“The Rude Guy”

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The Rude Guy is the poison mushroom on the pizza of corporate culture. The arrow in the ass of the institutions of our time.

And you have stumbled upon the blog page that posts his podcasts, and the text versions of his podcasts, every two weeks or so.

Find a show topic below, then click the correct MONTH, in the archives on the RIGHT hand side of the page, to find that show NUMBER.

Or scroll down on this page to find both text and audio versions of the recent shows.

There’re plenty of laughs, and something to offend everybody.

Podcast 1: Are U.S. corporations directly to blame for the attacks of 911? … January 2006

Podcast 2: Should we tax stock market transactions? … January 2006

Podcast 3: Does the Democratic Party understand the difference between white men and RICH white men? … January 2006

Podcast 4: What IS it with the fragile FEMALE ego? … February 2006

Podcast 5: What is Populism and what can we learn from it? … February 2006

Podcast 6: Does God exist? … February 2006

Podcast 7: What is science good for? … February 2006

Podcast 8: What is a Christian Communist? … March 2006

Podcast 9: Why are evangelical Christians, and evangelical Muslims, and evangelical Feminists, the WAY they ARE? … March 2006

Podcast 10: Are corporations vampires? NOT are corporations LIKE vampires. But are corporations REALLY vampires? … March 2006

Podcast 11: How come rents and mortgages are so much? And how can we lower them? … March 2006

Podcast 12: Are men the oppressors of women, or are women the oppressors of men? … April 2006

Podcast 13: [Continued from Last Week] Are men the oppressors of women, or are women the oppressors of men? … April 2006

Podcast 14: Are corporations tapeworms? … April 2006

Podcast 15: What is real, and what is not? … May 2006

Podcast 16: What’s really happening with men? … May 2006

Podcast 17: What is citizenship? What is a citizen? … May 2006

Podcast 18: a CORPORATE-FREE zone, adventures in the Peruvian Jungle … June 2006

Podcast 19: How come Republicans have their heads up their own asses? … June 2006

Podcast 20: Bush Family Fuckups and Rush Limbaugh cab drivers … July 2006

Podcast 21: Things Conservatives Believe … July 2006

Podcast 22: How do we get rid of fear? … August 2006

Podcast 23:What do women want? … August 2006

Podcast 24: Fantasies: Americans have free and fair elections and live in a democracy; and 19 Arabs with plastic knives brought down the World Trade Center and attacked the Pentagon … September 2006

Podcast 25: Should socialism be called Peoplism? President Hugo Chavez in Venezuela says: I follow the teachings of the first socialist. Jesus Christ … September 2006

Podcast 26: Rich Zubaty holds forth on polite, charming, witty, clever Assholes; taking back the government, the value of being RUDE, how your mom fucked up your brain, his jackass siren, and who’s really taking away our freedoms anyway? … October 2006

Podcast 27: The Corporate Vampires DVD sound track … October 2006

Podcast 28: Rich Zubaty reads vignettes from Romance, his autobiography, about life on the lam in 25 different countries … November 2006

Podcast 29: Guided Buddhist Meditation from Thailand …November 2006

Podcast 30: Rich Zubaty rants about living in his truck, Homeless in Hawaii, homeless shelters that don’t provide housing, and Female Aristocrats who ignore the plight of poor people …December 2006

Podcast 31: Impeach Bush, and Part One of Rich’s South Pacific adventures. Lost and found …December 2006

Podcast 32: Part Two of Rich’s South Pacific adventures. Fabulous fishing and a mysterious visitor…January 2007

Podcast 33: One year anniversary show. A recap of the first 32 shows …January 2007

Podcast 34: Nascar Politicians, cheeseburgers for Darfur, how our own soldiers enslave us, what is evolution good for?; and an excerpt about talking plants from Rich Zubaty’s novel: Your Brain Is Not Your Own …February 2007

Podcast 35: Grandfathering, plus: betting on presidents, the Jewish lesbian Republican governor of Hawaii, and outsource Dick Cheney …February 2007

