One aspect of today’s over-covered crisis with the Perp of Pop escaping the endless chatter and limitless cameras of a sensation-hungry media is Michael Jackson’s embodiment of the perverse delights available to and enjoyed by the mega-wealthy imperial corporate elite in today’s world.
Consider the diverse perverted menu available to Rome’s Imperial elite.
Tiberius Claudius Nero, who ruled Rome after Augustus as Tiberius Caesar Augustus had, among his many perverse pleasures, child slaves he called his “minnows” trained to swim underwater and manipulate the imperial genitalia.
Consider today’s sated class of bored super rich sensualists and their access to modern medical and pharmacological expertise along with the top notch disappearing act of global jet travel and a mano a mano diplomatic buddy system.
As Tiberius required a support system to, among other things, train the “minnows”, today’s globetrotting elites also require discrete services within and without their traveling entourage.
We hear talk of the booming sex and slave trade, human organ thefts and illicit Asian medical clinics and, of course, we occasionally hear of the global theft of human infants, children and adults for various industrial and social uses.
While the media diverts with glamorized sexuality and cheap yuks at over-the-top boob-jobs and melted facial reconstructions, it only occasionally reports on vanished white blond children or America’s gigantic porn industry and it never connects the dots between those events and the global monied powers which facilitate their existence.
Sex in America and the world, in its glamorous merchandizing and broadening medicinal support, is goad, cudgel and snare to wealthy and poor alike.
Money and medicine cannot buy true absolution or erase the sins of our fathers, our unbridled natures or our lost selves.
Michael Jackson lives at the crowded apex of our modern culture and I’ll bet he wasn’t the only attendee at the depraved Minelli-Gest nuptials to sport a fake nose.
In the dead whiteness of his self-vandalized face we can observe the death mask of unchecked and dehumanized techno-industrial civilization.
The Perp of Pop, as the LA Weekly notes, isn’t just a super wealthy freak he is simply the only one to suffer the indignity of arrest.

Photos: Roman-Britain.org, Santa Barbara County
- posted by Sean @ 4:25 PM  

 

Yeah, I roasted this in Air Force One's galley as I was flying the plane over.

Photo: Reuters
- posted by Sean @ 10:11 PM  

 
Some Eat, Some Don't

The President’s top-secret 2-hour ground-time Thanksgiving stunt trip to Baghdad has, within the hour, been breathlessly announced by CNN.
As I've come to regularly expect, the President, in CNN’s words, “dished up sweet potatoes and corn” to 600 member of the US Army’s 1st Armored Division and the 82nd Airborne and then, according to Reuters, met with four member of the Iraqi Governing Council all within the heavily fortified confines of Baghdad’s Bush International Airport.
Start to finish, again according to Reuters, the 30-hour trip included 27 hours of flight-time.
With the bold exception of Baghdad correspondent Walter Rodgers, CNN, always in love with the drama of top-secret doings, only sees bold bravery in the President’s high security top-secret stunt.
Ah, my friends, there is trouble lurking when "bold" abounds!
Throughout the day’s Hoo and Ha it might be worth considering that certain US Senators are actually, with much less personal security, eating a Thanksgiving meal with American soldiers now serving on the front lines in Forgotistan.
The photograph shows US Senator and former First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton eating, today, with US troops at Bagram Airbase north of Kabul.

Plus
Ho Ho Harvey!

Is Edna Turnblad as Mrs. Claus so wrong?
You go, er…girl?
Oy!

Photos: Reuters

- posted by Sean @ 1:50 PM  

 
Happy Thanksgiving

The Harvesters, 1927, Louis Endres

I hope every one of you have a wonderful Thanksgiving this year.
I will be laboring in a hot kitchen all day tomorrow in preparation for Thursday and blogging will be far from my thoughts.
If you are in the midst of a menu crisis may I suggest soup and a rub? The delicious soup can be served with a sprinkle of cinnamon or nutmeg. The rub makes for a spicy bird with beautifully crispy reddish gold skin. Discard the Jalapeno seeds for a roasted bird with less heat and remember to wear gloves or wash hands thoroughly after handling the Jalapeno.

