No Shit Sherlock by Gerry Fialka Venice Beachhead Sept, 2020 #459
No Shit Sherlock by Gerry Fialka Venice Beachhead Sept, 2020 #459
http://www.freevenice.org/ and https://freevenicebeachhead.com/
“It’s not worth getting into the bullshit to see what the bull ate.” — Don Van Vliet (aka Captain Beefheart)
Is there a deeper meaning to this aphorism? It confuses me. It may seem evident. One friend said it means that one should not waste time trying to diagnose bad/offensive/stupid/nonsense behavior. Garbage in, garbage out! I thrive on asking questions.
If an animal shits on the Venice (California) Boardwalk, who is responsible to clean it up?
I did a survey of ten mounted police on the Boardwalk a few years ago. I politely asked them if they were aware of the Philly cops on horses having a bucket attached to the horse. It could catch the poop instead of dropping it right on the Boardwalk. One of them said, “Good idea.” The rest were resisting even talking about it. One even said, “Get away from me.” I was saddened by this response .
Just a week ago, I asked a Venice mounted policeman, “What is the protocol on cleaning up the horse shit?” He was cooly responsive, “When it’s on a busy area, we will clean it up.” “Is that by choice or that is that a law?” He said, “Choice.” I recall Devo’s inquiry about freedom from choice or freedom of choice.
I know that horse shit is mainly grass. It’s a no-brainer that the look of a big load on the Boardwalk is not a pleasant sight. Two weeks ago, I was astonished to see a mounted police off his horse, cleaning up the shit. It seemed like a change. I asked other regulars and they said, “Yes, the cops are cleaning it up.”
This raises bigger issues. Lenny Bruce said we can call cops three names: peace officers, cops, pigs. It seems that we become what we behold. Why not just be civil. Let’s treat each other with respect. When you see somebody break the law, where do you file a grievance? When a cop breaks the law, what do you do?
How can we make Venice better? We come together in this newspaper to express thoughts, invent new questions and metaphors. I was startled to see one way to address the issue of police failures. At the corner of Penmar Ave. and Venice Blvd, I noticed that a yellow yield sign was stenciled with spray paint to portray two people kicking a policeman on the ground. I am a peaceful activist for non-violent protest. In this case, property was culture jammed to get people’s attention.
How do we directly address these issues? List the many ways in your head right now . . . voting, participating in the process, communicating to the leaders, holding power accountable, embracing risks, harnessing energy, protesting, revolting, making art, writing, talking, and {did i leave any out?} many more. Now survey which do you actually employ?
Here are some wise words. I highly recommend preeminent author Brad Schreiber’s recent book MUSIC IS POWER: Popular Songs, Social Justice and the Will to Change. He quotes Gil Scott-Heron, who wrote “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised”, on the nature of revolutionary change:
“Revolution sounds like something that happens, like turning on a light switch. But it’s moving a large object. And a lot of folks’ efforts to push it in one direction or the other have to combine. And the people who are there when it finally moves visibly — when people finally realize that it’s over here and it was over there — those are the people that get the credit for it. But I think everybody who moved it a little bit further were folks that understood that you try and change things, not necessarily for yourself, but for your children and their children. Because you want things to be better, by and by.”
I try to make things better by exploring the arts. I still facilitate the Venice Finnegans Wake Reading Group on Zoom every first Tuesday. Peter Quadrino, who is the new host, wrote some relevant related shit about James Joyce and his Zoom session disguised as a book, Finnegans Wake:
“So the scene (in a book published in 1939) takes place in a sports bar with a massive plasma TV with satellite connections. Most striking of all, though, are the many references to the atomic bomb inside a chapter that’s mostly about war. The “verbivocovisual” entertainment on “the bairdboard bombardment screen” is a comedy show starring Butt and Taff playing out the book’s apocryphal allegorical story of when Buckley shot the Russian General during the Crimean War (Robert Anton Wilson, who has written much great material on this chapter, points to Joyce’s use of the Crimean War because it contains the word “crime” which for Joyce represents all war). In that story, a soldier named Buckley caught an unsuspecting Russian General in his crosshairs but didn’t have the heart to shoot him when he saw the General in a most human position, squatting to take a dump. That little tale is loaded with symbolism, certainly, as the predominance of the anal territorial level (think of animals marking their territories with shit) of consciousness underlies the problem of war but it’s also striking how the General looked more human with his pants down taking a shit than he did with his uniform on. Of course, Buckley ends up shooting the General after the latter rips up a clump of Irish sod to wipe his butt. . . . Perhaps the key thing I learned from all of this is that Joyce was not human. He had to be some kind of cyborg to compose this book. Or at least he was tuned into something, some force granting him powers far exceeding the heights of human capability. The texture of Finnegans Wake is like an encyclopedia containing not only everything that’s ever happened but everything that will ever happen. As unfathomable as it seems, it’s perhaps not totally surprising as he was attempting to represent the deepest levels of the dreaming mind, a realm that is outside the bounds of time and space.” Read more Peter Quadrino at his remarkable site: https://finwakeatx. blogspot.com/
Welly well well, it is not “like,” it is. Sam Beckett agrees. No Shit Sherlock. Shit happens! This whole idea of marking one’s territory causes grounds for further research.
