I was thinking of writing about September 11 after driving into work and listening to Howard Stern rebroadcast his show from five years ago today.
But, what the fuck could I possibly add to the dialogue. Here's my take: I got shit to say. Terrorism is shit. US foreign policy shits the bed. That's all I got.
Instead, I offer the world this photo. It ain't an olive branch, but it provides me hope for something. Something like a world with more Doug Henning.
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Spent a lot of the day editing some shit at work.
The half-full glass part of that reality is life is a hunky dory festival where I get to do shit I don't suck at, that interests me and you know takes a spare brain cell or two. Better than digging ditches, a pay check and some semblance to being/doing shit I care about — namely writing. I didn't 100 percent embrace what I was editing, 'cuz at the end of the day some shit about domestic policy and blah blah congressional decision makers is going to get a bit dry. Not to mention, trying to convince social scientist types that "capacity building" is the kind of windy phrase signifying absofuckinglutely nothing and best avoided is a fool's errand.
The downside, the empty glass, is the phrase I like to torment the old boss with — working above my paygrade. Try as I fucking might, no one at any job just lets me make the copies, staple the pages, label the files and call it a day. Nope, I gets all the extra credit, thinking hard shit to do after a while.
The koan is, I guess, can I ever live my slack, lackadaisical dream? Or am I destined to get into the overachieving groove?
The real shit part for me is the slacker dream is one in which I work at a survivable pay rate but with just enough work to pay the bills and give me a rich and full personal life with hours enough to work on all the crazy ass projects and stories and comedy bits cramming the gray matter and itching to get out. But, I found a day job where the goal is really supposed to be helping the goddamn world and all the folks starving in it.
Check it and imagine the inherent conflict — Time enough to waste my own time ostensibly creating art, likely creating dreck or maybe innocent little divertissements, versus spending time helping the children, the varicolored human rainbow of suffering out there in the universe, with a little bit of making a dent in the establishment, fighting the man and selfish policies thrown in for fun and raising hell sport. Think of the children.
Over a year in to the gig, and I still haven't figured out the right balance. 'Course it doesn't help that the last couple of comedy shows have felt like, "eh, what's the point." I gotta find a mustang to get back on and ride.
After a little Photoshop action, here's a birdie:
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Meanwhile, I'm dozing off too much to be clever good or even purely mediocre. Nope, I got nothing. Best you entertain yourselves. Might I suggest puzzles, they can be soothing. Or there's always a well-timed wank. (Well-timed of course being relative. Time it for need and nuance or time it for duration, I don't care.)
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1. Among the fallout/benefits of M.'s new car is a working radio. Full range of channels, good signal, dials and buttons that work a fare-the-well.
The downside for me, conversations that begin "So, Michael Savage was saying…" I can't decide whether Savage is completely fucked in the head, a natural-born asshole who probably eats kittens for breakfast or a completely calculating provocateur who's just stirring shit and getting book sales.
In a perfect world, he and Dr. Laura would be locked in a radio sanctimony competition in a soundproof booth (so the no-doubt noxious vapors of so-called thought couldn't escape). Two go in, one comes out.
2. I am like whatever is less than a degree of separation from the Secretary of State. I was trying to convince someone I know to slip her a note for me. Something maybe about war being, I dunno, not good, and um, like, international policy based on clouded, obscured truth and um, bad secrets is like really not good. But written with clever, smart words like "malfeasance" and "power grab" and "arrogance" and "misguided," not stuff like "lying scum."
Maybe just a quick, "Could you cut it the fuck out, please?"
Or maybe, try out a whole masterminded, John Le Carre scenario where there's a lot of confusion and fake identities and elaborate layers of spycraft. (Besides being a bitch to actually plan and do, and let's face it, I'm lazy and completely unequipped, my attempts to recruit an accomplice met with rejection. How did they get Dianne Keaton to train in the desert, and I can't get a buddy to carry a note?)
By the way, apparently if you were to go a-visiting to the folks in power in the free world, you got to show ID, and the Secret Service are all careful and shit.
I was reading this dude's weblog, about this dude's rampage.
Now granted, Hbee loves him some psychotic right wing talk radio, but still and all, it's impressive that the local news is about a sad, fucked up guy. But, the national and certainly blogger flavor is a bit more spicy.
Who the fuck knows what was going on in the guys head? Maybe he was on a mini paranoic schizophrenia-induced jihad. I read an article once about how the actual, organized, having their actual terrorist shit scarily together, real terrorists sometimes hook the backpacks of death onto the aged and infirm, the sick and the crazy to be erzatz suicide bombers. All very Machiavellian and all, using who and what you can for the greater glory, and the backpackers aren't so much soldiers for the cause as ready to die.
