10 November 2013

Song Lyrics: Attitude

Attitude
           copyright (c) 2013 Laramie Crocker
===============================================


I'm gettin Attitude
from a fat dude
in a wheelchair
a motorized kill-chair
feeding,
speeding,
not heeding where my feet go

And a yuppie in a bronco
runs me over in the cross-walk, Yo!

And a yuppie with a cheese-roll
cutting me in line
swinging his baguette
like a machete

I'm getting run over
by a double-wide baby stroller
double-wide baby stroller moms is two-fistin
latte and a capuccino

I'm stepping over bodies of the mentally insane
the lady with the latte is getting deranged


CHORUS:
    And every time I say I hate this town
    And every time I say I'm gonna burn it down
    down to the ground
    to the ground ground ground

    she says: Go and build a garden
    dig it in the ground, ground
 
    Go and build a garden
    dig it in the ground, ground
 
    put your hands in the Earth
    put your hands in the ground, ground
 
    and praise a strawberry
    put it in your mouth
    mother earth, hail mary

    put your hands in the earth
    put your hands in the ground, ground
    dig it in the ground

Neck to neck on the train
skully's lookin in my brain
everybody's on their phone
no one lookin where they're going
and the people getting fatter
and my blood's getting hotter
like the planet
I can't stand it

I try to go to the health club
old lady in a hot tub
givin me the underwater elbow
the rage is just below the surface
the rage is just below the surface


CHORUS:
    And every time I say I hate this town
    And every time I say I'm gonna burn it down
    down to the ground
    to the ground ground ground

    she says: Go and build a garden
    dig it in the ground, ground
 
    Go and build a garden
    dig it in the ground, ground
 
    put your hands in the Earth
    put your hands in the ground, ground
 
    and praise a strawberry
    put it in your mouth
    mother earth, hail mary
 
    put your hands in the earth
    put your hands in the ground, ground
    dig it in the ground

08 October 2013

Redneck Monk Sez

Every advice you hear for other people inside your head,
or rules for other people that you imagine telling or enforcing,
are
for
YOU.

They are also
for you
to
poop
on.

--Finbar, the redneck monk
   (from the upcoming Anarchia.us cartoon)

16 August 2013

Big Brother Obama

Winston Smith sat as his lappy, typing words he knew Big Brother would read, archive, data-mine and pore over for as long as the NSA's Intelligence Community Comprehensive National Cybersecurity Initiative Data Center, sometimes called the Utah Data Center, or Minitruth, in Newspeak, was in existence.  Comrade Obama had declared that Minitruth would be dedicated to protecting Americans, and would be open to scrutiny and review by the party faithful.  How he loved Brother Obama!  He had voted for Brother Obama, of course, as did every freedom-loving blue-stater.  When Brother Obama spoke of freedom and security, Winston's heart swelled.  He did not give thought to stop-and-frisk needed to thwart terrorists, or the other implements of freedom: national ID cards, Stand-your-ground laws, persecution of whistleblowers, full-body searches at airports--for to question these things would surely lead to a visit in the middle of the night by the FBI, commonly known as the Thought Police.

[In case you think I'm some kind of Obama-hater, here's my posts from 2009, after I voted for the Obama-bot: 

http://laramiecrocker.blogspot.com/2009/01/yesterday-i-was-working-with-my-friend.html

http://laramiecrocker.blogspot.com/2009/01/new-model-politican-obama2008.html ]

31 July 2013

Don't trust the white man!

Don't trust the white man!
That man with all the power
he can drop a war
just like that
just by bein white.
Shit.  Don't LET a black man be President.
They won't let that happen.
You said.
You said it was cuz of white men that we had this shit.
But now, a black man is President,
and it is same shit,
different day.
Because, cuz, it is power that begets power.
And when power wants to look white, it looks white
when it wants to look black, it looks black.
These men, these actors.

Maybe we can forget about divisions
like white and black
like religion
like conservative and liberal
like republican and democrat.

