Year: 2011

The 99% gets one more pissed-off Marine

Manifestos from the Anonymous crowd are usually puerile and pointless. Coming from a Marine vet who lives in the real world, this one is neither.

“I am a United States Marine Corps combat veteran. I am a proud American and a patriot. I love my country, democracy and the vision our founding fathers had for this great nation.

“I went to war for my country. I saw and did ugly things that would make the average American civilian run in fear. I saw teenage boys die in the name of my country. I saw other teenage boys turned into hardened killers, left to return home unable to cope with the acts they were required to commit out of love for their country. I’ve seen several of these young men take their own lives upon returning home from the endless wars they have been subjected to.

“I’ve seen thousands of civilians die.

“In the eight years I have been home from the war, I’ve struggled to find the vital national interest I was sent to protect. I haven’t found any, all I’ve found is corruption and corporate profiteering, sw​eetheart backroom deals and hushed civilian casualty numbers.

“I see an elite class characterized by extreme wealth exerting undue influence over my government and enslaving my people through corrupt means. I see them eating away the rights I gladly fought to protect. I will just as enthusiastically fight to protect those rights again.

“I took an oath to uphold and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic. I take this oath seriously.

“You may not be a member of the United States Armed Forces. You may not be a combat veteran. You may have never left your home town. Whoever you are, if you are a patriot and a proud American the time for courage and action has come. Do not disgrace the legacy of our great nation by sitting idly by while our future is squandered for the benefit of the elite.

“Put down your video games and turn off your TV. Educate yourself about your government, our economy and the actions which have been taken in your name over the past few decades. Get involved.”

All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. —Edmund Burke

“I am a United States Marine.

“I am a combat veteran.

“I am a proud American.

“I am a patriot.

“I am the 99%.

“I am Anonymous.

“We are Legion.

“We do not forgive.

“We do not forget.

“Expect us.”

Something is afoot at the gas station.

The gas station routine has not changed in years. I put in my card, enter my zip code, choose my fuel, and pump. When I’m done I put the spout back in its bracket and the machine asks me if I want a receipt. I say yes, it spits out the receipt, and I leave. Sometimes I remember to close the gas cap again.

About half the gas stations changed recently. The machine now asks the receipt question before I can pump. At the end, it gratuitously announces that ‘THE OPERATION COMPLETED SUCCESSFULLY” and out comes the receipt.

Can you see what’s wrong with this?

If I don’t make the receipt decision until the end, I’m looking right at the gallons and dollars when the receipt pops out, and without conscious decision I compare them. By the time it hands out the receipt the numbers are all done, and it doesn’t know until then that I requested paper proof of its honesty.

But now the machine knows from the beginning whether I’ve asked for a receipt. If I say no, the computer can cheat me and give me less gallons or charge me more, knowing that I’ll have nothing to immediately compare with and no paper later when small differences in my credit card show up or the car runs out of gas sooner than expected.

Considering the heavy presence of organized crime in gasoline fraud around here (particularly in PIN thefts from debit-only stations), one has to wonder, doesn’t one?

Assorted premature thoughts on Breivik

I’m not sure, but this appears to be the first use of Family Circle cartoon art in a mass killer’s video manifesto. Eerie. For a guy who clearly hates both the modern and the postmodern, he sure hit the postmodern gong hard with his media technique.

Breivik managed to repeat the last 15 minutes of Monty Python and the Holy Grail. It reminds me of Timothy McVeigh’s identification with DeNiro’s heroic HVAC guy in Brazil. Have we reached a singularity of satire, culture war, confused thinking, and fertilizer bombs?

Breivik says he’s anti-Nazi, because he hates all modern collective post-Christian socialist ideas. But he would have got on great with Himmler and his crazy medieval Teutonic Knight Arthurian mysticism. That idealized medieval agrarian dream of the racially pure heartland is the European version of Imaginary 1903 Tennessee as imagined by reactionaries here in the U.S. Everyone’s stuck with the hell of modern industrial life, but powerful people hold out that idyllic dream of a small farm town to everyone who’s alienated.

And finally, what makes the difference between the internet comment person who talks like this guy, and the one who actually does the deed? Is there any way to tell?

Burro Canyon KABOOM!

Had a fine time shooting at the Burro Canyon range up in San Gabriel Canyon near Azusa. Apart from screwing up and shooting a rifle on the pistol range, I did fine. I shoot high and to the right.

As we were all banging away the range officer called an emergency cease fire, and everyone on all the ranges stopped and stepped back per orders. A helicopter was coming to land. WTF?

