Fear & Loathing on the Hamster Wheel
Sometimes I feel like I’m a hamster running on one of those silly wheels, spinning quickly to nowhere. The futility of the exercise is symptomatic of working within the institutions of today. My protest is just another “Catch-22”-like tome to rail against the absurdity of it all.
As a professional observer, I watch a lot of re-runs. The criminals I cover commit such similar crimes that it’s tough to keep the specific incidents straight; the community events I attend are mainly traditional, annual things that happen with little script changes each year.
Many times, I feel like I’m living the movie “Groundhog Day” infinitely. Finding something new to write about or photograph in the midst of these constants is the challenge. Finding the new in the midst of all these same-old, same-old, re-runs of life takes patience and paying close attention to detail.
When something brand-new happens, it’s a time to rejoice, to write about or photograph something the likes of which haven’t been seen here before.
For ages now, men have complained that it’s all been said before, that all things are discovered and there’s nothing new under the sun.
But that isn’t true. The newness slips in unannounced, most of the time, and I’m always ready to spot when it happens.
When it does and I capture that moment, I feel like Henri Cartier-Bresson, whose artistic credo was to capture the definitive moment. His art was in photographs and that “definitive moment” was that point that makes the picture live.
It’s the same with words and there are a few creations that live with the spark of genuine life; of energy and emotion harnessed into something that people want to look at or read again and again.
When that happens, and as an artist I am able to corral that bit of this American life, it makes all the repetition worth it.
It stops the hamster wheel and justifies the time spent spinning. It’s a re-affirming thought to think that I’m not just a hamster spinning a wheel in a cage to burn energy.
Here’s to life!
Saturday, March 27, 2010
Friday, March 26, 2010
Fear & Loathing on Friday
Fear & Loathing on Friday
The whole TGIF bit chaps my ass. As someone who’s worked nights, weekends and holidays for more than a decade, I don’t get the excitement the proletariat feels for Friday.
To me, it’s just another day except the traffic seems to be worse. I hate driving on the main streets in the Shenango Valley on Fridays, when everyone appears to be out-and-about and road rage threatens to explode in a volcano of verbal vulgarities.
Making Friday out as a holiday of sorts puzzles me, however. Are most people’s jobs so bad that they look forward to the weekend that much?
I don’t know, because I don’t do drudge work.
My craft is writing, reporting and photography and I’ll admit it: I live to work, not that I consider my “job” to be “work” if that makes any sense.
Most of the time, I get to see cool things from a good vantage point, and write and take pictures of it all.
So a day off for me is a day that I’m missing whatever’s going on and I feel left out.
I feel bad for the folks who have a job where all they do is complain: sure, Monday’s busy, but again, it’s just another day for me. I don’t feel like I’ve crossed a hump when I get to Wednesday and find nothing special about Saturday night.
I don’t really have a favorite day and have never thanked God for Friday as I’ve more important things to be thankful for.
But some folks live to holler about TGIF and all the fancy stuff they’re going to do. I think it’s because everyone else is so riled up about it that I prefer to withdraw from the world come Friday night.
I’ll read a book and listen to some jazz, try to get in a little personal writing and enjoy the solace of solitude after a busy workweek.
Alas, it’s Friday, thanks to God notwithstanding.
The whole TGIF bit chaps my ass. As someone who’s worked nights, weekends and holidays for more than a decade, I don’t get the excitement the proletariat feels for Friday.
To me, it’s just another day except the traffic seems to be worse. I hate driving on the main streets in the Shenango Valley on Fridays, when everyone appears to be out-and-about and road rage threatens to explode in a volcano of verbal vulgarities.
Making Friday out as a holiday of sorts puzzles me, however. Are most people’s jobs so bad that they look forward to the weekend that much?
I don’t know, because I don’t do drudge work.
My craft is writing, reporting and photography and I’ll admit it: I live to work, not that I consider my “job” to be “work” if that makes any sense.
Most of the time, I get to see cool things from a good vantage point, and write and take pictures of it all.
So a day off for me is a day that I’m missing whatever’s going on and I feel left out.
I feel bad for the folks who have a job where all they do is complain: sure, Monday’s busy, but again, it’s just another day for me. I don’t feel like I’ve crossed a hump when I get to Wednesday and find nothing special about Saturday night.
I don’t really have a favorite day and have never thanked God for Friday as I’ve more important things to be thankful for.
But some folks live to holler about TGIF and all the fancy stuff they’re going to do. I think it’s because everyone else is so riled up about it that I prefer to withdraw from the world come Friday night.
I’ll read a book and listen to some jazz, try to get in a little personal writing and enjoy the solace of solitude after a busy workweek.
Alas, it’s Friday, thanks to God notwithstanding.
Thursday, March 25, 2010
Fear & Loathing on Obamacare
Fear & Loathing on Obamacare
I really shouldn’t let myself listen to right-wing radio. Laura Ingram is spewing inane invective as I unwind from a day in court watching another shooting case that’s the latest gang-related crime in the Shenango Valley.
I had some time to think about it all while waiting for the wheels of justice to turn (they move about as fast as Congress) and I can’t say I have much positive to say about the present state of our union.
The problem as I see it is the nation is facing a crisis not of healthcare or the economy or the end of all morality. The problem is we’ve become a nation of blamers, a group of people who know one thing for sure: It’s not our fault we're facing the life we’re living.
That’s the great American fault at the moment. It derives from lack of familiar upbringing and a broken support system of love & wisdom that used to prepare our youth for the big, bad world.
Darwin’s theories are being proven daily in this brutal new, each-man-for-himself world, where kids become adults before they have a chance to be kids.
Our solution to the problem is to throw money at non-profit organizations, schools and programs that do little more than perpetuate the problem to keep the grant money coming.
Meantime, the kids are running wild without proper role models and the closest thing they have to “tough love” is the mercies that may be shown to them by a penitent judge.
Our pro-life advocates remain hellbent on advising kids to keep making more kids that are wanted like baby dolls, but when the novelty wears off and the dolls become children, their parents are out of the picture and the cycle of kids growing up without a grounding in the basic differences between right and wrong and an understanding of that greatest of commandments, to love one another.
