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Swept up in turbulent waters, attacked with killer tomatoes

Oh no, Scott Regan is playing John Prine’s “Lake Marie” on “Open Tunings,” his morning radio show on WRUR-FM (88.5). That song always makes me cry.

“We were standing, standing by peaceful waters….”

Damn. Sniff.

So yeah, I’ve been on blog sabbatical for a while. Reading, listening to music, walking the dog. But I’ve had absolutely nothing to add to the public discourse over the last month or two. That shouting, antagonistic, barbaric yawp of people sliding into the abyss that inevitably claims all of us. The Etruscans, the Greeks, the Romans, the Manson Family…

These are times that make my brain hurt. But I did continue to scribble notes on scraps of paper. Which I now unload, here, as an unreliable document of the past couple of months.

My respect for COVID over the past two years has led to a dramatically reduced social calendar. The biggest negative? I’ve been watching more television. That Applebee’s commercial with the cowboy swinging his Levis-clad butt in my face was forcing me to re-think my pledge to not throw heavy objects at the TV screen. Thankfully, over the last week, that commercial seems to have receded into whatever marketing hell it came from.

Not incidentally, the best show I’ve discovered during the COVID TV era is a low-fi Canadian faux-dramedy, “Trailer Park Boys.” Anything that depicts humans as irredeemably stupid gets my Emmy Awards vote.

When I heard about it the next morning, I didn’t know what to make of Will Smith slapping Chris Rock at the Academy Awards. Judging by the high degree of attention it was receiving in the media, this was big, big news. And two days afterward, a sports gambling company piled on, reporting that geotagged Twitter data showed 41 states supported Rock and nine states were behind Smith.

I have thought long and hard about this. Emerging from the fog with thoughts such as: With Russia invading Ukraine, do Will Smith and Chris Rock even matter?

I just keep repeating to myself…

“Peaceful waters. Standing by peaceful waters.”

I read a review of the recent release of the final book of Simon Gray’s four-volume “The Complete Smoking Diaries.” For true completists, those books are, “The Smoking Diaries,” “The Year of the Jouncer,” “The Last Cigarette” and now “Coda.” From the reviews I’ve read, Gray’s memoir quartet sounds a lot like Marcel Proust’s seven-volume “In Search of Lost Time,” which we used to call “Remembrance of Things Past.” Here’s a review from The Guardian of Gray’s first book in the series, when it was first published in 2004:

It’s perfectly possible to take Simon Gray’s diaries for just what they seem to be: a grouchy-hearted, grimly comic rant against the world by a playwright in his mid-60s who finds himself neglected by the modern theatre, unable on pain of death to drink a drop of his former daily three bottles of champagne, and obliged to confront the ineluctable mortality of his friends and therefore of himself. ‘The Smoking Diaries’ is a lament for the sorrows of growing old, of finding oneself stranded in a place from which there is already no return.

Ineluctable. Or, inescapable, inevitable. As a writer in his mid-60s who finds himself neglected, I am a moth ineluctably drawn to this flame.

Here’s a cocktail napkin on which I’ve scribbled “Food Insecurity,” “Underserved” and a third word that’s been blurred out by a crescent of red wine from the bottom edge of a wine glass. This looks like it came out of a conversation about feel-good euphemisms. Food insecurity is when people are starving, which should not happen in a nation of rich people. Underserved is when minorities can’t have access to decent schools or health care. Which, again, should not happen in a nation of rich people.

On another scrap I find this:

“The great artist of tomorrow will go underground.”

– Marcel Duchamp

Duchamp died in 1968. Was he predicting any artists living today must rid themselves of the artificial propellant of social media? Or did he mean today’s great artists might as well pick out an unoccupied piece of land and dig themselves a shallow grave?

Of course, I write down everything this guy says:

“I think inside every song there are other songs. But I also think, inside your voice, there are other voices that you have yet to discover and that’s kind of why you are here.”

– Tom Waits

And inside every comment is a lie. And other lies that we have yet to discover. And that’s kind of why I am here. My more-recent notes grow increasingly dark. There’s a list of names that basically asks: These people are transparently lying, how do they get away with it?

It’s like dialogue from a political satire. Marjorie Taylor Greene denying she had called for martial law to overturn Trump’s election defeat, despite the presence of an email in which she irrefutably suggests the answer might be in declaring “Marshall Law.”

Or The New York Times reporting that, in a private meeting, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy of California warned his Republican colleagues that their inflammatory comments might get people hurt or killed, and he was going to call Trump and suggest he resign. McCarthy insisted that story was “totally false and wrong.” And then, oops, here come the audio tapes of McCarthy, proving the Times story is totally true and correct.

Political satire isn’t always funny. Politi-tag this Twitter data and we’ll see it’s largely conservatives backing a notion borrowed from “Fahrenheit 451.” They’re calling for book burning, including high school math books.

