Tuesday, October 18, 2011

They Smelled Better Than Sin, Better Than Decadent Capitalism




Buddy Jim gently scolds me in comments:

But...without the Abbie Hoffman's and Jerry Rubin's, you know what I mean? Attention whoring can be a positive, especially for these kids who are assembling only to be defined, used, dismissed as irrelevant. I'm a fan. I want them to stay put. I want more att'n whoring, more people to try to define them and what they want, more people to use them for their own cynical (or not) purposes (yes, you a-a-a-and Corporate, too!), more serious and important people to dismiss them. And, through it all and beyond it all, I want them to stay put... There was this thing back in these old Woolworth lunch counters in NC in the Sixties, sit-ins they called them. They, like Rosa Parks, just sat. This is Rosa's grandkids—and a buttload of them... And here we've been lamenting this generation's lack of commitment, lack of paying att'n to what's happening, lack of concern. That'll show us.

Goodbud Sasha scolds me harder!

I don't care if West or anybody else is a whore if they get the thing on the teevee because otherwise Murdoch gets to control the conversation. It can be George Clooney or Lady Gaga for all I care. Jim H. said it better. But this all has to be on the Twitter and iPhone and teevee or it will "fail." Also. Re "before I'm utterly convinced it will fail." What would failure or success look like? If it pushes Obama to the left, even a little it succeeds. Also BofA discovered a substantial sum of money that it had been cheating me out of last Friday (at my insistence). I think that is success.

I'm not Occupy neutral. I'm incapable of saying anything without self-irony, self-mockery, but I mean this as least snarkily as I'm able: I want to play. I need get on the bus into or out of Occupy soon, get on or off before it's crosses that Walmart bandwagon/martyr endcap of participation. I'm going downtown this Sunday if plans hold to see what October 2011 is doing that day, to see what it feels like, see if it stirs, to see what it feels like to have my photo taken by government agents, see if it stirs. We're never putting another dollar on our Bank of America credit card, gonna pay it off, use a card from the teachers' credit union, rebellion, motherfuckers. I'm remembering that being complicit in somethings doesn't make me a thorough hypocrite if I'm not complicit in all things, or rather, personally being .06% less of a tool makes me .06% less of a tool, and that's a modest enough goal I need to learn how to not feel I'm a fool in trying to obtain.













LAUNDRY

Bruce Smith

Not even the cops who can do anything could do this—
work on Sunday picking up dirty and delivering clean
laundry in Philadelphia. Rambling with my father, get this,
in a truck that wasn’t even our own,
part ambulance, part bullet, there wasn’t anything
we couldn’t do. Sheets of stigmata, macula of love,
vomit and shit and the stains of pissing
another week’s salary away, we picked up and drove
to the stick men in shirt sleeves, the thin
Bolshevik Jews who laughed out the sheets like the empty
speech in cartoons. They smelled better than sin,
better than decadent capitalism. And oh, we
could deliver, couldn’t we, the lawless bags through the city
that said in his yawn, get money, get money, get money.




13 comments:

  1. I went to H.S. downtown.

    Sometimes we would run intervals around the Capitol for cross-country practice.
    ~

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  2. I have never been in a Wal-Mart. I will never go into a Wal-Mart unless and until they change their horrid exploitation policies. And I'm not only getting one at the intersection of Connecticut Avenue and Aspen Hill Road but another at the Pike Center? Holy Jeebus, I only hope that I can find more like me who just boycott the hell out of the place.

    As for the second shittiest human, a friend on Twitter has taken to referring to her as the Post's Breitbart. He isn't far off.

    Also. I try not to nag, you know? I just need some hope no matter how bleak it seems. I get some of it here: http://badlipreading.tumblr.com/

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  3. I need to be nagged. You are one of a handful of people I gracefully accept nagging from.

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  4. Fucking WalMart Derangement Syndrome. Sasha just confessed to it in a phone call (seriously).

    She claims I want to force her to become a greeter at the new Aspen Hill WalMart (if elected to the County Council, I will, and then some; I will also take kickbacks from Bentonville to allow WallyWorld to build at every interchange on the ICC, including an extra bump for every fucking duck they kill, with a bonus for making baby ducks cry).

    Sasha's tortured howls of indignation about the glassing-over of Bagel City--the only worthwhile thing on the Pike property (I get my bagels at Harris Teeter; howl, Sasha darling)--almost made me pee laughing, though in fairness her indignation is perfectly respectable and understandable, not that I'd be able to tell a Bagel City bagel from a freezer-section bagel.

