At the Counter: Three Days in the Canal

John Payton Payne took a sip of his coffee and told Niall Carter, "I keep thinking about this thing that I heard last month, on BBC, Witness - "

"I love that programme," said Niall Carter, "They always have this particular date, what happened on it x-number of years ago, that sort of thing, right?"

"Yeah," said Payne, "And this was last month, maybe last December, I dunno, but they had this guy talking about the First Gulf War, when it started, a ....


[and at that point, our stenographer passed out and missed the rest of the conversation, which has now been posted here as a copy from a lost conversation circa 2012]

[The editors of the Zen and Tao Acoustic Cafe do apologise in advance for the error.]

Overheard at Booth 5: American Culture

"Please excuse me if I can't get this off my mind, but I just gotta tellya:

"We live in a society in which the biggest hit shows include: a high-school chemistry teacher turned meth dealer, a gun-running drug running biker gang, a single mom who sells marijuana for a living, a family in which every single member is addicted to a different drug, a high school teacher who sleeps with everything with a double X chromosome, and yet we as Christians successfully took off the air a show about a Muslim family trying to integrate into American culture.  

"It just blows my mind."

Overread at Table 1: This Land is Your Land

Woody Guthrie "This Land is Your Land"

This Land Is Your Land
Words and Music by Woody Guthrie

This land is your land This land is my land
From California to the New York island;
From the red wood forest to the Gulf Stream waters
This land was made for you and Me.

As I was walking that ribbon of highway,
I saw above me that endless skyway:
I saw below me that golden valley:
This land was made for you and me.

I've roamed and rambled and I followed my footsteps
To the sparkling sands of her diamond deserts;
And all around me a voice was sounding:
This land was made for you and me.

When the sun came shining, and I was strolling,
And the wheat fields waving and the dust clouds rolling,
As the fog was lifting a voice was chanting:
This land was made for you and me.

As I went walking I saw a sign there
And on the sign it said "No Trespassing."
But on the other side it didn't say nothing,
That side was made for you and me.

In the shadow of the steeple I saw my people,
By the relief office I seen my people;
As they stood there hungry, I stood there asking
Is this land made for you and me?

Nobody living can ever stop me,
As I go walking that freedom highway;
Nobody living can ever make me turn back
This land was made for you and me.

---

© Copyright 1956 (renewed), 1958 (renewed), 1970 and 1972 by Woody Guthrie Publications, Inc. & TRO-Ludlow Music, Inc. (BMI)

Overheard in Booth 3: Church and Gaming

Man, I heard that Billy Graham came out and said that Mormonism is no longer a cult and all the Christians are just picking their frisky whiskers in a twist just trying to figure out what the hell they're gonna do now with this bombshell.  I mean, they're all thinking 'great, you've been teaching that Mormonism is a cult since the day Joseph Smith married his second wife and now you're telling me that suddenly it's all good, now that a Mormon's about to clinch the gold ring'?"

But I was thinking that these Christians gotta chill, just chill, because they seem to have forgotten that Christ and the Church is a lot like gaming and game conventions.   See, Church is like a gaming convention - you go there to talk with other people who really LOVE gaming, you commune, you break bread, you learn a few cheats, you meet new people, you reconnect with old people, you learn a little bit more about the history of gaming, where gaming's headed.

But any gamer knows that the real love of life, where it all is, what is more important than anything else, is just playing the game.  Interacting with gaming.   GAMING is CHRIST, man, and CHURCH, well, that's just a convention you go to, every Sunday for some people.

At least, that's just my take on it.

Overheard at Table 2: Biden and Ryan

T1: I thought Biden won.

T2: Naw, it was definitely Ryan.  Biden won the smirking game.

T1: He was illustrating what bullcrap everything was that Ryan was saying.

T2: Ryan's trying to get the country moving again.

T1: Biden wiped the floor with Ryan.  He said, "come on over here, little sonny, there's a spot on the floor you missed!"  there!   rubrubrubrub!

T2: See?  You're nuts!  Just like your guy, you're nuts!

T1: rubrubrubrubrub!

T2: Don't even see why I bother?  Can't work with you  . . . might as well go on to work without you.


T1: Exactly the way the Republicans think!

Overheard at Table 4: So Long, Frank Lloyd Wright

Heard today that there's a Frank Lloyd Wright house in Phoenix that's gonna get demolished this week.