Consider these words from more thinkers:"You have a mongrel perception of humor, nothing more; a multitude of you possess that. This multitude see the comic side of a thousand low-grade and trivial things -- broad incongruities, mainly; grotesqueries, absurdities, evokers of the horse-laugh. The ten thousand high-grade comicalities which exist in the world are sealed from their dull vision. Will a day come when the race will detect the funniness of these juvenilities and laugh at them -- and by laughing at them destroy them? For your race, in its poverty, has unquestionably one really effective weapon -- laughter. Power, money, persuasion, supplication, persecution -- these can lift at a colossal humbug -- push it a little -- weaken it a little, century by century; but only laughter can blow it to rags and atoms at a blast. Against the assault of laughter nothing can stand. You are always fussing and fighting with your other weapons. Do you ever use that one? No; you leave it lying rusting. As a race, do you ever use it at all? No; you lack sense and the courage." -- Mark Twain, The Mysterious Stranger.In Finnegans Wake, James Joyce made up a word "laughtears.""Discipline means to learn, not to conform, not to suppress, not to imitate the pattern of what accepted authority considers noble. The austerity of the priest and the monk is harsh. They deny certain of their appetites but not others which custom has condoned. The saint is the triumph of harsh violence. Austerity is generally identified with self-denial through the brutality of discipline, drill and conformity. The saint is trying to break a record like the athlete. To see the falseness of this brings about its own austerity. The saint is stupid and shoddy. To see this is intelligence. Such intelligence will not go off the deep end to the opposite extreme. " - KrishnamurtiRegulars on the Boardwalk told me more recollections: "I have seen the horses shit in Venice many times. Only twice did the cops even bother to pick it up. Once there was a huge pile on the OFW and tourists by the hundred trekked right through it." "One horse pooped on the grass. The cop laughed and said, 'Fertilizer!' and rode off leaving it! They give dog owners a ticket if you don't pick up dog poop." "I have seen an increase in the cops cleaning up horse shit."
So in the very midst of this data dump, please consider your proposed protocol for cleaning up horse shit? Is it the responsibility of the mounted police or the sanitation department to clean it up? Do you want horse shit on the streets in our neighborhoods?
“Is this bullshit or fertilizer?” — Author Unknown.
Can we navigate between not being taken seriously, and generally being treated like shit? Or is the trick not putting up with the bullshit?"You understand, of course, that everything I say is horse shit." -- Kurt Vonnegut.It does not end with another cute aphorism, people. Is it the mastery or mockery of metaphor? What pacifies us? What activates us? I welcome your input. Gerry Fialka pfsuzy@aol.com Dedicated to Marty Liboff, who published a free Venice newsletter from 1992 to 1995 entitled Seagull Shits.Flash Addendum: The Guardian reported on Sept 3, 2020 that testing feces could prevent covid outbreaks.https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/sep/03/arizona-university-prevents-potential-covid-outbreak-testing-fecesGerry Fialka, artist, writer, and paramedia ecologist, lectures world-wide on experimental film, avant-garde art and subversive social media. He has been praised by the Los Angeles Times as “the multi-media Renaissance man.” The LA Weekly proclaimed him “a cultural revolutionary.” Gerry has hosted the McLuhan — Finnegans Wake Reading Club since 1995 in Venice California. Laughtears Press is proud to announce the new book, Strange Questions: Experimental Film as Conversation by Gerry Fialka, Edited by Rachael Kerr, Foreword by David James. Laughtears.comVenice based FILM FESTIVAL = PXL THIS 30 Toy Camera Film Festival premieres online Youtube Sunday, Nov 15, 2020 at 7pm - 10pm (pacific). https://www.facebook.com/events/3778262985534746/
