Glossophagia

Post-What?

2012-01-27T09:43:00.000-05:00

How the world views Barack Obama:

How Jan Brewer is trying to portray Barack Obama:

I won't speak for the rest of you, but these Willie-Horton-isms from the Right Wing were tired in 1988. One might think that by 2012 we might be beyond race-baiting tactics with the "brave, patriotic white woman" standing up fearlessly to the "dusky Kenyan." One would, apparently, be wrong. This is exactly what's going on. It certainly didn't begin with Jan Brewer, but racism was definitely a major factor in her achieving her current office. She's still using it for political leverage.

I'm finished with the politics of garish, angry, paranoid trailer trash. Call me a snob, or whatever. It's not that we don't have our problems right here in New York. Maybe it's that we spend less time trying to champion ignorance. When we go to the polls, whether we are left, right or centrist, we usually try to promote the most intelligent or savvy in our midst. Realizing our own personal limitations, we elect people who seem smarter than ourselves. Mike Bloomberg, for example, might be a dick (not might), but few people are going to question his intelligence.

We don't suffer from an inferiority complex so stultifying that we are willing to have some mouth-breathing Bocephus speak for us because we're afraid someone with an education might hoodwink us...

And to a much lesser extent than many places across this country, we do not run our lives by racially fueled fear and bigotry. That's a good start.

So to the state of Arizona and to Jan Brewer, sit down and shut the fuck up.

On change and changing...

2012-01-26T11:42:00.000-05:00

And it is quite disconcerting to awaken, having gone on a lark, playing one too many games of nine-pin, to your rifle rusty and useless, the world having witnessed revolution and upheaval... and find that everything is different but you. You may set about, or lay about, or set about the business of catching up. Or you sit idly and tell your story so that you may serve as a horrible warning of sorts.

Was Rip Van Winkle a Prohibitionist's lament? That remains to be seen. I've heard no indication that this is so, but there is a chilling resonance and I shudder at the word...

ANACHRONISM

I awoke this morning from a dream missing this place, and a time. I am only beginning the process of sifting through the past, and separating the wheat from the chaff... figuring out what I need to let go of my attachment to, and what comes to the next place with me.

Moving. Motion. Change. Changing. Putting down. Picking up. Ending. Beginning. Etc.

It would be a lie to say that it was all bad, and more of a lie to say that all this change around me is uncomfortable.

I thought I remembered a part of the Rip Van Winkle story, a sequel perhaps, where he goes back into the Catskills to find the bowlers and play a few more games. It's sorely tempting some days, if the truth were to be told.

I still eat my own words...

2012-01-18T09:01:00.000-05:00

... but perhaps there are fewer of them.

Hardly haute cuisine, and certainly no emphasis on presentation. I don't even know who I'm serving anymore but maybe it was always only me at the table anyway.

So what's become of Glossophagia? I used to spill and fill these 'pages' with a nearly religious regularity. It was part of my morning ablutions. My morning pollutions. Mourning... There was always something to say. Some statement. Some proclamation. An irreverent quip. A tasteless joke at the very least.

I find myself, of late, with much less to say on any topic. It's not really a question that the world is less busy and it's definitely no less strange. It has been my observation, in fact, that our universe is more strange than ever. It is, after all an election year and it has shaped up to be one of the most unpleasant and divisive of our generation--rich fodder for commentary--and vitriol.

And perhaps that's just it. The vitriol...

Fueled by rage and frustration and a growing sense that any words I speak or actions I take are little more than pissing into the wind. It all blows back in my face and the subjects of my anger are laughing. Worse, they seem entirely unaware and unconcerned that any opposition at all exists.

And this is really just one example. It might boil down to this. I have fewer answers. The truth be told, I have come to doubt that I was ever possessed of any of the answers. There were ideas, to be sure. There were opinions.

Answers?

Not really.

My energies are focused in other areas now. My belt is drawn more tightly around my middle and my spiritual waistline is more fit and taut. It's taking work and every so often there is noticeable progress.

I've been engaged in reflection, and maybe some nostalgia. My older son is out of the house and hardly talks to me. We had conflicting ideas of what we both needed to be happy living together. The younger has been applying to colleges and it came as a surprise that he is thinking of going away to school. And why not? That's great!

Great... and I am trying not to get lonely in advance of the day I watch his skinny frame walking away.

I remember the song, You Are The Everything, when it was still relatively new. It opened with the mandolin in the beginning so many times while I looked down into Kyle's crib, watching him sleep... fearfully making sure his chest was still rising and falling... holding my hand in front of his mouth to feel his breath, because I couldn't believe that I had been entrusted with the care and responsibility for this amazing thing. Who really thought that was a good idea?

There is a sense that I have spent too much of my life talking... weaving a steel web of words around myself like a suit of chain mail. Now, more than anything, it just seems time to take it off. I no longer know what it was protecting me from. Is this venue closed? No, certainly not. There is still ego.

I guess this is just a placeholder.

Humility

2011-11-27T11:47:00.000-05:00

There will be no greater lesson in humility than watching your firstborn venture out into the world, and having to accept that anything that you may have thought to tell him or teach him, but haven't yet... is simply too late. I want to spin like Columbo and raise a finger and say, "Uh... just one more thing." There will always be just one more thing.

There will be no greater reminder of your powerlessness than when when you are watching your firstborn venture out into the world doing exactly what you told him not to do, and no greater curiosity than when he gets by anyway... because maybe he is smarter. Maybe things have changed since you were that age. Perhaps someone or something greater than yourself is the one watching out for him and just maybe it's been that way all along. Someone or something has had him in their/its care to protect him from you?

There will be no greater sense of hopelessness and futility than when living with your firstborn seems an impossibility and you battle with them on their way out the door and they swear to never talk to you again. No greater fear than the possibility that their proclamation will become reality. No greater relief than when it doesn't, but then you have the new fear that the fighting will start all over again, so you tiptoe around each other, like thieves sneaking past a sleeping guard dog.

I wonder sometimes if any parent is exempted from this, and I watch other families closer to see if it's just me, and mine. I take wicked pleasure when I see a crack in the veneer of perfection and happiness, and then feel guilt. It's not like I truly take pleasure in the strife and hardship of another, though I really sort of do. Or relief that it's not just me. I am wildly envious of others until I discover that they are also going through it. It's not something I'm proud of, but it's there.

There may come a time when you are going through photos of those first weeks with your newborn and wondering what you could have done differently and you simply must accept that there is no going back. It's probably important also that you accept the possibility that the outcome isn't the wrong one, even if it isn't what you had envisioned.

There are days when acceptance seems not so much like letting go, but like lifting an impossibly heavy stone. This is not necessarily one of those days. It is rather one of those in-between days when I can't tell if the weight is in my hands or on the ground before me. When I don't know whether to stoop to lift it or to walk away and not look back.

Perspective on heroism...

2011-10-13T20:44:00.000-04:00

Let me preface this by saying, RIP Steve Jobs. You seemed like a decent guy. You were certainly an enigmatic, pop culture icon. You are now gone and your commercial legacy will live on. You are the champion of really neato stuff. Thanks.

But some perspective on the hand wringing and worldwide moans: See above photo.

What was life like before Steve Jobs?

It was exactly the same.

Exactly

the

Same.

We had music.
We had telephones.
We had games.

It is easier now to bring music and telephones and games wherever we travel in the world. The cannot be denied.

Otherwise...

September 11

2011-09-03T00:30:00.000-04:00

There will be enough people, in coming weeks, waxing poetic, nostalgic, horrific, demonic etc. about September 11th... 911... The Day The Earth Stood Still. I don't want to be disrespectful to the families who lost loved ones, nor irreverent, nor is it my intent to minimize or be dismissive. Sometimes, however, I think about what that day may have meant to me if not for... Well, we know what happened.

September 11, 2011 will be the 2nd anniversary of the death of Jim Carroll, a poet, memoirist and musician that has meant a great deal to me over the last 35 years. It started, I guess, with the release of the album Catholic Boy, which stood well apart from the pack in the era of Southern Rock, Disco, California-Lite and Arena Bombast. What we came to call punk and new wave was not getting a lot of airplay, even on the FM stations, which like Liberal Democrats in the U.S. and the Labour Party in the UK, had long become staid, stodgy, dogmatic and somewhat constipated. There were exceptions. People Who Died, was an exception among exceptions, but it wasn't even the real poetic dynamic stand-out for those brave enough to buy the Catholic Boy album. The title track, by the way, is still rarely heard unless you own it.

The real impact of Jim Carroll, in my life was that he inspired me to write. Yes, a good part of it was teenage, romantic, fantastic stuff about sitting in a tenement, hunched over a buzzing Selectric next to a bottle of bourbon. These notions led me down the garden path to twisted places, admittedly. No, I never published anything of literary import. What writing has offered me though, is an avenue by which I might express feelings and words that I've never been able to articulate in any other way. If nothing else...

Catharsis.

This one single avenue down which my darkest fears could be paraded away from me may have ostensibly saved my life.

Did in fact, give me a reservoir, or a catch-basin in which I could open a valve and relieve pressure, and still have everything at hand, in a safe place until it could be dealt with.

I've been writing a lot more recently--diaries if you will--nothing even vaguely resembling a coherent memoir. Again, it keeps me level. And having turned 50 this past weekend, I had actually wanted to express that making this far was a surprise. I have, as a loved one pointed out, given my past behavior, stunned the actuaries. It doesn't make all that much sense to pontificate on aging. You either will, or you won't. This ramble aside, I have been trying to recall a bit from Carroll's follow-up to The Basketball Diaries. It was titled Forced Entries and was in many ways, better than its predecessor. My copy of the book has long since disappeared... probably loaned out to someone else who is foolish enough to romanticize junkie poets. It began like this though and fairly well describes what keeps me scribbling and tapping:

>>>The fact is, in many ways, I hadn't planned to make it to this age. I think of my past as if it were some exquisite antique knife. You can use it to defend yourself or slit your own throat. But you can't just keep it mounted on some wall. I can no longer allow the past, however, to interpret my future. Not dying young can be a dilemma.

Such notions, I see now, are an indulgence. I inhabit a different body now. Each day, it seems, another self wakes up and heats the coffee. I can distinguish, even gauge, the passage from a disturbed youth to a disturbed adult by the subtle aggressiveness in my anxiety..

So, having lived, it seems only proper to begin keeping track again, to record the flux of each self, and weigh the shifting landscape of the city. I've given much of myself to feed its insatiable, tick-ridden underbelly, and I expect the use of its character, without threats or intimidation, in return. If you haven't died by an age thought predetermined by the timing of your abuses and excesses, then what else is left but to begin another diary?<<<

I feel this right to my bones.

Economy of Language

2011-08-28T16:51:00.000-04:00

I needed only 12 short hours of smoke deprivation to realize that every last noun in my vocabulary could be readily replaced with a particularly unpopular word beginning with the letter "C."

The path to enlightenment is often much shorter than we might imagine it to be.

Down the Rabbit Hole

2011-08-28T14:52:00.000-04:00

Brief update... Irene's big ol' backside is still kicking up a mess along the shore, and there has been considerable damage up and down the coast, but it must be said... NYC dodged a bullet. She slammed ashore at Coney Island as a tropical storm at about 8 this morning. It's my not so humble opinion that people who are now griping that there was too much hype really need to count their blessings.

My fears, down here in the bunker, were not entirely unfounded. The water started coming in just before 1 a.m. The blessing was that it was clean (semi-clean) rain water from somewhere above, and not from the Ghostbuster's river of slime that runs under the street. Over the course of a very long night, I filled a five gallon bucket eight times, and got about an hour of sleep sitting up on the sofa. My preparations, putting everything up high, did not go unrewarded. The only damage is to the sheetrock low along the back wall of the apartment. The landlord has already called.

I can think of several dozen things I would have rather done on a Saturday night, but the upside is that once you've wrung out a string mop several hundred times, you can crack coconuts in your hands. I just have to be careful not to hurt myself... uh... THAT'S A JOKE SON! LAUGH! You know, one of those thinly-veiled, off-color things.

Never mind.

It's all good. I'm glad it's mostly over, and we all got to see Mayor Michael Bloomberg BUST OUT HIS SPANISH.

Cheers.

Irene

2011-08-27T20:04:00.002-04:00

Light rains all day, and it's just picked up a bit with a low roll of thunder. We'll see how this works out. There have already been fatalities down south, but I've seen no word if it was water, wind, or something collapsing that caused them. It's going to be an interesting night up and down the coast.

Perhaps the most alarming local news so far is that THERE ISN'T NOW AND NEVER HAS BEEN AN EMERGENCY EVACUATION PLAN FOR 12,000 INMATES ON RIKER'S ISLAND. This is a particularly disturbing scenario, as these men and women are locked away on a very vulnerable patch of land right in harm's way. Say what you will, but a large number of these human beings are in there for crimes that many of us have gotten away with repeatedly. The phrase, "there but for the grace of God," applies every which way to this situation. Fatalities as a result of this criminal negligence will be on the hands of Mayor Bloomberg and the Department of Corrections.

There have been many other sound preparations. At-risk neighborhoods are divided into three evacuation zones and the most vulnerable have been mandated to pack up and leave. Those who decide to stay are, as the Mayor has stated, on their own.

I am several blocks uphill from Zone C so I'm theoretically safe, unless the drains and sewer are overwhelmed by rain and back up into the houses. There are many advantages to a basement apartment, but they are pretty much nullified in these rare cases. There isn't much that can be done, so we've made basic preparations to fly on a moment's notice. Miss Jane Pitbull has been on edge and growing increasingly squirrelly, but that may have something to do with several feral cats trying to pry their way into the back windows. I feel badly for them, but... We will see how it goes.

There are two schools of thought on the perceived danger of this storm, in regard to the city. One is to prepare for The End of Days. The other is like the grasshopper from the old fable. Dance, fiddle and sing... we're not going any damn place. Few appear to be holding the middle ground.

I headed out to Rockaway Beach early this morning, hoping to catch a bit of a thrill. While it is always awe-inspiring and humbling to sit before the ocean, it was just a bit more so facing the higher-than-average surf and infinite mist. There was simply a greater awareness of the vast forces that dwarf even our imaginations. Or the imaginations of anyone grounded in anything resembling reality. It doesn't take much more than the approach of a huge storm to become right-sized against the world and/or any Higher Power you claim a connection to.

It was mostly just peaceful there in the mist, which would clear just enough every so often to reveal dozens of surfers out just beyond the breakers, waiting for something just a bit bigger than the last one.

And that is the day, thus far. I turn 50 years old tomorrow, and though I couldn't imagine even at 40 that I would be around at 50... and no, I'm not being morbid or ego-stricken as I am just an average man... and yes, anything can happen on the overnight... it is pretty much as inevitable as this rain and whatever is behind it. It's supposed to be one of those benchmark birthdays, just as Irene is supposed to be "THE BIG ONE," but against the greater scheme of things, time and the universe, it's just another day. It doesn't matter how much you talk it up.

Maelstrom?

2011-08-26T22:06:00.000-04:00

Or is this IRENE CHICK simply a manifestation of the last vestiges of my arrested development meeting a new force in my life.

I will let you know when the storm surge subsides.

How long can I sit here watching the news reports before it becomes tiresome? What age marks the onset of Weather Channel Syndrome? You know what I'm talking about. There is an older person in your life whose television is always tuned in to cyclones and tornado strikes in parts of the world that he/she has never even visited. You spend hours wondering what is so damned fascinating that they remember the storm track of hurricanes from 40 years earlier. Then you sit bold-upright on the sofa and realize you've been watching an hour by hour update of a storm in Guam all morning. What age can you expect this?

I don't know, but I can tell you that I just watched Irene News on NY1 for the last two hours. I am frightened. Not of the storm really, but that it's happened to me. Early onset of Weather Channel Syndrome.

I took precautions. I never stopped listening to The Ramones. There are no velcro shoes sticking out from beneath my bed. There are no trousers with an elastic waistband in my bureau. I've never owned a reversible belt.

Yet I can now give you a comprehensive summary of evacuation zones and shelters all over the borough.

This is a cry for help. Maybe I should just go stand on the beach tomorrow.

The end is nigh...

2011-08-17T00:05:00.000-04:00

Or so some people believe...

I broke down a while back and called the cable guy, who in an impressive feat of scaling fences, walls and poles... and operating a drill straight out of that Brian DePalma film the title of which I can't remember... hooked me back into the mainstream media. I've spent the last three months watching mostly highbrow stuff like Comedy Central, Adult Swim, and HGTV, and wondering why I suffered under the delusion that something had been missing in my life.

Of course there are those odd anthropological delights, like Intervention and Hoarders. There are cultural studies like Billy the Exterminator. I have mostly, however, been disappointed with the fare. There are few programs that I make it a point to watch regularly, and none that I can honestly say I look forward to.

That's why I nearly jumped from the sofa in delight when I saw that there will be a documentary addressing one of my pet topics.

The Apocalypse!

LIVIN' IN THE APOCALYPSE (click here)

It's not that I really believe that it's coming, or even care. In fact...

It's the people, though, that fascinate me. I am simultaneously drawn to and repelled by the seemingly growing number of people who believe that we are, at any moment, going to be facing the fire. That whether by God, or death comet, or nuclear holocaust, it's coming, and we'd best be prepared! They are a special breed and I cannot turn away from any program or article or book that features them. They range from rugged survivalists, to cults, and as evidenced by events earlier this year, otherwise regular folks who are prone to media driven hysteria.

I know, from a personal standpoint, that if things get that rough, I'd rather go in the first wave than to be trapped in a bunker or cave with any of these people. Call it misanthropy but just look at some of the photos in that article, or scroll back a couple months to the Rapture Hype. No, I think I'd rather put on some proper Apocalypse music... maybe Motorhead... kick back, and die. The thought of sitting underground munching Dinty Moore, cleaning my rifle and reading the Bible just doesn't appeal to me.

And I would really miss some of you.

Most of you.

I will, in the meantime, await the premier of Livin' In The Apocalypse impatiently. Thank you, Cable Guy.

Thank you.

Fisherman

2011-08-14T10:34:00.000-04:00

A lifetime at the tiller, piloting my toy sailboat through the swells and surges in the gutter, has left me with callouses. Blisters on top of callouses on top of blisters. A ruined back as well. I wonder sometimes, often now these days, what romantic notion carried me to the decision to go to sea. To spend my life fishing waters that I was duly warned were devoid of any catch that could sustain life. To fish for creatures that I would be better off leaving to their own devices there in the muck at the bottom. To explore waters that no experienced sailor would dare bother with.

But you can't, at the end of any day, even the best of days, tell a young man anything. I ignored the warnings, put my back to the tiller, and didn't look back until I was out there alone. I caught what I caught. I came back from time to time and would, when the opportunity arose, kidnap a reluctant ear, and overfill it with fantastic tales of storms, horrific beasts, and frightful misadventure. Then it was back out to the dirty water.

