kill ‘em all, let god sort ‘em out

it once was a matter of public scandal when our government was implicated in the attempt to even plan to assassinate foreign leaders.  now that we have engaged openly, even celebrated the assassination of our fellow citizens, in the wake of our openly engaging in and even celebrating torture and the general abrogation of civil rights both at home and abroad, we have certainly done more than turn a corner in the history of our unique society.  it could be said that we have begun the downward swirl around the receding surface of the commode.

if the president of these united states can claim for himself the right to end the life of one of us without trial or any sort of due process, based on hearsay alone, what does that say about what our republic has become?

i’ll tell you what it has become: it has become this.

the thing about figureheads

the thing about figureheads is, they don’t really LEAD, per se, they just give you a large papier mache puppet you can easily see from a distance to see which way the parade is going.

leaders inspire us to demand more of ourselves. leaders inspire loyalty because of how much of themselves they are willing to risk on behalf of those following them. leaders make decisions decisively; they don’t triangulate. and if they fuck up they own it and handle it. leaders are never tyrants; they put themselves in the direct line of fire of their decisions. leaders used to charge into battle at the head of their armies, not send them to fight while waiting for the outcome someplace safe. leaders go hungry so that others may eat. leaders tirelessly seek out people smarter than them to do things they themselves cannot. leaders beget leaders; anyone who spends any amount of time following them end up eventually leading something.

those are some of the ways one tells the difference. and yes, i am putting all of this in a book. that is, if “books” still exist by the time i am done.

credit counseling

aside from explaining to me what bankruptcy is, which my lawyer already took care of some time ago, the course provided me with this valuable chestnut of advice concerning how to overcome my financial distress: “Figure out something you are good at and like to do, and go out and get a job doing that. That’ll be $35.00.” oh, and i got a nice certificate with a bar code at the top.

fallen comrades

so today i did something i do when days, weeks, months, or even years go by between posts here — violent coughing and hacking from dust kicked up from the cobweb-shrouded mummified corpses of former readers in my waiting room — i go through the blogroll and see who’s still around.

a good 25% of the links there have been taken over by cyber-squatters and spamblogs.

i wonder if the, what is it, two or three or seven or nineteen various blogs i’ve abandoned have turned into something similar…okay, let’s be accurate here, been similarly HIJACKED BY SUCKERS WHO JUST WASTED THEIR MONEY ON A COMMUNITY COLLEGE “HOW TO MAKE MONEYS ON TEH INTARNETZ” CLASS…there, I said it.

ina vanba dariva honey

that’s a rock joke.  if you are not familiar with rock music of the previous century it may be meaningless to you.  and that’s…….okay.  (and that’s a reference to sen. al franken’s old day job.) but i digress.  as usual.

so where to start…uh, i paid my first visit to the other hemisphere’s so-called “developing world” over the past week and a half.  i’m still recalibrating my digestive tract.  but it’s given me a lot to think about.  one of the things is that there’s nothing romantic or noble about poverty, which i knew already having some experience with it, but seeing where people pay the cost of our lifestyles sort of drives it home.  nobody wants to be poor, really.  unable to get clean water to drink. treated like shit by obnoxious white tourists. children dying all around of preventable diseases which are the direct result of arbitrary political factors such as poverty, which is a direct result of capitalism. y’know, stuff like that.

but you also see how normal it is to live a simple life because the majority of people in the world live that way, and the sick, insane way we live over here is really thrown into stark relief.  and yet again, a powerful realization of that does not take away a concurrent realization of the beauty of this place, just as noticing the suffering there did nothing to take away from the beauty.

america really is beautiful.  not because of anything we did, or did to deserve it.

i’m also in a period of fermentation, percolation, acid reflux, diarrhea, introspection, transformation, cleansing, lint-picking, whatever, and awareness that the minute you get back to this madhouse you start worrying about not being productive.  can you fucking imagine that!  i tell you — this place is a madhouse.  a pretty madhouse, but a madhouse nonetheless.

one of the things that i do when i get in this phase is go back and read old stuff i wrote, and as usual i can’t recognize my own voice out of any of it.  i use bigger words than i think i know.  i somehow parse these sentence structures and architectonics of reasoning that upon re-reading cause me to go wha? huh? is that ME?  i don’t recognize that guy.  i feel stupid, preverbal.  i’ve been in this state of wordless emotion for so long that i almost feel as if i don’t even know my own language any more.

