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  hardie karges 8:26 am on July 14, 2008 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: America ( 59 ), sitcoms   

  The thing that separates America from the rest of the world, 

  more than Hollywood, more than rock-and-roll, are sitcoms. No one else even comes close to the slices of life that roll off the prime time sandwich line every night at retail for the homies, wholesale for the rest of the world, at least for those who ‘get it’. Most don’t. Most countries that produce their own shows go for news, variety, games, soap operas, even historical dramas, but few can come up with a true sit-com, endless variations on a non-variable context, essentially doing the same show over and over again, always different. Formerly the butt of jokes from the intelligentsia, sitcoms now draw some of Hollywood’s cleverest writers and has truly established itself as an art form to be reckoned with. As an abstract format largely divorced from current events and local issues, they do especially well in rerun and export, forever immortalizing the phrase, “the one where”.

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  hardie karges 9:22 am on July 13, 2008 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: America ( 59 ), Christmas ( 11 )   

  The American dream is of Chinese trinkets, 

  mass consumption, two cars in every garage and a bird in every oven, Sunday dinner and Christmas presents. As a child I could never sleep on Christmas Eve, not because I was waiting for Santa Claus (nobody believed that shit), but because I couldn’t stand the suspense of waiting to see what would be in my possession by next morning. Possession is 9/10 of the law, remember. Those are the halcyon days of pure memory, pristine and distinct, etched and beveled by space and time to a fine sheen and polish that belies the exigencies of the given situation. By my teens Christmas might be more like hopping in the car to go run off to the lake to watch the early morning stream rise off the water as the steam rises off my brain from some senseless argument. Family is elusive, as is friendship, just because of all the choices involved, I guess. Freedom is dangerous; role-playing is safe; love is always just out of grasp. I think maybe relationships kill the love that otherwise grows wild in vacant lots. The minute you incorporate, the business goes south.
   
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  hardie karges 11:28 am on July 12, 2008 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: America ( 59 ), history ( 42 ), migration ( 3 )   

  America is the happy hunting ground of myth and legend, 

  milk and honey on the mind’s tongue, horses and camels for the taking, more than that for the leaving. For millennia, the smart money went north and east, following mountains, following seacoasts, following herds, trekking Siberia. The farther they went, the bigger the payoff. When they went as far as they could go, they went even farther. That’s where the big payoff was, on the other side, mammoth and mastodon, bear and deer, buffalo and cows as far as the eye can see. There’s only one problem: you might not get back. That water level’s a bit finicky. On the other hand, you might not want to go back. Happy hunting grounds are nice, if you’re the hunter, not the hunted. The stupid animals act like they’ve never seen a spear before, just standing there, waiting to take it in the gut. Just wait until the summer and wait until the tide’s out and you can walk right across. Then one summer the men had to wade across to get to the animals, since they wouldn’t come across on their own anymore. Then it just kept getting deeper and deeper. On both sides the animals just headed south for the winter and didn’t go back, so the people did the same. They just followed the animals. Domestication of animals was probably accidental. Once big game was cut off from its endless source, the extant stock was probably selectively corralled for future use. One surprising result of this was likely the realization that the animals became tame in captivity. You could even put reins on some of them. The rest is history.

   
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  hardie karges 8:19 am on July 11, 2008 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: America ( 59 )   

  America is the queen bee, bloated and pregnant, 

  laying eggs in the shape of dollars. When the honeycomb is full, then it’s time to expand the line and found new colonies. Bred on royal jelly and raised on traffic jams, she only leaves the hives in swarms, for maximum protection. America thinks she rules the world, but in fact the world rules her. When she’s outlived her usefulness, the worker bees of the world will abandon her like a sinking ship, and find another frisky cow with big tits and big attitude and big hair. The workers win by default, but only as a historical group. Individually they live and die with the frequency of sunrise, constantly occurring at all times somewhere in the world. America is a concept, a role model, playing the role of empire for the sake of history. It’s nasty work, but somebody’s got to do it. If America did not exist, it would be necessary to create it, a bloated self-assured queen bee kept fed and fucked for common benefit, laying the eggs that the rest of the world needs to pay their bills. When the rest of the world doesn’t need her any more, then they’ll start investing elsewhere. They’ll stuff a new lowly commoner with royal jelly until she lets it go to her head and starts acting like a queen, throwing her weight around and printing money that the rest of us can speculate on.

