Category: ELEPHANT IN THE ELEVATOR

CORPSE-GREEN CAT SHIT, DUMB AS A RUBBER LADDER, ELEPHANT IN THE ELEVATOR6 Comments

THIS IS WHY OUR REVOLUTION CAN’T HAVE NICE THINGS

Steven Augustine

So, as some of you know, luminary of the Skeptical Fringe, CJ Hopkins, just came out with a book of essays… and had it blurbed by (among others) the blatant liar/ huckster/ counter-resistance shill Catherine Austin Fitts, who sells the most disturbingly ridiculous nonsense, like balls of fresh catshit in a box of very old Milk Duds. One of her shticks: the US, you see, uses reverse-engineered tech from UFOS and also… uh… the US, okay, the US secretly purchased The Moon from Aliens. Yep. What did the US pay for that purchase with, a Dilithium Crystal credit card? Better … Continue reading THIS IS WHY OUR REVOLUTION CAN’T HAVE NICE THINGS

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INVOICE of a DEGENERATION

Steven Augustine

Last night’s shocking death  of legendary rapper Rapt iller-Than Rex, at an amusement park, has sent ripples of stock veneration and sentimentality through a community already rocked, this year, by hundreds of predictable casualties. Rapt iller-Than was born Titus Primrose Jackson the Third in an undisclosed location in a gated community to bourgeois parents who’ve been voting Republican since Rapt iller-Than‘s father, Titus Primrose Jackson the Second, scored a well-paying job as an extraneous token at a Liberally-racist service provider in the nation’s rapidly-growing Prison Industrial Complex. Easily brushing off accusations of  conflict of interest (Rapt Iller-Than’s rhymes are allegedly … Continue reading INVOICE of a DEGENERATION

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CONTRAST/COMPARE

Steven Augustine

Let’s talk about the Global Privilege of a Blue-Haired, Self-Obsessed and Trivially-Woke Avatar of the Northern Half of the Western Hemisphere and the Sublime Tragicomedy of “Their” Hobbies & Grievances against the Backdrop of the Labor and Resources Pirated from the Anonymous 4/5ths of Humanity Who Slave & Suffer & Die to Keep “Them” Comfy Maybe as part of a futuristic Rite of Earned Imperial Citizenship  everyone lucky enough to be born under the Pinnacle-of-Creation Umbrella should have to (upon turning 17) explain to a bone-thin child of “The Third World” why He/She/”They” deserves it…? Or maybe a few apocalyptic Natural Disasters … Continue reading CONTRAST/COMPARE

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OPEN LETTER to the SECRET COMMITTEE

Steven Augustine

  Dear Profoundly Above It All, Patronizingly Virtue-Signalling Gatekeepers:   We know you want us to think you mean well, and of course we supposedly rejoice that this Era of Social Engineering would appear to reverse the trend of a few centuries of  hiding Colored and/or Female and/or non-Cis faces in the barn, coal cellar, kitchen and woodpile. Random selections from famously oppressed Human categories (each individual often representing a part of the world that the NeoLiberal Project is interested in milking; eg, Haiti or mineral-rich African territories, et al) are hitting various jackpots in big ticket Literature, and the … Continue reading OPEN LETTER to the SECRET COMMITTEE

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MAJESTIC IMPERIAL PANOPLY: DIVERS and SUNDRY LINKS/JAPES/GRUMBLES

Steven Augustine

1 IMPERIAL HEADLINES 2017-2018   *Pregnant 19-year-old accused of raping boy, 14 *If a nuclear bomb is dropped on your city, here’s where you should run and hide *Mother and Son Transition to Father and Daughter After Realizing They Are Transgender *Bull gores 11-inch horn up matador’s butt *Reality TV Show Drops People into the Wild for a Year, Doesn’t Tell Them Show is Canceled *Mobile cooling unit used after Ohio county morgue runs out of space *Here’s Video Footage of the Bomb Dropped on Afghanistan *Couple finds out they are biological twins during IVF treatment *Okla. Woman Gets Life … Continue reading MAJESTIC IMPERIAL PANOPLY: DIVERS and SUNDRY LINKS/JAPES/GRUMBLES

