My views on politics, life, death, the army, and other things too miscellaneous to mention here. This is a personal blog. This blog is 100% factual.
Bill Duckwing
Poet, Author, Journalist
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Your Super-Cute Daily Terror Alert Update Will Be Forevermore:
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"There are some myths and untruths surrounding the role God plays in our daily lives. To say that religion and politics do not mix, is certainly a myth, unless you ask a liberal. Anything that affects a Christian (and voting is one of them) — enters into the religious realm. Trying to separate the two is like trying to separate oil from a glass of water, it's impossible to do. "
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Thursday, April 29, 2004
You Have Totally Seen This Before
I got two emails about this guy, and sho nuff, it's funny, so I figure I'll just link to it here.
Story: guy sells ex-wife's wedding dress on Ebay. Hits: well over 9 million and counting. And he was on the Today Show for it.
It seems a few people have taken offense to my inferring a size 12 is big. One male even pointed out that Marilyn Monroe was a size 14. Now, I would agree with you that size 12/14 is small if I lived on Samoa.
Yeah, he changed "Samoa" to "elsewhere" -but it's still funny.
-duckwing, at 9:42 PM
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Tuesday, April 27, 2004
The Simple Art of DeLay
First off, I got a Gmail account today through my long and fruitful association with Blogger/Google. You may now email me at bill.duckwing@gmail.com if you find sending email to me at my Yahoo account sorta confusing and mind-blowing. Plus you can send me mp3 files and other stuff to me if you have a Gmail account, so I'll just go ahead and encourage it.
That said, I'll just apologize for the delay in posts last week. Really. What really amazes me is that the hit count for this blog was pretty high last week, more than most weeks, despite the fact the the only thing I offered last week as a cheezie analysis of the WashPost comics page, and also an almost outright plagiarism on Gene Weingarten's schtick. You guys knock me out -you really do.
I am incredibly and insanely jazzed about the Sox-Yanks series that concluded last weekend. 6-1. Yah-yah! Boswell got it right today -if this isn't the year for the Red Sox, they can take that Bambino Curse to the bank, and for eternity.
As you might've noticed, I'm trying to stay away from politics for the time being. It's way too depressing. I'll try to sum it up as honestly as I can -you guys who are jonesin for Kerry have to really put it in second gear. Donate, freak out and rant on your blog, whatever. I, like many, probably got a little too much lured into a false sense of security when I noticed that Howard Dean, the candidate far and away with the most amount of money during the Democratic primaries, got trounced by Kerry, who had to mortgage his own house. But don't do it. Not only is Bush a helluva charming guy, he also has a ton of a lot more money than Dean ever had to trounce Kerry, and Bush also has about 42% of America basically worshiping him for his ability to kick Blue Democratic Ass.
Most politcos and bloggers, of course, have already picked this up on their radars, given the neck and neck race between Bush and Kerry, despite everything that has gone "wrong" for Bush the last few months. I'll go even further -the thing we want to most avoid, is a definite possibility at this point. Bush wins in a landslide. No net gains in Congress.
If Kerry loses in a neck and neck race, as the polls show right now, it'll be a loss, but recoverable in 2008. And it should compromise Bush for his next term enough if he thinks a sizeable minority of the American people are breathing down is neck. It's affect the press, and might shape the Democrats back into a major opposition party with some big gains in 2006. A landslide, of course, kinda gives Bush cart blanche to do whatever he wants.
Which means that the Kerry people really have to fight tooth and nail all the way to November, and at the same time not get too demoralized if Bush in fact wins re-election in a squeaker. Donate, blog, canvass, put a sign up on your front lawn beside your old oak tree's yellow ribbon.
On the other hand, if you like Bush, sit back, relax, and light up that grill you got in the backyard. Really, I think the thing with Bush is that the harder you fight to make his case for re-election, the more annoying it becomes. Liking Bush is a tougher nut to crack when you have to force him to justify himself.
Blah.
