Friday, July 16, 2004

America's Most Wanted

Hello and welcome back.
 
Ok.
 
So.
 
Martha Stewart was just sentenced to 5 months in jail and 5 months under house arrest for allegedly (although her claims of  a stop loss order were not unsupported) lying about "insider trading" (hung on the testimony of a peon who cut a deal and changed his story).  The end result of this is that Martha didn't lose some cash.  In the long run the stock she dropped has actually gone up. 
This is the profile of a shameful criminal?
 
Here are some others:
 
The Bush Family
Bill Clinton
 
 
Only the humble hold not heavy hearts for haste.
 
Be humble in your sleepy hands on this world.
 
Be a
Killer in Heaven.
 
www.joenolan.com 

Thursday, July 15, 2004

Know I'm Not Dreaming



Hey IV I have insomnia and I was hoping to watch your video. I don't have a video but maybe we could meet in a cemetery sometime. Write me back so I know I am not dreaming. Thanks, Joe

Hey, baby where are you? Sorry I called you baby but it's just that I am really tired and yet I still can't sleeeep (whoah I almost fell asleep there...) and I was just hopin to say hello. Maybe you can't sleep either- and I have to be up early - don't get me wrong!- I mean I gotta work at it, man. I gotta work at it hard and fast!

13 minutes left. C'mon man this is it baby this it the final countdown! Just let me know that you are there. Let me hear you breathing air in disgust. Let your disdain be the blood red proof of your self-same life.

8 minutes left and all I see is the ghost of a curvy woman dancing lewdly in the round and round of a quadratic equation. What is my true vocation to write these ghosts into being awake in the wee hours where we keep with our own, with our selves, nuzzling like bumble bees in this shell of our own making.

6 is the shell of a man.

3 minutes and I am in it like a Roman rite.

"Je ne sais pas (Je ne sais quoi)"

What is love?
Well, it's not wanting more than what you got.
And what is grace?
It's the face of every single empty space.
And what is hope?
It's a rope, swinging from a slippery slope.
And what is pain?
It's the refrain of every single broken chain.

And I find that I'm blind in my heart and in my mind.
And yes, I am deaf to the sound of my own breath.
And I'm dumb when it comes to these same strings that I strum.

Je ne sais pas (Je ne sais quoi)

What's a friend?
Well they tend to not break when they bend.
And what's a lover?
That's the other that the nighttime comes to cover.
What's an ally?
That's the gal I always had a star to sail by.
What's an enemy?
That's the rest of me. Once I've lost track of the best in me.

And I find that I'm blind in my heart and in my mind.
And yes, I am deaf to the sound of my own breath.
And I'm dumb when it comes to these same strings that I strum.

Je ne sais pas (Je ne sais quoi)

la mer est bleu
la mer est sauvage
oui, c'est vrai
c'est dommage

And I find that I'm blind in my heart and in my mind.
And yes, I am deaf to the sound of my own breath.
And I'm dumb when it comes to these same strings that I strum.

Je ne sais pas (Je ne sais quoi)

Only the humble know nothing of humility.

Be humble in your sleepy hands on this world.

Be a Killer in Heaven.

www.joenolan.com

Wednesday, July 07, 2004

Old Number 7

Bon Soir, Comrades!

Thanks for stopping to check out the latest. The site has received a bunch of traffic lately (1703 hits on the 4th of July) and I am glad so many of you are enjoying these rants and the new poetry section.

I spent the afternoon today at the Jack Daniels Distillery in Lynchburg, TN after the rain put the kibosh on my trout fishing. If any of you are ever down South DEFINITELY go! I was never very interested in visiting there, but it was absolutely fascinating (I am completely serious, really).

I am going to visit my pals up north tomorrow to work on the site a bit more and also work on a graphic novel CD-ROM project based on my song "Plastic Jesus".



Imagine Michelle Yeoh (I love you with all my body and soul) meets "Preacher" with an "X" soundtrack. Cherry...

Here's a picture I just received from my friend Sarah Moore. She
took it when I was performing at the Riverbend Festival a few weeks ago...



Ok- I will finish up with a letter I sent to my City Council encouraging them to pass a new ordinance that requires dog owners to clean up after their pets when they shit all over everyone else's property.

Duh.....

If any of you live in Davidson County and agree with me please copy and paste what you'd like from my letter and use it to mail your own.

I hope this inspires you all to be politically active in your local communities. Graffitti and good old fashioned sabotage are fun too.

:)

Here we go...

Dear Ms. Hausser and Members of the Council at Large,

My name is Joe Nolan and I am a constituent of Ms. Hausser's as a resident of district #18.

I am delighted to hear of this new Ordinance No. BL2004-302

District 18 , as you all know, is very "dog friendly". Surely (though I am not a dog owner), the sights and sounds of dogs in our neighborhood generally adds much to the loveliness of an area my friends and I literally refer to as "The Street of Dreams".

