Party

Withdrawn

Withdrawn.

She holds a phantom, she kisses and she hugs him
And I am not averse to how she loves him

The Cast of Oliver Stone’s W. Biopic

Oliver Stone’s W. film is W. as in George W. Bush but the casting has me thinking, “W.TF?!”

Feast your peepers here:

Okay, maybe James Cromwell is old enough looking and all to play George Senior, but it’s hard to get past the fact that he’s an animal rights proponent, PETA supporter. It’s just too weird.

Ellen Burstyn may be no Spring chicken but, ahem, Marlon Brando’s reanimated corpse would make a more physically believable Barbara Bush.

I’ll just let the rest of these speak for themselves:

Josh Brolin as the big cheese, George W. Bush.

Thandie Newton as Condoleezza Rice.

Elizabeth Banks as Laura Bush.

I guess Oliver Stone has a history of jazzing up his biopics (JFK, Nixon, The Doors) so this is no surprise. These actors and actresses better get to work wiping all of that sincerity from their eyes. If they’re going to pull this off, they’ll have to perfect the vacant, cold, gaze of the Bush crew.

Some quite incoherent rambling about old men.

Beginning when I was about thirteen or fourteen, I developed an obsession with William Burroughs. Slightly dissatisfied with my real family, I imagined a world in which Old Bull Lee was my dad. He seemed so outside of anything I’d ever known. He was elegant, brilliant and with a bit of a “fuck all” attitude. He knew booze, drugs, women and men, poetry, love, hate, disgust, beauty, poverty and privilege. He had it all and he had it while looking not entirely unlike my father, who is only twelve years younger than W.B. Of course, there are differences. My dad has the long, frightening reach of a boxer while William was more of a wiry fellow. My dad is overalls and prefers his shirts with two chest pockets so there’s room for a package of non-filter smokes in one and reading glasses in the other. William is three-piece suits with matching hats and neatly combed hair. My dad digs “The Lawrence Welk Show.” William recorded with Sonic Youth and appears in a Ministry video (among others).

Really, as time has passed, I’ve come to appreciate the fact that all of the violent passions, the stuff that used to seem to matter, seemed “cool,” about Burroughs are in my Dad too…so many crazy stories I’ve heard a hundred times now. The big difference, I guess, what hooked me, was that Burroughs wrote about it. He wrote about it and he wrote about it differently than anyone else had written about it before.

Burroughs was and is my favorite Beat and let’s face it, all of the Beats are badasses in their own ways. Kerouac gets so much credit but I’ve always seen him as more of a lucky duck. He died younger. He died living with his mother, didn’t he? I could be wrong. Would he have done much more if he’d lived to do it? There are all of these old, dead men swimming in my mind and I divide them, usually, into those who lived off of women and those who lived on their own. So many had female wives or lovers who went to work at menial jobs to pay the rent, buy the booze.* I begrudge them that. The women were writers so often too. They are, for the most part, footnotes to the lives of the men they supported. They write, but so often what they’re writing is just “My Life as a Beat’s Woman” memoirs. Was it worth it to be with these men; to screw them, to mother their children, to share their lives? Was it worth the sacrifice of their own literary autonomy? I don’t know. Maybe Henry Miller had a huge penis.

William Burroughs and (my pretend, ohgodwouldn’tthatbeawesome) Uncle Allen Ginsberg

Note: I love these men. I love their beauty and wisdom and I love that they’ve shared it with us all. Incoherent rambling, that’s all I’m up to. If Ryan Adams can do it, gosh darnit, so can I! Ha!

Note 2: If I really feel rambly next time, I’ll tell you about how it used to be my wish to have “Freud” tattooed across my teenaged belly. Old dead guys have always been my heroes.

*I exclude Bukowski from this. I adore him. He worked to pay his own rent and in doing so, mined the life most of us live; all Sisyphus with our rolling boulders. Burroughs was really a bit of a “trust-fund baby,” wasn’t he? Not that I’m lumping Buk with the Beats. It happens a lot but I slightly disapprove of it. Apparently, Burroughs wasn’t entirely cordial when introduced to Bukowski once. I won’t hold it against him though.

The Origin of Love

And here I thought John Cameron Mitchell was just a total genius…okay, maybe he still is. But this “origin of love” story goes way back. I bet Aristophanes didn’t look near as foxy as Hedwig telling the story.

