Hopeful eyes

See the young kid eyes sparkling industrialist work ethic hell bent on self improvement advertising reel shilling the latest in pre-packaged self starting state of the art designer software enabled pseudo-minimalist neo-Luddite hardware gadgetry that your child NEEDS if they're ever going to be a success make the grade earn the promotion or fall in love. 

That kid who is supposed to be your kid pint sized every-man prophet poet protagonist philanthropist all American from the all American town with the all American braces and his all American girl with the all American freckles and the all American breasts sporting their all American hopes and chasing their sanitized homogenized pre-packaged user friendly celebrity endorsed test group approved all American dreams.

How do you tell that kid that its all bullshit all the time?

31 flavors 65 channels streaming live on broadband downloaded direct to the same essential easily outdated necessarily transient flippantly obtuse frivolous frippery that any and every all American soul would and should shrivel to dust without.

Can you picture that kid after twenty years chasing the ghosts of his ambition failing falling behind losing the race losing the girl losing the drive and losing his way coming in second to his own idealized expectations?

Can you picture that kid quiet behind the dumpster tied off and nodding off behind your local quickie-mart post mortem purge dribbling down mingling with the rest the latest the last meal vomited across the narrow expanse of his all American t-shirt limbs lividly stiffening in his own filth while the all oblivious all American public wander blithely by and distract themselves with shopping complaining consuming escaping and indulging all the other all American pursuits?

Would it really matter?

Would anyone really notice?

Should they?

Misogyny, Homophobia, Societal Decay, and Captain Caveman

So the other day I was trying to explain the tv show Captain Caveman to a younger co-worker, when said co-worker suggested that we look it up on YouTube (such things aren't frowned upon where I work so I agreed)

And of course, running a search, this was the fourth or fifth entry...

One more part of my youth that will now forever be associated with people doing unpleasant things to each other.


Oh well, at least it's got a good beat, AND they included the signature yell.





And here I was thinking it was just a Scoobie Doo ripoff starring a goofy hippy caveman in a van solving mysteries with a trio of young attractive women...  Who knew?

Fires, Pestilence, and the De-evolution of the Species.

I think there's something in the air up here,
maybe something going around.

The whole town seems on edge these last few days.

Normally mild mannered folks are going ape shit
and our normally ape shit eccentrics and tweekers are either seeking cover or taking it to the next level.

In three days, in one three block area we've had four fires,
two sexual assaults,
and a person stabbed with a machete.

That's in one small neighborhood (and not a very bad one either).

The loud students are subdued,
trying not to draw attention to themselves.

The usual dealers and panhandlers are rarely venturing out,
their prized corners and territories either empty,
or temporarily appropriated by people too naive to know somethings wrong,
or to desperate to care.

Even the crooked cops seem to have lost their swagger,
hunkered down and waiting,
taking inventory and making plans.

Every one's on edge and nobody seems to know why.

The entire town is acting like this.
Hell, the entire county.

If this were a big city I'd say it was riot weather, but we don't have the population pressure.

If it's like this now, I really can't wait to see what this county turns into next month.

Harvest season is always exciting up here,
and it's still a good six weeks away.

But I get the feeling that somethings coming,
I don't think I'm alone in thinking this,
and I don't think any of us are going to like it when it arrives.

Oh well, off to bed.

History

We are nothing but a collection of stories.
The ones we tell.
The ones other people tell.

In a year, or ten, or forty, those of us who still live, who are still remembered; they will all be very different people, because their stories stories will have evolved, expanded or contracted, will have been adjusted to meet the needs of their respective storytellers.

The unlucky few who's lives are memorable enough to become part of our 'history' will never be the same person they were at twenty, at fifty, in life.

They will be canonized, demonized, and eventually trivialized (in the truest sense of the word).


Better to be a disembodied voice in the crowd.

Invisible.

Forgettable.

Planting an idea here,
a notion there,
a seed of doubt,
a little kernel of thought at an inopportune moment,
playing the long game.





When his work is done, his aim fulfilled,
They will say, “We did this ourselves.”
― Lao Tzu  ―

Repast

Nothing like a little self destruction to remind oneself what's important.

So little truly is.

Of late I've allowed the unimportant to consume a more than prudent portion of my limited time.

I will endeavor to do change that.

