LUDIC LIVE

Hello, friends and readers!

As you probably already know if you are strangely obsessed with the financial peculiarities of people on the internet, I am a full-time freelance writer, and at the moment, 100% of my drastically tiny income is derived from writing.  And although I would never suggest that I am your equal in matters of hygiene, physical attractiveness, or basic human decency, I am like you in that I got bills to pay.

Many people reach out to their readers with donation drives; I am not one of them.  I work for a living, and don’t feel comfortable taking handouts for any number of reasons.  First, I prefer to think that the money I get is earned, not out of any abiding love of capitalism or self-reliance, but because it pleases me to think there’s at least one thing I’m good enough at that someone will pay me to do it.  Second, as you also probably already know, I did something pretty disgraceful and stupid earlier in my career, and I don’t feel like I’ve earned enough trust from my readers to ask them to pay me for doing nothing.  So you won’t see a big yellow glad-hand button on this site anytime soon.

But money I need, and if money you got, I’m happy to suggest ways for you to spend it.

First and most urgently, there’s the direct approach.  I offer a number of exciting and somewhat unique services via this website, all of which may be purchased by you at a surprisingly reasonable price.  Real people like yourself have taken advantage of them, to the overall enhancement of their lives.  Might your life be similarly enhanced?  Why don’t we find out together?  These services include, but are not limited to:

- Raps.  For a very small fee, I will write a rap for you about food; for a slightly larger fee, I will write a ‘dis’ rap making sport of a person of your acquaintance; and for a still larger but absolutely affordable fee, I will not only wrote a rap about any subject of your choosing, but I will also record it over an illegally acquired beat and send a copy to you for your listening pleasure.

- Spice mixes.  I am in the habit of creating mixes for the express purpose of enhancing the flavor of foods with a variety of ethnic and cuisine-specific herbs and spices; for not very much money, I will send you one at random, or for a bit more money, I will send you a specific blend (list of varieties available upon request) or even make you a tailored blend suited to your taste and temperament.

- Naming service.  Perhaps you are writing a novel, and are unable to come up with the perfect name that communicates that your hero is a lantern-jawed no-nonsense sort of fellow disinclined to take guff.  Perhaps you have crafted a home-brew and want a clever name to distract your friends from its terrible taste.  Perhaps you have just had a baby, and are boring.  I name things for you!

- Menu planning.  Putting together a party, get-together, soiree, or ‘happening’?  Lack the time, talent, or ability to put together a menu that pleases your guests and their high standards of mooching?  For a reasonable fee, I will plan a multi-course menu suited to your event, complete with recipes.  If you have more money than good sense, I will even come to your home and cook it for you!

- Short story subscription service.  Starting in June, I will be offering a new short story, delivered exclusively via e-mail only to subscribers, each month to those who join the plan.  Higher-level members will receive additional materials and even a short novella once per year!  Help revive the great pulp tradition, only in a much stranger and less relatable fashion.

- Mysterious boxes of thrift.  For a small fee, I will travel to a nearby thrift store, purchase a small number of items selected according to a rigorous but impenetrable process, and send them to you in the mail.  For a bit more, I will drive to another city or town, purchase a larger number of items via the same enigmatic criteria, and deliver them to you via U.S. post.  Thrillingly odd!

- Textual gaslighting.  You send me:  money and randomly selected items from your home upon which things can be written.  I send you:  the same items, but this time with various cryptic, disturbing, mysterious, threatening, and/or unsettling messages, slogans and other forms of unnerving one-way communication.  Frighten your spouse!  Drive your roommates insane!  Not for gambling!

If you have any inquiries, special requests, or a desire to learn exactly what the hell I think I’m doing here, please send me an e-mail; you can learn more about these strikingly special services by clicking here, on the “American Milk Solids Council” logo on the side menu, on the chubby self-delusional aristocrat logo above, on the “menu de l’offre” link at the top of the page, or on the “PURCHASE EXCITING LUDIC LIVE INTERNET HANDICRAFTS” option on the Links menu.  Payment may be made via cash or money order, or via PayPal:  leonard dot pierce at gmail dot com.

I am, of course, also available to hire as a freelance writer.  I have 25 years’ experience and a vast range of writing skills; I have worked for dozens of satisfied clients at alternative weeklies, websites, local and national magazines, trade and consumer publications, advertising agencies and media design firms, educational publishers, and other private companies.  I have written corporate newsletters, advertising copy, album liner notes and DVD packaging copy, record reviews, film reviews, book reviews, television reviews, restaurant reviews, interviews, features, textbooks, magazine articles, fiction, humor, news reportage, obituaries, and everything in between.  I have written two books and contributed to three more.  There is no kind of writing assignment I can’t handle — on time, in tone, when and how you need it.

If you’re interested in hiring an experienced, efficient, and talented writer for your project, paper, or any other required writing, please consider me.   A brief selection of my work can be found by clicking here, on the distressed robot head, atop the page on “Portfolio”, or in the links sidebar.  If you’re looking for longer-term assignments and wish to view my CV or résumé, or if you’d like additional credits or items from my portfolio to help you make your hiring decision, please e-mail me here or at leonard dot pierce at gmail dot com.

If you prefer a more indirect way of giving me money, perhaps you’d like to purchase my latest book, If You Like The Sopranos.  The first of a series by the fine folks at Limelight Editions, the book deals with the “Century of Crime”, in which a rising tide of urban organized crime was reflected in popular culture — film, television, literature, even music and video games — culminating in the development of The Sopranos, a show that forever changed the way we viewed both organized crime and television.  Well-reviewed and containing a plenitude of tips for even veteran crime-show watchers, it’s available at a peach of a price by clicking here, on the pork-fed sociopath above,  at the top of the page where it says “BUY MY BOOK”, or on the self-evident sidebar locations.  Buy enough copies, and I may get some royalties — or another book deal.

