Kokesh Reveals His Assets

Eww.

Where is Johnny Earl when I we need him? Must political discourse descend to this? A hirsute flabtard who has probably never donned a singlet in his life. Unlike Johnny. Sigh.

OK. I have to go watch the Judge of Judy to learn about the plebs. Wait. Does that sound elitist?

P.S.: I got Keef cased. Specialcommentfest on first night of Div. Serieses. All is explained.

@chicago bureau: Yanks now officially pounding the crap out of the Twins. I’m rooting for Dodgers v. Yanks in the WS.

TJ/Let the games begin!

Wow. Just. Wow.

Dear Arizona,

I am amazed by the misinformation, blatant racism and just general douchiness demonstrated by some of your commenters. For those interested, please study up on President Andrew Jackson, read “Black Elk Speaks,” learn about the continuing Black Hills issue, historical Native American diet versus introduction of government commodities after people were penned up and the bison were on the brink of extinction, evolution and diet and how introduction of commodities lead to diabetes and other obesity-related problems, the incidence of (unprosecuted) violence committed against NAs by people living in communities surrounding the rezs, the incidence of tribes still without potable water or electricity (in 2009), read up on the Russell Means case and its effect on Indian Law, heck, read up on Indian Law in general, read state laws (most casinos do not operate tax free and tribes have given more than a pound of flesh to the state to be allowed to operate these casinos), look into people like Gila River Spa as an alternative to casinos. I mean, educate yourselves, please. Until then, please keep your massive brain trust out there in the desert.

KTHXBAI,

JNOV, Eastern Band Cherokee, Blackfeet and not enrolled, so no freebees for me, y’all.

@JNOV: That’s Sheriff Joe Arpaio constituents you’re talking to there. I can only imagine their comments on anything related to the other brown folks.

@JNOV: LOL. They’ll know you’re not a regular instantly by your proper grammar and spelling.

@SanFranLefty: The commenters on stories on my cousin’s death got to blast Indians, Hispanics, lawyers, Democrats, lobbyists, and Mexicans (always fair game for commenters). Mrs RML alerts the appropriate people when the commenters at her fish wrap get out of hand. She may even bring an end to comments at her paper due to the blatant expressions of hate and racism.

@SanFranLefty: We haven’t hit the Messicans yet, but I just brought up the $1.6B in reparations to Japanese-Americans Ronnie signed into law, the ships laden with Jews we turned around and sent back to their deaths…let’s see how this all plays out.

@Jamie Sommers is an island: Heh! I keep asking them where I can go get all the free shit I have coming.

* luvthedirt
* Oct-07 @ 7:46 PM
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The average lifespan of a Native American was 27 years and they lived in mudhuts and caves before the whiteman arrived. Now they average over sixty, do you think they would go back to the past, I doudbt it. Show me a deed on the land and I’d be the first to leave. Ours is a world which is governed by the use of force, they lost. They’re lucky it wasn’t the Russians or Chinese who took them over as this wouldn’t even be an issue.

* JNOV
* Oct-07 @ 7:57 PM

Your benevolence is touching. :-*

Sorry, guys. I think I’m done after this one:

[62% positive ratings out of 3573 total ratings for this user’s comments.]
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* HaightMonger
* Oct-07 @ 8:00 PM
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More victimhood and I got it bad because its bad legislation!!! The worst kind of guilt is undeserved guilt. What good is an apology from someone who was not the offender to someone who was not a victim?

History is nothing more than a struggle for the races to survive. If Western europeans did not take over North America someone else would have!!!
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* JNOV
* Oct-07 @ 8:12 PM

I think you’re missing the point. When my son would fall and scrape his knee, even though I didn’t cause his injury, I was sorry that he was hurt, and I tried to make it better. I empathized with his pain. Whether or not you want to admit that you indirectly benefit from others’ acts is something for you to decide. But this country committed atrocities that have hurt and helped many, directly and indirectly. If Congress acts to issue an apology, how does that hurt you? I’m going to guess (okay, I’m going to hope really, really hard) that you’re not an elected official in DC. You are not being held personally responsible, but this symbolic act is an attempt of those in power to do something, however inadequate, to say we wish we had handled things differently. To *me*, just that desire means a lot.