Until we fix that and give kids back the love and nurturing that’s required to become a capable adult, we’re stuck with a spiraling problem that gets exponentially worse with each generation.
This is all happening as our world’s going to hell and everyone’s arguing about politics as usual: healthcare myths, abortion, gay marriage that are each phantom issues, the latter two of which shouldn’t even be a subject of political debate. But we’ll waste time on it while kids devolve in the streets because no one’s watching them.
I don’t have the answer, but I know what’s happening now is missing the mark. And it makes me sad and angry when I go to court hearings and see pews filled with young people gone awry.
I’m tired of watching kids with potential get chewed up by the system and transformed into criminals.
I’m also sick of everybody blaming everybody else for it, and complaining about the problems but doing nothing to solve it.
To do so would require too much that seems like socialism, I suppose. Folks would have to work together for the common good and the ties that bind us because we’re human.
Obamacare doesn’t include a prescription to cure this, society’s greatest ill, but it should.
I really shouldn’t let myself listen to right-wing radio. Laura Ingram is spewing inane invective as I unwind from a day in court watching another shooting case that’s the latest gang-related crime in the Shenango Valley.
I had some time to think about it all while waiting for the wheels of justice to turn (they move about as fast as Congress) and I can’t say I have much positive to say about the present state of our union.
The problem as I see it is the nation is facing a crisis not of healthcare or the economy or the end of all morality. The problem is we’ve become a nation of blamers, a group of people who know one thing for sure: It’s not our fault we're facing the life we’re living.
That’s the great American fault at the moment. It derives from lack of familiar upbringing and a broken support system of love & wisdom that used to prepare our youth for the big, bad world.
Darwin’s theories are being proven daily in this brutal new, each-man-for-himself world, where kids become adults before they have a chance to be kids.
Our solution to the problem is to throw money at non-profit organizations, schools and programs that do little more than perpetuate the problem to keep the grant money coming.
Meantime, the kids are running wild without proper role models and the closest thing they have to “tough love” is the mercies that may be shown to them by a penitent judge.
Our pro-life advocates remain hellbent on advising kids to keep making more kids that are wanted like baby dolls, but when the novelty wears off and the dolls become children, their parents are out of the picture and the cycle of kids growing up without a grounding in the basic differences between right and wrong and an understanding of that greatest of commandments, to love one another.
Until we fix that and give kids back the love and nurturing that’s required to become a capable adult, we’re stuck with a spiraling problem that gets exponentially worse with each generation.
This is all happening as our world’s going to hell and everyone’s arguing about politics as usual: healthcare myths, abortion, gay marriage that are each phantom issues, the latter two of which shouldn’t even be a subject of political debate. But we’ll waste time on it while kids devolve in the streets because no one’s watching them.
I don’t have the answer, but I know what’s happening now is missing the mark. And it makes me sad and angry when I go to court hearings and see pews filled with young people gone awry.
I’m tired of watching kids with potential get chewed up by the system and transformed into criminals.
I’m also sick of everybody blaming everybody else for it, and complaining about the problems but doing nothing to solve it.
To do so would require too much that seems like socialism, I suppose. Folks would have to work together for the common good and the ties that bind us because we’re human.
Obamacare doesn’t include a prescription to cure this, society’s greatest ill, but it should.
Tuesday, March 23, 2010
Fear & Loathing on Furlough (Part 2)
Fear & Loathing on Furlough (Part 2)
I’m furloughed again, this time a single day off to steel the profits of the ailing philo-industrial complex that controls words and information.
It’s the straw that stirs the drink, as Reggie Jackson was for the Bronx Bombers.
As a grunt humping a police beat in the Rust Belt, these unpaid days off are frustrating because there’s work I could be doing instead of sitting here typing up internet treatises.
I’m spewing invective in my mind as I think about the corporate and government institutions I wish we the people would revolt against: that would be a movement I could get behind.
I enjoy railing against corporate megalomania and institutional slavery: the twin banes of the post-9/11, post-industrial Brave New World.
We’re pawns in a chess game and no one’s playing by the rules, which they keep re-writing.
I thought it was check mate, but an eighteen-month stale mate turned into a victory somehow. I don’t think anyone’s considered how ‘we the people’ feel just about now.
We’re overloaded with invective and lamenting the loss of personal dignity during this time of lingering hardship: times are tight, and the smiles are few.
Dignity’s an important ideal and the unemployment, the rising costs and frustrating debts and spiraling-out-of-control financial problems; each strike blows at a person’s sense of dignity.
But without it, we wouldn’t hold our heads high and keep on, keepin’ on, to quote the master, Dylan.
As captured pawns in the game, all we can do is look on in horror as the chaos unfolds.
Add in furlough days which give people time to think about things, and the result is this kind of treatise. Pointless writing that fills the hours and takes up space on silicon-valley servers.
I’m furloughed again, this time a single day off to steel the profits of the ailing philo-industrial complex that controls words and information.
It’s the straw that stirs the drink, as Reggie Jackson was for the Bronx Bombers.
As a grunt humping a police beat in the Rust Belt, these unpaid days off are frustrating because there’s work I could be doing instead of sitting here typing up internet treatises.
I’m spewing invective in my mind as I think about the corporate and government institutions I wish we the people would revolt against: that would be a movement I could get behind.
I enjoy railing against corporate megalomania and institutional slavery: the twin banes of the post-9/11, post-industrial Brave New World.
We’re pawns in a chess game and no one’s playing by the rules, which they keep re-writing.
I thought it was check mate, but an eighteen-month stale mate turned into a victory somehow. I don’t think anyone’s considered how ‘we the people’ feel just about now.
We’re overloaded with invective and lamenting the loss of personal dignity during this time of lingering hardship: times are tight, and the smiles are few.
Dignity’s an important ideal and the unemployment, the rising costs and frustrating debts and spiraling-out-of-control financial problems; each strike blows at a person’s sense of dignity.
But without it, we wouldn’t hold our heads high and keep on, keepin’ on, to quote the master, Dylan.
As captured pawns in the game, all we can do is look on in horror as the chaos unfolds.
Add in furlough days which give people time to think about things, and the result is this kind of treatise. Pointless writing that fills the hours and takes up space on silicon-valley servers.