In addition, please watch this space — I’m hoping to make an announcement within the next two weeks about the availability for purchase of my next book, a collection of short humor entitled Moods from Marbletown.  It’ll be available as POD from Lulu.com, with the majority of the profit coming to me and not to middlemen.  If you have any inquiries about my books, again, please e-mail me:  leonard dot pierce at gmail dot com.

There are also plenty of ways to support me and my work without spending a dime.  Obviously, I would prefer that dimes be spent, as my creditors do not accept the clicking of a “Like” button as legal tender, but my name is my name, and I appreciate any and all support you care to give me:

You can visit my Tumblr at First World Problems and learn about the intolerable suffering of white people in America.

You can listen to the outstanding, award-nominated podcast Wasted Words, on which I am a regular guest panelist.

You can purchase the AV Club’s Inventory…

or Chunklet’s Indie Cred Test, both of which feature many contributions from me.

You can get a load of the High Hat, an internet journal of arts and culture I was pleased to write for and edit for several years.

You can purchase this issue of the excellent magazine Burning Ambulance, in which I have a featured article on fascist style.

And, of course, you can follow me on the usual social media suspects:  Facebook, Twitter, Google +, LinkedIn, and Yelp!.

Again, please watch this space for announcements of future projects.  I encourage and appreciate your custom, and those of you who put some money my way are guaranteed a place in Heaven if by some hilarious misunderstanding I am ever elected God.  You can always contact me via e-mail (leonard dot pierce at gmail dot com), telephone (210-569-4082), or postal service (4051 Tallulah Drive; San Antonio, TX 78218).  All inquiries welcome, all projects considered, all offers 100% genuine.  Thank you for your continued attention.

Some time ago, a friend of mine was discussing the painful direction criticism has taken in the internet age.  He suggested, in a bit of phrasing that has struck me as extremely perceptive ever since, that part of the problem is that people no longer approach art with any sense of humility.  Although the democratization of culture and the tumbling down of the walls that arbitrarily separated ‘high’ culture from ‘low’ has largely been a good thing, it has also birthed a generation so enamored of their own opinions, and so distrustful of having something pulled over on them, that they seem incapable of experiencing culture as something transcendent, something capable of instilling in them unfamiliar feelings, something that requires them to learn something new or experience something confusing or strange.  A generation raised on the idea that every opinion is worth publicizing and every cultural product is worth reviewing finds this unacceptable; unfamiliarity, discomfort and ambiguity make them feel dumb, so they eschew it, and approach every aesthetic encounter as something to be placed in a box that has already been labeled and slotted into an already-completed hierarchy.  That this is precisely the wrong way to approach art does not seem to trouble them.

Similarly, in a discussion earlier with another friend, he mentioned that he encounters so many people who have completely bought into the notion of themselves as special and unique creative snowflakes that they drag the entire artistic process through the mud, presenting their art as something undignified, a scruffy child they happened to birth that, if it has any function whatsoever, is to reflect glory on their own very specialness.  How can you have any dignity in your art, he asked, when you look at your performance as nothing more than an excuse to publicize your own oh-so-interesting bio, when the number and status of your credits is more important than the quality of the work?  The important thing is that you’ve written a dozen webcomics, not whether the webcomics are any good; the important thing is that you studied under a well-known dance instructor, not whether you learned anything from her; the important thing is that you’ve seen a thousand movies, not whether the majority of them were worth watching, or whether you learned anything from them or had any insightful criticisms to offer after seeing them.

Paul Fussell, in his bitingly insightful book Class, pointed out that one of the characteristics of the modern classless Bohemian — the people who he called “Class X” for their attempt to break out of the unspoken but strangulating economic and social traps that surround us from before we are born — was that they could look at any contemporary work of art and imagine themselves creating something similar.  This is all to the good, and there is nothing wrong with the idea that we take a proprietorial attitude towards art; indeed, it is essential that we read like a writer, that we listen like a musician, that we view like a filmmaker.  All of us should take a creator’s view of art, not a consumer’s view.  But as we often do in American culture, we have overshot the goal.  We have gone beyond viewing art as creators; we have started to view it as jaded rivals, or scornful superiors, or worst of all, patrons.  We have stopped looking at art as something glorious and mysterious, as aspirational, and started looking at it with the eyes of a latter-day Viennese emperor, wondering if a piece of music might not have a few too many notes in it.

From this sin of the art wagging the artist, none of us are exempt.  In the mediated age, we have all come to be convinced of our specialness; we cannot abide the idea that we might lack any given artistic talent, because since we have fully committed to the esteem-building notion that artists are special people, we must be artists, because who will admit to not wanting to be special?  And so it is that we elevate our artistic judgments to the level of artistic achievements — not because our criticism is artful, but because we must always be doing art.  We convince everyone that it is the self-made qualities of our art that makes it special, its ‘original’ plot or its clever structure or its mere status of being better than awful, and our dignity crumbles, because merely creating well-crafted, well-executed art does not make us unique enough.  We don’t create art anymore because it is a raw, pulsating need, a wound that must be cauterized through the creative process; we do it because we all want to be artists, because artists are special.  We are not in bands because we have something to sing about; we are in bands because being in bands is something that you simply have to do.

Another of my friend’s comments struck home with particular harshness to me:  he rightly complained about  comics writers who, having taken distressingly little time to come up with an idea worth writing, or crafting it into a script worth reading, then go on the hunt for artists because they can’t be arsed to learn how to draw themselves — thus showing a gory disrespect by rendering another person’s struggle to refine and perfect their own art into a mere functional component of their own attempt to be special.  That pained me, because I have been that guy.  It took me years to learn what a jackass I was being to the artists of my acquaintance, who were working just as hard to become good artists as I was to become a good writer, but whose efforts I did not respect because I couldn’t personally appreciate them.

