teleskiguy's musings

[teleskiguy]

FZ tells the story of King Kong

The gorilla is on an island, eats bananas and has a good time all day long. He plays out there in the bushes. Some Americans find out about the gorilla and they hear how BIG he is - you know. They're very impressed with the size of the beast. So they catch the gorilla & they stick him in a boat & bring him back to the US. They show him off to everybody & make a bunch of money. ...Then they kill him ! -- Frank Zappa -- The song King Kong.1968 tour Wisconsin.

[teleskiguy]

Frank Says:

In every language, the first word after "Mama!" that every kid learns to say is "Mine!" A system that doesn't allow ownership, that doesn't allow you to say "Mine!" when you grow up, has -- to put it mildly -- a fatal design flaw. From the time Mr. Developing Nation was forced to read "The Little Red Book" in exchange for a blob of rice, till the time he figured out that waiting in line for a loaf of pumpernickel was boring as f*ck, took about three generations. ... Decades of indoctrination, manipulation, censorship and KGB excursions haven't altered this fact: People want a piece of their own little Something-or-Other, and, if they don't get it, have a tendency to initiate counterrevolution. --Frank Zappa

[teleskiguy]

The Middle East will always be fucked.

This is the best thing I've read about "The Holy Land" in some time, written on Jim Wright's Facebook page, which can be found here: http://www.facebook.com/Stonekettle

Question from a reader: "...I couldn't find anything about the Israel-Palestine conflict on your wall. Was it because you didn't get the news about what is happening there or you just didn't give a damn on what's happening in the far middle east?" It's mostly the latter.  And what would you like me to say? Oh hey, look at that, Israelis and Palestinians are busy slaughtering each other again. Totally didn't see that coming, right? I guess we Americans better fire up the Jesus cannon. Bah. I wish they'd knock it off so that my gas prices would go back down, but honestly I stopped giving a shit about these assholes and their idiotic war years ago.  The Israeli-Palestinian conflict has been going on my entire life. My entire life. There's NEVER been a week in my entire life that these stupid people haven't been in the news killing each other. They've been killing each other for as long as I can remember - and a hell of a lot longer than that. Jehovah gave the land to the Jews. Jesus gave it to the Christians. Allah gave it to the Arabs. Everybody's God is buried there or has some ancient wrecked temple there or one of their various Holy Joes did a rain-dance and spoke some mumbo jumbo there or consecrated a shiny rock or a magic shrub or had some divine life changing experience there. Both sides are guilty of atrocities. Both sides are right. Both sides are wrong. Israelis kill Palestinian kids. Palestinians kill Israeli kids. The Israelis started it. The Palestinians started it. The Jews are the victims. The Muslims are the victims. It's all the Israeli's fault. It's all the Palestinians fault. On and on, round and round, eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, life for a life and the fuck all I care at this point.  America has this idiotic naive idea that we're somehow going to broker some kind of something something magic peace complete with flying bunnies and rainbows. We've got a road map and everything. Every couple of years we even get them to stop killing each other for maybe five minutes and Americans all grin at each other and say, see? THIS time it'll be different and while we're handing out the cigars and the peace medals, Hamas lobs a rocket into a Kibbutz daycare center or a bunch of radical Zionists dust off their Mogen Davids and fire up their bulldozers and they're all back to killing each other before the ink is dry on the peace accord. These people and their bullshit are the fundamental cause behind 90% of the problems in the Middle East, damned near everything ultimately traces back to this conflict and our constant meddling in it.  Meanwhile half of America wrings its hand in woe, wishing for peace and crying about all the little children while the other half of America thinks it's a dandy idea and they just can't wait for the final war to begin so that 90 Foot Tall Angry Bearded Robot Laser Jesus will return in fiery End Times to slaughter all the people THEY hate like it says in THEIR holy book.  I've been there. I've spent a significant chunk of my life in the Middle East. Let me clue you in: NEITHER side is interested in peace. They don't want to live together, none of them, and they don't pretend anything else - it's all the rest of us who suffer that delusion. These people, Israelis and Palestinians, won't have peace until one side or the other, or both, are all dead dead dead.  Frankly I've long since lost patience with these assholes and I don't give a shit about either side. This eye for an eye bullshit just leaves everybody blind. As long as there is even one of each left, they'll keep right on killing each other. So, the sooner they get it done, the better.  Hope that answers your question.

Now, I don't want everyone to kill each other. But the killing has been going on for millenia. Christopher Hitchens was abosolutely right. Religion poisons everything.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k5Pi7BVGy_8

[teleskiguy]

freetoken from LGF says...

I read a blog daily, it's called Little Green Footballs and you can read it here: http://littlegreenfootballs.com Here's a comment by LGF reader freetoken that is logical, lucid, and frightening all at the same time.

