The Try-Works

An anonymous eyewitness has been kind enough to add another account of Mr. Martin’s latest dipshit escapade.

Martin did leave out a minor detail: Throughout the “confrontation,” he waded in a pool of his own urine after he pissed himself silly out of fear. He looked very nervous through the whole thing; he could barely put two words together. Although, I could not tell if this was his natural state or if this was brought on by the events at the protest. There might be a potential lawsuit here in small claims court. Mr. Martin might have a legitimate claim that the ruffians owe him the cost of a new pair of pants.

Well done, gentlemen; the next round’s on me. Thanks for making my fucking week. Told you he was a creepy little motherfucker.

Seriously, Mr. Martin, you’re in your mid-fifties and this is your life’s work? Trolling anti-war protests in hopes of provoking a confrontation? That’s what you quit drinking for?

Because if that’s all you got, hoss, I recommend you take up the bottle again. Jesus, watching your old ass sleep off a vodka binge in a gutter would be good sight less depressing than the current void that seems to be your life. If these antics are any indication, yours is the kind of existential hell that forces the rest of us to muster our entire reserve of intestinal fortitude to withstand the sudden, overpowering impulse to drive ten-penny nails through our eyes. Hell, I’ve seen six-year-olds huffing Freon who were less pitiful than your dried up old ass.

Update: Having had, shall we say, a couple of run-ins with John Martin (here and here), I’m a little skeptical as to the cool, contained, mild-mannered version of himself he’s concocted for the above post. The Mr. Martin I know more resembles a spastic rhesus monkey with a greasy little erection and shit crusted around his mouth. I’ll never quite forget the first time I saw him hopping about and tugging at the front of his pants in the direction of a few college girls unfortunate enough to be in his general presence. I have it on good authority that at least two of the poor kids are still undergoing therapy.

So . . . if any of you Try-Works readers have firsthand knowledge that contradicts Mr. Martin’s tale, email me or leave it in the comments. I’ll happily repost it on the main page.

Update II: Seems Mr. Martin was fudging just a wee bit in his account of the so-called harrassment he endured on Columbus day. I’ve been emailed one report in from an unnamed journalist, who describes him thusly:

Foaming at the mouth is right . . . He was just trolling around, black hat backwards wearing some kind of ridiculous looking cargo pants with a vest to match. Very creepy.

But even better, Glenn Spagnoulo has chimed in at Mr. Martin’s blog with what I kinda gathered was the case:

You are so pathetic. Trying to act like you were in some kind of real danger. If I wanted to hurt you, I would have and there would have been nothing you could have done about it, but it would be a complete waste of time. Never claimed to be a peacenik. Oh yea, thanks for the ten buck donation. Nice not to mention that the scarf guy was playing with you, but I know, you need to create a story so go with it. We do not mind the attention, but speaking for myself, I do mind your false bullshit. Keep it up though, when someone like you starts writing something positive about me is when I know I have gone wrong.

Hey Drunkawife, your husband was never in any real trouble, he likes to pretend so he could look all dangerous to turn you on when he gets home. I guess you would have to be a drunk wife to cuttle up to that poor excuse of a man.

. . .

One more thing John, that is not Shareef in the picture with Larry Hales, but I guess to a scared little white man like yourself, “they all look the same” right.

Wm:
I pointed him out because people thought some one shit their pants because of the smell, I assumed it was John so I let them know. No reason to hide, right John. After all you were never really in any danger were you. Plus the fearless John Martin was trying to act like he was really into it all, thought people should no he was a fake. Keep hiding El Pres. Maybe some day you will grow a pair and introduce yourself to me. I won’t hold my breath. The only place any of you have any courage is when you are in cyber-space.

Well, that’s our Mr. Martin. He tries another goofy attempt at provoking an incident, then whines when his shenanigans are met with the mildest of reproval. Methinks he’s been hanging out with Heath Urie of late. One hopes the tender little darling never stubs his toe at one of these events. One can only imagine the snot, tears and howls of outrage attending.

