Freed from the restraints of meaning, I proceed out into the Universe unabated
I’ve got no picture postcards,
I’ve got no souvenirs
***
Nothing to live or die for/No religion too
Don’t get any big ideas. They’re not going to happen.
***
Stuff
I don’t know enough of it
The End
***
A beautiful girl can turn your world to dust. Sometimes I look at her in the rear-view mirror and see her gazing out the window. I wonder about what she is thinking, her synapses firing at an indeterminable rate. I wonder if it was the same thoughts I had, and perhaps we all have: flying, falling, slicing through rock and hills with our hand-scythes, wondering what things look like, layers peeled, on the insides.
***
1 A.M. Flashlights danced. Some giggling and brisk conversations above me. The chill of the water hit my feet as I stepped down the ladder at the end of the dock. Exhale. The muck in the end-of-summer shallows was to be avoided at all costs. Paddling on the surface, swimming out. Lake homes’ reflections on lake. Rolling on my back looking finally to the less-polluted heavens. The remnants of the Martian near miss stole the show. Three shooting stars and, my God, the Real Milky Way above me to the West finished the show. The chill and the muck brought me back to the flashing of lights and libation-induced laughs from the dock. The warmth of my towel. Sweatshirt back on. Mind finally cleared of The One Thing I Wanted to Do Tonight (I’m 30 for Christ’s sake).
Before I turned, the stars reflecting on the smooth surface left me with something new to dream about when my happy head finally hit the pillow.
Last night I realized (again?) that I’m going to die. And it made me sad to think that I won’t be around to see how any and all things progress to their ultimate ends. Even in my own city. It came from reading the Sunday paper – an article about the city where I live is potentially heading in the next 30 years. Yes, given a healthy existence and no 16-wheelers to run me over, I should be around to see 2033, but I was talking about AFTER.
It’s kind of like when Rae doesn’t want to go to bed. She’s afraid she’ll miss something … I can remember that feeling growing up and I suppose it’s the same for dying.
On another note, I had my first Ironman Triathlon nightmare on Saturday night. I finished the swim in a comfortable split, but couldn’t find my bike right away, and neither could the volunteers. I looked down at my watch after getting to talking to people (Lynn, family, etc.) and I had been in transition for over an hour and a half.
I guess that means all is well with the world and I’m right on track for my goals.
You know it's not a good thing when your life is reduced to the latest Mary-Kate and Ashley DVD collection ...
These films fly in the face of all logic to me: You don't have a life because you are choosing to buy a set of movies about two fictional characters having a soap-opera existence that you are to do your pitiful best to emulate throughout your inner-city living young life.
So many things play into this societal drivel it ain't funny no mo'.
Hell they don't even list directors on the copy. Any director in their right minds wouldn't want to be associated with this pablum. But as all the teasers say: The Mary-Kate and Ashley Brand is #1 in Firls Video, Girls Videogame, Celebrity Fashion, Girls Book, 'Tween Lifestyle Magazine and has a growing presence in Music.
What the fuck is "'Tween Lifestyle'?"
I don't know enough to describe all the shortcomings here. Something about the reinforcing of the stories about ourselves we like to tell ourselves ...
Crap, I dunno. "It's hard to run when a coat hanger beats you on the thighs ..."
Highway 20. Coming or going. It doesn't matter really. What was ahead or what was behind, the anticipation and the satisfaction play on equal footing in my mind. (Crash into me and I come into you ...) CDs on random. Jack Kerouack and pushing that jack - on the road I went. I had no concept of what I was about to get into, with the Red-Head or with The Race that Changes.
Phone calls and bike rides. Runs in the hills behind; swims in the lake. Soerbet in the heat under an awning with a couple from Wenatchee. Steak Dinner at the Duck Brand before heading home ... On Highway 20. Radio pumping Rancid and Dave Mathews, knowing that she was there. She didn't care. She just liked to be around me. I knew I had to grab onto that and hold on with everything I had. It was precisely that feeling that pushed me away, running scared before returning and confronting the smile and the embrace that I will never leave.
At some point we all quit talking about what it was we were going to give up to maintain this freedom we felt and what we knew to be good and righteous and whole. Youth. We moved on to jobs and the nasty undercurrents of the desperate masses.
I'm imagining now, I find some solace in the training toward ultra-races. I get to still be in touch with that youthful idealistic energy that is the world and it keeps me going in my current "real world" life. Without Tri-Geek-Dom, I'm not sure who I am, or who I would have turned out to be.
The personal, unutterable darkness and lightness confronted and moved through and beyond. Joy.
If you were sitting and watching, you might have been asking yourself what the Hell we were thinking, letting her pick the tortilla chips off the floor, place them carefully in the plastic bowl (already home to several partially eaten black olives), meticulously pour water into the mix and begin to smoosh things together with a dilligence found only in Enron executives covering their collective behinds.
You might have even looked on like you were rubbernekcing while passing your favorite train-wreck as my daughter took several bites of this astonishing concoction. If you were watching her the entire time, of course, you would have missed the obvious thing to any and all parents everywhere: Mom and Dad had those few precious moments to place morsels of goodness into their faces and even move some into their atrophied gullets before having to wrestle with the 20-month-old Ninja again.
Now that Lance has stolen the Yellow Jersey away into the secret place where only the likes of Miguel, Eddie and Fasto could find it, it's nice to see a Man of Tyler Hamilton's obvious strength, dedication and fortitude come to the fore.
Get his diminutive throne ready on Mount Olympus. Dude with the double cracked collar bone is among the new Gods of the world.
I sit and I smile, because sometimes (not Tour related) things come to pass just as I thought they might. Action = consequence.
I'm getting worn out thinking about how my life is in a constant state of just about to start ... It's like I don't allow myself to taste the real thing.
There are fleeting moments when I have that burning in my belly when I'm alive and willing and taking the steps ...
(Better than riding your woman with your favorite strap-on)
Yeah, I'll bring home the turkey, if you bring home the bacon.
Unless Lance Armstrong has a kick like Bruce Lee in the Chinese Connection the yellow jersey will switch hands after the second to last day of the Tour. The individual time trial ... where proof is in the pudding.
The Posties still have a shot at keeping Lance in Yellow. They'll have to relentlessly push the pace in the Pyrenees over the next four days. They'll have to catch and crush countless attacks from Ulrich, Vinokourov, Mayo and even Hamilton and their team mates.
Admittedly, only Telekom and Vinokourov have any of the horses to hang with USPS ... but Heras and Rubiera et al can only take Lance so far. He'll have to drop some awe-inspiring rides in the next few days if he wants to attain his goal of Five.
The Show II
Stop asking yourself why Conservatives have all the money, therefore most of the vehicles to get their message out to the mainstream. They are the ones, in the last 50 years who have benefited most from the status quo and will do anything (as is natural) to stay on top of things.
You pick me up just to throw me back down. (You say that I'm different? The only thing different is the way I feel about you ....)
No one I think is in my tree -
I mean it must be high or low.
Devoid of meaning. Worrying only about obtaining the proper shoes to accent your new ensemble. (Living is easy with your eyes closed.)
Once there was a way to get back home.
Sleep pretty darlin' do not cry, and I will sing a lullabye.
My head is as stuffy as Rae's nose this morning.
Love has a nasty way of dissappearing overnight ... I'm looking through me and I'm nowhere.
It's only after having found their one true love do the characters then get to tragically die. The two destined souls never get to spend time together. The story always truncates their relationship.
"My old man is another child that's grown old ...
Just give me one thing, Lord, that I can hold on to ..."
If I drown in good gin tonight you'll know why. You'll know why.
Do we aim for the three songs that create the foundation, the building blocks of who we are?
And if this is the case, are they the three songs that have resonated in our lives the longest. The background radiation of our lives? (If you listen very closely when you look in somebody's direction you can hear their music coming through ...?)
Or do you pick the three that represent the different phases of our lives? Childhood, HS/College, Adulthood and the like?
