Not with a bang

Social media has reduced me into being nearly only a crank. My moments of grace are becoming increasingly embarrassing. I find myself disagreeing with everything I hear, much of what I say, all that I write. It gives life an ugly momentum. Terrible. Everything that I see is obnoxious, or worse. So few experiences seem inviting any longer. Or, maybe I'm just arguing with the old me.

I might have lived out my life talking on street corners to scorning men... Now we are not a failure.

.. but a whimper. 

I don't know. I know that there is only so much uncertainty that I can enjoy, then it is enduring, up until it can no longer be endured. 

Her ex-ness asked the boy what it was that I really liked and the boy said, "Rock and Roll!" 

"Shhhh... don't tell." 

But he was right.

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"Sad memories, I cannot recall"

(Captain Ahab)

Two evenings of persistent drinking and I am crippled, limping from room to room, smelling of stale maleness. I am eager to have Jesus welcome me back into the fold with open arms. He is apparently standing at the door, knocking, though I did not explicitly invite him over. He had better not get any blood on my door. Maybe not Jesus, but somebody that loves me and wants to keep me far from old demon alcohol. Drink has kept me from the gym and a bike ride today, having completely reduced my heroic immunity from fatigue.

Are we still allowed to use the word crippled? If not, then I am temporarily differently-abled. 

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"I wish life could be Swedish magazines"

("I wish life could be Swedish magazines")

I have realized that I am not arguing against all people with guns. I am mostly arguing with just one or two of them. I think many liberals are probably the same, or similar. There is just this one gun owner whose rights they want to take away, or maybe a small few. You know, to shut them up, and celebrate equality and freedom. Freedom from the present and future rights of others. 

I know that I would. 

If I could forgo my right to own a gun, and by doing so that would deprive one other person from also being able to legally own a gun, then I would do it without blinking. I have a short list already made in the unlikely event that day ever arrives.

I think that's how it should work, anyway, sort of a sponsor program. I give up my rights to own a gun and then I'm free to pick someone that then also loses that right. 

It's a form of democracy.

What I would like even more is for Congress to amend the constitution and define the term "well regulated militia" as a secondary amendment to augment the actual second one. Doing away with the amendment need not be necessary, just creating a very clear definition of what is meant by the phrase "well regulated militia" and what it means to participate in one should solve the problem in so many ways. Then, we'll have a lot of people serving their state in the way that they are simply dying to. 

Like the Bundy clan, we can all participate in local politics. 

Okay, enough gun talk. It's only a matter of time before I use the word "rapist" again. Talk about a word that is far worse than "cunt"... I know, I shouldn't, but in the conversational effort towards equality... I often hear something like this, "It's not fair! There's no word that a woman can call a man that's as bad as 'The C word'..."

Yes there is.

I was going to discuss the new push to have women register for the draft, an initiative that is stalling in the house, presumably because they do not believe in equality. 

I'm against conscription for everybody, of course, though I'm much more against it being for only one portion of the population, divided on the imaginary binary lines of sex or gender. I only like the idea of having women register if men have to, also. The issue forces an issue, one way or another.

I just don't like the idea of our government using the draft, at all, or even having it at their disposal. In a world of opportunities... I am far more in favor of doing away with selective service altogether. 

The cry for "Equality" is often as much about subsuming power as it is about fairness. This specific issue will reveal that better than most. Equality of opportunity in death and disfigurement. Let's see who's willing to argue for equality now.

Ladies, your nation-state may one day need you. Do it for Sweden!

Few, I would think, want such a thing to come to fruition. But the absence of a reasonable argument against it will create some fresh comedy for a bit. 

I remember having to register when I was 18, and I remember not wanting to, but knowing that in 1986 Ronald Reagan himself might kick me in the balls if I didn't. It was a great time for liberal bashing, and still stands as a reminder to how fucked up things can become when we give people like Tipper Gore a public voice. It's a slippery slope, one that seems to end with Donald Palin.

Or, that is the cry of hope.





There used to be a nearly invisible thread that allowed two-way communication between soup cans, when pulled taut. Kids knew where to find them and just how to hold them. I wonder if, and hope that, kids are still able to find a way to be subversive as they hit that age. Online communication seems to have the most stifling effect on thought and behavior. The capacity for nearly universal shaming placed in the hands of the most most reckless, vindictive, and cruel age group is a wonder that makes little sense, though nothing can be stopped. What is now called socialization means something very different than what it has meant to me. The dynamic of the nervous system, the capacity for empathy and understanding, has been modified to now include reddit.

What this space can not abbreviate, it then obliterates. There seems to be a diminishing hope for the unhindered use of the mind, though perhaps that is only how I feel. What the medium itself can not destroy, the well connected mob can hunt down and denounce at will, with its tell-tale throng ferocity.

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When We Were Fabio

Well, I was able to get the boy's mind off death for a bit by taking him to see Finding Dorky, an animated Disney film that concerns itself with both the real and imaginary terror of losing and re-losing your parents in an impossibly large world, though admittedly one that is less hostile than we know the real one to be. Most of the action took place on land, somehow. The boy seemed to like it. He had Burger King for the first time on the ride home afterwards. It was late and he claimed to be hungry, so that's what happened. He was so excited about it he called his mom to video chat to tell her all about it. 

Her excitement was also palpable. 

I chose BK carefully, not based on the quality of the food of course, but on the scarcity of their franchised existence near us. So, even if the idea of King Burgers takes hold of the defenseless boy's imagination there will be limited access. At best, he will become a junky without junk food. 

We do try to feed him healthy food, I swear it. 

