bluesky-bullhead

Holes in les chausseurs

2009-11-20T16:29:00.000-08:00

Pierrot was perhaps made for wistfulness, as his is so elegant, it would be a shame to see him walking around at his full height with broad shoulders once one has seen him hiding in the corner of a lowly bar, uninterested in the women, the drink, hiding in the darkness behind sunglasses impenetrable. You would not understand that the loneliness fires the warmth of recognition, when it comes, though rarely, and in such times might mistake him for a saint in the magnanimity of his heart, as though at other times he were a hermit in the city desert, unnourished, swatting away buzzards feebly, and at his one friend, the arrival of Christ, he is revived!

John Grady Cole

2009-11-18T16:26:00.000-08:00

You died too young but were immortalized for all our sakes by Cormac McCarthy, that sage of the desert. I read your words in my Paris bathtub, bathed variously in filtered blue, red and green light, I read you driving down the highway, and walking along the beach, a fugitive, my life immersed in your art. When you felt, crossing the border, that your father had died, I was pierced, my eyes watered. Such a feeling could not but be true, though it has no basis in fact. In John Grady I understood myself as a lover. My love is hopeless, fatal, that is it's essence, the source of its sweetness is it's impossibility - and how sweet it the realization of the impossible! The moments of its realization must be immortal, they could fill my short life, as they filled yours, with thousands of lives of unrealized, undaring love. For myself, I imagine her coming to me, many years from now, needing my help with matrimonial problems, how could I refuse those eyes, of course I would take it on, there would be no question of billing, though you insist, rebuke it could be no other way. I will think of what is, what could have been, it will leave me, when she has gone, in unblinking silence. We could have been saved all this, those children could be mine. Alas. Thinking over time, when the dream felt so close to being real, and would have been real too, it was not that it could never be true, but that I could never see a reason why it shouldn't! The years would have haunted us, we would have been aged. But such feelings never die. They cannot starve and cannot be burnt. They live on even when the lovers fall, as John Grady Cole did, into eternity. My soulmate John Grady, the tatters in these paperbacks do not age your memory in my heart. Through you I begin to understand myself, and the death that will come, in her. What am I to do? There is no handbook, no law but the heart and I must rely on myself. She won't come to me but I am doomed to never leave and will be there, as I have before. Now I find myself standing against the darkness of existence, with no recognizable god to hear the prayers I pray earnestly, and only suffering to beat me down till death. Just the one hope makes it all worthwhile, even if I can attach to it no reason. We are together in our loneliness, riding alongside Comanche ghosts by moonlit trails, our laws shaped by the winds, John Grady.

So close, yet so far... l'histoire de Pierrot

2009-11-16T22:02:00.000-08:00

Mes amis, the saga of Pierrot and the only woman for him continues. It is incredible, n'est pas, that Pierrot should emerge from the darkest jungles of the human heart, gaunt with the heat, malnutrition and diptheria, and there she would stand, unchanged from his memory. Other men may have come and gone, he did not want to know about them, nor did he have the right. She was she and he was he. Somehow, she was back in the life of Pierrot. He was sullen with the knowledge, and came to the slaughter with reluctance, knowing that he had to go he just had to. It did not help that her handmaiden was standing by, with nothing but a smug smirk, to watch Pierrot descend. Pierrot's effected coldness melted instantly with her smile, her embrace. Why did they still have such moments of lucidity, when Pierrot knew he was falling for her, falling hard, that he would be crushed, and that she was too, such short moments, wine-clouded though they may have been, tantalized Pierrot with the Paradise they promised, broader than the abysmal Congo and deeper than the unknowable jungles of the interior. He felt so close to a breakthrough and did not know how to get there. 'And then I go and spoil it all by saying something stupid like I love you.' The only greater prophet than Sinatra was Bogart, says Pierrot. And then the silence. Was she afraid? Didn't she feel it too? Pierrot thought of the woods of Siberia, placer gold in unclaimed streams, the purifying winter night. He could not leave. Come what may, even the destruction of Pierrot. He was afraid not, and never thought of death as entailing his heart stopping, but that's what it would be, the silence of the brain. He cherished those seconds when he felt her love and didn't want to think that they would be his last. He couldn't.