Podcast 36: Pilgrimmage to Singapore and India …March 1, 2007

Podcast 37: Why I hate women, and the importance of ideas …March 15, 2007

Podcast 38: Soul, Soulfulness, Things I Want My Kids to Know …April 1, 2007

Podcast 39: Reinventing Learning; more excerpts from Rich Zubaty’s book: The Corporate Cult …April 15, 2007

Podcast 40: The last show for a couple months:…The mind of Robert Crumb; plus previews of upcoming shows: prosecute Cheney and Rove, how our soldiers don’t protect us – but enslave us to massive debt, how George W. Bush is like Josef Stalin, biographies of defense attorney Clarence Darrow, political novelist George Orwell, and populist Huey Long; ban depleted uranium, Teddy Roosevelt on malefactors of great wealth, male initiation, and male menopause …May 2007

Podcast 41: Rich Zubaty in France, reading from his Wisdom Booklet, the spiritual travelogue of his world travels …July 1, 2007

Podcast 42: Male Initiation, turning boys into men …August 1, 2007

Podcast 43: Huey Long, C.I.A. operative Gloria Steinem, and a goofy political Odyssey featuring the amazing human and animal impersonations of Dan Burgevin …September 1, 2007

Podcast 44: Unsung American heroes Abbie Hoffman, and Franklin Roosevelt, and Bad Words that are Really Good …October 1, 2007

Podcast 45: Evolution: Science or Religion? …November 1, 2007

Podcast 46: How fishing is like praying …December 1, 2007

Podcast 47: Synthetic Terrorism, Shadow Government, Oligarchy, False Flag Operations, Webster Tarpley book …January 1, 2008

Podcast 48: What’s wrong with American woman by author Nancy Levant …February 1, 2008

Podcast 49: Report from a Mexican village on Latin American anti-globalization …March 1, 2008

Podcast 50: Naomi Klein on the Shock Doctrine and Disaster Capitalism …April 1, 2008

Podcast 51: Quantum Physics and God …May 1, 2008

[God and Quantum Physics]

This is the Rude Guy. Assassin of ignorance. Corncob up the ass of pretentious people. Leo Tolstoy of podcasting. Welcoming you to the Reality Cult. The show with something to offend everybody. The show where we believe, as Rumi said: that everyone who is calm and sensible is insane. The show that’s about ideas. Not news items, not gossip, not opinions. Ideas.

[RZ voice] I’m still in that noisy Mexican town, as you will no doubt hear. I asked my neighbor, Bernardo, the guy with the power saws and planers and carpentry shop, to give me two hours of quiet from 7 to 9 am SUNDAY morning, which is right now, so I can record this show. He’s the one who I paid to build the canvas stretcher for my new painting, The Herd. So, since I’m an occasional client of his, perhaps he’ll respect my wishes. I’m getting better at this. Living in this noisy hell. Now if I could only poison all the dogs. Or maybe poison the owners of the dogs, who won’t shut them up, when they’re barking to raise the dead, every night at 3 am. What’s the point of training dogs to bark when burglars come, if they’re barking all night long anyway?

[RG voice: ugh or wretch]

And why do I call myself the Leo Tolstoy of podcasting? Because this is how Tolstoy wrote.

[bird squawk, or gulls]

A black parrot squawks in a palm tree. It’s cool, cause the morning sun is still hidden behind the cliff. The high tide swishes and hisses in the cove next to the concrete pier in the small harbor. Weary fishermen goose their outboards and plow their boats high up, onto the sand, where local women rush toward the boat, while it’s still rocketing up onto the beach, and swarm over it, grabbing fish off the floorboards. Mysteriously, I never see any money change hands, but I know these women will catch a ride on a truck and sell the fish in the big Monday market, in the city.