   
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  hardie karges 7:13 am on July 9, 2008 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: America ( 59 )   

  The smile of a sheep-killing dog defines the Bush administration, 

  the look of a pampered pet thinking he’s getting away with something. Hey, it’s hard ruling the world, very hard. It has to be hard for proper penetration. America’s got her hands in too many pies, her fingers in too many tight spots. You can’t control everything everywhere all the time. It’s simply not possible. The harder she tries, simply the more resentment she engenders. It’s always better to lead by example. Truth, beauty, and goodness will always be attractive. Lies, coercion, and evil will never be. The end result will be the same regardless, justice seeking a path to the light, regardless of how much turbulence has to be endured in the process. Injustice is simply not a workable system in the long run. Truth stands there like a monument to the future, a leather-bound book, a cruel teacher with cane in hand ready to force compliance. Still it works, just like good old-fashioned punishment, forcing the unrighteous into submission.

   
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  hardie karges 8:42 am on July 8, 2008 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: Crusade, Iraq ( 2 ), ISLAM ( 67 )   

  The Iraq war drags on and on endlessly, no end in sight. 

  They don’t want us there, so why don’t we just leave? Politics. We can’t leave until we’ve created something there in our own image and likeness. All for the love of oil we dust off our ideals and polish our principles. Unfortunately it’s much bigger than Iraq. It’s the new Crusade between Islam and everyone else. They want the world in their image and likeness every bit as much as Bush. There may not be a compromise possible to the Muslim issue. It’s hardball politics. They’ve got oil-derived wealth and intend to use it for political leverage. They feel they have a right to convert moderate Islamic states into religious theocracies with medieval fundamentalist overtones and undercurrents, regardless of who is inconvenienced and aggrieved. The situation reminds me of the American Indian’s encounter with Europeans. There is a just a fundamental clash of goals and values. Only now the stakes are higher, with Soviet-era surplus nuclear weapons unaccounted for. We’ll just have to wean ourselves from oil first, and then let the politics sort itself out. We’ll have to do it sooner or later anyway, so the sooner, the better.

   
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  hardie karges 6:51 am on July 7, 2008 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: America ( 59 ), Europe ( 19 )   

  America itself has seen better days. 

  It’s lonely at the top, pretending to know what’s best for everybody else when you can’t even solve your own problems, pretending you’re on the side of history when you haven’t even read the book. It’s lonely at the top, bullying the rest of the world into submission for their own good, whether they like it or not. I want my revolution back. I want the moral upper hand. I want to carry the flag of peace, love, and understanding through the streets demanding justice. I want to solve the world’s problems and still maintain the standard of living to which I’ve become accustomed. Europeans have got the best of all possible worlds right now- high standard of living, cheap Slavic labor, and potentially the world’s most powerful single government, if and when they decide to commit. Let the US fuck up first; there’s no hurry. I guess they deserve it, after all they’ve been through. It’s hard being the world leader. Nobody appreciates it; everybody resents it. But it seems like somebody’s got to take the lead, and I can’t say who I’d rather have, except maybe Europe. I fear the US is falling behind Europe intellectually. Country people may be the nicest people in the world, but that doesn’t mean they’re the smartest. Now that Europe has finally and unequivocally thrown off the yoke of the Church and the Party, they’re the standard bearer for liberal democracy, while the US increasingly looks like a frumpy old housewife and her grumpy old redneck husband. Processing kids through school, pass or fail, does not set new standards of excellence. Society pays for it in the long run. Urbanity does not guarantee intellectual achievement any more than rural life prevents it. It’s a matter of intent and discipline. There’s no shortcut to intellect; you gotta’ do the work.