And now as I am greying at the temples, my back sore, and my hands twisted like tree roots reaching up from shallow sand, I am back on firmament, still looking for my land-legs. I still haunt the piers where my toy sailboat is dry-docked, and daily I am drawn to the mystery. To the notion that there is some treasure out there. The catch of catches that I might, to the amazement of everyone, dump triumphantly on the pier. Where people will shake their heads in wonder and admiration.

I will most likely leave that to younger men who cannot and will not be told that there is nothing out there under the waves. And I will wait down at the docks to see what they bring back, because I'm still not entirely convinced either.

At 50

2011-08-13T22:54:00.001-04:00

I find myself, at 50, or at least approaching the day, far more uncertain of the world around me than before. I am somehow more happy for this. From this. About this. I don't even know how to phrase this and I'm not bothered by not knowing.

I find myself, approaching 50, with fewer opinions and feel more at peace. Every uncertainty is one less fortress to defend with my life.

I find myself, nearing 50, not needing so badly to be right. I will now, sometimes very quiety...

VERY QUIETLY!

Concede that I am... shhhhhh....

incorrect

You may see, from the look on my face, that I am not yet altogether comfortable with that. That will take time and effort.

I find myself, inching towards 50, coming to the realization that there is far less time in which to make an effort, any effort really. Lest I be misconstrued, effort I make will not be/is not driven by any cognition of imminent judgment. This isn't about redemption or salvation.

I simply grew weary. It must be said that others certainly must have grown weary also. Maybe we have shared a moment of mutual exasperation with... me.

This isn't a morbid aging and dying bender, merely an observation. It took me a very long time to realize that the heaviness of my step and the weight I felt across my shoulders was perhaps the ripe fertilizer that fed my...

How did Fitzgerald put it in Gatsby?

My "platonic conception" of myself.

Nor is this self-flagellation. I've spent enough time engaged in that. There is a thin line between self-hate and self-love, opposite sides of the same coin perhaps. It is merely an observation that having jettisoned some cargo, forward motion (not in the sense of linear time) has accelerated.

I have found, as I careen towards 50, that I no longer grip the wheel as tightly. It's not like I will be able, at any point, to make a sharp turn away and avoid the mark. Release the wheel and stay true to the path. There is no brake pedal either.

Imagine that.

Poem of the Day | Barbarian, by Arthur Rimbaud

2011-07-29T18:25:00.000-04:00

Barbarian

Long after the days and the seasons, and the beings and the countries,
The pennant of bloody meat against the silk of arctic seas and flowers; (they don't exist.)
Recovered from old fanfares of heroism—which still attack our hearts and heads—far from the ancient assassins—
Oh! The pennant of bloody meat against the silk of arctic seas and flowers; (they don't exist)
Sweetness!
Live coals raining down gusts of frost,—Sweetness!—those flashes in the rain of the wind of diamonds thrown down by the terrestrial heart eternally charred for us.—O world!—
(Far from the old refuges and the old fires that we can hear, can smell,)
The live coals and the foam. Music, wheeling of abysses and shock of ice floes against the stars.
O Sweetness, O world, O music! And there, shapes, sweat, tresses and eyes, floating. And the white, boiling tears,—O sweetness!—and the voice of woman reaching to the depths of the arctic volcanoes and caverns.
The pennant .....

Finding meaning in Everything?

2011-07-25T11:06:00.000-04:00

Egocentrism can render a man prone to finding hidden meaning in anything and everything. There was a King of Spaces playing card on the ground right outside my door this morning. The appearance of a face card in a game of Blackjack always brings on that hair-raising mix of anticipation and dread... a 50-50 shot of winning, or losing miserably. It is the same in life if you are one given to reaching too far for meaning and metaphor in anything that comes your way.

I knew the card meant something but had to turn to the oracle Lord Google for the answer. So the meaning of the King of Spades:

KING OF SPADES VICTORY Triumph; physical or mental release.

Aces! (no pun intended) This could be a good day!

Unless of course the message was left for my neighbor... I won't know for sure until I walk outside and live it.

Oxymoron of the Day: High Class Prostitution Ring

2011-07-22T15:21:00.000-04:00

This is why they call them "mug" shots. To quote the revered social commentator, Mr. Bugs Bunny, "Just lookit dem mugs!"

Anyway, I must take exception to the phrase, "high class prostitution." Paying to get hosed involves very little in the way of "class" whether at any price. No judgment here. Just saying, it's a simple business transaction, and as far as I'm concerned just like every other business transaction. Some people shop at Macy's, and some at the dollar store. BFD.

You can READ THE STORY HERE if you like. It should come as no surprise to anybody to find a prostitution ring anywhere in any cit in the world. I just balk at the phrasing, and honestly, that a crew of such exceptionally ugly clowns could be gathered in one place.

Internal Monument, by G.C. Waldrep... This floored me this morning.

2011-07-22T07:41:00.000-04:00

Internal Monument

A man was sad—for himself, maybe for someone else, maybe he had lost something, or someone—so he hired some workmen to erect a monument. He was not surprised when they came calling early one morning, while he was still in bed, but he was surprised when, with a practiced slash, the foreman opened his chest. "We build the monument inside," the foreman said. "But who will see the monument?" the man protested. "It's a monument for feeling, not for seeing," the foreman replied.

The operation was unpleasant but was soon over. And sure enough, after a brief interval of recuperation, the man felt, he thought, a little less sad than before.

This lasted a while, but then he felt the sadness returning, in spite of the dark, heavy space in his chest where the monument rested, nestled in flesh. He called the workmen again. They obligingly came and repeated the procedure.

Over the ensuing months and years, the man had cause to call upon the foreman and his crew repeatedly, as new life brought new losses, new sadnesses. His chest became a jumbled cabinet of monuments, the fatty tissue of his upper arms and thighs, his bowels: even his fingers and toes felt weighed down by his commemorations. At length, it was all he could do to lift the telephone receiver at his bedside. He called the foreman. "I can't get up," he said. "I can't even move." "An unfortunate side effect," the foreman told him. "Really, there's nothing we can do."

Bedridden, the man felt deprived even of what had been the most mundane pleasures of daily life: strolls down the avenue, the smell of bread baking at a neighborhood patisserie, autumn leaves. It was not turning out at all as he had expected, this life.

Inside his body the monuments huddled. Mutely, he thought, though sometimes, late at night, when he tried to shift position, they brushed against one another and made what could only be called sounds, though no one else could hear them, and he heard them, if he heard them, with his body, rather than with his ears.

When the man died, his landlord, his executors, eventually the city authorities all attempted to wrest his body from what had become his deathbed. No one could move it. Finally, they called the foreman, who agreed to try one last procedure on the corpse.

The foreman unzipped the body like a flimsy valise and, with the assistance of his workmen, slowly, carefully turned it inside out. Now everyone could see the monuments, but no one could see the man.

They were beautiful, his monuments. People traveled into the city from miles around to view them. The city graded and graveled lanes in what had been the sad man's body. Clerks and engineers began to take their families there for picnics. A bandstand was built. Lovers gathered at dusk for concerts and, later, laid out blankets on the generous lawns, over which the monuments stood like sentinels. "Look at the stars," the lovers whispered to one another. "Look up at the beautiful stars."

G. C. Waldrep

Where the sacred and the profane meet...

2011-07-21T12:13:00.000-04:00

His Purgations

Argyle shat himself and, truth be told,
but for the mess of it, the purging was
no bad thing for the body corporal.
Would that the soul were so thoroughly cleansed,
by squatting and grunting supplications.
Would that purgatories and damnations
could be so quickly doused and recompensed,
null and voided in the name of mercy.
He made for Goleen and a proper laving
of his crotch and loins and paltry raiments.
Outstretched on the strand, his body's immersion
in the tide was not unlike a christening:
two goats for godparents, two herring gulls
perched in the current his blessed parents,
a fat black cormorant the parish priest
anointing him with chrisms and oils,
pronouncing him reborn, renamed, renewed
in the living waters of baptism.
In every dream he dreamt after bathing,
the guilt and guile of his sin-eating
and all accrued perditions were absolved
and he was named after an apostle
or martyr or evangelist or saint,
welcome everywhere, forgiven everything.

Thomas Lynch

News of the Very Bizarre World

2011-07-20T23:23:00.000-04:00

There really isn't much need to bore anyone with further details of the latest troubles in the Rupert Murdoch Empire. Things have gone pear-shaped on The Death Star, and it's going to be strange when the media network most famous for covering things up (and inventing other things) is standing buck naked before the world.

A few points of interest, however:

1) The man that dealt the first blow to The Empire SEAN HOARE, WAS FOUND DEAD (click here). Police are still saying there is no reason to suspect foul play. I don't know how to insert a very long pause here. Really? No reason? Okay. Whatever.

2) On a lighter note, check out Wendi Deng Murdoch in the pink blazer pulling out the Kill Bill moves on the pie thrower! Wow! Who knew that the old man had hooked up with the OGB? ORIGINAL GANGSTA BITCH! The Lee Press-On Scowl she's exhibited through these proceedings is precious. This is a woman you do NOT want to mess with!

3) Yes, that is ex-NYC Schools Chancellor Joel Klein sitting ringside for this fight. They say you can judge a man by the company he keeps. Murdoch > Klein > Bloomberg > NYC Voters Who Will Vote For Yoda's Evil Twin Again (if given the chance).

I'm really struggling to find a light side to this mess. It's not like there is any love lost between me and any Murdoch media holdings. I don't watch Fox in any form and I wouldn't let my dog crap on The New York Post. Alexander Hamilton, founder of The Post and by many accounts a creep and proponent of galactic-scale fuckery, must be spinning in his grave. The Empire is mostly built on tabloid sleezery, and while I'm not beyond a bit of the old bodega-style bochinche (see above), I've no real interest in taking bullshit beyond the corner store or the front stoop. To build an entire print and broadcast dynasty on messing with people... The very best you can hope for after being near any of these people is a stain that won't wash out.

This is going to be an interesting ride.

From the IJustCan't.com Files

2011-07-15T14:26:00.000-04:00

and other things I am incapable of understanding...

I often find, at this advanced age, that there are many phenomena at work in the world around me that I remain incapable of understanding. Now granted, this is an extreme example, this...

PARAPHILIC INFANTILISM (click here)...

I don't even want to understand this. It's not really necessary that I do. There are, however, less extreme examples that create static interference in my day to day life. Some days are an exercise in sorting through and collating events and experiences that I learn from, filing away some to examine more closely at a later date... and sending some to the shredder. Take a look, say a prayer, and release it to the universe. I am mostly successful in getting things in order, or at least a manageable order. Then there are other days when the bits and bytes come like flurries of punches.

The story above though, is one that I hope to forget soon. It has, for the time being, no immediate relevance in my life. It is strange to think though that as we walk about, we pass by people with secrets we might never imagine them capable of harboring. Baby Bunnykins here might be an accountant, or a dentist, or whatever. My own secrets, by comparison, are very tame. Don't expect any kind of a confession or testimonial on this page. We all have secrets. Yet some...

On Bravery and Fear...

2011-07-14T10:04:00.000-04:00

From A.A. Milne, because his words are better than mine... And I think of the lessons in courage I find in this story. It's about attitude I suppose, and there are days when it seems the wind will certainly carry us away, or cause heavy things to fall upon us. Most days that doesn't happen, despite anything else that does. His words:

chapter eight

In which Piglet does a very grand thing

Pooh and Piglet are sitting together in their Thoughtful Spot, halfway between their two houses, trying to decide what to do with their day. Pooh suggests going to see Eeyore in case his house has blown down again and needs rebuilding. Piglet says that they should go and see Christopher Robin, if only he would be home, which he wouldn't be, and then Pooh says that they should go and see everyone, because then they could turn the day into a Friendly Day, which is obviously preferable to an Unfriendly Day, being friendlier.

Piglet says that they should come up with a reason to see everyone, like an Expotition or an Organdized Search, and Pooh says that they can wish everybody a very happy Thursday, what with it being Thursday and everything.

So they stand up, and Piglet sits down again briefly because he didn't realise the wind was quite that strong, but he is helped up by Pooh, and they set off together. They go to Pooh's house first (luckily finding that Pooh is home at just the moment they arrive), and have a little something, and than carry on to Kanga's house, battling through the very strong wind.

They stay for lunch at Kanga's house and then move on to Rabbit's, and Pooh wishes Rabbit a very happy Thursday, after he has gone in and out through the front door a few times, just to check that he can. Rabbit isn't terribly impressed with their Thursday greeting, because he is such an Important Animal anyway, and so Pooh and Piglet press on.

"Rabbit's clever," said Pooh thoughtfully.
"Yes," said Piglet, "Rabbit's clever."
"And he has Brain."
"Yes," said Piglet, "Rabbit has Brain."
There was a long silence.
"I suppose," said Pooh, "that that's why he never understands anything."

Pooh and Piglet arrive at Christopher Robin's house, and Christopher Robin is home from school now as it's the afternoon. They have a Very Nearly Tea with Christopher Robin (one you forget about afterwards), and then head off to Pooh Corner to see Eeyore.

They greet Eeyore, who asks them if they have got lost and ended up there accidentally, which of course they haven't, as they have come especially to see Eeyore himself, and his house, which is still standing! Eeyore says yes, it is, which is quite strange, as surely someone should have come and pushed it over by now.

Pooh says he was a bit more worried about the wind blowing it down, and Eeyore says that that is probably why no-one has bothered to push it down, as they were just waiting for the wind to do it instead.

Pooh and Piglet say how happy they are to have seen Eeyore, and mention that they are now going to see Owl. Eeyore says that they will like Owl, and that in fact he flew past Pooh Corner only a day or so ago and noticed Eeyore, although he didn't stop to say anything, but still it was Encouraging.

Eeyore says goodbye to them, and advises Piglet not to get blown away by the wind, and off they go again. The wind is still very strong, and little Piglet's ears are streaming behind him like banners. Eventually they arrive at the Hundred Acre Wood and the shelter of the trees, although the trees present another problem...

"Supposing a tree fell down, Pooh, when we were underneath it?"
"Supposing it didn't," said Pooh after careful thought.
Piglet was comforted by this.

They reach Owl's door safely, and they knock and ring as per his written instructions. Pooh says hello to Owl, and then says that he hopes they are not too late for...and then stops himself, and says how are you, Owl, like a well-behaved bear is supposed to do before he asks for a little something.

Pooh and Piglet get settled in Owl's house, and Pooh explains that they have been hurrying to get there in time for..., uh, in time to see Owl before they went away again.

Owl understands, and asks them if it is very Blusterous outside. Piglet says that it is definitely very Blusterous, while quietly thawing his ears out and wishing he was at home. Owl says that he had thought that it must be very Blusterous outside, and is just about to launch into a long and complex story about his Uncle Robert when there is a loud cracking noise...

Pooh cries "Look out!", and warns Piglet that he is about to fall on him. Piglet cries "Help!", understandably. Owl's house is tilting, and everything in the room is sliding downwards onto what used to be the floor, but is now a wall.

There is another loud crack, and then silence. A tablecloth in one corner starts to wriggle around, rolls across the room, jumps up and down a bit, and then turns out to be Piglet.

"Pooh," said Piglet nervously.
"Yes?" said one of the chairs.
"Where are we?"
"I'm not quite sure," said the chair.
"Are we - are we in Owl's House?"
"I think so, because we were just going to have tea, and we hadn't had it."
"Oh!" said Piglet. "Well, did Owl always have a letter-box in his ceiling?"
"Has he?"
"Yes, look."
"I can't," said Pooh. "I'm face downwards under something, and that, Piglet, is a very bad position for looking at ceilings."

Owl emerges from behind a table, looking rather irritated. Owl asks Piglet where Pooh is, and Pooh replies that he isn't sure, and Owl turns to Pooh and frowns at the bits of him he can see.

Owl asks Pooh if he is responsible for their current situation, and Pooh says that he doesn't think that he is. Piglet says that he thinks it was the wind, and that Owl's house has been blown down. Owl says "Oh," and that he thought that it was Pooh, and Pooh says no.

Owl and Piglet struggle with the armchair that is on top of Pooh, and after a little while they manage to free Pooh successfully. Piglet says that they need to think of something to do now, and Pooh says that he has thought of a song, which he sings, and although it is a very nice song, it doesn't get them out of their State.

Owl says that they can't go out of the front door because it is now blocked, so they are going to need another exit. Pooh puts his mind to the problem, and considers the fact that he is sitting on a floor which used to be a wall, and above them is the ceiling, which used to be another wall, and has the front door in it, which used to be a front door but is now a ceiling door, with a letterbox right in the middle of it.

Pooh suggests that Owl could fly up to the letterbox with Piglet on his back, an idea that Piglet quickly vetoes, and anyway, Owl explains the role of the Necessary Dorsal Muscles, something which he has explained before but is one of those things that often needs two explanations before anyone knows what you are talking about.

Pooh explains that the idea is to allow Piglet to squeeze through the letterbox and go and get Help, and Piglet says that he has put on some weight lately so that plan wouldn't really work, unfortunately. Owl says that he has actually had his letterbox made bigger lately in case he received any large letters, but then Piglet reminds Owl about the Dorsal Muscles situation, and they try to think of something else to do.

Pooh comes up with another plan - they should tie Piglet to a piece of string, and then Owl could fly up to the letterbox holding the piece of string in his beak, and then he could push the string through the wire, and then bring it down to the floor, and then both Owl and Pooh would pull hard on the string on one end and Piglet would rise up to the ceiling on the other end.

"And there Piglet is," said Owl. "If the string doesn't break."
"Supposing it does?" asked Piglet, really wanting to know.
"Then we try another piece of string."
This was not very comforting to Piglet, because however many pieces of string they tried pulling up with, it would always be the same him coming down; but still, it did seem the only thing to do.
So with one last look back in his mind to all the happy hours he had spent in the Forest not being pulled up to the ceiling by a piece of string, Piglet nodded bravely at Pooh and said that is was a Very Clever pup-pup-pup Clever pup-pup Plan.

Pooh reassures Piglet that the string won't break because Piglet is so small, and Pooh will stand underneath anyway, and if Piglet manages to escape and get Help then that will be a Very Grand Thing, maybe so grand that Pooh will make up a song about it and people will talk about it afterwards.

Piglet now feels much better about everything, so the animals prepare the string, and then Piglet is lifted slowly up to the ceiling. Piglet is rather proud of himself and wants to call out "Look at me!", but he doesn't in case the others look at him and let go of their end of the string.

Piglet successfully reaches the letterbox, opens it and gets in. He unties himself from the string and squeezes into the slit, and after a little bit more squeezing he is free! Calling to the others through the letterbox he lets them know that everything is OK, although Owl's tree has blown over and a branch is blocking the door, but with Christopher Robin's help he can rescue everyone, and it should only take about half an hour.

