Don’t Step In The Oomgowa!

            Galileo, Darwin and Sigmund Freud like most other pioneers first in suffered the slings and arrows of their detractors so outrageous were the initial pronouncements regarding their new discoveries. Kierkegaard and Nietzsche both were 100 years ahead of the psychological curve so perceptive was their genius. We see throughout history many examples of great minds that time would be needed to vindicate.

            Fast-forward to 2013 and we are well into another renaissance, not genius so much, but tremendous strides are being made in the field of bullshit! And if this is something in your wheelhouse America 2013 is the place to be.

            Living in America is like trying to earn your junior lifesaver’s certificate by treading for 10 minutes in a tank full of crap. Picture yourself making the required arm and leg movements that constitute treading, but instead of water you are making these movements in fecal matter!

            This crap is generously provided by all of the politicians, corporate spin-doctors, religious clergy, talking heads and anyone else with an agenda and the leverage to promulgate their bullshit. This goes on hour after hour, day after day, year after year until genuine outrage has been reduced to “what’dya gonna do?”

Q: How much bullshit am I actually talking about here?

A: Enough to sink the whole goddamn planet!

            Sigmund Freud for all of his great early contributions, most of which have been refuted, none-the-less made one great discovery that is probably the basis for more acceptance of bullshit by the public and the world at large than any single thing in the history of human civilization…his discovery of the phenomenon of transference.

            According to Wikipedia: Transference is a phenomenon characterized by unconscious redirection of feelings from one person to another. One definition of transference is "the inappropriate repetition in the present of a relationship that was important in a person's childhood." 1) Another definition is "the redirection of feelings and desires and especially of those unconsciously retained from childhood toward a new object. 2) Still another definition is "a reproduction of emotions relating to repressed experiences, especially of childhood, and the substitution of another person ... for the original object of the repressed impulses. 3) Transference was first described by Sigmund Freud who acknowledged its importance for psychoanalysis for better understanding of the patient's feelings.

           

            The patient in our case is John Q. Public a malleable, amorphous clod of Play-Doh that can be molded into any shape by any reasonably skilled, self serving, public bullshitter.

            Crackpots from Representative Steve King who recently declared this about immigration: “For everyone who’s a valedictorian, there’s another 100 out there that weigh 130 pounds and they’ve got calves the size of cantaloupes because they’re hauling 75 pounds of marijuana across the desert.”

            …to congressman Michael Burgess offering this about the unborn male: “This is a subject I know something about ... Watch a sonogram of a 15-week baby, and they have movements that are purposeful. They stroke their face. If they’re a male baby, they may have their hand between their legs. If they feel pleasure, why is it so hard to believe that they could feel pain?”

            …to congressman Todd Akin who famously uttered these words: “If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways of shutting that whole thing down!"

            Antediluvian cretins each, but the people buy this bullshit, their loyal constituency never questioning or calling these men to the carpet. When reason is abdicated, the transference is complete which permits the easy purchase of the hearts and minds of the citizenry.

            When the public knows shit about Shinola, I’m speaking about basic history and current events of the country they live in, the country is ready to be boarded by pirates. If the quality of our elected officials is any indicator it has already happened. The best and the brightest know that it has nothing to do with innovative ideas or the public good. It is all about who can stay for sale the longest.

            Because of the acceptance of bullshit, personalities like Bill O’Reilly, Rush Limbaugh, Chris Mathews, Bill Maher and even the President of the United States ascend into the pantheon of great intellects in the public’s collective mind. Real intellects end up marginalized by the marketplace, the marketplace having usurped reason as the coin of the realm.

            A culture is often defined by its heroes, but if these minds are the best the culture has to offer then the word “freedom” so precious to the history of this country has become the new code word for bullshit.

…which reminds me of a  joke:

A missionary goes to deepest darkest Africa to spread the gospel. He travels from village to village speaking to the natives:

“and we will bring education to your village!”

Whereupon the villagers respond “oomgowa!”

“and we will bring electricity to your village!”

…the villagers respond “oomgowa!”

“and we will bring a loving god to your village!”

…again the villagers respond in kind “oomgowa!”

As the missionary packs up his things he says to the village elder, “Can you please tell me how to get to the next village?”

“Yes, yes it if very easy. Proceed 5 kilometers north, then 2 kilometers east, but watch out…don’t step in the oomgowa!”

Still Life With Vegetables

Le Provocateur!

                               Comedies are joyous a constant delight

                            Dramas annoy us and ruin our night

    

                                                                         “Keep It Gay”

                                                                         The Producers

I am writing this particular regurgitation aboard an A-320 west bound to sunny LA no small achievement considering the Olympian misahgas I had to endure just to get to the unenviable position of enjoying a few complimentary peanuts. The day started ominously. I awoke at 6:30 leaned over to rouse my beloved by gently stroking her brow with sand paper. By informing her that I would indeed be requiring her services this morning this saint otherwise known as the dread Mrs. Schneider responded by emitting an imperious “harrumph” accompanied by a barely erect middle finger. That the service in question was only for cadging a ride to the airport and not something that required a gritting of teeth didn’t seem to matter to the mother of my children. And then it hit me. A sudden illumination, a satori had revealed itself and it was then that I knew for the very first time what the essence of being married to a woman actually meant. They are the only creatures in the world that can suck a cock and yell at you at the same time. Your wife’s teething on your Johnson and the next thing you know she’s reaming you about some drawer handle you promised to put back on! Didn’t anybody ever tell her that it’s not polite to talk with your mouth full! That’s all I have to say. End of story. Up to the bar boys, I’m buyin’.

