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Every so often I have a thought or two, I might as well write them here...they may be political thoughts (I hate war, polluters and thieves), or thoughts about American culture (which I wished we really had) or even religious thoughts (I don't play favorites)...but you're invited to see these thoughts of mine right here. Comments are welcome... |
| It’s Christmas again, a time for hope, for celebrations with family, for generosity of heart, for spiritual reconnections if you celebrate the religious aspects of the holiday. For me the religious aspect is in the Solstice and the return of light and heat to the earth (of course that locates me in the Northern Hemisphere), the promise of Spring, the rejuvenation of life, the turning of fancies from dormancy to new possibilities. I’ll avoid politics in this entry except to comment on President Bush’s exhortation to folks depressed by this dirty war we’re in to forget about it and go shopping. I tried it, it worked, I went shopping for food. I feel I’m lucky I could go shopping for food or anything, there are a lot of people less fortunate, not occupying the elite status I must enjoy to be able to shop for food. Yesterday I saw a bumper sticker informing me that 84% of the people below the poverty line work full-time, I don’t think the President has a plan which will work to stave off their depression. Here in Oregon we’re in the rainy season, when storm after storm cycles down from Alaska on the jet stream, depositing snow in the mountains and making us in the valleys glad for pavement to keep us out of the mud. I recently heard of an Iraqi saying that has broader implications but seems appropriate to the rainy season, “the mud is getting wetter.” In spite of the rain and soggy circumstance it creates I feel lucky to live in such a temperate climate where I can play golf pretty much year-round. I played in the rain yesterday, only losing one ball that descended from the sky to the middle of the fairway and dove out of sight into the wet ground, it plugged as we say. Tomorrow on Christmas Day I will play as I have done for seven or eight years now at a private ‘members only’ golf course. A member of the club introduced me to this holiday golfing experience, showing me the gate we can sneak around to play for free on the course closed for Christmas Day. I haven’t played with him again, but call the annual outing ‘The Bob November Invitational’ in his honor. We are observant of golf etiquette on the outing, respecting the grounds, fixing ball-marks and divots, being good stewards, so to speak, giving no reason to anyone to be compelled to have our group arrested for trespassing. In the back of my mind I harbor the faith that invoking the holy name of Bob November will act as some kind of ‘Get out of jail free’ card in case the law shows up (which hasn’t happened to date, keep your fingers crossed!). I am enjoying another feeling this holiday season, somewhat rare for me, of the possibility of a relationship bubbling under the surface. A growing attraction very much worth the exploration with a beautiful and sexy woman who is an excellent writer, is old enough to remember the same music I do, and has a wonderful sense of humor. I haven’t asked if she plays cribbage, perhaps I’m afraid that if she does play I wouldn’t be able to stop myself from doing something rash like blurting out a proposal of marriage. I can’t help feeling blessed by this new and exciting connection, but I’m doing my best to just enjoy it as it comes and avoid building castles in the sky. So best wishes from Oregon to everyone reading this and all the ships at sea. Keep your spirits up, if you need to, go shopping, if you can’t shop at least try to stay warm for a couple more months until our Mother returns bringing abundance to her thankful children. Bless all your hearts, sniff, sniff…where’s my hankie? I’m all verklempt, sniff… |
| There's a big storm bearing down on Oregon from the Pacific today, bringing strong winds and buckets of rain. It'll be a good day to hunker down indoors and think about things. Recently I scanned some pictures to send to a dear friend. I have this corkboard which usually hangs on the wall which I took down to remove the photos. The corkboard is a montage of my history, showing my children in various stages, old wedding photos, halloween costumes, pictures of my brothers and I growing up, family members who have passed on, etc. These pictures are what I refer to as snapshots. One thing I especially loved about Blade Runner were the importance of snapshots to the Replicant humans, as it gave them a structure to believe in a past they didn't actually possess. I don't think we are so far different, except for the fact we actually do have a past. I often catch myself looking up at the corkboard, differing emotions ticking through me as I look at various familiar photos. It really