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
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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.
