LIVING FREE OF TELEVISION

photo by vada, 3

New weather hysteria. We have a forecast for possible snow, an inch or two, and panic is in the air. Oh no, snow! What if the roads are slippery? What if? Of course the roads will be slippery. And it will be cold. For a short time. The snow will be gone by next day. This county isn't even included in the forecast. I'd love to see a wet snow with colored leaves still on the trees. I've seen it once. The world is like candyland. Weather forecasting has become a bit over-frantic in attempts to make the mundane into something exciting for five minutes of tv space. Gotta keep it exciting like the news and commercials around it with jets shooting missiles into Middle-Eastern cities, death from the sky, somebody else killed by cops, another school shooting. The weather doesn't have a chance in the excitement department. Recent reportage predicted a few months ahead to another Polar Vortex, that span of really cold weather that swept over us last winter. Another report says there will be no Polar Vortex this winter and it will be a mild winter. I've heard several predictions that the winter will either be the worst ever or the best ever, nothing in between. Bipolar. Our news, itself, has become bipolar. They only run extremes. Good drama. I'm remembering the time in the hospital channel-surfing a tv with fifty channels. I'd hold each channel long enough to see what it was, two to five seconds, run through it once and turn it off. I am still stunned by how much gun violence I saw, repeatedly, pointing, threatening, shooting, shooting to kill. News was about killing. Entertainment shows were about killing. The evangelists today are even more obvious frauds than the ones in the time of Tammy Faye and Jerry Falwell. Pat Robertson goes on raking in free money tax-free pontificating ignorance. 

by vada

Television is the American dream. I look at it and see what everyone around me, the people of the world I live in, are dreaming, tv shows focused on killing and fraudulent religion. Pizza dripping strings of cheese up close. Fast food. One of my rules of thumb for a good life, like stay out of Walmart, is don't eat anything advertised on tv. On Sundays, watching the race with Justin and Melvin, and football, and basketball, and baseball, and golf, and hundreds of commercials, I'm in a foreign country. It is not my world. Everything is coercion, you must buy something. You must look a certain way. You must have fun a certain way. I could not live with that hysteria in my house telling me what to buy, teaching me money is the only value. The False News channel has recently won a federal court case allowing them to lie legally in their news. Surely, this is to protect them from lawsuits for false reporting. It's not like they were waiting for permission. I'm glad I early voted. The political ads as false as Ann Coulter I pay no attention to since voting. I don't even hear them. Kay Hagan the democrat I can't tell from a republican. And the republican parrot Virginia Foxx. When I see her possum face I want to say, Knock, knock, is anybody in there? Not my world. I had the displeasure in the late 1980s to sit at a dinner party next to the head of the NC democrat party. He asked me how many children I had. I wanted to say, How many books have you read? I discouraged him from trying to talk to me right off. I felt like I died and went to hell. I did not feel at home. My world does not include people who ask me how many children I have, pretending to be interested in what I have to say. I knew before he started he was not interested in anything I had to say, and I wasn't interested in how many children he had. 

by vada

It was an interesting peep-hole into a world completely separate from my own, a world I did not want for myself. Something like television in that way. Made me glad I was not born into wealth as I regretted in childhood. Throughout my life, I've wanted to know as many different kinds of people as I could, from poor to rich, ignorant to brilliant, crazy to sane, different cultures, different countries. My reading is from all over the world. Recently been through about ten years or more of reading about China, history, fiction and poetry, seeing films and art. I'd waited a very long time for China to open up and let the rest of the world see their contemporary writing and art. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon sparked my interest. I looked for more and found quite a lot more. Raise the Red Lantern, The Hero, Shanghai Triad. One led to another, finding writers at amazon. In a short number of years I learned China's history, the whole story of Maoist China from the revolution to the post-Mao era. Perhaps the biggest surprise was the expanse of desert in China. I've seen parts of it in films, looked at it in the Atlas. It's serious desert like Australia, perhaps even more. Not even Aborigines could live there. Some of my favorite poetry is from Old China, Li Po, Po Chu Yi, Tu Fu, Han Shan, One of my favorite books in the house is Sunflower Splendor, a collection of Chinese poetry printed in the early 1970s. It's a desert island book. Interest in China expanded to interest in Mongolia. The great wall of China was built to keep the Mongols out. They were that much of a problem. Mongols raided northern China regularly. The Mongols could not be defeated, and one of the wonders of the world was constructed to wall them off. 