La retour de Pierrot

2009-11-08T13:17:00.001-08:00

It has been many long years since Pierrot has written to you, mes amis. He could not stand to look in your face. He travelled around the world on foot for your love, you spat in his face and he smashed an entire chateau to pieces in his rage, before leaving for Brazzaville and trading arms up the River Congo for many years. There the people were dark and savage, and while they raped and murdered without a whim the fundamental honesty of their animal brutality was consolation to Pierrot after how he had been treated by you. But Pierrot, sitting on the edge of that eternal river, his back to the unknowable jungle, knew that he needed to return. Exhaust him, spit in his face. But let him at least troll up to a van Saenredam, and feel awe.

l'Update

2006-12-04T21:51:00.000-08:00

Mes amis I do apologize for being so tardy with my posts, you see I am housebound as all my suits are receiving sartorial attention, having been aged by the grasp of countless women, all demanding my love... well Pierrot bows to no-one not even love or her minions! You may have guessed I am still chasing her, and shrugging off all my other female suitors as water off a ducks back (that my suits should have been so lucky...) I saw her recently and it was not a dream - another absinthe monsieur - but she was with another! Pierrot looked down on him with scorn and spoke behind his back accordingly: he lacked my Gallic good looks; observe this so kissable jawline and rugged cheekbones, or the sculpted musculature, the air of defiant criminality; he did not have much of a chin, and seemed to gaze off dully most of the time, while Pierrot charmed the women out from under the measly grasp of l'enfant, with his humour and sexiness. Naturally Pierrot was civil - make it a double - but still so empty, at least, at last he knew he was in control... of nothing, oh those pale blue eyes... sous les ponts de Paris... un homme et une femme... but I could not take this fellow seriously, and knew it wouldn't last, he didn't leave with us, unsuited to the snowy night and the embrace of lovers, the way she looked at me smiling how she held me; a sort of patience I found there in what was once a long slow pain, now I grit my teeth and spit in the face of my interrogators these long weeks, laughing I don't know why - this is a cheap form of what Kierkegaard called faith, not all of me even believes it yet it is there as I am torn down and rebuilt over the months, the seasons...

la reve d'un faun

2006-10-27T14:37:00.000-07:00

Last night mes amis Pierrot dreamt of soft wet kisses and pale blue eyes.

Pierrot et les ciseaux

2006-10-19T23:24:00.000-07:00

Is Pierrot cut? A certain woman Pierrot has been chasing - yes chasing in opposition to the women, either the lovelorn, the scorned lovers or the carless, whom typically chase Pierrot - there is a woman out there, mes amis, who commands the fullest of his respect, and possesses all of his irrational qualities, to the extent that Pierrot has already moved on to his next birdie when she calls and says she'd love to talk. How did she find Pierrot, having disgraced his employer, spouse and circle of acquaintances, just to dash all his chances of forgetting her wonderful shape and easy laughter? And then, when willing Pierrot arrives heroically on the scene, she has some excuse and is always beyond his loving arms, beyond his soft, sweet kisses! With some excuse, some useless excuse that Pierrot, knowing man of the streets can see right through and cries 'Ecrasez l'infame!' as that fool Voltaire once did, but for a purpose far greater than for reason, the purpose of love! Perhaps Pierrot ought to painth is face blue and strap a strip of dynamite around his head, would that make his love happy? Pierrot was born without fear, and whatever fear he may have acquired, he conquered with a treatment of Rimbaud and some excellent shiraz, taken together sur La Rhone. Soon, soon Pierrot will be forced to say: 'excusez-moi, mademoiselle, you will be with me or forced to face the eternal darkness that is life without my geourgeous Gallic visage!'

2006-10-11T21:06:00.000-07:00

Well faithful readers it has been a long time since you have heard from Pierrot... it is not easy to write when the better part of the french police are chasing you across the country and women are demanding your love and you are in Voltaire's estate at Ferney when the surete closes in and your lover shows you a secret passageway to the stables as the commissionaires are yelling their demands on the loudspeaker, onto the back of a brilliant stallion and across the Swiss border! So what did you do while I was gone? Nothing so brilliant I am sure. I read that three young men in Nova Scotia Canada possibly killed themselves in a garage, either accidentally overdrinking or from fumes as a suicide. This is a shame. Young men should not kill themselves, and if they do it should be as Pierrot did, by strapping a roll of dynamite about the head and blowing myself to smithereens - take that Fascists! Rather than overdrinking they should have just enough wine to make sure that they think they are appealing to the women and then they ought to begin the hunt anew! Or at the very least steal some autos.

