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Soupy Bowl

Sitting here trying to watch the Superbowl. Waste. This is the last year for me on this non-spectacle. The game is crashing like a gutted hotel. The only sport here is watching these dim bulbs trying to sell the world a pile of shit in the middle of a depression. Who's depressed? Not me.

And furthermore . . .

By FRANK BASS and RITA BEAMISH, Associated Press Writers

SANTA CLARA, Calif. – Banks collecting billions of dollars in federal bailout money sought government permission to bring thousands of foreign workers to the U.S. for high-paying jobs, according to an Associated Press review of visa applications.
The dozen banks receiving the biggest rescue packages, totaling more than $150 billion, requested visas for more than 21,800 foreign workers over the past six years for positions that included senior vice presidents, corporate lawyers, junior investment analysts and human resources specialists. The average annual salary for those jobs was $90,721, nearly twice the median income for all American households.
The figures are significant because they show that the bailed-out banks, being kept afloat with U.S. taxpayer money, actively sought to hire foreign workers instead of American workers. As the economic collapse worsened last year — with huge numbers of bank employees laid off — the numbers of visas sought by the dozen banks in AP's analysis increased by nearly one-third, from 3,258 in fiscal 2007 to 4,163 in fiscal 2008.
The AP reviewed visa applications the banks filed with the Labor Department under the H-1B visa program, which allows temporary employment of foreign workers in specialized-skill and advanced-degree positions.
It is unclear how many foreign workers the banks actually hired; the government does not release those details. The actual number is likely a fraction of the 21,800 foreign workers the banks sought to hire because the government limits the number of visas it grants to 85,000 each year among all U.S. employers.
During the last three months of 2008, the largest banks that received taxpayer loans announced more than 100,000 layoffs. The number of foreign workers included among those laid off is unknown.
Foreigners are attractive hires because companies have found ways to pay them less than American workers.

With God on Our Side

Obama’s inauguration was inspiring, yes. The media, as usual, did its absolute best to make it more so, and quite unnecessarily, I’d say. For as most of us know, Mr. Obama is a genuinely inspiring and charismatic man. And the near-landslide election of an African American to the American presidency is incredible enough; we hardly need Tom Brocaw’s unctuous slathering to remind us of its uniqueness. But when the ass-kissing and the fashion shows and the unfounded comparisons with Lincoln were finally over, I came away with a slightly foul taste in my mouth: the taste of religion being stuffed down my throat. Last I heard, this government’s strength lay in keeping church and state at a distance, yet this inauguration was so full of preachers, prayers, and pious pleas to the Christian god that I began to wonder whether those time-honored 1st amendment strictures had been cast into the fiery pit. George Bush’s belief that he enjoyed a direct line to his maker was responsible for some of the most reprehensible policy decisions in recent history. One would hope that Obama, in spite of his sincere belief in a personal higher power, would keep it between him and his god, instead of requiring the rest of us to join in. Yes, he called for unity among the world’s most contentious religions, and, yes, we need all the help we can get, but where’s the unity in a script that features two Protestant clergymen (one a homophobe), a musical petition to the Christian god to protect American liberty, a mass recital of the Lord’s Prayer (the best known prayer in all Christendom), and, so help me God, an oath sworn on the Christian Bible?

Corrine and Larrybob

Bed, San Francisco. August 2007.
Corrine was less than forthcoming about her extramarital activities
and who could blame her
doing it was one thing, talking about it quite another
that’s why Larrybob was forever loath to inquire
after his wife’s nocturnal whereabouts
he knew he risked a shot to the mouth
or a slap across his lightly bearded face just for asking
like for example the rain-soaked morning she arrived home
panties in one hand, flip flops in the other
you must be freezing, he said
having risen from a fitful slumber to answer the bell
mind yer own beeswax, she’d countered
sauntering to the shower, tracking mud down the hall
Larrybob for his part was civil and obedient
he’d never known a woman like this
she was a wild mystery and in the thrall of that mystery
he was gutless, putty in her hands his father used to say
Larrybob could no more protest her infidelities
than he could defend his own pathetic obsequiousness
he simply loved every inch of this woman and had long ago decided
that he would tolerate any abuse she might see fit
to rain down on his empty head
so long as he could daily inhale her divine scent
so long as he could sleep most nights at her side 

and so long as he could, 

in his dealings with the fair citizens of Farfetch, 

refer to her proudly as the queen of his kingdom

and the light of his life.

