John Shirley Blog

The Culture of the Presidency Matters More than All Obama’s Promises

John Shirley — Thu, 17 May 2012 03:34:17 +0000

My new piece, quite short, at THE RAW STORY / CULTURE CLUTCH dept. Read it at:

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2012/05/15/411966/

Our Cats are Concerned

John Shirley — Tue, 15 May 2012 19:33:02 +0000

Our cats are concerned about our lack of understanding of basic anatomy. Of course house cats that go outdoors will often leave dead animals, a kind of offering to its den-mates, on the doorstep, but these cats like to leave viscera, which appear to be neatly removed from the prey’s Body. A single tiny liver, neatly snipped out. A stomach, just a stomach. A length of intestine. A heart. All closely resembling human viscera but like doll-house miniatures. It’s like having Jack the Ripper as a pet. I expect a note attached to the viscera soon, “From hell”…

NON-FICTION ESSAYS, mostly short, by YOURS TRULY – linked here…

John Shirley — Mon, 14 May 2012 19:54:31 +0000

FOR EXAMPLE, these pieces:

The Next Fifty Years: Why I’m Optimistic Because Everything Will Be Terrible…

The Shadows of Ideas: A Distant Glimpse of Gurdjieff

Ecstasy and “Being Congruent”

Curmudgeon or Culture Critic?

My Exercise in Constructive Megalomania

Douglas Adams and the Wisdom of Madness

Those and more at:
http://www.darkecho.com/JohnShirley/jsnonfic.html

I’m now writing for THE RAW STORY – here’s my 2nd article

John Shirley — Tue, 08 May 2012 18:54:49 +0000

These short pieces will be at the CULTURE CLUTCH page. They’re social commentary, critique of media, and so on. My first piece is a light hearted discussion of “the old ultra violence” in big money movies. Here’s a link to the second one:

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2012/05/08/forward-obama/

“When I was young, it was more important…”

John Shirley — Sun, 06 May 2012 20:27:06 +0000

When you’re young, your adversary (to simplify) is youth itself, your youth; when you’re old, your adversary is old age.

If you say, JS, you’re wrong about my youth, it was never my adversary, I would suggest you failed to recognize the enemy. It was, but you didn’t know it. If you’re older and you say JS, you’re wrong, old age is not my adversary, then I would suggest you’re in denial–but remember, I said it was your *adversary*…I didn’t say it was the victor.

Whose Bubble Am I In?

John Shirley — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 20:39:18 +0000

Bill Maher says Republicans live in “a bubble”; certain information is not allowed in through the bubble, he says. Kind of true, yeah. Naturally, if you suggest this to a conservative they’ll say, “No, it’s liberals who are filtering out facts.”

Still–someone conservative recently said to me, “Obama lied when he said he’d go over budgetary items line by line and eliminate unnecessary ones.” But actually Obama did go over the the budget that way–and he eliminated unnecessary items. This person simply took Fox News’ (or Breitbart, Newsmax, etc) word that Obama didn’t do what he said he’d do. But it’s documented–he did do it. And he is still doing it.

It’s about your information source. Yes, I do think the New York Times is usually fairer than right-wing news sources. Usually is the best we can hope for in a free society.

Purple Brains, Purple Brains

John Shirley — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 06:51:58 +0000

I was in a store recently and they were playing Prince’s “Purple Rain”, a song I know well. Too well. It stuck in my head. Earworm. Something in the brain, really. What’s up with that phenomenon? It’s just another glitch of human brain 1.0 (starting with Homo Sapiens).

I started singing it to my dog but amusing myself by singing, “Purple brains, purple brains” instead of purple rain. Now THAT is stuck in my mind. I’m hearing “purple brains, purple brains” over and over to the tune.

HELP ME I’M TRAPPED IN MY BRAIN. My purple brain…purple brain…

Good Shows Chewed to the Bone By Hungry Hounds

John Shirley — Sat, 21 Apr 2012 22:20:07 +0000

I really suspect there are so many people with the job (or, “job”) of media criticism, that the corrosiveness of over analysis and blind critique can destroy good television shows, undermine perfectly okay movies, killing those projects in the cradle. The internet and cable tv and the plethora of media-fixated publications has created an excess of “critics”. Most of them are just bozos. I’m not opposed to critics. There are smart ones around. I’m opposed to people who are using the position for asshole reasons and don’t really take it seriously. They don’t care what damage they do as long as they made (or think they made) an impression. There’s a whole spreading phenomenon of “off the top of my head” Attention-Deficit media crit out there. . .

Some guy trying to make his name as a media critic, trying to get a job watching things, which is all he’s good at, takes cheap shots at an HBO show, or some other, and if he does it in an infectious way people pick up on it and they say, “Oh I heard that one was a one-trick show.” Or, “its characters are two dimensional.” This is after *one* episode. Shows GROW. Really, a lot of the criticism amounts to, “While this show delivers [four great qualities and entertainment], it fails to deliver pizza.” That is, there’s ONE THING it’s short on.

Well it’s Chinese food, dude, it’s not pizza

To make billions, market a thing as its opposite

John Shirley — Fri, 20 Apr 2012 06:52:19 +0000

When they market smartphones, they suggest, in the ads, that they allow you to connect with life, with the world, where you couldn’t have before; you never have to be disconnected from “the world”, they say, if you buy these things. I see people using them constantly, on street corners, in parks, in stores, around their children. I never saw more disconnected people.

But marketing something as its opposite is an American tradition.

Yes I’m on a computer now. But going out in the world, one should have a relationship to the world, or one shrivels inside.

Obama will Make Mistakes. But HE is not a mistake…

John Shirley — Wed, 18 Apr 2012 23:55:41 +0000

Obama will make mistakes. Sometimes he takes bad advice–Hell he’s got way too much information to sort through. He has been, I think, persuaded to be too tolerant of Monsanto and he’s into Natural Gas as a replacement for other fuels since it pollutes far less…so he listens to the wrong side on fracking. So far he does not seem to be getting the real data on fracking…

But here’s your choice for November: Obama may make mistakes but he is a good man. Romney is *not* a good man. Make your choice.