Frigate birds wheel overhead. An Indian woman rushes by with a cell phone slapped to her ear, her other hand holding up one side of a huge plastic tub, full of fish. Taking phone orders. Strangely, there are no radios blasting. Just calm Indian voices, muffled by the waves. Teenage girls weave through the crowd, selling ice cream cups and pineapple turnovers. A baby shrieks. A truck horn bleats.

It’s a very high tide today, and sometimes huge Pacific rollers, break around the point, and toss the fishing boats, like toys in a tub. One guy is gutting a fish that’s still slapping its tail. A woman grabs it, and holds it still for him. And slowly comes the sun, tracing palm leaf shadows, across the sand, baking off the stinking fish slime, evaporating into another bright hot day.

[bird gull]

[RZ voice] I’m sitting in the shade of the wall by the local “naval base” – the naval base that has no boat of any kind. I’m waiting for the fruit and vegetable store – Frutas y Verduras – to get a delivery. I’m dieting. Heavy dieting. I eat NOthing of what I like, and as much as I want, of whatever I DON’t like; these days mostly grapefruit and spinach. I’m a vegan junkie, hanging out on the dusty street outside the store, scratching my arms, waiting for my veggie connection. I yell inside:

“Got any grapefruit?”

“No.”

“Spinach?”

“No.”

“NO! You GOTTA be KIDDING!”

“Maybe in an hour.”

“An hour!… Jesus…OK, OK, I’ll wait.” I go next door to the internet place to check emails, kill some time.

After I’ve eaten a grapefruit I calm down a bit. Go sit on the steps of my friend Reina’s store. What I like about Mexico, there’s a little store on every little street. You can always get milk and onions and noodles right there, outside your front door, a minute away, and no driving. Had a forbidden taco offered me by Reina’s 93-year-old antie. A rare lapse in my dieting regimen, but I didn’t want to turn the old woman down. Tia, antie, has crinkled brown Indian skin, and an eNORmous hooked beak of a nose. Like a toucan almost. But it only looks like a beak because she hasn’t had any teeth for 30 years, and her mouth funnels into her face in a crinkled brown whirlpool, making her nose look enormous. Tough old bird. She finally stopped smoking… 20 years ago, at the age of seventy. There’s hope for me yet. I stopped two years ago. And felt so shitty for two years straight I decided I might as well have some good reason for feeling shitty. So I stopped eating too.

Lost 25 pounds in five weeks. Best thing about not eating is my knee pains have gone away, and my heartbeat has slowed from 78 to a steady 60. I felt crappy when I stopped drinking, wretched when I stopped smoking, but I feel GREAT not eating. Never would have guessed it.

[bird, gulls]

OK, maybe that isn’t really like Tolstoy.

[RG voice:] Yeah, but it started OUT like him.

Yeah, simple descriptions. That’s who Hemingway learned to write from. BUT… unlike Ernest Hemingway… Leo Tolstoy and I… are both DEEP believers. Our faith is awesome. It has no bounds.

That said, I have one original idea, a SPIRitual idea, I want to record, before we go into the The Rude Guy Podcast reruns, which will start this summer, and post on the web every couple of weeks. My original idea, like most original ideas, is patched together from other people’s discoveries. The same way Thomas Edison worked. It goes like this:

The more we focus our consciousness on the Supreme Consciousness, the more present IT becomes in this world. Another way to put it is: the more we think about God, the more real He becomes.

And I don’t mean that metaphorically, I mean the more we pray, the more really real God becomes in this world. Sounds like the ravings of a medieval monk huh? Actually it’s built on the back of the ravings of Quantum Physics. The more we think about God, the more real he becomes.

Let me give you a couple examples. (more…)

CLICK HERE to listen to The Rude Guy Podcast #50

or RIGHT CLICK HERE (Apple command/click) then click “Save Target As” to DOWNLOAD the podcast to your computer or playback device

[Disaster Capitalism, Naomi Klein]

[RG voice] This is the Rude Guy, the Machiavellian meat grinder. Welcoming you to the show where we make pork sausage out of politicians. The show where we find no reason whatsoever, to be polite and respectful, to liars and murderers, no matter WHO their dad is, or how charming and well-meaning they are. Because… as soon as you start talking THEIR talk, according to THEIR rules, the assholes, OWN you. [/RG voice]

I’m still in that noisy Mexican town, so some chickens and dogs and busted mufflers will probably bleep through onto this recording. I have no windows, and the noise here NEVER ever stops, so there’s nothing I can do about it.