Schopenhauer on my mind

Every time I think I've moved on I find that I haven't.

I don't know why that is, I've buried comrades with less heartache.

But every time I think I'm ready to move on, I'm brought to the sudden realization that I'm not.

I have moments when I am.
Days.
Sometimes whole weeks.
But when I try to act on my determination I fall flat.

Strange this weakness,
unfamiliar and unacceptable,
which I can't seem to shrug off.

I think a part of it has to do with how close I let myself get, and how much I let myself feel.  It's the only reason I can come up with for how poorly I read the situation, seeing what I wanted to see and ignoring the fact that we were moving in opposite directions, just passing each other (all be it, very slowly) in the night.

She was heading deeper into the city, I was trying to return to the country.
She was rushing headlong into the financial game that I had already played, and was trying to escape.
She was distancing herself and preparing for escape, while I (after no small amount of convincing, and self searching, and adjusting of my values) was imagining what our child would look like.

Love really must blind us, because in retrospect I see much more clearly.

I know I've said I'm done, a dozen times or more, but every time I say that something else comes up... 

This is why I use to drink, it made forgetting easier. 

Things would be so much easier if I could just forget, or at the very least make practical application of the knowledge that desire as the root of all suffering. 

Ah well, one more failure won't make any difference.






“If children were brought into the world by an act of pure reason alone, would the human race continue to exist? Would not a man rather have so much sympathy with the coming generation as to spare it the burden of existence, or at any rate not take it upon himself to impose that burden upon it in cold blood?”
     ― Arthur Schopenhauer ―

Lady Godiva of the Checkstand

So I'm waiting in line at the grocery store this evening I'm stuck behind this mostly naked lady in front of me who spent a good five minutes having a hollered conversation with a friend of hers on the other side of the store (not a small store, a full sized supermarket) WHILE the cashier was waiting for her to finish her order.  The cashier was so irritated that he spent a good three minutes complaining about it to me after she left (saying repeatedly that the homeless people who live behind the store are usually more considerate and respectful than these two tweekers were).

I mumbled some reply about how I could understand, having worked retail in this town before (when the drug problem was actually somewhat worse than it is now), but what I was really thinking was 'I wonder what she was like ten years ago'.  Was she always loud and obnoxious, or is that a symptom of the dope, or the things she's had to do to buy the dope.  I could see the hard use on this woman, who probably is younger than I am.  I could see the pock marks, and the gristle lumps on her face from being beaten, and the low sag and gyration of her over used and well fondled breasts. 

The cashier was venting about the attitude, and all the while the only thing I could think was that she was probably fairly attractive once.  And (as I often do when I have a chance to think about things) I found myself wondering where the turn in her life was.

I'm thinking too much.

A sure sign that I need to get laid

Humanity is shit

Nothing more.

No explanation necessary because I don't think anyone really needs or deserves one.

If I had the power I'd pull the plug on the whole worthless stinking species today.

Masochism

Every morning

Metronome tick
tock
snap
slap
circuit buzz
twitch
racing pulse
vascular constriction...

Every morning

Grass hiss
insect click
steel whine
harmonic
sympathetic
60 cycle hum
departing echo
stillness...

Every morning

Cordite breeze
copper tang
burning tin
urine
feces
sweat
dust
warm wet earth...

Every morning

Or maybe not

I once had a very unhappy young lady tell me that most guys just view a woman as a pair of tits and a hole.

There are times when I can admit that she was probably right.

The odd thing was that she never seemed willing to accept or wrap her head around the concept that (at least in my experience) most women just view guys as a walking dildo with a wallet.

I figure it kinda evens out.

It's not just her either.
I think there really is an accepted double standard there.

I'll give an example.

Go on any online dating site, and in a ten minute period see how many male profiles say something like "I'm just looking for an attractive woman to suck my dick and make me breakfast".

Write down the number.

Then, on the same site, spend the next ten minutes seeing how many female profiles say something like "I just want a 'real man' who will eat me out and buy me shit (or pay to raise the kids that I got off some other asshole)".

I think you'll find the numbers are about the same.

And there's a very good reason for this.

We're all looking for something.

Every single one of us, whether we choose to admit it or not;
we're all using each other, at least part of the time.

We're all scum.

This is the societal norm.
This is the standard of accepted behavior.
This is the benchmark of our species.
The goal that we (regardless of what lies we tell ourselves to the contrary) aspire to.