2006-09-20T10:55:00.000-07:00

This morning Hugo Chavez, the President of Venezuela, spoke at the UN. He made no bones about calling George W. Bush, President of the USA the devil, and calling out to the rest of the world to reject American attempts at hegemony and assert themselves. You can read a transcript here: http://www.drudgereport.com/flash2.htm
This speech is a must-read. While Pierrot in unaware of its' significance in terms of UN history it will most certainly prove to be one of the defining moments of that organization going into the 21st Century. I am personally a fan of Mr. Chavez, not only for his flamboyant rhetoric that could make even an irrationalist such as Pierrot proud, but for his tenacious ability to survive and thrive in a capitalist world without sacrificing the interests of his people who, with the exception of the deposed elites, are utterly and completely committed to his Bolivarean regime. Very rarely are countries transformed in the way Chavez has changed Venezuela during his tenure, and judging from the loud applause his speech received (it's all bullshit) one can always hope that the non-aligned will grow to include any number of those third world countries dispossessed by the global economy and develop on their own terms. Particularly I was struck by his attack on the American idea of imposing democracy from above, as it were. This reminds me of a sentiment of deTocqueville's that I came across once, if memory serves me correctly, in regards of the nascent USA: "A people deserves the government they have." I was thinking of this when looking on the troubles facing the new Iraqi democracy and the people ruled thereby. How could they want liberal democracy, a concept developed in the Western world which is completely alien to the Iraqi people and an utterly inorganic imposition of the West, read the USA. This may sound conservative but look at the rough road that the definitive Western democracies travelled: Britain, centuries of gradual debate and occasional violence as ancient tribal insititutions gradually evolved into a Parliamentary system that threatens the monarchical aspect that makes it unique, and the USA, where a people committed to their own, albeit initially racist version of equality, fought a long and bloody war to assert these principles. Iraq? They had no real template for democracy, and if the people really wanted it, they would have deposed Saddam themselves. Observe the sudden, revolutionary transcription of democracy across France which resulted in the terror and a century and a half of violent oscillation between weak democracies and imperial dictatorships. The point being: Chavez's claim that the USA doesn't necessarily know what is best for everyone else in the world is dead on, and they should stand up for themselves as best they can within the somewhat outmoded UN model. Food for thought: Chavez reiterated Ahmadinejad's point about the obsoleteness of the UN. Ahmadinejad the Iranian president described the UN along these lines: why should we be forced to work within a system that is a sixty year old relic of WWII. To him I would say, why should your people be forced to live within a system of sharia law roughly 1400 years old, which includes somewhat unrealistic references to warriors on flying horses?

