..Old School Meets CyberSpace, Linking the Cultures..

....or, I could be blissfully logged on the internet, reading the refreshingly contrary, rationally proletarian, and inspirationally reassuring, commonsensical world-view commentaries at LewRockwell.com or Strike-the-root.com..

....I could be agreeably absorbed in the strangely titillating, sometimes disturbing, odd form of mental group masturbation as practised on the internet's ubiquitous, real-time, interactive posting boards like the one at anti-state.com..

....or I could be logged on over at pgatour.com, an incorrigible and unrepentant golf junkie, contentedly perusing the "daily dozen." [Feigning a bow to circumspect discretion regarding the scope and purview of this treatise, much more significantly, owing to the limiting constraints of webspace and too little time, we won't begin here to broach the fascinating sphere of cyber-porn.]

....I could even be watching some regular old tv, that anachronistic, left-for-dead forerunner of the whiz-bang techno-toys that are today's hot new entertainment industry. It is a shock, I realize, but there actually is some substantial and relevant, quality programming making a reappearance on the small screen.

Yes, I could be doing a host of other things, ....some of them even productive; the weekly toilet polishing, tackling my festering dishes, or bringing in the reserve firewood and shovelling off the groaning old roof. Enough snow, already! Enough! (That much heralded, inexorably calamitous, deadly global warming sumbiatch is gone away for the winter, tightly tucking its tail and apparently following the sun in some alternate, much more temperate, hypothetically moronic universe). Incidentally, it is currently a brisk –2.7°F outside my exquisitely frosted living room window. It shivers violently in a brutal, knifing, howling northeaster.

But no, ....instead, I'm helplessly compelled to embark upon another exhausting, days-long excursion into the seductive intrigue of penning sensibly critical, anti-establishmentarian cyber polemics, as featured at some of the revolutionary websites linked above––you know, ....scribbling friendly, good-natured, inflammatory taboo stuff like, "Fight the Power, Brother!" and, "Stick it in your ear!" and so forth and so on.

Yes, it is a pleasure indeed, writing these essays, ....passionately pitching one's very own indignantly dissenting, pocket-scorching two cents worth_ into the rising, new age wishing-well, the impressively expanding, internet information highway, ....all in earnest hopes of palpably contributing, in any small way, to the amelioration of the widely epidemic, officially encouraged, terrorism-slash-war hysteria. Verily, I raise a crier's call with earnest hopes, as would any good watchman, an optimistically wilful, pessimistically realistic gadfly, observing the inherently ingrained, eternally waxing, despotic directions of governments in general, unconcerned with how naively quixotic or self-indulgent that may appear in the larger context of infinite Creation.

I don't give a good two shiats if I tick somebody off here, because the world's greatest mother always used to tell me, "Son, be true to yourself." I'm from the old school where, incredibly, some basic, early, rudimentary lessons eventually took productive purchase in the stubbornly rocky gravel of our amorphous young minds. A smart shoe over the head is a powerfully convincing and helpful educational tool, applied in a healthy, formative, familial environment. "I'm trying, Mama! I'm trying really hard, I promise! If I have any clue at all, I owe it all to you!" To quell in advance any possible misinterpretation, I say these things with no trace of malice, and I wish in no way whatsoever to cast aspersions on me dear, old Mum. After all, "she did it for the children!" No, ....really! Bussi, Mama! Thanks! I love you!

The inevitably painful element of writing these columns lies in the actual pencil-to-paper process of composition, and it's attendant, perfunctorily physical transcription into a usable medium––necessarily executed in an acceptably linear and cogent fashion––relying upon the wonderfully miraculous, inexplicably occurring, putative uniquely human phenomena of intellectual contemplation, abstract conceptualization, and the productive association of ideas. In other words, it's freakin' hard, man!

I shudder to think of the vast numbers of brilliant ideas and monumental insights which occur to me in waves, at any given moment. Of course, they always seem to go irretrievably lost and forgotten––in the very moment following. Natch! I'm afraid I'm already so far over the hill, that just holding a thought for me any more, is like dipping for a drink of cool water with a buckshot blasted old tin cup.

On-line writing's actual physical composition, in and of itself, is sufficiently daunting for me––let alone the mere seminal crystalization of an appealing and relevant message. To compound the difficulty, try transcribing a developing composition into a klunky, remote, data entry field, at one of the numerous on-line, free, web hosting sites, using a sticky, old, worn-out keyboard, and a quasi-primitive and intermittently recalcitrant, tv-top web browser. Can you say, "Heavy-duty, time-intensive?" (adieu, McFeely!) Hot coffee and cigarettes are helpful.

I paused in my writing to take an urgent turn in the throne room, just as my trusty, thirty year old quotidian soundtrack, Portland's rock-and-roll "Blimp," adroitly projectile-vomited (...in a good way!) the Rolling Stones' classic, "When The Whip Comes Down," prominently into my living room. From the 70's smash, "Some Girls." this concisely spare and primal, yet consummately masterful snippet from the Stones' illustrious, voluminous catalogue, is (or should be) an icon of the 70's proto-metal rock pantheon.

