Alice's Restaurant Massacre

That's pronounced "mass-a-cree" by Arlo Guthrie, if you happen not to be old enough to remember this schtick from the 60's. Seeing as how this is Thanksgiving I thought it appropriate. Enjoy...

This song is called Alice's Restaurant, and it's about Alice, and the restaurant, but Alice's Restaurant is not the name of the restaurant, that's just the name of the song, and that's why I called the song Alice's Restaurant.

You can get anything you want at Alice's Restaurant
You can get anything you want at Alice's Restaurant
Walk right in it's around the back
Just a half a mile from the railroad track
You can get anything you want at Alice's Restaurant

Now it all started two Thanksgivings ago, was on - two years ago on Thanksgiving, when my friend and I went up to visit Alice at the restaurant, but Alice doesn't live in the restaurant, she lives in the church nearby the restaurant, in the bell-tower, with her husband Ray and Fasha the dog. And livin' in the bell tower like that, they got a lot of room downstairs where the pews used to be in. Havin' all that room, seein' as how they took out all the pews, they decided that they didn't have to take out their garbage for a long time.

We got up there, we found all the garbage in there, and we decided it'd be a friendly gesture for us to take the garbage down to the city dump. So we took the half a ton of garbage, put it in the back of a red VW microbus, took shovels and rakes and implements of destruction and headed on toward the city dump.

Well we got there and there was a big sign and a chain across across the dump saying, "Closed on Thanksgiving." And we had never heard of a dump closed on Thanksgiving before, and with tears in our eyes we drove off into the sunset looking for another place to put the garbage.

We didn't find one. Until we came to a side road, and off the side of the side road there was another fifteen foot cliff and at the bottom of the cliff there was another pile of garbage. And we decided that one big pile is better than two little piles, and rather than bring that one up we decided to throw our's down.

That's what we did, and drove back to the church, had a thanksgiving dinner that couldn't be beat, went to sleep and didn't get up until the next morning, when we got a phone call from officer Obie. He said, "Kid, we found your name on an envelope at the bottom of a half a ton of garbage, and just wanted to know if you had any information about it." And I said, "Yes, sir, Officer Obie, I cannot tell a lie, I put that envelope under that garbage."

After speaking to Obie for about fourty-five minutes on the telephone we finally arrived at the truth of the matter and said that we had to go down and pick up the garbage, and also had to go down and speak to him at the police officer's station. So we got in the red VW microbus with the shovels and rakes and implements of destruction and headed on toward the police officer's station.

Now friends, there was only one or two things that Obie coulda done at the police station, and the first was he could have given us a medal for being so brave and honest on the telephone, which wasn't very likely, and we didn't expect it, and the other thing was he could have bawled us out and told us never to be see driving garbage around the vicinity again, which is what we expected, but when we got to the police officer's station there was a third possibility that we hadn't even counted upon, and we was both immediately arrested. Handcuffed. And I said "Obie, I don't think I can pick up the garbage with these handcuffs on." He said, "Shut up, kid.
Get in the back of the patrol car."

And that's what we did, sat in the back of the patrol car and drove to the quote Scene of the Crime unquote. I want tell you about the town of Stockbridge, Massachusets, where this happened here, they got three stop signs, two police officers, and one police car, but when we got to the Scene of the Crime there was five police officers and three police cars, being the biggest crime of the last fifty years, and everybody wanted to get in the newspaper story about it. And they was using up all kinds of cop equipment that they had hanging around the police officer's station. They was taking plaster tire tracks, foot prints, dog smelling prints, and they took twenty seven eight-by-ten colour glossy photographs with circles and arrows and a paragraph on the back of each one explaining what each one was to be used as evidence against us. Took pictures of the approach, the getaway, the northwest corner the southwest corner and that's not to mention the aerial photography.

