Passe Democracy - 5/27/2016

Right before I woke this morning on the top floor of the Fort Greene Conservancy, I had a dream about trashing a billionaire's mansion by driving a small tractor through the rooms.

Not looting.

Just good old vandalism.

People around the world are angry with the status quo. Mainstream media has no contact with the real world and they responded to this dire stte of things that democracy was passe, "The problem with that is: A little less than half the developed world's population is not interested in helping others unless it personally enriches them. That's the root cause of the divide."

I called out this bullshit by countering, "I've lived many places. everyone in the world is the same. they wake in the morning and hope for a better day. the problem are the elites. Once during a uprising in SE Asia the people burned, but did not loot a luxury mall and a taxi driver said to me, "I can live with them having stolen my life, but I hate Khon Yai for wanting to steal my children's lives."

I've heard the same thing in other countries. the struggle is not for the right to vote, but the desire to be human. The blessed rich constitute the filthy. 0000001 %. The banks, the government, the army, the police et al suppressing life itself. Here in the USA as well in the Time of 47.

Resist.

Five Degrees of Hangover - 2015 to now

The NFL football season has one game left. The Superbowl and next Sunday millions of Americans will tune into the rematch of the New England Patriots verus the Seattle Seahawks attempting to revenge their spectacular last minute defeat in Super Bowl XLIX 2015. I'm in good shape. The Patriots have unexpectedly arrived at Super Bowl LX thanks to an easy schedule, a great defensive, and the emergence of their yooung quarterback. Exciting for Seattle and New England, but even those fans with losing teams have beers in the fridge and burgers on the grill with tequila shots at half-time and whiskey for the winners. The losers finish with flat beer.

Every Monday America should be closed for business, since most men will be nursing catastrophic hang-overs, except the working man in this country have surrendered his bargaining rights with management in order to drive an SUV and watch porno on company time, except calling in sick is a good blow against capitalism, when a distressed worker requires a little extra time before handling heavy machinery. Their bosses will love hearing the excuse, but here's a list of hang-over ratings. They just might help to your boss decide that you do deserve a day in bed.

One Star Hangover (*)

No pain. No real feeling of illness. You’re able to function relatively well. However, you are still parched. You can drink 5 cokes and still feel this way. For some reason, you are craving a steak & fries.

Two Star Hangover (**)

No pain, but something is definitely amiss. You may look okay, but you have the mental capacity of a staple gun. The coffee you are chugging is only incenses your rumbling gut, which is still tossing around the fruity pancake from the 3:00 AM Waffle House excursion. There is some definite havoc being wreaked upon your bowels.

Three Star Hangover (***)

Slight headache. Stomach feels crappy. You are definitely not productive. Anytime a girl pass, you gag because her perfume reminds you of the flavored schnapps shots your alcoholic friends dared you to drink. Life would be better right now if you were home in your bed watching Lucy reruns. You’ve had 4 cups of coffee, a gallon of water, 3 iced teas and a diet Coke — yet you haven’t peed once.

Four Star Hangover (****)

Life sucks. Your head is throbbing. You can’t speak too quickly or else you might puke. Your boss has already lambasted you for being late and has given you a lecture for reeking of booze. You wore nice clothes, but that can’t hide the fact that you only shaved one side of your face.

For the ladies, it looks like you put your make-up on while riding the bumper cars. Your eyes look like one big red vein, and even your hair hurts. Your sphincter is in perpetual spasm, and the first of about five shits you take during the day brings water to the eyes of everyone who enters the bathroom.

Five Star Hangover (*****)

You have a second heartbeat in your head, which is actually annoying the employee who sits in the next cube. Vodka vapor is seeping out of every pore and making you dizzy. You still have toothpaste crust in the corners of your mouth from brushing your teeth in an attempt to get the remnants of the poop fairy out. Your body has lost the ability to generate saliva so your tongue is suffocating you. You don’t have the foggiest idea who the hell the stranger was passed out in your bed this morning. Any attempt to defecate results in a fire hose discharge of alcohol-scented fluid with a rare ‘floater’ thrown in. The sole purpose of this ‘floater’ seems to be to splash the toilet water all over your ass. Death sounds pretty good about right now….

This rating system came thanks to an email from Bryan La Boeuf.

My favorite painter and a lover of fine things.

And coming from Louisiana, he knows a little about hangovers.

Go Pats.

The Harsimus Branch Embankment - Jersey City

Last Wednesday I left Clinton Hill to act the role of a drunken pool player in low-budget film. LATE FAME. A movie from a 1894 novella about a forgotten poet discovered by the young. My friend was the lead.

"This movie is about you."

Famous for never. I know it well

One scene was all I got.

A local losing at pool to the hero's friend. None of the extras looked like barfly. The actor couldn't play eight-ball. I guess I was there to add cred. I had drank, since the age of 12. I hadn't had a drink in four years. Doctors' orders. No other choice other than to be sober.

The shoot began at 9. I was out at 2.

I walked to the Grove Street past the Harsimus Branch Embankment. Erected in the 1900s to carry trains to New York Harbor. Red sandstone. Each block a ton. According to Wikipedia the Pennsylvania Railroad branch served its freight yards and carfloat operations on the Hudson River at Harsimus Cove

Landscape historian John Stilgoe writes of the structure as having “the everlasting solidity of Egyptian pyramids and Inca roads."

