VL-IV (14): Round vs. Flat

Fri Mar 27 14:04:44 CDT 2009

I think the drug laws are important because they outline the  
hypocrisy of the cultural war: freedom through incarceration and  
spying, justice trough  police  planting evidence,   political and  
labor peace through murder, drunks and tobacco users persecuting  
Marijuana users and indulgers in halucinogens. In 1984 everyone was  
doing coke but only blacks were doing time. No healing, no reduction  
of gangs with guns, no large movement to healthier less addictive  
society,   no trust between generations to pass on some wisdom or  
deal with this stuff without jails and guns. The war on drugs is a  
big fat failure, and here is a voice outlining why.

Isn't Much Maas a "much more"  effective ambassador of the drug free  
life than Nancy Reagan?   Isn't freedom and experience, as long as it  
respects other's rights and freedoms, the best teacher in the long run?

Well  its been fun, but gotta do some work today.
On Mar 27, 2009, at 2:08 PM, Ian Livingston wrote:

> Beyond anybody's complex analysis of postmodern tropes and other
> highbrow concepts too highflautin' to be even decipherable, Vineland
> is about Thomas Pynchon's passionate distaste for our nation's drug
> laws. Col. Washington's and Gershom's scene in Mason & Dixon also
> comes to mind—our founding Father smoked weed! Now get over it!—But
> more to the point, our drug laws are designed to create and maintain
> outsiders. Busting folks that tend to dissent in this fashion has
> become a pro-forma process, creating a semi-permanant Underground. It
> is an inherent vice of law enforcement.
>
>
> Do you really think that is all Pynchon has in mind, Robin?  I think
> it is one of the many strands woven into this wonderful novel as it is
> in OBA's other works.  But I get the impression, both from the quote
> below out of the Slow Learner intro, and from the many threads y'all
> have explored here and elsewhere, that Pynchon thinks marijuana laws,
> among others, are dead wrong and I couldn't agree more wholeheartedly
> even though it has been many years since I last took a toke.  Pynchon
> is truly a genius.  He works at depths of meaning that leave me gaping
> in awe now as begin to plumb some of them.  Pot's just a tool, not the
> objective, I think.
>
> No question of Zoyd's good guy status, non-union worker and all (I've
> worked both sides of that issue and it ain't about collective
> bargaining power anymore, wasn't in the '70s, and it ain't now -- it's
> another  big business with hands down the workers' pants.)   This
> actually sounds pretty personal as regards the parenting problem.  P
> is likely a househusband most of the time, assuming he's a married
> man, being a pop and all.  Probably changed a fair share of diapers in
> that role.  Probably felt some of the despair of helplessness in the
> early days of it.  The pot thing seems to me like a specter in the
> magic show, rather than the point of the scene.
>
> It is that continuing in the face of despair that resonates for me in
> this scene.  What do you do when everything goes wrong?  As the
> Zennies say, 'Chop sood carry water.'   Or, 'Change the diapers,
> Zoyd."
>
> -i
>
> On Fri, Mar 27, 2009 at 9:58 AM, Robin Landseadel
> <robinlandseadel at comcast.net> wrote:
>>                                . . . . Somewhere I had come up  
>> with the
>> notion
>>        that one's personal life had nothing to do with fiction,  
>> when the
>>        truth, as everyone knows, is nearly the direct opposite.
>>        Moreover, contrary evidence was all around me, though I chose
>>        to ignore it, for in fact the fiction both published and
>>        unpublished that moved and pleased me then as now was
>>        precisely that which had been made luminous, undeniably
>>        authentic by having been found and taken up, always at a cost,
>>        from deeper, more shared levels of the life we all really  
>> live. I
>>        hate to think that I didn't, however defectively,  
>> understand this.
>>        Maybe the rent was just too high. In any case, stupid kid, I
>>        preferred fancy footwork instead.
>>        Slow Learner, page 21
>>
>> Chapter 14 starts with Zody's big bust, with a Kubrickian monolith  
>> of weed
>> [doubtless crafted in the backlots of Shepperton Studios] planted  
>> by "them"
>> (in this case, Brock) in his living room. Grandma Sasha rushes in  
>> just as
>> the bust is underway and the scene continues in Pynchon's usual
>> comediparanoiac mode when suddenly:
>>
>>        On cue, Prairie woke up into all the commotion and started to
>>        yell, more out of inquiry than distress, and Zoyd and Sasha,
>>        both heading for the door at the same time, collided  
>> classically
