When Tara and I were traveling last month, I read George Carlin’s splendid, posthumously published autobiography Last Words on the plane. I’m a mega George Carlin fan. There is very little of his material that I haven’t heard and I just miss his voice more and more with each passing year. Sure we’ve got some contemporary greats like Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert taking on the political and cultural issues of the day (I happen to like Joe Rogan’s stand-up a lot, too, he’s really underrated) but just like there will only ever be one Mark Twain, one Lenny Bruce or one Richard Pryor, there will never be another George Carlin, either. Carlin was a wise-acre product of Depression-era New York City. It was the no-bullshit (yet filled to the brim with hypocrisy!) New Yawk Irish-Catholic milieu that George Carlin was raised in that produced such a unique comic mind. I think he was a great artist and a great American. If you want to understand how Carlin became Carlin, I can’t recommend Last Words more highly.

By the end of his life, George Carlin had become more than just a mere comedian or humorist, he’d become a stand-up philosopher equal parts Nietzsche, Karl Marx and Céline. The material of Carlin’s later years is the work he was the most proud of, and indeed, it was the finest comedy he ever gave us. The darkest, most nihilistic, most rip your face off and shove it down your fucking throat stand-up comedy…. probably of all time. How could you top it? Who would dare try?

The terminal view of mankind, religion and Capitalism expressed in his 1999 HBO special You Are All Diseased and 2005’s Life is Worth Losing was so bleak it was thrilling. There were several times during these broadcasts when I recall thinking “WOW, I can’t believe I just heard someone articulate that thought and in that way.” I wondered, too, what would happen to the brain of a conservative or religious person who might be unwittingly exposed to Carlin’s sneering premium cable mindfuck! (I mean how many Christians accidentally tuned into his HBO special with no idea of what to expect except cursing and watched him do “Religion is Bullshit” and promptly rethought how they’d been behaving for their entire lives? For certain people, hearing the ideas expressed in that one impassioned ten-minute-long rant must have been like having a nuclear bomb go off in their heads. It’s a more powerful argument against religion than anything Richard Dawkins has ever come up with, that’s for sure, and funnier, too!).

Carlin was never much of a topical comedian, so much of his material is evergreen and will stay that way because it expresses deep societal truths and expose hypocrisy so ruthlessly. No surprise then, that his rant about Wall Street, corrupt politicians and end-stage Capitalism is still so on the money. Watch this:
 

 
Via reddit politics

 
They first met through a love of theater, at a production of The Flies. It drew them together, this collective experience towards a creative good. And then, of course, their love of literature and writing, and during the war through the Resistance, and endless conversations in the cafes, which later became famous through association with their names. Jean-Paul Sartre was the leader. Albert Camus the talented writer, a leader in waiting.

Though close, there were early signs of division - Sartre knew Camus was the better writer, something he would never acknowledge publicly - and when the war finished, it wasn’t long for their friendship to fail.

Against the background of Cold War tensions and the threat of nuclear war between East and West, Sartre took the side of the Soviet Union, while Camus said he was on “the side of life”.

“I’m against a new war. To revolt today means to revolt against war.”

But it was Sartre’s blind acceptance of Russia’s concentration camps that proved too much for Camus. He wanted Sartre to denounce them, in the same way they had once denounced the German concentration camps. Sartre refused.

This led Camus to question the idea of rebellion and revolution, in particular the value of the Russian revolution, this at a time when writers on the Left held it up as the socialist dream.

In The Rebel Camus wrote:

‘In order to exist, man must rebel, but rebellion must respect the limits that it discovers in itself.

“In contemplating the results in an act of rebellion we shall have to ask ourselves each time if it remains faithful to its first noble promise or whether it forgets its purpose and plunges into a mire of tyranny and servitude.

“In Absurdist experience suffering is individual, but from the moment that a movement of rebellion begins, suffering is seen as a collective experience, as the experience of everyone. Therefore the first step towards a mind overwhelmed by the absurdity of things is to realize that this feeling, this strangeness is shared by all men, and the entire human race suffers from a division between itself and the rest of the world.”

Camus’ intention with The Rebel was to change accepted ideas about rebellion, with a new concept of questioning revolutionary action. For many it was too abstract and too damaging to the communist cause.

Sartre, therefore, decided something had to be done to redress Camus’ apparent attack on Soviet Communism, and by implication all communist belief, and he organized a damning and high-handed response. It proved to be a devastating blow to Camus.

While Sartre could separate the world of ideas from his personal friendship, Camus could not. He believed friendship was essential, and depended on his friends like the strong camaraderie shared by a theater company. Camus believed friendship united people together in the struggle for a better world. He therefore saw Sartre’s actions as the worst kind of betrayal, and it finished their friendship.

This is a short but fascinating extract examining the friendship between Camus and Sartre.
 