Dwelling once more on what is called the “Late Bronze Age Crisis”, it occurs to me that these large scale, large regional changes in civilization simply can’t be avoided.

H. sapiens, no matter how much smarter than other species, is still just part of the global web of food producers and consumers, the continual machine of carbon-hydrogen bonding then releasing, ultimately all powered by the nuclear fusion of our local star but more proximately derived from the surface chemistry of this planet.

Human organizations demonstrate non-linear characteristics. Instability of the social hierarchy at any time ought to be accepted.

When I see reactionaries and atavists elected, not just in the US but worldwide, or political changes at the hands of the power-centers (e.g., recently in Thailand), I now chalk it up to our discomfort with the changes our own inventions have wrought way too quickly for many of us to truly understand, or at least understand well enough that we are not afraid of them.

The likes of Duck Dynasty stars are a world apart from, as an example, a post-doc in Boston studying genetic medicine diagnostic tools. It’s not that the Robertson clan are inherently stupid, but their culture does not value the real discoveries of the past 100 years. At least, beyond exploiting telecommunications to make a lot of money.

I fully accept that many may see me as a doomer, but I do believe that we are unlikely to see hardly any of the advances fancifully envisioned in some of our iconic science-fiction creations. And I don’t mean gadgets only, but also the positive social changes often (but not always) portrayed as arising from those inventions.

The rise of atavism as a political movement isn’t going to go away, I think. It did not start at any given point, though the election of Obama did bring many backwards thinkers out of the closet.

I do not ascribe to the doom-NOW! approaches - I can accept that even if I live many more years (and many of my ancestors and relatives have lived to ripe old ages) “things” won’t change that much, just incrementally, with a few spurts here and there.

When I read about my ancestors from say 300 years ago, I think they would have had a hard time guessing what life would be like in 2014. I’m not talking about gadgets - too many people get hung up today about technology, treating “technology” as latter day magic - but rather about social changes.

Societies do change.

Entire civilizations grow, grow old, and wither away, either disappearing for their remnants morph into something else.

[teleskiguy]

I Saw A UFO Tonight

Please, dear readers, know that what I say in this post is true. Tonight, I saw a UFO. That's all I can muster to describe what I saw in the night sky about 10 minutes ago. I was looking up and a saw a couple of jetliners passing overhead, their unmistakable red tint and steady light flashes from their wings. Then I saw something else. It was a dim light moving across the sky, about the same speed you would imagine a jetliner passing across the sky. But this light didn't have the telltale signs of a jetliner. It looked like any other star in the sky, except it was moving across the sky. I live in Gypsum, CO. I was looking in the south-southeast part of the sky. And I watched this thing that looked like any other star move across the sky for about a minute or two. Then it completely disappeared. I said to myself after I saw it at least 6 or 7 times "That was the weirdest thing I've ever seen in my life." I can't explain it. I honestly don't know what I saw. UPDATE: Kelly Carlin tells me via Twitter that it might have been a satellite. I think she may be right. Although I've seen satellites and even the International Space Station pass across the night sky, and they didn't just disappear into the ether of the cosmos straight above my head. They floated along until they disappeared on the horizon of the sky, not right above your head. All in all, I've never seen what I saw tonight before in my life, and I wonder... https://twitter.com/kelly_carlin/status/471508412002357249

[teleskiguy]

When I heard the Learn'd Astronomer, by Walt Whitman

WHEN I heard the learn’d astronomer; When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me; When I was shown the charts and the diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them; When I, sitting, heard the astronomer, where he lectured with much applause in the lecture-room, How soon, unaccountable, I became tired and sick; Till rising and gliding out, I wander’d off by myself, In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time, Look’d up in perfect silence at the stars.

-from Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman

[teleskiguy]

Shakespeare was born 450 years ago today.

23 April 2014 I read this in Frank Zappa's autobiography yesterday. It's the preface to the chapter entitled "Porn Wars" in which Zappa details his thorough anti-censorship campaign. He quotes Shakespeare:

"The man that hath no music in himself, Nor is not mov'd with concord of sweet sounds, Is fit for treasons, stratagems, and spoils; The motions of his spirit are dull as night, And his affections dark as Erebus: Let no such man be trusted. Mark the music." -"The Merchant of Venice" Act V, Scene i

Mark the music. I'm happy to share that quote by Shakespeare on his birthday, care of Frank Zappa. Cheers!

[teleskiguy]

Great quote from Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson

"Now you speak about the politicization of science, and yes that happens. People somehow feel they can cherry pick emergent scientific truths to resonate with their philosophies and reject those that don't. My issue here is that I am not going to debate these people, or argue with them in a venue. I'm going to, instead, offer the public this product called "Cosmos" that alerts you how science works, and what it means to express a scientific truth. I claim that all those who think they can cherry pick science simply don't understand how science works." -Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson, host of the reboot of the TV show "Cosmos" Very well said. Science awareness is paramount for today's humans. Too bad there's still fierce push-back from the hyper-religious.

