Tell A Vision

i haven't always not had a television .... in fact, i have one right now: i bought it in 1987, from one of those "i'm mad melvin ..... i'm right on the corner, i'm right on the price, and i'm close to every turnpike exit known to man ..... and i'll eat the asshole of a rabid chihuahua if that's what it takes to convince you to buy your iron lung from me ....." i bought a videotape player, which i still have, and a panasonic food processor from the store at the same time ..... the food processor was great, and i'm sorry i sold it ..... but the tv still works, and it still works great; i have it hooked up to a dvd player, that old vhs player, and the audio output goes through a 400-watt-per channel amplifier that i bought at the same time, which powers the jbl studio monitor speakers i got way back in 1976 .... they sound great, the whole thing works fine, and i can occupy the moral high ground, knowing that i'm a fucking luddite and what worked back then still works for me now, unlike all the new technology things that cost so much money, like my full suspension mountain bike, or ......

how about our government .....

but i shouldn't say these things, because i'd like to get on npr and push "going home ....."

well ...... right about now you're saying, what's the point, doctor pete? what's the fucking point?

well, i guess the point isn't as pushpin sharp as the penetrating observations i usually make, given the acuity of my intellect and the focus of my ..... oh .... excuse me .... i nodded off there for a moment, trying to catch up sleep that the twins snatched away from me last night ....

ahem .... the point is reality, and the point is television, and the point is perception, and the point is life and death and war and just being a happy herd animal, bleating along here in this great old land of ours that's the country it is, and that's what makes it great ..... the point is, television describes and determines reality for so many americans ....

oh, you think i'm making this up? what about the appearance of the new press secretary, tony snow, who bursts into tears at his first show? so what am i supposed to believe, that this reptilian slit-eyed cold-blooded lizard motherfucker is a human being, capable of emotions other than greed, avarice, and blood lust?

crocodile tears, anyone?

unlike most of the citizenry of this great land of ours, and that includes our congress persons and our senators and other people who are in decision and policy making positions, whose perceptions, attitudes, experiences, and outlooks would benefit from a more cosmopolitan background, i've been overseas ..... in fact, i've lived overseas for what? ten, eleven years? that counts asia and europe and, the last i looked, i had a handle on four languages, none of which are understood by my friends, including english ......

the first time i went overseas was when my father was posted in what was then west pakistan, and the first thing i remember from that was the bandarwallah, outside my bedroom window, exhorting his monkey to do the dirty monkey boogaloo, while the cobra wallah, right next to him, was putting his snake through its paces ..... the music was great .... the electricity would go out regularly, kind of like iraq, but hey ..... even though refugees from the great partitioning of india and pakistan were sloshing back and forth, like dishwater in a pan, there wasn't any shelling going on, so it wasn't like iraq is today .....

the point of this is, the family would come back to the states on home leave and, in those precious weeks, i could watch television, and see the things that made this country great ....

ooooh, and what were those things, doctor pete? what exactly made this country great?

well .... professional wrestling was one of them ..... i'd sit with my mother's father, a man who had ..... mmmmm .... what ..... four ph.d's? and spoke eight languages? and translated russian treatises on air and water pollution? as he shrieked and barked at haystacks calhoun and bobo brazil and bruno sammartino and andre the giant ..... nothing would convince this man that wrestling was bogus, as phoney and as contrived as a megachurch revival or a bush administration presentation at the united nations ..... or a bush administration anything ....

what else was there? well, when i wasn't watching darlene's tits bloom and blossom on the mouseketeer show, i'd watch victory at sea .... that was a great soundtrack and a great program, and it fit in with some of my personal experiences ..... why, coming back through europe on home leave i'd seen firsthand how the german troops had burned finnish lapland as they made their way to norway, where they hopped troopships in the norwegian fjords, because the finns were kicking their asses .... who now knows that the finns were an axis ally, united in their mutual distrust of the soviet union? but the finns were tossing the germans out because the germans had asked for the finnish jews, and the finns, through marshal carl gustav mannerheim, said (i'll translate from the finnish) suck my dick, you evil motherfuckers; just go and suck my fucking dick .... there were piles of munitions and helmets and troop carriers, rusting out, that the germans left on the shores of the fjords, as they sailed for home, the footprint of the finnish boot on their butts ....

there were still huge minefields when i was there, and my cousins talked about friends who had stepped on mines, while hunting .....