That's terrible!

Dam'right.  NPR had this guy on there talking about it, he said that the design was based on the same design that he did for the Guggenheim Museum.

The circular thing?

Yeah, this house was just like it.  It's got no stairs, it just goes around and around in a big circle and all the rooms are one th second floor, none of the rooms are on the first floor.   So the first floor is just to enjoy the foundation that the place stands on, apparently, to get a feel for the rock that it stnads on, and he said it ws designed so that as you walk around the house you get a 360 degree panoramic view of all the scenery around the area.

Sounds beautiful.  Why do they want to tear it down?

Developers bought it and they want to demolish it to build three houses.  Apparently it's in a really rich neighborhood in Phoenix, and these guys just figured they could make some more money.

But that's a landmark.

Seems like they don't have it registered as a landmark.   The story goes he built it for his son. Then when they died it went up on auction.  Some lady bought it two years ago, but she couldn't keep it up, so she sold it beginning of this year, and these two contractors bought it for 1.5 million so they could tear it down and build others.

That's totally wrong.

I think they're bastards.   I think these bastards who just want to make money, even if it means tearing out our national heritage.  Should be criminalized.   I mean, Frank Lloyd Wright is one of those masters, one of those artists, who built houses that no one else could ever build.  He could see things that no one else could see.   He was like our Da Vinci, our Picasso, our Dali.

He was an American Icon.

Right!   And now he's gone, and every single one of his houses should be preserved.

So when are they going to demolish it?

I dunno.  The radio said that they were gonna stop for a few days, and when I looked it up just before I got here there was a blurb that read the Frank Lloyd Wright group in Chicago contacted the city of Phoenix to have it stopped, but I don't know.

That's just terrible.  Beautiful things, all art, anything genius, that's just got to be preserved.

  
\

Overheard at Table 1: Feeling Fine

Ray:  OK only five more weeks to go, debate tomorrow night, after that, we got ourselves a new president.

May: How are you so sure he'll be a new president?

Ray: 'Cause even if Barry wins, he'll be transformed, into a second termer.   Second termers are actually very cool, because they're not looking toward the next election any more, they're looking toward their "legacy."

May: What difference does that make?  They're still in it for themselves.

Ray: Yeah, but at least this self-serving road has a long term view.

Overheard at Table Four: The Evening News

The say that the Taliban is gaining strength again in Afghanistan.  11 years, and we're back to square one.   Square.  One.

Numbers are not significant.  Small bands of insurgents can topple a country, especially when power is held by people who are generally unfollowable.

And who's this Karzai guy anyway?  He looks generally mean, but more of just one of those cowardly leaders who holds power by sheer crafty manipulation.   At least with the psycho dicatators, your Castros and your Chavez's, at least you knowwhere they stand.  This guy is one of those puppets that we always install, and are only useful until they fall.

Overheard at Table 4: NYT Sources Approving Quotes

Billy:  Finally!   A free press again!

Jilly: Nah, this'll just make 'em have to make stuff up, because now no one'll talk to them.

Billy: Yeah, but it's the same thing if you interview some guy and he just censors what you write - even if it's stuff HE said.

Jilly:  Or she.

Billy:  Yeah.  Or she.  You're so technical.   But don't you see, this is a great day!  Thank you New York Times.

Jilly:  I still say it won't help.  It'll just make the politicians not give interviews and then we'll just have nothing but more conjecture, speculation, spurious sources, and hidden cameras.

Billy:  Which is illegal in its own right.

Jilly: I just don't see what it all accomplishes.  The reason why these guys were wanting to approve quotes is because the media was already taking everything they say out of context.   They just wanted to make sure they were getting a fair shake.   In these days, when the media is anything BUT non-partisan, they're just making sure the words are true, and not twisted.

Billy:  Maybe, but I still see it as them wanting always to straddle the fence, so that they come across as being for everybody, instead of taking a hard stand on what they really believe.  These guys are more interested in getting votes than in ever standing up for anything, anything except thier own revenue sources.   This is just a way for the media to stop letting the Man try to control them.   The media HAS to be free to print, even if it is slanted, which it always has been, the people have to decide what is slant and what isn't.

Jilly: And how can the people decide when the only education they get on these issues is the very slanted sources that disseminate the information?   It's ludicrous - we've got a nation where the wolves feed the jackals who pass their shit on to the sheep.