Okay, the day is already wide open in front of me. I will go for a bike ride up the valley to Kenwood. A herculean uphill effort. The last time I did it it seemed as if it took me about two hours to peddle there and about fifteen minutes to coast home. The entire way back today I will hum through the only verses of "Ride Like the Wind" that I know, my remaining cilia-like head hairs trying to negotiate the advancing wind, a school of sensory organelles fighting to stay attached to their host, my skull functioning as the Great Irish Barrier Reef.

I promise.

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Selfie-ish thoughts

The boy was asking questions yesterday about life and death, the length of one and the finality of the other. I tried to explain to him that I am in my middle years, somewhere between where he is and his grandpa, the one that is still alive. Astute boy that he is, he had many questions about my death. A certain amount of telling him not to worry about it, that it was a very long way away, worked. The other part was filled with my explaining that aging is just how things go, and that one day he would be a grown man, maybe with his own son or daughter. 

I left out the part that sometimes things don't work out that way, that they almost did for me. I left out that there are some parents that outlive their children, rendering them as carapaces of the past, ghosts wandering the shore. There are so few guarantees in life, except the one that we spend our lives ignoring. It is a thought so terrible that I have become more like his mother in that one regard, not wishing to verbalize such a thing, as if that might somehow usher in the reality of it. Witchcraft, of course, might be only silly superstition, but verbalizing things does make them more real in at least one way, without any help at all from witchcraft, unless language is counted among the dark arts . Each telling is stylized to some degree. It is all that anyone can do, create some stylization to their life. 

It is part of why parents become so laughable. They have a mitigated ability to create much new style for themselves. The weight of children bend downward the branches out of need. The family tree still sways in the wind, where once it was felt as the breeze of leisure, now indicates an arriving storm even on the clearest of days. A gear inside the self starts turning and never stops. The mind becomes a machine that creates worries. I have forgotten what a vacation feels like, and I might not ever know again. That sense of being carefree elsewhere, once I have tired of my own domestic insouciance. Now, I worry no matter where I am, no matter how far I go. Will there be enough for this, or that. Will there be time. What will I do. How will I get there. Will I come back. How. How. How, indeed.

Some days it is all that I can think, though we are reminded in many ways that verbalizing our fears is a weakness. Articulation should only be used in the service of pleasing others. 

A close friend once sent a picture - the last and only of its kind - of him standing by his father's hospital bedside at the end. I believe it was near a holiday, possibly Christmas. He was still a child, hardly yet in his teens. His father, of course, passed shortly thereafter, which affected in some way how my friend unfolded thereafter. You can feel it within some people, the jarring loss that shapes all the rest. It is a difficult image to escape. The mind projects and imagines, those things are made most real through the repetition of fantasy, memories to the one in whom they wander. 

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Richter

Nothing Really Mattress

I dropped a pistachio on the floor. I leaned down, picked it up, and ate it. While I was down there, I found the pistachio that I had dropped. 

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Summer is here...

The second in my "kid-cop" series of images.

I have little to report today. The horses have been fed, groomed, hay bails rolled, water troughs refreshed, checked the almanac, noted the motion of the stars, milked the chickens, and finally fixed once and for all that god-damned hole in the fence where the wolves keep coming in.

That, and also maybe the beach or camping this weekend. The sky is so blue that anything might happen. 'Cause if summer is here, I'm still waiting there....

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Holy Dishwater

Waited too long to write a post today- should know better.- sometimes do know better - can't seem to change the course of this life, by much - some of it flows through - some of it flows past - much gets dammed downstream - the rest, damned by proximity. 

If you're going to run from the cops then think about it - fat cops carry guns, also.

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The Strawberry Solstice

I walked out into the courtyard last night after putting the boy to sleep, having fallen asleep with him in his bed for a bit, after reading a ghost story. I awoke shortly after, wishing to stay - had I only bought him something other than a child's mattress. My own bed a comforting temptation, difficult to disregard.

I chatted sleepily as the moon rose above the mountain line, a chariot of lost secrets. The cry of clouds moonlit from behind swayed above - one way whispers from the dark, soft curtain of the gods. 


Father's Day came and went, placing itself in the future; one year distant, one way past. 

The moon is not only beautiful
It is so far away
The moon is not only ice cold
It is here to stay

When I lay me down
Will you still be around
When they put me six feet underground
Will the big bad beautiful you be around

Everyone says they know you
Better than you know who
Everyone says they own you
More than you do

When I lay me down
Will you still be around
When they put you six feet underground
Will the big bad beautiful moon be around

Cause the moon is not only beautiful
It is so far away
The moon is not only ice cold
It is here to stay

Everyone says they know you
Better than you know who
Everyone says they own you
More than you do

- Cat Power

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Dad is dead

(Freda B)

Don't worry. It's meant to be a joke about Nietzsche, or Hegel. 

This dad is still karate kicking his way up the elevator shaft. When I used to get bored in NYC, which was often, I would walk down to Chinatown in my blackest pajamas and challenge random strangers to karate matches, assuming the familiar knees-bent defensive position anytime an opening in sidewalk traffic presented itself, loudly announcing my combative intention with a well targeted "Hong Kong Fuey!!!", drawing my light saber as needed.

You can find and enjoy whatever errors you'd like in that last paragraph. If you can't decide whether I'm being racist or ignorant then remember that it's always easy enough to just be both. 

Today, we go out on a sailboat, the bay for Father's Day. A schooner, the one pictured above. So, death is still on the table, so to speak. Don't worry. It's only the dying that can be felt, and what could be more of a joke than that?

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The Great Equalizer

Ugh, I tried, started three or four times and can't get off the ground. 

