Goat's Heart Soup for your Soul (where the Wild Things Aren't)

As I mentioned in an earlier post, I'm really looking forward to the Spike Jonze take on Maurice Sendak's Where the Wild Things Are. Now that its almost upon us, I'm taken back again to my youth when books really captured my imagination.

To be sure, I still love to read; however, nowhere near as much as I did when I first became aware of seemingly unending world of adventures to be found on the written page. And it was picture books like Where the Wild Things Are that led me to that world.

There's a good write up this morning on the LA Times page, not so much on the movie as on Sendak's groundbreaking work (it's not exactly "family friendly," which was scandalous for a children's book circa 1963).

I certainly dig the visuals I've seen of the flick - they're arresting but still quite faithful to the originals in the book. I'll be lining up to revisit that world come next weekend, for sure.

Speaking of reading, last night I got through a couple chapters of The Men Who Stare at Goats and it's a page turner. Man, have we got some batshit crazy programs - and people - cooking away in the DOD. I guess I knew that, having worked first in the DOD proper as a member of Navy Intelligence and then 14 years thereafter for a company that suckled on its lucrative teet (I know, I know - I'm a hypocrite, but one who's made peace with that now for the most part).

Still, most of the wacky things I was exposed to were generally comprehensible idiocy. The shit in Goats is simply baffling madness, with generals believing people can learn to walk through walls and numerous long running programs training intelligence operatives to be psychic just two of the perhaps more reasonable examples.

I guess none of this is, in the end, all that surprising. But it still shocks the sensibilities and raises my ire when I put the taxpayer hat on. We can invest millions (and indeed over the years, billions) into this sort of thing but public healthcare scares people!?!?!!?

Apparently the "Goat Lab" is still in operation down at Fort Bragg, in a seemingly deserted building filled with de-bleated Billy the Kids (loose lips sink ships or more accurately, 'if a goat bleats word'll leak to the streets'). These goats are then brought into a special room where they are placed in front of men who stare back at them intently, attempting to stop their hearts with the power of thought and the evil eye.

Goats! Huh! What are they good for!?! Absolutely nothing. Good God, y'all!

If successful, these brave operatives will be humanity's only hope come the inevitable war with our goat overlords. We wouldn't want Moses cursing our lack of foresight in some distant future: "You maniacs! You blew it up! Damn you all to hell! Baaaahhhh!"

I'd much prefer: "Get your stinking hooves off me, you damn dirty goat! Or I'll stop your heart with my stink eye!"

You think this merely fantasy?

Google has this year introduced upwards of one hundred goats to its 'payroll.' They're now grazing the property of their Mountain View corporate headquarters, officially as a greener alternative to lawnmowers.

Yeah, right.

Google controls access to the world's information and now is itself controlled by these crafty four-legged devils. They chew and Sergey, Larry and Eric jump. The kids are calling the shots these days and I don't mean the younger generation. Bleating will overtake Tweeting as the Social Media craze with the Google name behind it.

Perhaps the "Goat Lab" budget is money well spent after all. You just need to look at things from the (far) right angle.

Maybe the boys at the Pentagon should form a task force to befriend the Wild Things. Bring them into the fold as part of the 'coalition of the imaginary' against this growing petting zoo axis of evil. A couple hundred million to research the idea ought to start things off on the right foot.

No? Baaahhh!

Seventeen Years Past Due for "Carousel"

iPod Random Shuffle - 8pm on a Sunday. Only a couple of songs recorded in the last 20 years and very few artists that debuted after 1985 (actually, very few after 1979). God I'm a fossil.

• Sulphur to Sugarcane - Elvis Costello
• Rain - Beatles
• London Calling - Clash
• 5ive Gears in Reverse - Elvis Costello
• I Love a man in Uniform - Gang of Four
• Live Through This (are we there yet?) - Groovelily
• Dancing Queen - ABBA
  
• Galileo - Indigo Girls
• Please Mister Postman - Beatles
• Sixty Eight Guns - The Alarm
• Los Angeles - X
  
• The Boys of Summer - Don Henley
• Sleeping with the Television On - Billy Joel
• Backstreets - Bruce Springsteen
• Fortunate Son - Creedence Clearwater Revival
• The Blower's Daughter - Damien Rice
• That's Entertainment - The Jam
• I Melt with You - Modern English
• Private Idaho - B-52s
  
• Dress Rehearsal Rag - Leonard Cohen
• Pale Blue Eyes - Velvet Underground
• Desolation Row - Bob Dylan
• Soul Corruption - Graham Parker
• You cannot Win (if you do not Play) - Steve Forbert
• New York, New York - Nina Hagen
• Gimme Shelter - Rolling Stones
• Gloomy Sunday - Billie Holiday
• God - John Lennon
  
• Parting Gift - Fiona Apple
• Heroin - Velvet Underground
• Suzanne - Leonard Cohen

I realized that I was getting very old after I strained my back into the second mile of what I thought would be a relaxing jog on a mild summer evening. Christ, my body is falling apart, I thought - just a few weeks shy of 47 years. It's the new 27, though, right? Right? Who I am kidding? I'm not jogging, I'm running from the sandmen. When I finally limped up the stairs into the house, I shuffled back through the songs I'd been listening to and it only confirmed what my body had been saying: dinosaur. I couldn't even tell you what passes as 21st century popular, or cutting edge or even shitty music these days.

Gosh - quarter to 9 - almost time to put my dentures in the glass for the evening and tuck into bed ...

And enough entries into this #!)# blog, for crying out loud. You won't have anything left to scream into your pillow.

Anyway, bedtime for bonzo,

Yours truly,
Dorian Gray