Internet Suicide. So Fucking What.

Some dumbass kid gets all torn up about his shitty life and how some chick he is crazy about will never love him and decides to kill himself. Perhaps all the rest of you are not aware, but this happens ALL THE TIME! The hand-wringing and wailing about this kid make no sense to me at all.

It's also not news that some people watched someone kill themselves. That happens all the time too. In fact, some other guy recently hung himself on a webcam after being "goaded into it" by the people he was talking to on line. This kind of ghoulish voyeurism appears to be a part of our human nature. Not long after they started building sky scrapers, people started wanting to jump off of them. Pretty much from the start there have been people on the street below who egged them on. Guess what? Human beings suck. We always have. Take it back to the Romans who watched people get killed in the Coliseum if you like. Its just who we are.

So to the question of suicide itself. People were criticized for "goading him on". Well, why exactly shouldn't they? I believe that people should be free to do whatever they like with their lives. If you want to OD on prescription medication and kill yourself in front of an Internet audience, go right ahead. Fine by me. No one is making me watch.

Additionally, some of these fuckers just need to go ahead and do it. I'm tired of hearing about "a cry for help". You know what a cry for help sounds like? "HELP!" A self-obsessed ploy for attention sounds like "I'm going to kill myself, I swear!". There are too damn many people on the earth as it is. If you want to do your part to promote population control, have at it my friend. The truth is, that someone is going to miss you, but it won't be me. I really could not care less.

There is an entire industry in the US today that deals with involuntarily hospitalizing people who are claimed to be suicidal. This plays on our mistaken assumption about the sanctity life (see George Carlin's excellent discussion on this subject found on "Back in Town"). We think that life is SO SACRED that a person cannot even make the decision to end it, all at once, on his own. We let people kill themselves slowly with cigarettes and unhealthy lifestyles. Just not all at once.

For the most part, we don't restrict people's ability to create life either. Not even when an honest examination of the mating participants suggests nothing short of abject horror will be unleashed upon the world. No, we allow stupid, ignorant people to fill the earth with their progeny and then we refuse any effort to rectify the situation.

I can hear the usual chorus of voices suggesting that suicidal people are not in their right minds and are making a decision, influenced by depression or trouble in their lives, that they might regret. If they live that is. Which they may not. Others might point to a great list of people who killed themselves who "had so much going for them" or "had so much to offer".

Does having a lot going for you or being blessed with talents and abilities mean that you have less of an inherent right to determine your own destiny?

Some people like to talk about "those left behind". Won't mom and dad be devastated? Won't your girlfriend feel like a big failure? Who will play fetch with good old Fido? Well who knows? Its certainly no business of the guy who killed himself. He won't be here to worry about it. We don't force people to take certain jobs or stay in religions or marry this or that person for fear of letting their parents down do we? Why should we restrict a person's ability to give up on life?

I mean, sure its tragic, but so are lots of things. Whenever I see someone I love with a cigarette in their hands, I think about the tragic demise that very likely awaits them. I would like very much for them to stop. I might even try to influence, prod and bully them into quitting. But I honestly do not question their RIGHT to do it. If tragedy is what you want, I think its your right to have it; just don't expect me to cry for you.

Vacation all I ever wanted, vacation had to get away - Recap and Postscript

This should have been posted several days ago. There are no good excuses.


Saturday was the payoff from the whole damn thing. I spent all day with my sister. There was general mischief and minor pandemonium wrought in the greater Morgantown area.

It's hard to not make this sound like way more than it was. It was just us spending time together. But this is not something that we had really done since we were reunited. So maybe seven years or so. This used to be such an important part of my life. I didn't know how MUCH I actually missed it until I had it back. It was never weird or anything like that. It was just like it had never stopped at all.

Back in the real world the next week. Job. Home. Life. I really did feel better after having had the chance to be with Becky for a day. I'm grounded slightly; reminded that there is more to my life than misery and disappointment. There must be more to me than that.

I have basically ruined my certain parts of my life. Damaged much of what I hold dear to me beyond repair or recognition. Looking at the scorched earth that remains, I have to have something to hold on to. It's not enough to live everyday to fix what I've done. I don't even believe that I can. There must be some part of me that I can still believe in.


Some Buddhists believe that YOU are not simply everything that has ever happened to you and everything inside your brain. They think there is some part of everyone that just IS. Its not your soul, because that isn't real and even if it was your soul would still be you. It would still be dirty and fucked up from everything that has happened to you and everything you have done. Having a soul is worse than not having one because it means that I was always like this. That there was never even a chance that I COULD have been any other way, any other person. It would mean that I was destined to be this failed project.

I've been thinking of a Tom Waits song that I first heard sung by Johnny Cash (Down there by the Train - American Recordings).


If you've lost all your hope, if you've lost all your faith,
I know you can be cared for and I know you can be safe.
And all the shamefuls and all of the whores,
And even the soldier who pierced the side of the Lord,
Is down there by the train,
Down there by the train,
Down there by the train,
Down there by the train,
Down there where the train goes slow.