The assholes, the players, the users and abusers and gold diggers;
they are the evolutionary pinnacle of our species.

Just like us, only slightly more advanced.

They lack the impulse control that restrains the rest of us, which means that they (for the most part) are far more honest than the rest of us.

In the end, romantic love (not affection, or familial love, but that burning passionate feeling you get when you're 'In love' with someone) really just boils down to emotional instability, brought on by hormonal imbalance, precipitated by our desire to mate and pass on our genes.

For those of us who are mutants, the fact that we don't necessarily want our genes to be passed on does nothing to ameliorate the rather unpleasant side effects of said imbalance.

It's what's kept our species alive (and made a fortune for writers, romanticists, entertainment moguls, perfumers, flower arrangers, singers, song writers, marriage counselors, and attorneys).

When you think about it, ain't life entertaining?

Onward and outward

It's amazing the people you meet when you think you're incapable of meeting anyone.

So many years operating on previously enforced assumptions, and all that was required was a slight adjustment of attitude.

A dash of confidence,
a bit of cockiness,
brutal honesty,
nothing to lose,
and the will to actually tell people what I want.

This is shaping up to be an interesting phase in my life. And unlike other "interesting" phases, this one doesn't seem (at least at the outset) to be completely horrible.

Hope I survive it.

Quiet day

Shimmering bare earth,
bare limbs,
hands tearing sky,
brutal, unyielding,
drying of the world.

This land is dying,
literally, metaphorically,
drying to physical dessication,
dust spackled broken windshield,
         ash scattering late summer breeze.

One door closes

I'd almost forgotten how much fun being single can be.

Liberating and depressing,
lonely and enlightening,
convivial, stimulating and terrifying,
all at the same time.

Don't get me wrong,
I really did enjoy the last few years.

But we lost track of the fun things.
Weighted ourselves with unnecessary responsibilities.

Forgot about fun,
trying to live up to expectations that weren't our own.


So thank you.

For the time,
for the affection,
for the care,
for the pain,
for the heartache,
and the abandonment.

You have made me a better person,
and I will always love you.

New paradigm

Murph's [possibly final, if it pisses off the wrong people] Political Rant of the Month:

It doesn't take a rocket scientist or a brain surgeon to know that things have gone very wrong in this country over the last thirty-forty years or so. 

Very wrong very quickly.

I was reading an article the other day about police officers in Oregon tazering a naked autistic eleven year old.  Fifteen years ago that would've been considered outrageous, now we barely even notice.  Or if we do notice, someone makes a joke about how she was asking for it, or makes some indignant statement about how that level of force is necessary if we're to be protected from whichever bogeyman the network TV writers have worked into the big ticket dramas this season. 

Hell, someone sent me one the other day about an eight man SWAT team raiding an animal shelter in full tac gear in order to execute an abandoned fawn, still in it's spots.   Now I don't get sentimental about Bambie, I've killed, cleaned and eaten enough venison in my life to not be squeamish about that.  But why does it take an eight man entry team, complete with body armor and automatic rifles, to kill a spotted fawn?  One guy with a pocket knife and a letter from the county sheriff in that area could have accomplished the same thing without detaining all the shelter employees at gunpoint.

I'll offer another example.

I grew up in a county with 36,000 people in it.  
That same county now as two, armored personnel carriers.  Two!  For a county with a population smaller than most cities!

I currently live in a county with a population of roughly 200,000.  A couple years back the sheriff's department were talking about purchasing bayonets. (they said that they would be used to 'cut through screen doors' when searching property).  I've got to say, that doesn't give me a warm fuzzy feeling.

Add to that all the things that our government has admitted to in recent years, from total surveillance to indefinite detention of it's own citizens on their own soil, to drones in our airspace, to torture... 

When did we decide to accept this as the American way?

Now I'm sure there are some cop sniffers out there who are going to accuse me of being a traitor or a crook or something for being offended by this sort of thing, so I'll mention here that I come from a first responder family.  Uncles, are cops, grandparents were cops, parents were firefighters and EMT's.  My siblings, my cousins and I are/were all first responders for a while in our youth.  I don't claim to representa all of them, but I've worked with, lived with, eaten with, and grown up with a lot of cops, firefighters, paramedics, soldiers and civil servants. 

