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Posted 6/14/06 They've got a lot in common,
religion and myth. Both tell a primal story of good and bad from long ago,
passed down from generation to generation, in many cases by word of mouth and
instantly transmutable. Both teach a lesson. Both have variations and both are
integral parts of our history that demand our attention. Both are about things
people used to believe.
They used to have different Gods for everything,
assigning total Godlike stature upon anything they didn't understand. Lightning
must have freaked them out. What the hell was THAT? A giant bolt of fire comes
from the sky, but only when it's raining. It wasn't until the eighteenth century
when Benjamin Franklin flew a kite (religion or myth?) that mankind gained an
understanding of the link between lightning and electricity, that it was a
totally natural and explicable phenomenon. Up until then, lightning was
basically attributed to he-man Thor, God of Thunder, son of Zeus, sitting in the
clouds with lightning bolts manufactured in Valhalla. There was simply
no better explanation for fire from the sky till Ben came along. It's tempting
to say that gay followers of Thor must have been mighty thor when they found out
the truth about lightning. (Note to self: pitch "a gay assassin tries to kill
Benjamin Franklin" to the WB.)
People used to believe in fairies, nymphs, and
gnomes. They used to believe in Hermes, Poseidon, and Genghis Khan. They used to
believe that the earth sat on the backs of turtles and they used to believe that
stars told the future and bloodletting was healthful. They used to believe if
you ate fish on some days and sacrificed goats on other days, a benevolent
deity in the sky would reserve a space in heaven for them forever, heaven being
a land with rivers of milk and honey but without seltzer to made a decent egg
cream. They used to believe if you did certain bad things and didn't get
caught, you'd burn in hell when you died, unless you confessed your sins to a
man who was forbidden to tell anyone else, then you'd have orgasm after orgasm
in the clouds forever.
Most myths started as religions and only became
myths once some inconvenient science got in the way. No need to believe in Ares
as the God of War now that there's Halliburton.
It once was thought that caffeine would stunt the
growth of a child. A fact became myth once it was totally disproven by
dozens of scientific tests, freeing us from the bonds of antiquity and letting
us cram gallons of carbonated caffeine and sugar down our children's throats
without a hint of regret.
People used to think there was a river of molten
lava called the River Styx that circled Hades nine times before plummeting
straight to hell where a crimson goatman would decide which spit you'd be
roasting over for eternity. Now everyone knows that Styx is the first band
to have four consecutive triple platinum albums in a row - and mankind is the better for it.
I personally used to believe that if only there
were more people like me, the world would be a better place. That's a myth.
There are movements of people who believe the world would be a better place
if only everyone was like them, and they're willing to do anything, even
kill, to make the world conform to their beliefs. That's a
religion.
MD
 Getting High Down Under
by Paul Krassner In 1988, I was booked to perform stand-up at Lincoln Center, sharing the stage with poet Allen Ginsberg and performance artist Karen Finley, whose infamous reputation for shoving a sweet potato up her ass preceded her appearance. Lenny Bruce had taught me by example about the magic of an opening line that intuitively articulates the consciousness of an audience. “Well,” I began, “Allen Ginsberg is very disappointed. He thought that Karen Finley was gonna shove a sweet potato up his ass.” A few weeks ago, 18 years later, I was looking forward to seeing Karen again. She had written a novella, George & Martha, about a one-night stand between George Bush and Martha Stewart, and I was scheduled to be on a panel about satire at the Sydney Writers Festival with her and Andy Borowitz, recipient of “the first-ever National Press Club Award for Humor” (unless, of course, that’s just his idea of a joke). I flew to Los Angeles, then began a 16-hour flight to Australia, only to make a U-turn two hours into the trip because of a mechanical problem resulting in cabin pressure too low for the plane to fly at the necessary altitude. Customer Relations told me that hotel rooms were unavailable, but I got two meal vouchers which were good at any restaurant in the airport except Wolfgang Puck’s and McDonald’s. I spent 27 hours in the L.A. airport, alternating between attempts to sleep and dragging my luggage