One "WTF" Night in Whoville....

So  Mr. hg and I are sitting there last night vegging out in front of the tv, both barely-awake and exhausted (me from Christmas stuff and physical therapy, him from just finishing a huge project at work), just minding our own business - typical night, nothing special.  

We hear a siren. Since we live kind of in the country, and it's usually pretty quiet, we always notice when a siren goes by. Then we hear another one. I look at him, and say, "wow, something big must be going on somewhere tonight." He grunts.  So then I hear still another siren. Three sirens is something I have NEVER heard, in the two+ years we have lived here. "Good grief," I say, beginning to be a little concerned, "I wonder what the hell is going on?" He shrugs, nonplussed, "dunno."

Then we hear a FOURTH siren, and I notice they all seem to be congregating nearby, rather than going past us on the highway nearby: no doppler effect here, folks, they are getting louder and louder, and staying loud - even blowing those klaxxon horns on the fire trucks, repeatedly. Hmmm.....

Then I notice flashing red lights reflecting in the tv screen, which means they must be on the street behind us. Ok. This is really getting a little disconcerting, and this even gets his attention. We stand up and peer out the windows and see four vehicles going really slowly down the street behind us, blowing their horns like crazy, sirens still blaring like mad. "What the fuck?" I say, "can't they find which house is on fire?!?"  We go into the back yard, and still can't figure out what's going on. 

He thinks he sees them turning and coming onto OUR street. Yikes! He sprints out the front door to check out what's going on out front, and I keep watching out back. When it seems like they have all left the street behind us, I come inside, and I start getting REALLY alarmed when I see the lights are all right out front of my house!  I'm just about to begin hastily deciding what valuables to grab and start throwing out on the front lawn, when he comes back into the foyer, the queerest expression on his face.

"It's Santa Claus," he says - surprisingly calmly. 

"Excuse me?"

"It's Santa Claus, riding on top of one of the trucks."

Ok. Well, this is unexpected. Was it just a slow night, and they all got together down at Station One and decided to call up the Jolly Old Man and offer him a spur of the moment bash about town?  We've been here two Christmases, and Santa's never bothered to call on us before - at least not via fire truck parade at 9 p.m. at night.  "I hope they brought an ambulance," I say, "they're gonna give one of the old people on this street a fucking heart attack."

Lest you think me a complete Grinch, I do appreciate the sentiment - a little heads-up would have been nice, though. I guess it's one of the joys of country living, having a fire department that can even think about taking it in their collective heads to do something like that, out of the blue. Of course, I might not have gotten so rattled, had I not gotten too closer for comfort to a real fire in the Wellness Center a couple of weeks ago - alarms, smoke, fire trucks, the whole thing.

At least this time I wasn't naked in the shower when it happened. 

***Happy Holidays! ***

Steve Jobs - a few words about him and some from him

I've never even owned an Apple product (yet - if I had lots of money I would probably have an iPad and iPhone both), but just about every personal computing and cellular communications I have ever owned has been affected by his influence on the world of technology. His Pixar Animation Company's movies are some of my favorite animated movies. Jobs, who died yesterday at the age of 56, was a businessman, an inventor, an innovator, and a visionary, in an era when too many of our business leaders and scientists live narrowly-focused lives bounded by only their own greed.  I will admit that I took issue with his position on philanthropy: when he returned to Apple in 1997, he closed the company's philanthropic programs, and he steadfastly publicly refused to participate in charity foundations or comment on the subject other than to say that he chose to put his time and energy into his corporation. There is evidence that he made substantial unpublicized donations over the years, and his wife is involved in a number of philanthropic organizations. At the end of the day what matters most is what he contributed to the world with his creativity and accomplishments, and how his legacy of innovations has that truly changed our world. (And hopefully the ripple effect will continue, and eventually there will be an iPhone knockoff for the poorer folks like me, just like there are affordable versions of iPads and iPods now.)

I've been thinking  a lot lately about my own legacy: just exactly what it might be when my time comes, and how to make the best use of the time I have left on this planet. I guess some of this comes from having lost my brother a few years ago (he was only 58 when he died) as well as another very dear friend who was just a few months younger than me, and part of it probably comes from the fact that I turn 55 myself next month. There's something about those landmark birthdays that brings out that kind of thinking (I'll now qualify for "senior citizens discounts!"  -- *shudders*.)  The quotation below - very much along those lines - is excerpted from a commencement address Steve Jobs delivered for Stanford University in 2005, one year after he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer.  I really think I need to tattoo some of these words on the back of my hand, to remind me how important it is to kick my sorry ass out of the bed or off the couch - even on those days when I feel really shitty, to just get moving, and do something, even on the days when I'm feeling lousy.  Life is truly short, and it goes by so damn fast.

So. Some parting words from Mr. Jobs....

"When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: "If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you'll most certainly be right." It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: "If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?" And whenever the answer has been "No" for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.

Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart....

No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.

Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary....

Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish."


Bon Voyage, Steve.

Because I Worry About These Things...

An interesting article about the London Riots, and my ramblings on the subject....

Because the situation has saddened me so, I've been trying to understand the rioting over in England, looking at articles here and there. It's amazed me how little of the news coverage really gives any insight as to what lies behind the riots: interviews with the ones involved just come across as, "because we wanted to, thought we could get free shit," and theories about 'why' are either not offered at all, or mostly vague allusions to the bad economy.  I just read another article on the subject, which at least gave me a few indeas I hadn't seen anywhere else, and sort of shone a light on the subject from the other side. Here's the link. http://www.care2.com/causes/londons-race-riots-unemployment-and-disrespect-to-blame.html

The article may have or may not be giving the rioting youth more of the benefit of the doubt than they deserve - it's almost impossible to say for sure. But I definitely feel like it's safe to assume that the mainstream press, when covering such events as these riots (or anything, for that matter), does tend to sensationalize things, and almost always wants to bury any socially- or politically-liberal content beneath the trivial and outrageous. The mainstream media outlets, at least here in the States, are all owned now by large multi-national corporations that pretty much always toe the straight conservative (i.e. Republican, here in the U.S.) party line, and always ALWAYS have an eye to protecting their own corporate interests. We did have one really excellent TV journalist here, Keith Olbermann, on one of our big-three network news outlets (one owned by Rupert Murdoch, I might add) who fearlessly spoke the truth on a regular basis, and for his boldly reporting that the emperor, in fact, truly was wearing no clothes, he was suspended several times, refused to cave in, and was ultimately fired.  He now has a show on a small non-profit network (whose Chairman is Al Gore), where he has free reign to cover the news as he sees fit.

I don't doubt that there is a large amount of opportunistic, self-serving looting, and mindless drubbing being done by a lot of the kids involved in these riots. But I would also be pretty damned surprised if there was a not truly some degree of genuine social and ethnic discontent behind it, at least for some of them, that the mainstream media is choosing to ignore. They certainly tried to downplay it in the 60's, to disparage or ignore the significance to the protests and civil disobedience, and report it mostly in ways aroused fear of and hatred of the participants - and it seems to me like the quality of journalism from the mainstream news outlets has only deteriorated since those days. If you doubt me, just try to watch CNN Headline News any given day and find out what's really going on in Congress, much less in Africa or Asia. All you hear is endless nattering about Casey Anthony (or whatever the flavor of the week sensationalist story is), and endless other trivial celebrity crap, with just a little light non-essential news on the side.

One unfortunate aspect that has struck me about the London riots is how much a role the social media like Facebook and Twitter now play in such things. They all make far too easy to foment the mob mentality in record time. It's like the kid's gossip game, but multiplied ten-thousand fold or more, almost instantly: thanks to Facebook and Twitter what might have originated with one person's idea of a genuine peaceful protest, can so easily, in a matter of minutes, be distorted into "hey mates, come Flashmob at (whatever) Underground station - we'll tear the place down & take all we can get," and seen by everyone and their brother and sister. Case in point, apparently the Wisconsin state fair last week was marred by an incident where black youths gathered in a flashmob and were randomly harassing and beating white spectators. The mob apparently was as large as 200 at one point: 11 people were injured, and 31 arrested. It's not the racial aspect of this that concerns me nearly as much as the incendiary nature of it: how easy it is to for some random comment or suggestion from someone (who can easily be just some complete whack job) to start a tiny bonfire via one post on Facebook and Twitter that can quickly become a full-blown out-of-control conflagration.

I don't know what the answers are. Clearly parental responsibility and involvement is one part: the WI State Fair now has a policy that all youths under 18 MUST be accompanied by an adult. And it goes without saying that parents need to be vigilant about what their kids do online as well as where they are and what they are doing. But not everyone in these riots here or the U.K was under 18. Whatever causes lay behind it all, whether joblessness, distrust of the police, racial unrest, or just garden-variety despair and dissolution, need to be investigated and addressed. Nothing happens in a vacuum, that much is for sure.

Holy Hallucinations, Batman!

Since I was a kid, I have always had weird, offbeat, and very vivid dreams. I start dreaming as soon as my eyes close (literally), often remember much of my dreams, have lots of nightmares, and fear that if I could actually camcord all the dreams I have and show them to a shrink, I would be very likely be permanently locked away someplace where they would only give me plastic sporks to eat with and lots of long cold baths. Sometimes, my dreams are really, really funny, and I actually wake up laughing. Yesterday was one of those times.