Something’s not adding up here. Who are these nimrods, how did they get into positions of power? It’s the media as well, and voices like Laura Ingraham, attacking President Biden’s proposal of student loan forgiveness. She tweeted, “My mom worked as a waitress until she was 73 to help pay for our college.” It apparently escapes the Fox News Harpie that Dear Old Mom working way past retirement age to pay off her kids’ college tuitions might be a sign that something’s wrong with our system of higher education.

And what about the act of throwing a tomato at a presidential candidate? Asked about comments he made in 2016 about that possibility, Trump, the man who would go on to be the leader of the free world, raised this horror in a court deposition released just this week: “You can get killed with those things.”

Attack of the killer tomatoes.

I just keep repeating to myself…

“Peaceful waters. Standing by peaceful waters.”

BE THE FIRST in your neighborhood to know when a new Critical Mass has been turned loose. Go to the “Subscribe” button on the web site jeffspevak.com for an email alert. You can contact me at jeffspevakwriter@gmail.com.

Delusion, witchcraft, and the conservative way

A typical idyllic Trump household. Photo by Jon Gary.

Despite the pandemic, My Friend Jon gets out quite a bit. Rides his bike all over the county. He recently posted on Facebook a photo he took of this house blanketed by big TRUMP WON banners. Life-size cut-outs of Trump on the front lawn, and a two-dimensional Trump and Melania at the front door, greeting visitors.

I’ve stumbled across similar conservative urban trail markers. Here’s a house all dressed up in DON’T BLAME ME I VOTED FOR TRUMP banners. It’s just a two-minute drive from where we live:

This one needs a bigger U.S. flag.

Here’s another one, just one street over from our house. TRUMP 2024 it says. With images of handguns, brandished in a threatening manner. In the spirit of holiday décor, it recently added “TRUMP” spelled out in white Christmas lights in the front window. I walk the dog, Abilene, past it a couple of times a week:

Hello neighbor!

Who lives in these homes? Are they crazy? Are garish exhibits of personal political statements a Republican thing? I don’t recall Democrats draping their homes with HILLARY WON banners after the 2016 election. And Clinton did win the popular vote, so at least there would have been some truth to that one.

What’s happening inside these homes? They’re debating Critical Race Theory. They don’t know what it is, except… something, something, murmur, mumble… something about Black people.

No one who lives in these houses seems able to cite any specific evidence proving that THE ELECTION WAS STOLEN. All they know – and this really is all they know – is the vote didn’t tally up to what they were hoping for. They don’t know exactly what happened, except… some, some, murmur, mumble… something about the libtards.

Something grand-sounding like these words, which I conveniently created just for this essay, might be chiseled on the granite base of a forgotten statue covered in pigeon shit in your town square:

If we trust each man, woman and dog to be the curator of their own truths, then the rules of society will inevitably crumble.

We’re seeing the cracks widen now…

Domestic terrorists can attack the United States Capitol in an attempt to reverse the results of the November election and overthrow the government. And be hailed by conservatives as HEROES.

A 17-year-old kid can drive to another state, with an illegally obtained AR-15, shoot three people – killing two of them – and earn the praise of conservatives. And earn a trip to visit Trump at Mar-a-Lago.

Without offering any evidence, Republican Lauren Boebert can accuse her fellow congressional representative, Democrat Ilhan Omar, of being a Muslim terrorist.

Maybe this is a matter of you can’t see the morning until you’ve stayed up fretting all night. Sometimes, society’s norms do hold up.

A tourist at the Capitol building, on an invitation from Trump.

Because Unite the Right organizers have been found liable for millions in damages after a white-power rally in Charlottesville, Va. Because the conservative conspiracy entertainment theorist Alex Jones has been found guilty of defaming the families of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shootings. Because Trump White House political strategist Steve Bannon has been charged with criminal contempt for ignoring a subpoena from a congressional committee investigating the January 6 insurrection. And because the manufacturers of voting machines are suing right-wing media groups for claiming, without offering any evidence, that the companies were involved in election corruption that put Joe Biden in the White House.

Can you imagine how extensive this network of corruption would have to be in order to subvert, state by state, a national election? And no one – NO ONE – has stepped forward with any evidence?

Perhaps it’s a matter of personal perspective. Through which lens do you choose to view the world? What has caused more hospitalizations and deaths, COVID or donuts? Either answer is correct, depending on the time frame you choose.

There can be many variables, but ultimately only one truth. In 2020, in the final thrashing year of the Trump presidency, the Department of Homeland Security finally acknowledged that violent white supremacy is “the most persistent and lethal threat in the homeland.”

Not Muslim congresswomen. They’re not even on the Lethal Threats to the Homeland chart.

We’ve seen these TRUMP WON banners before.

Johannes Kepler, risking prison for the truth.

Centuries ago, mathematicians and astronomers such as Galileo, Nicolaus Copernicus and Johannes Kepler were calculating how our universe worked. Yet they were cautious about being too loud about presenting their evidence that we live in a heliocentric solar system. The progress of European civilization was hindered by too many Flat Earthers, and by a Catholic church that insisted the Earth was the center of the universe, and by believers that the hand of God was behind the death of every sparrow. The advance of humanity was stunted under threat of prison and torture. True, a smattering of cultures ranging from the Chinese to the Maya seemed to have a better grasp of cosmology. But let’s not award too much credit to a culture that, as a religious offering, would cut the beating hearts from the chests of enemies captured in battle, or even the hearts of their neighbors.