I'm sure that my sister has never stopped to ask herself if her brother was "good" or not. She never wonders if I'll forsake her for another sibling. We are the only siblings we have. Its obvious how special it is.

Being around her was a reminder that I have a place I can go to where I'm just me. Not the fuckup who did this or that thing and broke people's hearts. I'm just me. Just who I've always been. Even someone like me can be have a moment of grace.

Vacation all I ever wanted, vacation had to get away. - Part 3

Maybe I should have drank more. I mean, this is Morgantown for godssake. I haven't been drunk once yet. I guess I haven't spent my time well.

Why do I not have a single worthwhile thing to say right now? I guess I could yammer on in the same vapid way that so many people do. I'm not sure I have it in me. I don't know if I could even fake that.

This begs the question as to why I have a blog to start with. If I had an answer to this question...

Vacation all I ever wanted, vacation had to get away. - Part 2

I don't think this is working. I don't feel less stressed. I am highly preoccupied with work and home. I feel tense in my shoulders and I don't have anyone to work on them for me.

I've lost every last little bit of Zen that I ever had. I'm lost. I can't seem to calm down. I'm not happy.

I would expect to feel better by now. Its silly but I feel the weight of that place on my back. I feel the a anxiety of relationship issues in my heart. I know I have the power to control all this. I could quit my job and embrace failure in totality. I could end my relationship and forget about all the trials and joys that it has brought. In both cases I know that I am the source of the problems.

Plenty of people have similar jobs in similar situations. Most people do not become so personally invested in jobs where they work for other people. It's not like I'm a cop or a doctor. I think that I overvalue my job because its all I have in the way of accomplishments. In my whole life, I've never done a single thing that I am proud of. Not one. This job is it. Making money for some guy who lives in a beach house in California or something. I excel at my work so that our company might earn a few thousand more dollars or lose a few thousand less. Some dickhead shareholder gets to buy a new boat. That is all my life means.

Maybe if there was something extraordinary about me I could feel better about it. As it is, I'm bright enough to understand, without delusion, how boring I am. It sounds quite a lot like a poor pitiful me complaint, I know. That isn't what I intend. Its not how I want people to look at me, or how I want to look at myself. Its just how I feel and what I'm thinking.

I feel checkmated by life. I don't know what my move is. What now?

Vacation all I ever wanted, vacation had to get away. - Part 1

I was ordered to take time off by my girl. Actually ordered to. She resolutely insisted that I take a full week off work. I have never done this. I have worked at my job for eight years. In this time I have worked in several departments and even moved twice with the company. To the best of my recollection I have never taken more than 4-5 days off before.

I've never really felt like I needed one. I'm still not sure that I did. But anyway, here I am in Morgantown, WV. I'm staying with my sister. I've been solo pretty much all day. Ate alone. Walked around town alone. This used to be very common for me. I spent days hardly talking to anyone. I'm pretty sure that had a lot to do with my creativity. I think it gave me time to ruminate on things. Spend days thinking about something. Quiet is useful.

Its lonely. Its hard to get used to.

Don't Vote, I am.

The chorus of voices on every side of nearly every debate has hit what might be all time an high - YOU ABSOLUTELY MUST VOTE. If you do not, THEY will win, and holy fucking Christ, can you imagine what THEY will do to our great country? Its terribly, vitally important that you VOTE.

Allow me to offer a differing perspective.

Don't vote. It really is meaningless. In January, John McCain or Barack Obama will become president of the United States of America. And regardless of which one wins we will all lose.

If you are a member of the Messianic cult that has risen up around Obama, then you may want to just stop reading now. Its not going to get any better for you. This is a man who has become who he is now by any means necessary. He has surrounded himself with an army of people whose primary goal is to convince you that that is someone who will "save us" from the "mess we're in".

What is the reality of the situation? This is a man who has never taken a bold, firm stand for equal rights for gay and lesbian Americans. Its hard to comprehend the "audacity" of America's most successful recipient of greater equality doing so little to spread justice. Hard to believe that is if you try to match the failure with Obama's image as a courageous progressive liberal.

Change your perspective; who benefits when Obama sells out the Gay Community? Obama does. He knows that Gays are going to overwhelmingly vote for him regardless of what he does for them. What about so-called "middle class white America"? One way Obama can reassure these armchair bigots that he is not "weird" is by making sure he doesn't seem to friendly to the queers. It's called pandering, and Mr. Obama is an expert.

Consider his speech to the Cuban-American National Foundation. Obama clearly states -

"I will maintain the embargo. It provides us with the leverage to present the regime with a clear choice: if you take significant steps toward democracy, beginning with the freeing of all political prisoners, we will take steps to begin normalizing relations. That's the way to bring about real change in Cuba through strong, smart and principled diplomacy."

So basically, talk about change and about doing things differently, but when you are talking to the right voting bloc make damn sure they understand that you are really not going to change anything at all.

