honoring time by passing it by

Morbidly compelling look at the death throes of the Third Reich and Hitler. The lunacy, dementia and slavish devotion by the surrounding characters leave the viewer both amazed and incredulous.

This film offers almost nothing of interest. If you’re into bland bonhomie, c’est le film pour vous!

A compelling story of the plight of a Jewish forger in the death-camps facing Hobson’s choice, and his unwillingness to come to terms with his undeniable and inconvenient humanity.

This is an interesting “homage” to a gun-smuggling member of Congress. It’s compelling in and of itself, but the story has been sanitized of any unsavory details of the undoubtedly sordid reality.

I Want to Believe? This bunk left me speechless.Complete with pedophile priest,the tortuous tale knows no restraint as it devolves into cartoonish ridicularity. I Couldn’t Believe is what I’d call it.

Three stars for Chicago backdrop. Otherwise, this shallow yarn has all the elements necessary for the rote mediocrity to which we have grown so accustomed.

Oh! you’ll hate this one.Drug-induced hallucinations inspired tortured representations of the landscape. Nudies and Bluies romp about to find a path to strife and violence. You’d rather see Maude’s bush

Pure tripe with small hero constantly fighting bigger and bigger “monstas” using more powerful weapons and “splosions.” Standard drek in the anime genre. Uninspired and substandard animation. Skip it.

Interesting multi-perspective brings to life the chaos and lawlessness in what is modern Iraq. Shocking and pathetic, it makes you question just about everything about this occupation.

Standard goo-guy/ ba-guy HK film with requisite brooding cop with dead girlfriend anger screaming for revenge. Some shooting and ass kicking, but nothing you haven’t seen except one guy is invincible.

This movie is rather tripe. Its promise of senseless violence went largely unfulfilled and I so hate being duped. It was as if a bunch of mongoloids decided to become vigilantes. That’s this that is.

A madcap and mildly predictable brit-romp, (avec midget), but overall enjoyable. In fact it was so good I don’t ever want to see it again, but rather remember this midget flick fondly.

Like most Freedom films, this one is a slice of life piece with grand drama manufactured from something mundane, in this instance, the death of a rummy. Wanted to give it 3.5 but rounded up for style.

Excellent human docu-drama. Draws you in to its alien world where the blatant bias and unfairness will leave you surprisingly indignant. This is an excellent piece of work about a Piece of Work!

Another dissolute music man who couldn’t deal with his talents or vices. Much too dissolute. This guy drank himself to death. At least he didn’t make himself a fat spastic.

Excellent and interesting overlay of the involvement of Western powers in the Middle East since WWI, culminating in the “Peace to End All Peace.” Recommended viewing for today’s citizen.

Dull back-lot production riddled with inconsistencies so obvious that a zombie could have picked them out. 30 days? BS! These clowns wouldn’t have lasted 10 hours if this thing were properly written.

Interesting take on the “zombie” movie, i.e. an excuse to shoot people without guilt. I liked the filmcraft and movie- within-a-movie format the director utilized. Otherwise, uninspired writing.

Rote blarney about a “Nazi super-guy” who is infused into a ship somehow. This couldn’t have more macho- and testosterone-laden stereotypes if it had been penned by SpikeTV or the Pentagon. Truly awful.

Everyone loved this movie. I did not. I thought it was dark, dull and pointless. It just didn’t interest me at all. Hungarian cinema can shag off if this is what they have to offer. Disappointing

Looks at life on the “terrorist” side of the “official” debate. For the most part these are ordinary people who say they are resisting the occupation of their homeland. Agree or not, it’s worth a watch.

This cat is interesting and has some intriguing things to say. He’s actually a pretty energetic speaker, which is good because his presentation is about 6 hrs. I don’t expect anyone will watch this.

Juxtaposing the Book of Revelations with Mayan prophecy and a bit of sci-fi scare thrown in, this jumbled mess seeks to evoke some apocalyptic spirituality, but the only real tragedy is this film.

Amusing look at the US govt propaganda and lies in the name of eradicating the “most dangerous drug in America.” These dishonest shills are ridiculous and illogical, but funny nonetheless.

Initially promising creative intrigue, this quickly lost that promise to become more of the light-hearted unexceptionality that is far too common on the Sci-fi channel, see e.g. Stargate.