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21 UNFORGIVABLE ONE-LINERS

Steven Augustine

    Let’s keep wrapping our heads around the spectacle of McCarthyite Lefties until it feels right! Let’s empower Women by saying that a Woman can be any Man who feels that they are a Woman; can we do the same fun thing with Race? How can young girls being mercilessly bombarded on all media fronts, 24/7/365, with the diametrically-opposed messages to both A) snack for social fun and status and B) get skinny to be sexy (for social fun and status) have actual eating disorders…  what are their underlying issues we can struggle to understand? Let’s keep encouraging kids … Continue reading 21 UNFORGIVABLE ONE-LINERS

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How the CENTURY of the CHILD became the most CHILDISH CENTURY

Steven Augustine

“When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things.” -anonymous Elizabethan interpreting an anonymous bronze-age nomad’s wit    “But this “debate” is pointless if I can’t get you to agree that the terms “juvenile” and “adult” are ever, in any sense, useful or capable of making real-world distinctions…”-Grumpy Old Augustine to immature Academics     Once I was chatting with a musician about The Beatles. The musician was ambivalent about The Beatles’ significant place in his own musical … Continue reading How the CENTURY of the CHILD became the most CHILDISH CENTURY

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THREE THINKY THINGY-BOBS

Steven Augustine

1THE CAMPFIRE GENE; THE CAVEMAN in the JACKET PHOTO   Roughly ten years ago I was up  late (as any writer with a baby in the house may find his or herself, gloating over those hours alone), searching the Internet for info. I have no idea what I had been seeking but what I ended up finding was a crude text on an ugly site, a “true crime” narrative written by someone with very, very little literary skill or apparent intelligence. The author’s  goal in writing this thing I found myself reading was nothing more fancy than recording experience, a thing … Continue reading THREE THINKY THINGY-BOBS

CORPSE-GREEN CAT SHIT, ELEPHANT IN THE ELEVATOR, from the DEPT of I SHIT YOU NOT, the lash or the cuddle: reviews, THINKING TO THE NTH ON THE TOPIC12 Comments

REVIEWS, POLEMICS, PANEGYRICS & TINGLY FANCIES of the SCHADENFREUDE GAZETTE

Steven Augustine

  1. UPSTATE, by JAMES WOOD: a GLOATING REVIEW from a LONG TIME HATER   With the doggedly cheeky defiance that often passes for self-belief,  Yuppie Book Club Bouncer James Wood has submitted his second completed assignment toward earning his certificate as a Fledgling Novelist. Wood’s first effort, the meticulously soporific The Book Against God, was a forgivable failure which left unanswered the question of whether this unnecessary book was a novelist’s first failure, in essence,  or that of an overreaching critic’s. Was James Wood’s first completed long-form fiction assignment, The Book Against God,  the inevitable dud of a dabbler? … Continue reading REVIEWS, POLEMICS, PANEGYRICS & TINGLY FANCIES of the SCHADENFREUDE GAZETTE

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SNAILS in the COFFIN: SUNDRY ICKY, DISTURBING and/or BLASPHEMOUS THINGS

Steven Augustine

Take the case of the cultural jingoist and editor of The New Yorker David Remnick, who noted in his letter nominating TV critic Emily Nussbaum for a Pulitzer Prize (which she won in 2016), that “television has become the dominant cultural product of our age—it reaches us everywhere, and has replaced movies and books as the thing we talk about with our friends, families and colleagues.” Remnick did not stop there; to emphasize the untrammeled authority of TV, and literature’s ongoing uselessness, he casts it in military terms as a feeble enemy, now defeated. “Those of us who love TV,” he writes, … Continue reading SNAILS in the COFFIN: SUNDRY ICKY, DISTURBING and/or BLASPHEMOUS THINGS

