What am I working on?

New Puppy. Brigit. Don’t be fooled! She’s a perfect engine of destruction. 

 

It’s beginning to look a bit like spring time! I turned the earth over yesterday for my mini garden, Year Two. I’m also moving the stumps to New Locations. I am cognizant of both function and decoration via my mini garden. I am also eyeing the places where rabbits and ground squirrels like to visit. Plus, there’s the New Puppy. She likes to dig. Investigate where the humans go. Check out why the humans do this or that. I have a feeling my mini garden might not survive New Puppy.

Politics. If I. It’s just. WTF. I??!!

After that above enlightening delve into the current state of American politics, let’s move on. Oh sure, there’s a political rant in there eight miles long. It slaps the Spirit in the Sky, nut punches Jesus and generally includes words better suited for our POTUS and the Locker Room Boys known as the GOP. Anyhoo!!

What am I working on. Nothing.

That’s right.

I don’t have a PROJECT on deck or waiting in the wings. It just tires me to even think of rumbling up the engines right now. Or ever again. Which is troubling, to say the very least about that.

I have the Oregon novel. Which deals with the sorts that took over the Malheur wildlife refuge over by Burns. I really do wish to work on this. Eventually. It interests me. I like doing the research into extremist radical gun-toting scary ass militia groups as well as Oregon history. Scraping some sort of novel out of all that, interesting as well. But not right now? Or maybe tomorrow. Or.

Rework my Beastface Bay tales. Fuck no.

Start a brand new something. Maybe even a PLAY. What?? I never leave the house. What can I write a play on?

My conversations with the three dogs?

My inner monolog on trying to decide to make a pie or not out of whatever I can find in the fridge?

A family story that’s so boring it’s almost interesting but it’s not? Something I saw in the news cycles????

Seriously, when fiction can’t compete with your basic cable opinion piece on liberals taking their babies home to kill them, reported with a straight face as if true…yeah. You just kinda deflate like a sad little balloon writer-wise. Maybe that’s just me?

That’s total fiction, of course. But all we hear is that LIBERALS KILL BABIES here in ‘murica. It’s going to be a slogan for 2020. It’s predictable. They control the narrative, so they get to direct the narrative with the Lefties playing wide-eyed defense. It’s just…fuh.

Oh no, political rant about to snarl forth like a castrated lion looking for a snack.

Short stories, flash fiction, humorous essays? Mmm. Nope.

I seem to be running on dead writer batteries.

I even scraped myself together long enough to go to a FREE WRITER’S WORKSHOP. In Nampa, Idaho. It was on a Saturday, all afternoon, at the library, which was right by where that other writer’s gathering had been! So I knew how to get there and back again. Score!

It wasn’t in the downtown one-way hell of Boise!

Yeah, I went to the workshops, as there were four of them. I did three, then the fourth had to be held at a coffee shop, as the library closed at five. I just headed home, I’d had enough. All three of those were practical, well run, informative and actually helpful.

Death Rattle is the name of the organization here. I can’t say enough nice things about them. I’m glad they exist and that they’re nearby. 

I wish, sort of, I’d schlumped off to the fourth one. The drive back was right as the sun was going down, so trying to see the road turned into GUESS WHERE THE ROAD IS HA HA for me. I also treated myself to a sausage biscuity thing and an outing outside my present comfort zone.

I also felt guilty. I was wasting time. I was feeding my delusions that I’m a writer. I clearly am not a writer because writers, well, for one thing, actually write. 

My thoughts all the time. All the time. All the time. A constant punching stream, with me as that bag the boxers hit. Except it’s punchy thoughts that swing haymakers at whatever’s left of my drive, ambition or will to GET SHIT DONE.

Maybe it’s time for the ole writer standby of heroin, wine, mind-altering shit that allows one to be totally oblivious to reality while writing about reality. 

I am trying to co-write a screenplay. I should have whipped that out in a couple days. Nope.

To sum up!

I just need to retrain myself to start writing again. Something like that. Just put some crap down on the page! I am in a frightful abyss, looking upward for any bit of light. There isn’t any. I always admire people who are positive, or at least pretending super-alot. The ones who’ve lost their entire family to the local volcano, then found out they have brain cancer. Their dog then gets run over, and their house catches on fire. Yet, that person smiles at the world, going, oh, isn’t that daisy growing through the cracks of that mass grave grand?

Maybe I need to hang out with more creative sorts. That energy seems to sizzle the old writer batteries a bit. Except me and other humans have seldom gotten along. I’m always too much or too little in some way…it’s confusing. Oh sure, just be yourself! If I fucking knew who that is, I’d now be a teacher with a pension plan, a bad perm, wondering what would have happened if I’d followed my dreams…

You get hammered in the face, dear.

That’s what I’d tell that other me. You get hammered in the face and it’s supposed to mean something. That’s pretty grim.

Smile. You look so pretty when you smile!

So, there ya go. You’re all caught up on my Artistic Strainings. Thanks for stopping by. I hope…

mumbles something about almost ready to outline that Oregon zombie novel set during the imagined ages of Middle Earth if it were run by the Narnian minotaurs. Almost ready. Almost.

 

 

 

Library Talk

From a local fire we had years ago. Taken from my window.

I’m an agitated little poster maker these first days of October. I’m trying to get ready for my booth, and gear up for a public reading. Two of them, actually. So that’s good! Nampa, Idaho for the Death Rattle festival. Mountain Home for the tenth anniversary of Whistle Pig. Both in Idaho, so local events I can drive to easy enough.

Now, yesterday. I had a visit with an old friend. At the library. We sat in the far back, hushed voices. Talking about. Politics. We’re both a bit blue in a very scarlet area of Oregon.

What??

Oregon has conservatives??

Yeah, outside of that Portland-Salem-Eugene strip, the rest of the state is mouth-breathing methheads who still think Obummer is comin’ for theirz gunz. I know this because I’m related to some of them.

We’re a blue state only because that I-5 corridor consists of staunch liberals, for the most part.

Anyway!

Vale, Oregon

I’ve written about this friend before. The gentle peacenik sort with the high ideals of society and people. Right now, he’s ready to move to the bluest commune he can find, leaving behind his beloved animals if he has to. He feels sick all the time. He’s fighting with those around him who are Trump-supporters. He’s left his church over it being too pro-conservative. But he is writing. It’s helping him cope. He wants to hold a poetry workshop. 

Cope.

Those not in the cult o’Mangled Orange Hellbeast seem to be on coping mode right now.

Old movies, binge watching something familiar, listening to the same pieces of music over and over, eating too much, not eating enough, sleeping too much, not sleeping enough.

There’s this stunned, this cannot be happening take to America’s direction right now, from Americans who have to live here. We’ve become an army of zombies who want comfort, fattening food, mental candy and long snoozes in a soft, warm bed. To wake up to it was all a dream, everything’s okay, we’re still the good guys in the world. 

How to turn that survival mode switch off? Turn the LET’S FUCKING TAKE THESE MOTHERFUCKING ASSMUNCHES TO THE TRASH switch on?