   
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  hardie karges 10:10 am on July 6, 2008 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: America ( 59 )   

  America is a rural nation, corn-fed and sex-starved, 

  finding satisfaction in a Bud and a Bible, leaving the heavy thinking and the hard drinking to those who gravitated to the bright lights and the long nights. America is a cow grazing on fields of time, clock ticking. The Northeast is the brains; the Pacific Coast is the business end of recycling and reproduction, fucking and farting. The Midwest contains the internal organs and heavy machinery; the South is the seamy underbelly, tits to the task; the West is a vast side of beef, awaiting the day of reckoning and rendering. America wants common sense back in the world without realizing that there was never common sense in the world. Our ancestors crowded onto boats with little thought as to what lay on the other side except that it couldn’t be any worse than what lay at home. The days of amber waves of grain and purple mountains majestic are numbered and available for hire. Automated tractors turn circles in circular fields while conveyor belts carry eggs to market. Tourists flock to the mountains to see if there’s anything they forgot. Things have never been better for the average individual.

   
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  hardie karges 9:03 am on July 5, 2008 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: America ( 59 ), protest ( 2 ), WAR ( 11 )   

  America is still a largely rural nation, 

  about 70%, in sharp contrast to much of Europe, where the figure is not only 90%, but it’s been that way for a hundred years. Only Portugal remains predominantly rural. As much as I like country life, cities tend to be more liberal and tolerant. I suppose a good compromise is small cities, with countryside nearby for commuting when necessary. That’s what I’ve always preferred, actually. Who wants to live out in the middle of nowhere with no access to the amenities of culture? The states that rejected George W. in 2004 rim the East and West coasts where the cities are. The Pacific Northwest is as politically progressive as any place in the world, environmentalist and independent. It has been called the “last bastion of the terminally hip”. There’s worse insults, I suppose, worse than being accused of having ideals and caring about preserving them. Maybe some of the affectations are a bit dated, but that doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with it, except for the drugs, that is. There’s plenty wrong with that. The ideals may not solve anything, just as it didn’t in Vietnam, but they help us re-define ourselves and our direction as a society. If Congress re-instates the draft, then the shit will really hit the fan. The 60’s protests weren’t really about the war, after all; they were about the draft. Selfish interest can always accomplish far more than abstract ideals. George W. may just re-kindle the whole movement with his fascist attitude. Many of us wouldn’t mind “one more time” and the kids might love it. We just need a Nixon to unite against.

   
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  hardie karges 12:06 pm on July 4, 2008 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: America ( 59 ), communism ( 21 ), Europe ( 19 )   

  € vs $ 

  The world takes perverse pleasure poking through America’s underwear, digging through the trash, looking for anything incriminating- blood, shit, pee stains, bank statements, whatever it takes to prove what they’ve always known, i.e. ‘it’ll never work’, or maybe ‘they’re stupid’. Forget the fact that America invents the world, regardless of who ends up being the monkey on the production line screwing things up and bolting them down. Forget the fact that, by virtue of her leadership role, America has to take responsibility for nearly everything that happens in the world, whether she had any role in it or not. Forget the fact that things have probably never been better, materially at least, in the world, and that the life we live is virtually identical with what used to be called ‘the American Dream’. Now that Western Europe no longer needs the protection of America against the big bad Russians and the gray spectral cloud of world Communism, they feel free to insult us ad nauseum ad infinitum, disregarding the fact that we ARE them, genetically and culturally, though presumably the black sheep, in their opinion, I guess. Perhaps it’s a feature of human nature to disparage what is close in character but distant in geography. I hope they DO unite and assume world leadership. Let them fuck up again, as they used to do so well.