i can’t remember if i know anything, or if i have anything to say, or if i’m good at anything in particular.  when i was passing through passport control the officer asked me what i do for a living.  (hello america! back to the madhouse! i was all like “what the fuck do you care??  i’m from here, plus i’ve been unemployed forever anyway, wh0se job would i steal??”  but instead what i said was, “uh…i’m a writer.”  which is pretty much my stock answer.  that’s what i told this sort of local wiseman/leader/entrepreneur back in country when he asked me the same question.  he pressed for what kind of writing and i said “uh…web…content…”

meanwhile my american host over there played a funny trick on me i’m still kind of reeling from in which she introduced me to a local important person as a “great poet”.  he responded to this information by asking me how many books i had published.

no matter which country i’m in i still kind of feel like the big  joke’s on me.  my work is to figure out how to laugh instead of cry.

so there you have it friends.  glad to be back.  i’ll try to update more frequently in the coming days.

instructions

just in general, as an aphorism for daily living:

1) Vinyl.

2) 11.

white male privilege, american exceptionalism & pop culture sentimentality

there — i’m not even going to write the post. it just writes itself from the title.

having said that, i am recently divorced, off my meds, living in a ditched camper shell next to a trailer home in a rural area, i am unemployed & without health insurance, sponging off of my elderly parents (oh, sorry, did i say that out loud? i meant to say “helping out my etc.”), and i listen to this song and sing and scream and laugh and cry almost every day.

i have no stance on this. just offering it up for you to deconstruct at will. (although there’s a merry little discussion to be had on how it’s easier in america for a single/divorced white male to be poor than for just about anybody else, but i’m not gonna go there right now thanks. :) )

dude!

google is not a very reliable tool, by itself, for any kind of serious research, unless of course if you are in that particularly privileged position of having leisure time. having said that, i was trying to look up some kind of discussion online regarding how the usage of the term “dude” crosses over gender lines in different social spaces — specifically, i have heard women call each other “dude” before, but i wonder what women call each other when men aren’t around? most of the conversations i’ve found so far are (of course) male-centered, e.g. “is it okay for me to call a chick ‘dude’?”, etc. so, if you are a woman and you are reading this, do you all call each other something informal that is akin to or parallel in usage to “dude” but in fact different? as a postscript, let me suggest the filter of “besides ‘girfriend’”, which seems to have been indelibly co-opted by gay men. thanks for participating!

weiners and other dicks

when some of us got into the “us vs. them” political gamesmanship mentality a few years back, desperate to unseat a despotic anti-democratic regime, we might have been profoundly emotionally sandbagged by “one of ours” sabotaged by their own penises.  gary hart, bill clinton, john edwards, tony “it ain’t cheatin’ if she didn’t touch it” weiner, etc. — is it merely that the more “liberal” one is the more likely one is to get caught with one’s pants down?

i’ll suggest something else.  first of all, these cats aren’t “mine” — they aren’t on my team.  they are wealthy white men of profound privilege, and as such, they believe that sex on demand is their birthright.  they see it as a trapping and perk of simply being white men, much less being public figures.  my “team”, if there is one, is of human beings who do not demand or expect the “right” to penetrate, subjugate, or “cream on” their fellow human beings, with or without weiners.

i do think that a birthright of all human beings is to be fed, clothed, sheltered, educated, and cared for when sick.  to be treated with respect and honor, to be protected from harm, and to be given the chance to chart their own destinies.  this is in concert with the natural order, as human values are part of the natural order.  i think that any sane and caring human being should be concerned lest any other human being go without any one of of these things.

i am, therefore, a radical, not a liberal.  and i’m incapable of being disappointed or embarrassed by political figures who never represented me or my values in the first place.  i represent myself, and i am perfectly capable of social shame on my own behalf (and have plenty to be ashamed of).  i’m ashamed, for instance, that i live in a society that seems to strongly believe that the care and feeding of my weiner is more important than any of the other values listed above.  now THAT is shameful.

music

other people’s opinions about music seldom affect my opinions about music, just my opinion of other people.

the proper care of children

don’t wake them up in the middle of the night in order to taken them “home” from their other parent’s house.  even if it’s really much more convenient for you that way.

i <3 fafblog

still going strong, never disappointing.