I'll just write a note:

I've watched the gun argument unfold online in the familiar way and it still makes very little sense to me. It seems to be split almost strictly along the lines that those who own guns are for them, those that do not are not. Personal protection seems to be the argument that holds the most weight, understandably. That people need to protect themselves from other people with guns seems obvious enough. It is the argument that makes the most sense. That it rarely works out that way is not a part of the conversation that seems to matter, for reasons that can not be talked about openly and rationally.

I don't mean that the reasons are vague. Guns are dangerous and they are more often misused than well used, at least when the police are investigating accidents and criminal intentions. Yet even though the statistics show that people are far more likely to injure themselves or others, or to have their own gun used against them, still nothing. 

I read something along the lines of, Once we allowed someone to shoot a bunch of children and we did nothing then we lost. 

That those who own guns also seem to be the ones screeching loudest about others leeching off of their society... that, they're not putting anything in! seems to escape them. Nobody is willing to make a sacrifice to better the society they live in. They have the right to own a gun and they are intent on keeping that right, yet they also make the most noise about others not contributing, not doing anything to help. Not all of them, of course. Some of them secretly know that the "others" are the very ones that they might one day need to use their guns on. You know, the welfare crowd. It is only a matter of time before somebody walks into a welfare office with an AR-15, then the underlying essence of the conversation will become more clear for some. You'll see. 

I almost want to buy a fancy gun to see if my feelings about having it will change, but you know, there is a child in the house, and all of my money has been squandered on cameras. I can shoot, just can't kill. 

The thing that I love the most about gun advocates is their insistence that their guns are safe, they are all locked up with the "safety" engaged and only the owner has the key, yet they insist over and over that criminals don't play by the rules. Few arguments could be more asinine. If the proper safety precautions are taken then it renders the gun even less useful than it might have been otherwise.  None of this seems to matter much, it is safety upon safety. You know, the rapiss and killers of the world enter a house with a portable gun-safe, announce themselves, unlock the safe, assemble the gun, load it, disable the safety, put the key away, then conduct their mayhem, etc., etc., etc...

 

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Less rote

Being online so much is flattening the thoughts of my life. It is not only social media, but it is far too much of that. All day my head is leaning towards a computer screen, interacting with other humans in the most abbreviated way possible, just short of using code rather than language. I'm not very good at it. Too old, probably. Only recently did somebody get me to start using emoticons, which I now find cute and useful.

I detect some odd new flattening in my ability to feel. The depth to which I can now respond has been diminished. I am left with the memory of sensing life more fully. Perhaps it is only age. When I write or speak about my age I am gently reminded not to. Maybe it is not me, at all, but other people that make me feel this way.

Less rote, more dynamism.

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Briar Rose

Aurora was a Disney princess. Sleeping Beauty, in fact. At least one friend interpreted yesterday's post cryptically. It was not intended to reference anything other than the boy being a "princess" and my vague distrust of the ol' Disney magic, where he had just visited. Though when I look at the image more... it occurs to me that the mom was making a bed in the background, so the sleeping angle is reinforced a bit there. 

And the boy did look like one of the dwarf extras: Tranny Fancypants.

I am exhausted. Nothing makes any sense in my personal life. I just keep doing it but I am feeling increasingly disassociated from it all. I have lost some of the love that I was starting to feel for domesticity, for cooking. I spent $327.90 at the grocery store and I didn't buy anything to make a meal. Or, not very good meals anyway. The boy and I just had cheeseburgers, pickles, and mac-n-cheese. I swear it. I care that little. I am starving the future of its nutrients. We tried a different version of the noodles and cheese. There must be a healthy version out there. We haven't found it yet. I guess I need to do my research, but I don't feel like it. 

Okay, I just received a text that a friend is coming over. We will cook another dinner, one hopefully better, with more of the things that help one escape the previous paragraph.

Think stoically, cook frantically. 

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Aurora

Scattered, most of the day. There was a sunrise rush into the city, work, return home. I waited to go for a ride, for the sun to soften, the shadows to start their stretch towards evening.  

Should have kept riding, skipped the gym, but I didn't. I didn't linger at the gym for long. Came home to see the boy. He and mom had returned from the south of CA. His first trip to Disney. He had stories of adventures, the familiar rides as well as some new ones. I don't know how to explain to him that I have ideological differences with Mickey Mouse, always have.

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Enemies of Christendom

(Holy Batman!)

Religion is a poison. It corrupts nearly everything that it touches. People are too dim to prevent it, so they get out of it exactly what they deserve: imaginary legitimacy, without need of external verification. Everybody wants to purify something, or somebody. Gun ownership is the same, some imaginary something, some deep rooted biblical need to light something up with hot lead. I've never met a gun owner that won't willingly spin up a few imagined shooting tales. They always involve someone raping your wife and/or children, a mysterious sort of criminal that darkly enters the story not unlike most characters enter a porn scene. They magically end up at the sacred bedroom door every single time, wishing to do bad things to your women. Possibly you, too.

Nothing excites a gun owner more than the idea of you being raped while your gunless family is forced to watch. Cops, in particular, love gang rape scenarios. It's all they can talk about some days. 

If you had the gun, then at least you would have had a chance, but no, you chose to be a little pussy and now you're getting raped while your son watches. You'll have to deal with his homosexuality for the rest of his life. That is, if your new boyfriend doesn't end it right there for you once and for all.

It's no wonder that these honchos are all ready to kill. They've been living with family rape scenarios going on in their head for so long it is a testament to their noble character that they haven't started slaughtering already. Some of them have, I guess. When they get to the part about asking me what I'm going to do while my wife is being raped I always ask if the guy has a big cock or not, because that might influence my decisions. This always throws them off the trail for a minute or two. I try to get them to describe the scene more fully. Flesh it out a bit, etc. 