Or do you go the route of three portions of our dynamic human nature? As in Ego, Shadow and Archetype ...?
And perhaps it was too difficult to break the integral parts of the musical you down into three parts. This is OK, too, but you will have to pay for it.
Whatever path each of us chooses individually, this is an exciting experiment and a window, hopefully, that gives us an ocean view of each others' soul ...
Instead of settling in to a sustainable effort for a long climb, Lance will be sprinting up short climbs with his peak power reaching 500-1000 watts and his heart rate spiking to nearly 190 bpm.
I beg of you, get ye a heart rate monitor, go run up a hill as fast as you can until you're at 190 bpm and see what you feel like. Then do it again and again and again. 500-1000 watts on a bike? Fahgetaboutit.
"My Car go 160, swiftly ..."
Hedonism and you: What, if anything, morality/reason thrown aside, would you be doing right now, if you could be doing ANYTHING? What would your day look like? Are you afraid to fess up to yourself about this?
If you can't face and embrace the Shadow, you've got some shiznit on your plate, don't you? Because it always finds a way to sneak it's little self into any and all aspects of our lives. Like weeds growing up through asphault, Shadow will always find air to breathe. Might as well be in control of it. A steady dispensing mechanism of some sort. "A canon shooting cocunt cream ..."
But that's only my opinion. Go on and continue to have stuff blow up in your face. Just stay out of my way while you're at it.
Before we write Le Tour off as one three-week-long, super-slow-mo bitch slap delivered by Lance Armstrong to the rest of the cycling world, let us not forget Joseba Beloki and Jan Ulrich. They’re both within striking distance and have strong teams. Any and all things can happen in the Tour. Be wary and enjoy the ride.
Recent semi-quoted quote thingy:
“Death is a pleasant experience – ask any resusitated person. It’s this half-dying that is not. Walking around with a cane or ending up in a wheel chair; tubes sticking in and out of innumerable orifices. My goal is to prevent my half-death at any and all costs.”
So it goes without saying, if you want to reduce the collective cost of health care in this world, the most powerful thing you can do (even more than heading to the ballot box) is staying fit and eating a healthy low-fat, low cholestoral, low-salt diet. Your fat, plaque-clogged ass has an incredibly large chance of getting heart disease. Drives up the health costs a bit, ya know? Or you’ll become diabetic. Or your liver will die (get off the sauce too, while you’re at it). Or your lungs will finally turn to tar (get off the tougher-than-heroin kick; get ye to the Nicorette counter).
I’m not trying to be an ass, I’m just sayin’ put your “money where your mouth is.” Move. Be. Reality TV is for those with no lives of their own. Don’t be that guy(/girl).
Now if we can just get Rumsfeld to spew some more interesting spin on the “Situation in Iraq,” life will be REALLY good.
I used to think my ideas worthless! Then I started watching television and that confirmed it!
Anyone who bought anything online over the holiday weekend should be turned over to Ashcroft. The Patriotic Americans were so completely intoxicated on one substance or another that they quickly became threats to their children and people everywhere.
The Real Patriots attained this state of chemical Nirvana as they headed home from work the day before and maintained straight on through the weekend. Remember, any explosives, especially those obtained in illegal manners, make you fervorently patriotic in the state's eyes. So never forget: when in doubt, blow shit up.
If anyone cares to listen, what I have spinning at any given moment is the same as getting a glimpse at Faulkner's library when he was writing ...
One of these mornings ...
The monkeys want us to believe we are chimps (and the chimps are monkeys ...). And all evidence has been erased - down the memory hole. What is said from on high is to be believed down low and that's the way we like it. Plausible deniablity. We are Judas, feverishly washing our hands of all of this. But where is it exactly, that I end and you begin? The YOU being everyone, everywhere of course? We are interconnected in far more ways than we are disconnected. One has to strive with all one's might to disconnect. Connectedness, while being a double-edged sword can be wielded as our greatest strength in overcoming anything - getting through the chimp/monkey paradigm.
we're rotten fruit
we're damaged goods
what the hell we’ve got nothing more to lose
one burst and we will probably crumble
we're backdrifting
this far but no further
i'm hangin goff a branch
i'm teetering on a breaker
honey sweets so fall asleep
i'm backsliding
you fell into our arms
you fell into our arms
we tried but there was nothing we could do
nothing we could do
all evidence has been buried
all tapes have been erased
but your footsteps give you away
so you're backtracking
oh oh oh
you fell into our arms
you fell into our arms
we tried but there was nothing we could do
nothing we could do
you fell into our
you fell into a
we're rotten fruit
we're damaged goods
what the hell we’ve got nothing more to lose
one burst and we will probably crumble
we're backdrifters
When the lies start flowing from the top down, maybe it's time to worry.
I'm amazed at the lack of knowledge of some of some folks I work with.
I'm sitting there today listening to a perfectly amiable fellow telling me that I've been to one of these informative presentations every year. I've been with the company 10 years. I have never been to a presentation specifically geared toward sexual misconduct.
Now, I might have signed off on the "Federally mandated" sexual discrimination policy, given that it's in the employee handbook, and we've been asked to glance at a few pamphlets now and again and then sign off on everything from fire and HAZMAT safety to lifting properly.
But he's telling me I have.
All right.
Now he's telling me part of his job in HR is to write company statements of our position - statements to the effect of what "we" did or didn't do was the proper course of action regarding accusations of sexual harassment or misconduct in the workplace.
At this point let me clue you in on who the audience was: my peers. Nobody was a manager, just a few of us were salaried.
I won't go into the botched attempt and defining the differentiation in the company's eyes between "salaried managers" and hourly and regular salaried employees. There were no salaried managers in the room. What I gleaned from his attempt was the fact that salaried managers were bound to tell about someone's complaint of sexual harassment - even in passing at a non-company event, like a child's caretaker is bound to report any wrongdoing to CPS.
Anyway, what we have is a fellow speaking to the people he'd be writing against, literally, in case one of us brought a charge of sexual harassment in the workplace against our employer.
Last time I checked, most quid pro quo involved managers and their directs. "General" harassment occurs across the board, certainly, but it's certainly not mostly the lesbian new-hires harassing their female executive VPs ... if you follow me.
The fellow mentioned that we have a no tolerance policy towards discrimination of any kind.
When I asked him if the fellow that cost the company a few hundred grand for "allegedly" dropping his pants in front of another female employee was still working for the company, he asked the room if they knew what I was talking about (most of them groaned no) but the nice man said, yes the pants dropper was.
He went on to explain that the company feared retaliation from the man, should he be fired, now, two years after the fact.
Of course, "We" moved him to a different - better - shift to get him away from the woman he had his problem with.
The nice man in the front of the room failed to mention to the rest of the group the other important aspect of the case: A litany of other women came forward stating they had faced similar harassment from him: remarks, leers, tongue waggling, bragging about his sexual prowess.
So "We" moved him and gave him a whole new pot of women to pick on. Great. No wonder the judge ruled against "us."
The nice man at the front of the room said, in his opinion, not our company's, the judge ruled to heavily against "us." I got the distinct feeling that somehow because the harassed woman received perhaps an extraordinary settlement from the judicial trial and that "We" would be appealing the decision, that somehow this - not absolved - but emboldened the harasser’s case ...
Because "We" would never make it a habit of keeping or promoting people who behaved in such a matter, would we? Ah, but we have ... But that's a topic for another time, when I'm out of this joint ...
I feel "we're" setting a dangerous precedent here.
I love this company, really. I don't want to see it's image sullied and it's nose bloodied from cockamamie decisions. If "we" have managers in place who's best course of action is to separate the kids in the playroom - remember out "no tolerance" policy - then we've got a few more lawsuits coming before somebody starts rolling some heads at the managerial level, because THEY are the ones who ultimately are responsible for their employee's performance and conduct, are they not? Because we obviously can't expect the kiddies to play nice in the room together, can we?
I mean, that's why "we" pay 'em so well, right?
