Charles Carreon, The Arizona Kid

Identified as a trouble maker by the authorities since childhood, and resolved to live up to the description, Charles Carreon soon discovered that mischief is most effectively fomented through speech. Having mastered the art of flinging verbal pipe-bombs and molotov cocktails at an early age, he refined his skills by writing legal briefs and journalistic exposes, while developing a poetic style that meandered from the lyrical to the political. Journey with him into the dark caves of the human experience, illuminated by the torch of an outraged sense of injustice.

Re: Charles Carreon, The Arizona Kid

Postby admin » Fri Oct 18, 2013 10:33 am

WILLIAM GIBSON'S DYSTOPIAN EPIC: NEUROMANCER, by Charles Carreon

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The cyber-age began in 1984, when Canadian author William Gibson knocked out his first cyberpunk epic, Neuromancer, on a standard-issue typewriter. Some years later in an interview Gibson explained that he'd never been able to afford a computer until after he sold the book, and his first Apple frightened him so much with its floppy drive that sounded like "a toaster farting" that he took it back to the shop, thinking it was malfunctioning. The people there explained how the disk drive worked, and that it was noisy, and it totally blew his perception about computers. He figured he was lucky he hadn't realized there was a clunky Victrola mechanism hidden inside your average computer or he wouldn't have been free to imagine a smooth, crystal deck like the Ono-Sendai unit operated by our man, Case.

Case is precisely that punk born in the Sprawl, aka BAMA, the Boston Atlanta Metropolitan Axis who winds up hard on his luck in Night City, a dark place in Tokyo. A dark place illumined only by a tavern called Chatsubo, "The Chat," run by Ratz, a proprietor who will brook no homicide on his premises. Ratz lends emphasis to his edicts by crushing plastic ashtrays in his mechanical claw. His Brazilian bartender wields a high-tech repeating shotgun to underscore the gravity of the situation. And that's just when friends run into each other after a short absence, in Night City.

Case comes from tech royalty. "Case was twenty-four. At twenty-two, he'd been a cowboy, a rustler, one of the best in the Sprawl. He'd been trained by the best, by McCoy Pauley and Bobby Quine, legends in the biz. He'd operated on an almost permanent adrenalin high, a byproduct of youth and proficiency, jacked into a custom cyberspace deck that projected his disembodied consciousness into the consensual hallucination that was the matrix. A thief, he'd worked for other, wealthier thieves, employers who provided the exotic software required to penetrate the bright walls of corporate systems, opening windows into rich fields of data."

Sounds great, right? Into each life, some rain must fall. Case's hyper-adventure is over. Former friends have blocked his access to cyberspace by dosing him with a "wartime Russian micotoxin" that caused "minute, subtle, and utterly effective" damage to his nervous system. "For Case, who'd lived for the bodiless exultation of cyberspace, it was the Fall."

Case is in Night City because he's blown his wad trying to buy a cure in Chiba, the black market of medical high tech in Tokyo. As Gibson describes it:

"Synonymous with implants, nerve-splicing, and microbionics, Chiba was a magnet for the Sprawl's techno-criminal subcultures. *** In Chiba, he'd watched his New Yen vanish in a two-month round of examinations." Case ends up living in the cheapest coffin down by the wharf, where arc lights shine perpetual glare. He can't jack into the Net, he's hustled himself down to the lowest level, and Night City has brought out the worst in him fast: "In the first month, he'd killed two men and a woman over sums that a year before would have seemed ludicrous."

Of course, things have to get worse before they get different. Case gets his cyber-access restored when an Artificial Intelligence decides it needs his talents to pull off a heist at the elite Tessier-Ashpool space station. Case's job is to pierce cybersecurity. Soon he meets his partner, the very hot Molly, a razorgirl who bought her claws with money saved from gigging as a "puppet," renting her body as a cybersexslave for paying corporate johns. Molly deals with real-world threats, like people with guns and muscles, often while Case snoops through a neural interface that lets him see and feel what Molly is experiencing.

The Artificial Intelligence, named "Wintermute" (cold and silent) first communicates with Case through a physical agent named Armitage, who is really just a roped-together construct of a man, mostly bio-engineered, built around the thorax and brain of a demolished soldier. Once Case's cyber-passport is restored, Wintermute visits Case in cyberspace, appearing as sundry characters from Night City. Armitage lays out the deal. Case is a cyberspace cowboy again, but it's got a time limit. The same surgeons who fixed him planted sacs of the same toxin in little sacks inside his veins, and they'll flood his system with deadening poison if he doesn't get his job done. So our boy has incentive.

Along the way to the Tessier-Ashpool space station, aka "Villa Straylight," Case and Molly stop off in Zion, a reggae space station, mon, where they hook up with Maelcum and his space-tug, a solid rig shaped like a tin can. Maelcum is handy wi' a shotgun, and not afraid to show it, also a peaceful bruddah who can be trusted.

In Straylight, some strange things are available to be seen. Case watches through Molly's eyes, as she works her way through the space station. We run across a little high-tech incest, between rich people and clones of their children. We view an impressive display of 3-D Psycho-holographic talent from the heiress 3Jane's boyfriend, Peter Riviera. Peter has some issues left over from growing up feral in the post-nuclear ruins of Bonn, however, so his projections are rather apocalyptic:

"A dark wave of rubble rose against a colorless sky, beyond its crest the bleached, half-melted skeletons of city towers. The rubble wave was textured like a net, rusting steel rods twisted gracefully as fine string, vast slabs of concrete still clinging there. The foreground might have once been a city square; there was a sort of stump, something that suggested a fountain. At its base, the children and the soldier were frozen.

***

Children. Feral, in rags. Teeth glittering like knives. Sores on their contorted faces. The soldier on his back, mouth and throat open to the sky. They were feeding."

These kinds of images are sprinkled through the novel. It's how Gibson gives us these meta-glimpses into the near-future. As always, the question is -- shall we fulfill or avoid these futures? Did we miss 1984, or twenty-two years later, did we miss the fact that it came without our noticing?

There's much in William Gibson's world that is dazzling, stimulating, and much that eats right into your core fears. For myself, I am always left with a feeling of wanting to read about all of it, but wanting to live only the fun parts.
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Re: Charles Carreon, The Arizona Kid

Postby admin » Mon Jun 23, 2014 10:31 pm

"As God Is My Witness, I Am That Fool"
by Charles Carreon

July 19, 2013

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An ideal role model in a corrupt world.

Okay, admit it. Everybody wants to be bloodless and eternal, like a corporation. That’s why playing a vampire is the surest route to celebrity. But I have always liked immortals of a less rarefied type. The homey characteristics of the Addams Family enamoured me from childhood. The Munsters were even cooler in their TV show manifestation, with that crazy car and the blonde sister. Whoa! I fancied myself an Eddie Munster. There were similarities. I had a killer widow’s peak. I wore short pants for longer than I wanted to. My father always drove huge Cadillacs that looked like he’d checked them out of the government motorpool. Our house was a dilapidated dive that my brother once proclaimed, humorously, but with satirical style, “I figured out where we live! We live in a slum!” I was so proud.

Growing up as a schoolkid, I was ahead of everyone else, seven years old in the fifth grade for a little while, then put back to fourth grade, ’cause I was always in fights ’cause I was so little. I was always the runt, picked last for every sports team. I didn’t have to pick my friends, because only nice kids would be my friends, since I couldn’t throw or hit a ball, or do anything very well with my body. This pattern continued. I didn’t learn to swim until I was eleven, and didn’t learn to drive until after I was married. But I learned how to fight. Hell, we had a TV, so what excuse would I have for not knowing how to fight? Charge! Knock the other guy off his feet! They’re all smaller sittin’ on their ass.

The Addams Family movie became especially dear to the hearts of my children. It went well with the daily regimen of waking to the sound of “Rock and Roll High School” playing at 11 over the stereo. I never had a problem waking my kids, and they never minded getting up. And when we went to see The Addams Family at its Christmas release, it was a very fun trip to the movies.

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A moment of resolve with which I am in sympathy.

When Gomez, his homestead menaced by the machinations of his own lawyer, delivered his pro se soliliquy, I was thrilled: “Have no fear. Justice shall prevail. The courts will decide. They say a man who represents himself has a fool for a client. Well, with God as my witness, I am that fool!” Of course, it does not turn out at all well, and the family is evicted. Note, however, that Gomez was not a lawyer. Gomez’s mistake was not in representing himself, but in failing to observe that he was not a lawyer, and could not hope to compete on an equal footing in the courts.

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That’s another way of saying: “You don’t owe me anything!”

When Gomez returns to his strong suits — swordplay and magic — he’s back on top in no time. Most pro se litigants lose because they have no idea what the rules are. The rules are everywhere in the judicial system, and most pro se litigants don’t even know where to find them. Then, when they read them, they don’t understand them.

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These guys are only blindfolded, but same difference.

They are in a worse position than the blind men trying to determine the identity of the elephant. Three years in law school and you barely begin to scratch the surface of the law’s immensity. But if you have to go pro se, don’t despair. The most important case in the law of criminal procedure, Gideon v. Wainwright, was pro se. And what did it achieve? Eventually the principle articulated in Gideon gave nearly all criminal defendants the right to counsel. One pro se criminal defendant who was too stupid to give up did more to provide lawyers with jobs at public expense than all the lawyers had accomplished in hundreds of years. That man did not have a fool for a client.

But is it not undignified for a lawyer to represent himself? Yeah, let me consider that idea. Is it undignified for Chuck Norris or Steven Seagal to kick someone’s ass instead of calling the cops? Especially when, as in many action movies, the cops are all on the take and will sell your ass out for a nickel? And who was going to sue Matt Inman, Indiegogo, the American Cancer Society and the National Wildlife Fund for me? Find me the lawyer with the pair big enough to do that, and maybe I’d actually try to hire him or her. But from all the caterwauling I hear from the girlie-men lawyers, I think I’d have been wasting my time. So pardon my well-trained fists. I’ll kick ass on my own behalf anytime I find it useful.