The Smile of Tiberius

2006-09-17T21:19:00.000-07:00

Pierrot has no time at all for Bush bashing. While he doesn't particularly care for Bush, and thinks that he is definitely in line for a series of active criticisms. Here is one, albeit a soundbyte crafted by both sides, that is Penn and the media for ease of reporting, that I take offense with:
Actor Sean Penn wasted little time unleashing his volatile political views upon a Toronto International Film Festival news conference Sunday, calling U.S. President George W. Bush "a Beelzebub - and a dumb one." http://www.canada.com/topics/entertainment/tiff/story.html?id=4f83a29d-45c9-4f8c-a791-1689b8b49530&k=14822
Thank you Mr. Penn for your insight. I did not know that W was a Beelzebub... and to qualify that, a dumb one. On a related note, we now know what the word of the day was for Mr. Penn. Nothing else I have read of Mr. Penn's ideas on government that is much more insightful without being hopelessly anachronistic or unrealistic. While that may be all well and good this is what passes as an ideological attack by the left these days - as it has since 2000! When Bush sees this he smiles, just as he smiled and hugged a certain black civil rights leader after Bush was openly slandered by the preacher at the Katrina vigil. Why did Bush smile in the face of theseborderline insults? Because he knew that he had the power and that all they were doing was wasting their time in slandering him, not actually posing a measurable ideological threat to his regime. Just as in the height of the Roman Empire, Tiberius was said to smile in the face of his detractors, as countless scandals surrounded his rule. Why? Because he knew that he had the power and that talk is cheap. In fact, to him as Tacitus notes in discussing his reign, what appeared to be threats to his power actually helped prezerve it by distracting people from the real issues at hand, giving them something to talk about, not act upon. Bush is the modern incarnation of Tiberius and his sheepish smile that says 'sure you can say I'm dumb... but I'm still the most powerful man on earth'. His is the smile of Tiberius.
Funny how all these smug, self-indulgent fools (and I consider Jon Stewart, Colbert, Penn among their number) haven't been able to mount a decent defense of the Democratic party or its principals and probably will continue to be as impotent through the upcoming midterm elections despite the fact that they may gain control of at least one legislative body. This is pathetic given the intellectual ammunition Bush has given them. No-one seems to be able to rise above cheap satire. Where is the young versions of Howard ZInn when we need a new, realistic voice to defend the left against the Republicans and their fundraising apparatus which is currently miles ahead of the Dems. When Pierrot was young we based our support of the Algerian independence movement on cutting edge postcolonial ideas that we gleaned from the works of Sartre et al., not on the sayings of an undereducated actor. We put thought into our words and actions. 6 years on, Bush is still in power and looks a lot smarter than almost anyone who would bother to call him dumb. Here is my level-headed and acute criticism of his whole regime:
1.) Bush has not decriminalized the stealing of cars as he promised Pierrot he would prior to the election
2.) The regime has succeeded in convincing the working classes, particularly non-urban whites
that they are their party while eroding their tax position relative to the higher classes with an appeal to a misformed idea of christian patriotism that should be frightening to anyone who believes in the idea of separation of church and state.
3.) Has continued to build up a massive trade and national deficit, the implications of which are the topic of constant discussion amongst economists.
4.) Has relied upon personal consumption for the 'bounce', (are we still in a larger bear even with his latest run-up? Dow hasn't got back to 2000 levels yet?) to the historically unprecendented point of having a negative savings rate.
5.) Muddled, ineffective immigration policy.
6.) A useless war which is utterly absurd, based on a series of blatant, well-documented misrepresentations, which history will look upon as the beginning and end of post Cold War American imperial ambitions. All of this has been glossed over with appeals to patriotism which could easily be destroyed in the open argument that this government claims to protect but avidly avoids.
With such criticisms easily at hand, their is no place in my mind for relying on insults to decry Bush and his regime. Doing so makes this modern Tiberius very happy indeed.

The word of god?

2006-09-10T16:33:00.000-07:00

An American religious movement has recently come to my attention. 'The Prosperity Ministry', increasingly a major part of many Pentecostal churches, and also a part of their near-cousins the Evangelical movement. These are the sort of churches seen on tv where 24000 people drive in from the suburbs to listen to some fool who would otherwise be selling mutual funds talk about god. And their idea of god's love for his creation is that his children should be rich. I don't know if they read the same Bible I did, and I know that they probably have countless examples memorized chapter and verse to do battle with naysayers such as myself; mostly from the Old Testament, which offers a wealth of often contradictory phrases, many of which the Gospels have been seen to deny outright. But I seem to remember the character of the Gospels as being one of overwhelming poverty. The insidiousness and irreligiosity of this increasingly mainstream sect is deeply disturbing. Here is an example:
"Who would want to get in on something where you're miserable, poor, broke and ugly and you just have to muddle through until you get to heaven?" asks Joyce Meyer, a popular television preacher and author ... "I believe God wants to give us nice things." Direct CNN quote of Time cover story: http://www.cnn.com/2006/US/09/10/time.cover.tm/index.html
I am utterly certain, upon hearing the gospel of christ through the lips of Mrs. Meyer, that I can make god happy by selling my truck and driving around in a Rolls Royce. That whole thing about helping the poor must have been a misreading, for which I apologize to those of superior intellect to mine. I am supposed to make a token motion to charity, not enough to keep me from enjoying what god wants for me: custom shirts from Charvet. In fact, god wants me to be happy in my wealth, so I think I will burn food right in front of the starving, just to fulfill his vision for my happiness - never mind anyone else's. Clearly, the meaning of the good life has been distilled into its' purest essence - material wealth. Somehow they managed to find this message in the words of a man who was a carpenter, a preacher who went from town to town relying upon charity for his very survival and had no possessions to speak of, and urged his disciples to leave behind their flocks and their nets to join him. Here are some of the verses that my Christ spoke:
Yet lackest thou one thing: sell all that thou hast, and distribute unto the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven: and come, follow me.
And when he heard this, he was very sorrowful: for he was very rich.
And when Jesus saw that he was very sorrowful, he said, How hardly shall they who have riches enter the kingdom of God!
For it is easier for a camel to go through a needle's eye, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God. Luke 18:22-25
And Jesus went into the temple of God, and cast out all them that sold and bought in the temple, and overthrew the tables of the moneychangers, and the seats of them that sold doves.
And said unto them, It is written, My house shall be called the house of prayer; but ye have made it a den of thieves. Matthew 21:12-13
I would consider these passages to be somewhat definitive. In my mind, Christ would probably walk into one of these mega-churches and burn their creepy self-help books and tear apart the smash the headsets of the televangelists. I recall the tale of the Grand Inquisitor from Dostoyevsky's 'Brother's Karamazov'. The Grand Inquisitor informs the returned Christ that his message was fundamentally flawed - that the people need bread, not freedom/love, and that his second ministry would end the next day with his burning. Christ responds finally with a kiss, which both recognizes the apparent flaws of his creation and the tantamount position of love therein. My one consolation when looking on the increased popularity of this outright hypocrisy is that history provides many examples of doctrines destroyed by wealth: the rot of indulgences in the Catholic church, among other things mostly grown from greed and power, led to the Protestant reformation, essentially destroying the power of Rome across half of europe. I refuse to lie for these fools but will update you continuously of my dialogue with their groups. In fact Pierrot le Fou, though sharing no allegiance to any known god, would gladly burn their temples, just from spite.
In conclusion:
Well hath Esaias prophesied of you hypocrites, as it is written, This people honoureth me with their lips, but their heart is far from me.
Howbeit in vain do they worship me, teaching for doctrines the commandments of men.
Mark 7:6

