James J. Lee died yesterday.
Shot dead while protesting the media. Up close and personal.
If you read his “manifesto” you will quickly get the smell of someone who was obviously batshit crazy…a Bronx mental health technical term but no less accurate for all that…and there was clearly going to be no other end to the hostage drama but death if he did not surrender. That’s what SWAT teams do. They fuck you up if you pose a real threat to them or to civilians. Often referred to as “consumers”, ‘a course.
But…why the Discovery Channel?
Alla them nice people cuddling up to the polar bears and whales and whatnot.
A curious choice. What a shame!!! (Says the mainstream hypnomedia.)
Hmmmm…
#1-If the hypnomedia universally make a claim…any claim, from the efficacy of toothpaste to Lee Harvey Oswald’s guilt to the dangers of global warming…when you look under the media rock there are bound to be lots of nasty little bugs crawling around.
#2-One thing that I have learned in the Bronx and other environs where the disenfranchised and/or don’t wanna be franchised tend to gather is this…if a batshit nuts guy consistently says something, he’s usually got a point. He’s just speaking in tongues.
Other tongues.
Read on for a short exploration of part of Mr. Lee’s “point.”
So…the Discovery Channel, eh?
I don’t even have it on my TV “favorites” selection. (Yes, I do turn my TV on occasionally. But I do not watch the ads unless I am doing some research for a post. Sue me.)
Why not watch it?
It’s full of shit, usually.
How do know this?
It’s got corporate sponsors.
BIG ones.
They are full of shit, and they will not sponsor anything that challenges that shit.
So it goes. That’s OK wif me…live and let live, I always say. (When there’s not much that I can really do about it, of course.)
But still…why become obsessive over this particular channel?
Hmmmmm….
The Discovery Channel-Our Networks: Discovery Networks and Descriptions
Discovery Channel
Bringing stories and experiences that share knowledge, satisfy curiosity and inspire the joy of discovery.
TLC
TLC is an affirmative and connective experience.
Animal Planet
Dedicated to the unique relationship between people and animals.
Discovery Health
Your source for health & wellness info, tips, tools & support.
The Science Channel
The only network devoted entirely to the wonders of science.
Discovery Kids
Providing entertaining, engaging, and high-quality programming that kids enjoy and parents trust.
Discovery en Espanol
Una cautivadora mirada al mundo desde el punto de vista Latino.
Planet Green
Planet Green is the multi-platform media destination devoted to the environment.
Military Channel
Your only destination for weapons, warfighters and history – 24/7.
Investigation Discovery
Delivering remarkable insight into investigation, forensic analysis and true stories that piece together puzzles of human nature.
Turbo
High performance content about the technology and culture of cars, motorcycles, airplanes and more.
HD Theater
Wildlife, world culture, adventure and more exclusive content in HD.
FitTV
Providing lifestyle and fitness resources that work in the real world.
Petfinder
Adopting a pet has never been easier. From dogs and cats to rabbits and reptiles, search Petfinder’s database of pets and adoption groups.
Treehugger
Treehugger provides a one-stop shop for green news, eco-living, and product information.
HowStuffWorks.com
From car engines to search engines, HowStuffWorks.com demystifies the world and makes it cool to be smart with credible, high-quality content.
Hmmmm…these folks sure got a lot of range, eh?
From Planet Green right on through Turbo and The Military Channel.
Hmmmm…save the planet and destroy it simultaneously?
How about a Depleted Uranium Channel?
Hmmmmm…
Whatever makes money.
Hmmmm….
Mebbe James wasn’t as batshit crazy as he seems.
Maybe he was just driven crazy by an inablility to balance out equally insane contradictions.
Hmmmm…
So…I have a day off on Thursday and I’m not sleepy. Maybe I’ll have a looksee at this “Discovery” Channel, see if I can “discover” something.
Hmmmm…
`Round midnight.
What’s on?
Man vs. Wild (Man plus helicopters, snowcats, snowmobiles, cameras, a huge support team spewing exhaust and guzzling oil reserves and a synthesized soundtrack that cost more than my entre life versus wild, actually. And wild loses.) Hottest thing ever explorer type risks life and limb to show middle class assholes how to survive in rugged conditions which of course they will never, ever encounter. Heavy mountain snow in this case. What bullshit.