Those who criticize me for not surrendering, and instead using my own pugilistic skills, are simply saying that a lawyer is merely a mercenary. He has no principles of his own to defend or assert. Without a client distinct from himself, he is a neuter drone. He is supposed to “stand down,” as Paul Levy wanted me to do after he got his panties all in a bunch because Register.com coughed up Recouvreur’s contact information in response to my standard “cough up the registrant’s name” letter. Believe me, Register.com has gotten them before from me, and their lawyers know the law.

If you reflect on it, this argument that pro se representation is a profanation of the courthouse is just typical brotherhood propaganda, intended to accustom the average person to the tyranny of the legal profession. As a member of the brotherhood, I don’t have to buy the propaganda.

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This little nipper nips off more than its share.

So the idea that I, being a lawyer, would not stoop to representing myself when I don’t have money to hire even a bad lawyer, is absurd. That’s like not reaching for a handy SKS assault rifle when someone stops by for a little home invasion. Get real. What kind of world do these rapeutationists live in?

Besides which, very few lawyers will litigate the way I litigate. I entirely agree with all these rapeutationist lawyers who said they would “never do this,” and “never do that” thing that Charles Carreon did. That is one hundred percent true, which is why I have won many cases that they would have lost for pure lack of trying, or just not having the guts to make the other lawyer lose. They would call their cowardice “professional behavior.” I tell you what. The rich don’t put up with that kind of crap. Their lawyers fight like partisans down to their last bullet. When they screw up, it’s not a small matter. Millions in fees can disappear, and an associate’s job right along with them, if something gets misfiled, or an argument is not made.

Maybe because I haven’t earned a salary since 1995, and don’t depend upon anyone’s good will but that of my clients, I have tried to give all my clients the type of service I know the wealthy receive. It keeps them coming back, but it means that I have to contest vigorously with other lawyers. I suspect that much of the outcry about my unfair tactics by the army of zombie lawyers spouting nonsense was conjured up to assure my adversaries of victory in the court of public opinion sufficient to overshadow the truth about myself and the legitimacy of my claims. Ultimately, the vast amount of grossly inaccurate information proliferated through the rapeutation procedure virtually moots the effectiveness of any strategy adopted to counter it. And chief among those misrepresentations was the statement that I am unethical.

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Rapeutationist Lawyer Before Receiving Payment

I know the types of lawyers who say my tactics are unethical. They’re the lawyers that sound like tigers before they get their fee. Oh, are they fierce! In the confines of their own offices, they describe how they will strike the foe.

“Ha!” they laugh at the arguments that the client fears the opposing side might make. ”Ridiculous! An easy case! Wouldn’t you say, Jim?”

The obsequious sidekick agrees. ”I think we can win this one.”

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Rapeutationist lawyer after receiving fee.

The retainer is signed, the check crosses the lawyer’s desk, and invisibly to the eyes of the client, a transformation takes place. As soon as they start talking to the adversary, they start softening up on the case, backpedaling, finding reasons not to do what they promised. Motions never get filed. Excuses get delivered instead. This is not my style. I am the same carnivorous beast before and after being fed. My adversaries complain because I hit them as soon as they walk into the ring, and then have a whole series of attacks planned as follow-up. There’s a principle at work here — every day must be a bad day for the enemy. But sustained effort is costly, so effective litigation is, by definition, expensive. This must be disclosed at the outset, but many lawyers soft-pedal the risk, luring their clients into the mire, where they will contribute their bones to the tarpit. When the client realizes how costly litigation is, they easily agree with the lawyer’s plans to do little, and hope for the best. This is the legal product commonly delivered in law offices around the country every day. By spreading the idea that aggressive representation in litigation is a bad thing, mediocre lawyers are simply making the world more comfortable for their lazy selves. So if you are looking to waste your money on legal fees and get excuses instead of results, you should definitely hire those lawyers who claim I am too aggressive.

Finally, I should address the argument that a pro se lawyer working on his own case, like I, in dealing with Paul Levy’s lawsuit against me on behalf of Christopher Recouvreur, is at a disadvantage. This may or may not be true, but I personally was at a dire disadvantage. Why? Because I hated working on the case. Paul Levy is an icky lawyer to deal with. He has mannerisms that are strange. The lama Chogyam Trungpa once described the feeling of dealing with a guy like Paul: ”You think that they are looking at your face, but actually they are watching you from behind your back.” You say something to Paul, and he comments on your statement with a long, lingering “Oh….” as if you just revealed your naked crotch and he’s going to tell the principal. I actually tried to get a friend in San Francisco to represent me in that case, and he was willing until I told him Paul Levy was on the other side. Then he apologized and said, “Ooh. I’d like to help you, but I actually get involved in cases that he’s in, and he’s weird. I mean he does weird things.” Yes, I agree with that, but that fight’s not over by a long shot. I filed my appeal. Lex est longa, vita brevis.

And since we’re talking about Paul Levy, if you would like to get in bed with a snake, then associate with him as co-counsel. After being your friend, and co-counsel, he will then tell people that your work product was “terrible.” I wrote my brief to the New York Court of Appeals in American Buddha exactly the way I wanted to. It was not at all traditional, because the entire NYCA briefing was a ridiculous exercise in result-oriented jurisprudence, instigated by the activist, pro-publisher panel, that wanted to give Penguin every opportunity to overturn Judge Edward Lynch’s decision without insulting Judge Lynch who had just recently been elevated to the Second Circuit himself, as Obama’s first judicial appointee. There was no logic in the question certified by the Second Circuit that asked the NYCA to determine the situs of a copyright, because the New York state courts never hear copyright cases, as all copyright cases are subject to the exclusive jurisdiction of the federal courts. It is a rare occasion when an advocate feels so certain about the outcome of a particular piece of judicial gerrymandering that he will devote his brief to criticizing the legitimacy of the process itself, in an effort to provoke an attack of judicial conscience, but that is what I was up to.

Levy also claims that it’s wonderful that an attorney from his office argued the appeal before the NYCA. Really lucky. Because they lost.

What is most obscured by Levy’s diatribe against my litigation skills is that while on appeal at the NYCA, I was defending a win before Judge Lynch at the District Court level, and that after losing the appeal, I went on to win again in the District Court before Judge Ronnie Abrams. To hear Levy tell it, his disapproval is a black mark against an advocate that obscures even the lustre of victory. I assure you, my client does not concur.
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Re: Charles Carreon, The Arizona Kid

Postby admin » Mon Jun 23, 2014 10:35 pm

The Pizza Effect, and Why Crowds Are Stupid
by Charles Carreon
July 23, 2013

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Ann Bransom, As Smart As Many, by Tara Carreon
[Ann Bransom] Crowd to feed? Say “Cheese!”


I was twelve when I realized I liked anchovies on my pizza. Shortly thereafter, I realized that hardly anyone else did. Since I would rarely buy myself a whole pizza, and there was no pizza-by-the-slice in the Phoenix, Arizona of my youth, I resigned myself to anchovy-less pizzas until I became more independent. Then I had kids, and they didn’t like anchovies, either.

I just can’t get around the Pizza Effect: The larger the number of people ordering pizza, the more likely you will get plain cheese. If you are among meat-eaters, you have good odds of getting pepperoni, or a half-pepperoni. But even splitting the pizza toppings down the middle will not get you anchovies in any group of more than two — anchovy-haters are just too prevalent.

The Pizza Effect is a particular application of the more general rule that accounts for the stupidity of crowds, the Law of Selective Aggregation: “Whenever things get massed together, some of their properties aggregate, and other properties do not.” For example, a pile of carbon atoms, exists as “carbon” only because the strong nuclear force binds the subatomic particles of the nucleus together and keeps the electrons within their shells. But in a ton of coal the strong nuclear force does not aggregate. Only the gravitic force of the coal atoms aggregates; wherefore, it weighs a ton.

A crowd of people aggregates the physical strength and the emotion of the crowd. That is why provoking a deadly stampede is very easy, and there is a rule against shouting “fire” in a crowded theatre. Tug-of-war is a game built around aggregating physical strength. Add more people, and you can pull harder. Emotion also aggregates, perhaps because emotion is transmitted through simple words and gestures that work powerfully in mass communication, perhaps for deeper reasons. The power of aggregate emotion is easily recollected. You brush it off if one person in a movie audience says, “Sit down!” But if the whole row of people says it, you may feel humiliated and be unable to enjoy the movie. The massed emotional disapproval is more painful and intimidating.

By contrast, even though a good communicator may educate a crowd, he or she cannot aggregate the intelligence of its members to increase the speed with which we can solve a computational problem. For example, if we projected the following question on the screen at a moviehouse: “What is the square root of 67?” The quickest answer will come no faster than the most mathematically adept person in the crowd can provide it. Cognitive processes like computation and other intellectual skills like rational problem solving do not aggregate in a crowd.

In Brave New World Revisited, Aldous Huxley takes it further, and effectively argues that in crowds, all negative human qualities aggregate, such that people packed in crowds suffer “herd-poisoning.” He discusses this subject in the context of analyzing the art of demagoguery. Huxley turns to Adolph Hitler for a case study, because Hitler knew “crowds and propaganda” “by firsthand experience.” To make the German populace “more masslike, more homogeneously subhuman, he assembled them by the thousands and the tens of thousands, in vast halls and arenas, where individuals would lose their personal identity, even their elementary humanity, and be merged with the crowd.” Because “a crowd is chaotic, has no purpose of its own and is capable of anything except intelligent action and realistic thinking,” people in a crowd suffer from “herd-poisoning,” an “intoxication” in which the “crowd-intoxicated individual escapes from responsibility, intelligence and morality into a kind of frantic, animal mindlessness.”

