Podcast of the Day: Agony Column interview with Walter Mosley!
A great interview by Rick Kleffel with Walter Mosley in full on brilliant mode discussing his new GIFT OF FIRE omnibus novels. Covers everything from Philip K. Dick to Hegel to Christ to creation myths to Darwinism to Jazz to the American Prison System. Listen to it here and thank me and the Agony Column later! 
Subscribe to the Agony Column podcast here.
This is me, ranting. Bat crazy ranting. Those who want to avoid Bat Crazy ranting, avoid this one, come back tomorrow and hear about super-heroes punching each other in their under-wear.
I mean the major stuff I keep abreast of, if the president and congress are trying to sell first borns to big business, etc. But the 24 hour, FOX/CNN/SS constant “thought police, be afraid, believe, color coded terror, be afraid”… not really my bag.
You tell me something one time a day, that’s news. You tell me something 72 times a day, the same thing, 3 times an hour, that is not about news, that is about programming. That is about conditioning. That is about terror.
That is about you, the media, in ways deep and dreadful and not at all healthy, trying to touch me.
I watch people, sit in front their tv god… constantly just soaking up and regurgitating another man’s hate.
Older women in my family, god love women, but they are like sponges for the dreams of madmen, raised on serialized entertainment, on soap operas, so news and talk shows are just more soap operas to them. Idiocy is just more entertainment to them. And they will open up their mouths and parrot out of their mouths whatever is on television… without questioning.
“Oh isn’t it good we’re invading Libya” one recently said to me, when this nation (under God?) was committing yet another coup in a sovereign nation.
“Why?” I asked her.
“Cause of all the bad things the leader has done to his people.”
“Do you mean Gaddafi, who was supporting the civil rights movement in this country, and Martin Luther King and Malcolm X, when the American government wouldn’t let great quantities of the population drink out of faucets or use a bathroom, and was siccing dogs on marchers, and bombing churches and lynching Black children? That Gaddafi?”
Needless to say I’m really popular at family reunions.
It’s just amazing to me, how few people in America, think. Not Black people, or White people, or Brown people, or Yellow people, but any people… think, beyond what the idiot box tells them.
Oh it is to be wept at, how all you victims of Rome, so gleefully are turned into victimizers.
Here’s the thing with me. You have to earn the moral high ground.
YOU HAVE TO EARN the moral high ground.
Be you a man, or a nation, you have to earn the moral high ground.
America is forever taking the moral high ground. And no country, in the history of this world, is less suited to walk that walk. America began as a terrorist nation, and America grew fat through fostering a level of inhumanity and terror, that no Iraq or Iran or Cuba or Korea or Russia or Libya, has ever come close to.
And the thing about America, is her present shows no sign of having repented of her past.
America has never stopped being a terrorist nation. It’s her one, last great product.
So yeah when the military industrial complex, pulls the strings for the 24hour propaganda show we call CNN or Fox, etc… I’m not really big, on goose stepping along.
I guess because I have a long memory, and I potentially can forgive, but I will never forget and I will never cheer you into a position to do it again. To anyone.
Now you, the tides of war, can come through me, or you can try to walk over me, but you’ll never reach your goal with me.
It’s the same reason I’ll never be a Christian as practiced in America. I have no particular issue with Christianity, I think the ideology is grand, however in practice especially in America it has been an abomination in the eyes of God.
That’s not a dig, and it’s not an insult, it is however a fact.
From the Witch trials on. The odious form of Slavery that took place in this nation, the most depraved the world has ever seen, happened not despite Christianity. It reached it’s peak of evil BECAUSE of how Christianity was practiced in this country.
Slavery, in the vile form practiced in the US flourished… because of Christianity.
That’s a hell of a thing for anyone to say, I know it… and I take no pleasure in the saying.
More hell still, because it’s the truest thing you’ll ever hear anybody tell you.
I have seen the torture devices. I have seen your abominations. I have seen ships with names like HOPE, and CHARITY, and GRACE (all we need is one named OPERATION FREEDOM), loaded down with tortured men, women, and children. I have seen the machinations of righteous men and women. Shielding their abominations under the name of Christ and god.