Getting to the airport on time is in direct proportion to the indifference accorded to you by your loved ones. Since I didn’t have to waste any time with protracted goodbyes I was early. My kids acknowledge me like I’m the guy in high school you don’t personally know, but you have seen every day for years. You pass each other in the hall and give a cursory nod recognizing each other’s existence but without any emotional investment.

 We arrive at the terminal. And because I am the world’s greatest convenience man who once paid $10 for a Slim Jim I looked for the nearest skycap. Who designs uniforms for skycaps I wondered? Are there designers doing skycap couture somewhere? A lot of epaulets and brocade. These cats looked more like doormen in Emerald City.

The first hurdle is getting through security with your pride and anus intact. After checking my bags it turned out I was selected for special treatment based on my name Jeff Schneider. Three drones accompanied me to a security station and proceeded to rifle through my bags like they were auditioning for a German fisting film. After not finding anthrax, explosives or even a cheap glue on goatee I did receive some slack from the TSA agent after he finished perusing my definitive collection of vintage Swanks. He gave me the knowing smirk of a man who appreciates a nice pair then zippered up my overnighter. Next, I was summoned to another chair and commanded to remove my boots by a shrieking harridan with the sensitivity training of a crack whore. I opened with the Aristocrat joke and watched her officiousness melt away as I got to the part about the daughter blowing the dog. Not only did I receive clearance from this woman, the postprandial lap dance wasn’t bad either.

When you write a blog that has to do with immortality the main thing to consider is that it just doesn’t matter. Immortality is in the eye of the beholder. You’re immortality project is another man’s dick joke if you get my drift. You know that you can just as easily wipe your ass with the newsprint this tripe is written on or wrap fish in it. Be that as it may I created it. It’s my immortality project you just happen to be living in it at the moment. And when I say that it really doesn’t matter, what exactly do I mean? If nothing matters, what’s the point? The point is we are all looking for something to hang our hats on, a coat tree that doesn’t move every time you look for it. 

The nadir of this culture was born witness by a man who is at home in the worlds of both academia and ultimate fighting. He is a one-man think tank who traffics in low behavior and high and can whistle a symphony while ripping a chimp. He is at ease in the halls of academia or with the subtleties of cockfighting. He can hambone with the local jug band and receive the rapture while listening to Mahler. In essence he is a renaissance man of the highest order and it would behoove you to get the fuck out of the way lest you find yourself scuttling across the floor flailing away at your bouncing, sad existence. He can’t be fooled as his radar is tuned to the highest frequencies of bombast. He is Le Provocateur!

So know you got me. I am Le Provocateur. I can’t fly, become invisible or burst into flames, but I can bust your balls. My talent is annoying people in an existential way. Le Provocateur’s mission is to be a caraway seed under the bridge of indifference, to put a dent into the iron mask of apathy. Every day Le Provocateur walks the streets prodding and provoking people to take a good look at themselves, to stare into a mirror and embrace the pustules and impostumes that make living such a sublime farce. Le Provocateur spends his days wheedling and cajoling the denizens to reflect and observe what is under the surface of things. Basically I am a prick, an entertaining one I hope, but the one good thing is…there is never a cover!

Le Provocateur’s 10 Commandments

1.  Always question authority.

2.  Never believe what the shaman in power has to say.

3.  Remember the winking Jesus

4.  Always strive for the ultimate reason to be

5.  Black and white make gray

6.  Man is the only one responsible for his actions

7.  It is only about becoming

8.  Have a immortality project you are proud of

9.  There is only one lie that is vital

10. When things get tough the tough go commercial.

That’s the problem with the world, not enough goddamn provocateurs to rattle the cages of the Marvs out there. Where are the muckrakers who used to call the captains and leaders of industry and the world out on the carpet? They certainly aren’t anywhere to be found. The Internet has created a glut of half-baked weirdoes each straining at the tit of recognition. All great modern thinking has been thrown into this morass where nothing escapes. It is a black hole that will absorb and crush anything near its orbit rendering all insignificant. 30 years ago great writers and thinkers had influence. 100 years ago William James would pack them in for lectures on pragmatism. Now the outrage cannot be heard as the podcasts and blogs of every culpepper jam the pathways to enlightenment like logs of fecal matter. We are downing in the murk and don’t know it. This world needs instigators, prodders and pokers who feel the driving need to give the world a hot foot.

So remember you little fetzelfutzes, if a man comes up to you with a faux French accent and a drawn on mustache curled at the ends and insists that the tattoo or piercing you're wearing is just another form of conformity don’t be alarmed. For this is a man of great insight. What he wants you to know is that the only real deal is the topographical make up of your inner life. What have you got to say about that? He is just a man with your best interest at heart, Mademoiselle and Monsieur. He is… Le Provocateur.

