Monthly Archives: December 2010

 

Best Experienced With:   Dinosaur Junior;    Out There

(Please right click on the link below to open the suggested background music for this evening’s poetry, comic, and musical gathering.   This is Number 197 for Mind of Mully Biz Haus Shoppe.   Number 200 will be eponymous) 

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z81LcFhmqP4 

 

 

 

 

The first time I heard Dinosaur Junior, I thought of DH Lawrence’s poetry because Dinosaur Junior’s music is like placing DH Lawrence poetry against a backdrop of screaming electric guitars and then slashing the pallete with razor blades.   As Spin magazine once said on its cover:  “J Mascis is God”.

Amen

DH Lawrence (1885-1930).   Boo ya

 

Wild Things in Captivity

Wild things in captivity
while they keep their own wild purity
won't breed, they mope, they die.

All men are in captivity,
active with captive activity,
and the best won't breed, though they don't know why.

The great cage of our domesticity
kills sex in a man, the simplicity
of desire is distorted and twisted awry.

And so, with bitter perversity,
gritting against the great adversity,
they young ones copulate, hate it, and want to cry.

Sex is a state of grace.
In a cage it can't take place.
Break the cage then, start in and try.

 

I Am Like a Rose:

I am myself at last; now I achieve

My very self, I, with the wonder mellow,

Full of fine warmth, I issue forth in clear

And single me, perfected from my fellow.

Here I am all myself.  No rose-bush heaving

Its limpid sap to culmination has brought

Itself more sheer and naked out of the green

In stark-clear roses, than I to myself am brought.

The Appeal

You, Helen, who see the stars
As mistletoe berries burning in a black tree,
You surely, seeing I am a bowl of kisses
Should put your mouth to mine and drink of me.

Helen, you let my kisses steam
Wasteful into the night's black nostrils; drink
Me up, I pray; oh you, who are Night's bacchante,
How can you from my bowl of kisses shrink?

 

Gloire de Dijon

When she rises in the morning
I linger to watch her;
She spreads the bath-cloth underneath the window
And the sunbeams catch her
Glistening white on the shoulders,
While down her sides the mellow
Golden shadow glows as
She stoops to the sponge, and her swung breasts
Sway like full-blown yellow
Gloire de Dijon roses.

She drips herself with water, and her shoulders
Glisten as silver, they crumple up
Like wet and falling roses, and I listen
For the sluicing of their rain-dishevelled petals.
In the window full of sunlight
Concentrates her golden shadow
Fold on fold, until it glows as
Mellow as the glory roses.

 

Whatever’s left, just hide the rest, and bring it right in….

 

Best Experienced With:     Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds;     Into My Arms

(Please right click on the link below to open the suggested background music for this evening’s Christmas night nonsense.    A beautiful little ditty by Nick Cave.   Good slow dancing music.  Crank it up, grab your partner, and slow dance.)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m55-kJTjgHs

 

For some reason, I vividly remember each person I have made love with for the past three decades.  Unfortunately, I also vividly remember all those terrifying Christmas specials we were subjected to as children.    Christmas is all about love, picture cards, and those utterly terrifying Christmas TV specials. 

Take, for example, Frosty the Snowman.   All sorts of terrifying things going on in that animated Christmas special, including Jimmy Durante’s narration voice.  Sounded as if Mr. Durante was smoking a pack of Camel fliterless between each line.  As a child, I would picture Mr. Durante passing out, face purple, from either COPD of stage 4 lung cancer in between takes on set.     You have Karen leaving her parents and jumping a freight train with Frosty so that he does not die from meltation.  “Meltation” is not a real word:   do not use “meltation” in any holiday conversations.   Really, really nasty people travel this nation by jumping freight trains…these are the people who are too poor to buy Greyhound bus tickets.  You have the cop hassling Frosty and getting up Frosty’s face simply because the cop is The Man.   No wonder Karen ran away.   You have Professor Hinkle chasing Karen and Frosty around, trying to kill Frosty while cackling; “I must get that hat back! Think nasty, think nasty, think nasty!”   Think nasty?   That’s nasty.   Frosty clearly has early senile dementia because each time the hat pops back onto his head he exclaims “Happy Birthday”.  Terrifying, but not half as terrifying as The Year Without a Santa Claus.

