Happy Thanksgiving Eve!

 

...From Elektra and Pinky (live from the Tea House 11/26/08).

Sensawunda

 

I don’t want the world to get to jaded for "awe." I think stories, myths and life can be inextricably linked with the understanding of the mind (and culture, society, place in the universe, etc). I still get a thrill out of a new idea, or a new vision of what the universe might be like; but I’ve always preferred to have that universe inhabited by interesting beings whose motives I can understand at least a little. There are some really amazing things in this universe, and some really amazing people trying to understand them. If your sense of wonder dies, that seems like it could ruin travel, and art, and a lot of other things that make life worth living. I still want my Sensawunda. Seeing places I’ve never seen, learning about technologies that don’t yet exist, watching the “curtain open” and being surprised by what appears. Maybe it’s as easy as taking the world we live in, drop in one “different” element, and imagine how people would react. I think we may not be so much jaded as we are “living in the future”. However, I do wish I had a ray gun…

Peace, DAG!

Existence

 


The truth is that you’re living in a world that no longer exists. A world that never existed in the first place. From wonder into wonder existence opens.

2 it!!!

Battle Lines

 

About a year and half ago, Roo and myself thought about how dope it would be to do a project (movie?) on modern day pirates. I mean, c’mon, just because this doesn’t run on the local news here in Utah it doesn’t mean that they don’t exist. Well, it just so happens that this week there have been EXPLOSIVE reports about the pirate menace. And it seems that India has taken the “Ready, Aim, Fire” approach…

Indian navy destroys 'pirate ship'

An Indian warship in the Gulf of Aden has fought a battle with Somali pirates just hours after three vessels were hijacked off the coast of Somalia.

The Indian navy said the pirates' "mother ship" was blown up and the pirates fled in two speedboats in the exchange on Tuesday.

The navy said on Wednesday that the INS Tabar approached the pirate ship and asked to search it.

The ship had food, diesel and water on board and had two speedboats in tow.

The navy statement said that they had seen the men on the ship's deck with rocket-propelled grenade launchers and guns. The pirates threatened to blow up the warship, and then opened fire.

The naval statement said: "On repeated calls, the vessel's threatening response was that she would blow up the naval warship. The INS Tabar retaliated in self defense and opened fire on the mother vessel.

"As a result of the firing by INS Tabar, fire broke out on the [Somali] vessel and explosions were heard, possibly due to exploding ammunition that was stored on the vessel."

The blew up the mother effin mother ship?!? It looks like the battle lines have been drawn. It will be interesting to see how this plays out.

I am going to rock “Quantum Of Solace” tonight with K…DOPE!!!

Peace, DAG!

PS. I want Jason Statham to play me in a Mark Dago bio-pic. This guy is EPIC!
http://denofgeek.com/movies/148529/why_jason_statham_is_the_planets_purest_action_star.html

Django Fett Style

80 Years Old!

...And WAY better than "Camp Rock".

Give The Drummer Sum

I'm liking this one...alot. One thing (Facts?), I can't make out that Utah Jazz looking shirt he's got on? Thoughts?

BABYCAKES?

Thanks K!

Paolo Per Uomo

 

http://www.celebitchy.com/21511/sopranos_paulie_walnuts_debuts_new_cologne_for_men/

Paulie Walnuts debuts new colonge for men!

“You could smell me coming"?

M Theory or Ubiquity?

 

Micro things that act/look the same as macro things.

A few questions/comments on this picture…

-Are we just one small piece of one large brain? Or electrical pulses running through some ones head?
-Do these represent all the universe and all the multiverses beyond it
-Do we live in a brain cell. And people live in ours?
-What if the Universe IS a brain, and our brains are another Universe?
-I can't decide whether this is a better argument for religion or for evolution.
-Did God just got lazy and started Copy/Pasting?
-So can we unlock the secrets of the universe by studying the brain more?
-Do we have a whole universe with solar systems inside us?

Or is it…

Universes inside universes inside universes inside universes, it’s the never ending process of life, the only question is where does it start and where does it end? maybe our universe is what you would call "gods" brain cells, but what if god is just another person in a universe, say that is like a "god" of a "god" and once again you have a never ending process. Universe = You Inverse.

OR is some alien race out there just simply saying…

“Foolish humans! You only think they look the same because you can't see the fourth dimension!”


