All is perfect in this 6th Dimension

During the iron age
there were no cerebral inhibitions
there were no violent offenders
living was risking
resilience was simply surviving
you relied on intimidation
or choking the life out of someone
or something.

It is so much, much better
in this modern age
hours are spent not scratching the soil
with a pointed stick.
Instead we are enthralled
by the ghostly glow
of plasma screens in darkened rooms
locked in the ruthless embrace of distant others

All is perfect in this 6th Dimension.
Everything is better when it's transistional.
A YouTube video of a Welsh Corgi chasing
a soccer ball in the snow
is more important
more enhanced and extroverted
than the sighs of the homeless man
searching my trash for soda bottles
and un-used food.

Is this as it should be?
I don't really care.
This is what it is.
What is now will always be
more important
than what was,
or what might happen
or what should be.

Capitano Tedeschi

30

All is perfect in this 6th Dimension Copyright Oct. 27, 2011 by Jamie Jacks
P.S. I have not abandoned this blog

The Concrete Crick

I am a city boy and care little
for the natural world
but I can not ignore what

Granny on the Beverley Hillbillies

would have called it "The concrete crick."

A 30-year-old Koi pond expanded by

An artificial creek.

A concrete trough with embedded stones

Unnatural nature

The sound of rushing water

and the whir of electric pumps

fill the air

life thrives somehow

Pilgrims arrive

dust from the air
became silt that covers
the concrete bed
like milk chocolate

tadpoles swim nervously

fluttering over crayfish that

slowly move the silt

like grumpy old men puttering

in their underwater gardens

How did the crawdads get here? I ask myself

I don't know.

The frogs, I assumed, hopped.

The Koi were purchased from a pet store.
The turtle must have walked from
the bed of the Kern River
three quarteers of a mile away.

I am a city boy and care little
for the natural world
but since I saw the crawdads
I started watching the concrete crick
like it was streaming video.

I surf the web for info on crayfish and tadpoles.
As I watched the crayfish devour carrion,
I've started wondering about reincarnation
I've eaten lobster.
Lobsters and crawdads are arthropods
These are deep thoughts
I hate deep thinking.

The great wheel of life keeps turning.
In life one you eat an arthropod
in the next life an arthropod eats you
Some day a crawdad might feed on me
Karmically it might happen
but probably not

A butterfly lands on a
dessicated stalk of a day lillyI start to wonder
how did an insect become a kite?
Off on a tangent again.

Capitano Tedeschi

30

The Concrete Crick copyright 8/25/2011 by Jamie Jacks

Tango

This dance,
as you move you can count it off
queer as clockwork
Left, right, left, pause,
all the while,
the bandeon puffs
like an ore train
climbing in the Andes

the room is humid
draped in red and black
the realm of death or
the infinite bliss
after the sweaty harmony of sex
your silk dress is slightly wrinkled
my hair still
gleaming of Brylcream and sweat
call it amor if you want
Si tu quieres,
Te quiero-Si

jajajajaja--oh such bitter laughter
I move like an elephant on ice skates
in my magic black leather shoes
my torso rigid as the stone
of the Teatro Colon
My arms like masts
draped with the guazy gossamer
of your dress or your body

It's so hot so humid
I can't remember which is which.
I can't think straight
as the habanero melody
forces me to make my feet glide
across the milonga floor.

I hold you and I feel of the bones of
Evita's spine
being gently guided by a push
from the fingers of my right hand
out of the Duarte Crypt of Recolecta Cemetary
an into the crowded night.

This dance, this tango
I chase it
It crushes me the way an
a little girl kills a fly.

Still I return
the music as addictive as sugar
my persistence a mix of desire
and desperation

call it amor if you want
Si tu quieres,
Te quiero-Si

Capitano Tedeschi

30

Tango Copyright August 24, 2011 by Jamie Jacks

HIDDEN FROM OUR VAPID GAZE

Are you not tired of
their thrice told tales? I am.
Sick of listening to Einstein-like shamans
with their all-seeing X-ray eyes.

Oh they claim to see all
but actually know nothing
standing before green screens
or simple chalk boards
they are totally incapable of
accurately predicting the future
But incredibly adept at
spouting hate, intolerance and paranoia.