After the ordeal, we went back to the jail. Obie said he was going to put us in the cell. Said, "Kid, I'm going to put you in the cell, I want your wallet and your belt." And I said, "Obie, I can understand you wanting my wallet so I don't have any money to spend in the cell, but what do you want my belt for?" And he said, "Kid, we don't want any hangings." I said, "Obie, did you think I was going to hang myself for littering?" Obie said he was making sure, and friends Obie was, cause he took out the toilet seat so I couldn't hit myself over the head and drown, and he took out the toilet paper so I couldn't bend the bars roll out the - roll the toilet paper out the window, slide down the roll and have an escape. Obie was making sure, and it was about four or five hours later that Alice (remember Alice? It's a song about Alice), Alice came by and with a few nasty words to Obie on the side, bailed us out of jail, and we went back to the church, had a another thanksgiving dinner that couldn't be beat, and didn't get up until the next morning, when we all had to go to court.

We walked in, sat down, Obie came in with the twenty seven eight-by-ten colour glossy pictures with circles and arrows and a paragraph on the back of each one, sat down. Man came in said, "All rise." We all stood up, and Obie stood up with the twenty seven eight-by-ten colour glossy pictures, and the judge walked in sat down with a seeing eye dog, and he sat down, we sat down. Obie looked at the seeing eye dog, and then at the twenty seven eight-by-ten colour glossy pictures with circles and arrows and a paragraph on the back of each one, and looked at the seeing eye dog.
And then at twenty seven eight-by-ten colour glossy pictures with circles and arrows and a paragraph on the back of each one and began to cry, 'cause Obie came to the realization that it was a typical case of American blind justice, and there wasn't nothing he could do about it, and the judge wasn't going to look at the twenty seven eight-by-ten colour glossy pictures with the circles and arrows and a paragraph on the back of each one explaining what each one was to be used as evidence against us. And we was fined $50 and had to pick up the garbage in the snow, but thats not
what I came to tell you about.

Came to talk about the draft.

They got a building down New York City, it's called Whitehall Street, where you walk in, you get injected, inspected, detected, infected, neglected and selected. I went down to get my physical examination one day, and I walked in, I sat down, got good and drunk the night before, so I looked and felt my best when I went in that morning. `Cause I wanted to look like the all-American kid from New York City, man I wanted, I wanted to feel like the all-, I wanted to be the all American kid from New York, and I walked in, sat down, I was hung down, brung down, hung up, and all kinds o' mean nasty ugly things. And I waked in and sat down and they gave me a piece of paper, said, "Kid, see the phsychiatrist, room 604."

And I went up there, I said, "Shrink, I want to kill. I mean, I wanna, I wanna kill. Kill. I wanna, I wanna see, I wanna see blood and gore and guts and veins in my teeth. Eat dead burnt bodies. I mean kill, Kill, KILL, KILL." And I started jumpin up and down yelling, "KILL, KILL," and he started jumpin up and down with me and we was both jumping up and down yelling, "KILL, KILL." And the sargent came over, pinned a medal on me, sent me down the hall, said, "You're our boy."

Didn't feel too good about it.

Proceeded on down the hall gettin more injections, inspections, detections, neglections and all kinds of stuff that they was doin' to me at the thing there, and I was there for two hours, three hours, four hours, I was there for a long time going through all kinds of mean nasty ugly things and I was just having a tough time there, and they was inspecting, injecting every single part of me, and they was leaving no part untouched. Proceeded through, and when I finally came to the see the last man, I walked in, walked in sat down after a whole big thing there, and I walked up and said, "What do you want?" He said, "Kid, we only got one question. Have you ever been arrested?"

And I proceeded to tell him the story of the Alice's Restaurant Massacre, with full orchestration and five part harmony and stuff like that and all the phenome... - and he stopped me right there and said, "Kid, did you ever go to court?"

And I proceeded to tell him the story of the twenty seven eight-by-ten colour glossy pictures with the circles and arrows and the paragraph on the back of each one, and he stopped me right there and said, "Kid, I want you to go and sit down on that bench that says Group W .... NOW kid!!"

