Alfa Cowboy in the Great Blank

I Hate Cat Owners

2011-11-17T06:07:00.000-08:00

...and keep your damn cats inside. I understand you're socially retarded and need a substitute for actual human relationships, but you're an inconsiderate asshole for letting your cats run around and crap in your neighbors' yards, sandboxes, etc. I hope you and your cats get hit by cars, struck by lightning, afflicted with chronic wasting disease, eaten by fire ants, etc., etc., ad nauseum. I hate you.

much peace,

On a Lighter? Note...

2011-11-11T06:06:00.001-08:00

Any "man" who fake tans should just buy a cat and get the operation. You're not fooling anyone.

much peace,

Penn State is Superior to the Catholic Church

2011-11-10T06:43:00.000-08:00

The Catholic Church, from little country parishes all the way up to the Vatican denied, blamed victims, blamed the media and fired almost no one. They did that for over a century, at least. They transferred pedophiles around and provided them fresh kids to abuse. They paid blood money to have the cases hushed up, and the real power brokers like John Paul II, Pope Ratzinger, etc. etc. ad nauseum, had zero sanctions or penalties against them.

Penn State took a long time (13 years), but at least they've now fired the powerful men who averted their eyes and let the little children suffer. They were wrong, and they failed kids, but at least they're doing the right thing now, and through their actions admitting that the institution failed.They haven't blamed the victims, or demonized the media like Ratzinger and his cronies did. The Catholic Church has issued a few grudging apologies, but their actions show no willingness in the upper hierarchy to take responsibility, and they never will. They just blame it on the gays and let the cold heartless bastards who fed and enabled the pedophiles keep their cushy jobs.

Two failures: hugely different in scale, but both heartbreaking. The notable difference is in response, though, and the willingness of one institution to take action against those who knew and did nothing. The other, larger institution has not and will not do that, which is why they still have all of my scorn, contempt and wishes for fire.

much peace

Steve Jobs: The Perfect Deity for a Culture of Desperately Insecure and Superficial Consumers

2011-10-07T13:38:00.000-07:00

Steve Jobs revolutionized the repackaging and delivery of more and crappier media to people with hundreds of dollars to spend on the emperor's new information skins. What a pioneer! He helped so many desperately middle class folks watch yet another James Cameron abortion on four-inch screens. He saved so many technologically indigent hipsters from the tragic indignity of not having wireless devices that doubled as pretend beer mugs or cigarette lighters. Most importantly, he gave millions the opportunity to feel smug about their choice of meaningless tech. Steve Jobs understood the soul of America, and he exploited it as well as (if not better than) any soda company, fast food joint, auto company or clothing manufacturer.

The soul of America is as follows: The false expression of self and superiority through the mass purchase of whatever is best marketed as new, better and different.

That's it, peeps. That's all. That's what we're about in this culture. Jobs knew it just like Pepsi, Nike and BMW know it. We're all bleating little sheep whose sense of self worth is overwhelmingly determined by how much and what kind of crap we own. This is nowhere more apparent than in the tech industry, where companies fiercely compete for your attention(DD), while there are very few actual qualitative differences between products, the religious arguments of their respective cults notwithstanding. Lost in this fight for your superficial souls is the ugly fact that what skin you put on superficial inane crap doesn't change the fact that it's superficial inane crap. You're still an idiot for watching Avatar or Fast and Furious, regardless of the device on which you watch it, and you're still a rude asshole talking on the phone while your cashier serves you, regardless of whether you're talking on an iPhone or a Droid. You're still a smelly nerd for playing World of Warcraft, no matter what souped-up 21st century version of a muscle car you use to propel your nerd-dom.

Again, that's just who we are: chimps impressed and possessed by shiny new toys. Jobs was a smart chimp who did an effective job packaging new toys to play the same old stupid games. I'm sorry for anyone who dies of cancer, or of any other painful and incapacitating condition, but I'm not going to pretend Jobs was anything but the latest snake oil salesman with his finger on the pulse of our collective and vapid greed. Our desperation has become unquiet, but it's not much different that what Thoreau recognized. Good thing we have piles of morebetterdifferent crap to distract us.

much peace

Hey Old Bean

2011-06-19T11:32:00.000-07:00

Just a quick shout to my pops. From a jaded kid who's never really believed in anything: I've always and without any doubt believed in you. Thanks for always being a rock, old man.

much peace,

Let Me Be the Millstone

2011-04-12T11:01:00.000-07:00

"Under the same May 2010 revision of the Vatican's sex abuse norms, acquiring, possessing and distributing pornography of children under age 14 years is considered to be an equally serious canonical crime that is dealt with by the Congregation."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110412/ap_on_re_eu/eu_vatican_church_abuse?mwp_success=NONJS_POST_SUCCESS#mwpphu-container

Kiddie porn of children OVER 14, however, is not nearly as serious. Really, the Catholic Cosa Nostra does not consider any child abuse a serious issue unless it is publicized. This collection of diddlers and their enablers could not care less about the damage done to their victims. They only care about damage control for the Corporation if they get caught. You'll notice they say nothing about de-frocking the pedophile in this article. They also say Pope Ratzinger, the Patron Saint of Pedophiles, will have the final say on his sentence. These are bad, bad people who stay in power because millions of rank and file Catholic cult members care more about their brand loyalty than the safety of kids. If you identify as Catholic and give support and funding to these criminals, you're part of the problem. They get away with it because 800 million of you refuse to stop them.

I don't believe in any of this weak-minded imaginary unicorn bullshit, but the imaginary Christ I read about in the mythology would NOT be down with the current batch of wealthy overfed child abusers who diddle kids and skate in his name.

"It would be better for him if a millstone were hung around his neck and he were thrown into the sea, than that he would cause one of these little ones to stumble." (Luke 17:2)

I would be the millstone and the sea.

much peace

Eyes Without a Face

2011-04-11T07:06:00.000-07:00

So France arrested a few women earlier today who protested the new veil ban by wearing full face coverings in public. (http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/eu_france_veil_ban).

The root of the problem is the desperate need of weak-minded people to believe that some bearded sky fairy cares what they wear, or eat, or with whom they copulate. I'm not really comfortable with these women being arrested or fined, but I do think anti-intellectual religious devotion (I know, redundant) is much more dangerous. When I see anyone decked out in religious gear, whether Muslim, Christian, Jewish, Star Wars, Harry Potter, Batman, etc., I automatically think: "intellectual inferior."

much peace,

Tough Guys R US

2011-04-04T10:30:00.000-07:00

So a sperm donor and a cum dumpster were arrested on Friday, 04/01/11, for assaulting a 73-year-old school crossing guard in Lansing, MI. These walking billboards for forced sterilization ill-conceived a child who was in a fight Wednesday at Lyons Elementary School in Lansing. The kid is seven, and fought with another first grader. No big deal, right? Kids will occasionally scrap, adults step in, and the situation gets managed. In NightmareParentVille, though, it gets fucked up pretty quickly.

These "parents" drove their unfortunate spawn to school the next morning and encouraged him to get out of the car and beat down the kid he had fought on Wednesday. Being a chip off the old retarded block, the budding young sociopath did just that, knocking the other kid down and whaling on him. The school crossing guard, James Thompson, did what a grown-up is supposed to in that situation, and intervened to stop the fight. At that point, the stars of this sad drama, Darrell Livingston and Shareka McKinney, proceeded to boil out of the car and break a piece off for the people. Punk bitch Livingston punched the 73-year-old school employee in the face, and continued to beat him as he fell. McKinney, a dumb slut by trade, also punched Thompson in the back of the head. The two DNA time bombs then hustled their kid back into the car and fled the scene ("fled the scene:" not exactly a phrase associated with effective parenting). Thompson is ok, with only a chipped tooth for his trouble. The other kid was ok too, as most combatants in 7-year-old fisticuffs generally are. Livingston's and McKinney's offspring is, of course, royally fucked by both nature and nurture. I mean, bad genetics AND parents who clearly have no idea how to operate in society? Poor kid stands zero chance, and that sucks, horribly.

In addition to facing charges of assault and contributing to the delinquency of a minor, I really feel like Livingston should be charged with being a complete and total pussy. I mean, a 73-year-old? Really? If you're going to represent, please at least try not to be such a punk ass that you enlist your fugly lady for help against the geriatric set. Damn wannabe, gonnabe, cocksuckin', pussy-eatin' prankstas...

much peace,

End of Winter

2011-03-16T12:55:00.000-07:00

The sun is a benison to weary nerves. It is good to stand outside as the day ages, and to blink into the westering light. Soon the city and surrounding countryside will swell full with warmth and greenery. Max and Will will stretch and crow, and produce Vitamin D at an alarming rate. We will sleep out of doors, and swim in the river, and eat food we've grown and fish we've spent hours catching, and I will revel in the life and growth of my sons.

much peace

Goodbye Mom

2011-03-11T20:31:00.000-08:00

Mom went about as easy as a body can go, I guess, and was conscious and lucid for all but the very last. She asked to see my boys, and got to talk and listen to them for a little while before she began the last mile.