Seriously, where was Mr. Martin drinking during his epic days of debauchery? Christ, given the levels of levels of self-pity he evinces when sober, one wonders who the hell would drink with him? I can’t imagine any self-respecting alcoholic who wouldn’t drown him in a toilet after about five minutes of his whining. To paraphrase Tom Waits, get down off the cross, asshole, we could use the wood.

Update III: Mr. Spagnoulo’s right, of course, Shareef Aleem ain’t anywhere to be found in this picture.

I profoundly apologize for the rash of Snapple posts while I was gone.  I’ll delete them at some point, but now and then it’s nice to remind ourselves exactly how fucking lunatic the other side is, ain’t it?

And, hell, in the interest of tolerance, I’ve decided to respond to one of Snapple’s queries.  S/he would like to know what I think of certain recently unearthed statements made by Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Barack Obama’s pastor of 20 years.

An ABC News review of dozens of Rev. Wright’s sermons, offered for sale by the church, found repeated denunciations of the U.S. based on what he described as his reading of the Gospels and the treatment of black Americans.

“The government gives them the drugs, builds bigger prisons, passes a three-strike law and then wants us to sing ‘God Bless America.’ No, no, no, God damn America, that’s in the Bible for killing innocent people,” he said in a 2003 sermon. “God damn America for treating our citizens as less than human. God damn America for as long as she acts like she is God and she is supreme.”

In addition to damning America, he told his congregation on the Sunday after Sept. 11, 2001 that the United States had brought on al Qaeda’s attacks because of its own terrorism.

“We bombed Hiroshima, we bombed Nagasaki, and we nuked far more than the thousands in New York and the Pentagon, and we never batted an eye,” Rev. Wright said in a sermon on Sept. 16, 2001.

“We have supported state terrorism against the Palestinians and black South Africans, and now we are indignant because the stuff we have done overseas is now brought right back to our own front yards. America’s chickens are coming home to roost,” he told his congregation.

The rest.

Well, my response is easy, Snapple.  While I admire Reverend Wright’s intent, I see no reason for the reticence and reserve of his statements.  It seems to me that given his insightful analysis, it might be indispensable to coin some snappy term for those who benefit as a result of US foreign policy choices.  Some way of describing the, well, banality of evil endemic to those in the upper echelons of, say, international trade.  Y’know, the folks who make their millions wiping their ass with the rest of humankind.  Particularly brown humankind.

Any ideas?

Update:  Charles Coulter of the Kansas City Star points out the obvious.

So the Rev. Jeremiah Wright made comments that some portray as hate-filled and anti-American.

So what? I think that’s covered by something called the First Amendment.

And some want Barack Obama to distance himself even further from his spiritual mentor. Why?

Rev. Wright has not said anything that has not been said or is not being said in bars, poolrooms, barber shops, hair salons or anywhere else more than three black people gather.

And don’t fool yourself. It’s not just the black urban poor, those without jobs, education or hope, who express these comments. Many members of the black middle class have the same sense of history; the same sense of anger.

The rest.

Not to follow Mr. Coulter in his rather slavish obviousness, but it ain’t just blacks.  A fucking third of Americans believe 9/11 was a direct inside job.  Not blowback for US foreign policy decisions, which is what Mr. Wright and Mr. Churchill argue, but a direct conspiracy to either commit or allow the attacks.  The only pinheads left on earth who deny that US foreign policy is the reason they hate us are either working for Fox News or sipping Metamucil over at Jim Paine’s place.

But I’ll be offline for the next week or so.  Please, nobody feed Laurie.  It’ll only encourage her to keep coming around.

The dear hearts at Monkey Smashes Heaven have had just about enough of first world feminism.

For all the obvious reasons.

1. The contradiction between First World females and First World males is not antagonistic. First World females have, for the most part, are freed from traditional forms of patriarchal oppression. Like First World males, First World females enjoy a high degree of autonomy, a wide range of life options to pursue in their leisure time, access to imperial privileges, etc. First World males and First World females largely share the same culture and psychology. Whereas there are still differences between First World males and First World females, these differences are insignificant in the global scheme of things. First World males and First World females benefit from the global system of gender oppression.

2. The First World as a whole is your enemy. First World males and First World females are your enemy. Contradictions in individual First World nations are made less and less antagonistic due to the influx of super-profits. Contradictions that once seemed antagonistic have faded away within individual First World nations.