For many years, it killed me — killed me – that I had no real musical talent. I can sing passably well, and write decent lyrics; I can even compose music in my head.   But whatever it is that allows your hands to translate what you hear inside to something that can be heard outside, I don’t have it.  And this ate at me.  I felt entitled to make music, because, well, after all!  I knew so much about music, and it brought me so much pleasure, and here I am, a creative person and all — why wouldn’t I be able to make music?  In all my attempts to do so, I showed a shameful lack of dignity and humility to the people I tried to collaborate with.  I viewed them as functionaries in service of my attempts to express my unique snow-flower-itude, instead of people who were on their own (far superior) creative paths who I was pulling away and distracting in service of my own ego.  I count as extraordinarily fortunate the day that I realized that, since there are a million people far better at music than I’ll ever be, and that I am good at other things, the world did not need me to be a musician, and that was okay.  I don’t have to be miserable all the time because I can’t play guitar.

And I, too, was one of those people who bought into the privilege of artistic creation, and that I was missing out if I wasn’t good at everything.  I didn’t have any perspective on my talent, because it was unthinkable to me that I couldn’t do something.  I think I’m a good writer, but I wasted years of my life, and uncountable hours of the time belonging to my friends with artistic talent, arrogantly trying to push my projects onto them.  I was approaching the art of comics with no humility; I had to be the one in charge.  I was trying to convince the world that I was the boss of art, when it was art making a fool of me.  Since then, I’ve learned what a pleasurable but complex thing a real artistic collaboration is, thanks to the patience and good graces of some truly talented partners.  Collaboration — especially collaboration with someone who has a talent you lack — isn’t about being in charge, or issuing orders.  It’s about surrender.  It’s about giving up the sensation of thinking you’re in charge of the creation, and learning to work with your partner in order to make something that is bigger than both your talents.  It’s about learning that artistic expression isn’t a fun way to express your personality; it’s a necessary way to transcend, to escape your personality.

Because technology has given us more access to art than we’ve ever had before, we’ve begun to devalue the great in favor of the new, the difficult in favor of the quick, and the art in favor of the personality of the artist.  We have stripped the process of its dignity and made it a button to be punched on a fast-food menu; we have subjugated our humility before art into a situation where the artist must abase themselves merely for the art to be worthy of our attention.  Until we re-learn this humility before art — until we admit that, while we are all capable of creation, none of us are bigger than the culture we have collectively created — we will keep putting the cart before the horse, and getting nowhere.

I’m glad you asked!  My very good friend Cori and I just returned from a week-long trip down into Cajun country, and while I know no one comes here for my travelogues, sit through this one, and I’ll return to the pointless political griping and obscure 10%er comedy in a day or two.

We set out last Tuesday in the old reliable Chickwagon, my busted ’99 Saturn wagon, and, after loading up on a few supplies at HEB and Buc-Ees, we stopped for lunch at Luling’s City Market.  Now, admittedly, I’ve missed out on getting to strap on my meat bag at places like Smitty’s or Snow’s, but I have eaten a shitload of barbeque all over this country, and I never had any better than City Market.  You know when a joint has been in business for decades with only three things on the menu, they’ve learned to do it right, and City Market’s incredibly flavorful pork ribs, ridiculously tender brisket, and perfectly made beef sausage are reason enough for this state’s eternal existence.

From there, we headed up the road to Texas’ Palmetto State Park.  This is one of my favorite Texas parks, not only for its natural beauty — featuring an uncharacteristically tropical environment in otherwise arid South Texas and lots of fauna found only here in all of the U.S. — but also for its buildings, constructed when the place was a Civilian Conservation Corps camp in the 1930s and featuring unique National Parks architecture.  We enjoyed some bold ducks, fast-moving frogs, and grand views of the San Marcos River, and I read about the camaraderie and opportunity engendered by the CCC and wondered why no politician has the guts to suggest such a thing today.

Moving on to Houston, we checked into our hotel — a Howard Johnson on the outer rim of the city’s downtown area, operated by a Hindu family who helpfully stocked a Bhagavad-Gita alongside the Gideon Bible — and headed to Minute Maid Park.  I hadn’t seen the post-Astrodome stadium in person; placed in the confines of the city’s old Union Station, it’s actually a very good space with fine parking, very good amenities, nice line-of-sight views from all over, top-notch climate control, and overall a new-old-style park vibe not too different from Camden Yards.  The only thing I really have against it is that stupid fucking hill in the outfield, which accomplishes nothing and is a constant risk to anyone chasing down a long fly; level that thing and you’ve got a pretty solid ballpark.  We were there to see the final two spring training games before the beginning of the regular season, and happily, the ‘Stros were playing my beloved White Sox.  The Good Guys won the Tuesday night game and tied the Wednesday Businessman’s Special, and we had great seats right behind the visitor’s dugout, so it was a blast despite the meaningless nature of the games.

After the game, we headed east on the I-10 towards Lafayette, intending to camp out overnight in Lorrain Park, in Calcasieu Parish.  Unfortunately, our directions were completely off, and despite the assistance of a couple of well-meaning locals, we were unable to find the park at all.  Since it was already getting all dark-and-stormy-night up in there, and we didn’t relish the idea of trying to put up our tents in the middle of the night, we caved in an stayed at a hotel in a town with the unlikely name of Iowa, Louisiana.  (There was also a very sad, minimalist-looking water park there which created in our minds all kinds of unanswerable questions.  Who would build a water park in the middle of nowhere?  Who would go there?  Why did it look simultaneously brand new and abandoned?  Isn’t southern Louisiana one big water park anyway?)  The hotel was fine, but we were eager to hit the road again, and we soon ended up here.