Monday, March 22, 2010
Fear & Loathing Before the Apocalypse
Fear & Loathing Before the Apocalypse
The Man in Black could sing a story song better than anyone. As Bob Dylan sings, “some people say (he’s) got the blood of the land in his voice.”
I’ve been celebrating Cash lately: he is one of the artists who’re etched onto the Great American Songbook. His lyrics and the subject of the stories he tells that were written by others still resonate, four and in some cases five decades after they were recorded.
“I Walk the Line” may be the best simple love song ever; and “Ring of Fire” burns with June Carter Cash’s passion.
“Don’t Take Your Guns to Town” and “City of New Orleans” capture times and places in America, much like Walt Whitman did in poetry.
This country has been a fertile muse; this land that’s your land and my land. Too often we take for granted how free we are to disagree that we fail to see how petty we may have been.
The America I know today is bigger and better than ever, but because of its largesse, we’re a bitch to manage.
Any government or creation we concoct to serve the needs of our 300-plus million populous is going to be a monstrous, messy and in some ways wasteful. But sometimes collectives are needed and no one ought to die in these United States for lack of health care.
We remain as awesome country, full of people with diverse opinions, passions and extraordinary talents.
From the days of Melville and Hawthorne and the flowering of New England, then on to Twain, Poe and Whitman and then Hemingway, Fitzgerald and Wolfe, with people like Scott Joplin, Irving Berlin, Woody Guthrie, Hank Williams and Ledbelly thrown in for good measure, the American story is worth telling.
I’m but a loyal scrivener of the times. I’m a manic chronicler of the Shenango Valley at the turn of the 21st century and what the people are about now.
Today seemed to be one where the powers-that-be collectively caught their breath and plotted their next moves.
The debates of the last year-and-a-half have divided the country. It’ll be interested to see if that means outrage voiced at the ballot box.
It’s also coincidental that crunch time for healthcare reform came in the midst of March Madness, when much of the nation is tuned into college basketball and studying bracketology instead of serious issues.
When folks wake up from their hoop dreams, they’re going to find out if what passed was meaningful reform or just another failed government initiative we wasted a lot of hot air and bruised feelings over.
For everyone’s sake let’s hope it’s been worth it.
The Man in Black could sing a story song better than anyone. As Bob Dylan sings, “some people say (he’s) got the blood of the land in his voice.”
I’ve been celebrating Cash lately: he is one of the artists who’re etched onto the Great American Songbook. His lyrics and the subject of the stories he tells that were written by others still resonate, four and in some cases five decades after they were recorded.
“I Walk the Line” may be the best simple love song ever; and “Ring of Fire” burns with June Carter Cash’s passion.
“Don’t Take Your Guns to Town” and “City of New Orleans” capture times and places in America, much like Walt Whitman did in poetry.
This country has been a fertile muse; this land that’s your land and my land. Too often we take for granted how free we are to disagree that we fail to see how petty we may have been.
The America I know today is bigger and better than ever, but because of its largesse, we’re a bitch to manage.
Any government or creation we concoct to serve the needs of our 300-plus million populous is going to be a monstrous, messy and in some ways wasteful. But sometimes collectives are needed and no one ought to die in these United States for lack of health care.
We remain as awesome country, full of people with diverse opinions, passions and extraordinary talents.
From the days of Melville and Hawthorne and the flowering of New England, then on to Twain, Poe and Whitman and then Hemingway, Fitzgerald and Wolfe, with people like Scott Joplin, Irving Berlin, Woody Guthrie, Hank Williams and Ledbelly thrown in for good measure, the American story is worth telling.
I’m but a loyal scrivener of the times. I’m a manic chronicler of the Shenango Valley at the turn of the 21st century and what the people are about now.
Today seemed to be one where the powers-that-be collectively caught their breath and plotted their next moves.
The debates of the last year-and-a-half have divided the country. It’ll be interested to see if that means outrage voiced at the ballot box.
It’s also coincidental that crunch time for healthcare reform came in the midst of March Madness, when much of the nation is tuned into college basketball and studying bracketology instead of serious issues.
When folks wake up from their hoop dreams, they’re going to find out if what passed was meaningful reform or just another failed government initiative we wasted a lot of hot air and bruised feelings over.
For everyone’s sake let’s hope it’s been worth it.
Sunday, March 21, 2010
Fear & Loathing on Healthcare
Fear & Loathing on Healthcare.
So they did it. They had the vote as I napped after golfing, no news to be had early Sunday evening before the vote was taken.
I’m sure the cable news networks did it justice and made it into folks “watching history unfold” – I wonder if a chill ran up Chris Matthews’ thigh again, thinking about what Teddy Kennedy was thinking.
I can only imagine that many people in my neck of the Rust Belt are mad. They’ve bought the idea that the reform is pork-laden fat layered with socialistic bureaucratese, and they’re not entirely inaccurate in making that claim.
There are others who will be touting the passage like the second-coming of the polio vaccine that transformed America more than the Great Society did.
What I think should have been a provision in the law was something that banned, on passage, mention of “healthcare reform” for a fortnight in any print or broadcast media.
For that, I’d have bought into a single-payer system. Truth told, I don’t really care.
I’m still in the lucky age group: I’m a youngish man who’s healthy and I pay for health insurance I do not need and don’t fret too much about it because I understand that it’s my turn to dish out the money without getting something in return. I understand, my day will come. For now, it is my job in our convoluted life factory to be a feeder and provide cash to grease the wheels of most of the things that run.
So this bill is passed and whoop-ti-do! It’s supposed to right all wrongs. I won’t be surprised when it doesn’t. I also won’t be shocked when Karl Marx’s stamp on it isn’t found. We’re too greedy as Americans to be corrupted by anything but the most liberal socialism.
I’m sure there are legislative wastes in the law that will make us proud, backroom deals and sub-clauses crafted in smoke-filled rooms to calm the huddled masses in certain salamander-shaped gerrymandered political districts.
I’m also sure there’re some things to like in the legislation. Moreover, I hope there’re a few things in it that will please almost everyone. Doing something is better than letting our present system complete its suicide-mission.
I wished they left in the language about the death panels, it was the sole provision I whole-heartedly supported, but I understand that it is the graying-baby-boomers who are now the establishment power structure and they couldn’t stand for something as dangerous to them.