around. In the bathroom, it stood in front of the urinal next to the one I was using. Plus I caught up on my packet of research material. I learned that in some ways, America and Australia are similar - they are the only two countries in the world to reject the Kyoto Accords on Global Warming. And in other ways, they’re different--in America, seven states (including Alabama and Texas) have banned the sale of sex toys, whereas in Australia, prostitutes, strippers and lap dancers can claim tax deductions for sex toys. The next night, Tuesday, May 23rd, I left again on the same flight, arriving on the morning of Thursday, May 25th, airport-and-jet-lagged. After shaving and showering in my hotel room, it was time to leave for a panel on obscenity and censorship at the Sydney Theater. That afternoon, I performed at a cabaret, and a member of the audience kindly slipped me a generous package of pot. I immediately bought Tally-Ho rolling papers and a lighter with a smiley face, returned to the hotel, got stoned, ate dinner, watched CNN and fell asleep. When I woke up, Friday’s Sydney Morning Herald was waiting outside my door. In a front-page review, I was described as “the star entertainer on obscenity... He is about to test religious tolerance with a sex scene he is writing between Jesus and Mary Magdalene. She screams, ‘Oh, God!’ And He replies, ‘Yes?’” In 1962, Lenny Bruce had been kicked out of Australia for obscenity and blasphemy. Now I felt as if I had avenged him. This would be my day off, except for a few media appearances. It was always fun to hear a distinguished interviewer carefully enunciate the title of my book, One Hand Jerking. One interviewer would only state the subtitle, Reports From an Investigative Satirist. I had the whole afternoon free to explore the wharf. After a bowl of pumpkin soup, I was drawn toward an area in the park by the sound of a voice on a P.A. system. May 26th happened to be an annual gathering, a commemoration called Sorry Day. On that date in 1997, Australia was shocked by an official report that detailed anguishing evidence of the removal of - that is, kidnapping from their families and placing them in white homes--some 30,000 Aboriginal children over the years. They are known as The Stolen Generations. [There's an incredible film about this called Rabbit Proof Fence. -MD-] There was nothing in the press before or after this poignant event, but that evening I talked about it on a live show. “Terrorism,” I concluded, “begins at home.” I even brought up the subject during the satire panel. I was wearing a Sorry Day T-shirt acknowledging “Australia’s Hidden Agenda: Assimilation, Genocide, What’s Not Talked About.” When I bought that T-shirt, I asked what sizes it came in. The answer was, “Large, Extra Large, and Extra Extra Large.” I told the audience that “I felt like I was in Starbucks. Talk about assimilation...” Around 15 years ago, I met an American who owned a ranch in Australia. He told me about an Aboriginal child he knew who slept on a bed made of leaves and twigs, but he went to a school where they had two computers, run by a generator. He had already broken the code at MIT, and his next experiment would be the Pentagon. Now he was a young man and, since I was visiting Australia, I had hoped to track him down and find out what he was up to, but unfortunately it was too late. I had to return to the United States. I left Sydney on Monday afternoon, May 29th, and arrived in Los Angeles on Monday morning, May 29th. I had given away the remainder of my stash, but I kept the lighter and rolling papers. At the appropriate point in that pack, there was an ungummed, maroon rolling paper to remind customers, “When you’ve got 10 to go, just say Tally-Ho.” Paul Krassner edited Pot Stories For the
Soul, available at http://www.paulkrassner.com.
 Mr. Conspiracy
Says...
What if somebody in
the White House or Pentagon - whether on a lark, a whim, a landgrab, or sincere
attempt to spread democracy - decided the next country they wanted to invade was
Sudan? After all, it's the largest
country in Africa, borders the Red Sea, has large oil reserves, one of
the three largest deposits of high-purity uranium in the world, and the
fourth-largest deposits of copper. According to the CIA,
they've got 0 natural gas consumption with 84.95 billion cubic meters in
reserve. Sudan has $2.52 billion in gold reserves to offset $18.15 billion in
debt. Of their 86 airports, only 14 are paved, the entire country has one
internet provider and one FM station, and their capital, Khartoum, sounds like a
character in the latest Pixar production. Wouldn't it be cute to just take
it over without force, to actually be invited to move in? What would
the Bush Family Evil Empire do to capture such a prize?