What types of screams? Be more specific. I need actionable information!

And people think that I'm fucked up. It almost makes me want to buy a gun, just to see how uneasy the pro-gun crowd would become at such a thing. There are only two types of people in their world, the armed and unarmed. Among the well-armed, defense of rape is the imaginary crime of choice. 

I don't really want a gun. I understand the basics of them and am not that impressed. I've shot a .357 Magnum and a few others. It didn't give me a hard-on, even though I have a healthy appreciation for machinery of many kinds. 

Maybe that is the problem - not that I am less than titillated at handheld firepower - but that these people are attempting to satisfy the external verification component of their divine legitimacy. I mean, what could possibly please god more than killing 50+ homosexuals at a nightclub. 

Somebody needs to put a stop to gayness. It is a sin in most gods' eyes. Mine, definitely. My god be a great super-male. 

No gods have yet come out as being pro-gay. None that I'm aware of, maybe one of the new guys. 

It really does make you wonder, that there are people so confused in their internal monologue that they have worked themselves into a frenzy to kill because they believe that it would please their god. Not believe, but know. They know it will please their god. Because all gods are homophobes, also. Only a queer would pray to a pro-gay god. That's a no-brainer. Few things are more comical than gay Christians, truly. How they ever found forgiveness in their hearts for the God of the Old Testament is beyond me. 

Liberals don't know what the fuck do do. They think that they can out-liberal religious hatred with coziness. Feeling good about things must be powerfully seductive, to magically conceal from them that their stance on most issues is incommensurate with the issues themselves. They want to purify the world of unpleasantness, though that is also their strategy, annoying people into submission. How do you discuss war with somebody who's given it only enough thought to be against it.

As much as I can hardly stand liberal rhetoric they're still way better than what is found on the other side of the country. Though, at least conservatives understand violence. It's difficult to tell if they are against it or not, but they acknowledge that it is a reality. Liberals are useless, though now is as good a time as any to remind all reading here that I am also against violence, and basically a liberal. I'm not against all violence, of course, but the bad kind, you know, where innocent people get hurt. I have no problem with any type of violence unleashed against people that seem to deserve it online. I just don't want violence against my friends, or close group, that's when I get really angry, when it doesn't seem justified by my sensibilities. 

I'm no better than most liberals, I know. I would do away with the 2nd amendment if I could. It is useless, a true disaster. I would, at the very least, remove the part about bearing arms. It would just state that a militia is necessary to the proper functioning of a free state. That would be it, more of a statement than a right. Let's see if everybody can somehow misinterpret that.

Everybody is a constitutionalist. I used to be, until one day... I read back over what I had typed and was about to post online, it suddenly dawned on me… That was the dumbest shit that I had ever written - and I've written volumes here, millions of words - yet looking at my constitutional defense of gun ownership the whole bottom just fell out of it, like an overfilled diaper. It's the stupidest shit I've ever heard. It doesn't work. It was there as a by-product of the fear of slave revolt and as a response to Shay's rebellion. People became very concerned about the protection of their property, so the amendments were built to resemble the commandments, in one way. Protect the owners!

I'm oversimplifying, of course, but fuck it. Pretend I'm just shooting ideas into a crowd. I'm not going to get everything right with every sentence. Some sentences will just hit the walls.

Fuck it. I want to buy a gun range, with an attached gun store, all of that. A pickup truck, gun rack, bloodhound… I'll call it the "Enemies of Christendom" in case anybody has any fucking questions about where I stand on the only issue that matters. I'll pray to Mecca every now and then just to keep things interesting. I'd love to have a wife or two, not dressed in full burkas of course but every now and then to have them behind a racy hijab. 

Fuck, I don't know. Maybe I won't want to get married again, though the veil doth tempt. 

This is no lie. An online friend spelled out for me how a trained handgun owner could have accomplished the same damage in that nightclub as a halfwit with an assault rifle. The point of his educational story was that this same atrocity could have been done more economically. This was told presumably to argue against banning assault rifles, as if no corollary whatsoever exists between them and mass shootings. His very pragmatic reasoning was that because it can happen otherwise there must not be an actual connection between the guns used and the style of killing. 

I was then tutored in the details of projected mechanical force, because without a clear understanding of guns one does not get to participate in the national conversation. Now, I'm no naif but I'll admit that there is much that I do not know about guns, and have little interest in filling in those gaps of knowledge. This does not preclude me from looking at the results and being able to understand them. The gun crowd only seems to be willing to speak to the enthusiastic gun crowd on the issues that matter. 

The narrative ended with an invitation to go to a gun range, which I just might do, for number of reasons but most of all to entertain his close group with my own rape fantasies, which I have been tailoring to suit what I believe to be the mood of the many shooters that I might meet that day. I have prepared a scenario in which I emerge victorious against the family rapers with the use of a well concealed boomerang. After the laughter in which they assume that I'm kidding then I'll very seriously claim that the boomerang is my chosen weapon for home defense. That, and a handful of authentic ninja throwing stars, maybe an old pair of chain-linked nunchucks. 

I don't know. I just don't know. 

People are out of their minds, it's no little wonder why that is. 

NRA confirms, still no connection between this and all other mass shootings, encourages local law enforcement to look into "confined spaces" as a possible lead.

Post-script: I understand that many now claim that the killer's motivation was not religious. This changes nothing about my opinions, of course. Religion inculcates its adherents with this specific form of hatred. Also, if I don't trust someone to not buy into their own religious mumblings then I sure as fuck don't trust them when they try to tell me what-is-what about the source of their homophobia. 