Klaus Kinski

2006-09-06T22:51:00.000-07:00

When I survey the world of film today I am distressed that there are no men like Klaus Kinski currently working. The studio execs are as complacent as investment bankers and somewhat less artistic, they do not bleed for their art, nor do the majority of the filmmakers, so enthralled are they with the privilege of making films professionallythat they forget to actually make anything worth watching, they would rather masquerade as the middle-brow intellectuals they aspire to be. And as for the actors: low-key seems to be the dominant tone, perhaps it suits our times that actors of this mode are received with acclaim, whether their name is Zach Braff, Elijah Wood or Tobey Maguire. All a bunch of little pussies. Just imagine what a young Jack Nicholson would have done to these pansies if they were competing for a part: he would have choked them out like he did Rip Torn to get the part in Easy Rider. When you watch the previous men act, you know full well that they are actors, pretending to be how you ought to feel in this disconnected postmodern world of ours. I don't feel like that. I don't feel numb.
That is why Kinski is my favourite actor. He enters the scene and holds your attention with the sheer intensity written across his face, the fierce gaze, beaming with the same level of emotion in the moment of murder as in the highest expression of love. His energy was relentless, whether he was smashing Herzog's shared childhood bathroom absolutely to bits, on full day yelling sprees or before the camera, he brought an intensity to his life that translated perfectly to the screen, especially under the direction of Herzog, who, if he didn't understand him, knew how to put him on celluloid, which is why I focused on their collaboration. In Aguirre: The Wrath of God he is simply electric, the embodiment of might makes right for men in the wilderness and, by extension, society as a whole with or without god. But with what tenderness does he examine the monkeys that swarm his wayward raft, just as rapidly as they scurry before his hateful strides. In Woyzeck, the sheer pathos of the title character as perfected, bruises and all by Kinski, is heartbreaking. Similarly, in Fitzcarraldo, we see Kinski in full flight, bringing all his enthusiasm for life to the character of the undercapitalized Irish rounder in Paraguay who did the unthinkable and became a god. But in Cobra Verde, one of his final films and his last with Herzog, Kinski delivers the finest scene I have ever witnessed. Cobra Verde, the indomitable thief, has done the impossible for a cadre of brazilian plantation owners who intended to send him to his death for impregnating a few of their daughters. He arrive salone on the slave coast, where he proceeds to unite a shattered kingdom with an army of women and impregnate a few dozen locals - before the whole world it seems turns on him in a ban on slave transport and his kingdom collapses in on him. Having already done the impossible again and again and swam so valiantly up the falls of society, Kinski is now alone on an African beach waiting for his Western captors to come and kill him, or the Africans he once ruled to end his life. For several agonizing minutes, Kinski strains to pull a boat that would require 40 men to launch it off the beach, to make one last impossible escape. Finally, after an excruiating effort, Kinski collapses in the surf, broken by destiny. Of the last scene filmed in the movie it is said that after it was wrapped, Kinski told Herzog in an exhausted voice 'Werner, I am done'. He died a few years later, having brought nothing approaching the same magnitude to the screen in the meantime. In one unbelievable effort he put his whole life into the scene - where it remains, for those of us who remember to watch a man whose life was consumed by his art.