>>        and staggered back screaming, "Stupid pothead," and
>>        "Meddling bitch," respectively. They then glared at each other
>>        till Zoyd finally offered, "Look — you're a old Hollywood  
>> babe,
>>        been up and down the boulevard a couple times," reaching a
>>        cloth diaper out of a cupboard in the bathroom, which by now
>>        they'd been jammed together into closer than either would have
>>        liked by the increasingly mysterious activities necessary  
>> to get
>>        Hector's colossal dopechunk out of the house again, "can't you
>>        even see this is a setup?" proceeding to the bedroom, followed
>>        attentively by Sasha. "They're tryin' to get her away from  
>> me. Hi
>>        there, Slick, 'member your grandma?" While Sasha talked and
>>        played, Zoyd took off Prairie's diaper, got rid of the shit  
>> and
>>        rinsed off the diaper in the toilet, threw it in with the  
>> others
>> along
>>        with some Borax in a plastic garbage can that was just about
>>        heavy enough to pack up the hill to the laundromat, came back
>>        in with a warm cloth and a tube of Desitin, made sure his ex-
>>        mother-in-law noticed he was wiping in the right direction,  
>> and
>>        only about the time he was pinning the new diaper on
>>        remembering that he should have paid more attention, cared
>>        more for these small and at times even devotional routines  
>> he'd
>>        been taking for granted, now, with the posse in the parlor,  
>> too
>>        late, grown so suddenly precious. . . .
>>
>> How this scene would somehow be autobiographical, I really don't  
>> know but
>> you know it comes from "from deeper, more shared levels of the  
>> life we all
>> really live." You can practically smell this scene, and it's not just
>> babyshit either. Judging from the author's comments in "Slow  
>> Learner,"
>> getting more "personal", making the characters more  
>> "real"—"rounder"—was on
>> OBA's mind around the time of "Vineland." That certainly carries  
>> over to
>> Mason & Dixon." Though characters in Vineland shift in their modes of
>> presentation, their degrees of reality pushed at times all the way  
>> out to
>> animated cartoon & Cheeh & Chong territory, this scene renders  
>> Prairie's Dad
>> as one of Pynchon's "Good Guys," not simply by virtue of being on  
>> the right
>> side of a series of complex ideologies [not always anyway—he's a scab
>> laborer] but by having a soul, by paying attention to "these small  
>> and at
>> times even devotional routines he'd been taking for granted," by  
>> being far
>> more complex and interesting than your run-of-the-mill mindless
>> stoner—currently, thanks to Seth Rogan*, a staple of the Cinema.  
>> [Though of
>> course, Seth Rogan's everyman qualities—his innate "roundness"—is  
>> his big
>> selling point.]
>>
>> Considering this period of time when we are reading chapter 14 of  
>> Vineland,
>> I find the simultaneous talk on Capitol Hill as regards
>> decriminalization/legalization of marijuana an interesting little
>> synchronicity.
>>
>> http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/02/26/holder-vows-to-end- 
>> raids_n_170119.html
>>
>> http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/26/nyregion/26rockefeller.html? 
>> _r=2&th&emc=th
>> http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dan-sweeney/taking-the-pro-pot- 
>> positi_b_179653.html
>> http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/03/26/obama-takes-pot- 
>> legalizat_n_179563.html
>>
>>
>> Though Obama laughed off legalization/taxation yesterday, Eric  
>> Holder's
>> previous announcement of the halting of DEA drug raids on  
>> compassionate
>> cannabis dispensaries rings much like Brock Vond's helicopter  
>> tether being
>> yanked by economic forces controlled by forces high above him.
>>
>> Beyond anybody's complex analysis of postmodern tropes and other  
>> highbrow
>> concepts too highflautin' to be even decipherable, Vineland is  
>> about Thomas
>> Pynchon's passionate distaste for our nation's drug laws. Col.  
>> Washington's
>> and Gershom's scene in Mason & Dixon also comes to mind—our  
>> founding Father
>> smoked weed! Now get over it!—But more to the point, our drug laws  
>> are
>> designed to create and maintain outsiders. Busting folks that tend to
>> dissent in this fashion has become a pro-forma process, creating a
>> semi-permanant Underground. It is an inherent vice of law  
>> enforcement.
>>
>> *Current photo of Seth Rogan:
>> http://www.games2c.com/images/game/gid2168/images/screenshots/ 
>> sid3086/monsters_vs_aliens__x360__-__bob.jpg
>>
>> ================================================
>>
>> Mr. Nada sez: "Always use plain text."
>>