That war, that Vietnam war.
Blame Nixon!
Blame Johnson!
Blame Kennedy
Blame Ike
Blame Truman.
Yes.  You have to go that far back.
All those beloved Presidents.
All those warmongering motherfuckers
And that's just one of the wars they brought.
It wasn't them, it was us, what bought it.
Maybe we were following the marketing
of the rich and powerful.  Maybe we wanted it.

We don't have to *ask* the government nicely to stop the NSA.
As long as "We" is a majority, We can make them
do what we want, or we have the right to revolt.
It's in the Constitution.


25 June 2013

A Spy in the House of Mobile


It's a rainy day in Berkeley, as I set out from my garden, into the flower-laden streets of NorthB.  I have to leave the ferns and dripping beaks of the Birds of Paradise to enter the maw of the Beast.  Into his chthonic BART tunnel, through the billboarded piss-hallways, through the throngs and trophy parks and the screaming streets, into the screaming office, to sit in a row at my desk for the next nine hours.

So far, I'm passing fairly well.  Had my Giants hat already for the team outing to PacBell Park.  As part of my job requirement, I must participate in Skype chat (text only) all day.  Response times over a few minutes are called out.  Sometimes required conversations must take place in real time, talking by typing, to a group of engineers all sitting around the same table.  Everyone is typing, and suddenly, out of nowhere, everyone is cracking up, synchronized, and you have to jump on chat and catch up.  I haven't quite gotten to the point of fitting in well in chat.  I might need to post some cat videos.

I'm in the House of Mobile to learn the secrets from the inside.  To understand how marketers, and business men think.  To understand how someone can have a passion for Advertising.  To me, Advertising is the mark of the Beast, maybe even the Devil himself.  Born and raised in Berkeley, right here in NorfB.  I want to have a world where we all contribute content for free or micropayments, or *something* without ads.  Which makes me either a hypocrite or a rebel.  Pass the stogie, brother, it's been a long day.

27 June 2013
Overheard: "Well, they're a non-profit, so if they aren't in it for profit, I don't know what their motives are, so I can't trust them."

I like the 99% thing.  I want to be 99% faithful.  Hey, that's like three days a year...

03 April 2013

Seen in downtown S.F April 1, 2013

April 1 seen in downtown S.F. : A man with his "unit" in a knitted sock dangling between his legs to the ground, in half of a cut-up suit and tie, with exactly half his body exposed (the left half) and a sign that said "Sale, half-off"; A vintage 70's mint green Country Squire station wagon... with giant ghetto wheels (rimsos) cruisin'; And at Yerba Buena, two giant roll-off dumpster containers re-purposed as art installation with built in park benches and yucca plants; And the Twelve Gallaxies guy's sign is now in Cyrillic script. Sorry I didn't bring a camera, y'all. Just another normal day in S.F.

10 March 2013

Food Sovereignty -- what if Ask versus Make creates Trust?

I had some thoughts after reading these two posts that separately appeared on facebook:









Food safety might be related to trust. Do you trust your neighbor when he says his Vermont maple syrup is organic? Do you trust some mega-corporation when it says "All Natural"? Now, Vermont (my state half the year) has very strict maple syrup regulations to support the participating farmers. But the fact is, I could wander over and say "Paul, are there any chemicals you use, etc." I can't do that with a giant food corp. I must rely on government to make them compliant.

In her talk on TED, Amanda Palmer says we should Ask rather than Make. I'm relating these two posts ("Food Sovereignty" and "The Art of Asking") because Ask works over Make, when you Trust. So in Vermont, we trust because the social network is strong in Vermont. It has to be or you die of the freakin cold or the freakin floods.

So I live in Vermont when I can because I trust my neighbors. I can't trust a giant food company being regulate by a giant, distant government, because there's lots of documented problems with government not really checking for diseases at slaughterhouses, government allowing shady business practices of trans-shipping food from China through Mexico so it skirts some regulation, Government allowing genetically modified material into our food stream without warnings, courts upholding the right of mega feed/seed companies to sue farmers for "stealing" copyrighted corn polen that blew onto their farms, and on, and on, and on. In other words, no TRUST.

