Showing posts with label this american life. Show all posts
Showing posts with label this american life. Show all posts

Thursday, 5 June 2014

Guns, sexism, and killing (cartoons)

Pat Macpherson, Seth Auberon, Wisdom Quarterly; Tom Tomorrow (thismodernworld.com)
Maybe it's women. Maybe it's men. Maybe it's guns. Maybe it's Republican men with guns who hate women. And maybe it's unresolved mental issues in the psyche of post-slavery America.
Exploit the incident in Tucson, Santa Barbara, Santa Monica, Sandy Hook, Boston...?
Maybe the "solution" is to kill more people? *Irony* Because mass shooters, who shoot themselves (as programmed) after their shooting spree, would think twice about shooting anybody if they knew we would kill them. Uh, wait. Joe Blow McCain makes so much sense when he talks to Hillary about Ukraine, Benghazi, and golf, and POWs, and Big Government.

Wednesday, 30 April 2014

Love, Sex, and Death (video)

Pat Macpherson, Dhr. Seven, Amber Larson, Ashley Wells, Wisdom Quarterly; Jeff Walker, the "Carneous Cacoffiny" of Carcass; Nancy Updike (ThisAmericanLife.org, 4-25-14)

Oh the Occupy hippies of Claremont (B/W)
April, of course, is National Poetry Month in the US. Happy birthday, Shakespeare/Edward de Vere. And Wisdom Quarterly did an in house call for submissions. The rules were easy: "Repurpose something fun that tells a higher truth." Lately, we have been listening to a lot of grindcore, an extreme genre of death metal from Earache Records most people cannot swallow.
 
"Do it, do it, do it, you know you want to"
Three British vegans invented it (because vegans rock harder), and it changed American music. It was Occupy Los Angeles close to the end, before the literally "jackbooted thugs" of the LAPD Riot Squad stormed the peaceful encampment to cheering LA Times reporters sitting in the sidelines, after the "American Spring" was subvert by police state spies. And if Aleksa, the "face of the movement," can be a Cradle of Filth fan and a great kisser, why wouldn't Wisdom Quarterly have been listening to Carcass?

Then MARA [the personification of death in Buddhism] said to me:
 
Selena G. listens to more than Justin B. (wwtdd)
"Strike up
The discordant underture,
This carnal cacophony,
Perversely penned,
Transposed and decomposed
On strings fashioned from human twine."
 
I ask why,
But Mara carries on:
 
"Lovingly wound and fretted upon my bow,
Garishly incinerated.
All the dead resonate
In final death-throes."
 
I was vibrant as I thrashed
In movements scripted for the dead...
Orchestral horrors Mara vehemently conducts.

My corpus concertos were cordial.
I was disinterred and detuned,
All six feet below
In harmony with the deceased.


D.I.Y. (store.thisamericanlife.org)
In our pre-teens we walk around every day with the knowledge that our body is about to change. We don’t know exactly when or how. All we know is that it will happen and we will come out the other end a different person. This American Life hears from kids who are reluctantly facing puberty...any minute now.  Producer Nancy Updike takes some personal questions about death and dying to a place where they are happening all the time, the hospice. LISTEN

Golden King Tut the teen pharaoh (ancient-egypt.co.uk)
Mara explained:

"My inspiration is your disintegration.
You're my latest masterpiece!
The score creeps your flesh."
 
All my notes seeped from sinewy frets.
 
"But, no, don't hold your breath," Mara added,
"As you wait for your God, or The Void, or the
Abyss of Nothingness."

Mara knew, Mara knew, and said:

We live our lives in blue bras and wretchedness.
"Your usefulness is not through.
Your productivity will resume
In sordid, soiled handicrafts."
 
It was my afterlife's handicap.
The corrupt crescendos
Leaving me out on a limbo
And down on my knees.
I could not rest in my piece, rest in my piece.
 
Christian terrorists in Egypt (us.msn.com)
With deadly dynamics
I'm dead, buried, and barred,
My remains dampened and fingered,
My mortal coil barbed.
 
The death-bells are peeling
Ringing out as I flake
Shrieking out their recitals
In celebration of my wake.
 
Egypt my Egypt (nocaptionneeded.com)
Enter my funereality
My world two metres under
A curious habitat
A muddy trench to plunder.
 
Pass on to ethereality
Churned out under the sextant's blade.

We live our lives in wretchedness,
And death is no escape.
And Death is no escape.

Another good poem was based on Boxxy and Carlie Rae Jepsen's "Call Me Maybe," the bestest song in the history of music...except for Katy Perry's pre-girl kissing Christian rock. But it's X-rated, so let's just remind readers who "Boxxy" is, the most beautiful girl on the WW Web.

Thursday, 16 January 2014

"I want to kill!" - This American Life (audio)

Wisdom Quarterly; "Adam," Sarah Koenig, Ira Glass, ThisAmericanLife.comJan. 10, 2014
"No apparent motive, just kill and kill again/Survive my brutal thrashing, I'll hunt you to the end. My life's a constant battle, the rage of many men. Homicidal maniac!" - Slayer "Kill Again"

 
Adam is a killer, and he knows it. He went to kill in Afghanistan -- with bloodlust inculcated in him by American military training during bootcamp. He is the first person to honestly speak about it. Fortunately, he did it on public radio.
 
SHOW 515: Good Guys
Lots of men think of themselves as "good guys." But what does it actually take to be one, to be a truly good guy?

In 2009, a U.S. soldier ("Adam") contacted "This American Life." He offered to send audio dispatches from his military deployment in Afghanistan.
 
He wanted to do a story about what it is really like to go to war and to kill. What he learned when he was over there as a soldier [in the service of America's military-industrial complex] was way more personal and honest than anyone expected.
 
Even Adam had not planned to say as much as he did about how he was trained in bootcamp to WANT and look forward to killing people. He began as an older liberal among young, closed minded, gung ho killers.
 
War crimes, dishonor, moral injury, suicide
Although Sarah Koenig claims Adam never did get to kill anyone, it is clear he did: He killed by shooting humans he was invading, violating, and terrorizing. He shot alongside other Americans and saw targeted victims die but without being able to be sure that it was due to his gunfire.
  • PLAY AUDIO
  • WARNING: Story may not be appropriate for children.
More than gang killings, Adam called in airstrikes that got many people killed. He lusted after killing unarmed prisoners in his custody. He thought of executing them and shooting noncombatant civilians for no reason other than he had the power to. But he resisted like most other soldiers because he and they feared repercussions if they were caught killing without justification. It was fear of reprisal rather than respect for life that kept him and his fellow soldiers from killing more men, women, and children.
 
Now that he is back in America, he looks forward to being given an excuse to kill someone stateside. He needs a kill under his belt, which is not anything he discusses with VA doctors. He does not consider himself exceptional or psychopathic. In fact, he is sure other veterans kill and like it. Like other soldiers, he has discussed these facts with them. But they ordinarily never talk about it outside of the military. Producer Sarah Koenig explains (20 mins). WAR