THIS IS NOT A TEST (1 Viewer)

I just realized that the individual article pages I've been sending everyone to since I started the thing didn't have the audio file play/download widget on them. Only the main page of the blog was showing those. How the hell did I miss that? I'm like a rookie over here.

Anyway, now if you follow an individual episode link the player widget will be there.

I can only imagine that some people clicked on a Twitter or G+ or Facebook link before now and thought, "Is this a blog? I don't see any podcast file..." I'm sure most people figured it out (obviously you guys did), but I still fucked that up. What the hell?
 
I thought I'd link to this week's episode because I was drunk when I recorded it, and this is the Bukowski forum and everyone knows all he was was a drunk.

Anyway, you can listen to this and get a taste of what it's like to try to have a conversation with me when I've had a few cocktails. Whiny, slurring, belligerent. Well, I'm always whiny and belligerent, but you get the gist.

http://thisisnotatest.com/this-is-not-a-test-16-whats-in-a-name
 
I haven't really talked about this much around here, but I don't know why. So here it is. It's a podcast. Get with it. They're all the rage.

God bless our troops - THIS IS NOT A TEST #19

You may also hear me talking about office chairs, Malcolm Gladwell, technical people not being great communicators, baking pies, fundamentalism, the death of white America, dinosaurs, carbon, Rodney King, living in a cave in the desert, heads on pikes, Mad Max, Goethe and Mozart.

http://thisisnotatest.com/god-bless-our-troops-this-is-not-a-test-19

Subscribe, yo!

this-is-number-19.jpg
 
Some more good stuff. The idea that long-term employment is a possible deterrent to a better gig is a really scary thought.
Jobs, like people who work them, are just more fodder for the consumer machine. I've been in the same gig for 7 years and I'm like a dinosaur there.
 
It was a shocking thing for me, seeing so many young people's resumes and the way they work, a year here, a year there. But it's pretty common now. It got to the point where a long stint at one company was surprising to see, and I'd ask them about it.

The idea of working for a company for 25 or 30 years and then retiring is antiquated. Not just because the kids don't want to do that, but because it's increasingly rare that a company will keep you for that long. Or can keep you for that long, what with every company being sold to a bigger company every five years.

One of the last episodes of Parks and Recreation had a funny TV ad in it (the episode was supposedly taking place in the near future), the company's tag line was, "Proud to be one of America's four companies!" And that's probably going to be true sooner than later.
 
The bumper stickers thing, you think; okay they're showing their support for family members in the military or just generally, but there is the subtext of sabre rattling/moral superiority propaganda that seems innocuous, but ends up getting more troops killed. Conflict will never go away but we should have learned by now how not to escalate it and contain the warmongering elements - the people/politicians safely away from the conflict.
 
They don't really support our troops. They support the killing of brown people. If we invaded England, Ireland, Italy... they would NOT support them. They don't support our Muslim or Atheist troops enough to let them worship their god or NOT worship a god. They have no problems with their Jesus being forcibly shoved down the throats of troops that do not want to worship Jesus. They do not support our mentally ill troops that return home. Mostly, as Michael Moore said, they do NOT support our troops because they keep sending them off to die to make the rich owners of defense companies (like that dick, Cheney) richer and richer. Being used as cannon fodder to make the 1% even richer is NOT supporting the troops and anyone supporting THOSE missions is doing anything EXCEPT supporting them. Supporting our troops would be supporting Ron Kovic as much as you support Chris Kyle.

Support is more than a faded and weather-worn bumper sticker.
 
Hey man. Some interesting thoughts, especially about how maybe us humans aren't all that.

But sometimes I think hey, we're great...I mean we ARE great as a species it's just pretty much everything is built around promoting self-hatred and insecurity so we buy more stuff. And even the people put in pedestals (like Lennon/Cobain/Morrison or uh...Bukowski) well it's done in a way like 'here's some great guys way better than us because we suck'....not saying those guys AREN'T better than regular people but it'd be healthier if we all felt like we were great in our own ways cos every human has the capacity to be great, and even a low-achiever can have great things in them....sense of humour, stories to tell, perspectives.

And the idea of us all being disconnected for sure is true. I mean....I don't know, the idea that we don't relate to one another...that part really saddens me...and all this sitting around in front of screens. I don't think things are going in a good direction. But I wish I could find all the gloom about the state of the world more exciting, cos when I go out of the house it seems just a lot of people walking around plugged in and distracted, and then I hate myself cos I'm not really 'above' that or a part of it either...just a pair of damn eyes.