She was relatively pain free, and tired of the oxygen mask. She couldn't breathe so well without it, but a little bit of morphine here and there alleviated that discomfort. Her tiny little body, which had given life and comfort to so many for so long, was just done. She slipped pretty gently out of consciousness, and all the brothers and sisters sang and talked and prayed her to sleep. We got quiet at the end, and kept vigil while her breathing slowed, and while the pulse at her neck weakened and finally stopped. Everybody cried some, and I was a big bawl-baby myself, but I'm fiercely glad that my mom kept her sovereignty to the end, and drew her lines where she did. I'm also glad that my kids' first experience with death was with a woman as brave and as dignified as my mom, and with a family as large, loving and unabashedly emotional as mine. Her whole life, my Mom gave, and gave, and gave. Even in dying she had gifts and lessons to give. I'm richer for it. So thanks, and goodbye, mom. I hate that you had to go, but I'm glad you're free.

much peace,

Bike Commuting

2011-03-08T20:57:00.000-08:00

There were geese in the creek today, and a mallard couple, and a small mammal of some sort disturbed the surface as it swam. There was also some resilient ice in one of the drainage pipes, and the water was chilly blue-green.

much peace,

Abracadabra

2011-02-11T13:22:00.000-08:00

So this talking snake in a tree told me that Xenu, the Director of the Intergalactic Federation, knocked up this chick who swore up and down she was still a virgin. This was AFTER this crazy bearded guy with a magic hammer caused thunderstorms all over Norway, and some other cat in the desert said it was okay to kill all the infidels, a position that met with serious objection from folks who avowed and averred that THEIR bearded sky fairy had Chosen only them for that luscious desert. Then Aslan gave Prince Adam this magic sword and he and MacGuyver hooked up with Wonder Woman and Batman and made some crazy looking kids that Abraham was quite ready to kill until Buffy and Angel convinced him to change his ways.

Now, which of these things can be proven by actual empirical observation?

Answer: None.

Have a nice day. Abracadabra.

2010-09-15T11:09:00.000-07:00

The demons all come crashing in
to find a place under my skin
where there's fear and loneliness enough
for all the hosts of hell...

(CR 2010, tjb)

Awake and Alive

2010-08-11T06:15:00.000-07:00

It's easier to get up in the mornings knowing I have a bicycle ride ahead of me, and office work is more tolerable when I'm looking forward to my bike ride home.

This morning I heard bullfrogs creaking and croaking down by the Papio Creek, and the locusts were louder than I recall in previous summers. At 6:25 a.m., the edges of greenery along the trail diffuse into the late summer haze, and the eastern sky is still a tumbled confusion of color and cloud.

My shredded, then repaired, then re-shredded right knee aches in rotation, but my breath comes easy, my heart is steady, and my muscles burn like the good old days. I could spend a day concentrating on the rhythm of my quadriceps: fire and relax, fire and relax. Hypnotic, like the locusts and the slow-moving creek. I'm nothing but an extension of the scenery.

much peace,

Old Friend

2010-08-04T22:16:00.000-07:00

I saw a bluejay on my bike ride to work this morning. I hadn't seen one in a long time before that. I hope I see him again tomorrow.

much peace

Balancing Act

2010-07-07T14:36:00.000-07:00

Starting a second job this week. The extra hours and work don't bother me at all. Being less present for the various important people that need me weighs heavily on me, though. So it goes in the good old sweat-combustion engine. At least I have a spot on the wheel to which I can place my substantial shoulder.

much peace

Market Research

2010-06-02T17:36:00.000-07:00

So a child care center with franchises all over the world recently was exposed for molesting and abusing kids, covering it up and obstructing justice. The vast majority of perpetrators have avoided prosecution, or even termination, and the entrenched managers and executives refuse to leave. Despite all of the overwhelming evidence, and despite the proven track record of abusing children, millions of parents' loyalty to this brand is so strong that they still choose to entrust this corporation with their children's safety. I don't understand parents whose brand loyalty is more important than their kids.

much peace,
tjb

BOYCOTT BP

2010-05-16T08:08:00.000-07:00

There really isn't a whole lot else to say.

BOYCOTT THE PIG FUCKERS AT BP!

Much-Needed Input

2010-05-10T12:36:00.000-07:00

So I was playing guitar for my 4-year-old boys before bed the other night, and I was messing around with a very simple pick pattern in B-flat (new song). A couple of strings stay open and ring through the changes, and it gives (to me, anyway) an impression of space, or expanse.

The kids asked me why I wasn't singing it, and I explained that I hadn't written any lyrics yet. They then asked what the song was called, and I explained that I didn't have a title yet either. They continued to ask, and I said (somewhat shortly), "I don't know yet. Why don't you guys come up with a title?" They both got quiet, and Max tilted his head to one side and answered, "Day on the Water." Will actually started shyly singing something that was more or less in time and more or less in tune.

We play guitar and piano quite a bit, and they always sing along, but I have to admit that it's pretty amazing and fulfilling to me that they're already participating in the songwriting process. "Day on the Water" is really the name of the song, and if I can can figure out what's going through Will's head, I'll try to incorporate it as lyrics.

Of course, Will later tried to re-title the song "Circle in the Wind That Breaks into Someone's House and Steals Their T.V.," but I think he was just kidding.

much peace,
tjb

Resignation and a Little Hope

2010-05-06T19:43:00.000-07:00

Ugh. Kids. Catholic school. Guilt, shame, and anti-intellectual worship of the supernatural. Frightening and depressing simultaneously. I hope someday the three of us can raise a glass to the death of God. Until then, it's half-truths and mythology.

Six Ways from Sunday

2009-12-16T05:40:00.000-08:00

Screwed.

No public option, no Medicare buy-in, no re-importation of drugs: what's left of this alleged "health care reform?" A neverending goddamn gift to insurance companies and big pharma, that's what. Let's break it down.

1)The bill as it stands would require that you buy insurance.

2) It would require that insurance companies cover you regardless of any pre-existing condition.

3) If you could not afford the premiums, the government would provide assistance.

4) It would NOT establish any limits on what insurance companies can charge.

5) It would NOT provide any substantive change in regard to the insurance companies denying specific care on the basis of what they deem is "reasonable" (ie, what is profitable).

So the insurance industry would gain 30 million new customers, and both they and health care providers would have all the incentive in the world to send prices skyrocketing. People needing specific procedures could still be denied based on what is most profitable for the insurance company.

This farce would be almost an exact duplicate of the goddamn bank bailouts: an enormous transfer of public funds from the middle class to a handful of extraordinarily wealthy corporations, and no sanctions to encourage said corporations to conduct business fairly and ethically.

I must add that watching that slimy piece of insurance cartel dogshit Joe Lieberman simper and grin about once more fucking his constituents, and all of us, right in our un-lubed asses, has sent me over the top. I really hope that falsely pious pile of chickenhawk pig vomit dies of a brain aneurysm.

not feeling peaceful,

What Happened?

2009-11-24T23:03:00.001-08:00

I pulled out some pictures from my trip to Peru eight years ago, and while Craig looks much the same, I scarcely recognize the slimmer and more vibrant version of me in the photos. I am now, perhaps, 20 pounds heavier than I was then, and my face has settled into a softer and weaker rendering of masculinity. The hard lines of my jaw have all but disappeared these days, and the eyes in the mirror no longer communicate the unfettered joy and danger that, for good or ill, defined that young man in Peru, or hell, the young man who left and came home.

So what happened?

I blew my knee out a couple times and fell off the workout wagon, I guess, and stopped treating my body like a temple; and I had to quit school before the boys were born. The absence of concentrated and violent intellectual challenge has had much the same effect as the absence of concentrated and violent physical activity: the product of both being an overwhelming and near-fatal ennui.

I guess I fell out of love with myself, or stopped trusting my own instincts. I don't know, it's not as though my instincts have ever brought me any kind of tangible benefit or long-lasting contentment. I remember, though, waking from my midafternoon nap in the Ishinca River valley and being so slain by the mountains and the river, and by the benediction of a walk with my Friend, that despite my fatigue and rotten altitude sickness, I hiked and sang up the side of the mountain (I did stop singing at about 12,000 feet when I had to throw up about every 20 yards). From the outside, it sounds like mawkishness, a silly response to situational inspiration, but I know better. It didn't just happen on the side of the mountain, or on holidays or special occasions. I routinely allowed myself to be moved, to not take things in stride. I don't know what happened, or what changed, or what now seals me off from that dynamic experience of the world, but I need to find it again, desperately. I know I must in many ways be serious and solid these days, and I am, but if I don't find some way to reconnect to that vitality, I am pretty sure it's absence will eventually kill me.

much peace,
tjb

I Am Not Clever

2009-11-10T15:01:00.000-08:00

...but this song is a little, or what I have of it thus far.

Spaceman

Out into the ether, where the stars collide
and flash their long-dead smiles through the cavernous night
Good old spaceman won't put his helmet on again
He's out in the cold and the ghostlight wearing nothing but his skin

And beneath the sweet physicality, there's closed doors in our minds
We're miles apart in your tiny bed, and I'm leaving you behind

I'll choose the vacuum, where there's nothing I'm required to feel
Yeah nothing but want and wanderlust and a nagging urge to breathe
Into the outside through a blue-white picture frame
I can't see your face from outer space, I can't remember my own name

And to shed the false solidarity and barely murmured lies
There's a skylight above us, and I'm leaving you behind...

(Copyright 2006, Thomas J Burbach)

much peace

Untitled in Progress

2009-09-13T04:18:00.000-07:00

Maybe you'll finally make that mythic run south or
prove your repentance with a gun in your mouth
but you always lose your nerve
in the shadows' evening length
caught in your private hell between weakness and strength............
(Copyright 9/2009, Thomas J Burbach)

much peace

Of Mortal Gods

2009-08-03T21:37:00.000-07:00

There is joy in a well-thrown football, in the lovely lethal hiss of air around the composite leather, in velocity born in the balls of one's feet, and in the violent and terrible force transferred smoothly from hips to throwing shoulder. It's the same joy, love, to be honest, that occurs in the humbling attack of a summit by bicycle, in the grim and glorious struggle against oxygen debt, and, in truth, in the absolute desperate necessity of a well-turned phrase or verse hunted and found in in the despairing wilderness past midnight: the surrender of one's body and intellect to service of the cause at hand. I have no illusions about my own talents, physical, intellectual or otherwise; I am die-hard mediocre, at best. I am privy (in a small mean way), however, to the paradoxical juxtaposition of self-surrender and utter self-possession that I believe is the hallmark of all great creations, be they those of Whitman or McGrath, or those of Ali or Montana. There's a rising up and a thinning of the skin, a fragility and a belligerence, a passion and dispassion, between the points of which the constant artist must steer. In those moments, when the artist permits himself to be as weak and as strong as necessary, he imposes his will upon his environment, and in turn cedes internal territory that is neither returned nor forgotten.

