The Benghazi Scandal: The lies about the lies

As to the youtube video lie (and I think “lie” is exactly the right word to describe it when people purposefully tell you things that they know are untrue, don’t you?) unbelievably, the Obama Administration is STILL sticking to their story that their source for that bullshit was the CIA. When the recently released CIA emails clearly show that the CIA was saying from day one that it was “Al Queda” and a well-orchestrated “terrorist attack.” And get this: There is NO mention in the CIA emails about any youtube video. (http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/newly-released-benghazi-emails-directly-contradict-white-house-claims_724603.html )

But what else can the Obama White House say at this point except to stick to their lie that the CIA was their source (the lie about the lie, as it were)? And just hope they can bullshit their way through with lawyer-style BS and splitting of hairs. Their only other alternative is to tell the truth (that would be a novel approach for this administration) that in fact THEY MADE UP THE WHOLE FUCKING STORY FROM THE BEGINNING!!!!!

The Benghazi Scandal

The Obama White House could have easily cleared up the Benghazi mess by answering two very simple questions: 1.) Who made up the youtube video lie? 2.) And why did they make up the youtube video lie?

Instead we’ve gotten 7 months (and counting) of political double-talk (“What difference does it make what lies we tell you?!!!”). Can anyone on the internet answer these two very simple questions for me? I’ve even numbered them — number one and number two — to make it especially easy to address them.

Obama

 So Obama’s position basically is that:  1.)  He didn’t know anything about the Benghazi scandal.  2.)   He didn’t know anything about the IRS scandal.   3.)  He didn’t know anything about the AP wiretap scandal.  And 4.)  He didn’t know anything about the Fast and Furious scandal (oh don’t even get me started on that one).  And now Obama assures us he’s gonna authorize a complete and full investigation to make sure that this kind of tomfoolery never, never, EVER happens again.  Wonderful.   Obama can basically take one of two positions:  1.) He’s a complete idiot, or 2.) he’s a lying sack of shit.

I voted for Obama in 2008.  Like a lot of people I was hoping for the best.   My opinion?  The Obama Administration is about as dirty as it gets.  Oh well, at least he wasn’t as bad as George Bush.  That stupid imbecile.   P.S.  Don’t bother to audit me for making these critical comments about Obama.  I’ve got like 20 bucks in the bank.  You slimeballs.

Berkeley weirdos

I don’t know who wrote this but it’s right on the money.

• Berkeley eccentrics are not like SF eccentrics. The most unconventional residents of this East Bay city tend to have a lot more political gusto, are more concentrated in a particular area (near the UC Berkeley campus), and probably did a lot more drugs. Still, these characters are cherished by the community, kinda like how you still love your weird, smelly uncle. Since The Bold Italic and San Francisco are home to so many proud Bears (Cal Bears, gay bears, and gay Cal Bears), we present a list of Berkeley’s most notable eccentrics.

Known to generations of Cal students as “Patches” for the colorful embroidered patches he sells along Telegraph Ave., the lovable street vendor – Berkeley’s “last hippie” – Robert Meister has also made himself famous by allegedly selling special cookies to eager freshmen. 

The Happy Happy Happy guy repeatedly yells “Happy, Happy, Happy!” He’s known for standing at the entrance of Sproul Plaza on a bucket while wearing a straw hat (or two), big glasses, and at least three vaguely political, anti-imperialist handwritten posters at a time. Sometimes he yells sarcastic things or points at people who disagree with him and changes his tune to “CIA! CIA! CIA!”

Triangle Man got his name from his very buff upper body that happens to be shaped like a triangle. His stomping grounds included the Recreational Sports Facility (RSF), Crossroads, and the Asian food ghetto. If his arm weights don’t give him away, his shirts are tight enough to clue you in to homeboy’s hard-core workout regime.

Arguably the most intellectual hobo in Berkeley, Hate Man, aka Mark Hawthorne, used to be a New York Times journalist, a Peace Corps volunteer, and an Air Force vet before he abandoned it all to live in People’s Park. For the past 25 years he has established his own philosophy based on hate and “oppositionality.” No one is sure yet if the dress he usually wears is a necessary part of the philosophy. To start a conversation with Hate Man make sure you start with “Fuck you.”