In a few minutes the LASD rescue helicopter roared on in and landed a hundred yards south of us, and then left in a few minutes.

The story I heard was that someone on a private range was shooting a modified .50 caliber machine gun (!?) that only shot semiautomatic, and somehow it fired with the bolt partially open. This isn’t good, because then the hot gas from the propellant goes sideways as well as forwards, and one gets a faceful of fire and possibly chunks of stuff. Off he went to the hospital.

The story may be somewhat different, but this was from a range officer who should know.

This kind of accident is very, very rare. It’s possible that the guy loaded his own ammunition and made a mistake, or that the gun itself had been modified poorly in some way. But it’s also possible that it just broke. Scary stuff.

In any case I had a good time with my own unmodified, normal-powered stuff.

My War with Indie Rock

I started to write this thing and did it all wrong. There was a long-winded history of how “indie rock” happened, an examination of my own part in that, and then a whole list of reasons why “indie” gives me a headache. Dumped.

I know what I can’t stand “indie,” and it’s because “indie” is me. Indie rock has all my generation’s vices and even worse, all of my personal artistic crimes. I list these below:

Narcissism. False naivete. Excessive pastiche and homage in place of creativity. An aristocratic disdain for the popular. Rigidity. Excessive irony. Warmed-over modernism. Obscurantism. And no goddamn songs.

I keep having these Emperor’s New Clothes moments where I hear a breathy little girl voice over some feedback, or someone dropping a Velvet Underground quote into ten minutes of detuned guitar wiggling. I know what you’re doing there! You don’t have any songs or any substance, and you know your audience won’t care as long as you follow the style guide! You suck!

I like strange, challenging sound. My favorite artists include industrial bands that sound like a broken dishwasher, jazz that goes SKWONK, scary insane singer/songwriters, medieval European music, Central Asian wailing. No way do I want everyone to sound like Tom Petty.

And I still love pastiche, and quotes, and irony. And I still love Dada and the modernist revolt, 100 years later.

And I can’t fucking stand Klosterman and his celebration of everything popular for the sake of its popularity. That’s just this same attitude turned inside out, with extra patronizing.

I just want people to make good art instead of following rules. And this is especially true when the rules are the ones I rigidly clung to when I was 18 and a shining knight of the avant weird. At least two generation of musicians have looked to the “indie” of 1985 and duplicated it exactly, from the square glasses to the narcissism. Stop! Make a different thing!

So in conclusion, my war on indie rock is a war on my own failings as well as my generation’s. My appeal to indie rockers is: Please stop being me. I’m tired of me. Be more surprising.

What’s the next article? You decide.

I’m covered in writer’s block like a wet sheepskin. Help me out. If I can pick one of the articles that have been bonking about in my head and stick to it, things will be easier. The poll below has a list of titles. Pick one!

I have no idea how many people read this, or how many of those are interested, but this will give my brain a shove. Thanks!.

If you can’t stand my writing, don’t want me to write, or are disappointed in the lack of “Surface to Air Missile” option, the comments are there for you.

Dear Consumer Reports: an Open Letter

I have trusted Consumer Reports since I was a child for product ratings. Your policy of no advertising and no commercial use has been admirable and useful, and I’ve always been happy to pay for the service.

Now your website has a shopping section. The explanatory paragraph says that it’s intended to provide a safe, unbiased environment for shopping, and that you’ve surveyed us customers and found just the right places to shop. It also says that it’s “powered by” Pricegrabber.com.

So this means that you’ve cut a deal with Pricegrabber to send your members to their service. Pricegrabber is not a charity and anyone in the business knows how these things work. You have taken your very valuable membership as a commodity and rented us to an outside commercial service.

Your noncommercial use policy says: ” We are not beholden to any commercial interest. Our income is derived from the sale of Consumer Reports®, ConsumerReports.org®, and our other publications and information products, services, fees, and noncommercial contributions and grants.”

What are the terms of your deal with Pricegrabber, exactly? What exactly are the criteria by which you or Pricegrabber choose vendors and products for the shopping site?

Consumer Reports is not BizRate.com. Neither are you AAA, or any of the other “organizations” that sell your membership to affiliates.

How much money will it cost you to dump this shopping nonsense, and when will you do it?

There’s no way to maintain the fiction that you’re following a noncommercial use policy at the same time that you’re selling your customers to a generic Internet shopping portal.

Thanks in advance for your reply.

Note: This was also sent via their website as a Letter to the Editor