Sponsors?
11:50PM, EDT, 9/1/10
Lincoln MKX-A great big, expensive, wasteful (unless you are traveling w/six people and a lot of gear), gas guzzling SUV. (Stupid Ugly Vehicle) I got yer “planet.” Right here!!!
Blood for oil wars are being fought right now so some middle age spread exec’s wife can ferry her kids to soccer practice in this beast. Way to go, FoMoCo! I got yer “Job One” right here, too!!!
Castrol Edge (for Performance Cars)-“Performance cars.” Detroit-speak for small gas guzzlers. Nice.
Dos Equis beer– World’s most interesting man? I don’t think so. More like a drug gang-connected oligarch. Is it really made in Mexico? If so…how are the workers treated? Does it pollute the neighborhood? (Betcha.)
Kellogg’s Frosted Flakes-Tony the Tiger sells poisonous cereal to the mommies and kiddies. Cute!!!
Lincoln MKX-More SUV gas guzzler. So profitable they have to advertise it twice.
Back to the “show.” About as real as American Idol.
And then after a few minutes….back to the important stuff.
The ads.
12:10AM EDT, 9/2/10
Skechers shoes-SE Asia/Phillipines labor slavery? Bet on it.
Buick Regal-“German engineered.” Yup. One reason why it’s actually a pretty good car as slightly oversized sedans go. America. Love it or outsource it.
Home Depot -Who makes these products? How do they impact the environment? Who sells them? How well are they paid? How many mom + pop hardware stores have they put out of business? Does anyone know where the kitchen fixtures are in these monsters? Usually not. For minimum wage, why bother?
Discover Card-Right. On the Discovery Channel..Discover your usurious 18%+ interest rate once it’s too late.
Bad rock concert sponsored by Axe– Axe. Isn’t that a deodorant that’s s’pose to get you laid? Does it work? (Just askin’…)
University of Phoenix-I’ll give `em a semi-pass. I mean…how much worse than a Harvard that graduates people like G.W. Bush can they be?
The Colony-How to survive Armageddon. Nice. Didn’t see anybody w/radiation poisoning. Hmmmmm. More bullshit.
Enough already.
Got it?
James J. Lee did. In his own off-the-grid way.
And then he got it again.
One round right in the head, probably.
After which the shooter got off work and went to Home Depot to buy something for the garage in which he keeps his Lincoln MXK, his `70s Camaro and his stock of Castrol Edge. For those fast days, don’tcha know. Then he had supper and sat down for a night of Discovery Channel offerings.
And John Brown’s body still lies a’moldering in his grave.
Followed quite soon by John J. Lee.
Are we next?
Quite possibly.
NEWSTRIKE!!!
MEDIASTRIKE!!!
CULTURESTRIKE!!!
VAYA!!!
Or not.
Your choice.
Whas’ on tonight, Madge?
The Discovery Channel!!!???
Oh BOY!!!
Wake the fuck up.
AG
Believe nothing that you see on the hypnomedia.
Nothing.
You be bettah off.
Bet on it.
AG
TV has sponsors that control content?
Let’s turn off all radio and TV forever. What do you think the effect on society would be?
Who would benefit? Everyone? Really?
Who would lose out on access to useful information? No one?
Is the American MIC the product of the MSM or is it just the opposite? Is our love of one entirely due to the existence of the other? Why is this?
How many wars were avoided before the 20th century advent of electronic mass media? How many since? None, I fear.
So, is it all the fault of the newspapers then?
Should we never learn to read to protect ourselves from what we might read? Or is it that we should know HOW to read, but choose not to do it? I mean I have tossed the TV and radio but I still have all these books, but I can’t know if I should be info-striking them or not, so better be safe and toss em.
I realize I have taken this too far, but where should I have stopped?
How many blocks away can I build my media outlet without offending you?
Of course…in your own little two-dimensional world, that’s the only other choice, right?
Unbelievable.
As above, so below.
Tell you what.
