Carl Karcher must be shitting his pants with glee right now.

After a whole load of commercials for the Carl’s Jr. burger joint chain which tried its best to sink to the lowest common denominator of intelligence and humor, each sorry ass radio and TV spot replete with misogyny, fake machismo, juvenile ogling or a combination of any or all of the three, Carl Karcher Enterprises has finally aired a spot that has given his hideous little swill pit of a “restaurant” chain some notoriety. And we all know what they say about bad publicity beating none at all.

Paris Hilton, whose claim to fame sprang from such things as spending her family’s money and sucking her boyfriend’s dick on bootleg videos, is in the latest Carl’s Jr. ad washing a Bentley in a skimpy swatch of cloth and taking a few bites out of one of those horrendous shit sandwiches that Karl and Co. are trying to sell to, according to one of their formulated recent press responses, “our target market, 18-34-year-old males, who are the biggest consumers of fast-food burgers.” And in an earlier statement, Paris herself admits that, while she does not actually really indulge in burgers, that her mutt Tinkerbell absolutely loves them! So see fellas? The bitch wants to sell you dog food! Get hypnotized by that tits n’ass and pick up a surefire diarrhea and indigestion enhancer at yer local Carl’s Jr. right now!

And don’t expect too much public outcry on this one, at least from the usual Christian fundamentalist “family values” assholes who bitched about Janet Jackson. Herr Karcher has a long history of donating money to homophobic ballot initiative causes and the right wing, fetus grieving, affirmative action hating goofball politicians who love that sort of stuff.

Which makes you figure it all out: at last, after all that money being spent, Carl Karcher can point at this latest sorry marketing stunt and proclaim, “See? I ain’t no fag!”

PSYCHO'S RECORD PILE
Nuclear Assault- Handle With Care (1989)


I never considered myself to be much of a diehard metal fan. Still, I have a deep dislike of pigeonholing and labeling any form of art. Besides, to dismiss an entire genre of music just cheats oneself. But oh Hell, I'm guilty of labeling for the sake of description from time to time anyway.

I don't care what Nuclear Assault gets tagged with in time- hardcore crossover, thrash metal, speed metal, conscious latter day crossover hardcore thrash speed death metal, whatever. These boys kicked the shit out of 97/100ths of "the competition" in their heyday. The stuff they came up with goes into such seamless streams of melodic yet hard-as-Hell headbanger flow that upon first listening, the "real musicians" of the world may pooh-pooh their material as easy- yeah, until they actually try to fuckin' play it. Right, that is.

It's called heart, ye hacks of the music theory. Either you have a grasp of it or you don't. Doesn't matter how well you play a diminished seventh or how well you cross in and out of a 7/4 beat. Nuclear Assault had that quality necessary for a good, nay, great band, metal or otherwise, in that they knew exactly how they wanted to perform and write songs, and succeeded in bringing that vision to reality.

1989's Handle With Care is the album that thrust Nuclear Assault into the mainstream spotlight. Sort of. MTV's Headbanger's Ball and 120 Minutes programs featured heavily the band's video for "Critical Mass", which was aided by a special appearance by a freshly tabloid-exploited, Playboy-spreaded and breast-augmented Jessica Hahn. Jessica and her two fake friends weren't especially necessary as the real scene stealers were the lyrics to the song, which were smartly ticker-tape captioned at the bottom of the screen: "The Biosphere, the place we live/It seems like we don't give a damn/Other species flushed down the tubes/We need another place to rape/The way we live we will destroy/Every other living thing/'Til none are left except our race/And then we will destroy ourselves". HUH? Isn't this what we would get off the lyric sheet to a Crass or MDC album?

It doesn't stop there, by the way. "Inherited Hell" continues to expound upon the subject of eco-neglect. "When Freedom Dies" is like a time capsule of relevance: "We become the enemy/When freedom dies for security". They were addressing the Soviet/American nuclear contention of the time, but upon a second look nowadays, could just as easily be addressing today's issues of personal liberties in the wake of September 11th's events.

I can safely declare as well that this entire recording is free of gratuitous Satanic references and token bashing of divine beliefs. And we're not talking about that wussy Jeezo metal trend from around the same era either. Nuclear Assault represented unpretentious regular guy and gal headbangers and heshers. If there's ever anything close to a reunion tour I'll see youse in the pit.