The rest.

“The central question that emerges…is whether the White community in the South is entitled to take such measures as are necessary to prevail, politically and culturally, in areas where it does not predominate numerically? The sobering answer is Yes—the White community is so entitled because, for the time being, it is the advanced race.” —William F. Buckley, National Review, August 24, 1957.

I’ll be out of commission and offline for a few days.  Play nice.

There’s times one starts wondering if the motherfucker’s putting us all on.

George Bush’s favorite painting.

According to The Bush Tragedy, a new book by Slate’s Jacob Weisberg, Bush suffers from a similar inability to distinguish between what he wants to see and what is there to be seen. This is nicely captured in an anecdote about a painting (that’s it to the left of this text; click to enlarge) that Bush put up in his office when he was governor of Texas. Weisberg writes:

In an April 1995 memo, Bush invited his staff to come to his office to look at a painting. … The picture is a Western scene of a cowboy riding up a craggy hill, with two other riders following behind him. Bush told visitors—who often noted his resemblance to the rider in front—that it was called A Charge To Keep and that it was based on his favorite Methodist hymn of that title, written in the eighteenth century by Charles Wesley. As Bush noted in the memo, which he quoted in his autobiography of the same title: “I thought I would share with you a recent bit of Texas history which epitomizes our mission. When you come into my office, please take a look at the beautiful painting of a horseman determinedly charging up what appears to be a steep and rough trail. This is us. What adds complete life to the painting for me is the message of Charles Wesley that we serve One greater than ourselves.” Bush identified with the lead rider, whom he took to be a kind of Christian cowboy, an embodiment of indomitable vigor, courage, and moral clarity.

Bush subsequently took the painting to Washington, hung it in the Oval Office, and continued to tell the painting’s inspiring story, adding embellishments:

He came to believe that the picture depicted the circuit-riders who spread Methodism across the Alleghenies in the nineteenth century. In other words, the cowboy who looked like Bush was a missionary of his own denomination.

Only that is not the title, message, or meaning of the painting. The artist, W.H.D. Koerner, executed it to illustrate a Western short story entitled “The Slipper Tongue,” published in The Saturday Evening Post in 1916. The story is about a smooth-talking horse thief who is caught, and then escapes a lynch mob in the Sand Hills of Nebraska. The illustration depicts the thief fleeing his captors. In the magazine, the illustration bears the caption: “Had His Start Been Fifteen Minutes Longer He Would Not Have Been Caught.”

The rest.

From your friends at wardchurchill.net.

As we see how Dr. King’s life and message has been sanitized for mainstream consumption, we   recall his April 4, 1967 speech at Riverside Church in NYC, “Beyond Vietnam – A Time to Break Silence,” in which he said:

Even when pressed by the demands of inner truth, men do not easily assume the task of opposing their government’s policy, especially in times of war. . .

On the “why do they hate us” question of that era, King quoted a Buddhist monk:

Each day the war goes on the hatred increases in the heart of the Vietnamese and in the hearts of those of humanitarian instinct.   The Americans are forcing even their friends into becoming their enemies.  It is curious that the Americans, who calculate so carefully on the possibilities of military victory, do not realize that in the process they are incurring deep psychological and political defeat.   The image of America will never again be the image of revolution, freedom, and democracy, but the image of violence and militarism.

He also quoted John F. Kennedy:  “Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable,” and added that

Increasingly, by choice or by accident, this is the role our nation has taken, the role of those who make peaceful revolution impossible by refusing to give up the privileges and the pleasures that come from the immense profits of overseas investments. I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values.

We must not only break silence, but defend those being silenced.

Click here to hear Martin Luther King’s April 4, 1967 speech.

John Wayne was a Nazi.

From the always genteel folks over at RAIMD, who made my fucking week by posting this song. And to whom I will brag that I saw MDC about four thousand fucking times in my wild and wooly youth.

Pictures.

And video.