Whether it’s that bad or not, I don’t know. But at minimum, I know this — in a crowd, feeling what everyone else is feeling, you have the same intelligence as the whole crowd. You are likely much more stupid than usual. You are more likely to get a tattoo, make an inappropriate comment, inflict unwanted contact on someone of the opposite sex, or, in the really wrong crowd, discover yourself “hating” people you don’t even know, burning to punish them for wrongs that “everybody knows” they committed. That’s called a lynching, and it’s the apex of stupidity. Most people wouldn’t lynch anybody as a solo project, because then everyone would stop liking them for being a homicidal maniac. But crowds do lynch people –- time and again. Because, to a crowd, the worst ideas sound like the best ones.
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Re: Charles Carreon, The Arizona Kid

Postby admin » Mon Jun 23, 2014 10:38 pm

Unemployed Lawyers Go Zombie, And Why
by Charles Carreon
July 24, 2013

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Will Blawg for Oatmeal, by Tara Carreon and Anonymous

Nastier than a bag o’ baby rattlesnakes, that’s what I’d call ‘em, the latest generation of legal vipers turned out upon the world. Young lawyers are a lot like baby rattlers, well-known to be much more likely to bite than an older snake, that realizes that even though every other living creature may well be an enemy, it doesn’t always pay to attack them.

These little asps came slithering out of the laws schools under a trifecta of bad omens: a spike in law school tuition, a dive in the lawyer job market, and the explosion of “blawgs” where unemployed lawyers can “blaw, blaw, blaw” about stuff they’ve never done, in hopes that someday, someone will give them a shot at a job.

Law school was no picnic in my day, and when we got out we were in debt up to our necks, but we got jobs. Being a family man, I felt considerable pressure when I walked out of school $70,000 in debt – and into a salary of $47,000/year. My wife and I both worked full time, she as a legal secretary, me as an associate lawyer, and it was always a challenge to raise a family of five in LA on our income, and pay down the debt. I cannot imagine what it would be like to have twice that much debt, no job, and an economy with few prospects of producing a job for me. Which is the position of many, many young lawyers.

Statistics? Almost 13% of new lawyers have no work. Barely half of new lawyers have gotten a full-time job that lasts at least a year and puts their bar license to use. Meanwhile, the median salary for new lawyers is $61,245, while average education debt for private law graduates (including those who will never pass the bar) has soared into the range of $125,000. If you ask yourself how those numbers are going to even out, the answer is, they never will. We have minted a generation of lawyers who are under water, personal-capital-wise. And as we know, that debt is non-dischargeable in bankruptcy. Nasty.

Nasty enough to drive some people right into zombiehood. Take Adam Steinbaugh, for example. He can’t find work, so he blogs about things he doesn’t understand. How could he understand them? A lawyer with no experience in the courthouse or the conference room is simply a helpless creature, often veering from one near-disaster to another, frightened of judges, frightened of other lawyers, unable to communicate with clients effectively, spreading an aura of discombobulation throughout the vicinity.

Of course, Adam doesn’t feel like a zombie, yet. He knows that some sense of decorum is required, that he needs to show restraint, but he doesn’t know where the boundaries are. Meanwhile, he makes heroes of people whose own careers are not exactly the envy of the profession, like Marc Randazza. Adam worked for a little while at a firm that represents truly bad lawyers, like the Prenda Law Group fellas, whose conduct seemed so clearly criminal to Judge Otis D. Wright III that he referred these bad lawyers to the U.S. Attorney for investigation in a sanctions order. Adam scrounges around for praise from Ken Popehat White, and what good does it do him?

Tell you what – the more closely he associates himself with the Rapeutation business, the longer it’s going to be before he is able to cleanse himself of the association and begin a life of normal, meaningful lawyering.

Because, you see, lawyering is not about blabbing about “legal issues” on the Internet. It’s about having clients, whose interests you serve using a wide array of skills that you develop a little at a time, thanks to the patience of the more experienced members of the profession. You learn virtues like loyalty, and how to subordinate your concerns to those of the client by working diligently and never selling out, even when it means you have to work long hours for no money. You learn how to control your temper, stay cool under pressure, planning your adversary’s defeat, and putting that plan into action, putting in months and years of detail work. You learn how to lose pretrial or at trial, and appeal. You learn how to win at trial, and then lose on appeal. You learn to respect your adversaries, almost all of them, even if only because they beat you. Before you’ve learned these things, anything you write is like a child writing about sex. Utterly ignorant.

But if you have nothing else to do as an unemployed lawyer, you might fall into it. You might think you’re keeping your skills sharp, reading recent legal developments, picking up on the scuttlebutt, but likely you’re not benefiting yourself or anyone else, because you don’t have a client to work for, and you just don’t really learn that much, theorizing in the void. It’s like target shooting without a target.

So then, since you’re a lawyer, you’re likely to pick a target. Someone who’s been identified as a vulnerable target by someone like Ken Popehat White, who spends a lot of time identifying targets for rapeutational attacks. He has some little mental quirk that spurs him to do that. Then he gets guys like Adam Steinbaugh to form a cheering section of useful foolish “lawyers” who can agree with him, zombie-style, thus emboldening lower-grade zombies, the console-humpers who will truly ignite the fires of a full scale DIRA. At that point, Adam may even think “Wow, this is getting out of hand!” But he won’t be able to do anything about it. Having participated in getting the DIRA going, he’s pretty much bound to stay true to its principles.

But all this blawging ain’t gonna pay the bills. And baggin’ on other lawyers isn’t going to attract a client or a future boss. So here’s a word of advice for unemployed young lawyers. Work for free, if you have to, but don’t just fiddle around and write about stuff you don’t understand. It’s low-grade zombie activity, and nobody is going to be impressed by your drivel. Give it up now, before someone screencaps it and publishes it where you can’t get rid of it, or it could become a real enduring problem for you.
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Re: Charles Carreon, The Arizona Kid

Postby admin » Mon Jun 23, 2014 10:44 pm

A Topic of Discussion Small Enough For Little Minds
by Charles Carreon

July 26, 2013

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A Question of Perspective, by Tara Carreon
[Kenneth Popehat White] Elimination of this pest could rid humanity of so much suffering!
(Small Problems For Small Minds)


Recently I’ve been reflecting on why Rapeutationists rarely bend their vicious tongues to the task of criticizing truly evil people. For example, I’m sitting here reading Judge Katherine B. Forrest’s opinion enjoining President Obama from arresting and detaining Christopher Hedges, six other defendants, and the rest of us exposed to indefinite detention here in USA-land. Obama’s lawyers tried to defend the unconstitutional authority bestowed upon him by the kitten Congress in Section 1021(b) of the National Defense Authorization Act for the Fiscal Year 2012 (the “NDAA”) in the usual way – by offering no evidence, putting on no defense other than executive dogma, and stonewalling Judge Forrest’s questions with bland responses like “we are not prepared to address that.” It’s a damn good read, and really important for anyone who thinks our President’s ongoing power grab is being grossly under-reported, because this is a classic example of misplaced journalistic priorities.

Judge Forrest’s opinion concluded that Christopher Hedges and the other journalists had a well-founded fear that they could be arrested and indefinitely detained for their work. Judge Forrest concluded that author Alexa O’Brien had deliberately not published certain writings because she feared they could result in her arrest and indefinite detention. (Opinion, page 23.) Now that’s a chilling effect on speech of a major sort!

Judge Forrest issued her opinion while my Rapeutation was in full swing – on August 12, 2012 – but none of my Rapeutationists mentioned a word of it. Purportedly, they’re all champions of the First Amendment, and the First Amendment is intended to protect people from the Government, and here the Government is actually silencing people with legal threats, and the Rapeutationists are silent.

Wouldn’t you think some of our lead Rapeutationists – ever on guard against attacks on the Precious First Amendment – would sound the alarm? A big defender of liberty like Ken Popehat White would certainly post about it! Public Citizen would be jostling for a seat at counsel table for Hedges! EFF would be hopping mad! But they weren’t – site specific searches for “hedges v. obama” on Popehat.com, citizen.org and EFF.org produce null results.

The Rapo-sites are focused on really dangerous people, like Charles Carreon, the lawyer who never quits, never shuts up, never sits down. They’re not distracted from the real target. They know the truth — one guy like Carreon is more dangerous than a thousand Obamas. Presidents come and go, but lawyers like Carreon will keep jacking up cartoonists for Mercedes money until they are finally put down with a silver bullet. Is it possible the attentions of the Rapeutationists are misplaced? Possible? Certain, I say!

For an explanation of this silence regarding the retirement of the Presidential power of indefinite internment for inadequately-described speech-crimes, we must turn to the works of Robert Northcote Parkinson.

Robert Northcote Parkinson is an author well-known to most business students of my vintage, the originator of “Parkinson’s Law,” that states, “Work expands to fill the time available for its completion.” Parkinson’s Law explains why the war on terror won’t be won, and why military contracts often are closed out without anything being delivered – the military, and its no-bid contractors, hate deadlines. But without a deadline, there is no demand. That’s why, if you don’t do it promptly, the police will say, “Get your ass on the ground, now.” Officer Gusstep doesn’t want to be waiting around all day while you find something comfy to stretch out on. So he emphasizes the time for completion of the task.

Parkinson’s Law is fun, but it doesn’t explain what I’m here to talk about. Rather, it’s another rule of Parkinson’s: “the time spent on a task is inversely proportional to its importance.” I summarize it as: “small minds can only solve small problems.”