I don't know a lot about jobs in America (being an expat in self-imposed exile from the UK) but the way I see it if you can work without it destroying your energy and motivation/passion outside of that then there's no problem. I don't know how I'll feel in 5 or 10 years though.
 
bospress.net said:
Supporting our troops would be supporting Ron Kovic as much as you support Chris Kyle.
Click to expand...
I always wanted to make a bumper sticker that said:

SUPPORT OUR TROOPS
By bringing them home​

Patriotism, racism and xenophobia aren't going anywhere (and they are all intertwined). But it is interesting to watch those things disappear when people get to know each other personally.

We could all get along. Most of us anyway.

Ewok said:
every human has the capacity to be great...
Click to expand...
No they don't. That idea is flawed because it discounts or ignores the fact that some people have natural abilities that others don't have. Everything isn't learned. You can't teach someone to be Mozart. Natural abilities aside, most "great" people have had to rise above their particular circumstances, and everyone can't do that.

Especially in a system or a country that oppresses people based on color or gender or some other arbitrary way that you happen to be different from a white man. And those types of systems are all over the place, not just here in America or Europe. Just replace "white man" with whoever is in power wherever you are at the moment.

Everyone has the right to be great, but few have the opportunity. Not for nothing, but people who maintain that "everyone can be great" are usually people of social or economic privilege, and they are usually the same ones saying, "It's their fault they are poor," or in jail or dead on the street in Baltimore or Los Angeles. Whoever "they" happen to be.

On the flip side of that coin, some people are also born "bad," they aren't bad because of upbringing or circumstances, they are just naturally bad. Whatever it is in your brain that makes you bad, they have it. I didn't always believe that, but it seems to be true. Someone with that kind of brain will never be "great." A great dictator or murderer maybe. But not great in the way that you're getting at.
 
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mjp said:
I always wanted to make a bumper sticker that said:
SUPPORT OUR TROOPS
By bringing them home​
Patriotism, racism and xenophobia aren't going anywhere (and they are all intertwined). But it is interesting to watch those things disappear when people get to know each other personally.
Click to expand...

"and that's how you're hard core commie works Mandrake" :wb:
Yes they do disappear; but not for long, there is a quote attributed to Gandhi (who else) about tyrants and murderers that they will always eventually fail and it's true, humanity does overcome them, but it repeats again and again.
We need to get better at keeping them out of positions of influence/decision making. Or else we are stuck with Dr Strangelove and General Jack D Ripper types constantly, it's just the "enemy" that changes:

 
Didn't Buk say that the death of conversation began when they started putting TVs in bars?

For my money, conversation is hard to come by these days because those holding the extreme positions on any issue insist on starting the conversation (say, while waiting to check out at a grovcery store or the post office). Usually they're really subtle...like:

"Jesus, can you believe this goddamned line! I blame Obama!"
"What do you mean my coupon is expired?! You, and your corporate-fascist regime are as fake as the moon landing!"

At my office the other day I about came uncorked when I overheard a sherriff say: "Only one race riots."
I wanted to say; "You mean the human race? Or do you mean "riots" as in riots and not, for instance, like burning their city to the ground when their team wins the Stanley Cup?"

But the thought of starting a conversation with that guy exhausts and terrifies me. It seems that the curious, reasonable, fair-minded, and genuinely engaged people don't pipe up with their horseshit notions (not that they don't have them too).

So we're left, instead, to wade through a world of loud-mouthed cranks trying to sell ads and the echo-chamber-drones who spout their talking points.
 
mjp said:
I'm talking about on a personal level, which is all that matters. Politics and politicians and generals don't change people, it's the other way around.
Click to expand...

Yes, it is all that matters, but the understanding that we are much the same, often conflicts with our tribalism (local, national) which politicians exploit. We are constantly manipulated by politicians and generals with their own agendas - to sell a war or conflict and it's done covertly and overtly.

: “Did you ever stop to wonder,” Rendon asked, “how the people of Kuwait City, after being held hostage for seven long and painful months, were able to get hand-held American, and for that matter, the flags of other coalition countries?” He paused for effect. “Well, you now know the answer. That was one of my jobs then.”

... Public relations firms often do their work behind the scenes....But his description of himself as a “perception manager” echoes the language of Pentagon planners, who define “perception management” as “actions to convey and (or) deny selected information and indicators to foreign audiences to influence their emotions, motives, and objective reasoning. ... In various ways, perception management combines truth projection, operations security, cover, and deception, and psyops [psychological operations].”

— Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber, How To Sell a War, In These Times, 4

Truth projection- sounds like it came straight out of Orwell's Politics and The English Language.It's this kind of age old, cunning manipulation that's more worrying than bumper stickers, but all part of the same package.
 
Hosh,

The Sheriff was was wrong (and if you recorded him, he would be an ex-sheriff). Only one rage riots for a decent reason. I don't like violence, BUT, when you have no way to get justice withing the rigged system, emotions bubble over. As they say "No Justice, No Peace." It is the only way that the powers in charge seem to listen to those without a political voice (and the money behind it.)