Now, I’d just enjoy a moment of silence, a time to digest and think – not talk – about what it all means to me?
I don’t need some television talking head to tell me, although I hope I get the chance to hear Rush’s rant about this tomorrow.
I won’t lie, if I can swing it, I’ll be listening.
But I won’t take the preaching to be gospel. Neither will I drink the White House Kool-Aid that Gibb & Co. will be handing out in equal measure.
Instead, I want silence. A simple, quiet moment. Time to ponder a point.
It won’t happen, but this won’t be the first time legislators have failed me.
So they did it. They had the vote as I napped after golfing, no news to be had early Sunday evening before the vote was taken.
I’m sure the cable news networks did it justice and made it into folks “watching history unfold” – I wonder if a chill ran up Chris Matthews’ thigh again, thinking about what Teddy Kennedy was thinking.
I can only imagine that many people in my neck of the Rust Belt are mad. They’ve bought the idea that the reform is pork-laden fat layered with socialistic bureaucratese, and they’re not entirely inaccurate in making that claim.
There are others who will be touting the passage like the second-coming of the polio vaccine that transformed America more than the Great Society did.
What I think should have been a provision in the law was something that banned, on passage, mention of “healthcare reform” for a fortnight in any print or broadcast media.
For that, I’d have bought into a single-payer system. Truth told, I don’t really care.
I’m still in the lucky age group: I’m a youngish man who’s healthy and I pay for health insurance I do not need and don’t fret too much about it because I understand that it’s my turn to dish out the money without getting something in return. I understand, my day will come. For now, it is my job in our convoluted life factory to be a feeder and provide cash to grease the wheels of most of the things that run.
So this bill is passed and whoop-ti-do! It’s supposed to right all wrongs. I won’t be surprised when it doesn’t. I also won’t be shocked when Karl Marx’s stamp on it isn’t found. We’re too greedy as Americans to be corrupted by anything but the most liberal socialism.
I’m sure there are legislative wastes in the law that will make us proud, backroom deals and sub-clauses crafted in smoke-filled rooms to calm the huddled masses in certain salamander-shaped gerrymandered political districts.
I’m also sure there’re some things to like in the legislation. Moreover, I hope there’re a few things in it that will please almost everyone. Doing something is better than letting our present system complete its suicide-mission.
I wished they left in the language about the death panels, it was the sole provision I whole-heartedly supported, but I understand that it is the graying-baby-boomers who are now the establishment power structure and they couldn’t stand for something as dangerous to them.
Now, I’d just enjoy a moment of silence, a time to digest and think – not talk – about what it all means to me?
I don’t need some television talking head to tell me, although I hope I get the chance to hear Rush’s rant about this tomorrow.
I won’t lie, if I can swing it, I’ll be listening.
But I won’t take the preaching to be gospel. Neither will I drink the White House Kool-Aid that Gibb & Co. will be handing out in equal measure.
Instead, I want silence. A simple, quiet moment. Time to ponder a point.
It won’t happen, but this won’t be the first time legislators have failed me.
Wednesday, March 17, 2010
Fear & Loathing on St. Patrick's Day
Fear & Loathing on St. Patrick’s Day 2010
The last day of the three-day furlough is an unofficial holiday, an excuse for drunken revelry that’s manna for any bar owner.
I’ve stayed away from the huddled masses chugging green beer this year in favor of a quiet night listening to a high school girls basketball playoff game and then Laura Ingram, one of the few people who I actually despise on this world. I think her exhalations contribute a lot to global warming, but I listen to get my dander up.
The whines of the conservatives now that they are no longer in power is becoming annoying. Especially those of Ms. Ingram, who’s artfully-edited sound bites were funny at one time, but have become cliched.
The amount of misinformation that’s been spread over the last year about health care reform has been enough to make me sick.
What boggles my mind is that we’re even debating this, as the richest and most powerful nation in the world.
I can agree with many conservative ideals (and truth be told don’t identify myself with any particular political party or philosophy) but what I can’t understand is the conservatives' apparent complete disregard to offer help to their fellow man, especially those who are worse off than themselves.
I’m all for individual responsibility, but in today’s America there are scores of people who are set up for failure because of the environment in which they are raised.
And that some people think it’s OK for those of us who are better off to tell these people that it’s their fault they aren’t in a better position is inhumane.
Compassion and giving a damn about others is what makes us humans and selfish disregard for those less fortunate makes me sick to my stomach.
I do agree with many of the folks who are sick and tired of our political system and the people who populate it: we have far too much lobbying and other political machinations in today’s government.
But the problem won’t be solved by gathering together to hold signs and listen to speeches. The problem is that most people in these United States fail to vote come Election Day.
Who knows, maybe this will change in coming elections, but as long as fewer than half of voting-age Americans fail to vote, it’s all for naught.
As for comparing meaningful healthcare reform to a plunge into socialism: get off it.
Our country runs on socialistic principals. The very idea of insurance of any sort is socialism: a group of people band together and pool their cash to protect themselves from emergency expenses they couldn’t afford otherwise.
But it’s an easy rallying cry for conservative politicians to speak about and is sure to rile up people who are blinded by patriotism.
I’m proud that in America we have such diverse differences of opinion and live to argue another day, but when the arguments get in the way of progress it’s sickening.
Ms. Ingram is particularly annoying tonight. I can’t believe she actually has fans. But as an American, I’m in favor of letting her continue to spew her nonsense.
It’s my hope that the government and the people wake up and realize just how important guaranteeing affordable health care is to the future of America.
It’s interesting that the Japanese constitution – written by all-American soldier and statesmen Douglas McArthur – contains a provision that guarantees health care as a fundamental right.
Yet it’s something that’s too much for America to swallow, as if treating the sick and allowing those with chronic diseases that require continual, expensive medication to be able to afford to live is somehow an encroachment on our collective freedom.
Again, to use a computer abbreviation, WTF?
So that’s what St. Patrick’s Day has been about this year: a losing basketball game, politically-biased talk radio drivel and my thoughts on health care reform.
The best thing to come out of the holiday was the pistachio-flavored milkshake I bought to mark the day. How sweet it was!
The last day of the three-day furlough is an unofficial holiday, an excuse for drunken revelry that’s manna for any bar owner.