As an example of the operation of the rule, Parkinson describes how a public authority would approve a proposed nuclear plant in five minutes, and take half an hour to discuss the design of a bicycle shed. His discussion of the matter goes like this:

chairman we come now to item nine. our treasurer, mr. mcphail, will report.

mr. mcphail the estimate for the atomic reactor is before you, sir, set forth in appendix h of the subcommittee’s report. you will see that the general design and layout has been approved by professor mcfission. the total cost will amount to $10,000,000. the contractors, messrs. mcnab and mchash, consider that the work should be complete by april, 1959. mr. mcfee, the consulting engineer, warns us that we should not count on completion before october, at the earliest. in this view he is supported by dr. mcheap, the well-known geophysicist, who refers to the probable need for piling at the lower end of the site. the plan of the main building is before you–see appendix ix–and the blueprint is laid on the table. i shall be glad to give any further information that members of this committee may require.

chairman thank you, mr. mcphail, for your very lucid explanation of the plan as proposed. i will now invite the members present to give us their views.

it is necessary to pause at this point and consider what views the members are likely to have. let us suppose that they number eleven, including the chairman but excluding the secretary. of these eleven members, four — including the chairman — do not know what a reactor is. of the remainder, three do not know what it is for. of those who know its purpose, only two have the least idea of what it should cost. one of these is mr. isaacson, the other is mr. brickworth. either is in a position to say something. we may suppose that mr. isaacson is the first to speak.

mr. isaacson well, mr. chairman. i could wish that i felt more confidence in our contractors and consultant. had we gone to professor levi in the first instance, and had the contract been given to messrs. david and goliath, i should have been happier about the whole scheme. mr. lyon-daniels would not have wasted our time with wild guesses about the possible delay in completion, and dr. moses bullrush would have told us definitely whether piling would be wanted or not.

chairman i am sure we all appreciate mr. isaacson’s anxiety to complete this work in the best possible way. i feel, however, that it is rather late in the day to call in new technical advisers. i admit that the main contract has still to be signed, but we have already spent very large sums. if we reject the advice for which we have paid, we shall have to pay as much again.

(other members murmur agreement.)

mr. isaacson i should like my observation to be minuted.

chairman certainly. perhaps mr. brickworth also has something to say on this matter?

now mr. brickworth is almost the only man there who knows what he is talking about. there is a great deal he could say. he distrusts that round figure of $10,000,000. why should it come out to exactly that? why need they demolish the old building to make room for the new approach? why is so large a sum set aside for “contingencies”? and who is mcheap, anyway? is he the man who was sued last year by the trickle and driedup oil corporation? but brickworth does not know where to begin. the other members could not read the blueprint if he referred to it. he would have to begin by explaining what a reactor is and no one there would admit that he did not already know. better to say nothing.

mr. brickworth i have no comment to make.

chairman does any other member wish to speak? very well. i may take it then that the plans and estimates are approved? thank you. may i now sign the main contract on your behalf? (murmur of agreement) thank you. we can now move on to item ten.

allowing a few seconds for rustling papers and unrolling diagrams, the time spent on item nine will have been just two minutes and a half. the meeting is going well. but some members feel uneasy about item nine. they wonder inwardly whether they have really been pulling their weight. it is too late to query that reactor scheme, but they would like to demonstrate, before the meeting ends, that they are alive to all that is going on.

chairman item ten. bicycle shed for the use of the clerical staff. an estimate has been received from messrs. bodger and woodworm, who undertake to complete the work for the sum of $2350. plans and specification are before you, gentlemen.

mr. softleigh surely, mr. chairman, this sum is excessive. i note that the roof is to be of aluminum. would not asbestos be cheaper?

mr. holdfast i agree with mr. softleigh about the cost, but the roof should, in my opinion, be of galvanized iron. i incline to think that the shed could be built for $2000, or even less.

mr. daring i would go further, mr. chairman. i question whether this shed is really necessary. we do too much for our staff as it is. they are never satisfied, that is the trouble. they will be wanting garages next.

mr. holdfast no, i can’t support mr. daring on this occasion. i think that the shed is needed. it is a question of material and cost…

the debate is fairly launched. a sum of $2350 is well within everybody’s comprehension. everyone can visualize a bicycle shed. discussion goes on, therefore, for forty-five minutes, with the possible result of saving some $300. members at length sit back with a feeling of achievement.

chairman item eleven. refreshments supplied at meetings of the joint welfare committee. monthly, $4.75.

mr. softleigh what type of refreshment is supplied on these occasions?

chairman coffee, i understand.

mr. holdfast and this means an annual charge of — let me see — $57?

chairman that is so.

mr. daring well, really, mr. chairman. i question whether this is justified. how long do these meetings last?


Everyone who has attended public meetings of public entities is familiar with proceedings like this. For really complex issues with huge budgets, the time on the agenda for discussion is miniscule, even when the room is bursting with citizens wanting to speak. My favorite superquick bad decision by civic authorities who were faced with a question too large for their capacities was an event I wrote about over ten years ago in The Ashland Free Press – The Great McCloud Water Caper of 2003. Back in that faraway time, when many Rapeutationists were still becoming familiar with the pleasures of playing with their own joysticks and did not realize they would someday grow up to be zombies, the City of Dunsmuir, finding itself in possession of over a billion acre-feet of water drawn from the peaks of Mt. Shasta and other glacier-decked snowfields, sold it all to Nestle corporation for about $40,000. Thanks to some damn good luck, Judge Kosel’s nullification of the deal under the California Environmental Quality Act, although reversed on appeal, was ultimately given effect, and the insanely bad deal was scuttled.

So there you have it – another mystery handily solved by Charles Carreon. I was targeted for Rapeutation because I am a person perceived by Rapeutationists as an eminently misunderstandable person whose story would not challenge the mental capacities of the zombie horde. To misunderstand Judge Forrest’s opinion, Rapeutationists would have to read it, and at one-hundred and twelve pages, without Ken Popehat White, or Paul Aryan Levy to supply an agreed-upon distorted meaning, that’s just a non-starter. Zombies can’t march in formation without leaders. The employed among them have to write so many words per day, and it is the number of those words, not their sense, that rings their little toy cash-registers. As for structurally unemployed folks like Chris Recouvreur – they’re not afraid that the government is coming for them – hell, they’re White Patriots! Indeed, to be fair to Ken White, a site-specific search for “NDAA” at Popehat.com (ndaa site:popehat.com) does give us a nice list of posts that reveal Ken for exactly what he is, in my opinion — another Republican talking-points shill who dishes out crap to liberals who hassle his pointy-headed peers. Say it ain’t so, Ken!

You might ask what happens where Rapeutationists actually try to talk about something important, like the NDAA. It ain’t pretty. Back in 2012, the NDAA was up for “re-authorization,” that as Judge Forrest explained, was actually not a re-authorization at all, but rather, a surreptitious expansion to include powers never before wielded by any President. Rapo Mike Masnick at TechDirt, exercising his modest supply of grey matter, posted about some proposed expansions in the law. Not realizing this topic might require work he wasn’t equipped for, i.e., actual thought, Rapo Anonymous Coward lead off with this comment: “people hate people too much.” Granted, Anonymous Coward is an expert on the topic of hate – having a huge bile-sack in place of a prostate, and his fingers up the arse of a small army of sock-puppets to back him up when the rapo-action gets hot. But nihilists like Anonymous Coward always hit a dead end, and his next post revealed his true zombie nature, like a worm flicking from between the wizened cracks of his pie-hole:

“if there were no people, than it’s obvious that people would not have a problem with people…. thus people are both the source of the problem and the solution…”


Oh yes, that’s quite insightful, but does it really take words to say it? Can’t you just point to your empty head and grin like an idiot?

Take-home lesson? If you want to focus on unimportant stuff, and miss the important stuff, read TechDirt, Popehat, and other Rapo-sites. They’ll keep your eye on the irrelevant, but totally misunderstandable topics that you enjoy. Leave the real thinking to people who can read and write, like Judge Forrest and Chris Hedges. Thanks to them, you can say whatever you want, and nothing more than your incurious mind will be detained.

But if you actually have a grain of curiosity, you might wonder – are Rapeutations of people of slight fame like Charles Carreon just one more circus show to keep the zombies from snapping out of their zombie trance? The Rapeutation of Charles Carreon obviously contributed substantially to the mass of digital flotsam that blocks out discussion of really important events like Judge Forrest’s opinion. Do you think it’s just possible that people like Ken White, who so fears to be lauded by “Constitutionalists” that he will issue bogus legal threats to prevent them from reposting his articles in red-state-type blogs, is also working on the general agenda to keep stupid people riled up about trivial shit? Ya’ think?