Enough of the rhetorical questions. We ALL can do better. Especially yours truly.
He's still funny as Hell, even beat to piss, his insides churned up, brain addled, rattled and thrown into drug-induced cognitive dissaray.
Seven ribs busted. Spleen? In a jar or the Biohazard refuse bin. One lung? Fully functioning. The other? Multiple punctures and lacerations (those little membranes heal remarkably well, however). The bend but don't break defense manifest in a human body.
Between the Caddyshack quotes, semi-lucid comments on the merrits of good gin and the continuation of sentences paused then continued after a few minutes hiatus to pain and druggy-land, the truth would come out.
We were there. Good, fine, hunky-dory. We were the middle relievers just holding the game together before the closer was warmed up and ready to go. His wife and children were on their way.
He had seen his children briefly Sunday evening - the accident was Saturday. He hadn't seen his wife since the lake.
It all gets upset and thrown to shambles when a good friend breaks the routine I've set for myself, with very little variation, for months on end.
In a hospital I realize that things aren't always as they seem. I'm forced to remember there are people ailing, being born, dying every moment of every day. It sounds trite in my head now, writing it down, but there is something powerful here. Powerful in the sense we are only a few degrees from each other. We're connected.
I'm asleep at 11:30 PM most nights - have been for up to 2.5 hours. But not that night. I was driving home from visiting with friends and giving them an update as to our injured commrade's status. It is what I'd want, and what I'd expect and what I know happened in a similar situation not too long ago - when it happened to me.
I stepped off a plane with my wife in child in San Francisco two days later and was struck again by the fury and swiftness of life going on around me while I'm normally at my desk at work, pounding away about some item or another. Open your eyes, things are going on around you.
From me, to my neighbors, to my city, to my region, to my country, to my world.
Then the memory struck me again: I'd been back a week, the moon was full, my windows down on a late Spring night. The jet lag was starting to wear off. My "new friends" were flip side. It was near midnight and for them, it was almost noon. Then thinking about my buddy from home and his girlfriend in Germany ... How many hours there? And the people on the plane I came home on ... where are they now?
When his girls and wife finally showed up with his brother-in-law, the relief was evident on his face. We made a quick exit, telling him we'd see him soon and to get better.
It's been a week since I've visited and he's still in the hospital. A blood clot behind his knee is contemplating things - his release date not yet estabilished.
I'm back to thinking outside of myself. Remembering what it is like on my beach in Hawaii, in the hospital rooms, at the camps and around the world.
Axiomatic - Universally recognized truth (axiom); self-evident, principle, postulate.
Wookies.
Get ready to strap one on son!
Grab ankles.
Are you ready for the Lord of my Pants?
How in the Hell does this guy manage to breathe?
Who are you calling white, Casper?
Tom "Mama's got a Girlfriend Now" Greuning
"Rode to Pateros and back ~92 miles. +105 degrees. Tired. Thirsty. Had a steak at the Duck Brand Restaurant. Drove home. Made it in Two hours, 50 minutes."
Average height (5' 9")
Average white man's complexion (light skinned)
Male patterened baldness
6.5-inch dick.
A little near-sighted
10 pounds overweight
Not a prom king
Not a pot head
Not an athlete
Works out three times per week
IT/Middle Management Professional
Scored 1000 on the SAT
Never got any attention for being stellar
Never got any for sucking it up too bad
Lost in the middle.
We have to believe in the stories we tell ourselves so we can cope and move forward with our lives. If we were to begin to see things from the outside, "as things 'really' are," some might say, then our sense of self would be usurped for ... what? The loss of plausible deniability, for one thing. Our pseudo, self-proscribed innocence.
We are taught that evil is concentrated in one source. Satan. The evil mastermind (Lex Luthor, et. al). That evil tends to gravitate to one particular area: slums, dark alleys, Pioneer Square in Seattle during Mardi Gras.
The truth we know intrinsically, yet sometimes gets clouded or covered up; maybe we choose to ignore it. But the reality is there is evil in every one of us - just as there is good in every one of us - waiting to get out. Suppress either one to successfully and for too long and an explosion of good or evil is bound to happen at some point.
Then again, sometimes people (Americans, even) make a big deal about how simplifying your life, or being easier on yourself or not working out as much have all changed their lives for the better.
What we tend to forget is the fact that "these people" had to make the money first to enable themselves to simmer down and simplify their lives through buying that ranch in Eastern Washington.
Athletes, especially tri-geek types (which I tend to know best), mention off-handedly that their performances went up when their overall mileage went down. No shit. "You" had to go through the pain and long hours to get your body to respond to doing less.
Suffering and hard work ultimately begat the most greatness.
Sex, Poetry and The Princess of the Romance Languages
In the poetic subtext lies the demeaning dementia of our Words and Times. It's all about sex.
No, my dears, I'm not speaking of loves spurned. I'm talking, rattling the headboards, swinging from the chandeliers freaky circus sex.
If you got your darling back, or if they had never left or died, or switched sides of the plate on you, you'd still be rattling the headboard - with THAT person.
Oh, sure the ache and myriad melancholy that marches in tight formation along side your Desire is requisite, and much time should be spent, cathartically, dealing with said emotions, but sheesh, kids, What I'm Saying Is: If things were good and you were still getting it on = no poetic melancholy.
Hell, I remembered even today, without any REAL poetry, my more than latent desire to be in the midst of wild, passionate love making with a woman continuously speaking a foreign language in my ear. And it can't be Russian, I speak enough of the dreadfully wonderful language that it has simply lost its coitus luster for me.
Now, the bit that got my fewer and farther between synapses firing in this regard was my passing of a trio of French Canadian Women (not a one I'm in the least bit intrigued by) in the midst of a heated conversation about something - In French. Admittedly, my French peaked at or around age seven in Mrs. Jones' Montessori class, so I, again, was lost in a world of soup armed only with a fork.
Ah, French, the Princess of the Romance languages, soft on the ear, flowing and, when wielded properly, far beyond intensely erotic. Well, at least to my undereducated buttocks.
My closest pass to realizing my junk (Chinese, not English) of a dream was at a party, whilst I was still attending Junior College. A woman (I can't remember if she was a French Major, or simply spoke) had become sufficiently inibriated enough to saddle up behind me and press her well-coifed head against mine while I was choosing more music to play (the stereo/sound system is usually the place you'll find me at a social event when I'm feeling uncomfortable).
She began rubbing her nose in my ear and speaking gently, softly some words I imagined were idealized passion of sorts - I was quite certain it had nothing to do with my music selection. I turned toward her and asked her - in English - to kindly continue.
And she did. Until her boyfriend returned, and stood looming in the hallway. They had a roe - in English - which confirmed my worst fears: I was not the first lad to have his interest peaked by this bi-lingual siren. Her "man" had caught her in the act once again and was none too happy.
He never turned his attentions to me - it was as if he pitied me - I lost out again.
"I saw a newborn baby with wild wolves all around it"
The notion that gets bantered about, at least WAS bantered about by some friends, and in some (usually "liberal") discourse, is the "Case Against Babies" being that some folks don't want to bring a child into "a world like this."
A world like what? The one you've so dilligently built for yourself for 20, 30, or 40 years? Or, at least, let happen to you during the same time frame - drifting along on the Crunchy Baboochy - ending up on some delta of thought and idealogy?
Our world is the one we make of the one we've landed in. Yes, our circumstances, bend, mould and shape who we are, or we can, or might turn out to be, but ultimately it is our choices that get us to where we are.
Just listening to music, watching a few films and reading a few books will grant you an understanding that there are worlds out there that you cannot possibly imagine. So foreign from your existence, you or "they" might as well be living on a different planet. And I'm not talking about 3000 miles from you, I'm talking about more like within a 30 minute drive from your house - more like 3 seconds for many of us.
