Immaculate Infection

State of Double Happiness

2012-02-01T14:40:00.000-08:00

It’s been just about one full year since Trish and I (with the help of an amazingly generous group of friends) packed up our lives’ accumulated goods and moved up the road from the bustling city of Chico, to the quieter rumblings of small town Los Molinos. The year has seen its share of trials and tribulations, with the good times far outweighing tragedy.

We had the “big burn” in March, along with a keg of Guinness beer. That event went well for the most part; but, in spite of best efforts to evacuate animals living in the pile of tree trunks, a handful of native bluebelly lizards may have been burned. This caused distress within the animal rights community.

Several smaller burns throughout the year helped both to clear vegetation, and release pent up spiritual energy.

We were the victims of our own poor planning when it came to the garlic and potato plots. We planted in the late winter and failed to take into account the shade that would result from the oak trees leafing out. The crops did not produce, and we have since relocated the garlic patch. We have yet to plant more potatoes.

There were several minor plumbing disasters that resulted in an outrageous amount of cursing. We anticipate similar problems going forward.

It would be difficult to count the number of trees that have been planted since our arrival. In a landscape that was comprised only of the one hundred or so, magnificent, mature oaks on the lot, there is now an array of trees: deciduous shade trees, evergreens, fruit trees, ornamentals. Add to this an equal number of shrubs and a plethora of bulbs, and we are on our way to reconstructing the Garden of Eden here in our little portion of the North State.

Easy-E - a 1953 "NAA" (N - Double-A)

A 1953 Ford Jubilee tractor was purchased in the summer, and promptly named “Easy-E.” (The official tractor model is “NAA” or “N double-A.”) A disc harrow was purchased in the fall. We are still in the market for a rotary mower.

A number of structures were erected on the property, and one particularly large and ugly structure, a half-barn, was demolished. A shade arbor, metal shop, and brick barbecue were built, and the construction of a small greenhouse is currently in progress and slated for completion early next month.

Aspirin consumption went way up since the move – and not (primarily) to assuage hangovers. A variety of muscles were strained and pulled in the process of digging holes, tearing out blackberry vines, and lifting heavy objects. In addition there was the infamous “barbed wire through the nose” incident that, fortunately, resulted in no permanent damage or complication.

We also picked up a new family member in the form of a chocolate Labrador named “Kiki.” Bill the black Labrador was not initially thrilled, Kiki’s nose has the scars to prove it, but their relationship has since mellowed.

Going forward, we now have a better overall understanding of the property – where the sun falls, and where the water flows. We anticipate growing a larger amount of crops to be sold and donated.

Mainly we plan to continue to create beauty and spread happiness.

madbob@madbob.com

More "Natural News" Ridiculousness...

2012-01-18T19:52:00.000-08:00

I'm going to have to comment on this article. When I read it, it made me wonder if Natural News is the "alternative health" counterpart to the cultural eviscerations of the "Onion."

http://www.naturalnews.com/034676_sheeple_study_psychology.html#ixzz1jqjo20yM

The title of the article is:

Study Proves 95% of People Really Are Sheeple...

And it just goes downhill from there. The article sites a limited study in which non-verbally communicative people organized themselves into herds, essentially. In the study, a larger group of people was willing to be lead by a small minority.

That's the study in a nutshell.

Here's the source: http://psychcentral.com/news/2008/02/15/herd-mentality-explained/1922.html

From those facts, the author of the Natural News Article goes on to theorize that this tendency towards herding would lead to our susceptibility to being lead by political leaders, and to being taken in by con-men; to falling for political cover-ups, to falling for phony conspiracy theories. This paragraph has got to be the height of irony:

"Scary. Are we such sheeple that we allow a few "informed" people to lead us around without even knowing what's happening? Sadly, it makes sense. How many fall for scams of all kinds because of friends or "informed" sources, from pyramid schemes to religious hoaxes and political coverups. We seem to believe just about anything, or blindly tolerate it as long as the message is delivered with enough social credibility."

