Friday, October 14, 2011

Kurt Hegle...That Man Can Play! Duluth Must Be Proud of the BTJO!

A good friend of Nancy and I, Kurt Hegle can be heard here playing with the BTJO (Big Time Jazz Orchestra).

Wednesday, October 12, 2011

The Stoned Coffee

It's all about the stones today, folks. Watch the video and find out how to keep your coffee hot using a boiled or microwaved stone. The gratuitous picture of an attractive woman's back is simply to demonstrate the many uses of a hot stone. Yeah. The stone I used is about the size of the one sitting on her T6 thoracic vertebra. The one in the middle. Be sure to buy a travel mug with a cover before trying my trick, or you'll knock your fucking teeth out.

Good evening, friends and comrades!

Fun Fact: In Boston, a convenience store where one can get coffee is usually called a, "Spa." The store just up the street is called, "Boyle's Spa." This confuses Nancy, and a lot of tourists.


Tuesday, October 11, 2011

No Money For Halloween? Some Ideas to Keep the Porch Light On

Halloween, All-Hallows-Eve, Fat Kids Looking for Free Candy...what a great holiday. Get to know your neighbors, and then enjoy avoiding them for the rest of the year! My video blog will help you get away with spending nothing (or nearly nothing), and still participate in The Devil's Night of Free Candy. Shoplifting candy is another option, but I don't recommend it. It generally leads to unpleasantness! Like jail. Jail isn't pleasant. And the conversation just isn't up to snuff!


Right on, Linus! Don't let Walgreen's, Wal-Mart, and all the rest take spirituality and The Great Pumpkin out of Halloween!

Introducing The Big Four




From left to right; Impy, Panther, Fluffy (mother of Impy) and Ghost. They all have their share of eccentric behavior.

Monday, October 10, 2011

Northeast Shooters Are Intellectual Cowards


Just a word about Northeastshooters. If any of you visit this website, pass this little tidbit of information along: I was banned from the site. Everything you've said on your little forum is easily answered, but I can't answer. This creates a nice illusion for you all...that I've gone and run off because, "Nobody messes with NES." I would have loved to continue messing with it, but again, I was banned.

And to EddieCoyle (great Boston movie), there is nothing creepy about my blog. The NES are a far wackier and bizarre bunch who are unable to process information and think critically. And I don't give a rat's ass what you think about my disability. You know very little about me. Ironically, at some point someone at NES will need food stamps or some form of government assistance, and he or she will take it, using the excuse that, "I really need it, unlike the other deadbeats who receive help from the government." The NES are a group of conservatives who have embraced a pleasant fiction, and refuse to see the hypocrisy of saying that taxation is theft, but it's acceptable theft if it pays for police and the military. It's laughable.

Long after I was banned, members continued to dig up information about me, like my electro-shock therapy, obesity, and testicular cancer, gleefully posting away. In my opinion, it's pretty low to do that after a person is banned and cannot defend himself. Wouldn't you agree?

Finally, the reason I posted to NES to begin with is because of a fellow named Josh Manjarrez. I knew him in high school, and he was practically stalking my blog. When I visited NES, I realized that you all needed to be educated about socialism, free market libertarians vs.civil libertarians, public assistance, and a whole host of other issues. Instead of debating with me, the discussion turned quickly to insults...and I was accused of being a troll. Ridiculous. The NES is a little group of people with a very high opinion of themselves ("Don't mess with us!") that gets reaffirmed again and again because people like me, who disagree and present a well thought out argument, are banned and mocked. You're a bunch of intellectual cowards playing with your guns.

Repeated attacks on my being on disability ignore that I worked between age 14 and 35, full-time, and all the while paying into the Social Security system. I never anticipated having to use SSDI, but one never does until something happens. When I was making pretty good money (not great, but respectable), I paid my taxes, and my tax money was used for a series of stupid wars and corporate tax cuts. Tell your friends to climb down off of their crosses and accept that we all pay taxes, and some of the money we pay goes to programs we don't support. In my case, I'm on SSDI, an insurance program that I ended up needing. It could happen to you or any one of your gun nut friends. If you think otherwise, you're delusional.

The people of NES are Social Darwinists (Eugenics). They make me sick and I'm happy that we are going our separate ways. As one who holds a degree in evolutionary biology, it saddens me to see Darwin's theory of natural selection used to justify such a repulsive and brutal social and political philosophy. A misinterpretation of the term, survival of the fittest (which is all about reproduction and live offspring) is responsible for creating more assholes and dickheads than Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead combined.

Pass that along, would you?

Sunday, October 09, 2011

Don't Die of Embarrassment: Feel Your Balls For Cancer


This video shows men how to check for testicular cancer. Again, thanks to Torsten Koehler:



Very simply done in the shower.