They urge us to buy gold
or survival rations
or to "Lean Forward" or vote Democratic
Selling high-priced snake oil
or Andean Tapir Magic

We wallow in uncertainty
or drown in a sewer of useless opinion
pretending to be factual information
constantly hesitating we delay
inaction leads to sloth
sloth leads to damnation

Hidden from our vapid gaze
more ambitious, arrogant, and greedy
women and men sneak through
the hallways of wealth and power
following the bloodstained vision
of their hearts blackest desire

No one notices their treachery
or theft
No watchman shouts a warning
of villainy in the night
til one day
we're left with naught but
empty words
senile hatred and eternal prejudice

HIDDEN FROM OUR VAPID GAZE Copyright July 27, 2011 by Jamie Jacks

HOW DID IT HAPPEN?

How did it happen?
Sadly and soon we will know
how the five-year-old boy
playing on a swing

is transformed into a
Teflon-coated mass murderer
He was probably dehumanized over time
until his tortured soul
became armoured in hate like some
bionic superman.

It takes years of repression
holding rage in
shuntining it into hidden places
deep inside the body
beyond heart, beyond soul

Hidden from the light of laughter and love,
it festers, bubbles and ferments
until some little provacation
a rude waitress
an overdue bus

It boils over
hot as molten steel and
pours in to the nervous system
and the blood stream

The muscles reach
for the weapons,
the brain recycles its
contingency plans
and the erotic voilence erupts
spite and malice
expressed not with howls or screams
but with explosives and bullets

Each story is different
but the outline of the plot is the same
Too crazy to qualify for food stamps
but sane enough to be able to get a gun
just before the day when
the walls and floors of a school cafeteria
a library reading room, a church sanctuary
are bathed in viscera and blood

And each time we wonder
How did it happen?

Capitano Tedeschi

30

HOW DID IT HAPPEN? Copyright July 25, 2011 by Jamie Jacks

15.789 REAL DEAD PEOPLE PER PAGE

What type of disease causes
this depravity?
A summer day in Norway
A political extremist kills 76 people

In Norway--it is an obscene tragedy
the worse mass murder since
World War Two.
Here it's just a busy
Saturday evening

You'd think that there'd be
some kind of warning that--
if we'd been paying attention
we might have prevented it this time

You'd think the killer
would have given us more clues
But it's not until afterwards
we check out his online presence
Facebook or Myspace

And find the 1200 page manifesto
that no one would ever read
No one would ever read, except
when the author kills 76 people.
15.789 real dead people per page
the ultimate in vanity publishing

Murder is a rigid transaction
complex and anti-linear
There is no rose-colored lens
that can blur a head exploded
by a bullet or airbrush out
a training bra stained
by the rapid gushing of
arterial blood

No Scandinavian detective
will reluctantly explain it way
or explore the warping of one mind
to rage then mayhem

All I know is that
somewhere in the night
A perpetual loser
A perpetual loner
A failed poet perhaps?
is typing on his computer
planning, planning
actually planning something
for the first time in his life.

Reading the spewed hate
from the right-wing internet
stroking pictures of automatic rifles
with he "finger" of his computer's cursor
Soon he'll show us
Soon we'll see
That he is not to be ignored.

He is coming for us.
The sad and sorry question is
not if, but when.

Capitano Tedeschi

30

15.789 REAL DEAD PEOPLE PER PAGE Copyright July 24, 2011, by Jamie Jacks

This FOG has pride

It was the last part of a hot
July Bakersfield evening
The sun bright as a golden ducat
was setting
sinking behind the gray foot hills
of the coast range

I was out on my bicycle
trying to get in an evening ride

I am what is known in
cycling circles as a FOG
A Fat Old Guy
Think of Lance Armstrong
or any professional cyclist
wearing a fat suit

I was going fast, moving
faster than the next ice
huffing and puffing
like some asthmatic locomotive

I was having fun,
my gaze focused
on the asphalt five feet
ahead of my
trying to pedal faster
trying not to have
a heart attack and die

Then it happened
I got passed by a teenager
a slender beauftiful young woman
riding a red beach cruiser
on the sidewalk
she wasn't even wearing helmet

As she passed me she
looked and me smile
and laughed
Hmmm Hmmm Hmmm

I have my pride
I sped up to catch her
but she was gone
a red and white blur
fast as a bottle rock

It was hopeless.
I headed home trying to avoid,
old age, broken glass
coronary thrombosis and heat stroke..

Capitano Tedeschi

30


This FOG has pride copyright July 23, 2011 by Jamie Jacks

Would you like a salad with that?

Lunch time.
Waiting in line at the Sandwich shop
I stare at the menu
trying to make up my mind.

On my left, a wall-mounted flat screen TV
shows some woman on the Food Network
gettin' ready to do somethin' kinky
with ricotta cheese. Yum.

