Updates from hardie karges Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts

  • Unknown's avatar

    hardie karges 2:10 pm on June 19, 2015 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: Civil War, Emancipation, Juneteenth,   

    Happy Juneteenth Y’all: now more than ever… 

    Juneteenth, also known as Juneteenth Independence Day or Freedom Day is a holiday in the United States that commemorates the announcement of the abolition of slavery in the U.S. state of Texas in June 1865, and more generally the emancipation of African-American slaves throughout the Confederate South. Celebrated on June 19, the term is a portmanteau of June and nineteenth, and is recognized as a state holiday or special day of observance in most states–Wikipedia

     
    • Kc's avatar

      Kc 3:04 pm on June 19, 2015 Permalink | Reply

      every day is juneteenth here.

  • Unknown's avatar

    hardie karges 12:10 pm on June 18, 2015 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: cars, , ,   

    R.I.P. Amerika… “of wounds self-inflicted” 

    Image result for gun picPro-gun lobbyists in the USA like to say: If guns are illegal, then only the criminals will have them.  I say: If guns are legal, then everyone will have to have one.  Who’s right?  Blame it on the fences, or lack thereof.  Why bother when you can just buy a gun, and use it like a laser-pointing fence? We’re victims of our rural British-Irish background beyond the Pale, beyond the gates of civilized society…

    Likewise if cars are the norm, then ditto…  If everyone has one, then so do you—have to have one, that is.  In an automobile society, everyone has to have one, and the rest is history, global warming and Lindbergh barn-storming… God forgive us; we are a simple people…

     
  • Unknown's avatar

    hardie karges 3:56 pm on June 17, 2015 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , movies   

    European Films: Good, Bad, and Ugly 

    I’m happy to report that Europe is full of lousy films. I feel like this is a real breakthrough, considering all the really good films they used to make, back in the day of Truffaut, Godard, Bunuel, Bergman, Antonioni, and of course Fellini.  Where would Woody Allen be today without them?  Don’t answer that. 

    This new mediocrity might not have been obvious from the generally favorable reviews of the European films I review here. That comes from my major flaw as a critic: I don’t like to criticize. I could be wrong, after all. So I tend to review movies that I like. I’ve noticed that most film reviewers like to trash the films they review, while most music reviewers tend to be supportive. Hmmm, I wonder what that means, when most films are corporate-sponsored mega-budget monsters, while many musicians struggle to eat; but I digress… (More …)

     
  • Unknown's avatar

    hardie karges 4:01 pm on June 16, 2015 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , ,   

    What Sells? What’s New? Sex and Violence… 

    Remember back in the 60’s and 70’s when good citizens used to rail against sex and violence on American TV? Fast forward fifty years and the only thing that’s changed is that the TV must share turf with Internet, while the sex and violence have increased many-fold to the point that we’re inured to it. Remember when we used to rail against police brutality? Unfortunately liberalism is pretty much dead, and that’s not such a good thing…

     
  • Unknown's avatar

    hardie karges 6:12 pm on June 15, 2015 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: heat, ,   

    Staying Cool–in 108F/42C Heat… 

    When Tucsonans say, “Stay cool,” that is no comment on the city’s notable hipness. That is a comment on the city’s heat. Today it hit 108F/42C, equal to the hottest day in of all 2014. And I didn’t turn on the A/C, either. Do I pass? Do I get a merit badge?

     
  • Unknown's avatar

    hardie karges 9:03 am on June 14, 2015 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , ,   

    Religion: Founded on Fear, Fueled by Fire, Fed on Fulfillment 

    E Pluribus Unum…

    The nice guys over at ISIL have got it backwards. Fear may indeed be the starting point of religion, but not the end, and certainly not the means. That original fear is something like existential dread, whether in our ‘primitive’ ancestors’ realization of their own mortality, the danger from enemies or the self-conscious knowledge of our human predicament, struggling for survival.

    Regardless, that is something to be mitigated, not exploited. Organizing fighting forces on the principle of ‘kill or be killed’ with a God or a flag riding ‘shotgun’ to provide symbolic leadership and moral justification is a practice best relegated to the annals of history and the back pages of the Old Testament. (More …)

     
    • whitemagickvibes's avatar

      whitemvibes 1:44 am on June 15, 2015 Permalink | Reply

      Religion was founded on love. Love for God and love for people around you. Religious people are not all filled with images of hell or worried 24/7 about Sins.

