In the meantime, here are the most recent things I’ve recorded.

This is a Journal (Carry Rooms) by Ash Tree

I Walk the Line by Ash Tree

He was then put in the UCLA psych ward for teens where I visited him.  This made him worse, I think – they pumped him so full of drugs, up and down, that he kind of became his diagnosis, and pretty much lost whatever thread of him I’d known before.  Until that time, he seemed to be kind of terminally bored and rebellious – not disordered, but consciously flouting convention.  The ward brought the true crazy out of him.  When he was let out, he put a pile of dead leaves in front of a woman’s door at a neighboring apartment building.  He was sent to juvy.  He called me to help break him out.  Last time I talked to him, he talked unintelligibly about “putting pain into things.”  Then I heard his dog loudly whimpering and I hung up.

Through it all, he never struck me as truly crazy, at least not until that last moment.  He was doing as much as he could get away with – it was just more fun to act crazy.  And then that behavior became second nature.  This may seem crazy in itself, but it also seemed like he made an objective decision to be crazy, it wasn’t something that was thrust upon him.  Eventually, though, that objectivity became passivity and his crazy persona became his whole person.

I haven’t seen him in twenty years.  I’ve checked Google to see if he’s ever done something really terrible since then, and nothing comes up.  According to Google, he doesn’t exist.  I don’t think he gives me any great insight into Jared Loughner, who is truly involuntarily insane.  But maybe with him it started in a similar way – with plain boredom and alienation.  Maybe insanity became a habit, and it was more of a companion than his life.

Nucleomitophobia . . . is an exaggerated fear of being blown to bits by nuclear weapons. Bertie Rupp has it, and it’s driving him crazy. He’s tried meditation, yoga, vegetarianism, and The Society for the Preservation of Mankind. Nothing works, until he hears about “The American Book of the Dead”, a Zen guide to surviving the nuclear holocaust. Convinced that he must find The Book and learn its secrets if the human race is to endure, Bertie sets out on a desperate search that will take him to Las Vegas and back . . . and involve him in the lives of an ex-nun from Kansas who truly loves him, an old tailor who survived the Nazi holocaust, and a mysterious representative from The Society for the Preservation of Outer Space. It is an odyssey that will lead him through the darkness of impending nuclear war and beyond. . . to Enlightenment.

Never heard of it or read it, but now want to.

The artist.

The American Book of the Dead: poems by Jim Barnes

The Atlantic’s Andrew Sullivan wrote Wednesday morning that Williams’ statement about fearing Muslims on planes is an example of bigotry. “What if someone said that they saw a black man walking down the street in classic thug get-up,” Sullivan wrote. “Would a white person be a bigot [if] he assumed he was going to mug him?’

I read Andrew Sullivan frequently, but disagreed with this one.  This is why: would a white person be a bigot for fearing someone dressed like a gang member?  Absolutely not – and in fact this would be a way worse offense than wearing Muslim clothing, as gangs are more or less violent groups.  But that’s not racial profiling.  Racial profiling is fearing you’re going to be mugged merely if a person has black skin. Even if you downgrade it to “thug get-up” it’s not bigoted to fear a “thug.” It’s bigoted to fear a black person.

And you can make a similar argument about Muslim clothing. There is an inherent fanaticism built into having a book dictate what clothes you wear. You can consider me a religious bigot, but this is concerning whatever the religion.  About homosexuality, for one, someone wearing orthodox clothing is more likely to discriminate – as he bases his life on Biblical law.  It’s bigoted to think that anyone dressed like a Muslim is automatically going to be violent, but at the same time, someone dressed in a religious outfit lets religion dictate his or her life.  And if that’s the case, they’re one step closer to fundamentalism than someone who practices a religion, but does not advertise its religious symbols.  Again: bigotry is thinking that all Muslims are terrorists. Orthodox religion has shown itself to be more dangerously fanatical than moderate religion, so this sort of profiling is not totally off base.

If I’m walking down the street at 3am and see a black guy walking alone, I’ll tense up a little bit.  For that matter, if I see a white guy at 3am I’ll tense up.  Point is, in certain situations, it’s not raging bigotry to be a little more guarded.  And post 9-11 on an airplane, this is one of those situations.  Unfortunately, within the context of Fox News, Williams’ statement comes after round after round of bigoted statements. But in the context of the country, this is probably something a lot of people have felt on an airplane and it doesn’t make them the same caliber of racist as people who opposed the moderate Islamic center at Ground zero.  The difference is the protesters don’t want Islam to exist at all – but an airplane is specifically the vehicle for a lot of Islamist terrorism. If I was at an abortion clinic and a woman came in wearing a cross and an Israeli flag t-shirt, I’d wonder as well – it doesn’t make me think all Christians are terrorists.

All that said, a Muslim terrorist who goes to an airport dressed in full Muslim regalia is probably not someone to be feared.

While I’m busy sounding like a conservative, here’s another story from the mainstream that I found fucking nuts.  I’ve never seen the show “Glee” and never will but the fact that these actresses are of age is totally irrelevant. It would even be fine if they were posing in some other environment – but they’re posing as high school students. It’s a shame that the Christian group called this “pedophilia” because it’s not, but it’s dubious. Not just because it’s sexualizing teenagers, but if you’re a successful actress, the next step in increasing your fame is to take off your clothes.  I’m not one to think this is a great liberation of female sexuality.  Why?  Because they’re famous and successful and all this does is glorify stupid nudity for all those people who will never be famous.  Nudity is beautiful. Obviously. But when you throw money at it like in this expensive photo shoot, all it’s doing is trumping up the importance of dumb superficiality and fame worship, not female empowerment. Porn advocates seem to forget this, living by the mantra, “Sex is healthy!”  It is, but it’s less important than the thing that makes humans unique: reading and writing.  Oversexualizing teenagers in a men’s magazine only reinforces the idea that skin is more important than the mind.

