Sunday, January 27, 2013

A Working Class Nero is Something to Be

Nobody fell into the job really, the unfamiliar world of grout, just as a way to get The site had unquieted him. Hell, even getting to the site unquieted him. And then there was a the problem with the water, the buckets, the waste. Custom finishings require a remarkable amount of conspicuous consumption. Even before you actually get to live around the house. The process was incredibly, well, conspicuous, thought Nobody. Somebody, thought Nobody (though not him) should write a strongly worded letter to the local newspaper about the waste. About the fat cats. About the place. The site. The purposelessness of the fact that all this effort was going to an eight-year-girl who already had a whole 'nother house to live in next door ... except the room hadn't been painted pink, as ordered. The rest was well, too many trips to Disneyland for the girl. Hardly her fault. Parents, rich as hell, spoiling her, no doubt, Nobody groused, as he mixed the grout. The mix was a secret formula, he supposed, sent up from the gristy mill of hell. Nobody marvelled at how often the language for the cauldrens of hell, in fact, applied in this particular case, this job, this site. How often he went (Biblical on the language meter.)Although recently things had become more, shall we say, egalitarian. If only because it had only recently been discovered that Egyptian craftsmen for the pyramids were paid, respected members of the community. Most weren't slaves at all. They were skilled. Scientific. Architecturally seasoned sorts. Professionals. And this was no rush job. Ancient Egyptian economy, as it reigned over the desert for a few thousand years or so, was sustainable, diverse, generous, robust. Even in the desert. Hardly the stick-figured slaves you saw propped up at the minituarized displays of the history museum. They were consumers. Bricks in the wall. Threads in the fabric. You know. Those little brown tiny toy soldier-sized replicas of how this or that ruin might have looked in their heyday ... they represented people who had choices ... Nobody mused on this as he applied the grout to the wall and went "Karate Kid" on filling in the gaps on the opulent glass tiles ... musing to himself even more, then his co-worker, a dim, Mr. MaGoo-type, who perhaps had inhaled too many vapors from that so-called cauldren hell stuff, too ... mumbling orders like some mechanized clone whose DNA pattern got glitzy, downright out of focus late in life ... but the site had a life of its own, and a gaudy one at that, especially when it came to mixing the graphical styles, mixing Byzantine-age faux stone with four-by-four inch jewel glass tile that anybody with any taste could see was post-modern ... "Personally, I wouldn't mix Greco-Roman with this after-rebar, Frank Lloyd Wright-type stuff, but that's just me," Nobody said. "Look at this glass. The perfect squares made to look like New York City skyscrapers, little cube farms, the whole fucking matrix. But this other stuff, the pieces are old world, Constaninop ... no, the Byzantines. They could build walls like nobody's business." With that, Nobody went on with his business. Week One of Mr. Groutmeister man. Waxing on. Waxing off. Musing on the music on the radio. Sighing quietly to himself, considering the irony of the fact that he went to high school right here, that is, just right down the street, living in amazingingly vacant innocence among the super rich fucks of Paradise Valley, Arizona. He used to be one of those people, those spoiled kids with Disneyland lives, in a home just like this ... but now, but now? ... Now doing custom home scut work, doing nothing but scraping dried mix off a wall in a giant new bathroom extention for an entire week, a sort of pre-jeweled prison basement cell, like some strange and almost invisible ghost, doning on the past, as well as the spectre and energy of the site, with it's miniature toy soldier worker servants busily moving around in teams, painting, covering up walls with expensive fake brick stuff to make it look all so Southwestern, fortified, made to live forever, until they bulldoze the whole property again, to make it look like some other type of architectural flavor of the week, or better yet, Aztec ... or, no, Mayan jungle temple deco. Yeppers. Real Indiana Jones stuff. Both showbiz and still, yet, the perfect projection of power for the mercenary, feudal new century to come ... and so on ... "We could dial this whole bathroom fixture situation up to the Mayan calendar, if you like," Nobody told the bathroom wall, still enjoying the mid-morning growl of his coffee rush. "I could be president of the United States, too ... as long (a little woman's voice now) as it doesn't cost money ... eek, eeek, eeeeek ..." Nobody moved around his work space like a short-armed robot with each "eek," tottering in a smal circle like a penguin, his arms closed tight to his body, his hands grabbing tips of air in his snapper, zen worker bee position ... His partner, MaGoomeister, just groaned. It had been a slow starting day, due to complications due to the way one shower head lined up with the tile, considerations well beyond Nobody's talents or interest. Magoo was also still stinging, perhaps, from Nobody's lecture on the 1970s era classic rock on a dusty clock radio used to create white noise, a pulse and energy at the site. When you criticize someone's music it's like pissing on the soul, after all, especially when the words are flying over the target's head. A target, in fact, that was perfectly happy to remain stuck in the dope smoking days of his youth, listening to old Foreigner, Queen and Led Zep hits. A lecture on the development of "Heyooo RRRR," as it sounded to him (to the deliverer of the sermon, it was AOR, as in Album Oriented Rock), had abruptly missed it's mark, since old MaGoo was perfectly happy to still hear Manfred Man Earth Man singing about "douches" in the night in that Springsteen cover of "Blinded By the Light."
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Wednesday, January 16, 2013

In Quiet Remembrance of Who They Forgot to Thank at the Golden Globes ...