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Co-efficiency

At least one muslim has spoken concerning his opinions on homosexuality. That should stop men from kissing one another in public now, once and for all. He showed them. 

Oh, I know, I know... we're never supposed to question the religion in these situations. Religion doesn't kill people, guns do. We all know that people kill people, and they should be allowed to buy the very best in guns to do so. Because guns are just effective tools to complement ideas. The official cause of death won't be "gun shot wound" it will be "dangerous proximity to an armed religious fellow."

This is why homosexuals should arm themselves to the teeth. There should be guns hidden in every pair of pants. That's the only sensible response-as-solution. Just imagine if there would have been even one concealed carrier license in that nightclub…. Then this night might have ended up with fewer casualties than Sandy Hook, which is almost like a victory in such matters.

People are idiotic; admittedly, myself included. I need to get one of those "Coexist" bumper stickers that make life easier for everybody. Just to look at it and agree sends a wave of pleasure across the self-satisfied portions of my mind. It's practically Jedi in its mysterious power. Coexist. Do you see how easy that concept is? I think it would be funny if the image inverted the cross to make it Constantine's, because few things echo the sentiment of coincidental tolerance as does the image of a crusader's sword. 

Here, for those of you that don't live in California. This is a popular bumper sticker:

I love the mixed male/female e, just reminding men and women that we may have been born into different sexual and gender roles, but we can still find a way to allow for each other's doctrines to exist. I love most of all that the Hindus have once again been completely ignored, unless you believe that the peace symbol has something to do with India's nuclear arms program… The word is missing a dove and an olive branch also, but other than that it is complete and perfect. It suspends thought, as it is designed. 

Plurality, to a point! I say. I love living a multicultural semblance of American life, I just don't like all the extremists that this lifestyle sometimes allows for. Few enough seem to understand the embedded irony in the use of the preceding "Co" in the word. What is mutual, or treated as equal, among those symbols. Shouldn't the whole phrase end in an ankh or a question mark? At the very least to counter-balance the nuclear disarmament symbol. 

If I could find or make a "Coefficient" bumper sticker that resembled the one above then I would be as happy as I have ever been. 

Had the killer only seen this bumper sticker on his way to Orlando then tragedy might have been diverted into a deeper understanding of equality between his gender and his religion, as all of the gay gods always agree.

Who knows. 

I have mixed opinions on most of these issues. I'm not so liberal that I refuse to recognize the danger of religion, and not so constitutionally minded to also recognize that there should be something far greater than new gun laws put in place, if not the 2nd amendment to be repealed outright, or involvement with a militia to become a requirement. Either way would be fascinating to watch. I have pretended to be "pro-gun-choice" publicly, mostly to open the conversation up a bit. The real pro-gun folks won't even talk to you unless you take a 2nd amendment vow. All that has done for me is to give me a closer vantage point to an argument that makes less and less sense the closer I get.

It seems to hinge upon the belief that each person deserves a chance at shooting a bad guy in the act of being bad, that no one should be able to tell them that they do not have this natural right. It depends upon bad guys having guns, so the right of bad guys to own guns must also not have any fringes upon it, as the 2nd commandment decrees.

Well, that's too much to go into on a Sunday.

I don't pray, which leaves me at a disadvantage in these situations, because while prayer may be useless and perhaps even dangerous, it does seem to be a fitting response to such a thing. I'll go for a bike ride and try to clear my head. 

I played this nightclub many years ago, Pulse. It was an after-party or something. I have a recording of it somewhere. Though I am not the story here, at all. I only mention it to show that I have an unexpected connection to this shooting, and to the city in which it happened, and to the types of people that spend their lives dancing. 

The initial report stated that the man's motivation may have been that he did this for his three year old child, so that the child might never need to witness two men kissing one another, the way that the shooter did a few weeks ago and was subsequently disgusted by it. So, he wasn't so much of a muslim when he did this, he was much more of a homophobe. 

So says the shooter's father, sort of. 

Some young fatherless child will now have the memory of dad to guide him through the confusion of life, knowing that he took a rapid-fire stance against the evils of love.

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Dylan de la Vega

Dylan was much better than I expected. He stuck to mostly new material, which suited him well. Even when he threw a newly arranged rendition of "Blowing in the Wind" into the end of his set it didn't bother me much. How many fucking roads must a man walk down… Indeed. I didn't have to slap a lighter out of anybody's hands, which was lucky for all involved. His piano playing was festive and vibrant, made it easier to detect that he hadn't died between songs. 

Dylan looked as if he stepped right out of a Werner Herzog remake of Zorro. He shambled around the stage like a scarecrow, ever in danger of a breeze blowing over his entire costume with him included, a tailored tumbleweed. His entire operation looks like it weighs about 40 pounds with guitar included. Bob Dylan and Carlos Santana are slowly becoming the same person.

Mavis Staples opening was good, also. Her cover of Talking Heads' "Slippery People" was righteous. 

Cato and I had a pretty good time laughing along with it all. I had melted a Herculean dollop of pot butter into a Moroccan mint tea before driving in to meet him, then there were a few glasses of wine. Things steadily devolved into various states of nonsense.

We tried to eat some McDonalds french fries and a cheeseburger after the show, like kids do, but only the fries were edible. The cheeseburger tasted like a warm band aid. Whatever they do to those french fries is illegal. It must be.