"When The Whip Comes Down"'s paradoxically biting, yet mellifluent strains, served nothing more––after the initially powerful, nostalgically heady, deep, neural-memory stimulation––than to refocus intensely my attention on the ubiquitously recurring, two perpetually paired, great epistemic philosophical human themes.

What themes did the Stones reminded me of...? The relentlessly, exponentially increasing rapidity of the passage of time, and the growing and sobering, melancholy realization of the ephemeral nature of an individual's corporeal existence. I mean, my God in Heaven, some of these rocking old harbingers of a fading era are starting to push frigging 70! Peculiarly queer, I find, over thirty-something years later it seems like only yesterday I gaily shopped my brand new "Sticky Fingers" album, ....you know, ....the one with the real zipper sewn right into the pants on the album cover?

Speaking of albums––records albums, not photo-albums––the other day, a co-worker of mine related this amusing anecdote. As a result of her teenage daughters' recent rummage through the upstairs bedrooms' closets, the girls came running down the stairs calling, "Hey, Mom! ....Where did you get these awesome, giant CD's?" Of course, they were holding up armloads of old Led Zeppelin and Aerosmith records. Ha! We got a good chuckle out of that!

Another co-worker of mine, this one a hot-shiat, little, wise-cracking highschooler, told me he'd never heard of Supertramp! Right!! C'mon, man! You've never heard of Supertramp? ....think, Right, right, you're bloody well right! When the teeny-boppers at work clean up after closing and have the place all to themselves, they prefer the radio tuned to the meat grinder station that spews that particularly noxious, innervatingly virulent form of discordant, black noise which I so heartily despise.

This cacophony is embarrassingly bereft of even any elemental tonal structure or determinable melodic line whatsoever, ....and, ....NO, ....it's not the same thing our parents went through in the 60's and 70's with our music. This is very different. Not to put too fine a point on it, but the utter, completely atonal junk that some kids consider great music these days, could make a dozen screaming apes sound like a baroque classical choir.

The sound of the new "music" might be best described to blessedly unexposed fortunates, as being similar to a furiously chain-sawing army of lumberjacks, ....or perhaps a noise akin to the nauseating din generated by a fully-engaged, military class, mega-cruiser/ice-breaker. Ach, du Lieber Kind! A mind is truly a terrible thing to waste!

I leisurely finish my private business reading sundry printed matter I keep strategically stationed within easy reach of the throne, in this instance, The New Hampshire Gazette. It's a sweet old rag, an interesting juxtaposition alongside the modern, on-line media. This outspoken little bi-weekly blotter bills itself as, "The Nation's Oldest Newspaper," and is presently admirably anti-imperialistic and categorically critical of the currently reigning, rabidly insane war administration. On the other hand, it simultaneously espouses a nearly militant, curiously contradictory, collectivist, free-press mindset. Placing all debatably tenuous and suspect political philosophies aside, The New Hampshire Gazette is at its laudable best featuring a consistently entertaining panoramic historical perspective. It flexes its stout and sagacious archival muscles showcasing such popular favorites as the "Vintage News ...Better Old News Than New Lies," and its regular back-page layout, a this-day-in-history style record, is composed of sparkling gems like these:

February 27, 1534 – A "New Jerusalem" is established in Germany, To create a community bound by love and free of sin. Lutherans and Catholics are driven out..

..and,

February 17, 1600 – The Catholic Church burns Giordano Bruno at the stake for insisting that the earth revolved around the sun..

..and,

February 23, 1669 – Diarist Samuel Pepys, visiting Westminster Abbey, kisses and fondles Katherine of Valois, interred more than 200 years earlier..

..and,

February 29, 1809 – New Drury Lane Theatre burns to the ground. Owner Richard Sheridan (School for Scandals) having a drink at a neighboring coffeehouse, calmly says, "A man may surely be allowed to take a glass by his own fireside."

How delightfully droll! Admittedly, I may be remiss in repeating these examples without verifiable corroboration, but seriously, folks, I'm expediently reluctant to call into question the veracity of "The Nation's Oldest Newspaper." Besides, it's inconceivable to me that these examples are mere fabrications. You can't make shiat like this up––it's just too perfectly delicious!!

It occurs to me that they're still burning folks for heresy, amongst other things, in the much hallowed "Modern Enlightened Age," ....yes, indeed.... even in America. The inevitable authorities and elites in the modern era, still traditionally imprison, torture, demoralize, and terrorize stalwart iconoclasts at whim, in addition to the occasional, good, old-fashioned, ritual burning. These days, they simply do everything on a much grander scale with much bigger matches.

Shiat! ....You know what?

I'm going to go watch my movie.