Can I Speak To You For a Moment?...Absolutely!

            I was in the middle of my morning ritual padding around in my flip-flops and robe, the V formed by the overlapping fabric at the base of my throat barely concealing the gray Brillo pad which was desperately trying to peak out, when there was a knock at the door. Standing before me was an elderly gentleman in a tweed sport jacket holding a weathered briefcase along with a smile usually reserved for the criminally insane and 3-card Monte dealers.

            I’ve been proselytized before…by some of the best pimps around…politicians, used car salesmen, prostitutes, but none of them can hold a candle or a sap like the true believer. The true believer is the purest form of salesmanship because there is no filler and no by-product. They are by nature 100% grade ‘A” absolute and nothing you can do or say will keep them from their mission of pointing out the heinous lie of your heathen existence.

            Twenty years ago if a Jehovah’s Witness had come to my door I wouldn’t have been nearly as pleasant as I was to this man even to the point of asking him to wait while I poured myself a cup of coffee and made myself a couple of pieces of toast as I knew he would oblige.

            Twenty years ago I would have given any religious zealot the bum’s rush by yelling immediately something inflammatory like “FUCK YOU! I DON’T HAVE TIME FOR THIS SHIT!” punctuating the declamatory statement by slamming the door on his Sears catalogue ass.

            But having matured somewhat in the ensuing 20 years, letting my wife finish first would be the primary example and also by going gray and flabby both physically and philosophically, I decided to let this keeper of the flame chat me up and see if there was enough fodder in the next ten minutes for a blog on the subject.

            I am sure when most bourgeois, suburban habitués are confronted with this same scenario, they do what most polite society does after accepting the social contract, they smile and nod until it is over, take the literature, close the door, then call the beauty parlor to inform them that they are running 15 minutes late.

            Admittedly I have been dipping into a variety of philosophical tracts over the past 20 years. Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, Becker, Emerson. Cicero, Plutarch, mostly western minds of which I was one, and so I was eminently ready to battle the absolutist who had darkened my door.

            I pointed out to that it is not my job to believe because no matter how you define it or what you call it, it is all a mystery unless he happened to be God or the Ungod. By defining it in absolute terms, by putting a face on it or even calling it something by name, historically speaking bad things usually follow in the form of tremendous human carnage. I calmly told him that I’d rather just bask in the mystery. I was picked to be on the team. How I got here is none of my concern. It was dark for eternity before I was born, I have more or less 80 years to extract from life what I can with the chance that I’ve been given, only to be followed again by eternal darkness. That was all I absolutely knew until further notice.

            The Jews, Catholics, Protestants and Muslims all think they have the secret to the sauce. Any reasonable man knows that this cannot possibly be true. Religion is one of life’s great thumb twiddling, time killers. It is the ultimate dilly-dally and a perfect nightcap to a recherché lollygagger’s dalliance with his own self-importance.

            So how can you sir, standing in my doorway, know this too to be absolutely, positively true without somehow cutting yourself off from other possibilities in the infinite universe?

            It was probably at this point when the Fuller Brush Man for the Lord first realized that “I ain’t no bandleader!”, to quote Jack Walz speaking to Tom Hagen in The Godfather. I certainly had nowhere to go and could take as much time as needed to convince this man that I was not going down easily.

            I believe It was the first time in the history of attempted door-to-door conversion, that the proselytizer was the one that wanted to run for the hills. This nice man, with such initially high hopes, bid me adieu. I smiled and said goodbye then flashed on the next 5 minutes of my fantasy as the defeated hero of this little one acter chucks his briefcase and brochures into the lake, then shambles off to the nearest bar to commiserate with the rest of the poor souls until last call.

           

There’s The Door!…

“Our civilization is founded on the shambles and every individual existence goes out in a lonely spasm of helpless agony. If you protest, my friend, wait till you arrive there yourself.”

             William James

            

            How can anyone relax with that bit of moroseness hanging over his or her head is anyone's guess. Mr. James was no piker when it came to intellectual stamina, but you have to admit his sentiment is a bit on the downbeat side. Well my dears in case you haven’t noticed I have arrived there myself! 

            I just turned 60 and boy is my raison d’etre tired!

            For all of you god fearing and god smacking absolutists out there surfing in the viscous wake of the surface show, there comes a time when push comes to shove, everything is on the table and all bets are off, by this I mean a time when both of you pikers need to put up or get the fuck out!

What if there was a door and beyond this door was the meaning of life. All you had to do literally was open the door and you would know beyond a shadow of a doubt whether life had any inherent meaning or we were just farcical creatures standing on the edge of an abyss in clown shoes.

I have said this many times, mostly to myself, usually between 4 and 5 am, that Man erects hero systems to stave off the Jamesian “worm at the core”, the self-conscious knowledge that someday, no matter how hard he tries to the contrary, he will be no more.

But without hero systems life would be like space walking without a tether. Moorings provide Man with the ability to negotiate the vagaries of living in a remorseless cosmos. However, to find out that your hero system, the one so carefully constructed, proved meaningless is a very daunting proposition.