Sweet Potato and Parsnip Soup

½ stick Butter
1 large Sweet Potato, peeled and quartered
1 large Yellow Onion, peeled and chopped
1 medium Parsnip, peeled and quartered
1 stalk Celery, chopped
3 cloves Garlic, peeled and chopped
1 Tsp Honey
1 Tsp Maple Syrup
½ Tsp Salt
49 ½ ounce can Chicken Broth

Melt Butter in large pot. Add Onion, Parsnip, Garlic and Celery and sauté 2 –3 minutes. Add Honey, Maple Syrup and Salt and sauté another minute while stirring occasionally. Add Chicken Broth and bring to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer for 45 minutes to one hour or until potato is tender. Cool and liquefy batches in a blender. Serve hot.

Jalapeno Turkey Rub

1 stick Butter, softened
3 Shallots, chopped
2 Jalapeno Peppers, chopped or seeded and chopped
3 Tsp Chili Powder
3 cloves Garlic, peeled and minced

Pulse all ingredients in a Food Processor. Gently insert hands between flesh and skin of bird (also great with a roasting Chicken). Smear generous portions of rub mixture all over bird especially the breasts. Roast normally adding remaining rub as a baste during the cooking.

Painting: The Cincinnati Art Museum
- posted by Sean @ 9:10 PM  

 

As the drug companies and HMO’s line up at the public trough for a little Republican enabled binge feeding, privatized former Bushies, mouths and hands opened wide, stand under that shaking trough and between the gorging behemoths hoping catch a bit of the greasy overflow.
Exclusive to the Washington Speaker’s Bureau, Ari Fleischer will, for Fee Codes ranging from 1 to 6, draw on his two years of experience to “bring audiences into the corridors of the West Wing by detailing typical and not-so-typical days inside the White House.”
How marvelous and, as the Fee Codes indicate, how lucrative for Ari!
For an unspecified public event with a Fee Code of 1, Ari can receive payments ranging from $1,000 to $7,500.
I’m thinking this might be a quick 15-minute off-the-cuff job with a no questions stipulation.
Undescribed after lunch speeches coded 2 have our Ari pocketing from $7,501 to $10,000 for a grueling luncheon that likely entails a few postprandial questions.
Code 3’s average $10 to $15 thousand and, again I’m guessing, Ari actually composes a good 20 to 30 minute speech followed by 10 minutes of audience questions and maybe a little tongue.
With a $15,001 to $25,000 Code 4, I’m still thinking Ari pairs less than 60 minutes of prepared Current Events remarks with a lengthy Q and A and a trashier wardrobe.
Code 5’s with Fees of $25,001 to $40,000 likely involve Ari’s more revealing topics, each with a guaranteed climax, such as the listed The President: A Measure of Leadership or Crisis Communications: Practical Applications for Unpredictable Times.
Who is he kidding, huh?
I can just hear the various Kiwanis clamoring can’t you?
Hold on folks there is enough of Ari for everybody because I’m imagining he’ll even stay the night for a WSB Code 6 Fee schedule ranging from $40,001 and up.
Sounds like our Ari won’t have to cut his medication in half or decide between food and prescriptions.

Modified image: Washington Speaker's Bureau, Ron English
- posted by Sean @ 2:54 PM  

 
Freedom is beautiful. It's a fantastic thing to come to a country where people are able to express their views.
George W. Bush, November 20, 2003

"The body of a U.S. soldier lies next to his vehicle in Mosul, Iraq. Attackers slit the throats of two American soldiers who were waiting in traffic in this northern Iraqi city on Sunday", according to APTN.


The right-of-center Newsmax.com reports on glam militarist celebrity Tommy Franks' December issue interview with, I kid you not, Cigar Aficionado magazine:

Gen. Tommy Franks says that if the United States is hit with a weapon of mass destruction that inflicts large casualties, the Constitution will likely be discarded in favor of a military form of government. "A terrorist, massive, casualty-producing event somewhere in the Western world – it may be in the United States of America – that causes our population to question our own Constitution and to begin to militarize our country in order to avoid a repeat of another mass, casualty-producing event."

Is this the pre election game plan?

Photos: AP, Cigar Aficionado
- posted by Sean @ 3:46 PM