And I, I walked over to the, to the bench there, and there is, Group W's where they put you if you may not be moral enough to join the army after committing your special crime, and there was all kinds of mean nasty ugly looking people on the bench there. Mother rapers. Father stabbers. Father rapers! Father rapers sitting right there on the bench next to me! And they was mean and nasty and ugly and horrible crime-type guys sitting on the bench next to me. And the meanest, ugliest, nastiest one, the meanest father raper of them all, was coming over to me and he was mean 'n' ugly 'n' nasty 'n' horrible and all kind of things and he sat down next to me and said, "Kid, whad'ya get?" I said, "I didn't get nothing, I had to pay $50 and pick up the garbage." He said, "What were you arrested for, kid?"
And I said, "Littering." And they all moved away from me on the bench there, and the hairy eyeball and all kinds of mean nasty things, till I said, "And creating a nuisance." And they all came back, shook my hand, and we had a great time on the bench, talkin about crime, mother stabbing, father raping, all kinds of groovy things that we was talking about on the bench. And everything was fine, we was smoking cigarettes and all kinds of things, until the Sargeant came over, had some paper in his hand, held it up and said.

"Kids, this-piece-of-paper's-got-47-words-37-sentences-58-words-we-wanna-now-details-of-the-crime-time-of-the-crime-and-any-other-kind-of-thing-you-gotta-say-pertaining-to-and-about-the-crime-I-want-to-know-arresting-officer's-name-and-any-other-kind-of-thing-you-gotta-say", and talked for forty-five minutes and nobody understood a word that he said, but we had fun filling out the forms and playing with the pencils on the bench there, and I filled out the massacre with the four part harmony, and wrote it down there, just like it was, and everything was fine and I put down the pencil, and I turned over the piece of paper, and there, there on the other side, in the middle of the other side, away from everything else on the other side, in parentheses, capital letters, quotated, read the following words:

("KID, HAVE YOU REHABILITATED YOURSELF?")

I went over to the sargent, said, "Sargeant, you got a lot a damn gall to ask me if I've rehabilitated myself, I mean, I mean, I mean that just, I'm sittin' here on the bench, I mean I'm sittin here on the Group W bench 'cause you want to know if I'm moral enough join the army, burn women, kids, houses and villages after bein' a litterbug." He looked at me and said, "Kid, we don't like your kind, and we're gonna send you fingerprints off to Washington."

And friends, somewhere in Washington enshrined in some little folder, is a study in black and white of my fingerprints. And the only reason I'm singing you this song now is cause you may know somebody in a similar situation, or you may be in a similar situation, and if your in a situation like that there's only one thing you can do and that's walk into the shrink wherever you are ,just walk in say "Shrink, You can get anything you want, at Alice's restaurant.". And walk out. You know, if one person, just one person does it they may think he's really sick and they won't take him. And if two people, two people do it, in harmony, they may think they're both faggots and they won't take either of them. And three people do it, three, can you imagine, three people walking in singin a bar of Alice's Restaurant and walking out. They may think it's an organization. And can you, can you imagine fifty people a day, I said fifty people a day walking in singin a bar of Alice's Restaurant and
walking out. And friends they may thinks it's a movement.

And that's what it is, the Alice's Restaurant Anti-Massacre Movement, and all you got to do to join is sing it the next time it come's around on the guitar.

With feeling. So we'll wait for it to come around on the guitar, here and sing it when it does. Here it comes.

You can get anything you want, at Alice's Restaurant
You can get anything you want, at Alice's Restaurant
Walk right in it's around the back
Just a half a mile from the railroad track
You can get anything you want, at Alice's Restaurant

That was horrible. If you want to end war and stuff you got to sing loud. I've been singing this song now for twenty five minutes. I could sing it for another twenty five minutes. I'm not proud... or tired.

So we'll wait till it comes around again, and this time with four part harmony and feeling.

We're just waitin' for it to come around is what we're doing.

All right now.