________________________________

Comment: Charles – July 30, 2013 10:05 pm

Apropos of this topic, I discovered a thread on popehat.com, “Why Is Someone Spamming Our Comments On Behalf of a New York Attorney?” that revealed Ken’s capacity for pettiness in granular detail, as our explorer of submicroscopic space navigated his way through an exchange with an attorney whose comments took White to task for maligning the ethics of an attorney who is renowned for his ethical character. When backed against the wall, White’s willingness to deploy utterly disingenuous, sophistic arguments becomes supersized, and he can fire off gems like this one: “Is it your position that spam advertising has no ethical dimension? Will the relevant New York rules back up that provision? … The purpose is not to punish [attorney] — who will experience reputational punishment simply as a result of having comment spam with his name cluttering the internet, whether or not this post is here — but to deter lawyers from using scummy marketing methods, from using scummy outside marketers, or from failing to supervise marketers thoroughly.” White is well aware that his postings associating the attorney with unethical marketing techniques will damage his reputation once they appear prominently on that most important of all Internet real estate – “The First Page of Google’s Search Results.” No less an authority on the subject than one of White’s vociferous supporters (believed to be Mike Masnick of Techdirt) summarizes the nub of the argument: “Leeching motherfuckers like [attorney] want to do what we have elected not to do — capitalize on our hard work … Yet [attorney], who contributes nothing, seek to suck money out of us. Rather than offer to pay Popehat’s bandwith fees (blogging has expenses other than time), he wants a freebie. He’s a head lice. Do you not get how disgustingly parasitic that is? If [attorney] would just come in to apologize, at least I would move along. As it is now, I am pissed off and thus likely to make my ow contribution. I am considering a blog post with [attorney]‘s name prominently noted. I guarantee that whatever I post, will end up on the first page of Google’s search results.” [sic]
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Re: Charles Carreon, The Arizona Kid

Postby admin » Mon Jun 23, 2014 10:47 pm

The Tale of William Popehat Hearst
by Charles Carreon
July 29, 2013

Image
The Yellow Pig: William Popehat Hearst, by Tara Carreon

In which an unctuous talespinner much given to fiction imagines the character of a good man as evil, bewitches his readers to think the same, and comes to a bad end.

Once upon a windy L.A. day
A swine-shaped lawyer made his way
Along Flower Street where
It intersects with Third;
His eyes alighted on a bird,
He said to himself,
“You remind me of Charles Carreon,
You carrion fowl,
Pecking at scraps of offal.
I shall tell my readers of this thing,
So terribly disgusting.”
He trundled on, thus ruminating
Pig-teeth gnashing,
Pig-brain hating,
And all his thoughts keep deviating
to images of Charles Carreon,
Acting clever, having fun,
Pointing at people
With his legal gun,
Demanding money
Maybe even getting some,
How dare that bastard,
He’s a Mexican-
Spanish-Jewish, an oily sort
That last name’s one with
which I’ve made sport,
With imputations quick as light,
By saying “It’s so!”
I made black of white.
Was he known as good?
How tedious. He’s found his place
With the rest of us.
My mudball made of
blackest hate
Has marred his visage
Shaped his fate.
My curse is sure,
It never fails,
I bind it down with coffin nails.”
So thinks the hoglike barrister
As he humps over Bunker Hill
To his favorite watering hole to swill
And spin the tale that will
Take the starch out of that
Charles Carreon.

He picks up his pen, then
He turns to see the waiter
Looking on –
“What say you, Man?
What’s here to dine upon?
And don’t tell me you have no Charles Carreon.”
Anon his smiling partner comes
And conversation turns as conversation
must with William Popehat Hearst,
A man who knows the worst
And longs to tell it
If only he could package it
And sell it.
He’s working on that now
If only wishing could make a pig a cow!
The conversation turns, as I was saying,
To Popehat Hearst’s excoriation
Of Charles Carreon’s cardinal sin
“It doesn’t matter”
Says Popehat Hearst
“To a rogue like Charles Carreon
What side you’re on or who’s to blame,
He’ll take any side,
It’s all the same
His coin is lead
He’ll shoot you dead
As soon as look at you,
A cool devil, I tell you.”

His listener is skeptical
Having heard Popehat wax hysterical,
In phrases oddly metrical.
“Oh, c’mon Hearst,
He’s not half-bad and
Certainly not the worst,
He has his fun, that’s sure,
And aren’t we all
In stock and trade
Of threats and judgments made?”

Popehat Hearst turns dyspeptic
When he hears this dialectic.
“What think you, man,
It’s only Carreon must burn?
Watch yourself, watch me,
My friend, lest someday it be
Your turn. Who offendeth me
Offends a mighty crowd.
I’ll brook no opposition to a just position.”

“What, threats now, Popehat Hearst?
I’m not surprised!
Mark my words
This Charles Carreon business
Has boiled the marrow
Behind your eyes.
You’ve imagined crimes
Where there were none
You’ve pilloried the fellow
For what you say he’s done,
And all that he did
Was seen through the dark,
Twisted lens of your
Warped intellect.
How unfortunate your words
Have the power to infect.”

At this Hearst took a draught of swill
Belched very loudly as was his will
And said, to his fellow,
“He makes me ill.
I don’t know what it is.
I’ve had my fill.
I kill and kill and kill and kill.
It’s as if I don’t have my own will.
That hate has infected every fiber of me.
And I didn’t think
this could happen to me!”

At this Popehat Hearst broke into tears,
Pulled a dagger from his boot
And plunged it in his chest
Crying, “Tell that bastard Carreon,
He made me do it.”


________________________________

Written on July 29, 2013, the occasion of for the first time reading the following:

“See, a legal threat like the one Charles Carreon sent — ‘shut up, delete your criticism of my client, give me $20,000, or I’ll file a federal lawsuit against you’ — is unquestionably a form of bullying. It’s a form that’s endorsed by our broken legal system. Charles Carreon doesn’t have to speak the subtext, any more than the local lout has to tell the corner bodega-owner that ‘protection money’ means ‘pay or we’ll trash your shop.’ The message is plain to anyone who is at all familiar with the system, whether by experience or by cultural messages.What Charles Carreon’s letter conveyed was this: ‘It doesn’t matter if you’re in the right. It doesn’t matter if I’m in the wrong. It doesn’t matter that my client makes money off of traffic generated from its troglodytic users scraping content, and looks the other way with a smirk. It just doesn’t matter. Right often doesn’t prevail in our legal system. When it does, it is often ruinously expensive and unpleasant to secure. And on the way I will humiliate you, delve into private irrelevancies, harass your business associates and family, disrupt your sleep, stomp on your peace of mind, and consume huge precious swaths of your life. And, because the system is so bad at redressing frivolous lawsuits, I’ll get away with it even if I lose — which I won’t for years. Yield — stand and deliver — or suffer.’ Our system privileges Charles Carreon to issue that threat, rather than jailing or flogging him for it. And so Carreon supports bullying like that. He’s got a license to do it. He knows that his licensed threats — coming, as they do, on the [slightly odd] letterhead of a lawyer — inspire far more fear and stress than the complaints of a mere citizen, and by God he plays it to the hilt. By contrast, Charles Carreon doesn’t like shows of force that you or I can muster. ‘I’m completely unfamiliar really with this style of responding to a legal threat,’ he sniffs. There’s a whiff of Paul Christoforo of Ocean Marketing in there — the sentiment ‘how was I to know that I was picking on someone stronger than I am? Is that fair?’ But what he means is ‘if the people I threaten don’t have to dig into their pockets to go hire a lawyer, and spend unpleasant hours with that lawyer, and lay awake at night worrying, and rely on a lawyer who is part of my privileged culture, but can stand up for themselves … how can I intimidate them so easily?’ Perhaps some rude Oatmeal followers did actually send true threats or abuse to Charles Carreon’s office — which I condemn. That’s morally wrong and not helpful to the cause of free speech; it’s harmful. But I fail to see why Charles Carreon sending that threat letter is more legitimate, admirable, or proper than ten thousand Oatmeal fans sending back the message that Charles Carreon is a petulant, amoral, censorious douchebag. It doesn’t take lawyers, it doesn’t take law school, it doesn’t take any special privilege conferred by the state — it only takes a robust right of free expression — sending it back by blogging it, tweeting it, posting it on Facebook, and posting it in comments on forums. Charles Carreon has power derived from an inadequate legal system and letters of marque from the State Bar; The Oatmeal has the power of goodwill and community respect earned by talent. There’s no reason to exalt Carreon’s power and condemn The Oatmeal’s.” — Kenneth Paul White, popehat.com
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Re: Charles Carreon, The Arizona Kid

Postby admin » Mon Jun 23, 2014 10:50 pm

The Spirit of Surrender
by Charles Carreon
July 31, 2013

Image

Mark, an insurance defense lawyer in Medford, Oregon, twitted me once with this line — “I tell people – Charles Carreon is the best thing that ever happened to the defense community in Southern Oregon.” By this he meant that since my arrival in Jackson County I had filed a number of cases that other lawyers in Southern Oregon would not touch, providing the “defense community” with work that had previously been lacking. I guess it was nice of me to believe in the value of injury and civil rights cases that all the local lawyers knew weren’t worth the effort to try in front of the notoriously cheap Southern Oregon juries. I did get the occasional settlement out of Mark, and he eventually kicked my ass in the trial of a medical malpractice case. It was a bad hip-replacement case in Southern Oregon that I tried before Judge Ray White – a fair and affable jurist – out of sheer tenacity. My expert was terrible – he was from California and hadn’t done a whole lot of testifying, although he had done some hip replacements. Testifying against a local Oregon sawbones, and a much better expert, he was not carrying the day, and about halfway through the third day of trial, Mark was incredulous. He couldn’t believe I hadn’t thrown in the towel. But I couldn’t see why I should. I would only lose faster that way. My client would think he’d been given away, and I’d lose his respect into the bargain. So I insisted on hearing the final aria of the corpulent soprano!

Surrender fans will tell you that if you know you’re going to lose, you shouldn’t waste the jury’s time. Heck with that! They’re doing more real brainwork than they’ve done in years. They want to deliver a verdict. Although you can settle a case during trial, if there’s isn’t a good deal on the table, why deprive the jury of the pleasure? Besides which, how do you know you’re going to lose? You don’t know anything for sure – juries surprise all the time.

Let’s see, any more reasons to surrender? The judge will think you’re reasonable. That cuts no ice. Judge White already knew who I was – I’d tried at least a half-dozen jury trials and scores of bench trials and hearings before him, so there was nothing about me for him to learn. I was the prosecutor who at first went over the heads of the juries, but learned to try a case. Pretty well, actually. Once, after Phil Arnold and I tried an indecent exposure case where I was representing the People and Phil was representing the defendant, Judge White said to the jury, before sending them to deliberate, something to the effect of, “I don’t often say this, but you’ve just seen a couple of really good lawyers at work. This case was extremely well-presented.” Man, that felt great, and I got the conviction.