Would an evangelical so resolute in his absolutism risk finding out everything that represents him was a sham and that his life, his emotional energy regarding this life was based on faulty intelligence?

Would an avowed atheist walk through the door only to find out that there is in fact is a creator of eternal omniscient presence?

I say no! Both positions are absolute, which makes them vulnerable to cognitive dissonance. Both believers would bravely reach for the doorknob, turn it then freeze, realizing that by opening this door they are risking everything. What rational person would take the chance of losing the very thing that defines their worldview and in turn how they are viewed in the eyes of this world?

Hero systems are so hard to give up, as the true believer is so often willing to defend it with great prejudice. Hero systems are bulwarks against the other. These totems to meaning are erected and set in concrete for the express purpose of being steadfast and unmovable in a very unwieldy world.

This is the point and the problem, living with uncertainty. However, if you are somehow able to achieve equanimity living with uncertainty by building your hero system on its sandy base, when the topography shifts you are much better equipped to roll with it. So much of our trouble as a species is based on this. We are cursed with the knowledge of our own mortality. And for most of us it is too much to bear.

Man’s fate will always be tied to this immortality problem. In my view he is doomed because he can’t see the forest for the trees. Governments all over the world cobble reasons to be and most of them eventually result in the killing of their fellow man. This has been going on since man used the skulls of the conquered to pave his sidewalks. How arrogant and unconscionable is it to think that any hero system has the complete truth? Is it any wonder that murder has not abated since the first tool was invented? Are all 6.5 billion of us so special and individuated that we cannot find any common ground in which to play a friendly game of catch? Countries carry on as worlds unto themselves with complete disregard for the fate of the entire planet. Man knows deep down that he lives in finitude, but chooses instead to live under illusion. He willfully sullies the atmosphere, commits crimes against humanity and plays his sad animal games because somehow the immensity of being alive is not enough of a song for him to sing.

Why is Man so fond of predestination? Why is he always looking for a map? Many have tried to draw one with disastrous results. What about just being alive? What is so wrong with digging that action?

From the day we are born we are doomed to an unknown end. Why sweat it? The greatest thinkers, from Becker to Nietzsche, knew that the tenuousness of being alive was at its essence its greatest attribute. By admitting that our common finitude ultimately binds us can we only push forward as a planet, brothers in arms steering away from hero systems whose potential might perpetrate our extinction. Instead of preoccupying ourselves with over sentimental notions about what happens after we leave this world wouldn’t it be more prudent to address the problems of existence while we are alive? Governments then could exchange ideas in the hope of broadening understanding not just for their countries, but also for the fate of the Family of Man.

Living is the only miracle Man really needs to address. Think of what Man would accomplish if he were released from the tyranny of faith and absolutism and absolutely accepted that this might be all that there is and time for making hay and love is limited? Life would be more precious if we accepted our eventual demise and viewed it as an incredible opportunity to bask in its glorious albeit evanescent glow? Yes, yes I say! Man’s spirit of inquiry, his desire to create screams one thousand fold “yes!” to being alive.

Each day is a gift to make something out of nothing. Write a story, play an instrument, expand. We are a culture that is in such desperate need to be entertained, enveloped in the white noise of 24-hour blather. We are content to smother under the cult of personality. We seem to only take interest in the vacuity of the lives of others and don’t seem to have any interest in uplifting our own. The question is not whether or not life has any meaning. This is unknowable. The question is what are you going to do with the life you have. You have been invited to the party. That is enough. Why stand on the sidelines watching when you could be dancing with the hottest carbon based life form in the universe?

Doing Meaningful Boudoir Photography In The Age of Pornography

             How does the fine art photographer who plies his skills photographing the nude compete in this overly saturated world of sexually explicit imagery and still stay on an artistic path? How does the onslaught of pornographic images temper the vision of the fine art nude photographer? What options does this leave the artist who has shunned the slick patina of the obvious to pursue a loftier more immersive artistic experience?

            This is the great problem today for any serious artist who works with the human form.

            With its imprimatur on everything from network TV and cable, to the sex tapes of D-listers desperate to steady a sinking ship Pornography is certainly mainstream. Ever since it appeared out from under the counter of your local convenience store and onto the World Wide Web, you’d be hard pressed surfing in its viscous wake without ever coming across the lubricious acrobatics performed by the infamous pincushions who call it home. For the Internet caters to every original taste and sicko craving that has ever been remanded to the darkest corners of man’s consciousness. Log on for ten minutes and you will find a virtual bouillabaisse of every warped morsel of human perversity a mind can ever possibly conjure.

            It is there you’ll find the freshly spanked and shaven hordes, the ass worshippers, the stomata humpers, the insertion freaks, the body fluid sommeliers, the busty, midget cock riders, the out of control, anal grannies, and the rest of the cast of fudge slurping, load bearing, urine gargling gutter jockeys, denizens of a miasma of such depth and breadth that it would be refused admission into Dante’s Inferno so recherché is the nutty finish. Pornography is so pervasive that it has become the new lingua franca. And if you don’t believe me then I’m not your typical red blooded, all-American, diaper wearing, binky sucking, foot fetishist. Even as I write, it is raining harder than a bukkake film directed by John Woo.