Peace, DAG!

Continuity?

 

I can't help but notice that alternate universes and peripheral, out-of-continuity series are running rampant.

The sheer amount of all these stories begs the question: is continuity quite the cornerstone it sometimes seems to be? I like continuity and canonicity. I don’t care for all of these "multiverses" because, as far as the parent medium is concerned, they didn’t “happen” (Do we really need how many Iron Man titles?). Which I know is ridiculous, because none of these things happened anyway! They’re all fictional stories!

Still, I have to wonder whether continuity itself is soon to be a done deal. You practically need a degree in quantum physics to explain what the DC Universe has done with its continuity, but as we see, even Marvel...the original model of a shared superhero universe...is playing fast and loose with the idea now. Is it because books that take place in their own “universe” are more accessible to casual readers? Or is it because the interlocking nature of continuity actually restricts the storytelling potential of comics, and alternate universes are seen as a way around that? Either way, the signposting is clear: continuity is holding enough people back that they want to work outside it.

So why stick to it at all? Is it purely to keep the “old fans” happy? Perhaps. There’s business logic in it too, that says “buy one Marvel Universe title, and you’ll soon want to buy more.” Certainly, Marvel’s film division think it’s a good idea, as even now they’re weaving together the universes of various big-studio films with the aim of creating an “Avengers” story down the line.

It’s hard to say whether current models of continuity will ever go away. Logically, it’ll only stick around as long as it actually helps sell comics...but if the recent "Alternate Universes" are any indication, it seems like the day when it doesn’t might be closer than we think.

Unstuck In Time

 

I watched part of this film last night and plan on finishing it today. I should read the book because I'm sure it is better (However, Vonnegut "loved" the translation onto the silver screen). The film explores fate and free will and the illogical nature of human beings. Protagonist Billy Pilgrim is unstuck in time, randomly experiencing the events of his life, with no idea of what part he next will visit or re-live...so, his life does not end with death; he re-lives his death, before its time, an experience often mingled with his other experiences. Crazy huh? Think Desmond in "Lost".

Speaking of "Lost" it will be starting up in February '09. I always thought a big thread to the show was time travel. I think the "LOST" series revolves around the use of a quasi-conventional time machine. All of the "mysteries" that the show presents can be explained through an understanding of how this time machine is used. While many think that a time machine is a "cheap" answer to the show, I can assure you that once LOST makes the "big reveal," there will be much to think about and reflect upon. It's all about time-loops, alternate time lines and, most importantly, the ability to travel back and forth in time...and becoming "Unstuck".

Peace, DAG!

What last night felt like...

It's a metaphor, get it? And The Emporer isn't Obama...

One of my favorite images from last night:

 

The story is here:
http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/11/05/us.reaction/

And then there is Paul Krugman (Nobel Prize Winner) had this to say after the election…

"What I mean by that is that for the past 14 years America’s political life has been largely dominated by, well, monsters. Monsters like Tom DeLay, who suggested that the shootings at Columbine happened because schools teach students the theory of evolution. Monsters like Karl Rove, who declared that liberals wanted to offer "therapy and understanding" to terrorists. Monsters like Dick Cheney, who saw 9/11 as an opportunity to start torturing people.

And in our national discourse, we pretended that these monsters were reasonable, respectable people. To point out that the monsters were, in fact, monsters, was "shrill”.

Let’s not forget…these criminals need to be brought to justice. Anything can happen, right?

Yes We Can! Victory Speech Part 1

Elektra, K and myself partied last night! It was an amazing moment...I wish my father was still alive to see this. Now, it's time to get to work...

Peace, DAG!

Victory Speech Part 2

He saved his best speech for last...

...Props to J.M.! I'm sure he will look back on this and wish that he would have never let his campaign get away from him like it did. He is a patriot and a hero. Joe Lieberman on the other hand....

Trailer for Orgazmo 2!

Just kidding...but this is PRETTY awesome.

No Currency Left To Buy The Big Lies

 

Posted by John Cusack (Nov 2nd, Huffington Post)...

In the pre-capitalist reality, James Madison said when he put power in the hands of the business elite, he would be entrusting "enlightened statesmen and benevolent philosophers who would devote themselves to the welfare of all."