We don’t need more opinion pieces on why so and so is a supporter of Fat Nixon. STFU, New York Times. Enough!

We don’t need more earnest discussions on what to do if this becomes a dictatorship. That fucking ship sailed a while ago, kiddos.

We don’t need any more the politicians on the left are as bad as the ones on the right snooty snoots.

Fuck! Are you kidding, far lefties?? Are you actually trying to make sure shit goes down that will get America listed up there with North Korea, Stalin’s Soviet Union, Hitler’s Germany?

How bad does it have to get before you unicorn-seeking far lefties start fighting back with more than long blog posts on how no one is woke but you and about three others named Dreamstar of Nowhereland, Xena Cloudwarrior for Vegan Harmony, and Jangles the Non-Materialistic Clown for World Peace?

People mention civil war more and more here. That’s what has my hackles raised, my teeth bared. Because, frankly, it would be a relief to watch Trump supporters getting their heads blown off in mid-love fest of that thing they’ve chosen to worship. I know. I’m not supposed to voice such a thing, ever. I’m not even supposed to imagine that, I’m on the ‘nice’ side, that plays by the rules, takes the high road and loses about every election there is to lose lately. Which is the problem.

People still think there are rules, checks and balances, in place. BWHA HA HA HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH     um, I mean, tee hee, tee hee.

There’s not. Rules and fair play left years ago, you idiot grinners, you mannerly snitchheads.

Yeah.

The limping left keep waiting for Republicans to DO THE RIGHT THING.

Waiting. Waiting.

Waiting!

While assuming crash positions, knowing full well that those on the right will allow this creeping tide of fanatics to unleash the dogs of war on all of us. Yet waiting for the GOP in America to PUT A STOP TO IT.

Though, some on the right are sounding the alarm quite loudly. Going– hey, look over here, bad dudes and bad dudettes doing shitty things! LOOOOOOOK.

With the left using their inside voices and their company manners, telling those on the left using their outside voices and pointy fingers to pipe down, don’t upset people. Always Be Cautious Abused Wives seems to be the real slogan of the left these days. Placate, placate, placate, is the battle cry of the left. Those not placating get treated like something stepped in when walking the labradoodle at the dog park. 

Yeah. You notice that, you suppress the crappy crap, you sit through a literally hellish week of watching Kavanaugh blah blah.

And now the White House released a four person list that the FBI could interview, yet no one on the left seems to be screeching a screech that will be heard round the world about that…!!!!!!!!!! FUCK

BOOM BOOM BOOM

CLANG CLANG CLANG WENT THE COUNTRY

Until your head explodes after your tenth viewing of that song from the new Star is Born, where you melt with happy numbness over Lady Gaga hitting that middle shouty bit about being shallow or something. Bradley Cooper can sing? What?? Where’s that ten pound bag of Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups! I need some Hot Cheetos! Hit replay! Oooh, Lady Gaga, girl! Who knew Bradley Cooper could grow a beard and sing??! Lindsey Graham said what??

REPLAY REPLAY REPLAY–https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bo_efYhYU2A

Wheeee! Brains! Wall!!

So, I went to the library to talk to a friend. I’m redoing my posters for the writer’s event so they don’t look like I did them when drunk, asleep, depressed to the point of turning into an actual slug. I’m wondering what the uniforms will be like for American Civil War II, the Return of the Orange King.

I hope it’s flattering for all body types, and that blood washes out of it. No sense getting a uniform that stains too easy.

Mississippi Wind Chime

Adam Driver and John David Washington in Spike Lee’s BlackkKlansman

I took a trip. To Meridian, Idaho. Why, you might suddenly ask yourself. To go see a movie. Why??

Ah, because BlackkKlansman was not playing in a town near me. Mama Mia 2, sure! Spike Lee film, no. That’s fine. You gotta show movies that will turn a profit, I get it.

I’m totally a capitalist. I have that word as my tramp stamp.

I found the place, with about ten minutes or so to spare. The directions from MapQuest were shitty. Why didn’t it just send me to Millennial Avenue, as the Majestic is RIGHT THERE. Why send me to this barely marked street, then give me WRONG TURNS? I swear to Baby Jesus and Satan’s Nipple Piercings the MapQuest site thought, hey, let’s do something funny to the hermit girl.

Great big nice place. Comfy red seats that reclined. Great!

About three people at that first showing. Wheee! Saw some very earnest trailers and learned Sigourney Weaver’s first name is Susan.

Susan.

Some things you can’t unlearn.

So. Briefly, the story– a rookie cop, in Colorado Springs, CO, infiltrates the local branch of the KKK, or the Organization, run nationally at that time by, wait for it, David Duke. Ron Stallworth sees an actual ad in the local paper and calls the number, setting up a meeting with the local good ole boys. Problem! Ron is black.

And the Klan, yeah, is against any skin color but European. So Ron gets another cop– Darth Vader’s grandson, no less– to pretend to be him. He even uses his “white boy” voice on the phone, because yep, you can tell a black person from a real American just by listening to em butcher the King’s English.  Jive talk, ya’ll. Hijinks ensue!

Topher Grace as David Duke

We get to watch Flip or Philip, who’s Jewish, hang around these good ole boys and good ole gals.  Oh yes, the Klan doesn’t exactly like Judaism, either. Or immigrants!

The KKK does seem quite a boy-heavy operation in the seventies. The women folk pretty much bring in the platters of spray cheese and saltine bites. Then speak with real hope that they, too, will be able to yell rape during a protest or march…sort of exaggerating there, but not really. That’s the impression I got from those shiny Klan gals. The women libbers were going hot and heavy during this time period, that seemed absent from the Klan Barbies. Kind of like now…mm. 

Something that stuck out, to me, was the contrast between Kendrickson’s wife [Ashley Atkinson] and Patrice Dumas [Laura Harrier]. The good wife versus the liberated, gonna change the world firebrand. Because we still have that to this day. Who is considered a good woman and who’s not. The sexism, mm.

The ones who act like ladies and the rest of em, eh, boys, dudes, mens of all kinds? We never seem to shed that one. Ever. Okay!

Watching Flip flip that holocaust denier [Kendrickson] with hey, the Holocaust was awesome sauce, amen. Uncomfortable barely manages to cuddle that moment. Oh yes, the N word got thrown around, whee. And all the other words we pretend don’t exist anymore and that no one says them. Whee.

There’s of course some violence planned, some good ole cross-burnin’, not wearing the hoods in public. The Klan remade for modern times! The same turd gilded over with shit glitter. Way to go, Mr. Duke. 

 

from Wikipedia. The lynching of Laura Nelson. May 1911.

Then the ending, which marries what was going on THEN to what’s going on NOW. Boom!

Cinematography, it had that, a lot. I had to love that bright red VW Beetle tootling about town. Dang. The plaid and vests and guns against the Colorado vistas. My my.

The movie.

I liked it.

That’s my in-depth, went to college and everything take on it. Was it on the nose, in your face, not trying to be subtle? Well. Yep, yep, it was.

Every man I am related to has that shirt. Not even kidding.

