Mark Morford, Sagacious or Senseless?'s topics - tribe.net

Here's Oil in Your Eye

2008-07-19T10:17:28Z

Bush lifts drilling ban, oil execs leer, nation cringes, Obama sighs

— By Mark Morford —

Friday, July 18, 2008

I admit to bafflement. I admit to a bit of total confusion mixed with a certain level of stupefied awe and teeth-rattling frustration as to why anyone with the mental acuity of more than a housefly would think that stabbing more holes into Alaska and the eastern seaboard in the search for a few remaining precious drops of oil is a good idea, would solve anything at all, is anything more than the equivalent of hurling matches at the devil.

Perhaps I'm missing something. Perhaps there's some dark, secret genius behind President Bush's otherwise absolutely imbecilic and dangerous corporate-whore move to lift the federal ban on offshore drilling, a ban placed there by his own father, as Dubya actually stood there with a straight face and tried to imply that this insidious move was meant to impart something good and helpful for a gas-stunned nation, that he was "doing all he could" to help with prices at the pump, when you could actually see the oil dripping from his shivery bones and the giant hand of Exxon shoved up his weak little spine, making his mouth move.

Oh, I fully understand the corporate arguments, even the political ones. Asking why the oil companies are eager as rabbits on meth to gouge further into the planet is a bit like asking a surgeon why she wants to operate, or a lawyer why he wants to sue, or a snake why he wants to sink his fangs into a nice juicy rat and swallow it whole and smile for a week. It is, quite simply, what they do.

And politicos, well, they're of course generally terrified of their own shadows, merely following what the people scream, and enough misinformed people scream about high gas prices and demand some sort of relief and, well, politicos from both sides of the aisle will say just about anything to mollify and deflect and pretend to care, even if it means lying, even if it means feigning total ignorance and blaming the oil speculators, even (or rather, especially) if it means an utter and complete shunning of the facts at hand. ...

Read the rest:

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2008/07/18/notes071808.DTL&nl=fix

posted in Mark Morford, Sagacious or Senseless? - 1 reply

A note to readers of this tribe

2008-07-13T04:22:20Z

I must offer my regrets and apologies for the lack of updates to Mark's columns posted here.

As Tribe users, you are probably experiencing the same frustrations I am in connecting to Tribe and posting (or even reading). I'm sorry to say that my patience with this is limited, and I am not willing to spend more than a few minutes trying to post something. So when it's up and running, and the process works, you get an update. Otherwise, it just falls by the wayside.

posted in Mark Morford, Sagacious or Senseless? - 3 replies

Totally Gay Happy Meals

2008-07-12T20:39:31Z

============= MARK MORFORD'S NOTES & ERRATA =============
SFGate.com - Friday, July 11, 2008

== Totally Gay Happy Meals =
It is the end of the nutball Christian right. Here is your proof. To go
(By Mark Morford)

Hey, remember the angry evangelicals? The quivering clan of militant Christoholics who propelled Bush into office and seized the national narrative for a few terrifying moments about five years back, ran deep into the woods with it and rubbed it all over their naughty bits in a frenzy of fear and confusion and lust for all things homophobic and saccharine and spiritually denigrating?

Dying. Nearly dead. Gasping their last. Very soon to be a footnote, a caricature, a gag, a punch line, blasted to the dustbin of history like dried housefly limbs after a sneeze. You should know this now.

Yes, you are right; they already were a caricature, a cultural pothole, a nasty rash in the armpit of society. But it wasn't all that long ago that they were, through bizarre series of sociopolitical machinations still being parsed by baffled historians, a powerful rash, hugely newsworthy, as dangerous and unstoppable as they were wrongheaded and sad. Remember?

You were not much younger than you are right now. As the Bush era crested, as the neocons' power reached nuclear levels, when female nipples and f-words and evil gay agendas ruled the news, the evangelical Right -Ð led by the most virulent, spittle-flecked gaggle of mental throwbacks to ever stain the American newswires, the American Family Association and its nefarious leader, the Rev. Donald Wildmon -- this group controlled, for a brief, awful moment, the national dialogue. They were the temporary arbiters of taste, the warped conscience of a freaked-out culture. And lo, it was ugly. ...

Read the rest:
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2008/07/11/notes071108.DTL&nl=fix

posted in Mark Morford, Sagacious or Senseless? - 4 replies

"We are doomed! Sort of!"

2008-06-28T19:29:05Z

Earth In Crisis, Food And Water Increasingly Scarce, People Freaking Out. Should You Join Them?

--- by Mark Morford ---
Wednesday, June 25, 2008

It would be nice to think much of the ugliness is coming to an end.

It would be lovely to imagine the era of brutal Earth-mauling technologies, coal extraction and petroleum and industrial agriculture and strip mining and clear cutting and industrial fishing and all rest, all the more rapacious and unforgiving notions of how we exist on this planet are, after an era of unchecked capitalistic greed and waste and over-consumption right along with almost zero concern for consequences and the ethics of sustainability, finally moving toward obsolescence -- or rather, are quickly being shoved there by sheer necessity, brutal market forces, as supply runs dry and oil production slows and the Earth groans and spits and says, "enough already."

It is a pivotal time, and now more than ever, you get to choose the lens through which you want to watch it all unfold. Or implode.

Are we headed toward a brighter future packed like a Hooters Energy Drink with a renewed sense of hope and global cooperation? Or is our species plainly doomed to be crushed under the corn syrupy weight of our own gluttony and ego and entitlement? Are we waking up just in time to save ourselves from ourselves, or is that fistful of sociocultural Ambien we downed all those years ago merely causing us to sleep-drive into a wall of nuclear asbestos? ...

Read the rest:
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2008/06/25/notes062508.DTL&nl=fix

posted in Mark Morford, Sagacious or Senseless? - 8 replies

Your Dirty Little iPhone

2008-06-27T18:29:44Z

They Say Apple's Luscious New 3G Gizmo Is Perfect For Porn. But Oh, Just You Wait

-- By Mark Morford –

Friday, June 27, 2008

I was, it turns out, way ahead of my time. Prescient beyond belief. Or maybe I was just plain wrong ... but in a really right sort of way.

See, back in late '05, with the heavenly introduction of the slick video iPod, I predicted nothing short of a small revolution. An uprising, as it were. A coming together and a peeling away and a real growth spurt, you could say.

I predicted, in the form of a wildly successful multimillion-dollar business idea, an explosion of iPod porn.

A gush. A quickening. A mad rush by all manner of wily entrepreneurs and porn producers to reformat their sticky goods to fit the new iPod's gorgeous, tiny but completely adequate-for-nudity screen, thus fulfilling a very profound need amongst the hoi polloi and spurring a revolution in the way the smut-hungry male masses consume their favorite illicit confection. Really, what better way for wary business dudes and lonely husbands and frat guys to watch, say, clips of "Gov Love: The Eliot Splitz-Her Story" over and over again while stuck in the Denver Marriott, without having to bring a laptop or spend $29.95 for seven minutes of in-room pay-per-view? ...

Read the rest:

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2008/06/27/notes062708.DTL&nl=fix

posted in Mark Morford, Sagacious or Senseless? - 1 reply

About the direction and content of this tribe.

2008-06-12T18:49:55Z

Here's what I'm thinking: might we broaden the concept here to include discussion and news that *might* be appropriate to people who find Morford's columns interesting/entertaining/enlightening? I know there are a lot of "current events" tribes; I wouldn't want this to be just another one, but I'm wondering if we might find it useful and enjoyable to talk outside the box, as it were.

What makes me think about this is this item from the Washington Post: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/06/07/AR2008060700924.html

(Churches Eye Name Changes
Amid lower memberships, some churches rebrand to escape the stigma some say 'Baptist' carries.)

("The word Baptist is such a turnoff," said David Roozen, director of the Hartford Institute for Religion Research in Connecticut, who has documented the name-changing trend. "There is a kind of national skepticism about evangelical Christianity because of the religious right and the connection to the Bush administration. You say 'Baptist' and people almost automatically think conservative.")

Now, there's something distinctly "Morfordish" about a church "rebranding," to say nothing of Bush/Cheney being so toxic that even churches feel they're being damaged by any association with them.

But do you all think that this sort of thing is appropriate? Would you like to have it included in this tribe? I'd appreciate your thoughts.

posted in Mark Morford, Sagacious or Senseless? - 4 replies

Is homophobia just dying out?

2008-06-11T16:11:03Z

== Farewell, all you old homophobes ==

California's extraordinary, newfound majority support for gay marriage? Thank the young
(By Mark Morford)

It's a generational thing, you could say, grinning just a little as you do so.

It's because younger people today -- those under, say, 45 or so -- have been far more exposed to the gay "lifestyle" and to more fluid notions of gender and sexuality, to the idea of homosexuality as a common, nonthreatening, everyday, what's-the-big-deal shrug, and therefore, as a demographic, they/we understand that allowing gay people to wed doesn't actually mean our shaky notions of God and family and society will collapse like a priest's willpower at a Boy Scout jamboree.

This, I think, was perhaps the most fascinating tidbit of insight to emerge from the most recent poll of Californians where, for the first time in state history, a majority of those polled said they support the idea of gay marriage and/or oppose a new and vile push for a state constitutional amendment to ban it outright. And that majority consists, by and large, of the young.

It's an intriguing -- if slightly morbid -- thing to note, because on the flip side, the poll also found that most people over age 65 don't like the idea of gay marriage one little bit because, well, they usually can't exactly explain why, though it's not difficult to guess: It's what they were taught, what was implied, it's what their own parents passed on to them, as did their church, their culture, society as it was during their upbringing, and it was largely a narrow and repressed and sexually unaware period that finally, mercifully seems to be gasping its last. ...

And hence the obvious conclusion: It's only because the "Greatest Generation" is finally dying off that something like gay marriage can be realized as less of a silly threat. Or, more bluntly: As die the old, so dies the ugly intolerance so many of them carried like a sad, hereditary disease.

I know, it sounds a bit harsh. And it probably is. But just looking at the raw data, it appears to be one of the more lucid, clear-cut cases of generational upheavals in recent history. Hell, just 30 years ago, support for gay marriage was a measly 28 percent. In 1985, it was 42 percent. Now, at least according to one major poll (others aren't quite there yet, but it's getting very close) it's 51 percent, and growing fast.