You've got to know a little bit about Natural News to understand the irony - this site consistently peddles fear to its audience. Articles routinely propose the idea that the government will be rounding up American citizens, illegally detaining us, forcibly vaccinating us with mind controlling agents, etc. The agenda is not even subtle.

I think what you have to do here, to see where the article is so far off base, is... you have to try and clear your mind. Then read the study first, the article's source. After you've read the study, go back and read the article, and see if the conclusions the author draws, from the limited parameters of the study, are the same as the conclusions you might draw.

Anyway - I'll expand on this later. I think it's pretty obvious that I have some serious doubts regarding the Natural News author's conclusions. Aside from that, the title certainly suggests that the article is being marketed to a relatively select audience.

Seriously, this article leaves me thinking: if there are sheeple, they are the ones buying into this story.

Smoke and Fog

2012-01-11T20:26:00.000-08:00

Moon at night, falling around the Earth

I've spent the better part of the evening worrying a chancre sore with my tongue. It's on the lower right side of my mouth; inside, on the gums. The sore feels huge, but I don't think it's really as big as my tongue thinks it is. Tongue feels huge. My whole head feels big.

There is often a low-hanging mist in the air when you drive into the small town of Los Molinos. We like to play the guessing game: “Smoke, or fog?” Lately it's been mostly smoke. I wouldn't take a bet on fog for less than five to one odds, and even then I think it would be a giveaway.

Starting to get a glimpse of some of the movements swirling around. We got into a strong current of dissatisfaction and demonstration, and that seems to be disseminating towards debate and strategy. “Strategy” is probably too conscious of a word to describe it – the thing is more fluid than the word strategy evokes. It is sometimes painfully confusing.

Sign of the Times

Word on the street has it that Representative Wally Herger is retiring from Congress, after something like a quarter of a century of service. I've written to Herger on occasion, and always received a prompt and polite response. They typically include the phrase: “and even though we may not see eye to eye on many of today's important issues...” somewhere in the closing paragraph. I appreciate the effort anyway, and the stationary is very nice – thick, quality paper.

Representative Wally Herger has announced his plan to retire from Congress

I'd read that as a sign – the old way moving on. Even though another old-way advocate will likely take his place, it's still a dramatic shift. It's something worth paying attention to. Old people in new roles might be more receptive to change. But I am afraid sometimes that these guys play the same game. They've become entrenched. One begets the other begets the other. Even when one side takes power from the other, the arguments still stay the same. You could have followed the same thought processes in 1970, or 1930. Are we moving forward at all?

Dance for Rain

There's very little moisture in the soil and less in the air. Even though the plants and trees are mostly bare and dormant, they still need weekly watering. Water is what we need right now, in any form: snow, rain, sleet, fog, hail, drizzle, slush; we need it to knock some of this smoke out of the air.

Phenakistoscope - Waltzing Dancers
click image to view animation.

The Quiet Revolution

You know I think, I hope, I pray that we can do this thing, that we can make this transition here with a minimal amount of violence. Violence, some people say it's necessary, but I don't know about that. That seems to be a circular way of thinking. It's a logical loop; someone is committing violence against you, you strike back at them. But it's endless, and hopeless. Violence always begets more violence, until someone decides to walk away... Can you really walk away?

I think you have to.

madbob@madbob.com

$16.50 The Hard Way

2012-01-03T20:37:00.000-08:00

Scrap Metal Yard - Recycling at it's Most Basic

After eggnog season I had a few days off.

I had piles of rusted, tangled barbed wire coiled in heaps around the yard. I managed to jam all that wire into the bed of my Toyota pick-up, and on Thursday morning I headed to a surplus metal buyer in Orland. First I drove into the yard, where two men unloading material informed me I had to go get my truck weighed first. No big deal, I reversed the truck on out and waited for the scale to clear.

I parked on a metal plate and went into the office where a young woman adjusted a series of metal plates and weights to determine how much the truck weighed. She said I was good and off I went, into the yard, to unload my scrap.