Owl decides to make use of the half an hour at his disposal, and settles down to tell a long and convoluted story about his Uncle Robert. Pooh closes his eyes.

Why is this man smiling?

2011-07-12T10:29:00.000-04:00

He is Rupert Murdoch. That is why he is smiling.

HE OWNS ALL OF THIS (click here)

You might be smiling too, if you were Rupert Murdoch. Or not, considering recent problems with the law. I have to ask, as the New Corp. scandal widens (click here), just how deep is this going to get? How many of these other Murdoch "assets" are going to be involved? It seems to be going well beyond News of the World already. Phone hacking. Payoffs to police and government officials. Which of his other companies are involved in their own... pecadillos?

I've been watching the other news media dance around the story. It is out there, to be sure, but one might have expected the biggest feeding frenzy in the history of the Western World. Nobody seems to be asking any big questions, but rather waiting quietly in the corner, biting their nails as details emerge.

I've watched reporters on other networks run down brief lists of News Corp./Murdoch holdings. There is ALWAYS one glaring omission. Why is nobody mentioning The Wall Street Journal and other Dow Jones publications? They are really the crown jewel of the opinion-forming media in the Murdoch treasure chest. Is it that nobody can bear the thought that...? Ha! I won't say it. I will say that it has always seemed strange to me that such a major power in financial news should rest in the hands of a powerful man who could ostensibly stand to profit handsomely from what, where and how financial news is reported... or isn't reported.

We know this: Truth and Murdoch-owned media are often mutually exclusive entities. We're now getting solid evidence that there are those within his empire that will go to ANY lengths to get what they need, including breaking the law. I think it only stands to reason that if they're willing to break the law to get information, they would have no moral quandary at all about disseminating misinformation. If you're not outraged, and at least a little frightened, perhaps you should be.

We are, in the end, proper... ahem... We're out of luck. We re-wrote laws even in New York City, to allow this man to control more major, opinion-forming media outlets than were allowable even 30 years ago. We let it happen, and now we're getting a little taste of the Fox News we let into the henhouse.

This one might be considered a rant...

2011-07-12T00:01:00.001-04:00

This is, of course, Michelle Obama, The First Lady of The United States of America. She looks pretty good, right? Nah man, more than that. She looks damn good! I don't know about the rest of you (nor do I truly care all that much), but I feel it's kind of nice to have good looking people in the White House, considering we have to look at them so much.

I do have a question though. Every time I turn on the news or pick up a paper, I have to see some duff-ass journalist trying to "expose" the woman as some manner of hypocrite for throwing down every so often with one of those "guilty-pleasure" meals we all love so much. (Note: It's not a goddamn guilty pleasure if you chow down 6000 calories every day. That makes you the sort of pig that has to rent the Lil Rascal at the mall to drag your ass around the food court.)

CASE AND POINT click here)

Get a clue. Obesity kills more people yearly than crack. That makes Ronald McDonald a killer clown. Michelle Obama fronts a campaign to fight one of the nation's #1 killers. She cares about children.

Note that she is not fat. She obviously takes care of herself. Her children are not fat. Her husband is not fat.

You may note that this story is from The Daily Fail... okay, point taken, but it is one of dozens of these stories that have confounded me for the last 6 months. Why do I have to see this? You (the press) are going to have to try harder. Get this crap out of the news.

SHAKE SHACK rocks, by the way! I wish I was there right now.

Someone else's words for once...

2011-07-09T08:57:00.000-04:00

Second Row at the Ballet

That night at the Orpheum, what had I been trying to tell you? I remember
going over it in my head, testing the words
against the silences they would replace. The old theater at Beale and South
Main had been spared the wrecking ball,

its façade and marquee, ornate friezes and delicate gold leaf deemed worth
conserving after decades of neglect. Our seats were so good
they were bad. I couldn't see the dancers' feet for the footlights, and the sweat
on the ballerinas' backs wasn't a romantic glow, it was sweat.

This cluttered world is constantly encroaching and tangible, but it's hard
not to reduce it to something imagined. From where we sat
I could see into the wings, the lead dancer listening for her cue. She violently
wiped at her nose with the heel of a palm. Moments before,

a piece of her shadow had spun huge as a movie projection on the backstage
wall abbreviating the motions she was about to perform,
the way a mechanic tearing down an engine finds a way to remember the
orientation of each piston and cam and rod. We have learned

to practice until it isn't practice anymore, until the history of repetition
falls away as it did for the carefully costumed dancer
when she flung herself across the stage on the exact right beat and began
to inhabit the ghosted images so perfectly arranged in her mind.

Bobby C. Rogers

There is still more to it than making it in...

2011-07-03T10:05:00.000-04:00

"Where the hand of opportunity, draws tickets in a lottery..."

Millions of us will be looking towards the harbor tomorrow night. There will be pomp and circumstance. There will be excitement. There will be rockets. There will be a sweeping view of The Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island... the first sights seen by millions of hopeful and often desperate immigrants who have fled circumstance and loss in their homelands. Independence Day has become not only a celebration of freedom from foreign rule, for what it's worth, but a statement of the promise offered by a new life in a new world. That is the legacy, true or false or in-between, that we herald around the world, and our shores and borders are still crowded with newcomers looking for a foothold. Some make it in. Some don't.

This latter category is growing as we struggle with recession, joblessness, and an increasing fear of the "Ausländer." That fear has always been part of the game. The Lady of the Harbor says, "Give us your poor..." etc., but it's a bit of a misstatement, as THIS ARTICLE FROM THE NY TIMES (CLICK HERE) describes. We've always had lists of rather nebulous disqualifications, the early version of the "no-fly list," as it were. The immigrant question still weighs heavily in our political discourse, and on the hearts of many.

It's never been an easy ride for most that make it in, and perhaps that's just the way things go anyway. Should there be an easy passage? It just always struck me as ironic that 12 hours washing dishes in a steam bath, or day after mindbending day picking fruit... or standing on the corner of McDonald Avenue waiting for a chance to do three days work in one shift, and be paid for half a day... to go home to a subdivided apartment that you share with strangers... it's ironic that this represents opportunity. I shudder to think what this life may be better than, and I'm grateful that I've never known.

But curious...

All this and still trying to hold onto some shred of identity. The line from the song above says, "wherever we go we celebrate the land that made us refugees," chills me every time I hear it. There are many Americans that will begrudge and condemn the newcomers for this celebration, but still fete the lands that ousted their great-grandparents, and call it "heritage."

In the end though, so many people breaking their backs to look for the promise. It's inspiring, but frightening. Still looking for the promise where there is none. That's when and IF you make it in.

More than anything, this is humbling.

We saw this slo-mo train wreck from the 1st day... The Big Lie?

2011-06-30T23:34:00.000-04:00

The prosecution of the victim in the Dominique Strauss-Kahn case started the very first day when The New York Post thought it prudent to "remind us" that she lived in housing reserved for HIV+ people. This, of course, raises questions about her credibility that the subtleties of being a woman, a minority, and an immigrant may not.

Not two months later we learn that the prosecution has uncovered startling evidence that will blow the case out of the water.

CLICK HERE FOR THE STORY

Now, I realize that we are never going to know the truth about what happened in that room, but the case against the victim is already sounding a bit... remarkable, if not fantastic. Call me a cynic, but she seems to have some pretty big connections for a hotel housekeeper living at least to some degree on public assistance. Where is the defense going with this? Well, that's easy enough to see but it brings to mind an age-old strategy for swaying public opinion:

"…in the big lie…the broad masses of a nation are always more easily corrupted in the deeper strata of their emotional nature than consciously or voluntarily; and thus in the primitive simplicity of their minds they more readily fall victims to the big lie than the small lie, since they themselves often tell small lies in little matters but would be ashamed to resort to large-scale falsehoods. It would never come into their heads to fabricate colossal untruths, and they would not believe that others could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously. Even though the facts which prove this to be so may be brought clearly to their minds, they will still doubt and waver and will continue to think that there may be some other explanation. For the grossly impudent lie always leaves traces behind it, even after it has been nailed down, a fact which is known to all expert liars in this world and to all who conspire together in the art of lying."

"If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State."

The first quote is from Adolph Hitler's Mein Kampf and the second is an expansion from Nazi propaganda minister Josef Goebbels. Yes, I went there.

"There" is where I will stay. I don't like this one bit. It stinks.

H&H Bagels is closed

2011-06-30T22:48:00.000-04:00

But this is not a tribute... It's a... cry for help?

I have been trying very hard to spend the remainder of my days in this mortal coil within the spirit of "live and let live." Some days are easier than others. I am, at best, a simple man. Some would say I'm too tightly wrapped. There are many things that I don't understand. I am learning that my growth really depends on letting some things go.

THINGS LIKE THIS (CLICK HERE)

Okay, you're young. You're hip. You want to make a bold statement to the world proclaiming that you are... a bagel? That the inside of your head is made of cream cheese and smoked salmon? That your parents neglected you?

I told you. I'm simple. I don't understand self-mutilation.

Start a band. Write a book. Put crazy shit on your Facebook page. Adopt a pet. That actually works. I was lonely, and now I haven't gone to the bathroom alone in several months!

Do something.

File this under: Things I Didn't Need to See

Put this argument the F**K TO SLEEP!

2011-06-28T14:13:00.000-04:00

The term "politically correct" is the most obnoxiously misapplied and most overused phrase in the English language. It is most often used by half-bright, cruel-spirited cretins with the IQ of Forrest Gump and the heart of Leona Helmsley, to discredit criticism of statements and actions that are racist, misogynist, homophobic, xenophobic, or all of the above. I'd like to declare a referendum on its use/misuse, starting right after I use it here.

We recently witnessed the release of a delightful parents' lament titled GO THE FUCK TO SLEEP. There was an equally delightful audio version featuring Samuel L. Jackson, that nearly redeems him for Snakes on a Plane and Black Snake Moan.

It was short, sweet, hilarious, and struck a chord with parents worldwide. We knew, in a sense, that it was "wrong," but it was harmless. Innocuous. No blood, no foul, as they say in professional sports. It was too good to be true.

I sort of knew there would be a backlash from some self-righteous, imperious twat somewhere, but it still came as a surprise when I read this today:

WHY SO ANGRY, DAD?

And then this:

GO THE F*** TO SLEEP NOT FUNNY

Consider this an appendix to yesterday's missive about over-parenting. It's the sort of entirely disingenuous manure that comes off more as a cry for attention from the author than it does about the subject. Hey, look at me! I'm setting myself apart from the pack, because I have seen things you simply cannot imagine, and if you saw the world like I see the world... and blah blah blah off into the realm of indignant, egocentric blathering. It comes from a place of self-ordained, moral superiority that has no place in any kind of intellectual social discourse.

It is politically correct bullshit. I say to these authors:

We've all thought on this hard and long.
The jury's in and you are wrong.
Your argument is neither pithy nor deep.
Please, please please... Go the fuck to sleep.

Thanks for listening. I'm going off to read horrible things to my kids, and then maybe whip the stuffing out of them, because I have such latent anger.

Is Happiness Is Overrated?

2011-06-27T21:24:00.000-04:00

Lest anyone think this is going to be yet another bout of deranged, middle-aged vituperation, it's not. I am the same man who has accused most parents of believing they gave birth to the Baby Jesus, but these are just some thoughts generated on reading this article that was the talk of the Baby/Mommy Blogs last week:

HOW TO LAND YOUR KID IN THERAPY (CLICK HERE)

Dont worry. You can click it. It is safe for work. It's a very thoughtful article on the much-discussed subject of the deleterious effects of raising your children with too much affirmation and validation. It raises some interesting points, many of which I agree with wholeheartedly. My reservation may be that denying and depriving them of such affirmation and validation is worse, but that doesn't negate the salient points within. There is probably a balance somewhere but even that is probably more dependent on the individual child than any rule of applied, sustained parenting technique. It's not a one size fits all situation. I have witnessed in my own children, the need for very separate approaches. It may be argued that this recognition came far too late, but that's another story. I am sure that there are as many ways to fuck up your child as there are children, and maybe more.

One of these ways, I am also certain, is to raise them in an emotional terrarium, protected from not only the outside world, but from the consequences of their bad instincts.

We are also doing ourselves and our children no favors when we suffer under the pressure and delusion that we can right every wrong, thereby guaranteeing them the perpetual happiness we are convinced that we deserved but were denied in our own childhoods.

The article put me on a train of thought, though, about the premium we put on our own perpetual happiness. We actually STRUGGLE to find happiness and to be happy, and that presents a conundrum. How can we be happy if we are struggling, firstly? What is it that we think we need or deserve that we are struggling for? Secondly, how do we inure ourselves or reconcile the inevitable obstacles we face during this struggle? How do we reconcile failure to achieve the goals that we have convinced ourselves we need to achieve? When do we let go and find out how happy we can be without these things?

I'm not talking about settling, nor complacency. I'm talking about letting go of what might be driving us beyond our abilities to attain. I'm talking about contentment. I'm talking also, about accepting that things don't always work out the way we would like them to.

We then, as we become parents, combine these drives into a double helix. We are genetically engineering our dissatisfaction as parents, dissatisfaction for our children when they discover to their dismay that the world is bigger than each and all of us... and we predict their unhappiness as adults just as certainly as if we sold them into Dickensian servitude at 11 years old.

Again, the article, despite it's Apocalyptic title, raises some very good points. It merits mention, however, that we cannot protect our children from the realities of the universe with any more certainty than we have protected ourselves. We are ultimately not responsible for their happiness, and we'd better think hard on what happiness really entails before we shoot for it.

Let's Make a Deal

2011-06-24T16:56:00.000-04:00

There are odd twists in the road in any journey, and with inner voyages even more so. You do the work. You look long and hard at life as you've known it, and you're moving forward, and you reach a checkpoint where your progress is halted. You come to the realization that you're going to have to move farther away from your comfort zone than you had originally expected when you left home base.

The world can be funny that way, like a primetime gameshow. You're standing in front of Monty Hall. He's holding a check for $100,000.

Monty: What's it going to be MacGregor? You can have this check for $100K and walk away a richer man. OR, you can have what's behind Door Number 1!

MacGregor: JESUS MURPHY, MONTY! THAT'S A LOT OF SHEKELS!

There's a voice whispering frantically in your ear. It's a lot of money. You can pay some bills. Get some things straightened out. Have some left over for...

For what? You could take the check. It's guaranteed. Money in the bank. You could really use it. You could buy a lot of instant peace and comfort with that money. It would take care of quite a few immediate problems.

You also know it's not all that much against the greater scheme of things. There is the upside that you know how far it could go. The downside is that you know how far it will go. You spend it, and you're pretty much right back where you started.

You have no idea whatsoever what Monty and the producers have behind Door Number 1. It could be nothing. It could be everything you've ever dreamed of. It just might be everything you need. Something you need more than that check Monty is dangling in front of you like a carrot.

Consider now that you haven't come this far just to fall back on the familiar and comfortable. You've done too much work to opt for the easy way out.

Keep the check, Monty. Give me what's behind Door Number 1. I know from watching night after night that the contestants rarely go home empty-handed.

The Fickle Nature of Pop

2011-06-23T20:57:00.000-04:00

I'm through with trying to explain why I like what I like. I may still suffer from this odd affliction whereby I feel compelled to explain to others why they shouldn't like what they like, but I'm a work in progress.

That said, I am really very fond of FITZ & THE TANTRUMS. It matters very little to me what anybody else thinks. They are relatively popular. This confession isn't going to do anything for my street creds, but I'm growing comfortable in the knowledge that I never really had much of that anyway. It might have been nice if I knew sooner, but so be it.

Yes, Fitz sounds an awful lot like Daryl Hall, which is funny because beyond Sara Smile I never liked Hall & Oates.

I'll shut up now. I'm just sharing something I've been enjoying.

Stay in the day...

2011-06-22T18:12:00.000-04:00

That's what we're told. Live in the day. It's rather a slippery concept in a very complex world, even with the knowledge that many of the complexities are constructs of our mind, and have very little to do with reality.

I read somewhere yesterday, that depression is caused by living in the past, and that anxiety is caused by living in the future.

Again, slippery...

It often seems that the good things go by so quickly that we barely notice them before they're gone.

Whereas the weird shit... the often unpleasant things... are the things that are prolonged across a long period of time.

And of course we prolong them with worry. I will readily admit that I have spent months fretting the outcome of things that once passed, really weren't so messed up at all.

This is just an observation. I DO find that when I can let go of outcomes that I can more easily recognize and appreciate the fleeting moments of joy that ride the second hand of a racing clock.

This discipline of letting go is antithetical to everything I've learned until recently. We are a culture obsessed with clocks and calendars, each measure of time imbued with some totem of significance. I have, at times, felt infected by time... by a mathematical measure.

There must have been a serene point in the distant past where people lived in freedom from this time virus. It took a godawful long time to get anywhere, so my guess is that there was less hurry. Ecclesiastes makes it sound so peaceful. Born, die, sow, reap, dance, cry, gather, scatter etc. It all sounds blissfully spread out, one thing at a time.

Anyway, just an observation. I need to release myself from this time prison.

Apologizing in advance...

2011-06-21T22:58:00.000-04:00

My 30 free New York Times articles per month ran out a few days ago, and I'm running out of real news to make my standard pointed commentary on. You know, the good shit you've come to expect from this blog.

So you're stuck with this, from The Daily Fail in the UK. We can always count on them to feed us back all the weird stuff that our tabloids miss. Even if our people do cover it, it's seldom with the panache and flair of the English. For example:

'I thought she was 13': Amish sexting pervert 'busted after driving horse and buggy to meet 12-year-old girl'

Okay then... He thought she was 13. Well, that certainly explains everything!

Except maybe the haircut, but I guess the Dutch Boy still gets a guy a lot of play in Amish circles. Or maybe not? So will he get a chance to go the same rehab as Anthony Weiner? (Have we ever figured out exactly what Weiner will be kicking?)

I'll say this: This little girl's parents showed remarkable restraint in involving the authorities. I'd have been sorely tempted to set Willard up and then used his own horsewhip on him when he arrived.

Just for starters...

Where do we go with this? Is there any lesson we can take from this, as parents, or as anybody who is inclined to believe that sex with children is wrong? Keep an eye on your kids? Get into their business? Is it invasion of privacy to monitor their text messages and e-mail and such? How do we instill trust in them if we don't grant them some kind of leeway first?

Ah hell, I can't pontificate on this. I'm putting this story up because it's scary and weird and if you share my prurient interest in such things, that's great!

And the guy has a really bad haircut! And he went on a booty call in a horse and buggy. That would have been a hoot had his intended target booty hadn't been a child.

The Burning Question: EVOLUTION!!!

2011-06-21T17:12:00.000-04:00

Yes, I admit that beauty pageant contestants are an easy target, but given that one of our front-running presidential candidates (though undeclared) started her career representing her home state in this capacity, they're fair game. Deal with it.

