Thursday, September 28, 2017

Men and makeup

Hello, my dear reader. I hope that all is well with thee. I am writing here to inform you that at this moment, and for this past week (or month, or so) I have been diligently doing copious amounts of research trying to dig up everysingle thing that God, Yahweh, Jehovah, Allah, Saint Gabriel, Moses, and Jesus Christ, have ever had to say, in regards to the **very, very important  topic ** of men wearing make-up or, of course, not wearing it.
And I am quite shocked to say that instead of logging onto Google and finding out what these characters have to say about men wearing cosmetics or not, I have mostly just found other characters who claim to be speaking *for* these characters , instead.  Take for example this flashing erudite genius, from the website Debate.org when he tells you why He feels that make-up on men is a disgusting and vile thing :

Men are not women, so absolutely they should never wear make-up! Make up on men DOES MAKE THEM LOOK GAY. This world is heading towards destruction faster than it should, especially in the west. I personally think no morals and neglected childhood is the cause for such illnesses such as gay etc. gays are making the world a filthy place!

My oh my, oh my! How quickly did all of that descend into ... well, what exactly? In the first place, I can't quite figure out why this specific character here is even mentioning gays, when no such question about gays was even posed a single time. I thought we were discussing men wearing make-up, or to put it more bluntly, paint on their face? Ah! But wait a second, Antonio, for therein lies the old rub and the sharp jackknife of the Enlightened Modern Age: Men who wear paint on their face are now simultaneously and instantaneously also known as men who love and/or sleep with other men, even if the man in question with a simple streak of paint on his face has never made any such proclamation or claim ,et cetera et cetera. Indeed, to those of my descendants living 2 to 3 to 400 years in the future, I am here to tell thee: Back here in the old tombstone tunnels of what is, to you, the deep and dark and nonsensical past, men cannot wear paint on their face without being immediately accosted, accused, and essentially charged with homosexuality, effeminacy, queerness, and last but cerainly never least: an immediate highway to Hell, a.k.a. a terrible afterlife. No one knows quite exactly from where this association has arisen, historically speaking, but it does not matter, because someone once upon a time thought up a very specific version of God, or Yahweh, or Allah, or Somebody Divine, and they put out a decree: Make-up is not to be worn by MEN!

Let us dip our fingers again into the jar of Fools on the Debate.org web-site and see what else we dig up from the hallways of Imbeciles: 

I am a woman, and a younger woman at that. I do not feel comfortable when I see men wearing makeup, or men who believe they are women lecturing me (a true woman) about femininity and the trials of being a woman. It's insulting and demeaning to both men and women. The differences of the sexes (and there are only two) should be celebrated. Men should not wear makeup because it isn't a part of being a man, any more than a woman wearing men's clothes is part of being a woman.

Uhuh. Hmm. Again we seem to have someone who is dragging the Topic away from what it was originally: She was asked strictly about make-up, and yet for some reason, within the second sentence, she is referencing men who lecture her about femininity and the trials of being a Woman. What on earth, I beg to know, is this individual talking about? She has deflected the entire question, sayeth I and my God behind me! Madam, madam please, pretty please, with a cherry on the Tip Top, we were not discussing femininity, or men who think to have mastered feminity or the trials of so-called "womanhood" (whatever that may be) but rather the topic of men, specifically men, wearing make-up, otherwise known as cosmetics, otherwise known as paints, or if you'd like, colors, upon the skin of their face. I also, fairest lady, do not understand what the biological differences between the Sexes possibly have to do, with paint being smeared, or not smeared, or applied, to the skin that stretches across my facial skeleton, otherwise known as a Skull. A skull coincidentally that looks almost exactly like yours, if not exactly like yours, once the skin rots off it. But I digress.

Alas this particular young Genius passes us a wondrous declaration when she explains that "...men should not wear make-up because it is not a part of being a man..." But wait one second here, my fairest bonnie lass, wait one secone! Is thou saying that you, who have declared yourself in these sentences to be not just a woman but a 'true woman',  that you knowest better than I do, about what makes up being a man or not being a man? Is thou ... by God...by Yahweh...by Allah the Cupcake Lord... is thou lecturing me , on my masculinity? I thinkest thou is! Thou art lecturing ME! On MY masculinity! And how it ought to be performed, or not performed, seen or not seen, etc. Oh the utter irony I tell you! The utter irony!