They would do what they do best, invent reasons to invade.
They would try to justify such an invasion any way they could, and what better
way than by starting a crisis that demanded international intervention? Famines
are always good but ethnic cleansing's so much easier to achieve. Starting
a famine requires weather modification and the interruption
of traditional food routes, certainly possible, but all it takes to start
an ethnic cleansing that changes an "invasion" to a "humanitarian effort"
is to funnel arms to a homicidal madman like Sudan President Field Marshal
Umar Hassan Ahmad al-Bashir. That's what we're particularly good
at.
Using this
technique, the BFEE could get gullible lefties like George Clooney to
do their dirty PR work for them, actually demanding intervention in Darfur. Then
the BFEE could get to act like they're reluctant to do what they'd been wanting
and planning to do in the first place. Might I point out that U.S. Ambassador to the UN John Bolton,
former Secretary of State Gen. Colin Powell, Secretary of State Condoleezza
Rice, Gen. Wesley Clark, and British Prime Minister Tony Blair have all argued
in favor of intervention in Sudan? According to Sara Flounders' The
U.S. Role in Darfur, Sudan, their solution is to demand the United
Nations impose sanctions on one of the poorest countries on earth and that U.S.
troops be sent there as "peacekeepers."
Read 'em and weep, my friends. George
Clooney and his pals are Hollywood dupes unwittingly helping the cause of
neocon imperialism.
This devious plan
is going to work and all it took was a few hundred thousand
deaths, millions of refugees, and an Academy award for Clooney. Hell,
those pesky Sudanese would have died anyway in a "war"
anyway.
You don't think
somebody in the White House or Pentagon is that smart and ruthless? To quote
The Godfather, "Now who's being naive?" Hey, I'm a demented figment of
someone's imagination and even I figured it out.
"[T]here were two primary objectives of my work. First, I was to
justify huge international loans that would funnel money back to MAIN [Chas. T.
Main Inc.] and other U.S. companies (such as Bechtel, Halliburton, Stone &
Webster, and Brown & Root) through massive engineering and construction
projects. Second, I would work to bankrupt the countries that received those
loans (after they had paid MAIN and the other U.S. contractors, of course) so
that they would be forever beholden to their creditors, and so they would
present easy targets when we needed favors, including military bases, UN votes,
or access to oil and other natural resources."
- John Perkins: Confessions of an Economic Hit Man
-
Debunk of the Week
Mr. Conspiracy is full of shit. He doesn't know what he's
talking about. He describes himself as a demented figment of someone's
imagination without bothering to explain who that someone is. I say HE'S the
Hollywood dupe. He's attacking the sincerity of the magnificent George
Clooney, whose only interest in Darfur is purely humanitarian, in an effort to
shift the blame away from the terrorists who threaten this nation with their
sharias and fatwahs. I think it's safe to say that if Mr. Conspiracy and George
Clooney were to come face to face, Clooney would knock him sillier than a bag of
imaginary weapons. The next time Mr. Conspiracy feels like venting his paranoid
frustration, he should try imagining a demented figment of my imaginary boot up
his ass. Try writing Confessions of an Ergonomic Douchebag, Mr.
Conspiracy. That's where your head is.
- I. Rate Citizen -
Google Smackdown of the
Week
 vs.
 and the winner is "You're giving me a headache" by 923.
Mission Accomplished
Redux
by Steve
Pizzo
I just wanted to drop you all a note to ask
the rhetorical question: "How do you show respect for the sovereignty of
another nation?"
Well, if you are George W. Bush you drop in on that
country's new Prime Minister, uninvited and unannounced, and to show just how
little regard in which you hold the Iraqi government, you arrive with an invited
world media in tow as well.
Bush's surprise visit to Baghdad today shows that
Mission Accomplished Man (MAM), while shamed into temporary silence, is back.
All it took was the killing of Iraq's top terrorist leader to resurrect MAM.
