Rolling out the trash in Escondido Monday night, this paperback probably fell out of another bin. Under the cover:

DESERT SHOWDOWN

It was hot and still. Far off over the desert a dust devil danced among the Galleta grass and the creosote brush, but I saw no dust of human make. It could be we had shaken them. Maybe we would have no trouble after all.

What made me turn my head I’ll never know, but glancing over my left shoulder I caught just a glimpse of a rifle muzzle as somebody drew sight on me.

Mister, I left off of that rock like I was taking a free dive into a swimmin’ hole, and I hit that heaped-up sand on my shoulder and rolled over. When I came up it was on one knee, the other leg stretched out ahead of me, and my Winchester coming up to firing position.

That was the teaser, of course; got me to the first paragraph.

When I saw that black-eyed woman a-looking at me I wished I had a Bible.

I could see where this hombre was headed.

Read this find to my wife after dinner all excited. She tells me this is why the male species needs to be exterminated.

Louis L’Amour – Mojave Crossing 1964

This is the kind of thing bachelors do, as Joanna is out of town.

I just watched “Hobo With A Shotgun.” Mesmerizingly Brilliant, Astonishingly Insane, Powerfully Profane, and most important, shot in amped up Technicolor. As you may not have time to see it, I have distilled the pivotal essence.

The scene where Rutger Hauer (Blade Runner) confesses his soul to newborn infants at the delivery ward with a bloody shotgun in hand is, if you can believe it, far better than that magnificent Ridley Scott moment, setting free the doves when his hand expires. Cinema rarely has such fine acting moments. This reel is one chomp of existential delivery after another. See it with a vengeance – the minimum is two glasses of wine.

The immortal words:

“A long time ago I…was one of you. You’re all brand new and perfect — no mistakes, no regrets. People look at you and think of how wonderful your future will be. They want you to be something special…like a doctor, or a lawyer. But, I hate to tell you this, but if you grow up here you’re more likely to wind up selling your bodies on the streets, or shooting dope from dirty needles in a bus stop. When you’re successful you’ll make money selling junk to crackheads. And you won’t think twice about killing someone’s wife…because you won’t even know what was wrong in the first place. Or…maybe, you’ll end up like me…a hobo with a shotgun. I hope you can do better. You are the future.”

No more moldy books with underlines, browsing in the stacks, thumbing through middle pages and having to wash your hands. Days gone by. Infinite books ahead.

Not going to use the recommended Adobe EPUB reader –  a piece of crapulent programming. I type in the URL and browse the ebooks, mostly bestsellers. In “New Arrivals” – Steinbeck’s “Mouse and Men”. I click on an old arrival.  ”Place a Hold.” 14 readers pending, “You will receive an email when the selected title becomes available for checkout. Once you receive the email, you will have 3 days to check out the selected title.”

So they have perfectly replicated the worst part of the library experience – having to wait for the single copy that the “library owns.” If I remember correctly, the first ever libraries were medieval with chains attached to the books.

It has been an hour since I placed a book on hold that has (0) Readers waiting. Either the volunteer librarian is still making a PBJ or they are having a heck of a time trying to file the digital book in the Adobe Shelf Filing Software – Civic Edition. But then they probably are sharing the one legitimate license between all the civic libraries forced to participate in some councilmen’s free lunch scheme.

Mark Beaulieu

PS – A week later I get email notice one of the books. You enter your library card # and pass through some hard to follow tree to put the book into a cart. You can check it out for 7 or 14 days. You are supposed to load this .acsm file into the appropriate Adobe software to read it, although I have another reader. I finish in one hour, realizing the book is not my cup of tea. Courteously I go to the library site to let the next reader have it. There is no way to “return” the book or indicate you are finished. Obviously a scam to keep the publishers happy to keep the book out of circulation, yet appear to be offering the title for the community.

The Revolution Will not be Televised
You will not be able to stay home brother.
you will not be able to plug in, turn on and cop out.
you will not be able to lose yourself in a stare in hip hop and skip out for beer during commercials
Because the revolution will be televised

The revolution will not be televised
The revolution will not be brought to you
by Xerox in four parts without commercial interruptions
The revolution will not show you pictures of Nixon blowing a bugle and leading a charge by John Mitchell, General Abrams or Spiro Agnew to eat hog balls confiscated from a Harlem sanctuary
The revolution will not be televised

The revolution will not be brought to you by the shape of the war theatre and will not star Natilie Woods or Steve McQueen or Bullwinkle and Julia
The revolution will not give your mouth sex appeal
The revolution will not get rid of the nubs
The revolution will not make you look five pounds thinner

There will be no pictures of you and Willie Mays pushing that shopping cart down the block on a dead run
or trying to slide that color tv into a stolen ambulance.
NBC will not be able to predict the winner at 8:32
or report from 29 districts
The revolution will not be televised.