On my right, another flat screen--
CNN has breaking news from Pakistan.
The Taliban have released a video
showing the execution of
16 Pakistani policemen.

People are eating
No one is watching
A man says something funny
to his girl friend and then
laughs loudly at his joke.
A woman gets a soda instead
of an ice tea.
A nurse listens to his cell phone
I order ham and cheese.

And pause to watch
as 16 men, lined against a mud brick wall,
are executed by a firing squad of the faithful.
Kalashnikovs rise and fall from the recoil
the men collapse, some writhing in silent agony
Then a Mujahideen with a Tokarev pistol
makes sure all the men are dead.

The girl at the cash register waits
patiently.
"Would you like a salad with that?"
she asks.

Capitano Tedeschi

30

Would you like a salad with that? copyright July 18, 2011 by Jamie Jacks

What great journey are you planning?

The washer roars as its parts
complete their electo-mechanical orbits
another cycle of cleanliness
about to be completed

My neighbor's dogs bark at real postmen
and the ghosts of postwomen past
A toy archer is poised on
the crows' nest of a toy sailing ship

The Archer's bow is drawn
but he will never lose his arrow.
The boat's sails are unfurled,
it will never ride the waves
in the bath tub or the sea

Facing the toy boat,
my bronze lion of St Mark
purchased when my grandfather
visited Venice
at the end of WWI
It does not yearn to
return to the Serenissima
But I sure as hell do.

The keys of my computer click
an electronic abacus
that can still calculate the number a Spanish maravedi
it takes to by one Venetian Ducat
information that no will need
or want.

I am continually asked
what great journey am I planning next?
Istanbul or Chile I tell them
when the time and money are sufficient
which is like saying not now

But I am a 57-year-old fat guy
with a comb-over
I don't have many "not nows" left.
I will make it to Chile and to Istanbul.

The more important journey
is the one that beckons here
like a solitary cyclist
climbing a verdant Pyrenees mountain
the one that demands
that I go deep inside myself,
beyond terror, frustration, loneliness
and agony

I am here to
rip off the veils of reality
and try, try, try
to tell you what you don't know
you need to know.

Capitano Tedeschi

30

What great journey are you planning? copyright July 15, 2011 by Jamie Jacks

Today: Don’t try this breakthrough device until you’ve read this special report

Be warned!
We have come so far that golf balls
Orbit o’er the Sea of Tranquility
Demonstrating once and for all that
Our image of the universe
Is a typically American aberration

From Valley Forge to Viet Nam to the Vale of Kashmir
Everyone knows that we Americans
Can not see the Oceans
For the trees

We seed the world with cluster bombs
And big Macs, bombing our enemies back
Into the stoneage w/out realizing
That we are 20th Century Neanderthals
Living in a 21st Century world

We claim to lead the world
But now the world dances
To Sambas played by sitars
Posted on the internet
By a Muslim woman wearing Hello Kitty glasses
Who lives outside of Kuala Lampur.

Special report? There is no special report
Wouldn’t matter if there was, cause
I can’t read anything over 420 characters

Do the Tech companies have some magical gadget?
Some high tech philosopher's stone?

Probably, probably.
They design it in Finland
Manufacture it in Taiwan
Using lithium mined from Bolivia for the batteries
Running on application code created in Bangalore
The tech companies don’t care if we know about it.

Meanwhile,
Avoid trusting in supernatural authority.
The Heavenly G-Man is no longer on our side
Our civilization has been outsourced
While we consume the $5.00 smart phone, tablet, MP3 player,
that will let us talk to Aliens from
Proxima Centauri.

Capitano Tedeschi

30

Today: Don’t try this breakthrough device until you’ve read this special report
Copyright July 12, 2011 by Jamie Jacks

I offer nothing but false conclusions

While walking by the Koi pond
on my way to the cafeteria
a bullfrog challenged me
with an excited bellow

Both of us wisely moved away.
He with a plop headed towards
a sheltering stone turning the water
brown and inky with silt.

I kept heading toward
the cafeteria desperately craving
a venti iced coffee.

On the other side of the Koi pond
a black-haired young woman
sits on a park bench
beneath a maple tree

She is in the rapt embrace
of some flourescent computer-mediated discourse
emanating from her laptop.

The signals from the cyber continuum
bring small smiles and silent chuckles
from her otherwise impassive face
The current of microwaves
tugs at her conscious and she drifts along
heedless of time and space and place
bathed in a meandering microwave stream

Meanwhile having gotten caffeinated,
I pause at the Koi pond and ponder the young woman
The fish gather expecting to be fed
I can offer them nothing but false
conclusions based upon brief observation

Still they wait expectantly.
Realizing they'll not be fed
they pray to their Koi Gods
that I might somehow
trip, fall in and drown.