I was eager to help and I'd brought my gloves with me. The wire was all in a tangled mess that I felt uneasy about. I started wrenching and pulling the metal out. I had really rammed it in there – my strategy was pure laziness: instead of having to tie the load down, I'd let the wire do the work; and so I'd stomped it down into the truck to make sure it wouldn't pop free. It was tough, but I was making progress, pulling out the chain link fencing one roll at a time. Then I got to a pocket of barbed wire. It was tangled and interconnected with some hogwire and some more barbed wire. I was pulling hard, and it wasn't budging. I gave it a real powerful tug, and then I glanced something flashing by, and then there was a feeling of pulling on my nose.

A loose end of the barbed wire had shot free from the truck bed and whipped into my face, in such a way that a barb entered into my nostril, pierced the nostril's inside wall, and then the end of it poked out through the fleshy end of the septum. I was effectively hooked.

There was almost no pain; but there was blood, and I couldn't figure out how to get the wire out of my nose. My initial reaction was to pull, but that was wrong, because the barb was pointing down. I had to figure out from which direction the wire had entered, and then push it back that way. It took me a while to figure this out. I removed my glove to free my fingers. Slightly panicky, I tried pulling on the wire a couple more times, straight down. I felt my nose stretching, but the wire was not even close to pulling through. The attendant in the yard was getting concerned, and he called to his colleague, but then I got the wire moving in the right direction and was freed. A few thick droplets of blood ran down over my lips and mouth, and then onto my jacket.

“Man, I hope your day gets better.” The attendant told me sincerely.

madbob@madbob.com

Some Conspiracy Theory Links...

2011-12-23T12:47:00.000-08:00

These are links explaining how to construct a good conspiracy. Anyone who finds themselves believing the bevvy of conspiracy theories swirling around out there today really ought to read through a few of these.

First there is the word

Pareidolia

http://www.skepdic.com/pareidol.html

Here is a really good article that goes into detail about the various elements that conspiracy theory authors will use to convince an audience of their story:

http://warp.povusers.org/grrr/conspiracytheories.html

Here is a great, concise article on how not to be suckered by the people pushing conspiracy theories:

http://warp.povusers.org/grrr/tools_against_conspiracy_theories.html

You know I'm really getting tired of trying to debunk bad logic. So many conspiracies are based on a negative assumption. I can't prove a negative. I can't prove to you that Bill Gates is not trying to euthanize the world with vaccines. I can tell you with 99.999999% certainty that he is not, but there is always that minute possibility that he is in fact an evil serial killer and so good at it that no one is catching him.

I can't prove to you that the government is not rounding people up ad hoc and forcibly vaccinating them. Sure there is absolutely zero fact-based evidence to prove this is happening, but that doesn't mean the government isn't doing it, and they are just so good at covering it up that no one has found out.

Staggering. It is amazing to me what people will choose to believe. I shake my head...

What’s with the Fear?

2011-12-21T10:52:00.000-08:00

An Examination of the Motives behind Fear Mongering

I’ve been tripping out lately on all the fear-mongering and paranoia that has been percolating up on the internet and elsewhere. It’s easy enough to disprove a lot of the whacked out nonsense you hear, but ultimately it had me asking the question: Why?

Why are there people out there who are hell-bent on spreading fear and generating an climate of distrust and paranoia? Well I think some people probably do it just for kicks, for the ego stroke, for the challenge of writing a story that becomes accepted by a segment of the population. I’m a writer of fiction myself. I’ve made false documentaries; I’ve published phony news stories. My work is generally tongue in cheek and, even if the falsities are not detected, more of a goof than a nefarious tool of chaos. But still, I can understand the mentality of the creator of fiction who gets their rocks off by spreading falsehoods. It’s fun and satisfying to write a piece that is constructed well enough to be believable.

But there is a more pragmatic motive behind some of the misleading information out there: loyalty. If you monger in fear, and paint yourself as the shining ray of truth in a sea of lies, and if you do it well enough, you will eventually attract an audience of people who trust you, and only you.

This loyalty can be used for a variety of different ends. If you are the host of a radio program that purports to tell its audience the truth behind conspiracies and weird phenomenon, that loyalty manifests itself into an audience that boosts your ratings, and allows you to sell advertising to your sponsors.