Sometimes it means that every time you flip on the Damn USA Channel you see Robert DeNiro and Christopher Walken in the Deer Hunter about to blow some VC away during their game of Russian Roulette. Sometimes it's seeing Pimps and Hos at work. Sometimes it's walkin' down the street when you're in highschool and having a brother come up to you exclaiming "Baby Stoners! What you want? What you need?" Sometimes it's getting Blotto at the USA vs. Venezuela match and screaming at Brian McBride to suck it up.
There are worlds out there we cannot fathom, let alone begin to imagine. If you, big adult that you are, are in a world where bringing a kid into it doesn't seem like a great idea, good for you. Don't.
But here's the flip side of the coin: breeding them out has got to work sometime. What I mean by that whacky-ass statement is this: If you are the kind of person who believes in a good, righteous and just world, then by God raise a kid or two who does the same. If that means adopting or being a Big Brother or Big Sister, or even trying your hand at being a foster parent, I say GO FOR IT.
Of course there are a multitude of reasons to NOT have children. I simply argue "the state of the world" isn't one of them. We make our reality. Go make yours.
I'm sticking my neck out a bit further from the tortoise shell again. I'm considering getting back to the writing grind in earnest and foraying into a writers group that meets Tuesdays for the summer. Of course this necessitates the dropping of some greenbacks, the end result being yours truely will show up on time with his homework done, if only out of fearing The Lovely Red-Head at home and "not getting my freaking money's worth." Or something.
It was business as usual in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit at Children's Hospital here in Seattle.
On some level, they come, they go and you never see them again. The nurses, the neonatologists, the respiratory therapists, social workers and surgeons maintain a professional distance. But empathy and compassion and skill draw them to the most fragile of beings. You can't walk in and walk out without knowing.
A nurse told me once that they had a little one who passed after a year in their care. The German Sheppard that is brought in to cheer up the older kids made a visit to the lobby of the NICU that morning - for all who knew that little boy needed some levity, their sorrow so great. They'll need him to come by again, I suspect.
The eyes of our world were watching. His story was on the radio, subjects of journals - data supreme. The exception. The marvelous miraculous example to us all. One tough little guy who wanted it. A gamer who put on his hard hat on, brought his lunch box and stayed all day - for over 10 months.
He was in my daughters room. And was part of the healing process like so many before him.
It's hard, sitting on this side of the fence and looking in on the proceedings. All I know is happy endings - I did imagine and continue to imagine what Loss of this magnitude feels like. Condolences, hugs and memorials aside, the beauty and curse of the death of your child ensures you have that angel on your shoulder forever.
When I'M ninety, I'll be dreaming of the little man that was and what might or might not have been with my daughter. His parents ...
As it is, it was a sunny day. The most beautiful day of the year thus far. 10:06 AM, he chose to ride on.
Thanks for the memories, stories and photos little B.
Watching people around me slowly, inexorably turn into their mothers and fathers.
MTV's Dance Party dancer turned mom and still California Big Screen dreaming (no, she never went down THAT path).
I ingrained the naughty/devious grin on her face in the nuclei of the atoms of my retinas (whence they move, the knowledge is bound to them, teeming and replicating throughout my body). She caught me though, glancing up from the phone, knowing then that I had seen and understood. This is how it starts.
Crapola on the comments. We'll see what we can do ...
I dunno if it's gonna work but I tried to add a comments section ... We'll see.
Many things bopping around in my tired noggin this evening. Everything from an article I recently read regarding the somewhat sudden proliferation (eighty's style?) of conservative independent newspapers on college campuses to the resignation of Ari Fliescher as White House Press secretary.
But the funniest thing had to be from yesterday when my buddy Matt was helping my wife and I decide where we were going to hang our American flag off our home. He said "I didn't think you would get one of these ..." He's such a bastard at times =).
For the record, I know full well that I'm absolutely blessed to live in this country. I'm a lucky person to be able to speak my mind and not be shot or gagged for it. Just like you.
Never forget this honor we share. Rise up and fight for it if need be. Voting - and getting other like-minded folks to the polls - is how you do it. You can still make a difference.
Off the suds crate.
My daughter got tubes in her ears this morning. She's a tough cookie. My wife threatened (mildly) the surgeon - told him to do a good job.
Excerpts from an article by Scott Peterson for the Christian Science Monitor
No one has warned the vendor in the faded, threadbare black gown to keep the toxic and radioactive dust off her produce. The children haven't been told not to play with the radioactive debris. They gather around as a Geiger counter carried by a visiting reporter starts singing when it nears a DU bullet fragment no bigger than a pencil eraser. It registers nearly 1,000 times normal background radiation levels on the digital readout.
In the first partial Pentagon disclosure of the amount of DU used in Iraq, a US Central Command spokesman told the Monitor that A-10 Warthog aircraft - the same planes that shot at the Iraqi planning ministry - fired 300,000 bullets. The normal combat mix for these 30-mm rounds is five DU bullets to 1 - a mix that would have left about 75 tons of DU in Iraq.
Pentagon officials say that DU is relatively harmless and a necessary part of modern warfare. "There is not really any danger, at least that we know about, for the people of Iraq," said Lt. Col. Michael Sigmon, deputy surgeon for the US Army's V Corps, told journalists in Baghdad last week. He asserted that children playing with expended tank shells would have to eat and then practically suffocate on DU residue to cause harm.
"After we shoot something with DU, we're not supposed to go around it, due to the fact that it could cause cancer," says a sergeant in Baghdad from New York, assigned to a Bradley, who asked not to be further identified.
"We don't know the effects of what it could do," says the sergeant. "If one of our vehicles burnt with a DU round inside, or an ammo truck, we wouldn't go near it, even if it had important documents inside. We play it safe."
Six American vehicles struck with DU "friendly fire" in 1991 were deemed to be too contaminated to take home, and were buried in Saudi Arabia. Of 16 more brought back to a purpose-built facility in South Carolina, six had to be buried in a low-level radioactive waste dump.
"We were buttoned up when we drove by that - all our hatches were closed," the US sergeant says. "If we saw anything on fire, we wouldn't stop anywhere near it. We would just keep on driving."
That's an option that produce seller Hamid doesn't have.
The Sign Said, "XXX," But They Were Talking About Rootbeer
Well, before we all turn into meat-sicles from self-induced nuclear winter, let me get this off my chest: If your life is starting to look like Nails' song "88 lines about 44 women" (or men, or both - we're egalitarian 'round here) it might be time to grow up.
While we can all be on it, we can't all be Grade A class, number one in our divisions. So, necessarily, we have to find a way to shut up and be happy in our existences of quiet desperation. Or so we think.
A good friend of mine posed the problematic juxtaposition of finding herself in charge of helping some very troubled youth to conform to societal norms while at the same time fostering some sense of healthy self. Individual conformity. Horatio Alger for the Sexual Predator Set.
Things to Do in Denver When You're Dead Moment: Are we really all in each other's presence - in our worlds of soup - armed only with forks ...?
Just to clear up the last entry: I've never been a b-boy standing in a b-boy stance. But I always thought it might have been cool to try it. The times I've tried in front of the mirror made me laugh. Which is good, because I'm the biggest dork who lives inside my own skin. The rest of them are pretty cool - but me? Nah.
These things happen when you listen to Old School Rap:
(STICKY FINGAZ)
I'm a b-boy
Standin in my b-boy stance
Hurry up and give me the microphone before I bust in my pants
The mad author of anguish
My language, Polluted
Onyx is heavyweight (Sonsee: And still undisputed!!)
He took the words right out my mouth and walked a mile in my shoes
I've paid so many dues, I feel used and abused
And I'm.... so confused
umm, excuse me, for example
I'm the inspiration, for a WHOLE generation
And unless you got 10 SSsssticky Fingers
Its straight immitation
A figment, of your imagination
But but but but wait it gets worse!!
I'm not watered down so I'm dyin of thirst
Comin thru wit a scam, a fullproof plan
B-boys make some noise, and just, JUST SLAM!
SLAM! duuh duuh duuh, duuh duuh duuh Let the boys be boys!