Capitano Tedeschi

30

I offer nothing but false conclusions copyright June 29, 2011 by Jamie Jacks

Chained to your sofa

for Shanna

From the prison of the body
death has sprung its
trapping mechanism.
The mechanics of the Canyon Maker
mocks medical science
with risk and uncertainty

You are a wake through every minute
as pain erodes the spirit
and a new layer of humiliation
is laid open
to the scorching air

Somewhere far away
a place where you can
no longer go
the turtle surfaces
and dives back into the
space–time clustering ocean
that laps the shores
of lithium disilicates
a million miles away

While you chained to your sofa
watch Dancing With The Stars
and wish you could O.D. on
Peanut M&Ms

You try to make sense of it
this suffering
but there is no way to achieve
differentiation

The coming of the cold
moves closer not even
bothering to be stealthy now
Brought to you by
A persistent pestilence
that devours you from within
and devastates you from
without.

Prayers are useless
years spent practicing the teachings
of Jesus are a joke.
You have not lost faith
but faith has no meaning now.

Capitano Tedeschi

Chained to your sofa copyright June 27, 2011 by Jamie Jacks

Mimicking a monkey

Why am I always tempted
with desire produced by
male-ego enhancing
hormones that activate the
stupid centers
of my brontasaurus-sized brain?

For when my blood surges
with neuro-chemical compounds
I plunge me into
those silly capers
that should embarrass a rational
middle-aged man.

Before I know it I'm out
asking undercover policewomen
for a date and naming a price,
or asking my boss
how long his brain was deprived
of oxygen before he was revived

Thus I go dancing monkey-like
through the shallower part
of the river of life
squeaking, squealing and
waving arms
which are now longer than my legs

It's then that an observant Fool
Oh, they're everywhere these days
always perched in the dense and somber shade
always watching from the borderline
that separates the magical from the practical

Oh the Fool will see me and by
applying their logical formulas
think they are seeing a miracle
or mistake my squeaks and squeals
for the raving of a new Messiah
or believe that I'm not splashing
I'm really walking on water.

Is that me or my ego's fault?
My fault naturally.
You weren't mistaken
you were deceived.
In time you'll realize
that it was just
testosterone driven me
dancing in life's river
mimicking a monkey
and not really doing
a very good job.

Capitano Tedeschi

30

Mimicking a monkey. Copyright June 25, 2011 by Jamie Jacks

"Like" that one did you?

My life now
writ large on a six story
virtual billboard.

I am followed on all seven continents
North Korean hackers smirk at
my profile picture
The CIA scans my posts
for clues to the location in Pakistan
of Ayman al-Zawahiri
The world's most buxom women
send me their pictures
and beg me to give them love.
If I'm really lucky I could get
a free IPad for $20.
(Still haven't quite figured out how
that one works yet).

Don't get me wrong
it's a dangerous world
filled with zombies, perverts, and academics.
My movements, visions, and sentiments
are shared with millions.
They smile when they read
that I've just heard the roar of an African lion
Comfort me when I post
pictures of my bleeding finger
and remind me that thistles are barbed
and that roses have thorns.
And when I say that I have just
licked the salty sweat from the skin
of a woman's sternum...

"Like" that one did you?

Capitano Tedeschi

30

"Like" that one did you? copyright June 22, 2011 by Jamie Jacks

The ungodly Godly

I can't pretend anymore
I can't ignore the warnings
of the coming of a terrible,
dislocating disaster

A volcanic apocalypse
that will entomb us
in suffocating ash
and molten rock

What I'm fearing
Jesus never preached
Jesus never predicted
dying on the cross

So that two millenniums later
his so-called followers
can crucify the world.

Every night the ungodly Godly
use the gleaming beam of false information
to create a ever-changing narrative,
a macho screed of
false posturing and logic
defying half-truths.

I want to scream liar! liars!
as if my angry voice could shatter
them like brittle glass
Still they keeping talking
cause they know if they lie fast enough
they can never be burned.

Oh these pampered spiritual eunuchs
in their silken suits on their naugahyde
upholstered thrones
despising fact
shouting lies in which every sentence
invokes their senile dead God Ronald Reagan
and their faux prelude to Armageddon,
September 11.

