The Bishop and the Butterfly: Murder, Politics, and the End of the Jazz Age

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Cash & Curie - curieosity & opening up the past

By PeraclesPlease on Sun, 04/07/2019 - 6:49am |

I'd originally been looking at Rosanne Cash's comments on #MeToo,
but came across her tribute to a tribute to Marie Curie (yes, recursive,
or recuriesive depending, in this case Adrienne Rich as the midpoint)

But is it Art? Paint by Numbers dude dies

By PeraclesPlease on Sat, 04/06/2019 - 2:00pm |

Did he popularize, democratize art, or simply debase it?
Well, Dan Robbins will no longer be around to answer that question.
But I hear he left some kind of Da Vinci Code to the truth -
a sequence - simple yet sublime - 1 thru 50.
Palettes ready?
https://www.npr.org/2019/04/05/710332761/paint-by-numbers-maestro-dan-ro...

Food Review: LA Dishes on New York

By PeraclesPlease on Mon, 04/01/2019 - 11:18am |

What can I say that hasn't been said...?
(except St. Louis Bread Company seems to be nailing the vaunted trending "sliced bagels" niche -
both coasts must be jealous as all hell - or so they at least think)
Meanwhile, back to the Big (Candied) Apple - let that one stick.

https://www.latimes.com/food/la-fo-nyc-restaurant-scene-april-fools-2019...

Super Mario Bros: down so long, still feels like up

By PeraclesPlease on Sat, 03/30/2019 - 6:19pm |

Hard to say why so many hate this movie - charming sweet, funny lines, over-the-top performances, and a vibe that's a cross between Bladerunner and Running Man. That it came out the same year as Jurassic Park (which I hated) is even more perfect. Dennis Hopper is the ultimate reptilian reprobate - no longer confined to sodomizing cupie dolls in a tiny shack by The River's Edge, but as a real live Kooper reliving his Blue Velvet "I'll fuck anything that moves!" rages. And this is bad?

The Art of the Hustle

By PeraclesPlease on Fri, 03/22/2019 - 12:54pm |

Hearing ab​out a working girl who trades her life up should make us happy, right? Especially at the expense of Wall Street vultures... when metoo becomes Me Too...

https://www.thecut.com/2015/12/robin-hood-strippers-scores-c-v-r.html

What's for Lunch? Lydia vs. the Cultural Vampires

By PeraclesPlease on Mon, 03/11/2019 - 3:59pm |

Just a link, a pointer to a world that once existed, that still exists but is lost under a global sea of daily pablum.
She may not be *it* - nobody is - but she's part of *it*, part of the growth underneath, the bugs in the grass in a David Lynch movie, incessantly moving, foraging, moving earth, devouring and splitting and splintering. When we get tired of the nothingness, they will still be there, waiting to take it all down, not to build it over but to keep it in its place. That *is* underground.

On Breaking up Google - this is not your Grandma's Monopoly

By PeraclesPlease on Sun, 03/10/2019 - 1:24pm | Business, Politics

Another election and another round of liberal posturing - "how do we beat down the corporates, how do we dismantle their power?" "Google, Facebook, Amazon, Apple...," exclaims Elizabeth Warren, "along with their little subsidiary acquisitions". Let's call these The Big Four.

So let's tear this down - first, are these the monopolists you're looking for? Back in the day of the Robber Barons, we had goons showing up to beat up the competition - quite a bit of heat brought down on anyone who was in competition. This kind of activity is pretty rare these days - mostly it's just that customers are flocking to the big boys, and that's just tough on the rest.

The IT age truly hit when Microsoft ended up with a practical monopoly on the desktop. Sure, Apple could scrape out 4 million laptop & desktop sales a quarter with a huge comparative margin, and techies could go for Linux or lately Chromebooks, but in terms of units at home and in the workplace, DOS-Windows machines predominated since 1982, and still do. Microsoft went on to do quite well in the Office software and database business - and people howled to break them up. But in the end, they went from a dominant consumer company to a dominant enterprise software company, with the whole industry resigning itself to the fact that the OS is boring, and is best off boring, and all the OS wars in the 70's and 80's mostly led to things not working with each other, whereas the Windows behemoth solved that problem. Until the Web came along and made everything interoperable in a different way, so the Windows monopoly became a "who cares?" We got a little flurry of excitement when Steve Jobs decided to put a knife in the heart of Flash and Adobe itself, pretending to go to a new standard that was far from market ready - and suddenly we saw what we'd avoided for 2 decades - having to choose when we really didn't care. Sure, Excel rolled over Lotus-1-2-3 and M$ killed some other fine mail & database software companies, but it was the 90's, baby - the Internet Age, and if things hadn't just worked, that would have harshed our mellow. 