Max and Will (my three-year-old sons) have begun to be fast. They used to run and I could catch up to them in a couple of long strides. Not so much anymore. Now they run, and I have to turn on the wheels a bit. They also are evolving from little stick figures into sinewy, athletic little boys. They have developed little lat spreads, and miniature muscles play around their shoulders and arms. As I begin my slow (very, very slow) decline into physical irrelevance, I am comforted to see my boys begin to recognize the strength and speed written into their DNA, and in the obvious and unconscious satisfaction they take in the purposeful use of their bodies and minds. We threw the football around in their yard today, and I recognized the fey light that shone in the blue-grey eyes they inherited from me, and their revelations of speed and feats of strength. Don't misunderstand, the same joy is apparent in their steady mastery of language, space and math (and just as encouraged) but nowhere are the little wild things as purely abandoned to happiness as in running, jumping, throwing and wrestling. It's a bit sorrowful to know that when they achieve mastery of their bodies and their sweet, elastic minds, I will be inexorably declining. I am a god to them now: large strong and knowledgeable beyond reckoning. Little do they know the want and worry I feel for them, or how much their god's happiness is bound to theirs. Perhaps all gods feel this way; beside themselves with love and care for their creations. I feel curious panic in my gut when I think of the inevitable time when their god becomes mortal to them, when they recognize me as just as mean and insignificant as the world for which I am trying to equip them. They will ultimately outgrow their need of me, but I shall never fall out of love with their sharp eyes and their red-blond curls, or with their belly laughs and singing.

I have proclaimed my aversion to any and all religion, but today I sympathize with the gods of Abraham and Muhammad, with Osiris and Isis and Zeus and Apollo, and Wodin and Loki and even evil old Cronos. I sympathize with all bereft deities who demand temples and alters, tithes and worship, and even sacrifice and blood from their creations. I understand the terrible love and the beautiful, inevitable despair; but it's our blood, our lives that must be freely sacrificed. Jesus came closest, perhaps, but even he got it wrong. I can't say "take my body so that you may be free, but you have to do as I say and build the right temples and say the right words to receive it." I must instead say, "Here is my sacrifice. Do with it what you will. The gift is yours because I love you, and nothing you say or do can negate it." The burden of faith is therefore mine, as it should be for all gods. So should Max and Will read any of my hopeless ramblings someday, long after they have recognized their flawed humbug of a father, I want them to know that this intention and service, at least is pure; and that I love them as dearly as any mortal god can love his children.

much peace,
tjb

Another Song

2009-07-15T10:22:00.000-07:00

Similar Ways

A nameless cold stalks these small-city streets
in the aftermath of snow and of sleet
It's been years since I dreamt out loud
Thus dies the child/So falls the proud

The whole city estranged since you I
since river birds wheeled through an untroubled sky
And sharp-handed men, they cut ugly and deep
and the summer-brown sorrow pulls me from my sleep

I walk down by the big Missouri
where the wind sings through these old oaks
past the dying buildings and the coffee shops
East of all the pavement and the smoke

In search of some soul at the old reservoir
and the prairie blows in through the wide open car
In bits and pieces, the day becomes clear
In shards of sunlight and the absence of all fear

And out past the cardboard graveyards
I leave this shell of glass and steel
and melt along with the last of the winter snow
lying naked in the creekbeds and the fields

In cowshit and straw by the side of the tracks
I've waited my whole life for trains to come past
Perhaps we've been broken in similar ways
But can't we just call that love and I'll have you
here with me today

And far past the sand and sagebrush
through mountains choked with springtime snow
we come at last to the arms of the ocean
a salty kiss so deep and cold...

(Copyright Thomas J Burbach 2006)

much peace,

More of the Same

2009-06-06T00:02:00.000-07:00

She claims to recall in the August blues/
in the painful sweep of a windswept sky/
a young man stuck in an old man's shoes
and summer rushing by

In the wide expanse behind, there's three years dead and gone
but I can see salvation in the twisting hills of pine...
The car door slams in the rising wind/
In your skin is born the light/
of a thousand prairie suns as I go
down into this night

I recall your innocence/
your blond hair scattered across the grass/
the sweet release of your last defense
and the sorrow slow to pass

She called me beautiful...said everything's all right
but all I ever was was blinded in the antiseptic light
Over the lake, under the sky
with nothing in between...
our bodies and the rain and stars
the elegant machine

...and a young girl stands in her summer shoes
at the water's edge on the edge of night
and a young man loses these old man blues....

(Copyright 2009, Thomas J Burbach)

much peace

Christ's Church on Earth

2009-05-20T10:10:00.000-07:00

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090520/ap_on_re_eu/eu_ireland_catholic_abuse

Please note that much of the evidence in the report cited above came from Vatican records. Again, these weren't files hidden away in individual church or school basements, but records kept at corporate headquarters, records of crime and abuse filed, stored and hidden by the fearless and noble leaders of God's kingdom on earth. The richest and most powerful were more than happy to sacrifice the most vulnerable and disadvantaged children to protect their own lily white Roman robes. They are all of them honorable men, no?

much peace,

Quick Moment of Self Congratulatory Bullshit

2009-05-04T15:26:00.001-07:00

I am under 200 pounds for the first time in three years. I have lost 30 in the last four months. I have 20 to go. Should I reach that goal, I will likely post an "after" pic. I am, of course, too vain to post a "before."

much peace,

Reciprocal

2009-05-03T19:44:00.000-07:00

The sun heats the bedrock from morning 'til night,
and the wind breathes a song to the grass:
"hush, hush"

The sand shifts around the bright cactus blooms,
and whispers a song to the stone
"sigh, sigh"

A surprise of rain patters and cools,
and the granite repeats to the sky:

"I love thee
I love thee
I love thee"

Copyright 2009, Thomas J Burbach

much peace,

Outpost

2009-04-14T11:05:00.000-07:00

I think when I have reached the fabled end of this unbearable beginning
and all my many wounds and scars dissolve
into the blessed crucible of night,
I will if choice is given me forgo a resurrection of the body
for assumption or deserved descent
or any sale of this alleged soul

May the doe-eyed Huris (hidden pearls) not disturb the sweetness of my rest,
nor the clamor of the sexless seraphim
send tin hosannahs to rattle through my dreams.
And keep me, please, from the glare of a hilltop Sodium City,
from all the meccas, temple mounts and churches
in whose names the fervent spill their blood.

No Eden can shelter child of man, nor any love anneal his written Fall
so on my belly let me sleep as I have crawled
in the failing light and unforgiving dust.

Let the rushing wind that swells and soughs across these bony plains
coax my every weary molecule apart
and in the empty darkling night let me be free…
and lay me ‘neath the holy prairie grass
and let grass become of me

Copyright 2009, Thomas J Burbach

much peace

Forms

2009-04-13T21:24:00.000-07:00

No wispy strands of cirrus,
or mountain ships of cumulus piled
on a blue, sweltering sea.
Just slate grey skyscape from horizon to horizon,
and wind shaking the jumbled communities
of mismatched sedge and biblical thorns.

Copyright 2009, Thomas J Burbach

much peace

2009-04-08T19:14:00.000-07:00

upon departure

Today is heavy upon my shoulders;
it began in disarray, before first light,
struggling back into my defenses from
the supposed sanctuary of your bed

So hard to leave you; almost your warmth had reached me:
In bits and pieces I was comforted until
a chill edge crept into your talk,
within me met an answering cold
and, of a sudden,
we are miles apart in your little
bed

Two penitents at opposite ends of the cathedral,
too proud to kneel in servitude to the one
cause worth serving; and so we lie, stiff-necked
and quite separate, and moving in separate directions:
you to your clandestine loves (a heat I may not touch),
and I to ponder, hands shackled behind my head,
why my own heart is so cold

_______________________

So I am brought unto the morning:
the sun drags behind him a formless morass
of clouds, slow as a funeral procession:
and I a faceless mourner, lacking
the wits to grieve.

Copyright, 2001 Thomas J Burbach

much peace

Untitled

2009-04-06T11:53:00.000-07:00

Fragility:
A thinning of skin in the cold light
and Caution:
The keen edges of leaves and
the quiet, lethal blades of barely grass

Intent:
The dark burgeoning river strains
against its banks and bed
and Malcontent:
Simple sots who dreamed the mouth
and once believed it pure

Intuition:
Every shit-filled canal and little creek
knows something of the open sea
and Revolution:
The storm claims corpses to spite the levy
and drums and howls that war is yet alive

(Thomas J Burbach Copyright 2009)

much peace

"The Evil You Deem Most Terrible..."

2009-03-25T10:41:00.000-07:00

So there have been a couple news stories lately about the grand high bastard Archbishop of the Omaha Archdiocese, his Super-Duper Excellency Elden Curtiss. You know, the asshole who moved priests around in Montana and helped at least 30 kids get sexually abused there; the one who transferred at least one pedophile priest and one child pornographer priest around Omaha, then castigated the church employee who called him on it. The one who told the World Herald he sleeps beautifully at night; the one to whom the Catholic church is giving a $300K house in which to retire (hope to see you in the eye of needle, fucker). My brother had the singular pleasure of interviewing Curtiss, and I am glad it was Christopher and not me. My boys need their Daddy whole, strong and not in prison for life.

These news stories have brought me face to face again with events from my youth, and shocked me into recollections of darkness and of evil.

I'm not a believer in a supernatural overlord, but I have no problem raising my children to follow Jesus of Nazareth. I can believe, to a large degree, in the church of Oscar Romero or Desmond Tutu, or Mother Teresa or Maximillian Kolbe. The church of Ratzenberger the Nazi, though, the Vatican's Pit Bull, and of John Paul II, the CIA's pontiff, and of Bernard Law and Bishop Curtiss: This church fundamentally frightens me in a way I haven't felt since I was frozen with night terrors when I was a kid.

