Rosa Parks. Weasel TV.

.. from the sublime to the silly

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I was writing some stuff to some swell folks in the bloggosphere & I realized it was the kernel of stuff I wanted to share with you dear pogblog readers. The way the bloggosphere works is that you may write a Comment about something sublime and then in a few moments about something sublimely silly. That’s why I like it, the O'Sphere. It, like life itself, is fractal. We like to tidy up our memories into faux linearities. These two pieces met at the same dawn while I’m drinking organic <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = “urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags” />darjeeling tea and eating 72% chocolate. That is vie.   

 

I’m still up for dawn; not getting up.

 

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Rosa Parks Dared.

 

I grew up on a farm on the Eastern Shore of Maryland in the Fifties. There were the water fountains with 'Colored' & 'White.' The only place a traveling 'negro' family might rest their head along the several hundred miles on the Big Highway was down a dusty dirt road with a peeled and faded sign — not even Dew Drop Inn, but only 'Colored.' What most folks not from those places or times cannot begin to imagine was how utterly brave 'just staying seated' was in those years.

 

Some might say Ms. Parks is remembered “solely for refusing to give in to injustice” — there is no “solely” about it. 'Nice' southern white men could be so suddenly vicious, she could well have been followed off the bus and beaten to death or raped. The bitter meanness of many of the white people with whom I grew up is all but untranslatable in our time now. The gracious, mint-julep-sipping southern gentleman would turn into a slavering pitbull if crossed by a 'colored' person. It was jekyll-&-hyde.

 

You can see in the wonderful pictures of Ms. Parks in her youth how grounded she was. There are few enough among us who would possibly have dared to “sit our ass down” in a society like the underbelly of the American South back then. The things I saw 'nice' upper middle-class white people do and heard them say in those years were bloodcurdling. There was no recrimination whatever for perpetrating the vilest of the Shadow upon 'colored' people. It was terrifying and disgusting. (Think Abu Ghraib being done by your neighbors & nobody blinking an eye.)

 

Having done a fair amount of civil disobedience, I can tell you that the hardest thing is to just not move. Where is the three-square-feet of  the United States of America where you will take your stand as you are surrounded by policemen in black exo-skeletons and 2 ft long night sticks? It's the quintessence of non-violent action, not moving, but if you're standing, your knees go to jelly. Those kind of 'authorities' are very used to having intimidation 'work.' It not working is a real big threat to their pipsqueak bully self-grandiosity.

 

What Rosa Parks did was not just thrust upon her. She deeply dared. I will always be inspired by her turning rage into courage. Thank you Rosa Parks.

 

We surely must 'continue the work.'

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For Rosa Parks, please see chancelucky & Natalie Davis.

 

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Weasel TV

I had a nice flashback to my 5 years of doing televised improv with ordinary people off the street. I was talking to chancelucky's blog about saying that what he called re BushCo as Surreal Life should be SursurReal Life. I haven't quite coined a term for weirderthanDali or morepitchforksinrumpsthanbosch, but we're definitely there with these skincrawling lizards.

 

As for names like Chuzzlewit, Dickens is in a tie with Tobias Smollett (a heck of a name itself) for Name God. Smollett has Roderick Random & Peregrine Pickle. (On my Improv show, Weasel TV, my doppelganger Dame Polly Pickle [pronounced pick-kell] was a tip of the hat to Smollett as well as to Dame Edna & Hyacinth Bucket pronounced Boo-kay. Apropos of nothing, Weasel TV was the first galactic TV channel, as CNN was the first global one. We had time travel facilities and a lot of other cool stuff. We would go back and interview the babysitter of Genghis Khan & so 4th.)

 

One of my favorite planets we visited with Weasel TV facilities was the planet Nedrag (‘garden’ backwards for the anagramically impaired). On the Planet Nedrag, they had Zoos of Humans. We had two humans on and two of their zoo trainers. The Sentients on Nedrag were pretty disgusted by the hairless bipeds, but they enjoyed watching them mate (a la PBS documentaries, all very tasteful and narrated by deep-toned famous people you can’t quite recognize) They also like to watch the humans and eat and lie slothfully around. The Nedraggians would toss them peanuts — and cucumbers for some odd alien planet reason.

 

Dame Polly who uses my body when she visits, but likes hats and lipstick and enormous pink plastic shoes, is richer than TrumpGatesPerotTurner all in one bank account. Her cause celebre was Two, Then Adopt, a meme she promoted for a long time to get around some women’s baby addictions – Raise all you can afford if that’s your gig, but only two flesh + blood kids.   

 

I used to think we on Weasel were outre — but that was before the BushCo Administration came a long as a Category 666 of bizarre. Of course we were never in competition. We had a lock on warm-hearted & pithy outlandish. They have a lock on coldhearted kukluxklan without the sheets.

   

A friend the other day said, “Well, they, [the Bushoids], really haven’t got this oppression thing perfected yet. They don’t have the SS.”

 

I said, “Merde, man, they don’t need the SS. They got malls, football, and Humvees to keep people exhausted and drugged. You don’t need the SS when transmitting the Bread & Circuses directly into the home is so dead-cert easy. Honesty in blogalism, I am a pro-football nut having been a Johnny-Unitas Colts fan and a 49er fan in the glory years. Malls have just never gotten me, but not because I have any virtue, probably more because I don’t have any money.

 

Humvees. Well, the first Humvee is a felony. The 2^nd Hummer is death penalty, against which I am in most other circumstances. (People who chew gum are on the cusp death penalty-wise.) Orange Arnold Schwarzenegger (orange from too many years of ManTan) has 8 Humvees, so poor ole Dante has to take a break from Heavenly concourse with Beatrice to invent a new and special circle of Hell for Arnold. What woeful oceanic inadequacy must a man feel who must have the ultimate codpiece vehicle, a Humvee? And eight of them?  Welcome to Planet Asylum where the inmates clearly are running the whole hebang. Duck & cover.

 

ps. Remember, those of us who wield Ridicule do win in the end eventually someday not soon enough but never despair because despair is never a lollipop flavor.

 

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the pro-peace world begins today with you

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