I think it was his eye! yes, it was this! He had the eye of a vulture --a pale blue eye, with a film over it. Whenever it fell upon me, my blood ran cold; and so by degrees --very gradually --I made up my mind to take the life of the old man, and thus rid myself of the eye forever.
---Poe, Tell Tale Heart
http://www.ruyasonic.com/images/SFX%20a ... educed.JPG
Foley Effects
for release 10-06-06
Washington D.C.
The Poet's Eye is blinded. I'm on overload. Bombarded. Caught in a shit-storm, a hail of pedophilia and murder and excuses and finger pointing and betrayal. It's almost too much for a sensitive soul. I'm tempted to pull the covers over my head and never watch cable news again. It's just so disgusting.
I'm waiting for the government to declare war on homegrown whack wierdos who have a fetish for shooting high school girls in the back of the head. Or how about war on sicko congressmen who think that the Capitol pages are their own personal harem and can't keep their instant messages in their pants?
It's just too much. It's like a disaster movie. I'm dizzy from watching helicopter shots of chases and crimes in progress. There is a ringing in my ears.
On any Hollywood film project you will find the Foley artist. This is the person who does the ambient sound effects, the footsteps and the horse hooves and squeaking of doors.
Now there will be a new interpretation of the term "Foley Effect." The Mark Foley scandal is destined to be the soundtrack for the upcoming mid-term elections. It will be there like footsteps and the rustle of skirts and the clink of glasses, just under the surface.
Why is this story so resonant? Why do we care if some semi-drunken congressman got a little frisky in his emails with Capitol pages? It is because this is emblematic of the endemic abuse of power that exists in our government. This is the ambient sound track. This is the dimension of bumps and scratches and passing cars that makes any scene real, the things that are always there but that you never hear consciously.
The supposed purpose of the Capitol page program (besides getting cheap labor) is to instruct these bright young people on the workings of our government. What better teacher than Mark Foley? Isn't government and politics a matter of who sucks who and who pays who? I would say that this is a realistic object lesson.
The Foley man makes imaginary thunder. He does it by shaking a big sheet of metal. It's not real thunder, but you believe it because of the context of the movie. The same is true of the Mark Foley affair. We are ready to believe the worst. Trysts in the Capitol cloak room? Cyber sex, ohmygod!
The American people love this kind of story. Oh yes, it's better than Desperate Housewives. We love to see Jimmy Swaggart doing his tearful mea culpas for fucking prostitutes in motels after he had been so holy holy holy. We love to see Jim Baker doing the perp walk. We love to see Bill Clinton's contrition for his adventures in the humidor. We love to see Mr. Moral America Bill Bennett take a dive behind his gambling jones. And we love to see a congressman who was on the bandwagon for protecting the chastity of children on the internet get caught diddling with these same children...on the internet. It takes a good Foley man to simulate the sound of a pie in the face {splatt!).
This guy is supposedly smart enough to be a congressman, right? Doesn't he know that anything that you say or write on the internet is sealed for all history and instantly retrievable? And then the idiot used the old "AA" excuse when he should have said that he was investigating internet predation.
Hypocrisy is the tender red meat of humor. Show me hypocrisy and I'll show you a joke just waiting to happen. Listen to the sound effects.
And the people bowed and prayed
To the neon god they made
And the sign flashed out its warning
In the words that it was forming
And the sign said, "The words of the prophets are written on the subway walls
And tenement halls"
And whispered in the sounds of silence
--Paul Simon