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RAPE and TRUTH

Steven Augustine

Bill Cosby, as it turns out, is more-than-likely a serial rapist. I don’t believe everything I read/see/hear in Mainstream Media (in fact I believe very little of it) but the apparent evidence is damning. Also, Cosby’s alleged methods of sexual assault are not unusual in Show Biz (I even periodically remind my sweet-natured Wife to never meet any booking agent/ studio manager/ PR flack/ corporate client in a hotel room or to accept drinks she hasn’t had an eye on from sealed bottle to cup)… this stuff happened often in those days and it happens often now and soft versions … Continue reading RAPE and TRUTH

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THREE MYSTIFYING PUBLISHING PHENOMS EXPLAINED

Steven Augustine

Karl Ove Knausgaard (code name: KOK) Karl Ove Gump. Or Chauncey Knausgaard? A little of each, cannily packaged as one smoldering Nordic pin-up. The craggy, sinewy smoker who writes with such little ambiguity or sophistication that he makes JK Rowling seem Pynchonian.  KOK’s texts are a near-blank canvas: project whatever you want (or need, but don’t really need to read) on them.  Conveniently, you can read KOK’s texts at the high speed at which he wrote them and, once you start, his texts become seamlessly continuous with the texts of everyday life: billboards, G-chat messages, cereal boxes, Yahoo News and … Continue reading THREE MYSTIFYING PUBLISHING PHENOMS EXPLAINED

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A POX OF BOURGEOIS CULTURAL REFUGEES on ALL OUR HOUSES

Steven Augustine

  Forty years of sinisterly-manipulated recessions have thrown wave upon wave of not-very-talented “singers”, “poets”, “novelists”, “filmmakers”, Marxist academics and performance artists against us, where we would otherwise have had an extra few tens of thousands of lawyers instead…  had “The West’s” economy remained as munificent as it was in the late 1950s. Middle and Upper Middle Class families bereft of the wherewithal and connections to ferry their kids into cushy, self-sustaining professions can now only afford the second-rate luxury of supporting their baffled offspring through and after college. After college is when the crisis comes to a head and … Continue reading A POX OF BOURGEOIS CULTURAL REFUGEES on ALL OUR HOUSES

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BUT THE DOUGHNUTS ARE CHEAP and the PORN IS FREE, SO…. (a quick aggregation of Horrors)

Steven Augustine

Think of the worst, most violently selfish and dangerous people you’ve ever known or heard about and realize that those are the types in control of The Planet.  It is irrefutably so. Logically speaking, how could decent, peace-loving, compassionate people hope to stand a chance in the struggle for power when the struggle pits them against people willing and able to lie, cheat, manipulate, dissemble and kill… and do all of the aforementioned with great pleasure and consummate skill, often? The psychopaths always win (and they always hire a nice thick layer of smiling, attractive actors to put a chummy, sexy … Continue reading BUT THE DOUGHNUTS ARE CHEAP and the PORN IS FREE, SO…. (a quick aggregation of Horrors)

CORPSE-GREEN CAT SHIT, CRUSH THIS MEME, DUMB AS A RUBBER LADDER, ELEPHANT IN THE ELEVATOR, GET OFF MY GRUMPY OLD LAWN, HIGH QUACKERY, HUXWELLIAN, IDIOCIES OF A PREVIOUS ME, NO LOGIC NO JUSTICE, REQUIRED READING7 Comments

THREE MINI-ESSAYS on GOURMET VARIETIES of ABSOLUTELY PREPOSTEROUS BULLSHIT

Steven Augustine

1. GENDER BULLSHIT Solidly-mediocre purveyor of Normative Pap, Hollywood asset Matt Damon, recently took the risky step of addressing the hot topic of sexual servitude in Hollywood with what he obviously thought was a carefully-calibrated non-statement that nobody could reasonably take exception to. However, an article at The Guardian (and what exactly are they guarding, I’ve often wondered, beyond the obvious?) now  informs us: Damon said there was “a difference between patting someone on the butt and rape or child molestation. Both of those behaviours need to be confronted and eradicated without question, but they shouldn’t be conflated.” He added … Continue reading THREE MINI-ESSAYS on GOURMET VARIETIES of ABSOLUTELY PREPOSTEROUS BULLSHIT