Lafayette, the largest city in Acadiana, has a reputation for great food — in fact, we didn’t have a bad meal the whole time we were there — but the food at Jolie’s Louisiana Bistro was far and away the best.  It was probably, now that I think of it, the best meal I’ve had in years.  The place is renowned for its local sourcing of ingredients and new takes on regional classics; I had an impossibly crisp and light piece of fried catfish and a side of sweet corn grits that made me wish I’d had them this way my whole life.  An appetizer of lightly fried pimiento cheese and a pre-meal French 75 cocktail were also tremendous, and I left feeling completely sated, which was kind of a drag, because our next stop was Avery Island, home of the world’s most famous hot sauce:  Tabasco.

It’s hard to talk about the tour without feeling like you’re being a corporate shill, no matter how much you like the product (and I like Tabasco a lot).  But it’s a product with an amazing history, and it’s one that does a lot for the community and the environment, even if their promotional film was a little iffy (the bit about “reorganizing the workforce” after the Civil War was pretty gross, and one can’t help but notice it’s basically the same people doing the agricultural work now as it was in 1864).  The product is all-natural and delicious, and if I hadn’t been so damn full I would have gorged myself on the crawfish etouffe available at the company store.  (I did get a huge bag of seeds and skins to make a shrimp boil with, though, and it made the car smell slightly and pleasantly of Tabasco for the rest of the trip.)  We headed down through the rest of Cajun country, down into Houma for a rap sesh with my man Swamp Thing, and were struck by the weird juxtaposition of incredible natural beauty and a thriving, all-consuming oil industry that gives locals much-needed jobs but does its best to wreck all that natural beauty.

After nabbing some crazy-good Cajun jerky at a gas station right in the middle of the oil boom, we cruised into New Orleans, where we checked into the Intercontinental — a beautiful place far too classy for the likes of us — and settled in.  The service in the hotel was amazing, but the service outside was pretty shabby; I had to wait over half an hour to get my car back from the valets and no one helped me take a very heavy bag up to my room — I had to get special permission from someone to borrow a luggage cart.  But overall, it was a great stay.  After a swell dinner of beer, hot boudin, and richly soaked deli meats at Butcher, a sandwich joint operated by Cochon‘s Donald Link, we met our pal Kevin O’Mara at Bellocq, the new bar run by the proprietors of Cure, one of my favorite joints in NOLA or anywhere.  Conversation was drunk and good, and I’ve put New Orleans at the top of my list of places to let the clock run out on what’s left of my louche life.  The next day was brunch at Court of Two Sisters, where the food and the jazz were both good but not great — albeit much improved by the place’s rich history.  We sat next to a bachelorette party that provided endless entertainment and stuffed ourselves on local favorites.  After some shopping in the French Quarter (where — you won’t believe this!  – there was some kind of street festival going on, I got myself a walking stick, making me the fanciest fat man in the South, and hit the road again.

We stayed the night at the Attakapas Wildlife Management Area, camping out in the primitive grounds of yet another gorgeous wilderness area cozied right up next to an oil refinery.  (Its mild glow and industrial buzz was like a giant night-light.)  The backroads were pretty busy with both oil workers and local fishermen, and the nature scene gave us a nice Werner Herzog moment as we spotted a snake being noisily and slowly devoured by a snake.  Somehow, I lost the frame to my tent and had to spend an uncomfortable night in the car, sitting cramped against the window and being devoured by mosquitoes; but it was a lovely night and a drop-dead beautiful morning as we headed back west.  We detoured down the Creole Nature Trail, soaking in the unmitigated beauty of one of the country’s loveliest drives; stops at the Cameron Prairie National Wildlife Preserve, the Sabine National Wildlife Refuge, and Holly Beach on the Gulf Coast (the view just a little spoiled by the presence of oil platforms everywhere on the horizon) were all hugely enjoyable and ridiculously photogenic — pictures are here if you want them.  The occasional absurdities (houses on stilts, neighborhood watch associations in remote towns of a few hundred people, crass Mountain-Dew-chugging litterbugs) couldn’t ruin our enjoyment of one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever seen, just a few hundred miles away from home.

Now I’m back home and in dire need of sleep.  But if I might be permitted to end this pointless entry with something slightly meaningful:  folks, I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, but this country, which is messed up in a variety of ways, did something incredibly, indescribably right with its national and local parks systems.  They’re one of the greatest things we’ve ever done as a nation, and they’re perpetually in trouble of being defunded even though they offer an immeasurable amount of enjoyment and utility for a staggeringly small amount of money.  If you’re a single person, or a part of a couple, or part of a family with kids, you are cheating yourself and everyone you love if you’re not taking advantage of the parks system.  And while I realize that America’s driving habit is a decidedly mixed blessing — a lesson I could hardly miss on this trip in particular — I also know that one advantage our country has over the primitive rawness of Africa, the ancient cultural richness of Europe, and the grand sweep of civilization in Asia is that we are a huge place, full of almost limitless natural beauty, that has gone out of its way to make it incredibly easy for even the most cash-strapped traveler to see as much of it as he might care to see.  We are also a place of staggering, almost unbelievably diversity that expresses itself in the cultures of music, architecture, language, and food, and one of the best ways to see that is to just pile into the car and go, eschewing the flavorless sameness of the interstates for the byways and backroads.  No matter where you are in this country, you would be astonished at the richness and beauty to be found only a few dozen miles away from where you live.  Take advantage of the many, and free, resources available to you and hit the road as soon as you can.  It’ll provide you with some of the best memories you’ll ever have, and give you an appreciation for the people who built America that’s easy to miss when you’re stuck in a hometown rut.  Like it or hate it, the culture of driving in America lets us experience things that are wonderful, delicious, breathtaking, hilarious, and unique.  Break away from commuter culture and you’ll see.

So, I’m not black.

I’m able to say that I’m not white, either — ironically, through the very mechanism of white privilege.  If you’re white and you choose to reject whiteness, you are able to do so only because you’re white.  People of color can never deny their color; they carry the evidence on their faces.  So when I tell people that I’m not white, all I’m doing is calling attention to the utterly arbitrary nature of race, and try to squirm my way out of the unwanted privilege (and the oppression on which it rests) that I was born into.