Update: One of the actresses apologizes:

In perpetuating the type of images that evoke these kind of emotions, I am sorry. If you are hurt or these photos make you uncomfortable, it was never our intention. And if your eight-year-old has a copy of our GQ cover in hand, again I am sorry. But I would have to ask, how on earth did it get there?

Yeah, this isn’t the point. I’m not worried about my 8-year-old daughter seeing these pictures. I’m worried about her seeing them when she’s 14 or 15 and thinking this is the best way to get people’s attention. That this actress has no idea about the impact this has on teenagers shows the general thoughtlessness that goes into this kind of thing.

It’s not conservative to think that there should be some boundaries on sexuality/drug use/etc. for teenagers who have a harder time setting their own boundaries.  Already I have to drive around town with Hustler Casino billboards calling out to my daughter. Who thinks this teaches her a healthy attitude about a woman’s role in society?  Anyone?  Sex is great, drugs are great – but they’re both easily abused.

Unlike most other shows on television, in almost every episode Louie deals with a deep moral quandary — whether it’s ever OK to use the word faggot, for instance — which is addressed from a fundamentally liberal point of view. In the first episode, Louis responds to a bus malfunction on a school field trip he is chaperoning by sending every kid home in a limousine. In the stand-up section that follows, he says, “There are people who are starving in the world, and I’m driving an Infiniti.” In the third episode, a fellow comedian complains that white people don’t stand a chance in the age of Obama, and Louis asks, “What is 10,000 years of unchecked prosperity? That’s not enough for you?”

For some reason, Louis CK speaks deeper to me than comics like Bill Hicks or Doug Stanhope, who can say some incisive things – maybe because of the fact that CK’s not overtly political.  So much of his emphasis is personal, about just the struggle to be alive, which is as political as anything without needing to call out “the system.”  That said, the thing that went the most viral is “Everything’s Amazing, and Nobody’s Happy” which is pretty political at its core, so this kind of fuels his comedy, even when he’s not talking about it directly.

BTW, the “Louie” show is now streaming on Netflix, so watch it. The whole thing is better than any novel I’ve read in years.

White Noise was published in 1984 and won the American Book Award in the same year. Its early working title, The American Book of the Dead, highlights the centrality of death in the narrative and the prominence of spiritual or sacred processes that must be undertaken to ensure safe passage into the afterlife.

Weirdly enough, White Noise is the only DeLillo novel I’ve really enjoyed.  Couldn’t get into Libra, Underworld, others.

More:

A reader on Goodreads writes:

Book started off very promising with interesting premise – a writer writing about the apocalypse as if it has already happened although he is actually writing it in advance.

About a third of the way through it degenerates badly as the author seems to be in an incredible rush to get things done. The author also gets away from scenes and starts explaining everything instead.

Very disappointing.

He gave it one star. By no means do I think the book’s perfect. It’s uneven in places – some of it is too weighted with “future history” – as if it’s an encyclopedic retelling of a past event. That was intentional, but it might slow things down. I get that – I even mention it recently in Part II:

“It wasn’t perfect, mind you. Thought it was better about the Eugene stuff than the President Winchell stuff, moved better. I understand what you were doing. Writing a history of the future. Reminded me of Last and First Men by Olaf Stapledon, at least what you were going for. But the almanac descriptions got in the way of the story, I thought.”

I wrote that before I saw the Goodreads review. In what I could see as having some cosmic significance, only now am I started seeing the bad reviews, after I’ve started writing Part II and I’m happy and excited about what I’m writing. That’s pretty much armor against anything. If these reviews happened seconds after the book was released, I would have thought – shit, this wasn’t ready, I suck. But I’ve had enough good feedback that I feel I can move on.

Another reviewer says,

There are some glaring weaknesses with the text. Baum’s characterization of the president, an obvious joke against George W. Bush, comes off as derivative and uninspired. I did not believe for a second that this individual could become president, or that he would be able to lead America willingly into a suicidal nuclear war. A disastrous war in Iraq, yes, but a world war, not believable. Baum needs the US President to be an idiotic buffoon to start the apocalypse but that is far less interesting than an antagonistic that is smart and cunning.

A final weakness with the novel is the ending, which seemingly comes out of nowhere. While I’m not going to describe it here, it does come off as Deus Ex Machina.

Yeah, the epilogue could seem tacked on. But that’s explored more in Part II. I get the criticism of President Winchell’s character as well. Same thing was leveled at me about the white power serial killer in North of Sunset - he didn’t have enough of the traits of real-life serial killers. Basically, I don’t feel like writing that. The dread’s big enough without scaring people to death – so I err on the side of satire. I will say that Sarah Palin is as hapless and dimwitted as any powerful person in American history and she’s come close to the White House, and may again.

He had some good things to say too.

Piece from the L.A. Times that’s similarly smug and dismissive as this Christian Science Monitor piece about UFOs.  Book looks promising.  Piece begins:

He’s not saying he was abducted by a UFO and probed or anything, but former President Clinton’s chief of staff John Podesta is lending his name to a new book on UFOs.

Podesta has written the foreword for “UFOs: Generals, Pilots and Government Officials Go On the Record” by investigative journalist Leslie Kean, which will be released Aug. 10.

Part of the reason I self-published my novel.  The mainstream won’t treat this subject seriously.

The real face on Mars.  Yes, they could post anything, but never bought that story.  Rocks can look like things.

Also, Mars site may hold ‘buried life’

Dinosaurs were shape shifters.  Evolution of the Triceratops:

Finally, Manta Rays jumping 9 feet out of the water.