The fragrance of their corruption
wafts over the globe
from the torture chambers
of Abu Ghraib
to the office rooms of Goldman Sachs

Can they be stopped?
I don't know
I feel the minor tremors
as their tectonic vileness
subsumes the very ground
upon which I try to stand
I want to flee
to warn others
of the death and ruination
that awaits

As the ungodly Godly embrace darkness
and the darkness--evil
embraces them back

Capitano Tedeschi

30

The ungodly Godly copyright June 21, 2011 by Jamie Jacks

3 poems for June

I am sending you a picture

I am sending you a picture of my Jonathan,
that naughty boy,
that horn dog, hellfire meat missile.

Don't be afraid.
Open the file and know it's from
my heart.
Know that my hand is demon-possessed.
I want it to scatter
dewy, defocused fluids as it runs down
the soft crevice of your ass
and discovers the bright star
formed by your thighs and as yet
uncrossed legs.

I am sending you a picture of my Jonathan
I want to writhe in the deep verge
the fount of musk, sweet water and
inescapable warmth.

I am sending you a picture of my Jonathan
my muscle of fun.
Oh look at it.
It's an icon of lust works that works miracles.
It is a column of desire and raging blood.

You know what next comes?
My desire overwhelms your defenses
It erodes your dikes
of deny and denial
My pipe yearns to burst
in your conduit

Don't act surprised
I wouldn't do this
if I thought you didn't want this
to happen.

I am sending you a picture
of my Jonathan.


Rituals of exclusions

You don't see it, you feel it.
The mask of your reality
cracking under the strain.

You can't just pull out
your Wizard's spell book
full of rituals of exclusions
and practical strategies
to defy unclaimed experience.

But you do it anyway.
You chant your chants,
a narrative of traumas that sounds
like werewolf cries.
You wave your hand--

The air becomes toxic.
The once clear blue sky shatters
into a heap of
glittering broken shards.

There it's finished.
Are you happy now?

Galaxy of risk

The Devil has wired
this galaxy of risk
we are living magnets
attracting only animated corpses
we call them zombies
but we are the ones
beyond redemption
deficient of Grace

We care, if we care at all
only in the physical and mental well-being
of bullies
While their victims,
well uh...you know
if they weren't where they were
they wouldn't get what they deserve

Oh I stand here
I stand of sacred ground
a paradise of paradox
where as an adult
I act childish not child-like
I can defy those harpy sisters
Science, Reality, Morality
knowing I'll get by
through some miracle or Fate

So I and you--I mean we
dance that kinky Kabuki like dance
feigning false morality
while violating natural and moral law

The seas boil turtles in their shells.
Birds burn as they fly through acid skies
Eight year-olds grow breasts and pubic hair
drinking estrogen laced milk
We dance merrily onward
from gratification to gratification
I'm thinking--
I love what is happening.
I don't even want to return.

Capitano Tedeschi

30

I am sending you a picture, Galaxy of risk, and Rituals of exclusion copyright June 10, 2011 by Jamie Jacks

tomorrow is an improbability now.

In this dark nation
so obsessed with empire.

Everyone knows
from reading the Bible or History
that the legacy of Empire
is dust.

But the deluded and the authoritative leaders
still utter the gamblers mantra,
"this time different, this time lucky."
Meanwhile, in secret laboratories
where they synthesize the toxins of the future

transgenic mice die in their cages
their mass extinction heralding a doom
that goes unnoticed, eliciting neither
reaction or response.

Is a long night coming?
Does there creep across the land
a suffocating silken blackness
darker than the Devil's shadow
and heavier than mountains?

What do I know?
I can still recognize the moon
in the foul cloudy sky.
What care I for tomorrow?
What care I that Grace evades me?
Retribution may come tomorrow
but tomorrow is an improbability now.

Be afraid I am having a dinner party

I am hosting a dinner party tonight. Let me repeat, I am hosting a dinner party tonight. I can't cook, my house is a mess, and I entertain rarely. Is disaster imminent? I hope not.

Why am I hosting a dinner party given that being a host is not one of my strengths? The answer is quite simple. As a member of a church, I belong to a group that do supper once a month. The group divides up and six people have dinner on a weekend at someone's house. I have been to a couple of these parties. People have opened their houses to me. People have fed me. Now it is my turn.

I am okay with that and gladly accept my social responsibility. But noble intentions are the paving stones of the road to perdition and that would give even the most pompous fool a moment's pause. What I am having trouble accepting is how unsuited I am to do this particular task. I live alone and I enjoy living alone. When I bought my house, I thought it was an excellent idea, better than living in an apartment because in this case, the landlord is a jerk who doesn't fix anything and the tenant is a slob, who is well on his way to starring in the reality show Hoarders. Since I am both tenant and landlord I get along fine with me.