Let us see if we can find yet another beguiling statement such as this, in regards to men and make-up and the utter Wretchedness of it in the eyes of this Modern world of fools.  Or, on second thought, let us see if we can instead find a statement that is - shall we say - a wee bit more sensible, when it comes to this so-called "debate" (which is not really at all a debate but rather one way of life being forced upon everyone).

Here , we see, is a good one ...from Quora.com, a site where people with gooey brains inside their head, instead of a box of rocks, tend to meet. One fellow says the following :

I reckon men don't wear it because they don't like getting tied up with doing things. They want their life hassle free.
How many men keep their clothes well folded, pressed and neatly arranged in cupboards daily? Its the same way.
They don't want to get into it because then they will have to do it regularly, and its time consuming.

This man seems, to me, to have something along the lines of a 'good idea', and for the most part, he is quite correct, and certainly sensible: Instead of jumping to strict, fascist nonsense about someone elses very fashion obsessed God, or giving us ironic lectures about manhood or womanhood or humanhood, this man simply explains to us a little something about a topic called convenience, and TIME - and of course HABIT! And, yes,  the truth currently is that many men are simply not in the habit of putting dabs of paint on their faces, or their eyes, or their lips... they have not learned to do it... and mostly that all stems from centuries of rushing around, and doing *almost all* of the very grueling labor, as well as murderous fighting, cannonballing, bombing, and shooting, in this World.

Of course lest we forget, Iw ould like to add: Even those brave fighting men who go out yonder with M-16 assault rifles and grenades strapped to their backs, have at times been known to adopt a specific style of make-up on their faces, usually of the camouflage sort, to blend in with the trees and the wilderness, whilst they search for enemies of the Empire to slaughter. In fact I have a very vivid memory from my boyhood (perhaps a bit off topic) of eating at an ice cream shop, and seeing a man who walked in, dressed in full US marine regalia, who had his entire face *tattooed* camouflage. Yet, even with men like that waltzing about in the Free World, we still find ourselves largely trapped with the social stigma that make-up, or anything upon the face at all that is not flesh, is only for the gals, and that any man who wears cosmetics is certainly some sort of delusional psychotic who is seeking to be a girl or, if not that, to sleep with other men and get involved with hairdressing.

All of this of course could not be more ridiculous, and all of it too, I can assure you, barring any sort of massive ecological or political disaster that sends us backwards in time to the Dark Ages, shall fade soon enough - maybe even within the next 20-30 years, or quicker. You'll go to the mall in the future and I bet a good quarter if not half of the men...and maybe even all of them at some point in time after that...will be wearing *some* style of makeup. I do not know exactly what style, I do not know if it will adhere to the exact general style the gals do now; but it will be something, it will definitely be something.

They will not just be forced, as they indeed are now, to walk out plain-faced with nothing on, into the lighto f day, if they wish to be accepted amongst the masses as a "real man" who isn't a "psychotic" or a "weirdo", or a "sinner" destined for a wretched, intolerable after-life.

How come? Why shall there suddenly be a changen ow, after all of these years of men not wearing makeup? It is very simple: The age of men being trapped almost entirely with the manual labor and fighting duties is not quite over - but it is getting closer to being over for a very large percentage of men out there -more than ever before, as a result of technology handling much of the labor--  and not just that, but for the first time in history, thanks to inventions like birth control and then too the dissolution of marriage being a social requirement, more and more men and women are meeting one another, and becoming friendly with one another, without romance or children being involved, than any previous historical period. It's basically cheaper, easier, and safer than ever before, for men and women to hang out with one another. 

 Previously almost every single man and woman relationship often ended in a child appearing upon the stage "at some point 9 months later", because there was no birth control -and what this obviously meant was that, oftentimes, if not 9 out of 10 times, there was a major price tag attached to male and female togetherness, and people did, in this sense, have serious reason to fear it, and make up silly shaming stories about why it ought never happen . This is coming to a close now, however, because birth control has lowered the price tag and largely killed off the consequences. All of this is DEEPLY connected to the story of make up and the poor, ragged normal people (whether male or female) wearing it or not wearing it. 

