in exchange for the desperate, statistically nearly impossible, dream that they too may one day be rich, and be able to consume conspicuously in a level equivalent to some third world countries).  

Rage is not an emotion that portends a long and fruitful life.  But looking around at the idiocy that is our puerile, petty nation, how does one not become enraged? Baby fatt reads, smokes fine herb grown by friends, and travels, and loves everything in which is contained beauty.  And limits his rage to no more than about sixty minutes a day.