SOMEONE MAKE ME STOP!

* classof83
* Oct-07 @ 8:26 PM
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*
What about the negro? Reparations are next and are high on the agenda of Obama. It will cost the average US family $450K. Just watch.
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* JNOV
* Oct-07 @ 8:30 PM

Seriously, “negro”? Are you like a bazillion years old? I think it’s time you moved on to “colored” or maybe “Afro-American.” I wouldn’t dare to presume that “African-American” would ever be formed by your brain to make it to your lips or to your fingertips.

@JNOV: The funny thing is, the average lifespan of the europeans coming to the new world then was probably exactly the same, or close enough to be meaningless. Whereas the life lived, by the two groups, well, one measure is in the phenomenon of “going native.” Early colonies had large numbers of people who, once exposed to the native american lifestyle, preferred it. Not so much, the numbers of native americans deciding to enter the european ratrace.

@JNOV: “Mudhuts and caves”. That’s especially ignorant coming from someone who lives in a town whose existence continues to depend upon the canals first created by the Hohokem and where less than 100 miles north there are cliff dwellings (Montezuma’s Castle) and ruins of an ancient civilization far more complex than he’ll find in his trailer park.

@JNOV: Step away from the Arizona Republic website, I beg you.

@redmanlaw: My reporter friend is on a one-woman campaign to end all comments on stories in their fishwrap. I unfortunately read some of the comments on the coverage on your cousin’s death and I seriously thought the vein at my temple was going to asplode.

TJ of sorts: What do y’all think of JNOV’s suggestion of Consider the Lobster for the next Stinque Book Club selection/Amazon kickback to Nojo? It’s a book of essays, so it’s harder to not finish. Of course, if we pick the book, it means that JNOV has to start off or lead the discussion on book club day, first Sunday of the month, which will be November 1, 2009, All Saints Day.

@JNOV: You must indeed stop, you cannot afford to waste your spiritual energy on reaction to every evil you see in the world, you must save your spiritual energy and focus it on your own living, on making your life itself a living, walking, being refutation of those people, and an expression of the good and justice in your soul. You will not, by your pain and anger, alter the ignorance, change the hateful nature, of these people who post their hate and rouse your righteous, correct, anger. But its a waste of your anger, and a waste of your life force. Don’t spend your righteous passion in anger over these things, focus it on NOT BEING THAT. Focus your anger on refuting that evil you see by BEING, by living a life that itself refutes that hate and anger.

Just waking up tomorrow and being better than that, that is enough reason to wake up tomorrow, JNOV, it is. Just to be better than that, its enough of a struggle for anyone, and just to prevail in that struggle, is a tremendous affrirmation of life and good, in the face of hate and evil. And I think that sometimes, those born with good souls, who never vary an inch from their true, and good, moral convictions, lose sight of what a victory it is just to be, and to continue on, holding to their true and good moral convictions. Because for a person who is, deep in their soul, good, it is easy to be good, and to stay true to their ideals of good. I think someone like you, JNOV, for whom having anf believing and living, good and true values, is so much an inherent part of your being, this makes being just simply good to easy for you, and because its too easy for you, you can lose sight of the fact that just being like you, is something that other people have to struggle to do. You fail to value the amazing thing that you do, which is to live a life committed to truth and justice and love, because for you it is all you can do, it is what you are, whereas for the vast majority of people, it is something that they must struggle to achieve.

You understand what I am saying? You are taking yourself for granted, you need to know that what you do effortlessly, on account of your inherently good nature, is something rare and valuable and which others have to struggle to achieve.

So stop, stop letting the fact that the haters are out there make you feel helpless and powerless because you cannot eliminate their hate from the world, and know that your life and existence and what you do, is the only thing in the world that can overcome their hate, and that simply being you, is a victory over the hate, JNOV, keep being you, thats more than an answer to a stupid hater’s stupid internet comment. Keep being you, and take pride in what you are, a living embodiment of the better nature of human existence.