 In fact, when it comes to the topic of working class women wearing makeup,  this price tag issue ties in deeply to their cosmetics history: The truth is that at the turn of the 1900's, most working class women **would not have regularly worn make-up** in any way like we know it today  ,even in spite of the fact that they did not work construction or dig ditches. The reason they did not wear it was because, back then, it was simply too costly. Hell, even if you go back 20-30 years in time to the 70's, the way makeup was worn in working class areas was much different than now. But the prices have dropped  now, as a result of industrialization, and civilization, and then of course there is agian that additional fact  that BIRTH CONTROL was invented. This cannot possibly be stressed enough. This was a major societal switch. Possibly the biggest invention of the past 12,000 years of human history, really. Television and automobiles get a lot of credit. They are great. But birth control was HUMUNGOUS. In my opinion, it really is up there with Neil Armstrong (or was it Neil Diamond, I ask thyself?) hopping Apollo 13 and going to La Luna.

I understand that it might seem very bewildering to modern eyes and ears; but this modern "social bridge" that is currently being built between men and women did not truly exist, especially for the working classes, in previous centuries. In fact, it didn't even really exist for most of the 20th century. For example a man in the pre-birth control (being affordable and widespread) period might have known a number of women in his day-to-day life, and they of course would have known him, but they probably would not have had intimate contact (like hanging around in each others personal bedrooms) unless they were lovers, or planning to become lovers etc. This detail changes everything in very dramatic ways, and in fact even in todays world, men and women, once they're beyond high school, still seem to often be rather separated from one another's...bedrooms.And where is the makeup usually kept but the bed-room? Again, it might seem silly, but this fact has had a very large consequence and most of that "consequence" is being reflected through the way the clothing, and the jewelry, and the make-up, is or is not shared.

Usually when someone gets me started on this topic (for many modern people actually seem quite interested, even people you would never think were) I tend to open with the phrase I can remmber reading from Keith Richards rock and roll autobiography , Life: "I never understood what the hell everyone was talking about, when it came to me being a fashion icon and all...becaus the only thing I ever did was just go into my old ladys closet, and throw on some of her clothes, before hitting the stage. There was nothin else to it - and usually they were old, old clothes." The statement might seem funny and, again, to modern eyes and ears, very small, at first glance, but the truth is that, as I said, someone like Keith Richards even having the ability to walk into the girls closet, and then to walk out of it and take a photograph that would be distributed to millions,  was absolutely enormous, as far as the previous centuries were concerned. It was a major, major social and cultural shift . Seriously: major.  In the 1800s someone doing what he did would have been forced to hide from absolutely everyone, as a result of just how stressed MARRIAGE was in those previous time periods.

 In the 1800s one was either married or one was not, and trysts and escapades did not generally happen in the light of day, because they were terribly frowneed upon...not so much because of God or moralism, like the modern Christian brigade of Republicans would have you believe, but rather because - let us just keep hammering this one point home, why not -- no secure birth control method existed (and abortion was imperfect and deadly) and so people who went on trysts were far more likely to face serious consequences like out of wedlock childbirth, which would have been an absolute fiasco for very obvious financial and economic reasons.

 I would say at this current point in time we are living towards the closing, or perhaps just the late middle chapters, of what I suspect shall one day be considered the "initial birth control period" or something such as that. Think of birth control and abortion sort of like film  and motor vehicles: We are still in the cultural phase of birth control  where the film perhaps has yet to leave the cinema and travel with us on a VHS cassette to our house, and we are maybe driving a 1945 Ford Mustang that can do 50 mph nicely , rather than a 1965 Mustang ,  that can do 100 mph , et cetera. It is something like that. We are still in the opening chapters of BC, its effects aren't totally complete, and haven't yet washed over our culture entirely. It exists; but people are still sort of confused by it, and creating superstitions about it, and problems about it, enormous political debates, etc.