Don’t like the government or the way it’s doing things?
Why…let’s get rid of it!!!
Duh.
Do you belong to the fringe elements of he Libertarian movement, or are you just a big fan of the Discovery Channel? Or of course…are you just pissed off because you own an SUV??
Wake the fuck up.
Or…go back to sleep.
This in-between state is annoying.
I have repeatedly offered a quite practical idea…practical save the vicious addiction to media among Americansthat evinces itself every damned time I mention it…that offers the possibility of real media reform.
Hit ’em in he pocketbooks with a boycott.
You don’t like that idea?
Great.
Come up with a better one. I dare ya.
But don’t reductio ad absurdem me with a straight face and think that you’ll getaway with it.
Please
‘Cuz you won’t.
Bet on it.
AG
P.S. You’re not addicted?
Riiiiiight.
Prove it.
Turn the shit off for three weeks.
Completely.
No papers or mags either.
I mean…the world won’t turn to dust any faster just because you’re not watching the media with your eagle eye. How much good has that done over the previous decades that you’ve been watching?
Betcha can’t do it.
Betcha.
P.P.S. You leftiness people who get so bent out of shape when I mention this idea remind me of the followig old hipster/beatnik joke.
Like dat.
Keep on ‘a watchin, podna.
Yer gettin’ a lot done that way, fer sure!!!
You have no clue who I am and you waaaay off, Johnny, and should not be trying. Your constant resort to ad hominem disgraces your ideas.
I am glad to play the hated sleeping strawman this week but, you are wasting keystrokes. Not because you should be fighting me or anyone, but because you are full of shit, repeating some 1970s lines straight out of Network. We’re mad as hell and we’re not taking it anymore, then we wake up and go to work for GE, for the government, for some piece of shit boss because guess what, we’re trying to feed people and be responsible to each other. The shit people like you and me care about is about #400 on most people’s priority list. Even you are arguing about the topic du jour, but with some job-killing solution that includes Beck-esque delusions of an American transformation if only this or that happens.
The American dream came true. You’re looking at it.
“Wake the fuck up” and move on to something someone cares about or stop insulting everyone if you want Person One to ever ever ever listen to your ever more tired line of BS. If a bunch of liberal wonks (your audience here) stopped watching all news for 6 months no one would notice. And then what.
PS. If you want to hit these guys in the wallet, there are very direct routes to that end: don’t pay taxes and/or don’t buy crap depending if your boogey man is the gov’t or the MI/”Corporations”.
If you think a direct appeal to that end would be less effective then people avoiding the news, I’d rethink things, as that seems to be predicated on a near complete lack of free will in the American individual.
As an aside, if I were living on an island in the outter banks right now, I’d be pretty bummed if my neighborhood were on newstrike just now.
Hey, I’ve got a crazy idea. Why not start a channel that has your metaphorical alarm clock blaring 24/7 and get something constructive done? I am sure you could do it if you cared to.
By the way, please inform us what the CULTURESTRIKE part would entail, it’s not quite as obvious what that would mean.
Do not buy or consume in any way ersatz, corproate-created so-called “culture.”
You do not know how to tell the difference?
Obviously.
What’s on your TV set?
(I shudder to think…)
AG
P.S. Here’s a hint.
If it wins a prestigious media-sponsored award…you know, like an Emmy or a Tony or a Grammy or an Oscar…then chances are it’s full of shit.
Just for starters.
So, the art museum is still ok…
pfew
Depends on which one…
AG
my point exactly, Mr. Blackwell.
Glad you’ve made the fashionable museum list for us, please distribute.
How many blocks away from ground 0 can I build my art museum that features only images from historically significant advertisements?
SELFAPPOINTEDMESSIAHSTRIKE!
Build ’em wherever you want.
But go to them with open eyes.
There is a lot of sheer shit out there in the so-called art world.
That is what I mean by “culturestrike.”
Same thing goes for music.
All music.
For movies.
For books.
For TV.