If you are a self-proclaimed health guru who exposes to your audience the schemes and cynicism behind modern health care, you can use the loyalty of your audience to sell health supplements and books.

If you are a government, you can use fear of insidious enemies lurking in the shadows to foster loyalty to a police state, all in the name of “security.”

The problem with loyalty is that it comes at the expense of freedom. You trade your free will when you pledge your allegiance to a figure or cause. You lost your rights when you give into fear. Not just your government guaranteed rights, but your ingrained human rights – your right to be in harmony, to be at peace, to be happy. Fear destroys those rights.

The truth will set you free – because the truth is the truth. It is not disputable, it only is. Seek the truth and you need pledge no other fealty.

madbob@madbob.com

Is Bill Gates Aspiring to be the Greatest Mass Murderer In History?

2011-12-20T10:21:00.000-08:00

Misconceptions and Paranoia in a Culture of Fear and Doom

I have been hearing a variety of vicious and insidious rumors of late regarding vaccinations. Three recent conspiracies have been proposed to me for consideration.

The first is the idea that Bill Gates is using vaccinations around the world as some sort of plot to either sterilize, or exterminate, 10 to 15% of the world’s population.

The second is that vaccinations are being used to intentionally spread cancer, and were used to introduce AIDS to the population.

And the third is that citizens of Maryland are having their children rounded up and forced into sort of vaccination detention camps, complete with armed guards and “attack dogs” to ensure that the populations receives their shots.

I am pretty well convinced that all three of these theories are completely bogus, and are being peddled by the fear mongers who are bent on fostering an atmosphere of paranoia and chaos. I will take them one at a time:

Is Bill Gates a Mass Murderer?

This one makes me shake my head. The fuel for the fire is a quote, clearly taken intentionally out of context, from Bill Gates regarding the effectiveness of vaccinations in helping to curb population growth. Here’s the quote:

“If we do a really great job on new vaccines, health care, reproductive health services, we could lower that by perhaps 10 or 15 per cent.”

People have interpreted this phrase to mean that Bill Gates is either actively sterilizing, or actively euthanizing, poor people around the world.

Here’s another idea. Preventing childhood diseases lowers infant and child mortality. Reducing child mortality means families don’t have to have a dozen children in order to ensure that three of them make it to adult-hood. The downward pressure to procreate reduces population. Do you really think people in poor countries really want to have large families with extra mouths to feed?

Do Vaccinations Cause Cancer and AIDS?

The only “proof” I saw of this claim came in the form of a dubious article from an “alternative news” site, and a hackneyed YouTube video. The reason I even clicked on the video link is because the article said there was proof of vaccinations causing AIDS in the form of a vaccine scientist actually admitting as much “on camera.” The video was typical paranoid drivel – a series of still photos with the ominous underlying music: gruesome photos of dead bodies and mayhem. The doctor “speaking on camera” was voice only, and a scratchy recording at that, running underneath the still photos. At that point, any credibility the article might have had was already dashed – but don’t let the facts stand in the way of a good rant.

Are Unvaccinated Children in Maryland being Herded into Detention Camps?

God, enough with the detention camps already. I don’t know who started this stuff, but give them credit, they sparked a real wildfire in the fringe communities on the far left and the far right.

In this twist on the story, unvaccinated children are literally being herded into camps staffed by armed soldiers and “attack dogs,” where they are then forcibly inoculated.

As with any good conspiracy story, there is a germ of truth to this one. A sheriff in one county of Maryland did indeed issue subpoenas targeting the parents of unvaccinated children. These parents are meant to have their children vaccinated within a certain time frame, under threat of a fine, or possible jail time.

First, it isn’t state wide. Second, I’m pretty sure it’s not legal, and that under legitimate legal challenge, these subpoenas will likely be dropped. Still, makes for some good fear mongering.