Humanity is only one rung up from the Black Widow spider, notorious for eating its mate.

Acceptance of facts and truth is critical to society moving forward. But when rejected, facts and truth are equally valuable as tools that reveal prejudice or lack of education. Displays of ignorance is a Geiger counter, its escalating chatter betraying the danger at hand.

Awareness of their willful ignorance warned us of who would be waving those TRUMP flags on the steps of the Capitol building on January 6.

When truth and science isn’t allowed in, witchcraft and superstition fill in the void. Human nature has always been open to delusion. Over the centuries, nothing has changed.

BE THE FIRST in your neighborhood to know when a new Critical Mass has been turned loose. Go to the “Subscribe” button on the web site jeffspevak.com for an email alert. You can contact me at jeffspevakwriter@gmail.com.

Reality as airtight as a landfill

Meat beer. Giant black-and-white spiders. Women brawling with each other, right in front of me, tearing their cocktail dresses. A global pandemic, killing millions.

We should know which of these are real, and which are fantasy.

What a big movie spider looks like.

The well-adjusted side of the world does. It is laughing hysterically at former Trump economic advisor Larry Kudlow. Now a Fox News commentator, on Friday Kudlow mocked the Green New Deal: that’s a set of forward-thinking ideas, presented by the smart new women of Congress, understanding how economics and ecology work together. But as Kudlow interprets it, the Green New Deal is the road leading us all too soon to “plant-based beer.”

I check the label of the beer in my hand. Hops. Various grains. Yeast. Plant stuff. My beer appears to be largely vegetarian. No cattle died in the making of this product. Unless they wandered from the pasture and got hit by a beer truck.

Anyone who went to college, and experienced almost any kind of social life, would know these beer facts. In fact, Kudlow attended the University of Rochester, just a few miles from where I’m sitting as I type these words. And I have it on good authority that University of Rochester students have been drinking beer for around 175 years.

Worse than his beer gaff, it’s been more than a year since Kudlow proclaimed that the Trump administration’s containment of COVID-19 was “pretty close to airtight.” Airtight as a landfill, it turns out, with the U.S. death toll now passing 570,000.

The allure of your airplane crashing in the ocean, leaving you trapped on an island with eight exotic dancers.

Speaking of trash, this week Georgia Republican Congressman Jody Hice argued against statehood for Washington, D.C., because its population is too Black. Or because it doesn’t have a landfill, that’s what he actually said.

But we know what he meant.

Here’s the obvious question that emerges: How is it that such say-anything buffoons can occupy important positions in government, and the media? Who left the barn door open?

It’s not the job of average citizens to run a quality check on these people. We’re busy, we can’t help but let our guard down. When I’ve had a tough day, I’m just like the next guy. I want to flop down on the couch, turn on the television, and watch the latest advertisements about medical supplements for happy, active, intrusive seniors.

A Quiznos creature.

Then maybe on to “The Horrors of Spider Island,” using all of the stock footage technology available in 1960. “Mystery Science Theatre 3000” couldn’t ignore this fat target. An airliner whose passengers include eight exotic women dancers and their smarmy male manager takes off with two engines, and by the time it’s over the Pacific it has four engines. Until it catches fire and plunges nose-first into the ocean. Cut to a guy talking on the phone, who’s assuring someone on the other end of the line that, yes, the last word from the plane’s crew was that it had caught fire. And now they’ve lost contact. But there’s no need to worry. Because, it’s only been four days…

The screenwriter’s decision to limit the survivors to the eight dancers and their manager – who have somehow found a rubber raft amid the chaos of a burning airplane nose-diving into the ocean – is pretty damn smart. Because now we can get to the meat of the story: Eight women in spike heels, tearing at each others’ cocktail dresses, and their once-smarmy, now-resourceful manager, battling the horrors of giant spiders on an island. Monsters with all of the structural integrity of one of those ragged creatures from the Quiznos sub TV commercials a few years ago.

As the women of “The Horrors of Spider Island” demonstrate, a society under stress can’t distinguish fantasy from reality. Less than a week ago, I posted an obvious observation on social media:

More horror.

Ted Nugent said Covid-19 was a hoax. Now he says he had it, and thought he was dying. Just a reminder that, of the 4,000 or so interviews I’ve done over the years, he was the biggest idiot.

That’s a true story: I mean, that I think Ted Nugent is an idiot. For those of you who rate world events by the numbers they draw on social media, that Facebook post has just eclipsed the 100 mark for comments, with about 350 likes and 30 shares. I call that a success for any minor-league blogger.

This pandemic is working for me. A mix of fantasy and reality.

BE THE FIRST in your neighborhood to know when a new Critical Mass has been turned loose. Go to the “Subscribe” button on the web site jeffspevak.com for an email alert. You can contact me at jeffspevakwriter@gmail.com.

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