You can get anything you want, at Alice's Restaurant
Excepting Alice
You can get anything you want, at Alice's Restaurant
Walk right in it's around the back
Just a half a mile from the railroad track
You can get anything you want, at Alice's Restaurant

Da da da da da da da dum
At Alice's Restaurant

What are the chances...

The California Supreme Court on Wednesday accepted three lawsuits seeking to overturn Proposition 8. The amendment passed this month with 52 percent of the vote.

...that the SCOCA will allow the voters of California to decide this issue?

It ain't too good.

Give it a little more time

coComments added

Let's just try this and see how it works.

Seems like most of the bugs/fixes have been ironed out...

The "magic" has descended

I don't ever remember a new president-elect giving a press conference standing behind a podium with a sign reading "Office of the PRESIDENT-elect", and I've been through Nixon to Carter to Reagan to Bush to Clinton to Bush. It seems I'm not the only one who notices this bit of narcissism. His flair for the dramatic, combined with his mellifluous speeches, melts the hearts of the faithful. It's all part of Obama's transition website.

H.L. Mencken considered the cynic right nine times out of ten. Color me a skeptic.

A future and a hope

Of all the things I've read and heard since the election of Tuesday, this is by far the most important and significant statement anyone's made...

Since it's now far too late to salvage the USA in its present form, the important thing is to build for the future. If there's one thing certain about dysfunctional societies, it is that they are doomed to collapse. Therefore it is much more important to focus on building a foundation for future freedom than to chase after yesterday's vanished liberties. Having children and teaching them well is the single most significant and revolutionary act any individual can reasonably hope to achieve at this time.

After a personal relationship with Jesus Christ, there is no doubt in my mind that in that one sentence Vox Day has encapsulated the only lasting hope of a free society. We neglect our progeny to our own peril.

The statement he makes following is also significant...

The short-term battle is over and the USSA is upon us. But it will be a short-lived entity by virtue of the Invisible Hand's iron fist; the only real question is if its successor will be the North American Union or a collection of rump-states of widely varying social structures. Five years ago, I would have assumed the former, but now, given the increasing devolution in Europe and chaos in Mexico, the latter is looking rather less improbable than before.

He's right. Geopolitical boundaries aren't set in stone. The changes (Oh, how tired I am of hearing that word.) coming will make the U.S. completely unrecognizable to our parents.

Polling numbers

Polling totals, 98% precincts reporting:

Obama 62,945,914 52%
McCain 55,753,790 46%
Nader 646,933 1%
Barr 483,973 1%
Baldwin 172,635 0%
McKinney 140,749 0%
Keyes 34,498 0%
Paul 19,285 0%

Georgia unofficial polling, 96% precincts reporting

McCain(R)2,019,740
Obama (D)1,803,920
Barr(Lib) 28,414
Totals 3,852,074

And what was that about wasted votes?

Fox News quoted a statistic from exit polling about Indiana white evangelical voters tonight.

According to exit polling, and I know exit polling is somewhat unreliable, white evangelicals, and I know defining evangelicals is a challenge, voted for Obama, who's a Marxist who doesn't know an abortion technique he doesn't like, in the neighborhood of 31%...

31%

And idiotic Christians would try to lay the blame for McCain going down in flames at the feet of people like me for voting third party? And in Indiana 31% of them voted for Obama? There's 11% of them in Georgia and 9% of them in Alabama? I WISH Chuck Baldwin would get even 11% of the white, evangelical Georgia vote!

I don't want to hear any of the stupid arguments about my third party vote being wasted when 11% of white evangelical Georgians don't even have the intelligence of a hammer to vote for the infanticidal Obama.

Today's a good day to wave the flag

Another reason I won't be voting for McCain this time or any time.

John McCain on Wednesday [January 16th] sharply defended his opposition eight years ago to the flying of the Confederate battle flag over the South Carolina state capitol in Columbia, brushing aside protests that dogged him at campaign events and suggesting most people in the state don't want the issue reopened.