New-clur plants. As many as we can build. That’s what Dubya has presented as one of his imaginative and bright ideas in resolving the nation’s energy needs and soaring fuel costs.

Apparently, his aversion to paying attention to the various forms of news media goes back to the days of Chernobyl, or even Three Mile Island. But hey, like he says, we can solve our obstacles with modd-in teck-nol-oh-gee and I think that what he really means by that is: we can build them plants bigger, stronger, faster than ever before! Golly! How inspiring!

Of course, it would be easier to swallow that sugarcoated Bullshit Pill if it weren’t for stuff like recent findings that our country’s own Nuclear Regulatory Commission which has discovered that Hemyc, brand name for a material used to insulate electrical cables in reactors, is unsafe and prone to being a potential fire hazard. And who makes this shit? Well, what a coincidence! It just happens to be a company based in Houston, Texas!

So hey! The HELL with all that safety issue crap, right? Let’s just start getting those nuke plants up and going ASAP! And, whaddya know, I have taken the time and trouble to find a PRIME location for the first one we put up! It’s in a central locale where, hey, the bigger we make it, the more new-clur power we can spread across the whole US of A! And we might even get to sell some to them Mexicans under NAFTA and make a few bucks, too! Ever trying to be as helpful as possible, I have provided a link below to the map area of where I think this plant would receive perfect and almost unanimous support!


Click here to view map of my proposed nuclear plant site

Click here for an article on the Hemyc problem

NOSTALGIA TIME! Installment 1

(Note: Considering that there's been a lot of talk lately about the FCC cracking down on "indecency" and "obscenity", especially after Janet Jackson's Boobiegate incident and all that, I've decided that, rather than repeating myself, I'd post this rant from a long-extinct site I had up several years ago. So here it is, where somehow, comments made in 1997 have newfound relevance in 2005. Go figure.- MP)


Ruminations and Accusations

CHAPTER 1.This Censorship Shit is Really Fucked Up!

WHEN IN THE COURSE OF HUMAN EVENTS, it becomes annoying when fuckheads who somehow get elected to public office start trying to tell people like me that mere words, usually being vulgar references to sexual acts, excrement, and male and female genitalia used in many creative alternate ways, are obscene and threatening to the well-being of our children, but that, say, for example, Freddie Krueger or Michael Myers disemboweling and dismembering people on movie screens or the Starr Report or ignoring the dangers of the use of methyl bromide in heavily populated areas does not, one can only conclude that these aforementioned lawmakers have their heads firmly and permanently lodged in their sphincters.

I'll cut to the chase. The reason so many of these parents nowadays are pushing for "decency" measures in all walks of media life isn't because there's this sudden proliferation of nasty material everywhere. That level of "adult" information and entertainment and whatnot is about the same level of obscenity as 10, even 20 years ago, actually. The real reason that these parents are campaigning so hard for censorship and control is that...

THEY DON'T WANT TO SPEND THE TIME IT REQUIRES TO SUPERVISE THEIR FUCKIN' KIDS!!!

Yup, ever since the beast Ronald 666 ascended to the throne back in '80, we've been bombarded with these right-wing diatribes about how we need to bring "traditional family values" back into governmental policy and American lifestyle in general, and things like unmarried people humpy-dumpin' each other and gays getting married and some 12-year old girl who got raped by her brother choosing to have an abortion are unacceptable abominations which must be stopped immediately at all costs.

But on the ass-end of this deal, the same fools who propagate this mentality want to have their cake and eat it too. Why? Because they also want to retain their over mortgaged homes and bloated expensive late model vehicles and over-usury-dependent lifestyles, that in all practical terms, they KNEW that they had a snowball's chance in Hell of affording in any realistic view. And HOW do they perceive to pull this off? By throwing their kids into fuckin' day care centers until they're old enough to become "latchkey kids", whilst both parental units work their asses off 24-7 to prove to the world that they can be good parents and provide all the necessary GOODS and SERVICES for their family. And on top of that, be able to drag the whole family to service every Sunday!