My Thoughts on Vaccinations

Look, I think there is plenty of room to question current vaccination policy. I think we likely over-vaccinate. My understanding is that some of the vaccines administered routinely are for diseases that rarely manifest. I think it is important that we critically examine the connection between vaccine administration and “Big Pharma.” Do I think vaccines can cause autism? Maybe. It seems to me that most studies say no, some studies say possibly. Intuition tells me that giving an infant or a child 40+ doses of vaccine at once could have harmful side effects. So the amount we vaccinate, and how we apply those vaccines, is ripe area for debate.

But do I think vaccinations are an insidious form of population control, that spread cancer, sterilize people, kill people, cause AIDS? No, I think that’s ludicrous. Vaccines have staved off incredibly destructive childhood diseases: Polio, mumps, measles, rickets, and more. Why would you target those diseases for eradication, only to replace them with cancer or AIDS? It makes no sense.

That’s the thing with all of these conspiracy theories; they start with a theory in mind, then use circular logic, twisted logic paths, innuendo and conjecture to bolster that theory. It’s bad logic, junk science – it preys on the innate desire of the human mind to make connections. The conspiracy theorists peddle fear and confusion; they seek to make chaos out of order. They seek to spread fear and loathing through the population.

madbob@madbob.com

The Girl with the Drake Tattoo

2011-12-14T19:43:00.000-08:00

Makes as much sense an anything else this year

Well damn – only a couple more of these to go and we are done with the year 2011. Onto twenty twelve – is your bunker well stocked and secure? I'm serious, mine is woefully inadequate at the moment, so I am looking for more prepared souls whom I can latch onto When the Shit Hits the Fan (hereafter referred to as WTSHTF, in case I may need to use it later on in this piece). Ah but that's alright, come what may, makes not a bit of difference. Right now I've got a fire going, two lazy dogs trading places beneath my feet, a good looking woman reading a novel on the couch, and a one-third full mug of stiff eggnog; and plenty more where that came from. Live in the moment, and this moment is pretty damn good.

A Bit of Politics

“Seeming to do is not doing.”

-Thomas A. Edison

I can't resist – the longer this Republican race goes on, the less able I am to avert my eyes. It reminds me of Charlie and the Chocolate factory, with all of the candidates riding along and being ejected, one by one, in these increasingly horrifying scenarios. Okay, well, really only Herman Cain has ejected in a truly dramatic fashion thus far – but there are so damned many of them! The potential is there! And then that humanoid bobble-head “The Donald” comes jamming himself into the picture every so often, making preposterous statements, causing a ruckus, and then disappearing back behind the curtain; probably feeling like some kind of discombobulated Machiavelli. He's amazing though in that he doesn't actually do anything. Then, of course, there is the specter of Sarah Palin lurking back there somewhere. They really ought to just declare the “fuck it” ticket and run a Trump/Palin or vice-versa package. They could pay down the debt by broadcasting a reality television show from the White House – primo advertising; get some Kardashian style money that way. Didn't I mention something about WTSHTF earlier? In the immortal words of George W. Bush: “BRING IT ON!”

Curses and Passion

Oh fuck me. This is not the direction I'd intended to go with this column. But I didn't plan a direction when I started, and so now the energy is just going where it's going. That's what happens when you send energy off unfocused, undirected, leaderless. Passion makes for a great seduction, and passion can lead to a vicious and bloody killing spree. I used to really make a point of not using too much foul language in these columns, but at this point, what's the difference? I mean, some cracked out chick got DRAKE tattooed across her forehead, and some tattoo “artist” was willing to take her money to do that – so what genuine panic is an f-bomb here, or the s-word there, going to create?

There is nothing shocking anymore; not when there is death and mayhem, blood and putrefaction running on the nightly news. The year 2012 is almost upon us and we still haven't figured out how to solve our differences without tearing one another limb from limb. So Merry Fucking Christmas.

Here's an oldie of the author, post holiday panic

madbob@madbob.com

Ho Ho Horror...

2011-12-08T20:35:00.000-08:00

Why is there Never a Decent Panic Room Nearby When you Need One?