And it worked.

If you can totally ignore the crap around you, you might say this movie was a bit too much or too broadly painted. If you can ignore the rather obvious rise of white nationalism in America and elsewhere, you’re probably at Mama Mia,  we made a sequel! or watching reruns of Bonanza. 

The racists were not presented as balanced or that deep. Cartoonish. Stereotypes. Except, eh. Well…!

Except.

I grew up to talk like that. I heard it a lot.

People don’t talk like that guy in the movie, I hear. And then I just laugh.

Yeah, people talk like that, people are talking like that right now, this minute. The string of words for people not white or Christian. The desperate frothing about taking back our country. The rabid weasel screeching about them people, them people. Build the wall! America First! Shithole countries. Actual Nazis are running for political offices in America. Nazis. Real ones.

Fuck a duck. Come on!

Jasper Pakkonen as Felix Kendrickson. This could be from my family Christmas Eve gala.

This happened near the ending of BlackkKlansman.

A story about a lynching, a real one, interposed with Duke, played by that guy from That Seventies Show. Who should probably get some sort of acting award, because he NAILED IT. That’s my professional writer take, uh huh.

Harry Belafonte telling a story about America.

Eerie, gut-wrenching, hands clenched moment. The hoarse tired voice of the storyteller [Harry Belafonte], the smooth reasonable speech about hating and killing people not of your race or creed [Topher Grace].

The back and forth between the two speakers. Taut, quiet film scene.

Breath being held to hear the two better kinda movie moment.

Remember that speech of Quint’s in Jaws? Yeah.

I was a kid when all that was going on with the fall out of the Civil Rights movement. The seventies where America started to lose her sparkle as the GREATEST THING SINCE JESUS.

The sixties gave us protests and love ins and freedom rides.

Seventies–Nixon bruising, quite badly, the “sacredness” of the office of the President of the United States. We can’t trust the president anymore. Watergate. Deep Throat. Washington Post. Oh. My.

Vietnam.

The end of good wages and the advent of insurance companies taking over health care. Thanks, Nixon!

I’m not a kid now. We have our own updated version of FatNixon, our own kneejerks to people losing their rights. Get over it, snowflakes. Lock Her Up! Make America Great Again. Drain the swamp. Free speech, libtards! Clean coal! The intolerant left. Witch hunt. There is no Russian collusion. Dogs. Animals. 

We have those standing up for some stuff and things, in some cases silently kneeling. Which has set off a shitstorm of retread-ish screeches about hating the flag, the military and America itself. [Get a haircut, hippie!]

from the Mercury News

That same ole Klan shit now called Alt Right with fucking David Duke still here, still making those soft reasonable speeches about hating everyone not white or a Christian. Richard Spenser doesn’t have Duke’s charisma, ouch.

I think Spike Lee hit this one out of the park and hit the rotting side of the moon with it. I also picked up a new, horrible bit of slang. Mississippi wind chime. Guess what that stands for.

I don’t know the artist for this. All I could find was Hangman’s Tree but it did come up for a search for Mississippi wind chimes.

AUGUST. HOT. FART NOISES.

Light-hearted summer moments with Jake, Molly and Clyde, the big Newfie, who is now, ah, over the Rainbow Bridge

What month is this in this ghastly interminable hellbeastly span of years masquerading as a span of days? Oh. August.

It seems time has thudded to a damn standstill. And yet speeds along. I know. How original am moi? Not at all.

I’ll answer myself as no one comments or spews invectives at me in the social media time out I seem to be in. Or maybe I haven’t pledged myself enough to Satan or given enough lip service to AmmoJesus.

from Pandora’s Boxx. No, not this version of Jesus. Is it me or did the artist put a bit of Tom Cruise in that face? 

We only have two options for worship here in ‘murica. Sort of only sorta kidding about that. You’re either with Jesus and the angels or you’re a godless Satan worshiping hate America commie traitor who hates babies. Yep.

Oh, so for those at home breathlessly reading along, I wrote a poem. That’s all.

It included the words ‘motherlumping’ and ‘scorpion’ and ‘Mamerigaga’.

I wrote it with great and furious anger.

I had fun writing a poem in great and furious anger. It drained my fury and anger.

I sent off my barely coherent scream against avocado toast to that monthly poetry challenge I AM STILL DOING. Because it’s good practice, and it helps foment me into a BETTER WRITER.

Or so I tell myself. Don’t we all tell ourselves happy lies so we don’t spatter our pretty brains on the ugly walls wherever we live? Or perhaps we live under a bridge and have to walk to the library to use the internet.

So some other form of suicide will have to do for welfare moochers and societal losers. Starvation and disease and freezing to death are free, moochers!

from geograph.uk. Small bridge over river Dulais. 

Wow, that took a dark little turn.

Ah, so. I squibbled out a VASTLY POPULAR post about fires. I believe that’s the one before this one. Let me check, brb.

Yep. The fires still burn. It’s awful. It’s getting smoky. It’s HOT. But it is summer.

Thank you, Queen Obvious!

You’re welcome, sarcastic voice in my head!

Some snow would be nice. A nice couple days of constant rain would be nice here in Eastern Oregon.

I do mean the entire area. From Ontario all the way to Bend. Awash with rainy rain!

No wind, no lightning, just rain. The wet stuff we’ve heard tell of in tall tales. As you can, literally, walk between the rain drops here when it does piss down a bit. I’ve gone outside, when it rains here, and not gotten a drop on me. Sorta, kinda…kidding. Sorta.

I’m working on Starved Out, which, for right now, is set in the mythical world of government-hating extremists. As in they have a mythical view of themselves as freedom fighters and the rest of us see them as scary fuckheads.

But anyway!

I am telling it from the POV of the women, as men have enough stories under their column, frankly.

And when I tried to just write it…I stalled right out of the gate, trying to put the two men who started a fire and started an actual insurrection against the gubbermint front and center.

I’d also read a blip about this woman homesteader who Starved Out right at the start of the Great Depression. And of course the Massacre at Hells Canyon, I wanted that to make an appearance in my Great American Novel that No One Will Read Until I Am Well Dead and Rotting Under A Local Bridge.

So far, it’s a tripod. Rosie, the wife of Butch, the son, and Vickie, the wife of Merle, the dad. And Gladys, who had to pull up stakes and head back to the big city when drought and ruin faced her in sagebrush country.

I was, at first trying to be super-accurate and capture everything about the Hammonds and all that.

And then went, yeah, it will be fun to get sued. Fun! I’m not writing a non-fiction account, after all. I can fudge things, smear things, compose composite characters to protect the guilty and insane.

So, in the hot afternoons, I attempt a few paragraphs. It’s slow going. I need to dive in and let her buck, as they say around here.

Because we have rodeos and horses, and people actually go and get up on wild horses or other wild livestock, and…uh huh.

Why not write in the cool of the morning, dear? I hear some of you mutter that in nice, polite tones.

That tone you get when someone rattles on about some project of theirs that you could give two shits in a shot glass about.

