Arts &/Or Crafts

The Never Clean live in the Untidy Areas where Nothing happens. Leaving aside their allegiance to the Filth & to Disaster, it's fully possible to imagine a political or cultural scenario where the Never Clean serve a purpose, never useful, always Insidious, for the Powers-That-Are. & my friends, not only has this happened repeatedly in the past few Whens, it may yet be happening Now.

It is a strange fact of sociology that, although there are the Never Clean, there are not the Always Clean. For although most people will tell you they live somewhere in the discomfort between Normality & Hyperbole, they can never quite achieve the latter. Don't get me wrong - it is inherently human that we strive toward the Hyperbole - & fall toward it, too, on its other end. Or else there would be the need for Cure songs. But that we can never reach the more happy Hyperbole (the unhappy Hyperbole would probably be eternal damnation, so perhaps we never reach that, either) is an essential part of our natures.

Perhaps, then, the Never Clean are also mythological, & this essay spoke out of turn. Frankly, the author of this essay had not expected to be blind-sided by a kind of inner dialogue more often reserved for the dog-end of a long night of drinking. There were many other insights that this essay was prepared to share, but, as it stands, they are rendered suspect by the admission that the Hyperbole can never be reached, whether the reach be grasping high or digging low. Therefore, the tag "Never Clean," containing, as it does, the Hyperbole in its own title, becomes a useless description of a class of humanity which this essay endeavored to show as willing tools to the Powers-That-Are.

Damn it! This always happens. Weeks of gathering data for examples & extrapolation are completely ruined by attempts at poetic turns of phrase. Oh well. Never mind, then.

"War On Sailing" Playlist December 27, 2008

A four-hour extravaganza played at year's end.

"Happy & Safe" Airfields from Up All Night
"Freedom Highway" Mavis Staples from Live: Hope At The Hideout
"Ooh Wee Baby" Carl Campbell from Shout Baby, Shout Roots Of Rock In Texas Boogie 1948-1950
"The Walk" Indian Jewelry from Perfect As Cats: A Tribute To The Cure

"Wait A Minute" Osbourne from Ghostly Swim
"Warm Architecture" Lorna from Writing Down Things To Say
"Speed Boat To Heaven" Alaska In Winter from Holiday
"Blow A Kiss" Lines from Flood Bank
"Bèlaya Bèlaya" Mahmoud Ahmed from Ethiopiques, Vol. 19: Alemye Mahmoud Ahmed

"Diseases Of Yore" MC Frontalot from Final Boss
"Feel It" Afros from Kickin' Afrolistics
"Dallas After Midnight" Brian Burns from Highways, Heartaches & Honky-Tonks
"Why Sting Is Such An Idiot" Allen Clapp & His Orchestra from One Hundred Percent Chance Of Rain
"Sea Sick" Love Is All from A Hundred Things Keep Me Up At Night

"Fresh Egg Boxes" Jazz Symphonics from The Beginning
"Don't Try" Meridene from You're Not Pretty, You're Worse
"Catfight" The Diving Captain from Catfight
"Ate It Twice" Boston Spaceships from Brown Submarine
"Open The Door" British Sea Power from Do You Like Rock Music?
"You Really Wake Up The Love In Me" The Duke Spirit from Neptune

"Shango" Michael Pugliese from Wendy Mae Chambers: 12 Squared
"Aslan Makes A Door In The Air" Rad Wolf from For Your Consideration
"Mr Roberts # 1" National Lampoon from That's Not Funny, That's Sick
"Abandon Ship" April Showers from Abandon Ship
"The Love Theme" Microfilm from The Slingshot Orchestra

"Mandinga" Novalima from Afro
"Cuando Maravilla Fui" El Guincho from Alegranza
"Painting" Atmosphere from When Life Gives You Lemons, You Paint That Shit Gold
"Wash Out" The Arch Cupcake from Wash Out EP

"Macho Beagl" eBunnygrunt from Standing Hampton 7"
"Say What You Feel" Cause Co-Motion from It's Time: Singles 2005-2008
"Pan Handle Rag" Buddy Charlton from Ernest Tubb Presents The Texas Troubadours
"The Hollerin' Mountains" State Bird from Mostly Ghostly
"How To Play The Bongos" Jack Costanzo from Ultra Lounge Vol. 15: Wild, Cool. & Swingin' Too

"It's Never That Easy Though, Is It?" Los Campesinos! from We Are Beautiful, We Are Doomed
"C'est La Vie (Disco Mix)" Caramel from Punkpopgaragemods
"Suite Bergamasque - III. Clair De Lune" Peter Frankl from Debussy: Piano Works, Vol. 1
"Words Of Advice" William S Burroughs from Spare Ass Annie & Other Tales
"The Place You Love Is Gone (Indian Giver)" Finally Punk from Hypertension 7"