Much has been made of Obama as a man of peace. Nothing could be further from the truth. Here is a man who has PROMISED to throw away more American lives in Afghanistan, as though this should be more palatable than lives lost in Iraq.

It may be somewhat transparently ironic for me to quote Martin Luther King Jr. right here... but what the hell. Lets hear what a true man of peace has to say -

"True pacifism is not unrealistic submission to an evil power, it is rather a courageous confrontation with evil by the power of love, in the faith that it is better to be the recipient of violence than the inflicter of it, since the latter only multiplies the existence of violence and bitterness in the universe, while the former may develop a sense of shame in the opponent, and thereby bring about a transformation and change of heart."

"The leaders of the world today talk eloquently about peace. Every time we drop our bombs in North Vietnam, President Johnson talks eloquently about peace. What is the problem? They are talking about peace as a distant goal, as an end we seek, but one day we must come to see that peace is not merely a distant goal we seek, but that it is a means by which we arrive at that goal. We must pursue peaceful ends through peaceful means. All of this is saying that, in the final analysis, means and ends must cohere because the end is preexistent in the means, and ultimately destructive means cannot bring about constructive ends"

I can't imagine Obama saying these words. He is primarily interested in the pragmatic viability of a military action, not the human cost. In this regard, he is very much like his former advisory Hillary Clinton; determined to acquire power by any means. Willing to sell out any position or stand in order to further the only real goal, power. This is what the Democrats had to offer us this year. Liars selling fake change.

McCain isn't even worth talking about.

I am voting this year, for the very first time in my life. I'm doing it because it doesn't matter, but it should. I'm doing in defiance of its meaninglessness. The idea of democracy is a good one. We should have one, but we don't.

I'm voting for what I want. I'm voting for someone I believe will do what I would do if I was president.

I refuse to vote for Obama because of who he isn't. I will not vote for someone because its practical. I will not balance my decision against how likely someone is to win. I refuse to be realistic about this.

The act of voting should, more than anything else I can think of, be an act of idealism. This is the moment you tell the world how you want things to be. If I sold that out to Obama just because he wasn't a stupid fucking republican, I could never live with myself.

I may never vote again in my life. I have no illusions about how useful or meaningful it is. I know (to paraphrase the great George Carlin) its just masturbation. But for me, this time, its about the principle. Voting SHOULD matter, so I'm voting for Nader.

How to Keep From Killing Yourself

First of all, let me start by saying that I am not anti-suicide. There are all kinds of people out there who really should think about ending it all. You, dear reader, might be one of these people. So don't go doing anything drastic like taking the Final Exit off the table. You have the right to die, (and stop bothering the rest of us) and don't let anyone tell you otherwise.

However, you may be like me; frequently miserable and unhappy, but unwilling to die just yet. Why not end it all? Well, because there are still some things that I enjoy at least a little bit. If I was to walk down to the State Capitol, douse myself in gasoline Thích Quảng Đức style, and burn myself to death, id be dead. I'd never have Indian food again. I'd never have a decent cup of coffee again. I'd never have scotch again. I'd never have another orgasm.

In the spirit of surviving your meaningless, excruciating, mediocre life, I have compiled a list of things that may help.

•KEEP EATING

I can't remember ever hearing of someone deciding to kill themselves after a good meal. Food is probably the greatest pleasure that we have. Its easy to get, fun to use, and immensely gratifying. The good effects of food last for hours too. Sure, you might develop an eating disorder or get really fat. Compared to dying, these don't seem so bad though.


•AVOID USING YOUR OWN ACCOMPLISHMENTS TO BUOY YOU UP

You probably don't have much of consequence that you feel proud of. If you did, why would you be thinking about killing yourself to start with? Chances are pretty good that you are just going to let yourself down again. People like you really can't be counted on to deliver in the clutch.

Don't think "if I get the big job everything will turn around for me". You aren't getting that job. They don't want a mopey loser like you mucking up their business.

Don't say "if I can only get that threeway happening with my girl and another chick, imagine how great that will be". If it was going to happen my friend it would have by now. Just forget about it and watch some more porn. You can imagine that you are watching your girl get fucked by a real man for a change. (Ladies, I won't pretend to understand what is going on in your head enough to attempt a female version of this point. Sorry.)


•FIND THINGS TO LOOK FORWARD TO

There isn't a chance that I'd kill myself right now with the new Star Trek movie coming out next summer. Waiting for the new Amanda Palmer certainly kept the blade from my wrist for a few months earlier this year. Planning on seeing Amanda in Pittsburgh next month is doing wonders for me now.

A word of caution on this strategy - it can backfire in a big fucking way. There are families across the country who curse the Transformers movie every day for letting them down. Daddy isn't coming home baby, he's looking for energon in heaven with Jesus now.

Avoid counting on your friends and loved ones. If you could count on them to understand how important the plans you all made together were, then maybe you wouldn't be thinking of killing yourself.