Music is my specialty. My life. I have attended concerts by world-renowned orchestras where they were just mailing in the program. Lifeless. Full of shit conductors. Bored musicians. Ditto B’way shows. Ditto so-called “jazz.” And double ditto pop music…the worst farce of all, most of it. And TV? Fuggedaboudit. 99% bullshit. And yet the venues are full and the TVs are blasting away. People go out to go out and watch TV to pass the empty time. Not to experience an artistic vision. If there is some real creation going on it has now become mostly a coincidence. Same audience reaction no matter whether the soloist plays like he has a cab waiting outside or actually becomes one with the music.
Same same in the other arts.
Bet on it.
Stop consuming mediocre shit.
Culturestrike.
It’s a slam-dunk “Duh!!!” Or so one would think.
But NOOOOOOooooooo….
The media-driven mediocritization of what was once a great and thriving culture.
A culture where transcendent musicians like Louis Armstrong, Benny Goodman and Frank Sinatra were pop stars.
And now?
Justin Beiber.
Nice.
As the culture goes, so goes the country.
Bet on that as well.
CULTURESTRIKE!!!
Like dat.
You don’t get it?
Precisely.
AG
you make it sound like you’ve never danced to mindless junk because the booty just needed shaking?
Why dance to “mindless junk” ..or equally importantly, emotionless and physically inept junk… when here is so much great dance music available?
It is…and has been for well over 100 years…literally pouring out of Africa, South/Central/Caribbean America and the ghettos of the U.S. White, hispanic and black ghettos.
But NOOOOOOOoooooo…Lady Gaga rules!!!
Sad shit.
AG
Guess not.
prosecutable criminality and the sheer need to survive, work, provide food and shelter for myself and pursue my art/craft:
“Don’t pay taxes and/or don’t buy crap depending if your boogey man is the gov’t or the MI/”Corporations” pretty well describes my position on the grid.
And you?
AG
Ok, then say what you really want people to do. Those acts would actually have some effects.
that I describe with the NEWSTRIKE!!! etc. thing is what I am doing.
And with the exception of a period where I felt that I had to live a little more inside of the system in order to safely raise my son…who is now a young man and just as outside as am I, by the way…that is exactly what I have been doing since I was about 18 years old.
40+ years so far, and counting.
Still burning, too.
Brightly.
Bet on it.
And you?
AG
I work for BB making 2+2=5. We all do.
But, I am awake. Although who know WHAT ‘awake’ means here anymore.
I’ve read the book printed between the pages.
Still gotta eat . Choco rations up 25% last year? Awesome.
I gather you get our absurdity on one level, but don’t grasp it’s completeness, it’s victory, it is human nature itself we need to ‘awake’ from, which cannot happen without destroying our selves. Who are you when you are not the one who calls for NEWSTRIKE?
What is the only release from the boot on humanity’s neck forever? There is none, but the end of humanity. The dream is real and there is no waking. Humanity has what type of heart? Darkness or Light? You tell me what you TRULY believe.
It is the recognition that we are all stumbling through a darkness of our own making, but stumbling together; that we are awake, but ‘blind’ and forever requiring each other’s assistance – it is our very common helplessness in the face of our own nature that brings us hope to make it through the days which build to our pitifully meaningless ends.
But one thing I am not, is worried about CNN has to say on the subject of the windmills of la Mancha. The fact that they get paid or do not won’t stop what they are saying or our very nature’s need to hear it.
I am not saying there is no point in being upset or doing anything, I’m just thinking that picking something more mortal than human nature to slay next time might be good, Señor.
Bearing in mind Quixote, this phrase from Shakespeare has even more force:
“Come not between the Dragon and his Wrath.”
Sure, THISSTRIKE! or THATSTRIKE!, but pick a topic, a leverage point to make change: something real. The ambiguous ‘dream’ from which we all must ‘awaken’ is a figment ™, an illusory mis-perception of human nature itself.
People who go on strike will stop consuming shit and then they will start again, not because they don’t see ‘it’ for ‘it’, but because we simply do not operate at our best all the time, even when we know we should/must. We are ‘wind up toys’:
http://www.lyricstime.com/king-missile-wind-up-toys-lyrics.html
There’s your problem.
You think that we all do.
But some of us do not.