            Tough competition…

            This question is a conundrum to be sure, but by no means insurmountable.

            First, the artist has to ask himself a few basic questions. What are my goals in photographing the nude? What am I trying to say about the naked body? Is my artistic vision about nudity current or contrary to the prevailing zeitgeist? Am I making a new statement or am I just a garden-variety pornographer trying to elicit an easy reaction?

            These are all valid considerations, but for me the answer is always an existential one, that is, all I can absolutely do is try to define the meaning of my existence through the relationships I have with people. As an artist do I look beyond the façade and try to fuse desire along with a deeper sense of humanity?

            In the case of the photographic artist it is the belief that human flesh is only a pleasurable adjunct to the human experience and is never a complete portrait without the inclusion all of its encompassing modes. By incorporating this modus into the act of making art only then can the artist create a work worthy of the inscrutable. It is the obligation and duty of the artist to render a full portrait of the sitter, which balances on a fulcrum the ephemeral with the inevitable and with it the truly erotic can have purchase. This is only achieved if the artist is a thoughtful one and willing to sacrifice the worship of artifice for one of infinite dimensionality.

When Daily Life Intrudes

            If you have an artist’s mentality then you know how tough it can be administering to the commercial exigencies of daily life. Paying the bills, fighting bureaucratic red tape or even scheduling an appointment for a car inspection is looked at with virulent indifference by the artist each task designed to smash the spirit and reduce the recipient to the level of an easily replaced cog. 

            Artists are skewed emotionally to the creative side of existence and every waking moment is another opportunity to reinterpret the hell that is daily life. A great paradox to be sure, but a necessary one lest the commercial treacle ooze over reality like a warm baker’s glaze. This is a very difficult position to be in because financial remuneration is not commensurate to the power of the impulse. The culture does not venerate the artist’s insight, but would rather see it sublimated into something that furthers the goals of the culture namely individuated assimilation.

            Daily Life is the Jones Crusher, the great equalizer, the matrix, the wool, the hypnotic eye, and the grand illusion. Daily life controls “the vertical and horizontal.” It is the mob boss: “Don’t you get it you prick? You got a home, car, businesses, family and I own the paper on your whole fuckin’ life!”  It is an over the top haymaker out of nowhere that stops its victims cold in their tracks...and that is almost everybody you run into once you leave the house in the morning.

            Daily life is the errand that can never be run.

            Yet somehow through all of its grinding machinations we convince ourselves of its inherent heroic nature. By doing what a man is has to do, we have symbolically hedged our bet and now live a life through culturally sanctioned fiat that is recognizable to everyone in our constituency.

            Sounds pretty awful to me, but what do I know, I’m a chronic dyspeptic of the highest order. I can’t think of anything worse than following that map. The map knows where you are at all times even if you are a piece of shit. (“You are here” declares the map of the human digestive system.) I know it seems defeatist my claim that anyone who participates as a good citizen in the culture could not possibly have a fulfilled life, but I assure you that it is true otherwise there wouldn’t be such a thing as a comic con.

           

            It is the narrowing down, the fetishization, the cutting off from experience that bolsters this assertion. Living life as a one trick pony eventually becomes rote and predictable. Life is like a well-rounded relationship, a little throw down, a little romance and everything in between. I mean if you can’t describe your lover to a police sketch artist, you’re probably doing it doggy style way too much.

          This is why the artist in a commercial culture is so important. When daily life intrudes the artist becomes the weather vane revealing the true direction of the wind. Without the artist the prevailing winds never change course. They do what they always do…they blow!

When Daily Life Intrudes
Jeff Schneider 1998

America’s Got Syphilis!

             “Of all the reality shows currently on the air this one debuts to a 50 rating and an 80 share…guaranteed or I’m a monkey’s uncle!” chirped the president of the Dirty O Network B.S. Walks. “This is the perfect storm. What could be better than a reality show that is an amalgamation of every reality show of the past 15 years all wrapped up in a weekly spectacular?”

            “America’s Got Syphilis has everything a reality show junkie craves,” Walks declared between bites of baby seal…”midgets, cunty housewives, ornery drunks, sub mental lowlifes, rancid, smelly hoarders, hairless gigolos, unsuspecting expectant mothers, jellyroll magnates, horny talent-less rappers, sassy domestics, surgically augmented narcissists. This will be the crowning achievement in reality programming or my balls will be in the wastebasket come Monday morning. Either way my epitaph has been written.

            This show will be a Roman rodeo with of all of the busted out, hair brained Americans (America’s biggest growth industry) who ever had the demented delusion that by being on television they would somehow be spared from their ignominious destinies. These true American freaks fight to the finish for the ultimate prize, any sign that their lives might have meaning, a tiny trophy, a small check perhaps or something even as little as when the tip of the thumb and the tip of the index finger meet forming the universal sign for OK.