Okay, okay, let's see. My mind is a spinning whir of mud and mash right now. Between the insane political and economic phase we are in, and the manic holiday climate, it is wine wine wine for me. I hate this time of year - I really do. The holidays freak me out. I mean, I'm limping through the year, barely making the bills, the weather turns cold, I'm drinking more, trying to stay warm, getting desperate for some reprieve. I find myself wandering through the aisles at the 99 cent store looking for anything that will substitute for comfort food, and then the goddamn Christmas music starts playing – so fucking happy, joyous, maniacal. Bells, and choirs, and BELLS. I'm staggering and lurching, knocking over the damned Tupperware and wrapping paper in a panicked frenzy trying to get the HELL OUT OF THERE!!!

Deep breaths - I feel it coming on. I should be listening to calm, soothing music on the radio, but I can't turn away from the endless babble and chatter about the politics. Herman Cain, Herman Cain, Herman Cain. Jesus, the funniest thing I've heard in weeks was Herman Cain saying he was looking forward to “getting back on message.” Jesus. Europe is collapsing. Stock market down, stock market up. Jesus Christ.

OWS Blues

I feel like I'm on the outside looking in with this OWS stuff. I support the movement, for the free exchange of ideas it has generated, if nothing else. I get the general idea – people are fed up with a government that caters to special interests at the expense of the people. I've been upset about that for shit, as long as I've been politically aware. But the OWS movement also disturbs me. It seems like something of a Rorschach test in that it can mean anything to anyone. There are those who simply want to reform the current system of representative democracy, and those who want to abolish everything and start over. I can respect both of those points of view.

And then there are the doomsayers and conspiracy theorists who have latched onto the movement. They offer no solutions, no way forward, simply a myriad of demons and bogeyman that are enslaving us all in insidious, self-defeating webs of deceit and mysticism. These folks will make your head explode. I frankly don't get their way of thinking. If they are right, if we are all pawns in the game of some unseen caste of mystics who have been controlling events since the middle ages, then what the fuck is the point? I'm sure they've got it figured out; or else some tripper hero like Neo from the fucking Matrix will sort it out... or maybe we all are inanimate, living in pods, and being kept alive for feed? Again, what's the point?

I can't let myself believe that kind of stuff. I like solutions, I am a fan of action, and recourse. I like to feel like there is a way forward, a way up, a way out.

But on a serious note, how the hell am I going to get my Christmas shopping done this year?

madbob@madbob.com

Flickering Lights

2011-12-08T20:20:00.000-08:00

The days are getting shorter. I'm cold right now. The sun went down about an hour ago and the fire is only beginning to cut through the bite of the encroaching cold air. I'm on the verge of shivers. My wife told me years back that this time of year, starting in around October, and running through, I don't know, about now I guess – it's the time when the worlds of the dead and of the living are in the closest proximity. Of course I could go and throw on a coat. The dogs are fine – they've got their fur wrapped around them. Right now they are prancing around the room and sniffing furiously; then sucking up any morsels of edible and semi-edible objects they discover. They lick at stains. I'm sure we feed them enough. They don't look too thin. I think we all burn more energy out here than we ever used to. The simple act of walking from one end of the property to the other provides exercise like I haven't really had in many, many years – I'm thinking decades.

There's horror on the evening news: footage of violence in Syria as people rise up against the government, folks shot through, bloodied bandages over a hollowed eye, crimson flowers blooming and expanding across polyester/cotton blend fabric shirts. A piece on cancer, the kill or be killed nature of that disease; vicious crimes against children, stories of unanswered pleas for salvation; and profiles of the current crop of political candidates, grinning, manicured ghouls.

God It's a Freak Show

Makes you shudder right down to the bones.

I've got a jacket on now – dogs and I went outside for a bit. We've been talking about post-traumatic stress disorder. It's that loop phenomenon the brain can get into when you've been heavily effected by something done, heard, seen; experienced. Maybe that's trivializing it, I don't think so. Our brains; we are meant to be happy, and harmonious. When things happen that knock us out of harmony, then it sends us off into waves, or loops. Like when you swing your arms for balance. Sometimes you have to keep on swinging.