However, in order to maintain this lifestyle, they have to cut back on certain traditional mainstays- such as time with their kids! Oh, sure, once in a while there's a ballgame or a school play to attend or a trip to the zoo or the miniature golf course, but that takes a back seat to the fact that you need to prove to the world that you're not one of these leeching welfare ingrates sucking off the tax dollars, never mind that the multi-national that you worked for got enough tax breaks to pay NOTHING on the millions they profited for the past few years or so! NO, you've got an image as a good wholesome family head to uphold, and gosh darn it, the world may not owe you a living, but it certainly owes you free babysitting! Now, where, I repeat, where the fuck does this mixed up confused logic come from?

My bottom line is this... I did not encourage you to join genitalia with the opposite sex, combine DNA info, and reproduce. That was YOUR choice. I chose NOT to do so. I am NOT your male nanny, and my behavior on MY personal web pages is, quite frankly, NONE OF YOUR FUCKING BEESWAX.

I know as well as the next folk that there are some very sick motherfuckers in this world out to get kids for their own perverted use. I despise the actions of these pedophilic miscreants as much as any card carrying Christian Coalition groupie. But blocking information en masse, ignoring the real methods and means, not only will do nothing to protect kids, it will simply ignore the objectives they're attempting to address. The best way to protect your children is the same on the Internet or on TV as on the streets: INFORMATION. Information on what is right for viewing and who is right to associate with. Give them information on what to do if a stranger tries to communicate with you, whether in the chat room or on the street. Hey, even good old fashioned GUILT. If the parents aren't there, the kid's been taught about right and wrong well enough so that Mom and Dad's eyes are drillin' through their heads if they know that they could be using poor judgment!

And besides, do you really think pornography causes teen sex and pregnancy anyway? What REALLY causes it is horny teenage kids of opposite genders getting together and being STUPID and UNTHINKING! I mean, to quote the average '90s teen, "Well, DUH!"

In closing, I would like to say, in regards to criticism that my Website material is inappropriate for your younger children, let me give you a quote which my dear old Dad said when I was just a teenager my own self: "Well, if you don't like it here, then get the fuck out of my house!"

What? The major recording companies are being investigated for possible shady dealings with radio stations in getting their shitty music played?

Well, DUH.

Like, gee, you never could have seen THAT one coming.

Big Fat Clue: turn on any corporate-owned radio station in any American market today, and you will hear songs by artists on the air because some slimy schmuck indirectly greased all the right palms of the station management.

Ooooh, no, some folks will say, that’s illegal. Record companies can’t pay off stations in cash, goods or anything of that sort.

Wrong, me pilgrims. That’s exactly in the area where recording labels have all of these convenient stooges doing all of that shitwork. They’re known collectively under the dubious moniker of “independent promoters.” A more appropriate term would be “kickback facilitators.” Basically, the promoters get paid fairly big bucks by the labels to promote their chosen limited crop of no-substance losers, and the promo people in turn pay the stations an annual “retainer” to be their, um, sagely advice on what records to put on the respective stations’ playlists. This has become the standard for just about every type of format. Rock, R&B, Rap, Country, you name it. Even oldies stations aren’t free of this shit. For many of those, some dork is probably their “certified golden oldies” promoter (read; providing a list of songs that, e.g., Time-Life is presently regurgitating on infomercials for overpriced CD collections.)

Yes, that type of business in which the music biz participates in every day is basically fucked up. Yes, it does stagnate the variety of music offered by commercial stations. No, it probably won’t change or even slightly improve anytime soon. Although it is nice to see an investigation by the New York Attorney General’s office being carried out, I’m not going to hold my breath.


Here's the latest story about the alleged (not so) New Payola

The pope’s still on a slope as I’m writing this, so it may seem a wee bit premature to some folks, but somebody’s gotta say it.

Now’s the prime time to elect an African pope.

What the Hell, in serious consideration, perhaps having a figurehead of that level from Africa would finally draw some serious international attention, media and otherwise, to the AIDS menace still decimating the continent.

But who the fuck am I kidding. They’re just going to elect another Italian, and shit’s going to be the same as it ever was from the time before John Paul II was elected. This should thrill Dubya and his cronies to no end, since the papacy will slide on back over to the right again; not that it was all that liberal beforehand.