•STAY BUSY

If you keep busy doing lots of things, you are less likely to take the time out of your day to kill yourself. Suicide is fairly time consuming and will really fuck up your plans. You just can't do things when you're dead. Plus, it makes a bunch of extra work and bother for other people.


•GET SOME PERSPECTIVE

Think about your whole stupid life. Think of every moment that has passed you by. Does it seem like a long time? I don't know about you, but mine has gone by in a flash. And so will the rest of it. Why bother killing yourself? It'll be over soon enough anyway.

Meaning

It hasn't always been like this. Something used to matter. I'd scatter words on paper. Compare the perfect robin's egg of one day's sky with the azure of the next. Mellon Collie versus White Album. Coffee and coffee and coffee. Days indoors and nights under the moon.

Things used to matter. I'm sure they did. Something must have. How else did I survive?

Was it all god? Sorry... I mean God? Maybe just the belief that there was a larger Purpose? Some reason to endure all the pain? The truth has been exposed. There is no Purpose, no Plan, no reason for it all.

And yet the pain is ubiquitous. I guess it always was. Yes. It was. It was always there.

It won't hurt anymore when I'm gone. I won't have to worry. I won't have the stress of success or failure. I won't have anything. Just nothing. Nothing. Nothing. The closest thing to peace that I can ever hope for. That must be why people kill themselves. Just for peace. Out of options. Life is too noisy. We just want peace and quiet.

The Sweet Mystery of life has cloyed. Its just frustration compounded with frustration with no end in sight. Am I "just feeling sorry for myself"? I don't think so. I don't literally "feel sorry" about me. I'm unsatisfied with life. Its short, excruciating and consistently disappointing. And EVERYONE'S life ends in tears. No matter what you think or who you are or what you do, your story will be a tragedy. Memento Mori motherfucker.

There will come a moment in the future when a worm will eat the part of someone's brain that contained very last memory of me anywhere in the whole universe. There will have been no point to anything I have ever done. Nothing lasts. Everyone dies. Entropy always wins.

This should be the most beautiful thing any living being could know. It means that we are absolutely free to do anything at all with no fear of consequences from an Old Angry Man in the Sky. We don't need Him. I don't need Him. I don't care if He exists or not. I won't serve Him.

I don't know what I am struggling with. Search for meaning? How silly is that?

Smells

I'm sick to death of everything being so goddamn scented. I can't wash my hands in the restroom in my own home without ending up smelling like Strawberry Shortcake's vagina. What the hell is wrong with just smelling like soap?

I don't need or want everything to smell 'nice'. This doesn't make my life better. This doesn't make me smile. This just annoys me.

I can appreciate that for most of our history humans smelled pretty damn bad. Feces, sweat, and ancient caveman style funk. Its OK now though. We don't owe some kind of scent debt to our ancestors or anything. We can just let it go. We have the ability to just smell clean now. Let's leave it at that.

There is a whole industry devoted to this stuff now. A good friend works at Bath and Body Works - its their bread and butter there. These people have built an entire enterprise around the idea that you can take the same 4-5 products, repackage them in a myriad combinations, and sell them over and over again to the same people. Some of these people basically own 10 bottles of the same product, just with different smells! I don't get it.

The potency of these modern smells is also unnerving. When I was a kid, there were two scented products that smelled super strong - Irish Spring bar soap and Lemon Pledge. Kids in the 90's killed themselves huffing Lemon Pledge, and Irish Spring is a Lucky-Charms-style, faux-Irish abomination. But at least that is where it stopped. Nowadays, every fourth rate gas station hand sanitizer is a sandalwood scented aromatherapy assfuck.

I'm done with it. From now on, I'm going to wash my hands in rubbing alcohol and dry them with a cigarette lighter. Sure sometimes I'll be badly burnt, but as far as I know Bath and Bodyworks doesn't sell Silvadine, so I think I'm ok.

Josh's First Birthday

Saturday I had the very first observance of my birthday. A bit of a roller coaster getting to it, but that seems to always be the case with me. I invited several people and damned if about half of them couldn't come. This might not be devastating if you invited 100 people to your 31st birthday party and only 50 came. Fifty is still a whole lot of people. But when its your first one ever, and you are 31, and 4 out of 10 people can't come, and you really shouldn't even count one of the ten people anyway because she is your girlfriend, well... it sucks.

So I canceled it. What the hell, nothing lost, nose still very well covered with skin, etc. The remaining people all still wanted to do something though, so we agree on Olive Garden. Nothing too exciting.

Here is the surprise - it was utterly fantastic. My advice to everyone in the world: every once in a while, surround yourself with people who truly love you. I was genuinely touched and affected by the display of affection for me. Its been a bad month in a bad year for me, and this made all the difference. If someone like me can find friends among such lovely people there may still be hope.

Or maybe it was all the scotch.

Heroes

I don't feel especially sorry for people who go over to Iraq and get themselves killed.

There, I said it. I mean it. Let me tell you why.