Years later, Phil became a judge, and I tried a non-jury case for the plaintiff in front of him. My client was the very beautiful acupuncturist Jennifer Fletcher, a regular Ashland thief of hearts who was enmeshed in a real estate deal that had turned out rotten. Literally, like her house was rotten – you could punch through the walls with your fist, or kick a hole in it, and inside the walls was like old newspapers and crap. It was the worst “Oregon construction” you have ever imagined. But the case turned on documents, and in particular, a statement of Jennifer’s that we couldn’t weasel out of, and Phil ruled for the real estate agent. Now, I didn’t agree with the ruling. But I will tell you with one hundred percent certainty that I never thought “This is payback for kickin’ his ass in that indecent exposure case.” Nor did I think I might have an edge because I had contributed to Phil’s campaign and hosted a memorable event (he will smile if he reads this) at my office to support his candidacy. Because I knew Phil’s lawyerly character, and he knew mine. What Phil knew about me as an advocate, a judge, and a friend was that I had the type of character that allows a man to present a case to a jury, and receive the judgment. If you try cases repeatedly, you will develop a trial lawyer’s character, which means you will learn to do everything you can and then let go so the jury can finish the job. Because only they can give your client the verdict.

The time when the matter is in the jury’s hands is a time of almost unbelievable tension. This is the fruit of not having surrendered – massive uncertainty. I have, on one occasion, known with unshakeable certainty that I was going to win a case. On every other occasion, I had to wait to hear the verdict. And that wait is like no other. Talk about “out of your hands.” It’s so bad, that I made it a practice to bring a basketball and shoot hoops with my client and co-counsel if I was lucky enough to have one.

I remember once, Peter Carini and I shot hoops with the client in a drug case where our client could have been nailed on three deliveries and one possession. Nacho, the client, had an innocent dupe defense, and played it with mastery, being as he was a handsome Tae Kwon Do black-belt family man. The trial had gone well, with some humiliating reversals for the prosecution, but when you’re facing four felonies, there’s testimony from informants, and video of the client at the scene of the third delivery, how you gonna beat all that? So shooting hoops will keep you from going insane between the time when you say “the defense rests,” and the judge says, “I have received the verdict from the bailiff, and it reads ….” We spent several hours playing “h-o-r-s-e” before my cellphone rang, and we walked back to the courthouse.

Image

We knew the jury had something good for us, because they had the windows open upstairs in the jury room and they were leaning out the window smokin’ and laughin’ and you know you don’t feel that way when you’re convicting the hell out of somebody. We walked in and the jury looked well satisfied to find him not guilty on all deliveries, and guilty of possessing the ounce in the freezer. A few years later we would shake that charge on appeal. Mighty fine result you couldn’t have got from a surrender, which was all you could have gotten from most lawyers. Because, they’ll say, “You’re guilty! How you gonna beat four charges? THIS IS A GREAT DEAL!”

The average public defender consumes and serves his clients a daily diet of surrender. The guys in jail in Southern Oregon called their appointed lawyers “dumptrucks.” They just deliver their clients to the dump, like garbage. They can always tell their clients why they will lose if they go to trial. They doubt whatever their clients tell them; they fail to interview witnesses; they accept the spin the prosecutor puts on the facts. They do their job as it’s explained to them, and get their client to plead guilty to something that will take the case off the docket. They advocate surrender.

The spirits of lawyers who advocate for surrender become shrunken and unimpressive. They are filled with cautions and limitations. I find such people without charm or appeal. I know from the firsthand testimony of their clients that their clients do not like them, and hold them in contempt. Having witnessed that contempt, I would never want to be the subject of it. And having felt the gratitude of clients who felt well-represented even though their trial ended in an adverse result, I have come to appreciate that sense of reward for a contest well-fought, separate and apart from the nominal outcome.

Image

What do the advocates of surrender use to sell their product? Fear. Just fear. A lawyer learns how to sense and play upon individual fears. Since every person is a bundle of fears, you can play them all together to create a real sonata of anxiety, and drive people right into the chosen course of action. Some people have big fears about family, others about money, others about self-image and honor. You name it, their fears are evident, especially when you can tell them, “Everything is confidential, and I must know the truth.” When they lie, it tells you more about their fears than when they tell the truth. And of course, everyone fears most what they most adamantly claim they do not fear at all. That’s why so many people claim they don’t fear death.

Manipulating people with fear is pretty low, though. I don’t like to do it unless they are so lacking in wit that I cannot get the job done with reason and teamwork. I like to make my client a partner in the process of solving their problem. Two heads are better than one, and we each supply different parts of the equation. Together, we try and reach the solution that they want. If that’s impossible, I try and help them figure out how close we can get. Then we put the plan into action, and try and secure the best result. It’s actually pretty fun work, helping people get what they want, instead of scaring them into accepting what they don’t want.

In order to increase the amount of fear people feel, those who would manipulate them will always overstate the benefits of surrender. They will make it seem like something good will happen if you surrender. But when you look at the histories of those who have surrendered to the Rapeutationists, who have kissed the hem of Popehat’s shit-stained robe, you see that they gained only further derision and enhanced abuse for their pains.

Image

So when I scan the comments of those who marveled at my tenacity, and hooted in my direction as I “doubled, tripled, and quadrupled down,” calling me a fool for not surrendering, I enjoy the pride of having frustrated their expectations, and the satisfaction of knowing that, by their own admission, they would never have the guts to be me. Their advice is the advice that cowards and tyrants give, but I saw the Wizard of Oz, and I know what happens to the witch who screams “Surrender!”
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Re: Charles Carreon, The Arizona Kid

Postby admin » Mon Jun 23, 2014 10:52 pm

I Robbed Leonard Cohen
by Charles Carreon
August 3, 2013

Some people feel compelled to confess to crimes they did not commit. In my case, I will let you be the judge. Read my story.

If indeed I robbed Leonard Cohen, it was most treacherous of me. For without him, I would not have escaped the slough of despond where Jennifer Sharkey had abandoned me in the sixteenth year of my life. Desperate, stoned, lying on a couch in a house slated to be torn down, unused methamphetamine stashed behind the picture of Jesus until finally I gave it away to a redneck stupid enough to do it. Listening to KDKB and the third Led Zeppelin album ameliorated, but could not entirely deaden the pain of my abandonment by a maiden so fair-skinned, dark-haired, and cherry-lipped. It was like I’d broken the ornate clock at the center of the crystal mansion that was my mind, and there was nothing for it.

But by the power of Leonard Cohen and his redemptive anthem, “There Are No Letters In the Mailbox (and there are no grapes upon the vine),” I was able to lift myself from that couch, and boldly go forth into the world and commit new mischief. Now with all those admissions of adolescent misconduct behind me, I guess it pretty much doesn’t matter whether I robbed Leonard Cohen or anybody else, since I was a felon before I was an adult, along with Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, and George W. Bush. Of course, so was Leonard Cohen. So were we all, felonious, shameless boomers who ate the fruit of hedonism and fared well, let it be known. Now let those who will pay our social security behave themselves, and enjoy their medical marijuana and gay marriage, the fruit of our permissive era.

I kept up with Leonard, even as I sobered up and pursued a Buddhist lifestyle, and he kept up with me, going Buddhist, too. We were close throughout the years. Everytime I drove by Mt. Baldy on my way to the Pomona Courthouse, I would think of him, sitting up there in his Zen robes at Sasaki Roshi’s place. I often wished to go up there, or even buy a shitty little trailer up there, to meditate high above the smog. Pomona has so much smog, it kills more people than the gangsters. I thought it would be a kick to be way up there in the pure air, looking out over the Pacific, with all of LA engulfed in smog, crime, decadence, and debauchery. Pull in a lungful of psychic putrefaction and breathe out blissful emptiness like the Tibetans say you can do. Get rid of the EPA. We’ll clean up this world one lungful at a time.

I remember once I was over at Kelly Lynch’s apartment, with Zigar Kongtrul Rinpoche. Can’t remember why we were there. She wasn’t there, but we had the key. We were part of a privileged Buddhist entourage, and had entre to her apartment. It was in the chic Larchmont district, where yoga and yogurt were always just around the corner, and the shops had the old-timey preserved look that tells you we’re in the privileged zone. The answering machine message played, and it said, “You’ve reached Stranger Music, please leave a message….”

Over the years, because Tara and I ran the Yeshe Nyingpo Buddhist center in Santa Monica for about six years, I’m sure I must have met Kelly Lynch. But I’m not sure. She might weigh three hundred pounds or ninety five. I don’t know. But she’s talked about me and my wife Tara a lot. Like a lot of conventional US Buddhists, Kelly started talking about us after Tara published “Another View on Whether Tibetan Buddhism Is Working In the West,” an insider critique of what was then perceived as the most politically-correct Buddhist sect, eclipsing Zen in the number of show-biz adherents, one sure sign of its hipness. Tara’s essay has now been cited in several scholarly articles on Buddhism, and has so permeated the culture of Tibetan Buddhism, that lamas now give each other pointers on how to deflect student’s questions about Tara Carreon’s critiques.

Kelly, despite our lack of personal familiarity, directed the standard invective at us, standard for our particular, magical sect, that is. Kelly was only saying what everyone already believed – we had gone insane from the powerful tantric teachings, and Tara’s ideas were the ravings of a madwoman. Of course, I had no reason to think that Leonard had anything to do with Kelly’s Internet diatribes against us, and every reason to believe that he was just moldering away up on Mt. Baldy, dressed in black robes, with a bunch of other New Yorkers who just found Santa Monica too warm and beach attire too revealing.

