Benjamin Whitmer's Blog, page 36

Happy Father's Day

When I was younger, before I had children, I figured they were little automatons that you created to fill with all your own guilt and fear. You'd just wind 'em up and watch 'em go. Of course, after having a couple, I learned that it might just be the other way around.

A Father's Day movie recommendation:

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And this quote from George MacDonald, which opens Cry Father, my nearly-completed second novel:

Therefore I say to son or daughter who has no pleasure in the name Father, 'You must interpret the word by all that you have missed in life. Every time a man might have been to you a refuge from the wind, a covert from the tempest, the shadow of a great rock in a weary land, that was a time when a father might have been a father indeed.'

Guns, Books, Etc.

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"The way a rock person should kinda be, which is half cartoon character. It's kinda necessary. We should be seen from afar."
How to drink like your favorite authors.
"She dumped me over that song. But between her and that song, I would have took the song anyway."
DIY Weapons of the Libyan Rebels.
"Teddy Roosevelt, for instance, was a big fan of photographing his penis, and would pose for hours at a time. In Paris, in the twenties, it was all the rage. Hemingway's little-known short story 'Look at This Photo of My Penis' attests to it. Stalin often adorned his dacha with framed eight-by-tens, coyly saying to visitors, 'Boy-oh-boy, is that a lovely penis, or what?' (The wrong answer proved costly)."
Reinstate Hank.
"'They fuck you up, your mum and dad,' the poet Philip Larkin declared in 'This Be the Verse.' Maybe so, but Adam Mansbach would like to point out a corollary: The kids return the favor."

Frame fail

A little while back I posted about Amelia Nicol, a young lady who the Denver Police were attempting to put in prison for some 90 years on trumped-up charges. Their claim was that she threw a Molotov cocktail or explosive device at a couple of cops, attempting to murder them. It was a lie, of course. What really happened was that somebody in a crowd of protesters — might have been Ms. Nicol, don't know and don't care — threw a firecracker in the general direction of a police car, within which two officers sat. Hardly the same thing.

Well, it turns out that the judge in charge of Ms. Nicol's pretrial hearing isn't nearly as stupid as the Denver Police thinks the rest of us are. From Denver Anarchist Black Cross:

Amelia had a pretrial hearing today, on June 9. A pretrial hearing allows for a judge to hear the evidence, and decide whether there is sufficient evidence for a defendant to stand trial for the charges that have been filed. In this case, as detailed below, the judge made some pretty strong rulings in favor of Amelia.

As of the writing of this reportback, the judge in the case, Judge Andrew S. Armatas, has thrown out nearly all of the felonies that Amelia was facing, including both charges of attempted first degree murder, the charge of arson, the charge of inciting a riot, an amended charge of participating in a riot, and a charge of felony criminal mischief. Amelia is left facing a single felony charge of possession of an explosive, and three misdemeanor charges: one count of resisting arrest and two counts of attempted assault on a police officer.

I'm not really surprised. Though if it weren't for the toll it would've taken on Ms. Nicol, I would have really enjoyed seeing Denver's District Attorney attempt to run the original horseshit charges past a jury.

Quote

From Patricia Limerick's The Legacy of Conquest. Posted for no good reason but that I love stories about imported plants and animals fucking up the West.

As powerful and persistent as the fantasy that the West set Americans free from relying on the federal government was the fantasy that westward movement could set one free from the past. The West, for instance, was once a refuge for people who had trouble breathing. Sufferers from asthma, bronchitis, and even tuberculosis believed they chose a therapeutic environment when they chose the clean, dry air of the West.

Respiratory refugees particularly favored Arizona. Tucson's population jumped from 45,454 in 1950 to 330,537 in 1980, in large part an accretion of people who liked the climate–the clear air, the direct sunlight. Understandably, many of these new arrivals missed their homelands. Ill at ease with the peculiar plants and exposed soil of the desert, they naturally attempted to replicate the gardens and yards they had left behind. One popular familiar plant was the magnificently named fruitless mulberry, the male of the species, which does not produce messy berries. What the fruit-free mulberry produces is pollen.

Re-creating a familiars landscape, Tucson immigrants had also re-created a familiar pollen count. Allergies reactivated.

Guns, Books, Etc.

