Too Hot to Handle, Too Cold to Survive

Good Evening Friends, welcome again to another episode of Lies & Diversions. Tonight, as we lean back in our office style swivel chairs, surrounded by the warmth of a glowing fireplace brightening our War Rooms, we invite you to take a little trip with us into certain, rather frightful places, some call it the unknown, but that would be only because they have not been paying attention.  They have been paying attention to the aps and features on their bluetoothed phones between absent-minded mouthfuls of whatever high cholesterol, fructosed, BHT preserved and crunchy crackling bag contents they've sequestered in their desk drawers, occasionally spraying large gulps of green Monster on the desktop.  They think you are laughing with them because they are funny, but you are laughing at them because maligning them is not spiritually healthy.

As a mood-setting prelude for tonight's episode, here are a few select lyrics from "Desolation Row" off the Highway 61 Revisited album.  Are you going to ask me who wrote them?

... They're selling postcards of the hanging
They're painting the passports brown
The beauty parlor is filled with sailors
The circus is in town
Here comes the blind commissioner
They've got him in a trance
One hand is tied to the tight-rope walker
The other is in his pants
And the riot squad they're restless
They need somewhere to go
As lady and I look out tonight
From desolation row ...

... Yes, I received your letter yesterday

(about the time the door knob broke)
When you asked how I was doing
Was that some kind of joke?
All these people that you mention
Yes, I know them, they're quite lame
I had to rearrange their faces
And give them all another name
Right now I can't read too good
Don't send me no more letters no
Not unless you mail them
From desolation row

If you'd rather listen than read poetry, visit the link and turn up your speakers, although this particular version has a skippable ad before the stills.  Why can't we view the original?  Because standards and licensing agencies appear to have found something objectionable about desolation.  "This video contains content from SME and The Harry Fox Agency, Inc. (HFA), one or more of whom have blocked it in your country on copyright grounds." Cough, cough...

It is interesting to me that Visible's recommendation of the film, Memento, so remarkably captures visually much of the same high weirdness, tragedy and romance we pondered over the years listening to Dylan's musical metaphors.  Thank you Vizzy.  In Memento, with the funky sexy Guy Pierce (also in The Road, the calming father with his family at the beach) as our protagonist who has lost his short-term memory, aka the inability to make new memories.  Check out the trailer and skip the brief Jurrasic Park-extreme ad if you like. Memento is THE perfect film for these times, crazy, backwards and forwards, completely lacking the continuity necessary for making sense in our once civilized world of dates, calendars, clocks and schedules big and small.  I suggested you see it last summer, but if you have not done so yet, let me remind you again, its very, very good.  Easy to rent too.


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I read Clusterfuck Nation every Monday morning.  Its just what I do, along with all the other blogs on my bloglist.  I don't usually comment there because its a crowded house and heavy on self-adverts, but Mr. K's entertaining writing style and take on our state of affairs are always interesting, often localized, you get a clear picture of what seedy desolation has overtaken upstate NY and much of small town New England.  This Monday's read contained a link it would be well worth your while to investigate.  Kunstler never links and I'm not going to give you a direct link.  I think you will find out why when you visit the sole link wedged into the middle of Kunstler's essay.  You can't miss it, it ties together more than a few billboarded and blathering diversions and puts truth to your worst suspicions, if you have them, if you allow yourself to ask the hard questions, if you are able to grasp a complex concept and follow it to its natural outsome.  Some of you may not be shocked at all.  Some of you may even have known all along the BRICS are well underway in their program.  There is no way our overlords will take this oncoming economic ostracisation sitting back, handwringing, unless action is taken before the fact - which may happen.  The MSM just ignores it, continuing on with gay marriage, the downfall of Lilo, powerball frauds and absurd employment/home sales statistics.

Decide for yourselves and feel free to comment even if you have never commented here before.  This needs discussion.  It does appear we are facing Memento on Desolation Row come round at last.  All that we have been preparing for, all along, was this.  We may not have to prepare anymore because if we've been good, loving, compassionate little persons, we might soon wind up on Pandora with our beloved Scout, ..neil..  HI NEIL!