Not since the Free Speech Movement has UC Berkeley become so well known in the national media than for the infamous Berkeley tree sitters who began their lofted protest in 2006. Zachary RunningWolf was the leader of the tree-huggers, who sat for days in an allegedly sacred grove protesting the construction of a new football stadium. Eventually, in 2008, the trees and the sitters came down. In 2012, RunningWolf ran for mayor of Berkeley, which didn’t quite work out either.

Korean religious leader Sun Myung Moon became famous as the founder of the Unification Church, and his mass weddings involved hundreds of his followers who were known as Moonies. The cult had a strong presence in the hippie town throughout the 1970s and continues to be active on Berkeley’s campus today, with members often carrying posters of the blessed Moon’s face near the entrance to Sproul Plaza.

The Rawr man roams the streets of South Berkeley roaring at passersby. Kinda like the Bush Man in SF, he has been known to jump out with a ferocious growl and scare the bejeebies out of innocent walkers, much to the enjoyment of anyone nearby. Or you can engage in a Wu-Tang inspired call-and-response and ask the onomatopoeia-loving man, “How do you like it?” I think you know what the response might be.

Cal’s lovable and semi-creepy mascot has been an eccentric at UC Berkeley since 1941, when Oski took the place of live bear mascots. Oski can be seen at pep rallies and games dancing awkwardly and taking pictures with sorority girls. Plus, he’s in a secret society – Order of the Golden Bear – with ex-chancellors and ex–Rally Committee presidents.

The Yoshua guy is named after the T-shirt he is always wearing that says “Yoshua” (Jesus’ name in Hebrew) on it. He’s known for making bullshit predictions about when the world will end and writing them on a standing chalkboard he sets up at the entrance to Sproul. He also carries a Bible and flyers that nobody wants, and will talk your ear off about why he wasn’t totally wrong about the Armageddons of past that he had predicted.

A Cal student in the 1990s, Andrew Martinez made a name for himself as a nudist – he went to class, parties, and even the dining hall completely naked. Even though he was a media favorite and made appearances on numerous TV shows, the Naked Guy was expelled from the university in 1992 after a new rule passed requiring clothing in public. Things went south after that. The Naked Guy wandered around Berkeley pushing a shopping cart full of rocks until he was arrested and spent the remainder of his years between jail and mental institutions. In 2006 he suffocated himself in his cell at Santa Clara jail.

Through the ’80s and ’90s, Rick Starr could be spotted singing Big Band–era hits on UC Berkeley’s Sproul Plaza. Wearing a tacky suit and hat, he carried a microphone that wasn’t plugged into anything, and, like a true lounge singer, was known for interjecting commentary mid-song to passersby (“You’re beautiful!”). He was charged with malicious disturbance of the peace in 1992 for singing too loudly, but if singing Sinatra terribly is so wrong, who would want to be right? He faded from the Berkeley scene in the early 2000s saying he felt unappreciated, but his fans can find him on Facebook and occasionally performing in Oakland.

Stoney Burke, aka the old political guy who hangs out in front of Dwinelle Hall, makes you question your life choices. He has blue hair and a bagful of props: a rubber chicken, American flag pants, and a bullhorn, to start. His best material is making fun of people wearing suits, or students with majors he thinks are useless. He satirically pretends to be a Republican conservative to get kids to engage with him, and he upsets freshmen in the name of free speech and lulz.

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People’s Park 44th Anniversary Show

 

 

Welcome to Berkeley’s legendary People’s Park, home of the freaks land of the strange.

 

 

Hate Man pushing shoulders at the People’s Park 44th Anniversary show.

 

 

 People clustering for some reason, live in People’s Park.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 Homage to famous Berkeley activist Zachary Running Wolf.

 

 

 

Needless to say, Right On! 

 

 

 

Mural of Hate Man painted by me and Duncan on the Peeple’s Park bathroom. 

 

 

 Michael Delacour, co-founder of People’s Park (1969) live in People’s Park.