First, and probably most importantly, I do not believe there is any honor or glory to be found fighting wars that should never have been started to start with. If someone still thinks that it was a good idea to invade Iraq, then they are hopelessly stupid. Don't even bother trying to talk to someone like this. As far as the military presence there now, I do not respect service in the name of blood for oil. I do not support the actions of these troops.

The American Story that I heard growing up was that the Founding Fathers were guys who heard what the authority of the day had to say, thought it was bullshit, told it to go fuck itself, and then did what they believed was right. Time and time again, both courts and public opinion have held that "I was just following orders" is absolutely no excuse for criminal or immoral actions. So why is it OK for some guy to join the Army, go drop napalm on five-year-olds, and then claim that he has no responsibility for his actions? They want to blame Bush because he started it. Just how far would this stupid war have gotten if people had just refused to fight? How well does "just following orders" fit with the revolutionary spirit Americans should own as a birthright?

Secondly, to quote the late, great George Carlin -

"...you strap on a gun and go struttin' around some other man's country you better be ready for some action Jack. People are touchy about that sort of thing."

So, you went to go fight in George Bush's war for oil. While you were over there, some guy planted a bomb in the road, you drove over it, and so much for your legs. Well, I agree this is a unfortunate situation, but what exactly did you THINK was going to happen? This is a WAR for fucksake! If you weren't interested in a future spent piloting a Jazzy Scooter around town, then why the hell did you sign up for an occupation that has land mines as a work hazard?

Meanwhile, average Americans die every day for no good reason whatsoever. Some dumbass runs a red light or drives drunk and now a family is minus one parent. Is this less tragic because my imaginary "freedom" wasn't on the line?

I'm really sick of hearing about how soldiers are "heroes". One moment they are not responsible for their actions because they are just following orders. The next they are heroic Paladins holding the standard of Freedom high. I fail to understand how some kid trying to get money for college is a hero. More tragic than heroic. Totally different dramatic principle.

If you really want to do something heroic, refuse to fight an illegal war of aggression in a foreign land. Tell them that you would rather go to jail than put innocent people's lives on the line in the name of oil and American Hegemony. Tell the powers that be that they can go fuck themselves and let the old men fight their own damn war. Stand up for what's right, for what you believe in. Refuse to be a pawn in our Plutocracy's latest power grab. That would be heroic.

Not A Short One On Politics

"There is only one difference between dictatorship and democracy. In democracy, you vote and then take orders; in dictatorship you don't waste time voting." - Charles Bukowski

Reannan asked me write something about politics. It is a subject in which I have much interest. There is an irony here - I'm not even registered to vote. For a long time I wasn't because of the enforced apolitical stance of my upbringing. More recently its been out of a inability to find someone to trust. But I like to know what's going on. I stay informed. If I'm going to get fucked, I'd like to at least know who's holding the dick.

The first thing you need to know about American Politics is that the same people have ALWAYS been in charge. It's a well reported fact that every last U.S. President has been a direct descendant of the Royal families who have ruled Europe for centuries. Not only that, but pretty much all of our presidents have been related to each other too. What does this tell us?

Some people infer a giant Illuminati style conspiracy from these facts. I believe the truth is simpler but at the same time even more foreboding; power has stayed in the hands of a few families for pretty much all of our recorded history. To look at it another way, if you want to be president it really matters more who your family is and how much money you have than whether or not you are really the best man for the job. It means that Orwell was right; power never really changes hands. Despite his best efforts to remind of how different he is from "those guys on the dollar bills", even Obama is from the same blue blood stock.

Now to be fair, it certainly isn't your fault if you are a direct descendant of Charlemagne or the 15th cousin of The Queen of England. After all, all you did was get born. But the rest of us, the ones who take the orders, should ask ourselves "who is REALLY in charge if all of our choices keep the same people in power for centuries?"


***

Change. As long as I can remember politicians have promised the voters that they could deliver change. I can never remember the word being this worn out and cheap though. Its been drained of all its meaning. As often happens with things like this, its really come to mean the opposite of its dictionary meaning. 'No change' instead of 'change'.

Let's look at one of the central issues of our time to demonstrate. Israel. The country that shouldn't exist. The West's reminder to the Arab world that we can do whatever we like. So if we want to carve a country out of land where some other people were already living, we can do that. Then we can spend 60 years propping them up and arming them, allowing them to have the fucking bomb, and otherwise really just giving the finger to existing Arab governments, and then act surprised when they don't like us.

We fill their countries with troops and bases. We invade or bomb whenever we feel like it. We exploit their oil and resources to feed our "oil addiction". We treat anyone who doesn't like having Israel's insane existence rammed down their throat like an anti-semite and a hostile threat. Then we act shocked when people are so desperate for change in their world that they are willing to blow themselves up to get it.

How about you Obama supporters? How many of you want to ride the bus to work tomorrow with a bomb strapped to your chest? Now that's change. It might not really solve the problem, but its probably cheaper than a TV ad.

