Nations bank commercials and Janet’s Jackson’s tits.

we have just recently found out that there is a publicist that our label had hired that makes her living from ripping bands and record labels off. She does some work and then after she gets paid she doesn’t work anymore and never follows up. churn and burn. We had hired her before we did any research on her. just kind of took her at her word. She talked a great talk. So we ran with her. little did we knew that soon she would be running one way and we would be running the other. Our bad for not checking her out more. I spoke with our lawyer on Friday about her and told him, “Shark, in this case. I want you to bring the hammer all the way down. I want you to crush her. No matter how much it costs.” It turns out that she has done this to a fair share of people.

what's amazing is the shock one feels when confronted with something like this. with a person like this. when I first found out from our label what was happening, I had to run downstairs and guzzle down a mojito. Just to ease my anxiety. After all I was the one who recommended her so readily. Because she talked such a good talk. But after I heard that she had taken close to four thousand dollars so far and almost produced nothing, that our other publicists were fuming that we had hired her, that our label reps were fuming... well, at first I was feeling pretty dejected. Betrayed. You know. the usual.

After I had a drink I felt better. I realized that there was no use in feeling anything at all about the situation. it was business. better to move on. Sue her and let the courts work her out. if she really didn't do the work she contracted to do, she’ll pay us back. simple enough. You can’t make sense of people who lie. They lie. They're in their own weird little world. and there is no making sense of it if you don't operate in that world. what this woman needs is to acknowledge times past when she was lied to and hurt by it. she is probably holding onto a big ball of pain and anger inside from being lied to in the past. And in response to it she is on a lying rampage so to speak. Lying to and cheating everyone she can get her hands on. She can then move on to start acknowledging everyone she herself has lied to and begin to make amends to them. that's if she wants to change. If she even sees the benefit in it. if not, this may never happen for her. and she is the one who will continue to suffer.

Someone at the label said to me about the situation, ‘I can’t believe this lady is doing this to so many people. what the hell is she thinking?’ I replied, ‘she's not thinking. she's lying. And when a person is lying to so many people like that, they are lying to themselves even more. that's the only way they can get away with it. I'll bet you that consciously she has no clue what she is doing. Her higher self disappeared long ago. Hiding somewhere deep in her subconscious, scared shitless to show itself for fear it will get hurt again. We just need to bring her out of her coma. We’ll sue her. she’ll argue and kick and scream for a while, and then maybe it’ll get to her. maybe she’ll wake up. it could be really good for her for someone to call her bluff. who knows.’ ‘Fishy you're a bigger man than I am,’ Angel says to me in response. ‘Angel, you're not a man.’ ‘You know what I mean.’

Later that night I'm relaxing for the evening watching some news on TV. Talk about lies. The American news channels are filled with them. it’s a big game of deception that we all play into. and worse, we know it. we beg for it. the reality TV shows that we know are staged. The commercials that we are know are faked. I was in a daze last night. just wiped out from a very long day. half numb watching this amazing array of crap that people take in everyday on the TV. I have been doing this for about two weeks now. after a long day I come home and I just sit there and scroll through all the channels on the TV. Normally I don't watch the TV. But I thought it would be fun to see what the average American mind consumes on a daily basis. [some girl says to me something about the OC. I apologized that I didn't know what that was. Turns out that its a TV show of some kind. She started laughing. Now of course I was laughing myself. But not for the same reason she was laughing. I couldn’t imagine not having enough to do with your life to know anything about TV, but I didn't say anything to her. I was just laughing. In times past I would have ripped into her for being such a mainstreamer. But these days, I don't know, I guess I have discovered a new tolerance inside of myself. Anyway, I thought it might be fun to flip through some TV and see what was out there.] You keep thinking you are going to get to something good, something valuable, something honest. And sometimes you do. but that is very rare. [tlc, discovery, pbs, VH1 classics is a great channel, cspan, nightline. There are certainly some good things out there. but mostly the TV is just a bunch of worthless crap. and you are left with this feeling of shock and disbelief. Even the short haired and bespeckled College educated news anchors are just winging it in idiotville most of the time. You switch to them, hoping for a moment of clarity or some kind of light in the dark. They are seeing the trees just as they're supposed to, but they aren’t seeing the forest at all. And that's the way its set up. for people to get so deep inside the matrix that they never see the big picture. So they not only don't see the lies, they become part of the big lie machine and they don't even know it.

Take that show crossfire for instance. A bunch of really cool, really smart guys you'd be happy to spend a lunch with anyday. But the problem is that they spend all of their time arguing over who is right, the evil republicans or the whacky democrats. Neither man seeing the bigger picture. How would you rather die? poison or being burned alive? Lets argue about it everyday till we’re blue in the face, but for God’s sake no one bother to argue the fact that there is no need for us to die in the first place. that pretty much sums up the American two party system.