 

 

Alcoholic beverage live in Prepull’s Puke. 

 

 

Hot chick rocknroll singers live in Parkle’s Puck. 

 

 

The heroic Fud Nut Buds stuffing vegan food in people’s faces live in Parkle’s Peeps. 

 

 

 

 Me urinating live in Pupple’s Pork.

 

 

 Moby’s cool flier live in Purple’s Peak.

 

 

Live from Pipple’s Pawk. 

 

 

 My goddam face live in Peeeeepull’s Porch

 

 

And a wonderful time was had by all.  44 years old.  Long may you rock, People’s Park. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Weird Sex

 

 

 

 

Over the years of doing my field research while living amongst a tribe of feral cats I’ve witnessed some peculiar feline behavior, re the sex life of cats.  For instance:

Cats usually have sex in the traditional doggy-style position (though I’m sure they hate that term).  But I’ve seen them having sex in the missionary possition, too.

When they’re having sex the tom will often sink its teeth in the back of the female’s neck to give it better leverage.  Sometimes the tom will go too far and cause real pain causing the female to turn around and slash the tom in the face.  Then she stands there for a couple seconds glaring at him like she’s thinking:   “Sure, I like a little rough, kinky sex, but knock it off, asshole!”   Then they resume.

Cats have a peculiar mating ritual.  When the female is in heat the tomcat will stalk the female everywhere she goes for hours, usually staying about 20 feet behind the female.  The female will play hard to get and do everything she can, seemingly, to ditch the annoying male stalker.  But every now and then she’ll actually succeed in losing the tom.  And then she immediately backtracks so she can find the tom and they can start the mating dance all over again.   Isn’t that just like a woman?

One time I saw a female trudge down the hill about 100 feet with a tom attached to the back of her, pumping away the whole time.  When the female finally got to the catfood dish by the creek she immediately flicked the male off of her and went about eating her breakfast.  Feral cats really aren’t very romantic.

Cats will risk their lives to have sex.   One time this tom chased this female up a tree and she walked all the way to the end of this long branch about 30 feet off the ground to get away from the dude.   The male followed her all the way to the end of the branch.  Then this other female who had the horns out for the tom climbed up on the branch with them.  So now all 3 are stuck up there in this log-jam.  Finally, after about 10 minutes of standing there in confusion, they figured:  “Hey, this is stupid.  Lets get down from this damn tree.”  And they scurried back down.

Sometimes my cats will lick eachother in the face for long periods.  I don’t know if they’re just grooming eachother or what.  But it sure looks like they’re kissing.

The whole mating ritual usually starts with the male and female singing back and forth to eachother.  Its like a Sonny and Cher point-counterpoint kind of love ballad.  At first you think they’re fighting because it sounds similiar to when cats are hissing at eachother in combat (and they don’t call it the battle of the sexes for nothing).  This eerie, high-pitched, squealing wail.  But it has this unmistakable yearning sound to it.  I always wish I could record it, I’ll bet I could get a hit record out of the deal.  And I always suspected that if you played it at slow speed the cat sounds would translate into English like a Barry White record:  “Baby, baby, baby lets get down tonight, everybody wang chung, tonight.”

This one feral cat, he was obviously the leader of the pack.  He was the most assertive, the most dominant, the most intelligent, he was always first in line and the other cats always stayed two steps behind him and followed his lead.  So I named him King Cat.  But then one day I saw King Cat getting screwed by this tom so I had to change “his” name.

 

 

 

 

Synchronicity part II

Its a weird story how I met my pal Mary Mayhem. And it really makes me wonder whether life is just a random series of accidents, or if its predestination, or what the hell is going on. It makes me wonder how much control we have over what happens to us.