The ideal title for a children’s Christmas special is The Christmas That You Got Everything on Your List from Santa and Thirty-Three Extra Things That You Didn’t Even Consider.  For a seven year old, the worst title for a Christmas special is The Year Without a Santa Claus.  Since his mom loved Snow Miser better than him, Heat Miser (looking like Satan) is angry at Santa and burns stuff for the entire twenty-two minutes.   You have Vixen getting tossed into the pound by The Man in Southtown and then getting sick and close to death while waiting to get put to death at the pound.   Even at that young age we knew that seventy-two hours after an animal shows up at the pound, that animal gets the gas bath.   There you are, the seven year old you, sitting on the edge of your seat watching Jingle and Jangle screw the pooch as the clock ticks down on Vixen’s seventy-two hours and Santa remains in bed with a “cold”…really just angry that no one really believes in him.    This fits, because he doesn’t exist.   Terrifying, but not as terrifying as The Grinch Who Stole Christmas.

The Grinch Who Stole Christmas is narrated by Boris Karloff, the man who played Frankenstein and the villains in Isle of the Dead and The Body Snatchers.  Apparently Lon Chaney and Bela Lugosi had other commitments when the producers were looking for the ideal narrator for a children’s Christmas special.    The Grinch treats his doggy, Max,  in a Michael Vick like fashion and then heads down into Whoville from Mount Crumpit and steals everything in town.   There you are, the seven year old you, watching this green guy who just beat his dog senseless stealing every single present in Whoville.  That’s uplifting.   Each and every year I watched that flick as a child I would hope and pray that the Whos down in Whoville would converge on the Grinch when he roared back into town like a pack of rabid dogs, ripping him to pieces and then discarding all their wrapping paper on his still warm body.   Cindy Lou Who standing on the Grinch’s chest with a miniature Lousiville Slugger screaming: “There’s a bulb out, eh?     A bulb?   Lie to me now about my tree, pal!   Oh…you can’t, can you?   Because you’re dead now, you damn thief!”    

None of those have as much angst and terror as Rudolf the Red Nosed Reindeer.    First thing we see if Rudolf’s dad rejecting him six minutes after he is born and the rejection goes on and on.    I always wanted to be able to levitate as a child, but lived in fear that if I ever realized my dream of levitation, my father would pack a bunch of mud onto my nose and tie lead to my feet so that no one else would see the “real” me.   Donner was a jerk and perpetuated the myth that if you are different, you will be ostracized.  Then, Clarice’s father forbids Clarice from hanging with Rudolf because he was different, further propagating the ostracization.      That’s a fake word.   Ostracization is not a real word so do not use it.   People will laugh at you if you work “ostracization” into a holiday conversation. 

What happens after Clarice’s father tells his daughter to only date the “normal” reindeer boys?   Yep.  Rudolf and the dentist elf guy and Yukon Cornelius go to the concentration camp that is the Island of Misfit Toys where we find a ton of toys that any of us as a seven year old could have fixed.    We could have emptied the jelly out of the squirt gun and filled it with water.   We could have taken the square wheels that some moron put on the train and replaced them with round wheels.   How tough would it have been to change Charlie’s name to Jack and, all these years later, none of us can figure out what the hell was wrong with the “dolly for Sue”.    That was a perfectly good doll.   Go watch Rudolf the Red Nosed Reindeer again.   Watch it over and over and over and over and over again.   I defy you to find anything wrong with that doll.

Fast forward to the end and you have an abominable snowman who had all of his teeth pulled out, a flying lion who is still flying around and stealing perfectly good toys to populate his island of “misfits”, and Mrs. Claus finally got Santa fat.   Do you remember the swing in Santa’s weight in forty-seven minutes?   Terrifying example of bulimia.   That entire Christmas special is terrifying.