Sir Alex Fraser Tyler: (1742-1813) Scottish jurist and historian’s 9 stages of civilization

1. bondage to spiritual faith

2. spiritual faith to great courage

3. courage to liberty

4. liberty to abundance

5. abundance to selfishness

6. selfishness to complacency

7. complacency to apathy

8. apathy to dependence

9. dependency back again into bondage

            Modern historians peg us at stage 7 (complacency to apathy). As a consumer society you can see how this might be true. From Plymouth Rock to the Revolution all the way through WW2 America ascended and triumphed against it’s foes from the real to the imaginary (the British, Japanese and Germany on the real side…Native Americans, North Korea, Iraq and the environment on the imagined side) Stage 5: the 50s: rampant consumerism, personal homestead fetishism, when death arrives “whoever has the most toys wins” sentiment…Stage 6:  60’s idealism quashed by corporate interests, bank law deregulation, focus on business and profit, vast, trapped middle management armies seeking relief from corporate Big Brother tyranny…disco, cocaine up the wazoo straight through the 80s, followed by corporate downsizing, shrinkage of the middle class, government subsidies for the arts attacked by government controlled big business and fringe groups, the arts finally remaindered or eliminated from school curriculums under the guise of fiscal responsibility. Stage 7: Public opinion completely manufactured and controlled by corporately controlled media and corporately controlled political process. Constituency hypnotized then yoked to state of the art technology...

                                               It ain't no myst'ry

                                               If it's politics or his'try

                                               The thing you gotta know is

                                               Ev'rything is show biz

                                               Adolph Hitler in Mel Brooks’ The Producers

                                               

            If politicians believe in their own manufactured beliefs about democracy how can we proceed from there? The belief in the illusion is integral to the success of the show. Once the show is accepted as reality…Don Delillo's White Noise comes true!

           Sorry America that’s the diagnosis. I don’t think we need a second opinion! Stage 8: apathy to dependence, is it here…now? Are we dependent on the superstructure as culture for all of our entertainment and opinions? The superstructure is always remodeling its citizens to mirror the whims of the superstructure. 

         Stay tuned after America’s Got Syphilis for a new reality show about a man whose passion is his work and his work is his passion…Dr. Levine Master Gynecologist!

Riffing Into The Abyss

             If you really want to teach your children about the human digestive system and you are willing to go the extra mile then there’s nothing more educational than a road trip to New York City by way of the Lincoln Tunnel. In fact, it is so demonstrably reminiscent of the human digestive system that the chapter dedicated to it in any boilerplate public school science book could be summarily scotched so definitive is the experience it is almost not metaphorical.

            Having accessed New York City via the Lincoln Tunnel then you know exactly what I mean…28 hours to travel 15 feet, bumper-to-bumper, winding, winding, winding down through the lower colon of New Jersey into the alimentary canal that is the Lincoln Tunnel out to your final destination.

            As a true story it is probably not. As a symbol of modern life well…

            I cannot tell you how many times I’ve felt like a piece of shit in relation to the rest of the culture. It is not a self-esteem issue as mine has been buffed into high relief. This is a hearing problem. The culture can see my lips moving, but can’t hear a goddamn thing I’m saying because everybody is talking at the same time! No one shuts up…ever!!!  Forget about listening, that would require a spirit of inquiry. That notion died ever since WW 2 ended and the cities expanded outward to accommodate the newly minted heathen hordes.

            “The spread of slums, the hyper growth and congestion of manufacturing cities, the noise and stench of the industrial process, debased urban life all over the western world and led to a great yearning for escape … in America, with its superabundance of cheap land, simple poverty laws, social mobility, mania for profit, zest for practical invention and bible drunk sense of history, the yearning to escape industrialism expressed itself as a renewed search for Eden. America reinvented that paradise described so briefly and vaguely in the book of Genesis, called it suburbia and put it up for sale.”                                                                    

                                                                                    James Howard Kunstler

              

            My name is Jeff Schneider and I am a suburbanite. The suburban concept is something I could never get my head around. Weeding, feeding, the will to kill for horticulture perfection…

Once Harold’s lawn was perfect he began getting invited to the toniest parties in the subdivision.

            Lawn care is a recent invention in this country probably within the last 100 years or so picking up steam right after the post WW 2 liberation of the masses. The creation of suburbia, promoted by the advertising industry (Dupont’s slogan "Better things through better living...through chemistry") created a naïve trust in the benefits of chemicals, fomenting an American obsession for the perfect lawn.  Prior to that most people in America lived on farms where a kinship to wilderness and the natural world was a dominant force.
 

            Suburbia was the great leveler of experience. Once ensconced the motivation now became; how do I blend in? After all of the flavor had been removed from daily life, the suburbanite was malleable to any sales pitch Madison Avenue could conjure. You have a suburbanite champing at the bit for assimilation, an advertising industry that knows this, tethered in to the constantly changing and seductive properties of new technology and the takeover is complete.

            The Walkman is the forerunner of the smart phone as it was the first early technology able to wall off the individual from all stimuli outside of the musical experience. Fast-forward 30 years and now I witness families, groups of men and women seemingly out for the evening together staring at their smart phones. Instead of sharing in the common experience of being alive in the cosmos or even looking up into the heavens where the real show is, life for them has been reduced to a 4-inch screen.