@JNOV: I hear directly from Rahm that reparations are at the very top of the agenda.

Anyway, with perpetual wars and the need to pull shenanigans to fund them, not to mention the obvious imperative to use state secrets privileges to deny torture victims their day in court, and the ongoing necessary effort to Keep America Safe Scared, which is the Prime Constitutional duty of the Commander-in-Chief, and in his “free” time devise a way to redistribute a $Trillion or five of wealth from the plebes to the health insurance industry, it makes perfect sense that Obama would see slavery reparations as job #1.

@SanFranLefty: Jesus Christ! This is Steve Benson’s paper. I had no idea. I should start making Mormon jokes.

Oops, sorry…JNOV, please don’t let my cynicism and sarcasm get to you. I only spew it because I have no other outlet where some semblance of reality is discussed.

@JNOV: Save the Mormon jokes for tomorrow. The assholes won’t be going anywhere. And I’m with Prommy on this. Not worth your energy.

@JNOV: Don’t bother. They hate the Mo too.

/Total TJ/

I think it was Jamie, but not sure, who said in a comment on a previous thread that she was reading The Family. And because of something else I’d read recently I immediately thought she meant the Kitty Kelley muckrake about the Bush fambly. So I trotted off to Amazon and downloaded it to my iPhone Kindle-reader post-haste. And I’m only into the first chapter but WOW!

Now I know there are legitimate criticisms of Kitty’s methodology out there, but I’d like to remind you that she’s never been successfully sued for libel.

That said, I think I’d also like to read the The Family that Jamie (?) was talking about in the first place.

And somewhat related, because there are still a few true journalists out there and I think we need to praise them: I think Jeremy Scahill is hot hot hot!

io9 has a book club now, too.

http://io9.com/5376685/get-ready-for-the-first-meeting-of-the-io9-book-club-tomorow

@JNOV:

Mud huts my ass. They had cities.

@Pedonator:

I’ll read The Family. Do I get to join?

@Tommmcatt is hunkered down in the trenches: You’re already a member, and membership has privileges.

But, to bring it back to the important issues: Do you or do you not think Jeremy Scahill‘s combination of rogue-ish scruff, relentless journalistic integrity and, last but not least, penchant for wearing librarian spectacles is sodomizable?

@Promnight: <3

@SanFranLefty: I love that suggestion. I’m a huge fan of the essay, an under-appreciated literary form. Also, I’ don’t think I could find the time now to read Infinite Jest.

@Promnight: Well said, sir.

@SanFranLefty: Yep, Yep, Yep, on the DFW.

Elevation.

@redmanlaw: I was at the club when this was recorded: http://www.amazon.com/Elevation-Pharoah-Sanders/dp/B000AMJE4G/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=music&qid=1254992772&sr=8-2

@Pedonator:

Maybe after a few martinis. Not really cutie-boy enough for my taste.

@cassandra_said: Vote here as well for DFW. I may be the only stinquer not to have read IJ, so to start with some essays would be fantabulous. Not that I’ve actually participated in the book club to date, mind you. Maybe if you chose a “Classics Illustrated” comic I’d be game.

But yes, DFW essays, on todos los santos day.

@Pedonator: Pedo, how is that Kelly book about the Bush’s? I mean, there was an internet site called “the bush crime family” which did a pretty good job, all the way from stealing geronimo’s skull, playing a role in trying to get Smedley Butler to lead a coup against Roosevelt (by the way, the description of the benign coup predicted in that conservatard site last week was pretty much what the wall-streeters wanted to do to Roosevelt), there was the family commitment to eugenics, and the underlying beleif in the inequality of people, support for forced sterilization and birth control, but again, in order to breed a master race, then there was the whole Brown Brothers Harriman support for Hitler, and there was the connection with the CIA from its inception, and the involvement of GHWB in the Bay of Pigs, and the Assisination of Kennedy, and the time GHWB hired a bunch of literally nazis, actual old nazis, to work on his first presidential campaign, GHWB’s lies about Iran Contra, and just tons and tons more, the political corruption, influence-peddling, and cronism that has made the Bushes the greatest professional family of grafters in US history, anywho, like I say, does Kitty get to any of this?