Unlike OTHER races who riot to celebrate AND protest losses of sport teams and other meaningless bullshit.
 
Community policing, at least in urban centers where "they" live, seems to be a thing of the past. The rise of the police as a paramilitary organization is to me one of the saddest facts of the last decade or so. They function now as a defacto National Guard, and cause the very tension they're tasked with diffusing.
I lived near the corner of San Vicente and La Brea in the early 90's and remember well the APC's and National Guard troops in Hollywood and South Central after the riots. Now, cops have military vehicles and gear and very little oversight.Very fucked up in my view.
 
mjp said:
That idea is flawed because it discounts or ignores the fact that some people have natural abilities that others don't have. Everything isn't learned. You can't teach someone to be Mozart. Natural abilities aside, most "great" people have had to rise above their particular circumstances, and everyone can't do that.

Especially in a system or a country that oppresses people based on color or gender or some other arbitrary way that you happen to be different from a white man. And those types of systems are all over the place, not just here in America or Europe. Just replace "white man" with whoever is in power wherever you are at the moment.

Everyone has the right to be great, but few have the opportunity. Not for nothing, but people who maintain that "everyone can be great" are usually people of social or economic privilege, and they are usually the same ones saying, "It's their fault they are poor," or in jail or dead on the street in Baltimore or Los Angeles. Whoever "they" happen to be.

On the flip side of that coin, some people are also born "bad," they aren't bad because of upbringing or circumstances, they are just naturally bad. Whatever it is in your brain that makes you bad, they have it. I didn't always believe that, but it seems to be true. Someone with that kind of brain will never be "great." A great dictator or murderer maybe. But not great in the way that you're getting at.
Click to expand...
I think you're right actually....having thought about this some more I don't think 'greatness' is natural talent either though. The pattern I see emerging with many great people is a kind of psychotic drive which develops an almost inhuman talent though it's also a bi-product of insecurity/self-hatred/isolation.

That for me works for the more intense 'disturbed' artists as well as the clean cut ones.

Then again you can't really train to rap like Eminem for example. There is, thankfully, some magic involved - some human magic, which is good. Because otherwise life would be pretty dull.

I've not really thought of people born 'bad'....I tend to think most people want to think of themselves as good and create frameworks to support that.
 
Ewok said:
The pattern I see emerging with many great people is a kind of psychotic drive which develops an almost inhuman talent...
Click to expand...
Drive and ambition can create success, but they can't create talent.

I've seen people use The Beatles as an example of Malcolm Gladwell's "10,000 hours of practice" theory from Outliers. "See there, it's proof! All of those hours and weeks and months spent playing in Hamburg made them great!" But for every one of those hours and weeks and months that The Beatles spent in Hamburg honing their chops, Pete Best was their drummer. All that time didn't really help him, did it.

Talent is either there or it isn't. You can nurture it and develop it and exercise it, but you can't create it or instill it in someone who doesn't have it.
 
A Passport and a Clean Pair of Socks – THIS IS NOT A TEST #20

You really deserve a gripping, original podcast every week. One where I'm rhapsodizing about something I love but that you just don't understand, or me frothing at the mouth over (a perceived) grievous social injustice. That's what you deserve, but this week I'm going to read you a bit of a book I'm working on instead.

The book is called A Passport and a Clean Pair of Socks, and it's about being in a band. Sort of. It's a lot like this podcast: a central theme that I can't stick to. But variety is the spice of life, amigos. Never forget that.

http://thisisnotatest.com/a-passport-and-a-clean-pair-of-socks-this-is-not-a-test-20

Subscribe, yo!

this-is-number-20.jpg


(It occurred to me after this was finished that I didn't exactly pick the most compelling part of the book to read, but that's the way it goes. It's too late to do anything about it now.)
 
Just the one? Well, as long as you don't skip a week because we are kind of getting used to our weekly dose. See what you've done?
 
The weekly schedule has turned out to be more...demanding than I anticipated, but If I didn't have a schedule and a deadline it would probably come out every 12 or 14 (or 20) weeks.

And you see what consistency has done? It's made you dependent on my tawdry dog and pony entertainment! You're now putty in my hands. Putty I say!
 
See, maybe weekly is too much. Carol is further behind than that, and she's practically obligated to listen to them. ;)
 
the book excerpt was really good!

hang in there finishing it, it's worth it.
 
Yes, don't give up on that. That's a rich mine for picking. Picking? touche!

Writing often seems to work on different levels, commenting on or communicating the process while telling a story. It seems an inadvertant outcome and mysterious.
 
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