I’ve stayed away from the huddled masses chugging green beer this year in favor of a quiet night listening to a high school girls basketball playoff game and then Laura Ingram, one of the few people who I actually despise on this world. I think her exhalations contribute a lot to global warming, but I listen to get my dander up.
The whines of the conservatives now that they are no longer in power is becoming annoying. Especially those of Ms. Ingram, who’s artfully-edited sound bites were funny at one time, but have become cliched.
The amount of misinformation that’s been spread over the last year about health care reform has been enough to make me sick.
What boggles my mind is that we’re even debating this, as the richest and most powerful nation in the world.
I can agree with many conservative ideals (and truth be told don’t identify myself with any particular political party or philosophy) but what I can’t understand is the conservatives' apparent complete disregard to offer help to their fellow man, especially those who are worse off than themselves.
I’m all for individual responsibility, but in today’s America there are scores of people who are set up for failure because of the environment in which they are raised.
And that some people think it’s OK for those of us who are better off to tell these people that it’s their fault they aren’t in a better position is inhumane.
Compassion and giving a damn about others is what makes us humans and selfish disregard for those less fortunate makes me sick to my stomach.
I do agree with many of the folks who are sick and tired of our political system and the people who populate it: we have far too much lobbying and other political machinations in today’s government.
But the problem won’t be solved by gathering together to hold signs and listen to speeches. The problem is that most people in these United States fail to vote come Election Day.
Who knows, maybe this will change in coming elections, but as long as fewer than half of voting-age Americans fail to vote, it’s all for naught.
As for comparing meaningful healthcare reform to a plunge into socialism: get off it.
Our country runs on socialistic principals. The very idea of insurance of any sort is socialism: a group of people band together and pool their cash to protect themselves from emergency expenses they couldn’t afford otherwise.
But it’s an easy rallying cry for conservative politicians to speak about and is sure to rile up people who are blinded by patriotism.
I’m proud that in America we have such diverse differences of opinion and live to argue another day, but when the arguments get in the way of progress it’s sickening.
Ms. Ingram is particularly annoying tonight. I can’t believe she actually has fans. But as an American, I’m in favor of letting her continue to spew her nonsense.
It’s my hope that the government and the people wake up and realize just how important guaranteeing affordable health care is to the future of America.
It’s interesting that the Japanese constitution – written by all-American soldier and statesmen Douglas McArthur – contains a provision that guarantees health care as a fundamental right.
Yet it’s something that’s too much for America to swallow, as if treating the sick and allowing those with chronic diseases that require continual, expensive medication to be able to afford to live is somehow an encroachment on our collective freedom.
Again, to use a computer abbreviation, WTF?
So that’s what St. Patrick’s Day has been about this year: a losing basketball game, politically-biased talk radio drivel and my thoughts on health care reform.
The best thing to come out of the holiday was the pistachio-flavored milkshake I bought to mark the day. How sweet it was!
Monday, March 15, 2010
Fear & Loathing with ADD
Fear & Loathing with ADD
Single-tasking in this era of the multi-task, I type into a single text file, without a Web browser in the background or the television on. It’s more complicated without the distractions so I at least have to have Bob Dylan’s latest at a reasonable volume so an accordion can provide a backbeat to riff upon.
I understand there are now adults with attention-deficient disorder, one of the scores of newly-coined diseases psychological professionals want to hang on us humans.
I don’t doubt this one and wouldn’t be surprised if it becomes an epidemic. The problem isn’t us humans, it’s the oodles of information that are a mouse-click away. It’s the smart phones we carry and the Ipods and the digital cable or satellite television with hundreds of channels and still nothing of substance on.
It’s e-books and right wing radio and pod casts and social networks that keep us connected at all costs.
There’s so much to pay attention to that it’s impossible to offer undivided attention anymore, so as I’ve said, it’s no wonder there’s a syndrome among both children and adults of attention deficits.
It’s so great a problem that I’d be surprised if there was a single soul who was reading this with rapt attention: Lord knows I’m not writing it that way.
Our collective attention deficit is something that should spur more worries than the national debt, but aside from a few excited drug company execs and a couple mental health professionals, the problem barely rates a blip on the international radar; eventually it may be the subject of an impassioned PSA, but that’s about it.
In generations to come, it’s going to be more worrisome than another swine flu pandemic because it is a serious, if not lethal problem.
Kids are growing up without being able to get from here to there without a GPS. They don’t know the names of local rivers or physical landmarks and they read and write in a babble of abbreviations and slang that’s yet to be organized into a dictionary.
Ear buds deliver audio instructions, Google organizes the information and if specific knowledge is needed there’s the Wikipedia fact collective to tap into.
There’s no need to remember when i comes before e because the computer programs self-correct and there are more important things to remember like random passwords and keeping track of who posted what in the continuous news feed.
It’s beyond mind-boggling and in fact is an infinite swirling abyss of information spinning out of control.
Achtung ad infinitum, and ever changing like strobe light flashes by the nanosecond.
I don’t know what the cure is aside from repeated sensory deprivation chamber treatments and/or seclusion, but the withdrawal pains from such have yet to be studied and could probably be fatal, possibly resulting in creation of a class of zombies who are in fact living dead, perhaps moaning, perhaps chanting incantations in binary code.
It’s scary stuff: First it was not enough information, then it ballooned into too much information and now that information’s being spewed for information’s sake it’s impossible not to pay attention to it all with a dizzying intensity that crashes and burns into silence and a flatline buzz of white noise that signals it's time to re-boot, defragment and quarantine the misinformation.
Single-tasking in this era of the multi-task, I type into a single text file, without a Web browser in the background or the television on. It’s more complicated without the distractions so I at least have to have Bob Dylan’s latest at a reasonable volume so an accordion can provide a backbeat to riff upon.
I understand there are now adults with attention-deficient disorder, one of the scores of newly-coined diseases psychological professionals want to hang on us humans.
I don’t doubt this one and wouldn’t be surprised if it becomes an epidemic. The problem isn’t us humans, it’s the oodles of information that are a mouse-click away. It’s the smart phones we carry and the Ipods and the digital cable or satellite television with hundreds of channels and still nothing of substance on.