The death of the leading man

2006-09-06T22:36:00.000-07:00

The leading man is dead, in addition to, as some unidentified sources tell me, god. Part of the reason Hollywood is seeing falling revenues is undeniably due to this fact. Survey all the actors working in Hollywood today and the picture of leading men is pretty bleak. Tom Cruise? His acting consists of looking intensely across the camera, as though he were trying to hold our attention. Jack Nicholson? Parrots his 70's underage-banging cool. Jim Carrey? Doesn't have the tools to cross over to drama as he so wants, appears to try to hard. The young stars such as Heath and Jake? we won't even bother with that flavourless Josh Hartnett whom Hollywood is parading down the Pitt path to stardom with this new crime drama. Perhaps they will someday have the appeal of stars of the past, certainly the acting is not out of reach. Harrison Ford? Should really probably try his hand at, oh, say carpentry. Denzel? The novelty of an intelligent, educated black man belonged to Poitier in the 60's, the civil rights movement remember? He should stick to his ubermensch performances as in Training Day, the hard street savvy chessmaster. The only actor Pierrot will watch any more is Colin Farrell, who stole the screen from Tom Cruise in Minority Report and continues to bring us a nice taste of brusque tough coolness that hollywood hasn't seen in a handsome man since Clint Eastwood's prime. 'I'm a fiend for a good mojito' his character intones in Miami Vice prior to giving that uptight bitch the fucking the whole audience wanted to. He is our only hope. Besides, his drug intake should teach LA a good lesson - there is no place for a clean actor whose name isn't James Stewart. That is unless any Hollywood execs would like to hire Pierrot, who will bring his rampant sex appeal, uncanny screen presence and policeman-bashing pedigree to whomever will pay him American dollars, cash.
Thus Pierrot starts a new series wherein (whenever it suits him) Pierrot will discuss some of his favourite actors of the past, including James Coburn, James Dean, Toshiro Mifune, Klaus Kinski, and whomever else comes to mind.

Rimbaud

2006-09-04T00:11:00.000-07:00

If it can be said that Pierrot has an idol, it would have to be Arthur Rimbaud. Alas, men of his kind have largely disappeared from our society, bred out by centuries of imprisonment, other state-sponsored infringements from newspapers to primary education and siphilis. For the uninitiated let me run through Rimbaud's accomplishments: he was a runaway, who drank too much absinthe, smoked too much hashish, fucked too many people regardless of sex, shitted openly on the ideals of the self-establishing bourgeoisie, was raped by soldiers and shot by a gay lover, had an ethiopian wife, was an army deserter a gun runner and a poet of diabolical innovation and power. That is too many 'ands' but rimbaud demands such poor editing and long-windedness. You should read his works. Perhaps then you will throw away your job at Total and cause some bloody car crashes. AIIEEEE! There are people screaming on the side of the road, how did those mangled autos crash like that they are almost stacked on top of each other burning. Anyways, as The Weekend is over, the picture of Rimbaud on the side here if by Fernand Leger I hope you do not enjoy it but pick up the Drunken Boat and draw Rimbaud yourself, if you are a man you will do it in your own blood, just from the feel of his verse.