Several protesters aggressively waved Confederate flags at McCain's bus procession as it arrived for campaign events in Greenville and Spartanburg and passed out literature recalling McCain's April 2000 call for removal of the flag from atop the South Carolina statehouse.

Some may co-opt it as their symbol of hate. The only expression of hate it represents to me is for oppressive, tyrannical central government rule. This isn't some common redneck affection for the flag but an admiration for a symbol of the principles of liberty and honor which Confederates stood for. Being a New York Yankee, even Ann Coulter finds the right words:

The Confederate battle flag today has nothing to do with race. It stands for a romantic image of a chivalric, honor-based culture that was driven down by the brute force of crass Yankee capitalism, which was better at manufacturing weapons than using them, and that shortly thereafter gave us the Grant administration and the Gilded Age....It stands for a proud military heritage shared by both blacks and whites in the South. The reverence for tradition and pride in historical antecedents are precisely what make Southerners, black and white, such stalwart patriots.

The Confederate battle flag controversy is a completely synthetic issue created by the same people who believe there is a burgeoning class of brilliant blacks graduating from law school every year, but Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg refuses to hire them out purely out of racism. They are picking a fight in an election year to enable The New York Times to distribute daily reports on the superior Democratic response on the question of the Confederate flag.

It is also a completely illogical issue. If the Confederate battle flag can be tagged as a tribute to slavery, how is it that the American flag has gotten a pass so far? Slavery existed far longer under Old Glory than under the Stars and Bars.

It does seems strange that the Stars and Stripes, under which slavery existed years longer than the Confederacy, seems to have no such stigma attached as the Battle flag. Take a look at the picture of Klansmen marching in Washington D.C. in 1926 and note closely the flag used. (click to enlarge)

The familiar H.L. Menken quote on Lincoln's poetic but twisted Gettysburg speech makes clear my view of what the flag symbolizes:

The Gettysburg speech was at once the shortest and the most famous oration in American history...the highest emotion reduced to a few poetical phrases. Lincoln himself never even remotely approached it. It is genuinely stupendous. But let us not forget that it is poetry, not logic; beauty, not sense. Think of the argument in it. Put it into the cold words of everyday. The doctrine is simply this: that the Union soldiers who died at Gettysburg sacrificed their lives to the cause of self-determination – that government of the people, by the people, for the people, should not perish from the earth. It is difficult to imagine anything more untrue. The Union soldiers in the battle actually fought against self-determination; it was the Confederates who fought for the right of their people to govern themselves. - H.L. Mencken

Fairy tale elections

Let's just put an end to the charade that the law makes things fair.

In Connecticut, state officials initially said the Barr campaign came up about 500 names short of the 7,500 signatures required to put Barr's name on the ballot. They later acknowledged that they had made an addition error. Barr was only 321 names shy of the minimum. The state then admitted that state officials had actually lost 119 pages of signatures—almost certainly enough to put Barr over the top. Nevertheless, a U.S. District Court judge ruled that Barr would not be on the ballot, citing testimony from Connecticut officials that it would be "nearly impossible" to reprint the ballots to include him.

Meanwhile, in Texas, the tables were turned. Both the Republican and Democratic parties somehow missed that state's deadline to include Barack Obama and John McCain on the Texas ballot. Barr's campaign sued, noting the equal protection problems with allowing the two major parties to skirt campaign rules while holding third party candidates to the letter of the law. Barr was right — Obama and McCain should have been kept off the Texas ballot. But Barr's suit was dismissed by the Texas Supreme Court without comment. Apparently, the Democratic and Republican parties are, to borrow a now-tired phrase, "too big to fail." They're allowed to break the rules.

And every vote will be counted. And it's all done according to the law.

And fairy tales come true...