You do not understand the basics of English grammar, anarchronarchist. Unless you are speaking in a folk dialect with its own rules those basics are an IQ test as far as I am concerned. You are not speaking in any dialect; you simply do not understand the difference between “it’s” and “its” or how to spell “ourselves.”
So why am I wasting my time talking to you?
Damned if I know.
So I am going to stop.
Have a nice day.
AG
Thanks for the grammar reminder (although I kinda like how it reads as is), cop out and last word.
It only takes 3 people to put this piece of crap diary on the Recommended List.
If AG were actually on this News-Trike he insists we all ride, he wouldn’t even KNOW about this story. But, I guess, he walked past a news stand and forgot to avert his eyes and got…
HYPNOTIZED!
SUCKED RIGHT IN!
AMAZED even.
So FASCINATED by the IDEA that walking into a building with guns and/or explosives will get you a BULLET IN THE HEAD that he felt COMPELLED to do research and pay extra special attention to the FUCKING COMMERCIALS!
Proves his point, doesn’t he?
Mad, ain’tcha!
I partake in no hypnomedia as I define it. That is, no TV or radio as background noise and that especially includes the ads.
If I find myself watching or listening to anything whatsoever in a passive manner, I turn it the fuck off.
I consume no bad culture. Again…especially in an unconscious manner. That kinda changes the way I walk through stores w/background music, among many other things.
No stupid, badly acted, written and directed movies.
No movies with a political agenda…left, right or center.
No badly played, written and produced music.
No badly written or edited articles in newsmags, newspapers or on he web.
There are certain…topics…that interest me in a survival sense, and I sometimes put on my mental hospital mask and read about them on the web.
Sue me.
Attacks on the media is one of them. I think that the keystone to the whole rotten US societal structure is the media and the way that it bends people’s minds to a set of agendas that are not necessarily in the best interests of said people.
After the Discovery Channel foray I took my mind out and caefully rinsed it in some Bach Cello Suites as played by Pablo casals, and a glass of great Mosel wine and then went peacefully to sleep.
Unhypnotized.
You don’t like that?
Sue me twice.
I am continually amazed at the anger of the addicts.
AG
What angers me is your sophistry:
1)Your lame insistence that ONLY YOU are AWAKE and AWARE;
2)Your character slurs against anyone who tries to reasonably discuss the fallacies at the root of YOUR PRESUMPTIONS;
3)And, every diary you write has one primary theme–you tell your readers that THEY are STUPID and YOU AREN’T.
THAT’S what pisses me off.
From time to time, I will continue to remind you that you are not nearly as clever as you think you are.
1-Is my insistence that the majority of Americans…including many leftiness clones…have been quite literally hypnotized by the media an insistence that I am the only one awake to his problem?
No.
Of course not.
2-I have yet to hear any “reasonable discussion” of my “fallacies” on this thread.
Anachronist jumped right off of the two-dimensional bridge by saying that I am advocating turning off “all radio and TV forever.” I am not. I am advocating a boycott of advertisers; I am further advocating increased awareness of the subliminal approaches that are used to control the population and I am even further saying that all of us…even you, sjct…might benefit from a crash media detox program.
You immediately chime in by calling what I am saying “crap.” Then you follow it with a reductio ad absurdem fallacy and call it a day.
I got yer reasoning…right there.
Nowhere.
3-Stupid?
If the shoe fits…
Your “arguments” are stupid, sjct.
In fact, they are not even arguments. They are hissy fits.
Sorry, but there it is.
AG
P.S. For example, I do not imply in any way that Booman is stupid. I disagree with his positions sometimes…most recently not giving the on-the-ground, rank and file Tea Partiers a status above idiot or trying to understand where they are coming from and why…but he makes reasoned arguments.
Almost aways.
You?
Not so much.
Not here, anyway.
So it goes.
Some folks just like a good fight, and the attention it gets them. Fighting remind you that you are alive and a real person.
Posing as some sort of self-righteous, pugnacious messiah is a great way to get into them.
Just admit what you are doing and perhaps some of us could move on to topic B.
I just hope you aren’t confusing your message’s intent and what is actually getting communicated.