I fear. I fear. I fear.

I am afraid of a corporation that holds over 800 million in thrall and has for centuries aided and abetted the felony sexual abuse of children, me included. The boys start Catholic pre-school in about a year, give or take, and I am terrified of the potential harm that may be done to them by an organism that has shown every willingness to let the children suffer until they are caught red-handed. Sure, there are sick fucks everywhere; in every school and every park, but the Catholic church has repeatedly thumbed its nose at the law, blamed the media for its crimes, and thrown a middle finger to victims. It is fact that Elden Fuckhole Curtis transferred a known pedophile priest around Montana for years, resulting in damage to at least 30 kids. I don't want to make this about my experiences, but I know something about the hurt and injury that occurs when a kid has his doors broken down in that manner. I spent over 20 years in spiritual poverty I didn't recognize and that I finally realized, sort of, I did not deserve. I could not love, and it was just part of my identity that no one could possibly love me. It no longer defines me; I am stronger and better now; but you're never entirely free of it.

Thirty children in Montana and more in Omaha had swaths of their lives taken from them. I am not an empathetic person by nature, but I am almost incapacitated by the extremity of the rage and sorrow I feel for them, and for all victims of these fucking men of god and the fat bloated uncaring bastards who enable them. Thousands of children violated, and Ratzenberger has the malice, the cruelty, to blame the media for blowing it out of proportion. Curtiss told my brother he sleeps soundly at night, and the Catholic Organism, the Roman Spider, says fuck you to law and to victims and to Christ and REWARDS the Vatican's Pit Bull by appointing him pope. They say fuck you to the Montana and Omaha victims and REWARD Curtiss with a $300K retirement home.

So yeah, there are sick fucks everywhere, but I am, unbelievably, going to commend my children into the hands of a corporation that considers itself above earthly law or accountability, and that did everything in its power to hide the suffering and injury it inflicted upon its most vulnerable members.

I fear.

I fear that finding out after the fact (which is when you find out, if at all) would mean the damage to my sweet, precious, beautiful little boys would already be done. I don't want them to be condemned to the same miserable dirty cage that I inhabited for so many years. If they find faith or prayer, I want it to be whole and clean and strong. I want them to be overwhelmed by love and mystery, not amputated by knee-jerk cynicism and hate. I fear...

I fear what their father would do if they were harmed by that organism. I don't believe in forgiveness, for me or for anyone else, and should my children be harmed by the Catholic church, I swear upon my body, my life, and my love for my sons, I will not leave a temple stone standing from Rome to Nebraska. I have no love and no loyalty for these pretend followers of goodness: I will tear down their churches and drink their hearts' blood to the bottom.

I fear.

much peace

Relevant Poem by Thomas McGrath

2009-03-19T12:43:00.000-07:00

After Tomasito's Departure

The sun still shines
And the moon moves on the waters.
In the heavy press of the heat,
The flowers and the citizens shrivel.
Everything in order for the summer solstice:

But the whole city empty -
Since you've been gone.

(McGrath, 1991)

much peace

Benediction to Max and Will (to be recited at nap and bedtimes)

2009-03-10T12:12:00.000-07:00

I love you in the morning, in the afternoon and
at night.

I love you when I go to work, and when I come home.

I love you at breakfast, lunch and dinner.

I love you when the sun comes up, and in the dark
under the moon, and all the way to the stars.

(Copyright, 2009, Thomas J Burbach)

much peace

Some More Lyrics in the Mediocre Tradition of ThomasJ

2009-02-09T10:48:00.000-08:00

Worn out old cliche leans on the bar, anti-omniscient and
the narrator struggles to the car
Sits and transcribes faces, trying to capture all the spaces...

the wood and the whiskeyand/the cigarettes and the t.v. and
a drunken angel dancing on the bar

and everything is stories and everything is poems
and nothing really illustrates/nothing really penetrates
and every incidental touch reminds him he is so, so
far away from home

Seven hours and fifteen minutes dying in the circle of
her arms while she breathes softly in her sleep
and dawn is never dark enough to reconcile the raging gulf...

the warmth of the bedclothes/the ice on the windows and
the raucous passers-by down in the street

and everything is stories and everything is poems
and nothing really illustrates/nothing really penetrates
and every incidental touch reminds him he is so, so
far away from home...

I thought I knew who my friends were
now it seems that i just can't remember
and this age I feel is sinking in my bones...

So maybe once tomorrow night, I'll try to sleep without the light

let the shadows on the walls
be just shadows on the walls
and slip from fear to blessed eversleep

To let go all the stories and surrender all the poems...
where there's nothing left to illustrate/no secrets to infiltrate
just all this time and all this time just so, so
far away...

(Copyright 2008 - Thomas J Burbach)

much peace

Obama Continues Rendition - Screw Him

2009-02-02T11:45:00.000-08:00

Quick post today. I am too angry to try to be witty.

L.A. Times reports that the Obama administration will continue the rendition policies of the former regime. Some apologists bandy semantics and assert that we we will only kidnap folks and send them to countries that don't torture, but that smacks of bullshit to me. If we want to be sure suspects aren't tortured, then bring them here and make the process transparent.

To clarify: I could give a good goddamn about five minutes of waterboarding. We had a ridiculous national argument about that while we were haveing people's teeth broken with hammers in Syria and people raped with broken bottles in old Soviet gulags in Uzbekistan. I voted for Obama with some hope things might be different, but the cynicism I manufactured to shroud my optimism has been borne out. Barack Obama is a bad guy owned by the same interests that W. was. Fuck him and all the other professional dissemblers.

much peace

Go Rush!!!!!

2009-01-28T06:47:00.000-08:00

Rush Limbaugh is in the headlines again. He's not smuggling drugs this time, or displaying his phenomenal football illiteracy (I mean Jesus Christ, Donovan McNabb has carried this Eagles team on his back his whole goddamn career). This time he's resuming his role as the premier fat-ass megalomaniac of the GOP, which is good news for the Democrats. When the most visible face in your party is a crazy, sweaty, xenophobic talk show host who does no research and doesn't check his "facts"... well, you get the picture. It's way early of course, but if this trend continues the GOP will buck history and lose more seats in the midterms, and probably nominate Sarah Palin or someone like her in 2012. I am not a supporter of any politician, per se, at least not on the basis of their personal identity, so I am reserving judgment on Obama as pResident until I see his policies in action, but he is an infernally intelligent person, and one of the better speakers I have seen in the last couple of decades. Palin barely survived a gaffe-prone Joe Biden. Can you imagine her opposing Obama directly? It would be like sandblasting a damp graham cracker.

If I were the GOP, I would beg George Will to beat Rush to rhetorical death with the lead pipe in the library. If I were the Dems, I would revel in the fact that Rush is again in the news representing the worst and the dimmest of the opposition.

(Author's note: I apologize to George Will for mentioning him in the same sentence with Rush. I know, Mr. Will, that Rush couldn't carry your jock strap.)

much peace

2009-01-27T12:15:00.000-08:00

" ... And we did want to be respectful of the neighbors of the Obama family, of all the many people who are feeling great congratulatory happiness. But I think that we have to recognize where—well, that President Obama has now become the chief arms exporter in the world. He’s in charge of the most massive killing machine in the world. ... "
(Kathy Kelly, international peace activist, as told to Amy Goodman on DemoocracyNow!)

Are my sons safer now that Israel has demolished Gaza with U.S. money and technology? Are we safer with 600,000 - 1 million Iraqis dead? I doubt it. After 9/11, this country reserved the right to remember and hate without stint or discretion. What about the Iraqi shopkeeper who saw his son blown in half by good old American know-how, or the 8-year-old who saw his parents murdered in an elective war? Don't the friends and relatives of the dead and maimed in Iraq and Gaza have the same perpetual right to rage and hatred that I would if my toddlers were murdered by another country's bombs, or is the horrible choking, desperate grief of middle-eastern non-christians and non-Jews somehow less real, their bereavement less keen, because American exceptionalism has designated their sacrifice acceptable?

Let's for a moment pretend that these actions have made us safer, rather than simply hardening another generation of anti-American sentiment. I still can't look another father in the eye and say, "your child shall be killed, blown apart, so that mine can maintain the lifestyle to which he is accustomed," or to another son, "Your father will be burned to death with white phosphorous so that my old man can retire without stress." The price is too great.

Self-congratulatory, preening fucks like W.F. Buckley will prate about the existential threat; neocons think it's our divine right to conquer the world. The world bank, the military-industrial complex, and all their economic hit men think only of profit. I just can't get that orphaned father out of my head. I know how I would feel if my boys were taken from me. There is no amount of bloodshed that would sate me, no salve would tame the violence. Our American attitude, though, doesn't recognize our murders as real people or real deaths, just acceptable statistics in pursuit of our "interests." I don't know, maybe we've killed enough people to make us more secure for a little while. I don't think attrition is a long-term fix, though, unless we're willing to implement a Final Solution and simply kill everybody whose interests run contrary to ours. Otherwise, it's only a matter of time before those we've brutalized gather enough strength and numbers to attack us again. Hopefully I can manage the casualties in my family.

much peace,

Poem I Wrote Five or Six Years Ago

2008-12-01T10:59:00.000-08:00

Vanished Girl

The westering sun decomposes on the asphalt of Grover Street,
pools in windshields and the glass fronts of stores,
searching for somewhere permeable to fall

Old woman - prisoner in the throes of growth on the prairie's edge -
steps from the faux brick mouth of the Four Seasons Apartments:
Four seasons, maybe; but all four four of them Autumn:
all descending steadily towards winter

In and out of the postage stamp sunset she moves,
turning towards the bus stop, carrying the gaunt
austerity of her shoulders and the fallow poverty
of her hips, ilea jutting akimbo like the skeletons of horses
bleaching in the desert sun

Startling blue veins twist across her forearms and hands
like back highways in an atlas,
her papery skin in the last stages of a backward alchemy:
transmutation of living gold to a pale leaden grey

