Friday, December 9, 2011

I Invoked the White Robes, Gleaming Blades Ready for Blood, and, Feeling the Scourge of Increase and Multiply, Made Affirmation: *Yes,* Deliver Us from Complicity

I understand the thinking of friends who think pissing off a potentially sympathetic demographic by making their commute a horrific two hours of inconvenient hell is a fatal strategic mistake, and maybe possibly probably true, which to me is the reason to fucking inconvenience them. I understand the thinking of friends who think aligning in any manner with coopting motherfuckers for the sake of better air-time in exchange for a diluted at best, serving the Master at worse message is a fatal strategic mistake, and maybe possibly probably true (and I watched some of those Union fucks in their yellow vests look at Occupiers with policeman stares), but, for the sake of the argument, one million people in DC the week after New Year during POTUS12 agitating about whinyass Jamie Dimon's salary is a bad thing?

Not that there will be one-hundredth of a million people. Fuck, that's all the gah I've got for yodeling the cud today. Here's an anti-Occupy K St, here's a pro-Occupy K St, needless to say I understand and completely agree while disagreeing with each. Here's an oldie, Fleabus as Metaphor:










VASECTOMY

Philip Appleman

After the steaming bodies swept
through the hungry streets of swollen cities;   
after the vast pink spawning of family   
poisoned the rivers and ravaged the prairies;   
after the gamble of latex and
diaphragms and pills;
I invoked the white robes, gleaming blades   
ready for blood, and, feeling the scourge   
of Increase and Multiply, made
affirmation: Yes, deliver us from
complicity.
And after the precision of scalpels,
I woke to a landscape of sunshine where   
the catbird mates for life and
maps trace out no alibis—stepped   
into a morning of naked truth,
where acts mean what they really are:   
the purity of loving
for the sake of love.



10 comments:

  1. Tourists equal protesters equal tourists. My sociopathy is not nuanced. Neither is yours, come to think on it. Perhaps I'm onto something here. Will you vote if I run for something on a platform of Loving Sociopathy?

    And sure, bring Fleabus into it. How, I ask, is that any different from Steve Nicol having Branko's leg broken?

    ReplyDelete
  2. Run against Hans! And Fleabus was meant as the sherbet between courses.

    No one would have given Occupy a moment's thought Wednesday but for the K Street action. Of course there are consequences for pissing people off: we disagree whether the thinking involved in being pissed off is worth more or less than not thinking about Occupy at all.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Who cares about pilfering sympathy from fellow unwashed, for me it would be all about having to sit next to an animate cigarette butt for two hours, but I'm very much selfish.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Heh. Well played. Both of you.

    It's a little tendentious--to be kind (see legs and peeing thereon, op cit infinitum)--to pretend that no one would've thought about Occupy on Wednesday if not for the obstruction of peoples' daily lives.

    But we're circling the same thing, and that thing is the source of my suggestion about Adderall. I will consider whether my personal and hard-earned aversion to others' purely attention-seeking behavior is an unjust bias.

    Yeah, I think we both know how that's gonna come out.

    ReplyDelete
  5. No one would have given Occupy a moment's thought Wednesday but for the K Street action.

    Nonsense. There are people paying attention all the time. And there are lots of other ways to get attention.

    Of course there are consequences for pissing people off: we disagree whether the thinking involved in being pissed off is worth more or less than not thinking about Occupy at all. It isn't about consequences. I don't give a rats ass if people choose to get arrested. But when folks make the lives of the 99% more miserable, they convey to me that they're full of shit. It ain't right to mess with the folks who have lousy enough lives and who haven't volunteered to be inconvenienced.

    Seriously. Aim your weapons or keep them holstered.

    ReplyDelete
  6. (Sorry, was here then gone, needed to edit some misspellings, fucking blooger comments.)

    It's my inability to not not see both sides that I'm constantly documenting. I've been persistently inconsistent, quite purposely.

    And as for better ways to get attention, please (said unsnarkily) suggest. I will pass them along to the one person I know who has a voice at Occupy DC.

    ReplyDelete
  7. It's all good. I have channels into Occupy DC (of course) and frequently suggest. Sorry I was so .. um .. harsh. I'm mostly mad about Plan B.

    ReplyDelete
  8. Yay! Fleabus. Here's hoping Planet's pics will garner more posts over her winter break, assuming, of course, she's coming home.

    I would disagree. That vid is more simile than metaphor, but I digress. And I would also note the thematic convergence with the lovely Planet college vid, to wit: the string.

    Hey, and thanks for the linkage. Seriously, I would love to go to a soccer match with you guys.

    ReplyDelete
  9. One passing event is one thing, but the notion that we could possibly change anything worth changing without disrupting people's daily lives is a mysterious one to me.

    ReplyDelete
  10. Richard doesn't it make sense to disrupt the folks who need disrupting instead of their victims? The notion of needing to disrupt the lives of the 99% just smacks of a lack of imagination to me.

    How about Occupy Congress or Occupy Our Homes? They don't require that nonsense. Besides if one alienates ones main constituency it will be all over.

    ReplyDelete