There will be no pictures of pigs shooting down brothers on the instant replay
There will be no pictures of pigs shooting down brothers on the instant replay

There will be no pictures of Whitney Young being run out of Harlem on a rail with a brand new process.
There will be no slow motion or still lifes.
or Roy Wilkes strolling through Watts with a bright red and green revolutionary jump suit that he has been saving for just the proper occasion.

Green acres, Beverly Hillbillies, Hooterville Junction will longer be so damn relevant
and women will no longer care if Jack gets down with Jane
because black people will be on a the streets looking for a brighter day
The revolution will not be televised

There will be no hilights on the eleven o’clock news
and no pictures of hairy-armed liberationists
and Jackie Onassis blowing her nose
The theme song will not be written by Jack Webb or Francis Scott Keyes nor sung by Glenn Cambell, Tom Jones, Johnny Cash, Engelbert Humperdink, or the Rare Earth.
The revolution will be back right after a message about a white tornado, white lightning or white people.
You will not have to worry about a germ in your bedroom or a tiger in your tank a giant in your toilet bowl.
The revolution will not go better with coke

The revolution will put you in the driver seat
The revolution will not be televised
The revolution will not be televised
The revolution will not be televised
The revolution will be no rerun brother,
The revolution will be live

Buddy says, “Hey! Sign says, ‘No trespassing. Hopeless Abandoned Waste Dump.’”

Doesn’t stop them.

-Heck of a waste dump, did you get a whiff. B.O. What were we thinking?

Lookie there. Now that is one hell of a toilet, Dan. Gotta admire it. Nine shades of brown.

-Jesus that’s nasty.

Put your head in it.

-You shit’n me? Goddamn, it stinks.

What did you expect? It’s a waste dump. Didn’t you read the sign?

-God almighty! Whole place smells like ass! Light a match for Chrissake! Let’s get outta here!

Imaginarium – Worth it to hear the lyric – “We are the children of the world and we have suffered for your sins” and the visage of Lily Cole’s Valentina, what a lensful.

Inception, the plot? “Man walks into a special effects machine. Things happen.”  Seriously, a finely mad movie of elaborate construction that ends up the design of an architect. The fect of this film is as bad as seeing Jaws for a kid who is going to the beach the next day.  You will never sleep again because when you go to bed and sit up in your jammies, you dream about you sitting up in your jammies. And you are really sitting up in your jammies. That kind of thing. Reminds me of a conversation with Gary Wolf (Wired) when we both determined to have a hundred French meals in San Francisco.  May have been dreaming there.

As any good googler knows, Terry Gilliam never injected his child suffering song into the world wide brain. I listened. Here’s my take. With my devious variant.

The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus

We Are The Children of The World
lyrics: Terry Gilliam

Improved:

You must know again my reluctancy to marry, my feeling that I shatter thereby chances in work which means so much to me.

In our life together I shall not hold you to any medieval code of faithfulness to me, nor shall I consider myself bound to you similarly.

I may have to keep some place where I can go to be myself now and then, for I cannot guarantee to endure at all times the confinements of even an attractive cage.

I must extract a cruel promise, and that is you will let me go in a year if we find no happiness together.

There are whole generations who still don’t believe that men and women both benefit if women are more adventurous, independent and well educated. Amelia’s purpose. I am hoping the best for Hilary Swank’s interpretation. Great Show Mr. Ashbrook.

PS: Saw the movie. The plane goes down.

You hear a grand eloquent tone, re-meaning of words, and the sentencing. It is such a pleasure, I often read sentences out loud. I imagine James Mason intonating  in his airy reserved voice:

In the second century of the Christian Aera, the empire of Rome comprehended the fairest part of the earth, and the most civilized portion of mankind.

In writing about the principled four hundred year decline, Gibbon chronicles the rule of the occasionally good, but mostly snowballing horror of corruption in rulers, tyrannical emperors and their hideous children. The variations of decline include powerfully flawed characters, a maniacal laboratory of runs at governance, jealous rivalries that divide the land, murder as a way to power, locust-like riots that leave empty thrones.  The continued root cause is the failure to establish rule of law in the face of the unmanageable and immoral military rule by terror. A repeated pattern is of the gifted ambitious honorable soldier who learns the way to become a corrupt powerful Praetorian. Through military attacks on his capital he destroys any possible hope of a sustaining a Roman civilization. Occupation after the victory results in surrounding  throngs of the suspicious and the envious defeated. Everyone gets their revenge in the end. Rome’s own military divides the nation, generation after generation.  You watch generations of original vigorous productive people succumb to the heavy corrupt rulings that sap output through a national method of ownership. This comes through forcible theft or official demands for tribute and taxation.