Firstly, why do the pageant folk persist on asking quasi-intellectual questions when everybody watching is really just wondering three things:

a) When are they going to cut the crap and get to the swimsuits?
b) What does she look like naked?
c) When is this chick going to crash & burn and end up in the tabloids?

Secondly, just listen to a few of these women. Some of them seem quite unaware that most public schools are already teaching evolution theory. Sort of makes me wonder if they are aware that math is taught in public schools.

It's also curious that so many of them say that there are "so many different theories and we should give all of them fair time!" (And they say this so passionately it's almost cute... almost.) Um... as far as I know, there are only two theories in contention for the hearts and minds of American school children. If there are more, can someone please let me know what they are so I can hear them all and make up MY mind???

There are a few among these young ladies that sound like solid "B" students. Okay, well, maybe B-minus. Still, maybe these arguments are best left to the thinkers in our society.

And what does any of this have to do with beauty? Unless of course they are still promoting the idea that inner beauty and intelligence are sought-after qualities in our culture. All evidence from everything else on television suggests the contrary. There is, of course, PBS... but I suspect that none of these ladies, nor the men watching, are sitting home on Friday evening enrapt by Masterpiece Theater or the re-broadcast of Equus. There may be exceptions.

I'm not even going to pretend to understand Beauty Pageant Culture... or the national fascination with Figure Skating. Don't get me wrong! I'm waiting on pins and needles for next week's season premier of Ugly Americans. I'm currently punchy from staying up too late watching Hoarders. There are limits, though. Beauty pageants to me, have always seemed fraught with dishonesty, promoting a manufactured ideal of a something that never really existed in the first place. I can't buy into the the affected (seemingly) wholesome, virtuous stage-lit aurora, that to me comes off as an irksome glare... similar to highbeams in the rearview mirror. I can't speak for other countries either. I don't know if they cloak their beauty pageants in the veil of national "goodness" that we do here... again... the dishonesty. It's the sort of thing that creeps about when I'm lying awake at night thinking...

Something is not quite right.

The Art of Invisibility

2011-06-20T13:59:00.000-04:00

Alternate title: We are all magicians!

Alternate title: Blindness is epidemic!

Douglas Adams, in his HITCHHIKER'S GUIDE TO THE GALAXY, described a perceptual/contextual phenomenon he called The SEP, shorthand for Someone Else's Problem. The phrase has since been adopted in Pop Psychology circles and is described thusly:

Various areas of psychology and philosophy of perception are concerned with the reasons why individuals often ignore such matters. Optimism bias tends to reduce the subjective importance of some matters. Where multiple individuals simultaneously experience the same stimulus, diffusion of responsibility and/or the bystander effect may release individuals from the need to act, and if no-one from the group is seen to act, each individual may be further inhibited by conformity. On a wider basis, all members of society are exposed to so many messages about pressing matters of concern that information overload may play a part. There may also be a tendency to argue that "I can't fix this problem, so I need do nothing to reduce it" (a perfect solution fallacy).

However, taking responsibility for negative events that are outside an individual's control can lead to depression and learned helplessness, particularly in adolescents.[2] Part of the solution is to help the individual to realistically assign a proportion of responsibility to herself/himself, parents and others (step I in the RIBEYE cognitive behavioral therapy problem-solving method).[2][3][4]

In short, if nobody else is going to say something, I'm going to pretend it's not there. Or... I'm already so overwhelmed by other things that I simply don't see this otherwise really twisted event occurring right next to me.

This latter angle may or may not be a legitimate defense in THE CASE DESCRIBED IN THIS NPR PIECE that was posted on my Facebook page earlier this morning. (Thanks, T... for getting my wheels spinning. My first thought, upon reading of how a policeman on the chase might have failed to see another crime in progress, was The SEP Field. But is it a reasonable argument? Perhaps. I really can't say.

I know the human brain is a wee, funny machine. We do tend to operate in constructs and contexts. We may fail to recognize a neighbor when we see him in Target. He is outside the construct/context in which we usually place him. Alternatively, we can read words and sentences where letters are scrambled and some omitted, because enough of the familiar context is there to know what it is. Educators have found that elementary school children grasp mathematics more readily when teaching is accompanied by constructs like block groups and number lines. It is simply how we are wired.

Who is to say for sure if Officer Conley saw an undercover colleague being beaten by uniformed officers, except for Conley himself? I can affirm that I have missed all kinds of things going on right next to me because my limited brain power was otherwise occupied. I remember taking no end of pleasure in watching the quota-rabid traffic cop writing moving violations, while countless dope transactions carried on unchecked on the adjacent corner, in plain view.

I firmly believe that we have unlimited capability to render objects and events invisible for a variety of reasons... we do it as individual, and as groups. Sometimes it's rampant denial. Other times we just have our heads jammed firmly up our asses.

HOWEVER... BUT... in the case of the hapless Officer Conley, my experience... my familiar contexts and constructs based on what I have witnessed all too often, leads me to one conclusion. IF... and I repeat IF, he didn't see this crime taking place, it's because he is so accustomed to seeing his colleagues delivering what they believe to be a righteous and fully justified ass-whipping to a black man (and they seem to always believe it is righteous and fully justified), it's because such a thing is fully within what he considers a normal context, and therefor it has, in effect, been rendered invisible.

Pro-WTF?

2011-06-20T00:20:00.000-04:00

I'm still catching up after the WEINER-INDUCED NEWS BLACKOUT of recent weeks. The dick was flying around so hot and heavy it was hard to keep abreast (no puns intended) of the world beyond. I don't have any confirmed measurement of big it was, but it seems to me that Weiner overshadowed THE RAPTURE!

Astounding headlines aside though, I don't see how I missed this one!

Having viewed the trailer for THE LIFE ZONE twice, I suspected that it was a hoax. My instincts told me it was a bit of dark humor. Poorly executed, but just some Hollywood Shits 'N Giggles.

It's not.

The Pro-WhatTheFuckever Movement have really outdone themselves with this gem. It goes so far beyond the streaming stills of aborted fetuses (with crying baby accompaniment) of yesteryear, so ambitious that it's hard to even say what side they're on. It travels very closely to the edge of Saw VII, with a little bit of Touched By An Angel thrown in for good measure (don't even ask me what the title TBAA invokes in my 14 y.o. brain). It's so stupid that I'm legitimately baffled.

And as an aside, WTF is Robert Loggia thinking? I can see the bit o' fluff from True Blood getting involved. She's too young to be held responsible, even if her handlers might have steered her off. But Loggia? Anyway...

How is that sound that Lurch makes spelled? I keep thinking that I've been Punk'd, but this appears to be "next-level" assholery from our friends on the right who I'd thought out-sphinctered themselves years ago.

Fathers Day

2011-06-19T11:00:00.000-04:00

I am famous (semi and among friends) for taking music and film clips out of context, and on this Fathers Day I am hung up on a bit of dialogue from Barcelona. It's hard to say exactly why it resonates, but it has something to do with how the day has always been more about reflection than celebrating myself...

"Sometimes we think ... we almost always assume, we're going through life surrounded by people. Then something happens and you realize: We're entirely alone."

He continues very seriously and pausing often, gazing into the room, as Marta listens musingly,

"Tonight, while shaving, I always shave against the beard, for a closer shave, I remembered this razor ad on TV, showing the hair follicles, like this." (He says the following as he mimes a razor cutting hair follicles with his hands) "The first of the twin blades cuts them here. Then the hair snaps back and the second blade cuts them here. ... 'for a closer, cleaner shave'. That we know."

"But what struck me was, if the hair follicles are going in this direction and the razor is too, then they're shaving in the direction of the beard, not against it. So I've shaved the wrong way all my life. Maybe I misremembered the ad. The point is, I could have shaved the wrong way all my life and never have known it. Then I could have taught my son to shave the wrong way, too."

Not understanding, Marta asks "You have a son?"

"No," he answers, "but I might someday. Then, maybe I'll teach him to shave the wrong way."

"I think maybe my English is not so good", Marta concludes."

Nobody taught me to shave. In all fairness, I was sort of a late bloomer and by the time I needed to shave even weekly I had long since fled the nest. Shaving became an exercise in tedium, trial and error. Much blood was shed. There have been many times when I have been tempted to just tie off my neck with a tourniquet and forget about shaving for good.

I have not taught my sons to shave either, and if I had, I can't say for sure that it would have been the right or wrong way. Parenting, like shaving, is often an exercise in trial and error. You never know the outcome of any lesson until blood has been shed, or not. If you haven't learned yourself, then you really have nothing to pass on. This isn't a case of letting myself off the hook for errors made. It's merely the conundrum of parenting. You tell them what you know, or what you think you know, and if you're a really good parent you send them to someone else to learn what you admittedly cannot. These admissions don't come easily though, and you can catch yourself making it up as you go along.

Making the best of what you've got... It can be a pain in the ass. No, it is often a pain in the ass. There will be blood.

Happy Fathers Day to all of you guys out there, and to you women also, who are doubled up. Can't leave you out of this equation.

Black Death Vs. Hairless Weiner

2011-06-19T00:51:00.000-04:00

I'm still catching up on news that fell by the wayside while we were being beaten senseless with WEINER. As a woman on NY1 said, "Every time I pick up the paper all I see is Weiner, Weiner, Weiner!" And now you shut up! It's impossible NOT to make a pun with this name. Just try it.

There were most certainly other things happening in the world. Wars still raged. People across the tornado-belt are still digging out of the rubble. Joblessness still plagues us... wait... plagues us. Here's news:

PLAGUE IDENTIFIED IN BOULDER, CO.

Whistling... images conjured...

Thats right, folks! The Black Death! With a capital B and it rhymes with... Tea?

Whose idea was it to preempt the world for that other nonsense? I mean, The Plague (La Peste in French) pops up here and there every year. The first confirmed case this year was in New Mexico in mid-May. It's still news though. Did you hear about it. Can anyone confirm that Boulder is still out there? I'll take it for granted that it is, because I havent turned on the television and been told otherwise. Yet I wasn't told a hell of a lot FOR TWO DAMN WEEKS BECAUSE SOMEONE THOUGHT I WAS MORE INTERESTED IN STUPID SHIT!

Exhaling. Deep breath through the nose, exhale slowly through the mouth.

I pretty much count on the news going for the lowest common, sensationalist denominator. That's been the rule for long enough. It's just caught me off guard, this plague business aside, that I missed so much.

My Bricks

2011-06-18T23:01:00.000-04:00

These bricks have a relationship. They are like objects. They share the same space. Their many uses are under-realized. They might ostensibly be used as weapons.

coughcoughGazacough

hackwheezeBelfastsnort

But I digress...

These bricks have a partnership.

We are not bricks. We may, if we like, choose our role in the world around us.

Oh look! I'm in a box!

2011-06-16T23:28:00.000-04:00

Crap! I'm lifting weights! I'm playing tug of war!

Have I have mentioned that I don't like mimes? I've just never been able to make that leap to willingful suspension of disbelief.

Illusion...

Don't get me wrong! I'm really big on delusion, and have on more than one occasion, found myself in imaginary crates, clean & jerked crushing weights, battled at the end of imaginary ropes, and shadowboxed opponents that don't exist. I've mimed for an audience of one! Er... without the makeup and beret, thank you very much.

Fear is a funny thing. Fear is the magic ingredient that makes doubt gel. It opens the door to the willingful suspension of disbelief. You see the box. You feel the weight. There is someone at the end of the rope.

Until you stop being afraid. You let go of the rope and step back. You look over to where you thought the other end was, and there is nothing there.

I still find mimes tedious to the point of annoyance.

Overexposed

2011-06-16T11:25:00.000-04:00

WEINER IS OUT

Not mine, clowns!

The word is out that Congressman Anthony Weiner is bowing to the pressure following his self-imposed over-exposure, and resigning. Is he still capable of doing the job he was elected to? I believe he is, but that's not the point any longer.

This would have been a minor distraction in a more mature political climate, with elected bodies capable of offering meaningful solutions to real problems. The people we've put into office, however, don't seem capable of that, so the focus has shifted to unrelated, non-political issues.

What exactly is it about Weiner's digital pecadillos that render him incapable of doing his job effectively? The most common answer is, "Well, if he lied about this..." And so on...

Can a surgeon or an accountant or a stockbroker who has done the same things still be capable of performing his work duties? Are we holding Anthony Weiner to a higher standard with this than we would ourselves or someone we loved?

Too late to worry about that, at least with this case. That just leaves me with one very big question.

Do I un-friend Weiner on Facebook?

ATTENTION ANGRY STAT GEEKS

2011-06-16T08:20:00.000-04:00

I usually try to maintain a degree of levity in these public missives. There is little more tedious than an endless runner of bile strung out from the shuddering jaw of a dyspeptic, middle-aged man. There is none of this levity here, unless you find humor in the idea of my spleen exploding. I can find no humor whatsoever in this topic:

DISPARITY OF WEALTH DISTRIBUTION IN THE UNITED STATES

A fellow from University of California at Santa Cruz put together this report. The figures are from 2007, but it's pretty obvious that the housing crisis and Wall Street collapse haven't improved the situation. This report is really very telling.

Your favorite political candidate can tell you that cutting capital gains taxes will help, but you can look at the charts at periods when capital gains were lowest and see that it didn't. You can look to 1976 and see that wealth distribution for the lowest 80%, having peaked then, has been spiraling downwards ever since, NO MATTER WHAT PARTY WAS IN POWER! Consider the lowest 80%, which includes those on public assistance, the union members that your favorite political candidate may have convinced you is the whole problem, and everyone in between. Remember that most of our country's tax revenue comes from the lowest 80%.

DON'T BUY THE LIE. FOLLOW THE MONEY. LAUGH IN THE FACES OF THOSE WHO TELL YOU THAT TAXING THE TOP 20% IS PUNISHING PEOPLE FOR HAVING MONEY! REMEMBER THAT WHEN WE CUT THEIR TAXES TO CREATE JOBS WITH THAT GODDAMN TRICKLE DOWN THEORY, THEY TOOK IT AND RAN AND JOBS HEMORRHAGED TO FOREIGN SOIL.

Whew! Look! I don't want to punish anybody. I want them to pay at least the percentage that I pay. Isn't that fair.

We are broke. We are in crisis. The evidence is in. It's not the burden of a "welfare state." It's not abuse of credit in the working class. It's not the unions. It is the people at the top of a food chain that we allow to continue unchecked.

When you are at the beach and someone yells shark, you don't go in and start treading water. You get the hell out! Why are we still in and flailing away, awaiting the next bite?

KNEEL BEFORE ME, PIG!

2011-06-15T16:35:00.000-04:00

There is very little more gratifying than bloviating about one topic or another and then AND THEN HAVING THE NEW YORK FRIGGIN' TIMES come along with a tangential article that however minor the connection, you feel supports your... my... wind.

Argumentative theory is what they call the subject. Why have I spent so much carrying on to friends and strangers far and wide about issues that none of us truly care about? We do it to win!

Ego!

It's a humbling day when you discover than winning an argument is more important to you than what the argument is about.

Sad, but true. I think I'm getting a little better. Damn shame there isn't some spiritual TUSSIN I can rub in and make it go away.

I'm not beating myself up. It seems to me that national politics have become much more about winning the argument than about the argument, or finding a solution to any number of social ills than plague us. When they find themselves having won an argument on some pseudo-moral issue and then get caught with their pants down powerless to make any change... you change the argument.

He wasn't born in the U.S. Etc.

Click the first link above though, about the Friggin' Times. It was like looking in the mirror for me. Oops. Ya got me.

Naked Lunch

2011-06-14T23:09:00.001-04:00

No, not this one, but bon appetit, gentlemen.

This one:

More specifically, this part:

"The Talking Asshole " David Turley Reads William S. Burroughs from Yves Roy and the Wacky Ballerina on Vimeo.

I first read Naked Lunch at 18 or so, because that's what "cool" young men are supposed to be reading at that age. It would be dishonest to say that I had a vague inkling of what was going on. It took decades of living, and trolling through dark places, both externally and internally, before it started to make sense. That could be considered a good or a bad thing, depending on how willing you are to integrate your weird stuff with your day-to-day practice of getting by.

The Man Who Taught His Asshole to Talk... strikes me as a metaphor for... something. Perhaps the parlor tricks we practice to make ourselves more palatable to the world at large, when we are afraid that just showing up isn't enough. There was a movie trailer some years ago that stated in an ominous voice, "IF YOU PRETEND TO BE SOMETHING FOR LONG ENOUGH, YOU BECOME IT," or something of the sort. That's the gist of it anyway.

Naked Lunch was not a book I "got" all at once. It came to me in fractured bone splinters, at times as an epiphany, and others a nightmare. I read somewhere that Burroughs had taken the original manuscript and tore it in two, shuffled the pages, and put it together as published. It can read like that, until you are lying in bed one night having read it for the tenth time, and you realize that life is just like that... torn, shuffled, and reassembled. Parts of the narrative are cohesive, and others surreal, and you are left to sort through it all and accept it as is.

Iced, Iced Babies...

2011-06-14T16:47:00.000-04:00

JACK KEVORKIAN'S DEATH IS OLD NEWS, at least by the rapid-fire, disposable infobyte standards of The Internetz, but I'd like to revisit it, just briefly.

That's right, we're back to The Grim Reaper. No, I don't have a morbid fascination with death, but I don't share the belief that its something we don't talk about in polite company. I harbor no superstitions (nor social graces) which would render the subject off-limits.

The euthanasia argument, at least as presented in the press, was always an either/or proposition. It's either right or wrong. You are either for it, or against it. My position was more or less on the fence. The moral implications eluded me. The legal implications seemed even more slippery. There were no hard-set religious beliefs preventing me from considering the notion. There is no compulsion to impose an opinion on this topic on anybody. It's just too... vague, at least for me.

I'm not sure that THIS ESSAY FROM DISCOVER brings me any closer to an answer... not that my life and death at this point hangs in the balance if it remains in the fuzzy regions, but it brings up some interesting points. I must admit also, that the thought of people living forever frightens me far more than the thought of people who want to choose how and where they kick it.

Two sides of the same coin, really, though it had never occurred to me. One side wants to, in slang terms, ice themselves. Then there are the cryogenics adherents who want to be iced until technology catches up with their pipedreams. Why does the former seem okay to me, and the latter give me the willies?

Hell, someone hire me... I'm not bright enough to face all this time in my own head.

Class War

2011-06-14T12:17:00.001-04:00

This song resonated when the depth of our problems with class and race in this country were only just creeping into my consciousness. You can sit in one place and just sort of take it things for granted. Get out and see the world, they say, but when you do you're presented with the conundrum of disparity. You want what "they" have, but you're not sure if you want to do what it takes to get it. By that I don't mean work, because the average Joe works his tail off his entire life and never gets much farther than his backyard for a weekend barbecue. What I mean is that if you have any conscience, the idea of jacking a crampon into the back of your neighbor's neck becomes less palatable, and you might start to ask some questions. Certainly, turning on the television and watching people just like you sucking up to a malevolent, cannibalistic shitheel like Donald Trump brings up more bile than amusement.