Where your eyes glaze over as the person prattles about how they tracked down that one knitting stitch only used in Medieval stockings in Ireland by cloistered nuns who occasionally took fits because they thought the devil visited them at night.

That stitch!

Ah, well. I’ve been writing on ‘other stuff’.

Junk crap that I need to clear from my smoke-filled head so I can do the ‘real’ writing later in the day while not looking for gainful employment. Oh.

I did vow to at least go look at Craigslist and DesperateFuckers.org.

Sigh!

One last bit before I go find some pictures to place at random among these sickly paragraphs of LIKE ME I WRITE LIKE ME.

Shit howdy. I had a thought but…gone, baby, gone. Oh!!

Okay!

Movies.

Now, I wanna go see Mama Mia 2, I heard it’s great fun. I wanna see that damn Spy thing with the two women, because that looks like a lotta fun. I also want to see Spike Lee’s Blackk Klansman because that looks like angry fun.

I find I want to watch movies that are light, fluffy and might contain dance numbers with colorful outfits.

I find I have no head or heart for sitting through a Serious Drama. I find many others share this right now in ‘murica. We want our entertainment fluffy as wobbly kittens and our real life to resemble some dystopian novel that doesn’t get that happy ending. Whee.

I want Christmas movies all year round right now, the Hallmark ones. Where there’s barely any real problems, people are shiny clean and look made of glitter and sugar cookies, and the villains and obstacles are easily overcome in the last five minutes.

Give that crap some Oscars! Emmys? Yeah, Emmys, as it’s television. Sorry.

That level of sugary goo erases the gritty reality show playing on every screen and device world-wide. Where people seems made of rattlesnake poison and toxic sludge and the villains win every single fucking time.

And the heroes mumble and then there’s tweets from ten years ago with jokes and…ugh.

What the hell was this post? Mostly just fart noises, I think.

Ah, you were wondering where the ‘fart’ came in. Glad to help out, darlings.

Tee hee. My mother, who was a nurse, worked in a Catholic hospital back in the day. She was told to carry a spoon…not even kidding. Not even a little. 

Handmaid, Pt. 1

Got around to watching the Handmaid’s Tale. And being an almost writer, had some thoughts and notions and impressions. Which went on rather long-ish. So I’m chopping my review/primal scream/ramblings into two parts. Here we go:

from Jacob’s Media. Hulu’s the Handmaid’s Tale, with Elizabeth Moss.

It’s the red dresses, the white hats that act like blinders on the women. Rather like one puts blinders on a horse. That red of sin and menstrual blood and fertility and death. The women walking in pairs, the flap of their cloaks, their faces so careful. So careful. The least betrayal of their actual thoughts could get them killed. Everyone, though, in Gilead, seems to be playing a part. The honesty seems gone from the very air even as people murmur constantly their allegiance to some truly tyrannical deity.

If you’ve not seen Hulu’s The Handmaid’s Tale, with Mad Men’s Peggy front and center, or Elizabeth Moss as some call her, you should. It’s…timely. So fucking timely. And yet it has an ancient grit to it. That grit of slavery and bodies exploited for the common good and a god used as a hammer to make everyone fall in line. Oh, we’ve seen this tale, it’s not a new one.

from the Daily Mail. Joseph Fiennes as Fred, Moss as Offred and Yvonne Strohovski as Serena Joy. The Ceremony.

It wasn’t that long ago, after all, that women couldn’t have their own bank accounts. Or own land. Or run a company. Or attend school to become a doctor, a lawyer, an engineer of some kind. It’s only been recently that single women could get birth control openly without having to lie or obtain it illegally. You had to be married. Why does a single gal need the Pill for? Mm!

That was reflected upon in another great show–Call the Midwife, which chronicled the dawn on the Pill hitting the market and so forth. There was even a bit about a widowed Lady Mary, on Downton Abby, having Anna buy condoms for her. In the 1920’s. Anna got slut-shamed pretty hard at that chemist shop.

We seem to forget that openly buying birth control is a relatively new thing, since about the seventies or so and it’s still controversial here in America. There are groups working against it, as well as being rabidly ‘pro-life’ or pro-forced birth. As these same groups seem to drop any concern or care for that child once it’s born. So it seems.

Oh gosh, and the big one. Voting.

Being able to help decide who runs your country. Who gets to speak for you in the halls of government. 1920 is when women won the right to vote in America. Woman had actually run for office earlier than that, in protest.

Women started being included in the American government. White women became grudgingly more and more common in the rank and file of Congress’s elected officials. Jim Crow laws, laws against Native Americans and the Chinese and…mm. America, you sure got a weird notion of who’s a citizen and who’s not. Even when born here. 

Those red dresses.

The handmaids never allowed to wear anything else. That almost theatrical costume that marks them as human livestock. They are not free, they are watched constantly, they are guarded from taking their lives. Offred’s predecessor, for instance, hung herself using her own bed sheets.

What God would want any woman treated like that? Like birds in too-small cages, being asked to sing songs that ring with such false notes? What God is that?

I sat there and binge watched this show and wondered that. What society wants to follow a God that thinks so poorly of women?

It’s just traditional values at work, dear.

I hear that in my head. I hear it all the time in American society now. So called traditional values being used to justify the devaluation of women, the curbing of rights to anyone not a straight white male, the attempts to force LGTBQ folks back into closets, the snarling against the other known as immigrants, etc, etc. That ‘animals’ remark…

Conservative values seems to be they can do whatever they want and everyone else can suck it. That seems to honestly be what Conservatives stand for right now. It’s rather a little bit, or, a lot, scary. There doesn’t seem to be any opposing force to this yet. Yet.

Handmaid’s Tale showed, rather than told, very well why women didn’t openly rebel. Because those that did ended up swinging gently from ropes or they disappeared. Just gone. Or they came back with eyes missing. Or a clitoris.

from Medium. Enjoying the river. And oh, some dead people rotting away there on the wall.

One of the Of-girls, played by a Gilmore Girl! had ‘gender traitor’ qualities. She was gay, in other words.

This was found out, and since she was fertile, she was given a judgment of mercy.

Oh sure, she got to live and go to some new household where once a month she had to shave her legs, take a ritual bath and then get raped. By a commander. Be raped as the wife held her arms down and watched her own husband rape another woman. All in the name of God.

But this ‘gender traitor’ can’t act on her sexuality, or so the reasoning goes behind mutilating a woman’s genitals; she has been stripped of not only her identity but an attempt has been made to actually erase her essential self.

Her standing there with that heart-shaped bandaging between her thighs…we see her break. And she doesn’t scream or cry, she just breaks with a quiet ghastliness that actually hurts the viewer as well. This was silence screaming, if you will.

This was a reminder that such things have happened to women, to little girls, fellow humans, since a long time ago on this very planet. With dull knives used and no nice modern surgeon and anesthesia. That such things happen now…

from Insider. Alexis Bledel as Ofglen and Ann Dowd as Aunt Lydia

And we get a small flashback scene where the commanders speak about renaming this rape-itual as the Ceremony.

To make it sound nicer. More palatable.