"They Blow My Mind" Blair from Night Life
"Letter Codes" Build Buildings from Ceiling Lights From Street
"Taken To Antrim" Arliss Parker from Handsome Like A Lion
"Video Boys" Circuit 7 from Video Boys
"Robot Ponies" Laura Barrett from Nothing On But Your Radio: Live Sessions From CJSW 90.9

"Grooveyard" Harold Land from Harold In The Land Of Jazz
"You've Got Some Neck" Giraffe Running from Giraffe Running
"I Touch Myself" Genitorturers from Covered In Goth
"Bledstyle" Kasbah Rockers with Bill Laswell from Kasbah Rockers
"Topkapi" Transglobal Underground from International Times

"IGA" Sleepy John Estes With Hammie Nixon from On 80 Highway
"She Stays Drunk All The Time" Billy Bizor from Blues Masters
"Swing Swing Swing" David Soldier & Richard Lair from Thai Elephant Orchestra
"Sewn Two" Mountains from Sewn

Please note the new day & time for The War On Sailing: Sundays from 7 to 9am. On 91.7 KVRX Austin. I won't tell you again.

Yeah, yeah I will.

Who's Who In The Minneapolis Zoo

One might be forgiven for reading the above subject line & say to oneself or perhaps to another, sitting nearby, whom one has singled out as a person who might enjoy the gainsaying of a blog page, "There's no Minneapolis Zoo! There's the Minnesota Zoo, which is about twenty miles south of the Twin Cities, but there's no Minneapolis Zoo itself! What a mistake!"

I honestly worry about the sort of people who feel the need to quibble & nitpick in such a manner, not the least reason of which is the simple courtesy of questioning the assertion of the blog title. For example, this author might well be engaging in a "puff-piece" about the Minnesota Zoo, which is close enough to Minneapolis to engage in a "nickname" of sorts. As well, the author may well have been taking too many over-the-counter pain medications & may have simply "mis-print" the word, as he may have simply meant "Minnesota" but wrote "Minneapolis" because the words are so closely related. Or there may well be a Minneapolis Zoo that the person simply does not know about - which is entirely the case.

Because at the Minneapolis Zoo, the charges are not nature's creatures, caged for the perverse delight of so-called "free" people to view them as they live in mockeries of their natural habitats. No, the charges at the Minneapolis Zoo are none other than human beings themselves!

Scandal! Triptych! Diorama! It's more true than one might dare fear. & before there are other assumptions hurled at this writer, specifically ones about the underground human slave trade, I wish also to simply ask that the reader bear with me. True, the human slave trade has a very profitable hub in Minnesota, primarily because of all the lakes, but the Minneapolis Zoo has a different sinister scheme, one being replicated in many dying industrial cities across the United States & Europe, which is this: the displaying of human beings in mockeries of their natural habitats.

Imagine, if you will, a housewife abducted from her Tupperware bacchanalia in Rochester & put on display in a glass-case as a representative of the "Now Generation." Or an aging golfer on the fourteenth hole in the Boca Raton Community Gardens snatched away & placed at a kitchen table as an example of a grandparent with Alzheimer's. Or three children from a reform school in John McCain, Arizona, dressed as hip-hop artists & forced to reenact historically inaccurate gang violence for a wide-eyed, affluent audience. This is the Minneapolis Zoo. This is what the powers-that-be are doing in our crumbling economy.

Outraged? You ought to be. Instead, you're given an invitation, & though you imagine leopards with cancerous scrotal tumors belching at you behind plexiglass, what you get is far more intriguing: a bevy of unhappy southern women beating up black men as a demonstration of the "PUMA" of the last election cycle. Or a Chicano worker dressed as Santa Claus being forced to sleep cold nights in the Wal-Mart power-tool department. Or an overgrown lawn to which a sorority girl & a member of the cast of one of the cancelled "Law & Order" shows have been inexplicably tied, to represent god-knows-what.

These are the things the rich, famous, lucky, disturbed, politically well-connected, & media-employed are not only watching but fostering. This author received an invitation accidentally; it was meant for my nearest neighbor, a giant corporation dedicated to polluting America's lakes & rivers. I went, & discovered something so awful it makes Cirque Du Soleil seem as innocuous as Ban De Soleil.

Skeptics are invited to seek their own "New City Zoos." There are reported ones in Dallas, Vancouver, Los Angeles (not hard to find), Denver, Pittsburgh, Portland, Des Moines, & Lexington. They are expanding - & more & more innocent people may be involved. A crisis is brewing of national import - please learn more before you too become just another exhibit!

As a postscript: Xhibit the rapper is not currently an exhibit.