=-=-=-=-=-=

Read the rest:
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2008/06/11/notes061108.DTL&nl=fix

posted in Mark Morford, Sagacious or Senseless? - 2 replies

Is Obama an enlightened being?

2008-06-11T15:04:24Z

I find I'm having this discussion, this weird little debate, more and more, with colleagues, with readers, with liberals and moderates and miserable, deeply depressed Republicans and spiritually amped persons of all shapes and stripes and I'm having it in particular with those who seem confused, angry, unsure, thoroughly nonplussed, as they all ask me the same thing: What the hell's the big deal about Obama?

I, of course, have an answer. Sort of.
Warning: If you are a rigid pragmatist/literalist, itchingly evangelical, a scowler, a doubter, a burned-out former '60s radical with no hope left, or are otherwise unable or unwilling to parse alternative New Age speak, click away right now, because you ain't gonna like this one little bit.

Ready? It goes likes this:

Barack Obama isn't really one of us. Not in the normal way, anyway.

This is what I find myself offering up more and more in response to the whiners and the frowners and to those with broken or sadly dysfunctional karmic antennae - or no antennae at all - to all those who just don't understand and maybe even actively recoil against all this chatter about Obama's aura and feel and MLK/JFK-like vibe.

To them I say, all right, you want to know what it is? The appeal, the pull, the ethereal and magical thing that seems to enthrall millions of people from all over the world, that keeps opening up and firing into new channels of the culture normally completely unaffected by politics?

No, it's not merely his youthful vigor, or handsomeness, or even inspiring rhetoric. It is not fresh ideas or cool charisma or the fact that a black president will be historic and revolutionary in about a thousand different ways. It is something more. Even Bill Clinton, with all his effortless, winking charm, didn't have what Obama has, which is a sort of powerful luminosity, a unique high-vibration integrity.

=-=-=-=-=

To read the rest: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2008/06/06/notes060608.DTL

posted in Mark Morford, Sagacious or Senseless? - 5 replies

Whatever happened to Hilary Clinton?

2008-06-03T02:11:34Z

== The great Barack Obama insurrection =

Hillary was ready. Hillary was unstoppable. Hillary was, by all accounts, a lock. What the hell happened?
(By Mark Morford)

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2008/05/30/notes053008.DTL&nl=fix

Are you paying any sort of attention to this moment in time? Are you reading bits and hints about the transformation, the shift, the unusual and slightly surreal energy coursing through the nation? Are you tattooing this seminal period on the sacrum of your sociopolitical consciousness? Are you under 50? Then there's been nothing else like this in your lifetime. And there probably never will be again.

You gotta take it all in, you know? Because it was no time at all ago, less than a year, and Hillary Clinton's presidential nomination was pretty much a given, and even I was relatively thrilled and gung-ho for her candidacy, especially given how she was so ahead in the polls and so ahead in fund raising and so ahead in public opinion her imminent nomination felt much like a slam dunk, a forgone conclusion, a sure thing.

And therefore it was all something rather otherworldly for progressives, a bit unprecedented, a Democratic race to watch only for the sheer historic value and for the surprising quality of the other candidates involved, and not because there was any doubt as to the eventual outcome.

Just a bit beyond incredible, then, what has happened since, in such a short time, in this, one of the more fascinating turning points in American history. ...

Read the rest:
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2008/05/30/notes053008.DTL&nl=fix

posted in Mark Morford, Sagacious or Senseless? - 4 replies

Reality -- What A Concept! -- OR -- Ceci n'est pas Cameron Diaz

2008-05-25T03:31:09Z

Of course every magazine spread has been Photoshopped. But do you know to what degree? How deep is the lie?
(By Mark Morford)
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2008/05/23/notes052308.DTL&nl=fix

I have a vision. It is for a smart, sexy new upstart fashion celeb lifestyle hipster magazine and it will be a raw and shocking and anarchic thing, mostly because its radical manifesto will contain the resolute and mighty vow to be as real and authentic and photographically honest as possible in every way at all times without fail, almost.

How radical? Well, my magazine will have this one overarching rule: no Photoshopping. No professional retouching to any ad or product or grisly food item, no ridiculous digital enhancement of any celeb's face or torso or battle-scarred pelvis, no dramatic re-backgrounding, no slippery light effects or lip enhancements or ass lifts, with the possible exception of zapping a few errant nose hairs or stray gray pubes and of course excepting any shot containing Ashlee Simpson or Tom Cruise or Adam Sandler, who will be eliminated from any photo completely and replaced with a feral squirrel or perhaps some nice shrubbery.

There will be pimples. There will be blemishes. There will be wrinkles and scars and flab and sag, stretch marks and cigarette burns and age spots and syringe holes and bone spurs and dark circles and giant moles and droopy kneecaps and asymmetry galore. Won't that be wonderful? Won't that be refreshing?

Imagine the joys. You will see the reality of Madonna's horrible skin right along with her scary gap-toothed leer. You will admire Katherine Heigl's blotchy chain-smoked lips and J.Lo's short, overplump neck and George Clooney's third nipple as you quickly realize, oh holy hell, that bright shiny celebrity world sure ain't what I thought it was. ...

Read the rest:
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2008/05/23/notes052308.DTL&nl=fix

posted in Mark Morford, Sagacious or Senseless? - 2 replies

Kim For Mod !

2008-05-23T07:14:19Z

Kim has graciously put her hand up to take over the moderatorship of this tribe...

The tribe has been through its rough patches and needs reinvigorating and someone to lead it better than I can.. Somone who loves Morford.. someone like Kim..

Instead of just handing over, I thought I would consult members and allow them to declare their support for Kim...

She gets my vote - what say you folks ?"

posted in Mark Morford, Sagacious or Senseless? - 10 replies

Raise a mountain in your pants!

2008-05-11T08:24:12Z

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2008/05/07/notes050708.DTL

You found it!!

And a very good morning to you! Big white meteors nympho chicks take it hard.

Nothing else can arouse more female derision, than its tiny dimension.

The computer without the software work can not. But only the present, license programs will ensure to you quality and reliable job of computer system!

Kick-up porno dvd for mmorford!!! Kylie Minogue Kick-up porno!!! Penelope Cruz Stunning photo!!! Meg Ryan Shocking mpeg4!!! Beyonce Full porno dvd!!! Porno Shocking for mmorford!!! Christina Aguilera Stunning video with a naked celebrity!!! Carmen Electra Full video without cowards!!!

To read the rest, click on the link above. You don't even have to register!

posted in Mark Morford, Sagacious or Senseless? - 2 replies

Reasons Why this Tribe Needs a New Moderator

2008-05-08T04:09:34Z

Hahaha!

I was given this tribe a few months back, and I never remember to even READ Mark's column (though I love him), let alone get conversations going about them. As you can see, I just posted 5 or 6 that I'd missed since that *last* one that I remembered to post.

Sooooo, is anyone interested in taking the mantle? Anyone who actually read him twice weekly, and can put a fire under our butts to talk about it? I'm just overwhelmed with life, and even reading an article that long is daunting me <lol>.

Anyone? Bueller?

posted in Mark Morford, Sagacious or Senseless? - 18 replies

Not Mark Morford

2008-04-21T02:33:48Z

But it is interesting..

Memorable Web Videos of 2007

http://potw.news.yahoo.com/s/potw/58092/the-most-memorable-web-videos-o/

posted in Mark Morford, Sagacious or Senseless? - 2 replies

Free iPhone with Every Outrage!

2008-04-09T04:06:27Z

Free iPhone with Every Outrage!
Bored with the 'war' on Iraq? 4,000 dead merely induce shrugging?
Need an incentive to keep caring?
By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist

Friday, March 28, 2008

It is a time for a radical rethinking. It is a time to reconsider it all, to perhaps reassess how we are presenting and digesting America's most costly and lost and unwinnable and brutal and ignoble and inept and insidious and depressing war that's not really a war; it's time to revolutionize how it's all packaged and broadcast and pumped like hot sticky misery into the heavily narcotized American cultural bloodstream because, oh my God, we are sick sick sick of it all, and only getting sicker.

This is the problem: People are getting bored. Check that: People are already bored, insanely so, have been bored for a few years now, so utterly and thoroughly jaded and burned out on stories and pictures and woeful tales of Iraq and death and Baghdad and cluster bombs and burned-out trucks and limbless soldiers and flag-draped coffins and photos of a grinning George W. Bush posing with a horribly burned, mutilated U.S. soldier, it might as well be Lindsay Lohan snorting blow off the dashboard of an Escalade.

We have now accomplished 4,000 dead U.S. soldiers in Iraq. Did you see that headline? Did it cause anything but a stab of pain and a heavy sigh and a need to click a different headline, maybe the one about cute baby polar bears in Germany? Did you simply mash and mix that inglorious number with tales of wretched economic meltdown and torture and health care system collapse and roll it all into a little ball of sadness and hurl it at the wall of forgetfulness? You are not alone.

Yes, 4,000 dead soldiers was a miserable milestone indeed, one that doesn't even hint at the roughly 100,000 wounded and brain-damaged and clinically depressed U.S. soldiers and simply shrugs off the hundreds of thousands of dead Iraqi civilians, a number which is probably far closer to 1 million but hey, they're just civilians and they were stupid enough to live in Iraq in the first place and therefore the military couldn't care less about them and besides, all those stats are just boring too, so who's counting?

Certainly not the media. Sure enough, war coverage has apparently dropped to less than a fifth of what it was even a year ago, as increasingly desperate, budget-strapped news organizations understand that everyone's exhausted by incessant death tolls and no one wants to read about suicide bombers or failed surges or Bush's staggering ineptitude anymore, even if John McCain is now wobbling around the nation trying to defend Bush's idiocy and rally the frothy, paranoid faithful by actually suggesting that what the world needs right now is not less war, not the U.S. out of Iraq, but rather the U.S. into everywhere else. 100 more years! 100 more years!

Of course, all the widespread boredom and ennui is completely understandable, similar to having some sort of inoperable tumor growing deep in your heart for so many years it eventually becomes the norm, The Thing That's Always There, so ingrained and embedded into your being that you can't even remember a time when you were free of it. And so every morning as your chest convulses and your body withers a little bit more, you just sigh and shake your head and accept the misery because, well, what the hell else are you gonna do?