I can understand the charismatic quality that made Karol Wojtyla, the man, so admired by millions. Having survived Nazi occupation and its accompanying atrocities; standing up to the commies in Poland; and that seemingly superhuman resilience that survived getting run over, and later shot, then later disease. But as Pope John Paul II, I saw nothing in the guy but a capitalist stooge who kept the Catholic party line of homophobia, misogyny and sexual intolerance intact. So fuck him.

Thank God that they finally pulled the fuckin’ tube.

In this whole mess involving Terri Schiavo’s “rights” or “choices”, whose side am I on?

Actually, neither one.

For starters, it’s really none of my business what happens to her. And more, both parties to this debate strike me as a bunch of assholes. On one end, you have her parents, who will whore out to any Tom, Dick and Falwell just for the chance to prolong seeing their child in a perpetual vegetative state. Then you have the husband, who swears up and down that his wife would not have wanted to be put on feeding support, already with a fiancée and a child already birthed by the future wife waiting in the wings for wedding bells to ring as soon as the death certificate is signed. So then you wonder why Michael Schiavo doesn’t just say, “fuck it”, annuls the marriage and leaves Terri to the parents? It makes you wonder if the allegations of his waiting for a big ch-ching upon his present wife’s demise are true.

But otherwise, if I were Terri Schaivo, I’d want to be cut off the foodline simply because it would be a welcome escape from the shitheads surrounding me at present.

And should it be a surprise to anyone that Bush takes the side of the parents? After all, as long as she is still alive, he’s confident in knowing that someone out there exists who is actually more brain dead than he.

I’m sick and tired of these assholes in the Establishment Media going off on this tangent of “Well, uh, the Democrats are on an aggressive campaign to oppose the President’s plan to reform Social Security, but aren’t offering any alternatives.”

Well, I’ve voted Democrat for my entire life (and admittedly, voting with fingers pinching nose on more than one occasion,) and I have an alternative:

Wanna hear it?

O.K.

Here’s my alternative to Dubya’s plan to “save” Social Security:

Don’t fuck with it.

There. How’s that? Now you have an alternative.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. The funds are going to run out in 2042 (according to Dubya’s bean counters’ forecast, and we all know how accurate and honest THIS administration can be.) I’ll be 80 years old by then. And like, the whole country is going to sit idly by and say, “Gee. You mean all this money that I’ve had deducted from my paycheck is gone, and I’ll never see any of it in any shape or form? Oh, huh, aight, I’m cool with that.” Yeahrite. Things are fucked up enough as it is today; can you even imagine what the social climate will be like by 2042? Want to see an armed revolt the likes of which the world has never seen before? Get up in front of the American public and tell them THAT.

And how the fuck is private investment of our Social Security payments an attractive alternative? Uh, yuh, if you’re a Wall Street investor you’re chompin’ at the bit right now. But any fool knows that the stock market works in cycles, and if this investment scheme were implemented, say, within five to ten years, most of these Gen Xers would be shit out of luck after one or two downturns and I’d bet the farm that they would have LESS then if they simply were deducted from their pay as it stands right now.

Or better yet, how’s this for an option? When we pay Uncle Sam every year in Federal income taxes, we can choose whether, oh, at least ten percent or so of our tax payments go to our choice of: defense (where a monster chunk of it goes anyway,) or to augment the Social Security fund! Let’s see how many true patriots we have around us THEN.

So… what’s up with this Midtown Monthly shit?

That’s the name of this little paper I get in the mail here in the 95816 once every month or so. As far as I can tell, it’s the work of approximately 3 people with one person writing most of the content. Most of the pages are filled with display ads from quaint lil’ yuppie businesses ‘round town (and it appears that most of them are actually located outside of the Midtown area.) The actual reading content is mostly advertorial crap with a two page fluff piece on time management thrown in the paper’s center, written by the same person who writes almost all of the other stuff, natch, and which goes in 140 different directions, yet in the end, says nothing.

