Please enjoy my brief article/photo response to this graffiti over on the Portland Mercury site, which inspired a lively debate over the value of graffiti, led by a charming fellow who wishes to "stomp right on [a tagger's] fingers with my steel-toed Redwings."
Ah, I love it when high profile newsfolk like Lou Dobbs refer to "Big Media" as if they are not a part of it. It's like when the President claims to be a Washington outsider. Lou has continued his ongoing crusade against illegal immigrants, quoting a Vanderbilt professor in an apparent attempt to pit Hispanics and African-Americans against one another ("these low-skilled, low-wage workers"). Everybody is fighting for that McDonald's uniform, huh Lou?
After reviewing a few of Lou's tirades against illegal immigration, he's definitely big on hate and little on thoughtful argument and solutions. He seems to really believe that illegal immigrants are a tremendous scourge responsible for disease, crime, and even the dissolution of our democracy. Lou's comments are thinly veiled racism at best, as by "illegal immigrant" he clearly means Hispanic people (who he probably refers to only as "Mexicans" in private), even though illegal immigrants come from all over the world.
Amazingly, Lou has had the gall to compare people who support plans to intelligently manage immigration to Nazi propagandists, earning him a worthy lashing by the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society. Maybe someone should tell him that kidnapping and taking immigrants back over the border in cattle cars would probably rate a place in our illustrious history right along with putting Japanese people in concentration camps during World War II.
I think someone should tell him that if he loses his job, it will be because of immigration, but only the stupid racist shit he says about it- not to worry, another fat rich white man will take over where he left off.
Jules Verne is hardcore. He accurately wrote about cars, planes, calculators, and submarines before they'd been invented. Plus, he was shot by his nephew. Anyway...
His stories, along with Burroughs, always make me a bit nostalgic for the mid-19th century, back when I was a lad. I'm always a bit aloof at first, but then get drawn into the adventure, whether it's traveling to the center of the earth or to a forgotten island full of prehistoric beasts. Back before Google maps and "modern science," adventure stories were so exciting because they had the slight possibility of being real. Now that essentially the whole world has been explored, mapped, and highways put in, science fiction and adventure stories have become comparatively lame.
Instead of stories about Amazonian cannibals, we get celebrity chefs like Tony Bourdain trying exotic fishes from reputable restaurants. While Michael Crichton brought us a little taste of the old days with the first Jurassic Park, he has since devolved into boring garbage about nano-technology and rants against the reality of global warming, stating that "a belief in extraterrestrials has paved the way, in a progression of steps, to a belief in global warming." What happened to the T-Rex? It was much more believable.
Oh well.
The battle between man and whisker-fish dog is escalating rapidly. On Wednesday, a sea lion stole a salmon from a fisherman's line (or so he says), causing him to become so irate that he shot the lion in the head twice at point-blank range with a .22 rifle. Look, either get up at 5 A.M., take a case of beer and go deer hunting, or take a case of beer and go fishing- no fair doing both.
A term I have never quite understood is "sport fisherman." I assume that this term is designed to distinguish those who fish for their livelihood from the weekend warriors (another amusing phrase). However, do we call gardeners "sport farmers?" Granted, sitting in a motorized boat with nothing but beer and pork rinds to sustain you is pretty harsh.
I was walking across the Hawthorne Bridge today on my way downtown, when I noticed something pop up in the river, and then be mobbed by seagulls. Perhaps a "floater?" I thought (Policealise for body in the river). No, on closer inspection it was a sea lion feasting on the spring salmon in the Willamette, obviously doing much better than the fishing boat next to it. No fat and lazy zoo exhibit, this river dog was a beast, and was still at it two hours later when I returned.
Apparently, sea lions have become a major problem at the Bonneville dam on the Columbia River, eating as much as 3.5% of the precious fish on their way to spawning. One bolshy bastard has even managed to hurl his blubberous self up the fish ladder to eat the fish resting in pools as they climb over the dam.
"Scientists" have been shooting the lions with rubber bullets, exploding firecrackers, and making faces to try to drive the stubborn animals away. Needless to say, skinny white men do not frighten 600 pound carnivores. Meanwhile, real scientists point out that the problem is not the sea lions, but the four gigantic dams that grind up over half the baby salmon each year on their way downriver. I say that this be decided physically, since sea lions can not discuss serious matters without resorting to childish belching and flipper-slapping. Critics can either go mano a dog-fish thing-o or shut the fuck up and take down the stupid dams.
Got to get up to get down, that's what P-funk said. Yesterday marked the start of my membership to Portland Rock Gym, the local hangout for all types of Portlandians whose idea of a good time consists of wearing tiny rubber shoes, capris, and strapping themselves into junk-highlighting harnesses. D.L. Hughley said that you don't see any black people bungee-jumping because getting attached to a rope and pushed off a bridge is too damned much like lynching, and I suppose rock climbing probably fits in that category as well.
I think that people like climbing because it's one of those activities where you can't think about anything other than what you're doing right then. Or you fall. That's why people get tired of just "working out" at a regular gym- you're always trying to distract yourself from what you're actually doing. Clarity of mind may not be available on the Stairmaster, but you won't find anyone climbing with an iPod on or whipping out a cell phone halfway up the wall. It's just you, the wall, and a rope pulling your harness up your ass.