One party is as good as another Part 2

Continued from Dan Phillips' "Biblical Christianity" blog:

4. All third-party candidates are immature, fools, and/or liars. Which, I think, is a minus! At least, it's a fatal flaw in their leadership qualities. How can I make this claim? Because they either know they cannot win and are misleading and misdirecting their supporters and (already!) wasting their money; OR they do not know it, in which case they are hopelessly out-of-touch fools. So they know, for instance, that the two possible candidates differ very sharply on the issue of abortion. They themselves oppose abortion, as does the GOP ticket. So followers who also oppose abortion would naturally vote for the GOP candidate if they had only two choices. But, wrecklessly and egomaniacally, they mislead their followers into thinking that there is a viable third choice. They take the vote that would naturally go to the one pro-life candidate, and turn it into an empty gesture — which benefits the candidate who adores abortion, which they (supposedly) abhor. So they actually help score a touchdown for the other side. Brilliant. Idiots.

Ad hominem attacks are so intellectually dishonest, but it's all there's left when there's no sound rational argument to make. No vote is wasted, except the vote for McCain. He's lost my vote with his fascist legislation (McCain-Feingold) and his support for an unconstitutional war. You can talk about his position on abortion, which is dubious due to his support of exceptions, but what about the men and women in the military he would risk? No, I don't support McCain and I'm not voting Obama, but for Chuck Baldwin. There, can I be any clearer than that? And so far as "scoring touchdowns for the other team", the only one I remember reading about was this one.

And here's where Phillips goes really awry. A vote for a candidate is a vote for a candidate, not one that "naturally" would've been expected to go another way. Candidates earn the votes they get, and it's not a zero sum game. The freedom not to vote still exists...for now.

5. I'm a grownup. I want to make a difference, not a gesture. I don't know if there has ever been a more stark nor consequential choice in my lifetime. One candidate has a sterling pro-life voting record, and an even more persuasively pro-life running-mate. The other never met an unborn child he wouldn't just as soon see dead, and even in the most gruesome way imaginable. He thinks spreading abortion is the most important thing he can do. I agree with the former's position, and as a Christian I abominate the latter's. If I do not help the former, I help the latter. Simple as that. I've read hundreds of words from third-partyers. While I share many of their goals, I really think it's all about them. It's about making themselves feel better. Me? I'll feel better if I keep that monstrous, pro-infanticide position out of the White House.

This idea that "If I do not help the former, I help the latter." is ridiculous. One minus one doesn't equal two, unless we're talking manipulative fear mongering. And he might think he's keeping a monstrous, pro-infanticide out of the White House, but nothing substantive has been accomplished toward making abortion illegal by voting for the Republicans up to this point. Nothing would change with a McCain administration, and don't expect conservative, strict constructionist judge appointments on the SCOTUS. How many more babies would be spared under a McCain administration than Bush? Voting Republican hasn't moved us even incrementally toward ending abortion, but to a status quo, and that is monstrous. I want to end abortion, and I'm voting with that end in mind.

6. This election will have a huge impact on the state of abortion law. As I've documented repeatedly, Obama is the most viciously merciless and doctrinaire Presidential candidate in history, when it comes to abortion. We've made progress in abortion over the years, and it's made a difference. Thanks to President Bush's appointments, some restrictions have squeaked by the Supreme Court. Now there are 2-3 justices who are about 900 years old who are holding on for a liberal president. You let Obama load the SC and other benches, and you will set the pro-life cause back legally for years. You will hurt every aspect of its public face. And, to be blunt, if you do not vote for John McCain, you are helping Barack Obama.

This is just a ridiculous, fear based argument. And again, just like many in Republican party circles, Phillips continues to display his lack of math aptitude. Repeating the same argument doesn't make it any more effective.

The blame for Obama, should he be elected, doesn't lie with people like me who won't vote for McCain, but instead with a Republican party who chose to disdain and ignore Ron Paul for his candidacy. Right now, a Ron Paul candidacy would be trouncing Obama in the polls, even in an election year in which the Democrat is expected to do well against a Republican. The fact that Obama and McCain poll so closely to each other is a testament to the lackluster candidacy of each and the disinterest of the voting public.