It’s e-books and right wing radio and pod casts and social networks that keep us connected at all costs.
There’s so much to pay attention to that it’s impossible to offer undivided attention anymore, so as I’ve said, it’s no wonder there’s a syndrome among both children and adults of attention deficits.
It’s so great a problem that I’d be surprised if there was a single soul who was reading this with rapt attention: Lord knows I’m not writing it that way.
Our collective attention deficit is something that should spur more worries than the national debt, but aside from a few excited drug company execs and a couple mental health professionals, the problem barely rates a blip on the international radar; eventually it may be the subject of an impassioned PSA, but that’s about it.
In generations to come, it’s going to be more worrisome than another swine flu pandemic because it is a serious, if not lethal problem.
Kids are growing up without being able to get from here to there without a GPS. They don’t know the names of local rivers or physical landmarks and they read and write in a babble of abbreviations and slang that’s yet to be organized into a dictionary.
Ear buds deliver audio instructions, Google organizes the information and if specific knowledge is needed there’s the Wikipedia fact collective to tap into.
There’s no need to remember when i comes before e because the computer programs self-correct and there are more important things to remember like random passwords and keeping track of who posted what in the continuous news feed.
It’s beyond mind-boggling and in fact is an infinite swirling abyss of information spinning out of control.
Achtung ad infinitum, and ever changing like strobe light flashes by the nanosecond.
I don’t know what the cure is aside from repeated sensory deprivation chamber treatments and/or seclusion, but the withdrawal pains from such have yet to be studied and could probably be fatal, possibly resulting in creation of a class of zombies who are in fact living dead, perhaps moaning, perhaps chanting incantations in binary code.
It’s scary stuff: First it was not enough information, then it ballooned into too much information and now that information’s being spewed for information’s sake it’s impossible not to pay attention to it all with a dizzying intensity that crashes and burns into silence and a flatline buzz of white noise that signals it's time to re-boot, defragment and quarantine the misinformation.
Fear & Loathing on Furlough
Fear & Loathing on Furlough
The Ides of March are upon us and I’m vigilant as the soothsayer’s warning echoes across the looming fog of history. Caesar and Rome were but the first act of the American Dream.
The Roman excesses and perversions are nothing compared to the frivolity, greed and abuses we Americans have perverted our lives with.
The next three days are my penance for my contribution to the collective American sin, as I’m off unpaid per corporate orders. It beats being laid off permanently or not having a job at all and these unpaid days off are the way many American companies are using to preserve the black on their bottom line.
It’s all about the Benjamins, as the rap song goes, and in America in 2010, it’s especially all about the corporate cash. The individual can go broke, lose their home or starve so long as the conglomerate is preserved. To save our high-stakes houses of gold, we’ll mortgage the solvency of our great-great-great-great grandchildren.
It’s all about the top two percent, the extreme upper crust, of our age. They must not suffer!
It makes the sins of the gilded age of Vanderbilts, Morgans and Rockefellers seem slight. These hypocritical greed-mongers are making more money and only want to make more money and they have the power where it counts to keep doing that.
The politicians who control the purse-strings are pawns in their game and no matter what anyone says that game is rigged.
Joe Sixpack is and always will be the loser. No politician, be them red, blue or shades inbetween, has the common man at heart or mind. (Politicians don’t have souls so I won’t go there.)
Instead, they’ll get us revved up over health care, debating something that doesn’t effect the ruling class. They’ll spread fear of change and play the “Red Card” that “socialized medicine” is some sort of evil at the same time they benefit from government-funded health care that’s the best in the world.
As a people, we’ve fallen for the trick and swallowed the bait and they’re reeling us in even as we’re still reeling from the effects of this economic recession and they’re finding more and more ways to squander the cash in taxes that we work so hard for but they spend so easily.
It’s maddening to be used like this. As I sit here, being paid less to do a job that I’m already underpaid for, it makes me seethe to think about these corporate bigwigs who keep getting richer.
They don’t care that they’re creating an untenable situation and causing problems that aren’t offset by the cost-savings.
All they care about it their bottom line and it’s enough to drive a common man over the edge.
Some men have been driven thus, but for the most part we’ve swallowed this bitter medicine with little complaint.
What’s frustrating is there’s little we can do. The politicians are all the same: Democrat, Republican, tea or coffee drinker, once they’re elected they drink the Kool-Aid and join the select society that only cares about furthering itself.
The only way I can see where someone can seek solace is to withdraw in the fashion of Henry David Thoreau and to take to the woods, unplug and unwire, and “simplify” life so that it’s something the greedy men can’t take away.
All they care about is money, so they have no use for an aesthete. And the real affluence that men possess is the substance of their souls: what they dream and create with their minds or fashion with their hands not for a wage but for the satisfaction of creation. It’s to scrawl ‘Kilroy was here’ in the sands of time.
That’s what I’m living for and I’m thankful they can’t take that away.
Like Caesar and Rome, the American house of cards will one day fall. But the American Dream and Great American Creations will live forever.
So there!
The Ides of March are upon us and I’m vigilant as the soothsayer’s warning echoes across the looming fog of history. Caesar and Rome were but the first act of the American Dream.
The Roman excesses and perversions are nothing compared to the frivolity, greed and abuses we Americans have perverted our lives with.
The next three days are my penance for my contribution to the collective American sin, as I’m off unpaid per corporate orders. It beats being laid off permanently or not having a job at all and these unpaid days off are the way many American companies are using to preserve the black on their bottom line.
It’s all about the Benjamins, as the rap song goes, and in America in 2010, it’s especially all about the corporate cash. The individual can go broke, lose their home or starve so long as the conglomerate is preserved. To save our high-stakes houses of gold, we’ll mortgage the solvency of our great-great-great-great grandchildren.
It’s all about the top two percent, the extreme upper crust, of our age. They must not suffer!
It makes the sins of the gilded age of Vanderbilts, Morgans and Rockefellers seem slight. These hypocritical greed-mongers are making more money and only want to make more money and they have the power where it counts to keep doing that.
The politicians who control the purse-strings are pawns in their game and no matter what anyone says that game is rigged.
Joe Sixpack is and always will be the loser. No politician, be them red, blue or shades inbetween, has the common man at heart or mind. (Politicians don’t have souls so I won’t go there.)