And I have seen one more thing, that we are our fathers even onto the 7th generation, and crimes not grappled with, not resolved… are repeated: there or there or there.
Christianity as practiced in this country, has more of Rome in it, than of Christ, and this country has the crucifixions to prove it. The cross itself, having nothing to do with a Christ, being a Roman symbol long before any such messianic birth or death, a roman symbol of power, and dominance, and torture. The devil going up and down, and to and fro.
How does a person wear a cross and not know that? Not think one minute, of one hour, of one day, of the millions upon millions who died screaming their guts out on that most sacred torture device of Rome… on the cross.
That cross.
Think about it, logically for a second. Who would carry around an idol, a symbol of a lynched man except the lyncher. Much the way lynchers in America would cut trophies from the bodies of their victims to wear around their neck.
Such… Christian people. Such, righteous people. God forbid you accuse anyone else in this world of terror.
So to, who would wear a symbol of a crucifixion around their neck, except the crucifier? For one second, think, actually think, about the dogma, the ritual that Christians do, that has nothing of Christianity in it… but everything of Rome, even onto the forsaking of the Sabbath.
I honestly don’t care what people believe.
But I do care that your choice of good or evil be informed. Whatever you choose to believe, make it an informed choice.
It’s not evil men that worry me.
It’s the masses that cheer them as they go marching by, too busy to make a choice not handed to them. The careless masses are the engine without which, the dreams of evil men… could not fly.
Try an examined choice.
I’ve done that, and I’ve found I can’t wear lynched or crucified men or the symbols of their suffering around my neck, I can’t bend my knee to bloody priests, and I can’t follow a nation of terror.
But I’m wacky that way, your examined choice may be different.
That’s been my news for today.
Cheery son of a gun, aren’t I?
But it’s past now, my mad fit of absinthe and peyote, it comes only rarely, when the spirit moves.
Perhaps even when the spirit needs,
For a man, supposedly shorn of faith, I do believe in fate.
I needed to speak.
Perhaps becomes someone needed to listen.
Who knows.
Wild is the world, and occasionally wonderful.
But the mad compulsion has left me, until the next blue moon.
Which is fitting, because I find the truth you don’t have to repeat as often as lies. If a lie, it will touch you not, without a constant barrage, and you will be unmoved by my mad ramblings.
But if the truth, it lived in you long before you read these words, and my words simply, like a stone waiting for a sculptor… revealed it.
If the truth you will know it. And if a lie you will know it.
And how you make of that news, something new…. well, who knows, the world is wild and wonderful… his miracles to perform.
As long as he’s not bringing that to the forefront, which (with a few glaring exceptions) he manages to do with Glamourpuss, I found the book engrossing and good. The literally tongue in cheek covers aside, GLAMOURPUSS first and foremost is an art and cartooning clinic/history lesson. The interior artwork, and Simms clear love for the cartoonists of the early 20th century is impressive, and quite informative.
And in between he shows off his art chops, with impressive photo-realistic renderings of models he makes say stupid things.
No one would have figured when he started this experiment going on four years ago, that it would last 4 months. But here 4 years later and the book is still going strong, and along with Brubaker’s CRIMINAL it’s one of the few books, I must own in individual issues.
Fault Simm for what you will, he does sequential entertainment… well. I own all 24 issues, and if you’re a fan of art or cartoonists, or the history of cartoonists… you may want to own all 24 issues as well.
There is no collection yet of these issues, so check your comic book store, or go here
I have four new MONARCHS OF MAYHEM interviews that have come in and three more that I’m waiting to arrive, and just have to schedule them and put them on the calendar. Last week completely threw my time table off, and this weekend isn’t helping any.
But yeah should have the next couple of MONARCHS OF MAYHEM up after the weekend.
And once all the MONARCHS OF MAYHEM posts are up that’s just the end of the first stage, the second stage is where it gets fun. But I’ll notify you of that when the time comes.
On another note the link usage has dipped a bit, so if we can turn that around that would be great. You guys using the links and purchasing through those links, is a huge deal. And is greatly appreciated.