Once the effects have washed over completely and people have come to understand, truly, what a major invention it was, we will be looking at a very differnt culture, and one of the biggest differences will be this silly makeup topic, I assure you, because once the Father and Mother roles are not being played upon the stage so heavily, you're going to see that the Gender Roles also start to quickly disintegrate.  It's kind of common sense really. So to you boys in the far off future who are wearing make-up and looking into the deep past with wonder: Do not worry,and do not feel too revolutionary either perhaps, for even your great-great-great-great brother (I) all the way back here in the dark tombstone tunnels of the old days, saw you coming.

---END....


Wednesday, September 27, 2017

A Misogynistic Essay

Where did the myth that women are more "suited" for monogamy than men come from, exactly -- and how is it possible that people could still believe it -- at all -- in the 21st century? Shouldn't it be obvious by now that women, though they might be easier to trap in a monogamous relationship than men, are not actually all that interested in one, deep down?

One need only look at simple facts to see the Truth about women throughout the centuries: When break-ups happen in the modern day, who is generally able to be guaranteed a lay, or even a whole new long term monogamous relationship, faster? The truth is , and for some time always has been, women.

Women, unlike men, have generally *always* had a bit of a license to move very quickly through many different areas of society and culture, and get themselves warmly *greeted* in any room they might think to show up at. Yes, it's true, the greeting often turns cold very quickly, and they often wind up, as I said before, *trapped* in certain rooms, and this was especially the case in the deep past, but it doesn't change the fact that women are still, when given the chance, able to switch rooms much more quickly than men. And this very fact, of course, is what gives them and the obnoxious myth about them being "more monogamous" away. Not only are women not more monogamous, but they are usually considerably more focused on sex than any man ever could be.

One need only look at Internet pornography, in my opinion, to understand the truth about women. A racy thing to type, I know, but still one can't help but notice how little anyone out there seems to care -- men or women -- for the men who pass through the screen, during a porn shoot. The image of men in a pornographic film is often what I call a "half image" -- and sometimes it is not even that....sometimes it is naught more than a mere "shadow". For all the talk of how a woman in our society is only taken to be "tits and ass", the truth is that men in pornographic films are always, as a general rule, merely faceless animals with enormous semen spewing cocks.

 The women in porn, however, are, as we all know, stars, and by being stars, they are often also "complete". They are not shadows. They are not half-figures. They are not, in fact, merely tits and an ass. They are neck, shoulders, hair, eyes, lips, feet, legs, thighs, and so on. For men -- especially, say, in a gangbang -- the same simply cannot be said, no matter what your queer Harvard professor tells you.  And this of course leads us to the other truth of our species that so many modern thieves cannot accept: The general reason that there is really no porn where men are gangbanged by a group of women is because no man really wants to be,believe it or not. Why not? Because men, again I stress, see the "whole picture". Always.  If a man were to be gangbanged by a group of 12 women, there is a definite chance one of them might be fat, or ugly, or weird looking. He thus has no interest in it. It is simply too risky for a man to lay with an ugly woman.

There has always been something particularly mortifting about an ugly woman, for as long as this world can remember. They have never been written about by any poet, Shakespeare completely avoids even making reference to the fact that they exist, and there are hardly even any portraits painted of them. Also, take note of  a successful modern day establishment like Hooters: Even in times of hardship, that company will hesitate to hire an even slightly below par woman. They will go understaff. They may even very well just close their doors entirely, if only ugly women start applying for gigs. This is because Hooters understands the core of our human species: Ugly women are biological gambles. Mistakes of nature. 

 Women, for all of their bickering,  just tend to not have these same standards for men, especially when it comes to faces, which porn displays very clearly to all of us: A man could be missing an eye, have a huge knife scar down his cheek, but have the 6 pack and the enormous cock, and women will flock to him like flies on a flame. A woman with a perfect body and an ugy face would never make it as a porn star. She would be cast off into the dark web of the terrifying city to fend for herself, or work behind the curtains at Walgreens. Or she may very well hope to struggle to use makeup to make herself attractive, at which point she could begin to sneak herself in and perhaps hope to continue her evolutionary line....








