Monday, September 29, 2008

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.

Monday, September 22, 2008

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.

Tuesday, September 16, 2008

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

Monday, September 15, 2008

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.

Friday, September 12, 2008

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.

Monday, September 8, 2008

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.

Friday, September 5, 2008

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.

Tuesday, September 2, 2008

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.