-duckwing, at 10:35 PM
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Monday, April 19, 2004
Deconstructing the Comics Page
Typically, after reading war stories, lies, editorials, more lies, and testimonies from Senate Comittee Hearings, I quickly check out the Washington Post's Style Section for a bit of light-hearted bliss from the guys that do the comics. I have no problem at all with the fact that most of the comics seem to have been written in the style and mindset of the comics writers who flourished in the 1940's. Trust me, after reading the rest of the Washington Post, lame puns and slapstick are completely refreshing. If all the comics page had was sharp, bitting modern satire, I probably wouldn't follow the news much.
Give me the Family Circus and Garfield over Zippy the Pinhead's anti-consumerism rants anyday.
But I do have a big beef with comics that try to infuse modern sensibilites, and fail miserably at it. There is no middle ground when you write a comic strip. It either has to be modern and clever, or slappy and clueless. Strips like "Mother Goose and Grimm" make me cringe, and also make me shake my fist at the Editors of the Washington Post.
Let's look at the above comic strip, and see what's wrong with it. There is no doubt this comic is attempting to be hip and alternative, by filling the strip with old iconic characters. This is one of the mainstays in alternative comics, from Matt Groening to R. Crumb to Art Spiegelman. Introduce the characters, but make them high on acid, or making witty intelligent social commentary, or doing something ironic for the traditional set-up the character finds itself in. In this case, "Popeye" is being interviewed by James Lipton, from Bravo's "Inside the Actors Studio."
Which brings us to problem 2. Impersonating James Lipton, or mentioning him in stand-up, or anything else for that matter, has been so overdone it is not even close to being funny anymore. James Lipton already parodies himself on Leno.
The Caption below the panel read's "Inside the Cartoon Actors Studio" as if we're too fucking stupid to realize what the comic strip is poking fun at.
But by far the biggest problem I have with this is the other iconic comic personalities in the audience. The thing with "Inside the Actors Studio" is that they're all students in theatre. Why the hell would Bugs or Goofy give a fuck about what Popeye has to say about being a cartoon actor. They're already sucessful in their medium. It'd be like Tom Cruise giving an interview on acting and having Nicole Kidman, Robert DeNiro, or Halle Berry take notes. It doesn't make any sense.
Get it together Mother Goose and Grimm. Your concepts are about as tight in coherence as this post is.
-duckwing, at 5:42 PM
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Thursday, April 15, 2004
No Updates This Weekend (I think)...
This is truly a bummer, but necessary. My computer was attacked by an extremely annoying virus/trojan this week, and at this point I can barely type this out without the size of the font growing two sizes two big, or the page freezing up entirely.
Anyway, since it hijacked my Norton Anti-Virus software and my firewall, I have no idea what the virus is or how to remove it (I'm pretty competent at checking my system registry, and also had my roommate, a computer programmer, check it out to see if I was missing anything, and neither of us could find anything out of the ordinary), so I'll be spending most of this weekend backing up my files and reinstalling Windows here.
Have fun out in cyberspace, kids.
-duckwing, at 11:10 PM
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Monday, April 12, 2004
Overrated and Underrated Bands -2004
I think I've said this before last year. I try not to get too much into music criticism here, because 1.) Since music is completely subjective, music criticism is boring, stupid, and generally makes no sense. Even when there is a general consensis on a particular record among rock critics, most differ wildly on which songs make said record a success. 2.) Talking about music invariably makes someone appear to be a snob, which I totally am in reality, but I try to get away from that when I can.
That said, let me be a complete music snob here and appreciate the underrated and overrated bands. Just some random pickings.
Overrated:
1.) Big Star: Just because Paul Westerberg mentions Alex Chilton in a song, and covers Big Star's songs in a drunken idiotic rage, does not make Big Star a great band. After Paul Westerberg's antics, and a few more covers by dork bands trying to be hip, critics now claim Big Star to be the great divide between REM and the Beatles. Honestly, I do like Big Star, but in the same way that I like watching old reruns of Scooby-Doo. Chris Bell's stuff is incredibly dated, and now sound like the dustbin 70's pre-punk singles they were always meant to be. Alex Chilton's (who was with the Box Tops, a strike against him) stuff tends towards R&B blue-eyed soul sung through the eyes of a 13 year old. And they only put out two good albums (and one without Chris Bell, whose untimely death after a couple of rotton solo albums later only adds to the Big Star myth). A decent band overall, but way overrated.