I took the train into downtown Manhattan this morning to arrange a debt payment. No big deal really. I owe the money. I can still, despite being unemployed in a dire job market, make the payment. Next month is next month. Sitting in the waiting room, however, with a bunch of other people was a grim reminder of how many of us are in the same situation. Maybe we all could have avoided the situation by making the detour around our consumerist tendencies. Perhaps there were things we didn't need. That's all true enough, but it doesn't change the fact that we're all sitting in the same place trying to do the right thing, and facing the same hurdles. What's already transpired... well, there isn't much to do about that now.

I got off the train at Jay Street on the way back to run some errands. There are, as most Brooklyn residents know, a half dozen military recruitment centers around the Fulton Mall. There are strapping men in full regalia standing out front of each luring young men, mostly unemployed, with all sorts of promises. We've all heard them, and depending on your frame of mind, these promises can sound... well... promising? I'm familiar with the argument that military service is a viable way out for those with few other opportunities. It just doesn't ring true for me. It never has and does less now than ever.

This is the option they're giving our children? It's essentially, "We haven't offered you a fair shot at a decent education that will make you competitive in the job market. The job market is crap these days, even for those who have been fortunate enough to get a decent education. BUT, if you're willing to lay your life on the line securing the interests of American companies abroad, we'll throw you a bone. When and if you make it back with all your limbs, maybe the job market will be better."

The situation is no different, and often worse elsewhere. Many states are hammering away relentlessly at unions, which have brought about the only meaningful, significant improvements in the world of working class America in the last 100 years. Minimum wage, despite having increased a little, isn't enough to keep a teenager living at home afloat. The attitude of many employers (and business owners are under the gun also so I'm not condemning anyone) is that we are expendable. For every one of us who can't get the job done under increased expectations, there are a dozen waiting in line for the spot.

It's no longer a question of what we want. It's not about luxuries. It's not about chasing the elusive "American Dream." It's about staying afloat whilst the water is rising rapidly. It's raining really hard and most of us, regardless of race, creed, or color, live downstream from a faltering levee.

Call this the daily gripe, but somebody needs to start paying their share into this economy. We need an awful lot more than the opportunity to go to some place we can't find on a map and get shot at, by an even more unfortunate critter than ourselves.

They see your every move...

2011-06-14T00:23:00.000-04:00

FBI GIVING AGENTS NEW POWERS IN REVISED MANUAL

I wonder if they happened to consult the Constitution this time.

Wasn't The Patriot Act enough? And furthermore, does it strike anyone else as odd that a Congressional Member got more press than further egregious violations of our rights? This goes back, I suppose, to what I was pontificating on in an earlier post. What do we believe in and how far are we willing to go to protect these beliefs? It's not that I'm calling for armed rebellion. This is more about pointing out inconsistencies.

Most Americans will, on the one hand, blather endlessly about their sacrosanct Constitutional rights. Four airplanes and 3000 casualties later, there were no more sacred cows. Forget my rights and save my ass. Pretty please. Granted there have been no further large scale terrorist actions on American soil, but the jury is still out on how effective the anti-terrorist measures were, here or abroad.

Same for crime--there are those that still extol the virtues of Rudy Giuliani's anti-crime campaign, despite that in the same time period, cities with less stentorian crackdowns had greater reductions in crime. Let's talk about those reductions though. With crime lower than it has been in decades, what are these latest FBI moves about?

This is just another comment on the pool of cognitive dissonance that I float in. Like... we are ostensibly "exporting democracy" far and wide, but curtailing liberties here.

Blah blah! Will someone from a major media outlet PLEASE write something really pointed and angry about this new manual.

Exhaustive Study Yields This Sage Advice

2011-06-13T17:10:00.000-04:00

Essentially, don't feed it or it will keep coming back...

Duh!

This is really tangential to my confession that I have, in the past, engaged in infuriating exchanges with strangers online. It's not necessarily something to be ashamed of, but it's stupid, the spiritual equivalent of eating styrofoam peanuts. There are few greater wastes of time... one would think.

I did happen upon this particular gem today though, a prime example of pseudo-intellectual roadkill:

Trolling in asynchronous computer-mediated communication: From user discussions to academic definitions

Seriously... Someone was paid to slog through 9 years worth of messages on a horseback riding forum, trawling for data and examples of internet trolls. As strange as it seems...

A) That a horseback riding forum can carry on for 9 years
B) that people troll and flame on a horseback riding forum
C) that horseback riders respond and get upset... etc.

Someone was actually paid to study it, only to come up with this (and attach a ludicrous title to it and publish it):

"Whilst computer-mediated communication (CMC) can benefit users by providing quick and easy communication between those separated by time and space, it can also provide varying degrees of anonymity that may encourage a sense of impunity and freedom from being held accountable for inappropriate online behaviour."

And the solution... ignore it and it will go away.

Look, it's not that it's not easy to get caught up in it. It's probably not any better to argue endlessly over socio-political issues or assorted philosophical bullshit.

Well, I guess what I'm saying is that I want to get paid to write about bullshit.

Before you go and kill yourself, have something to eat.

2011-06-12T21:53:00.000-04:00

I recently learned a coping tool commonly called H.A.L.T.

Hungry
Angry
Lonely
Tired

When my emotions are running wild, or when I find myself overreacting to stimulus that would usually leave me un-phased, it is suggested that I take a brief moment of self examination. Have I eaten anything in the last eight hours? Is there something entirely unrelated to the situation at hand that is pestering me? Am I simply lonely? Have I run myself ragged, to the point of needing to go face down in the linens? It's usually something related to the last category, and believe me when I tell you... it's a strange moment when you're pushing 50 and you come to the realization that most of your biggest crises could be immediately diminished by a sandwich or a nap.

Having gone through this inventory a little while ago I decided that an early evening would work. The Good Humor Man had other ideas, and when I'm lying half-asleep after 9 p.m. on a Sunday evening, every fucking ice cream truck tinkering down the block enters my twilight monkey brain looking like this:

Ouch! Count to ten. Say the Serenity Prayer. Give it to The Universe. Adjust your plan of action.

Have a hot fudge sundae.

How far do you want to take this, pal?

2011-06-12T19:54:00.001-04:00

"Tell me how you deal with your fear of annihilation, and I will tell you about your philosophy."

THIS ARTICLE means more to me as it applies to the layman, like myself, than as it pertains to the heroic martyrs throughout history.

We, as a people, have never been shy of strong opinions, or reticent about expressing them. The internet, if anything, has opened up a much larger forum for voicing any number of headstrong ideas on any number of topics. Every newspaper and magazine has opened comments sections in articles published online. The comments are often more interesting than the articles themselves, if only to witness the venom and rage contained therein. I have to wonder if people are more angry these days, perhaps projecting the fears and frustrations of living powerless in an increasingly complex world... or if we've always been pissed off and we just have an outlet for it now. How, if it's the latter, did this anger manifest itself before the web?

The article suggests, probably quite accurately, that philosophy and opinion become more elusive when confronted with one's demise. It is one thing to "believe" something, and quite another to be willing to go the distance for that "belief." We might do ourselves a favor by considering how far we might go before insisting with fervor that something is absolutely right, or absolutely wrong.

I've foolishly taken part in online arguments in chatrooms or message boards, which having degenerated into flame wars, get me to saying, "you wouldn't say that if I were standing next to me, because I would..." And they probably wouldn't. Similarly, I would most likely not be in a conversation with a person with such a differing opinion. We do tend to choose our company based on like ideals, and we do that for a reason.

But I digress...

We do make a lot of moral and ethical judgments on this or that, and probably many more of these than we need to. They're also cheap and easy. Most of these judgments will never be put to the ultimate test.

It has been easier for me, to divest myself of many things I used to fight about. To not only choose my battles more wisely, but unburden myself of the egocentric practice of putting a moral pricetag on everything I profess to stand for. It's an ongoing process and there is a lot of baggage yet to leave by the side of the road. Let someone else take it if they like. One man's trash... and all that. Picking up my cast-offs isn't something I would recommend. None of it served me particularly well. Most of it was kryptonite.

Selah

Moral Dilemmas

2011-06-11T08:18:00.000-04:00

Let's talk about fantasies.

No, not those, pigs!

I've long entertained this one specific fantasy, of moseying down the street on one of my walkabouts, and finding a huge sum of money, perhaps dropped by a careless, armored carrier. You read about such things from time to time in stories like this, where some working stiff, not unlike you or me, is graced with such a find...

AND THEY GO AND RETURN IT!!!

STOP! Roll back the tape. Yes, they return it to its rightful owner.

Pause.

I suppose there are a few ways to look at this. Perhaps the finder suspects that in this day of the ubiquitous security camera that they will get busted. Perhaps they are simply fearful of karma. Or that it's a test from their higher power. Or maybe it's just a person with a conscience.

My confession: I would have a really, really hard time not seeing this as a gift from God, The Universe, or a stroke of unimaginable luck, depending on where I stand spiritually on any given day. I would be fearful of being caught on tape, or witnessed by a jealous stranger... or whomever... whatever. There is definitely a side of me that would be nagged by guilt. I'm not beating myself up. There is a heart an a conscience buried under the leathery exterior. I know, however, that there would be a tooth-and-nail internal struggle though, to do "The Right Thing."

I'm fairly certain though, given my current financial situation, which side would be victorious. $17K would go a long way towards straightening out some issues. The question "at what cost" remains, but I"m not sure how much sleep I would lose.

There are certainly less apocryphal moral dilemmas that the Average Joe faces daily. You do the moral inventory at the end of the day, if you are one so inclined to inventory such things (I do it grudgingly as part of this wee journey I've embarked on), and if you've been mindful... Well, there are days I am weighed and measured and come up wanting. There are better days. Even now, as I re-read this story of Honest John in Chicago, I am shaking my head and can't decide if I want to pat him on the back, or thump him on his head.

Still shaking my damn head...

Selah

ISimplyCant.com, dot.net? dot.org?

2011-06-10T10:07:00.000-04:00

Every so often I'm confronted with a news byte that defies my ability to process. There are just too many issues in this one to wrap my head around.

GENETICALLY MODIFIED COWS PRODUCE HUMAN MILK

The argument presented by the scientist in the video appeals to my utilitarian sensibilities. Feed people first. Ask the moral, ethical questions later. There are more than 6 billion of us on this little globe. Feed them all first. Moralize later. Ugh! Why isn't this enough for me? Am I feeling the same sort of fear that people felt when told the world was round? Am I a flat-earther?

My ego balks, right here, right now. Yet the fear remains. I cannot answer any of the questions. The science is beyond my knowledge. The moral implications elude me.

And quite frankly I'm surprised that the American Dairy Association hasn't jumped on this... or maybe they have and just haven't told us yet. I'm also surprised that someone hasn't suggested genetically modified humans to produce cow milk. This is where my brain goes when something is so much greater than my understanding.

Laugh it off.

Pornography & Mathematics

2011-06-09T23:26:00.000-04:00

I think we need an injection of honesty into the feigned shock with this whole Weinergate scandal and matters concerning internet usage for sexual gratification. The NUMBERS IN THIS ARTICLE show a bit of a disparity between actual usage and the number of people who feel very strongly about regulation and enforcement. It would seem to me that a lot of people are... well... lying. These aren't the most recent numbers, but it's still very telling.

I could find no recent polls on the percentage of users who had indulged in cybersex or exchanged "lewd" photos (lewd rhymes with nude, which we all are beneath our clothes), but recent surveys cited on news programs of the number of mobile users who have shot off pics (no pun intended) are pretty high.

Maybe a bit of perspective. Slap the goon on the wrist and tell him to go back to work. Were he a doctor, or a lawyer, a barber, or whatever, using his private computer, he would not be terminated, would he?

Grow up, folks. And try to be honest.

That's it! I am revolting!

2011-06-09T14:38:00.000-04:00

I've officially "had it," and I'd like to point something out. Weather is NOT news. Not in the Northeast. It's a public service announcement at the end of the news. Barring a tornado watch, a hurricane warning, or an impending blizzard, it is NOT news. We don't need it as the lead story every time it gets above 90F.

Guess what. We can find out when we walk outside. Rain? We can look out the window. Cold? Oh snap! I forgot it was January here in Brooklyn.

How is Wall Street doing today? Is there a serial rapist loose in my neighborhood (this may take priority over the heat, right? Wrong). Is my president signing an important bill that will effect my life? HAS SOME WORLD POWER DECLARED A FUCKING WAR?

Okay, I'm done. I don't know that I've said anything but that I really need a job, but I needed to say it.

Thanks.

I must have one of those faces.

2011-06-09T00:37:00.000-04:00

The capper on an already strange day...

One of a string of strange days...

In a very strange time...

In an increasingly strange life...

A MORBIDLY OBESE MAN informed me that to beat the summer heat, he has his wife NAIR his entire body except for below the elbows and knees.

The parts that show in shorts and a tee-shirt.

But then he pulled up his tee-shirt and showed more.

I hadn't asked for proof.

If he's elected I'm moving to...

2011-06-08T22:49:00.001-04:00

I would imagine that this grinning chimp isn't truly CONSIDERING A RUN FOR MAYOR. It is not unlike him to run off at the mouth... What is it they call him? The Bloviator? His immense, sotted ego aside, he certainly must know that he can't win. That if he did win it would be disastrous to any cause he claims to support...

I'll be more that a little irked if I find that he believes we're really that desperate.

It's not that it would be the first time that AN ENTIRELY UNQUALIFIED HOLLYWOOD BUFFOON RAN FOR OFFICE, but the thought that he has a remote chance of winning is still bothersome.

I guess perhaps I'm feeling a little less than confident in the clowns that are entering the political arena. Is there another profession, other than entry level positions, where people with absolutely no related experience listed on their Curriculum Vitae have a shot at a job? It just doesn't happen unless nepotism...

Oh. I'll shut up now.

Taboo

2011-06-08T12:17:00.000-04:00

New York Congressman Anthony Weiner Seen in Public With Mistress

He finds no support amongst peers or constituents. MacGregor Rucker of Park Slope, Brooklyn says, "I will probably vote for him again, but I'll be damned if I'm shaking hands with him this year at the 7th Heaven Street Fair!"

Much ado about nothing? This is towering irony. People will say it's because he lied, but when push comes to shove (and push never came to shove in his private life), this is 8th grade stuff. Nobody wants to admit to... self-love. And can there be anything more embarrassing than getting busted with your hand on the trigger?

Let's get back to this nagging little embarrassment called joblessness.

Please.

Really.

MACHO MACHO MAN!

2011-06-07T08:58:00.000-04:00

NAZI FROM EARLY INCARNATION OF THE VILLAGE PEOPLE FOUND DEAD

Shush! Yes, I know. Wrong. Whatever. After a week of the cognitive dissonance that is WEINERGATE, I needed a jump-off to any unrelated stupidity... a palate cleanser.

Cognitive dissonance is rarely more profound than in cases of White Supremacists. It is a phenomenon most often perpetuated by parties that have the least justification to be proud of anything. It's hard to wrap the head around, yet there it is. I always want to ask...

Me: Why?
Nazi: Because I hate black people.
Me: Really?
Nazi: And Jews.
Me: Oh... (blank stare)

It's easier to handle emotionally in an entirely different context. There was, of course, no Nazi in the Village People (as far as I know), but the conversation would have ostensibly been quite different:

Me (as reporter): So at what point were you asked to leave the group?
Nazi (Frank Roch): Our manager suggested that mainstream audiences weren't quite ready for a Nazi. I tried to explain, but...
Me: You didn't see the sound reasoning in that?
Nazi: Look, Man! We had a Black guy! We had an Indian! I just wanted to make sure my people were represented! We are always being marginalized!
Me: And the biker and the construction worker didn't cover those bases...
Nazi: (blank stare)

And silence... Frank Roch, having been on the brink of international stardom, and then rejected, spirals downward and embarks on a life of heroin addiction, crime and imprisonment. An American Tragedy.

Oh Hell, I'm sorry... but just look at that mustache. What year is it? Aryan Brotherhood? Really? Are we really sorry this guy is gone? Is it really such a mystery anyway? He's dead. Seems to me that there is a town in Texas that smells just that much better.

Good morning.

Ego Fail?

2011-06-07T08:14:00.000-04:00

Oops! No, it's not nice, but yes,I laughed. Sorry.

I don't know. It seems to me that it requires no small measure of ego to chain yourself to the back of a car, confident that you're clever enough to escape before it takes off AND DRAGS YOU LIKE A RAGDOLL down the track, in front of your family, friends, and onlookers... Many of whom I suspect are secretly hoping that this will happen. Those hopes are less secret these days in the Roman Coliseum of Fail that has come to fuel the internet. You succeed and it's "like a boss." You don't succeed and suck pavement, and it's "FAIL!" It's the latter category that comprises the larger portion of viral videos on the Internetz.

Ego can very quickly put a person in harm's way, and I suspect that it's ego behind our desire to see someone else wipe out in any number of horrible ways. Do we really want David Blaine's stunts to be successful? Or do we quietly sit wringing our hands awaiting the inevitable moment when he's carried away on a stretcher?

The first famous televised FAIL was probably in the intro of The Wild World of Sports. Nobody I've asked remembers what clip accompanied "The Thrill of Victory," yet EVERYBODY remembers Jean-Claude Killy cartwheeling down a mountain during "The Agony of Defeat." We have hazy memories of Evel Knievel clearing 20 buses, but the image of his rocket-bike spiraling into Snake River Canyon, in another early, televised example of FAIL, is crystal clear.

I've always preferred to perform my death-defying feats in some degree of privacy. The opportunity to be stupid in private, however, has become rare. Everyone has a phone. Every mobile phone has video capability. Every mobile user who is not an exhibitionist is an amateur filmmaker. Or it would seem so. It's not that my ego isn't zeppelin-esque. It's just that it's more of a stealth zeppelin.

I suspect though, that when I join The Realm of Fail, some tit will be right there with a camera. Karma... payback for laughing.

Words fail me...

2011-06-06T09:03:00.000-04:00

It's a rare day that I don't consult DICTIONARY.COM, either looking for the meaning of a new word, or in search of a word to describe something that defies my monkey-brain vocabulary. Some may argue that if I talked less I wouldn't find myself at such loggerheads with my ability to express myself. That doesn't seem to be an option. We can discuss that, or not.

This free site has one particular service that fills me with unspeakable joy! That is their Word of the Day, usually something outside of common daily usage, and often something utterly arcane. Either serves me well, filling a gap in my daily glossary, or amusing me to no end. It doesn't take much I suppose.

Today's word fills the latter column. It's unlikely that I'll have find the opportunity to lob this verbal grenade into the arena of conversation, but it's there nonetheless.