Edit, Stage Right ...

 ... After watching a couple of hours of many of the best-known, most beautiful, best-dressed, and certainly most familiar faces on Earth, it occurred to me that each and every one of these high beings all forgot to mention not only the vendors of popcorn and ticket sellers who work for minimum wage. But more than that, they forgot to mention the movie-goers who spent bazillions of dollars, in recent months to their own personal peril, even death, to dress them all up in the silky pomp of their red-carpeted lives ... and that some of these adoring patrons did so, in fact, when usually they couldn't even put down a dollar into faux soda machines coughing up their lesser, but yes, more frequently insanely violent cinematic efforts. Not one of these pretties mentioned this. Not one ... What a great year for propaganda films masquerading a reality so intense, so real, so deadly, so geopolitical and tactically correct in their horrifying worldview master-crafters, we can all barely keep from spanking ourselves with hard-earned dollars and personality cult worship to keep from spilling blood into buckets of popcorn to dress up these, yes, highly creative, but self-congratulating folks to say "enough ... enough already." Stop celebrating now all of the wars, all of the human sacrifices, stop depicting these training films for international intrigues and instructors of how to run death machines, these films that need security clearances just to rent the props. Is there a Frederico Fellini, a Woody Allen, a Robert Altman in the house? ... I suppose in these days of economic disparity, it seemed like there was only time for the Hollywood elite to save their own arses to stay off the street to revisit the tough times many of them came from, or, more than just secretly loathe.

 And that's my review.


To the sound of silent cyberpunk (or Wilco-style bluegrass, your choice) we go: 

Spent seventy two hours as a social Darwinist 
Gotta get ahead of you (Seventy two hours) 
Seventy two hours as a Social Darwinist 
Gotta get an edge over the loss, 
vengeance is hip you know 
Gotta get a handle on the guilt I miss  

Spent seventy two hours as a social Darwinist 
Gotta get over you (seventy two, seventy two, seventy two hours) 
Seventy  hours as a Social Darwinist 
As you tried to convince me of your Know Nothing bliss, 
I let my eyes look away, if for just a minute (Seventy two, seventy two seventy two) 
Being anti-social ain`t darlin little Darwin 
You won`t like the feeling, your empty hand will be shaking (seventy two, seventy two) 
Won`t like the smell as the whole world is quaking (seventy two, seventy two seventy seventy seventy two) 

(Refrain) 
On the third day I flew across the sky 
rebuilt the temple of love, I did pray 
Sure, I fell, makin` a hell of her heaven, 
and man O man let the bunker busters fly. 

I ran for cover, O sweet Sweet Twenty Three Skidoo (Twenty three, twenty three twenty three skidoo) 
By the sixty-ninth hour as a social Darwinist 
I ran for cover, looking for the way you look at me, 
hoping and I`m praying to look up to you. 

(Jaggedy Guitar riffs here) 

Three more hours as a social Darwinist, 
for just three days I forgot about you (seventy two, O, seventy two, yeah) 
Seventy two hours of living from your hand to my fist 
Seperate but equal, sure, gotta get a step on you. 
Treated every living thing like my private little toy 
Dreamin of the cosmos now, when I was just a boy (Darwinist) 
Wore your love like a glove but there was no joy (Darwinist) 
Gotta get around these blank walls, gotta get over you (Darwinist) 

 A Phoenix-based freelance writer, Douglas McDaniel can be e-mailed at mythville@gmail.com for as long as the empire supplies electricity.
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Wednesday, January 09, 2013

I really need to do something about having this governator around ... Any suggestions?


  1. Like · 


  2. Marshal Law
    15 hours ago via YouTube
    • Dedicated to the late Mute Rimney, who should be lost in the desert 'bout now.

      camper van beethoven - the history of utah

      off "Camper Van Beethoven" (1986) He was the river boat gambler He was the son of the chief of police He drove around in a Rambler He had a message from the ...
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  3. Marshal Law
    16 hours ago via YouTube
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  4. Marshal Law
    16 hours ago via YouTube
    • Save this one for a Sunday morning, about 11 a.m., a great replacement for church.

      Yes - And You And I

      Live, 1991
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  5. Marshal Law
    16 hours ago via YouTube
    • Do these lyrics, once thought banal and obtuse by reviewers, make more sense to you now?

      Yes-Fragile (Full Album) 1971

      1.Roundabout (0:00-8:33) 2.Cans And Brahms (8:33-10:11) 3.We Have Heaven (10:11-11:51) 4.South Side Of The Sky (11:51-19:49) 5.Five Percent OF Nothing (19:49...
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  7. Marshal Law
    23 hours ago via YouTube
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  8. Marshal Law
    23 hours ago
    Ask yourself: How dot calm are we, really?
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  9. Marshal Law
    Monday
    Woke up at 2 a.m. with jingle bells in me head and a parking lot full of one fire department squad. Can't wait to get the deal on that caper today.
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  10. Marshal Law
    Monday via YouTube
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  11. Marshal Law
    Monday via YouTube
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  12. Marshal Law
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