it's always always

Sky consciousness, January 2008

beyond the icebound lake
the universe blazes
behind the canvas
a crow cries
the sound of all sounds

the stars between the trees
the trees beyond the stars

in that mountain
this mountain
in these rocks
all rocks
sleeping the life of always

this drop of day is on fire
this is what you are
adrift in the endless dream
in this time
in all time

Xmas 2008: scamland

Photo: Somewhere in America

markdowns on markdowns
but nobody's buying
laid off her job
her children are crying
old people freezing
homeless are starving
tuna for turkey
nobody's carving
families on food stamps
while bankers run free
in the land of the scammers
and the smug bourgeoisie
where there's only one question
what's in it for me
so this is America
the U.S. of Fraud
hounded by hucksters
suckered by god
lost in the flim-flam
a people in need
in the home of the knave
and the landfill of greed

Q: Who Shot the Tiger?

A: We all did.

Photo: Obviously not mine. Saw it, stole it, am passing it on. 

East is East

Marsh Grass. Maine USA. November 2008.

Oh, olive, my olive.

Living without drinking?

The perfect martini.

 Served at Jimmy's retirement party. Nov 15, 2008.

Maine Rocks

Living without thinking?

Coast of Maine. October 2008.

Go Bama

Obama won it. Truly a milestone. I am dazed and awed, and for the first time in many years, proud to be an American. His speech tonight was as great as I have ever heard, a statement of hope, strength, and reconciliation. May President Obama govern us with the the same skill and compassion that he put into his campaign. And may the Americans who had the good sense and courage to cast their votes for him continue to use their talents and commitment to create the democracy we have all long sought.

Capitalists Unrestrained

light in mirror. 2008

their fingerprints are everywhere
they devour everything
and vomit to devour more
the people do not watch them
and now must pay the piper
pay through the nose you flab
kill baby kill baby drill baby drill
i piss on the valley of greed

Moyers Interview with Andrew J. Bacevich

Click here or on image above to link to video.
I know, it takes an hour to watch, and who's got an hour. But if you want as good an analysis as you're going get of the roots of America's downfall, this is it. It's not a bunch of liberal claptrap, either. Basevich is a political conservative.

The Cult of the Folded Tongue: Heavy Metal in Baghdad

Heavy metal in the land of heavy metal.
Here's a film for your Netflix queue: Heavy Metal in Baghdad, the story of an Iraqi heavy metal band and their struggle to be free to play metal in the Armageddon of war-torn Baghdad 2005-07. So what if the music's unpracticed, so what if these guys could get disappeared for playing it, so what if all the concert-goers are men, so what if the musicians end up in expatriate dead-end jobs, playing for peanuts. The story's told from the Iraqi point of view, so it's a man in the street look at the devastation Bush's war has wreaked upon them. The evening news it ain't.

Image: Heavy Metal in Baghdad (2007). Directed by Suroosh Alvi, Eddy Moretti.

Notebook

Monotonous entry. October, 2007.

There Will Come Soft Rains

by Sara Teasdale

There will come soft rains and the smell of the ground,
And swallows circling with their shimmering sound;

And frogs in the pools singing at night,
And wild plum-trees in tremulous white;

Robins will wear their feathery fire
Whistling their whims on a low fence-wire;

And not one will know of the war, not one
Will care at last when it is done.

Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree
If mankind perished utterly;

And Spring herself, when she woke at dawn,
Would scarcely know that we were gone.