Onto the holiday cards, the photo ones in particular.   Rest assured that your annual photo cards are not wasted when you send them to The LJ each year.  I watch your children grow up on the inside of the cabinet doors here in the office.   Each time I grab a book to read or lend out, I get to look at your children and that’s quite cool.    Thanks for sharing.    All twelve cabinet doors are now almost filled and if you continue to procreate, will have to get a bigger house down the road.    Here’s a sample of your cute kids and your holiday cards:

 

 

Had a brief flirtation with being a husband and for the entire period of the engagement through the end of the marriage, those vivid images disappeared.   It was Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, it was effortless, and it was quite wonderful.  With no thought or intention, those vivid, nekked memories packed themselves into a box and self sealed the lid.    That was pretty damn cool.

I guess that would be a damn fine definition of true love.  It’s a great deal of fun to watch you people in love during the holidays, walking around holding hands and giggling.   It is still utterly terrifying to watch those evil Christmas specials.

Merry Christmas, Happy Festival of Lights, & joyous whatever else you may be celebrating this week.

 

Best Experienced With:      Delta Spirit;         Bushwick Blues (acoustic version)

 

(Please right click on the link below to open the suggested background music to this evening’s poetry gathering and art showing in a new browser window)

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MtPjg0Jfpqc

 

 Amedeo Clemente Modigliani (July 12, 1884 – January 24, 1920)

I felt a Funeral, in my Brain,

And Mourners to and fro

Kept treading, treading — till it seemed

That Sense was breaking through

 

 

And when they all were seated,

A Service, like a Drum

Kept beating, beating — till I thought

My Mind was going numb

 

 

And then I heard them lift a Box

And creak across my Soul

With those same Boots of Lead, again,

Then Space — began to toll,

 

 

 

As all the Heavens were a Bell,

And Being, but an Ear,

And I, and Silence, some strange Race

Wrecked, solitary, here

 

And then a Plank in Reason, broke,

And I dropped down, and down —

And hit a World, at every plunge,

And Finished knowing — then —

 

Emily Elizabeth Dickinson (December 10, 1830 – May 15, 1886)

 

 

 

 

 

Best Experienced With:          Pearl Jam;           Elderly Woman Behind the Counter in a Small Town

(Please right click on the link below to open the suggested background music for this evening’s treatise.    The perfect last minute Christmas gift idea from Mind of Mully Biz Haus Shoppe.   You are welcome)

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YF-5vW4GbsQ

 

Three shopping days remaining until the holiest of all gift giving days.  Here is $100.00.   Quick, name six holiday presents you can buy for $100.00.

What did you name?   Those are some solid answers.  Me?    Thanks for asking.   I named the following:

1.  One hundred rolls of pennies
2. Forty-eight Foster’s oil cans
3. One fifth of a share of Google on the NASDAQ
4. Twenty-three Slinkies
5. Eight hundred green army men toys
6. A year of elementary education in Primary School for a child in Haiti

 

The Ideal Gift

As you may have surmised, the ideal  last minute gift to purchase a friend or loved one is #6 above:   a year of Primary School for a child in Haiti.   Have mentioned here in the past that Haiti is a Horatio Alger story that ends on page six.   One of the levers that can change the poverty cycle over a long event horizon is educating children.  Poor children are more likely to suffer a higher rate of cognitive delays and developmental disorders and, absent intervention, are likely to perpetuate a cycle of poverty.   A single $100 sponsorship can help change someone’s fortunes and is a far better gift than twenty-three slinkies.  

Unlike in the United States, education in Haiti is for a fee and there are a bunch of good kids who need sponsors.  Promise for Haiti has done a wonderful job over the years administering a program whereby they match up sponsors with good kids who want to learn.  I vouch for Promise for Haiti and guarantee that your $100 will put a child through Primary School…they are good peeps.  In fact, here is a link to the scholarship page on their web site.  Have a look for yourself:

http://promiseforhaiti.org/Eductaion.aspx

Perhaps you are pressed for time and cannot get to the mall.   It’s well past the safe period to get a gift shipped from an online mall.    How can you get $100 to Promise for Haiti and make a gift of an education?  You can call the H.E.L.P desk at 641-628-9353 and speak with a live human being.  Or, you can send $100 to:

          Haitian Education and Literacy Program

          Joanne Schaefer, Education Coordinator

          Box 275

          Pella, Iowa  50219

The MAFF

 

Average number of visitors to Mind of Mully Biz Haus Shoppe over the past thirty days has been two hundred thirty-two per day.    If you have checked all the boxes on your 2010 gift list, perhaps you would be so kind as to pass this on to two friends and perhaps they could pass it on to two more friends?  