Her colorless gaze drifts above the town homes down
Fiftieth Street; she avoids in her exile
all communion with shoppers, mothers and
the cruising proletariat

In the utter loneliness of bustling Middle
America she waits alone, and accepts without
question the injustice of invisibility

------------------------------------------
In the sere lines of her face are mapped years
of such silent stoicism - centuries since youth
and usefulness were exhausted
-------------------------------------------

She recalls, though, in the grass-green days of spring,
the hot breath and rough hands of man;
damp Julys before the bowl of her hips fell barren,
was once filled to bursting with sunrisesexlilac
and foggy river valley funk

Farmers' and ranchers' sons drowned in the flood of her:
in the pendulous weight of her breasts, heavy
with the life of this place: in her warm belly and
eager hips, milk and honey rhythms and August evening
cherry pits
and the nameless eyes falter for a second,
overtaken by memory and loss
so long - an ocean since that touch of heat –

What man would now reach his hand to the vanished girl,
her hunching shoulders and wasted hips,
withering skin and arid lips slowly
folding in upon each other

Too long - too far for a forgotten woman in the
invisible twilight, where the sibilant wind cannot be heard
through the switchgrass and little bluestem,and
the tides no longer roll up the wide Missouri

So, in the failing light, her eyes resume their practiced vacancy
and she waits alone, in the chill of early evening,
staving off memories of warmth

(Copyright 2002, Thomas J Burbach)

Much Peace,
tjb

White People Should Not Attempt to Play Jazz

2008-11-29T13:31:00.000-08:00

Am I racist? A little bit against white folks, I think. I really like this coffee shop. The baristas are pretty and sweet, and the drinks are well above average. But Holy Mary's sweet untouched tits, I am going to go insane from all the lily white self-styled jazz musicians tap dancing around the downbeat with all the soul of a corpse bled dry and washed up and washed out on the banks of the Elkhorn after a spring flood. I mean, it's as bad as Stevie Ray Vaughn playing variations of the riff from Red House over and over and styling himself a blues artist. What is it with white people trying to find soul in places in which it just isn't accessible for them? It's the same stink as Frank Sinatra (the Chairman of the Whitey) and Tony Bennett singing the same old shit that cost them nothing, NOTHING, to trot out. For chrissake, does anyone really think Jack Benny and his ilk could even play fluffer to Charlie Parker?

Don't get me wrong, white people have soul. Walt Whitman, Thomas McGrath, The Who, Michelle Shocked, Steve Earle, U2, me, the list goes on.... White people should just not play jazz or blues, unless, of course, they're sitting in with black folks.

Anyway, I have to endure another month+ of inane Christmas music pretending to be jazz. I will try very hard to avoid proselytizing to my fellow white people in this small-city cattleyard, but I may well end up on a street corner in full beard spreading the word of God, otherwise known as John Coltrane.

Much Peace, and a Love Supreme
tjb

"Nothing's the same, the whole city estranged, and restless since you've been gone." (Thomas J Burbach)

2008-11-28T12:23:00.000-08:00

Kids are out of town with their mom and I am purposeless, on my third cup of joe and staring at the world in squigglevision.

Forty-eight degrees: warm enough that my surgically-repaired and recreationally re-destroyed knee does not ache. This shoulder, though, is one more avatar of encroaching age, along with the hints of grey in my beard and the slow retreat of my voice from its upper ranges. Knee, shoulder and vox: all three need surgery, for ligaments, labrum and nodes, respectively. Who the hell has time for crutches, slings and silence, though? I can't imagine hobbling after my soldiers for 12 weeks, then only using one hand and no scary voice to keep them out of the street.

Enough self-indulgent bitching. I am still young and charming enough for any 10, well, six people. Here's the deal with Obama (I voted for him, by the way):

1) He has to do what he said he would do during the campaign and his acceptance speech: Audit Government. Separate the wheat from the chaff. Keep the social safety net and cut ridiculous expenditures like a pedestrian bridge across the Missouri and dueling atomic clocks in the same town square. There are billions to be saved. Obama has to draw a clear distinction between being being liberal/progressive (which I am) and being an enabler for pork barrel slush funds. He won't make any friends cutting billions in pet projects, but there's no other way to fund the things that need funding.

2) Absolutely veto the so-called Fairness Doctrine. Look, right-wing talk radio is ridiculous, dishonest, anti-intellectual crap. It flees from facts like kids from a turd in the pool. Studies have shown that folks who get their news from talk radio (or Faux News) are just horribly misinformed. I listen to Hannity, Beck and O'Reilly to find out what's NOT going on in the world (then I go read the Christian Science Monitor for real news). There's a reason George Will isn't guesting on Limbaugh (George Will is very smart). If you take talk radio seriously, I probably think you're a troll whose parents should have considered birth control; but you CAN'T legislate it away. First Amendment. Period. Progressive radio failed because folks that tune in to radio didn't want to listen. You wan't people to listen, craft a more radio-friendly presentation. Passing something like the Fairness Doctrine is an effective admission that we can't spread our message on its own merits, which is clearly not the case given the last election. Let the truth-defiers have their antebellum circle jerk and let's get on with the honest business of revitalizing America.

There will be more to come. As I am something of a midwestern circle jerker (when it comes to football, anyway), I gots to git along and watch the game.

Much Peace,
tjb

2008-10-14T05:44:00.000-07:00

The boys and I were up well before dawn this morning to take their mom to the airport. We drove back in the early cold, stopping to get coffee, and I directed their attention to the methodical advance of light in the east. I saw the color and shadow over the abandoned grain elevators, their bases overgrown with rough weeds and rougher trash, and I was reminded of thousands of mornings in hundreds of places...

-over the battered, scarred bluffs in Gering, NE

-avatars of sun from over my shoulder, past the guides on my fishing pole to touch the surface of the poor, abused Caloosahatchee River

-through weariness and terrible sorrow, cajoling my failing car to find my Friend in Ames, IA

-from Omaha to the Northern Territories; unbroken prairie, wind and song

-bourgeois sun over bourgeois snow and a decidely un-bourgeois blown knee in Silverthorn, CO

-febrile with caffeine and exhaustion rolling into a party in Austin, TX

-light cold, pale and intense, and me mostly dead from altitude sickness at 17, 000 feet in the Andes

-innumerable bicycle rides through empty Omaha streets, shirt and tie in my backpack, wondering at my good fortune

-everyone but the horses asleep on Mike and Mary's farm inAberdeen, SD; I sneak to the lake in the early dark to catch a fat catfish not two feet from shore

-making insane love for hours with Jennifer on the big red couch...six years of want sated...She left at sunrise, the last time I saw her alive.

-down, down, forever down, via an old ramshackle bus with one headlight out, down at unsafe speeds on narrow mountain roads, my Friend wisely asleep from a Valium...racing the sunrise from Huaraz to the coastal city of Chiclayo.

-cowboy coffee, bracingly bitter, brewed in a saucepan over a butterfly camp stove in the Boundary Waters. Oyster Lake shines like a pure shard of the sun.

-eyes itchy and frustrated...driving back and forth between Squaw Lake and Deer River in the Chippewa National Forest, trying to find the goddamn turn to reach Campbell's Empty Bar

-my big brother Max and I leave the less-dedicated anglers wrapped in their blankets, and we throw buzzbaits and Hula Poppers into the weedbeds of Sand Lake

-Pembina, ND, and dawn falls like honeyed poison through the trees in the churchyard; even the sun fears the violence remembered here

-16, torn with love and sociopathy, pacing all night; morning finds me awake on my knees and hopeless in the absence of prayer

-stoned: really, really stoned and seven solid hours of video game football. Keyshawn Johnson had over 10,000 receiving yards

-a little light seeps through a gap in the blinds; Max and Will are only a few weeks old, tiny, curling aginst each other asleep on my chest

-men and boys from 10-50, playing soccer at the crack of dawn on a basketball court in Lima...an enormous staircase from Alejandro's flat to the beach below

...and sunset on that same stretch of Peruvian sand: my Friend and I standing together, but quite apart, looking out at the endless Pacific. The boys still sleep in the back seat in Omaha, but I am taken. I remember in my body that which I have never known, have always remembered. The ocean: ages of restless harmony and dissonance falling into me, briny and cold. Somwhere past brother and Friend, beyond lovers and sons...in the rhythmic depths is my undiscovered home...rest from this unbearable restlessness.

Ouch

2008-09-24T20:27:00.000-07:00

"... The very financial companies that tried to prevent individual Americans from having some kind of an opportunity to bail themselves out from their individual financial troubles are now rushing to the government to assist them in their financial troubles. " (Amy Goodman, 2008)

Remember a few years ago when the big fat bottoms in Congress bent us all over for the financial industry and made it more difficult for Joe Schmo to file bankruptcy? Those same pimp politicians are again helping screw you in the ass by rewarding that same industry's criminally irresponsible behavior with $700 billion of your money. We're just a pimper's paradise, to quote Bob Marley, more than happy to give our hard-earned cash to banks and finance companies who charge us interest for our patronage, or to put it in 401(k)s that assure us of nothing but richer CEOs moving farther away from we unwashed masses. We meekly submit to the entire credit bureau gulag, where someone checking your credit immediately hurts your credit, but removing a credit bureau mistake or an instance of fraud is virtually impossible.

And for what? So we can buy shit RIGHT NOW! IMMEDIATELY! that we cannot immediately afford without giving economic handjobs to Visa and American Express. That's really it, peeps. We enable the most predatory individuals and entities in the world so we can buy things for which we don't have the ready cash.

So don't be fooled. This "bailout" is not necessary to preserve the health of our nation. Quite the contrary, it is a desparate (but predictable) attempt to perpetuate the current fundamentally diseased credit-based economic paradigm, with the added purpose and result of redistributing income from you and me to the already obscenely wealthy.

"...the poor stay poor and the rich get rich/that's how it goes..."