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"A dangerous and entirely unscientific application of archaeological principles to inspect evidence of previous human habitations and demises, preferably involving an amateurish and histrionic analysis of human relics, case and site assessments based on children's diagrams of parlor games, and palindromic investigations of imaginary crime scenes. Equipped with expert witnessing skills and third-grade chemistry sets, we are always ready to take the stand."
The Naipaul test.
"My son is 10 and a romantic, as all 10-year-olds surely have the right to be. How then do I speak to him of this world's masterminds who render you a supporting actor in your own story? How do I speak of the Sentinels whose eyes melt history, until the world forgets that in 1962, the quintessential mutants of America were black?"
Fuck you, and it.
"When some cultural critics fret about the 'ever-more-appalling' YA books, they aren't trying to protect African-American teens forced to walk through metal detectors on their way into school. Or Mexican-American teens enduring the culturally schizophrenic life of being American citizens and the children of illegal immigrants. Or Native American teens growing up on Third World reservations. Or poor white kids trying to survive the meth-hazed trailer parks. They aren't trying to protect the poor from poverty. Or victims from rapists."
"I know it's all my fault, from the bloody marriage to the deep alcohole."
A brilliant example of why video gamers should not be allowed to buy guns.

A dangerous and entirely unscientific application of archaeological principles to inspect evidence of previous human habitations and demises, preferably involving an amateurish and histrionic analysis of human relics, case and site assessments based on children's diagrams of parlor games, and palindromic investigations of imaginary crime scenes. Equipped with expert witnessing skills and third-grade chemistry sets, we are always ready to take the stand.

Dead Sharp: Scottish Crime Writers on Country and Craft

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Lem Wanner's excellent collection of interviews with Scottish crime writers, Dead Sharp: Scottish Crime Writers on Country and Craft, is coming out soon. And if you order it directly from the publisher, they'll send you a copy a month early. The product description:

So much more than just a collection of in-depth interviews with Scotland's bestselling crime writers, Dead Sharp is also a distinctive and edgy investigation of Scotland as a changing nation. Brimming with pithy, witty and sometimes just plain weird revelations, these interviews provide a unique and unforgettable insight into how writers think, and into the professional secrets of some of the genre's greatest exponents.

Wanner was kind enough to let me take a look at an advance copy, eliciting the following:

In interviews as whiplash-smart as they are meticulous, these nine authors reveal the kind of insight about craft that makes you want to take a copy and start bludgeoning creative writing students out into streets. There's no gang of folks you could better spend an evening with, and no guide better suited to give you a tour of their world-weary and shrunken hearts than the immensely knowledgeable Len Wanner.

That's no shit. It's a great book, and Wanner's an amazing interviewer.

Still Rattlin' the Devil's Cage

A new Charlie Louvin documentary, which I can't wait to see. Website here, and more videos from the film here.

Still Rattlin' the Devil's Cage: Battled Trailer from Keith Neltner on Vimeo.

Quote

Joe Bageant from an article entitled "The Great American Media Mind Warp." This is just the introduction; the rest of the essay's as good or better.

All Americans, regardless of caste, live in a culture woven of self-referential illusions. Like a holographic simulation, each part refers exclusively back to the whole, and the whole refers exclusively back to the parts. All else is excluded by this simulated reality. Consequently, social realism in this country is a television commercial for America, a simulated republic of eagles and big box stores, a good place to live so long as we never stray outside the hologram. The corporate simulacrum of life has penetrated us so deeply it now dominates the mind's interior landscape with its celebrities and commercial images. Within the hologram sparkles the culture-generating industry, spinning out our unreality like cotton candy.

The American media hologram forms our subconscious opinions immediately and without our rational participation. Particularly when it comes to generating terrorist outlaws. For example, despite what we were told and most of us believe, Timothy McVeigh was a patriot and was a more literate and intelligent person than most Americans; in truth, he more resembled Tom Paine than a terrorist. Chew on that one for a while … or read Gore Vidal's Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace. Again, nothing significant is as presented by the American media. Watch television in countries with supposedly primitive media, and after a while you will be shocked at the technologically mediated and shape-shifted image of the world presented to Americans — how the hologram makes incongruous parts suddenly fit together and make sense in its own parallel universe.

The rest.

The only television show my wife and I are watching right now is Mad Men. So when I think of television that's what I think of. But this American hologram that Bageant writes about, that's what it seems like is at stake. Which is why I keep watching it, even though I'd happily cut the throat of every single character.

The Dillinger chair

If I was to list off personal heroes, there's no doubt but that John Dillinger would be on it. And if I was to list off favorite artists, Matjames Metson would be on that one. He's an old friend, true, but he's also an inspiration and a hell of an artist.

With that in mind, this from Wouldn't You Like To See Something Strange:

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Guns, Books, Etc.

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Stupid people with guns.
"That's life in the high school, kids. The depredations of the real world have been hanging above your head for years, just out of sight. You reach a certain age, that's it. The string snaps."
Hesher. Just as good as you'd expect it to be.
Casualties of war.
"Well, I can't kill her. I'm a Professor of English. Besides she was a very good pistol shot."
That's Not Your Mommy Anymore .
Baby, Mix Me a Drink .