by vada

I've not done anything notable with my life, but I've had a rich life of the mind, which was the only thing I wanted all the way along. I knew from the start I wanted to live remotely and alone, to follow my own interests. So much I was curious about and one thing led to another. By now, I have a fair to moderate understanding of the history of the whole earth. Persia is a gap. I have little experience with Persian history and writing. Some of Persian history is in the Old Testament. Persia was a powerful force in the Old Testament part of the world, and had some interesting kings. Their religion, Zoroastrianism, is one of the world's great religions. They are called Parsis in India, I've checked out a netflix documentary about Persia that was interesting, a good starting place. There is one king, in particular, whose life I'd like to read about. If my imperfect memory is functioning, I think it was the first Darius, the Great. He sounded like a good ruler. One of the rare ones in human history. I sent off for a DNA analysis a couple days ago. I'll be curious to see all the parts of the world my DNA went through. I feel like I spent some time in Mongolia. I'm curious to see the African lineage. I've an idea Africa is where most of it will be. Cultures all over Africa are unique unto themselves. The music from different parts of Africa are unique to their culture. Thomas Mapfumo's music from Zimbabwe is very different from the music of Chaba Zahouania from Algeria. My curiosity encircled the globe down through time. I don't know a great deal about any one place, but have some familiarity with almost every place on the globe. I don't know much about Greenland, though recently met a woman who had lived there. She told me about the landscapes inland seen from a plane. This is how I entertain myself while the people around me watch television and buy new cars. My life is so much richer for bypassing television. I've not had time to watch television. Too much interests me to waste a lifetime on hyper-violent, mind-numbing eye candy. 

vada herself

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MONKEY FOOTBALLERS

I heard today that a Nigerian football (soccer) squad was publicly called Monkeys in Poland. The Polacks are even the last to learn political correctness. Now we have racism outside America. Africa has what we on our side call reverse-racism. Blacks kill whites in Africa. Outside Africa, whites call blacks Monkeys. Now the entire international television scene is about to endure a long period of political correctness. If Africans called us Oinkers, we'd think it was funny. What white person on earth cares what a black individual thinks of them? In the entire earth, black people are automatically at the bottom of the status hierarchies. When they call white people something, white people don't notice. White people call black people anything and all hell breaks loose. It's not so much the black people making a stink over it as middle class white people who believe their role is enforcing political correctness. The outcome of this conflict about Monkeys or not Monkeys is something ridiculously complex that says white teams can't call black teams monkeys. It would be so much easier if the black African teams would embrace being called Monkeys and call themselves the Flaming Monkeys or something fun. That would take all the racism and render it without meaning. But it's too subtle for so large a number of people to embrace. It's gotta be in conflict or not at all.


For white middle class people that can't let the rest of the people use a word like Monkey without at least the punishment of having the finger of blame wagged in their faces, it will be an issue from now on. Penalties, fines for using the M-word, major attention for every perceived use. He said Monkey! Can't say that word anymore because it's not acceptable to the white middle class. Anybody who might come out and use it openly in public would be informed the word is unacceptable and the person would be shunned for further use. The people of Poland and all over Europe now are being bored out of their minds by political correctness American style in their faces. What? I can't say monkey anymore? No. Bad word. American soccer moms don't approve, don't want their children to hear the word. You can't say Jungle anymore, either. It's rain forest. Jungle tends now to mean the underbelly of American cities, where the people arrested in tv cop shows come from. The N-word and the L-word are already banned from use; now it's the M-word's turn.


It's not intelligence that bans these words. It's a matter of control. One set of people tells another set of people what to do with the authority of having higher paying jobs. As in America with the N-word, the M-word in Europe will go on being used, possibly more than ever before, in reaction to the issue made of it, but only privately with people of the same attitude toward the willful ignorance of political correctness. It makes me laugh that people who adhere to political correctness call themselves liberal or "very liberal." Political correctness is another code for appearance. Memorize the list of words never to be used, go about smug and disapproving, correct everyone caught using a forbidden word or letting their own point of view show, don't ever let anyone get away with enjoying a cigarette. I often wonder how much of the motivation to PC is based in Christendom, Jesus saying tell everybody, go out and be missionaries. As a result, I don't see a lot of Christians with a spiritual path. In the baptist realm, you get saved, baptized, join a church and start browbeating everybody in your life because Jesus said to. Nobody makes an issue of Jews calling non-Jews cattle. Nobody cares. What do Africans care that Polacks call them monkeys? To the Africans, the Polacks are the spitting image of squealing pigs. Polacks don't care, except for the occasional justification.


My entire politically conscious life, from after high school onward, has seen how slow racism is to change. Early on, I cared, it needed doing now. It really did. It's not been solved by now, well over half a century later. I've seen in USA and South Africa major efforts to undo racism. Trying to change it from the top downward is not possible. American and South African racism has simply gone underground because it's not acceptable above ground to the people who make the most noise. In America and South Africa, racism is every bit as prevalent among people as it was before. Only difference is that it's illegal. By law, anyone black is equal to anyone white. In a world run by white people, the black people are still looked down on, because it's nice to have somebody below you on the totem pole of existence. When you're the bottom on the totem pole, the weedeater whacks your face. Best to have somebody else on the bottom. Black people get the bottom. White people keep them there, because the white folks don't want the bottom for themselves. Keepin the N-words down. I can't say I believe there has been a great deal of change where racism is concerned over the last half century. It's gone into denial. People who declare they are not racist tend not to know any black people other than superficially.