Billy:  Wow.  That's a little sharp, don't you think?

Jilly:  Just calls 'em like I sees 'em.

Billy: You wipe your butt with the New York Times don't you.

Jilly:  If I still received the print version, probably so, yeah.

At the Counter: Bemoaning the State of Affairs in our Schools

Verble on a rant:

Far be it from me to bemoan the state of affairs in our schools, but what I saw at my children's open houses was absolutely deplorable.  De-plor-a-ble.

OK, I get that we're embracing new tech.   Bring their tablets, they can use them to read the assigned books.   Cool.  They can even use them to link to the textbooks, which are now online.  That I think is great.  It's better than having the kids lug around a ten pound tome that they're never gonna crack open anyway.

But what I can't abide is this utter lack of concern for the language.  The teachers themselves can't even spell. I saw at least two grammatical errors in every teacher's handout.  Some benign, some egregious, but they were there!  On their printed pages!

Honestly, the teachers were so much more interested in showing us how their new online home-interactive website is just like Facebook for Schools!  It's new, It's wonderful!  See how the kids are already interacting with each other.

Yeah, it was all like:

- teacher im confuse bout the hw bc i wasent ther in class

or

- how do u lode adobe reader i cant read the textbk

or

- does anybody got 5 words in spanish 4 the homwork


What the HELL?  What the holy hell?

If language is our cultural DNA then America is filled with a mass of broken chromosomes.
How do we expect our kids to learn a foreign language when they can't even spell their own?
At the beginning of the 20th century, literacy was at 5%.  At the end of it, ILliteracy was at 5%.   Now we've PISSED it all away in the space of one generation.

All the money has gone into smartboards and not into the bodies needed to impart that information.

Even a bad teacher could be mediocre with a smaller size classroom, but even a fantastic teacher, if that class is over 22 students, is simply a ringmaster in a circus, trying to keep the elephants from trampling the audience.

Thank God these are the last kids I'll ever have, because I really do not see how they have a chance.   Not a chance in hell.  

But then, what do I count for?  I'm old, outdated, in the way.  Me, with my fancy ideas of cultural literacy, understanding of history, language as cultural DNA, and the use of language as a way to express ideas, hopes, dreams.

All just frittered away in sext messages and porno pics.  Here, let's tap our phones together and share that photoshopped pic of our teacher naked in leather bondage gear.   Yeah, Jimmy!

Overheard at Table 4: Framing the Debate

Republicans are very very good - at framing the debate.

Some examples, on a radio show (Morning Joe I think it was) there was a soundclip of two men discussing the attack ads of this year, and one man was talking about Romney's negative ads, and had asked the other man about this false accusations, and the other responded by the question, "Well, what about your ads - they did the same thing.  Are you comfortable with that?"

And the first man tried to bring the question back to the original point, but the other guy just kept hammering the question, "Are you comfortable with that?" Meaning, are you morally accepting of your camp presenting the same type of ad.   All the while, Joe is interjecting, "Answer the question."

This is so typical of the conservative style of debate: they are able to avoid answering questions by using fallacies of logic, such as this play on the "Tu Quoque" (You Too!) fallacy.   And then, spotting the hesitancy in the first man's response, the other man was able to continue the belabor the point, thereby making his opponent more confused and seem more evasive.

And those who can't reason coherently (about 90% of all Americans and a full 100% of Morning Joe listeners) will have only the impression that the liberal is weak while the conservative is strong.

Overheard at Booth 4: Criminalizing Dissent

Criminalizing Dissent
The very name of the law itself—the Homeland Battlefield Bill—suggests the totalitarian credo of endless war waged against enemies within “the homeland” as well as those abroad.
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/criminalizing_dissent_20120813/
 Copyright © 2012 Truthdig, L.L.C. All rights reserved.

Overheard at Table 2: Election Year Reality Show

Corrine:  An election year just seems like some sort of sillybad reality TV show where the contestants produce the pilot, but the viewers have to pay for it for the next four years.

Overheard at the Counter: Shell's Arctic Campaign

http://arcticready.com/social/gallery

This is on Shell's site. They were asking people to send in pics of how the Arctic would change with increased drilling. The people have uploaded many many pictures with depressing slogans. Shell either is "down" with satire, or they really, sickly, do not give a %@$k.