is a montage of my life and not just a collection of random images, although a stranger would see it that way. Taking some down to send to someone represents an opening of a very personal window, here are some pieces of me I am sharing, it's a vulnerable act representative of a growng trust. You can't really get to know someone through sharing snapshots, but you get some pieces of the larger jigsaw puzzle we become as we go through our lives. There are a lot of other pieces needed, we get some from conversation, more from reading thoughts, enough to know whether there's either a good reason to know more or conversely a reason to close the window. The difference, as I see it, between snapshots and photographs is the exact same difference between having live conversation with another human as opposed to reading their written work. Photographs, like poetry, are images from the soul, endearing, but separate and with an existence all their own. Snapshots are like conversation in that it deals with more physical aspects of the person. To see a photo of someone smiling and then to actually hear them laugh creates a real link, a shared now, rather than the shared but more amorphous link provided by sharing Art. Memories are made by contact. I can feel my Grandma Hazel's hug when I look at her picture. You can take a trip with someone and capture beautiful scenery and breath-taking natural wonders, and those photographs are something the couple can share. But my guess is looking at them later will release memories of a different nature, the memories of human contact and experiences that took place behind the camera, but are still specific to the trip taken. I have shared my personal pictures with a special person and she has shared some with me. It's a start. If there is really a future for a relationship between us it will be made apparent when I put a picture of her on the corkboard. It won't be one she sent me, it will be one we shared being together in this life and experiencing contact. Such a picture will reflect we have gone beyond exploration and entered the realm of relationship, the foundation of a house which might very well turn into a home, a symbol of a much larger memory. And if I get a picture of her smiling at my camera I will remember kissing those lips, touching her wind-blown hair, the way she looked at me when we made love. I need to put the photos I sent her back on the board and hang it up again, but I'm seriously tempted to leave a space open for the picture of her I described earlier. Not only would such a picture fill an empty space on the corkboard, it would fill one in my heart. |
| I've nearly finished reading the Thomas Ricks book "Fiasco" which came out earlier this year detailing the mistakes, incompetence and hubris surrounding the Bush administration's rush to war and failure to accomplish anything in Iraq. It should be required reading for American taxpayers, voters and parents of soldiers. The release of the bi-partisan commission's report to the president yesterday agrees with Mr. Ricks' conclusions down the line. We have failed miserably to win the hearts and minds of a people we just didn't understand and we got it wrong almost from the getgo. Perhaps we could have won the real war, which was not a shooting war at all, if we had been able to admit our mistakes and learn from them. Unfortunately that's where the hubris comes in, in the form of arrogance on the part of an administration which just can't seem to admit mistakes. Almost 3000 of our own people have died and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis have died as a direct result of mule-headed arrogance and stubbornness. Time and again the President and his puppets, Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld, Myers, etc., painted a rosy picture of progress that had nothing to do with the reality going on in the theatre of the war. It took them years to admit an insurgency was anything more than a few "deadenders", claiming repeatedly the insurgency was in its death throes, when in fact it was growing in numbers and deadliness. Now the ame arrogance and hubris cannot admit Iraq has dissolved into a civil war that our troops are caught in the middle of. I knew before the war started we'd face this outcome. I hoped I was wrong, but I wasn't. When I first saw George Bush give a speech my impression was he was a bumbler, a man of second-rate intelligence, and his subsequent election and re-election left me with the profound impression my fellow Americans were just as stupid as he was. So maybe this fiasco is not to be laid solely at the feet of our incompetent leader at all, maybe we all share the responsibility. Perhaps Bush was just expressing the blind arrogance and hubris of America, the same arrogance and hubris which was the direct cause of the Towers going down on 9/11, that led us into Vietnam and has us mired in the quagmire of Iraq. America has lost its way, we're not a savior to the world anymore, we're bullies. We bullied our way into Iraq and now the shit on our shoes will stick with us for a long time to come. I don't have any faith Bush will suddenly start doing the right thing, regardless of his seeming at this time to want input from sane people, my prediction is he'll just keep bumbling until his term ends, continuing to claim the pig with lipstick is really Lady Liberty. |
