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Friday 21 October 2011

What a Difference a Rice Makes!

I care not to discuss the cold-hearted who take pleasure in challenging those who question humanity's failure to cast aside its acculturation to vengeance. Nor do I, in particular, feel like making nuanced excuses for that acculturation, which may as well be (and for all I know is) less assimilation, more embedded attribute.

To what, for example, do we owe that nary a "plot" trickling down the Hollywood Hills plays to the end of its third act (as if) without going through the revenge wringer?

Chicken or egg? It doesn't fucking matter.


I would rather talk about Jefferson and Harrison:
The former was respected as a man of great knowledge and intellect, renowned as an agent of enlightenment (The Enlightenment, unnerstand?), referred to as a forefather, a Founding Father, and even has a big "D" democracy named after him.

Whenever the subject of slavery enters the discussion of stuff Jeffersonian, two ideas appear more than any other: 1) He was a man of his time. 2) His views were complex.

With his being at once slave owner and abolitionist (at least as the latter related to international trade), can we not say that "his views" may have evinced something akin to Jeffersonian Hypocrisy? I mean, like, even "in his time"?

Dig: "I got mine!" Dude owned hundreds of slaves; dealt over a thousand in his lifetime.

Oh, but he treated 'em well.

Ooooh - he treated them well, alright: He let 'em take long coffee breaks and occasionally spooged in one of their cooters. Y'think they got maternity leave?

Interestingly, in spite of his opinion that slaves should be freed once the investment had been recouped, he was also a separatist and proponent of back to Africa repatriation.

So how does that work? I'm "cordial" with you as a servant or serf, but I don't think you're equipped to live amongst me & mine after you've finally worked off the hard-earned money your owners paid for you?

No, no. You have it all wrong. He just knew that Whites would never accept freed slaves as citizens.

Wrong again, bub. The man is on record expressing his fear of a potential Black Rebellion (okay, his words were "slave rebellion", but it wuz teh freed Blacks wut wuz gonna help it). Sounds like Tea Party paranoia to me. The modern version, that is. What a pioneer! (Yet, for some reason, it ain't the GOP who's always trumpeting him as being the model they look to for guidance. (Hee-Haw!-))

What Jefferson teaches us, I believe, is that the concept of ownership has always - and always will - make excuses for treating each other like figures on a balance sheet. His distrust of bankers should enlighten one to the fact that while looking out for his own "Jeffersons", he apparently didn't possess the knowledge and intellect sufficient to have his slaves educated in the art of leveraging their own indentured servitude (on his behalf, of course). Dude could've made, uhhm - a mint. But he died broke. Whatever. I just hope he didn't blame the Jews. Hardy-har-har.

In his time, Uncle Tom was one of the 1%.


Yep, "People 'R' Money"
Jerome Harrison is a running back for the Detroit Lions. He was respected as an All-American football player at Washington University, where he studied Humanities and Communications. He is renowned for his time in Cleveland, having rushed for 286 yards at Kansas City, breaking Jim Brown's single-game team record. He is referred to as not worth the risk.

Dig: Harrison was about to be traded (back) to the Philadelphia Eagles, but the deal has just been voided. You see, due diligence in NFL-trade terms means that your potential acquisition requires a physical examination. Jerome Harrison's physical revealed a brain tumor.

Obviously the Eagles wouldn't want to take on such a liability, right? Business is Bizness, yeah?

The Eagles probably won't regret the rescinded transaction unless Harrison recovers, leads his team to the playoffs, plays a decisive role in defeating Philly in the NFC ChampionshipTM - preventing the loser from advancing to the even more lucrative SuperbowlTM.

And if he never plays another game? Or dies? Bittersweet luck?

And what nouns did I use to recount what is happening to a human? Trade, deal, acquisition, liability, asset. They don't stand out, do they? Are there any commerce-neutral words to describe how we interact with one another as a species?

Not sure if Harrison is one of the 1%.
I guarantee his owners are.


As to the title of this entry
I mean, Condoleeza versus Susan. (I know. I should be comparing Condi to Hills, but that'd be sexist;-)

Didn't that lady from Darren Aronofsky's first filmπ look just like Condo friggin' Leezza, I mean, like when she was all mean an' shit, going after the hero under the car and everything, with him having the secret cabala-like code for the ultra secret unspeakable name of God or some shit. You remember that?

Well, even if you don't, just picture mean ol' Condoleezza and remember all the ugly & evil she done delivered upon uns.

And shake with fear and shudder with disgust at the day the Repugnicans ever Occupy the White House again. Lord ham mercy!

Now would you look at that! Couldn't be more beautiful.

Susan Rice: father Emmett, Cornell U prof, governor of the Federal Reserve.

Stanford alum her own damn self. Not too shabby. I mean, valedictorian and all that shit.

Not that Condoleezza wadn't without her documints. I'm jus' sayin' look at that face. What a doll, yeah? An' smart t'boot!

And nominated by Bo Rama to be Ambassador to the UN. The position was tailor-made for her, it would seem. God bless us all, sweet Jesus.

And unlike that sell-out Leezza, she tells it like it is and speaks truth to power!

And though I don't know who that power might be, I'll be damned if Bo Rama ain't the mos' powerful man on the planet right about now, ain' 'e?

Just picture them two. Harvard and Stanford. Talk about good breeding.

You couldn'a bred 'em any better.

And for y'all that object to my going all Greek on you: Don't forget the father of American Democracy (and a few other "assets"), Donkey Party fave Thomas m-f'n'* Jefferson:
He bred the shit out of them. Just didn't want 'em hanging around for another several centuries.


I relent, just by the way
I cannot quantify the extent to which Mu'ammar al-Qaddafi was a liability. But I do know that he wasn't an asset to anyone other than the companies that sold the missiles that chased him & his kin. And the bullet that went through his head.



π in retrospect his only "best" film you should ever watch more than once (no, not the prequel to Jeff Bridges as a Kuntry Sanger, all due respect to the Pope of Greenwich Village's Comeback Tour)

* by default, I suppose (& retroactively, of course)