Some people, like the existentialists, think there’s no rhyme or reason to life. Life is just a random series of events with no deeper meaning (and there’s a lot of evidence to back up this theory, like the seemingly endless series of convoluted messes that make up my daily life). Myself, I’ve always believed there’s an inherent order to human life. I mean, the universe itself is so intricately ordered. The earth is revolving around the sun in an exact order that we can measure, and the sun is beaming light to earth from about 3.72 million light years away (give or take a few feet) which is regulating the tempature here in Berkeley at this exact moment at 72 degrees farenheit. If I jump off a 10 story building, according to the laws of physics and mass and volume and all that crap, my guts will splatter like tomatoes all over the sidewalk in intricate, exact and colorful patterns (and I suppose you could take a photo of the patterns and call it Art but thats another story). So if the physical world is so intricately ordered my great philosophical leap of faith is that life must also be ordered on the moral level and the karmic level (even as I often can’t see the order of those levels). I think it was Edgar Casey who said: “Everything is appropriate.”

Anyways, it was January of 1980 and I had recently turned 23 years old. I’d spent the previous 4 years as a homeless bum in San Francisco’s Tenderloin district and as a bike messenger living in flophouse hotel rooms. So I decided to see if I could elevate my life a little bit. Take charge! Take the bull by the horns! Pull myself up by my own bootstraps! Take bold and direct action! Get MY Shit Together! So I started devising all these master plans to get my life moving in the right direction (even as most of my plans usually went from point A to point B to point Q37 if you know what I mean — the best laid plans of mice and men often turn into comvoluted fucked-up shit). So anyways, I got a nice, clean-cut haircut and I bought a clean pair of clothes and I decided to apply for a normal job and see if I could be a normal human being (I’ll try anything once). So I get the want ads from today’s paper and I get a whole bunch of nickels, dimes and quarters and I go down to the payphone on the corner and I start making all these phonecalls to prospective employers. Pretty soon I had used up almost all my change without hitting on anything. Then I saw this ad for a phone salesman at the Oakland Tribune. It didn’t look very promising, just a minimum wage crap job. But I figured what the hell, if I got one more quarter in my pocket I’ll make the call. If not, the hell with it. Turns out I had one last quarter, so I made the call, I got the job, and I would meet Mary Mayhem at that job, and I would fall madly in love with Mary for the next 13 years. And just about everything that happened to me in the course of my life during the next 13 years was somehow connected to and/or directly effected by Mary (anyone who has ever “fallen in love” can verify that it is a powerful force that can lead you down all sorts of avenues of abnormal psychology).

So anyways, to make a long story short, sometimes I’ll be thinking that I’m the captain of my soul and the master of my destiny and all that crap. And I’ll be plotting and scheming like a chessmaster to figure out how to move my life in the exact direction that I want to take it. And I’ll think: “Yeah, but no matter how much I plot and scheme, my life would have turned out COMPLETELY differently simply if I hadn’t had that one last quarter in my pocket.” The weird thing to consider is that the whole course of my life was basically changed by the flip of a coin.

Synchronicity

There’s a weird synchronicity to life.  Its like there’s this mysterious Unseen Hand that is manipulating events behind the scenes.

It was June 25, 2009 and I was walking to the hospital to visit my best friend, B. N. Duncan, for the last time (he was on his death bed).  As I walked I was listening to my transistor radio and all the news stations were talking about the actress Farrah Fawcett who had just died.  Later, as I walked back (after two hours of watching my best friend go through his death throes) I passed these young black boys who were playing in front of their house.  “Did you hear?” one of them said to the other. “Michael just died.”  Michael Jackson had just died.   I felt like I was hallucinating.

A couple days later, me and Duncan’s sister are at Duncan’s storage locker sorting through all of Duncan’s crap in this outdoor courtyard.  “We had better pack up early today,” said Duncan’s sister who is kind of psychic.  “I think its going to rain.”  “Thats ridiculous,” I said.  “It never rains in June.”   But sure enough it started to sprinkle.  So we packed up and I walked up to People’s Park in the drizzle to hang out with Hate Man.  Hate Man was hanging by the bulletin board.  I had blown up Duncan’s obituary from the Oakland Tribune on an 11-by-17 xerox and posted it in the middle of the bulletin board.  Suddenly, I swear to God with Hate Man as my witness, this huge and bright rainbow appeared in the sky from one side of the horizon to the other.  And the bulletin board was EXACTLY centered in the middle of the rainbow.  There was a big photo of Duncan’s face in the middle of the obituary, and it was if he had picked the perfect place to stare up at the rainbow. Like he had staged this fantastic farewell to the town he loved.