Overheard at the Counter

Niall Carter:  It ws a little disturbing today, I was listening to Pacifica radio, with that Australian woman who's deep into saving the planet, and she was talking to this Americn guy, and I don't know why really he was on the show, but they were talking about war, and how war was economic, OK yeah, we got that, but what was a little disturbing is that she asked him what about the people who died in World War One, the Great War, and he kind of just snickered and said, well he couldn't speak to that, and she said, "It was just a SLAW-teh" and he had this answer that was kind of like, "yeah, well, so what, they died almost a hundred years ago . . .

John Steppenwolf: A hundred years is like two thousand.

Niall:  Exactly!   He was just like, well, if WE didn't know any of them, it's really no big deal.    It doesn't affect us.

Verble: You're right.   We don't give 'em any thought, because they're so far removed from our time.

John: Yeah, but what about all those tribes and times and peoples throughout history who fought battles for hundreds of years, thousands of years, all because that's what they do, that's what they know.

Verble:  Half the world is still fighting that way.

Niall:  Yeah, but then why are we so cut off from people who were contemporaries of our grandparents - great-grandparents?

John:  I blame the Internet.

Verble:  It started with TV.

John:  Heck, it's 2012.   This year, everything's blamed on Obama.

Overheard at Table 4: Recent Ruling

that was kind of a shocker, Roberts turning like that.   Make you kinda wonder what he has in mind.

- for me, I think the worst thing that ever happened was when the judges got political.   I always thought they worked best when they're out of the spotlight.

yeah, like the black robes, what?  Supposed to hide 'em in the shadows?

- something like that, yeah.

From the Counter: Verble Loses It

I really can not take this hypocricy any more.   It's time for true Christians to stand up and take back their Jesus from the conservative movement that has taken our Lord and Savior and made Him some sort of poster boy for the military-industrial complex.  

Shit, you can parade all your Viet Nam vets across the pulpit on Sunday and tell us how the Lord above gave them the strength to gun down 1500 NVAs and wade across streams to save three of our "brave American boys" and I will still find you in contempt of the word of love from our soveriegn Lord.

I swear to the Lord above, these humans have made His house a den of lies.   a den of LIES.   It was a shame, taking this man who only served his country because that was how he was raised, and he knew no better, and made him a hero in an eight hour period where he, under training and command from his secular government, killed human being after human being, until the ground was littered with their bodies.  

The true crime is those of us in attendence, who sat there clapping and cheering him on.  Good job!   Great American!   Thanks for making us free.

I am ashamed.  Ashamed I didn't have the guts to stand up in front of the 5,000 and tell them to stop parading this man around as though he were some sort of symbol of Christ.  

Because he's not.   He's a symbol of American military heroism.   but that belongs only to this earthly realm, and has nothing to do with the love of Jesus Christ.

I'm sick of this.   I'm sick of you.

Get your false patriotism out of my Christ. 

Stop raping the image of the sovereign God with your putrid jingoist imperialist doctrine, you malevolent spews!    You're making me sick, and I can't take it any more.

Now, if you'll excuse me, the second half of Euro 2012 is on.

Overheard at Table 2: Running out of steam

What's really sad is that I am already so worn out by this election year that I can't even muster enough steam to be angry at all the hateful lies that are flying around our heads.

And the RNC hasn't even officially met yet!

Overheard at Table 4: Singleminded

As the year heats up, the RNC has only one focus in mind: to take back the White House.   What will they do with it when they get it again?   Same thing that they've always done:   throw big giant parties for their rich frat-boy friends and party like the champagne ain't never gonna run out.

Oh yeah, and while they're at it - they'll allow businesses to take a major toxic dump into the last remaining clean rivers, plow under the national forests looking for oil, and pump your children so full of grease that their arteries will explode.

All that while killing untold numbers of Middle Asians so that you good'ol redbludded Americans can imagine yourselves going to sleep at night to awake to a new morning of sweet bluebirds singing "God Bless America"!

But since this is what you want, this is what you will vote for.

If this is not what you want, get out there and make your voice heard.   You're not talking loud enough!

Overread on an iPad at Table 4: Reagan

THIS MAN


HAD ALZHEIMER'S

BEFORE

HE WAS ELECTED TO A SECOND TERM

AS PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES.

WHAT DO YOU THINK THEY ARE GOING TO SLIDE BY YOU NOW???