Still reading The Glums here. 974 pages in and about another 200 to go.

The trouble is: I don’t know why they’re revolting. I don’t know why they built the barricade. Or why they’ve got Javert tied up. You might think that at least they’d put some nipple clamps on him. But no.

Actually, they might think about putting some nipple clamps on this person, too. Whoever he is.

@SanFranLefty: Is that a consensus on the book pick? I can’t quite tell.

@nojo: We can read the essay “Consider the Lobster” right here, now: http://www.gourmet.com/magazine/2000s/2004/08/consider_the_lobster

@Prommie: “Working” at home due to sore throat. I may check it out now that I’m done facebooking and playing the drums.

@nojo: Sounds like consensus. As close as we would approach it.

@SanFranLefty:

Define “Concensus”.

:)

Just so y’all know, there’s no guarantee I’ll have the intertubes or a phone after next week, or cable TV, so I might be MIA for awhile. So, maybe no DFW for me. I’m not feeling much like reading right now anyway.

@JNOV: Dude, you’ve gotta lead the discussion…

@SanFranLefty: Maybe I can surf off someone’s unencrypted wireless.

A far better introductory reading of DFW would be the commencement address that JNOV has previously posted. It contains far more of the particular elements of what defines Wallace than Consider the Lobster. In particular, his looping parentheticals into other topics related only by his unique view of the world, and above all, the multiple layers of perspective. Wallace writes, and he writes as the writer observing himself writing and describing his thought processes in deciding what and how he says what he is saying, and as the writer anticipating the audience’s reception and understanding of what he is saying, and, now from the perspective of observer describing himself writing and anticipating the response of the audience, responding to his anticipations of the audience response. This is all there, no exxageration, in much of his writing, and though many critics have thought it contrived and even “show-offy,” I think he is setting down on the paper the subjective thoughts that fleet through the minds of everyone, every time they try to express themselves to others, the process of composing what to say, anticipating the responses, deciding how to further refine the statements made to ensure that there will be no misunderstanding, but always aware that minsunderstanding is inevitable, and because of the impossibility of perfect communication between people with different subjective responses to words and symbols, and always sad that in the end, try as he might with his herculanean effort to say it all, address every possibility of imperfection, make every effort to lay before the reader, the listener, every aspect of the process of the effort to communicate, despite all that, communication will never be perfect, and from that perspective, each and every consciousness is forever utterly alone.

Yes, that is what to me screams from everything that DFW wrote, a despairing hope, wish, desire, to be understood, which is, in the end, to commune, with others, and the knowledge that perfect communication, communion, is impossible, that ultimately, each consciousness is, despite the deep desire for communion with others, always inevitably and in the end alone.

Oh lord, please don’t let me be misunderstood. I suffer from it, I see it in Wallace, maybe I project it onto wallace, I don’t know, its my ever present fear, and it happens often enough, too.

Here it is: http://web.archive.org/web/20080213082423/http://www.marginalia.org/dfw_kenyon_commencement.html

@Promnight: This.

Yes, that is what to me screams from everything that DFW wrote, a despairing hope, wish, desire, to be understood, which is, in the end, to commune, with others, and the knowledge that perfect communication, communion, is impossible, that ultimately, each consciousness is, despite the deep desire for communion with others, always inevitably and in the end alone.

And This is Water

@Promnight: You beat me to it!

@JNOV: But he was wrong in one thing, JNOV, you can commicate, you can commune, its not perfect, but the imperfection, well, its not so great as to prevent real and meaningful communion, touching each other, souls touching and finding solace in the shared experience of life, all its beauty and ugliness. he says it, the error is in worshipping by default, one of the things one can worship unknowingly is one’s own intellect, understanding, and I think, this led to his belief that because he could not perfectly communicate his particular genius perfectly, all was lost.

But even though we surely don’t understand him perfectly, just as an example, you and I do believe we get him, at least well enough that we would say to him, that communication, even if imperfect, is nevertheless good enough, it is possible, , its possible to communicate well enough to bridge the gap between souls, and allow the feeling of fellowship, oneness in something greater than our small little worlds in our heads.