            Before smart phones you had dick going on! Now your dance card is always filled! Hobos are texting hobos about some hot new dumpster. Your girlfriend is texting her girlfriends that you are shit in the sack…while you are fucking your girlfriend!

            I am writing this diatribe knowing full well that is will probably never be read by another soul and that includes my mother. She’s too busy promoting her own website Bubbies Schtupping Boychicks to give a rat’s ass what I’m up to.

Happy Time!

              The happiest time in a man’s life, and I would put this question to any man if he was honest with himself, is the time between conception and birth. Three hots and cot…eating and sleeping 24 hours a day…life is a perpetual lazy summer’s day. However, once expulsed from paradise all bets are off. Now people are telling you what to do, where to go, how to act. In some cases who to kill…Pushed and prodded in directions that to most would seem insane man eventually settles in and hunkers down for the long, slow fade to oblivion.

            The greatest pessimist in history was one Latimore Bivens DeGroot upon the moment of his birth took one look around then proceeded to claw his way back up into his former residence never to be heard from again! Extreme perhaps, but none-the-less a sober reaction to an insane situation.

            The powers that be are called just that because without their power they would not be. Without being they have no power so they do whatever it takes to maintain power and revels in the fact that the masses spends every waking hour currying its favor, either by promoting the power structure or willfully bowing in front of it. There is no in between.

            Baby Latimore did the only thing a reasonable man would do in his situation, yet most of us do not have this fore thought and instead will take our chances that the culture has our best interests at heart. It is rare for our best interests and the culture’s best interests to gibe in any meaningful way. The culture is selfish and defines itself in purely narcissistic ways. In order for this machine to run smoothly we need likeminded operators. The machine cannot be efficient if there are too many savage minded citizens.

            What about these “others” who receive no sustenance from the culture as it stands? Where do they go to find nourishment? This is a tough question. It seems that the culture in a Darwinian sense would just as soon let these contrarians go by the way of the buggy whip. By this I mean eventually not be naturally selected. Life would run smoother with less irritation if the bane of the culture’s existence no longer were to be.

            The poet, the painter and the mad man your services are no longer required. Politicians, clergymen and the talking heads are now the litmus to which all commercial thought is measured against. These are the beacons that illuminate the surface.

            There hasn’t been any real news for a very long time. What has taken its place is a seamless, translucent reality. It looks like reality, but is missing one very important ingredient, none of the bitter aftertaste. It’s the bitter aftertaste that makes us and keeps us human and moored.

          For those you who refuse to get with the program learning to tread in the schmaltz of modern culture might be your only way to survive.

          However, if you happen to be a spineless yes man we would only be too happy to have you fill out an application. 

What An Ass!

It is only when we place God at the End not at the Beginning, that the Universe falls into order. God is an Unutterable Sigh in the Human Heart, said the old German Mystic, and therewith said the last word.

                                                                                                                         
                                                                          Havelock Ellis

            Today I am going to revisit a position that is Kryptonite to the theological world. The mere thought of it will propel most of you to investigate securing the greasy talents of some malodorous shyster in an attempt to set a new precedent in personal  injury law by suing the pants off me for the willful destruction of a hero system, from this point on referred to as Schneider v. Texas. The statement to follow is a shotgun blast, a blunt force trauma and an anal Rolfing not seen since Darwin cold cocked the world in 1859. As an idea it is pure emetic causing the hardest, stone cold killer to tremble behind his cellmate’s leather slip, the priestiest priest to chuck his collar into the baptismal pond and even the most wild-eyed Jihadist to put down his strontium 90. This manifesto smashes your house of cards, plunges a dagger into the back of your most sacred cow…and pierces the corporate hymen of your most decrepit existence. And I’m not even going to charge you a cover.

              Life has no meaning Bitch! That’s right I’m calling YOU a bitch Mr. And Mrs. Citizen of the world. Deep down you know that the animal games you play everyday are a lie; a vital one to be sure that keeps you from committing a deservedly ignominious seppuku. Life basically consists of a series of thumb twiddling time killers designed with our complicit consent. We embrace this vital lie with the fervor of country music fans and staunchly rise up to fend off the heathens who don’t. You can bet your last Viagra I’ll be keeping a roscoe under my pillow when this thing hits the streets. 

              How do I know this considering I would have to be God himself or the UnGod or or worse yet some crazed absolutist? And even if I was God and knew that life had no meaning then I wouldn’t exist, but would instead spend my days playing that lovable bystander in the proverbial one act-er about man’s historical inability to get out of the way of his own way. Well, I am not God. I can’t even get a blowjob from my wife and I’m in a fairly convincing tax bracket, but to say that life has absolute meaning is as untenable as saying it doesn’t. This is a very arrogant position because the meaning of life is ultimately unknowable, just as declaring it an empty vessel is the same, but it is only from this position that I can possibly take solace.

              For you see my lumpen liars it is my contention that the true believers take no risk. They are steadfast and unbending. Their hero systems are constructed on the strongest foundations that never waver. Their faith is absolute. This is where it becomes tricky. You can’t have faith without doubt. That is what faith is. Remove doubt and you have a lethal cocktail for murder as Nietzsche pointed out. Heads will eventually roll. Life for the true believer is a luge run narrow and true. He knows his life is scripted and that it will never veer so why try in any meaningful way? He knows he’ll be covered on the backside when his maker rewards him with a front row seat because he believed. Considering how many bags of pork rinds and Lazyboys are sold in this country do you question the veracity of my premise?