And when I hear people tell me, when I speak of the endless and daily indignities we heap on black Americans, that I suffer from something called “white guilt”, I understand it is meant to be an insult, but I can never quite understand why.  America is not unique in being marbled to the bone with racism, but our racism is unique; our relationship with the descendants of our slaves is like nothing else in any country, because we alone developed a system of slavery that carried into the modern era and was predicated entirely upon racism against blacks.  For me to feel white guilt seems the only reasonable reaction not only to the historical crimes people like me have committed against blacks for hundreds of years, but also to being part of and benefiting from the toxic soup of prejudice, bigotry and injustice that we force black Americans to swim in every day.  When I think about the unimaginable subjection blacks have encountered in my country’s history and the fact its legacy is a near-universal assumption that we’ve done enough to make up for it and from this point forward they’re on their own; when I think about the soul-stirring beauty and grace of what they have brought to our national culture, and in what base, worthless coin we’ve paid them back — what could a reasonable person feel other than guilt and shame?

I am poor, and I am from a low family, and I have had to claw and scrape to get by as have many people whose skin defines them as “white”.  But since the day I was born, I was spared the million daily debasements and indignities that I might have suffered if I’d been born black.  No matter what I try to do to erase my own privilege, and to make people like me aware of theirs, no matter how deep my embrace of what blacks have brought to our culture, I will never be one of them; I will never fully understand what they must feel and how they must live in a world that judges them in a way that, whatever barriers are set in my path and whatever blame is directed my way, it will never judge me.

But sometimes I think about them.  Recently I have thought a lot about Trayvon Martin, and the way the public has reacted to his death.  I think about the way the leader of our country, whose skin knows some things mine never will, has reacted to his death, and I think about how a man who wants to lead the country, and who looks a lot more like I do, reacted to that reaction.  I think about the way that so many people are trying to treat this incident — the dreadfully inevitable result of a law that could not have been better designed to end with the death of young black men; this incident which could not possibly be more about race – as if it were not about race.  And I feel like I should say something, but who am I to say anything?  Other people in a much better position than I to appreciate how an innocent young man ended up dead on the ground have already said it better.  His tragedy is not my tragedy.  All I own of it is my part in sustaining a culture where blacks are under suspicion merely for being alive.

It’s still not enough, though.  I have heard endless times since the election of Barack Obama that we live in a “post-racial society”, that racism is no longer a serious problem, that the “real” racism is something called “reverse racism” and that it injures only whites, that by talking about racism I am only making it worse.  I have been told to look on the president’s race as clear evidence that racism is over, as if sexism ended when the first woman was elected to high office or poverty ended the first time unemployment dipped below 10%.  I am assured that open racism has flattened away to nothing under the weight of public disapprobation, that the victories over the blatant violence and oppression of the past are enough and the improvements that have been made mean we can now stop fighting against all the still-present prejudices and cruelties, that we have collectively transformed the world through some mysterious event horizon of multiculturalism into a world where the only true form of tyranny comes from the stalking spectre of “political correctness”.

I hear all these things and try to make sense of them, but I can’t.  Because wherever I go to read a story about Trayvon Martin — who no more deserved to die than the purest, most innocent little white blonde girl who was tormented to death by some brain-fogged maniac — I see this:

- “Anyone recall the carjacking, torture, rape and slayings of a beautiful couple Channon Christian, 21, and Christopher Newsom, 23 by 5 blacks?  MS media didn’t touch it.”

- “Jesse Jackson is a race baiting POS.  This had nothing to do with white people, so why is he bringing it up?  Because he is a shitsttarting racebaiting POS”

- “The media spin on this is amazing!  The race card is alive and well with the left.”

- “Nigger tried to front, got owned by a gun.”

- “Blacks ruin every community in the U.S.”

- “Common sense dictates that when black men stop being sperm donors and instead become responsible fathers we will see the end of stories like this one.”

- “O PLEASE – tell the truth.  The neighborhood had the same problems that exist in any ‘diversified neighborhood’ The neighborhood is a Gated Ghetto NOT WHITE.”

- “Trayvon Martin was a wannabe thug, a 6 ft tall bully in school who was suspended, and wasn’t the innocent teen the media made him out to be.  don’t be brainwashed by that Reverse Racist Propaganda that the news throws at you.”

- “Because Obama is a RACIST BIGOT for all to see now!!!!!”

- “If this kid was 17, where’s a recent photo?  These pictures are clearly many years old.  All violent offenders were ‘peaceful’ until they weren’t.  So far, this is all about those who thrive on promoting racism.”

- “Hispanics are valuable people they pick the berries and keep the coon population down.”

- “The Congressional Caucus is planning on showing solidarity by having its members get teardrop tattoos and L.A. Dodger jackets with a hoodie…….wont that be nice?”

- “So now this thugs family has the colored panthers on thier side.  Good choice, call the taliban and see if they will help you also!!!”

- “Timothy johson BLACK Hoodie killed a computer store owner in Lancaster CA .north of LA, Johson was caught today wearing his NIGGER hood.  shot all BLACKS,totally worthless.”

- “The media and Obama have really taken advantage of this ‘opportunity’ to set race relations back several decades.  What a sade time to be an american!”

- “The moral to the Trayvon Martin shooting:  ’If you make it a point to walk like a duck… talke like a duck… and to look like a duck…. don’t be surprised is someone concludes you are a duck… and decides to go duck hunting…’”

- “buy stock in KFC and colt 45, monkey boys parents will be spending lots of that money they will be getting there and the local meth dealers will make a haul also”

- “just keep wondering what was he doing in a gated community?”

- “Hopefully Zimmerman has started a trend that will continue.”

