My sleep was disturbed at about 3 AM, so I went out for a walk, and slept in the car until sunrise. I did a sunrise pipe ceremony this morning by myself by a river, the weather was so perfect. Smoking the sacred pipe and seeing my prayers rise to heaven in the smoke gave me a profound sense of peace. I wrote a poem and got a call from Ray saying he bound some copies of my self-pub’d books for me. At 8 AM I got online and answered my emails and sent several days of this to peacefile. I went to the chiropractor to help correct my neck and prevent a migrane. It worked. I felt much better. Then I went to pick up the bound books from Ray; traffic in New Paltz was bad so I turned around and went back to 9W, where I got some French fires at a fast food place and read the paper in the A/C.
The Republicans had gotten a press release to be distributed by AP that was truly ludicrous. They positioned an article on “how important the voters think this election is,” kind of a non-story, and then used as a graphic a poll showing Bush with 46% and Kerry with 41%. I thought that was a little odd, so I read it over three times and read the fine print, and figured out that the poll shown in the large graphic was from June 9th, one month earlier!! I have heard that the latest poll shows Kerry with 46% and Bush with 44%. Kerry’s popularity has risen at least 5% in one month, and this article was deliberately designed to misinform the public.
That made me wonder just how much the release of Michael Moore’s flick and choosing John Edwards had affected the polls that they had to stoop to simple deception in order to keep up appearances. That’s it. I’m calling the guys (and gals) from FAIR, Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting. What is the current poll anyway? Hardcopy or Hardball or Hardass, one of those shows, said Bush was at an all time low, and that was days ago.
Then I went to Poughkeepsie and then the library and did another pass on Robert Jay’s editing project, and wrote letters to Robert, to my cousin Mary and Eddie Benton Benaise. I mailed my screenplay to Mary, using Marist’s post office, but sent it to an old address, which I only found out afterwards. Mary is a professor of screenplay writing and worked on the screenplays for the Leprauchan series. Not that it’s fair to say that, since they were meant to be “grade B” by design. She had given me some excellent advice on “Hollywood” plot development two years ago, so I wanted more advice on the finished draft.
I went back to the post office ten minutes before closing time, at 4:20, and they were closed and the employees nowhere to be found. I wrote a note (noting the time) telling them the correct address then floated it through the grate. It floated through the air, across the desk, across the work table and down to the floor behind the counter. I’m sure they will find it, but they will probably not lift a finger to help out, sending it knowingly to a wrong address. They didn’t call me. I had also written a long letter to Eddie and sent him Paths of Light Paths of Darkness, which he has not seen. Then I went to visit a friend and went to see King Arthur after playing some baseball at Riverfront Park in Beacon. I had an appointment to interview Pete Seeger at the Sloop Club meeting, but for some reason the meeting was cancelled. I hope Pete is okay.
Review and Explanation of King Arthur
King Arthur turned out to be a big winner, though not for everyone’s taste. Newsweek gave it a weak review, and indeed some of the acting was bad, especially Arthur, but Gwenevere was totally, like, radical! Anyway, it was not based on King Arthur legends and fairtales, but on recent discoveries in eastern England among Roman ruins, suggesting there was a real King Arthur who lived around 300 AD. The political innuendos were clear, at least to me. The Romans (The United States) pulls out of Britain, (Iraq) a third world country they have occupied for a long time, training and employing locals (Iraqi police) to keep down their own people. The Romans leave suddenly, leaving Britain (Baghdad) in chaos, and the Saxons (Kurds) are invading from the north, crossing Hadrians Wall (the line between Kurdish Iraq and Bath Party Iraq.) King Arthur is one of these half Romans, half locals (like the people Bremmer is turning Iraq over to) who was promised freedom, but is now told he must rescue a princely son of the Bishop who is in enemy territory before gaining freedom to return to Rome, the center of civilization and intellectual knowledge. (New York, location of the Republican Convention). (This reminded me of the National Guardsmen who went back to their families after being promised freedom, and were then told they must return to Baghdad).
Arthur’s men rescue the prince (Bush?) whose life is run by the Bishop (Ashcroft) who is a religious fanatic who imprisons and tortures the non-Christians (Islamic Iraqis) he has captured in his secret prison. (Abu Greib, or I’m a monkey’s uncle). The movie dwells a long time on this issue, and makes strong statements against Christianity and those who torture others. Arthur follows a Roman philosopher who may have been Plotinius, who teaches individual freedom and human rights. The prince then tells him the man has been excommunicated and assassinated. (Wellstone?) Arthur loses interest in going to Rome. The girl (a WTO-style protester type, whose face paint makes her look like she just left a bodypainting workshop at Starwood) kills the Bishop. After Arthur rescues the prince, he joins the Pagan resistance and defeats the Saxons. He and his men are given their “visas” to go to Rome, but he says that real freedom is something you are born with that no one can take from you, and that if people want to follow a tyrant it is really their own choice (so much for Operation Iraqi Freedom; in other words, the people could have overthrown Saddam if they wanted to). I thought the parallels were pretty obvious but clever nonetheless. It reminded me quite a bit of The Last Samurai, which has a similar subliminal message.
MoPress 
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