They KNOW what they do to the handmaids and their own wives is gross, creepy and fundamentally wrong, wrong, wrong and yet instead of facing that, and facing their own filthy dark hearts, needs and beliefs, they rename the damn rape day for PR purposes. That’s what God wants? Lies and theatrics and costumes and…?

So this Gilead doesn’t seem to run on honesty or truth, but on theatrics and mirrors and smoke so a few men at the top of this theocracy can reap some substantial benefits while nearly everyone under them suffers, burns silently, or burns openly and dies, or gets mutilated or sent off somewhere to work in a place of nuclear contamination or in a secret brothel everyone seems to know about.  

The Jezebels, where we find out what happens to June’s best friend, Moira.

Everything in this ‘new’ society seems a gag-inducing farce. 

We get a hideous picture of this in Commander Fred Waterford’s household.

The wife, Serena. Who helped craft the very laws and customs that now chain her into a narrow, icy role of sexless wife who must watch her husband use the handmaids that come into their home like a teen boy might use a sock. Or a flesh rocket.

That handmaid becomes both sacred vessel and sex toy. Without a name of her own.

But poor Serena and I do feel an actual measure of pity for her, in between bouts of picturing her riding a chainsaw as someone pours salt over her…because it would hurt more. And salt is very Biblical.

Serena!

She had to become single-focused on Offred becoming pregnant or there’s literally no reason for her to exist in Gilead. If she’s not wheeling around that trophy baby, she’s relegated to arranging flowers and abusing the handmaid and the Martha. She’s also used as corporate wives are so used– to make the man look good.

Go look up how Hillary Clinton got compared to Barb Bush, for instance. One was a scheming, too-ambitious cold monster, the other a cookie-baking, cuddly grandma type. Mm.

Serena’s ambitions and dreams must be subverted and funneled toward the man in her life.  She wrote books, she gave talks, in the old life. Clearly, Serena was a sort of Ann Coulter figure, using the very things feminists before her had won with such hard work and sacrifice to decry feminism itself.

She must now look good and act perfectly, to be a credit to Waterford. She must embrace this new role of hers or face uncertainty and chaos. She is a monster because she had to become one to survive.

from the Bradford Zone. Moss, and Strohovski. 

I also think, and here the writers and the actress came together in small, brilliant little moments…I also think Serena didn’t think it all the way through.

She didn’t realize Gilead’s rules would include her. I honestly think that’s part of her deep, savage divide, one of her many layers. That bitter realization that she’s just as trapped as Offred and who better to take that out on? She can’t go after Fred, after all. It would bring her down as well. She would no longer have a place of some value. She might become a Martha or have to find a new husband and start that cycle all over again…suppress herself for yet another’s man’s fragile ego and standing among the other men. It would be unbearable, so she puts up with Fred.

Which is rather a throwback to the days when divorce was nearly unheard of and everyone looked the other way about the true nature of your marriage. Told you to bear it, marriage was for life. 

A good wife has to wait for her moment of revenge.

Like the wife of Warren did. Warren, who, of course, had a side thing with their handmaid, the one-eyed mad girl Janine, or Ofwarren, who actually managed to get preggers and bear a kid.  That wife threw her husband to the lions without a backward glance. We feel Serena would toss Fred, too, if it came down to it.

There is a definite caste system in Gilead. These wives are a higher rank than most, and coast on that with a carelessness that makes you wince and cringe. Because we see that. In real life. All the time. We see the privileged talking about how they managed to make their own toast one morning because the cook had an emergency. And expecting applause and endless praise…for some small ordinary act the lesser mortals take for granted.

That scene of Janine giving birth upstairs and the commander wives offering Offred a cookie, a treat. Treating her like both a whore and a child, at the same time. As if Offred had a choice in being a handmaid.

Well, she did. Which would have involved her being executed or tortured or banished to the Colonies. And she has a daughter.

Somewhere. That she hopes is still alive.

So we understand very well why June goes along and does what Aunt Lydia and the others want her to do…pretend she’s some obedient fertile cow for Jesus.

Part II to follow! 

from Pinterest. Protest sign

 

She-Devils, Tarzan Marathon and Political Shriekings, wheee!

from Alamy. Now, that’s a damn title for the ages.

I watched a movie called Tarzan and the She-Devil. Yes, I did. Why?

Well, it was on TMC, which has been showing Tarzan movies for days now for some reason. I got to see the Johnny Weissmuller Tarzan, the Ape Man, and part of Tarzan and His Mate. I’ve seen both already, if we’re all being strictly honest here.

So there it was. With that title. Come on! You’d scroll past that title?

Is it weird 1950’s era porn? It is a horror movie? Is Tarzan facing off against the actual devil, who’s a woman?? What can it be?

I read the synopsis–Lyra wants Tarzan to bring her lots of elephants to kill so she can harvest their ivory, but Tarzan refuses.

Monique Van Voreen as Lyra, the She-Devil. From Down Memory Lane.

So, in trying to get Tarzan to comply, Lyra has her henchmen [one played by Raymond Burr, who oddly reminded me of the guy who plays Negan on the Walking Dead.] kidnap Jane to persuade Our Hero to do as Lyra wants.

Raymond Burr as Vargo. from Rare Films.

Jeffrey Dean Morgan as Negan, from the Walking Dead. For compare and contrast fun.

The henchmen, of course, mess this up! Jane is presumed dead, the tree house gets burned down, Tarzan gets captured. What?? 

SPOILER——–> Don’t worry. Tarzan wins the day.

There’s also, gulp, some tribe of white folks living in the…African jungle, who look like products of actual Aryan breeding, right down to the curly blond hair and Nordic cheekbones galore. And that’s just the manly men of that tribe. Yeah. Uh.

from Pinterest. See what I mean? Yep. Also– the lack of hirsuteness. ?

My mind went pffft.

And stayed off the rest of the movie, it had to, out of sheer primal survival needs.

This tribe of Vikings gets tapped to do the heavy lifting as the ‘natives’ are, um, lazy and don’t wanna work hard and…PFFFFT.  The men get captured, helped to escape, by Tarzan and then re-captured because…SHE-DEVIL wants her some money-making ivory, baby!

Joyce MacKenzie as Jane and Lex Barker as Tarzan. From Rare Film

So, Jane fights the same snake and crocodile from all the other movies, gets sick, has to be healed by a guy dressed in straw and beads, and Tarzan allows himself to be gently tortured by Raymond Burr. Whose character, by the way, is the actual villain of the movie.

The she-devil seems oddly caring and concerned about people, especially Tarzan. Who’s this 6’4″ GORGEOUS man with blond hair and Weissmuller’s swimmer build.

I then note this actor, Lex Barker, has played Tarzan about five times. And died in his early fifties. Ah! Sad!

Because, yes, I looked this movie up on IMDB.  I’d never heard of it.

Because it stormed all afternoon so I couldn’t stare at my mini garden, looking for new leaves. Or take a quick peek into the bird’s nest in the privet hedge. Or go look for the dog’s lost ball, which he loves and wants back. It’s been lost for days now.