I read these things, and I think about how Trayvon Martin’s family can read them too.  How they watched their son go out to buy some candy for his little brother, and the next time they saw him was cold and dead and gone forever, in the morgue with his chest blown open for the crime of being black, shot because some cop-loving motherfucker saw him put his hood up in the rain and decided he was a criminal and a drug addict; and how now the name of their dead child is on the front page of every newspaper in America, and all they have to do is scroll down a few inches and read ten thousand anonymous racist cowards salivating out pure acid about how he deserved it and worse.  And I think, I should say something.  But what can I say that will make one goddamn bit of difference to them, to their grief and pain, to their dead son whose crime was his color?

The murder of Trayvon Martin:  it seems like the only thing we should be talking about.  But it seems like there is nothing we can say.

That one finds, in the infant days of the 21st century — indeed, if certain overzealous interpreters of the Mesoamerican Long Count calendar are to be credited, the very end of human civilization! — a widespread resistance to well-established facts about human behavior continues to surprise.  The world probably isn’t coming to an end, but if it does, the final expression on more than a few faces will be a wince at the thought that, here in the most highly developed nation in human history, many people still live according to a mindset that hasn’t changed much since the 14th century.

The subjugation of women, for example — physical, social, and intellectual — has literally been with us since the beginning of civilization, if we define that word as the widespread introduction of those two brutal blows to the gender, sedentism and agriculture.  The reason for it is equally indisputable; since the first caste of bosses was formed, they found it necessary to restrict the freedom of those who served them.  The question “Why should I do what you tell me to do?” is the oldest and most problematic one for members of the ruling class.  The justifications for the oppression of women (or any other minority, even when it is, in fact, a majority) have varied through the ages, as has its implementation, but the cause of this dreary effect has always been the same:  women must serve (first by childbirth, then by drudgesome agricultural tasks, then by less taxing but just as cheerless domestic chores, and — in the final stages of the pre-feminist society — the more degrading forms of capitalist labor), so women must be kept down.

Reactionaries and conservatives — I will try to stick to these terms even though I am specifically discussing Republicans in America, because this ignominy knows neither party nor country — like to date the latter-day decline of the human race to the 1960s.  This period of social upheaval — brought about, apparently, by Saul Alinsky, the Grateful Dead, and the sudden widespread availability of hallucinogens — is what they believe gave birth to such nightmarish bugaboos as civil rights, sass-mouth, the appearance of uncloseted homosexuals, and worst of all, feminism.  On this, as with almost everything else, they are wrong, due to their well-documented allergy to history and economics.  It was not the social chaos of the ’60s that led to the expansion of freedom which they believe has turned our world into a noisy parade of disobedience; it was, instead, the development of widespread industrialization and technological development — and its concomitant decline in the need for traditional divisions of society and organizations of labor — that led to a recognition that the time was right for freedom to be expanded.  Feminism did not change society for the worse; society changed and made way for feminism.

This was already recognized by anyone who had the sense to look into it as early as it began to occur; at this late date, with feminism as an idea being centuries old and women’s rights as a going concern dating back well over fifty years, acting as if it is an ugly new idea that can be extinguished, let alone resisted, has to be thought of as willful ignorance.  The notion that women, like men, should be allowed some degree of agency over their bodies, their time, and the direction of their lives is so established in almost every country on Earth that it is bewildering to hear it coming from Americans in the year 2012 — and doubly so when it comes from a body of conservatives who have of late passionately, if unconvincingly, attempted to define their primary motivation as the protection of freedom.

This style of conservative politics, the still-unnamed development of a sweaty, messy, decades-long coupling of right-libertarian economic absolutists and time-displaced religious activists, has managed through a combination of luck and money to dominate the public conversation since in early 1980s and show no signs of flagging.  They wrestle the body politic into submission in the most curious of ways, and are as oblivious in their losses as they are eliminationist in their victories.  Right now, for example, they have managed to turn an attempt to unseat an unpopular president during a massive economic downturn into one of the most comical electoral clusterfucks in recent memory; the leading candidate, a bland plutocrat of the sort that have won elections for the Republican Party for a century, is felt by these mutants to be so ideologically impure that they seem willing to scuttle the entire election by backing a pair of comically inept throwbacks rather than settle for the one guy who might actually win the election.

And so it is that today — at a time when it might be the understatement of the millenium to say that we have more important things to worry about — we find the conservatives deciding that the defining issue of the 2012 election should be birth control.  The idea that a man should not have to have a baby every time he fornicates is as settled as the island of Manhattan, and even women have largely been allowed to escape the notion that sex=child for the last 40 years or so.  But conservatives just hate it.  The notion that sex is strictly for childbearing within heterosexual marriage — and that everyone should both desire and be bound to that mind-bogglingly restrictive conception of human sexuality — is one of their favorites despite its utter removal from the way most human beings experience reality, right up there with the idea that you can keep teenagers from having sex by simply telling them not to, the idea that everyone in a capitalist system will behave both ethically and rationally provided that no one attempts to ensure that they do so, and the idea that the effect humans have on the environment doesn’t matter as long as you don’t believe it’s happening.

The problem for conservatives is that nobody likes this particular idea.  Women, even ones who openly vilify the concept, love birth control because it means they can engage in the universally-enjoyed practice of sexual intercourse without the not so widely embraced consequence of having a baby.  Men, of course, love birth control for exactly the same reason.  Even in the most established strongholds of Catholicism (with the possible exception of Africa, which white people seem determined to reduce to a continent-sized charnel ground if it’s the last thing they do), birth control and other forms of sexual liberation have gotten themselves a toehold they’re not likely to relinquish.  If gay marriage is allowed in Mexico City (and it is), and contraception is widely available in Ireland (and it is), what chance have these people of rolling back the clock in America?