Dancing around the Apple Tree...

Then this holiday season – it's like on top of everything else they want you to maneuver yourself through an obstacle course of commitments. Battle the crowds, get the gifts together, get them out – the final sputtering, fits and spasms of the year's cycle of consumer capitalism – the chaotic, orgasmic ending – just the post-coital eruption of champagne and high-spirited inebriation of the New Year events left to go.

And then we'll do it all again. One way or the other. We move in circles, not lines. We spin and spin together through this universe (universes? multi-verses?). One big swirling mass – infinite parts and pieces – everything larger, everything smaller, forever and ever.

All we have to do is be. And the good news is, we can't not be. So congratulations! You've done it.

madbob@madbob.com

Who Needs OWS? We've Got Papandreou...

2011-12-08T19:51:00.000-08:00

(Originally published November 2, 2011)

This year’s final harvest is over. Trish and I spent some time over the weekend tearing out old, spent plants and vines, and gathering what tangible fruit that was left: tomatoes, squash (zucchini, acorn, and blue), an assortment of beans, and a pumpkin. I suppose the pumpkin is technically a squash as well, but this time of year they feel like they ought to have their own category.

We also turned a little earth and planted winter vegetables: cabbage, cauliflower, broccoli, chard, lettuce, garlic and onions. We’re surrounding the winter beds with a ring of diatomaceous earth; it is a fine, silicone powder used in pool filtration systems. Word is that snails and slugs will not crawl over the sharp powder. So far it seems to be working fine, but it’s too early to qualify that experiment as a raving success just yet.

There is more to plant, but I think we’re off to a good start.

Forget OWS, We’ve got Greece

The protesters are still occupying Wall Street, as well as venues across the country; including right here in the Chico downtown plaza. After this week though I’d say the protesters can wrap it up and go home – it looks like Greece is going to single-handedly bring the Wall Street banks to their knees. This is really an incredible story.

Greece has been teetering on the brink of economic collapse for years now, but because they are part of the European Union, there is a real vested interest in righting their listing ship. As a result, the countries in the European Union convened a summit and, amazing, arrived at, at least a framework, for a solution to Greek’s problems. It was a huge, complicated deal, and entailed major sacrifices from a number of countries and investors. It also required continued “austerity measures” on the part of the Greek government – meaning basically that the government can’t spend a dime. This has caused major civil unrest – but the feeling is that, while it is a bitter pill to swallow, the deal will eventually allow Greece to get out of debt and eventually prosper economically in a way the country never has before.

Enter Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou. After praising the overall framework for the deal, and applauding the generosity of other countries involved, Papandreou has made a political move described by experts as: “bizarre,” “schizophrenic,” and “mystifying.” The Prime Minister has decided to hold a public referendum on the overall bail-out package and, ultimately, whether or not Greece should remain in the European Union. The announcement has completely scuttled all the hard work of those involved in structuring the bail-out package, and may end up costing Papandreou his job. The citizens of Greece will vote later this week on whether or not they continue to have confidence in their government. If the current government survives that confidence vote, then the aforementioned referendum on the bail-out will go forward. If the government does not survive the confidence vote, and judging from the Prime Minister’s latest maneuver, they may not, then new election s will have to be held.

Ah well, get used to it. The winds of change are howling.

Madbob@madbob.com

Information Overload leads to Abandoning the Matrix

2011-12-08T19:18:00.000-08:00

It seems like eggnog came early this year. I suppose that is how they would do it – I mean the eggnog industry; they’ve got to be paying attention to this trend of pushing Christmas closer each year to the Fourth of July. I think for awhile I was sort of living under the assumption that there were many out there who are ‘not paying attention.’ I’m realizing now that everyone is paying attention – to something.

There is too much. I’ve made half-dozen false-starts on this column – the reason is too much information: too many scandals, crises, wars, elections, icons passing away, natural disasters, medical mysteries, and financial catastrophes. I don’t know where to start; and once you start in, there’s no natural point at which to stop.

So forget it – by the time you read this, everything will have changed anyway.