But here's the fascinating part: On the one hand, the rabid GOP war hawks would simply love it if you'd let your boredom rule and just shut the hell up and forget all about Iraq, let it all just keep churning and eating us away and killing until the economy collapses and Halliburton and Lockheed and Bush's puppet masters make a few hundred billion dollars more off the backs of young and exhausted soldiers who only joined the military because they couldn't afford school or get a decent job or buy a home.

But on the other hand, the GOP still desperately needs middle 'Merkins to hate, to seethe, to burn with fear at least until election time so McCain can leverage America's latent loathing of dark-skinned foreigners and convince the remains of Bush's heartless base that we need to invade and destroy and kill a great many more people in order to, you know, remain free and happy.

And then there's the anti-war crowd, fighting the exact same widespread malaise in reverse, given how everyone with even a passable education and a thriving soul is now exhausted by the incessant jackhammerings of Bush's incompetence. Indeed, the left needs intelligent Americans to remain angry and outraged at least until Barack Obama can wipe the slate clean of all those warmongering old men.

So then, maybe what everyone needs, of course, is incentives. We're Americans, after all. Do we not love shiny dangling things to keep us enthralled, engaged, some sort of clear prize at the end, maybe a nice all-expenses-paid vacation to Cabo or a new dishwasher or $100 worth of free iTunes downloads? In other words, do we not love to have our collective misery turned into soft, sweet pablum, into cheap cultural commodity for mass consumption? You bet we do. You have a better idea?

Maybe reality TV is the answer. "Real World: Baghdad." Could that do it? Make it all more interesting? Tagline: "Will macho heartthrob jerk/personal trainer Tyler hook up with drunk slutty ex-marketing manager Sonia in the hot tub even as gay bartender Todd is weeping in the game room because his tiny Chihuahua, Mr. Sniffles, was blown up by a cluster bomb just outside the Green Zone? Tune in to find out!"

Or, something else entirely. For example, the McCain campaign could make you an offer: "Attention, America! Launch an insular, jingoistic blog with lots of animated American flags and link out only to Sean Hannity and Ann Coulter and Michael Savage and include lots of hunky photos of Rod "Destroy Islam" Parsley and John "Christian Zionist" Hagee, those rabid televangelists McCain has welcomed into his camp so as to court the ignorant evangelical vote, and the Republican Party will send you a free iPod pre-loaded with Chubby Checker and Tanya Tucker and bad Christian rock. Yay America!"

Indeed, the possibilities for alleviating our boredom are endless. Free tank of gas with every anti-war comment you post to FoxNews.com whenever they lie about the troop surge. New Starbucks coffee drinks named after various Shiite and Sunni leaders so you never forget that no one in the Pentagon has the slightest clue as to what their religious war is really all about. "Hi, I'd like a double vente caramel macchiato Abdallah Suleiman Omary, with lots of room for cream."

Will it help? Will it make it all less boring? Will you attach to the horrors and misery of the war more passionately as you wake up every day thinking, Oh my God, I can't wait until I get a hot steaming cup of Abu Omar into my body? Well? You have a better idea?

Source http://www.sfgate.com/columnists/morford/

posted in Mark Morford, Sagacious or Senseless? - 4 replies

Tax my rich white torturer

2008-04-08T15:29:28Z

Tax my rich white torturer
Schools? Health care? As if.
Your taxes pay for brutality and Wall St. bailouts. Feel better?
By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist

Wednesday, March 26, 2008

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Just so we have this straight: You are not paying taxes merely to fund torture and bomb-dropping and the killing of countless innocents in Iraq in a futile and lost war that's not really a war and is far more of a massive fiscal, tactical and moral failure which will end up costing the nation an estimated $3 trillion, burn through any remaining sense of national dignity and leave repercussions that will last for generations.

Ha. You should be so lucky. Because your tax money is right now also funding the Fed's unprecedented and rather shocking multibillion-dollar bailout of rich bankers and fund managers who have, through their greed and excess and with the implied blessing of former Chairman Alan Greenspan (whom many consider the architect of the collapse in the first place), helped bring about what is shaping up to be the worst fiscal crisis since World War II.

There now. Don't you feel better? Isn't it a good time to be an American? And is it not, despite the notorious dishonesty of the players involved, still a bit hard to believe?

Yes, I know it's George W. Bush. I know its Dick "Satan Loves You" Cheney. I know it's Wall Street. Hence, I know expectations are at rock bottom. But as far as torture is concerned, it's still profoundly disturbing to watch the world's most powerful leader, the president of what was once considered the most reasoned, humanitarian nation on the planet and the one that ostensibly set the ethical bar for all nations, actually veto a bill that would've banned some of the most brutal forms of torture known to man, techniques we know for a fact do not work.

Repeat: Torture does not work. Waterboarding does not work. It merely coerces the tortured into telling you what you want to hear. The CIA knows it. Torturers know it. God knows it. No matter, because America is apparently still being run by inbred white collar thugs who would blind their own mothers for an uptick in Exxon share prices.

By the way, it has also come to pass that this same president, amid an appalling laundry list of scientific and environmental abuses, has actually worked firsthand to worsen the quality of the very air itself.

It's as true as it is disgusting. It turns out that Bush himself stepped in to force the already troubled Environmental Protection Agency to defy its own mandate, its own scientific recommendations, ordering it to raise the limits for allowable ozone (it was about to recommend the exact opposite), all for the benefit of his pals in Big Energy.

No president ever dared such a move before. In fact, Bush's action was so unprecedented, so galling, so against the very structure of government itself that an army of White House lawyers had to scramble to rewrite the legal justifications for the lower air standard. Do you smell that? That's the scent of the most shamelessly foul leader of the free world. Breathe deeply, because it ain't over yet.

So then, torture, pollution, more war, Wall Street megalomania, incompetence like some sort of satanic mantra. If you had any lingering doubt that Bush was an arrogant and petulant man-child with the mind of a violently overpampered 10-year-old, please abolish it now.

Ah, but wait. It's not all bad. After all, Congress — with the eager support of the infuriatingly mindless Democrats, by the way — just rushed through an economic stimulus package, costing even more billions of dollars we do not have just so the IRS can rush you a check for a few hundred bucks, presumably so you can race right out and make a down payment on that foreclosed three-bedroom two-bath hunk of shiny tract home hell in Antioch — "The Finest Slum this Side of Stockton" — with enough left over for a burrito and some vodka. Voila! Economy saved. Or maybe not.

Do you feel stimulated? Do you feel reassured? Oh wait, I'm sorry, gas is now $4 a gallon and therefore by the time you actually made it to your tract slum and back, well, your stimulus has evaporated into a gassy vapor, just like your shares in Bear Stearns. Whoops.

Maybe now is when the real dark period begins. Sure the last seven years of the inept Bush regime have been miserable and shameful, sure we've been humiliated, mortified a thousand ways from Sunday by an administration that would yank the legs off a dog if it meant a thank-you note from Dubai.

But now Bush is in his final year. This is both the good news, and also the very, very bad news. Because we are now in the death throes of the worst administration in modern history, entering the period of serious consequences, of economic collapse, environmental impact, record oil prices, international recoil, rashes, boils, inexplicable vomiting. Fun for the whole family.

Know this for a fact. Bush does not care. He is detached, supercilious, viciously ignorant of anything but how beautifully he has served his corporate masters, of how he has raked in billions of dollars for Halliburton and Lockheed Martin and Exxon and the coal industry, mercenary armies and military manufacturers and his dad's Saudi friends. He is on no one's side but theirs, and he always has been.

Some say this pain, this fiscal crisis, this enormous instability will last a few years. Some say no way, it will be at least a generation or two before we can right this ship of state again, so deep are the wounds and so insane is our national debt and so violent the damage to our reputation, our identity, our enfeebled infrastructure.

But I'm more with those who say, no, the truth is we will never truly recover, that America's former ranking as Gilded and Irreproachable Empire No. 1 is dead and gone. India and China are dramatically changing the game, peak oil is nigh, fresh water is the new gold, the planet itself is in paroxysm, Mother Nature is quickly revealing her hand — or rather, maybe just that one big, stormy middle finger.

But maybe this is the best news of all. Because the sort of gluttonous empire Bush so disgustingly represented was doomed to failure. The center could not hold. Dubya may not have hastened the apocalypse like the evangelicals desperately prayed he would, but he certainly is hastening the end of the bloviated American ego.

So maybe the real question is not can we return to our former ill-gotten superpower glory, insular and unparalleled and reckless and arrogant, or even peaceful and defensive and ironclad. The true question is, do we have the slightest clue what we want to become instead?

Source http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/gate/a/2008/03/26/notes032608.DTL

posted in Mark Morford, Sagacious or Senseless? - 5 replies

Hell Readies a Room.

2008-03-23T18:20:37Z

Here's a link to a posting on my blog. I'm not just reposting it here because I'd like you to see the picture that goes with it.

http://people.tribe.net/e7041df3-38ff-492a-9753-19a447ab7019/blog/4c4bb0ba-d326-474e-8795-adedfe3ecbde

posted in Mark Morford, Sagacious or Senseless? - 0 replies

Praise Jesus, the end of an era

2008-03-05T10:36:03Z

Praise Jesus, the end of an era

Fidel Castro slumps away, Bush races to history's dungheap, and 13 million TVs prepare to die. Are you ready?

By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist

Friday, February 22, 2008

You know what we don't really get enough of in American culture? Change.

No, not the bland politicalspeak Barack Obama/Hillary Clinton brand of broad sloganeering bumper-sticker change, the kind where part of your naive perky innocent unicorns-in-the-sky self really wants to believe it's all going to be hopeful and good and radically different, but yet you kind of know, deep down, when you peel back the masks and the rhetoric and the spin, that when all is said and done, pretty much the exact same jackals and demons and CEOs will run the bleak global circus, same as it ever was.

No, I mean the kind of deep, cathartic change that can only come through, say, death, or explosive upheaval, or mind-shattering discovery (Jesus was a woman!), or, you know, "the end of an era."

Fidel Castro retired. That was, apparently, a big one, albeit a bit anticlimactic, given how Castro's end didn't come as everyone expected, by way of him suddenly keeling over and dying in a crumpled heap of smoky rage with a cigar in one hand and a bottle of Havana Club in the other, wearing a bright red Adidas tracksuit and stabbing his finger at the sky as he called for a people's revolution as not a single one of his handlers had the nerve to tell him it was no longer 1968 and the revolution had already passed by and oh, by the way, the revolution actually was televised, but the ratings stunk and hence it quickly replaced by all-new episodes of "The Bachelorette."