But, you know what? Back in the day, if I was an asshole punk from Southie or Dorchester who bought a gun on account of the world treating the Irish like shit on the bottom of their shoes, I wouldn't be a warrior for the IRA. I'd be a fucked up psycho with an ax to grind and a misguided sense of purpose.
I guess what I'm saying is, I ain't buying the terrorism angle. Not a bit. He's a loser from Fremont whose family was hoping marriage and manhood and maybe a dose of the old country would snap him out of his funk. I'm willing to bet it.
Better yet, I've been in SF more than once or twice now. It's a big, fucking, honking huge city. It's NYC, Paris, London big. Major, urban, diverse. For the rumors he was heading toward some kind of Jewish Community Center or Jewish neighborhood, go to Google maps and look it up.
I've been on Bush St., California, Fillmore. In fact, the recruiting agency (where folks had more British accents than, say, Yiddish) that led me to my employ is on Bush. Look at the shots from the news cameras and look it up again. It's the city, a big freaking city.
I mean, he may has well have been trying to run down Buddhists, since there are more of that temple flavor in that locality. (Google maps are our friend.) Probably a lot of Thai and noodle places, too, like many SF 'hoods. Ain't no one claiming he wants to free Tibet.
Besides, didn't we win the war, hearts and minds in Afghanistan?
Relationships are hard. Sometimes things come up you just don't know how to handle.
What kind of a man throws day-old Krispy Kremes into the trash?
Everyone in a 3,000 mile reading radius is encouraged to go to this here new website:
It's new and still in its infancy, so be gentle at least until it grows up to be as big as JonBenet Ramsey. I'm pretty sure I'm going to hell for that conflation.
We spent yesterday in Berkeley, spiritual home of much that is left. When I moved out here, I thought about landing in Berkeley, sister city to the People's Republic of Cambridge.
But, the older I get the more morally bankrupt I assume everyone is. Telegraph, the main drag near U. Cal's campus where once people struck in the streets to end war and promote love, is an absolute shithole. it's cool and all, and if I needed a waterpipe, I'd know where to go, but flower power ain't so pretty.
There are might aggressive homeless dudes all set to lecture you on the evils of capitalism, which is clearly evident by you not wanting to slip some bills to an unemployed stoner. I got heart for crazy, down on their luck, shit just went so wrong in my life, addicts and despairing homeless. I can see where shit happens and whatever you do to the least of your brothers and all shows your measure.
But, if you are just a 20-something dick with a tie dye and white boy dreads who no doubt broke his suburban moms heart by panhandling in the big city, fuck you and get a fucking job. I'm not an evil capitalist, you're a scumbag. Besides, we couldn't tell if it was us or the nice couple walking along next to us who were the harbingers of society's downfall, when you commenced to shouting.
Someone, who attended UC Berkeley, told me she once saw one of the panhandling stoners of Telegraph Hill, not to be confused with the parrots of Telegraph Hill, getting picked up by his mom in the family Volvo after a long day of hustling people for change. Knock yourself out embracing street culture and taking a dump in People's Park, if that's what gets your mojo working, but spare me the lecture on the evils of my life.
Of course, most things in life are relative. So, to the stoner dude we were the evil consumerists, including M.'s college instructor buddy who lives on the cheap and is proud of how little he has. In fact, he's pitching a class on living simply, the movement du jour that I cynically think hinges on being just as much of a consumer, but in a hemp-y, self help kind of way. As soon as you can teach a course or buy a magazine, you ain't exactly walking the Bhuddist path. He, I'm sure, thinks we are wild consumers, driven by money and the new car smell.
At the end of the day, though, I gotta take a bit of what M. says from living simply for reals in the good old third world. Why shouldn't he get some creature comforts now that he can afford them?
The other thing that cracks me the fuck up about the living simply dude, simple as his hippie embracing of the reuse and mooch from others vibe, is overall he's had fewer jobs and more access to cash from his albeit weirdly splintered familiy. M. and I worked to get stuff we wanted, and we had that single mom thing simplifying our economic lifestyles growing up. It wasn't a movement.
Better yet, and sadly so, his 11-year-old, as she explained to me "tween" daughter, was the most money conscious kid I have ever met bar none. I found out from her that dad's pay the worst for chores, mom's second, but step dad's are the best, because they pay like double.
Chatting with a kid who wanted her dad to sell his car so she could go on a trip, because he could take the bus anyway, well it had me thinking about me and M. and our childless existence. Yup, a day with tween joy effectively shriveled my ovaries and jammed them so far into the pit of my internal organs, that I couldn't even lift a doll. I'm doubling up on the birth control pill, stocking up on the morning after and wearing the female condom 24/7.
Ain't nothing penetrating our happy, childless, double-income no kids lifestyle.