The truly non-racist people I've known make no issue of race in their interactions with others. The non-racist people I know are people who have known black people. The only problem I ever have  with black people is when I'm regarded the same as black people's cliche beliefs about white people. I say, Look, I don't hold you to my cliches about black people, please allow me out from under your beliefs about white people. That never works. Fact is, I'm white. The other fact is, they're black. In America, black people wanted integration, marched for it, protested for it, were bit by dogs for it, hit by police sticks and put in jail for it. Oh to be free! Then they got integration and immediately started segregating themselves. Upon legal integration, buried black anger rose to the surface. It was several years of black people spewing anger at white people. In some cases, white people took it, in some cases they didn't. Cops pretty much took care of the white end of the matter. The cops are the circle of wagons around the white ruling class to keep the Indians (N-word) out. The irrational racial hatreds will gradually calm down. As long as humans have egos, we'll have racism.


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AT HOME WITH THE NEWS

blurry half moon

I've been enjoying the unpredictable turn the news took when the people of Cairo gathered to boot out the American puppet Mubarak. Then there was Bahrain, which I had to look up in the Atlas. I've heard the name in relation to Arab news for several years, but never had seen it on a map. I set out on a search and found it's an island just off the coast of Saudi Arabia, connected to land by a bridge, in the Persian Gulf. It looks like it's about the size of the island at the southern tip of Malaysia that is the city Singapore. Bahrain sitting in the Persian Gulf rings the alarm, OIL, and the other American alarm, MONEY. If there's trouble for us to get into in Bahrain, we'll find it. The king had a few people killed for being brazen enough to speak out about replacing him, another American puppet.

The best is Khadafy of Libya. Bringing down the American puppet by mass protest in Egypt caught on in Libya next door. Remember 30 years ago when Reagan sent some jets across the ocean in the secret of night to invade Libyan air space and bomb Khadafy's house with intent to assassinate him? They missed and bombed the French Embassy instead, killing a Chinese diplomat and one of Khadafy's children. Major diplomatic blunder, but no problem. It was the Gypper behind it, and the Gypper was on our side, unless you're in the middle class or the working class. Anyway, it helped Khadafy to see his vulnerability with a rogue government ruling the world that paid no mind to Geneva conventions, international law or anything unAmerican like the ACLU. Khadafy calmed down, took his bonus under the table and turned into a real nice guy where American power was concerned. Now he's on the line with the Libyan people for being an American puppet. I think I heard something like 50 or more dead in the Libyan protests. He's a true African dictator. He'll kill everybody in the country before he'll relent.

What surprises these are, people of the Arab world suddenly standing up to their dictators to get shot, beat up and thrown in prison that's bad anyway, but as political prisoners, much worse. Hilary Clinton cheering them on with platitudes about democracy, Obama mouthing empty words about democracy. I heard a pundit on the radio talking about dictators having demonstrators killed always works against them, the dictators. This was in reference to the King of Bahrain who evidently let 4 people get killed. Now Khadafy has stepped in it big time, more than 50. We'll see. It sounded a bit academic to me, somewhat hollow. I doubt Khadafy's troops are done yet with the killing. African dictators don't operate by American pundit forecasts. Khadafy is as ruthless as Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe. He'll do what he has to do. He likes suitcases full of freshly minted greenbacks under the table. Smells so good. He'll be an American puppet if he wants to be.

I doubt any American pressure will be applied anywhere but Egypt, and that primarily for the Suez Canal. They could nuke Cairo and think nothing of it, but leave the canal of oil tanker commerce alone. The canal is bigger than Egypt. Egypt is just the gatekeeper and will wear a bow tie if told to. Odd little run of news in the last week or so. A little gust from out of the blue, democracy movements in the Arab world wanting to oust American puppet governments. And they were successful. Something about that says a great deal about Egypt. They have international tourism for the pyramids and international excavations going on. Alexandria is an an international city. Egypt is more in sync with the rest of the world than seemingly any place in Africa, bonded by the canal and the pyramids to the rest of the world. Egypt can't cut loose on its population like other African countries can, for these two umbilical reasons that keep it vitally connected to the rest of the world.

Surprise urban uprisings have made refreshing asides from all the present terrorist themes we're given to be alarmed over daily, entertained the way we wanna be. The thrill of being aghast at something I just heard. Like Jr would say, It ain't the world that's crazy, it's the people in it. Bernie Madoff in prison for life, his son a suicide, his wife changed her name. That's what you call outside of society. First day of one news story, they were out forever. The place they held in NY society closed up behind them like water closes after you step out of the pool. I can't stop listening to the news, even when I don't like hearing it, even when I don't believe it. There's something about it that feels necessary to hear. It's our collective agreed upon reality. It has the same urgency as Saturday morning cartoons for a kid. It's the constant surprise popping through the mundane same-o that tells me an awful lot. Like these democracy movements in Arab dictatorships, American puppets, wanting rid of the American dependence, wanting democracy and money too. After what democracy did to Iraq and Afghanistan, none of it makes sense. Thus it stays interesting. Makes it like it's alive.

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