But tonight I'll open my house to a group of people who have no idea regarding the disorder of my private life. I am a terrible cook, which means I am an okay bachelor cook. Most of the things I eat are fresh fruits, vegetables, the all-to-frequent microwaved baked potato or chicken pot pie, and chicken or fish that is broiled or seared until they reach leathery toughness. Does that mean I am a terrible cook. No! I can say for a fact that no one has ever lived to complain about my cooking. Conceptually a dinner cooked by me is like an airline flight. Every one of my meals that you walk away from is a "good" meal.

But my guest have nothing to fear. They are bringing the salad, dessert, and garlic bread. I am serving lasagne. Once, long ago in the past, when I was married I may have actually learned how to make lasagna. But now that I am divorced, what simple cooking skills I once possessed have gone the way of other lost skills, such as being able to answer the question about fat women in bathing suits or proper foot massage technique. So the meat lasagna is being purchased from Caesar's Italian Delicatessen in Bakersfield. The meatless lasagna is coming from the frozen food case of Albertson's. So as long as everything is heated thoroughly everything will be fine.

But being a bachelor means that I didn't have enough plates and bowls for my guests. When I got divorced, the ex got the house, the car and all the kitchen stuff. So I went to Wal-mart and bought a 4-piece place setting to go with the plastic lawn chair and folding card table that constituted most of the furniture of my apartment. Not wanting my guest to eat off paper plates, I decided to go to Target and buy dinner ware for eight people. That also included place matts and napkins. I've stayed true to myself in the sense that nothing matches, but at least there's enough to ensure that all my guests have something to eat off of. What was really great was that it reminded of the joys of shopping in preparation of a divorce. But it was better there were no lawyers or ex spouses to deal with.

All that remains to do is pick up and clean the house prior to guests arriving. But that is an Augean labor that would give Heracles a moment's pause. It will require me pickup all the crap, mostly paper, and shove it into plastic bags and hide in a spare bedroom until they can be sorted, shredded, recycled or saved. Don't hold your breath. The carpet will have to covered with somekind of smelly cleaning stuff and vacuumed the kitchen and bathroom floors mopped. I should also replace the cracked toilet seat in my main bathroom, but I don't think that is going to happen.

But it's worth it, I guess. Every person needs to be part of a community. All I can hope is that when I open my house, my guests will notice that I am opening my heart as well. If that is the case they hopefully they will ignore the chaos of my solitary life, have an evening of good food and fellowship, and walk away from the dinner. Well that pretty much sums it up. Walk away from the dinner without worrying about being poisoned.

Capitano Tedeschi

30

Be afraid I am having a dinner party copyright March 19th 2011 by Jamie Jacks.

Photo credit National Cancer Institute Len Rizzi Photographer retrieved 3/19/2011 from http://visualsonline.cancer.gov/details.cfm?imageid=2547

Random Thoughts March 15, 2011

Rep. Michele Bachmann's gaffe hear 'round the world

There's been a lot of chortling regarding Minnesota Congresswoman (Tea-Liban 6th District) Michele Bachmann's recent gaffe about Revolutionary War geography while in New Hampshire. Representative Bachmann told an adoring crowd,

"Before headlining a GOP fundraiser, the possible presidential hopeful told a group of students and conservative activists in Manchester, 'You're the state where the shot was heard around the world in Lexington and Concord.'" according to the Huffington Post. Which was an unfortunate mistake to make if she has presidential delusions.

I wanted to say something biting like the deranged Roman Emperor Gaius Caligula once appointed a racehorse to the Roman Senate and the people of Minnesota's 6th Congressional District have elected Michele Bachmann to Congress. (notice how I snuck it in here).

But before I did that I read Rep. Bachmann's biography in Wikipedia. She has a law degrees from Oral Roberts University and William and Mary. She was a tax lawyer for the IRS. She's intelligent.

Which means I have a hard time explaining many of her bizarre policy positions and statements. The Economist once called George W. Bush, "intellectually incurious." I wonder if Rep. Bachmann has this defect as well. She has found an ideological niche and is now comfortably ensconced in it. Many of her political beliefs and positions all no room for compromise. It seems that her political success depends in part on not compromising.

When my back was to the wall, comedically speaking

Saturday night, I did my first comedy monologue. It was for a pledge drive dinner for the Unitarian/Universalist Fellowship of Kern County. The last time I tried to do stand up comedy was over 30 years ago.

It was not an auspicious debut. It was an open mic night a bar called The Levee at 43rd and Main. I got up on stage and tried to do something crazy, like kicking a chair and acting strange. I didn't last long. As my friend Stepbuddy Anderson later wrote, "I had a chance and blew it."