Topics: 
Business
Politics

Jong at Heart: Everything is Copy

By PeraclesPlease on Thu, 02/28/2019 - 7:34pm |

Kids of famous people - kind of makes you jealous, all those advantages, and then you realize it's usually not an advantage, just the typical mixed kettle of fish.

Molly shares some of that constantly reflexive view with us. Suddenly I have this curious wonder if Carly Simon wrote "You're So Vain" about herself. I don't meant that meanly - I mean it like she means it, "Everything is Copy", you're always on stage, or for book writers, soon to be a character in a book.

To be the daughter of The Zipless Fuck - how you you go to Kindergarten with that on your name tag?

2020 Rejects & Remainders

By PeraclesPlease on Tue, 01/29/2019 - 7:25am | Politics

Ok, was trying to stay out of this, but so far the "no way Jose" list:

- Tulsi Gabbard (Fox hawk if not Russian asset in Hawaiian hulu skirt with jackboots)

- Howard Schultz (latte corporate vulture with an odd sense of "centrist" looking more like "blame the Dems for asking for nice things" misguided conception of "independent", while pitching a well-tarnished "businessman saves America" deficit-scold message. 15 years ago maybe - plus a business run only on young hipster easily-exploited youth hardly seems like it offers a breakthrough message for the rest of us)

Topics: 
Politics

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Superpowers
Defies gravity Can spit really far Almost touch my toes Can cut a fly's legs off with a beer cap from 20 paces Know how to say useless stuff and prattle on in a dozen languages Don't know when to shut up
Favorite Quotes
To be for or against the Plague, it's much the same thing. Fiddledee, how a body shure do get around - just 2 weeks ago I was in Mississippi and now I'm all the way to Tennessee... Eat or Be Eaten Better to be pissed off than pissed on.
Biography
Born in swaddling clothes (designer, of course) at the confluence of big waters, my first recorded words were "Dad, can I have the keys to the car?" Raised a Southern Pedestrian, my musical talents were recognized at an early age, leading to my being exiled to the shed out back with a stack of books that became my eddykayshun - advanced readin', writin' & ritmytick, creating a major quandary of "what will I do, oh what will I do?" (Gunslinger) As an old black man advised in song, "You Gotta Move", so move I did, traveling the byways sideways even a lot of driveways, picking up sticks and psychological tics, even movin' to Beverlee through a quaint misunderstanding of the seriousness of TV series, until finally I blew up so big the carry nation incarnation tarnation couldn't hold me no more, so I fixed my sights on yonder sitar, and like Queequeg and Paul Bowles and one of those abducted kids by the Pied Piper of Hamelin, I ventured forth to the larger world, pickin' and grinnin', doin' me some reckonin' and naughts from naughts, occasionally rightin', building me some buildings and wiring and just trying to understand the babble comin' out of people's mouths and heads, I finally ended up in what Rummy quaintly calls "New Europe", which ain't so new from what I sees, but that pit in my stomach from lack-of-moving-sickness finally disappeared, and instead I sit behind a whopping big desk stacked with missives from all the chiefs with big whampum around the world telling me "what's going on". Which seems like a load of boolshit to me, but I guess that's what keeps me busy and entertained now, separatin' the weeds from the chapstick. So my name is Perry Keys, or Peracles to you, and since my mammy always said, "say please and thank you", I added the please, but I'm holdin' back on that thankee until I feel you've earned it. But do welcome, and I hope we's a gonna have a real good time. It all starts with, "I wuz born a poor young white chile livin' in the South..." and we cycle through again, like Nietzsche and his infernal regurgence. So enjoy, and let's spin a spell...

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