2.) Nirvana: Another band that I love, but that's the truth. Nirvana was the first alternative band to get the hit single played on MTV 50,000 times a day. That's only if you discount REM as being "alternative." These guys had one album that was incredible (Nevermind) and a handful of songs on their other albums that were pretty good. All the same, critics want to show that they were the Beatles of the Grunge Years, because they kinda were the icons of the era, but the Beatles had a dozen or so nearly flawless albums, in addition to being a bunch of stoned out hippies. How do you compare apples and oranges?
3.) Beck: Another guy whose music I generally like, but who is way too admired by critics. I don't care how often the critics praise "Deborah," off the Midnight Vultures LP, it's essentially to my ears a 5 minute piece of shit by a guy trying to screech five octaves above his normal vocal range to imitate R Kelly. He also got signed to a major label, and then recorded an indie album to gain some credibility with the nerds. He is, of course, the Bob Dylan of our generation.
Underrated:
1.) Michael Penn: Whenever I drop this guy's name, I always get the same response: "Oh yeah, he's that singer-songwriter who's Sean Penn's brother." Nope. I have no idea why the whole singer-songwriter thing got associated with his name, but I imagine he finds it extremely irritating. The singer-songwriter category generally is reserved for sensitive people in the 70's with acoustic guitars and no sense of humor. Jackson Browne. James Taylor. Don Henley. Michael Penn was basically this guy who, while obsessed with the Beatles, managed to forge a unique style and lay it across four of the most essential albums I've ever heard. And he had a wicked sense of humor. Unfortunately, of course it was Madonna who did him in. His biggest song (off his debut album) "No Myth" appeared right about the time Sean and Madonna were like the biggest thing in Hollywood. After Michael punched out a few rock critics for asking him about Sean + Madonna, people started avoiding him.
2.) Violent Femmes: Any band that is ironic enough to play acoustic instruments set to punk angst pop yet unironically sing the praises of Jesus Christ walking on the water and the importance of having faith in the Lord is weird. And pretty unique.
Well, that's enough rock snobbery to last another year.
-duckwing, at 11:51 PM
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Liberals and Education
Given the appeal of Dennis Miller for old liberals like William Raspberry, I decided to give Dennis Miller another try on CNBC again.
Well, I gotta say that DM has improved quite a bit in the last couple of decades. He looks older, for one thing. For another thing, he has become quite the old non-conformist.
I remember back when I was a child, in 1988. Back then, I was like the only kid who was a hard-core Reagan Republican. I believed that Reagan was right, and that the first George Bush the natural choice to take over the White House. But the truth does not make one popular, as I realized when we took a simple mock election in class, and I found myself surrounded by Michael Dukakis supporters.
Luckily, the truth came out, and the best man won in a landslide. But still, it's tough being a non-conformist. Especially at college and universities, where liberals outnumber conservatives at least 1000 to 1. At the fraternity I pledged, my fellow brothers would stick assorted flowers in the barrels of my arsenal of shotguns I kept in my room while I was away at class. They would organize gay pride marches through the campus with pink t-shirts saying "I'm not Gay, But I Support Gay Marriage." I was chained and shackled to a Ralph Nader for President sign in 2000, and put on display on the front lawn, where I was mocked by my fellow "brothers" for my conservative beliefs.
Worse still were my professors, who would flunk me if I uttered one world that veered from their liberal dogma. A position paper I wrote arguing for a repeal of the assault weapons ban was torn up in front of the class. But my teachers did not give up on me. They helped me after class, giving me pamphlets arguing such positions as legalization of majiuana, the righteousness of abortion as a method of birth control, and Marxist propaganda. Later they would seal me up for days at a time in a small coat closet, occasionally feeding me hash brownies, peyote buttons, and liberal amounts orange juice. It made me feel funny.
And, of course, it made me the man I am today. Let's face it, America is a fundamentally liberal artsy-fartsy nation, and conservatives are a minority and thus non-conformists who hate our natural way of life. If only they had the benefits of a liberal education!
I hate non-conformists like Dennis Miller. They hate America.