This movie is so skewed, hokey, and preposterous, yet strangely amusing. Perhaps it’s the legions of B-list actors they got to play the increasingly ridiculous roles. Not a loss if you miss it.

Rocco in a legit movie. Can’t believe it. This film is explicit, clinical and morbid. Not fo the faint of heart. In fact many of you would hate this. Not recommended for those more delicate friends.

This [movie] is complete tripe. Forget about this nonsense and drink some hot-dog water instead. You’ll certainly feel better than if you watched this hokum.

(2006 horror film)

This is yet another remake of the Invasion of the Bodysnatchers and it is suitably trite and hackneyed. A not unpleasant waste of time.

Cynicism is that moment when you begin to doubt the benefit of giving people the benefit of the doubt.

doubt the benefit of the benefit of the doubt
y and i exchanged and holy days became holidays
goodbye to the with within god be with you

a pen is a penis

Before you break something, make sure you can pay for her.

A faithful blonde is a fateful bond.

Those who are afraid to love love to be afraid.

Prophet at a loss for words

Masturbators and fornicators!

Children who don’t play with adults turn into adults that act like children

Love your mind and mind your love.

Talent is god-given
but discipline is man-made.

big heart cold heart
small heart warm heart
big mind no mind
small mind any mind
big soul warm soul
cold soul small soul

Better to meet someone of significance
occasionally
than to surround yourself
with no one in particular
constantly.

If you’re influential
without being impressionable,
you’re as dense as a white dwarf.
I’d rather be a black hole.

BAD ASSUMPTIONS:

MY PROBLEMS WITH ISLAM IN PARTICULAR

(NOT WITH RELIGION IN GENERAL,

NOR ATHEISM FOR THAT MATTER,

WHICH HAVE THEIR

OWN PROBLEMS)

Introduction

I was born into a Muslim family. That being the case, I was born into a framework of epistemology (Islam) that was inculcated through multiple means: casual, formal, and self-directed. Though I had spells of doubt, none of these systematically worked their way into any sort of substantive dialogue until one fine season about 6 years ago. Most of my spiritual questions I kept to myself and worked out through my own research.

Certain problems with the religion arose within my conscience slowly and surely seeped to the surface until they became unbearable. To be sure, as I examine some of the most painful spiritual depressions I experienced in life, many of these were involved with aspects of Islam that alienated me from myself. And because of this, I feel it is an ethical responsibility to share these destructive and questionable aspects with other people.

As I look back, only through time, self-searching, and much guilt, did I slowly open myself to possibilities of existence outside of an Islamic identity. I was neither pushed nor pulled by other people so much as it has been my own inquisitiveness that has made me stand for grievances I have with this consuming religious influence. [Read more →]

How is it fair to hear the term “Islamic terrorism” in the news every day, but we never hear the word Christian terrorism? Or Jewish terrorism? One would conclude that the latter two do not exist. One would conclude wrongly. Does bankrolling war count as terrorism? Does selling arms count as terrorism? Does going into other countries to “end war” count? Does a history of 500 years of colonialism count? Has slavery ended? Are African-Americans all right? [Read more →]

Boxes of me,
unlabeled,
disorganized,
read only by me.

But I have my notebooks!

What use do I have
for printed impersonality!

A-Ha!
There’s the rub.

I love my own manuscript,
no one else will get
my essence
but in the flesh….

Some say beauty is in the eyes of the beholder,

Or in the eyes of the beheld.

It may just be in the act of beholding itself.

Sometimes I wonder if I really understand anything

Could there be mysteries out there

That can’t be measured or drawn?

And then I feel a fool to even try

Better to close my eyes

And pretend to myself that I make sense.

And then out of the darkness of seclusion

Comes a glint of recognition

And I can come out again, and feel known.

I love beauty in stressful times

like daydreaming on a busy day

art without purpose

kindness without reason

love without money

Magen lived in Wisconsin, had her whole life. She had been upstate, downstate, inside and out, down and out. She had lived a ramshackle life, but from the looks of her, you would have thought she had had a slightly amusing, but none too dangerous or reckless life. The truth is, she had been a foster child, she had been the caretaker of her alcoholic mother and drug-abusing father. She was 23, with the slight frame of a 16 year-old, a pixie with a rounded chin.