Later that night I was trudging up to my campsight in the Berkeley hills.  There was a big rock concert at the Greek Theatre, this outdoor stadium, and the music was wafting in the air.  This cosmic, celestial song about soaring in the “atmosphere.”   I recognized the song from this alternative radio station that sometimes played it.  “Do you know who this band is?”  I asked this woman who was headed towards her parked car.  “Its Death Cab for Cuties,” she said.  And it was perfect.  Because that old cutie Duncan was soaring through the atmosphere in his death cab on his way to the next life.

If you wrote scenes like that in a movie it would be hokey and unbelievable.  But real life is weirder than any movie I’ve ever seen.

The “Telegraph Avenue Street Music” CD

Some of the artists who appeared on the “Telegraph Avenue Street Music” CD in 1994.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sproul Plaza

 

 

 

 

There’s a lot of history to Sproul Plaza on the UC Berkeley campus. Its where Mario Savio helped to launch the Free Speech Movement in 1964 when he stood on top of a police car that had been surrounded by a huge mob of protesters and delivered his famous speech about “the operation of the machine being so odious” and “throwing your body in the gears” and all that. It was the seminal moment of what Berkeley would become over the next 6 decades. All that “radical Berkeley,” “the People’s Republic of Berkeley,” and “Berzerkeley” stuff that lives on today in the popular imagination (before the ’60s Berkeley would regularly elect Republican mayors, believe it or not). Today there’s a commemorative plaque on the Sproul Plaza steps in honor of the occassion.

 

 

 

 

 

Sproul Plaza was also the scene of a huge anti-war rally in 1965 that Ken Kesey supposedly subverted with his psychedelic harmonica act (as immortalized in the “Electric Koolaide Acid Tests” book).

Charles Manson famously met his first Manson Family follower sitting on the very steps of the Student Union Building playing his guitar, fresh out of San Quentin in 1967 just in time for the fabled Summer of Love. A young UC Berkeley co-ed was so impressed with Charlie’s guitar-playing grooviness that she would carve an X in her forehead 2 years later in his honor (no commemorative plaque for that one).

 

 

 

 

Then there’s the Pauley Ballroom on the second floor of the Student Union Building. In 1969 Timothy Leary hosted one of his LSD freak-out parties there (needless to say a groovy time was had by all).

I first started hanging out regularly in Sproul Plaza around 1987. My comic strip was appearing every day in the campus newspaper. So I’d walk behind people who were reading the paper and look over their shoulder to see if they were reading my comic. Sick, aren’t I?

And I spent 10 years in the 1990s hanging on Sproul with Hate Man and his legendary Hate Camp, this motley collection of street crazies. Sproul Plaza was like a stage where we enacted countless mad dramas. Some of which I can still sorta’ remember. . .

 

 

 

 

Yesterday I was sitting on this bench that we used to refer to as Bench One (because its the first bench when you first enter the campus). And I remembered sitting on that very bench back in the summer of 1974 when I visited Berkeley for the first time as a 17-year-old boy. I used to buy an Orange Julius at this cafe across the street (an Orange Julius was this hippie concoction made up of orange juice and raw egg — today the place is a Subway sandwhich fast food chain, which seems symbolic of something or other). I’d sit there on the bench, sipping my drink, and watching the mad hippie circus that was Berkeley circa 1974. So its a weird feeling for me to be sitting on that bench nowadays. Because I’ll think of all the people who have come and gone over the years. And yet I’m still here. It all seems like a dream. Its like I’m trapped in a twilight zone. I swear, life is like a Rip Van Winkle deal. Its like I went to bed as a 17-year-old boy and woke up as an old man 40 years later. And all the people I once knew are gone. And the town of Berkeley that I had once lived in is gone, gone, gone. It all went by in a blink of an eye. But sometimes, if I squint my eyes just right I can still see the ghost of the 17-year-old boy that I had once been.