Saturday, September 23, 2017

Liberalism, Gay Cult. and the Fear of the Past

The modern American liberal activists on Twitter are a very interesting bunch to me. I think that they are a very confused bunch of folks because, coming from the US culture, and not wanting to look outside of it more or less, they almost have no real "intellectual tradition" to pull from -- since none rerally exists in the States.

I think if many of the modern American liberals were more inclined to look outside of America for heros to draw inspiration from...and especially if they were willing to look into the past .. they might be able to set up a better movement, and a sturdier foundation. The problem with the American lib movement, however, is that , even though they're liberals and everything, they're still Americans, and in my opinion, I can't stress enough how little most Americans think to look outside of the country for inspiration. As for the past, American culture --especially liberal culture -- has little to no understanding of it. Basically they sort of "brush off" the past as though it was all horrible. One strong reason I think this happens is because much of the American liberal movement is based completey around the concerns of the African-Americans (which it should be). Nevertheless, since the African-Americans have had such a horrible past, I find that it's very uncomfortable in US liberal circles to reference literally any aspect of history, without inevitably falling into the "but this author was clearly a racist, or a this, or a that..." sort of idea.

 In other countries, older ones, like France and so on, the past isn't something people are so terrified of, I think. In America it's literally as though everything before 1995 or so has just been completely erased. No one wants to remember the world before the Michael Jackson era  ,in a liberal camp. This is a big problem, because they are missing out on significant stockpiles of ammunition that many historical figures are keeping for them. My basic belief is essentially that, if liberals in America were able to display just how old and even traditional liberalism is in some respects,  they may actually have a better chance of selling it to the people they need to convert. If they were able to show just how long some of these ideas have been around, I feel the opposition might be easier to beat, since we all know that the opposition is concerned with conserving the past, and understanding it, et cetera. Again, however, the big problem in the States is that all the liberals are forever painting liberalism as though it's literally something that just began the other night, and that it is something completely new.

Gay culture is really the best example of something that has been completely re-painted in America to seem utterly new, even though it is not new, at all. From the typical American point of view, even from many gays themselves, it's literally almost as though gay people were living entirely in the closet -- or maybe didn't even exist at all -- until the year 1980. This is ridiculous of course, but sometimes you look at it and it really feels that way. Gay icons from older eras all seem to be matter of factly ignored, forgotten, and hardly ever referenced. There is no discussion in the States, for example, of how decidedly queer movements like the Renaissance in Florence, Italy were, or, for that matter, even how queer a recent movement like rock 'n' roll was in the 50s and 60s. Modern gays would be aghast, I feel, at trying to paint smeone like Elvis Presley as a "sort of" gay icon. In my opinion, he actually kind of was though, especially latter-day Elvis. Yet for some reason it's never even remotely mentioned.

All of these historical examples of queerness are totally abandoned and left for the straights to consume -- as though they were always just straight, normal movements. No parallel is drawn between a figure like Michelangelo Buonarotti and Giorgio Armani (a modern gay icon), even though a parallel certainly exists. Nor is there really too much of a parallel drawn between someone like Little Richard from the 50s, Jimi Hendrix or Jim Morrison from the 60s, and then someone like Lady Gaga these days. Hendrix is seen as a completely masculine figure, worshipped in a rock n roll camp that, nowadays, seems to be imbibed solely by young men, or even older men who are of the biker culture etc.Same with Jim Morrison of the Doors. But the fact of the matter was that those two were enormously transgressive by the standards of masculinity for their day. Quite frankly, they both would have seemed like queers at that point in time, to the older men who were around then...

Yet the modern queer movement doesn't even so much as think to point this out to anyone. In my opinion, you have to sort of "steal" the icons that the straights cherish in order to pull them in. You also have to steal, like I said, these big pockets of their culture. The more you try to point out that a cherished movement like rock music was unusually queer, the more you show straights just how long this has been going on....and then, in my opinion, the more comfortable they become. Why? Because they see that society did not collapse .