    Next time Sasha's over to Casa Satanica, I'm trundling her into the car and whisking her off to the Germantown WallyWorld. Where she will be exploited.

    I'm just a dick that way.

    Jeebus H.T.F. Christ, I might get a whole blog post out of that comment, because--and this should appall, fascinate, and titillate each and every one of you--I'm not fucking done.

    I love you, Sasha, now and forever.

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  5. Thanks for the Kind, Dog. We are all complicit, and we can't help it; it's the society we're in—it's the water we fish must swim in to survive. (h/t Landru for pointing that out emphatically)

    Sasha, I guess that makes you the meat in a Walmart sandwich, no? Some here're fighting to keep one out of a local shopping center, pushing out our fave Last Chance Thrift Shop (half-price Mondays, yo!). Traffic's bad enough, and I don't expect them to make WM make concessions and pay to improve the intersections, add lanes, recalibrate stoplights, etc.

    Let's move to Greece!

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  6. Landru is just a fucking anti-Semite who wants the crackers to glass over the bagel place to keep the Jews down in the county. And wants all of the elderly who are being raped by BofA and Citi to find employment as greeters.

    Instead of fighting with Landru, though, I think I'll talk to all of the Christers and their sisters on the county council about how anti-Semitic they are. (You will note that I never called him a ... damn, I don't know if I can say that here.)

    I love you too, now and forever Landru.

    Blog post? Makes me very happy until I draw my weapon.

    Also. When are you feeding the Dog and me? You owe us the opportunity to fight at Casa Satanica. With food.

    (And now the rest of you may begin to understand how very gentle my nagging of Our Host really is. I'm just getting warmed up.)

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  7. I've only set foot in a Wal-Mart once, in a late-night breast-pump emergency, but I can't pretend that Target's any better, and we go there all the time.

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  8. A week or two I heard the equation that WalMart and Home Depot are for Tea Partiers and Target and Lowes are for Occupiers.

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  9. Interesting. I don't know anyone who goes to Lowes but not Home Depot, though the other formulation, alas, fits.

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  10. Jim: Sorry about your thrift shop, for reals. And I'm no fan of corporatey corporatists assraping local merchants. On the other hand....

    What Richard said (in both comments, actually, and if I knew you better than I do, Richard, "late-night breast-pump emergency" would also be a terrific launching pad, but I suspect you knew that). While WalMart is as reprehensible as anyone, they've no monopoly on reprehensibility when compared to other big boxes--including, for those of us not growing our own in nightsoil down at the anarcho-syndicalist collective, our food stores.

    As for you, Sasha, I was saving the anti-Semitism for my blog post, because you just can't expect me to burn all of my best stuff here. My special favor to you: I won't tell my close personal friend Councilmember Grossdeutschesnannyreich or his friend Councilmember Shewolf that you're coming.

    And yes, yes, wheels are in motion. I sort of wanted to make it happen last weekend (sans our host here), but I got lazy. Remind me later to tell you exactly how. Both of you: the target is now October 30, but that date hasn't been fully cleared through Protocol. I will advise.

    Disappointingly, if we're inviting Himself, I'll have to change my plan to serve veal. And you wonder why I'm an anti-Semite.

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  11. Target, Lowes, and Costco treat their employees decently, train them, offer tolerable health insurance, and the like. WM (and Home Depot I'm told) still love to hire people for 33 hour weeks so they don't have to offer any benefits, exploit on a dime, and do their best to destroy any small businesses in the area.

    Veal goes well with bacon. Just sayin'

    And for you the packer of the ballot box, sorry for taking over your comments and driving all of your delicate flower followers to their fainting couches.

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  12. Oh, deary me, someone please hand me my smelling salts.

    @Landru: As long as I shop at Last Chance, Herman Cain can't slap that 9% VAT on my stuff. Places like that—the brown and black mkts—will flourish under his regime. The poor will finally pay their fair share (the lousy 53%-ers who skate). And capital gains will be even cheaper for us all. We are the 1%!

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  13. I don't know anything about Lowes or Costco, but Target's anti-union activities are well known, and what I know about their pay and benefits (which is admittedly not up to the minute) is that they're not much different than Wal-Mart's.

    Landru: yes, I was thinking as I wrote the breast-pump line that I was offering both TMI and prime mocking material, figured fuck it.

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