Yes, that’s right. It’s cammo, it’s got an eagle, and it’s got the Twin Towers. Because all those things are somehow related to Oklahoma, which the Cherokee were promised, and from which they were subsequently ejected.
Semiotic overload.
Update: Semiotic overload overload….
The sad thing is, someone will *really actually* desire it more this way.
First it was illegal search and seizure, and now it’s just plain seizure.
Over the past weeks, I’ve been watching my housemate deal with some serious stuff.
Dude has a drinking problem, first and foremost. I’ve come home and he’s offered me a Busch. He doesn’t say “Do you want a beer?” He says, “Do you want a Busch?” And then he jokes that it’s probably not expensive enough for my tastes. Which, it turns out, is true in practice, but I say, “No, thanks, I don’t feel like a beer.” And he says, “It’s the last one, so if you want it…”
“How many beers have you drunk tonight?”
“The other four, and this one.” He holds up the can.
So five a night. I got to the point where I’d accept his beer just so he couldn’t drink it. He’s not violent or unruly or anything. He’s just alcohol-fried. He’ll be saying things to you where he never says the predicate. He’ll just start talking about something that’s going on, as if we’d already been conversing about it for the past ten minutes. And this is when he’s sober. He actually gets a bit more lucid when intoxicated.
For a while, he was begging money off me all the time. He always paid it back, because he had work. It was two bucks for bus fare because the bank was slow or whatever, and so no big deal. Then he wanted to get ten, because [insert rational rehearsed, reason, presented as a linear story he wouldn't let me interrupt here]. At fifteen I said, “I’m lending you money so you can buy groceries, bus fare, that kind of stuff.”
One day I was headed out, so he asked if I could take him up the hill to the store to get cigs. I gave him a lift, and when we got there, he said, “Hey, man, could you loan me for…” And I stopped him and said, “What’s your brand?” Newport Menthols. (ick). I bought him two packs of Newport Menthols and said, “That’s it. My gift to you. No more loans.”
He did ask once after that, so he could get a TV. Dude can’t buy food or medicine because he’s buying beer, and he wants a loan for a TV.
At some point he cut his arm, and let it get infected. And it’s infected in the kind of place that makes me think that maybe he’s using a needle, but I don’t want to say it out loud, ever. But it got infected, and so he couldn’t work as many hours, and of course he doesn’t have medical insurance. I relented so he could get antibiotics. So he’s on antibiotics, and drinking beers. That wound healed up eventually, but there’s another one almost exactly like it in his hand now.
He told another housemate that I was helping him with it. That he has to repack the wound three times a day, and I was helping him do it. Which, of course, I’m not. And today he told me that the other housemate was helping him with it. He should be going to the doctor’s office for this, but he can’t afford it.
He’s already been told to hit the road by the landlord, but she’s had pity on him because of his hand. Which became infected after he got told to hit the road.
Here’s a guy who has fallen through every crack possible to fall through, I’m pretty sure. And who, it seems, must gamble on infection in order to keep a roof over his head.
I’m going to repeat this story, because it’s such a glaring example of how racism and hypocrisy can undo a man.
State Rep. Allen explains sex case: Fear made me play alongLaurin Sellers | Sentinel Staff Writer
August 3, 2007TITUSVILLE – State Rep. Bob Allen told police he was just playing along when a undercover officer suggested in a public restroom that the legislator give him oral sex and $20 because he was intimidated, according to a taped statement and other documents released Thursday.
Allen has already denied any wrongdoing, but the recordings and documents offered new details about what he and police say happened on July 11 inside the men’s room at Veterans Memorial Park.
“I certainly wasn’t there to have sex with anybody and certainly wasn’t there to exchange money for it,” said Allen, R-Merritt Island, who was arrested on charges of soliciting prostitution.
“This was a pretty stocky black guy, and there was nothing but other black guys around in the park,” Allen, who is white, told police in a taped statement after his arrest. Allen said he feared he “was about to be a statistic” and would have said anything just to get away. [..]
Yes, that’s right: They were big and black, which intimidated him into agreeing to having them work his knob. For money.
Not an LP I own. 
A recent mefi entry reminded me of Kevin Gilbert. Way back in the day, my ahead-of-the-curve friend Ian played a tape of Gilbert’s ‘Kaviar’ for me, and while I thought it was cool, it was in the middle of some other complicated stuff so it went in one ear and out the other.
Well, after, ahem, obtaining ‘The Shaming Of The True,’ it’s clear that I should have paid more attention.
He reminds me of World Entertainment War, mostly because they came out about the same time, Gilbert sounds like Rob Breszny and mostly because he’s actually trying to say something.
Update: Oh shit! Gilbert performed the whole of ‘Lamb Lies Down’ on stage! Now I’m really, really sad. (He died at 29.)
Yes.
This has been another episode of: Simple Answers To Simple Questions.
I just answered this Featured Question, you can answer it too!
I love white sugar the way nicotene addicts love cigarettes.
I get groceries at a health food store because they *don’t* have Pop-Tarts. Except I didn’t go to that store today, I went to the one that’s closer. And right now, I’m flying high on ‘toaster pastries’ that are actually delivery systems for an addictive mind-altering substance. I might as well have just snorted a line of cocaine. The crash will come soooon….
I keep honey around instead of sugar, because it’s more cumbersome to mainline. Well, OK, not really.
‘Blog culture takes over Presidential debates at YearlyKos. Just absolutely excellent to see. Watch all the way through for Kucinich with the sucker punch.
I wanted to go to the first YearlyKos, because it was a really interesting story. But now it’s not just a story, it’s an institution. And if you’re a Democratic candidate and you don’t show up, forget it, you’re done. It used to be the state caucuses. Now it’s on the web. The Web Caucuses. We’re seeing a real democratic (small ‘d’) change here, and it’s a huge deal.
If James Brown is the Godfather of Soul, Brian Eno is the Godfather of Ambient.
Brian Eno, ‘Ambient 4: On Land,’ an album derived from considering the aural landscapes represented by maps of artifical places.
Other Eno I’ve listened to without ‘blogging: ‘Taking Tiger Mountain By Strategy,’ and ’801 Live.’