Bush simply couldn't resist showing up in Iraq three days after bagging al
Zarqawi. MAM simply had to show up at the scene of this rare accomplishment. It
was MAM's way of tap dancing on al Zarqawi's grave. Mission accomplished.
Okay, fine. Maybe MAM deserved another little victory
dance. After all, Zarqawi was a world-class psychopath and mankind is better off
that he's dead. The only trouble is Bush's unannounced visit comes at the very
moment Iraq's newly elected and formed government is trying its best to show
that they - and not the US - is in charge of their country.
The Iraqi people will certainly not miss the points made
by the timing and manner of Bush's visit. It will go something like this:
The President of the United States figures he can come
and go from Iraq as he pleases, whenever he pleases and without so much as a
"Mother may I?"
What a fool Bush made of Iraq's newly minted Prime
Minister with his second MAM stunt. Poor old Al-Maliki wasn't even told Bush was
in his country until five minutes before MAM strode into the Iraqi Parliament as
though he owned the joint. Video cameras rolled, still cameras flashed and
reporters scurried around to get their best shot of the Iraqi Prime Minister,
who looked like the proverbial deer in the headlights - which he pretty much
was.
And how will the Iraqi people interrupt the 5-minute
heads-up to their new leader? "We may support you, but we sure as hell don't
trust you."
MAM put on his best Texas grin, grabbed Maliki's hand
and chirped, "Hey, thanks for having me."
The look on Maliki's face read something like this:
"Like I had a choice?"
- Stephen Pizzo
-
History Lesson from
Hell
 Babe Ruth and George W. Bush
Quoting
Buddha
Michael,
What we have in translation of
what the Buddha said consists of the work of now dozens of translators. The
original work consists of 84,000 suttas (not a mythical number, but about
accurate... I have counted). The four oldest 'books' (The Digha, the Majjhima,
the Samyutta and the Anguttara) are all huge, multi-volume works. It would be
very helpful to those of us who would like to check your quotations if you would
give a real citation rather than simply mentioning the book title in Pali. And,
by the way, what you are quoting is not the Pali of the Digha, etc., it is a
translation, so the proper citation should give the name of the book as
translated. That would tell us the real author, the translator.
I realize most readers will care less, but it would not be
much work for you to give them the name of the book and then, looking to the top
of the page from which you are quoting, also adding the sutta
number.
Example: The Middle Length Discourses [MLD 56] (Sutta 56 of
the Bodhi/Nanamoli translation) The Middle Length Sayings [MLS 56] (Sutta 56 of
the Horner translation) or:Bodhi/Nanamoli: The Middle Length Discourses, Sutta
56.
If you must, for simplicity, use the Pali name, you should at
least tell us the translator and sutta number. Digha, Bodhi/Namamoli, Sutta
56
Translation is interpretation and we are not really reading
what the Buddha said when we read a translation. Those of us concerned with the
state of our minds do not rely on translations/interpretations, but go to the
sources (the Pali) and your method of citation is not helping.
It might also be useful if you were to provide a link to a
sutta when it is available on line, and many suttas are now available on line.
The easiest collection to reach (and the largest) is this.
Here is a page which
describes the file system set up and the filenames used are such that using them
will serve in most cases as a citation. It is a simple scheme to remember (um...
relative to the massive complexity of the body of literature) and if you used it
it would be helpful.
Take Care!
- Michael Olds
Gardening Tip of the Week
"It took authorities nearly eight hours to
forcibly clear protesters from the farm. Officials bulldozed vegetable gardens
and chopped down an avocado tree to clear the way for a towering Fire Department
ladder truck so the final four protesters could be plucked from a massive walnut
tree. Among those aloft: protest organizer John Quigley and actress Daryl
Hannah, who waved and smiled as supporters cheered her on from across the
street."
- Hector Becerra, Megan Garvey and Steve Hymon: L.A.
Garden Shut Down; 40 Arrested. Protesters are forcibly taken from the site that
had flourished for years in a poor area. The owner refuses the city's
$16-million offer. -
"What did you do today, honey?"