I learned something about myself this past weekend.  Something that a man more in touch with himself probably would’ve figured out some time ago.  And that is, I rather like X-mas.  Yeah, I know, one is supposed to get all fucking exercised about the crass commercialism of the holiday.  But, hell, I rather like excess, and an entire holiday devoted to it in the middle of dead fucking winter always smacks to me of exactly the right thing at exactly the right time.

What’s not to love?  The God-given right to eat an obscene amount of rich food and burn through cocktails by the gallon?  Hell, there’s even singing, and the occasional recitation of a literary work.  And, to top it off, everyone seems wholly aware of the casual crassness and wholehearted fakeness of the entire shtick.  One can get away with the sort of flip remark that usually leads to a thorough drubbing by family members, and even the fundamentalist aunties with the pinch-mouthed crucifix leers start coming across like Jean Baudrillard after a spot or two of rum in their coffee.

In other words, I love X-mas for exactly the reason we are always cautioned not to love X-mas: to paraphrase Dr. Seuss, exactly because it doesn’t mean anyfuckingthing anymore.  I love the holiday for the same reason Robert Anton Wilson loves it.

As Weston La Barre pointed out a long time ago in his classic Ghost Dance: The Origins of Religion, you can find remnants of a primordial bear-god from the bottom of South America up over North America and over the North Pole and down across most of Europe and Asia. This deity appears in cave paintings from southern France carbon-dated at 30,000 BC. You can find him and her (for this god is bisexual) disguised in Artemis and Arduina and King Arthur, all unmasked via canny detective work by folklorists — and etymologists, who first spotted the bear-god when they identified the Indo-European root ard, meaning bear. You can track the bear-god in dwindling forms in a hundred fairy tales from all over Europe and Asia. And you can find the rituals of this still-living god among the indigenous tribes of both American continents.

And Santa, like Peter Pan and the Green Man of the spring festivals, and the Court Jester — and (in an odd way) Chaplin’s beloved Little Tramp — all have traits of the god that walks like a man and acts nasty sometimes and clownish sometimes and who was ritually killed and eaten by most of our ancestors in the Stone Age, who then became one with their god and thus also became (if the ritual worked) as brave as their god. See Sir James Frazer’s The Golden Bough for the gory details.

And I swear the same god-bear tromps and shambles through every page of Joyce’s masterpiece of psycho-archeology, Finnegans Wake. If you don’t believe me, consult Adaline Glasheen’s Third Census of Finnegans Wake.

Most folklorists recognize “the cannibal in the woods” as a humanized relic of the bear-god. The heroine, in 101 tales, meets him while on a mission of mercy. He generally sets the heroine to solve three riddles, and when she succeeds, instead of eating her he becomes her ally and helps her reach her goal. One variation on that became The Silence of the Lambs. Another became Little Red Riding Hood.

What? Hannibal Lecter another of Santa’s uncouth family?

Yes, indeedy.

In some rustic parts of Europe and probably in Kansas, Santa retains traces of his carnivorous past. Children are told that if they are “good” all year, Santa will reward them, but if they are “bad” he will EAT THEM ALL UP. Yeah, the Boogie Man, or Bogie, or Pookah, or Puck, are all of somewhat ursine ancestry, although other animal-gods got mixed in sometimes.

As Crazy Old Uncle Ezra wrote in Canto 113, “The gods have not returned. They have never left us.”

Jung might state the case thusly: Gods, as archetypes of the genetic human under-soul (or “collective unconscious”), cannot be killed or banished; they always return with a new mask but the same symbolic meaning. Related example: Young ladies in ancient Greece were often seduced or raped by satyrs; in the Arab lands, we note a similar outbreak of randy djinn; it India, it was devas. In the Christian Dark Ages, it began happening to young men, too, especially to monks. They called the lascivious critter an incubus. Now it’s happening all around us, and the molesters come from Outer Space. The sex-demon, like the Great Mother and the Shadow and our ursine hero, and the three brothers hunting the dragon (recognize them in Jaws? Spot them doing their Three Stooges gig?) — these archetypal forces always come back under new names. Sir Walter Scott called them “the crew that never rests.”