Free Speech

2006-09-02T23:42:00.000-07:00

Well amis, Pierrot is here to talk to you today about a subject very close to his heart - free speech. I am not only interested in the subject for its' own sake, but because deep in my heart I believe that if we champion the right to free speech, the right to free steal autos and free love cannot be very far behind. But these fascists are as attached to their Citroens as they are to their housewives and their pathetic excuses for mistesses. But Pierrot wishes to be able to express himself and his ideas any way he feels - including obviously speaking, whether that be walking along a tree branch yelling phrases from Celine or telling the de Gaullistes that they should get their nazi hands out of Algeria. But some in our society believe that there are certain things that we should not be able to say - specifically against a god or religion, because those things are above scepticism. Pierrot laughs in their enfuriated collective face. Clearly they have not been in France long, where making fun of god and the medieval religion of this continent is an ancient custom. Have they not seen the playful farces of Rabelais, from half a millenium ago, targeting the sexual, greedy ways of hypocritical Catholic monks? In school they told of god's omniscience, his omnibenevolence, his omnipotence, his omnipresence. If he is everywhere, all-loving, -knowing, and -powerful would he not have created a universe where only good things are said about him? Why would he care, being so powerful, what puny idiotic mortals say about him, he'll have the last laugh at the gates of St. Peter! I do not believe in a god like such. Being a man of incredible intellect and independence I created my own god, a god of theft and trickery, of fleeting love and destruction, whom I worship through my actions - and my words. You can say whatever you want about him and neither he or I will be upset about it, in fact, we welcome the criticism because we are so sure of our superiority that we are not afraid of any puny words, unlike some fools who burn embassies over cartoons. The only thing I ever did about a cartoon was wrote a very appreciative letter to Mme Herge for her wonderful Tintin adventures! Free speech is essential to our society, which, however much I deny its' basic tenets and wish to destroy its' whole entire paradigm is ideal compared to most of the other societies in this world, where, in addition to speech being punished, stealing autos and having enjoyable sex are also dealt with harshly. If you do not like it, you should leave France, because our tradition of horny monks and dead gods is not going anywhere, not so long as Pierrot is around to restate the rallying cry of the enlightenment, 'ecrasez l'infame'! Friends, shatter these ancient myths, thought ought not to spare feelings! Then, one day, we will all steal each others wives and women and stomp on the religious icons of ages past.

New Art!

2006-08-29T23:00:00.000-07:00

One of the finest feelings for the man of taste is to disover a new artist. The indiscriminate can find something to enjoy in any work of art, such insidious relativism is not only corrosive to the true meaning of art, in all its' manifestations, but also to the basis of a constructive (or destructive?) society such as we enjoy in the West. As the saying became known in the early 1990's, art history is dead, with art having gone full circle in the West, from the childish scrawlings on cave walls of our ancient ancestors, through the greatest refinements of Baroque taste, and back down through a time of realism so soon made somewhat obsolete by the perfectible, and manipulable technique of photography. Then, men sought to draw as children, as our ancestors drew and we were back at a sort of square one. Anyone producing such primitivist works in our time is simply wasting theirs, however the example, drawn as validly from Picasso as from the anonymous men at Lascaux, must inform the future direction of art. With all that off of Pierrot's chest, I must admit that I can neither draw, nor paint, nor sculpt, nor perform any arts - save poetry of which I will say more later - but find that I love the arts I cannot do as fully as I disdain the one I am so gifted in. And when I find an artist who can captivate my attention in a new way, who can compel me to put my useless hands to canvas, an obsession is born. Neither am I less than picky, I look over art, whether plastic or otherwise, with the same discerning eye as Napoleon, of whom it is said always brought a full carriage of books with him on all his campaigns and was wont to discard a book onto whatever road of europe his hooves brought le tricolore after only a few artless sentences, or perhaps a misplaced word or poorly developed thought. Please, enjoy the latest of Pierrot's non-physical infatuations (of which there are also many.) On the left, observe Vasily Perov's 1867 painting 'The drowned'. The virginal stillness of the recently deceased reminds me of a model another painter once found on the banks of the Tiber, a prostitute killed for political imposture by Catavaggio's patrons or at least those in their circle, and thrown in the Tiber, where that great artist found in her untouchable corpse the image of the dead mother of Christ. Above her, in the silence of gull wings, floats a mist of souls above the dawning river. And looking over her corpse (I ask, is this Perov, or Caravaggio even), a boatman pulling on his pipe, sits somewhat stoically, and perhaps without thought, though certainly not without a kind of gaunt feeling.