[rooster]

This show is gonna be a book report, on Naomi Klein’s world-changing book: The Shock Doctrine, the Rise of Disaster Capitalism

Everything Americans have been told for the past 50 years has been a lie. Every news story, every academic analysis, every Hollywood movie, has been a lie… a diversion from what’s REALLY happening.

What’s REALLY happening is that the United States of America has developed the most MURderous economic system every contrived by man. We call it the free market. But we should probably call it, shooting peasants for profit. Our market is not free. It’s paid for in blood and murder and mutilated babies.

This free market we worship, University of Chicago professor Milton Friedman’s “free market”, does not exist in the real world, and can NEVER exist in the real world. It’s a fantasy, used by huge corporations to rob the planet. The “free market” is a phantasm. The free market CANNOT exist, except as a totality. Everyone on earth has to be IN the free market, or it won’t work. No half measures.

So…armed with this fractured fairytale, our corporations sallied forth, across the planet, to bring EVERYone on board. Everyone on earth is a prospective worker and consumer of their free market goods and services. EVERYONE. From the jungles of Malaysia to Hong Kong sweatshops to the hidden valleys in the Andes. EVERYONE!

We announced to the world we wanted to eliminate poverty. We sent our economists into poor countries to quote “cure inflation”… then we robbed the people of their natural resources and snuck privatization in, under the fence. We destroyed the economies and murdered hundreds of thousands of people in Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Bolivia, Nigeria, and many other countries. All in the name of… eliminating poverty.

Our corporations smashed democracies around the world so they would not have to deal with requests from the local people for clean water and decent food and shelter and wages, while they robbed the wealth from under their feet. Slimy bastards.

[donkey]

Sez Naomi Klein… Washington has always regarded democratic socialism as a greater threat than totalitarian communism. Corporate Capitalists would rather do deals with a dictatorship, than a democracy, any day. That’s the dirty little secret behind the Chinese economic explosion. It’s corporate communism. Vast freedoms for investors, but total control of workers and wages. Every capitalist’s dream.

Free market capitalism is an abstract idea. It cannot work unless human greed is eliminated from the planet. As long as there are greedy people, corporate capitalism cannot work. So guess what? Corporate capitalism canNOT work.

Capitalism was not invented. It’s a practice as old as trading fish for bananas. You have fish, I have bananas, we trade, we’re both happy. Everyone’s equal… until one guy gets greedy and hires gunslingers and takes over everything. We call economic imperialism: ownership of property.

Now hear this… there can never be a free market as long as there is ownership of property. Wanna own things?… Then you want government-sponsored contract law, and armed enforcement of contracts by government police, which restrict the FREE exchange of commodities, in order to keep prices up… so some people are made rich… and other people, are made poor.

What if some rich guy “owns” an empty lot on my street? It’s just sitting there. He’s not using it for anything. In a TRULY free market, I could move onto it, and build myself a shack. But oh NO! Not in the ownership society. I’ll be arrested and beat up by cops if I so much as put up a tent on that guy’s empty lot.