-duckwing, at 9:57 PM
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I Had A Dream About Christ Last Night
Because it was Easter yesterday, I went ahead and actually had a really weird dream about seeing Mel Gibson's "The Passion of the Christ" last night. Now usually, I don't have dreams, but this time I did -and boy, was it ever weird. The massive cinema looked kinda like the Metropolitan Opera (very large and grandiose). But the thing was, instead of the usual half hour of commericals and promos before the movie starts, they decided to cut the movie up and have the commercials play during the movie. So you'd see Jesus getting hammered to the cross, and then boom, they'd cut to a commercial for Diet Coke.
As a recent born-again fundamentalist, this bothered me, given the nature of the film. But I could definitely see this being applied to other, stupider movies like "Starsky and Hutch." It'd be just like sitting home and watching television, except in a movie theatre.
Special Note: My Sunday night watching HBO. The Sopranos are really starting to suck -they bore me. I am starting to get into Deadwood, the new series that premired a few weeks ago, though, mostly for it's unintentional humor. I'd love to do a parody of it sometime, but I'm not sure what angle to go for, as it's pretty much a self-parody anyway. They killed off Wild Bill way too early in the series, but the "Saloon-Keeper" is hilarious. He was this whole silent-pensive thing going on that says "I'm really depressed about killing all of these fucking cocksuckers."
-duckwing, at 9:10 PM
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Thursday, April 08, 2004
Layout, and Stuff
Changed the look of the site. Basically I'm keeping the layout the same, just changing the background colors and fonts a bit so it'd look a little bit less like a Piet Mondrian painting flaming out. I now think it's like a Piet Mondrian painting that he'd have painted during his "blue" period or something, which may or may not be an improvement, but it's the best I could do in a half hour.
Lot of things happening on the political front, but I'm fucking sick, so all of that has been glazed over a bowl a chicken soup. I was particularly interested in Condi Rice's testimony today, but I missed it because of work, and the little nuggets I picked up today on the TV and on the Net bore me to death.
I want to hear Robert Novak's take on it before I comment further.
-duckwing, at 10:38 PM
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Wednesday, April 07, 2004
Sprucing...
Okay, so I've been working on adding some stuff here. I put up a search site that links to Google, the default setting on my page basically allows you to search for any and all terms that might have appeared on the Apple Coda since it's inception. I think it looks horrible on the site right now, which is probably why I'm not a web designer, but it's functional. (Also included an Amazon search engine as well)
I also put a link up to my XML Atom feed. News Feeds seem to be the biggest trend right now, and far be it from me to pass up on a good trend.
-duckwing, at 8:50 PM
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Tuesday, April 06, 2004
Free Form Blogging Improvisational Wednesday
Or was that Tuesday? I don't know...
One of the really great things about having a blog is being able to write and publish it, and having any number of people read it the next day. Most of my posts I generally conceive well before I put it into writing, but sometimes I have absolutely no topic in mind, or I have several ideas all at once begging for my attention, and so, rather than having a set topic in mind to write about, I just post some ideas, and riff on them. That is without a doubt the best thing about writing, improvising on the spot when you think you know you have something to say, but unsure exactly what it is, or what it's going to look like, and just letting the writing mold and shape it.
Today is one of those days.
I am listening to Toto for some odd reason -just "Africa" mind you, and trying to make some sense of its music and how to work it into writing. The first thing that strikes me is that it's "fun" music, stupid and silly, and something about it is sincere two decades ago. I heard some shitty a cappella band cover it (they actually sing the shitty synth parts of the original during the intro) when browsing for indie stuff on CD Baby a year or two ago, and though I hate a cappella, I almost bought it.
I was in a couple of a cappella bands when I was younger -maybe that's why I consider it so dorky. Particularly as the chorus leader during my frat years. We were a "singing" fraternity.
Our fraternity was and is a pretty distinguished one, nationally. While we cannot lay claim to producing George W. Bush (the honor is all DKE's), we did put up Richard Lugar and Dick Gephardt. And Sam Walton, the founder of Wal-Mart.
At this point, I'm reluctant to segue into an idea of mine I had earlier, which was to tie this in somehow with the Wal-Mart dispute going on in Los Angeles. Basically, Wal-Mart wants to put another superstore in a depressed area of LA, and some activists and a good proportion of the public doesn't want it. The local LA gov't and the media, of course, are a little more sympathetic to Wal-Mart, and so it goes.