No, Castro merely stepped (gingerly) down, at 81, to enjoy his final doddering years writing political editorials from the hammock, reveling in how he outlived them all, from Eisenhower to Nixon to Reagan, never backed down and stood the test of time and survived assassination attempts and CIA coup attempts and was an icon of rebellion and socialism and radical politics and you have to admit, it was quite a run. Quite a record. Quite a man. Quite a legacy and quite a ... oh, to hell with it. Get out, would you please, Fidel? I mean, basta already.

Yes, the headlines were right. Castro's retirement really was "the end of an era." And let's just say it outright: It's about goddamn time. If Castro indeed represented the last, wretched dog of the Cold War period, with all its saber-rattling and warmongering and pseudo-macho preening, its clenched old white men stroking each other's egos behind closed doors and its flagrant misogyny and the giant disastrous myth of the nuclear family, well, that particular era could not end soon enough.

No, not because it's all bad. Not because there is nothing of beauty to be mined from all those years and nothing to be learned from the plentiful mistakes therein, but because the era in question hung around well past its expiration date, started reeking up the fridge of the culture about, oh, two decades ago.

See, this seems to be the problem with most noteworthy eras: They go on far too damn long. From the Cold War to the petroleum economy to jungle-themed restaurants, they just refuse to see the signs. The internal combustion engine? That era should've died years ago, replaced by technology we've already developed. Smoking? Oh my God. Really? Still? Should've passed with hula hoops and '70s disaster flicks. And then there's Christianity. Talk about your interminable eras. A good 1,500 years too long, at least.

Ah, but does the moment not seem ripe for a good, raucous round of real change? Does it not feel like we are on the verge of finally letting go of a whole slew of pointless, hoary old eras we no longer need, eras that we've been reading and hearing about for just about ever and that have seemed to define us and hold us bound up in their limited worldviews? You bet it does.

Here's one: It's approaching the end of an era for analog televisions. Does that count? Is there anything noteworthy there? Because you have exactly one year to switch to a television that can handle the new, government-mandated all-digital signal, or you're stuck staring at the radio, which I'm not even sure they make anymore. But fear not, because the U.S. government is offering $40 vouchers to help millions of unprepared Americans rush out and buy a converter box so as not to miss a single episode of "Two and a Half Men." This is important. This is mandatory. They can't have you, you know, reading books or something.

Not good enough? Fine. Then how about this: It's fast approaching the end of the Bush era, 12 combined years of miserable, silver-spoon governorship by one of the lumpiest, dorkiest, least appealing clans of desperately shrill powermongers in the world, Barb and Jeb and George and George Jr., Laura and Barb Jr. and Jenna and beer bongs and fake IDs and old coke habits and running AWOL from the Air National Guard and it's all felt like a particularly insufferable episode of "The Beverly Hillbillies," wherein the Clampetts go to Washington and screw three generations out of any sense of hope or environmental protections while getting the world to despise us for everything we used to stand for. Wacky!

The Bush era cannot end soon enough. Hell, I have politically conscious, attuned friends in their 20s and early 30s who have never known a president other than a Bush or, to a lesser degree, a Clinton, in their adult lives, have never known any leadership other than these two very lukewarm, mealy political families. (Which, by the way, very much explains the desperate appeal of Obama.)

Eras like these need to end. And when they refuse, we often need to shove them out the door like a 35-year-old stoner computer geek who still lives at home with his mom. Because people need to feel a part of a change, the shift, to say we were once there and now we're here and oh my God what a difference an era makes. Hell, I think the only eras my friends have lived through were the end of cassette tapes and tolerable Tom Cruise movies and lame sex on 'The O.C.' ("Tyler finally hooked up with Brianna in the hot tub? Wow, that's the end of an era!")

Good news is, there are plenty of other eras slated for death in the next decade or so, perhaps more eras than in the past 50 years combined. Print newspapers (ahem). Full-sized SUVs. Fox News. Music CDs. Record labels. Megachurches. Ann Coulter. Pennies. Pat Roberston, who will finally join Jerry Falwell scrubbing toilets in Hell. Won't that be refreshing? Even if it all now feels deeply unstable, unpredictable, just a little too warm up around the ice caps for our own good? You bet it does.

Truth is, for far too long we believed we had it all figured out, how the planet worked, that we could stomp and rule and abuse and suck the place dry, forever and ever, and get away with it, with zero consequences or future implications. Our arrogance knew no bounds. How very wrong we were. Is it not long past time to say farewell — and good riddance — to that disastrous mind-set? End of an era, really.

posted in Mark Morford, Sagacious or Senseless? - 0 replies

New York condoms, Texas dildos

2008-03-05T10:34:59Z

New York condoms, Texas dildos

When sex toys are legal and contraceptives are free, are we not doomed?
By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist

Wednesday, February 20, 2008

Is it a good day in America? Is it a good time to be in this broke, disgraced, sexually bewildered country when the lumbering and lost state of Texas finally crawls, lurching and sputtering and blinking hard, into the 19th century as it finally, against its will, is forced by the courts to allow sex toys to be sold to adults, thus leaving only Alabama and a bit of Georgia to stare into the void of their own unused genitalia and scream in abject terror?

Is it, furthermore, a better and brighter day for all Americakind when the lumbering and lost Federal Communications Commission still wants to fine ABC Television $1.4 million for showing a glimpse of a naked female butt on an episode of the now-defunct "NYPD Blue" five years ago, even though all the little kids who were ostensibly traumatized by said ass are now about 12 years old and into ultraviolent video games and hooking up on MySpace and choking each other to death, and the FCC's move is not considered a distressing, dire prediction of oppressive things to come, but rather a forgettable trifle, a shrug, a silly little footnote?

Is it not, finally, good to know that you now can, when in New York City, stroll into any number of bars or fine urban locales and grab yourself a free, official NYC condom or five, and also a nice packet of lubricant, all on the city's dime?

And what's more, not only are they complimentary and available citywide, and not only is there an impressive accompanying ad campaign for the second year of the groundbreaking program (TV, print, subway billboards, Web site) hawking said latex fun-sheaths and encouraging you to "get some," but the packaging is actually created by a semi-famous industrial designer (Yves Béhar) and the campaign itself actually isn't insulting or shy or demeaning as it dares to suggest that young adult Americans might actually enjoy sex and therefore, oh my God, wouldn't it be fun to get some today? The horror.

I am here to say yes, yes indeed, it is all quite good, refreshing, even a little promising, even if you don't really notice, even if it all seems minor and insignificant, overshadowed by looming recessions and lost wars and the bleak, bleak, bleak BushCo End of Days.

See, there was a time, just a handful of miserable years ago, when it all felt dour and sad and pathetic, when John "anoint my feet in oil" Ashcroft ruled the porn-obsessed Justice Department and worthless abstinence education was being forced down the throat of the educational system and the fundamentalist Christians were stabbing at the culture like unhappy vultures tearing at a carcass.

It was a time when major media was eating its own tail in fear of getting fined for allowing the slightest illicit or sexually suggestive infraction, as Michael Powell's Bush-controlled FCC went on the warpath, behaving like some sort of gnarled sexually uptight Megatron who hated women and never masturbated, desperate to crack down on the slightest naughty infraction, from Bono saying "f-" at the Golden Globes to Howard Stern talking dirty to porn stars for the benefit of his audience of overweight frat guys and lonely cab drivers.

It was quite a ride. From Ashcroft covering the nipples of Lady Justice with heavy cloth to the massive, insane outcry against Janet Jackson, it all culminated in 2005, in the Republican-controlled Congress ramming through the inane Broadcast Decency Enforcement Act, which increased tenfold the penalty the FCC could impose on broadcast media, to $325,000 per violation.

But now, oh, now how quaint it all seems, the Bush administration's dark and sexually repressive cloud actually proving to be nothing but a sticky mist, a passing pink puff of rancid gas, so many of the fundie Christians/congressmen proving to be secretly gay and the nation itself proving very quickly to be rather sick of the entire gaggle of Jesus-terrified henchmen.

What's more, the FCC's ominous threats suddenly feel moot and meaningless, especially given the upsurge of shows like "The L-Word" and "Californication" and "Tell Me You Love Me" and who the hell cares if they can show nipples and butts on network TV? The landscape is changing, far faster and more powerfully than any hypocritical conservative movement could ever comprehend, much less contain.

The signs are in place. The tone is shifting. Despite a misogynistic Supreme Court, despite the Christian right's desperate attempt to instill Taliban-grade prohibitions and constrictions around sex for the past seven years (well, more like 2,000 years. But that's another column), Texans can now buy dildos to go with their Sunday sodomy, condoms and lube are free all over New York City, abstinence education has proven to be a massive failure and the flatulent bout of Christian-led sexual hysteria has, at least for the moment, largely passed.

Oh, there will still be blips and triggers. There will still be Christian rock and "True Love Waits" and cute little Web sites extolling the virtues of teen virginity, of making nifty little pledges not to have sex until you're married and/or no longer a Republican or no longer absolutely horrified at the notion of your own vulva.

And yes, broadcast media will remain terribly uptight for a while longer. There will still be, for example, the producers of this year's bland-as-death Grammy Awards, who actually asked Amy Winehouse to please cover up the nipples on the bare-breasted pinup girl she has tattooed on her arm because some Americans might be confused and offended. (In response, Winehouse simply took some black eyeliner and drew a nice "bra" over the nipples, and middle America breathed a huge sigh of relief because oh my God, nipples. Our great national scourge.)

What's more, many issues remain volatile. The gay marriage war, for example, is far from over, though it now seems the most difficult battle has been won. The hull has been breached. The rainbow-colored cat is very much out of the bag. Wail as the fundamentalists might, the feeling now is that gay marriage — like women's suffrage, like interracial marriage, like the notion of a black or female president — is no longer a matter of if, only when.

This is the feeling. The straps are loosening. The legs are parting. The repressive sexual ideology of the right has, quite naturally, failed. So please, America, go buy your dildos in Texas and grab your free condoms in NYC, safe in the knowledge that the temperature of the national body, once frigid and clenched, appears to be warming up.

Can you feel it? Won't you do the right thing, and "get some" yourself?

posted in Mark Morford, Sagacious or Senseless? - 0 replies

hilarious!