If you Obama acolytes want my support, you could start by changing our involvement sovereign nations affairs across the world. You could stop sucking Israel's circumcised cock long enough to take an honest look at what's really going on in the middle east. You could stop trying to look 'tough on terror' by talking about going after bin Laden. Its embarrassingly transparent.

You could also offer me some kind of explanation for why your supposedly progressive party has thrown the gay and lesbian community under the bus on gay marriage. I'm sure that it has nothing to do with the fact that your demographic research tells you that you can count on these votes regardless of how you treat these people. Why bother catering to a group of people who will probably vote for you any way? Why bother caring about social justice, equality, or simple human decency? There is certainly no reason to pause for even a moment and consider the glaring hypocracy of a man who has personally benefited so very much from our nation's growing racial tolerance, standing in the way of equal rights for every American.

If you McCainites would like me on board, you could start by answering one very important question for me. If you are for small, unobtrusive government, why do you care if gay people get married? Why is this such a big deal to you? If you believe that marriage is a religious sacrament, then what gives government the right to be involved in it at all? If its a civil institution, then how can government not offer equal access to it? Perhaps most importantly, what possible interest does a small, non-intrusive government have in who I fuck? To paraphrase Thomas Jefferson's famous statement (on religion), "It makes no difference to me if my neighbor fucks one woman or 40 men. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg."

Any party that calls itself 'conservative' needs to get straight on what that really means. It means "Stop spending so much goddamn money". Stop mortgaging our country to the Chinese to fund this stupid war. How is it even possible that we have spent nearly a trillion dollars on this war and we don't have the money to take care of these poor fuckers when they get home? Where did that money go? Who has it right now? What did they spend it on? Hookers? Lots of pizza? Can I get an itemized receipt for my war please? I'd like to know exactly how many one-armed Iraqi children I got for my trouble.

Both parties can tell me what they are going to do to control the sky rocketing price of heath care. Everyone seems to agree that we should do more to give more Americans access to heath care, (I personally believe that we should ensure it and enshrine it in law) but we are allowing the Doctors and the Drug Companies to continue pushing things higher and higher. They are basically working against our goal of affordable health care by inflating the market value. Why price people out of the system? Who wins when people cannot afford heath care?

Someone is winning. Someone MUST be winning because America still spends more per person for health care than any other advanced country. We spend about $5000 a year per person and look at what we have to show for it. Infant mortality that is comparable to a third-world country, and life expectancy that puts us around 45th in the world (somewhere between Bosnia and Kuwait in case you are wondering). What we don't get is universal health care for every single fucking person from sea to shining sea.

Canada has that. You know how much they pay for it? About two grand. That's right. They pay way less, and they get way more. Oh, and they are number 14 on that same list. Chew on that for a while if you want to get so angry that you might just need a drink. These people live this close to us on the map ---> || <---, they sit around all day drinking beer and eating sausage and maple syrup, and they live almost three years longer than we do. What the motherfuck?


***

So yeah, politics is thoroughly fucked. Nader wants a "Jeffersonian Revolution". I'm afraid that its going to take a Thomas Paine to straighten things out though.

Not all the treasures of the world, so far as I believe, could have induced me to support an offensive war, for I think it murder; but if a thief breaks into my house, burns and destroys my property, and kills or threatens to kill me, or those that are in it, and to "bind me in all cases whatsoever" to his absolute will, am I to suffer it? What signifies it to me, whether he who does it is a king or a common man; my countryman or not my countryman; whether it be done by an individual villain, or an army of them? If we reason to the root of things we shall find no difference; neither can any just cause be assigned why we should punish in the one case and pardon in the other. Let them call me rebel and welcome, I feel no concern from it; but I should suffer the misery of devils, were I to make a whore of my soul by swearing allegiance to one whose character is that of a sottish, stupid, stubborn, worthless, brutish man. - Thomas Paine

Reflections on a Trip to my Childhood Home.

I went down to my old home in Hurricane recently. I happened to be driving past the area with Amber and had nothing else to do. I know some people who have lived in almost the same area for most if not all of their lives. I lived in Hurricane for about 10 years. Its still where I think when I think of my childhood.

We lived on Cow Creek. Yes, that was really the name of it. The place is like some kind of lost Narnia to me. It was magical and mundane. Isolated. At night you could look up into the sky and see so many stars that it seems impossible that anyone could have ever named them all. It was almost perfect for me as I was growing up.

My grandparents (through my great-grandfather) had several acres of land on either side of the road about 3 miles off the main thoroughfare. We lived opposite them for a few years and then moved across the street onto the same patch they lived on. It was spacious, but not ranch-like.

I went up in the woods nearly every day. Played with my sister and sometimes our dad. We were discouraged from having too much to do with the neighbor kids. The problem being that they were not of our faith and therefore "bad associates". Looking back on it, my mom probably had the right idea for the wrong reasons. We were surrounded mostly with crazy creekers.