Yes, actual thunderstorms and some actual rain.

Of course, all the animal stuff, it just jars you. You know good and well animals were hurt during the Tarzan shoots, you just freaking know that. But.

When the editing is off or does those jumps, you notice how the elephant will lie down first and then get attacked and ‘killed’. I also noted that the monkeys, in one of the Tarzan movies I peeked at for a bit…and I watched several because I’m a sad sad little shut-in…were actually people in monkey suits. Cheetah was real, at times. I guess?

At one point, Tarzan jumped on a hippo to escape crocodiles. There was the shot of an actual hippo and then the very fake hippo with Tarzan sprawled across that weird fake back like some sort of human frog.

Oh and my fave. When Tarzan fights not one, but two lions. That was not in the She-Devil one, and was Johnny, not Lex.

We clearly see the fake lion that Tarzan wrestles, mixed in with a real lion that just growls and runs about looking spooked…as if someone had a whip and chair and a torch off-screen to get it to go where the director wants. I don’t know if that’s what they did, but that’s what it looks like.

So, our manly jungle man kills the lioness, then faces off against a lion. Back to back fights with giant felines.

Weissmuller and lion. from the Film Experience

Tarzan also is seen taking on a gnu, killing it with a small knife after twisting its head about as the animal yells accordingly, and then cutting off a hunk of raw meat from the carcass as yet another lion runs up to drag off this dead beast as Tarzan heads up the nearest tree, one hand full of actual raw meat.

Jarred is rather too polite a word to express my inner WTF screaming.

Was that a real goddamn gnu? It sure looked a little too real. Brain PFFFT. Ah, that’s better.

Okay.

If you’ve seen any of the creaky Tarzan flicks, you know a bit of what I’m blithering on about.

Johnny Weissmuller. 

Oh my gosh, the rampant racism…can I get an amen? It’s…wow. You just…wow.

And I don’t remember which film this was, but I do remember Weissmuller in it– where I think it was supposed to be pygmies who had a pit with a giant ape-thing in it. Who killed whatever victims the pygmies? children dressed up in weird ways? threw down to it.

The, uh, Pygmies, from 1932’s Tarzan, the Ape Man. Wikipedia

Now, the monkey monster thing was a man, obviously so, dressed up in some sort of monkey outfit. And oddly more pitiful than scary. I wasn’t scared of that thing. It was deformed and lumpy and sad. I wanted to help it.

Yeah, it was tossing victims around like they were stuffed bunnies, but…still. One of the intended victims was, ahem, Jane. Who got to do the faint and be carried bit. Oh my! That same limp draped in the villain’s or monster’s arms popular go-to.

Oh the pygmies. Or Little People in blackface. Or children. Or…yeah. That was. You just. Your brain stops.

You’re going, am I seeing this? Is that, uh, what is that? What’s happening here? And then you go– golly, so glad we’re in post-racist times! [Sarcasm. That was sarcasm.]

You then switch over to the Hallmark movie where a young couple fight gently to remain in love and save their bed and breakfast and the guy gives up Manhattan for a goat. A goat. He misses the goats. 

So, yeah, I switched back to Tarzan. I’m a sad little shut-in, did I mention that??

Why am I writing about Tarzan movies that today would be rightfully skewered for their KKK-esque treatment of Africa and all that?

I’ve been avoiding a big long political rant for some time because…I’d lose my marbles and not get them back for some time if I did.

SPOILER—————> Political shriek almost here. Look away now if you’re squeamish. 

I also have Handmaid’s Tale, season one, waiting to be watched. For a week now. 

I peek at the American political landscape and it’s almost as if this Hulu series is more of a documentary than grim misery porn entertainment.

I don’t need to watch a television series where a country morphs into some sort of hellish biological prison for women, who are forced to breed for the state. Is that not where American is headed RIGHT FUCKING NOW? Look at Iowa. Look at the Bible Belt.

You have trouble breathing as this shit starts to stack up and stack up and stack up. Is this where dictatorships starts? Of course it is.

I don’t know who designed this. 

But where is the tide to stop the rising tide of totalitarianism? Where are the check and balances? Where are the loud-voiced pugnacious fighters on the side of common sense, common decency and basic rights for all people, not just the few selected Christian-esque males who make all the laws and hoard all the money?

Right now, it’s comedians versus politicians and actual presidents. It’s people doing satire versus people unable to understand why they are fodder for the satire cannons.

That absence of self-awareness just shines right through there on the Alt-Right. Wheee!!! It’s people greedily hurting as many as possible then claiming they’re the real victims here.

When conservatives and such are called out on their nastiness, their hypocrisy, their crimes and misdemeanors, their schemes and frauds and underhand dealings…they cry and scream and claim they’re the ones being attacked and marginalized.

And it works, it works, it works so very well.

There was an actual New York Times op-ed piece  [by Bari Weiss] on JUST THAT VERY FUCKING BULLSHIT TACTIC. Being presented as if…as if very very true.

As if those conservatives screaming and stomping in so many public places, and on the media lately and gosh, always, have been silenced and not allowed to speak at all…while speaking about how silenced they are.

With no awareness that they are speaking, about being silenced, WHILE GETTING AN INTERNATIONAL PLATFORM TO AIR THEIR ALLEGED GRIEVANCES.

God damn it. GOD DAMN IT.

An actual sign from Maryland. This is real. 

Ah, mini political rant. Well. There ya go.

Oh and to end this weird mash-up of Tarzan and political shrieking, I got some submissions sent off. A film noir-inspired play for a contest in Los Angeles and three plays for some woman-heavy festival in Detroit. I think I’ve been rejected by both places.

But yesterday, this woman from Columbia [the country!] wants to create a work around one of my short plays, as well as use that same play for some university something or other. The Care and Feeding of Baby Birds. 

Sometimes the universe gives you a small sign that yes, you can sorta write stuff people actually do respond to once in a blue moon.

And then you wonder how Tarzan always looked so shaved and groomed in those old Tarzan movies. No chest hair. Did he manscape, too? Those loincloths don’t hide a lot.

You have to wonder about grooming because the movie itself seems full of fake stuffed animals stalking the latest  version of Jane and people dressed up like some Grand Dragon’s most acid-laced dream about Africans in actual Africa.

And those ‘long ago’ views on black people seem the same as they are right now in 2018…holy fake stuffed lion, ya’ll. 

But gee, Tarzan’s kinda nice to look at if you ignore everything else…

Douglas P. Whitney, photo credit. 

THOUGHTS OF AN IGNORED BUT UTTERLY FANTASTICALLY GIFTED GENUIS WRITER GAL

 

from Texas Wildlife Control.

I must write something sluggishly wonderful to live up to that title.

So I posted a plea over on Acebookfay. If you read Pig Latin, you know I mean Facebook. Okay. It was a plea for ‘friends’ to go ‘like’ my author page. As the two people who regularly read my blog once in a while, you well know I am TERRIBLE AT SELF-PROMOTION.

Or I’m repulsive and lack charm.