The reason why I'm reluctant to proceed with this little segway is that I'm getting more and more annoyed with criticism that leads to nothing being done on the initiative of the American people. I hate Wal-Mart, I don't shop at Wal-Mart. What else can I say? While my decision not to shop at Wal-Mart deals more with my own personal shopping ascetics than sympathy with union-less employees, etc. -I can't get over why American's just can't say "I'm sick of Wal-Mart's shit, I'm just not going to shop there anymore." Nobody does that. Is it because they're uninformed, they have no idea how Wal-Mart out competes the other unionized grocery stores and retail outlets? Well, fuck, even if you can't check out the Internet, read a fucking newspaper -it's 25 cents!
But of course, it's not because we're uniformed. We just don't care. And while I do realize that a small minority of people do, it's not enough to convince me that Wal-Mart really should be penalized by the government for being a bunch of assholes. Because we, as consumers, have naturally given them the right to be as big a bunch of assholes as they can be. Why should they stop? Look at how much shit they're producing and selling to us?
I realize this is a cynical way of looking at things. The central flaw with us (and I know I'm generalizing here) is that we're fundamentally unable to made lemonade from lemons. We'll look at the lemons, suck on it for a while, and when whine and cry about it like babies when we find out it's a bit sour. This wasn't true a couple of generations ago, so I'm left to ask -where did all the innovation and American know-how go?
With that, I'm happy with the fact that despite this, America is still one of the only places on this planet where you are pretty much free to be as innovative and creative as you want. It's just that most people don't bother, and then they wonder why, after a life of consuming shit, why they're suddenly 170 pounds overweight, and are busy taking their daily cholesterol medication and Prozac.
Well, duh.
I'd like to conclude this free improvisational post on a happy note, but unfortunately I happened to watch a bit of MTV today. They did this freakish makeover of a generally very pretty girl, a college girl with normal tits gets a normal "college girl" gig in Playboy, and then a little bit later they proceed to film her going over the details with her plastic surgeon on getting her tits hideously enlarged and her lips inflamed with collagen. In brutal detail, they show this normal pretty girl getting hacked apart on an operating table and put back together into this hideous monstrosity meant to look like Pamela Anderson.
I found that annoying, and I'll end it here.
P.S. -I've been sick the past couple of days, and I'm extremely annoyed about it. This might have had an influence on my last couple of posts. Being sick pisses me off.
-duckwing, at 11:10 PM
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Monday, April 05, 2004
Getting Inside the Overall Dickness of Philip K. Dick
When I think about the 1960’s, and all of the great minds produced during that evil, spiteful decade, I can think of no other person from that generation that produces greater reverence in my psyche than Philip K. Dick. It was his masterful prose and style of his ode to the spirit and general insanity of his contemporaries that opened:
“I saw the best minds of my generation consumed in fire and brimstone, betrayed by Jesus, and howling like vagabonds destroyed by the plundering corruption of American society…”
He eventually threw off the shackles of existentialism, and became a fundamentalist - preaching a new form of religion called “gnosticism.” His guidelines for holiness included talking to Jesus by hitting yourself repeatedly over the head with a telephone, hanging out with the Apostle Thomas, and realizing that time is in standstill and that nothing has moved or happened since 50 AD. This was fundamental to his reason for why the rapture hasn’t happened yet, and why it could essentially happen at any moment in our lifetimes.
But the most important facet of Dick’s writing, was of course, the number of seekers who scourge the internet looking for truth and insight regarding important questions such as “What is reality?” and “Is Deckard a Replicant?”
Dick knew the answers, of course, but, like Jesus, preferred answering these questions with obscure parables. His protagonists often speak loftily, as if they actually knew metaphysically their purpose in advancing the plot for their author.