PECKSNIFFIAN.

It's awkward. It's hard to imagine it falling off the lips of even the greatest orators, even Mario Cuomo, of "nattering nabobs of negativism" fame. Yet there it is in all its glory! It's like a dare.

"Go ahead, Monkey. Try me."

Okay.

The GOP, having long ago eschewed discourse on any meaningful political issues, have rebuilt their entire platform on rabid, bloated, pecksniffian monologues.

Okay, I think I've sprained something.

Have a nice day! Thank you!

2011-06-05T10:26:00.000-04:00

And so another Sunday morning in Brooklyn... It's not hard to find gratitude on a sleepy Sunday morning in the cool, breezy pre-summer world. The sun is up and very few people are. Cops, grocers, donut makers and the odd jogger have ventured out, but other than that it's quiet down in the area that ambitious realtors, several years ago, dubbed South Slope.

I like to use the early morning hours for solitary meditation, whenever circumstance allows solitude. I had some fear that the responsibilities of dog ownership would interfere with that, but oddly (or perhaps not) it has enhanced it. I am up and out earlier in whatever weather. You don't sleep in when you've got a broad, hairy skull flattened against your face and a tail drumming a steady pattern on the nightstand... feet dancing a bit (probably with back legs crossed), claws clicking like high heels on the tiles. She is otherwise quiet, and staring with eager eyes. "Wake up! Pay attention to me." Then it's a splash of cold water and we're off.

This is the best time of day. There is little distraction out there and it's easy to feel thankfulness and connectedness to the little bit of nature that's fed to us in measured doses here in the city. This is the time for prayers of thanks, and blissful semi-silence. This is the time to make the casual considerations that will steer the rest of the day... a glorious, private time when private time can be so elusive... when alone doesn't mean loneliness.

And of course there is, what I find to be hilarious, the irony of walking down the street with a plastic bag of dog shit, emblazoned with a big smily face, that reads

HAVE A NICE DAY! THANK YOU!

Doctor Death Takes a Holiday

2011-06-03T12:26:00.000-04:00

JACK KEVORKIAN HAS DIED OF OLD AGE.

I had wondered how it would be for him when he faced his own demise. Would he try to hold on, or simply give up the ghost?

My feelings on his work have been, over the years, varied and complex. It seemed horrifying at first. A moral outrage, the Hippocratic Oath and all that. Years passed and I got to know a few people suffering terminal illnesses. That tends to change one's perspective, and it did mine.

I'm not aware of anyone picking up the flag on Jack's crusade. If someone has, they have been roundly ignored by the media. It seems such a basic human right, to decide how you want the second most important event of your life (after birth) to transpire. I've heard all the arguments on either side, and the cons just don't move me reverse my beliefs on this.

And so, one of the more unique voices of our time passes...

Behind every great man...

2011-06-01T18:12:00.000-04:00

There has been a great deal of press in recent years concerning men behaving badly. Lengthy essays have been published and blogged about the corruptive and morally corrosive influence of power.

Bill Clinton
Newt Gingrich
John Edwards
Elliot Spitzer
Arnold Schwarzenegger
Dominiquetrix Strauss-Kahn
Mahmoud Abdel Salam Omar
Anthony Weiner
to name a few...

And sadly, as it turns out EVEN THE MAN OF STEEL IS NOT EXEMPT!

Of course, men of no status whatsoever exhibit a sense of entitlement where women are concerned. One might think that power and influence, in and of themselves, might be enough... but it's still there, and often worse.

Is power Kryptonite? Apparently, it can be.

Surf's Up!

2011-06-01T00:27:00.000-04:00

We need a preface here. What is THE DAILY MAIL? My best guess is a mutant hybrid of an English newspaper, People of Walmart, and questionably attractive slags in ill-fitting bathing suits.

I can't get enough of it. There is something wrong with me.

Further evidence that I need to find a job and get back to work soon--I'm poring over THIS ARTICLE ABOUT MEMORIAL DAY BEACH VIOLENCE, and actually wishing I was at one of them. Yes, there is something wrong with that. I had a perfectly enjoyable, if quiet, weekend in Brooklyn with friends, family and dawg, but being involved in an alcohol-fueled riot in the sand sounds kind of... Well, you don't live in my head so it's not going to sound the same. It will probably sound about as appealing as a live-ammo reenactment of D-Day. Yet for me it's the same appeal as a beach volleyball tournament.

It's like Fyodor Dostoevsky shares a dorm room in my head with Ken Russell. Check out the map though, and the casualty report. Folks sure do love to party. Maybe Harold Camping was right after all.

It's only words, and words are all I have...

2011-05-31T17:34:00.000-04:00

Bet you never expected me to begin a blog post with a BeeGees lyric... I'd like to point out, however, that the line should be, "They're only words..."

Pedantic, yes... especially given the license I take with usage and grammar. Get over it. It's not going to stop.

BUT, I do love words. I love obscure words. Obsolete words. 50-cent words.

Dead words.

So without further ado, I bring you.... Are you ready?

THE MOST NEGLECTED WORDS IN THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE!!!

I do use the words paroxysm, draconian, and hornswoggle with some regularity. Is that pretentious? Maybe, but I'm going to see what I can do to fit the rest of the list into conversation.

Except for schadenfreude... There is simply no excuse EVER for schadenfreude. I heard someone belch that one out recently and would have heated up the pimp hand for the speaker had I been sitting closer.

But since you asked...

2011-05-31T10:45:00.000-04:00

THIS IS WHAT HE'S DONE SO FAR!

With proper support, he could have done more. His record speaks for itself.

What did we expect?

2011-05-30T18:02:00.000-04:00

Liberals, and the left-at-large (pardon the alliteration), have done very little lately (ditto on alliteration) but express disappointment in the accomplishments of the Obama administration. The New York Times has leveled utterly venereal attacks on everything from the healthcare battle to the Bin Laden assassination, and everything in between. It reached new lows in the last several weeks with Dr. Cornel West's mostly personal ad hominem attacks (he may have made some valid points but even a broken clock is right twice a day).

There are better minds than my own to make the case for the defense, but where are they? They are witnessed mostly on blogs and in academic circles, but the mainstream media has done very little to publish and broadcast them.

MY QUESTION, PARTLY ANSWERED IN THIS THOUGHTFUL ESSAY, is what could we realistically expect? Few presidents have faced such rabid assaults from the opposition. Rarely has the opposition been so successful in politicizing the utterly irrational and mobilizing voters behind non-political issues. We live in a climate not at all conducive to any real change and progress.

Barack Obama spoke to us in 2008 of what he believed in and what he would support. There were very few "I promise" statements, beyond, "I promise you that if you work with me, we can change this." He never shouted "YES I CAN." He has, as far as I can see, fulfilled that promise. The best any administration can do is stand with a foot in the door, hopefully long enough for the rest of us to push through.

No, we didn't. Not yet. Let's face it. The opposition, as fractured and weird as they are, works harder.

I support Barack Obama's reelection. The Democratic Party, apparently, does as well. There has already been a buzz (read 'a roar') from The Right on possible presidential candidates, but nothing from the other side. Is it too early to presume that there will be no other candidates for 2012? That would be incredibly ironic considering the sniping.

But the questions remain, did we have realistic expectations, and furthermore did we expect one man to do it all himself?

Pupdate and stuff...

2011-05-30T15:19:00.000-04:00

It has come to my attention, that Pitbulls are not extreme weather beasts. Miss Jane is no exception and has let me know in no uncertain terms that she prefers a cool, ceramic tile floor to blazing pavement. This news suits me fine. Hot weather is like a house guests or fish. It starts to stink after three days. We have retreated to cool, dark environs.

Not a bar.

HGTV House Porn is on with the sound down. The music is playing at just-below-live levels.

This post is a bookmark. A place-saver. Like leaving a jacket on the back of a chair. I've ingested a lot of information in the last few days. It's time to process now. That could take a few days. Things upstairs have always moved glacially and God forbid I sprain something.

Kidding aside, the heat is just fine for me. It has been an obnoxious spring. The cold, damp settled into my bones and the distance from sitting to standing was feeling a lot farther than just last year. My patience had worn thin. I was unsuitable for human consumption. A few days in the sun seems to have been the key. All the grime has burned off like a morning mist.

For now.

When real news eclipses The Onion...

2011-05-28T22:16:00.000-04:00

I've been told many times over the years that I'm too tightly wrapped. There is probably some truth to that, because it really doesn't take much some days to set me off. I will argue, though, that we live in a very strange world.

THIS STORY SETS ME RIGHT OFF

It is so strange and so wrong on so many levels that it's hard to find words for it. I've never been able to get my head around beauty pageants for children. It's a special brand of perverse to doll up little girls like Morgan Fairchild and parade them about in front of adults--and it comes as no surprise that so many sick twists go nuts over this stuff.

The little rodeo described in this news item takes it to a brand new level. The video... the exhibition... the interview clip. I kept waiting for the cut to Rod Serling that never comes.

It also contains a stern warning. There is an equine herpes epidemic in Utah. Take that for what it's worth.

Abuse of power...

2011-05-26T21:52:00.000-04:00

I'm still trying to sort out my words about the current deluge of examples of...

MEN BEHAVING BADLY

A fair amount of my trouble here is how the definition of power is applied to specific situations.

It could be TWO POLICEMEN AND A DRUNK GIRL.

It could be A "GENTLEMAN" OF MEANS

It could be the Governor of California...

Or one of thousands of stories that never reaches the news... The common denominator is that rape and sexual misconduct are difficult cases to prosecute, and the victim usually ends up on the shit end of the stick. That's really something to think about. I looked for statistics for successful prosecution rates for violent crimes; I searched for a comparative analysis, but came up empty handed. It seems every time I turn around though, there is another acquittal. That has to be pretty frightening when you are not one of the empowered.

So they say that absolute power corrupts absolutely... but how much power is enough to corrupt? Just enough to do something horrible?

Just random thoughts in The War Against Misanthropy.

You get what you give. Sometimes.

2011-05-25T01:07:00.001-04:00

I had a discussion today with a friend, on whether or not empathy and compassion are innate human instincts. Nature vs. nurture, and all that crap... I'm really kind of glad that this conversation wasn't recorded. Nobody would believe that it wasn't... um... chemically enhanced.

It did resonate though. The closest points of reference I have are my own children. Kids, on the surface, often seem like obnoxious, cloying, needy, self-centered, wee peckerheads. They want. They ask. They demand. They don't care that you've been busting your ass all day. Their needs/want are right there, in your face, on your best and worst days... Often at the most inconvenient times.

Then again, I experienced moments of connectedness with both of my sons that can only be described as spiritual. They seemed entirely attuned to all my moods. They shared my joyous moments and seemed ready, willing and able to offer comfort in down time, even before they could speak. Or, it was suggested today, they became alarmed that a down mood meant their needs wouldn't be met by a moody parent, and practiced a learned behavior to shift attention.

I'm not going to speak for all adults, but there are days where my compassion is in short supply. Hence the illustration above. There are days when I couldn't find it with a shovel. I've had a string of them... and of course 'shovel' is appropriate because these days generally happen when I'm buried in my own bullshit. Or simply tired. And tired of it. It's not exactly like I'm well practiced with it either. It's often only after the fact that my response to an entreaty for advice or help was... less than kind.

It's a discipline, at least for me. I'm working at it.

Why I can't program my mobile phone...

2011-05-24T18:05:00.000-04:00

I totally forgot what I was going to say about THIS REPORT ON AGING AND COGNITIVE DECLINE!

It doesn't make it feel any better to know that these lapses are a normal part of aging. Then again, if it were long-term memory rather than short-term, it could preclude the need for expensive therapy. Maybe...

Potential problem with this? Well, learning is supposed to be a lifelong process, but chemical breakdowns aren't going to make it easier, are they? Can the breakdown be slowed? Reversed? There are scores of products on the market that claim it can be. The jury is still out on most of them though. Gingko biloba gives me a headache and that's probably not because I'm remembering too much.

Oh well...

Silent but deadly...

2011-05-23T22:15:00.000-04:00

So, apparently...

HE WAS HERE ON SCHEDULE!!!

He came in "like a thief in the night," just like the book says. He passed... er... judgment quietly. He'll be back in five months. Then we'll all be headed either north or south.

Harold Camping told reporters that it was a tough day for him.

Yeah, no shit. I'll bet it was.

Will Family Radio be writing refund checks? Nope. And that stinks.

Is happiness overrated?

2011-05-23T17:37:00.000-04:00

THIS ARTICLE from The Boston Globe suggests that it may be. I'm going to have to read up on the study cited. The write-up here, at best, tells us to be wary of those who always appear happy, and to be suspicious of those who are always engaged in the obsessive pursuit of happiness. It's also a fairly stern warning to be mindful of our own ideas of what might make us happy, and the lengths to which we'd go to achieve such.

Really just food for thought, as I inventory my own wants vs. my own needs.

Taking the kids along for the ride.

2011-05-23T09:12:00.000-04:00

LEARNING IS A LIFELONG DISCIPLINE.

And everybody hates a know-it-all, right? This article poses an interesting question: How much better off would our children be if we positioned ourselves as being traveling the road with them, rather than dragging them along with us? The co-learner, rather than the pedagogue? How could they benefit from witnessing our own trial and error (provided of course we carry ourselves through tribulations with a small amount of grace)?

I have, at times, done my children a great disservice by establishing myself as the expert, dispensing gospel truth with authority and discipline. The inevitable failures inherent to any parent's life quickly dispel myth, but perhaps foster resentment. Even children hate the know-it-all...

So this article was a good reminder for me. We are entrusted with the education and well-being of our wee bairns, but maybe there is a better way to prepare them. Keep the mythology of the perfect being in the books. It might, at the very least, relieve some of the pressure of being perfect.

It's a process...

2011-05-22T19:43:00.001-04:00

And like THE RESPONSE TO THIS LETTER suggests, it is about re-framing your perspective. Life does come with its disappointments. The gratitude list I wrote of a few days ago is a tool. It's not a solution. Writing a grocery list doesn't take you to the store, and the list certainly isn't going to carry your purchases home. That's going to take a bit of sweat.

Nobody can tell you what you deserve to feel and why. Nobody can tell you when and how to "get over" something. Life would be grand it it was all as easy as a quick comparison to someone in a worse situation... someone with a higher misfortune quotient. There are usually several within spitting distance.

Just be willing to believe that, as George Harrison put it so wisely and beautifully, ALL THINGS MUST PASS.

And be willing to work it.

All kidding aside... on Gratitude

2011-05-18T22:33:00.000-04:00

I've spent the better part of the last week stirring it, just a little. I do want to be very clear, however, that I am not having a laugh at the expense of good people of faith. These are mostly good-natured pokes at the sort of false prophets and charlatans that, over the years, scared me away from religion and spirituality... and of course there were other factors... my own immense ego not the least of them.

This coming Saturday may or may not be THE END OF THE WORLD AS WE KNOW IT. We may or may not die, as a group, or as individuals. Make no mistake, though. You're going to die. I'm going to die. There may come a point also, when you'll want to take inventory of your life as a whole, or a spell you've been going through, or just that particular day. You may not like what you see at the end of that inventory. You may find that no matter how you crunch the data, you're coming up in the red. What then?

I'm told a person can always start over, at any point in their life. At any point of any day. That is probably true but I'm still trying to figure that out. I'm not that bad. I'm not Pol Pot, and if you're reading this you're probably not either. I have, however, pulled some nasty shit. I'm not proud of it, but going back and doing it over isn't an option. Why did I do it? God knows. Perhaps because I always viewed the world as a hostile, adversarial place, and that anything I did was simply payback for any number of things that happened or didn't happen to me. I had a grocery list of justifications. You may also. Something to think about?

Lately, I've been trying... TRYING, I SAY... to remain in the spirit of gratitude for the blessings in my life, large and small. I try to make a daily list, and that helps. Sometimes it's the small things that keep me going, when for whatever reason the large things are obscured. This discipline of making this daily list didn't come easily, having become practiced in counting up all the things that never went my way. Some time ago, someone passed me a handwritten note with their list. It was VERY SIMILAR TO THIS LIST. I gave this someone a very insincere smile and a thank you, and pocketed the paper. It came out of my pocket a few days later on laundry day and I read it. What was there to lose? Long story short, I still try to make that list every day, with my morning coffee, which incidentally I am always very grateful for. It helps.

But this Rapture business. I do believe wholeheartedly that it's a load of nonsense, but... BUT... I don't believe it's such a bad thing for people to remember that when they are called up, or simply drop dead, it's entirely out of their hands. You just don't know, bucko. That in mind, it's never bad to be reminded about how you're living. Nothing brings you closer to life than death.

And now... back to the Apocalypse!

Many are called, and few are chosen.

2011-05-18T20:04:00.000-04:00

400,000 really isn't a lot when you think about it. The odds of being among The Chosen are a little better than hitting a PowerBall jackpot, but not quite as good as hitting the Trifecta at the track. That leaves many of us way up there without a paddle, if you get my drift.

So it's all supposed to start this Saturday, on May 21, 2011. Then there will be 5 months of mayhem, starvation, plaque and all that fun stuff. I don't have much of a taste for any of that so I'll probably do some reading.

I've had a lot of time on my hands, being a Citizen of Involuntary Leisure, and all this Hell Hoopla got me thinking. I'll be taking a trip to a place I've never been before. I know nothing about it. The geography, the climate's a no-brainer (pack shorts), the culture... most of all the people. I've got some research to do. So my journey really begins at Amazon.com.

WHO'S WHO IN HELL seems like a good place to start, no? It's on order. I chose UPS 2nd Day, because who knows what deliveries will be like after Saturday. Seems to me like the closest I'm going to get to a Fodor's Travel Guide to Hell. I'll head down to the passport office tomorrow. Looks like vacation time, baby!

What Have You Done To Prepare For The End of Days

2011-05-17T13:08:00.000-04:00

Oh Stephen... please SIT DOWN!

2011-05-17T08:28:00.000-04:00

STEPHEN HAWKING PRATTLES ON AND ON and I'm really not qualified to say whether he's right or wrong, but really... Am I the only one that finds him irksome? Can I be the only one that's noticed that he's as famous for statements he can't prove as he is for anything truly scientific?

I'm not a particularly religious person. I am not, however, an atheist either. I do, in fact, find many atheists every bit as annoying as the religious right. They are often as devout in their proselytizing as those they find all too many excuses to argue with.

It almost makes me wish that May 21, 2011 would settle the argument once and for all.

Almost.

Not quite.

We could, of course, launch from here into arguments about teaching Creationism and Intelligent Design in school, as an alternative to Big Bang and Evolution. Perhaps, after more coffee... but not now. I'm just saying. Faith is an interesting phenomenon. We all seem to be possessed of blind, unwavering faith in something. Even Stephen (har!). I'm just going to keep my eyes and ears... and heart, open. We will see what develops.