The hubs was a hardcore Batman fan as a kid, and day before yesterday, they showed the original Batman movie on tv, circa 1968 or so, so he insisted we watch it so he could stroll down memory lane, tell me cute stories about his mom making him a bat-cape out of a towel and him running around the house having little bat-fantasies, point out all thevarious bat-vehicles he had models of, and so on. After about an hour or so of enjoying his "cuteness", and being amused by the high camp of the movie itself, I nodded off. Later that night, we watched Clean House, which I think we mostly watch to remind us that we never want our new house to get like the homes that are featured on that show, which our previous residence, which I lovingly refer to as "Casa Hell", was dangerously close to being. So far, we are doing pretty well.  That was a dark period, one I don't look back on fondly. Let's leave it at this: after four years of depression, bad health problems, some pretty heinous real life crap, and a truly shitty mold-infested rental house, all ganging up on me, I now have an appreciation for how hoarders are born and a sympathy for them I might not have had otherwise, and will always feel like I dodged a bullet, getting out of there and starting over when we bought this house. Never again, I chant doggedly as I ruthlessly throw shit out and attempt to keep this place at least passably clean.

So. Anyway. I took my afternoon siesta yesterday, and had this dream. (This now seems like an overly long build-up now for a relatively short punch line, but hopefully you will find it at least a little amusing.) It seems Batman - and this was geeky Adam West Batman, not the dishy, debonair Michael Keaton or Christian Bale version - had become hopelessly overwhelmed with all his bat-phenalia, and was having a huge yard sale in front of the Wayne mansion, yard sale signs all over the place, and big tables everywhere laden with all his assorted bat gear - assorted used laboratory equipment, items from his bat belt (which seem to be ever-changing and never-ending, so I can see how they would accumulate), excess vehicles - bat copters, bat boats, bat cycles, etc., and so on. It was a  regular Batman-Clean House yard sale extravaganza. I woke up laughing my ass off. 

I definitely need to watch less television... I think it really messing up my mind.

This is why I write (or try to...)

*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*

from Tibetan poet, Tsering Woeser, b.1966
from Like Gold that Fears No Fire: New Writing from Tibet
pub.2009, International Campaign for Tibet, translated by Andrew Clarke

"A sheet of paper can become a knife
- A rather sharp one, too.
I was only turning the page
When the ring finger of my right hand got sliced at the knuckle.
Though small, the sudden wound oozed blood,
A thread as fine as silk, and stung a little.
Startling transformation,
From paper into knife:
There must have been some mistake, or
Some kind of turning point.
This ordinary paper…a chill of awe."

*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*

Get Real - Really.

Every once in a while you stumble on a bit of video or writing that just says, "oh hell, yeah," to you. You wish you had written it or said it. You wish you could put it on a billboard. You wish you could put it on a major cable channel on a continuous loop, so everyone would have to see it sooner or later.

This little bit of wonderfulness, about things being done in the name or guise of extreme positive thinking, which I found on YouTube today, is one of those rare gems. It is ten little minutes of so much wisdom, so much common sense, resolving or addressing so much of the crap that has gone on in the past ten or fifteen years and sadly continues to goes on, not to mention the endless mind-fuckery that we all  play endlessly in our own heads and put ourselves through. It gets to politics, the self-help movement, the economy, and a little about just life in general, in just a little over ten minutes, with nothing more fancy than simply a woman's voice, and a very talented guy with some magic markers. So much for the magic of high tech.

It speaks to an aspect of the self-help movement that has been a pet peeve of mine ever since Elaine Hay hit the scene back in the '80's and started telling all the gay men dying of AIDS they could heal their besieged immune systems if they just believed hard enough - leaving them to feel like failures and moral weaklings as they died because, of course, it didn't work. While I won't argue that a positive outlook is certainly helpful and far better than a moribund one, the HIV virus doesn't give a rat's ass how cheerful you are as it ravages your body without benefit of any medications to check its effects on your immune system. Offering solace is one thing, but mindless, baseless cheer-leading and offering hollow false hopes is something else altogether, and can all-too-easily become exploitative.

In recent years one of many ways that same kind of thinking has reared its ugly head again is in the form of James Arthur Ray, of the Killer Sweatlodge notoriety. James Ray was also featured in the film "The Secret," which is mentioned prominently in this little YouTube piece.  Mr. Ray's followers  - who paid more than ten grand for five days of sketchy food and lodging, neglect, bullying, and bastardized and/or stolen rituals - were told repeatedly in the sweatlodge if they complained of the extreme heat that they were "better than that," and they simply had to "play full on" as he called it, while he proceeded to cook them to death in a lodge that was several times larger, hotter, more crowded, and longer than any Indian sweatlodge ever is. (I know, I have Native friends who run  traditional sweatlodges.) Meanwhile, he sat by the door and enjoyed cool air and water he denied his followers as they sickened and died, and fled the scene back to his air-conditioned cabin as soon as the sweat ended and the true nature of the chaos he had wreaked became fully-apparent. What a sport.  

I could go on and on... the video touches on so many things that I can and have ranted about - but it does it so much more succinctly, and with better humor and much more reason than I can usually summon when dealing with such loaded issues. Just watch it.  It's well worth the ten minutes.

ok..... what now?

Still deciding if I even want to do this, much less what to do with it.

Stay tuned.