 
We culture vultures out here on the West Coast may think we’ve got it good with the opening of Ann Magnuson and Kenny Scharf’s big East Village West show opening at Royal/T (and we do!) but New Yorkers have something pretty amazing to attend this weekend also:
 

 
“IN ALL OUR DECADENCE PEOPLE DIE” is an exhibit of fanzines that were given to members of Crass between 1976 and 1984, plus original punk-era artwork by Gee Vaucher. The exhibit also features a new audio installation from Penny Rimbaud. Curated by Johann Kugelberg

As someone who was a huge Crass fan (I saw them fuckin’ live, how many Americans can claim that?) this looks like something that can’t be missed! (Except, drats, I will miss it as it closes right before I get to NYC next month! Awk! Quel bummer for me.)

The exhibit opening and talk will be held tonight but is already closed to more RSVPs. The exhibit continues daily until October 20th, hours 11am to 6pm.

Boo-Hooray, 265 Canal St. #601, New York, NY 10013
 

 

 
Below, Crass: There is No Authority But Yourself, a Dutch documentary about the band:
 

 
Rumors are rife that Radiohead will be playing a set today in support of Occupy Wall Street.

As reported on Gawker, no permit has been granted, but since they’re going to be on The Jimmy Fallon Show tonight, the rumor sounds like more than a rumor. Apparently the NYPD is aware, too, that something is being planned.

Via Gothamnist:

UPDATE 12:19 p.m.: A spokesperson for Occupy Wall Street confirms “Radiohead will play a surprise show today at four in the afternoon. Press conference at one in the afternoon.”

Update 12:54 p.m.: The spokesperson tells Gawker they have no permit but the police are “aware” of the event. This is going to be interesting—a band with Radiohead’s popularity can easily draw a hundred thousand for a free show in New York City. You need permits for this sort of thing, and there, obviously, there are a lot of crowd control issues that are worked out in advance. However you slice it, this will be bananas.

We’ll be looking for the embed code for the video to post here when/if it happens. Fingers crossed!

UPDATE: It was just a rumor after all. The Wall Street Journal and The New York Observer have both confirmed that Radiohead is not playing the #OccupyWallStreet protest Friday.

 
Think voter fraud is just a paranoid conspiracy theory? Or maybe you see it as a possibility with these controversial DRE voting machines, but not a likelihood? You might want to take another look: In the video posted below, a Diebold (read it) touch-screen voting machine is shown to be easily hacked for cheap by Argonne National Lab’s Vulnerability Assessment Team (VAT). With a mod costing 10 bucks ($15 for the remote control) apparently even an amateur could do this.

The votes can be changed remotely from up to half a mile away!

From Salon:

The use of touch-screen Direct Recording Electronic (DRE) voting systems of the type Argonne demonstrated to be vulnerable to manipulation has declined in recent years due to security concerns, and the high cost of programming and maintenance. Nonetheless, the same type of DRE systems, or ones very similar, will once again be used by a significant part of the electorate on Election Day in 2012. According to Sean Flaherty, a policy analyst for VerifiedVoting.org, a nonpartisan e-voting watchdog group, “About one-third of registered voters live where the only way to vote on Election Day is to use a DRE.”

Almost all voters in states like Georgia, Maryland, Utah and Nevada, and the majority of voters in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Indiana and Texas, will vote on DREs on Election Day in 2012, says Flaherty. Voters in major municipalities such as Houston, Atlanta, Chicago and Pittsburgh will also line up in next year’s election to use DREs of the type hacked by the Argonne National Lab.

Think how easy it would be for a partisan operative to volunteer at a polling location to gain some alone time with one of these machines long enough to do what the guys do in this video. Or take it a step further and ask if you trust the programmers who maintain them? HOW would the layman know what to think? I’m not a conspiracy-minded person, but a conspiracy theory is not what I’m trying to get across here.

It’s the issue of uncertainty and how it could cause social unrest.

That’s why these machines should be outlawed. THE. ONLY. WAY. to protect against election fraud—or the suggestion OF it—is to dump these evil things and go back to paper ballets.

What I haven’t heard any of the commentators about this matter saying, but I think it’s worth contemplating is this: The mere plausible suggestion that these machines can be so easily manipulated and that voter fraud COULD OCCUR is far more of a pressing issue than any other facet of this matter (i.e. actual hacking occurring) .

Fast-forward to 2012, in your mind: If Barack Obama, the incumbent, wins by a landslide—or (legitimately) by ten votes in a country in Florida, it matters not a whit—VOTE FRAUD is going to be the rallying call of people who don’t like him. It will be the new “Birtherism,” mark my words.

It’s that sort of thing that’s a far bigger problem than any tampering of individual machines ever could be.