Of Card Tables and Canes

Dissent is Wicked Patriotic!
Quite a bit has been happening in our quaint little republic. The true grassroots movement against the attempted destruction of our democracy (Koch Brothers, Diebold), corporate person-hood, and an historically unprecedented bail-out of capitalism is deeply moving and inspiring to me. Back in the day ('90's), when I was very active in the Socialist Party USA, and in the Socialist Party of Massachusetts, and in the Boston Local, I learned quite a lot. Here is a short list of what I learned through activism:

1. It's possible to have a very productive meeting with just a card table and four chairs.
2. Intellectuals love to argue. The love it.
3. Getting people involved in a grassroots movement is a difficult task, in the extreme.
4. It's absurdly difficult to get a third-party candidate on the ballot (the most we could do was a, "certified write-in," which meant that the votes had to be counted. Yeah, big deal).
5. The longer one is involved in a radical, left-wing movement, the more psychosomatic illnesses accrue. Frank P. Zeidler seems to have been the exception. As a thrice-elected Socialist mayor of Milwaukee, he didn't have to bottle his outrage within himself. He had access to change things as a, Sewer Socialist. If memory serves, he got around pretty well, and wrote me often after our time together in Milwaukee. Sigh. I miss his letters. Anyway, other Socialists use canes, take SSRI's, have gone blind, suffer from vague aches and pains, argue with birds in the park, and have irritable bowel syndrome. Why? It's not easy knowing what is wrong with the country you love, only to have your solutions ignored and to be accused of being, "Anti-American."

That's a short list of five. I took away a lot more than that. For example, at the Feminist Expo 2000 in Washington DC, I learned that feminists are not to be fucked with, and will punch your lights out if you piss them off. Also, Eve Ensler's, "The Vagina Monologues" is incredible. At the Socialist Scholars' Conference at the Borough of Manhattan Community College, I had lunch with a group of Libertarians who were there in solidarity with our cause for fair ballot access for third parties and learned that real Libertarians (not "Republican Libertarians" who are just confused) are a fine bunch of people. They enjoyed calling me a, "Pinko." I loved it.

Advocating revolutionary change is not an easy business. Hell, taking the bus to Chicago for the 1992 National Convention of the SPUSA was a fucking nightmare, but hey, that's how us poor folk travel. One does what one has to do! Trying to unionize a shop is not easy. Getting people out to vote is also not easy. Overcoming the natural inclination towards despair that afflicts the poor and powerless is extremely difficult. As a poor person who feels that our nation has been robbed from us, I feel that despair, as well.

We all get by with a lot of help from our friends and comrades. America is a very flawed country, but at least there is a chance (albeit small) for poor and middle class people to get together and scare the hell out of corporations. It's also deeply satisfying to stand-up for human decency (universal health care, amnesty for illegal immigrants, a minimum wage increase).

And the people you meet! The comrades! J. Quinn Brisben, Frank Zeidler, David McReynolds, Eric Chester, Ann Rosenhaft, Kari Fisher, Matt Andrews, Paul Avery, Greg Pason, and on and on. These are people I admire. Now we have a grassroots movement of consequence. Very dedicated and bright young men and women are doing a magnificent job. Bravo, comrades!


Saturday, October 08, 2011

Occupy Boston: Well Done, Comrades!

**Message to Northeast Shooters: I was kicked off of your little discussion group. Enjoy your love fest and have fun talking shit, you ignorant assholes**

Occupy Boston is up and running and raising hell and doing a mighty fine job. Here are some pictures. This is the time for real change. Right now! Breaking news:
1199 SEIU will back Occupy Boston State’s largest healthcare union (44,000 members strong) to lend resources, support to growing movement. Complete story here.
Capitalists are damn lucky we don't have a, "meritocracy."

Dr. Cornell West in action.

Well put.

This is so inspiring to see in my city.

Wicked good sign!

We owe so much to unions, even the suit knows.

Friday, October 07, 2011

Ennio Morricone

My father, brother and I have always loved the film scores of Ennio Morricone. So far, he has composed more than 500 film scores. Once Upon a Time in the West has always been a favorite in this household. My mother used to watch the movie frequently, partly because it's a fine tale well told, but mostly because of that deeply moving soundtrack.

Morricone was nominated five times for an Academy Award (including one for Days of Heaven, one of my favorite films), but never won, even for The Mission. However, in 2007 he was awarded an Honorary Academy Award by Clint Eastwood. So many "spaghetti westerns" that featured Eastwood owe their success, in large part, to the achingly beautiful music of Morricone.

I've posted three of his scores. The first is from Once Upon a Time in the West, performed live in Venice, Italy.



The second is from his most famous composition, and his self-described favorite, The Mission:



The third is from Cinema Paradiso, a movie that makes me embarrass myself with tears every time I see it.




Monday, October 03, 2011

Capitalism is Dead, It Just Doesn't Know It Yet


If it is revolution that the bankers, capitalists, and war-profiteers want, they will get it. They best be careful. Once cut off from the ability to make change democratically, there is only one choice: violent revolution. Our electoral process still functions...barely. When it ceases to, look out.

Listen: The Internationale (Sung by Alistair Hulett)

Arise ye workers from your slumbers
Arise ye prisoners of want
For reason in revolt now thunders
And at last ends the age of cant.
Away with all your superstitions
Servile masses arise, arise
We'll change henceforth the old conditions
And spurn the dust to win the prize.

So comrades, come rally
And the last fight let us face
The Internationale unites the human race.
So comrades, come rally
And the last fight let us face
The Internationale unites the human race.

No more deluded by reaction
On tyrants only we'll make war
The soldiers too will take strike action
They'll break ranks and fight no more
And if those cannibals keep trying
To sacrifice us to their pride
They soon shall hear the bullets flying
We'll shoot the generals on our own side.

No saviour from on high delivers
No faith have we in prince or peer
Our own right hand the chains must shiver
Chains of hatred, greed and fear
E'er the thieves will give up their booty
And give to all a happier lot.
Each at the forge must do their duty
And we'll strike while the iron is hot.