| I know it's probably not fair to beat up on young George, he does have his hands full beating the drum for his pet project, the democratization of Iraq, which by all accounts is not going well. But I must say I was surprised to learn three Texas cities are fighting for the chance to house the Bush Presidential Library, each of them prepared to spend as much as one billion dollars for the privilege. It makes me wonder why they would need such a big building. All the important things George Bush has said so far would fit in a shoebox, with room left over for a stack of Fantastic Four comics (supposedly the source for such great gems as "Axis of Evil" and "Bring 'em on"). George claims to read books, so maybe the library could display the books he personally handled and there's also the book he was reading to the children while terrorists were attacking our country, perhaps that book should go under glass as a lasting reminder to his cluelessness. I will grant you he still has time to write a book (or more likely have it ghost-written, since Dick Cheney took away his tablet and colored pencils). I would suggest he write a book entitled "The Things I Was Wrong About." I doubt he could get it all into one book, so shelf space would be needed to house several volumes. George has given a few speeches, but after the "uhs" and "in other words" were removed, they'd require much less space. They should save some money down there in Texas and design a much smaller repository for Bush's legacy. A small room would do, maybe call it the "Bush Presidential Library and Broom Closet." |
| Independent’s Day It appears the Democrats won the Mid-term elections because the Independents voted for the Democratic ticket instead of the Republican. And the Independents won two seats in the Senate, and probably some in the House, too. The Independents are on the rise! My oldest son (and possibly my daughter too) is an Independent and likes it that way. I’ve been a registered Democrat since I first registered to vote. If you’re an Independent you can’t vote for Democratic or Republican candidates in the primary and for some reason that actually meant something to me. But I’ve been thinking about it. Who cares who the Democrats or Republicans put up? If I were an Independent I wouldn’t have to soil my hands with the whole mess, let them sling mud like crazy, I could just stand by and see who comes out the cleanest, and if I like what I see I’ll vote for it. Who knows, maybe an Independent will be on the ballot I could vote for, but no, I probably don’t want an Independent representing me, my true independence is in being the one who is too independent to have anyone represent him. Being an Independent might also lessen some of the load of my mail-carrier, he’ll probably thank me for a wise political move since now he won’t have to carry several pounds of junk mail every election season. Isn’t there some way you can limit your snail mail, like there is with email? Maybe you could have an account with the Postal Service on-line, showing the mail you’ve gotten and allowing you to mark the spammers you don’t want to get mail from, including political spam. See? What an ingenious idea, a solution to a real problem, junk mail, and I’ve just started thinking Independently. It’s clear to me the way to solve our country’s problems is to bring in Independent thought, especially when neither the Democrats or Republicans can get anything meaningful done. Now that Independents have the power to make sea changes in government those so-called representatives had better do some representating or we’ll vote the bums out again. The Independents have spoken. They want something better and if those stuffed-shirts in Washington don’t give it to them, Independents will kick their butts to the curb, all the way up the line. Darn it, independence feels good, it makes me feel like a free American. I can’t wait until Independents have their own day, no wait, they do, Independence Day! I hadn’t thought of that! I’d already have my own Holiday. I definitely am going to go change my registration, and what the Hell, I encourage everybody else to do it too. Screw the lot of them! Let’s all be Independents! |