2008-09-22T11:30:00.000-07:00

Is anyone at all surprised that we are bailing out the richest and whitest guys at the heads of some of the most irresponsible corporations, while poor and multicolored folks (some certainly with eyes bigger than their pocketbooks) face foreclosure? If you are surprised, you shouldn't be. Most of the economic infrastructure in this country is in place to funnel wealth to those already possessed of great wealth. Most of our "law enforcement" is in place to protect the haves from the have-nots and the want-to-haves. These structures are working quite well in the manner in which they are intended to work.

"Roughly 60 percent of the economic gains in our country went to just to the top .05% of taxpayers. When comparing gains overall throughout the taxpayer base, the so-called middle class had economic gains of just 10% from 1979 to 1997 while America’s wealthiest rose 157% (after taxes). When factoring in the cost of inflation, a 10% gain over almost 20 years actually translates into a loss." (Paul Krugman, NYT, 2002)

Contrary to Saint Ronald the Second Coming of Holy Jesus H. Christ Reagan and his Kool-Aid-drinking Branch Davidian Scientologist-I'll-hook-you-and-Katie-Holmes-up-to-a-fake-machine-followers, that shit does not trickle down; nor is it intended to do so. When Reagan and his circle-jerk Democratic congresses passed legislation deregulating S&Ls, Reagan said "I think we hit the jackpot." Ask John Keating McCain about who cashed in. It sure as hell wasn't the majority of Americans. The same ethic, or lack thereof, holds true with the recent bailouts. Royalty gets their asses saved, the offending CEOs retire with tens of millions, and poor folks get the shaft. To talk about those numbers, of course, is to engage in class warfare or "the politics of envy." Facts are anathema to the Plutocracy. They want us to get all pissed off about queers and abortion while they wage true and effective economic warfare against the rest of us.

So what do we do? It will take a major shift of perspective. The problem is, most of us decry the imbalance now, but would quickly shut up about it and enjoy being part of the Plutocracy if we just had the coin. So we work our fingers to the bone, neglect our kids, and "invest" (which means giving your money to those same rich irresponsible CEOs to play with and lose), all in the hope that we might acquire some of the same expensive, shiny and unnecessary crap that Bob Nardelli acquired through the literal blood and sweat of his employees.

I don't claim purity; I do compromise and buy my boys the slightly more expensive cereal with dried fruit in it, and I do occasionally replace my guitar strings. but I can honestly aver that I have no interest in a BMW or a chic condo. I am perfectly happy with a roof, food, and my used Ford Focus. Hell, if I hadn't totaled it, I would still proudly be driving my 1999 Chevy Prizm. Should I ever get married (admittedly an unlikely proposition), it will not be with an overpriced and blood-soaked little rock.

I don't really want to preach, but the only way to effectively counterract the wholesale redistribution of money from you to guys like Ken Lay, John McCain and Barack Obama is to spend less of it. The Plutocracy wants, in fact desperately NEEDS, you to be in debt, because they own the debt and, by extension, you. The same CEO shipping jobs from Nebraska to China laughs all the way to his summer home when some Nebraska kid goes into hock for a huge truck he can't afford. So spend less. Keep your money and quiet that laughing asshole down. Don't buy a bigger house than you can afford and pay off Ass-boy's yacht with your interest payments.

Much peace

"I dreamed I saw Joe Hill last night alive as you and I..."

2008-09-16T11:11:00.000-07:00

I am weary of talking about unions, but I can't let regurgitated Hannity propoganda go unanswered.

Much like the consistently intellecually dishonest right-wingers who claim that real wages have gone up, but casually skate over the fact that they're not speaking in constant dollars, Maury plucks out select pieces of my argument for the necessity of organized labor and dissembles. Acting on the pretense that his argument is honest and not just more sophomoric Karl Rove spin, I will grace it with serious answers.

Q) "Are you trying to tell me if an employee at Wal-Mart, which abhors unions, were to lose their arm in an accident, they would have no recourse?"

A) No, I am not. I have no doubt that a worker permanently crippled at a WalMart would be compensated (I am less certain he or she would be set for life.) ... right now. Because of the threat of work stoppages, i.e.: because of the rise of organized labor, the government stopped supporting and joining in the abuse of workers and passed laws to meet some of the workers' demands. Every one of those laws was fought tooth and nail by Management, and by much of government. Let's be clear: the Oligarchy/Plutocracy didn't and doesn't give two shits about the health or safety of its workers. The laws in question were passed not because of any ethical or moral code, but only because organized labor held the power to delay and diminish profits; because workers organized and said enough. Should the threat of work stoppages and the accompanying threat of delayed or diminished profits disappear, we would without question see workers' protections diminished and ultimately go by the wayside. It could take 10 years, or 20 or 50; but without the real threat of an organized workforce halting production, Walmart or Home Depot, and the politicians in their pockets, would happily let an employee bleed out on the back loading dock. Don't kid yourself otherwise. Furthermore, Walmart and other non-union corporations provide benefits solely out of fear that their workforce could unionize. I have sat through the anti-union screeds at some big box retailers, and it's easy to see the cause and effect.

Here's the real deal: Maury and wingnuts like him are offended by the pinko commie idea that workers might get together and try to snag a bigger piece of the pie. Their position is inherently contradictory crap, of course. Management constantly colludes in an attempt to depress wages and benefits. In the wingers' bizzaro world, it's considered Capitalism for management to use the resources gained on the backs of workers to organize and hire lawyers and create committees to figure out how best to decrease compensation for those workers; but it's considered anti-American Communism for workers to organize in an attempt to increase their compensation. What a load of selective, anti-competitive crap. Management can organize and try to get the most out of isolated employees, but workers can't organize to try to get the best deal that they can. Hmm...Suppressing competition: sounds pretty anti-Capitalist to me, but there you go. The nuts don't really want a free market where EVERYONE can pursue their own best interests. They want a market where the bottom 99% pursues the best interests of the upper 1% (The truly disgusting thing is that Maury and Co. want you to believe the two are the same thing). Should unions go away, you'll see Maury's World reinstated as quickly as the police goons killed the preacher in the Grapes of Wrath.

Oh, and John McCain is as much a maverick as I am a saint.

Much Peace

"Tepid disinterest. I guess I expected fire or ice."

2008-09-11T21:14:00.000-07:00

So an old flame looked me up on Facebook and got in touch with me a few weeks ago. Not being sure of her motivations (but knowing something of her current situation from a mutual friend), I answered her correspondence with pleasant, if somewhat terse, aplomb. Her response is above. Her no nonsense assessment, and our ensuing conversations, left me wondering about the same things she did.

Let me be clear: this woman was a flame back when I still knew what fire was. Ours was not a casual relationship, and neither of us were casual individuals. In our youth and foolishness, we managed to break both of our hearts, but I thought until quite recently that said phenomenon had no lasting effect on me.

Also to be quite clear: she is now very happily married with a child and contacted me only with the (conscious) purpose of catching up after 14 years.

Through the course of our back and forth, I was reminded than this chic was not only wicked smart, but that she was, as always, bold, direct and uncomfortably perceptive. It has been many long years since I looked at a woman with an idea of long-term discernment; since I have reflected upon the necessity of passion in myself and my peers, and actively searched for it in another person. To be quite honest, in the last decade or so I have consciously preferred a sort of detached and world-weary warmth in my associates.

Our correspondence was a serious splash of cold water in the aforementioned warmth. Given our history (I up and moved to Chicago for her), and the tumultous nature of our separation 14 years ago, I owed her something more than just clever rejoinders, and I soon found myself drawn into actual real (and revealing) communication. Just like old times, sort of; but with some boundaries. Nothing inappropriate, nothing I would worry about her husband reading; just real remembered intimacy resurrected in the here and now. I was a little unsettled by the ease with which I gave up the goods, and by the fact that she apparently still operates with an openness and intensity I lost (or at least eschewed) a long time ago.

Whether or not she was someone with whom I could have shared my life is not the central question (though I did allow myself a moment or two of self-indulgent regret for what might have been, and it might have been extraordinary, if I had had the maturity or awareness to see it). What I find disconcerting is the conspicuous day-today absence of the intense and open person I used to be. My correspondence with my ex reached a natural and necessary conclusion, but I find myself hungry for that level of communication and intimacy, and I wonder at the habit of resignation (she called it being placated) I have chosen. I wish her all the happiness she can manage; I am left wondering how much I myself can handle.

Much peace,
thomasj

Thank Goodness for Amy Goodman

2008-09-05T21:08:00.000-07:00

I know, I know....lazy post; but not enough people follow Democracy Now! We hate independent media in this country. Check this story.

http://www.democracynow.org/2008/9/5/maverick_author_paul_waldman_on_free

"...and the amber fields all laid to waste, and the revolution failed....at your coming forth..." (from "Salinas," copyrighted 2008 by this blogger)

2008-08-29T11:26:00.001-07:00

It's easy to rant about politics or unions or religion. Even though the things I say (unskillfully) are without question my own, it is less costly to be honest (even with myself) about things and issues external than things true to me. See, there are variables I cannot control, and facts of which I can comfortably claim ignorance, that influence U.S. foreign policy and even Omaha leash laws. Not so in my own mind and body, where I am solely responsible for content and editing. No press releases for me to miss, no fair and balancing act; just a question of how much accuracy will be allowed.

So I am a father of 28-month-old twin boys, and I am not in a romantic or physical relationship with their mother. I am, however, as involved as possible in my son's lives, by which I mean that I am with them a large portion of their waking hours. I am imperfect, to be sure, but I am not a sperm donor or a child support check. I make breakfast and lunch, we practice our letters and numbers, we go for long walks and learn the names of different bugs and flowers. Last week we learned the word gravity, and the accompanying physical law (water goes from the top of the fountain to the bottom because of gravity. So saith my beloved sons). I give them tons of hugs and kisses, and I sing to them (poorly) before their midday nap. In short, I do the things a dad is supposed to do. I don't say this to garner any credit, but simply to provide an accurate description of my daily life and priorities. My sons come first, period.