The other day the courts ruled that we (that means us, all of us American people) can not sue our HMOs or insurance companies in state court if they fuck up and deny us medical care for something if we are sick and then we die. This was a huge win for the large greedy insurance companies and huge loss for the rest of us. for everyone of us. the puppet heads on TV commented on it I noticed and then they proceeded to tell us about Britney spears getting engaged as if that was some important news and that we weren't supposed to be shocked horrified or angry about our loss of rights when it comes to our healthcare. I sat there in disbelief. So its finally happened. We've just been totally sold out. again. and it keeps happening more and more and more as the days pass.

Now sometimes I think, ‘its time to start over. We need to tear the whole thing down and start over. Its just too far gone. America is just too far sold out to big corporations and to the almighty military industrial machine that Eisenhower warned us about oh so many years ago when he was about to leave office. but then I wonder even if we were to start over from scratch, how long will it take us to get back to this sorry state once again.... Remember that Eisenhower was the one who single-handedly ruined all chances of America reconciling or even negotiating the cold war with Russia in the peace talks by secretly and deceptively building up Americas nuclear arsenal behind Russia’s back, after telling them that we wouldn’t. Khrushchev screamed and yelled at him and every other nation at the table for a few minutes saying what liars we were, and then he left the talks. And thus began this huge military buildup on both sides for decades. Just because of these lies of our president. But you see, then Eisenhower comes around as he is about to leave office and warns us flat out that our most eminent danger to our great democracy is not Russia or china or any other country, but his fear that we were being taken over by this invisible and all powerful military industrial war machine that was on the verge of controlling all of us. but in the end, what happened from his warning? Not much. We just kept building and giving up more and more control anyway. Now we are controlled by it.

So now we are in Iraq many say for the same reasons. For oil and for profit. Michael Moore’s movie is hitting theatres now and he really tied all the pieces together that many people knew about for years now. he spoke the unspeakable. And instead of investigating it on the TV news, the anchor men and the news people instead choose to just sort of sit there and talk about the movie instead. about how fair it is or how good of a movie it is or how partisan it is. which is amazing. because mike’s not being partisan as much as he's just trying to shed light on something which everyone both republican and democrat alike already knew, but would never speak about in public for fear of losing their lives---that the bush and bin laden family are friends. That they are both investors or shareholders in some of the largest military and war companies in the world, like Bechtel, Halliburton, and the Carlisle group, and that they along with the Saudi princes, make millions of dollars every year from oil together.

You ever notice that hundreds of thousands of people have been taking to the streets in Venezuela in protest to try to take back their country from the current dictator there and the US is doing nothing about it? or what about Cuba. Talk about a country full of people that need liberating. But again, we aren't going to do anything about it. these people live like animals in a country ruled by a communist dictator. In Miami we know about it because we live amongst millions of Cubans who found a way to escape. They tell us how a fucking box of cornflakes cost twenty dollars if you're lucky to get one. and how men get taken from their homes in the middle of the night and are never heard from again for doing nothing but speaking up against their government. But America for some reason hasn’t gone in to liberate these people. and there are numerous countries around the world that need our help but we just aren't helping. But for some reason we felt the need to go in and liberate the Iraqi people. go figure.


Take this recent editorial from Bob Rinear at investyourself.com:
“What a world. Every day we have the threat of some innocent person blowing up, being beheaded or getting shot. Yet try as we might, the latest surveys show that more of the world hates us now than ever before. In Egypt, the latest Zogby poll done in June shows that nearly 100% of the population has an “unfavorable” view of the US. What happened to the waves of newly liberated Arabs bringing flowers to the US troops? What happened to the idea of reducing terrorism, and being applauded for our efforts? The fact is that 99% of all that was just fantasy to start with.
If you believe that we went to Iraq to free the Iraqi people, I personally think you’ve been deluded. It sounds warm and fuzzy, it sounds quite noble in it’s intentions. But, if we were really interested in freeing people we’d be in North Korea folks. We’d be in China. Did you know that in China, and not that very long ago, the government did nothing at all while literally millions starved to death? Where was the US? In North Korea, their population has been on the verge of starvation for years under a fairly ruthless leader, and yet we aren’t marching into North Korea to “free the people”. Interestingly, both China and North Korea have nukes, and they don’t have oil. You don’t see us muscling around in many places with that combination.”