Well that’s all the minor updates for this posting. Have a great night, and I’ll leave you with the craziest thing I read all day over on BLEEDING COOL, namely… Alan Moore goes… OFF! (Again:)). I love Alan Moore, even when he’s completely napalming everyone in sight.
Check out this line, from Mr. Moore:
“In the world that could have been, I could have carried on working happily with the American comics industry.
I know a way that they could have sorted out their continuity. I could have gotten rid of all of their problems for them. It would have been really simple. But, like I say, they unfortunately alienated me. But, they’ve done that [to] everybody who has been a heavy-hitter creatively. Jack Kirby and all the people who genuinely created stuff all got screwed. It was only the company employees who kind of created stuff that wasn’t really that original in the first place that didn’t. It was the Len Weins who kind of did all right out of it because they always did what the company told them.” — Alan Moore
Ohh, I grew up reading some Len Wein comics. Ouch that’s harsh. Heh!Heh!
But the thing about Alan Moore is, even when he is bitch slapping people, and saying ‘F*ck! You write like a retard!’. You cannot argue with the man, because he has the body of work, even to this day, to back up his talk. And the man has a reason to feel screwed.
So I completely get his tirade with the industry. Where I think he does a disservice to himself is with his burning of bridges with his co-creators. That has a bit to do with how Moore views himself.
From what I can gather reading his interviews, he does have a bit of a high opinion of himself, bordering on perceiving himself as the messiah, the savior of comics. Which while not true, is complicated by the fact… that it’s not entirely false. Alan Moore’s work made something… new out of comics. It redefined what a comic could be, it raised the bar, and here almost three decades after he raised that bar, no one else has arguably equaled it, and without argument no one has transcended it. Thirty years later and WATCHMEN is still hailed as the best, most sophisticated work the comics medium has produced.
So yeah given that, and given the fact you’ve been rewarded for this achievement by being repeatedly lied to, cheated, and used, and ripped off… yeah… I can see that persecution, mixed with an unequaled body of work, will give anyone a bit of a messianic attitude. His falling out with Dave Gibbons is part of this.
Moore taking an idealogical stance against Hollywood films, has been signing over his revenue from these films V FOR VENDETTA and WATCHMEN etc to his co-creators. Moore’s stipulation being he wants his co-creators to call him up and thank him when they receive the money. Both David Lloyd and Dave Gibbons, ultimately balked at this.
Being an outsider I can see both points of view:
Moore sees he has on idealogical grounds signed over a considerable sum to his co-creators and wants to be thanked. But if I’m a co-creator my stance is ‘I didn’t tell you to sign over the money, if that’s what you want to do great, I appreciate it, but you’re not going to compel my appreciation. I’m not going to thank you for a work that is mine as much as it is yours’. And I can only gather that’s Lloyd’s and Gibbon’s stance.
This is the problem with altruism when it is misplaced, and I think in Moore’s case it is. He gives away the money but wants to be thanked.
Note to Moore: If you want to be thanked then give your proceeds to your family or a charity. But to relinquish your profits to your coworkers and then insist they thank you when they get the check??– well that’s you putting fellow creators and fellow men and I would assume fellow friends, in a subservient position to be beholden to you, and therefore that’s not giving them anything at all.
That behavior is attempting to buy something. So yeah I completely understand what Moore wants to do on idealogical grounds, but he would have been better doing it without expectation of being thanked, or bnot doing it at all.
So Moore, burning bridges with his friends, when friends always a rare commodity becomes ever rarer as we get older; is the only thing, If I had his ear, I would suggest he reconsider.
As far as his industry comments…
Well once again a lot of people are up in arms, talking smack about Alan Moore because of his attitude. Here’s the thing, you have to earn the right to throw bricks. And when it comes to the industry Alan Moore has earned the right to throw bricks. A lot of you attackers have not. Stay the heck out of it.
I agree that perhaps there’s another way to handle this almost three decade old feud, between Alan Moore and mainstream comics (specifically DC) rather than tossing gasoline on it. But if that’s not the way Alan Moore chooses to go, that’s his choice. I’m not in his shoes.