This perception was confirmed when he released his “Ten New Songs” album, a flow of luminous sludge that showcased the anthracite depths of Leonard’s soul. In my Amazon review of the album, I commented that his voice was like that of a salesman selling timeshares in the afterlife, and noted that while the death of a poet is a sad thing, it is sadder still when his song precedes him to the grave.

All of the time that Leonard was sitting up on his zafu at Sasaki Roshi’s center on Mt. Baldy, purging his soul and producing these dreadful dirges, I am sure Kelly Lynch is thinking, “He doesn’t need these four million dollars I’m in charge of. He just needs that little minx that serves him tea and plays those insipid tunes on the synthesizer. He’s gonna die up there and never even ask about his money. I’m gonna be a Bodhisattva-thief and start using his money for wise purposes.” Of course, she wouldn’t talk to me about that. I’m a lawyer, and I don’t advise people in how to steal, unless the law specifically defines that theft as lawful, which of course means that it is only stealing in the colloquial sense.

Meanwhile there’s this fellow who pretends to be a lama named Kusum Lingpa, a really P.T. Barnum-style, Tibetan self-promoter, who took Hollywood by storm in the leadup to the millennium. He was building a big “stupa,” which is a large version of a “chorten.” These are little sacred houses for relics that are symbols of the Buddha’s mind, and they have that typical architectural style that immediately makes you think, “that’s Nepal.” Adorned with prayer flags and surrounded by phalanxes of prayer wheels and monks prostrating themselves full-length, a fully-operational stupa, according to no less an authority than Uma Thurman’s dad, is like a psychic power generator that would put Tesla’s greatest achievements to shame.

Kelly Lynch fell much under the influence of Kusum Lingpa, and believed that Leonard’s millions would do more good invested in a spiritual power grid of stupas that could save the entire planet. A far better use of the funds than serving as the stuffing for Leonard’s retirement zafu, which after all, need be no better than the egalitarian zafu of any other bald New Yorker with a need to experience inner voidness. So she dispensed them, carefully, no doubt, but when you’re trying to rewire the planet, the nest egg of a sixties star will go only so far.

But take away a star’s nest egg, and what do you get? In the case of Leonard Cohen, a second career, actually more resplendent than the first career. He is the elder statesman of bohemians everywhere. The video of his live concert in London is triumphant, an event that would never have occurred had not his zafu gone flat. If it had been within my power to engineer it, I would have done it. So did I rob him, or not?

_____________________________

Charles Carreon * August 2, 2013: Written on the occasion of seeing the following post on Popehat.com, with the intention to further obscure the record.

narad • apr 14, 2013: in a perhaps amusing sidelight, when i went looking for tara’s opinions on zen, i stumbled across a posting on leonardcohenforum.com. the back story is that kelley lynch, cohen’s former business manager, was found in 2005 to have stolen about $5 million from cohen over the years, and cohen got a $9.5 million judgment (which she never paid, of course; last year, she was sentenced to 18 months for continued harassment). so, apparently lynch had some history with… tara and charles! this seems to tie back to tara’s resentment over june campbell. as for zen, all one gets is charles’s “review” of cohen’s ten new songs. apparently, he doesn’t like either. (although, as a subitist of the huineng variety, i can’t say i think much myself of the japanese fixation on zazen.)
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Re: Charles Carreon, The Arizona Kid

Postby admin » Mon Jun 23, 2014 10:54 pm

"Black Robe Fever" -- Popehat Reveals His Malady
by Charles Carreon
August 4, 2013

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Call it “gaining the first accuser advantage.” When the chips are down, the fraudster will always accuse their victim of exactly what they themselves are doing. I learned this rule from Steve Cohen, and explained its operation in the chapter entitled “What Moral High Ground?” in The Sex.Com Chronicles. The victim is of course infuriated at being falsely accused of exactly what the fraudster himself is doing. Cohen, who had stolen Sex.Com with a forged letter, leaped on an error Kremen’s lawyers made by creating a new corporation to assert old claims, got the new corporation dismissed from the case, and from then on argued that Kremen’s entire claim was fraudulently concocted. What had really happened, Cohen argued,­ was that Gary had abandoned Sex.Com, letting Cohen turn it into a moneymaker, then coming back years later and suing to steal all of Cohen’s sweat equity. Cohen accused me of being a part of this plot, because Gary had scrawled a mysterious reference to “CC” on the Sex.Com “business plan” that he’d written before Cohen induced the domain registrar to transfer the domain to him. Of course, I had provably not known Gary before June 1999, so he was barking up the wrong tree, but the story had enough apparent substance to be alleged in a cross-complaint against Gary.

The lesson I drew from the experience stuck with me. I see the first-accuser advantage at work everywhere. Republicans are big users of the technique. They use it against the poor, often typified as minorities, when they sound off about the oppression of white males as an excuse to proactively rebuff demands for better treatment of the poor. Ironically, white males who vote for Republican Congressmen are one of the fastest-growing demographic groups now descending into poverty, so you can see how Republican exploitation of the first-accuser advantage shifts the terms of the debate, and inspires constituent loyalty powerful enough to nullify economic self-interest. While they’re well aware that they are white males, white male voters don’t realize that their wonderful Congressman is going to sell them down the river economically. Because the Congressman shifted the debate from poverty and economics to skin color and sex, which are much easier to comprehend.

In Popehat’s Black Robe Fever post, he excoriates Judge Mark Martin of Pennsylvania who dared to lecture the “victim” in some asinine case concocted by frat boys and dismissed by an embarrassed prosecutor before trial. Popehat launches into this tirade about how this is a classic example of Black Robe Fever. I’m reading it, and I’m not buying it. This judge lectured Ernie Perce, who was making fun of Mohamed by dressing as a zombie with a turban and claimed Talaag Elbayomy attacked him with a wet noodle or something. Popehat fails to inform his readers that dumb prosecutions for trivial injuries that could be avoided by behaving civilly and not provocatively are a regular annoyance to the courts. Why the prosecutor charged it out is another question, but the “victim” was clearly the nub of the problem. That someone would become outraged at his antics was utterly foreseeable, and the judge is trying to tell him he should watch his ass because ethnic violence is a reality, and it could be visited upon him. You know, that’s a little piece of information that the young zombie Mohamed might stick in his turban and profit from. The judge was just dealing with his misdemeanor calendar and delivering a few homilies for the benefit of society. That’s why we pay him. He made no unfair rulings based on a whim. He delivered a free lecture to a kid who probably needs a dad. Popehat has attacked this particular judge because he is scoring points with people who think pranking Muslims is an important civil right. Using the first-accuser advantage, Popehat has slandered a good judge who showed no lack of proper judicial temper. How unfortunate.

The first-accuser advantage is a very clever, intuitively effective use of what Robert Greene in “The 48 Laws of Power” calls “the Mirror Effect.” Cohen would say, “Kremen says I’m a fraud because he is one.” Or as Ken Popehat White himself would say, “people who call people bullies are usually bullies themselves.” Since Ken White has personally accused more people of bullying than any other human being who has ever lived, he’s a bully by his own definition. Let us briefly pause to savor this admission, then move on to discussing the evil of Black Robe Fever, from which Ken White has been suffering for years, all to the damage and injury of his victims.

The evil of this judicial “fever,” as Popehat puts it, is that it strips us of our rights, and submits us to the rule of whim. I have repeatedly said, “I would rather have a judge who follows the law and takes the time to read it, than one who believes he knows how to rule based on experience and acquired wisdom.” Judges who feel themselves subject to law, who bother to look it up and acquiesce to its dictates, regardless of their opinion about its rightness, are generally ones whose rulings you can predict based on the case facts and established law. We call these judges smart. If they don’t like a rule, they may deconstruct it and find excuses not to apply it – and that’s part of the growth of the law. On the other hand, the rulings of judges who rule based on their intuitive feel, and who will tread on the law and leave you to appeal the ruling if you have the time and money, are often easier to predict, and without reference to law books, because they’re not reading the law. A judge’s prejudices become well-known among practitioners, and lawyers are paid to know them as part of the courtroom lore. We do the best we can with our judges, and much of the time, we get good judicial work out of them.

When judges rule by whim, it retards the growth of the law and brings the judicial system into disrepute by generating arbitrary results instead of well-reasoned, just results. That is the real problem with judges having episodes of Black Robe Fever. Whenever it’s happened in my courtroom life, and it’s happened very rarely, everyone’s feeling sorry for the poor lawyer and his client who are getting treated to some kooky rant, and the judge’s reputation declines rather severely. In fact, the most memorable time was when Judge Kelleher in US District Court in downtown LA reamed the lawyer ahead of me on the docket, asking her “Do you know what rule you just violated?” The poor creature, not a graduate of the finest school, I’m sure, stumbled, “Yes, your honor.” Judge Kelleher responded, “Which one?” For some reason, she said “Rule 9,” which was at that time some kind of rule that got you in trouble, but it was the wrong answer, and all the lawyers in the room knew it. Judge Kelleher kicked her around with good humored sadism for awhile, and ended up by telling her to go back to her office and get the partner who was going to try the case to show up at the hearing like his order had directed.

I was next up, and no one had told me who was going to try the case. It was Chuck Mazursky’s case. Chuck tried all his own cases, and Judge Kelleher knew him well. So he asks me, “Who’s going to try the case?” I had re-read the rule again when I saw the gal ahead of me take the blow to the back of the neck, and responded, “I am the attorney presently contemplated to try the case.” This was just repeating the rule, but on your average day in a courtroom, that’s a good part of what’s required. So Judge Kelleher goes on and says he expects to see me at trial, and doesn’t want Mr. Mazursky waltzing in here at the last minute. I reaffirmed my prior statement, knowing of course that when Chuck showed up to try the case, Kelleher would be delighted to see him, and if he remembered me at all, would probably say, “Pretty sharp kid you sent in here to the trial-setting conference. Weird haircut, though.”