Aristophanes’s Speech from Plato’s Symposium

Translated by Benjamin Jowett from Collected Works of Plato, 4th Edition, Oxford U. Press, 1953 (189c-189d) p 520 to (193d-193e) p 525

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Aristophanes professed to open another vein of discourse; he had a mind to praise Love in another way, unlike that of either Pausanias or Eryximachus. Mankind, he said, judging by their neglect of him, have never, as I think, at all understood the power of Love. For if they had understood him they would surely have built noble temples and altars, and offered solemn sacrifices in his honour; but this is not done, and most certainly ought to be done: since of all the gods he is the best friend of men, the helper and the healer of the ills which are the great impediment to the happiness of the race. I will try to describe his power to you, and you shall teach the rest of the world what I am teaching you.In the first place, let me treat of the nature of man and what has happened to it. The original human nature was not like the present, but different. The sexes were not two as they are now, but originally three in number; there was man, woman, and the union of the two, of which the name survives but nothing else. Once it was a distinct kind, with a bodily shape and a name of its own, constituted by the union of the male and the female: but now only the word ‘androgynous’ is preserved, and that as a term of reproach.In the second place, the primeval man was round, his back and sides forming a circle; and he had four hands and the same number of feet, one head with two faces, looking opposite ways, set on a round neck and precisely alike; also four ears, two privy members, and the remainder to correspond. He could walk upright as men now do, backwards or forwards as he pleased, and he could also roll over and over at a great pace, turning on his four hands and four feet, eight in all, like tumblers going over and over with their legs in the air; this was when he wanted to run fast.Now the sexes were three, and such as I have described them; because the sun, moon, and earth are three; and the man was originally the child of the sun, the woman of the earth, and the man-woman of the moon, which is made up of sun and earth, and they were all round and moved round and round because they resembled their parents. Terrible was their might and strength, and the thoughts of their hearts were great, and they made an attack upon the gods; of them is told the tale of Otys and Ephialtes who, as Homer says, attempted to scale heaven, and would have laid hands upon the gods.

Doubt reigned in the celestial councils. Should they kill them and annihilate the race with thunderbolts, as they had done the giants, then there would be an end of the sacrifices and worship which men offered to them; but, on the other hand, the gods could not suffer their insolence to be unrestrained. At last, after a good deal of reflection, Zeus discovered a way.

He said: ‘Methinks I have a plan which will enfeeble their strength and so extinguish their turbulence; men shall continue to exist, but I will cut them in two and then they will be diminished in strength and increased in numbers; this will have the advantage of making them more profitable to us. They shall walk upright on two legs, and if they continue insolent and will not be quiet, I will split them again and they shall hop about on a single leg.’

He spoke and cut men in two, like a sorb-apple which is halved for pickling, or as you might divide an egg with a hair; and as he cut them one after another, he bade Apollo give the face and the half of the neck a turn in order that man might contemplate the section of himself: he would thus learn a lesson of humility. Apollo was also bidden to heal their wounds and compose their forms. So he gave a turn to the face and pulled the skin from the sides all over that which in our language is called the belly, like the purses which draw tight, and he made one mouth at the centre, which he fastened in a knot (the same which is called the navel); he also moulded the breast and took out most of the wrinkles, much as a shoemaker might smooth leather upon a last; he left a few, however, in the region of the belly and navel, as a memorial of the primeval state.

After the division the two parts of man, each desiring his other half, came together, and throwing their arms about one another, entwined in mutual embraces, longing to grow into one, they began to die from hunger and self-neglect, because they did not like to do anything apart; and when one of the halves died and the other survived, the survivor sought another mate, man or woman as we call them,–being the sections of entire men or women,–and clung to that.

Thus they were being destroyed, when Zeus in pity invented a new plan: he turned the parts of generation round to the front, for this had not been always their position, and they sowed the seed no longer as hitherto like grasshoppers in the ground, but in one another; and after the transposition the male generated in the female in order that by the mutual embraces of man and woman they might breed, and the race might continue; or if man came to man they might be satisfied, and rest, and go their ways to the business of life. So ancient is the desire of one another which is implanted in us, reuniting our original nature, seeking to make one of two, and to heal the state of man.

Each of us when separated, having one side only, like a flat fish, is but the tally-half of a man, and he is always looking for his other half. Men who are a section of that double nature which was once called androgynous are lovers of women; adulterers are generally of this breed, and also adulterous women who lust after men. The women who are a section of the woman do not care for men, but have female attachments; the female companions are of this sort. But they who are a section of the male follow the male, and while they are young, being slices of the original man, they have affection for men and embrace them, and these are the best of boys and youths, because they have the most manly nature.