There’s nothing free about the free market. It’s a game rigged for rich people and their corporations, by charming political ass kissers, and enforced by gun-toting cops. (more…)

CLICK HERE to listen to The Rude Guy Podcast #49

or RIGHT CLICK HERE (Apple command/click) then click “Save Target As” to DOWNLOAD the podcast to your computer or playback device

Mexican village life and Latin American anti-globalization

This is Rich Zubaty. [RG voice] The Rude Guy. Ideology assassin. Globe trotting hot air balloon. Escapee from the Corporate Cult. Welcoming you back to Reality… Fuck fantasy. Your government is a fantasy. Your job is a fantasy. Your marriage is probably a fantasy. And unless you paid cash for your house or your car, you don’t own them… they own you. Fantasy. Welcome to the show where we don’t suck up to liberals or conservatives. Progressives or Libertarians. Screw ‘em all, and their dead-end ideologies. And screw corporate branding and marketing too. We do not accept advertising on this program. Welcome to the show where we talk about ideas. Not ideologies, not opinions… Ideas. Because America is suffering, from an apPALLing lack, of ideas, for how to shape our institutions, and manage our lives. In the marketplace of ideas, America is the most impoverished country in the world. The average Bolivian potato farmer, or Bangkok taxi driver, has more ideas in his head, than the average American.[/RG voice]

This episode is so personal I may chicken out and never post it. I’m trying something different with The Rude Guy podcast. It’s not sex talk or refried ideology. I’m not trying to be funny. I’m trying to provide something useful. I’m trying to be sensitive without being sentimental. I’m trying to present art, not news. Art lasts a thousand years, news lasts a week. This podcast is intended to be an audio archive of pertinent and useful ideas.

Since I did the very first show in Hawaii, two years ago, I’ve been wanting to do a show from the Third World. The REAL tropics. So here I am…

Back in the same Mexican town where I wrote my first, and most successful book: What Men Know That Women Don’t. I wake up every morning, in fear. I have a leaky heart valve, called mitral valve prolapse, and one of its side effects is frequent panic attacks. But that’s not the only reason for my fear. I feel like a runaway hot air balloon, buffeted around the globe, by winds of insanity, with no place to land. I’m lost. I have no home. No family. I’m trying to recover my soul. As I said in Podcast 38, soul is where you connect ideas with actions. If your ideas are disconnected from your actions, you have no soul. And that’s me. The Iraq War, and my mom’s death, have shattered me somehow. My pure hatred of George W Bush and Dick Cheney has POISONed me… Literally made me sick. They’re not worth it.

And frankly, America’s not worth it. The 70% of Americans who oppose the Iraq War do not oppose it because it was a dastardly, vile, shameful, murderous invasion, violating both the U.S. Constitution, and international law. They oppose it because they see, at last, that this war is UNwinnable. Fuck ‘em. I’ve had it. I went through the same shit with Vietnam. And that’s why we can’t get out of Iraq. Because… as I say over and over and over again in my books… opinions don’t matter. We inhabit a feminized society, where having an opinion, has taken the place, of performing an action. People are opposed to the war, but they won’t take fifteen minutes off work to go to an anti-war rally. Fuck ‘em.

And another thing I can’t STAND, is the Liberals PRAISing our soldiers for their SERvice to their country. What VILE hypocrites. Our soldiers are not SERVing the country, they’re desTROYing the country. They’re stomping all over the Constitution. If they really wanna help, they should surround the White House and arrest everybody inside, and cart THEM off to Guantanamo.

Like Vietnam, this war won’t end until the soldiers stop fighting it. And the more smoke we blow up their asses about how they’re serving their country, the longer it will take for them to REbel. We need to shame them, for scaring women and children. Call ‘em baby killers if that’s what it takes. Then fewer babies will get killed. And more of our guys will come home BEFORE they accidentally kill a baby, or a grandma or grandpa… then freak out from guilt and kill themselves. This is not a war. A war is where soldiers kill soldiers. When soldiers kill noncombatant civilians, it’s called murder. It’s called slaughter.

[Ride Guy wretch]
[bird?]

Anyway……..Every few years I go through a mental cleansing I call “falling apart”. It’s based on the idea that I have to get rid of the old mental shit, before any new inspirations can enter my brain. It’s always easier to do that in a foreign country, where you don’t speak enough of the language, to know what the fuck they’re talking about on the news, or on the TV game shows. [Ride Guy wretch] It’s a really great filtering system.

