Thursday, September 16, 2010

The Real National Anthem

Fuck all that "bombs bursting in air" bullshit. They burst on the ground now, and limbs tend to scatter everywhere. Glorifying homicide is just bad form. If we're going to worship death let's be a little more honest about it. Here's my nomination:



A howling wind is whistling in the night
My dog is growling in the dark
Something's pulling me outside
To ride around in circles
I know that you have got the time
'coz anything I want, you do
You'll take a ride through the strangers
Who don't understand how to feel
In the death car, we're alive
In the death car, we're alive

I'll let some air come in the window
Kind of wakes me up a little
I don't turn on the radio
'coz they play sh*t, like... you know
When your hand was down on my dick
It felt quite amazing
And now that, that is all over
All we've got is the silence
In the death car, we're alive
In the death car, we're alive
So come on mandolins, play

When I touched you
I felt that you still had your baby fat
And a little taste of baby's breath
Makes me forget about death
At your age you're still joking
It ain't time yet for the choking
So now we can see the movie, and know each other truly
In the death car, we're alive
In the death car, we're alive
I want to hear some mandolins

7 comments:

Morocco Bama said...

Crikey!! Was that song about what I thought it was about? It is stereotypical though, don't you think? Seriously, this is one of the images that's conjured when you think Eastern European. And maybe that's the point. The stereotype is reality, and this art is just imitating life as these fine fellas know it.

Of course, Henry Lee Lucas comes to mind, as well, and he was hardly Eastern European, so I guess aside from the artists being Eastern European, with Globalization, this musically articulated scene could be just about anywhere these days, and soon to be in outer space, because this sadistic system and its predictable behavioral implications is ready for export to the rest of the universes.

A universal anthem, then, if you will.

Morocco Bama said...

Here's something I think you would appreciate if you haven't already seen it. It segues nicely with a comment you made about living for 200 years a while back, and also with the Technocalyps videos I posited a while back.

http://counterpunch.org/correia09152010.html

I don't know about you, but I think such a possibility is the stuff of nightmares. Suicide is illegal for a reason, and in this techno future, it will not only be illegal, but impossible. Your destiny will be completely dictated by the flip of a switch...one to which you will not be provided access. I hope I die first, and most likely I will...we will, because we don't fit the mold for the grand new world that awaits.

The truth is not the techno-utopia described at the conference or in the pages of H+. The singularity movement is encouraged and sponsored by a malevolent coterie of military and corporate interests in search of a technotranscendence that serves to reinforce inequality rather than the dream of human transcendence. Those who should be offering skepticism are blinded, it seems, by the truth claims and seemingly self-evident goodness of technoscience. But the singularity movement is far from progressive and the appealing possibility of technosolutions to our most intractable social and environmental issues masks frightening social and ecological implications.

The “wildly improbable dreams of the ‘perfectibility of Man’” as Leo Marx put it has a long and disturbing history. The scientists behind the Human Genome Project and the corporations profiting from genetic engineering, and the militaries interested in bioengineering are not the first to express techno-enthusiasm for the possibilities of technology and science to transform what it means to be human. Throughout the 1920s and 30s, eugenicist scientists celebrated the power of science and technology to cleanse the human genome and produce a new pure human race.

Eugenicist “scientists” convinced state and local authorities throughout the U.S. to sterilize tens of thousands of Americans. Thousands more were institutionalized and the “science” of eugenics came to serve as the central scientific principle in Nazi Germany. The coordinated campaign of “scientific” eugenics in the pursuit of human perfectibility produced tens of thousands of victims in the U.S. and millions worldwide who were guilty only of being poor, rural, uneducated or “unfit” according the “scientific” criteria.

The dark side of eugenics hid behind the edifice of science and the scientists who advanced the goals of eugenics policed the building. They painted their critics as uniformed technophobes who lacked the necessary scientific background to comment or criticize. Arrogant claims of technotranscendence are being elaborated once again, this time by singularity movement scientists who ignore the social costs and inequalities of an emerging military-led technocapitalist version of progress.

just_another_dick said...

We love our serial killers in America Shrub. I've met a few women who collect serial killer ephemera.
I'm sure they aren't much removed from Bundy & Ramirez's courtroom groupies.
& don't forget, GW, a governor who appeared to enjoy executions, commuted Henry Lee's sentence.
But, Lucas always said he had friends in high places, didn't he?

Anyway, I loved the song. Saw an Iggy Pop version on Belliosto's blog, but I don't think Iggy's version has the same sublime menace as the original.

As far as Utopias go Shrub, they tend to make my sphincter tighten.
People who dream of perfect futures, where birdies always sing & no one says a mean thing, always seem a tad delusional, like a manic depressive in their manic phase.

Sure, we've made technical advances that have made life easier, but they all have come with a price. Sometimes a quite heavy price.
Their worth, I think, is infinitely debatable.

Anyway, with only a normal lifespan, people become so bored & jaded & disconnected, they do horrible things just to feel something. Imagine the mischief an immortal human could get up to with centuries to play around.

Morocco Bama said...

I love the song, too. I don't want to hear it any other way. I didn't know there was another version, but I don't care, this is the only version as far as I'm concerned

They don't make music like this anymore. You have to go to the Old Country to get this kind of delicacy. Nothing these days lifts the spirits quite like a tune such as this. It's festive, joyous, folksy and yet introspective, reflective and nostalgic. It's the whole Megillah, all there wrapped in one.

Tina Delgado said...

It's also a favorite of mine. I was once a passenger in a death car, and I've lived to tell you so. It's true, you are never so alive. In fact, my life has been like death since the experience. I've never been able to replicate the rush, and believe me, I have tried a myriad of things, both sordid and sanitary, to conjure that irreplaceable feeling.

just_another_dick said...

I love the sparseness of it Shrub.
American music, of course there are exceptions, always seems to feel compelled to overplay. Sometimes you have let a piece of music breathe a little.

Tina, glad you survived your death car voyage. I once escaped a similar fate riding on a Death 10 speed.
Take some advice, never ever ever accept a ride on a complete stranger's bike handlebars. He can get up to so much mischief behind your back that it isn't the least bit funny.

ericswan said...

Tell me we don't have a defector.

I was in a death truck one or two times but being the sole occupant and the trees aren't talking, there is no way to convey how sharp is Okkam's razor.