Sometimes the price of genius means you tow an idealogical line, perhaps to your detriment, and past the understanding of those of us who eat compromise for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. And so we attack anyone who doesn’t compromise, or quiet down like the rest of us.
Alan Moore wants to rant, he’s earned the right to do so. Cause even when he is ranting, he is erudite, and informed, and teaching us about navigating the slippery slope of dealing with businesses… with conglomerates in the early days of the 21st century. Hopefully without losing our souls…. it’s a history lesson and a cautionary tale. So rather than objecting to Alan Moore having an opinion take from what he says… what works for you, and leave alone the rest.
Pretty simple.
Read Rich Johnston’s synopsis here and when done with that, go here to read the whole eight page interview! I’m going to call it right now, with a whole 10 months left in the year, the best/most important comics related interview of the year. !
heh.heh. That Len Wein comment cracks me up.
*************
Language interests me. Possibly because I’m so bad at picking up new languages. It interest me the things that are lost and changed in translation.
The Uncanny X-men in Spanish becomes La Impossible Patrulla X, which does not mean ‘The Uncanny X-Men’. It translates literally into The Impossible Patrol X. Patrulla meaning Patrol, a small detachment of soldiers to secure the safety or peace of a place.
So the X-MEN though translated, is changed in the translation, to PATROL X. A subtle change admitted, but change none the less.
******************
Closing out Black History month, I have to remark I really hate the term African American.
It’s right up there with morons using the term political correctness instead of the word respect.
Just use respect whenever you rant about political correctness, and you’ll realize what the eff you’re really complaining about. Racist bastards.
Now back to African American.
Nationalistic boundaries have no place in an ethnographic designation. It’s been removed from the unifying way it was first broached in the 60s, to a moronic misnomer. What is wrong with Black or Colored or Moor or Nubian or hell even Pan-African, all of which are inclusive terms that define your ethnicity regardless of whether you live in Canada or France or Brazil or China or Honduras or Haiti or Senegal.
How such a stupid term is not only in general parlance, but is on federal forms just goes to show you how poorly most people in America reason. And don’t even get me started on separating Black from Hispanic. What the eff are you talking about? How do you separate blood from blood? Keep your divide and conquer nonsense.
“Just like the Spanish, raping the Black and Indian women and creating Latinos!”— Immortal Technique
If you’re walking around and defining your ethnicity based on your nationality, which may work in homogeneous society but does not work in a heterogeneous society, then you sir and mam… are doing something moronic.
And you may want to stop and think, and scratch out that stupid line on federal forms that says African American, and write instead… “Eff You! I Wont Do What You Tell ME! ” (Yeah, that is from RAGE AGAINST THE MACHINE).
Think… better.
It’s the only salvation you have.
.
The man of bronze looked at me, and I heard
on the wind
something singular
that spoke with voices legion.
Voices that had given
much;
their last,
best measure…
“Don’t fall backwards.”
The voice of the few
and the many
implored
“Don’t fall backwards.
Don’t give ground.
Go forward.
More to do.
Much, much, more.”
Much later I would try to convince myself that the man of bronze could not have spoken, the children of bronze could not have watched me with eyes the color of bombed churches and torched buses.
Much later I would try to find security in rational lies. I would try to un-hear what I heard.
But in the midnight hour
Always in the midnight hour
like an old, tired song
I hear them clearly.
With the voice of men
who go down to the sea in ships
and war heroes
swinging from southern trees
they cry
“More, more, more!”
—words and photos copyright 2012 HT
Track 1 roller-coaster/carnival barker-“tell all your friends, tell all your enemies, tell all the people you do not know.” Goes to about the 5:30 mark. From the start, his most sonically, and stereoscopically mesmerizing CD.
Track 2 rain, a tour of London- Moore’s voice at once longing and hungry and haunted and stark. A dreamer two days dead, speaking of dreams. Speaking of London, all Londons. “hallucinated rain in a mirage of gutter… a phantom, speculated city, somewhere else… where do the Yarmouth breakers detonate, a distant semtex when we are away from yarmouth… these are the towns of light, built from remembered brick… where thought is form…locations we shall never visit that yet have their hearsay substance in our lives, and so are never far from us… metropolis erected out of nothing, only metaphor, and ringed with slums of dreams… a shadow London, our idea of London” Goes to about the 8:44 mark. 9/10.