Or I’m a terrible writer and everyone’s too afraid of me or ‘too kind’ to let me know I should slip over into customer service rep, complaints department, for adult diapers. Or maybe Dead Animal Removal Engineer for the Oregon Highways Cleanup Wing.

I honestly think I just have to hold my breath, overcome my near total lifetime of conditioning not to draw attention to myself and JUST FUCKING GO FOR IT. Like. Ovaries out, grinning, trying to sell every last used car [book, story, play, etc] on my writer-lot. Be that aggressive, rhino-skinned used car-esque, religious preacher selling salvation and snake oil, smiling grinner. Always Be Closing.

from Udemy

Which is not me.

But me is not pushing the Ann Wuehler line of products that well.

I need a spokesmodel, I need a new, brash face of the Ann Wuehler factory line of novels and plays! I need a Shamwow gal with no sense of shame or vocal volume. I can’t do the sales pitch without sounding like a sarcastic monster. It’s not in my wheelhouse. I’d have to take several years of acting classes to pull that off and even then…I’d come across as a sarcastic monster with some acting classes under my belt. And yet, I know very well that’s EXACTLY WHAT I NEED TO DO.

Be a pushy annoying rhino-skinned saleswoman pushing against all the other pushy annoying rhino-skinned sorts selling their snake oil. Whee. Oh goody. Yay.

It’s the doing it that…makes me sick. Actually sick, as in nausea and tears.

Hey, buy my books. I worked hard on em. They’re nice.

Does the above work for any of you?? Yeah. I need to work on this area of schmoozing and sales. I do. It’s my Moby Dick. [A giant whale that slaps me with its tail or something. I never read Moby Dick. Should I admit that at all?]

from Etsy

So, my goal is to make myself start being the aggressive pusher of my own stuff. To crow about WHAT A FANTASTICALLY WONDERFUL WRITER GAL I AM. That people need to part with their pennies for my stuff! PART WITH YOUR PENNIES FOR MY STUFF, IT’S WONDERFUL.

I need rum and cigarettes if I’m going to actually tackle this side of writing…the push it until your sanity snaps side. And then someone else can write a biography of my attempts to sell my own writing, become a best-selling New York Times darling and get a movie deal, with that movie winning all the Oscars ever invented…ugh a bug.

The Disaster Artist, anyone? Anyone? It didn’t win blah blah blah, but that’s what sprang to mind for an actual real-world example.

I might also need to pick up some forms for Dead Animal Scraping, part-time intern with no benefits or pay check expected, too. Just in case. It’s outside, you bring your own shovel and you’re outside. You work with animals, too. That’s a big plus right there.

Yes, that’s an actual thought in my head. If I do dead animal removal, I’ll be outside. Uh huh. Yep.

Actual photo taken under the local tiny bridge over the Malheur River. There is no hope for humanity or sales, is there? 

DOWN AT THE SPOTTED HORSE

from Pinterest. A blanket Appaloosa, chestnut. 

I got a flash for a short tale. About a goddess drinking at a dive bar.  In Payette, Idaho. The protagonist writes travel books. She’s collecting stories for a a book about rodeos.  

It’s in strictly rough draft, prolly needs a rewrite or the scrap heap, early stages yet.

Here’s the opening shot across the indifferent bows of the world:

A sign, made of tin, nailed to the outside, announced that the Spotted Horse had been established in 1956. A vague horse-like shape had been painted onto the tin, and this, one had to assume, was the horse the bar had been named for. I also saw a no minors allowed warning and we shoot, then we card cutesy plaque. Peaked metal roof, wooden structure. Otherwise, this place looked just like any other dive bar anywhere in the United States of America. Dirty, full of low-life rabble-rousers and shady sorts a step ahead of Johnny Law. Bikers to underage whores to out of work locals waiting for that switch to flick. That switch that kept them from murder sprees and desperate crimes of passion. A few beers at the Spotted Horse or the Pit or the Longbranch or the Sailor’s Bees, as one place was called, in the wilds of South Dakota. Then, a life-changing decision to take up a gun or an axe. And go kill people, whether you knew them or not. He was a quiet man that never caused any trouble. Those quiet men started off their day of mayhem usually with a few shots of rotgut crystallizing their thoughts and silencing their doubts.

The Fourth of July rodeo, Vale, Oregon

from Celtic Legends. The Wicker Man. 

Pipes Cleared

The seed packets were four for a dollar at the Dollar Store. I can’t even! It really is international happy day!

Oh my, I’ve been distracted from finishing Honest Women. It’s raining. Therefore, I will spend moments today composing dialogue designed to tell a story. I do too have a damn story, shut up! Where were we?? Oh yes!

Pipes cleared. More or less. I have recovered from that surreal St. Pat’s Beckett loop a bit. Have not forgotten it, but the inner tide of WTF is Happening Here??? has subsided a wee. Enough to let me laugh at manatees appearing to smooch or a cat making a dog flip upside down when that cat attacks it from around a corner or when a giraffe catches its reflection in a mirror. Tee hee.

I also have a short play [Mystery Meat Molly is the title and I have the tale to go with it, I just need…yeah]  stewing in my head, cooking a bit in the inner casserole pan, as I mull over how to get it from said inner casserole pan to said page. And then clean it up, put page numbers to the pages, polish it a bit, then send it off to await judgment. Where people picking plays for this or that will go LOVE IT MUST PRODUCE FOR MILLIONS OF DOLLARS. It’s my version of playing the lottery. Ooooh!

I bought seeds.

To plant.

I plan to have a small garden and put in some straw flowers as well. [Bachelor-Buttons.] The best laid plans of mice and writerly gals…!

I did find a spot that’s out of the way and within easy reach of water for the veggies. No one will pee on it or throw chemicals on it thinking it just a patch of weeds or throw beer cans among the tender shoots beating all the odds to rise above the dirt at all. It will get some sun but not sun all day. It will also avoid the lawn mower, as it’s between the front lawn and the back lawn, this patch o’ground. I need to get some fertilizer– a small sack of manure. [Dried animal shit. Or some assorted somewhat natural substance that plants like.]

I need to jump back into my full-length and get ‘er dunnn. However you spell that most annoying ‘murican phrase since the last most annoying ‘murican phrase.

Is HW a comedy? A searing drama on the feminist mystique? A take-down of organized religion? A…ah, an homage to other playwrights and writerly sorts who played with structure, time, what a story is, etc? Yeah! Let’s go with that last one! OMG THE AVENGERS FIGHT SOME GUY LOOKS TOTALLY AWESOME…gosh, it really does, all feeble banter aside.

Okay! To sum up. I am partially, not at all, recovered from the relatives and their Beckett Fox News Waiting for Reagan time loop wafflings. I plan to have a tiny garden. I plan to finish my ode to the Avengers, the Honest Women…wait a minute! Sounds good, I’ll let that stand.

Note: it’s not an ode to the Avengers. Sorry. I’d probably get sued and my finances register at about twenty bucks, and I need that to buy fertilizer. And chocolate. Oooh. Or maybe I can buy a baby chick or two, and raise them to avenge my honor. Oooh! I have so many plans in my head. So many!