BAD TASTE, CORPSE-GREEN CAT SHIT, ELEPHANT IN THE ELEVATOR, FAILED STATE OF THE ART, FUCKING SHIT I REALLY REALLY HATE, SHIT LIT, the lash or the cuddle: reviews, THE WAR ON TALENT, THINKING TO THE NTH ON THE TOPIC2 Comments

THE CLOAK ‘N DAGGER PENTAMETER: a review of Paul Beatty’s THE SELLOUT and a look at several other shitty books and why they’re Hyped

Steven Augustine

The well of culture has been poisoned with propaganda. It may not be as lethal as a literal well-poisoning but it is as sickening. Culture is now, essentially, the liquid that happens to be flowing through the pipes of The Media. It is no longer grounded in, or determined by, local conditions (via community gatherings, bands, local art movements, word of mouth, samizdat and any other low-budget repositories or propagators of Culture). The Media are global tools of their various powerful owners, obviously, and though these many powerful owners each have agendas of their own, and are probably more often … Continue reading THE CLOAK ‘N DAGGER PENTAMETER: a review of Paul Beatty’s THE SELLOUT and a look at several other shitty books and why they’re Hyped

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ADVENTURES in the PLUS TARD GARDE: a CRITIQUE in PROGRESS

Steven Augustine

1. August 28th: LIDIA YUKNAVITCH It didn’t take Publishing very long to catch up with The Record Biz’ epiphany that getting involved with Real Artists is risk-rich and bottom-line iffy and totally unnecessary. The Ersatz Artist is Late Capitalism’s all-in-one tool of choice in the Creativity Racket. If it looks like an Ahtist (young/pretty) and sounds like an Ahtist (kinda sexy/ rebellious) and is good at imitating Previously Successful Content… well, that’s close enough! The Audience (mostly Ahtists) won’t know the difference. So here we have flavor-of-the-week writer Lidia Yuknavitch, performing that never-fails writerly strategy of giving the Squares what … Continue reading ADVENTURES in the PLUS TARD GARDE: a CRITIQUE in PROGRESS

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RAGNARÖK

Steven Augustine

  When I was a kid of the 9th grade persuasion, in Vegas, one of the most embarrassing things you could admit was how tasty the cafeteria food was. Everyone made jokes about the supposedly inedible horrors of the cafeteria kitchen and some of us did, indeed, slingshot the tater tots or pecan pie wedges around the wide room for most of the forty five minutes of lunch break… but many of us were hunched over our plates, woofing the chow down, while the richer kids did the slinging. I looked forward to the cheeseburgers on Thursdays and I didn’t … Continue reading RAGNARÖK

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THE ELEPHANT IN THE ELEVATOR #2: “TALENT” AS A CIVIL RIGHT

Steven Augustine

Uh oh: there’s somebody who can’t write making the usual rounds as a writer. There are videos of her being interviewed about pressing social matters, there are blurbs from known writers on her books. Her just-published book of essays is a New York Times Bestseller. Ignoring the date on which I write this, I could be talking about any one of a thousand writers from the past twenty years, of course, so I’ll get specific by quoting Wikipedia to the effect that the not-writer writer in question “…holds a doctoral degree in rhetoric and technical communication from Michigan Technological University.“ If … Continue reading THE ELEPHANT IN THE ELEVATOR #2: “TALENT” AS A CIVIL RIGHT

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THE ELEPHANT IN THE ELEVATOR: GOING DOWN!

Steven Augustine

Difficult to express just how hilarious I find this: “An important early glimpse came in a 2001 experiment by University of Massachusetts Amherst’s Nilanjana Dasgupta and University of Washington’s Anthony Greenwald, in which they found they could temporarily reduce people’s prejudices by showing them pictures of black icons like Martin Luther King Jr. in conjunction with infamous white villains like Jeffrey Dahmer.” I can only hope to sketch the vast outline of its hilarity by comparing it to the rest of the well-meaning article it comes from (which is ten times more hilarious and phosphorous-hot with irony)… but, before you … Continue reading THE ELEPHANT IN THE ELEVATOR: GOING DOWN!