Development of the area I grew up in started decades ago. It was going on when I lived there. There is a bend in the road made up by two 90 degree turns. On one side for many years there was very little but a grassy field. Around the time that I left they had begun building the "mansion style" homes. They were nice homes. Expensive for the area, but not mansions. I had lived all my life up to that point in a trailer though, so homes without wheels were kinda fancy to me.

Going through there now, some parts are unrecognizable. Ten big, rich homes have become 50 or 60. Probably more. Further down the road, a bit closer to my property, there had been an old farm-style house. Also big but in a way that seemed real, and not like a castle. It had an ENORMOUS maple tree in the front yard. I think this tree might have been the first object on earth that I thought was beautiful all on my own without being told so. Every fall it would turn bright orange on one side and stay green on the side facing the house. I've never seen another tree do that. It was the damnedest thing.

The tree is gone now. So is the house. In the woods when a tree falls over and dies, fungi and mushrooms grow all over it. Looking at the rich new houses in the shiny, gated community that now stood there, I found myself thinking that. Just like a fungus. They grow over night and normally on something dead or a pile of shit. We were creek people I guess. So I guess we were shit.

Depressing.

The place I grew up lives so vibrant in my memory that it seems totally impossible that I can't go there. I remember the exact way that it felt to run full speed down the hill I lived on. Recklessly abandon everything and just hurtle down hill. My feet would pound the earth and I would think about what my mother had told me about gravitation and how it meant that the earth was leaping up to meet me just a little with every step. The power of the impacts seemed to shake the teeth in my head. Seemed to make my spine slap together like a slinky. Sometimes I'd just fall down on the grass. My mind would try to understand the earth itself. The great teaming mass of it. And me there on it, like the Little Prince of my own planet.

These are just words. Even if you read them and you understand exactly what they say and just how I mean it, you still wouldn't understand what I'm talking about. I suppose I don't really know. Not completely. I'm grasping.

I've always been aware of death. When I was a little kid I sprayed a giant grasshopper with WD-40 until it died. I don't know why. I felt ashamed. I'd killed something beautiful for no reason other than my own amusement. Under the weight of guilt, I buried that grasshopper. I cried about it. I didn't tell anyone for a long time. Who would understand the Sin of Grasshopper Murder? Yet I know to this day that If the Universe had a God and a Judgment Day that I would have to answer for that act. I could show you the exact spot on that property where I buried it.

At some point after that, in 1985, my grandfather died. The last time I ever saw him alive he was standing on the poach of his trailer with my grandmother. We had spent the evening with them and were walking home. He stood there in the inky dark wearing a white tshirt and a pair of brown Dickies. I hugged him. He was smiling. He seemed like the earth itself to me, like Cow Creek, like the woods and the grey paved road that meandered though the creek, like the azure sky and the garden and the junky swing set. He seemed like he would always be there. He was dead about 8 hours later on a beautiful Sunday Morning.

I'm going to die just like him. And everything that seems important or permanent to me will change and die and turn into things I'd never recognize. Every word I've ever uttered will be forgotten. And everything that I'd wanted to say or do, but never did, will never exist. Even my memories of all this splendor will just rot into the ground with me. I'm good but I can't beat entropy.

I should be able to just live like water rushing downstream. I should be able to transcend all this. Exist in every perfect moment. Mostly I think I do. But then I see that big ugly house where the maple used to be. And I think about my grandfather.

Who Killed Amanda Palmer?

I am uncharacteristically somewhat lost for words when it comes to Amanda Palmer and her band The Dresden Dolls. I LOVE everything about them except maybe that they don't play at the Empty Glass every week.

It's possible that I might have lost my objectivity when it comes to her. I think she might be able to release a totally worthless album and burn my apartment down and I'd probably still think she was the greatest thing that had ever happened to music in the last 10 years.

I briefly met Amanda after a show in Columbus a few years ago. This is a bit of an embarrassing story but its one that I tell over and over again because of how it ends.

I KISSED HER MOTHERFUCKING HAND.

But let's not get ahead of ourselves here. The embarrassing part is that I got really really really drunk at this show. I'm talking 6-vodka-tonics-in-45-min-on-an-empty-stomach drunk. Falling down, leaning on Reannan the whole time drunk. I remember exactly two parts of the whole night - the cover of War Pigs and meeting Ms. Palmer and her amazing band mate Brian Viglione.

They were standing outside in the lobby of the venue signing autographs and meeting every single person who wanted to talk to them. As we waited in line, I slowly sobered up enough to stand on my own. By the time we said hello to them, I was really just loud and happy.

I was wearing a black bowler hat which I took off with an elaborate, old-fashioned, and very silly manner, lowering myself into a bow. She extended her hand which I grasped and promptly kissed. If she was shocked, offended or put put in anyway, I had no idea (on the other hand, I was drunk). They were both very gracious and friendly.

I heard an interview with them on NPR a while back. All about being a working band and the struggles that you deal with. I had never thought about how NOT RICH these guys were. Turns out that they were not clearing much more than I do a month, and quite a lot of blood, sweat and tears to get it. I had an epiphany about supporting artists that I care about. I have never been a big illegal downloader or anything. But I realized that it actually really made a difference to Brian and Amanda what I did to support thier music which I love so much.