Clearly, he believed this statement in the way I guess some modern Republicans do. The only problem was that he eventually realized this didn't work and in 1792, disillusioned and worried about the democratic experiment, condemned what he called "the daring depravity of the times." He went on to denounce the business elites who, given ultimate power, "become tools and tyrants of government...they overwhelm government with their powers and combinations and are bribed by its largesse." That's how he perceived the system he had helped design. In 2008, this is an apt description of the Republican relationship to government and power.

Finally, some blue light, tectonic plate shifts, a sea change, we hear... a wave of despair carrying us to a new place. The bastards are finally meeting their grisly ends and will be discarded and abandoned as men come to power who will actually try to govern. I know we're supposed to be civil but I'm not a real believer in this method when dealing with crimes.

What does the sea change mean? How can we help people understand what is happening and help them contextualize it?

First the past: Senator McCain, Governor Palin and assorted surrogates are delusional and breathtakingly corrupt. They disgrace themselves and their country as they lie, smear, slur and write it off as political manner.

Yet the creeping truth must frighten them late at night: there is no currency left to buy the big lies.

There is no more money left to loan or borrow the big lies or to sell them. No more money left to pay off the debt, the wreckage in the wake. The orgy of excess has drained every bottle, smashed the furniture and left the cupboards bare. All that's left is derivative debts -- bets between liars and lies. Trillions of dollars. Turned capitalism into a Ponzi scheme for trading worthless paper. No real value anywhere. No matter how much money Ben Bernanke prints.

We are asked to stand over the abyss and experience our own destruction as another political game show -- just another surreal horse race. We watch millionaires and paid Republican hacks appear on television yelling "Socialist!" at Obama as if the Bolsheviks are coming to rape our daughters. These are the same people who oversaw the greatest upward redistribution of wealth in the history of this country. The same people who, through general lawlessness and a privatization frenzy, succeeded in shredding the Constitution, turning war, illegal domestic spying, security, border patrol, interrogation, and even torture into profitable industries gorging on the state.

So define the big lie: free marketers want free markets. Not so, the facts say. They are the biggest welfare freaks on the planet.

These men and keepers of the faith would lecture us with a straight face on the evil socialists/ communists/terrorists /vampires/space aliens who would dare "redistribute wealth" by amending the tax code. Two wars and the only shared sacrifice they want is more tax cuts for the rich and for the U.S. citizenry to continue shopping. As Sidney Falco said, you gotta give it to them, their gall is gorgeous.

If we stay the course, we are told, we will finally, one day, reach that shining city on a hill, the free market-based fundamentalist utopia. Even though all evidence points the other way, we should listen, reason, step back and watch them as they devour what's left of the government. They will feast on themselves -- the feast of carrion the Book of Revelation tells us -- but I digress, sort of. It's over. This would be a great system if there were no human beings.

Mathematical realism. Eat what you kill. The bottom line. Greed is good. Graphs and flow charts and metrics for success. All social organization is based on profit as the unifying force and engine of the common good and even social justice; worship the market, even as you corrupt it.

Our perfect system will provide for all.

And yet Wall Street cripples America and the world because it won't adhere to the same rules it says we must obey for the good of freedom. Because reality won't be a slave to their machine.

And so this is how we can rationalize privatizing war. At last look, with 630 corporations like Blackwater and Halliburton getting 40% of the $2 billion spent each week in Iraq, no one can doubt the corporatist dominance of the war machine.

Mathematically, the market crash shouldn't have happened according to their system, but human feelings make panic and panic cannot be calculated. I would bet that someday someone will discover that math adheres to a quantum reality: the participants and the observers affect the outcome. I digress again. But not really.

Instead of an international consensus based on trust and global community, the Neocons say trust no one, need no one, ask no one. Rigged, "open" markets are created at the barrel of a gun after bombing a country. We must all bow to the market.

Collapse, chaos, lawlessness. And even the market voted with its feet.

The era of market idolatry is over.

This is the end of Milton Friedman, Reaganomics and supply-side theory. This ideology has never been about free markets but a fundamentalist vision that is a cover for naked aggression and a social contract based on fear and greed. The government's job is to create optimal conditions for corporate profit, to privatize everything in sight and to sell off its own body parts. To literally devour itself.

So we have laws that allow borrowing money against derivatives -- basically a bet between two people who create nothing without collateral. They leveraged the public financial health on something you wouldn't be allowed to do in Vegas. It illustrates the corruption that has become institutionalized through deregulation and a culture of predatory greed. Alan Greenspan testified that he was shocked: business didn't regulate itself. The common good was not achieved by greed.