after that my father was stationed in the philippine islands, so i've been to corregidor, and i've been in the malinta tunnel (you really ought to google this shit), and i've been where the death march started, and my classmates had relatives who were interned in intramuros by the japanese, or they had a parent who went underground for years, working with filipino guerrillas, eating bugs while tossing bombs .... i thought corregidor and the malinta tunnel were bitchin' ..... munitions were still stacked, floor to ceiling; the floor was under water from seepage; it was also inches deep in magnesium strips, used as rocket fuel ..... think about this: magnesium burns under water, and the tunnel floor was .... under water ..... the story was that there was still so much ammo stored on the island that it would disintegrate if something went awry .... and every evening i'd watch a column of water climb slowly into the sky: munitions disposal and smorgasbord .... the local fishermen would scramble out to pick up dinner ..... and how could i forget when one of my friends pulled the pin on a grenade that was a decade old ..... and blew his head off .....

so ..... what's the point, doctor pete? what's the fucking point?

well, the fucking point is, i'm reading another book, nor will i apologize for reading .... it's about the second world war, and it's about the pacific theater, and so .... i remembered victory at sea .... sure, it was martial and it was triumphant, but you got to see stuff .... here were shows about a war that was only ten or so years past, that would show you, not just great shots of ships maneouvering at sea, or big guns recoiling when fired, or tracers streaking through the night ..... they'd show you cities levelled; they'd show you refugees, pulling carts piled with their possessions; they'd show you displaced persons, behind barbed wire; they'd show you civilians, fucked up, in cities, fucked up, and it'd give you a taste for war that was pretty exciting but that made you glad you could walk into the kitchen and get a bowl of popcorn and come back out, settle down in your chair, pull the cat up on your lap, and .....

not have to duck and cover .....

or eat the cat .....

do you know where i'm going with this?

i don't watch tv now, so i've missed "shock and awe ...." but why would i watch that shit? watching firepower doesn't make my dick hard, nor does watching a city get flattened make me feel good about myself .... i've walked through it; cousins have been through it; my wife's father was a survivor and a displaced person; you know, there aren't any commercial interruptions in war; there aren't any breaks so you can go into the kitchen and whip up some popcorn; miller lite doesn't come on and spare a city block from being shelled; budweiser's chicks, rocking out, won't stop children from bleeding to death, or mothers scrambling for the arm that just got blown off, or ......

what happened to us, that we think the worst thing happening right now is that it costs a little more to put gas in our suv's?

fuck tv, and fuck the shallow voyeur mentality it creates, and the illusions that it perpetrates, and fuck the people behind it, and fuck you, too, if you're sitting down watching it ..... i don't think it's "extreme" when some asshole eats a cockroach as the camera rolls, but only when the makeup artist smears some glycerine on his tanned abs ..... i think it's extreme when a city gets firebombed and all the oxygen gets sucked out of it and people's lungs explode and their eyeballs pop out of their skulls .... i think it's extreme when hospitals don't have electricity or anaesthetic or antibiotics ..... i think it's extreme when morgues are busier than the schools .....

we need to be reminded that war kills people ..... war fucks up cities and it fucks up schools and it fucks up childrens' playgrounds and, because we're a good christian nation that values life, we don't let hospitals in these fucking rughead areas have drugs (oooooh! the war against drugs, right?) or hypodermics or anaesthetic or .......

i recently watched "hotshots part deux ...." that's me, mr. intellectual, but i'm proud of it .... and there's a scene where charlie sheen helps an american soldier get ahold of his balls and overcome his fear and reticence, and the soldier says, in a full face close-up, "war ..... it's fanTAStic ....."

what-ev-er........

you know, we invaded panama because we had low self-image after vietnam .....

we couldn't do fucking sit-ups?

and now the only thing that makes america question the evil and fascism that comprises george bush and his neocon crusade in iraq and the rest of the world is ...... higher fucking gas prices?

i'm sorry ..... blow me .......

i know that they figured something out, after vietnam .... it wasn't, "don't get bogged down in a land war in asia ...." it wasn't "don't invade a country on bogus bullshit reasons ...." it wasn't "let's be pro-life and not kill them or have our children killed ...."

what they learned was, don't show dead soldiers on television .... because the sheep tend to get upset if they see what happens when they're led off to slaughter, although it takes a long fucking time .....

so we don't see the coffins .... and we don't see the body parts .... and we don't see our brain-damaged soldiers in their rehab wards ..... and we don't see the levelled city blocks .... and we don't see the children, scrabbling in the dirt, trying to stuff their intestines back into their bodies ......

hey, i didn't mean to be a fucking down ..... i think i'm going to pour myself a miller lite, whip up some popcorn, and ....

watch some wrestling ......

it's more honest than fucking george bush, and every asshole he's got in office with him .....

next: dr. pete and bobo brazil's "coco butt"