SLAM! duuh duuh duuh, duuh duuh duuh Let the boys be boys!
SLAM! duuh duuh duuh, duuh duuh duuh Let the boys be boys!
SLAM! duuh duuh duuh, duuh duuh duuh Let the boys be boys!
SLAM! duuh duuh duuh, duuh duuh duuh Let the boys be boys!
SLAM! duuh duuh duuh, duuh duuh duuh Let the boys be boys!
SLAM! duuh duuh duuh, duuh duuh duuh Let the boys be boys!
SLAM! duuh duuh duuh, duuh duuh duuh Let the boys be boys!
SLAM! duuh duuh duuh, duuh duuh duuh Let the boys be boys!
SLAM!
I used to think that what I had to say wasn't important. That the metavoices of the world is all there is. Maybe that is how it's "supposed" to be given the structure of discourse in our society.
It's only lately that I've discovered that those of us out there attempting to synthesize the world of "how we grew up" (which metamorphoses with each record or non-record of what happened) with the constantly changing here and now, is becoming an increasingly important endeavor.
With the advent of companies who's sole role is archiving net traffic and discourse (not unlike this one) as a record for future generation, the reminder that we are without a physical record (letters, books, journals - all in the physical realm) of some of our recent offerings from all over the planet is apparent.
In the future, harvesting hardrives will suplant finding the brilliant offerings in a sock drawer when auntie dies.
I've come to a dead end
Ends divide the means
Meaning's lost on me
Me and my handy rake
Raking the river beautifies the world
Worlds spent apart from you
You and your flacid baggage
Baggage requiring me to stand up
Up high above, over the top
Topping it all, we're just extras
Extras looking for our bit roles
Roles in a play where the understading's been lost
Lost to dark matter and background noise
Noise (white), light (spectrum), Heat (absolute zero K)
Kelvin, that's what his name is, yes
Yes, you should be careful who you walk next to
The afterglow of the Comedy
Wore off as we left the party
"That was easy," his poster-boy face
smiled, wreaking, pressed too close to mine.
I showed him my teeth
(compliance)
We stepped on, light from the Tiki kitsch
showing the way.
"You realize," he went on, "that my CEO
is a Wall Holder when he pees?
(It's true.)
I see him do it all the time in the
Executive Washroom." He extended
his arm, and paused his step, laughing.
It was late and I was beginning to feel
ill again.
He was going non-stop now, whatever
it was he ingested was taking hold,
"What do you think of when you hear the word
'cockpit?'" I shrugged
(indifference)
"I mean, do you visualize an airplane, a cock
fighting ring in rural Mexico (or next door, I thought),
or a six foot pit, ringed with dildos and cocks sticking
through holes?"
I don't answer
We stumble on - it's dark now, torches gone
"Hell," he says, "I'm heading back up there. That idea's
too good to waste."
I'm about to ask which one he thinks of when he turns on his
(drunken) heel
and half-whispers "Maybe they'll let me do
a few more in front of their mothers while they build it ..."
And then I know
The sun came up
& shot through the blinds
Today was the day
& I was already behind ...
My God, I was raised on TV, just like so many of you I see around me.
Nothin' to live or die for, no religion too.
Take it away, but I want more and more.
One day I'm gonna loose the war.
The Blues are still required.
She said, "Sorry I can't go on with this ..."
We've been dancin' with Mr. Brownstone,
He won't leave me alone.
Nobody ever got a medal for being Mr./Miss Chipper 24/7
(Nobody ever got one for being an complete and total asshole constantly either ... well, I suppose that's debatable)
I don't know what to believe
Sometimes, I even forget ...
A list of shit I avoid at all costs starts with the invocation of womens' wrath.
silence swimming in a pool of dreams
beneath its depths the forgotten streams
above, the city of the evening star
behind its walls, the grand bazaar
"Did you kill the man who killed you William Blake?"
"But I'm not dead ..."
There's no simple explanation
for anything important any of us do ...
Diving in at the gun with riff's peeling from "New Orleans Is Sinking" tearing through your auditory essence
(I'll see you on Arizona Bay)
Just hold on, 'cause I'm comin'.
I'm so glad we made it.
Come on, come on
You and whose army?
Dropping off the edge sideways
only to land on your feet and plunge
headlong into a dive
sometimes, sometimes (you look up and half the year is gone and your 17-month-old daughter is giving you a knowing grin before pulling the wool over your eyes one more time)
Time, place, and the associations of music in our psyches and who we are, who we were and who we will be. I had the experience this afternoon of hearing a song I hadn't heard in awhile, and it brought me right back to the teenage mindframe that I had developed, nurtured, known and loved.
Now people have beaten this "music is the soundtrack of our lives" (thanks "Dick" Clark) horse to death a long, long time ago, so all I can do is pitch in my two cents (sense) and see where it goes.
Pinky swearing. Backwashing. Football at the park. Ripped t-shirt - it was my favorite one. At school; saying a I couldn't go. He left on his bike. Me riding mine up to the top of the street; watching the planes take off. (When would it be my turn?)
Intelligence is not simply possessing knowledge but the ability to apply that knowledge in a meaningful and constructive way.
A weekend giving of yourself completely can make you tired, but it always seems to fill up your soul in ways just lounging around drinking beer and watching the NHL playoffs cannot.
Becoming closer with your neighbors can be a daunting and rewarding task.
Wondering why your name is the way it is on your birth certificate for the first time - when you're almost 30 - makes for interesting conversation with your wife on a Sunday evening.
Watching your daughter spin around and fall down - over and over - can be the most entertaining way to spend half an hour in the history of mankind.
Sleep is a precious commodity. Especially when you "can't" have it.
an e-mail message to you from jeremy@home may contain inappropriate
language and has been intercepted by our automated email protection system.
if you recognize the sender's email address and you feel that this email is
for business purposes, please reply to this message and we will deliver it
to you.
we suspect this employee of having a sh*tty attitude and misusing
valuable corporate resources such as chairs, more than 256 colors and
capital letters. we also suspect him of singing to himself during
the day and reading emails in fonts other than courier 12 point,
possibly even using italics.
if this is not the case, then, hey, rally on. otherwise it's time
for an ashcroft-type enquiry. you saw what happened to that guy down
at intel? hope you've never donated to the salvation army as they're
a religious organization too. we saw you last christmas, money in
the little red tin -- we're on to you. can you say "enemy combatant?
sunny vacation in guantanamo, anyone? if this is the case please
contact your corporate thought police in cube 7b.
all received requests will be processed within 1 business day.
thank you for surrendering your civil liberties so easily.
war is peace
freedom is slavery
ignorance is strength
For those of us that have been following the flow for a bit and not pretending the writing on the wall was in Portuguese (we, being typically English-only types, 'round here) the announcement by the Bush Administration that the being built and or upgraded currently in Iraq will be permanent fixtures.
Oh, and "we" won't "allow" a "democratically elected" government in Iraq that "we" don't "like."
Well, I'll be. That doesn't sound like "us" at all.
Oh yeah, and Lieberman et al queing up for Presidential bids seem to be following in line behind. The whole concept that we've somehow arrived at this point in History simply because a bunch of recycled Reaganite wackos made the highest office on the planet is kind of beyond me. If Al Gore and his lovely bride of "Free Speech and Expressionism" (heck, you can throw in Ralph Nader, here) had made it, I argue we'd be in much the same boat we find ourselves today.
A) It's not like Osama and Co. decided that "Hey, Shrub made the White House, NOW we take the towers ...." Horse pucky. We're all in this one together, kids. Dem's, 'Publicans, Green Party, the lot.
Now Ralphy's response might have been decidedly different to all of this, but he would made us all out to be a bunch of commie panzies who actually might want to listen what the rest of the world has to say. But that's not how we grow up 'round here, not amongst many of my Monolingual buddies.