That said, having to avoid (not always successfully) the excrement of strange animals, that I do not own, every time I walk out to my car or try to play with my young godson in the yard, is ridiculous.

That this has become a point of legislation is a sad statement indeed. The fact that many of these "dog lovers" don't have adequate yard space for the animals they profess to care so much about is another issue. The fact that cleaning up after your pet is part and parcel of the obligations one takes on when one chooses to be responsible for a domesticated animal, is as irrefutable as the goo between the toes of the unsuspecting strangers who are victimized by the wanton abdication of said responsibilities.

I think dogs (especially when well cared for) are great. Domesticated dogs and cats and birds and reptiles are a part of our collective lives and I think people who love animals should be allowed to own and enjoy them.

That said, I have seen only one dog owner ever clean up after his/her animal on Belmont Blvd.

I have seen countless others stand idly by as if the dog was making some sovereign decision they were powerless to affect.

These noble beasts are not citizens and are not subject to your decisions, however, their owners are.

The Ordinance as it stands is a good start, but it should apply to any owner with their animal who isn't "reasonably equipped" (i.e. has a "pooper scooper" or a plastic baggy etc.) to clean up after it. Only penalizing owners who may or may not be caught after the misdeed has taken place will ultimately do little to change the environment or the attitude in Davidson County.

It is horribly frustrating when common courtesy and good old-fashioned personal responsibility has to be legislated in order to curb the kind of moral oblivion that results from an exaggerated sense of entitlement.

I do not envy you your charge, but, surely, there is no reasonable objection possible regarding this legislation.

Thank you for your time and your service.

Joe Nolan

Saturday, July 03, 2004

Codependence Day

Hey Everybody.

Ok.

Here we go.

Alright,

It's been a little bit since I left an entry and lately I feel like these have become a bit formal. So today I'm just gonna cut loose and let it flow.

First, goodbye Marlon. One of the greats.



Read his autobiography. "They" say it's bullshit and make-believe, but it's very interesting and so self-effacing that it's hard to believe he'd make up that much negative crap about himself. Besides, like the guy has to convince people he's cool. Come on dude...

Second I am trying to put my thoughts together to write my condemnation of Marriage/Modern Love and hope to publish that here soon. That is exactly the kind of subject that this blog is for. I feel so uncomfortable in "polite" society sometimes, given that so much of its disingenuity makes me nauseas and really, truly angry. Most of what passes for "love" in our society (America in particular, I can't speak for the rest of the world with any authority) is just a strangle-hold in which "lovers" limit each other's freedom at the border of his/her projected insecurities. That's "LOVE"? This is much like the praise and adulation that gets heaped on "CAPITALISM" (and you can bet your ass there are deep and dark connections), when it is nothing more than the glorification of the "LAW OF THE JUNGLE"!

Are We Not Men?




In the meantime I just added the new poetry section to the site. Please check it out and let me know your thoughts. As one hipster-dufus commented to me at an art opening right before the holidays,

"So you write poetry? That's so Olllddd Scchhhooolll!"

Yes and indeed.

Ok.

So.

Right now I am drinking even more Mate and smoking some weird herbal concoction that has damiana, skullcap and a variety of other witchcraft shaken into it. I can't tell if it makes me feel horny or furious and the fine line between the two is enough to give one pause.

Is there any poison I won't try?

Yes, of course there is.

Mate makes me so dramatic.

Onward! (and inward?)

I saw a great documentary on Che Guevara entitled "El Che". Really informative. I've read everything he wrote (he fancied himself a poet, but his voice reaches a crescendo when he writes about kicking imperialist ass in his tactical manual "Guerilla Warfare") and most of what's been written about him and this is a very good film with lots of footage of the man (and the boy) himself.



There is a movie coming out based on his "Motorcycle Diaries" and Benicio del Toro is starring as the eponymous "Che" in another biopic directed by that apt hack, Stephen Soderbergh and written by the incomparable genius, Terence Malick.

Hopefully these films will be truly subversive and not merely giant tourist t-shirts in technicolor cinemascope.

On this Independence Day weekend, let's contemplate "The Land of the Free" by remembering that there are 715 people per 100,000 in jail in Amerika. That is the highest percentage IN THE WORLD! Crime rates have been declining since 1990 while prison populations have risen 49%. Prisons represent the 35th largest state in the union. (No links here kids, check it out fo yo sef).

Only the humble look beyond the Laws of Men to the Empty Hands of True Justice; unencumbered by want of wealth, lust for power and blind faith in the Old Gods of War.

Be humble in your sleepy hands on this world.

Be a Killer in Heaven.

All power to the people.

www.joenolan.com