That is the big fear, after all: all of this new fangled liberalism is going to make society collapse!!! They believe this because they think it's something that has never been tested before. They do not even realize just how much their own modern culture has been pulling from queerdom for so long.  A band like the Rolling Stones from the same era is yet another perfect example, maybe one of the best: this band is, to an extent, worshipped even within the modern country music culture because of songs like "Wild Horses"  and "Dead Flowers" etc. Mick Jagger was decidedly gay acting. Yet, again, he is seemingly never at all mentioned in any of these modern discussions, he is never seen as a gay icon at all, so it seems to me. How is it possible that the modern country movement could feel so comfortable with Mick Jagger and his band and yet not feel at all comfortable with someone like Lady Gaga? It's not because Gaga is more outspoken, in my opinion. It's instead because they are somehow not even seeing Jagger as slightly gay. Why not? Because he lives, as a figure, underneath literally miles and miles of heavy straight white man "stone". The stone is the rock movement itself, which again as I say, is consistently read now as the "straightest" thing ever. It's seen as the domain of the most straight acting normal white men on Earth, the working class white men, the wild motorcycle mad men,  who, we are repeatedly told, disavow and despise everything to do with queerdom or difference.  These working class white men who are ritualistically condemned by the queer and liberal community  have been listneing to a queer music for the past 40 years now. Do they really hate queers as much as we are told? I don't think so. I think they're just confused...just like the liberals themselves are . They are confused because they do not understand one thing about history. They have never been made to see the "rainbow" in the classic rock artists.

The other problem with hte modern liberal movement, too, in the States, is the fact that not only has it completely disregarded these historical figures--but it also seems to think it ought to utterly disregard entire art forms & communication avenues.

When you look at the modern liberal & by extension queer movement, it seems to exist solidly in three places to me: FIrst of all, it is very strong in the realm of the Female pop /rap artist, i.e. Madonna, Gaga, and now Minaj et cetera, secondly it is there in the Twitterverse and the new social media, and lastly it is occasionally glimpsed on TV shows. Look towards more traditional forms of culture, however, like the aforementioned country or rock music, or novel writing, or even film, somehow, and where is everyone? Well, I understand they might feel these forms "reject" them, but it doesn't help any that the modern lib. always seems to reject these forms just as much. When I try to envision, for example, a queer man performing country music in drag for his entire stage act, its essentially impossible. I don't think it ought to be, however. Again, I think this is exactly what needs to happen in order to show people that these movements are not wholly disconnected from oldness or normality (or whatever they think those things to be). In our own time, it's practically as though someone gay could not possibly enjoy country songs. This is ridiculous. It needs to fade. These forms of art that are considered the domains of the straight and the normal need to be adopted and immediately subverted. It is sometimes better to subvert a thing rather than consistently create new types of music, et cetera, constantly....

In a way, I suppose we could say that it's almost as though queer culture just "allows" things to be stolen without putting up much fight. They don't seem to think twice about an icon like Jagger being washed over completely by straights, because they have already forgotten him, anyways.Well why have they forgotten him? Because they are never taking stock of their past successes or triumphs. They are, as I said in the beginning, acting like perfect little Americans: they are habitually disregarding the past, even just the relatively recent past. The queer culture is very much a throwaway culture that gets rid you after 5 years or so, once it is tired and onto something new. Love it or hate it, the truth is that the straight culture does not do that nearly as much -- primarily because they are not trained to be so "Frightened of the past". There is no sense for a straight, really, that the world was any more wicked in the 1970s than it was now. If anything, as we all know, it's perhaps the case that it seems all the more comforting back there in the 70s. So they re-visit it constantly. The liberals, the queers, the AfricanAmericans, I know it might sound controversial, but it's like they've all been trained to just look at the past and immediately despise it without second thought. And so too do they then just despise *all* the icons from it. This is a big, big error...


 

incomplete


Friday, September 22, 2017

American Culture and Trump

Every time I think about how "radically shocked" everyone was by Trump being elected in the USA, I always just feel a strange sort of "irreality". Basically the chief question I tend to repeatedly ask myself is... "Did these people ever really expect anything else from Americans? From the general American?"