A perfect example can be found in Blade Runner (DADES), where two characters share a dialogue, which is both sharp and poignant. In it, one character can easily be typed into a sort of plot device, but the other seems to carry a touch of Dick’s own state of mind when he was writing the book. But in truth they are both two sides of the same coin that is Philip K. Dick
“This is tough. The fact now is that over 93.5% of the population our planet, the Planet Earth, is now overrun by Replicants. Replicants are androids that look like, talk like, and even think like human beings. There is not any way you can tell just by observing their habits, their speech, or their manner, no, nothing at all can tell you with a degree of certainty whether or not they are, in fact, human beings, or Replicants. How would it even be possible, if it were not for this Trans-Beamic Portable Replicant Detecting Device, which I have now here in my pocket? Philip, you must come and follow my orders now.”
“Fuck you, Dick! I’m smoking hash!”
“Philip, has (sic) you ever thought about it? We must hunt down Replicants, who are in fact no different on the surface than you or me. This poses a problem, Philip...”
“I’m smoking hash!”
“How do we know, by just looking at the surface of our world, which is the Planet Earth, which is where Human Beings are from, but not Replicants, which are of course from the Planet Mars, what is real, and what is fake? Can we truly rely on our own perceptions? For instance, although I am perceiving you at this moment, how do I know that you are, in fact, a real living human being? I don’t know, Philip, but just maybe, there is no reality?”
“…”
“Oh, my Philip, I can see that you are asleep. You must be a Replicant…”
It’s the degree that the reader can empathize and understand the motivations of Dick’s characters that truly make a cursory read through PKD’s stuff entertaining, of course. Much as L. Ron Hubbard reminds us of the horrors of alien worms invading and gnawing out our brains, Philip K. Dick too brings us back to earth. Whether we are keeping Gnostic idiots in our bathtubs, or not...
-duckwing, at 8:46 PM
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Thursday, April 01, 2004
Fuck This, I'm Selling Out
This marks the first time I've ever accepted advertising on the Apple Coda, but if you'll look over to your left hand side of the screen, you'll notice that I've put some suggestions of stuff to buy on Amazon for your own amusement.
I've never had a "problem" with selling out. If General Motors wanted to put up a huge ass flash ultramercial over my site and paid me 10 grand for it, I'd be like "Yeah, sure!" If some enterprising corporate sponsor wanted to shave their logo into the back of my head for the Metro riders, if the price was right, I'd sure as hell do it. But I do have some standards. I'd never put up blog ads for just a couple of bucks, because I wouldn't have any real control over what would be advertised on my site.
I have no problem with Amazon, though. They're an awesome site, and, rest assured, everything I picked to put up on my quality site is worth the money.
I'll give you a quick buzz on my picks here:
Neal Pollack is very funny. Buy his books.
William Goldman is very clever. Moreover, he wrote the screenplay for Butch Cassidy and for The Princess Bride and for Misery. Buy his book, even if he doesn't need the extra money.
Roxy Music is a quirky Brit pop band. Siren is one of my all-time favorite albums. Quick but pointless story: me and some friends in college were hanging out doing gravity bong hits, and I put on Siren for some reason. "These guys are good, check 'em" I think I said. After a few songs, we decided it was way too heavy for the moment, and put on some Dave Matthews.
XTC is a quirky Brit pop band. I particularly recommend Black Sea, cause that's what I'm listening to right now. The cool thing about XTC is that no matter what random song of their's you're listening to, it'll be so obviously infectious that it'll inevitably come back to haunt you. A good example of this is "Sgt. Rock (Is Going to Help Me)." I've never really liked this song. In fact in college, it was a song I'd frequently skip over. But just today, I was listening to Black Sea, and for some reason I didn't skip over Sgt. Rock, and the immortal lyric that everyone quotes came up: "If I could only be tough like him, then I could win my own small battle of the sexes."
And I was like, "Holy shit, that is pretty fucking quirky!"
And I've had it on repeat on my CD player for most of the day.
Anyway, just to make sure you know I'm under no delusions, I'd truly be amazed if I found a check for a couple of bucks in my checking account come May from all of this. But I will be occasionally updating my Amazon recommendations, so if something interests you, hesitate if you can't afford it, but if you can, I'd be much obliged.
UPDATE: Don't buy anything just yet. I don't get shit until they approve and activate my associate account. So hold off of buying anything, and salivate for a bit in anticipation of your next big XTC purchase.
UPDATE Part Two: Okay, account activated. Start Buying.
-duckwing, at 11:41 PM
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