Some indeed assert that they are shameless, but this is not true; for they do not act thus from any want of shame, but because they are valiant and manly, and have a manly countenance, and they embrace that which is like them. And these when they grow up become our statesmen, and these only, which is a great proof of the truth of what I am saying. When they reach manhood they are lovers of youth, and are not naturally inclined to marry or beget children,–if at all, they do so only in obedience to custom; but they are satisfied if they may be allowed to live with one another unwedded;

And such a nature is prone to love and ready to return love, always embracing that which is akin to him. And when one of them meets with his other half, the actual half of himself, whether he be a lover of youth or a lover of another sort, the pair are lost in an amazement of love and friendship and intimacy, and one will not be out of the other’s sight, as I may say, even for a moment: these are the people who pass their whole lives together, and yet they could not explain what they desire of one another. For the intense yearning which each of them has towards the other does not appear to be the desire of lover’s intercourse, but of something else which the soul of either evidently desires and cannot tell, and of which she has only a dark and doubtful presentiment.

Suppose Hephaestus, with his instruments, to come to the pair who are lying side by side and to say to them, ‘What do you mortals want of one another?’

They would be unable to explain. And suppose further, that when he saw their perplexity he said: ‘Do you desire to be wholly one; always day and night in one another’s company? for if this is what you desire, I am ready to melt and fuse you together, so that being two you shall become one, and while you live live a common life as if you were a single man, and after your death in the world below still be one departed soul, instead of two–I ask whether this is what you lovingly desire and whether you are satisfied to attain this?’–

There is not a man of them who when he heard the proposal would deny or would not acknowledge that this meeting and melting into one another, this becoming one instead of two, was the very expression of his ancient need.

And the reason is that human nature was originally one and we were a whole, and the desire and pursuit of the whole is called love. There was a time, I say, when we were one, but now because of the wickedness of mankind God has dispersed us, as the Arcadians were dispersed into villages by the Lacedaemonians. And if we are not obedient to the gods, there is a danger that we shall be split up again and go about in basso-relievo, like the profile figures showing only one half the nose which are sculptured on monuments, and that we shall be like tallies. Wherefore let us exhort all men to piety in all things, that we may avoid evil and obtain the good, taking Love for our leader and commander.

Let no one oppose him–he is the enemy of the gods who opposes him. For if we are friends of God and at peace with him we shall find our own true loves, which rarely happens in this world at present. I am serious, and therefore I must beg Eryximachus not to make fun or to find any allusion in what I am saying to Pausanias and Agathon, who, as I suspect, are both of the manly nature, and belong to the class which I have been describing. But my words have a wider application–they include men and women everywhere; and I believe that if our loves were perfectly accomplished, and each one returning to his primeval nature had his original true love, then our race would be happy. And if this would be best of all, the best in the next degree must in present circumstances be the nearest approach to such a union; and that will be the attainment of a congenial love.

Wherefore, if we would praise him who has given to us the benefit, we must praise the god Love, who is our greatest benefactor, both leading us in this life back to our own nature, and giving us high hopes for the future, for he promises that if we are pious, he will restore us to our original state, and heal us and make us happy and blessed.

This, Eryximachus, is my discourse of love, which, although different to yours, I must beg you to leave unassailed by the shafts of your ridicule, in order that each may have his turn; each, or rather either, for Agathon and Socrates are the only ones left.

Wobbly

Wobbly or walking on all fours like you’ve got no cerebellum.

Still Ill

(Poor bastards probably couldn’t even get any Chunky Monkey in that place.)

I was going to write some awesome review of the BBC doc, “Parallel Worlds, Parallel Lives” and discuss how interesting Hugh Everett’s theory is and how much of a crush I’ve got on his son, E. but I’ve been shot down in my prime by that icky devil who has been making the rounds about town, the flu. I’m definitely on the mend, I think, but still in rough shape so I’m blogging my flu-recovery tips instead…

SLEEP!
Sleep like a mofo…this is your big chance to ignore everyone and everything and sleep your ass off for days on end. It’s awesome. It’s the best part of being sick, unless something really cool is happening and you have to miss it because you’re sleeping but that hasn’t really happened to me this time around so sleep is my friend and sleep is your friend too.