Thats would I would tell him. And part of the reason I believe it, is that I know you know what I mean, and its rare to have that faith that someone really does understand, and I have that faith that you understand what I am saying when I talk about DFW, because of what DFW said, even if what he was saying is that this communication do believe we have is impossible.

@Promnight: Well, he’s no Ali G, but I sure enjoyed it.

@The Nabisco Quiver are Go!: I may be the only stinquer not to have read IJ

No DFW here at all. None. Nada. No reason; just never happened.

@Promnight: This isn’t really a reply to what you wrote. I’ll get to that. I just want to discuss his speech.

It’s not a great speech. He starts off saying that he’s not going to give them advice, but he does. He says he’s not going to go off into platitude land, but he does. And his speech is kind of disjointed at places.

The reason I love this speech isn’t so much what he says, even though I agree with him, but instead his speech displays his personal struggles. It’s like he’s up there naked trying to tell these kids how to survive in a fucked up world even when he’s not sure how to do so himself. He’s basically saying “Life sucks. Sorry. Maybe you can think your way out of the tedium, but the tedium is there. Here are some tricks that might help, but we are truly fucked.”

That’s not exactly the kind of thing you want to hear when you’re in your early twenties or at any age, but I give him credit for not putting on the happy face for the world.

When you suffer from severe depression (some people think he also suffered from some sort of mental allodynia), but you’re “highly functional” (a fucking misnomer), you put on your happy face and power through until you just can’t anymore. I think he was in tremendous pain when he wrote this speech, and I think that’s why it clicked for me.

As far as being understood, that’s the default setting he’s talking about, where we are the center of our own universe because we experience the world alone. We interact with each other and try to communicate feelings and ideas, but no one ever really knows, I mean really knows or understands, no matter how hard they try, no one will ever really understand you. Ever.

Maybe it’s like horeshoes and hand grenades and sometimes close is good enough, but for some people, it never is.

I know so many people who empathize and are emotional sponges and do their damnedest to put themselves in others’ shoes. And I know so many people who have had similar life experiences, similar brain chemistry and anatomical similarities that they recognize themselves in others. But they are recognizing themselves in others. Back to the default, right?

So, yeah. We are alone, and we are fucked. We just have to try to think our way out of it sometimes. And sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn’t.

@nojo: I’ve never read him either. I figure I’m depressed enough already.

@Mistress Cynica: IJ was the first of his I read. It had just come out, and it’s not quite as depressing as some of his other stuff. It’s been over ten years since I read it, and I probably was in a happier place emotionally, but it wasn’t anything like “The Depressed Person” or some of his other stories and essays. (Weird tangent: “The Depressed Person” reminds me of “The Displaced Person,” and I always think of the two of them together. I’m not sure why. It could just be that the titles are similar, or there might be something more. I haven’t read “The Displaced Person” in probably twenty years, but I have that image of the lonely DP placing his lonely plant (a geranium?) on the fire escape (?) every morning. I dunno. Maybe I’ll reread that tonight.)

Parts of IJ are beyond hysterical in such a brilliant way (be sure to read the end note about the reasons videophones failed). He had a way of taking something mundane and drawing it out to a creative, ridiculous and plausible conclusion. It takes a while to get into it, but once you do, once the light bulb goes on, you’re like, “Wow. This guy is amazing.”

@JNOV: Heaven beside you, hell within.

@redmanlaw: I was learning that on the geetar! I was getting pretty good.

@JNOV: Hokay. Got “The Geranium” and “The Displaced Person” all confused in my noggin’.

@nojo: @Mistress Cynica: /breathes/ Thanks for helping me come clean on that one. But I’d like to after all that I’ve heard around these parts.

@JNOV: Cable tv is overrated. Sure, I miss catching cable newssquawk, including Keef and Rachel, but my bp is probably better for not following them. I think I miss Mad Men more than anything, since it is not on Hulu. I have a digital tuner for the laptop that works pretty well, Philly should have decent digital coverage.