2008-02-14T00:55:10Z

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/g/a/2008/02/13/notes021308.DTL&type=printable

back to loving Mark!

posted in Mark Morford, Sagacious or Senseless? - 0 replies

The Machine Gun of Capitalism

2008-02-08T23:07:29Z

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2008/02/06/notes020608.DTL

posted in Mark Morford, Sagacious or Senseless? - 0 replies

Meet My Hot New Stripper Wife

2008-02-08T23:04:38Z

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2008/02/08/notes020808.DTL

posted in Mark Morford, Sagacious or Senseless? - 0 replies

Are you Tom Cruise Crazy?

2008-02-06T17:49:03Z

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2008/01/23/notes012308.DTL

posted in Mark Morford, Sagacious or Senseless? - 2 replies

Study Says Many Studies Suck

2008-02-04T20:14:40Z

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2008/02/01/notes020108.DTL

posted in Mark Morford, Sagacious or Senseless? - 0 replies

The 935 Lies if George W. Bush

2008-02-04T20:13:51Z

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2008/01/30/notes013008.DTL

posted in Mark Morford, Sagacious or Senseless? - 0 replies

29 Things to be Happy About

2008-02-04T20:12:55Z

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2008/01/25/notes012508.DTL

posted in Mark Morford, Sagacious or Senseless? - 0 replies

Guess Which Drug is Illegal?

2008-02-04T20:11:16Z

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2008/01/18/notes011808.DTL

posted in Mark Morford, Sagacious or Senseless? - 0 replies

The Woman vs. The Black Guy

2008-02-04T20:10:25Z

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2008/01/16/notes011608.DTL

posted in Mark Morford, Sagacious or Senseless? - 0 replies

How to get drunk at the airport

2008-01-30T16:40:37Z

Can you make an airport bomb from chocolate, iPod wire and port wine?

By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist
Friday, January 11, 2008

Passing through the cute, harmless, relatively tiny Spokane airport on the way back to the goodly San Francisco bubble after spending a week and change up in the Pacific Northwest with the family for the holidays, entering the security checkpoint and of course doing my all-American duty and basically taking off all my clothes so as to help protect my country because, you know, it's Spokane. Islamo-fascist terrorists really hate Spokane.

Off came the jacket and the belt and the boots and the jewelry and out came the laptop and into about five plastic bins went everything, all the while figuring I'd zip right through, given how careful I'd been in my carry-on packing, nothing to raise any alarms and nothing to cause any sort of delay, no liquids and no lotions and no Astroglide travel packs and this time I even had the foresight to remove the tiny 1-inch Leatherman Squirt from my keychain (my third one — I keep forgetting) because everyone knows how easy it would be to hijack a goddamn jetliner by, say, threatening to give the pilot a really awful pedicure with that badass 1-inch nail file.

Except, oh holy hell no, something's amiss, they need to inspect my bag, probably something weird showing up in the scanner with my camera gear or the various rechargeable battery packs or maybe the handmade candles I'd received as a gift or ... well, it's airport security. Who the hell knows what it could be.

And suddenly, I saw it. The port. Oh holy dammit, that's right. Last minute of my of packing, I'd switched the new, sealed 375-milliliter bottle of 16-year-old vintage port wine from my checked suitcase over to my carry-on due to concern for the former's overall weight, somehow completely blocking out the no-liquids thing and despite all my careful packing and awareness just prior. My hand went to my forehead, and slapped. Idiot.

The security guard carried the bottle over to me, shaking his head, but in a nice way. "Sorry, this can't go." No kidding. Damn. What a waste.

I pondered my options: Lots of time before my flight, but no real way to check the bottle, no way to ship it to myself, and I wasn't about to call the sister who'd dropped me at the airport and was now well on her way to Seattle and who didn't even drink alcohol to tell her to come back to pick up a small bottle of really good booze, just so I didn't have to toss it.

I was ready to suggest the security guy take the port home and have a lovely new year, ready to extol the virtues of this particular not-at-all inexpensive Krohn 1991 vintage and say it wasn't no cheap swill, that he should maybe light a fire and sip it carefully after dinner and wouldn't that be nice, when he said the words I didn't expect to hear.

"You want to go have a few sips before you come back through?"

Wait, what?

I paused. This was cute little Spokane airport. There were no bars back down by the entrance, no restaurants or even little cafes (the few the airport had were all up beyond security), nothing but a sterile, bare-bones baggage claim and a handful of ticket counters back where he was gesturing and, beyond that, 19 degrees of bitter cold winter.

"But there's no bar down there," I stammered, momentarily confused and momentarily trying to be some sort of upstanding, law-abiding citizen. Or something. "You mean I can just swig an open container of booze out in the open? I don't need to be in some sort of designated bar area?" Duh.

He looked at me curiously, like I'd just returned from the jungles of Malaysia and had clearly lost all sense of how civilized society functioned. Then he shrugged, and smiled. "I don't think that matters. Up to you."

It was 11 a.m. I had two egg salad sandwiches, some spelt pretzels, a small bag of gourmet chocolate mints, a well-loaded iPod, a laptop. And an hour and a half. I didn't ponder for long. "Well hell, OK then."

I strolled back around and back down to the baggage claim area, found a seat in a quiet, empty corner, got comfortable, opened the first sandwich and peeled the foil from the port, popped the cork, and glanced around.

Horrible fluorescent lighting, random airport stragglers, assorted families picking up or dropping off, baby strollers and assorted screams and yelps and car horns and no one really caring about much of anything in the calm after the holiday storm.

I took my first big swig, and proceeded to enjoy one of the stranger, warmer, fuzzier late-morning lunches I've had in awhile.

It was pretty good port. At least, for 11 a.m. on a Saturday in an airport baggage claim. Dark, fruity, sticky and chocolatey and thick like murky dreams. After about the fifth sip, I had the profound insight that I was sharing this surreal moment with roughly one million other travelers worldwide who had equally (or rather, likely far more) obnoxious, annoying, unusual airport security tales to tell, from the profound to the silly to the stupid.

I recalled the story on the Associated Press newswires just before Christmas about the 64-year-old German genius who, furious at having his bottle of vodka yanked from his carry-on in a Nuremberg airport, decided to chug the entire bottle right there in line, thus guaranteeing himself a trip to the emergency room, permanent liver damage and charming international headlines.

Also, the tale I'd heard from my own mother of her friend who was returning from a vacation in Italy, a new bottle of limoncello lemon liqueur in her carry-on, and was stopped at a Milan airport checkpoint. Rather than toss the bottle, she headed for the nearest place available to enjoy a sip or two — the airport restroom.

In the restroom, she saw another woman standing over the sink, shaking, breathing heavily, trying to calm her nerves. The woman was, it turns out, terrified of flying.

Limoncello was promptly proffered, gratefully accepted. And so, for a few minutes, there they stood, chatting, laughing, drinking most of the bottle, the latter woman's nerves sufficiently marinated until she could fly and the former's sufficiently entertained so she'd have a tale to tell of the limoncello that never made it back home but that might have very well saved someone's sanity.

Wishing to remain upright and mostly coherent, I didn't finish my bottle. An elderly Spokanite sat down not far from me and I turned to him, asked if he was a fan of port wine. He looked at me oddly, said he'd never tried it before. I explained what it was, and my situation, showed him the half bottle remaining, told him this was premium stuff and might he like to take the rest home and kick back and perhaps sip a couple glasses after dinner with the wife in front of the fire and have an even happier new year? "Well sure," he said. "I'll try some of that. What the hell. Thanks very much."

And lo, the world shrinks, the year is off to a good start, and the terrorists lose again.

posted in Mark Morford, Sagacious or Senseless? - 4 replies

The top 12 'Top 10' lists of 2007

2008-01-14T07:46:50Z

Best movies? Music? Look elsewhere. Here's the real list to help digest the year gone by

By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist
Wednesday, January 9, 2008

12) Top 20 dictators of the world (Parade).
It's like a reality show in hell, a rogue's gallery of the most heartless, insane, power-mad thugs and cretins (all male, natch) this side of Dick Cheney's darkest orgiastic fantasy. Even Vladimir Putin made the list, mostly for the weird beauty of his flat, heartless stare.

Side question: When the hell did Parade magazine, so beloved for its unreadable, ultra-saccharine swill of fruitcake recipes and fluffy profiles of Billy Ray Cyrus, 'The Lockhorns' comics and George Bush telling America about "What made my year special" (oddly, "most inept, despised U.S. president in history" not mentioned), become some sort of authority on brutal world dictators? Is it because they have special insight into the banality of evil (ref: The Lockhorns)? Hmm.

11) Top 10 vegetarian-friendly prisons (PETA).
Attention, radical unshowered vegans who've lost all perspective and want to blow up Whole Foods and set fire to shops that sell leather! When they haul your cute, dreadlocked butt to prison, be sure to request one of these fine facilities, where you can serve out your time enjoying low-grade vegetarian gruel, like tofu cattiatore in Pennsylvania, soy taco crunch in Tennessee and meatless Sloppy Joes in North Dakota. So helpful! Do inmates deserve accolades for wanting to turn their lives around and start eating healthier? Hell yes. Does PETA make you want to order a fabulous Prather Ranch grass-fed steak in defiance of its harsh Taliban-grade fundamentalism? One guess.

10) Top 10 food and drink hacks (Lifehacker).
In which it is revealed that vinegar is quite likely the greatest and most versatile liquid known to humankind, slicing a mango does not have to be a sloppy sticky mess (unless you are naked and partially drunk and really, really want it to be), and you can learn how to chill a bottle of white wine in about two minutes, make sexier cocktails with clear ice cubes and use your old plastic CD spindle as a perfect little bagel tote. Didn't know any of that? You're not reading the right blog.

9) Top 10 celebrity products (Trendhunter).
"Hannah Montana" clothing line for screechy tweens; 50 Cent condoms; Roberto Cavalli vodka. Is this why they hate us? Or rather, why we hate ourselves? Oddest inclusion: Bjork introduces a weird new musical instrument in her concerts, available if you want it. Bjork is a fearless and insanely talented musical genius. Bjork selling a new musical instrument is an act of genius. Kanye West letting Fendi buy ad space on his head for ten grand is, decidedly, not.