He did do one of his older songs in the early part of his set also, which was good and got people up out of their seats to sing along:

You will start out standing, proud to steal her anything she sees

She never stumbles, she's got no place to fall

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Patchouli for you to say

Cato and I go to see the mighty Bob Dylan in Berkeley tonight, the Greek Theater. He texted me yesterday with news of tickets still being on sale. Dylan didn't, the other guy, Cato did. So, we acted like members of the Bay Area tech community and paid lots of money for something that hippies used to be able to afford. I'm going to wear something expensive and be giving out lots of "peace signs" and fine, big free smiles tonight. Maybe bring one old half-chewed hacky-sack and give it out to a hairy beggar, asking, Is this what you need? 

Not everything the hippies did was wrong. There are lots of leftovers wandering the woods up here and north of here. You see them every now and then in their fresh tie-dyes, shopping on the weekends, trying to procure the necessities for their chosen lifestyle. Lentils, probably. I'm sure that some of them will be creeping out of their stale bong water for tonight. They are all semi-amphibious. 

Dylan looks like a corpse that has had far too much current coursing through him for far too long. He's like one of Dr. F-steins early first efforts. I'm going mainly because there is a reasonable chance that history will be made sometime very soon. After Prince and Bowie, I've been buying tickets for anything that is John Prine and up. Putting all my money on black, etc.

I joke, of course. I wish the end on no one. 

In the 80s I felt out of place, and believed that I would have been more in place in the 60s, only realizing later: No, I would have felt out of place anywhere, anytime. It's me, not the decade. There is no hour that would have been more welcoming than the one that I was in.

I had a pretty good time during the Bill Clinton years. Many people did, I think. They were all near my age and we were all much younger then. A perfect storm, that has rained down the torrent of middle-aged friends. 

I look ahead now to what will hopefully be the Clinton years again, because I want her to have the nuclear launch codes. I mean that. If it is a choice as to who will have them between the two options, I want them to be with her. I understand that Kim Jong-un feels differently, and his voiced support is with the other guy. Not that Hillary is a guy. 

No matter what happens, when it is all over, I will still want there to be a female president one day. 

It will be funny, either way, to watch either of those two win. It will leave half of the country in a wild, desperate state. I mean, a real kerfuffle. America suffers like any similar nation, from having two languages, both sides still believing those to be black and white.

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Parts of Darkness

The earlier post started as a description of a bike ride. That one sentence kept getting pushed down the page until it was no more. 

I have gone on two rides today, both of equal length, both along a route that is as beautiful as anything I've ever seen, and have seen it often. It is the strongest argument against something that I'm not quite sure of. But I'm certain that it's the right thing, so charming it need not prove itself, nor ask anything of the viewer, and never has to argue for itself.

The ride that I just finished was through the flat part of the valley along the open roads where the shadows start to stretch across the curves and plains of the land. The hills turn amber golden, and all of that.

coming from the wet hill

descending upon a grove in season

turning our heads, an apricot falls

and all of that.

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Periods of Apathy

I am bored, witless. 

It has served me, boredom, when alone or with others. Waiting, after feelings have excused themselves; passing as emotion, or is, shadows in the shade. 

Periods of indifference and flashes of witfulness, though not much lately. 

There is Love - most hope to have it in the present or future, little point in glancing back, too many points as facts, no use in staring. The heart is an unfocusable mechanism. Eyes suffer in different ways, though only by little degree.

Like wit, love requires the participation of clever and willing people to exist in the present. Otherwise, love lingers in the past and future, as half of any love may sometimes accept.

Few emotions resemble one another more than love and wit. Perhaps only jealousy and desire are more closely aligned. Some people will understand the first sentence, others the other. Some, none. Or, neither. 

It is an open joke, love, - retold poorly, too often, sometimes dangerously well - depending on the involved; their willingness to laugh and sigh, and slaugh again. 

We each might be clever, for a person or a few, when the whole of the cocktail party gets to listen. No words can pause nor delay the party of life for long. There is hope to cut through manners with the occasional rsvp fragment, for one in a bottle, or the album that everyone agrees on.

Répondez, si'l vous plaît…. Avis! Avis, avis?

I spend much time in my life solving problems, or trying, too much. There is decreasing space left to feel my way forward. The cleverest of people enjoy and endure much more leisure than I. They maintain the ability to dismiss. So many want it - the quality of effective negation, the enthusiasm of a well or often articulated No. No?

I am surrounded by smart people, they are oftenest correct, and forgiving in correctness. If only that, that one quality could be held against the other in light.

Wit and charm emerge as byproducts of inactivity, recreation, pleasure, and the joys of dark sin. These nine ingredients produce uneven results once the heat is increased, or applied, fast or otherwise. Heat does more than make things hot. 

So, what is hell, if not.

It separates, clarifies, melts. 

Or else.

No, no. I have to go soon, too soon. That is a tangent for a different set of tangents. 

Few possess charm by incorrectness alone, always depending on the naïveté of stranglers, the kindness of Exterminatoring Them All! 

Ever Ways, and Yours, 

Blanche Kurtz

cc. Mistah Dubois

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All that is botched can be yours

(me, dreaming)

Sleep causes more sleep, lethargy. I had a lazy Sunday - home all day, working from bed - which led to an early night and then 12 hours of semi-sleep filled with restless and half-remembered dreams, whispers from the shadows of madness, kernels of truth. Those that attempt to derive meaning from dreams get exactly what they deserve, and almost always what they wish most to expect. If you seek your inner psychic, then look no further than your own dreams.

The only message that dreams have ever conveyed to me is that I have unexpected fears, pleasures, and memories, and that they all coexist in a much smaller space than I tell myself when awake.