First place is decided and is not negotiable. When I am not with my sons, however, I am by all rights single and reasonably attractive, certainly not without some rough-hewn charm. So given the fact that making love (or whatever you call it) is a healthy and necessary function of human behavior, why am I so reluctant to take part? Some of it is time, I suppose. I definitely don't have the time to invest in a relationship with a woman. I guess another part is the emotional fatigue inherent in raising a couple of energetic kids. At the end of a long day of fatherly attentiveness, my emotional beer mug is just mostly empty. Anyone doing it right, though, will argue correctly that sex for its own sake is rejuvanating to body and spirit. I also don't think the act necessitates marriage or even a commitment, as long as all parties involved are open-eyed about the situation.

I think, right or wrong, it feels as though I would be alienating attention I owe to my sons. That sounds weird, I know, but I know for a fact that I have never felt a visceral sense of duty to anyone or anything before my boys were born. Sure I respect my parents and feel some attachment to my family and a couple of friends, but this is different. I have no problem not getting married for my own selfish reasons. I don't want to deal with the passive-aggressive behavior that is the hallmark of every relationship I have ever seen. I won't resign myself to either a total loss of sovereignty or to the alternative stupid and underhanded struggle over who gts to be in charge. I don't want to have to cater to another grown-up's irrational neuroses for the next 50 years. With my sons, though, it's different. They don't have a choice and neither do I. They are mine and I am theirs, writ in letters plain as day. I therefore have to be as broad and as deep, as sharp and as soft, as they need 100 percent of the time. I find it difficult, therefore, to move from that uncompromising fealty to simple enjoyment in my life apart from theirs. It's a problem.

Much Peace,

thomasj

"Sweat Combustion Engine"

2008-08-22T12:10:00.000-07:00

Whether it's called reducing overhead, streamlining, or "operational excellence," it is managment's goal across all industries to get the fewest number of people to do the greatest amount of work for the lowest possible wages. That's not a secret; it's almost invariably a stated business goal. In the bad old days BEFORE unions, this deliberately adversarial (and often murderous) approach by management was simply accepted by a workforce with no recourse. The adversity was all one way. If you lost an arm working for the railroad or the mills, then by God you just gave an arm to the cause of the great American Elites. Fuck you and your starving family, you were just a tiny cog in the blood-drinking machine that built the Rockefellers and Mellons and DuPonts. The American Oligarchy (or Plutocracy, whatever you want to call the moneyed folks who ran and still run the show) was not answerable to anyone for their abuse of men women and children in the workforce. If someone thought two cents per bushel of tomatoes or artichokes was a little low, the machinery of law enforcement would simply be brought to bear against those "agitators" who posited that five cents and a water break might be more humane. That machinery, of course, was quite simple: guns and clubs.

Then slowly, like ripples presaging a tsunami, workers started calling bullshit on their overseers, and doing so in numbers. The barons running the show still had cops and national guard beat the fuck out of and murder folks crying for something approaching a living wage, but enough workers were abused and desperate enough that production began to be affected. Let a field of artichokes begin to rot, and management would finally put down their lobster forks and take notice. Organization. Fraternity. Solidarity. The highest of human virtues. Abused and beaten people coming together for the good of the whole. Anyone who thinks the murderous fucks of United Fruit would have responded to anything but a kick in their wallets is hopelessly (and possibly deliberately) naive. Anyone who thinks that management today would treat workers like anything but cattle without the continual threat of a work stoppage is hopelessly (and possibly deliberately) naive. The Oligarchy has no conscience or goal beyond making money and sharing that money with as few people as possible. I make a living wage in humane working conditions ONLY because workers before me stood up and folded their arms. What the organization of workers did was create an opposition to the adversity visited upon them by their owners and operators. It is unfortunate that said relationship has to exist, but to pretend, as Maury does, that it doesn't exist, and that workers should just take what's offered and shut up, is, again, hopelessly naive. Let the unions dissolve and the threat of work stoppages disappear, and you'll see how fast wages drop and workers' protections go away. To posit that our ruling merchant class would act in a fashion other than predatory is to ignore the whole of American business history.

The logic that says workers should not organize and fight for wages or pensions or health insurance ultimately ends in slavery. Of course it is vastly more efficient to just own slaves, stop paying wages and give them just enough bread and water to keep them alive and working. Very low overhead, no regulation, and you can just beat or shoot problems. Maury and folks like him should just follow their logic to its conclusion and advocate the legalization of slavery. At least they would be intellectually honest for a change.

Much Peace.

"I find it very, very easy to be true/I find myself alone when each day's through." (Johnny Cash)

2008-08-08T15:46:00.000-07:00

Horrible, wracking, crashing waves of child-abandoning guilt. Preparing to begin the pilgrimage North towards our annual fishing trip. Ely, MN this year, and the Boys are too young to go. They will be in daycare all day this coming week, and I am a terrible, rotten, faithless father because of it. This biological imperative results in temporary amputations; but I desperately need some time in the North and on the water.

More on why my attachment to my kids keeps me from getting laid, and on the absolute necessity for workers to fold their arms and organize, when I return.

Much Peace

Glacial Change

2008-07-25T18:12:00.000-07:00

So I was asked for whom I am going to vote in this year's presidential election. The factors I am (or am not) considering are as follows:

The Economy. To be frank, the economy barely figures into my decision-making. For one thing, the President has little practical effect on the economy, regardless of what the spin doctors say. We have become a petroleum-based economy, and our major recessions are inextricably linked to the cost of petroleum, the deflated housing bubble notwithstanding. That is not going to change until we as consumers make it change, or until there is a significant collapse due to a worldwide shortage of petroleum. There are a few regulatory positions with which I generally side with the Democrats (such as requiring banks to be honest and careful with people's money), but in general, I believe that there's not much government can do to change the economy.

Abortion. There is not a politician at the national level who is going to seriously attempt to criminalize abortion. Enforcement would be impossible, given the number of providers, and it would be political suicide to try. While I personally think abortion is just one more way for folks in our culture (particularly men) to avoid responsibility for their actions, I am forced to consider it a political non-issue.

Religion. I don't think we have, as our Monkey-in-Chief posited, "a mandate from beyond the stars." If people find comfort in the belief that a sentient and benevolent overlord cares about them, and if that encourages them to treat their neighbors well, then I am all for it. If, however, they think their religious identity gives them the right to wage war, or to commit genocide, or to diddle kids, or to fly planes or drive trucks into buildings, well then they and their respective bearded sky fairies can go fuck themselves. Religious arguments effectively end debate. How can anyone advance a practical position against the infallible holy word of the gods? So I guess I could care less to what abstraction our President prays, as long as Christ or Jehovah or Allah isn't informing his or her policy decisions.

(In answer to a previous query, I suppose I am atheist, if I am any -ist at all. I would need to see the pillar of fire or put my fingers in the nail holes.)

The Environment. I am almost exclusively sympathetic with Democratic policy positions in regard to the environment, as those positions are absolutely more conservative than those of the right wing. It just makes sense to conserve, look down the road and have back-up plans should things go awry. Any energy policy that does not begin with the acknowledgement that fossil fuels are a finite resource is just plain silly. The whole idea that we can drill our way out of high gas prices or foreign oil dependency makes zero sense. Let's allow for the sake of argument that there is significant recoverable oil off our shores or in the Arctic. When Texaco extracts that oil, are they somehow going to sell it at discounted prices exclusively to U.S. consumers? Only if we nationalize our oil industry, which is something we've overthrown other governments for doing. Truth is, Texaco and Exxon would sell that oil on the world market at market prices, and there is simply not enough extractable oil to make an appreciable dent in those prices. Beyond the short-term pricing concerns, it is fact that we will ultimately run out of oil, whether it happens in 20, 50, 100 or 500 years. Rather than desperately freebasing the last of those supplies, why would we not devote our money and energy to conservation and innovation? I mean, Jesus Christ, have we lost our fabled American ingenuity?

Foreign Policy. I'm not like that college professor who called the folks who died on 9/11 "little Eichmanns," but I am also not an anti-fact Hannity drone who thinks 9/11 happened in a policy vacuum and was the work of folks who hate us for our freedom. If our foreign policy is fundamentally exploitative (as it has been for over a century), those who are exploited will eventually do whatever they can to strike back. Does this mean that the people in the WTC deserved to die? Absolutely not. It does mean that 9/11 was predictable. Drawing correlations or positing causation btween U.S. actions in middle-eastern countires and terrorist attacks by middle-eastern men on U.S. soil is NOT unpatriotic. Quite the opposite, it is responsible and necessary. It doesn't mean, as the right wing would have you believe, that we have kumbaya moments with militants, or that we stop fighting terrorists. It means that we should consider the repercussions of our actions in Muslim countries like Iran, Saudi Arabia and Indonesia. I love my country, and I am pretty goddamn pissed at some of the things being done with my flag and in my name. Again, I lean towatds the Democrats here because I think a thoughtful considered approach is more conservative and effective than the current shoot from the hip and devil take the consequences mentality. Everybody is going to spend a shitload on defense and security. That infrastrucure is not budging (see Eisenhower's farewell address). I think Obama represents a micro-departure from previous administrations, and a broader and longer-term view of what really constitutes "U.S. interests."

Both of these candidates are owned by special anterests and lobbyists, whatever their arguments to the contrary may be. You don't reach that level of politics without being beholden to a bunch of people, both good and slimy, so don't kid yourself that these guys are free of slime. They're not. I am voting for Obama because of the differences in environmental and energy policy, and because I think he will be smarter and more deliberate in regard to foreign policy

Here's the real thing, though: Neither Barack Obama nor John McCain are going to visibly change the direction or dynamic of our culture. As a people, we are driven not towards freedom or harmony or love, but towards luxury. By luxury I do not mean an abundance of food, water and shelter. Every culture since the emergence of Homo Sapiens sapiens has striven for secure food sources and safety from the elements. Our pursuit of luxury does not end with plenty. It's not sufficient to have enough to eat and clean water to drink, or to have different clothes for every day of the week. It's not enough to have shelter from the elements and soft beds in which to sleep. This belief that more things will improve one's life is the fundamental crisis of our culture, and is addressed, generally, by neither left nor right. So if you want change, if you really want to create a healthier and more sustainable world for your kids (or for my kids, who are ridiculously smart and funny) than we're going to have to do it our own goddamn selves.