Interestingly enough, Ken White is a downtown LA lawyer, and I gotta say, back when I practiced regularly in LA, everyone knew there was a lot more Black Robe Fever in the downtown LA courthouse of the Central District Federal Court than in other courts. For years, we had Manny Real as Chief Judge, who fined civil rights lawyer Steve Yagman $250,000, overturned on appeal. Then there was Judge Gadbois, who had two San Diego lawyers taken out of court in leg irons by the Marshals for trying to practice in the Central District without being admitted. Regarding the current status of the judicial temperament in the Central District, therobingroom.com provides some interesting reads. It appears that there may be something in the air conditioning there at that old Federal courthouse on Spring Street.

Of course, that’s the same courthouse where the US Attorney has his office, and where Ken Popehat White parked his abundant bulk for a few years, so maybe he picked up the bug. However he got it, it has metastasized to the point where there’s very little left of Kenneth Paul White anymore. During the last four years he has been in a permanent state of Black Robe Fever, convening court each day, receiving the list of miscreants for arraignment from the bloggers who serve as his minions and informants, and reading the charges. If the accused do not plead guilty instantly, the online chants begin, the Popehat signal goes up, and a DIRA is commenced against the recalcitrant.

Popehat’s Reddit Zombies (PRZs) take up the cry. “Popehat is here! Popehat is here!” The sound of verbal knives unsheathing resounds like ten-thousand cavalrymen drawing their sabers before the attack. Popehat fires the first cannon-blast and there’s a mighty shout, a charge, and the melee begins. Truth is the first victim of this war, and soon the most energetic, most witless PRZs move with storm-trooper speed, and their waves of obloquy push virulent threads pulsing with lies to the top spots on Google overnight. The Free Speech Mafia responds to the Popehat signal, the pro bono defenders of nasty talk mount their armored vehicles, and the victim wakes to find himself in occupied territory. Outside his windows, weird siege machines are being rolled into place. Beyond the realm of immediate sight, Popehat is emailing furiously to his network, that goes beyond the Free Speech Mafia, and includes prosecutors and retired FBI agents. When served with a subpoena in the Recouvreur case, he said he had hundreds of emails about the case, so many it would be burdensome to produce them. Purportedly, all this furious labor brings him no monetary reward. If indeed this is true, Popehat’s case of Black Robe Fever is one of the worst on record, because virtually all real judges get paid. Ken’s is an all-volunteer insanity.

It’s true, it takes a real judge to sign the order pitching you out of your house, condemning you to serve time in prison, or enter a judgment against you for money due. Ken Popehat White doesn’t have that power, but of course he could never become a judge. What group of lawyers would want to see him on the bench? With the case of Black Robe Fever he so obviously suffers from, he would be a terrifying judge. It’s quite bad enough that he has found a way to use his connections with the Free Speech Mafia to protect him from reprisals from those whom he injures with such gusto. It’s enough to make you want to believe in magic, or something similarly effective, to disarm him and put a halt to his sadistic agenda. If anyone has any ideas, feel free to let me know.
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Re: Charles Carreon, The Arizona Kid

Postby admin » Mon Jun 23, 2014 10:59 pm

Parody vs. Fabulism
by Charles Carreon
August 10, 2013

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The noble highwayman succored by his bawds.

Everybody knows what a parody is. My favorite is The Beggar’s Opera, by John Gay, in which he laid funny lyrics over tunes of the day, back ihoten the Neoclassical Era of English Literature, the precise dates of which I forever remain fuzzy on. I didn’t feel like I missed much from not knowing the originals of the tunes that Gay had written over the melodies of, but probably there are a lot of extra laughs to be harvested by getting those original lyrics and doing a comparison. Probably someone’s done that by now and it’s online, but I’m not going to search for it just right now.

Because I’m on a mission to get a meaningful definition of parody out of this session at the keyboard. And I’m not going to just look it up and report what I find. I’m going to think. Weird, huh?

See, when you think, sometimes you contradict yourself, and you often seem to. I seem to have contradicted myself, because my opening line says everyone knows what parody is, and the opening line of the second paragraph says I’m looking for a definition of parody. It only seems contradictory, though. In the first paragraph, I gave you an example with which you would automatically agree, especially if you know The Beggars Opera. It is a perfect example of the form, lacking nothing.

The parody presented by The Beggars Opera is deep and multi-leveled. All of British society, notoriously class-stratified, is defined as being of a piece, for as Gay’s introductory character says, “It is difficult to determine whether (in the fashionable vices) the fine gentlemen imitate the gentlemen of the road, or the gentlemen of the road the fine gentlemen.” Gay creates a parody of high manners in low places, replacing the delicate lyrics of popular English songs with the wisdom of whores and highwaymen. The results are delicious. I enjoyed reading it, hearing it in a recording, and most enjoyably, in an incredible performance at McCabes in Santa Monica, back in the early nineties. Took the whole family to get an eyeful of a truly saucy production. My dad, who took me to a few Broadway shows over the years, would have been proud. The kids felt like they’d seen more than a spectacle. They had glimpsed strange doings on that misty island towards which they were sailing – adulthood.

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There are of course other very famous parodists, like Weird Al Yankovic, who made himself on the back of Michael Jackson and more power to him — the guy was funny. My favorite parody of the Michael Jackson Billy Jean video is one Steve Martin did for “The New Show,” a comedy vehicle that went nowhere, but had a great first show. I was going to law school at that time, poor as a churchmouse and always in need of cheap entertainment for the kids.

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In those days, Michael Jackson was a god in LA, and that Steve Martin parody of Billy Jean practically caused me to die laughing. I noted it down as one of the most enjoyable TV moments of my life. Well, obviously, as I view it again today on the flatscreen, context is everything when you’re trying to get parodic punch. In order to enjoy the parody to its full extent, you need to know the original. Of course it shows how independently fine a librettist John Gay was, that The Beggar’s Opera is wonderfully enjoyable with no knowledge of the original songs whose tunes he borrowed. This is not the fate of most parodists, whose works, like clinging vines, require a strong tree to affix themselves to.

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Too late now for a reprieve — the light is in the sky and there is still no parody at Charles-Carreon.com

Nowadays, there’s a lot of people claiming to be parodists who wouldn’t know how to execute a parody if they were told they would die at sunrise if they failed to do so. The operator of Charles-Carreon.com is such a man. I can imagine Popehat, in his cups, at the end of a long, boring night in his glassed-in command post, looking over the smoggy skyline towards San Bernardino, getting his jollies sending Recouvreur a text telling him he’ll hang at dawn if he can’t actually launch a real parody site against Carreon before the first rays of sun tint the sky. Poor Christopher would probably not be shocked to be told that he has fallen far short of executing a real parody.

Christopher Recouvreur is not a parodist. He is a fabulist. He makes things up about me. He imagines me doing things, and imagines my wife doing things, and puts words in the mouth of “Charles Carreon.” These words he puts in my mouth are like nothing I have ever said or would say. There’s no ironic play on my true character. He’s pretending that Charles Carreon is a silly guy, that his brain works in funny ways, and that everyone should make fun of him. There’s no parody there.

I mean, I’ve done a few parodies, so I would recognize it if someone actually parodied me. Like I took the “Hotel California” tune and wrote anti-Bush lyrics for it in “Hotel Babylonia.” I ripped off Elton John and did that “Condoleezza” song about George W. Bush’s love for his Secretary of State. I stole Elvis’ “Blue Suede Shoes” as the music for my late-term craziness opus – “The Old Ve-to,” and clipped the Sex Pistols’ “God Save the Queen” for my tour-de-force reconciliation of the opposites – “Vlad and Me.” I’ve put funny political lyrics in rock tunes lampooning conservative politicians and policies – a harmless enjoyment that is probably sufficient to get you some unwelcome attention. Like from faux parodists like Recouvreur, a Rapeutationist pretending to be an artist. Give you any odds that he did not draw that cartoon of me on the dinosaur. (Can I buy it?)

If you were an artist, and you wanted to parody me, you would have to actually look at what I have done, and start making fun of that, which of course would be possible, because everything can be made fun of, and I make the job easier by engaging in outlier behavior, like leaving the big city law grind, spending years living in yurts in the woods of Southern Oregon, and having a well-known identification with rock and rollers as heroes. C’mon, guys! There’s stuff to work with here. I’m Mexican, and you can always parody Mexicans easily, can’t you? Oh, I don’t fit the stereotype! Damn! I’ve written smart-alecky songs like “Explode on the Border,” with inflammatory lyrics like, “I’ll show you what this burrito’s for!” Don’t be lazy. You can use that.

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It’s almost like my enemies don’t really care. They put all this time into researching me, and they don’t find anything to parody me about. They just don’t see the material, because they don’t have a creative bone in their body. All they’re looking for is stuff that is easily recognizable as “dirt,” bad things that Charles Carreon did or was associated with. So they miss all the thousands of ways that they could actually parody me. No surprise. They’re not parodists, they’re just poo-flingin’ zombies on a mission to paint the town brown. Since they can’t find much dirt about me, they invent dirt with lies and damn lies, expand the tiny amount of dirt that does exist, and make up the difference with plain ole “Fuck that bastard!”

This entire post flies in the face of an old saying of mine: “Never fault your enemies for ineptitude that accrues to your benefit.” Think about it. With this information, Popehat might be moved to fire Recouvreur and have someone else parody me who would be much better at it. Then again, a real parody of me would be funny, and probably much better than simply being mocked by a jackass. C’est la vie. Popehat’ll never do it. He’s just too cheap.
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