8) Top 10 videos of 2007 (AlterNet).
No, not music videos. No weeping gay teens wailing on YouTube about how you should leave Britney alone. Rather, an oddball mix of smart, semi-political outbreaks, including Michael Moore's terrific retort to Wolf Blitzer, Stephen Colbert effortlessly daring the Dems to impeach Bush, Mitt Romney's favorite cartoon, psychotic evangelicals attempting to disprove evolution with a jar of peanut butter and "The Simpsons" blasting Fox News, a.k.a. "Your Voice for Evil." See how easy?

7) Top 10 science revelations (LiveScience).
Yes, the "peak oil" era is now under way, the American Southeast may very well be facing a brutal 90-year drought as dry areas get drier and wet get wetter, a region of ice in Greenland twice the size of the United States has now melted, the World Conservation Union's list of endangered animals now tops 40,000, with more than 200 moving closer to extinction in 2007. And the No. 1 spot, naturally, is climate change itself, now so overwhelmingly omnipresent and ominous it would take a band of truly troglodytic jackals to deny, reject or otherwise sneer at what the world's scientific and environmental community is desperately trying to tell us.

6) Top 10 climate myth busters (Fox News).
And there you go. Shut-ins, inbred cultists and global warming deniers rejoice as Fox News' junk science "expert" and Big Tobacco boy-toy Steven Milloy lurches and leers, cherry-picking a handful of minor studies in an effort to mount the world's shakiest anti-warming argument, all while ignoring mountains of evidence, not the least of which is the recent, dire 3,000-page report from the 113-nation-strong Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Bonus: Calls anyone who might agree with Nobel-winner Al Gore part of an "alarmist mob," despite how that mob now includes an increasing number of Christians and Republicans. Also announced, a new network slogan for 2008: "Fox News: Like an angry psoriatic monkey, flinging feces. Mostly at itself."

5) Top 10 Christianity-related stories of 2007 (Christianity Today).
In which successful atheist authors get jabbed, Jerry Falwell is actually not acknowledged as Satan's newest fluffer and hardcore religious orgs of every stripe celebrate and/or lash out at other religious orgs for either a) not being religious enough, b) not being bigoted enough, c) not hacking away women's rights, d) not slamming gays, e) all of the above.

Highlight: Militant evangelical nutjob Dr. James Dobson tries — and fails — to have slightly less militant nutjob Richard Cizik ousted as vice president of the National Association of Evangelicals over the latter's global warming activism. Also: Episcopal church fractures because one half doesn't hate gay people enough. And Jesus returns, says Christianity was "a huge mistake," turns Wiccan.

4) Top 10 new organisms (Wired).
Hypoallergenic cats. Fluorescent tadpoles. Schizophrenic mice that exhibit Bush-grade hallucinations, paranoia and delusions of grandeur. Alas, no mention of whatever the hell mutant virus is attacking the American brain and causing millions to actually give a damn about how much blow Lindsay Lohan does or that white-trash wunderkind Jamie Lynn Spears is pregnant. Maybe that's another list.

Mixes well with Wired's other top 10 list of scientific breakthroughs, in which transistors get even tinier, any type of blood can be converted to Type O, female chimps make actual spears to hunt lesser game, and scientists manage to skirt BushCo right-wing idiocy by creating stem cells from skin. I mean, thank God. Now we can put those controversial frozen human embryos back where they belong: in the garbage. Score one for Christian fundamentalism!

3) Top 10 astronomy photos of 2007 (Bad Astronomy).
You know what we as a nation, as a people lack more than anything else in this bitter, Bush-gutted age? No, not more porn-happy YouTube-ripoff sites. It's awe. The raw, delicious, mind-bending, perspective shattering, oh-my-God-what-the-hell-is-that kind of awe that makes your id tingle and your ego sigh.

Stare in wonder, then, at these photos. Let them seep in. Note for example, how the star known as Mira (a.k.a. "The Wonderful") has a tail that is 13 light years (about 80 trillion miles) long. See two massive, ancient galaxies mingle in a lover's embrace. Note how two of the most beautiful words in the English language might just be "whirlpool galaxy." Feel your brain whimper, but your soul expand.

2) Top 10 hottest good luck symbols.
Pity the luckless, hobbled rabbit, the feet of whom we still prize most of all as our fuzzy icons of fortune. Also: four-leaf clovers battle it out with spiffy angels and cute ladybugs for the top spots for women, whereas men apparently go more for horseshoes and Buddha, who clocks in at No. 4, well above jade elephants and coffin nails (but curiously, makes no appearance at all on the top 10 icons for women). Highlight: The No. 5 most popular good-luck icon/item for children? "Rock."

1) Top 10 positive stories of 2007 (Ode).
Former Taliban fighter now a humble teacher to young girls. A new, market-ready LED light bulb that uses 90 percent less energy than regular bulbs and lasts 35 years. Organic agriculture actually can feed the world. A zero-emissions, zero-combustion car engine that runs on compressed air. A damn fine, glowing list from Ode Magazine, the best little antidote to media nastiness you're not reading, but should be.

Honorable mention: It's not a Top 10 list. It's not even a top 100. It has nothing to do with fashion or trends or politics or the year's coolest iPod accessories. It is intellectual hotbed Edge.org's annual question, this time a profound doozy: "What have you changed your mind about, and why?"

One hundred sixty-three of the world's finest scientists of all kinds and caliber respond with some of the most insightful, humbling, fascinating confessions and anecdotes, an intellectual treasure trove of proofs that flip-flopping is a very good thing indeed, especially when informed/inspired by facts and shot through with personal experience and laced with mystery and even a little divine insight. Best three or four hours of intense, enlightening reading you can do for the new year. Read it. Read it now.

And then, flip it over and answer the same question for yourself.

Thoughts about this column? E-mail Mark.

Mark Morford's Notes & Errata column appears every Wednesday and Friday on SFGate and in the Datebook section of the San Francisco Chronicle. To get on the e-mail list for this column, please click here and remove one article of clothing.

Mark's column also has an RSS feed and an archive of past columns, which includes another small photo of Mark potentially sufficient for you to recognize him in the street and give him gifts.

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2008/01/09/notes010908.DTL

posted in Mark Morford, Sagacious or Senseless? - 0 replies

Mark!! Wii was so last year's score, dude. Where have you been ; )?

2008-01-02T14:51:27Z

Though I would have done a lot for a UK version of one this Xmas. Not this much, but a lot.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2007/12/21/notes122107.DTL

Anyone else work this hard for anything this year?

posted in Mark Morford, Sagacious or Senseless? - 4 replies

whats your position?

2007-12-21T03:18:22Z

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/12/19/DDJOU0658.DTL&hw=mark+morford&sn=001&sc=1000

posted in Mark Morford, Sagacious or Senseless? - 2 replies

Give me sushi, give me death

2007-12-19T00:49:51Z

We have not had any posts for a while....
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Give me sushi, give me death
This luscious tuna nigiri meets the ocean's plummeting fish stocks. Can you reconcile?
By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist
Wednesday, November 21, 2007

It's times like this I wish I was a heartless Republican.

It's times like this I almost wish I didn't really give a damn, that I lived in happy, savage denial of humankind's true impact on the health of the planet, that I didn't have much of a conscience and therefore felt the world and all its natural resources and all its cute little squiggly creatures were merely here for my enjoyment and my wanton exploitation, all here to feed my omnivorous appetites and to hell with environmental protections and respectful, restrained consumerism and, hey waitress bring me another order, oh what the hell, make it a double because hey, I'm an American, I'm entitled.

Alas, that isn't me. It probably isn't you. Hell, it's not really even most Republicans. Just those in Congress. And maybe Utah. And Montana. But never mind that now.

This time, it was all about the sushi. It was all about a fine lunch I was enjoying with a friend over at a raw fish joint in the Mission when it struck me that it was the third time in a week I'd enjoyed a fabulous sushi meal — not at all an unusual rate, I realize, for sushi-drenched San Francisco, and also increasingly common in America overall as mall sushi explodes in popularity — but still, not exactly a cheap way to live, especially on a (non) humble columnist's salary. But hey, you only live once, yes? Sort of?

This is the problem: Sushi has become one of those things. Like Cate Blanchett, like a Led Zeppelin reunion, like enlightened anal sex, there is simply nothing else like it, no other comparable cultural experience. Prepared well (as most San Francisco sushi is), sushi remains a unparalleled delight, so much so that it's nearly impossible to adore it and not at some point say out loud to anyone who will listen, "Man, this stuff is so effing good, if I could afford it, I'd eat sushi every single day. Wouldn't that be wonderful?"

Except, of course, for the fish. Except for the nagging issue of the massive, unnerving collapse, for how report after report and new scientific revelation after dire international prognostication now says, with increasing alarm, that we are actually raping our oceans far more severely than we ever imagined, that researchers actually haven't been measuring all that accurately in the past and when we now seriously study the historic record, well, it appears that the overall volume of edible marine life is plunging faster than Dick Cheney's soul into the fiery pits of hell. Which, as you well know, is pretty goddamn fast.

In fact, a recent New Yorker piece (a profile of radical environmentalist and whaling ship-rammer Paul Watson), cited the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization as stating that nearly 70 percent of the world's major fisheries are already "fully exploited" or "overexploited." One ominous report, appearing in Nature a few years ago, estimated that we've now lost a staggering 90 percent of our once-overflowing bounty of large predatory fish such as tuna, marlin and swordfish, and we're still hacking away.

It might very well not be that calamitous. Hell, it might only be, you know, 50 percent. Or the fish could all be lying. But no matter how you slice it, at the rate we're eating our way through the oceans right now, many scientists say that the seas could be nearly barren of most edible stock, from tuna down to calamari and sea slugs, by the time your toddler turns 40 and the ice caps finally melt and the sun turns black and God goes, "See?"

It used to be easy. Just a handful of years ago, you could simply look up the list, see which few wild-caught fish were severely impacted and which were in most danger and adjust your diet accordingly, simply avoid them at the supermarket and refuse to order that nice wild sea bass or swordfish from the restaurant menu, cast your vote and let your feelings be known through sheer market forces, and feel like you'd done your part.

Not anymore. Fact is, there exists almost no wild-caught species that isn't impacted, brutally overfished, or threatened with collapse — or soon will be. And that includes many shellfish. And farmed seafood is little better, in terms of both health and negative environmental impact. Not to mention mercury, PCBs, hormones and other toxins.

So then, the ever-present question: How do you respond? What to do with this dire and ugly information?

