This is a celebrity I have Faithfully (heh) avoided for the entirety of my life. A feat I managed despite so-called “professional” music critics showering me with their enlightened opinion. But here I am, listening to her Greatest Hits for the first time, and two songs in, I’m experiencing full-body tremors and the early onset of musical PTSD.
Category: Bad Art
One small oversight
Here’s an obviously staged photo taken at the fake Trump assassination attempt on July 13, 2024.
How can we tell it was staged? A shot had supposedly been taken at Trump from the direction that his white shirt is facing, opening him up to more shots from that direction. Any prominent public figure knows that when faced with danger the instructions are to get low and stay low, and crawl to safety. Since fight promoter Trump knows about staging, it is safe to say that he and the circle of people around him rehearsed this scene for dramatic effect, creating a courageous and defiant leader.
Right in the Nuts
As I continue to trudge through the musical gold and platinum mines of 1971-1980, I can’t help but wonder: did people actually listen to this stuff? The sheer volume of mediocre music churned out during this time could only be explained by three quintessentially American tendencies:
- Questionable taste (let’s call it “poor discernment” to be polite).
- A suspiciously robust ability to spend money we don’t have.
- An insatiable hunger for entertainment, no matter how mind-numbing.
On re-reading the Cultural Cold War
I first read The Cultural Cold War in 2019. Written by Frances Stonor Saunders, it was highly recommended to his readers by Miles Mathis. I gave my copy away. It is one of those books that should be kept on hand for reference. Saunders is surprisingly (to me) young to have published such a book. She would have been 33 when it was first published in 1999. I am rereading the 2013 edition. (Saunders is currently 58.)
I am only 30 pages into the book. I ordered it while we were in Europe, as the only reading I did over there was of the beach variety, Brooklyn, by Colm Toibin, and The Woman in Cabin 10, by Ruth Ware. I started reading another book by Ware, The Lying Game, but opted not to finish it as I felt it was going to be very dark and depressing. After exposure to those three books, I longed for substance, not looking down my nose by any means, but rather preferring nonfiction over popular fiction.
An open letter to Mike Williams, Sage of Quay
Mike Williams is also known (musically, I think) as Sage of Quay, and runs a website by that name. He puts out videos, and since I have been traveling, suffering jet lag and that sort of thing, I’ve watched a few of them. They are quite long, and in my opinion, very good. I will link to some of them at the end, but not run them here.
Generally when someone does an “open letter”, get ready for a takedown. That is not my purpose. Mike does a few common themes which cause me to avoid him, such as the idea that Paul McCartney died in 1966 and was replaced by a person known as Billy Shears. He and I have been around the block on that, and I am not going to rehash, as it serves no purpose. The whole of the McCartney business was covered here in my post, Sir Faul. His side, my side, and a group that first performed on Ed Sullivan in 1962, 62 years ago!
Continue reading “An open letter to Mike Williams, Sage of Quay”
The world of modern art exposed
Miles Mathis recently came out with a piece, Andy Warhol, The Second Biggest Fraud in Art History. It was Mathis who suggested to his readers years ago that they read The Cultural Cold War: The CIA and the World of Arts and Letters. In that book Frances Stonor Saunders details how the modern art movement, even the creation of the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), the advancement of frauds like Jackson Pollack and Warhol were backed by CIA and British Intelligence and the Rockefeller’s.
Resolution for 2023: Decolonize, de-imperialize, and restore sovereignty
As a child of the 1950s and ‘60s I cannot help but see flashes of Vietnam in Empire’s latest – hopefully its final – military expedition(s). Social media platforms and television propaganda maintain a persistent numbness. Institutional and individual indifference breeds a hunger for bread and circuses, football, Disneyland, talk shows and star-spangled “influencers,” who excrete toxic slime from every crack and crevice. The system now occupies every square inch of terrain. Bureaucrats, bored out of their minds, nevertheless read the latest memo from Washington directing street operations programmed to steer the “hive mind” hither and yon, round and round, to a place called nowhere.
It’s hard aimless work averting eyeballs — already robbed of their gaze — day in, day out, away from the wretched, inhumane global slave quarters and killing zones where pillage of the last untrammeled forests, grasslands, and scenic vistas produce commodities and emerging, synthetic “Green” markets needed to keep the insatiable machines, financial schemes and meaningless political simulations from totally melting down. Down this road is one logical end: suicide.
Continue reading “Resolution for 2023: Decolonize, de-imperialize, and restore sovereignty”National anthems, good ones, and ours too
Taylor Swift sings our national anthem. Who cares? Not me, for sure. I have never much cared for her work, but music is personal, so I don’t imagine many agree with me. And anyway, there is this, which has always troubled me:
Continue reading “National anthems, good ones, and ours too”
The Great Pacific Garbage Move, Australia Wanders East on us!
In a post below, I noted that the map below, which is really part of an art project, depicted the Great Pacific Garbage Patch as being a mere smudge on a satellite image of the Pacific Ocean off the coast of South America.
Continue reading “The Great Pacific Garbage Move, Australia Wanders East on us!”
$$$$ for Hypno-Apes
Fiat money has been in existence in the U.S. of America since 1973, the year Pres. Nixon removed the nation from “the gold standard.”
So, why are we stuck in pre-1973 thinking about how the federal government spends money to achieve its political (foreign and domestic) agenda.
I have attempted to write about this topic, with little or no reaction from POM readers. Let me try another tact. How about another author with a similar message, and some examples that might awaken the hypno-ape masses? See: Mulga, Japanese artist; http://mulgatheartist.net/en/shop/?post=267.
Repetition is how apes learn. I repeat my(ape)self: “ ….there is no tax-payer money” in federal finance/appropriations. https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/09/21/taxpayer-money-threatens-medicare-for-all-and-every-other-social-program/
It’s never a matter of being able to “afford” health care or a “pay for” a retirement program that keeps us from eating out of dumpsters. It’s a matter of whether or not Congress can find it in its greedy, self-serving, soulless existence to give a shit or not. Obviously, we have a lot of work to do. Patience, grasshopper.
Piece of Mindful 