Scumbag Millionaires

we went to see "slumdog millionaire" on oscar night; it was a good night to see it--between heavy rains and it being oscar night there wasn't anyone in the theater, and we actually parked right out in front of the theater .... i don't get out much these days, so i was .... well, not surprised but ..... taken aback by the assaultive nature of what we were subjected to before slumdog started: advertisements, commercials, promos, played at top fucking volume; i know, this is america, a nation of whores, where every inch of space has to be smeared with some corporation's logo feces, where there are now fucking tv screens on top of gas pumps that tout high calory high fat predominantly synthetic snack foods to bovine america while pushing big! quality! autos from detroit that get 17 mpg! highway! even as Big Oil bends you over and pumps bucks out of your butt but this .... this was aural rape, a massive headfucking of a captive audience, an interminable and unavoidable shrieking, shrilling, importuning, yelling and ..... i'm no stranger to volume; god knows i spent my time in front of big amps, when it was a badge of honor to learn how to lipread, when the success of a performance was gauged by how much blood came from the ears of the folks in the front but ....

when did volume, subsonic frequencies, and the sound of explosions become a substitute for emotion and meaning?

ha ha .... silly question; don't bother taking it seriously ....

fortunately, america's advertisers take americans seriously, and here's what they were pushing ..... shampoo, for starters; then we got into a dazzling array of upcoming motion pictures premiering on television, and all of them seemed to be about 1) barely post-pubescent "rock" musicians or 2) comic book superhero characters with superpowers and spandex costumes ..... jeez, i had all the marvel comics from back in the sixties on, but you didn't have to put in earplugs to read them ..... boy, i sure love going to the movies so i can find out what's coming up on television, and i resonate wildly to teenage heartbreak and, as for evil mutant comic characters who hate humanity and want to destroy the world, i've been following republicans for years, so do i need to see this shit at 145 decibels?....

anyway, we liked slumdog; i grew up in pakistan and boy, did i feel right at home here .... have you seen it yet? there's a sequence where you get to see lots of young beggars; when i saw how many of them were missing limbs i knew right away what was coming; why, doesn't everyone know that kids get their arms and legs broken because crippled beggars make more money? it was part of my education as a seven-year-old in karachi, pakistan .... and later in life, too: it's a guild, kind of like the internships i had to do on the way to becoming a psychologist, mutilating, degrading, and scrambling for spare change .... ha ha .....

well, it was kind of synchronous, seeing slumdog millionaire last night and reading the "news" the last week, with the dow index now down over fifty percent in one year ..... you've got a choice: you can go to the movies and watch slumdog millionaire, or you can stay home and read about all the scumbag millionaires you're forking your hard-earned tax dollars over to, those fucking beggars .... oh, they're fucking beggars, all right, and their begging is predicated on mutilation but never think that they'd mutilate themselves ... instead they've mutilated the economy, and they're threatening further mutilation unless they get more money: eeeeee, we're too big to fail! oooooooo, how can we attract top talent unless we drop millions and millions of dollars on them? aaaaaaaaaa, sucka! if we go down we're taking everyone with us ......

clearly, they've spent their money wisely and well, judging by how well their businesses are doing, so i'm thinking we oughtta give 'em what they want .... it's not just that they're extortionate threatening cocksuckers: doesn't it strike you as ... mmmm ..... odd? that the people in charge of forking the swag over to citibank used to work for citibank?

oh, life's little ironies!

speaking of movies, here's my current favorite: wall-e, another oscar winner, especially the first thirty-five minutes .... i watch it over and over and over i really do .... it just keeps me endlessly entertained, and i think it telling that its non-verbal machines are more complex, compelling, and attractive than the 'human' characters that are introduced after thirty-six minutes .... but what really gets me is that wall-e has a christian theme ..... you didn't know that? neither did i, but i just read it somewhere and immediately repressed the knowledge of where; it must have been the front page of the new york times ..... really, i didn't know that these robots had accepted jesus as their personal savior, while their selflessness is one of the christian virtues .... NOT! it's the same rationale that has n[auseatingly] p[uerile] r[adio] repeatedly giving air time to those who would expatiate shrilly about their wonderous faith--haven't they ever heard that pride's a sin?--or air time to republicans who need to say how they wish our president to fail, how they want our country to crash into oblivion, how turr'ble it's gonna be when we soshalize the banks, and this helpin' peeple stay in their homes ain't fiscally responsible--like funding illegal immoral unilateral invasions of sovereign nations; maintaining occupying forces around the world, and funding a preposterous "defense" budget is ..... i guess the best way to "balance the books" is to shut down schools and hospitals; 'member now, edjimacation and health care is fiscally irresponsible and ...... aren't there any democrats who have comments? well ..... i know there aren't any democrats who have a spine, but surely we could find a socialist or progressive who could indict the failures of forty years of republican voodoo economics ..... shouldn't we establish--once and for all--the total failure of republican economic theories as an historical fact? rather than devote more time a 'battle of the books' between the bible and "the origin of species?" anyway, i envy people who can find affirmations of their faith wherever they look, be it a cheeseburger, the mold on a stale piece of bread, or the abstract diarrhetic splatter on a porcelain bowl: honey, come look! it's jee-ziz face! it's our lord and saviour!

actually our current economic crisis is a christian theme park .... didn't know that? here's how it works: see, when the world's economy collapses one of the benefits will be that people can no longer afford food .... or water ..... starving people will get edgy; there will be riots, chaos and anarchy will ensue, nations will go to war over mcdonald's franchises, untold numbers will die and .... and this will hasten the rapture .....

i shouldn't have to explain this to you ....

speaking of religion--and hastening armageddon--over one hundred and fifty years after emancipation the residents of washington d.c. are set ... .maybe ... to get a vote ..... there's a trade-off, of course; republicans want d.c.'s citizens to be able to carry semi-automatic weapons on their way to the polls, the bargaining chip being that "we'll give 'em the vote if we can sell 'em the guns ...." i don't know; i thought that d.c.'s citizens were already better armed than the national guard and that d.c. was the murder capitol of the united states as well as being our capitol city, but ..... subtlety has never been america's strong point, and overkill is a way of life .....

next: dr. pete reads the bible to a galapagos tortoise