What really made me want to spit my soda when I picked this rag up: a cover story licking the shit clean out of Paul Petrovich’s ass. Petrovich, he of the dreaded Sacramento Art Nazi Movement, he who has the gall to white over an original and attractive mural on one side of the street, and on the other, post a hideous equine hunk of scrapheap shit right smack in front of the Safeway, and then pay the equivalent of about 25 Safeway employees’ wages to plop up a water tower that is completely hollow and has no fuckin’ practical purpose whatsoever. Hey, don’t get me wrong, it’s nice to take a short hop to pick up milk or Fritos or whatever, but this guy really needs to stay out of the art world. As far as his senses of aesthetics and urban culture are concerned, he has his head totally up his ass.

But hey, perhaps I should either pity the folks at Midtown Monthly, or even strangely marvel at their incredible level of being out of touch with the real pulse of the Midtown that they claim to be a part of. Perhaps they saw a certain unfillable niche: after all, the Bee tends to cover the hard news and the News & Review goes after the “wacky” stuff, so hey, the upper middle income carpetbaggers who bought Victorian fixer uppers for WAY too much money need SOMEthing to read, don’t they? And you have to hand it to them: they just spit this shit out to everybody in certain zip codes who has a mailbox. There’s no mailing label, and therefore, no mailing list, and THEREfore, nobody can cancel their delivery because hey, we don’t have an address to remove! Admittedly, that’s some pretty clever tactics.

Yeah, fuck it. Maybe I took these folks too seriously. Maybe we need people like Petrovich around to remind us once in a while that the old saying is true: when money talks, bullshit does walk. The best way to deal with this shit is: next month, when their rag involuntarily pollutes my mailbox, to: 1.) Take it straight to the recycling barrel, and 2.) There is no number 2. As for anyone in Midtown reading this: Who’d care to join me?

So we finally got out to see Kevin Spacey’s latest flick, “Beyond The Sea.”

At last glance, rottentomatoes.com gave it a 41% rating, leaning over into the rotten side. The reviews have been pretty mixed, with two examples being: the local hired gun for the Sacramento Bee, Joe Baltake opining: “You have to hand it to Spacey. He gets by on sheer willfulness. He believes so much in his cockeyed dream that we come to believe in it, too." And then you have John Anderson of Newsday trying (too) hard on the diss tip: "It's a car wreck, a sideshow. You simply have to watch, there are so many things going so terribly, terribly wrong."

For most of you writers, giving both good and bad reviews, I just have one question:

What fuckin’ movie were YOU folks watching?

There’s no “cockeyed dream” going on here and it certainly isn’t a “car wreck”. Spacey succeeds in telling the story of a guy whose entertainment career (and life) was, to say the least, pretty convoluted and more complex in its progression than most of his peers (and considering Bobby Darin’s various fields of accomplishment, that’s not a very big peer group.) It was a great movie to see on a large screen as opposed to the tube at home, in that almost everything is shot Doris Day lush and vivid. And everybody from Spacey on out to the kid playing lil’ Bratty Bobby puts in fine performances, portraying characters that are believable yet have that level of Hollywood flair that reminds you that you’re watching a movie, not a debate between two goobs on “Survivor” over how to cook the rat stew.

This experience gives me a reminder about how insignificant film and music “reviews” generally are. Short of, say, Lester Bangs (who actually got people to discuss music, because of his genuine love for music, as opposed to certain hacks nowadays trying to play the sonic dictator out of their lack of self esteem,) most reviewers never had shit to say anyway in terms of actually assessing art. Nope, it’s a sense of “See this, see that. Listen to this, listen to that.” And in order to avoid being accused of trying to be the cultural fuehrer of the rest of us poor innocent unwashed peons, they dress their opinions in gaudy, tacky vocabulary that reads like only the most unforgivable rhetoric since the last time that Ronald Reagan stood behind a podium.

So in the end, remember this. If you want to buy a CD, or see a movie, or go to a museum exhibit or whatever, just make your mind up and fuckin’ do it. Most arts “critics” are just frustrated, mean spirited people with an overrated assessment of their own minds. If they did not determine that they were worthy harbingers of truth and justice and beauty through their golden pen, then someone who got paid and/or their Mommy told them that they had a “talent” for telling other people how and what to think. (Who knows, maybe Moms got paid too.) So don’t see “Beyond the Sea” because I thought it was pretty good. See it because you chose to do so. And if you don’t, then I hope that you’re in a world where you can make your own choices, because the ability to truly use one’s own critical thinking and choose is more valuable than all the diamonds that you could possibly hoard.