      Religion is here to stay.

      • hardie karges's avatar

        hardie karges 6:11 am on June 15, 2015 Permalink | Reply

        Old Testament could use a bit more love for my tastes, but I agree with your conclusion.

  • Unknown's avatar

    hardie karges 3:04 pm on June 13, 2015 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: Ellipses, Hash tags,   

    So Just Call Me Elliptical: I Remember when a #Hashtag was… 

    I remember when a ‘hashtag’ was called… a ‘pound sign’ to be exact, or maybe ‘number sign’, and I still use it to mean ‘number’, not ‘look at this’ or #look at me# in some so-called social medium neither rare nor well-done… the rest is history…

    It’s a sad commentary when the broadcast network evening news is nothing but a re-hash of the day’s You Tube highlights long since published on Internet and social media; that’s why I watch BBC, and al-Jazeera, anything but Russia Today, RT for YT, day for night, that’s entertainment…

    I prefer three dots over hash-tags any day BTW, used to be called ellipses and have the limited function of substituting for the missing parts of discontinued narrative, with no change in meaning, until they came to represent the missing synapses of disconnected narrative, with no similarity in meaning implied whatsoever… #Twitter got nothing on Herb Caen, much less L.F. Celine, the writer and doctor not the solution…

     
  • Unknown's avatar

    hardie karges 2:57 pm on June 11, 2015 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , Trader Joe's   

    Trader Joe: Hipness in a Bag of Chips 

    Trader JoeTrader Joe charms me, a little bit of hippiness in every four walls, no matter whether downtown Hollywood or suburban Tucson. Just walk in and get a little jolt of the 60’s, in a heartbeat.  So when a customer asked me where to find a certain product, “You DO work here, don’t you,” I don’t know whether to be flattered or disgusted so I guess I’ll just be amused… I was carrying a basket BTW… They’ve always got a good selection of wine, of course, and beers, and other rites of passage from youth to adulthood, spring into summer, Europe into America, not to mention free shots of coffee, and hors d’oeuvre, sweet nothings, side jobs, no-brainers, baguettes and blog-ettes…

     
  • Unknown's avatar

    hardie karges 9:56 am on June 10, 2015 Permalink | Reply  

    Support Your Local Public Radio–Warts and All 

    kxci_emblem
    I listen to at least three different public radio stations in three different cities on any given day, mostly for music but also for news, and can’t help but compare and contrast their differences and similarities. Why public radio stations play the Grateful Dead on Sunday evening I don’t know any more than I know why they play EDM late night or reggae on Saturday morning, or sometimes country and western, but I smell conspiracies, and they smell like mind-control to me, as if Saturdays somehow imply stoniness of the gravel road sort or island sort, while Sunday stoniness of the 60’s sort is somehow more Left Coast or Godly. But does anyone on NPR in LA have a name that can be pronounced, or better yet—spelled? That’s what I want to know… and you gotta’ love those pledge drives…

     
  • Unknown's avatar

    hardie karges 10:02 am on June 6, 2015 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , ,   

    Religio-Politics 101: The Final Stage of Life—Buddhism 

    Statue of Buddha in Kandy, Sri Lanka

    Statue of Buddha in Kandy, Sri Lanka

    I figure if you’re not getting more religious as you’re getting older, then you’re doing something wrong. I thought I’d be a Buddhist monk by now, ensconced in some little corner of the globe hanging with the brotherhood and speaking Tibetan or Pali or even just Thai would be okay, doing the business of no-business, begging for alms in return for my purity and compassion, just trying to provide the world some moral compass, without desire or desiderata, without percussion or repercussions, ni meringue ni compas, life as lived in the latter days of ambition, no ambition just breath in breath out occasional fuel and oxygen fanning the flames of non-consumption…

    I suppose that those plans are on hold by now, as long as my 1954 libido has a first gear, a clutch, a power train and a love of transmission, not something you take for granted in the fourth semester of life, the will to power and all that rap, or even the will to succeed and all that jazz… (More …)

     

← Older posts

Newer posts →

c
Compose new post
j
Next post/Next comment
k
Previous post/Previous comment
r
Reply
e
Edit
o
Show/Hide comments
t
Go to top
l
Go to login
h
Show/Hide help
shift + esc
Cancel