On the plus side, that happening is probably what would, in the end, see the DRE machines done away with. I think the Tea party-types are more worried about having it done to them, than doing it themselves (not that most of those confused folks would have the first clue how to, of course…)

As one of the YouTube wags commented: “Can we buy this for Diebold ATMs?” Good question!
 

 
Lovely one-of-a-kind terracotta planter of Rick Perry’s head up for auction on eBay. Jeff Koons must be kicking himself that he didn’t think of this first. Genius!

From the listing:

Rick Perry has a hole in his head.  Lots of them, in fact.   For sale is a 6’ terra cotta flower planter in an extraordinary likeness of Rick’s head.  The outline of his hair is surprisingly accurate, with holes throughout to grow lush grass, flowing ivy or flowering plants.  Prayer plants might be appropriate.

There’s a “buy it now” for $4500.

(via World of Wonder )

 
Fascinating short film about the Wall Street occupation movement.

And if you haven’t read David Graber’s Guardian article, “Occupy Wall Street rediscovers the radical imagination,” then you probably should:

Is it really surprising they would like to have a word with the financial magnates who stole their future?

Just as in Europe, we are seeing the results of colossal social failure. The occupiers are the very sort of people, brimming with ideas, whose energies a healthy society would be marshaling to improve life for everyone. Instead, they are using it to envision ways to bring the whole system down.

But the ultimate failure here is of imagination. What we are witnessing can also be seen as a demand to finally have a conversation we were all supposed to have back in 2008. There was a moment, after the near-collapse of the world’s financial architecture, when anything seemed possible.

Everything we’d been told for the last decade turned out to be a lie. Markets did not run themselves; creators of financial instruments were not infallible geniuses; and debts did not really need to be repaid – in fact, money itself was revealed to be a political instrument, trillions of dollars of which could be whisked in or out of existence overnight if governments or central banks required it. Even the Economist was running headlines like “Capitalism: Was it a Good Idea?”

It seemed the time had come to rethink everything: the very nature of markets, money, debt; to ask what an “economy” is actually for. This lasted perhaps two weeks. Then, in one of the most colossal failures of nerve in history, we all collectively clapped our hands over our ears and tried to put things back as close as possible to the way they’d been before.

Perhaps, it’s not surprising. It’s becoming increasingly obvious that the real priority of those running the world for the last few decades has not been creating a viable form of capitalism, but rather, convincing us all that the current form of capitalism is the only conceivable economic system, so its flaws are irrelevant. As a result, we’re all sitting around dumbfounded as the whole apparatus falls apart.

Read more of
Occupy Wall Street rediscovers the radical imagination (Guardian)
 

Revolutions are great places to meet members of the opposite sex… just sayin’

There have been a lot of people wondering why they major media seems to be ignoring the Wall Street demonstrations. Some are calling for the protests to be brought to the media and it seems like a decent tactic would be to take the demonstrations directly to the headquarters of the various networks and news organizations so they simply can’t ignore it. In the meantime, until the networks deign to cover them, you can watch a live feed of the Wall Street protests on the Global Revolution Livestream channel.
 

 
If you’d like to show some support for the brave and persistent protestors who are occupying lower Manhattan to call attention to rapacious finance capitalism run amok, why not consider sending some… pizza?

Some local pizzerias listed by Get Smart News who’ll deliver to the anti-capitalism protestors. Liberatos Pizza & Parmigiana at 17 Cedar Street are offering a “Stand-Up-for-Your-Beliefs” special, “The Occu-Pie,” but you might want to consider ordering some meatless (if not vegan) options for this bunch—call Liberatos at (212) 344-3464

For some healthier options click here; below, some lower Manhattan pizzerias:

Adrienne’s Pizza Bar Restaurant, 54 Stone Street, (212) 248-3838
Harry’s Italian Pizza Bar, 2 Gold Street, (212) 747-0797
Papa John’S Pizza, 21 Maiden Lane # 23, (212) 608-7272
Underground Pizzeria, 3 Hanover Square, (212) 425-4442
Zeytuna, 59 Maiden Lane, (212) 742-2436
Big Al’s Chicago Style Pizza, 9 Thames Street, (212) 964-3269
Caruso’s Pizza & Pasta140 Fulton Street, (212) 267-2927
Cucina Bene Pizza, 41 Exchange Place, (212) 635-0345
Grotto Pizzeria & Restaurant, 69 New Street, (212) 809-6990
Caruso’s Pizza, 42 Broadway (212) 785-7747
Friendly Gourmet Pizza, 59 Nassau Street, (212) 791-180

Some non-pizza local restaurants that will deliver to the protestors:

Lemon Grass Grill, (212) 809-8038
Toloache Taqueria, 212) 809-9800
Alfanoose, (212) 528-4669

Occupy Wall Street rediscovers the radical imagination (Guardian)