March 20, 2009 – 10:57 am
photo by mogmismoWalls have taken over my life. It’s disconcerting and it’s creepy and I don’t know how to undo it. I used to just live inside them, walk beside them, only really paying attention when they were sporting some nice graffiti. These days even plain, grey walls pop out like clown masks while tripping (seriously, it’s that disturbing). A typical day now reads like this:
- Wake up, check the news. The Israelis and Palestinians are either bombing the hell out of each other, or they are reloading. Nice photo of an eight foot concrete wall and a little kid running for cover.
- Get an email which tries to convince me that the entire reason our economy is tanking is because of the Mexicans. Wants me to (among other things) spend some time helping keep an eye on the video streaming from the border, let them know if I see anything sketchy.
- Check The Contest, feel crazy and discouraged, or guardedly hopeful, vow to think about something besides walls.
- Read about the ongoing economic troubles. People screaming about Wall Steet. Rip out fistfuls of hair.
- Hit Stumble…find page of Robert Anton Wilson quotes. Breathe sigh of relief, until I hit this gem: The border between the Real and the Unreal is not fixed, but just marks the last place where rival gangs of shamans fought each other to a standstill. Think hard for a moment on RAW’s statement about finding 23 everywhere. Realize I am perilously close to obsession.
- Take break and walk the dog. Do you have any idea how many types of fencing there are available for your home or office, these days? Note security signs in yards, Beware of Dog notifications, neighbors who are pointedly ignoring each other.
- See statue of Buddha, and pause for a minute, feeling inexplicably sad. Read More »
photo by mogmismoIt’s been a while since I wrote. There are a lot of reasons why, but the best one is that I didn’t feel I had anything new to say. I didn’t just not write
here, I didn’t write. Some of you will understand what that’s like. To not write felt like I had left a crucial piece of myself somewhere out on the highway to get run over, but I couldn’t remember where I had gone. Recently something happened, though, and suddenly I found it, that there was in fact something that still needed to be said. And, like most stories, it can’t be told well without a little retracing of steps to provide a frame, so bear with me for a moment…
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November 2, 2008 – 2:16 pm
I know there are a million issues we all worry about every day. It gets hard to decide where to put your time and money (if you have it to spare). Should you rescue the whales or the cheetahs? Should you support organizations fighting for your rights or the rights of others, folks overseas whom you will never meet but whose eyes gaze pleadingly out at you from the t.v. and magazines, telling you that just $15 a month could feed their entire family? The last thing you need is to hear about another noble cause that you might or might not have the energy and money left to help.
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October 7, 2008 – 10:33 pm
I have a few words for Senators Obama and McCain this evening.
Dear Sirs,
I watched the Presidential candidate debate tonight, as did far too many of my fellow Americans. Each one of us wasted an hour and a half of our lives (an hour and a half, may I note, that we could have been cutting our arms with razor blades or smoking crack, either of which would have been more rewarding). As the people who pay your salaries, people whom you are both fond of saying “deserve” everything under the sun, I want to make it clear that we deserve more.
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Yesterday I found myself explaining a curious thing to my son. He was wondering why H.P. Lovecraft wasn’t the most famous horror-writer ever, and I explained that he was a little too “out there” to ever garner a larger readership, until recently (admittedly, I suspect his readership is still not huge, but it’s growing). My son asked me why more people were reading him now. And so I told the tale of How Geeks Took Over The World.
Long ago, I told my son, when I was growing up, Geeks were forced to desperately cling to the lowest rung of the social strata. “Really?” my son asked, horror showing plainly on his face. Yes my love, I told him, it was a very hard time to be a Geek. And I reminded him of several nightmarish episodes from my youth. I then proceeded to explain to him how we took over. How, with the advent of the Internet and computer games, suddenly we were the ones holding the keys to the kingdom. You see, I continued, no one but the Geeks had ever bothered to learn how to write computer programs or play with hardware. And so they found themselves coming to Us.
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OK…so I’m a bit drunk. But tonight’s surfing brought me to a story of some girl who got arrested for her “too revealing” prom dress, and then an assortment of Hollywood “gaffes” wherein some starlet or other showed too much nipple, and finally I was compelled to do a search for “men burkhas” which, I can tell you, turned up no men in burkhas. So I just wonder:
1) How come it’s crazy when Middle Eastern religions say women have to cover up, but it’s OK when we do it here? It’s because it’s different bits, isn’t it?
2) How come Western culture is so sexually promiscuous, and yet a nipple is still headlining news?
3) How come anyone still cares about Britney Spears? [Note: you must follow above pattern of searches to understand this question]
4)Why does a search for men in burkhas turn up mostly naked women?
Perhaps they are not deep questions, but I sort of think they are.
April 28, 2008 – 10:34 am
One might think that in an evolved, educated, first-world nation, the issue of “sex ed” would have been settled long ago. After all, what could be more important than teaching children about their own bodies, and encouraging each individual to make responsible choices when it comes to reproduction? And yet, the debate continues to rage, in our homes and schools and on the national stage. How much information is too much? Does sex ed encourage children to have sex? Should we teach them about birth control? And recently the debate has extended to include the question “When do we start?”
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March 22, 2008 – 11:25 pm
So, it’s Easter/Ostara/Spring Equinox/whateveryoucallit, and as usual the stores are full of symbolic representations of our gratitude for new life. Pastels, chocolate eggs, and the persistent Peeps. Yes, the gooey marshmallow “treats” which line up in their neat little rows behind their cellophane windows to peer blankly out into the world through their vacant eyes. They practically beg to be abused, with their conformist attitudes, insubstantial nature, and misprinted features. And, inspired by this effort, my family and I decided to accommodate their blatantly masochistic inclinations. Thus, the afternoon before Easter, we invested $2 in two packs of the “bunny” variety of Peeps, and proceeded to destroy them in the most creative ways we could imagine. What follows is a record of our efforts.
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