His testimony was incredible and felt like it was coated in lies or at least standing deeply in their shadows. But one doesn't doubt him as a true believer, absolved of messy feelings of collective responsibility. We made him a high priest even though we saw the suffering and the cruelty of the system.

The final irony of the free-market Darwinist model is instead of the strongest and best surviving, it's really the weakest and the worst. From a moral and spiritual point of view this is hardly in doubt. See George Bush. The gospel he purports to serve tells us this but perhaps he saw Christ as a conqueror. I've always doubted men who call themselves Christians who live by the law of the jungle. The gospels, the Koran and the Torah make no bones about it: wealth is not strength; power often represents not the brightest and the best but the weakest and worst. The beast in the Book of Revelation is not a horn-rimmed devil but Rome. Empire. Any empire. Every empire.

As Bush leaves office, the real truth is this: the new economies of the world disprove everything he ever said. Apparently that doesn't matter.

Neoconservatives will lie in the weeds and gather forces, the same players in a revolving door. They want back in and if history has proved anything, worshiping the markets is not enough. We must actually kill to feed them. A horrible cross-pollination of fundamentalism, dementia and market fever has turned America into a willing enabler of corporate cannibalism. Nothing else to call it when murder is seen as a legitimate extension of economic policy. Preemptive war is not only justified but openly referred to as a market opportunity. The strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must. As we look out at the wreckage -- world economies collapsing, nationalized banks and a complete loss of trust -- we can see the hypocrisy as all are revealed as true socialists on the way down, crying in their scotch and Ambien as they run to the state for cover.

Many, like the Financial Times, endorse Obama. But let's remember when the F.T. and the Wall Street Journal talked glowingly and starry-eyed about the "Baghdad Boom" -- as horrifying a moniker as Shock and Awe. It was not the site of a gold rush, it was the sight of massacre and armed robbery. Now these men jump like rats off a death ship but don't be fooled. Francis Fukuyama and company will just lay low, regroup and rebrand. They speak openly about such things, beaten but unbowed, with no moral connection to the fiasco they have fostered. They speak as passing spectators watching the Weather Channel, (see Frum, Kristol, Brooks and all the rest), rather than intellectual architects, defenders, and foot soldiers in an illegal war and the thirty-five year assault on the New Deal.

As we help Obama try to implement another New Deal, I asked Naomi Klein about the parallels to The Shock Doctrine as it's polar opposite. She told me:

"I have been talking about the need for a progressive shock doctrine in speeches a lot. I call it disaster populism and the key difference is democracy. The right has been using shocks to suspend and sidestep democracy, declaring states of emergency and the progressive use of shock to enlarge and deepen the democratic space to bring more people into the political process. This is why it is important to remember that the New Deal did not come only from kindly elites handing it down from on high, but also because those elites were under massive popular pressure from below. We can all use shock and crisis to move the political direction of the country, but the progressive route is a democratic one, the right is an authoritarian one, even if it takes place within an electoral democracy."

The real challenge is to erase the delusion that greed equals freedom and prosperity, let alone the hideous lie that it somehow spreads justice. Amazingly, we are asked to listen to this gibberish in political life no matter how high the bile rises.

Many believe economies must serve humanity and not the other way around. Economies must make a moral connection to the republic. Brace yourselves free marketers: the quality of economic and human transactions will have to take priority over money. Faith and hope have to manifest in the social transactions we make.

A new social contract could be coming based on a real currency my friend Kevin McCabe calls the currency of grace. It is a currency of economic fairness and institutionalizing concepts of shared responsibility; a currency based on the gold standard that every human has value and should be awarded respect and opportunity, the dignity that comes from human beings protecting each other from the values and ideals of a Darwinist world. Its spirit is in Keynesian economics, a mixed economy with regulated markets and social spending. In the new era, we must remove fundamentalist right wing economists as the high priests and kings. Their ideology will stay dead only if we remain vigilant and call things what they are. It's a battle for the idea of America and it's just beginning if Senator Obama becomes president.

We should worship God if we want to, not the markets.

PS. Kenneth (pictured here) says...GET OUT AND VOTE!

I'll see you in two days...

 

...if McCain wins!