Sometimes irony takes on a life of itself. Sometimes it wraps itself completely into people and their fates.

One of those music sites that basically let artists post their own glowing PR blurbs (I’m guilty of the same charges, so I’m not copping out) had this to say about a new band, started by the brothers from Pantera, called Damageplan:

"So, I ask you... how can you go wrong with four badass motherfuckers like Damageplan? The name says it all...Devastation is truly on the way."

Indeed.

I’d hate to say it, but I saw this happening a long time ago. Not specifically to these guys: I didn’t really care about Pantera either way (there are a lot of worse metal bands out there) and haven’t heard much of Damageplan. But I’d figure that, considering today’s mixture of stupidity and arrogance in our present human landscape, I could just as easily have been playing open mike at the True Love or somewhere and had some idiot jump up, yell something about me breaking up Industrial Hate and fill the air with bullets. Which would truly be sad since everybody knows that Satan broke that band up.

But all kidding aside, regardless of how much you hate somebody and/or their music, nobody should be getting shot just because they want to go out and see some live music. So kids, before you think that you’re going to make your fifteen minutes by blowing away your chosen artisan target, please just leave the guns at home. Or better yet leave yourself with them at home. Or even better, instead of a weapon, invest in an instrument or a PC or something and show us what you’ve got to say.

There’s really no other way to put it.

Fuck Rural America. AND the South.

Are you people that brain dead, or what? What impressed you the most about the Appointed Chief Executive that wanted you to help put him in the White House for four more dubious years?

Was it how masterfully he’s managed to kill over a thousand (so far) of our finest men and women in a completely time-wasting and costly war that had no reason to be started other than to show gullible idiots that he’s actually doing something to go after terrorists, and therefore, deserving of re-election?

Perhaps it’s his dogged commitment to preventing even victims of rape or incest from obtaining a safe and legal abortion? (Hmm, after considering that point, no wonder he did so well in the South.)

Or perhaps it’s the fact that his corporate buddies will reap further breaks and absolution from gradually squeezing their labor pools like a sponge, that is, the ones whose jobs aren’t exported overseas.

Oh, wait a minute; it’s the flip flopping thing, isn’t it? Well, Dubya’s supporters have a point there. He’s no flip flopper. When Bush makes a mistake, he sticks with it. When he bullshits the American people, he won’t back off the lies. While I have still failed to see the appeal here, I can certainly concede that his groupies are certainly correct in that regard.

No, I think I’ve figured out the reason that he won in these areas so handily.

Look at the map of the final results. Notice that big huge sea of red in the middle of the Continental U.S.? That’s Bush country. These are the same folks that like to give Hollywood studios big bucks for movies where there’s lots of killin’ and blood and blowin’ up things real good. They pump up the ratings for shows like "Fear Factor" where contesatants are forced to eat bugs and shit. Since the start of the Iraq war, they’ve actually found an excuse to watch the news for once. Even when the military doesn’t let the embedded Establishment Media reporters show the full carnage, people from these areas get off on the descriptions of soldier maiming and civilian beheadings. Hell, Lynndie England is probably a masturbation fantasy girl rivaling Pam Anderson in some of these states.

So it’s really not surprising that Bush did so well in these states. These folks are validated as Americans and patriots at the expense of the bloodshed of others. And in a society now weaned on reality TV, that makes perfect sense.

And now we have the pundits saying dumb shit like, “Now the Democrats will have to rethink their strategy and improve on the message and do whatever it takes blah blah blah…” Psychic moment: The Democrats will get even more “middle of the road” (read: conservative leaning) and turn off even more people from showing up at the ballot box. Including myself. It’s never been a better time to say, “Fuck it” and change my party affiliation to “Decline to State.”

As depressing as it is to see that the suckers outnumber the smart (and let’s face it, we don’t have 58 million millionaires in the USA, so SOMEBODY was bullshitting themselves when they picked the name “George W. Bush” on the ballot,) I know that I will recover with G force speed. After all, to bastardize a reputed Nixonian statement, now I DO have Georgie Bush the Lesser to kick around some more. And you bet that I plan to continue. Tenfold, mothaphuka.