So, like on a Buddhist retreat, I’m left alone with my thoughts and obsessions. It’s frightening. Not fun. Frightening. All the shit that’s wrong with me bubbles to the surface. I can’t get awAY from it. Like I have “you are an asshole” sunglasses strapped to my head, and I can’t get them off. Maybe I beat off a lot for a few days. Then that loses its ability to distract me. I run out of books, get too tired to go fishing. Got no phone or TV or internet connection. All the ways I use to distract my self, from my self, disappear. I start thinking about what a total failure I am, which is, of course, egotistical pity-pot bullshit. But it is also, EXACTLY, why I make paintings, and write books. To fend off that feeling of uselessness and failure, and conGENital shame. Norman Rockwell, the famous painter said, that the instant he stopped painting he felt awkward, useless, and worthless. Like he might as well just curl up and die. His wife would invite folks over for Christmas or Thanksgiving Dinner, and he would greet them at the door. But an hour or so later they would ask “Where’s Norman?” and he would be out in his studio. PAINTing. I have the same problem. Shame. So do Bill Clinton and George W. Bush for that matter. I think they have it worse than me and Norman actually. Why would ANYbody want to be president of the United States???? Power? Fame? Those are just antidotes to shame.

This summer I met a guy named Lawrence Bennett in the South of France. A Brit, who used to play double bass for the Amsterdam Symphony Orchestra. He got Multiple Sclerosis, couldn’t play, and got pensioned off. But… he told me it took seven years for, quote, “the music inside my head to stop.”… “the music inside my head to stop.”

That’s what I want. I want the writing and painting inside my head, to stop. Yeah, I suppose I will make more art. But I am sick to death of being obsessed about it. I’m sick of the feeling that the only thing that gives me any self worth, is if I write or paint.

So maybe THIS is something useful. I’m certain I am not the only person with this problem. Maybe we can start a group for Recovering artists and musicians… and presidents, and even CEOs. We can call it Recovering from All of It, Anonymous. Our entire society is run by deeply shamed, insanely ambitious people. Hillary Clinton anyone? That’s why our country doesn’t work. We have a systemic problem… a problem that runs so deep, people don’t even see it. Recovering from All of It, Anonymous.

[bird]

Some of my listeners say I’m living the good life in Mexico. Maybe, maybe not. I’m gonna tell you the good and bad of it. I’ve already sketched in the fear and insecurity of it. The personal neurotic crap that bubbles into my brain. But there’s more.

The place I’m in is so goddam noisy, I can’t find a quiet place to record this show, to save my life. So I’m just gonna leave all the ambient crap in: birds, burros, dogs, roosters, motorbikes, trucks, street vendors, taco pop music, swinging machetes, crying babies, the whole village scene. This is how most of the world lives. Outside. With no windows. I’ll use some editing tricks to erase some of the crap. But I can’t erase all of it without erasing some of my own voice too.

[bird, donkey]

So… Here I am… back again… in a place where women carry baskets of food on their heads. Where the main talk of the men is fishing, and I can stroll down to the wharf any morning, and buy a fresh fish for two bucks. Where pelicans stretch their necks, and crash insanely into the ruffled waters of the cove… then perch on the gunwales of the anchored fishing boats, to dry their wings. Where the greasy smoke from broiling lobsters and shrimp, wafts through the streets at dusk. It’s Ernest Hemingway time… but he’s dead, and this is still here, if you search hard enough to find it.

They aren’t gonna send you here on a tour, to a homemade hotel, where you rent an ocean view room for nine bucks a night. And go fishing with the son of the owner, who built the place by hand over 20 patient years. We caught two twenty-pound Dorado this morning, Alvaro and me. The fish running and charging and leaping in backwards somersaults, over the sparkling blue water.