Slate ran a fascinating piece recently, a discussion between two authors, Sasha Issenberg and Trevor Corson, each with a new sushi-related book written from a different perspective (the former historic/economic, the latter culinary) but each complementing the others' research and both more or less dovetailing on the point that, while sushi makes for fascinating study as both a culinary phenomenon and example of global commerce in action, we are, at the current rate of engorgement, very much on the verge of collapse. With sushi in particular, it seems like it's a case of too much, too fast, too easy, too cheap.

Ah, ain't that America?

One notable takeaway from their discussion: America's (and the world's) sushi craze might very well be short-lived, a quick, gluttonous blip on the radar screen of hot culinary trends as increasing demand far outstrips global supply and meager international measures to protect the oceans do little to stop overfishing, and soon there's nothing left of sushi but some seaweed and the sticky rice (which, by the way, is what "sushi" actually refers to: the rice. Sushi does not actually mean raw fish. But again, this is America. Such facts matter almost not at all).

The fact is, sushi should not nearly be so cheap nor so ubiquitous. Like beef, we should actually be eating far less of it, honor it when we do, treat it like the precious delicacy it is (a point reiterated by the authors, who say they eat raw fish sushi only rarely, and very selectively, and really savor the fish when they do). But again, therein lies the problem: The free market doesn't do moderation. We don't do respect and restraint and honor. We just eat.

So then, where do you draw your lines? How far can you let yourself and your cravings go? Is it not easier to deny it all, to just pretend you're one of those heartless conservatives and simply shrug it all off and claim that the free market economy will figure it all out, just say "screw it" and eat up all the fish and burn up through the planet's resources and pillage whatever else we like until it's all gone, and then figure something else out? Hey, it worked for oil. Oh wait.

I do not know the answer. Or rather, I sort of do, but sometimes the answer seems so much larger and more hopeless than just limiting my raw fish intake (which I hereby vow to do) and staying informed and supporting the right anti-ocean-raping causes and eating more burritos.

Except not the kind with that horrible industrial chicken, because that's vile in an entirely different way. So maybe more soy-based foods, except, oh holy crap no, unfermented soy is extremely bad for you and GMO soy might be poisoning the American diet so maybe more ... what, organic cabbage? Goat cheese? Toast? Ice cubes? Lots of deep, meaningful gulps of (polluted, toxic) air, and praying?

http://www.sfgate.com/columnists/morford/

posted in Mark Morford, Sagacious or Senseless? - 2 replies

I am the new Sherriff????

2007-12-16T22:00:14Z

It seems to. I have become moderator here...an Xmas gift from an Elf of Snarkitude, or something <lol>? I'm ashamed to say that, while I adore Mark Moreford, i havent' read his column in over a year. I suppose I'll have to catch up now, eh?

Regardless, in effort to get this party stirred up, what's your favorite MM rant from the past, and why?

Here's one of mine: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article/comments/view?f=/g/a/2000/10/27/notes102700.DTL

For no better reason that I love the idea of Pomeranian Slippers <g>.
posted by:

posted in Mark Morford, Sagacious or Senseless? - 7 replies

47 gifts for savvy perverts

2007-12-16T21:45:09Z

No fruit baskets. No swell digital cameras and no "Sopranos" DVD sets and no noxious copies of "High School Musical 2" and no "Eat, Pray, Love" and nothing at all approved or endorsed by Oprah. No golfing figurines. No sports paraphernalia. No candleholders. No pink fleece hoodies with little glittery skulls. Not on this, my annual list, anyway.

Just random delicious deeply cool things I've come across that make a statement or warm your blood or taste unreal or that serve some sort of sexy subversive purpose, all to thwart the Bush and the bleak and the dour. Because the world already has enough swell plastic bird-feeders and cheap-ass iPod cases and lavender hand-milled soap. Right? Right.

Start with a teddy bear named Muhammad. Yes, even right-wing dittoheads probably think this rather obvious gimmick is funny, in a let's-hate-the-icky-Muslims, Christianity-rules sort of way. But there's actually some subversive poetry to this cuddly hunk of fluffy blasphemy, a decent enough slap at organized religion as a whole, especially if you combine it with, say, the God's Immaculate Rod dildo from divine-interventions.com and a copy of "God is Not Great" while mixing your next cocktail with Christian bottled water (yes, it's real) and/or Kabbalah bottled water, using whatever's left to rinse off your Baby Jesus Butt Plug. Hey, blasphemy is the new black.

Of course, you could merely skip the gimmick and buy everyone you know a "Every time you see a rainbow, God is having gay sex" T-shirt from tshirthell.com, but that might be a bit excessive. Besides, everyone knows God is omnisexual.

The Backwards Bush countdown clock. Again, obviously. Single biggest drawback of this must-have item: It doesn't count down nearly fast enough.

There you are, soaking in a hot bath and sipping your newly legal absinthe and letting the toxins and anxiety and the Bush ooze and sigh out of your pores. Don't you wish you had some better background music, maybe some mellow sexy throbbing trance ambient stuff that massaged your id and licked your bones and sounded like a squad of drunken wood nymphs masturbating with a cloud? I know how it is.

I've got you covered. Try these: "Dusker," by Kiln. "Love or Die," by Susumu Yokota. Gorgeous ambient washes via "Plume," by Loscil, "Nautica," by Krill.Minima or "Dropsonde," by Biosphere. Also: "Driftwood," by Rena Jones, "From Here We Go Sublime" by The Field, "Pop Ambient 2008" (compilation) from Kompakt, or anything at all from Ultimae or Interchill Records (check Beatport.com for all listings). And oh my God yes, this: "Untrue," by Burial, a wicked dark hybrid of dubstep and minimal and trip-hop, like nothing else on the planet. What, never heard of any of them? That's the point. Now go and sip and ooze.

You say your giftee's not quite ready for absinthe in the tub? Then grab her (and yourself) a bottle of insanely delicious Zaya dark rum (sip straight up; it's that good). Or a fifth of Hendrick's gin. Or Grey Goose pear vodka. Or nearly anything at all from my beloved True Sake in Hayes Valley but especially the Chikurin junmai, which comes in a giant 1.8 liter bottle — enough to last you, oh, an entire afternoon.

Bonus: Get on Beau's mailing list and learn more about the fine art and history and deep deliciousness of quality sake (not that warm swill you get at mall sushi joints) than you ever dreamed. Thank me by sending me a bottle of Onigoshori ("Demon Slayer") daiginjo. I won't tell.

This is the look: Subtle ultra-sexy neo-pagan metal fiery tribal with a dash of S&M and a wink and a smile. It's like Burning Man, but with better leather. And actual design. And you can wear it every day and you don't even necessarily need a bunch of weird neck tattoos and some quarter-sized glass plugs in your earlobes. (Though those can certainly help.)

Start with an amazing handmade leather jacket and some jewelry from Five and Diamond in the Mission, or a dark wearable art piece from Derrick Cruz of Los Angeles' wicked Black Sheep and Prodigal Sons. Also, I imagine some of the incredible piercing jewelry from Braindrops in the Haight would go wonderfully well with, say, a raccoon penis bone necklace and coyote skull from the oddball landscapers/naturalists over at Paxton Gate in the Mission, which in turn would mix beautifully with some lovely python ribs and maybe a couple of kudu horns from the Bone Room in Berkeley. Best accessory: A tiny silver hummingbird skull necklace from Erica Weiner Jewelry. What, you want the world to be full of that cubic zirconia crap from Wal-Mart and Zales? Please.

For far too many years, nothing but stiff smooth boring plastic and giant plug-in back massagers with tennis-ball heads and maybe the weird nearly useless multi-function pink rabbit pearl thingy with silly plastic beads and pulsing action and a cheapie made-in-China motor that burned out in a week.

No more. You need a sign of the divine feminine's true reemergence in modern culture? Another indicator that the religious right is doomed and the Grand Shift is nigh? Behold, the flourishing world of high-end vibrators. From Sweden's Lelo to beautifully overpriced JimmyJane, these are vibrators as sculpture, as art pieces, as mandatory accessory. Yes, the Hitachi Magic Wand rules, now and forever, but if you need something more elegant and portable, head over to babeland.com, goodvibes.com or blowfish.com and look up these names: Womolia, Jasmine, Tuyo (it's a ball!), Form 6, Gigi, Leopard, the Cone (big pink mountable vibrating cone yes yes yes), the Je Joue programmable, Laya Spot. Boyfriends and husbands, take notes now. (Oh yes. For men, one word: Aneros). E-mail me with photos of your successes. Truly, there is no better time to be a clitoris.

I do not buy mainstream DVDs. I do not care much for mediocre Hollywood chyme. I truly don't understand why anyone would want to own a copy of, say, "National Treasure" or "Pirates of the Caribbean" or "Superbad" when, if you must, you can rent 'em a coupla times and zombify your brain and get your fill and save some plastic.

But I make a serious exception for anime. (Well OK, and porn. But that's a different list.) That is to say, for art. Mostly Miyazaki, like the stunning "Howl's Moving Castle," "Spirited Away" and "Princess Mononoke," but also a handful of others, like maybe "Ghost in the Shell" and "Cowboy Bepop" and that's about it because I'm American and therefore have little clue about the rest of the deeper world of quality anime.

But now, a new one, from Satoshi Kon: "Paprika." Weird surreal violent strange gorgeous and oh my God so much better than, say, "Ratatouille" or "Happy Feet," which were cute and charming and also obnoxious and trying and exhausting. Yes, Pixar may offer up clever storytelling, but they have zero innovation in anything except excellent graphics. Whereas anime is otherworldly and dangerous and creative beyond comprehension. Or so they tell me. Get "Paprika" for someone who knows.

The Prius is so played. The Mini Cooper is so very 2004. The time is nigh for smaller weirder cuter. Time now to pre-order your very own Smart car, about 2 feet long and 8 pounds light and more adorable than a whippet puppy in a pleather jacket, and you can pretty much park it in a mailbox and it only costs about nine dollars and if the current swarm of 30,000 pre-orders is any indication, Daimler should sell a zillion in San Francisco and New York alone, all of which might go a tiny bit toward offsetting all the obnoxious soccer moms who still insist on buying a massive 20-ton Suburban XLT to haul their kids the mall, where they fail to park their land tanks without killing a few pedestrians and blocking out the sun.