- LAPD Officer's Wife -
"I bulldozed a vegetable garden, chopped down an
avocado tree, and arrested a bunch of gardeners so a real estate developer could
make more money."
- LAPD Officer -
"That's nice, dear."
- LAPD Officer's wife -
"Good idea."
- Karl Marx -
"Someone's got to protect us from Daryl
Hannah."
- Mos Def -
"Whose garden was this? It must have been lovely.
Did it have flowers? I've seen pictures of flowers. And I'd love to have smelled
one."
- Tom Paxton: Whose Garden Was This?
-
Answer to Last Issue's Stupid
Question
Stupid Question of the Week
What were Abu
Musab al-Zarqawi's last words?
Satan Doesn't Want
You to Know
You don't have to wait
for Exxon to start distributing ethenol. You can make it yourself with an ethenol
still. You can also make your own diesel
fuel for 75 cents a gallon.
Don't Take My
Word for It
"First of all, when you go to
apply for your first job, don't wear these robes. Medieval garb does not instill
confidence in future employers - unless you're applying to be a scrivener. And
if someone does offer you a job, say yes. You can always quit later. Then at
least you'll be one of the unemployed as opposed to one of the never-employed.
Nothing looks worse on a resume than nothing.
"So, say 'yes.' In fact, say 'yes' as often as you can. When I
was starting out in Chicago, doing improvisational theatre with Second City and
other places, there was really only one rule I was taught about improv. That
was, 'yes-and.' In this case, 'yes-and' is a verb. To 'yes-and.' I yes-and, you
yes-and, he, she or it yes-ands. And yes-anding means that when you go onstage
to improvise a scene with no script, you have no idea what's going to happen,
maybe with someone you've never met before. To build a scene, you have to
accept. To build anything onstage, you have to accept what the other improviser
initiates on stage. They say you're doctors -- you're doctors. And then, you add
to that: We're doctors and we're trapped in an ice cave. That's the '-and.' And
then hopefully they 'yes-and' you back. You have to keep your eyes open when you
do this. You have to be aware of what the other performer is offering you, so
that you can agree and add to it. And through these agreements, you can
improvise a scene or a one-act play. And because, by following each other's
lead, neither of you are really in control. It's more of a mutual discovery than
a solo adventure. What happens in a scene is often as much a surprise to you as
it is to the audience.
"Well, you are about to start the greatest improvisation of
all. With no script. No idea what's going to happen, often with people and
places you have never seen before. And you are not in control. So say 'yes.' And
if you're lucky, you'll find people who will say 'yes' back.
"Now will saying 'yes' get you in trouble at times? Will
saying 'yes' lead you to doing some foolish things? Yes it will. But don't be
afraid to be a fool. Remember, you cannot be both young and wise. Young people
who pretend to be wise to the ways of the world are mostly just cynics. Cynicism
masquerades as wisdom, but it is the farthest thing from it. Because cynics
don't learn anything. Because cynicism is a self-imposed blindness, a rejection
of the world because we are afraid it will hurt us or disappoint us. Cynics
always say no. But saying 'yes' begins things. Saying 'yes' is how things grow.
Saying 'yes' leads to knowledge. 'Yes' is for young people. So for as long as
you have the strength to, say 'yes.'"
"Across the country, federal
bankruptcy judges have begun to express frustration with the Bankruptcy and
Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act of 2005.
"'No judge is comfortable doing something they know is unjust,'
says U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Leif M. Clark, of San Antonio, Texas. 'I haven't
taken a survey,' he adds, 'but the critical reaction from bankruptcy judges
crosses political boundaries. I've gotten feedback from a wide variety and
everyone says its badly done.'
"'Unquestionably, this is the most poorly written piece of
legislation that I or anyone else has ever seen,' says U.S. Bankruptcy Judge
Keith M. Lundin, who has overseen cases in Tennessee since 1977. 'No one has
ever seen a piece of garbage like this,' he adds. 'There's going to be the most
fantastic anarchy in bankruptcy courts for years...'