The Dude Abides

 

from ebay. 

I was younger then. A sprat in the great garden of life. This movie, so many said, is the funniest thing since Duck Soup. It’s got a dash of Beckett and a smearing of the Muppets! Nobody said that, but that’s the praise that floated about for the cult classic known as the Big Lebowski. It was both highbrow indie art secret inner circle fare AND a lowbrowish fart joke, boobies out, lots of cussing lowest common denominator sorta popcorn flick. I sat through it, young sprat that I was, and went…eh.

Jeff Bridges, one of my favorite actor type people, shuffled through this trainwreck of a movie where nothing happened and he got a rug and then it ended. Or did he get his rug back? Ugh!

Also, this guy Bridges played whined like a stepped on puppy the entire six hours of this movie! How many hours was the Big Lebowski?? Ugh times two. I liked the music. Yep. That was what I basically took away from this Coen effort. The music was okay. I had no desire to watch the Dude shuffle through Los Angeles scenarios like a bewildered whiny, well, Fozzy Bear. [Which is probably not quite the right Muppet.]

Anyhoo!

Fade in, years later–

from Way Marketing. This is from Mountain Home but still…!

I’m at the Idaho Youth Ranch. It’s a local thrift store, right next to the Canned Food store. Which, if you don’t know, is a bargain basement sorta discount grocery outlet joint. Cheap, past the date stuff, cleaning products, VO5 shampoo.

So! There I am, at the Idaho Youth Ranch, plucking through the VHS tapes. Which are, like fifty cents or so. The DVD’s are, like, two bucks or so. Just so you get an idea of price range and options. The paperbacks go for about fifty cents or so, hardbacks a dollar or so…mostly because they have stacks and stacks of books, not because they’re trying to save YOU, THE CONSUMER, any cash. As the books used to be quite pricey which is why they didn’t move very many of them…so, the commies win that one. Dang commies. Anyhoo!

There it is. The Big Lebowski. In a battered VHS jacket. A rather comfortable gold-ish hue.

Eh, I figure. Why not. I can have it on in the background as I…write. It’s cheap. Jeff Bridges is in it. [I might have a bit of a crush on Mr. Bridges. Don’t tell anyone.]

I have my VHS/DVD combo hooked up to my truly ancient Sanyo at home. I have since had to unhook that and replace it with a DVD player, bought at the Idaho Youth Ranch. Fifteen bucks. I was rolling in dough back then.

And thus begins the second phase of my Big Lebowski Spring Awakening minor epiphany.

Fade out!!

The Dude. Everyman sort of character, wandering through a rather Apocalyptic ***if you use this term three times in a single document, Jesus shows up and tells you ‘No butt stuff, go Patriots!’ before returning to heaven–I heard this on Fox News, hand to Satan*** vision of Los Angeles, encountering devils and angels in his simple quest to replace his rug.

He doesn’t change a whit. Not a single lesson doth he learn. He doesn’t go on any sort of inner spiritual journey, which is the damn hallmark and actual lodestone of Western Lit and Western filmmaking. The Dude ‘abides’, which is the famous quotable quote from this film. From being attacked by a ferret in the bath to his friend dropping dead to a snit fit over the Eagles, he abides. He abides. That’s, as I’ve pointed out earlier, rather radical storytelling.

As who has not been taught that ‘something’ has to happen, when telling a tale of some kind? Remember those writing classes, kiddies? I barely do! But I’m no longer a sprat. I’m a gone to seed faded sprout! Sad face. Big sad face here.

Are we not lectured on the arc of a story? We start here at X, something happens, there’s a climax, the end. We assume the hero [rarely the heroine] learns something or is changed in some way, for the better. The hero changes. Something happens. Stuff adds up at the end. There’s a reason for why that stuff happened.

The Big Lebowski says nuts to that.

Which is probably why I went, eh, and didn’t embrace its laid back radicalism. After all, some guy having absurd encounters while taking time now and then to bowl– just not my cup of sarsaparilla. I have plebian tastes in movies, I like em simple. Things blow up, stuff happens, things blow up, big speech, things blow up, the end.

Back to the BL!!

Storytelling. Ah. BL says nuts to traditional ways and means to tell a story. What is the story here, in BL? Is it about a rug? About the Dude? About consumerism? About porn? About Vietnam? Conservative versus liberal? White Russians are the bomb? Is there a story here? Isn’t Sam Elliot dreamy? That voice! Like rough velvet and those twinkly blue eyes!

I might have a bit of a crush on Sam Elliot, too. Oh gosh, I’m revealing so much of myself with this post. Damn it.

Jeff Bridges as the Dude and Sam Elliot as that other dude in the Big Lebowski

I just know that if I turned in something like the Big Lebowski to a writing teacher, I’d have been told to rewrite it so that ‘something happened’ and there was a pay off of some kind. Or not. They, those that taught various writing classes and such, might have just shrugged, given me a passing grade so as not to deal with me further and forgotten my efforts entirely.

Now, I’ve seen Fargo. And the Coen remake of the John Wayne magnum opus, True Grit. Which, to me, didn’t quite fire on all cylinders. There was something lacking in it. It had gorgeous scenery, the acting was okay…eh. I can rewatch it and not get sick. So, yeah.

I’ve enjoyed the comedy stylings– O Brother Where Art Thou. We thought you were a toad! I thought they did a bang up job with No Country For Old Men. [That hair cut!! That hair cut gave me nightmares. Now that’s a film.]

I didn’t ‘get’ the Big Lebowki until I’d lived a bit. Until, like the Dude, I’d been tossed about by a truly indifferent life and thrown away to root, hog or die. I get it now. It’s…yeah. There’s no reason for any of this and then the credits roll. Yep. The BL is a metaphor for life itself. Gag me with a spoon, rightio? I should leave my house once in a while?? You get born, you live, you do a lot of drugs, you go bowling, you do stuff that doesn’t pan out, then you die. Amen.

I can go on in this vein for some time. That it’s all for nothing. You strive like a motherfucker, do most of it right, die anyway and…we don’t ever find out if what you did was all worth a hill of beans during a shitstorm. The Dude drinks his White Russians, grieves over his rug which brought the room together and bowls with his buddies, and he’s happy. He complains, but he’s generally a content sort without too much worry or stress. He’s that guy who drifts on life’s waters and bumps gently up against this or that with no real visible damage. And don’t we all know one of those sorts? That floating through life like a balloon sorta person? They just nudge and bounce against the walls and ceiling and then find a way out into the sky through an open window. And float away with a ‘well, fuck me, look at that’ smile of beautified indifference for it all.

So maybe, we watching are the story. Maybe we’re the journey. Which is a bit uncomfortable and high-falutin’. Maybe the BL is performance art! Talk about being precious and elitist! Probably communist, as well.

“They” were screeching about commies elsewhere, as the fear of commies under every bed is back with a bullet, baby!– this morn. So I find myself grinning and including commie references into this rambling take of the Coen Brothers ode to bowling, rugs and abiding dudes.

from Mondo Mosaic– art print of Big Lebowski.