Instead, they’ll get us revved up over health care, debating something that doesn’t effect the ruling class. They’ll spread fear of change and play the “Red Card” that “socialized medicine” is some sort of evil at the same time they benefit from government-funded health care that’s the best in the world.
As a people, we’ve fallen for the trick and swallowed the bait and they’re reeling us in even as we’re still reeling from the effects of this economic recession and they’re finding more and more ways to squander the cash in taxes that we work so hard for but they spend so easily.
It’s maddening to be used like this. As I sit here, being paid less to do a job that I’m already underpaid for, it makes me seethe to think about these corporate bigwigs who keep getting richer.
They don’t care that they’re creating an untenable situation and causing problems that aren’t offset by the cost-savings.
All they care about it their bottom line and it’s enough to drive a common man over the edge.
Some men have been driven thus, but for the most part we’ve swallowed this bitter medicine with little complaint.
What’s frustrating is there’s little we can do. The politicians are all the same: Democrat, Republican, tea or coffee drinker, once they’re elected they drink the Kool-Aid and join the select society that only cares about furthering itself.
The only way I can see where someone can seek solace is to withdraw in the fashion of Henry David Thoreau and to take to the woods, unplug and unwire, and “simplify” life so that it’s something the greedy men can’t take away.
All they care about is money, so they have no use for an aesthete. And the real affluence that men possess is the substance of their souls: what they dream and create with their minds or fashion with their hands not for a wage but for the satisfaction of creation. It’s to scrawl ‘Kilroy was here’ in the sands of time.
That’s what I’m living for and I’m thankful they can’t take that away.
Like Caesar and Rome, the American house of cards will one day fall. But the American Dream and Great American Creations will live forever.
So there!
Sunday, March 14, 2010
Friday, March 12, 2010
The Horror
Seventy-five miles going 75 mph with the dome light on in a drizzle, dodging road construction after a back-and-forth basketball game that ended in a loss for the local team was a harrowing adventure.
It was a trip through the heart of darkness with Kurtz riding shotgun, swearing at a computer on his lap and playing tape recorded comments while pounding at the keyboard.
Driving without a map in unfamiliar territory at the beginning of the rainy season: it was like being in the Parrot’s Beak in 1970. Instead of landmines there were potholes, Jersey barriers and deer looming in the mist.
It was a close basketball game, essentially a draw that became a win at the charity stripe with .1 of a second remaining: not enough time for even a last-ditch, full-court heave.
The site was an opulent school is an affluent aberration of the Rust Belt. Penne Pasta and $2 hot dogs at the concession stand and a gym filled with banners celebrating tennis and lacrosse championships.
This was dinner-jacket territory, beyond white collar and making even this valley’s white collars seem blue.
A wrong turn out of the parking lot twisted me around and caused minor panic before I righted the course, then battled dome-light blindness the rest of the way.
No cigarettes and nothing to drink. Nothing to say to the colonel beside me, it was a wild time, alone with my thoughts spinning out of control.
Waking night-driving dreams of Conrad and Apocalypse Now wrought by the resonance of the Nelson Demille pulp fiction I’m reading.
I felt like a caterpillar crawling across a razor blade.
Now, 90 minutes after a safe return, the present keeps blurring by: I feel like I’m still moving as Bob Dylan sings about “Marching to the City” and I think about marching from the city.
I’m thankful I made it back in one piece, met deadline and now am safe at home, if home is indeed safe.
Tapping a keyboard like a maestro, taking the surreality of the world I wrought and turning it into words.
Words can redeem us. In the beginning was the word and come the apocalypse the word will be said.
Alas, the word will save the world if the world will let it. The word will fill the hollow men with substance and define the absurdities of the digital life in the next world.
Now that’s a load of nonsense and it’s time to stop the words and get back to the world.
The dreams should be vivid tonight!
It was a trip through the heart of darkness with Kurtz riding shotgun, swearing at a computer on his lap and playing tape recorded comments while pounding at the keyboard.
Driving without a map in unfamiliar territory at the beginning of the rainy season: it was like being in the Parrot’s Beak in 1970. Instead of landmines there were potholes, Jersey barriers and deer looming in the mist.
It was a close basketball game, essentially a draw that became a win at the charity stripe with .1 of a second remaining: not enough time for even a last-ditch, full-court heave.
The site was an opulent school is an affluent aberration of the Rust Belt. Penne Pasta and $2 hot dogs at the concession stand and a gym filled with banners celebrating tennis and lacrosse championships.
This was dinner-jacket territory, beyond white collar and making even this valley’s white collars seem blue.
A wrong turn out of the parking lot twisted me around and caused minor panic before I righted the course, then battled dome-light blindness the rest of the way.
No cigarettes and nothing to drink. Nothing to say to the colonel beside me, it was a wild time, alone with my thoughts spinning out of control.
Waking night-driving dreams of Conrad and Apocalypse Now wrought by the resonance of the Nelson Demille pulp fiction I’m reading.
I felt like a caterpillar crawling across a razor blade.
Now, 90 minutes after a safe return, the present keeps blurring by: I feel like I’m still moving as Bob Dylan sings about “Marching to the City” and I think about marching from the city.
I’m thankful I made it back in one piece, met deadline and now am safe at home, if home is indeed safe.
Tapping a keyboard like a maestro, taking the surreality of the world I wrought and turning it into words.
Words can redeem us. In the beginning was the word and come the apocalypse the word will be said.
Alas, the word will save the world if the world will let it. The word will fill the hollow men with substance and define the absurdities of the digital life in the next world.
Now that’s a load of nonsense and it’s time to stop the words and get back to the world.
The dreams should be vivid tonight!
Thursday, March 11, 2010
Fahrenheit 450
So this is what it’s like at Fahrenheit 450.
We’re almost at burning temperature, we almost have walls that talk and we almost don’t have to talk to each other face-to-face.
Every person is a newscast now, a live wire in this war called life. Everyone’s boiling with commotion and I’m steaming.
They might as well discontinue the pencil, it’s gone the way of the abacus: an entry between Penchi and pencil pusher.
My dictionary’s smoldering as I take the time to look it up: “the individual style or ability of an artist”
Do we need individuals anymore?