            However, Man still wages war to conquer reason. He craves meaning and constructs it like there’s no tomorrow, but the denial of his own mortality is the wheel that gets the most grease. By denying his animal existence Man props himself up against this bulwark with mendacity designed to masquerade the fact that he is really nothing more than a rutting fornicator, though I have to admit the receiver of his ministrations wear some pretty hot Manolo Blahnik stilettos sometimes. Man, those shoes are hot, but that’s not really the point here or is it? So Man pretends he is better than the dog in the street and uses every waking moment to deny his mortality, creating totems to greatness that ever eludes his grasp. The worm of corporal oblivion always rides herd over his meager talents. What an Ass! Man’s great task is to create meaning out of his meaningless condition. See hot shoes above. Could it be in Man’s masterfully ingenious way stiletto heals are just another way of denying our animal nature, the disguising of the hoof so to speak? Tabitha Stevens’s a nom de porn if there ever was one had the death defying idea to update the corona around the egress of her alimentary canal.

            Apparently it had fallen to disrepair or it was looking a little long in the tooth I’m not sure which, but Miss Stevens decided to seek some youthful remedy and was willing to use a bleach to vivify the region. The procedure, which must be repeated daily and is accompanied by a burning sensation, registers over 10,000 on the Scoville meter. The bleach claims to remove years from the aging embouchure leaving a more youthful appearance and hopefully landing her those coveted anal roles she’s been losing to younger assholes. If the appearance of your bilge annoys you so goddamn much Miss Stevens I’m sure you can find a couple of chowder heads in the business you’re in to detail it for you once a month. What kind of death denial do you have to be in to bleach your asshole? You kraythee!…You nuth!…We are all born between piss and shit for crying our loud.

            Even as I write millions of planets are cratering, billions of stars are becoming black holes, natural disasters are killing thousands, ethnic cleansers are cleansing, pro lifers are making bombs, Klansmen are preparing crosses, jug headed Browns fans are barking, The Sudan is liquidating, breasts are being implanted, graffiti is being sprayed and steroids are being abused. From all the psychotic rituals for the dead to the 10,000 practicing religions around the world everything, I say everything is a palliative for the ultimate joke. Say it loud and say it proud. Reality has no remorse! Get used to it! It’s a City Hall no son of an unwed dog can fight.

            Something is holy to everybody as Paul Tillich once observed.  It is the choice of what is holy that needs condemning or maybe we should ask what is the best illusion to live under. How does it feel to be alive in the cosmos now?

            Can any religion have the truth, absolutely? Absolute faith is the most disturbing oxymoron of our time. (Both former president Bush and Osama Bin laden made faith based policy decisions all the time too.) How can any orthodoxy preside over another with the authority of absolute infallibility? How egotistical is it to assume your sad little prescription for immortality is divine and not the caterwauling of a madman. Man pursues his absolutes with the determination of a telemarketer on amphetamines. He forces meaning upon life because the prospect of living in a meaningless universe is too much to bear.  So he narrows down and lives life in the most manageable of bites. I’m talking to you, you, the useless chooch with the remote control over there. I don’t want to get all warm and fuzzy about this meaningless thing, but if you want I’ll write a snappy theme song for it right now muthafucka!  Just try me. It’ll go down easier that way. That’s what you want. Don’t worry it’ll be bouncy too with funny lyrics like everything else in your black and white world.

            I prefer to think that life has no meaning because life itself is such a mystery that to departmentalize it into some kind of controllable twaddle is to rob it of its one great dimension, the very mystery itself. It is the mystery that provides the awe to achieve greatness and not some phalanx of inchoate doctrines that hammers its constituency into pusillanimous sycophants. By not tethering to dogma and a doctrinaire worldview everything is up for grabs and life unfolds in all of the possibilities creating a much richer bounty. I want to live a life that is not cut off from experience.

              So to sum it up: You can either cure aids or sit on the stoop waiting for the grim reaper to bring you your last case of Iron City beer. It’s up to you. As Ernest Becker announced “The most any of us can seem to do is to fashion something-an object or ourselves-and drop it into the confusion, make an offering of it, so to speak, to the life force.” So go home and get to work. Write a symphony or some really clever dirty limericks. Invent something useful like a home retracting stripper pole or a bean dip server molded from the vagina of Paris Hilton. I don’t care what it is just give me a third dimension, that’s all I ask. But to sit around worrying about some afterlife with harp music and bad paneling, I’d rather take 40,000 volts any old day.

            Well, that’s it baby! What did I tell you…all laid out like the lox at Sol’s delicatessen. You are standing on the edge of the abyss in clown shoes. Enjoy! Ladies and Gentlemen, will you welcome the Big Bupkis!  Mr. Nothingness to you…a man who needs no further introduction…Oblivion.

           

            And just what exactly is my immortality project you ask? You’ve just read it.