Fairly amazing masonry work and still standing, although the ground has sunk under its weight. The height varies from 13 to 27 feet. The top is inaccessible to the public and since its closure in the 1990s nature has taken over with woods spanning the one mile stretch.

I saw no way to scale the walls

A new Eden.

Without man.

No Adam or Eve.

Mankind back to whence we came

No one.

Ps I thought the Embankment was pre-Roman.

THE ANNALS OF DRINIKNG / A Few Too Many

First published - Saturday, September 29, 2012

The wife of my landlord in Fort Greene subscribes to the New Yorker. I read it from time to time. Never all of it, but I pick and choose the articles and several years ago I was drawn to Joan Accocela's BOOZY BEGINNINGS / A Few Too Many, which was probably the best-written piece to be published in the esteemed magazine in decades. For once they featured writing more to my pseudo-intellectual tastes, especially with key search words such as hang-over, alcohol, and Kingsley Amis.

The article suggested that hang-overs occur, when the blood/alcohol index returns to zero brought on the dehydrating trips to the bathroom, so holding your urine prevents hangovers rather than succumbing to the urge to relief yourself throughout the night, although an overloaded bladder would produce more anxiety than a hang-over.

The writer dated hang-overs to the Stone Age and offered insight into the source of the word hang-over plus several foreign alternatives.

Danish is the best "Carpenters in my head." although Kngsley Amis once said, "I feel like I have grown antlers.

As for cures the writer heralded Andrew Irving's HOW TO CURE A HANGOVER and also RU-21 a KGB remedy for 'A few too many'.

No drinking man or woman should miss this piece, so please click on the following URL

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2008/06/30/boozy-beginnings-2

Never have so many been help by one person.

The Jack Palance photo is featured, since Attila the Hun famously fell off his horse while drunk, caught pneumonia, and died the next day. The Huns supposedly hid his corpse to avoid desecration, but some historians think his bodyguard were too hung over to find it the next day.

Thursday morning I woke up this morning with a hang-over and couldn't figure out why, until I recalled drinking champagne combined with wine. According to AI some studies suggest that moderate consumption of both Champagne and white wine may be associated with a lower risk of sudden cardiac arrest,

Never a good combination, but I survived the dawn thanks to the frosty Stella Artois' stuck in my refrigerator.

Hang-overitis.

It's never forever.

Bad Grass

Back in 2013 photographer Stéphane Sednaoui was cutting the red grass from his field in France and posted this photo on FB.

"Countryside removing the bad grass."

The picture reminded me that as a child my father had my older brother and I hand-pluck the weeds from our backyard in the Blue Hills south of Boston.

We were too young to use sharp implements. It was a thankless job, especially since many of the 'weeds' were wild flowers of New England. We uprooted by hand. No gloves. A thankless job for an nine and eight year-old.

All to plant more grass seeds, so we could mow the lawn every two weeks from spring to early autumn. I still recall the clumps of dirt on my Keds sneakers

Once I was old enough and moved away from the suburbs. I have almost never pulled weeds or mowed a lawn again, except for once off Round Hill Road in Greenwich, Connecticut. On a chariot lawnmower. With a broken throttle. to mow a knee-high lawn. In truth I have always had a mighty fear of lawnmowers. I feared the blade coming detached and slicing off my legs at the knee like a machete. I leapt off the chariot mower. It crashed into a rock outcropping. I left it there and refused to touch it. Never no more the mower.

Free the weeds.

Stephane and I had been friends in Paris back in the 1980s. I haven't seen him in ages. I wish him well.

ps suburban lawns are a toxic blight on nature. Weeed killers, such as Bayer's Round-up, whose main ingrediant, glyphosate, kills everything green and may cause cancer. They have substituted another toxin and the EPA has yet to recognize its danger.

pps as a child in 1960 the town sprayed DDT in our neighborhood against mosquitoes. We gleefully ran through the white cloud. We were guinea pigs for organochloride which was manufactured by Monsanto, later to be bought by Bayer. DDT had a diasasterous effect on bird population and almost exterminated the bald eagel. We thought nothing of it. DDT had no smell, but when sprayed from the back of the truck wikipedia reported that it had a sweet smell. Monsanto called it 'summerlike'. What me worry. I was only eight and my whole life ahead of me. And still today. I'll never mow another lawn. Let the grass live.

Photo : Stéphane Sednaoui

The Sins of Helmut Newton 2009

Sex for Helmut Newton was different from the Playboy magazine version. S&M tainted photos versus airbrushed farmgirls, however Hugh Hefner recognized the Berlin-born photograher's talent and hired Newton to shot soft-core pictorials for Playboy, including pictorials of Nastassia Kinski and Kristine DeBell. His true vision of sexuality will always be renowned for its departure point being far beyond most people's ken of fetishism.

Me too, but only because the lingerie looks so expensive.

His ashes are buried next to Marlene Dietrich at the Städtischen Friedhof III in Berlin.

Click on this URL to see more of his photos

http://www.ocaiw.com/galleria_fotografi/index.php?author=newton
Sehr Mittel Europa.

East Berlin Immer Eis Cream - 2013

Back in 1989 one West German Mark bought a huge ice cream in East Berlin's Alexanderplatz.

Two marks bought two ice creams.

For good girls.