Of course, the Smart is but a stopgap until Audi releases its Mini-killer, the A1, in the States in 2009 or 2010. Or, screw all that and just get yourself a badass Can-Am Spyder trike, and blast everyone's sense of normalcy all to hell. Yes indeed.

Quick mentions, because I am so totally out of room:

# "His Dark Materials" trilogy. Bad news: "The Golden Compass" movie is less than mediocre. Good news: The books are astonishing, dense and mystical and creative beyond imagination. Bonus: They completely confound the religious right. Perfect.

# Tank U porcelain tank vase, via charlesandmarie.com. Death and flowers, together forever.

# Ritual "Nature Calls" instant toilet deodorizer. I have no idea if it works, but it seems lovely.

# Mimobots designer flash drives. Funky enough.

# Urban Gnomes. When you can't find a real one.

# Dwell magazine subscription: To thwart the never-ending and totally evil dominion of Good Housekeeping, et al. Runners-up: Good, N+1.

# Momspit no-rinse cleanser. Not like that skanky alcohol-based stuff. Also: Best product name of the year.

# "Heavyweight" tape dispenser. Three pounds of solid zinc. Designed in London. And I don't even use much tape.

# Honey incense from L'Occitane. My all-time favorite. Sue me.

Did I miss anything? Of course I did. Let me know, for next year.

http://www.sfgate.com/columnists/morford/

posted in Mark Morford, Sagacious or Senseless? - 2 replies

Does your religion dance?

2007-11-24T12:57:52Z

Does your religion dance?
Behold, the most dangerous issue facing modern faith: Its inability to evolve, nakedly
By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist

Friday, November 9, 2007
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

It's a topic that jumped up like a stunned ferret from God's own hot plate three separate times recently — indicating, I think, that I'd better pay some sort of attention to it — the topic being the obvious but still desperately under-discussed idea that perhaps the most dangerous problem facing man in this modern age of radical technology and dazzling scientific conundrum and otherworldly raspberry vodka and ever-expanding notions of love and sex and human interconnection is the sad and treacherous fact that, well, religion and belief as we know them in America are, by and large, far too horribly stuck, limited, fixed in time and place and stiff karmic cement.

Put another way: We as a culture just might be suffering a slow, painful death by spiritual stagnation, by ideological stasis, by cosmic rigor mortis. It has become painfully, lethally obvious in the age of George W. Bush and authoritarian groupthink that our major religious systems and foundations don't know how to move. They don't learn, adjust, evolve, see things anew. They don't know how to dance. And what's more, this little problem might just be the death of us all.

The idea is everywhere, and not just in the obvious, sour religious outhouses of evangelical Christianity and fundamentalist Islam and rigid Catholicism. It even popped up while I was in conversation with tattooed Buddhist and author of "Dharma Punx" Noah Levine at the Roxie theater during LitQuake '07, he and I chatting about the dangers of dogma and the problem of trying to adhere too closely, too severely, to classical Buddhist rules of behavior, concluding that even Buddhism has its dangers, its limits and its issues and general theological potholes.

Levine, a fairly conservative Theravadan Buddhist, admitted that even he had to seriously adjust some of those old rules to make them tolerable and digestible, particularly in regards to how poorly classical Buddhism valued women and the feminine principle (not to mention other rather impossible dietary and lifestyle restrictions), outmoded ideas that sort of make you wince and cringe and say no no no, Buddha couldn't really have meant that, could he?

Ultimately, Levine is much like any other honest, modern Buddhist in that he will see these apparent snags and merely shrug, and then choose what rules and notions from the ancient texts work for him in the modern world. Arguably, the beautiful thing about Buddhism is that, by and large, it seems to willingly allow for this adaptation, welcomes it and encourages it, in the full understanding that, so long as clear, divine intent is in place, there can be no real threat to the Four Noble Truths, to the honest path. (Though there is no shortage of strict Buddhist sects who believe their version is the one true way.)

A similar idea came up again as I was sharing the stage with the luminous Sera Beak, author of "The Red Book," a funky spirituality tome for fiery youngish women, she and I talking to the small crowd over at the Alameda Literati Festival about the hot ideological tongue baths that simply must take place between the divine feminine (her oeuvre) and the profane masculine (mine? Sort of?), the idea that you cannot have one without the other and they are both, in fact, required, and it's when you get deluded into thinking there is only one way to see notions of divine and god and sex that you get in serious trouble. (Full disclosure: I edited her book, so I know her ideas well).

It is the notion of fluidity of spirit. It is the notion that religion and belief, far from the immovable anchors that supposedly give your life deep meaning and sustenance, just might be far better and juicier and healthier for you and your ravenous soul when they do not always give you such firm and inflexible ground upon which to rest your head.

It's a decidedly Tantric principle, that of a divinely animated, changeable universe, the idea that because we are fluxive and adaptive and ever-evolving species, that perhaps our gods, our doctrines, our belief systems should evolve and adapt with us.

(Here is where you may insert the sounds of screaming from the evangelical Christian and Catholic churches and all Bible literalists, among many others, who generally abhor change and resist the new and fight against all efforts to let the spirit, the flesh, the id truly breathe. After all, it is only through rigidity and dogma that they have meaning and control. It is only through the lack of change and the resistance to thinking for yourself that they have any real power. The poor things.)

It reminds me of the story Beak told me of a scene in the 1998 documentary "The Jew in the Lotus," in which a group of Jewish delegates traveled to India to meet with the Dalai Lama to discuss serious matters of faith and exile. During their talks, the Kabbalist (that is, the mystic) among them brought up the notion of angels, which instantly enthralled and excited the Dalai Lama, who immediately wanted to discuss them more, to learn and share ideas of wonder and magic (much to the chagrin of the other, more "serious" delegates).

It is, in a way, nothing short of astonishing. In the face of the horrible suffering of his people, the Dalai Lama was wide open to new possibility (he's also hugely interested in the ways new scientific discoveries intersect with faith), fresh ways of looking at God, soul, the universe. Here was the Tibetan people's most holy leader, an eager sponge for new spiritual information he could use to inspire and transform his faith, his people. Now, imagine the Pope doing the same thing. See? Laughable. And horribly sad.

And then, finally, the idea sprang up once more, this time in an entirely different, thoroughly wonderful, hyperintelligent mode that I wish I'd thought of myself but must hereby give credit to the amazing conceptual artist and all-around creative genius Jonathon Keats, and his new show over at Modernism gallery in San Francisco.

Keats has created new miracles for gods. Which is to say, any deity who might be in need of something new and refreshing and mind-blowing, any sort of supernatural being who might have lost some of his/her luster or exalted status and needs a nice kick-start, may, through the gallery, license any of Keats' newly developed, miraculous phenomena to enthrall the human species anew.

He has designed seven new and unique solar systems, each available for licensing by any needful deity. ("The buyer is responsible for construction, and advised to hire a qualified engineer.") He has also created "lesser miracles," including a suite of supernova pyrotechnic displays, designed to "blaze across the heavens for months" and inspire new waves of awe among jaded believers. There are astral organ works designed to be played on constellations of stars, one of which is now available for free download.

"I'm sympathetic to deities, who must compete to be noticed, and are constantly at risk of being debunked," Keats says in a press release. "I'm also sympathetic, even more so, to the cynics amongst us who have lost their sense of wonder. Perhaps awe can be rediscovered through art."

And there you have it. Bottom line: It is through the creative impulse, through imagination and our deep need for mystery, that the gods can truly dance, remain fresh, stay alive and vital and interesting. It is only through our ability to reinvent them and honor them in new and miraculous ways that humanity will keep afloat and vibrant. The gods are, after all, our creation. Why not let our creation tango?

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/gate/a/2007/11/09/notes110907.DTL

posted in Mark Morford, Sagacious or Senseless? - 0 replies

Mark is Litquaking

2007-10-10T21:22:27Z

Sat night Mark is doing a public reading (along with a buncha Chronicle columnists+reporters) at 12 Galaxies as part of the Litquake litcrawl. See you there! http://www.litquake.org/the-festival/lit-crawl/

Alsoooo,, he's interviewing Noah Levine tomorrow night:

Thursday, October 11, 7:30 pm Punk Monk-Noah Levine
Tattooed Buddha:
An Evening with Dharma Punk Noah Levine
Roxie Theater. 3117 16th Street. FREE

Punk rocker turned Buddhist teacher/bestselling author Noah Levine talks dharma with San Francisco Chronicle columnist Mark Morford. Audience Q&A follows. In addition, selected clips will be screened from Meditate and Destroy, a new documentary about Noah’s life and work. Book sales and author signing after the event. Presented in conjunction with HarperOne, publisher of Levine’s books Dharma Punx and Against the Stream.

posted in Mark Morford, Sagacious or Senseless? - 1 reply

Not Mark Morford...

2007-10-05T05:07:45Z

but it would have been better if it was..

http://www.bostonherald.com/news/opinion/op_ed/view.bg?articleid=1035832#articleFull

posted in Mark Morford, Sagacious or Senseless? - 0 replies

Mark Morford, Sagacious or Senseless?'s topics - tribe.net

Here's Oil in Your Eye

A note to readers of this tribe

Totally Gay Happy Meals

"We are doomed! Sort of!"

Your Dirty Little iPhone

About the direction and content of this tribe.

Is homophobia just dying out?

Is Obama an enlightened being?

Whatever happened to Hilary Clinton?

Reality -- What A Concept! -- OR -- Ceci n'est pas Cameron Diaz

Kim For Mod !

Raise a mountain in your pants!

Reasons Why this Tribe Needs a New Moderator

Not Mark Morford

Free iPhone with Every Outrage!

Tax my rich white torturer

Hell Readies a Room.

Praise Jesus, the end of an era

New York condoms, Texas dildos

hilarious!

The Machine Gun of Capitalism

Meet My Hot New Stripper Wife

Are you Tom Cruise Crazy?

Study Says Many Studies Suck

The 935 Lies if George W. Bush

29 Things to be Happy About

Guess Which Drug is Illegal?

The Woman vs. The Black Guy

How to get drunk at the airport

The top 12 'Top 10' lists of 2007

Mark!! Wii was so last year's score, dude. Where have you been ; )?

whats your position?

Give me sushi, give me death

*I* am the new Sherriff????

47 gifts for savvy perverts

Does your religion dance?

Mark is Litquaking

Not Mark Morford...

I am the new Sherriff????