And the bear-god seems wakeful elsewhere. He has appeared prominently in other bits of pop culture — the movies Legends of the Fall and The Edge (both of which, curiously, star Anthony Hopkins, who also starred as Hannibal Lecter) and snuck into Modern Lit 101 not only via Joyce but also via Faulkner’s great parable “The Bear.” He also pops up to deliver the punch line in Norman Mailer’s Why Are We in Vietnam?

We will see more of him, methinks.

Meanwhile, Santa, the Jester/Clown/Fertility God aspect of Father Bear, is doing quite well also, despite getting the bum’s rush by some grim, uptight Christers. He has quite successfully stolen Xmas from X and brings pagan lust and pagan cheer to most of us, every year, just when we need it most — in the dead of winter. His beaming face appears everywhere and if we have a minor cultural war going on between those who wish to invoke him via alcohol and those who prefer their invocations per cannabis, we all share the pagan belief, at least for part of a week, that the best way to mark the solstice and the year’s dying ashes is to form a loving circle and all get bombed together.

As a pagan myself, I wouldn’t have it any other way.

The rest.

Meaning The Proposition.  Your official Try-Works recommended holiday viewing.

Word has it that after seeing The Proposition, Russell Crowe called Nick Cave, asking him to wrote a sequel to Gladiator.  Mr. Cave’s script was an anti-war epic with the Gladiator as an undead warrior, fighting in Vietnam and ending up in the halls of the Pentagon.  Needless to say, the project was immediately abandoned.

I may post more over the weekend, but it’s doubtful.  For one thing, it seems my reputation precedes me, meaning I have acquired an unconscionably good bottle of Scotch for X-mas.  And when that runs out, I’ve always got a supply of Sterno and Jim Beam stockpiled just for this hellish little bit of joy to the world.

So, fuck it.  Merry Christmas.  From the drunk tank.

The aforementioned best bluesman in Denver has a fucking MySpace page, where I’ve spent most of the evening.

I’m a prick, hate me.  But love Derrick Terrabell.

Doing his best Edward R. Murrow impersonation. And it ain’t bad.

• So what is an assault rifle?
• “Forged from Irish church bells, consecrated metals and crucifixes, Hellboy’s Samaritan is the most sacred sidearm in comics. And it’s got monster-specific bullets including garlic and holy water just to make sure the job’s done right.”
• See, this is the sort of thing that inspires atheism.  Or at least the kind of visceral contempt usually reserved for a drunken excursion through the greeting card aisle of Wal-Mart.
• X-mas is fast approaching, and if you still haven’t bought me anything . . .
• A belated well-wishing, but none the less heartfelt.
• “A hectic, frenzied pinpoint in desolation: booming, bleak, and dark with the horror of loneliness and reluctant solitude. Patchouli and cardamom with bright mandarin, labdanum, muguet, red sandalwood, angelica and gardenia.”
• South Park meets the Aristocrats.
• Y’know, I’ve thought about doing this ever since I read The Crying of Lot 49.  But there always seemed better purposes to vandalism.

I just got this press release from Colorado AIM/TCD.

American Indian Movement–Transform Columbus Day Alliance Wages Battle With The City Of Denver On Friday, December 7.

Columbus day trials begin with motions hearing.   Motions to suppress evidence hearing set for FRIDAY, DECEMBER 7, 2007. 1:30 P.M., Courtroom 117M, City and County Building, Denver. Media are welcome to attend.

Attorneys for 83 Transform Columbus Day Alliance (TCDA) defendants will be challenging the probable cause to arrest Columbus Day protesters on October 6, 2007 at this year’s Columbus Day parade. Police will be required to justify the reasons for arresting protesters and will be questioned about the use of excessive force that day. TCDA attorneys will assert that unnecessary and even illegal measures were employed by police in making arrests.

The TCDA legal team led by David Lane and Mark Brandes will vigorously examine police motives and testimony in the hearing. “We will not be surprised if several of the defendants in this case leave the courtroom with the charges against them dismissed. The city acted in a manner that disregarded the constitutional and human rights of lawful citizens.”

This hearing begins a series of legal battles with the City of Denver, including challenging the constitutionality of the ordinances under which the defendants are charged. It is expected that Mayor John Hickenlooper and other high city officials will be subpoenaed in these cases.