Gibbon produced the Decline in 1776. He sat in the English Parliament neutral on the American Revolution. You cannot help but wonder that he wrote about the character failures of men and women, government, economy, and military as suggestions to the King. THOFTDAFOTRE seems parenthetical to the unwinding British Empire. Consider the broad histories of civilization. Military vs State (Rome); Church vs State (W. Europe); Business vs State (United States). When one complex dictates governance a people become stunted and may not long endure.

The Decline and Fall. What a TV Show.  If ever there were a premise for a Sitcom, the plots and cast have that winning quality of bizarreness and inconceivability. Does anyone sit and snack on generations of ambition and pitiful failure? A morality play per emperor. Fun for the family. Romans rule. If you ever thought Homer Simpson’s family was dysfunctional come take the transcendental bus to Roma.  Dysfunctionality, idiocy and ruin, the best show in the Television kingdom.  With such an onslaught of devastation it is hard to rise above it all to know where mankind must recede next.

Gibbon often has this Highlights for Children, Goofus and Gallant, bad boy and good boy, way of characterizing the stories of obscure emperors. The personalities are richly defined and  he writes in a voice that let’s you distance yourself from the action and make human conclusions. It is inspirational, in an academic way. Just needs a hack or two for a har har.

PS – Best ecopy so far is free for your IPAD in EPUB form at http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/25717

Remember in the 2008 election how so many American popular artists denied Republican candidates from using their material? Few artists are willing to mix with the ever-growing meaner Republican messaging. Where are the Republican artists ? On Fox Entertainment. It appears that FOX is coordinating the delegitimizing of Obama through a clever messaging campaign. It is almost a conspiracy. Even actor Tim Roth is totting Republican story lines. Perhaps his agent is not reading the script as FOX conjures forth a singular message of white males to “take individual action” against the system.

Clearly FOX News fans the Limbaugh hate flame with O’Reilley, Beck, and the milder Hannity.  Then I read British Market chain Waitrose is pulling programming not only from Fox News, but from the entire Fox Network. Less income for shows like “24″, “House”, and “Lie to Me”.  I can see why an unchecked Glen Beck is awful, but the shows too? Then I thought about why advertisers do not want buyers of their products to see corporate association with the deep “art messaging” of the network. The writers for FOX are now writing stories and constructing dialog, coded at having the individual white male kill individuals of black authority.

To Wit : This week (Oct 5-9 2009) on television.

Article 1: On “House”, after much ado, a white staff doctor successfully infects and kills a powerful black dictator (masterfully played by James Earl Jones). The doctor, with little information to go on,  judges this man’s life and future with handwringing certainty. But most artists don’t lead the audience this way. On ER I don’t know how many times an obvious criminal was saved on the operating table by conflicted doctors who would commiserate with their staff. The Fox style is – no need to consult – just do what you think is right in your prejudiced mind – even a doctor can murder. (but no abortions please).  Kill that great political black leader.  You can do it, and your supervisors will look the other way because “you believe it is right”.  An doctor’s will to power is greater than even the Hippocratic oath.

Article 2: The climax of the  FOX program “Lie To Me” is when a barrel-chested white man – the diameter of Rush Limbaugh – shoots dead an attorney who represents the truthful views of the murderer’s daughter about love-making with a Black athlete.  Usually a writing staff shows their miracle actors have decoded evil intent and head it off – in the nick of time. Instead they story “satisfies” the FOX TV viewing audience who get to see the white man get even with a system by killing a person who with an internal turmoil rightly defends a black man. The writers can’t stop here, they give a line to the (ignorant?) Tim Roth who watches the apprehended murderer of a great attorney loved by Tim’s wife say only. “He looks at peace” as the police presses the criminal head down into the squad car. The more truthful observation, “He has murdered not only a great law keeper, but his daughter’s relationship. What a monstrous race we have become.”

FOX is certainly in the programming business, of both news and entertainment. Programming used to refer to the blocking of time, but clearly it is about programming the shape of people’s opinions. The artists of Fox should strike to keep their art and dignity like those artists in 2008. Fortunately, the smart advertisers are not willing to subsidize the reach of this kind of messaging. It doesn’t make cents.

When will 60 Minutes pick up this line of argumentation about the state of our political willpower in democracy. Or even better Mr. Taibbi’s analysis of the financial crisis. The CBS Show has gone soft. The used to be able to do what Bill Mahar does as in the segment looking at outrageously angry teabagger imagining Hitlarian Socialism compared to desperate people in line in the dark of night at LA Stadium to get basic medical help.