| The trouble with playing golf regularly is you get better, and as you get better your expectation level goes up. You expect to hit putts, expect to drive it straight down the middle, expect to have good thoughts about your iron play. That's the killer, people, the old expectation level, because we're all doomed to screw it up some way, just when it seems the sweetest. Which is how I look at the election results. In spite of my helf-empty reality check I felt something I can only describe as hope in relation to how the election went. For a fleeting second I actually thought George W. Nitwit was going to be called on the carpet for being such a nincompoop. That the bloodbath of Iraq Now! would somehow be lessened, that a light (not a trainwreck) was at the end of a tunnel somewhere. But then today reality hit. This is only some kind of political ballet. Nothing at all will change, besides for Rummy, and the Democrats are going to be saddled with admitting defeat while the Republicans go Nyaah, nyaah, nyaah all the way home to their inflated bank accounts. And in the meantime, before the Democrats can get their machine to work, more Americans and Iraqis will die. Rest assured no fix will come for this problem before W is gone, his peeps are making money hand-over-fist, Cheney's Halliburton, Shell Oil, countless humvee, body armor and munitions concerns, just about everybody who is anybody is scoring big bucks on the back of Iraq. For another two years all those folks are going to stay nose-deep in the government trough, I'd call that a victory for George W. Bush!! When he's gone the shit will hit the wall. Some way or another Democrats will get blamed for it and the American dupes will be ripe for more duping. If I'm surpised by anything it is how easily Bush gave up the Senate to Democratic rule. A tweak here, a tweak there and voila, the results you want. It worked in Florida in 2000 and in Ohio in 2004. Why don't you think they went for the fix in Virginia in 2006? Though the game in Iraq is already lost, let the Democrats wear the label for finally calling it quits. That'll keep the thing from being known in the future as Bush's Folly. |
| I remember when my Mom was all excited about going to her 40th high school reunion. For those folks reading this who aren’t Americans, high school is the next step before college and the difficult time of life called adulthood. Anyway at the time Mom was so excited while I couldn’t believe anyone could live so long as to look at 40 years since high school. How much fun could those old folks have, pushing each other’s wheelchairs over by the window to get some sun. 40th reunions should be held in antique shops. But now here I am staring my own 40th reunion square in the face. The class of ’67 has their own website, I get emails all the time from former classmates, there’s a place you can write your own bio, encapsulating 40 years of life since high school (try to keep it short). The emails have turned into a curious dynamic. A couple of guys who probably were like that in high school too started a long chain of emails, obviously enjoying their adolescent humor about toilets and shopping for women’s gifts at Home Depot. The next thing we knew a bunch of fuddy-duddies started writing in complaining and wanting to unsubscribe, sick of the low-brow humor, serious-minded people, with lots on their plates, “I’m a serious fuddy-duddy, I don’t have the time to wade through nonsense I find no humor in…” Then the guys apologized for their foolishness and said “you fuddy-duddies won’t hear from us anymore and to hell with your silly reunion too!” So what I find curious is there was no discussion between the goofballs and the fuddy-duddies at all, no attempt was made to try and mediate (except by level-headed folks like me), to try and make the email thing a good communication tool where we could actually get to know each other again before we show up face to face. But instead of people voicing opinions and direction, they were saying “unsubscribe me” and “piss on your reunion!” It should be interesting to see how it all turns out. And it should also be gobs of fun next summer at the reunion, I can’t wait to see all the fuddy-duddies and goofballs facing off, their wheelchairs parked in front of the windows of the antique shop to get a little sun. |
| Poor John Kerry, he can't help but shoot himself in the foot. Perhaps it's a first indicator of Alzheimer's or something. What I mean is back in my and John Kerry's day the draft was instituted to supply fodder for the war machine in Vietnam. If your grades fell below a "C" average you could lose your student deferment and would then be in line for the draft. John just forgot we now have a volunteer army and kids rich enough to go to college stand to make too much money to even consider a lucrative "career" in the Armed Forces. I'm sure our beleaguered "freedom fighters" ranks in Iraq are chock full of college-diploma-toting troops who volunteered for their onerous duty because they were patriots, not because they were from some backwater town with no jobs available locally. It occurs to me the lesson to be learned from the Vietnam debacle is to never fight a war with educated