Track3 a tour of London- “Move on to the city hypothetical… his Tesla grid of terror and magnificence…streets filthy with mythology… “ till about 13:20 mark
Track 4 Cray Twins/Double trouble – Brilliant use of stereo! Love listening to this. “two sides to every story, two doors to every cell” till 15:31 10/10
Track 5 St.Pauls/Diana -The heart of the City – Let us pay attention to St. Paul himself, a Proto-Mason , there in 1st Corinthians 3:10 he states “As a Master-builder I have laid foundations and another builds there on.” , “here is Diana chained, the soul of woman-kind bound in a web of ancient signs that women might abandon useless dreams of liberty” “be careful here” till 19:45
Track 6 Fleet and Bride Street –“they are the engineers of our exhaustion” “If this room is mirrored in idea space, what of we?” “…monologues we have mistaken for the world” “stay close together, these are stairways beyond substance, things get slippery here.” Till 24:50
Track 7 Into the Abyss – “Theory and belief are all we have to walk upon” A walk through idea spaces, through landscapes/mythologies… eclectic. Till 32:15.
Track 8 Spectre Garden- Angel Baeletic- “I am the daughter of fortitude, and ravished every hour of my youth” Haunting and beautiful. Till 35:24
Track 9 Demon Asmodeus- Sumptuous, disturbing use of sound. Till 40:02
Track 10 Deity/Glycon last created of the roman gods- “Proceed with caution, this is old power. And the idea of a god, a real idea” Till 44:10
Track 11 Tundra Absolute/The Final wasteland- “if we observe it, we affect it” He is dropping knowledge, no, not knowledge… wisdom… wisdom beyond the paltry dreams of science. Brilliance! Brilliance! Reaches a stunning conclusion, with a truly compelling performance by Alan Moore. A+. till 59:35
Track 12 End Music/Denouement- Don’t care for this folksy/wood nymph song, or the delivery. But not enough to mar this excellent CD. Till 63.07.
Overall grade: A+. Best of breed. Essential CD.
I am still very much a child of Public Enemy and my my thoughts can be summed up as follows:
“If you heard I was celebrating… it’s a world wide lie!”
On top of that, what annoys me is half the people setting off firecrackers (depending where you live, possibly illegally) could not begin to tell you why they are setting off firecrackers.
They set-off a firecracker, giggle like a chimp, then set off another firecracker. With no more thought of why they are doing what they are doing, then a baboon in orbit around the moon.
Somehow it’s a fitting definition of America.
A country filled with people with no real sense of the country.
No sense of truth from lies.
Me, I’m not a holiday type guy. My thoughts on Christmas, for example, can be summed up by that episode of the Boondocks (‘SANTA! You gonna pay what you owe!!’ Yes that episode ). While I will never shun a day off, neither have I ever been one to go goose stepping with the crowd.
Thanksgiving? THANKSGIVING? Is that like an effing joke?
There’s roughly some parallels to it in most anglofied countries, and it pretty much celebrates the pale newcomer, having by God’s grace conquered(ie stolen) a new land, and successfully killed or converted the heathen natives therein.
As an unrepentant and proud heathen native, I take umbrage to such holidays.
UMBRAGE I SAY!
Thanksgiving???
Really? Can you call it that with a straight face?
Not me Kemosabe.
Wrong can’t be made right, by putting glitter paper and a bow on it.
No siree!
And if you heard I was celebrating, in the words of Public Enemy “it’s a world wide lie”.
But I’ll take the day off, sure as shooting. I’ll break bread with my family. But the day will be remembered by me, my way, for my reasons.
A day of remembrance, lest we forget behind pretty words like Thanksgiving, lest we forget Indian Wars and genocides past. And in the forgetting, give life to Indian Wars and genocides… present.
Remember, rightly.
Your sins. Our sins.
Remember… Rightly.