Women

2006-08-27T22:27:00.000-07:00

Yes, what you have heard is true - Pierrot is indeed a renowned lover, one who has stolen, and broken, at least as many hearts as autos in his meager years. Women are helpless when faced with his combination of open criminality, striking good looks, acute wardrobe, sparkling conversation and utter disdain for the other men around him, and society as a whole. But things were not always this way for Pierrot, for years, when he was but a struggling student at the Sorbonne, absorbing Duchamp, Rodin and my personal favourite Pieter Jansz Saenredam with equal vigour, living in an abandoned building on the Rive Gauche. Women would not even look twice at his sallow cheeks, nor would he look up from the feet of works such as Rodin's 'The Kiss', and then wondering, upon a viewing of that great masters 'Fugit Amor', what was this thing called love, which could condemn two lovers to an eternity of hell for a moment of transcendence, which was worth the intertwined limbs, only to reach blindly as unseen forces pull the two apart, easily trumping their puny mortal efforts. He would find out soon enough, the way of love, by imitating the great lovers of the screen - Bogart, James Dean, Marlon Brando, he would watch them in the all-night cinemas and learn their cool. Pierrot, having conquered a woman and holding her quivering heart in his masculine hand, lost interest as soon as the victory was complete, he would not call, but instead, looked for his next lover, even in front of her, with no subtlety, just to make the pain that much more awkward and crushing. And Pierrot acted as though his actions weighd not upon his own heart, but they did, and they always will. Perhaps some day, in the distant future, Pierrot will be able to settle down to a nice flat on Rue Michelin with a few little ones to read about El Greco to... sooner will a bullet knock him down in the arms of his last love.

The price of oil

2006-08-25T11:01:00.000-07:00

Well mes amis, lately your old friend Pierrot has become obsessed with the price of oil. Why, you ask, would a man such as Pierrot, who lives as free as a bird and drives his car into the ocean just because the bourgeois pigs insist on driving on the left side of the road, care about the price of oil? Well, because I have to rob many more people at gunpoint in order to fill whatever citroen I stole the day before in my manic flight across France - and perhaps to Italy. And when I do steal cars, the capitalist fascists with their false ideas of property often have empty tanks! Zut alors! The price fluctuates erratically on a daily basis, Pierrot knows it is commodities speculators and hedge funds trying to cover their asses against whatever new crisis is overplayed on CNN - tropical storm threatens? Oil goes up, too much. Storm is not so bad? Oil is down again. Problems with storage? Everyone knows that a few fractions of a percent fluctuation in storage rates doesn't change a thing in the real world, yeton the exchange prices adjust a hundredfold what they should. Bastards. Don't even get me started on Iran. Those fools are one of the largest producers in the world yet have to import a large portion (40%) of their refined products because they lack the will or means to build refineries without Western assistance - and because of this they want to build nuclear plants to supply the energy they already have but aren't smart enough to use. The only reason I support them is because they hat the capitalist pig fuckers in the West enough to invest in their own apocalyptic vision, cobbled from some desert tales that are centuries old, for this I commend them. But there is a lot of talk about a new benchmark, people are saying that we have said goodbye to the days of cheap oil, that oil will never fall below $40 again. That is what people said in the oil crisis of the late 70's, and by the mid-80's oil was already back around $20 in real terms from a high around $100 (also in real terms). So Pierre hopes that the capitalist economies will perish, victims of their own greed and simplify his process of theft anf grand theft auto, allowing him to live an easier life running from the law and his cuckolded wife on the avenues of Bordeaux.

2006-08-24T23:13:00.000-07:00

Welcome to Bluesky-Bullhead, a place where the classical world is given a chance to critique our society as it is at the dawn of the 21st Century, among other things. I am your host, Pierrot le Fou, it is among my duties to look down my nose at you and pretend that any mistakes I may have made in citing or paraphrasing are eithertoo far below me to warrant the slightest inconvenience, possibly just meant to trick you fools, or even enlighten you into whatever other meanings you may find. Notice the picture at right, that was from some 1950 odd years ago, I recall being on my way to Damascus to persecute some Christians when their god - what nerve! struck me blind and spoke to me, informing the path I would take for the rest of my life, even possessing the gumption to change the name my parents had given me! I went along with it somewhat grudgingly for a few decades until I was crucified. Then a millenia and a half later this Italian fellow decides to paint the whole scene, and leaves me lying in the light of this divinity, struck off my horse, surrounded by darkness. Let me set the record straight - yes I was blinded, but I maintain past my dying day that it was merely the reflection of the noonday sun off of the polished iron armour of the centurion in front of me. And as for being knocked to the ground by the holy spirit, well, our saddles didn't have any stirrups you see and I rather was distracted by the sun and at the same moment a bee stung me in a very sensitive area having forgotten to wear anything under my toga and tunica...