232 x 2 = 464

464 x 2 = 928

928 x2 = 1,856

And on it goes.    Maybe we can get 1,000 or so last minute shoppers to sponsor a wonderful child for a year of elementary education.  What’s in it for you?   Aside from helping to shape the future of a child, what tangible thing will your gift recipient have from you?  

First, twice a year your gift recipient will receive a color report card from Promise for Haiti with a photo, grades, and an update on how your sponsored child is doing.   The report card will look like this:

Second, and for a limited time only, Mind of Mully is offering the following to the first five folks who choose to give the gift of education through the Promise for Haiti scholarship project.  Send an email to danmulligan4@yahoo.com stating that you have given this as a gift and we will send you one of the sets of bunny ears shown below.   Each is autographed and has been worn in a Mind of Mully Indefinite Time Period episode.  Please email your address and the following single line:  “I promoted education”.   We work under the honor system here and that’s all you need to say.  “I promoted education”.

More?   Sure, why not.   Also for a limited time, the first five people who send a link to this page to ten friends and ask them to send it one to at least five friends will receive a set of bunny ears signed by either my cat Ceeeeeeeeeatie, or one of the kittens from the last foster group.    These are limited edition bunny ears because cats have no opposable thumbs and odds are that no one else in the galaxy can train cats to sign bunny ears.    Same instructions as above, please.    Simply send an email to danmulligan4@yahoo.com saying “I forwarded a link to promote education” and your cat autographed bunny ears will arrive within two weeks.

Thanks for reading and, in advance, thanks for passing this on to more folks.   Go ahead and cut and paste the link up there into an email and send it to a few friends.   Cut and paste it into your Facebook page and let’s promote education for some good kids in the central plateau of Haiti.

The Alternate Gift Idea

Should “giving” not be up your alley, may we suggest a Slinky?    Slinkies are a great deal of fun.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Best Experienced With:          The Ramones;           Bonzo Goes to Bitburg (My Brain is Hanging Upside Down)

 

(Please right click on the link below to open the suggested music to this evening’s gathering in a new browser window.   It’s a Ramones song so read as rapidly as you possibly can.     Ramones concert at Bogart’s in Cincinnati, Ohio is in my top three mosh pits ever and that is a story for a different day.  RIP Joey Ramone)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZiJK5cHjYzI

Hello there.

Clearly our negative campaign ad for Mully for Emperor of Florida worked wonders from a cash flow perspective.   Although the campaign is over and proved fruitless in Florida, millions, nay… billions, poured into the campaign coffers.   Thank you.    You have my word that at least .07% of your contributions will be used to fund the next Mully for Emperor campaign, whevever it may pop up.   Rest assured that there will be another campaign and rest assured that The Man will again quash the populist movement, much as The Man is quashing Wikileaks this week and will most certainly murder Julian A next week.    I learned at a very early age that you do not want to piss off The Man.

This entire MLOG is a public service announcement because our campaign receives a tax rebate on PSA’s.  This is a public service announcement for those of you interested in FAR less government.   You know who you are.   You were the ones out there screaming “LESS government” last October and November, then mumbling nonsense after you screamed “LESS government” because you were somewhat unsure of where the “less” would fit.   Would it be your road that did not get paved?   Would it be your child that did not receive extra education or treatment for his/her certainly fatal glioblastoma?   Perhaps you are the one who will no longer receive Saturday mail delivery?  