Dorado means golden, for the spectacular green-gold color of these dolphin fish, that hunt the mackerel in packs. We went far out on the Pacific in our little outboard motor boat, but the sea was a desert. So we came back in close to shore, and stumbled on the Fishermen’s Wet Dream. Thousands of birds smacking the water, atop thousands of silvery baitfish, that are driven up, from below, by the mackerel. So they’re trapped at the surface. And deeper yet in the clear blue water, shooting golden arrows of Dorados, exploiting the mayhem. Picking off unwary and crippled fish here and there.

Twenty years ago I smashed my ankle, slipping on Dorado blood and slime, on a boat off Pompano Beach Florida. Wrecked my ankle and my marriage at the same time. Once I couldn’t work like a mule, what did she need ME for? I’ve often said that my wife divorced me when I bought her an electric garage door opener… But this time we are careful to clean up the blood and slime after each fish we gaff, and beat on the head, and fling, thashing, onto the floor of the boat.

We fish from six to ten in the morning. That’s enough. That’s when the wind comes up and the waves get rough. So I take a long siesta, then go down to sit by the water and write. Right now I’m watching eight Mexican kids play volley ball on the beach… with NO volleyball net. They’ve got a ball but no net. No net. No problem. They just IMAGINE where the net is supposed to be, and give it a go any way. Works pretty well too. That’s one of the things I love about Mexicans. They have fully functioning imaginations. They know how to IMAGINE something into existence. It’s like they discovered quantum physics three thousand years ago. Of the infinite possible waveforms for a volleyball net, that exist throughout the universe, they simply collapsed, one, volleyball net waveform, here – inside their group mind, on the beach.

[bird]

In the market I see wheelbarrows of avocadoes and oranges and bananas. Women standing by buckets of fish, chopping them up with meat cleavers. Snappers and jacks and tuna and a big silvery blue Spanish mackerel. I spied a baby snook, and I bought it. Couldn’t believe it. SHOULD be illegal. Too small to kill. A snook is the best tasting tropical fish there is, and gets to be five feet long and 50 pounds, but this one was less than a foot, and less than a pound. I SHOULDn’t have bought it. Must’ve been caught by barefoot kids paddling around in the mangrove lagoons, instead of going to school. And of course, the snook tasted sublime.

[bird]

I’m living in a second story apartment that has no walls, only knee walls on three sides. I’m shaded by a mango tree, but my view of the hills around the harbor is blocked by the tops of the coconut trees, between me and the road below. I can almost reach out from my porch with a broom, and knock down coconuts, they’re so close. But the mosquitoes are brutal. Gotta have a mosquito net at night, and even a fan pointed at my feet in the evening, to blow the bastards away. But my little house is only 120 bucks a month, and I have a big porch for writing and painting. And Gracias a Dios, I’m NOT living in my car, THIS winter.

However the water has been off in the entire village for four days. And it’s not an accident. The electric company shut off the power to the water commission, because the water commission honchos have been pocketing the money they collect from water bills, and not paying the power bill. So the electric company shut off the power, and apparently the municipal water pumps don’t work.

This house, however, is built over a cement cistern, where about five days worth of water is stored, specifically to outlast just such problems. We can only bath and wash dishes quickly, but it’s OK for awhile. You would think the water commission would have back-up diesel generators for such eventualities, but no. Each individual house has to build its own emergency water storage system.

[bird]

The hardest thing to get used to here is the goddam noise. There are no windows… anywhere… you either got screens, or nothing. The staccato bleating of TV game shows, soccer games, and horrible Spanish pop music, where someone is losing his fucking Corazon every two minutes, suffocates the air between the houses, on the weekends, and most weeknights. And as soon as the amplified sounds go off at night, the dogs begin. Guttural, murderous, howling, growling… screaming at each other from ridge to valley. Hundreds of insanely barking dogs. Threatening to tear their rival’s throats out.

[record dogs barking]

They stop around 2 am. Thank god… Then the roosters start. Same macho crap, only birds this time, threatening to rip the hearts from their feathered enemies on the next block, for four hours… until the sun comes up, and the REAL birds start in, chirping and tweeting and reeling off stunning melodies… and the audio landscape becomes pleasant again. For a half hour, until the trucks and motorbikes start.