This time was better and different. I actually wrote out my jokes beforehand. What was surprising was how easy I thought that was. After I finished creating my monologue, I was suspicious about how easy it was. But in way it was easy. I am a storyteller, I tell stories. I also know that if I make jokes about myself, I have an endless supply of funny stories and my jokes won't hurt anybody.

It went okay. But I was nervous and rushed my delivery. Which means I need to practice and I need to start creating an archive of funny stuff.

Phrases I liked today

One of the things that has just been archived, is the phrase"counterfactual deficits." Sorta know what it means,

Found a definition for counterfactuals, "Counterfactuals are mental representations of alternatives to past events. Recent research has shown them to be important for other cognitive processes, such as planning, causal reasoning, problem solving, and decision making—all processes independently linked to the frontal lobes. "


Sounds like something I should suffer from. Also came accross the phrase, "sarcasm perception." Psychologist are doing research on counterfactual deficits and sarcasm perception. I don't intend to read any of that research but I do like the phrases.


Capitano Tedeschi

30

Random Thoughts March 15, 2011 copyright March 15, 2011 by Jamie Jacks.
Michele Bachmann official photo, (government document in the public domain) source:

http://bachmann.house.gov/Biography/OfficialPhoto.htm

The Devil dances live from Cairo

The whole world is rupturing.
We see it unfolding on the nightly news.
Pundits like Jeremiahs tell us of
disasters now unnatural.

The floods now are from rivers of people
not water.
The explosions of are not of coal seam methane
but of human rage pent up
not in the tunnels underground
but in ancient alleys of distant streets.

We are witnesses thanks to
the uses and gratifications of social media.
But this new technology fills us with
a sense of fear
not feelings of transcendence.

We see the collapse of alliances and long-time allies,
while angry masses in their thousands demand
Bread, justice and peace.
And meanwhile they hurl epthitets on the nightly news
we know they are hurling monkey wrenches
into the delicate cogs and gears of the American
Imperial machine.

Now we know the Devil dances
live from Cairo
over wi-fi now.
Destroying in a moment our democratic
mythologies and conciets.

The demonstrators in the Muslim streets
delicate as dancers whose dancing shatters
our sunny sky with future filled with
higher food prices and
predictions of $5 a gallon gasoline.

We witness a reclamation of indigenous rights
and realize that
we stand on the floor of canyon
where black gray skies threaten inundation
and not just rain.

An inundation that drowns our world
while creating a new world
beyond reason and brighter than
the rainbow.

A dawn of a new era
in which we participate
but do not wish
to see.

Capitano Tedeschi

30

The Devil dances live from Cairo copyright by Jamie Jacks 18 February 2011

Photograph from the U.S. Department of Defense. Source: http://www.defense.gov/dodcmsshare/newsphoto/2011-02/hires_110204-M-8012P-076.jpg. In the public domain.

Gerry Rafferty? No Al Stewart.

On January 4th, 2011, Scottish folk singer Gerry Rafferty died. His song Baker Street, was an iconic rock ballad of the 1970s. But as I was reading Rafferty's obituary and feeling somewhat saddened that his life had been devastated by alcoholism and depression, I was trying to remember the lyrics of another song, that I thought that Rafferty had also written.

It was about a Russian soldier who fought the German's in World War II. So I did a search on You Tube and found out it was not a Gerry Rafferty song, but a song written by another Scottish singer Al Stewart, who is very much alive. Al Stewart song Year of the Cat came out in 1976 and Rafferty's hit song Baker Street came out in 1978. So they would have been playing on F.M. radio about the same time.

The song I was thinking of was Roads to Moscow. Which tells the story Russian soldier who fights the Germans from the start Hitler's invasion of Russia to the conquest of Berlin. War over he expects to go home but,

I'll never know, I'll never know
Why I was taken from the line and all the others
To board a special train and journey deep into the heart of holy Russia
And it's cold and damp in the transit camp, and the air is still and sullen
And the pale sun of October whispers the snow will soon be coming
And I wonder when I'll be home again and the morning answers "Never"
And the evening sighs and the steely Russian skies go on forever

source: http://www.answers.com/topic/roads-to-moscow

Stewart writes beautiful music. He also enjoys writing songs about history. That makes for interesting music. It also pretty much guarantees that many of his songs won't be played on MTV or what passes for FM rock radio. One of my current favorites of his is Hanno the Navigator, about the Carthaginian admiral who first explored the coasts of Africa. The lyrics are beautiful and playful at the same time.