People complain that Michael Moore is too angry. Of course he is angry. The truth is that it was never supposed to get like this. America was never meant to be sold out to large multi-national corporations. We were never meant to go to war and lose thousands of soldiers lives because of a few old rich white men wanting to make tons of money. and yet we’re watching it happen right in front of our eyes. now that all the lies of the war in Iraq have been revealed and every one is blaming everyone else for all the lies and mistakes and deceptions, still no one is doing anything about it. the puppet heads on cnn and fox news and all the other news agencies are talking about the casualties and the small details of the war, but no one is just standing up and saying “this is total bullshit and I for one am sick of it. people can we finally do something about this and take back our country?!” instead they just keep on reporting about all the deaths and what not.

It is said that those who are not ignorant go insane. And I believe it. we have no choice now in our history but to act insane. We have to pretend to be ignorant. Because if we don't then we will go insane from our being forced to believe all of these lies everyday. Even though we know that Enron was one of the largest contributors to the bush campaign and that bush knew about Enron’s financial troubles but he didn't warn the American people about it, we have to pretend to not know this. even though we know that our VP Dick Cheney was an officer for Halliburton for years and now we are over in some strange country losing American lives everyday and killing tens of thousands of innocent civilians so Halliburton can be paid hundreds of millions of dollars from our hard earned tax dollars from us invading that country, again we are supposed to act like we don't know this. we are supposed to act like this is not wrong or bad or evil or scary. We are supposed to act like everything is o.k. here in America even though its obvious that we are now literally owned by this giant monopolistic war profiting corporation that most people have never even heard of. The fact that so many of us can know this but not do anything about it makes us all quite insane. The fact that I know enough about it to be sitting here writing about it but I'm not actually doing anything about it makes me quite the insane one.

Some guy tells us the other day at dinner, and I don't remember who it was, but he tells us that he can’t help but feel a little happy when he sees these beheadings and insurgent attacks on TV from the Iraqi people. that that's exactly what they're supposed to be doing when some larger country comes in and tries to take over their country. there was mixed feelings at the table when he said this. you could understand what he was saying and how he felt. Of course they are going to try to fight for their country. how would we feel if we were being taken over by a foreign country that was bigger than us? we’d be doing the same thing. maybe not beheading people. but we’d be doing whatever it took to try to defend ourselves and send messages to the rest of the world.

Ever notice that the rest of the civilized world is not on our side in this. through our own example many of the rest of the countries in the world like France or Germany or Spain slowly became democracies over the last few decades. And now that they are what we used to be they are standing strong to the democratic ideals that we once stood for and completely opposing us. I really don't understand why we Americans aren't taking the hint. I think it’s a combination of the general ignorance of the majority of Americans, mixed with a lot of fear of our government and what they might do to us if we revolted, and an underlying hubris that tricks us into believing that somehow we will eventually make it out of this alright and everything will one day go back to normal.

Yesterday when bush went to Ireland he was met by thousands of protestors and signs all over the country that were very anti-American and anti-bush. Right on live TV in Ireland the news reporter told him to his face that he has made the world a much more dangerous place and there are terrorist attacks happening now all over the world. of course he squirmed and interrupted her and argued. But the point was made. we aren't the shining city of lights on the hill to the rest of the world that we once were. Its not like the old days when we could just do whatever we wanted to. I think the rest of the world has not only caught up to us, they’ve surpassed us in their desire to embrace the democratic ideals that we once held so dear here in the States. the rest of the world are at once disgusted by us, angry at us, feel sorry for us, and frightened by what we have done to the peace of the whole region. Train bombs in Spain. Terrorist attacks in Istanbul. We really opened up a can of worms.

Every reason in the book we were given for going into this thing has been proven to be a lie. But we just keep marching on in the face of all of that. ignorance or insanity? Feels like a little bit of both.

But who can really blame us now? when it has gotten so completely out of hand? if you watch the so called reality TV shows on American television, you will notice a whole string of disclaimers at the end. half the time the contestants are asked to change their minds after “consulting” with the producers of the shows. We are infamous for disclaimers here in America. Car commercials are filled with them. drug commercials are filled with them.

The other night I see this commercial on TV advertising that bank of American offers free checking to all of their customers. Lots of happy smiling faced fake people on TV pretending to be customers raving about it. but then at the end you notice a little disclaimer that its not really true. that's just for people with direct deposits. But somehow they are allowed to say it anyway. Why not? They are paying for the airtime and the station needs the money. so that's the world that we live in now.

And then I happen to notice the cover of blender magazine with Janet jacksons fake tits sticking out on the cover. And that was kind of the icing on the cake. So there it is. fake tits are cool. fake commercials. Fake wars. Fake health insurance companies. Fake everything all around us. there is even a TV show now called ‘fake out’ where you win if you are good at being a liar and being able to fake out the other contestant. Unfucking believable. liars and thieves. All part of the matrix that life in America has turned into.

So how much can we blame our dear publicist who lied to us and tried to cheat us out of $2500? Shit man, she was just doing her job. Just going with the flow.