Join a group, make friends, comment in a 100 characters or less. Throw all those spelling tests into the fire and
Soon it will be burning bright. Paging Guy Montag: spring forth from the yellowing pages, sir! Here’s the order:
“Give the people contests they win by remembering the words to more popular songs or the names of state capitals or how much corn Iowa grew last year. Cram them full of non-combustible data, chock them so damned full of 'facts' they feel stuffed, but absolutely 'brilliant' with information. Then they'll feel they're thinking, they'll get a sense of motion without moving. And they'll be happy, because facts of that sort don't change. Don't give them any slippery stuff like philosophy or sociology to tie things up with. That way lies melancholy.”
It’s getting hotter by the day, burning heat and we keep getting dumber.
“I want to see everything now. And while none of it will be me when it goes in, after a while it'll all gather together inside and it'll be me. Look at the world out there, my God, my God, look at it out there, outside me, out there beyond my face and the only way to really touch it is to put it where it's finally me, where it's in the blood, where it pumps around a thousand times ten thousand a day. I get hold of it so it'll never run off. I'll hold on to the world tight some day. I've got one finger on it now; that's a beginning.”
It’s 450 degrees and I’m sweating. My books are brown and I feel like a pencil getting chewed up in an electric sharpener.
Getting chewed up before being thrown into the fire.
We’re almost at burning temperature, we almost have walls that talk and we almost don’t have to talk to each other face-to-face.
Every person is a newscast now, a live wire in this war called life. Everyone’s boiling with commotion and I’m steaming.
They might as well discontinue the pencil, it’s gone the way of the abacus: an entry between Penchi and pencil pusher.
My dictionary’s smoldering as I take the time to look it up: “the individual style or ability of an artist”
Do we need individuals anymore?
Join a group, make friends, comment in a 100 characters or less. Throw all those spelling tests into the fire and
Soon it will be burning bright. Paging Guy Montag: spring forth from the yellowing pages, sir! Here’s the order:
“Give the people contests they win by remembering the words to more popular songs or the names of state capitals or how much corn Iowa grew last year. Cram them full of non-combustible data, chock them so damned full of 'facts' they feel stuffed, but absolutely 'brilliant' with information. Then they'll feel they're thinking, they'll get a sense of motion without moving. And they'll be happy, because facts of that sort don't change. Don't give them any slippery stuff like philosophy or sociology to tie things up with. That way lies melancholy.”
It’s getting hotter by the day, burning heat and we keep getting dumber.
“I want to see everything now. And while none of it will be me when it goes in, after a while it'll all gather together inside and it'll be me. Look at the world out there, my God, my God, look at it out there, outside me, out there beyond my face and the only way to really touch it is to put it where it's finally me, where it's in the blood, where it pumps around a thousand times ten thousand a day. I get hold of it so it'll never run off. I'll hold on to the world tight some day. I've got one finger on it now; that's a beginning.”
It’s 450 degrees and I’m sweating. My books are brown and I feel like a pencil getting chewed up in an electric sharpener.
Getting chewed up before being thrown into the fire.
Welcome to the land of the living dead
“Welcome to the land of the living dead.”
- Ruby in “Brownsville Girl” by Bob Dylan and Sam Shepherd.
The Rust Belt is teeming with life this week as light-jacket weather has arrived. The snow is melted and the debris of autumn and winter is exposed to the eyes: leaves that haven’t completely decayed, sticks and stones and litter including half-crushed beer cans, empty, faded cigarette packages and thrown-out-the-window butts that had been buried beneath a dirty-white tundra of snow and ice.
Puddles have formed in the low spots and potholes, creating mirrors to reflect the welcome sunshine and making some street corners sparkle despite the grime.
There’s beauty in this Shenango Valley, splendid sights to see if you take stop time and take it in: Aging houses and neighborhoods full of old stories told by busted-out windows and sagging porches. Old men are sitting on front porch furniture that was bought in the 1980s, kids playing in the streets, moving out of the way of cars blasting music that adds to the booming vitality that blooms in the sun.
The WPA-laid red brick streets are filled with life in Farrell and even the dogs seem happy to just be outside without shivering.
There’s hope in the air that still has a bite of cold; hope that things might improve this year; that bigger and better things are around the corner for this neglected corner of America.
It’s been a long time coming; a wait that’s been punctuated by false-starts and pipe dreams that didn’t come true.
It’s left a weight on the shoulders of the bread-winners that’s eased for a moment by the thaw and sunshine. Troubles can be forgotten for a moment and hope prevails.
There’s a quiet dignity that comes from enduring tough times, a dignity that hasn’t yet disappeared, even with job losses, crime epidemics and drug problems.
There’s hope yet for this place that we call home.
- Ruby in “Brownsville Girl” by Bob Dylan and Sam Shepherd.
The Rust Belt is teeming with life this week as light-jacket weather has arrived. The snow is melted and the debris of autumn and winter is exposed to the eyes: leaves that haven’t completely decayed, sticks and stones and litter including half-crushed beer cans, empty, faded cigarette packages and thrown-out-the-window butts that had been buried beneath a dirty-white tundra of snow and ice.
Puddles have formed in the low spots and potholes, creating mirrors to reflect the welcome sunshine and making some street corners sparkle despite the grime.
There’s beauty in this Shenango Valley, splendid sights to see if you take stop time and take it in: Aging houses and neighborhoods full of old stories told by busted-out windows and sagging porches. Old men are sitting on front porch furniture that was bought in the 1980s, kids playing in the streets, moving out of the way of cars blasting music that adds to the booming vitality that blooms in the sun.
The WPA-laid red brick streets are filled with life in Farrell and even the dogs seem happy to just be outside without shivering.
There’s hope in the air that still has a bite of cold; hope that things might improve this year; that bigger and better things are around the corner for this neglected corner of America.
It’s been a long time coming; a wait that’s been punctuated by false-starts and pipe dreams that didn’t come true.
It’s left a weight on the shoulders of the bread-winners that’s eased for a moment by the thaw and sunshine. Troubles can be forgotten for a moment and hope prevails.
There’s a quiet dignity that comes from enduring tough times, a dignity that hasn’t yet disappeared, even with job losses, crime epidemics and drug problems.
There’s hope yet for this place that we call home.
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