The Government will conduct a performance risk assessment.

Harper's magazine. March 2008.

Kahlil Gibran: On Children

Kahlil Gibran was my mother's favorite poet/philosopher, and this poem was her guiding light.

In the Canyon: July 1-9.

The Canyon trip was truly Grand. Hot as hell (topping off at 125 in the sun, 108 in the shade), but we did most of our hiking between 3am and 9am, then sat in the crystal cool waters of Bright Angel Creek during the day. Phantom Ranch had Buttwipers and a swamp-cooler lodge, thank you. The side hikes were amazing. The view of the Colorado from Plateau Point, a mile and a half from Indian Gardens, 3000 feet above the river, was, well, surreal? The River Trail, cut into the cliffs high above the nexus of Bright Angel and the river: I could not do it photographic justice. Ah, the immensity of it all. So much time, so much earth to erode.
The last two days we spent on the north rim, which is an entirely different micro-climate: cool, wet, Ponderosa pines, beautiful green meadows, kind of like Oregon, yet, always, when you emerge from the forest, the humbling edge, the multitudinous, variegated colors, and, for the brain, the utter impossibility of the great abyss--even after looking at it for days, it's still just a painting on the wall. There's a hotel up there that sits on the edge, where you can have a drink and watch the sun set. Or you can have breakfast in their dining room, which looks south across that terrible hole. Something else with eggs over easy. And because it's a 250-mile drive from the tourist-packed south rim, the humans are few and far between. Wunderbar!


From Plateau Point. A couple of rafts down there.

Indian Gardens.

North Rim View.

The Grand Canyon of the Colorado

Cougar/Mountain Lion
Thanks to: http://dhreno.files.wordpress.com/2007/08/mtnlion.jpg
I’m heading for the Grand Canyon three weeks from today with a couple other old farts. We’ll be in the abyss for five nights, then up to the North Rim for a couple of days. I’ve been to the canyon before, but never hiked it. Of course this is the hottest time of year to be there, so I’m taking as little as possible weight wise, but am still potentially overloaded. It’s the small things that count: glasses, binoculars, ear plugs, towel, gloves, utensils, toilet paper, thermometer, camera, tripod, space blanket, headlamp, matches, safety pins, clothes pins, mirror, moleskin, foot powder, etc. I’ve been reading a lot about the canyon. The history is pretty interesting, but the feeling I get is that when all’s said and done the canyon’s the canyon and what anyone says about it doesn't matter a hoot. It's only when you're in it that you're in it.

In the early part of the last century there was a guy named James T. Owens who was appointed game warden of the North Rim by rough and ready Teddy Roosevelt. Uncle Jimmy, as he was fondly called, was known for his skill in killing mountain lions and other predators—wolves, coyotes, etc. The big guns were trying to set up a hunting preserve out there, and the feeling was that the fewer predators you had, the more game would be available for hunting. Jimmy claimed that he and his dogs killed 532 cougars. That's right--532, although some believe he killed more than a thousand. Their skins covered his walls; he drove their claws into trees and into the siding of his house to show them off. He was much admired. Trouble was that once the cats and wolves were gone, the deer bred like rabbits. They ate everything green on the North Rim, and the population soared from 4000 to 100,000. Eventually they starved to death in droves, an ecological disaster and an early lesson in "wildlife management."

The thing I find interesting about all this is that a man actually had the will and desire to destroy 532 wild souls like that. Not for food, not for protection--just to kill them. These individuals were there long before Jimmy, minding their own business. It seems to me that violence like this against innocents leaves a man at the bottom of the barrel in the karma department. How do you look yourself in the mirror when you kill like that? But Uncle Jimmy Owens lived to be an old man, happy and venerated, making me wonder whether karma's a ruse. As someone wrote to me last week: "you can do whatever the hell you please, just so long as you can deal with the consequences." My guess is that Jimmy felt fine about it all, and life--his, anyway--was fine and good.