people, they know how to think for themselves and cause all kinds of problems in the military. Educated troops don't condone stupidity, they have opinions and know how to express them, they spread dissent. The volunteer army has not won anything in Iraq, they have a thankless task policing millions of people while driving around with a target drawn on their Humvees. They are shown repeatedly stating how what they are doing is making a difference, they love fighting for the Iraqis' freedom, they're proud to be Americans, obviously believing in their mission. Of course this isn't propaganda, put out by a government that has its own reason to prolong this war, mainly so the stink of failure isn't hung about its neck like a rotting Middle Eastern albatross. It could very well take a draft to finally end the war in Iraq. I predict we'll send even more folks over there in the future, we'll need them to prop up the powerless Iraqi government. It will help us to have weathered defeat in Vietnam, we've had practice admitting national stupidity, but it still won't make it any easier to admit we've made a huge mistake and finally get the hell out of Iraq. Kerry should have told those college kids to get good grades so they will get good jobs, the bill for the Iraq war will have to be paid by them, and it's a whopper! |
| Everybody’s moaning about the obesity epidemic here in the USA, now I hear Japan too is beginning to suffer a fat explosion. I think a solution is pretty simple, not perfect, but simple, but first let’s look at why people get fat. Why people get fat is simple too, they eat too much and sit on their widening butts eating ice cream for dessert. Too much food and too little activity and voila the looming pudge factor. So what is the solution? Well, you could go to the gym and start working out, you could decrease your portions and cut out fast-food, pie, sodas, beer and doughnuts, you could staple your stomach shut, or your lips. But let me ask you something, have you ever seen a fat speed freak? The meth problem is becoming as widespread as the fat problem, but could there be an upside to the meth problem? The short answer is yes, if folks were to start taking a lot of speed they’d lose weight and fast. Of course, as with any medication, there could be some side effects, like losing your teeth, destroying any number of vital internal organs, ugly blotchy skin, hair loss, etc., but isn’t that a small price to pay to decrease the number of fatties we see all over the place right now? Sure you’ll chain-smoke cigarettes, drink like a fish, lose your job, get a pack of pitbulls and shoot your girlfriend because in your paranoid delusion you thought she was Godzilla, but you’ll be skinny and have more energy than you ever dreamed. Another potential downside is the cost of meth and how to pay for your addiction. A word to the wise here, meth isn’t covered by medicare, and there isn’t any copay to reduce the cost of staying thin. But successful addicts all over the country find a way to get more by driving around all night looking for things to steal, and because there are so many of them our jails are already full so the fool that gets caught will be right back out on the street in no time. I will grant you the fact meth addicts don’t have any moral guidelines, kind of like congress, but wouldn’t that make them perfect candidates for today’s armed forces? They like guns, they are fearless and hard to stop with just normal shooting, they will save us a ton of money in the mess-hall and they’ll gladly torture anybody for another bindle. That’s a win-win if I’ve ever heard of one! Plus, if these folks were in some other country raiding and looting we’d be a heck of a lot safer here in the good old USA. Okay, it’s not a perfect solution to the obesity crisis, but what is? Sometimes gravy’s got lumps in it too, you know. |
| Who out there knows who Pander was? Anyways, the Pres signed a law today supposedly banning internet gambling. Why? I'm not tempted to gamble online, Hell, I lose enough money gambling in real time not to try losing money while compromising my bankcard. Who is the Pres trying to please? His base, the evangelical Christians who would like to ban dancing, movies, in fact anything which could lead us to be sinful. I hope it works for him to pander to his base in a purely political gesture. No one is being hurt in the internet gambling except for the folks who need treatment, like Congressman Foley. My feeling is this is another attempt to limit our freedoms as Americans, another law signed by a pandering to Christian morality, having nothing to do with any problem we face that has teeth. I'm sick of selective morality. God, if you believe in God, was pretty clear about killing other people yet our Pres chooses to play God and tell us who we can and should kill. Fuck gambling, there are bigger fish to fry. |
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