Maybe if we buy and GROW locally, we'll know where our goddamn food comes from and we can trust, and know, our food is safe. Now--local growers can still elect to go through any certification process (e.g. certified organic) if they feel the stamp of approval will help them with their customers. But being made to do this won't make food any safer, because the "make" implies top down control, which would be fine if "everyone" agreed with the top, e.g. functioning democracy. But when the system gets a bit big and convoluted, maybe smaller, more local, more known, can be more trusted.


[Getting ready for french toast at our Bed-and-Breakfast in Berkeley.  Challah bread: Cheeseboard Collective, Berkeley, California.  Maple-syrup: from our neighbors in Brownsville, Vermont]

20 January 2013

A Week In L.A.

A Week in L.A.  (c) 2013 Laramie Crocker 


Sunset on Berkeley
A Week in this town
is better than sayin 
I'm leaving in May


I'd stayed a year
and another year
I left my other girl
when my brother left his
and her sister said
as she stood in our kitchen
does this idiocy run in the family
in pairs
or is it contagion?


and I took a two-week vacation
once
a week on a cruise to paradise
and back
and a week in LA
a week in LA
that's what was left
seemed better than sayin
I'm stayin til May


and I'm calm under fire
capable of murder
I've taken my own life
but still, here I am
but still, here I am

and I've sold chocolate bars
delivered papers
I've been a carpenter
and I've been a trainer
and now I'm a singer
and I wanna live
and sing every day 
and live my whole life
like a week in LA





18 January 2013

Sir Mick explains all to Oprah

Oprah: So tell me, Sir Mick, are you willing to be totally honest on my show.
Sir Mick: Sure, luv.

O: So did you do it?
SM: Yes, I did.

O: And did your "team" also go along.
SM: Sure, we all did.  I mean, it was the only thing keeping Keith alive.

O: He's alive?
SM: In a way.

O: And how did you avoid the testing?
SM: Well we didn't very well avoid it in Alabama, did we?  I mean, it was part of our image.  People expected it.

O: And did you make your team do it?
SM: Well, I felt just as I told them we should tune up, and practice, aye, that it was my duty to share what I could score with the team.

O: And what about the other bands?
SM: Look, luv, it was Rock'n'Roll.  EVERYONE doped.  I'm not gonna name names, but Floyd, The Doors, The Who, the Grateful Dead, The Mouseketeers, EVERYONE.  Well, not the Monkeys...

O: Not Jerry Garcia--no way!
SM: 'e was a bleeding smokestack on stage.  I don't think I'm going out on a limb here.  I mean, we coulda not doped, but then we'd still be wankers, and the Beatles would still be choir boys, wouldn't they.

O: So there we have the whole truth.  Sir Mick, admitting that the Rolling Stones doped, the Who doped, and most shockingly, and perhaps part of a continuing pattern of coercion, Sir Mick outs the leader of the "Hardest Working Band" as doping as well.  A whole industry, riddled with doping, perhaps even unable to function without it.

07 January 2013

Django Unchained


Hideous Fun. Blaxploitation never felt this good.
Django Unchained is Blaxploitation for good, instead of evil, and it allows the director, Quentin Tarantino, to get away with showing
attrocities on screen that even Roots could not muster.  This movie is serious in the same way that James Clavell writes, in Shogun, that the feudal Japanese attendees laughed after witnessing sepuku, laughing to relieve the social and emotional strain and acknowlege the horror, in a socially acceptable way.  The film is brilliant, funny, outrageous, over the top, post-modern, a blaxploitation spaghetti western complete with soundtrack, an excoriating expose of slavery in this country,  a deep philosophical dive into feeling and living in those awful moments, and an unbelievable riot of a pulp movie.  Tarantino has perfected his game.

--Laramie Crocker
  showdate: 2013-01-14,
  Westwood Village Theater, L.A.