It's a good day
for going to sea
Hanno the Navigator said to me.
There's an open sky and a steady breeze
out beyond the Pillars of Hercules.
Above the foam-kissed waves seagulls scream
up in the masts of our trireme
and it's a good day
for going to sea
Hanno the Navigator said to me.

source: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hZ7RD7ebZUA

Gerry Rafferty is gone and that's sad, but in researching his life and trying to remember his music, I was able to find another artist, Al Stewart whose music I enjoyed when it came out some 30 plus years ago. The other great thing is that Al Stewart will be playing here Bakersfield on April 16th. Count on it, I intend to buy tickets.

Capitano Tedeschi.

30

Picture of Gerry Rafferty by Eddie Mallin,(6 September 1980) retrieved from Wikipedia on 16 Feb. 2011. Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Gerry_Rafferty.jpg and used in accordance with permission granted by Creative Commons.

Gerry Rafferty, No Al Stewart copyright 16 February 2011 by Jamie Jacks

The cult of the dead God--Ronald Reagan

source: http://reaganboner.tumblr.com/page/4

Ronald Reagan the president, well I'm not a fan but he was probably a better president than I give him credit for. Sadly, Ronald Reagan, the president, has become the god of what I call, The Cult of Ronald Reagan. It is the Cult of Ronald Reagan I despise. Its is tenants are no longer effective and it's principal priests are debased and false.

What tenants you ask? Well the idea that Reagan advanced that Government is not the solution, government is problem.

Many of the cult's followers no longer engage in debate, refuse to compromise and rigidly adhere to creeds and dogmas that currently have no relevance in a rapidly changing world.

For nearly 22 years, the Cult of Ronald Reagan has exerted its baleful influence on American public life. Our republic is on the edge of bankruptcy and economic demise to the misguided pursuit of pseudo-Reaganistic policies by Bill Clinton and the two Bushes. Now as the country is slowly recovering from these policies, it is members of the Cult of Ronald Reagan have regained control of the House of Representatives. Now in power, they threaten to destroy the country's fragile economic policies that demand tax cuts for the rich while destroying what remains of the nation's social safety net.

What I find really amusing is the idea that Ronald Reagan might not be able to win elective office in what passes for today's Tea or Republican parties. As Alex Massie notes in his blog,

"For a long while and certainly at the time he was in office Reagan was an under-rated President; today he's in danger of being over-rated. The problem with the Cult of Reagan is not Reagan, but the impact membership has on the believers. He was more flexible than his admirers today sometimes acknowledge. Few of today's Republicans would, one supposes, endorse Reagan's tax-raising 1982 budget. Nor, one suspects, would today's nationalists approve of his decision to talk to the Soviets (indeed, at the time there were some who whispered that Reagan was "soft on Communism".) Nor, for that matter, could a Republican with national aspirations today endorse Reagan's liberal approach to immigration issues.

"Indeed, it's not clear a less gifted communicator armed with Reagan's actual beliefs could really win the Republican Presidential nomination today. And that's fine! Times change and so do parties. What was appropriate for the early 1980s isn't necessarily appropriate now. Reagan should no more be held as a template for modern Republicanism than Churchill should for the Tory party. (Mind you, the Cult of Churchill is also stronger in the United States than it is in Britain.) But nor should an imaginary Reaganism hold sway over, or demand unthinking fealty, from today's conservatives."

source: http://www.spectator.co.uk/alexmassie/6677674/the-cult-of-reagan-president-of-all-our-hearts.thtml

I agree with Alex Massie. Like I said I am not a fan of the Reagan Administration. Ronald Reagan, the Dead God of the corrupt Cult of Ronald Reagan, well he's just a figment of some people's imagination and not a real man at all.

Capitano Tedeschi

30

The cult of the dead God-Ronald Reagan copyright Feb. 10, 2011 by Jamie Jacks

Tule Fog

The last of the day is hazy,
but there was some sun and some warmth.
night becomes gray with fog

I drive into the evening
attempting to perform and gain certainty
from the rituals of my daily life
Headlight beams distorted
Distance disappears when landmarks
are swathed in vapor

I try to come to terms with
a new year
I feel late like I'm
26 days behind the rest of the world
Lost, groping cautiously
Propelling myself in to a future
I cannot see my way clearly

The night is cold,
All the world seems besieged
What once was known no longer has meaning
I’m up late pondering the nature
The nature of all manner of darkness.

Capitano Tedeschi

Tule fog copyright Jan. 27, 2011 by Jamie Jacks