EAT!
“Insanely Easy Vegetarian Chili”

Ingredients:

1 tablespoon olive oil 1 cup chopped onions 3/4 cup chopped carrots 3 cloves garlic, minced 1 cup chopped green bell pepper

1 cup chopped red bell pepper 3/4 cup chopped celery 1 tablespoon chili powder 1 1/2 cups chopped fresh mushrooms 1 (28 ounce) can whole peeled tomatoes

with liquid, chopped 1 (19 ounce) can kidney beans with liquid 1 (11 ounce) can whole kernel corn, drained

1 tablespoon ground cumin 1 1/2 teaspoons dried oregano 1 1/2 teaspoons dried basi

Directions:

1.	Heat oil in a large saucepan over medium heat. Saute onions, carrots, and garlic until tender. Stir in green pepper, red pepper, celery, and chili powder. Cook until vegetables are tender, about 6 minutes.
2.	Stir in mushrooms, and cook 4 minutes. Stir in tomatoes, kidney beans, and corn. Season with cumin, oregano, and basil. Bring to a boil, and reduce heat to medium. Cover, and simmer for 20 minutes, stirring occasionally.

That’s the greatest food ever, right there. It’s really spectacular…spicy and warm and awesomeness served with a nice crusty French loaf. Follow up with some Chunky Monkey ice cream.

DRINK!
Lots of water, lots of juice, and lots of those Naked Juice, Bolthouse Farms, etc. fruit and veggie smoothie drinks with all of the “immunity boosters”, even better than that, make your own smoothie or have your “nurse” do it! I can’t talk mine into it but he did deliver Chunky Monkey to me without my having asked for it (or even having thought of it) so he’s still on the payroll.

CHILL!
Here’s your chance to catch up on all of the television you normally never allow yourself to watch. I recommend the National Geographic Channel, Discovery, Discovery Science, History, Book TV, etc. as business to watch without feeling too guilty because you’ll probably learn something and that’s always good. Just because you feel like someone fed your respiratory system to a saber toothed tiger doesn’t mean you shouldn’t continue to actively pursue knowledge where you can get it.

READ!
‘Tis a good chance to catch up on your book learnin’ too. I’m still working on Dawkins’ “The Selfish Gene” and dipping occasionally into Lee Strobel’s “Case for a Creator” as well (because there are a few stretches where R.D. gets dryish). If I can wrap these up before I’m all better, all of the fever and sweat, coughing and mucous, Tylenol and Delsym, will totally have been worth it.

For any sickly readers,
I feel your pain, homeskillet
and:

(No telling what kind of heavy drugs she has in that wayback bottle.)

 

St. Anthony

Gentle and loving St. Anthony, whose heart was ever full of human sympathy, whisper my petition…

Happy Darwin Day

Happy Birthday, Charles Darwin! The O.G., Chuck D., was born on February 12, 1809. Two centuries later, we have Darwin Day.

For your reading pleasure, there is this:

“For my own part, I would as soon be descended from that heroic little monkey, who braved his dreaded enemy in order to save the life of his keeper; or from that old baboon who, descending from the mountains, carried away in triumph his young comrade from a crowd of astonished dogs–as from a savage who delights to torture his enemies, offers up bloody sacrifices, practices infanticide without remorse, treats his wives like slaves, knows no decency, and is haunted by the grossest superstitions. Man may be excused for feeling some pride at having risen, though not through his own exertions, to the very summit of the organic scale; and the fact of his having thus risen, instead of having been aboriginally placed there, may give him hopes for a still higher destiny in the distant future. But we are not here concerned with hopes or fears, only with the truth as far as our reason allows us to discover it. I have given the evidence to the best of my ability; and we must acknowledge, as it seems to me, that man with all his noble qualities, with sympathy which feels for the most debased, with benevolence which extends not only to other men but to the humblest living creature, with his godlike intellect which has penetrated into the movements and constitution of the solar system-with all these exalted powers-Man still bears in his bodily frame the indelible stamp of his lowly origin.” -The Descent of Man
(but I stole it from the intro to a Carl Sagan book)

And because I’m silly and inserted a picture of Chuck D. of Public Enemy into the little Darwin photo set, here’s this:

The minute they see me, fear me
I’m the epitome - a public enemy
Used, abused without clues
I refused to blow a fuse
They even had it on the news
Don’t believe the hype…

-”Don’t Believe the Hype,” Public Enemy

I think those lyrics actually make sense for Darwin Day when you think about those situations in which school districts have issues with board members, parents, or community members protesting the teaching of Evolution in schools or demanding the inclusion of Creationism in the curriculum.

Have a wonderful Darwin Day, friends…celebrate with a little reading or listen to “It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back ,” or sport a funny beard and a tall hat (because it’s Abe Lincoln’s birthday too!)

Bounced

Earth must feel pretty lame after you’ve bounced across the moon.