And so it is that Rush Limbaugh, who, despite his self-definition as a rarefied form of entertainer/performance artist is and has always been the spokesperson for this curious band of moralistic libertarians, came to call a perfectly decent law school student a slut in front of the entire nation.  The Pied Piper of Petulance has taken some heat for his comments, even from a handful of the softer sort of conservative, and a surprisingly widespread pressure campaign against his advertisers has led some to suggest that he may have finally crossed a Rubicon of asininity from which it will be impossible to return.  This ignores the fact that not only has Rush proven absolutely unkillable in the past — serial fabrication, extramarital whoring, and bullying his domestic staff into enabling his pill addiction have done nothing to tarnish him — and that the vast majority of his fans and followers agree with him, with many even going as far to criticize him for offering even the flaccid apology he mustered when things got a little too heavy.

The curious thing about this approach isn’t its weird persistence into an era when it has become ludicrous.  As noted, the existence of certain types of elitist societies — even ones whose time has long past — is not merely eased by, but is absolutely dependent upon, the subjugation of women.   And, as they say in in the Navy, there’s always some son of a bitch who doesn’t get the word.  So “bitch, down!” remains the clarion call for everyone who thinks that the decline of western civilization began with the First Amendment and culminated with the publication of Le Deuxième Sexe.  What’s so funny about it — what’s so fucking funny — is that these people wrap up their slut-shaming and gut-punching in the fancy hatbox of happiness and the festive ribbon of freedom.  If women pretend that they think birth control is an important part of their overall health and well-being, well, it’s certainly not because contraception is real medicine, like hair loss creams and boner pills, and it’s definitely not because they should be able to decide whether or not they have a baby every time they have sex (a freedom only available to men).  It’s because, after all, they are dirty, dirty whores, and requiring an insurance plan to offer contraception as part of its coverage is not only, somehow, an affront to religious freedom (as if religious organizations, just like everyone else, do not routinely have to follow all sorts of legislation that may not coincide with their morals), but also a green light by our liberal overlords for women to slut it up all over town.

If there were any doubt about the sincerity of this hambone attempt to further the cause of gender oppression under the guise of freedom and contentment, it can easily be dispelled by reading this not atypical eructation from the flirtini-stained teeth and tongue of Pamela Geller.  It makes all the usual assertions — as always, unaccompanied by any questioning of women other than the one who made them — that women were all happier before those nasty ol’ feminist bull-daggers came along and ruined the game for everybody.  (It’s especially bizarre coming from women, of course.  Crazy Pammy condemns Fluke as a “full-fledged activist” — I know she is, but what are you? — and speaks fondly of a time when she surely would have been publicly shamed for being a loudmouthed, half-educated, drunken termagant, regardless of how much her line of noisy horseshit flattered the bosses.)  The killer yap comes in the very beginning of the piece, before Pam starts fawningly quoting herself.  After accusing Sandra Fluke of being a “pig” who lowers herself to “meat status” and teaches children to “debase themselves”, she reveals her own counter-construct of the role of women:

I explain it to young girls this way. Go into any Wal-Mart or Target. There are hundreds of black handbags for sale in bins, hung on display walls, all cheap or moderately priced, and they can’t give them away.

Now  go into Hermes. There is one black, gorgeous, impossible to get, crocodile Birkin bag. There are waiting lists for this bag. No one can get that bag. It costs a fortune and still everyone wants that bag.

Be that bag.

There you have it, ladies:  rather than be a “pig” who revels in your status as “meat” by suggesting that you be allowed to speak in favor of controlling your own reproductive choices, better than you imagine yourselves as a Hermès bag:  ludicrously overpriced, existing solely as a means of conspicuously flaunting your wealth and power, and most of all, beautifully, perfectly, eternally inanimate.  A pig, for all its filth and foulness, is at least a living thing that might behave in unexpected or even — gasp! — self-interested ways; it is thus unthinkable for students of the Bitchdowne School to respect a woman who fits such a definition.  Instead, ladies, see yourself as something motionless, brainless, pretty and pricey, with no more volition than a stone.  Be that bag.

Attention media professionals, academics, authors, popular culture enthusiasts, seekers after wisdom, and other information-needing individuals and/or organizations:  today is your lucky day!  For today is the day I , Leonard A. Pierce Jr., announce that I am available for consultation on any and all topics — at a highly reasonable fee — as a Qualified Expert!

Ermm…on what, exactly?

On everything.

Could you be a bit more precise?

I am offering my expertise to you, your organization, your institution, company, conglomerate, website, pod-cast, think tank, ruling government and/or loyal opposition, criminal enterprise, rebel group, or ‘uncategorizable’ as a Qualified Expert on all things.  I will answer all questions, decide all issues, settle all arguments, reveal all secrets, pass all judgments, and provide all advice you may require, for a fee suitable to your needs and resources.

Why you, exactly?

Because I am never wrong.

What?

You heard me.

But surely.

But surely indeed.  And yet here we both are.

What…I mean, you’re not saying you’re always right, are you?

No, I am saying I am never wrong.  The distinction is subtle but important.  However, if it furthers your trust in the Leonard Pierce, Qualified Expert experience to believe that I am always right, I am willing to settle for that interpretation of my abilities.

But what about that one time…

Yes.  Even then.

You know which time I’m talking about?

Yes.

And yet you still maintain…

Yes, even then I was right.  No one is more surprised than me.  Indeed, it was that time that convinced me that if I was not wrong under those circumstances — which seemed specifically constructed to make me wrong — then it was entirely possible, perhaps even probable, and from there a mere gavotte across the floor to inevitable, that I am never wrong.

About…

Anything.

So you’re saying that you know everything.

No, I am not saying that.  I have no more access to information than any other jobless oaf with an internet connection. I do not know everything; however, I am never wrong.  If you ask me a question, the answer I give you may not be factually correct, but neither will it be wrong.

I don’t think I fully understand this concept.