AWW JESUS CHRIST! NOT AGAIN!

2011-05-16T09:26:00.000-04:00

This is, of course, not the first time that they've predicted... what?

THE END OF THE WHOLE GODDAMN WORLD!!!!

I grew up in the shadow of the Cuban Missile Crisis. We did a 'duck & cover' drill a couple times. There was a mysterious yellow sign in the school that read FALLOUT SHELTER, and it marked the entrance to an area in the school that nobody but a crusty custodian named Dobber (don't ask why, I don't know) had seen. My suspicion is that it was chockful of ashtrays, bourbon and porno mags. But I digress. People regularly used terms like overkill. By the 80s, Ronald Raygun (Remember him? He doesn't.) was talking about First Strike Capability and Star Wars, blah blah blah.

This latest threat, however, carried much more profound implications. Jesus is coming back, they say, and he's rather ticked off this time. You would be too if you got banged to a cross in the blazing sun for somebody else's sins, and they turned around and kept doing all the crap you warned them not to do. Okay, I would be pissed, anyway.

This isn't new though. Every few years, some group comes along and sends you a SAVE THE DATE notice with a little byline that says in no uncertain terms, "DO IT OUR WAY OR YOU'RE UP SHITCREEK WITHOUT A PADDLE!"

We are still here.

These dates come and go, and one would think that would be the end of it for whatever johnny-come-lately group is spreading the word. Sometimes it is, like with those poor, misguided bastards with the purple shrouds and neat-o New Balance running shoes. Sometimes, however, they move on, mumbling about miscalculations and the inscrutability of God. They're an interesting lot, these Prophets of Doom. Most of them really don't seem bad sorts. They can be annoying for sure. And amusing. Let's face it. We all enjoy a good laugh, so at the end of the day (and there may not be too many days left) I am thankful for these folks.

Which brings me to my end of the world book recommendation:

APOCALYPSE PRETTY SOON chronicles a few of these Doomsday groups. The author even meets with some of them... folks who picked a day... and the day came and went... etc. It's a light read. It's a fast read, which may come in handy, all things considered. It could be, after all, your last Monday on Earth. It's easy enough to get at your local chain bookstore. Or you could have mine. If these folks are right, I'll be busy swimming in a lake of fire, and that's not conducive to a relaxing read.

No matter what happens, though, I recommend it highly. Enjoy

The End of Times

2011-05-16T01:42:00.000-04:00

THESE PEOPLE ARE GETTING RICH
And while I admire the spirit of entrepreneurship, and all that entails (or you can go back in the archives and find me extolling the virtues of Socialism and believe that), let's make one thing clear:

A BUNKER ISN'T GOING TO SAVE YOU FROM GOD!

This is the deal. You believe the Bible, or not. You believe the world is going to end in 5 days, or not. IF... IF YOU DO BELIEVE THIS TO BE TRUE... please, I implore you... At the very least, don't spend your last few days digging a hole (you can take that literally or metaphorically)! It's not going to help.

You are one of the chosen. Or you are not. It's really that simple. There are 400,000. That's it. Not 400,001. And it's not like there is a whole lot you can do between now and then that might give God that moment of pause. He's not going to turn to someone and say, "Hey you! Yeah, you! Silly guy in the ugly Walmart shirt with the stupid look on your face!"

"Yeah, you're out. My pal here is in. Go home. Better yet. Go to HIS home. He's got a bunker. Yeah, you'll be safe there. There is a lifetime supply of Dinty Moore and Spam."

No, if you really know the book, it doesn't work that way.

But you just can't tell some people shit!

Stay tuned. It's going to be a strange week.

Your bucket list...

2011-05-14T23:44:00.000-04:00

Okay, so you've got ABOUT A DAMN WEEK! You may want to take a quick inventory of your life. How do you feel? Tally it up again. How do you feel now? Easy does it. It doesn't really matter. Our time is up, right? It must be true if you read it on the side of a bus.

Problem...

Looking down the barrel of doom, and being a devout underachiever, I've realized that my to-do list is pretty damn boring. AND I'M RUNNING OUT OF TIME! Well, thankfully there is a solution. God bless the internetz!

Underachievers, procrastinators, and tragically unimaginative folks, there IS an answer. CLICK HERE CLOWNS!!! Consider your remaining days an adventure.

Carpe diem, bitches!

Ah, but I was so much older then...

2011-05-11T16:34:00.000-04:00

I'm younger than that now...

I don't think so much about age and aging most days, despite the growing numbers of silver hairs that surprise me every morning in the mirror. Despite hair appearing where there was once none... Ugh! Despite the mild shock of receiving a reminder from our good friends at AARP, that I'll be turning 50 later this year.

!!!!!!

Yes, I will be signing up the moment the benefits are available. The word DISCOUNT carries a greater weight now than it did in more carefree days.

There has always been a lot of talk about the reverence we should hold for age. Respect your elders. Honor thy father and mother. Etc. It's always seemed more lip service than anything else. And I will admit to having encountered some fairly difficult older people. I am quickly becoming one of them.

The world, however, remains mostly enamored of the young and their achievements. The Information Age and The Intertoobz have us hurtling through linear time like shit through a goose. You can be rendered a has-been overnight. You can be yesterday's news before you can grow a full beard.

It can, admittedly, be a little disheartening sometimes to be one of the "not so fresh," having through circumstance or bad decisions not realized one's potential. So this in mind, news of an art showcase featuring the work of ONLY folks over 50 may not have caught my eye, even just a few short years ago. I was about to straighten my creaky knees up from the sofa this morning when I encountered this bit on THE GEEZER GALLERY. This is not a little feelgood, pollyanna crap about art therapy in the home. Definitely a cut above and worth checking out.

Post-racial? No...

2010-10-02T14:12:00.002-04:00

I would like to coin the phrase right now.... get ready... IN-YOUR-FACIAL...
But I should explain. Firstly, this article from the Chicago Trib isn't particularly thoughtful and doesn't answer any questions. It could have been written by a half-bright 8th grader.

CLICK HERE,CLOWNS

It is, however, a question, that I believe should keep getting lobbed into the forum like a hand grenade until people talk about it, argue about it, fist fight about it, and make it clear to everybody, and themselves especially, exactly where they stand on the issue and why. I vote for total transparency with no more veiled insinuation, no hints, and no room for misunderstanding. Hence, in-your-facial.

I do believe that the country is much better off than in 1965, but that was the last time that there was a significant jump forward politically in any progressive sense. I also believe that in the following years one side patted themselves on the back and the other side decided grudgingly that they would go along with things and keep their grumbling limited to mono-chromatic social gatherings, lodge dinners and holiday get-togethers. It's always been pretty obvious to anyone paying attention though that not a lot really changed. You need only look at the continuing disparity in income, incarceration, public education, college entry, etc. to know that Jim Crow has just laid back a bit and is cruising down the boulevard with the top down. And for those that need mass media to deliver the message, consider that it didn't take Sasha Baron Cohen as Borat more than 10 minutes to get a crowd of rednecks to gleefully join in for a chorus of Throw The Jews Down The Well... and assorted misogynist, racist and homophobic paeans.

I might assert that it wasn't technically the election of Barack Obama that stripped off the IKEA quality veneer and brought the shit bubbling to the surface, but he has certainly become the figurehead for the Fear Party Movement. It's just nothing new. It's always been there. Had the election come in a time of economic prosperity the lid would have probably stayed on for a few more years. It's time though and I don't necessarily think it's a bad thing, provided that race and class issues are addressed in a national, holistic sense. Portions of the nation have always wrongfully taken a moral highground on racism and fairly well convinced themselves that the civil rights movement was about the South.
Surprise, Boston! Surprise, New York City!

And simply for the purpose of clarification on points on race vs. class... My point is really that there is a lot of overlap between the two issues, but they've always been addressed separately. There was an interview earlier this year where George Stephanopolous was trying to draw out Barack Obama on the subject of affirmative action, and whether it should exist at all, or perhaps be a class-based focus rather than race-based. The questions were posed in the framework of whether race should be a factor in college admittance for Sasha and Malia (pretty smarmy tactic on George's part). Obama answered, as I would have expected, because I agree with him, that his daughters were Ivy League legacy on both their parents' sides and could rightfully be removed from the equation. There are socio-economic factors that make race-based affirmative action (and other race-based viewpoints and legislation) sound and moral policy. I do believe however that until the overlap with class-based issues are addressed, then neither will be addressed properly.

Culture? That's another story altogether. Racially and ethnically based monolithic views of culture continue to astound me.

And I believe in throwing hand grenades.

Fathers' Day? Sort of...

2010-06-17T21:50:00.002-04:00

With no mind towards saying anything poignant about Fatherhood or Father's Day, and having more to do with a sort of spiritual quest I've embarked on of late, I've been spending some long nights toiling through insomnia taking a personal inventory of my successes and failures as a father. Always prone to self-flagellation, and trying to be as brutally honest as possible, my personal, parental checking account seems to have come up in the red.

I will try to keep this in mind should my sons characteristically forget what this coming Sunday entails.

This is not a testimonial. There will be no confessions of misdeeds, moral lapses or neglect. There are appropriate venues for such things. The internet is not one of them. The people that matter know anyway. I'm just saying that I've been spending a lot of time thinking about what I would have done differently, and searching deep within myself to do better. They are nearly grown, but somehow not, and in many ways more in need than when they were infants. Funny how that works. I pray that I am up to the task.

It was a hellish, long, sleepless night and I hadn't even thought about the alarm or the morning coffee let alone read this thoughtful piece:

click here, damn it

...yet at 4 this morning, stricken yet again with insomnia, and weighing my accounts, but by coincidence was thinking similarly, about how odd it was that rather than the fat little screamers I once knew had grown to be young men. Of course they did, but how dare they! I wasn't ready.

There were many first-times and last-times, as mentioned in the article, that I wasn't present for. There were times but I was present, but not, preoccupied by one thing or another. There were times when you couldn't have told me that I wasn't paying attention, but apparently I wasn't, if only because I was so nostalgic for an age just passed, that I couldn't appreciate the magic of the new stage. I just wish I had slowed it down.

The heavy, pre-dawn rain added to the melancholy. Or call it melodrama. I've always been capable of being the one-man show. One man. One act. On huge ego. Even alone in my bed I embarrass myself sometimes. The third night of insomnia amplified every emotion, compounding my inability to shut it all down. So there I lay, mulling it all over. Pushing 50 with the 18 year old out for the night.... and I've learned to be okay with that... and the younger one faithfully on the other side of the wall snoring. Not long for that either.

And then there was one.

I'm hoping, by that point, to have worked through some of these notions that trouble my sleep now. Perhaps there will be new waking nightmares. Creatures, some real and some imaginary, scratching at my windows and spurring the instinct to pull in my limbs so that nothing is hanging over the edge of the bed.

I need to slow it down. That's it. I need to slow it down.

Rose-colored glasses

2010-05-29T17:49:00.002-04:00

or just age-related memory lapse? The persistence of memory indeed.

Wistful? How would I describe my mood today, Alex? I'll take Paths to Self-Delusion for $1000.

There may be moments in time best left to the scrapheap of memory lapse, or blackout, or brain damage. It depends on how much you can face, or how many times you're comfortable repeating the same mistakes. Some of us don't have the luxury of choosing what comes back and what remains obscured by time. Call it masochism, or sadism if I've already bored you, but I do prefer to remember. Every so often the past bears an important lesson.

Now and again... not always.

I've been sitting around though, for the past 36 hours or so, feeling wistful. Not quite mournful, but ailing still, my mind running a sad lament for the explosive summer openers of old. The ghost of Memorial Day past was coming back to haunt me in my waking and sleeping hours. The beginning of summer and all it bodes had my faulty, old spark plugs firing. Yet I have been facing it with a growing sense of... not quite doom... but nagging trepidation. Friday morning wore on into Friday afternoon and I could feel something growing. The clock spun and my outbound calls and e-mails were greeted with an increasing number of out-of-office responses. I was talking to machines. The exodus had begun. Yet I was still planted firm. No big plans. No mayhem scheduled. No phone calls asking what time I would be... somewhere. Co-workers, packed from the night before and ready to go, slowly filed out.

Big plans, some asked?

Well, yes... but I wasn't ready to explain. A few things have changed. Big things, actually, but perhaps another time. Maybe.

And I delved further into... not despair... some purgatory between Friday afternoon relief, or even excitement, and tedium. And somewhere to the left of reality as well, apparently.

The compulsion to keep a diary, or a journal or a blog can be a gift or a curse, depending on what a trek back in time reveals. There was a time until fairly recently when maintenance of both a diary and a blog was a fairly big part of my life. Not that much of what is stored within isn't colored by whatever mis-perception I may have suffered at the time something was written, but I did really try to be honest with myself... to varying degrees of success. The time travel this time, however, was illuminating. I didn't unearth the musings of a particularly carefree soul. Hopscotching back across Memorial Days past pieced together a jigsaw image of a... a wistful and often troubled man. It was a portrait of excruciating self-consciousness, alienation, and more than anything else, plain, old tedium.

Maybe it's not so odd to feel nostalgia for that which we only think we remember having. It's unsettling to find one's self engaged in lamenting the loss of something that never happened or even existed though. It's got me wondering what else I'm remembering incorrectly. At some point, I'd like to, like a diligent Amish plowman, hitch up the old horse and turn a few fields over, haul out the rocks, sow again and see what comes up.

I've always wanted to be a farmer.

Just sayin'...

Discipline Part 2

2010-03-19T12:16:00.002-04:00

Same root as disciple, or follower, or one who adheres to a discipline or faith.

Faith vs. Superstition? Sometimes I can't tell the difference. God vs. Magical Thinking? I want to have faith, but it's shaken when I try to reconcile that I also catch myself believing in black cats, lucky pennies and horoscopes. It's shaken when I can't reconcile all the horrible shit I see with the concept that some benevolent being is watching out for our best interests. It makes me feel simple and childish that my doubts have me returning to all these hackneyed arguments. I would prefer to say it all eloquently but the words aren't there. I would prefer to just believe.

And I fear the answers will never come unless I relent to absolute faith. Silly to fear abandonment by an entity that thus far has eluded me, but I am frightened to be wrong too. And I really don't want to believe that this is all there is either. I want desperately for there to be a rhyme and a reason for all this. And of course a salvation at the end, or the possibility of salvation.

A discipline is expected here.. the discipline to believe in and follow the faith, even when one can find no visible evidence. One is expected to go beyond logic and science. I struggle with that even though I witness a lot that defies logic, and beyond that there are scientific matters about which I remain agnostic.

A discipline of surrender and acceptance is expected. Get down on your knees and pray to him for strength. Do it daily. Do it hourly. Or as many times as you need to. Just do it. I am trying to make due with the serenity prayer, if only because I was told it was very very wrong to pray for anything more, because then you are just being selfish. Ignoring everything you should be grateful for. When you enter into the discipline of naming every little thing that you possess to be grateful for, I've read, you will find all the evidence of God that you require. That act in and of itself though requires more discipline than I often feel I am capable of, but I'm trying.

I am giving it my best shot, but that's not always so much. I am ashamed of this pride that stands between me and surrender and acceptance. I am mortified by the immensity of my ego. Ego is the the highest obstacle that one will face, it has been said, in the pursuit of happiness and peace. This discipline of daily self-examination makes me weary. Is this all just my ego? Self-doubt pervades even here.

But faith--I want to believe fully and wholly (holy?). I want to just exhale and give in to a higher power than my own. Even on the days though when any and every power seems higher than my own, the hurdle is there. Some days it is laughable and everything I want seems within my grasp. Then there are the interminable Days of Sisyphus when it's all I can do to keep it within the ditches. There are too many of these days. Of course I set myself up for them and everything on the back burners came to boil all at once. Too many kettles to manage it seems. Something is bound to get burned.

But of course the discipline of faith dictates that I accept that which is lost, and take care of what is within my power to save.

Conundrum... conundrum... The word sounds like a heartbeat.

Conundrum
Conundrum
Conundrum

Discipline

2010-03-19T04:44:00.002-04:00

I Googled the word "discipline" just so I could get a quick, easy, succinct caption to open a bit what is to be my first missive in months. I might have just looked up "irony" because the result will require an awful lot of discipline if I'm to integrate it into anything coherent. Writing is a discipline though, like yoga, or a daily workout, or even a punishment if one is to delve into the verb... discipline.

dis·ci·pline
/ˈdɪsəplɪn/ Show Spelled [dis-uh-plin] Show IPA noun, verb,-plined, -plin·ing.
–noun
1.
training to act in accordance with rules; drill: military discipline.
2.
activity, exercise, or a regimen that develops or improves a skill; training: A daily stint at the typewriter is excellent discipline for a writer.
3.
punishment inflicted by way of correction and training.
4.
the rigor or training effect of experience, adversity, etc.: the harsh discipline of poverty.
5.
behavior in accord with rules of conduct; behavior and order maintained by training and control: good discipline in an army.
6.
a set or system of rules and regulations.
7.
Ecclesiastical. the system of government regulating the practice of a church as distinguished from its doctrine.
8.
an instrument of punishment, esp. a whip or scourge, used in the practice of self-mortification or as an instrument of chastisement in certain religious communities.
9.
a branch of instruction or learning: the disciplines of history and economics.
–verb (used with object)
10.
to train by instruction and exercise; drill.
11.
to bring to a state of order and obedience by training and control.
12.
to punish or penalize in order to train and control; correct; chastise.

This will require more coffee. I will need more discipline. Self-discipline. I don't know if I'm ready for this. Maybe it's a cop-out to simply say that Dictionary.com covered all my bases. Someone got here before me and said it better than I could have anyway. Why bother?

Unless it becomes personal... Use discipline in a sentence, or perhaps a bunch of sentences, and see how many of the above permutations can be covered in one morning. Am I ready to go personal? Not yet. It's been a while.

Firstly, it's notable that discipline, if one is to read through all the possible uses listed above, that the line between a worthy endeavor or exercise and punishment is left rather undefined. That's funny actually. It's been a while since I've strained, and grunted and farted through a round of morning calisthenics, but if memory serves it always seemed a cruel joke I was playing on myself. I never looked in the mirror after a workout and saw that glow of self-satisfaction I see on the faces of people leaving gyms all over New York City. No, in fact the face in the mirror was never more than a mask of grim determination... of resignation... of where the hell are my cigarettes?

No, this is going to require more... something. I am, at least for now, going to have to read and re-read the definitions above, and think about how each one, and how each is directly applicable to some facet of my life that's been under intense examination. I have, similarly to many others, I suppose, let too much go for too long. A wiser soul would try to manage one thing at a time, but time seems short. There is a now or never pall over everything. That may or may not be true but a sense of priorities is lacking. It all seems equally desperate.

Some things prioritize themselves though, so for now it comes down the the daily routines that pay the bills... time to apply the instruments of punishment that make me fit for public consumption.

