It Ain't Where You're From

It's where you're at.

I've been posting at The Mighty Corrente Building for a while now.

Drop on by for some Bloggy Goodness. Or Badness. You be the judge.

I Have Seen The Future, And It is Sexy

A couple weekends ago I went down to my neighborhood non-corporate video sto' and picked up a copy of Sin City from the rack.

Me: "I just need something to take my mind off the hurricane stuff, I've been watching it on cable all weekend. It's driving me insane."

Video Sto' Guy: "This is good. It's violent, but it's a fantasy..."

Me: "Perfect."

Maybe I'm a cornball, but I enjoyed it thoroughly.

The film is done in black and white (+red). This is supposed to make it look like the graphic novel, but it reminded me of film noir from the 30's and 40's.

Back then reality was black and white. The difference between good and evil was obvious. Fascists and Nazis on one side, the allies and the Reds on the other.

Then, after WWII, everything went Technicolor and reality was confusing. The Corporate Public Relations professionals started taking control of the minds of Americans, who were lost In a haze of cigarettes and Better Living Through Pill-Popping, getting fat off casseroles and imperial profits.

In the late sixties and early seventies, brief moments of clarity. Black and White photography was cool. I only remember black-and-white photos of the MLK assassination. And of Malcolm standing by the window with his gun.

Reagan brought in the eighties with happy-colored propaganda about a "Good Morning in America". When I think of the Clinton years I think of neon raves and the x-files. The smart people are in charge, they know what they're doing. Don't worry your little non-elite head about politics, we've got this covered. Globalization is cool, everyone in the Third World will be a jet-setting dot-com exec in no time, you'll see.

Which brings us to the Naughties. From the get-go, George W. Bush's administration has been so rigidly ideological, so grossly corrupt that it has completely eliminated any "gray areas" there might have been in the American political landscape.

Sin City is ruled by a power-mad politician in league with corrupt cops and his brother, a cardinal who uses religion for political ends. The brothers and their demented progeny are responsible for horrible crimes against humanity. Sound familiar?

On the other side, we have courageous individuals who risk their lives out of a sense of personal morality and fight the powers-that-be to protect the most vulnerable.

Marv: This is blood for blood and by the gallon. These are the old days, the bad days, the all-or-nothing days. They're back! There's no choice left. And I'm ready for war.

I swear, if Howard Dean utters those words in a speech, I will vote a straight Democratic ticket for the rest of my days.

I'm not saying it's a realistic vision of the future. There don't seem to be any gay people or any women who weigh more than 100 lbs in Sin City. But if the future is going to be filled with scantily clad women standing around weilding giant weapons, I'm looking forward to it. It's going to be hot.

PS: My favorite movie of all time is also in black and white. Set in New Orleans and starring Tom Waits, Roberto Benigni and John Lurie, Down By Law is a sad and beautiful film. The opening sequence (shot by Wim Wender's old DP, Robby Muller) is an endless drive-by of the Crescent City's victorian slums with Tom Waits' "Jockey Full of Bourbon" in the background. Check it out. If it doesn't break your heart to see images of what Nawlins used to be and if you're able to stay awake through Jim Jarmusch's trademark meaningful pauses in dialogue, you'll be glad you did.

PPS: Sin City also features one of the funniest exchanges I've seen in a while:

Jack Rafferty: ...sccaught you ssmokinggthere, bud.

Dwight: You shut the hell up, Jackie-Boy. You're dead. I'm just imagining this, so shut the hell up.

Jack Rafferty: ...Hntells you somethin 'bout your sstate a' mind don't it?... Ss'got you hearin things'got yer nerves shot. S'got you ssmoking... You know it's truuuuuuue nobody ever really quitsss... Smoker's a smoker when the chips're downn and your chips're down, pretty much.

The Ungrateful Dead

New Orleans is now off limits to the media. I wonder why?

Kos via Corrente:

We are in Jefferson Parish, just outside of New Orleans. At the National Guard checkpoint, they are under orders to turn away all media. All of the reporters are turning they?re TV trucks around.

Pair that up with this little item from the AP:

Many, like the man whose body was on a wooden cart on New Orleans' Rampart Street near downtown may simply be buried in anonymous pauper's graves.

What's a pauper grave? It kind of sounds like a quaint, old-timey kind of expression. As George Michael is wont to say on his Sports Machine: "let's go to the videotape." Webster's online in our case:

Modern Translation: PAUPER'S GRAVE Translations for "PAUPER'S GRAVE"; alternative meanings/domain in parentheses. Spanish: fosa com?n (mass grave).

OK, then. Isn't that the type of shit the Nazis and Saddam Hussein used to do? US citizens are going to be rolled into ditches and covered with dirt in unmarked graves? Yep.

As long as nobody's around to see the dead, nobody will see the mass graves. Nobody can question a lowball body count.

Will every corpse be meticulously identified using the latest DNA technology like the bodies of the 9-11 World Trade Center stockbrokers? I'm not counting on it. These are poor black people we're talking about. Dignified burials for 10,000 people and identifying their corpses for family members takes time and money.

Just this past week we have numerous new additions to Bush's Afterlife Army of Torment coming from New Orleans and the Gulf Region. And they have more reason to be pissed than before. Not only did the Chimp leave them to die for no reason other than lack of concern, he's also not going to give them a proper burial.

The souls of those who died from the Katrina disaster will torment George Bush, his family and his associates for all eternity. But that is not nearly good enough. How much death, destruction and misery will he and his ilk spread before they meet their Maker and She smacks the shit out of them?

Why am I thinking about Tibetan depictions of hell right now? The Italians are pretty good at this type of stuff, though. My man Dante would have a field day with these evil bastards.

I don't even know if I even believe in hell. But my point is that it doesn't matter. You have to punish evil people while they're still on this earth so as to deter other evil people. More importantly, you need to stop them. Now. As quickly as possible.

Unless the Media raises a stink about corpses rotting in unmarked piles of dirt, this will be allowed to pass. And it will. I doubt the Media has the stomach to stand up to this latest outrage. The Army of Torment will be seeing them soon too.