And oh, yeah, just a friendly reminder to my "real" leftist co-horts: if you plan to go out and practice your right to free speech and march and protest and "practice civil disobedience" (all of which I am willing to fight and die for - as well as being a major proponent and supporter of) don't be surprised when a bunch of folks who don't agree with you (from the "redneck" and his death theats down the street to the cops and National Guard firing rubber bullets, wooden dowels and tear gas at you) come after you.
Don't fear it, accept it as part of the War against this growing menace in our society. Arm yourselves with knowledge (legal, and otherwise), self defense - to be read as offense - (aerobic kickboxing classes, don't count shoogah), and have the understanding the reason why the Black Panthers "lost" is because they didn't have enough (or big enough) guns.
And by all means, don't cry about being shot in the face and back by some joker in a blue uniform with a sidearm. How and why would you expect anything different?
Pacificism works only in very specific situations, Michael Moore. Look at when and how the British left India. Let's revist history all over again.
I'll have some 'splainin to do regarding some of this ...
Please see my entry from April 10 ("Coalition Public Service Announcement") and then read this part of Robert Fisk's recent dispatch from Iraq:
It's going wrong, faster than anyone could have imagined. The army of "liberation" has already turned into the army of occupation. The Shias are threatening to fight the Americans, to create their own war of "liberation".
At night on every one of the Shia Muslim barricades in Sadr City, there are 14 men with automatic rifles. Even the US Marines in Baghdad are talking of the insults being flung at them. "Go away! Get out of my face!" an American soldier screamed at an Iraqi trying to push towards the wire surrounding an infantry unit in the capital yesterday. I watched the man's face suffuse with rage. "God is Great! God is Great!" the Iraqi retorted.
"Fuck you!"
The Americans have now issued a "Message to the Citizens of Baghdad", a document as colonial in spirit as it is insensitive in tone. "Please avoid leaving your homes during the night hours after evening prayers and before the call to morning prayers," it tells the people of the city. "During this time, terrorist forces associated with the former regime of Saddam Hussein, as well as various criminal elements, are known to move through the area ... please do not leave your homes during this time. During all hours, please approach Coalition military positions with extreme caution ..."
So now - with neither electricity nor running water - the millions of Iraqis here are ordered to stay in their homes from dusk to dawn. Lockdown. It's a form of imprisonment. In their own country. Written by the command of the 1st US Marine Division, it's a curfew in all but name.
Maybe compression is the reason why we do what we do.
It's funny how, everyday we learn things about ourselves and others.
In athletics some speak of "white moments," (like in that Kevin Costner baseball movie when he wills himself to "clear the mechanism") chunks of time when our focus and attention to detail are at their greatest. These chunks sometimes last the entirety of say 45 seconds - or less - but can last up to several hours or days.
But for most of us mere mortals, several minutes of this level of intensity is enough to show us what we need to know.
Our sporting/fighting/athletic endeavors sometimes create a compressed "hypertime" or "hyper-reality" where everything is magnified +100,000X and we get our learning in the most minute fractions of our existence ...
Moments where you are forced to live in the here and now or perish (sometimes literally).
What makes this hyper-existence special isn't just in living in the moments themselves - for they extend beyond and out into the realm of other's worlds and existences. If these moments were fishing stories, they are the ones that you'd still be sitting around the campfire with your favorite flavor of Grog and recanting with such great levels of detail that it makes all others around you sick to "hear that damn story again" - 25 years after the fact.
The problem is we (the storytellers) know how important and transitory these moments are - especially in the formation of who we are as beings. A literall lifetime wrapped up inside two seconds or three two-minute rounds; our interaction with the Universe stripped bare and laid bare before all souls. The beautiful essance of who we are.
Compressed Rockabily Riot Act. (I have no idea what that means, but it came out so there you have it.)
I handed him the book I'd promised and stated "If I get this back, great, if not ...," I shrugged.
He told me I'd get it back. We smiled and shook hands.
He had been there, as much as anyone, through my little family's scariest moments. I know him. He prayed every night for us. He told others about our plight - and I'm certain they prayed too. This is community. This is what is done in trying times.
Later, in the afternoon I asked him what he was doing for the Easter Holiday weekend. He looked at me, hair still perfectly placed (the recent trim was becoming), his eyes more strained and red than I'd ever remembered on him.
He said "I'm taking dad to church on Sunday." There was a certainty and an understanding in the resoluteness of his voice. Something I recognized, but could not fully pretend to understand. Air and vibrations combined with body language on both our behalves completing the bonds in the air between us.
This man, his father, may not be here for another Easter. The subtext was easily read, but things that seem easy mostly never are.
I stood, rooted, waiting for whatever he was to offer next. His mom and sister were going back "home" for the weekend. Big plans for sis and a national event. Mom would return when sis was safely on her way. He was going to stay in town with his father.
His brother's wife is due with twins soon as well, he reminded me (good, I thought, something I can relate a little better to), but they were at 33 weeks gestation, and at 4+ pounds each and starting to get a little grumpy inside mom it sounded like to him. A little one's heartrate was dipping for undesirable periods of time. They might be coming soon.
I looked back at him, doing my best to show empathy, standing in front of filing cabinets and the new copy machine, with people walking in front of us all the while. I said "When it rains, it pours, huh?" He nodded and said, "Yes." We shook hands again and moved on - bound to what somebody tells us is the more important thing for the time being.
I don't have the capacity for prayer he does - not in the same way at least. He and his family are here, in my mind and in my dreams ~ I'm giving them all I have. I'm willing that this not be the last Easter they get to share together - that he might find the strength he needs to come through it all.
The beautiful lull, the dangerous tug
We get to feel small from high up above
And after a glimpse over the top
The rest of the world becomes a gift shop
The pendulum swings for the horse like a man
Out over the rim is ice cream to him
The beautiful lull, the dangerous tug
we get to feel small but not out of place at all
We're forced to bed but we're free to dream
All us human extras, all us herded beings
And after a glimpse over the top
The rest of the world becomes a gift shop
I don't know what to believe, sometimes I even forget
And if it's a lie, terrorists made me say it
The beautiful lull, the dangerous tug
We get to feel small from high up above
From high up above
I blew through the atmosphere,
My hair a blue-green (cold) fire
I circled then,
face scrunched, kneck twisted
Yearning.
My wings impervious to these (non) elements
A new test for a new age -
I rode the solar currents electric
A step closer to my organic maker
Looking "up" no longer ~
God was all about me now
I reached out -
sailing to an ever-present vast horizon
The ocean clear, thick clouds over a new land
When the tears came,
it was not for the beauty of my vision -
but for my return -
pulled back again before my time.
Once upon a time there was a little story about Dinty Moore stew:
The older I get the more I start to appreciate some of the guy-guy things in my life. It's not a He-Man Woman Hater thing at all. It's all about those times you're able to just sit and watch a game, or have a beer, or go fishing, or go for a ride, or go for a run, or go camping and do all of the above (well, except we play, not watch games).
The fellows I am lucky enough to hang out with are diverse enough that we hardly ever see eye to eye on anything. This makes for lively conversation over several brews, Dr. Jacks or anything else we feel like concocting at the moment.
No matter what it might be, crawdad fishing, sitting around the campfire, drivin' on up to the outhouse, throwing around the baseball, or rafting down the river, the spirits are flowing and the mouths are moving. Whether the brains remain clear enough to follow all the arguements and threads isn't necessarily the point.
The hills and the river and the trees hear us and understand better than we do most times.
The music - while only battery powered, and not often a capella - is what we have collectively listened to growing up. Rarely is anything "new" brought along. If there is anything we can usually come to agreement on, it is the music.
I haven't much more to say at this point other than, if you're reading this and come back, you're sure to read more about The Dinty Moore in the future. "Can August come fast enough?" is often the question ...
There is a line that we cross, a line that can be toed for a good long while - sometimes the longer, the better (for you must be certain) - but once we step over mysterious things within and around us are put into motion. Sometimes the starting is enough - the gears moving inexorably on, churning out their purposeful creations.