There is that one recurring night vision… swimming naked with my teenage girlfriend in a pool of armadillo afterbirth. I'm not sure which category that belongs in. Perhaps "post-pregnancy road-kill" qualifies as a fourth component of the dream world. I think she planted that one there. She was a sorceress' apprentice, had the deadliest periods of anybody that I've ever met. You'd swerve to avoid them, but there was never any denying that they were there. There was just the silence in the car, the headlights stretching into the present, pretending it hadn't happened, wishing that it had not crawled out of the woods to cause itself such recurring disaster. 

Nature can be so unfortunate. 

I do have an odd number of erotic fan dreams about Amy Fisher, the Long Island Lolita. When I say odd number I mean that they usually arrive in 3s, 5s, and 7s.

The mind needs stories, so it strings together the nearly random firing of synapses into a pattern that resembles a narrative. Some discover a mystical thing there to cling to. I have the misfortune of having Amy Fisher in mine. Not as she is now - reformed from crime, ex-porn-star, but as the young criminal killer that she was. 

Or, rather: failed criminal killer. Her poor aim was her most redeeming quality. Lucky girl.

(my girl)

The world is fucked up. Everybody is out of their minds. Neurosis is just the inability to conceal it, or impulse to convey it. Everybody that I know has a little bit of both. I must. I mean, have you read the shit that I post here? It doesn't make any sense, at all. There are companies that won't hire me because of the types of honesty that I am willing to export into the wild. I function mostly as a human that has been safely released back into captivity. 

There is something that I've heard many people say, though never to me: You really need to get more in touch with your feelings.

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The light that never lands

The image reminds me of the album "Los Angeles" by the band X, for no reason beyond the obvious. Or, "Wild Gift." Their first four albums were freakin' monsters.

It also reminds me of the poster for the Donald Sutherland remake of Invasion of the Body Snatchers, or perhaps a scene from Close Encounters.

I have been listening to Black Uhuru for a week now, particularly the album "Red." If you're a fan of reggae and not familiar with this album then you should check it out. Here is a little retrospective review of the two producers of the album, Sly and Robbie. The 80s are still an enormous reservoir of music that I am barely, or not at all, familiar with.

It has been a lazy morning spent with the boy and his buddy at Rebounderz, the injury factory. It is a warehouse filled with trampolines. Each time that we leave in our own car rather than an ambulance I am grateful and offer a silent prayer to the gods of injury. He's never been hurt there at all, but it requires little imagination for the parenting gene to kick in and take over, transforming a normal human into an annoying wart of anxious fears.

When I left my apartment this morning there were a number of squirrels panicked, more than 10 of them, and they were all running across the parking lot, all in the same direction. I was certain that an earthquake was coming, but none arrived that I could detect. My nervous system is so shot that we could have slid into the ocean and I might have missed it.

Now, I lie in bed watching the day begin to disappear. There is an abandoned bottle of rosé in the refrigerator that should complement the last of the light that lands before slipping out for good into the great dark beyond.

.

this

this turning sleep

hands find hand; lips, teeth,

bodies breech the skin of the fruit

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Makeup, America. It's Great Again!

There's nowhere left for Americans to hide. The political, social, and cultural conflicts of the last 40 years have culminated in the Clinton / Trump scramble for presidency, the unfolding of which is an inescapable dilemma. What these candidacies lack in political merit they more than make up for in stark comedic content, though few are left laughing. It is the grimacing ghost of laughter past. 

America has spoken. We want something that we simply do not deserve: improvement. There seems no better way to accomplish this than to vilify others. The best way to be innocent in America is not to be guilty. Those versed in accusation become the accomplished. Why we would expect our political landscape to reflect something other than our social and economic atmosphere is beyond me. We get the culture that we deserve, and we never have to accept full responsibility for what is ruined in halves. America might be more Zen in this regard than any Buddhist nation. Never before has national yin risen against rising federal yang with such complementary and effective balance. 

The processes by which these two candidates have risen to the top of their respective parties, which will now anoint each of them to become their party's nominee, is so rotten and fucked that it boggles the mind to consider how much actually depends on it. It's as if the gallows scaffolding can no longer hold the weight of the rope. They're bringing in a safety expert to see if the doomed can safely put themselves in the noose while the burlap sack remains snug over their head. It's a genuine safety issue. The rallies on both sides do have an air of public execution to them, which should be somewhat expected when rallying for the office of chief executive. There exists the underlying excitement that for one to rise then another must fall, and far.

I had wanted America to last for mostly selfish reasons. 

I don't think that either of them should be allowed to pardon the Thanksgiving turkey, much less appoint supreme court justices. The center of American society has rotted from underneath and is collapsing. Nothing else can explain the success of these two ongoing jokes. As old HST once said (paraphrased), There's no such thing as paranoia, everything you ever feared is actually happening.

Much has been said about Trump from the one side, but what I want to know is how the fuck did Bill Clinton, governor of Arkansas, ever rise to the presidency in the first place, and why is Hillary still knocking around in the Democratic party like an unleashed Godzilla? It's the Dems version of having Nancy Reagan run, except that Hillary actually does have a political career. Too much so, many say. She's corrupt and superficial, but at least she brings hot sauce with her in her purse when she enters black neighborhoods. Her naked efforts to secure her cultural and political cabal would have ruined a lesser liberal, one like Gary Hart. 

Much like her husband, she would probably be helped by a sex scandal at this point. It would chip away at the hideous flesh facade that is her face. America should brace itself for many things, and Clinton's sexual cravings will appear soon enough by media necessity. It is something that no citizen should be expected to endure, a political animal in raw heat for power. Endure it we will. It's going to be that kind of sex scandal: unanimously non-consensual. 