"'It's such a poorly thought
out piece of legislation,' says Henry E. Hildebrand, a U.S. bankruptcy trustee
in Nashville, Tennessee. He currently administers about 14,000 bankruptcies,
deciding when and how much debtors need to pay their creditors. 'They put too
many loopholes in there,' he says. Under the old law, Hildebrand says he could
force higher-income debtors filing Chapter 13 bankruptcy to give up a vacation
home or car. Now, however, he says a debtor can claim that money used for car
payments, even for a new Mercedes, cant be redirected to pay off other debts.
Hildebrand claims these new rules were inserted at the behest of auto and home
lenders, who wanted to ensure they got paid before the credit card issuers. 'The
new law is good if you've got a lot of toys,' he adds."
- Brian J. Rogal: Bankruptcy Law in
Shambles: What happens when the credit card industry writes congressional
legislation? According to the judges who have to enforce it, anarchy
-
"Television enables you to be entertained in your
home by people you wouldn't have in your home."
- David Frost - "In the part of this universe that we know there
is great injustice, and often the good suffer, and often the wicked prosper, and
one hardly knows which of those is the more annoying."
- Bertrand Russell - "It has taken me years of struggle, hard work and
research to learn to make one simple gesture, and I know enough about the art of
writing to realize that it would take as many years of concentrated effort to
write one simple, beautiful sentence."
- Isadora Duncan -
"Great intellects are skeptical."
- Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche -
"Good judgment comes from experience, and
experience comes from bad judgment."
- Barry LePatner -
"The worse of the two is he who, when abused,
retaliates.
One who does not retaliate wins a battle hard to win which is why there's nothing in this issue about
Ann Coulter."
- Buddha: Samyutta Nikaya I, 162 as translated by Michael Dare - "If you think the summer sun is too hot, just remember. At least you don't have to shovel it."
- Bob Dylan: Radio
show #1 on XM -
"To read this message in Spanish, press '2'.” - Keith MacDonald - |
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Iraq Body Count
Contact George W. Bush
- president@whitehouse.gov
Contact the Freemasons
- president@whitehouse.gov
Contact Skull and Bones
- president@whitehouse.gov
Contact the Carlyle Group
- president@whitehouse.gov
Contact the Illuminati
- president@whitehouse.gov
Contact
Satan - satan@whitehouse.gov
Contact both houses of
Congress - president@whitehouse.gov
Contact the Supreme Court
- president@whitehouse.gov
Contact Dick Cheney -
vice.president@whitehouse.gov
Contact Halliburton -
vice.president@whitehouse.gov
Contact Bechtel -
vice.president@whitehouse.gov
Contact Saddam Hussein
- tightywhities@whitehouse.gov
Contact Osama bin Laden
-
deepthroat@whitehouse.gov
Contact Jeb Bush - jeb.bush@myflorida.com
Contact Fidel Castro
- jeb.bush@myflorida.com
Contact Kim Jong Il -
eng-info@kcna.co.jp
Contact Jacques Chirac
- france-presse@un.int
Contact the new Pope
- accreditamenti@pressva.va
Contact the old Pope
- thirdlevel@hellfireanddamnation.com
Contact God - president@whitehouse.gov
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You need a Disinfotainment
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Boo hoo
My life's a fucking wreck.
Please donate
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Buy
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Read
the first chapter
"It's a charming story, very
funny and I hope he writes a lot more.
- Lynette Sheffield -
Acknowledgment
dIsInFoTaInMeNt ToDaY
consists of information from dozens of sources, cut up, thrown in the air,
and recycled randomly. It is sent all over the place, so I apologize if
you're seeing the same thing twice. If you see a joke, graphic, or news
item that came from or through you, thanks, send more, and please accept
the fact that much of dIsInFoTaInMeNt ToDaY is unacknowledgeable, and if
I sought permission from everyone whose bastardized material showed up
here, I'd never get anything else done. Please note that I don't even put
my own name on it. If you're still pissed off, hey, it's fair
use.
Thanks,
Frank Lee Scarlet (I don't give a damn)
DISINFOTAINMENT@EARTHLINK.NET
Your Very Special Gif for Making
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Nobody drowned in a sea of their own
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