It is difficult to completely comprehend until you see it in action.

And I assume that’s going to cost me?

Yes.  But the price may range from a cocktail to several hundred million dollars.  From each according to his abilities and all that.

Who said that, smart guy?

Uh-uh, no freebies.  Hit the sidewalk, freeloader.

All right, fine.  For what sort of questions might I utilize your service?

• The true meaning of life
• How to make a proper Gibson cocktail
• The identity of the greatest athlete in human history
• The correct moral action in any given situation
• The soundtrack one should prepare for a specific activity, from a half-hour masturbation session to one’s betrothal ceremony to a ewe
• Advice to the lovelorn
• The rectitude and applicability of various permutations of foul language
• All correct opinions on art, literature, music, film, philosophy, and culture
• Presenting one’s self to society
• Ending a sentence with a proposition and why it is acceptable
• Employing the word ‘utilize’ instead of ‘use’ and why it is not acceptable
• Etc.

But, listen.  Surely you don’t think that you are genuinely right about everything.

I know that I am.

How?

I believe that I was created by God to be his own oracle on Earth, dispensing the truth to all who know to ask the right questions.

Come on.  You don’t even believe in God.

That’s true.

So how do you know you’re always right?

It just seems like I would be.

So assuming I credit this outrageously ridiculous claim, how might I take advantage of your alleged correctness on all possible topics?

Simply write to me via this website, leonard at ludic live dot com.  Let me know what your subject of inquiry is, in what venue you would like it answered (podcast, tele-vision program, e-mail, secret meeting of sinister cabal, etc.), and what learning the answer to your pressing question might be worth to you.  I guarantee the process will be rewarding, satisfying, and potentially life-altering, up to but not including the point at which those terms become legally actionable.  Write today!  I get not wronger every minute.

Welcome to 2012, Ludic legions!

Whoa, I was channeling Stan Lee for a minute there, he must have gotten bottle service and nodded off.  Anyway, I’d like to take this opportunity to usher in the new year and let you know what’s up for this site and for me in general, because if you’re reading this, you’ve expressed an unexplainable interest in my activities.

First of all, as you may have heard, thanks to our dynamic American economy, I have recently become what is known as a “victim of reduced circumstance”, or, to put it in more Objectivist terms, a poverty-stricken loser.  Thanks to the good fortune of having a Southern family, I’ve avoided homelessness (or, to be precise, houselessness), and things will surely be looking up, but if any of you are inclined to donate to FailureThon 2012, I can be PayPalled via leonard dot pierce at gmail dot com.  As a great political leader once said, “I’ll take any motherfucker’s money if he givin’ it away.”

But, thanks to a series of birth defects and the entirely unsupportable vestiges of a Protestant work ethic, I’d rather earn money than just take it!  I’m happy to say that there will be a number of exciting projects coming your way this year that I hope will pique your interest and earn your dimes.  This blog will be updated at least three times a week in the coming year with the usual vaguely referential pseudo-humor, politely bitchy political opinionizing, and reviews of things you will never read, watch, or listen to, and it will continue to be free as always.  But I have a major endeavor, launching (hopefully) in the spring, that will feature new and original writings — by myself and, eventually, other creative and talented folks — to which you can subscribe or buy a la carte at exceptionally reasonable prices.  It’ll be a micro-pay set-up, with no administrative or production fees built in, and all the money will go directly to the creators.  After a Kickstarter start-up, I hope to get it going as soon as possible, and while I want to keep the details mum until the official announcement, I think it’s something all of you will find compelling and worth your couple-of-bucks.  But you’ll get new fiction each month, delivered in the format of your choice, and a full book at the end of the year of new material.  It’ll be an exciting new experiment that gives you well-written and exciting short and long-form fiction from talented writers, with a large degree of participation from you, the reader.  I’ll give the specifics here once the Kickstarter campaign begins, but if you’re interested, please feel free to e-mail me for details at leonard at ludic live dot com.

There will also be some merchandise for sale, because everyone has merchandise, and why shouldn’t I have merchandise?  There is no reason why not, so within a month or so, you can purchase Ludic Lessons apparel from the already overstuffed pantry of American t-shirtery.  Stay tuned for more on that later this month.  I also hope, by spring or early summer, to have a new print-on-demand book — made from actual flayed tree corpses —  for sale, comprising a collection of my best blog posts from the last decade of internet tomfoolery.  This book, entitled Moods from Marbletown, will feature the ‘greatest hits’ of my previous web-work, as well as some new material just for purchasers of the book — and if you never read it before, it’s all new to you, wot wot.  Of course, my latest released-through-an-actual-publisher book, If You Like The Sopranos, is still available for purchase, and I encourage you to pick up a reasonably priced edition at the outlet of your choosing.  I hope to have another new book out this year or early next, but more on that later.

2011 was a rough year, and there’s no guarantees that 2012 will be better.  But if the job market isn’t going to provide, I’m going to do my best to make my own opportunities by providing you with the chance to support quality fiction and non-fiction writing at low prices, and feel like you’re involving yourself in a creative enterprise that’s filtered only by you, and not by endless layers of editors, publishers, agents and middlemen.  Louis C.K. proved last year that the internet really does offer new and exciting ways of bringing your art directly to your fans and still making money.  I don’t have that level of ambition (or talent, or audience, let’s not fucking kid ourselves), and I don’t know if these projects will succeed or fail.  But I want to test the theory that it’s possible for a single creator, working with a small audience, can still make a living, even in a highly mediated economy, instead of, as another great political leader once said, having to “just put our hand in the next guy’s pocket“.  That’s up to you, up to me, and up to a whole lot of luck.  But I don’t want to spend any more time not trying.  Maybe this is the year the world ends; maybe it’s a new beginning.  But either way, now’s the time for trying things.  I hope you’ll try them with me.

Tomorrow:  back to our regularly scheduled.