She lived to care, to care for her 37 year-old husband, who had seduced her while they worked together at his store at the mall. He was clean-cut, an army vet, who loved spinning yarns about his own misfortune, in a way that was almost unbelievable. That was their congress, the horrors told with a smiling lip, James Joyce over a six-pack of Old Milwaukee. He would complain about his loveless marriage of convenience, done for tax purposes. Complain about having to sleep in a couch in the basement while his wife and two stepchildren slept above the warm eaves, planning their fey futures. Magen felt that she could do better than his army wife, and she aimed to do that.

[Read more →]

It’s thirteen o’clock and I can’t sleep again for the nth time. I sulk in my boxers in front of the kerosene fan and count the magppies on the carpet. Somewhere, a full moon howls. Wife asleep in bed, with the miasma again, and kids tucked safely away, somehow forgetting that death is an imminent possibility every day of the week.

I anticipate the visitor as I do every night now. Two fifty-seven a.m. and she comes.

I open our front door, which opens onto our secret alcove where the neighbors can’t see. She is nineteen, in a halter and boy shorts like the one two times ago, and I invite her in, pretending to pause and size her up. She is eager to please and I am still in a twilight funk.

  [Read more →]

Playing house
is the only game
I’m interested
in playing.

You put a smile
on my face,
worldly sorrows
erase.

The newspapers won’t tell us the truth
because that would offend the advertisers,
the corporations, the crooks, the bankers
who are counting on your money
to keep their payments coming in,
to keep your nose to the grindstone.

The politicians are looking to feed off
the anger of the rabble
and turn it into enormously wasted rhetoric.
They’ve never been in your shoes,
they are planning on the graft,
the perpetual ignorance of the laborer.

Don’t put your faith in vested interests,
it’s only ever been angry mobs
who accomplished anything real.

The ballplayers are doped up,
they are throwing games,
again to feed the bankrollers,
the promoters, the ones who have to bait you
with yesterday’s paychecks
to awaken you from your dreams.

The physicians are pushing the pills
produced in factories
by armies larger than nations.
Health is a dying commodity,
everything published is a lie
at the disposal of the unpossessed.

Plutocracy, kleptocracy,
oligarchy, finally democracy.
I truly believe in aristocracy,
if nobility were fairly assessed.
How holy would be theocracy
if godliness were clothed in naked dress.

Let’s turn the asylums into prisons
Let’s turn the hospitals into prisons
Let’s turn the classrooms into prisons
Let’s turn the factories into prisons
Let’s turn the offices into prisons
Let’s turn the neighborhoods into prisons
Let’s turn the temples into prisons
Let’s turn the prisons into profit

I feel joyful,
I feel powerless,
I feel lonely,
I feel affiliative,
I feel terrified,
I feel secure,
I feel confident,
I feel unsure.

You feel nothing
and criticize everyone
for their personal proclamations.

For one moment,
could you be honest
to your secrets, dreams, and happenings?

When you don’t have time
to be yourself
in the real world,
you find yourself
in a dream world.

Can I share in your good fortune
as you have shared in my bad?

“Atheism is the most militant of religions, not that I give a shit what anyone does or doesn’t believe unless they start telling me what I should think as well. That’s the problem though isn’t it? Every little tribe seems to think it has the market cornered on what is, and isn’t. And all of you refuse to leave everyone the fuck alone and will do whatever you can to try and force everyone to follow *your* way, because somehow - *you* figured it out.

One idiot is blabbering that his god is better than theirs, and you’re whining that we’ve stopped evolving because the words from different languages used to describe the same religious belief are still in use. You’re both prime examples of humans being totally incapable of leaving each other the fuck alone. Who really gives a shit what either of you believe? The people of Libya would doubtfully care about some bible thumping redneck with an internet connection, and the whole of humanity will shuffle on most likely never unanimously agreeing with your “correct” camp either. Guess what Pot? you and your buddy Kettle are nothing more than the same shit, just a different pile.”

-Ray Ward

I don’t want to be jailed,
like a bird in a cage.

I’ll pick my own seeds,
earn my own wage.

Sing unforgettably,
though you’ll soon
misplace my name.

All of us need sunshine,
though the rays
all look the same.

Assault with a salted tip!

my writing is not man-made.

Down, down, far below
Down, down, nobody knows.

Down, down, far below
And I think you’re talking to me,
I don’t know…

Being self-conscious gets in the way of knowing yourself.

Everyone has a mother. Not all of us had moms.