[teleskiguy]

Frank says...

I was writing all kinds of positive and negative canons and weird inverted this and retrograde that and getting as spaced-out mathematically as I could and I was going "Wait a minute (laughs), who cares about that stuff?" I had always liked rhythm and blues so here I was stuck between the slide rule and the gut bucket somewhere and I decided that I would opt for a third road someplace in between. Frank Zappa -- From an 1972 interview to Martin Perlich. On giving up writing serial music. Many thanks to Charles Johnson in Los Angeles with his ever-changing "Frank says" blurb on the lower right hand side of his website http://littlegreenfootballs.com Check the site out. I've been reading him for 10 years and its always been interesting.

[teleskiguy]

Joe McGinniss, RIP

This is the opening quote to a book called "Blind Faith" by Joe McGinniss, who died today at age 71:

There is no steady unretracing progress in this life; we do not advance through fixed gradations, and at the last one pause: through infancy's unconscious spell, boyhoods's thoughtless faith, adolescence's doubt (the common doom), then skepticism, then disbelief, resting at last in manhood's pondering repose of If. But once gone through, we trace the round again; and are infants, boys, and men, and Ifs eternally. Where lies the final harbor, whence we unmoor no more?

-HERMAN MELVILLE, Moby-Dick

This is a beautiful piece of writing.

What's beyond it is a true crime book by McGinniss, which one of his true crime books was excoriated as slander by some. Dude settled out of court in a lawsuit against him for over $300 grand because of a true crime book he wrote.

Dude had some balls though. Hell, he did move in right next door to Sarah Palin to write a book about her. I read "The Rogue" and I thought it fascinating. It was his last book, and it explored a theme he always was fascinated with, the public personae versus the private reality of people.

Rest in Peace, Joe.

[teleskiguy]

Why Psychedelics are Illegal

Psychedelics are illegal not because a loving government is concerned that you may jump out of a third story window. Psychedelics are illegal because they dissolve opinion structures and culturally laid down models of behaviour and information processing. They open you up to the possibility that everything you know is wrong. -Terrence McKenna (1946-2000), noted psychonaut and truth-teller.

[teleskiguy]

Frank says:

"Drop out of school before your mind rots from exposure to our mundane educational system. Forget about the Senior Prom and go to the library and *educate yourself* if you've got any guts. Some of you like *pep rallies* and plastic robots who tell you what to read. Forget I mentioned it. *This song has no message.* Rise for the flag salute."

-- Frank Zappa, writing in the liner notes for a song called "Hungry Freaks, Daddy" on "Freak Out", his first commercial album.

[teleskiguy]

Email to my Congressman

The following is an email I sent to Hon. Scott Tipton (R - Cortez), Representative in Congress for the Third Congressional District of Colorado, my congressman:

subject: Vote for clean CR!

Message Text: As a natural-born and nearly life-long resident of Colorado's 3rd district, I am rather ashamed of my congressman in Washington. I understand you are voting against funding the government unless the Affordable Care Act is stripped of its funding or repealed. You must have a tenuous grasp of the Constitution if you take such a position. The law was passed by a previous congress lawfully, its legality was challenged and upheld by the Supreme Court and then Mr. Obama was re-elected president. The only feasible way to rid of this law you hate so much is for your party to win back the senate in 2014 and then the presidency in 2016. When that happens, you guys can repeal the ACA, Depts. of Education, Energy, the EPA, whatever the hell else you guys want to do to - in the words of Grover Norquist - get government so small you could drown it in a bathtub. Elections matter, sir, and your party has lost a lot of them in recent years. I write to you as a constituent who has dear friends who have been furloughed. These friends need their paychecks for rent, food, student loans, finishing graduate school, child care, you name it. And our members in the House of Representatives are playing asinine political games to suit their ends. I blame this shut down solely on the apoplectic Republican Party. Many Republican representatives were elected in 2010 explicitly promising to shut down the government. Now that it's come to pass, those same representatives are blaming the Democratic Party for the shut down! The chutzpah of these representatives, I admit, is something to be admired. But that's where my admiration ends. I could go on and on with my disgust for house Republicans, suffice to say that those Republican representatives don't represent me or my views. And neither do you, sir. I am not voting for you in the next election. But you could do my struggling furloughed friends a solid and pass a clean CR ASAP to get these people back to work. By the way, I know that you believe deep down in your soul that the ACA is one of the worst laws ever and is destined to fail. Well, if it's destined to fail, let it fail and let the Democratic Party pay electorally in the next elections. Respectfully, Charlie Vogel (Twitter handle: @teleskiguy)

A few of my dear friends have been furloughed until the government is funded by Congress. Laid off. I know people drawing disability from Veterans Affairs, their payments will be delayed as long as this bullshit in our federal government continues.