Other times, it takes daily maintenance to remind yourself why you came to this side in the first place. We arm ourselves with knowledge and supporters who help keep us aimed at the prize. Choice is there with us every moment.
And if you choose Peanut M&Ms (and are willing to share the green ones) I'm yours for life.
While I was spinning during my workout at lunch I had the joy of watching Fox News and their glib updates regarding "Operation Iraqi Freedom." The one that peeked my interest stated that the UK/US would be broadcasting one hour per day to Iraq "News and Coalition Public Service Announcements."
I have done them the favor of writing their next PSA (with a little help from Jello Biafra).
"We interrupt this program with a special bulletin:
You are now under the control of the American and British Liberation Forces.
Stay in your homes.
Do not attempt to contact love ones, insurance agent or attorney.
We apologize if any or all of your family members have passed away in the last three weeks.
We must remind you that our bombing campaign was the most humane bombing campaign in the history of mankind.
We never intentionally target civilians or journalists.
Do not attempt to think or depression may occur.
Stay in your homes.
Curfew is at 7 PM sharp after work.
Please keep your children out of the minefields that Sadaam ringed round all oil rigs. Halliburton and KBR will have all fires put out and wells working proficiently soon enough.
Anyone caught outside of gates of their suveillance sectors after curfew
will be shot.
Remain calm, do not panic.
Your neighborhood watch officer will be by to collect urine samples in
the morning.
Anyone gaught intefering with the collection of urine examples will be
shot.
Stay in your homes, remain calm.
The number one enemy of progress is question.
Your security and the development of a moderate democratic republic is more important than individual will.
Stay tuned for future broadcasts and informational bulletins.
Proceed as normal.
No more than two people may gather anywhere without permission.
Use only the drugs described by your new American boss or supervisor.
Shut up, be happy.
Obey all orders without question.
The comformental mandor is now mandatory.
Be happy.
Like in America and Britain, everything is now done for you."
Hey now, all you sinners
Put your lights on, put your lights on
Hey now, all you lovers
Put your lights on, put your lights on
We have to remember that, like Christianity, Islam is a religion of peace. Do we look to the New Testament for our answers ...?
Hey now, all you killers
Put your lights on, put your lights on
Hey now, all you children
Leave your lights on, you better leave your lights on
And we must remember that, like Christianity, Islam is a religion of death. Do we look to the Old Testament for our answers ...?
Cause there's a monster living under my bed
Whispering in my ear
There's an angel, with a hand on my head
She say I've got nothing to fear
As we well know, and is being played out in many ways through many governments and groups, hard-line zealotry, no matter the form, is a dangerous, dangerous game to play. Lives hang in the balance, and recently, too many disruptions in The Force we have seen.
There's a darkness deep in my soul
I still got a purpose to serve
So let your light shine, into my hole
God, don't let me lose my nerve
Lose my nerve
Are we candy asses for wavering? For questioning? I look to all things good and righteous in our world and each and every one came from questioning the presumed assumptions that stood before.
Hey now, hey now, hey now, hey now
Wo oh hey now, hey now, hey now, hey now
Do "They" all want to kill us? No more than we want to kill them ... What does a Muslim look like? They look like you and me. They look brown, black, Asiatic, Caucasian and everything in-between. In killing "them" we only kill ourselves.
Hey now, all you sinners
Put your lights on, put your lights on
Hey now, all you children
Leave your lights on, you better leave your lights on
As there, the families cry and we, on this side of the planet, try to reconcile and rationalize the introduction of "moderate" and "democratic" governments into the Middle East and Halliburton gets their $900m for "reconstruction" we are forced to try and ask the right questions - even if it gets us on Ashcroft's sh*t list.
Because there's a monster living under my bed
Whispering in my ear
There's an angel, with a hand on my head
She say's I've got nothing to fear
La ill aha ill Allah
We all shine like stars
We all shine like stars
Then we fade away
Thanks to Santana and Everlast ("Put Your Lights On" copyright 1999 for the lyrics)
So I yield to remain whole
bending to be straight
and what went around came back again
as circles often complete themselves
love has come in like the tide
flooding me only to wash out again
so I am empty yet I remain full
knowing here is happiness
the ups and downs ins and outs
lessons I learned, full circle it all returned
Too many things kicking around in the ol' noggin the past couple of days.
Ideas ranging from expansive essays on "American Corporate Welfare and The US Military" to just thinking about all the dead and dismembered humans - especially of our young men and women losing much more than their youth and innocence over there.
All eyes on reconstruction ...?
How do we know? How are we supposed to know?
We've all been at the Crime Scene or a Sporting Event and then read the local newspaper's rendering of "what happened that night." We've all cried BullSh*t when we knew the cars were white or the guy's toe REALLY was on the line - the Ref missed it.
Then there's the Return of The Central Park Jogger. I'm sure glad we all got that news story right. A nice gaggle of black and Hispanic youth ("Oh, I'm sure they were a bunch of criminals - anyway they confessed ") got their sentences overturned last December - no matter they got to serve all their time in prison for a crime they didn't commit.
The subtext and the Giant Other Shoe to Drop here is amazing. If you are of color and wealthy White America is wronged - we'll find some of you and beat and torture (litterally) confessions out of you. If it was the good ol' days and you happened to be in the passing circus at the time of the rape of a white woman, you would get lynched (if you know that somewhat obscure reference - you know your history better than I do).
If you're brown, you are criminals. All you N***ers and Sand N***ers and Mexican N***ers are all the same. If you didn't do it, you probably did it in the past or you'll do it in the future. So we're just doing our job and getting you off the street now, to save our communites some grief down the road. (Sound familiar?)
Fascinating the response when one of Wealthy White America's own (go ahead, you can include Oprah Winfrey in that rubric - it's OK) gets raped, sodomized and beaten into a coma. I DO NOT belittle what happened to this woman, God help (or not) the man who committed this attrocity.
I simply question why it is we find it the story so emotional, wrong and absolutely horrific when it happens to a pretty white investment banker, when the same horrific crap happened three times inside of a week (if memory serves) to women of color in their own homes within 10 blocks of "The Central Park Jogger Incident."
We don't hear about that stuff, though do we?
Now, a few days after the anniversary of the death of Dr. King and his unspoken speach to the group of striking union garbage workers, (and the University of Michigan with the possible "death" of affirmative action) "I have a dream ..." still sings with hope, but is shrouded in opined, borrowed and outright stolen darkness.
It was a sunny day
Fingers curled in trepidation
Involute naevete
Divesting innocence
Fingers on the yoke
Fingers on knives
Fingers on the trigger
Finger on the button
Dramatic, talking-head tragedy
This is Truth.
The dead left standing - we all die
I digress
Fingers over my heart
The psy-ops at home and the war of ideologies is waged at an even higher level during days like these.
David Horowitz: I've read some of his stuff on Frontpage.com recently. He's got it right on. If the Right (which, of course, he's is now a part of) wants to get rid of these pesky protester types, you have to get rid of the folks in the Universities teaching them how to be "radical."
'Cause here's the deal: everybody knows the best way to deconstruct the master's house is to use the master's tools. And you have to apprentice to learn how to use dem tools. Someone has to teach you, or at least set you on the path.
Other funny thing: you can go through your entire University existence as a business student and not have touch a critical theory or advanced history class (don't want to poison the young minds that will be carrying the torch of capitalism for years to come - better we keep them in fraternities and sororities and let them breed among their like-mindedness to create more progeny dedicated to "freedom and democracy").
I am reminded from time to time that I have to look up every once in awhile.
This is the song I sang the first night my daughter came into the world, and have continued to sing to her every night I put her to bed.
The world is new to me
For I am young and free
And you're a part of my first start
And all that I'm to be
So touch me gently
Teach me kindly
Tell me things to know
For I am now a part of life
And I would like to grow
She was intubated and at Children's Hospital in Seattle, but the drugs hadn't quite taken full hold of her yet and she looked into my eyes as best she could while I sang it.
Sam Kinison screamed it first: “You live in the f&$#%*@ desert!”