For the most part I don't see the ones I've known doing these sorts of things.  The older ones can't even believe that they're happening.

I had one relative call me after the coverage in Boston a few weeks back, a relative who had been a soldier, and had worked in government for a good thirty years, wondering what on Gods earth gave these guys the idea that they could dress up like soldiers and kick in the doors of entire neighborhoods, pull families out of their homes at gunpoint and toss their houses at will just to find one guy. 

No hot pursuit, no immediacy of threat. 
Just cops dressing up and playing soldier.
And people cheering them for doing it.
The cops I know were fairly sickened by it.
The soldiers in the family were downright irate over it (a couple even going so far as to say that they joined up so that these sorts of things wouldn't be happening on American soil).
But our society either ignores it, or goes on TV and talks about how wonderful it is.

and God help you if you disagree.  Might end up under surveillance, or worse (another thing that would have been unthinkable for our government to admit to twenty years ago).

And I can hear the snotty newbies out there now, telling me that I didn't care about this when Bush junior was in office.  Well yes I did, spoke out loudly against this sort of thing then, and had people telling me that I was paranoid, and that I didn't care about it when Clinton was in office... when I was also speaking out loudly against this sort of thing and being told that I was part of the lunatic fringe, and that I didn't care about it when Bush senior was in office...

And don't feed me any shit about the ends justifying the means, or how it makes us safe from terrorism or it being the price of a "free" society. 

There have always been people who wanted to do us harm, there always will be.  In years past those people were dealt with quite effectively without all this extra surveillance, military equipment on our streets, intrusion and government sanctioned random violence. 

Every so often a few would get through, because no system is perfect, but for the most part the majority of the really bad ones were neutralized before they had a chance to wreak havoc... 

So what changed? 

Did the world suddenly become a more dangerous place? 

Well not really.  It's just as dangerous as it's always been, we just became more aware of it. 

Did people suddenly become worse than they've ever been before?

Well, not really.  A bit more shallow perhaps, a bit dumber, but for the most part folks are still folks, and they still want the same things.

The only thing that seems to have changed is that a handful of well positioned people were able to take advantage of our fear and hysteria, and essentially remove any last vestige of control that we, the unconnected, had over our society.

It's been getting worse every year.

And all measures that have been taken so far to try to effect a change have either failed, or been subverted into this new paradigm of dealing with the American people.

So I think We, the People need a new paradigm. 

Something that hasn't been tried before.

Mass uprisings won't work, they're more than ready for that (if they weren't, there wouldn't be APC's and such stationed in every county in this country and SWAT teams wouldn't be practicing assault tactics on animal shelters)  Hell, they want people to revolt, that's easy to deal with.  People rise up on Monday, they make a few examples on Tuesday, non-stop coverage of collateral damage on Wednesday and Thursday, splatter it all over the evening news with the right spin and Joe and Jane Q Public will be begging for a dictatorship by close of business Friday.

Peaceful protest won't work (if you think it will, just ask anyone who was part of the occupy protests, now that their movement has been marginalized and all but forgotten ).  The only reason peaceful protest worked in the 60's was that the media hadn't figured out how to turn it into a joke.  But now it's become so common that it's comical.  Honestly, does sitting on a street corner singing kumbaya until you get arrested really change anything?

Going to the ballot box won't work (if you think it will, just ask a Tea Party member, now that their newly elected representatives have proven themselves at least as corrupt and abusive as the ones that they replaced).  If you think voting works, then tell me, when was the last time you saw a third party candidate in a presidential debate?  Been a few years hasn't it?  In all but the most inconsequential elections we're essentially given two choices, both equally odorous, and then told that their behavior post election is sanctioned by the people who (for the most part) voted against what they thought to be the greater evil.

We, the People, need new ideas if we ever hope to regain control of our government. 

I wish I knew what those ideas were (though if I did I'd probably end up a statistic).

But if you're unhappy with the way things are in this country, I think that's where you should be focusing your efforts.  Coming up with new ideas.

The rest is just an excuse to get yourself killed, waste your time, or sanction another bunch of assholes and crooks do what you were hoping to put an end to in the first place.

Anyway, hope to write some more on the subject (assuming I don't end up in some dark unpleasant place with a car battery hooked up to my nipples for writing this).