 My basic idea on it, and I've written this before, is that, if you seriously were that shocked by Trump being elected , by the white supremacy that quickly ofllowed after, or the homophobia, et cetera, then you maybe need to take a look around you and make sure you're living in America. Cause if you were really that shocked by Trump, there is a part of me that doesn't think you are. The basic American has been a bit of a moron, a masculinity obsessed misogynist, and an ignorant homophobe/racist, for about as long as I can remember. I for one do not ever recall living in a country that was filled with anything **but** people like that. Growing up in the States, I was introduced to my first race riot at 13, and my first real life nazi with a swastika tattoo,w ho spoke to me of the Aryan Brotherhood, at 14. I was often threatened as a teenager, by older American men, that, if I ever got into trouble with the US law, I would have no choice but to become a "nazi", in order to defend myself against "hordes of angry murderous blacks who would beat me to death in my prison cell  if I did not take a stand" And don't even get me started on the masculinity coin: American masculinity was indeed a prison that seemed deranged and terrifying. I wanted to be like my friends online from England, where masculinity seemed much more enjoyable and not nearly as mean and toxic. The English created David Bowie, John Lennon, Elton John, and Mick Jagger. The Americans just do nothing but occasionally listen to them on the radio; and then turn around and say they're fags et cetera....

So this was the American reality I was presented with from a very young age. They seemed like a bunch of hicks. It seemed like a trashy culture. And this was generally no matter where I looked. New York City, Los Angeles, Dallas, New Orleans, Baltimore, Oakland -- all of the places seemed to have a weird , threatening , and potentially racist and murderous underbelly to them. All of them seemed beyond "infested" with a gang culture of either white or black, of a hyper masculine culture, and of a culture that was decidedly anti-queer, anti-art, anti- anything that wasn't inherently violent or based around strength, etc.

So when I look out to the culture now and I see all of this shock, I am very surprised. Where, exactly, are these people who are shocked coming from? And how come they were never there to defend me when I was a kid, at family holidays, or school year after school year, when I would regularly be accosted and harangued by "proud Americans" who hated everything from long hair on boys, to literature, to poetry, to Europe, to history.  Where in good fuck were these people? These so called defenders of this liberal idealism? Where in good fuck were y'all?

The truth is that these people were, I think, always in very specific pockets of this culture --pockets I ain't no part of, cus I got no dime --  which is exactly what the conservatives say about them. So basically, even though I, as an outcast, hate conservatives more than you can ever imagine, I also have to agree with them on that one point: These fucking people who claim to be the defenders of all this liberalism are absolutely no where to be found when the battle actually counts. I do not seem to ever see them in reality. They do not seem to be the typical American I have ever run into. So in a way, they don't really seem American. They seem, quite frankly, too intelligent and well-read to be American. And if *that* sounds offensive to you, and you're a conservative or something,  then I also say again: I don't think you really live in the same America as me. How come?

 Well it's simple and goes something like this: For all of my life, I have passed a lot of time on the internet. It began when I was a kid, because my neighborhood was often considered too dangerous to venture into, and it continued straight into adulthood. And while all this internet browsing was going on, I came across a very particular pattern years and years ago, when I was about 12 really, that never seemed to change. The pattern was that almost everyone i met online who seemed even slightly interested in anything even minimally intellectual was, as a rule, hardly ever an American. Literally, nine times out of ten, the most artistic or intelligent/open minded people I would wind up meeting online - and this goes back to the old mIRC days of the late 90s, to the message board days, et cetera -- were almost always not Americans.

 I thus, when I was very young, began to kind of critique and even, to a degree, stereotype my own country and the people in it. I started to see them as being kind of inadequate, and stupid.  I saw that American culture seemed rather "Backwater" in respect to the rest of the developed world.  I didn't wanna do this, and I didn't "magically create the idea". I t was something that came to me after iliterally years of only running into intellectual sorts overseas, and never homegrown. I would sit in my room on my computer meeting these extraordinarily well-read people , but they never were from here. They were always from those northern Scandinavian countries Bernie Sanders now obsessively references, or from England, or Germany, or Japan. They were always from somewhere else. Nobody was ever from America.If they were, they were always from fucking California. It was like a rule after awhile: you meet a smart American, he or she is probably gonna say they're from Cali.