So the actual change in my behaviour is fairly small for the most part. Then I see the come on for pre-ordering the new Amanda solo album. I really almost never do this. I am content to wait for things to come out in the store. She made a persuasive case though, sweetened the pot with the promise of special unreleased tracks, and made me feel good about supporting the music. So I pre-order.

And the album is GREAT. Highly extraordinary. Lovely. Just exactly what I wanted it to be; obviously an Amanda Palmer album, but also obviously not a Dresden Dolls one.

If you love the piano, if you love dark but whimsical music, if you just like chick singers, you could do a whole lot worse and not much better than "Who Killed Amanda Palmer."

Guess that is not much of a record review, but then again this isn't Rolling Fucking Stone either.

Things That I Love.

15 Things (not individuals) that I love.

1. Fucking
   
2. Whisky
3. Whiskey
4. Scotch
   
5. Irish Whiskey
6. Courier New font
7. Social Distortion
8. Veganism
9. Coffee
10. The Boston Red Sox
11. Riding a bicycle.
12. Reading
13. Linux
14. Indian Food
15. Hummus
    

Work Work Work and Seperation Anxiety

Reannan is out of town with her parents. They needed to take care of a medical issue but figured (somewhat humourously I think) to not waste the trip to Cleveland and spend a few days in town. Sunday was Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Hard Rock Cafe day.

To be fairly obvious tourist things, there still seems to have been quite a lot of fun to be had by all. Sid Vicious' bloody t-shirt and Joe Strummer's guitar. Very cool.

I mean, it would have been if I had gone. Actually, I'm pretty sure that it was a good time without me. It could have been a good time with me. Sigh... work.

I am currently wasting money on ever paycheck because I have maxed out my vacation time. And yet I don't take time off. I don't have money to go anywhere and its just not worth my time otherwise. If I take a day off, my first day back is proportionally shittier. Sisyphus anyone?

***

So Reannan is out of town. And I am sitting here watching the Universe decay. I do not like being away from her. On the first night, I couldn't sleep and ended up going on a long walk in the middle of the night. I really should be a little better on my own for just a few days. Perfectly normal thing to experience. Very common.

Sigh.

I'm getting one of these

I have been using Linux for a while now. I have a salvaged old desktop running Xubuntu and a Ubuntu partition on my girlfriend's computer. I love open source software. I love it because its not what everyone else is doing. I love it because I can make it work the way I want it to work (usually). And its not fucking Microsoft or Apple.

So I am ready to take the plunge and actually spend some money on a computer. Not easy for me. I am a well known cheap bastard. I am also prone to second guessing things. Wondering if I should get this one or that one. I held off getting a netbook for all this time because I was waiting for something to come out stock with Ubuntu. Sure you can almost always add Linux on top of whatever comes from the factory, but I have a feeling that things will run better if the hardware and software are tailored to work together.

We shall see.

A quick one on religion.

This should be a huge post, and I'm sure I will revisit it on future occasions, but at the moment its nearly 6 am.

I used to be a very religious person. Very spiritual. Very whatever you would like to call it. I came to realize that it was bullshit. That sound rather simple. To be more specific, they (the faith) helped me realize it. It was a long, painful process but I came to understand that I had ALWAYS had these doubts.

I have a specific memory of being around 5 years old and standing in the hallway of the trailer we lived in at the time. I was walking to the living room and it suddenly occurred to me that the whole God thing just didn't make sense. That sounds silly, but it was exactly what happened. By the time I was 10 I understood that it was sinful to have doubts like these, but I wondered why an almighty God would allow me to not believe in him. This isn't a issue of free will. Its simply a question of informing people of something that they ought to know about.

God is supposed to be our Heavenly Father. Your flesh and blood father doesn't question whether or not he should let you know if he exists. He directly involves himself in your life. No one would suggest that forcing your children to base their belief in you on 'faith' is a good idea.

So either he is a shitty father or else he doesn't exist at all.

Obviously there are a lot of other angles to this. I don't pretend to cover everything here. Just a few things I have been thinking of and wanted to talk about before I went to sleep.

Getting Started or A Simple Desultry Blog Entry

I'm not 100% sure why I am doing this... I guess I have always felt like I had things to say. Most people who know me would probably agree rather wholeheartedly with that.

So what IS wrong with you people? I don't feel like I understand most people. I don't get a lot of what people are interested in. I don't feel like I think in remotely the same way as most of the people I know. I don't feel like I am a part of anything. Generally speaking, I'm not sure that I'd want to be.

***

I used to write. Poems mostly. Then I started working. I'm not totally sure why, but I slowly stopped writing after I started working. By the time I moved away from home for work, it was all gone out of me. I miss it.

Maybe this will get me writing creatively again. Or maybe I will just be able to spread my message of hate to the internet. We shall see.