There are several good reasons to get up early in the tropics, and one of the best is simply to cease tossing and flipping and cursing, because of the insane screaming of animals. Ear plugs are a life saver. Actually, I learn to block out the animals after a week or two. But TV is not so easy. God I hate TV. (more…)

CLICK HERE to listen to The Rude Guy Podcast #48

or RIGHT CLICK HERE (Apple command/click) then click “Save Target As” to DOWNLOAD the podcast to your computer or playback device

[The Cultural Devastation of American Women by Nancy Levant]

This is The Rude Guy. Rich Zubaty. [RG voice] The 3000 pound mosquito of LOVE. Wiggling worm on the Wheel of Karma. Escapee from political feminism. [RZ voice]Welcoming you back to the Reality Cult, the Toolbox of Truth, where we hammer together a future, made out of ideas, not people… Ideas. Not ideologies, not opinions… Ideas.

This show’s gonna be a book report, on the book, by Nancy Levant called: The Cultural Devastation of American Women: (subtitled) the strange and frightening decline of the American female (RG voice: and her DREADful timing)

Nancy Levant is an American. I never heard of her, or her book, before I ran across it at the home of my friend Martin Harvey, in Cambridge England. It was sitting on his bookshelf, right next to two of my own books… so I plucked it right down. Thank GOODness for amazon.co.uk.

Nancy Levant’s a mother and grandmother. But more importantly, she has been a daycare provider in her home, in Michigan, for 13 years. And out of the mouths of her daycare children, and through the attitudes and actions of their mothers, did Nancy Levant come to be reVOLTed by modern American women.

I’m going to do little more than quote from her book, and take an occasional pot shot, from the hip. But it’s clear to me that if I, as a man, said the things I am about to READ to you, from HER book, someone would put plutonium in my soup.

So here we go.

Page 19… Concerning food:

Meals are leaving the consciousness of the American female. Half of the children I have cared for, over the past 13 years, were either underfed… or overfed on drive-thru food… HALF!!! I have seen hundreds of children who have never eaten vegetables, and hundreds more who eat pizza, Taco Bell, McDonalds, or macaroni and cheese, every… single… night. They are bundled through the door with baggies of the previous night’s COLD fries, and chips, and Cheetos and M&Ms. I have seen one hundred pound 4-year-olds, and 25 pound 4-year-olds. I’ve had babies and toddlers vomit apple juice and milk, because they only drink carbonated soda. I’ve seen kids who beg for food the INSTANT their parents leave my house. Nowadays the best case scenario is if they arrive at my house having eaten cold cereal. Bacon? Eggs? Oatmeal? Forget it. Soups and sandwiches, and fruits for lunch? No way. Mom’s not around for lunch. She’s at work, or in school, or spa-ing.

Sez me: The modern female battle cry of “I don’t cook!” is easily extrapolated into: “And my kids don’t eat properly.”

Sez Nancy Levant: There are a lot of mothers out there who starve their kids – a lot of them!

Poorly fed children not only CAN’t learn, but won’t. Their brains want to rest and shut off… coast. How do I explain this to college educated career moms???? HOW?

P 32: Concerning DAD:

Here’s what Nancy’s day care kids have to say about dad:

“My dad’s stupid.”
“My dad doesn’t like to be with us.”
“My dad doesn’t like it at home.”
“My dad is a control freak.”
“My dad wants to STEAL me.”
“I’m not allowed to talk to dad when he’s working.”
“I’m not allowed to talk to dad when he’s watching TV.”
“Dad never does anything.”
“I don’t know what dad does.”
“Dad never talks to mom.”
“Dad likes his car better than us.”
“Dad never takes me anywhere.”
“Dad doesn’t like to sit with mom.”
“Dad likes his computer more than mom.”

Sez Nancy Levant: Do you think three, four and five year olds come up with this on their own?… or do you think they HEARD this from someone? (more…)