Selah

Thanksgiving 2009

2009-11-27T14:59:00.002-05:00

I had no intention of cooking this year until Kyle weighed in, reminded me, "You said that living well is the best revenge, and why shouldn't we do it right since none of know where we're going to be next year."

Eyebrow up, Spock position... hard locked. Very interesting.

He was of course, right. I did say that. I say a lot of things and often too much, but he's going to catch hold of something there are worse he could remember and hit back at me like a spinning forehand hurtling way down the baseline where there was no chance to recover and volley.

No regrets. His sentimental lead brought us to a moment of normalcy, and the Fortress of Solitude filled up with the smell of turkey and the percussive bubble of spuds on the stove--a proper, quiet sit-down in a warm home.

And now it's Black Friday and I'm on a news blackout while I sort out what follows us to the next spot, and what gets passed along, passed down or simply discarded. There are six and a half years of sorting out the other kind of baggage, discarding what no longer fits and stowing away what should be saved. Six and a half years of trying to get things in order, and amassing new clutter, and some days it seems as though I exchanged the old clutter with new messes to be collated and filed. Most days though, despite the complex hassles and the ensuant pains and discomforts, are pretty light with a sense that I am spending most of my time on the right road... no destination but forward.

The notice that we would have to leave The Fortress of Solitude, although coming along at a rotten time financially, seems well-timed with other changes that we are surfing along with. It is time to leave the cocoon and its restorative history and make a clean break.

And so the purging... it started with books that I've dragged behind me, some for thirty years or more, living with the comfort that I had read them, and could again if I needed to. It's more than plain with many of them that this isn't going to happen. There are some that I cannot part with. Getting rid of them is as unthinkable as exiling an old relative. And there are others...

The music is a somewhat harder task. It's a task akin to going through endless photo albums or slideshows. They are full of friends and family and ghosts, and the odd devil. There is a visual archive of my entire life in all these songs. I remember with utter clarity where I was and who I was with and what I was doing when I first heard these... and with laser focus how I felt in those moments. It is of course dangerous to be too attached to material items, but it's impossible to consider these material items. It feels sometimes that if I were separated from the music I would lapse into amnesia. I would risk forgetting who I am and how I got here.

Dangerous, no? It is what it is. It's the Dewey Decimal system of my entire memory. There are quite a few that can go, in the same spirit that a person can eventually part with clothes that are out of fashion, or love letters from someone you can no longer remember.

And riding back on the holy metaphor... I disassembled an old computer that was sitting at the back of my closet. I remembered the panic when it began to sputter and die. There was a wealth of... something... on the hard drive that seemed at the moment to be irreplaceable. That was not true, or at the very least I don't seem to be missing anything. It was quite a task to pull out the hard drive today... just in case. How unpleasant might it be if someone else revived the information! It came out eventually though, a 5 pound block of aluminum and silicon bits. It's on its way to some landfill now and what's gone is gone.

Selah

On questions...

2009-11-18T06:30:00.002-05:00

As a young man, and certain that there were men on Earth... my heroes... to whom all the answers to the important questions had been mysteriously gifted, I came across this. I was more than certain at the time that it was a condemnation of God and faith, but I've come to know that it was a condemnation of man.

Look where we worship. -- Jim Morrison

I have, upon reflection, decided that nobody is endowed with the big answers by a benevolent higher power or by stroke of fate, but by long, often painful treks through one's own reflection, and more often only by smashing the mirror.

Admiration

2009-11-11T06:35:00.002-05:00

I have long admired those that can lower themselves to their knees, to supplicate before their personal God, rather than hidden beneath the covers in a shamed fetal position, begging for answers that are already clear.

They all come down...

2009-10-15T07:44:00.002-04:00

The leaves that is... and other things, but the leaves... if you live in New York City, they just go straight from green to brown and come down. You wake up one morning and it's cold. Then if you're lucky you wake up one cold morning a couple weeks later and the radiators are pissing, and the leaves are coming down and you decide maybe you should draw the curtains, not because it's cold but because your neighbors can see in once the leaves are gone. Or not. Some people never draw their curtains. That's annoying and I don't know if it's because I really don't want to see them or that I can't help but look in. This is a town of and for and by voyeurs. It's funny (not haha funny alway) that a city full of people so enrapt with their own reflections (myself included) that there is always time to peek in a few windows.

A thought on reflection: If you really want to grow weary of looking at yourself, write a memoir. You run the process first; you start at narcissism and run through fascination, discovery, revelation, mortification, Sartre-esque revulsion, weariness and finally on to stultifying tedium.

"And if thine eye offend thee, pluck it out, and cast it from thee: it is better for thee to enter into life with one eye, rather than having two eyes to be cast into hell fire."

Is hell other people? Try looking too closely at yourself for too long and see whom you think hell is or isn't Perhaps those unshaded windows are there for a damn good reason. If you see a person on the street with the thousand yard stare, who is most certainly too young to be a Viet Nam vet, there's a good chance they've written a memoir. They've just seen too much. If you recognize it in yourself, break the gaze with the image in the mirror and get out there and start looking into other peoples' windows. Those windows are God's gift to battle-weary narcissists, navel-gazers, and assorted misfits of introspective natures.

I'm not recommending you desist entirely from self-examination. Just balance it, or most assuredly you will fuck yourself up big time.

It's easy, neighbors' open curtains notwithstanding, to fall into long spells laser sharp self-examination, self-dissection and emotional seppaku in the fall. You're more apt to find yourself alone and inside, or alone and outside and in the dark, for that matter. The season lends itself to solitude, and all the gin mills, facebook pages and cell phones can't stave off the eventual moment when you find yourself at home alone thinking. I can offer no advice for those moments, except that if you are not relatively certain of what you'll find, don't mine your past and write a memoir. Or maybe just do it a bit at a time, a child with a soup spoon digging to China, rather than the gargantuan hedgehog tunnel blaster. Take it slowly, or you may find yourself in a spot you are ill equipped to deal with.

My own memoir... I shelved it, not so much out of horror, but because I found what I needed to find, or at least enough. I've moved from the role of miner forty-niner to archivist or librarian, tagging and sorting and stowing it all away in it's proper order, where I can pull it up on demand. It's still rather chaotic at the moment but we're getting there.

There were others to consider also. The greenery turned brown and fallen, it didn't seem my place to decide whether or not their curtains were drawn or open.

But with that, the radiators are pissing, the coffee on and the forecast is dire. I've got things to do.

Selah

Do you know what today is...

2009-09-11T20:44:00.002-04:00

I've thought a lot about this--I suppose everybody has--of how the day should be best commemorated. It's hard not to internalize it on a personal level, and then on a national level, and so on.

I was standing on the 7th Avenue overpass of the Prospect Expressway in Brooklyn when the second plane hit and the realization with it, like a huge wind, that this was in fact a terrorist attack. A woman standing next to me, never taking her eyes off the scene said, "Huh! America just joined a much larger world community," and she gathered her children and headed for home. I had no response but felt instantly that this would be the most poignant statement I heard that day, and it was. I collected my own children from school and brought them home, no idea what was next.

So here we are, eight years later and there is no way I'm going to recap the events that have ensued since then. I was reading a petition online though, that if successful, would mark September 11th as a national holiday. I've mixed feelings on that. It's very complex really but my gut tells me that to commemorate the day as such almost trivializes it. The event stands quite apart from what I've always perceived as the nature of Independence Day, or Memorial Day, or other national holidays. It doesn't seem connected in the same way to our national identity but it's hard for me to explain.

I keep going back to what the woman on the bridge said and my instinct is that any commemoration of September 11th should be taken beyond our borders, and perhaps tied into our identity with the rest of the population of the world. In the greater scheme of horrible events--and not to demean the loss of human life by any event as it would have been horrible if there had been only one victim--the day does not make us special. We did actually become part of something bigger that day.

Perhaps we should all, everywhere, petition our leaders for a real world peace day. Maybe Worldwide Memorial for Victims of Really Pointless Horrible Shit... No seriously. I'm not making fun. Maybe International Memorial Day...

I don't really know. I'm just thinking aloud, so to speak.

Mercy, more than life

2009-09-04T12:31:00.002-04:00

Reposted from a Facebook thread, simply because it makes sense in ways I have been unable to articulate:

"Mercy More Than Life"
Why is Universal Health Care "Un-American"?

By Rev. JIM RIGBY

Last week supporters of health-care reform gathered around the country, including in Austin, TX, where 2,000 people crowded into a downtown church to hear speakers talk about different aspects of the issue. Asked to speak about the ethical dimensions of health care, I tried to go beyond short-term political strategizing and ask more basic questions. This is an edited version of what I said.

September 02, 2009 "Counterpunch" -- Is anyone else here having trouble with the fact that we are even having this conversation? Is anyone else having trouble believing this topic is really controversial? I have been asked to talk about the ethical dimension of health care. Here’s one way to frame such a discussion:

If an infant is born to poor parents, would we be more ethical to give medicine to that child so he or she does not die prematurely of preventable diseases, or would we be more ethical if we let the child die screaming in his or her parent’s arms so we can keep more of our money?

Or, let’s say someone who worked for Enron, and now is penniless, contracted bone cancer. I’ve been asked to discuss whether we are more ethical if we provide such people medicine that lessens their pain. Or would we be more ethical to let them scream through the night in unbearable agony so we can pay lower taxes?”

I can’t believe I am standing today in a Christian church defending the proposition that we should lessen the suffering of those who cannot afford health care in an economic system that often treats the poor as prey for the rich. I cannot believe there are Christians around this nation who are shouting that message down and waving guns in the air because they don’t want to hear it. But I learned along time ago that churches are strange places; charity is fine, but speaking of justice is heresy in many churches. The late Brazilian bishop Dom Hélder Câmara said it well: “When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint. When I ask why the poor have no food, they call me a Communist.” Too often today in the United States, if you talk about helping the poor, they call you Christian, but if you actually try to do something to help the poor, they call you a socialist.

Some of the other speakers today have been asked to address what is possible in the current political climate. I have been asked to speak of our dreams. Let me ask a question. How many of you get really excited about tweaking the insurance system so we just get robbed a little less? (silence) How many of you want universal health care? (sustained applause) I realize that insurance reform is all that’s on the table right now, and it can be important to choose the lesser of evils when that alone is within our power in the moment. But we also need to remember our dream. I believe the American dream is not about material success, not about being having the strongest military. The American dream is that every person might have a right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

It’s amazing to hear Christians who talk about the right to life as though it ends at birth. They believe every egg has a right to hatch, but as soon as you’re born, it’s dog eat dog. We may disagree on when life begins, but if the right to life means anything it means that every person (anyone who has finished the gestation period) has a right to life. And if there is a right to life there must be a right to the necessities of life. Like health care.

I believe the American dream was not about property rights, but human rights. Consider the words of this national hymn:

“O beautiful for patriot’s dream that sees beyond the years. Thine alabaster cities gleam, undimmed by human tears.”

Doesn’t that sound like someone cared about the poor? There are those who consider paying taxes an affront, but listen to these words:

“O Beautiful for heroes proved in liberating strife, who more than self their country loved and mercy more than life.”

“Mercy more than life” -- have you ever noticed those words before? Supporting universal health care does not make you socialist or even a liberal, it makes you a human being. And it makes you an ambassador for the American dream which, in the mind of Thomas Paine, was a dream for every human being, not just Americans. As we struggle to get health care to all people, we may have to settle for the lesser of two evils, but remember your dream -- the true American dream, a human dream. Whatever we win through reform is just first step toward a day when every human being has a right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

Rev. Jim Rigby is pastor of St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church in Austin. He can be reached at jrigby0000@aol.com.

On the bonnie, bonnie banks of Gowanus

2009-08-08T09:35:00.002-04:00

Multi-culturalism is the subject of national debate (for whatever array of idiotic reasons that people feel the need to debate it), but it's hard to to argue the sheer wonder of hearing a Spanish ballad done to the tune of Loch Lomond.

I grew up listening to this song and hearing it flowing out of a storefront in Brooklyn in Spanish is a powerful trip--a nostalgic journey not at all at odds with the significance of hearing it transformed.

Wistful homesickness and longing is the same in every language.

July 2009 Roundup, Part 2

2009-07-23T17:43:00.002-04:00

July 2009, as it happens, will also go down in history as part of the summer when the nation declared open season on Hipsters.

Nobody seems to have come up with a definitive description of what exactly a hipster is or isn't. It seems rather like what the GOP used to say about pornography, "We know it when we see it." The term itself has gathered a rather broad, catch-all, meaning, becoming the most overused (and mis-used) word since Yuppie." I have, over the years, been inaccurately called a yuppie, presumably because I am white, middle-class, and work in an office. Whatever...

Everybody seems to know what a hipster is though, and rarely has any word describing a fairly innocuous idea been thrown about with such a degree of derision. Williamsburg, in Brooklyn, is now world-famous as the hipster equivalent of the Borg Collective headquarters. I was speaking with a client on the west coast, who when she found out I live in Brooklyn (a place she has admittedly never been), asked if I were a Williamsburg hipster. No, I replied with a laugh. I am a nerdy, middle-class salesman and a dad.

It wouldn't be honest to say though that I haven't had a few laughs of my own at the expense of shaggy-bearded, tattooed, pierced, mutilated and otherwise affectedly freaky looking people. Don't get me wrong! I have a fondness for freaky people. I'd prefer that they are more than freaky looking, but who am I to judge. Self-expression is a sacred entity and let those who wish to, go at it wholeheartedly. Every so often though, I allow myself some cruel fun.

And in that vein, here is a site that I've had a great deal of fun with lately, which was first sent to me from my dear friend in Pakistan (yes, it's gotten all the way out there too!):

LOOK AT THIS FUCKING HIPSTER

Ah well, it is what it is. Enjoy.

July 2009 Roundup, Part 1, Appendix B

2009-07-16T19:54:00.002-04:00

"I'm not going to spend my life being a color."

Yep, I'm going there...

"It don't matter if you're black or white."

Here are two lines that have been quoted out of context as often as most popular excerpts from the Bible.

We are going on more than two decades now of discussion on Michael Jackson's supposed race and gender dysphoria. I won't speak for the latter, but the business about race sticks in my craw.

Consider this: Michael Jackson, like most people born black in a Eurocentric world, never once experienced the luxury of NOT being judged as a black man. I don't buy that he tried to escape it with plastic surgery, skin dying and hair straightening. Millions of other people go to great lengths to alter their appearances and rarely does anybody accuse them of being ashamed of their race... unless of course they happen to be black and famous. It's not like the accusations didn't come from all corners, and all races. There seemed to be a universal condemnation and throngs rising up to say, "Michael Jackson is ashamed to be black."

Was he?

An aside: There have been an awful lot of people over the years involved in the discourse of "what it means to be black." Conversely, there has been an awful lot of discourse in recent decades, when North American demographics are changing, on what it means to be white. Pat Buchanan is really big on that. Rush Limbaugh is really big on that. Think about it...

I will say right here that I have no business whatsoever discussing what it means to be black. You know why? Look at my picture. More white people might want to consider that. There is little more irritating than a roomful of white people discussing race and racism. It is not uncommon that if a non-white person amongst them challenges them on any aspect of the discussion, they take great offense.

Yet I'm also uncomfortable hearing black people accusing other black people of not being "black enough." Think about that for a moment and those whom you've heard lumped into this group--Bill Cosby, Bryant Gumbel, Colin Powell, Michael Jackson, and perhaps many of your friends. (****plug here for the documentary Afro-Punk**** which you should see) White people get in on this humor too. I will slap the next white person I hear call someone Uncle Tom. Seriously...

A thought from Thurgood Marshall which may lend perspective. Upon his retirement in 1991 he was asked about progress in race relations in the United States, and how he felt now traveling in the South. His response was that there was no single place in the United States, North or South, then or now, that he ever had to look at the back of his own hand first to be reminded what color he is.

I can't speak for Michael Jackson and his views on race. I know one thing: There came a point in his career when his videos were supporting MTV and he found it necessary to go before them and threaten to ex-communicate them if they continued to refuse to play other African-American artists. Being a supporting musician in the Power Station and the Thompson Twins was about as far as they had ever gone. I figure he didn't have to do that.

This isn't even really about Michael Jackson though. It's about us. Michael Jackson was only ever judged as a black man, no matter what he did cosmetically. I can't, despite any misgivings I may have about him, believe that for one instant he didn't recognize that. I don't believe there was shame... at least not about that. We all, white, black, brown and yellow, judged him as a black man. Let's be honest about that.

July 2009 Roundup, Part 1, Appendix A

2009-07-14T06:22:00.003-04:00

A placeholder--my last missive came across as far more angry and embittered than I had intended. Just wanted to say quickly that I have no ill will towards Michael Jackson nor his fans. None whatsoever...

It's really just a question of frustration at the celebrity death phenomenon and media-driven cult phenomena in general. I was laughing when I wrote the last business but there is much to say related to the public discourse of the last several weeks.

But that requires time, and that is a limited commodity at the moment. Watch this space.

July 2009 Round-up, Part 1

2009-07-11T21:59:00.004-04:00

Forgive me Father Google, it has been nearly a month since I've blogged...

Blogging is not unlike making confession in that the longer you go between confessions, the more there is to talk about. I suppose it is also not dissimilar in that it often seems as futile as farting into a hurricane wind because it doesn't really matter all that much anyway.

You can read the news though. Nothing at all has happened in the last month, except for one huge event. The summer of 2009 will go down in history as the summer that not a single thing happened except for Michael Jackson dying. Watch the news if you think I'm lying!

I actually made a vow not to mention it at all. What can I add that hasn't been picked over ad nauseum by every news outlet and every last person you know? That's a hard call, but I'm going to say something that probably won't go over well in light of Michael's post-mortem resurrection and deification. Cover your ears, oh ye faithful.

Fuck Michael Jackson. I was impressed when he danced backwards, but that was 25 years ago and the man had no bearing on my life in any single way. Genius? Get a grip! Humanitarian? The jury is out on that and you damn well know what I'm talking about. King of Pop? Whatever. He entertained a lot of people and now he's dead.

What I'm going to say next may be more unpleasant, but it's the honest truth. I have not heard a single person say a single nice thing about Michael Jackson in more than 20 years. I've heard nobody even discussing his music in a positive light and let's not even get into his personal life! I'm not talking about just the ever-false celebrities who have all come out singing his praise. I'm talking about friends, co-workers, acquaintances.... I've heard NOT ONE SINGLE PERSON utter a single kind word about the man.

Until now that he's dead.

So seriously? Fuck all of you too. I love some of you, but you are lying. As much as the media who picked on his bones while he was alive is now profiteering upon his demise, there is a friggin' trailer-load of dishonesty on every level.

More on the Michael Jackson phenomenon in the next post... I've got a lot to say and it ties into some other thoughts.

And please understand that this is more light-hearted than it sounds. I'm mostly laughing.