[teleskiguy]

A thought to add to the whole Syria bullshit

One is astonished in the study of history at the recurrence of the idea that evil must be forgotten, distorted, skimmed over. We must not remember that Daniel Webster got drunk but only that he was a splendid constitutional lawyer. We must forget that George Washington was a slave owner . . . and simply remember the things we regard as creditable and inspiring. The difficulty, of course, with this philosophy is that history loses its value as an incentive and example; it paints perfect man and noble nations, but it does not tell the truth. -W.E.B. Du Bois

Our government is currently making decisions to kill folks on a scale that you and I don't want to imagine, no matter how small the government says the strike will be (and it'll be "surgical" according to the government). Remember when George Bush sent troops to Iraq in 2003? Yeah, that worked out good, eh?

[teleskiguy]

A comment on Black Sheep

This cracked.com article has a weird comment about the "War on Terror" and its relationship to the people who actually started it. Anita Serwacki writes about Osama bin Laden:

There was all manner of controversy when it came to light that members of the bin Laden family were hastily flown out of the United States several days after 9/11. Conspiracy! Inside job! Michael Moore is fat!

Granted, it certainly didn't look good, particularly considering that planes weren't supposed to be in U.S. airspace at all. But imagine for a moment if members of Walmart's Walton family were stuck in Saudi Arabia after one of their spawn grew himself a ZZ Top beard, assembled a personal army, and started murdering thousands. Someone would have been hauling their fabulously wealthy butts out of that country with a quickness.

Saudi Binladin Group is the largest construction company on the planet, with an annual revenue of $30 billion. To put that into perspective, Nike made $24 billion last year. To put it into even more perspective, holy shit.

It's not just about revenue; the Saudi Binladin Group must have some serious brand loyalty if they haven't bothered to scrub their name and logo by now. In a twist of horrible but lucrative irony, the company is currently erecting the tallest building in the world -- Saudi Arabia's Kingdom Tower, which is supposed to cost a cool $1.23 billion. It will likely go over budget into numbers that don't exist because they're so high that the Binladin Group still needs to build them.

Osama, who had already been disowned by the early 1990s, had 53 brothers and sisters. And with all the cousins and "special uncles" thrown in, it's really more like a tribe than a family. That's not to say they're all squeaky clean, but it looks like they are far more interested in making a buck than making threatening videotapes in caves.

As reviled as the name "bin Laden" has become, it's difficult to remember that it is attached to a sprawling bunch of people, many of them insanely rich and of great privilege, who, like their American counterparts, happened to have a black sheep in their midst. Except that particular black sheep didn't just embarrass them, but happened to provoke the War on Terror.

Right? People are fucked up. Families are fucked up. Some of both are very lucky, some have hell for lives. I shudder at the thought...we're a virus with shoes.

[teleskiguy]

People don't talk like this anymore.

I found this passage by noted skeptic and agnostic Robert G. Ingersoll, who was a Civil War Veteran (he was 29 when the Battle of Gettysburg took place, 150 years ago) who met his end in 1899. He made a living speaking in front of large crowds, he was an orator. And here he is speaking about Abraham Lincoln's background:

Lincoln was educated in the University of Nature - educated by cloud and star - by field and winding stream - by billowed plains and solemn forests - by morning's birth and death of day - by storm and night - by the ever eager Spring - by Summer's wealth of leaf and vine and flower - the sad and transient glories of the Autumn woods - and Winter, builder of home and fireside, and whose storms without, create the social warmth within.

Hell of a description of Lincoln's education. People don't talk like this anymore. Why? Do we have a deficit of good leaders that require beautiful descriptions by orators? Yes. We do. Fuck, where are the orators? Do those kinds of people even exist anymore?

[teleskiguy]

A few words about The American Civil War.

There was a time in the United States when collapse of order amongst humans was a very real thing. We're talking dead bodies piled up everywhere. It happened 150 years ago. The documents that made the nation - our godless Constitution - was only 76 years old when the Battle of Gettysburg took place, where probably 50,000 men lost their lives in three days time. The Civil War was fought because of slavery. A score had to be settled with humankind in that part of the world in 1863. Slavery was perfectly legal for those entire 76 years prior to Gettysburg in the Commonwealth of Virginia, and well beyond that. Look at it this way, what you know as the US state of Virginia was founded in 1607 and slavery was outlawed there in 1863. 256 years slavery was legal in Virginia. The United States has been a nation for 225 years. Why did the United States government outlaw slavery in 1863? Because the fucking mouth of hell opened up all around the country in very real ways. Humankind changed their minds about slavery in Virginia after The American Civil War, and everybody that lives in the United States is better off.