Yes, Kinison that fire and brimstone born again minister that turned to comedy to see the light. Yes, Sammy might have been a gay-bashing, misogynist, angry little white balding racist, but, Hell it was the eighties and the closest thing to war on our consciences was a vague understanding of some bizarre non-communist proliferation agreements attained through the CIA and the use of a little place once called “The School of the Americas.”
But that wasn’t to be worried about. The Sam Kinisons of the world were joking and telling us to “Save Haji.” Yes, send Haji a buck a day and he and his village can eat like kings and queens for a month. But they were idiots, and of course Haji was starving! He lived in “the f&*#$%@ desert!”
U.S. Marines in Iraq are referring to Arabs as “Hajis.”
Today, Being Haji Malkovich: starving, brown and living in the desert, can get you bombed, strafed or just give you cancer and help your unborn kids have an amazing array of birth defects (thanks to the approximately 3000 tons of Depleted Uranium munitions unleashed in Iraq over 12 years).
But Haji isn’t alone, is he? Hi Marines!
We support you too with our dollars! The Sunday Herrald states “67% of Gulf War I Vets had children with severe illnesses, missing eyes, blood infections, respiratory problems and fused fingers.”
Yes, even you Corporal! How’s that Purple Heart?
Me? I have RPG shrapnel in my spine and aside from the horrific scarring and being bound to this wheel chair for life - not to mention PTSD, Gulf War Syndrome and the memory of having to saw humans in half with my heavy machine gun – I’m doing just great! Hoo-Rah!
Why? Because all you hypocritical Raytheon, Halliburton, Boeing, Lockheed Martin, GE opportunistic stock buying “No War in Iraq” asses AND all you amicable “allow those protestors their free speech – they’re all going to Hell anyway” asses know that I’m just going to get on up out of this chair and walk on out of here.
That is when the cameras and (not justifiable by Western sources) journalists leave me and this country of Depleted Uranium and rescued refineries behind.
And thanks to the (Republican controlled) House Budget Committee’s vote to cut $25 billion in Veteran’s benefits over the next 10 years, you won’t have to lose sleep over where your hard earned tax dollars are going to – who wants it going to those who put their lives the line for America’s freedoms anyway?
On the news tonight: “… An Operation Iraqi Freedom veteran and father of two made it through the war but couldn’t overcome his new found friends: Drugs and Alcohol …”
“That star-spangled banner that waves,
O’er the land of the hypocrites,
And the home of some brave men and women who laid their asses on the line and come home to an apathetic populous …”
She asked me if I had kids &
when I said I did
she said make sure you teach them what's right & I said how will I know?
& she nodded and said good point
just don't teach them any obvious wrong then.
You remember the guy ... way back in 1983, he lost the WWF heavyweight title to none other than Hulk Hogan. Hulk proved his metal by extricating himself from The Sheik's power move - "the camel clutch" or some such move it had been dubbed, I'm sure it had a more sinister name but I can't recall as of this writing - a move that NO MAN, WOMAN OR CHILD had been able to get out of previously.
Once The Iron Sheik got his move on, you knew it was over. (Everyone's mind's permanently etched with U.S. men and women bound and blindfolded.) But some how, some way, The Hulkster - long before all his little Hulkamaniacs got busy with their ripped yellow t-shirts and started screaming at one another on playgrounds about their "22-inch pythons" - yes, The Hulkster endured and made his way out of the camel clutch and prevailed to the glee of all the patriotic Americans in the Georgia night. Catharsis reigned.
The Iron Sheik, you remember, was from Tehran, Iran and was out their clutching and grappling with the good, red-blooded Americans in the ring, night in and night out, letting the angst and revenge ebb and flow from our Patriotic Cold War hearts.
After the Sheiks humiliating loss to Hulk Hogan, more folks in the WWF were able to follow the Hulkster's lead and get out of, and unbelievably, reverse the camel clutch. The Sheik was forced to make his new living tag-teaming with Nikita Kruschov and later, Nikolai Volkov.
During Perestroika in the Soviet Union, the characters Volkov and Kruschov were made to team up with folks like the Nature Boy Rick Flair (of WCW fame - the wrestlers were moving fairly freely back and forth between leagues and the fierce rivalry for who would dominate the wrestling empire in the 90s was beginning to unfold), because, you know, the Russian's are our buddies (large nation of new consumers - don't want to piss them off).
Much later, in or around 1989 The Iron Sheik, while still representing the veiled evil lurking in Tehran (even with the death of the Ayatollah Komeni), was caught in the mirror-world called REAL LIFE snorting coke in a limo with Hacksaw Jim Dugan (The Sheik's new American enemy in the ring - a little lower on the scale of combatants than Hulk Hogan at the time).
Fast forward to 1997 when Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Perle, Cheney, and Co. form the Policy for a New American Century. They new they had a plan for America - to protect our interests (corporate interests) and to dominate the globe via control of the flow of the one resource that literally greases the industrial complex we know the western world to be today - oil.
They had the plan, and they knew the American people to be just bright enough to follow the comings and goings of the second-level representation wrestlers in all their guises and leagues. If anyone could pull it off, it was that rich bunch of white guys, right? I mean, come on, throw Dr. Conaleeza Rice's (Aunt Jemima) smiling face and General Colin Powell (Uncle Ben) on the cover and you gots it goin' on ... Corporate America, CNN, The Bomb and the Poster Children for Dr. King's "I have a dream" all rolled into one. How can "we" lose?
This time, it would be on with the all the Iron Sheiks of the world. We could put the world's remaining oil supplies in the hands of freedom (to drive a larger SUV to my even larger house on the ever-expanding suburban shores) for all time.
We know the Sheiks get TV. Our TV. They know who always wins. They also know our history. So when George W. Bush started talking, after the crime against humanity of 9/11, of greater crimes possibly to come - of all those Iron Sheiks in caves and in our cities and our airplanes and sewers, we all bought in - and thought that all the Sheiks must have bought in too.
We know the story. We understand. There has to be someone - real or fabricated - for our Red Blooded Hulkster to fight - always. Or we don't sell enough tickets to sell out the Superdome for Wrestlemania Bazillion and Four.
George Bush sprinkles the stolen words of Christ in his speeches and "his people" are mobilized. We know. We understand our duty. It's in our culture. It's in our blood. Rise up against the infidels, against the Iron Sheiks - no matter if we made them who they are.
But this can't be real because everybody knows that The Iron Sheik was a Chicano guy from L.A. anyway. Or was he?
So YOU tell ME: "Is it time to get down on your M*F*n' knees?"
While you make pretty speeches,
I'm being cut to shreds.
You feed me to the lions,
a delicate balance
When this just feels like spinning plates.
I'm living in cloud cuckoo land.
And this just feels like spinning plates
Our bodies floating down the muddy river.
You ready to sit around your job, at your home, at your parks and wonder where the next dirty bomb is going to go off? (Not quite strong enough to kill massive amounts of American men, women and children - but enough to kill a few dozen in the blast radius and injure hundreds more; not to mention make many extremely ill from the radiation poisoning and the litany of cancers it causes in the unsuspecting bodies.)
Then there is The Fear, beamed directly to you 24 hours a day by our smiling news media.
Saddam's gone, but the latest tapes from Osama say that the occupation of Saudi Arabia and Iraq and Palestine must stop or another bomb will be unleashed in a U.S. city. He gives us the time, but not the place. One bomb has already gone off in Anaheim - little bodies and Mickey ears everywhere; makes for riveting television. "Where are the Peace Marchers now?" Rush Limbaugh asks on his nationwide broadcast.
Will you watch the news, will you go to a cabin with your friends and drink wine in the San Juans, or will you stay home, going about your business? It's a Wednesday night for Christ's sake. You have to work in the morning.
So what if it's Code Red all the time now. You have customers to help and deals to make.
Insurance seems meaningless and the markets are down. Business is off from last year, but the promise of summer has the sales staff excited.