 My fellow Americans who materialized either in reality or online were always pretty one dimensional, and you knew who they were right away: They were terrifid of the arts, of gays, they often seemed racist, they fetishized American military, they got a big kick out of being "Beyond masculine" men etc. They're the people who are now Trump voters. And they do not shock me and never have. If anythig, I grew completely accustomed to having to live around these people years and years ago. It becme a sort of accepted "handicap" of my reality: I was going to be forever trapped with a bunch of close minded assholes for my countrymen, but at least I could always hope to meet people who could do complex things like read, on the internet, who never seemed to be American.

Years ago, when I was younger, I remember being pretty frustrated about how dumb most fellow Americans I would meet were. I thought it was crappy and I wanted it to change because I felt lonely in my pursuit of being an "intellectual". But eventually I got over it, as I'm saying. Eventually I even sort of started to find it oddly endearing. It was like I went online to meet people who were deep and profound, who almost always just seemed to materialize overseas, and then I could slip back into the standard American reality, with a bunch of near illiterates who apparently never read a newspaper in their life, when I wanted to cool off and just be "Easy" and "simple". So I got to this place where I didn't mind the idiot American vibe anymore. I started to find it funny, comical, and as I said, endearing. I started to find it almost oddly lovable.

The so-called "dumbed down" American culture all became a sort of place to just relax inside for me. It was my dumb and simple home. My ridiculously asinine, backwater kinfolk from Rhode Island. They were morons, and they annoyed the hell out of me, but I knew that I had to deal with them, because I lived in their country . Then, however, this Trump thing happened, and I started to read, in absolute wonder, about how "angry" "confused' and "shocked' half of the country apparently was, and I was , of course, shocked myself. Were these really the same Americans I had always regarded as so simple and foolish and void of any intellectualism? My Lord, I could remember thinking, how much these little fools have grown in the few years I have disregarded them! How much they have truly grown! I was almost .. you know, my mind really was almost blown.

So now I think -- if you're a liberal -- I want you to see things from my perspective for a second, and what I want you to do is to understand that, for me, this whole Trump thing and the immense backlash against him and his homophobia and his racism, it doesn't really seem like I'm living in a period that is backwards, like everyone keeps saying. No.To me, it actually all seems like I'm now living in a period that is decidedly moving FORWARDS. It seems like these little dumb Americans that I always arrogantly mocked  with my European and overseas friends -- it seems like they're finally growing. They are actually engaged in widespread political discussion now. They seem to be taking a bigger stand against racism and homophobia and anti-intellectualism than ever before. Do they still usually seem like idiots in comparison to the Europeans I've met, who always seem oddly informed and well-read? Yes. I willl admit they do. They still don't seem to read Dostoevsky as much as those beguiling Europeans do. In Europe you go anywhere, it seems, and you find that even relatively good looking and big breasted women occasionally make a point of it to read Dostoevsky and Camus and so forth. The Americans aren't there yet: Talking to most American women with big breasts, or even little breasts, is about as fun as swallowing a switchblade at a Hells' Angel "get together".  They still don't seem to take in anything on such a profound level as the Europeans, I am sorry to admit. And as for the American gay scene, which I suppose is of some interest in an article about Democrats and stuff, it often seems like many of them are merely trying to portray Peter Pan come to life, if he did a kilo of cocaine and decided to start cutting hair. European gays don't tend to act like that; it seems they also take time to read Dostoevsky and Camus as well.....

 But,whatever the case, do they seem radically more intelligent than they did years ago in the past? Yes. They definitely do. And this I know for a fact.
Therefore again, to me, it all seems like progress. It all seems good. Go on you little young Americans, go on and fight the good fight! I'm proud of y'all. Damn proud.

Wednesday, September 6, 2017

Set list

The Rose Red Lilac--- Ohio , October 9th, 2017

1. Dime store cowgirl 
2. Mr. Tambourine man 
3. Sugar magnolias
4. The Pink lady
5. Rhiannon
6. Blowing in the Wind
7. To Sing for You 
8. Bully pit Song
9. Colours
10. Box of rain
11. Fannin Street 
12. Ballad of Queen Rebecca 
13. I wish I was the moon
14. Frankie & Johnny 

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