I was genuinely pleased when Obama chose Clinton to be Secretary of State. I thought, Well damn… that is an uncharacteristic expression of unity within the Democratic party. It made perfect sense at the time and few on one side questioned it. There will always be one half of the nation that questions the other half. We can safely ignore that for now. We are a divided country in every way except that the educated here are not expected to speak at least two languages. Everybody seems to silently agree on that in their own broken and local English. But when Clinton stepped down from the position everyone knew what was coming. Some of us even cheered our fate, as if viewing it from a safe ideological distance. 

Lots of people want to see a female president, it's understandable, but Clinton doesn't even pass the bathroom tranny test. I want to see her pedigree, the long form. She's a purebred, but of what species it is impossible to tell. She has the testosterone of a lion, the genetics of Caligula, and the face of an albino raptor. She'll be the first president with naturally red eyes.

Some would say, that's not fair. Well, fuck those people. Defend Trump against the sexism that has been leveled at him then, I say, or shut the fuck up. Hillary deserves to be observed and discussed, and her power cravings and flaunting of process should be noted and hopefully judicially punished. Where does one find a jury of peers for such a person.

That shiver that just raced through your body means something: She has no peers. 

The worst types of people are being emboldened by this election cycle. They are those that were personally crushed by Obama's dual victories on one side. Old whitey has had just about enough. Sarah Palin can still make the news, and one must wonder what sort of a society allows such a thing with seemingly no preventative measures in place.  

That said, it's the screaming and cheering new left that worries me. They are filling stadiums, also. There will always be the sleeping flat tire vote in America. The right has depended on it since the Christian coalition hijacked their party when they could no longer stomach the civil rights movement. The mobilization of the faux left in the form of Bernie supporters is perplexing and yet also makes a perfect sense of American funhouse symmetry. We rise and fall in response to perceived opposition. We produce sets, matched political pairs, that function as dually self-indulgent regressions of ideology. Everybody's demanding a new doctrine in the form of a new leader. 

Hillary Clinton is our Charlene Manson. She was involved in something horrific long ago, but she was just one of the ones who orchestrated it, which has mostly been forgotten and forgiven now. She has somehow kept her hands just clean enough to stay out of prison, though not by much, and many still dream of a faraway federal indictment, though it is tough to say what good that will do. That her hubby was disbarred came close. They should have thrown his lying ass in the clink after he perjured himself to the grand jury.  He should be the first ex-president to have his tomb and library be wholly contained within the federal prison system. 

There are those who look at some of the changes that we have seen - a black president, legalized marijuana in some states, gay marriage, trannie port-o-potties - and they marvel at the progress we have made as a people. It's true, these are all things that I never thought that I would see in my lifetime. Now, I want to see a sitting president in jail. That unraveled mummy, Nixon, should have viewed his final sunset from a cell in the medical ward of a federal prison. That he was allowed to evade captivity set the legal tone for most of what has followed. 

Again, as HST wrote about that same Prez at the time, If there were any such thing as true justice in this world, his rancid carcass would be somewhere down around Easter Island right now, in the belly of a hammerhead shark.

Then: Bernie Man, 2016. He has somehow convinced America of his legitimacy as a possible president. I saw an article comparing him to Tonya Harding. He's willing to kneecap his opponent which could very well allow the Trump national nightmare to unfold, preventing Nancy Kerrigan from winning the gold and ushering in the era of Trumpidity. It was some astute snark, though the article is thin on additional observation. 

That Bernie's campaign has made it as far as it has, and has such ardent supporters, running on the vapors of anti-corruption is a testament to America's disgust with things as they are, far more than it is with genuine belief or any claim that Bernie is qualified. In fact, that question never gets asked, or answered. If it does, then it is only for the purpose of stating that genuinely qualified politicians are the actual problem.

Very well. 

The fear has been that unleashed democracy is only a version of mob rule, mob mentality; these political rallies are nothing if not mobbed. 

No other sweeping public sentiment can explain the rise of Trump better or more completely. It is adequacy fatigue. People are tired of qualified politicians. We need some good strong celebrity power back in the presidency. So many have focused on Trump being our new Hitler, but they miss the point. He is a John Wayne, and openly invites that comparison. That fact alone should be sufficient to cause terror in any liberal's heart. 

Let's all just agree that Hitler is overkill for the time being.

So, we're left with a populace that is suspicious of qualifications, intellect, and wealth. That last word can be effectively swapped out with success for some. Their focus is on the hard work that went into making all of that money by individual hand rather than any admission that those who possess wealth might not be wholly deserving of every single bit of it. In the right eyes, these victims have been robbed of so much more already than has the average tax payer. To have made that much money is a testament to their wholesome industriousness.

That is perhaps a conversation for another post.

Now, nothing that I've said here has not already been said much better in the national press and various opinion pieces that have sprouted along the media peripheries and at its center. I am just trying to make some sense of it all for myself.

Trump is not the real danger, though he should be kept from power for reasons that should be obvious enough. He, at least, has a sense of humor. Hillary should be kept from power because of her humorlessness. It is not the harmless grandmother kind that some have tried to portray it as. The hopefully desperate should be put on a waiting list until the background check is complete. 

The danger seems to be the emerging rise of extremism cloaked as popular sentiment. State tyranny only seems preferable to national tyranny for so long, and only remains state tyranny until it can achieve federal tyranny. The "hands off" message should not be believed any more than should the helping hand, though those same messages packaged differently have been used to justify all manner of horror. Prescriptions for national happiness are always untested, though many would have you believe that theirs is the true word and spirit of our Fathers. 

You see, what matters most in these trying times is that we all agree to get rid of one half of the problem, lest those hotter heads prevail once more. 

My fellow Americans, our long national nightmare is over. - Gerald Ford, Presidential Inauguration speech, August 9th, 1974

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