Before we get to the PSA, let’s chat about that song you cued up before you began reading….”Bonzo Goes to Bitburg”     Reference is from when one of my favorite Presidents, Ronnie Reagan visited Bitburg cemetery back in the 1980’s an laid a wreath on a gravesite where Nazi SS soldiers were buried.   For you youngsters, “Bonzo” is a reference to the monkey that co-starred with President Reagan when he was in the 1951 film “Bedtime for Bonzo”

Heard “Bonzo Goes to Bitburg” today and began thinking about the 111th Congress that will begin legislating in four weeks.   Was thinking that Bonzo the chimp is at least as bright as many of the Freshman Congresspeeps as far as world affairs go.  In an October New York Times article, it became quite clear that Republicans and Democrats who make up the “Tea” Party, for the most part, cannot explain their thoughts or opinions on foreign policy.  In the October New York Times article, asked whether the Tea Party had a foreign policy platform, and if so, what was it,  Dick Armey, founder of FreedomWorks, stated, “I don’t think so.”  Given the state of affairs worldwide, this is certainly comforting.

What do we get when we have elected officials with little knowledge of the rest of the world and no opinion on foreign policy during an election?   We get elected officials placing wreaths on the gravesite of Nazi SS soldiers while the rest of the world laughs at us like I laugh at episodes of COPS.  Especially the following exchange:

 Cop:  “Do you have anything in your pockets that may jab me?”

Shirtless White Trash Person Wearing Cut-Off Wrangler Jean Shorts:  “Outside of the meth pipe, the used needles and the Brillo pads for my crack…definitely not.”

Here is the public service announcement/tax shelter

Hey!   You peeps screaming for less government interference?  More regional autonomy and you want it to be like it was “back in 1773” (Ms. Palin)?

Move right here.

This is Somalia.   There is very, very, very, very, very little government interference in Somalia.   In fact, there is very, very, very little government in Somalia.   Somalia is an anarchist’s dream and if you want things controlled at a local level, it is also the ideal place for you.   There are flights leaving for Mogadishu daily from an airport near you.   Pack light clothing…..I hear it is quite warm in Somalia.

I adore government interference and “big” government when things slow down.   No one is happy when things slow down.    Throughput is the key to happiness in any galaxy.  For example, I adored it when President Reagan fired the 11,000 air traffic controllers who chose to strike back in the 1980’s.   For the most part, those of you screaming blindly for “less government interference” have absolutely no idea how to clarify or quantify that statement.  You are as brilliant as those who scream “those Mexican’s are taking our jobs!”

When I hear the “those Mexicans are stealing our jobs!” spoken blindly (Meg Whitman), I follow up with a simple question.    “From whom did those Mexicans steal a job?   You?   A family member?  A friend? “   Let’s go get that person who lost a job to those darn Mexicans and bring them up to the ollallieberry fields in central California and get that person working.   I’ll drive that darn Mexican who stole that job back here and turn them into the Border Patrol.

From this evening until the sun burns out, when I hear “LESS government interference” from some lemming moron with nothing intelligent to back up the statement, I’m going to ask a similar question:

“When are you moving to Somalia?”   Please send me a post card and fill me in one which tribal war lord you join.   My favorite has always been Bootaan Ciise Caalin, but you make your own choice.

Because if you don’t like “big” government, I don’t want your moronic, lemming-like ass here in my country.   I miss Joey Ramone and his two minute songs.    Two minute songs are ridiculously ideal for moshing.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Best Experienced With:          The Foo Fighters;          Best of You

 

(Please right click on the link below to cue up the suggested background mucis to this evening’s treatise in a new browser window.)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V64EVABgYEo&feature=related

The Beginning

 

 

Marco!

 

(polo)

 

 

Marco!

(polo)

 

 

Marco!

(polo)

 

The Middle

 

Person # 1:  “Knock knock!”

Person #2:   “Who is there?”

Person #1:  “The forgetful cow”

Person #2:  “The forgetful cow who?”

Marco!

(polo)

 

 

Marco!

(polo)

 

 

Marco!

(polo)

 

Person #1:    “Huh?”     (pause)    (pause)   “What?”    (pause)   “Huh”  (pause) (pause) (pause) “MOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO”

The End