Much Peace,
ThomasJ

Your Kids Are Not Special

2008-07-03T06:58:00.000-07:00

600,000 Iraquis are dead because you spoil your kids, or more accurately, because several hundred years worth of western Europeans, including you, have spoiled their kids. The fundamental dynamic of these European United States is not freedom or opportunity. It is still Manifest Destiny. Just like a spoiled little child, "waaaaah...Saddam kicked out BP and Texaco," we throw a tantrum until we get what we want. Rather than beating our heels against the floor and crying, though, the physical effects of our national tantrum are cluster bombs and widows and orphans. Like a pampered 3-year-old in high dudgeon, we simply cannot comprehend the fact that another nation may have the right to control their own natural resources. So we overthrow Allende and install Pinochet. At the behest of British Petroleum, we overthrow a democratically elected Iranian government and install the Shah. Through military and economic force, we make certain that a populist uprising in Cuba will fail. Our goal is not (and has never been) to spread freedom. Our goal has always been to make sure that all significant economic markets and natural resources are open to our exploitation. Was Pinochet's government democratic? Was the Shah's? Democracy is cosmetic in our corporate war on people that want to live differently than us. Sure, they can determine their own destiny and establish their own governments, as long as those governments put European-American economic interests first and their people a distant second. The threat of a Euro-American napalm tantrum is enough to keep most of them in line. Unfortunately, over a century of slash and burn foreign policy has resulted in our current day to day terror threat.

....and it all comes down to you spoiling your kids, teaching them that they're "special" and instilling a sense of bottomless entitlement. Kids are mammals and, contrary to the teachings of most Eastern and Occidental religions, part of the large and interdependent community of carbon-based life forms. Feed them, protect them, take care of them, but for chrissake don't teach them that they're little gods. I have a biological responsibilty to my boys, a genetic imperative simplistically labelled "love," but I hold no illusions that they deserve more than anyone else because of their race, nationality or baptism. If they grow up thinking they're better than the kids they meet at the playground, then I will have utterly failed as a father. I will also have passed on, in the most fundamental and binding way possible, the Western European ideal of imperialism, the concept that through some inate function of identity divorced from action or rationality, we have the entitlement to whatever we want, even if sating our want means taking its object by force from those who lack the might to stop us.

Much Peace

Civil War

2008-06-30T11:19:00.000-07:00

“ …in every one of us..there’s a civil war going on….every time you set out to be good, there’s something pulling on you…every time you set out to love, something keeps pulling on you trying to get you to hate. Every time you set out to be kind and say nice things…something is pulling on you to be jealous and envious and spread evil gossip…..we end up crying out with St. Augustine “Lord make me pure but not yet.” (MLK - Unfulfilled Dreams)

I'm a white guy from a white family in a white neighborhood. I guess I was fortunate in that my parents and some of my older siblings were literate about race. I got smacked twice for bad language when I was a kid: once for calling my brother a cocksucker, and once for telling Mom that Anthony and I had gone nigger-knocking (In my defense, I did not, at age seven, know what either of those words meant). While I have used the first term a time or two since then, my education was such that I have not used the second since. I'm not pretending to empathize with the African-American experience; but I do try to be conscious of my thoughts and knee-jerk reactions, and I make an honest effort to root out the prejudices I find in myself.

So why the bullshit introspection/disclaimer? I reckon if a white guy is going to start a blog post with a quote from MLK, he'd best be honest about the ground on which he stands. This post isn't about race, though. I don't have the perspective or the chops to start that discussion. I was listening to NPR today, and they were playing excerpts from some of Dr. King's last sermons and speeches. The quote above is taken from a larger context in which Dr. King stated that, "life is a continual story of shattered dreams." He referenced Gandhi's ultimate heartbreak over a divided India, and he of course masterfully framed the concept in the arena of the Civil Rights movement. What struck me, though, was the blatant and almost illicit personal narrative occurring in Dr. King's voice and delivery. The NPR narrator speculated that King could have been drawing from his own purported personal struggles with adultery, but I don't know that the specific sin matters. I think he was saying that ain't nobody all one way, and that nobody is free of the capacity for destruction and debasement, self or otherwise. It's not a clear cut struggle, either. Some days it feels like all the things you do right are made false by the miserable and compulsive joy of entertaining wrong. Lust, rage, meanness...If somewhere in my brain it's considered, then it's as surely me as any good I may ultimately do. I'm not religious. I am, in fact, allergic to religion. As a non-religious white guy from a white family in a white neighborhood, though, I would, almost, follow whatever abstraction this black preacher told me to if it illuminated a way through this struggle. Too bad the fuckers had to kill him.

Much Peace.

Saturday Interlude

2008-06-28T07:58:00.000-07:00

Max and Will (my twin two-year-olds) are lingering over their english muffins, eggs and juice while I make plans for the day. It is not so unbearably moist today, so we will likely pack a lunch and go survey what damage last night's storms did to one of the nearby state parks. The boys will be fascinated by the rarity of a full and fast-flowing Platte, and I will be glad to head outside and absorb light not produced by a computer monitor. Obviously, I am getting off the damn compter now.

Much Peace

Who's Going to Shoe His Holy Little Feet?

2008-06-27T14:23:00.000-07:00

I suppose I should begin with a correction from yesterday's post, wherein I questioned his Grand High Holiness' credibility, in small part due to reports that he flaunted red Prada loafers as part of a Papal ensemble. A Vatican newspaper set the record straight, assuring us that the Lord High Brownshirt "does not wear Prada, but Christ."

Jesus forgive me, and all of us, who would for one minute believe that this model of simple living would ever succumb to the lure of worldly goods. Excepting, of course, his red fur-lined hat, his gold-embroidered robes and gold plated cups, and the long red velvet cape trimmed with ermine he wore to a recent event. As I recall, the poor carpenter from Galilee (who generations of Popes and other less exalted Christians have failed miserably to emulate) didn't go in much for ermine. I think Nero did, though, and probably Caligula. Given (then) Cardinal Benedict's attempts to cover up his corporation's widespread kiddy-diddling (see http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2005/apr/24/children.childprotection), Caligula is the more accurate comparison.

Pit Bulls and SUVs

2008-06-26T11:43:00.000-07:00

Pit Bull Terriers and Hummers send the same message to me: “My owner has a small penis and a tiny brain.” The two beasts may seem unrelated, but their genesis and proliferation are children of the same junkie whore mother.

Another pit bull attack in Omaha and another kid loses a portion of her anatomy. This time it was a 15-month-old baby with her scalp ripped off. The owner, a stereotypically unwashed, undereducated woman with obvious life issues, told television reporters she was sorry for what happened to the kids. 20/20 remorse. It would be nice if these short-sighted troglodytes considered the possible ramifications of keeping their killer “pets” in an urban area with children. Are there not enough documented cases of kids getting their faces or genitals bitten off by noble Staffordshires to pierce the fog of terminal adolescence that surrounds the owners of these dogs? Seriously, how self-absorbed does a person have to be to put his own misanthropic desire for a big mean dog ahead of the safety and well-being of his community?

… about as self-absorbed as the cases of arrested development who drive Hummers and other big SUVs during an energy crisis. Just pop some Extenze, for chrissake, or better yet, get over yourself and realize you’re still a selfish, juvenile, strutting little peacock no matter what you drive. Sure, sure: we have the Divinely granted freedom to engage in whatever self-and-socially destructive behavior the Gods of Oligarchy deem profitable (provided it’s nothing so benign as marrying whom you want or smoking weed), and I am not suggesting we ban SUVs. I would, however, like to bitch-slap some perspective and self worth into the bitches hogging the highway and the resources in their rolling self-esteem chambers.

These are just two lurid examples of what is really the fundamental and basic compulsion of our entire culture and economy: the Holy Pursuit of Unnecessary Goods. The more extravagant and nonsensical the purchase, the more negative the fallout elsewhere, the more valuable it will be seen by you and the Joneses.

For example, women want diamonds because, like ravens and crows, they like to line their nests with shiny things. Pathetic men purchase these overpriced shards of coal in the hope of a consistent date less efficient than their own right hands. Both parties in this blatant bit of prostitution ignore the well-publicized fact that folks half a world away are being raped and murdered to supply hooker and john with their trinket of respectability. Again: It’s not a secret that many of us were married with conflict diamonds. It just doesn’t matter to us. Those little things are just so damn pretty; a few dead kids in Africa are a small price to pay to stroke our fancy and our egos.

It’s all of a piece. We define ourselves by what we own, setting a baseline of narcissism and materialism. I don’t believe the Superstitious Right when they preach about Christian values in their $1,000.00 sweetwater suits and 3000-square-foot homes. I don’t believe God’s Pit Bull, the current Catholic Pope, who rails against vague materialism while strutting in his red Pradas and blessing fleets of Ferraris.

I don’t believe the purportedly socially and environmentally conscious left, whether D.C. or Hollywood, who talk a pretty good game, but who zip back and forth in private jets and fuel the most banal brand-minded consumerism. When push comes to shove, neither Barack nor Hillary will actually alter their lifestyles or consumer habits for the greater good, any more than would Bush or a Saudi prince. There really isn't much difference between the illiterate troll who keeps a pit bull, the preening suburbanite getting 10 mpg in his Hummer, and the middle class consumer who pays no attention to where his diamonds, shirts or coffee come from. The underlying attitude is, "we gots to get ours, and screw the consequences."

Much Peace