I just came back from the yard – the dogs and I walked down to the creek under the light of a bright moon. It isn’t full, but it is on its way up and nearly there. That white light of the moon lights up the whole area, so long as there isn’t interference from artificial lighting. It is cold but not unbearable.

I came back with seed pods attached to my stocking cap. There were two of them, oval-shaped , spiky burrs; reddish-brown. They look a lot like caterpillars and that is what Trish thought they were, at first.

“Bob, there’s something…” but before she could finish, I’d swatted my hat away and flung it towards the fireplace. I guess she was trying to say I should be careful, because of the creatures on my head; but I mistook her to mean there was something terrible climbing over my skull – some kind of treacherous venomous spider, or maybe a radioactive, blood-draining mosquito. I take no chances, not this time anyway.

No harm done, then we figured out what they were – burrs.

I lost track of the days today. I’m in the middle of a longer assignment at my job, and so the activities aren’t varying greatly from one day to the next. If I didn’t have a job to go to, I’d never know what day it was. I might be fine with that. Right now I’m thinking the lunar calendar probably makes more sense anyway. There is nothing physical that signifies the passing of a week – it’s completely arbitrary, just a year broken down into mathematically symmetrical components. Following the sun, or the moon, there you’ve got something very real and tangible to go by.

I’ve got a great big wool coat to wear. It belonged to my grandfather, his army coat from 1945; big leather wrapped buttons and a fine, smooth lining of some material, maybe thick silk – I don’t know. It is stiff and warm, though it’s starting to loosen up. No one wore it for a lot of years; it feels very good to wear it now. This coat makes me look forward to the colder months of winter. I’m wearing that coat right now – sitting outside on the porch; looking at my breath and typing this out on a lap-top my mom gave me recently. Things are starting to look really good around here.

madbob@madbob.com

Smoking Mirrors

2011-10-26T20:13:00.000-07:00

Trish and I are in the process of laughing riotously at a letter printed in a recent Enterprise Record. I don't know if it is from a lack of submissions, editor “discretion,” or what, but the Letters to the Editor lately have been closely resembling the random and anonymous babblings that make up the infamous “Tell it to the ER” column. Great and entertaining stuff – our King sitting his royal ass on a bejeweled throne, black supremacy, a thumb up, or a thumb down for the whacked out, maniacal, and desperate “plan of the day.” Come to think of it, it is sort of starting to resemble the fall of the Roman Empire around here - I can smell something, burning in the air.

But that's a myth anyway – the Roman Empire didn't collapse overnight; more accurately it broke up, or eroded away, over a period of time, centuries I think. The Soviet Union had a more abrupt collapse a few decades back, but they seem to be chugging along, a series of confederate countries.

Now the Middle East is on fire. Governments are being overthrown right and left. The latest leader to go is Moammar Ghadaffy – the infamously titled (by President Ronald Reagan):

“Mad Dog of the Middle East.”

Reagan could turn a phrase. You can start to understand why people still hold him in such high esteem when you hear a phrase like that. It's got alliteration, action, tension. Never mind policy; nobody really has a firm grasp on policy anyway; that's all a bunch of smoke, and mirrors.

People are throwing around a lot of political terminology these days: Capitalism, Socialism, Communism, Anarchy, Direct Democracy, Radical Direct Democracy, Utilitarianism, Fascism, Horizontalism... It can make your head spin trying to keep up with the latest political philosophy to be making the scene on any particular day.

Isms, isms, isms... I'm not sold on all that stuff. All the “isms” seem to ignore the potential for human miscalculation, confusion, and corruption. Folks act as if choosing the right political and economic theory is going to catapult human-kind into thinking and acting decently towards one another. Sorry y'all – it's entirely the other way around.

Out of Iraq

Well as of the end of this year we are out of Iraq, out military troops anyway. No one seems to know if this is a good thing or a bad thing – it's probably a bit of both. These times, man, there is no satisfaction. I had so many strong opinions ten years ago – now I don't know which way is up. It feels like we're treading in a pool of oil, slogging along, not sure which way to turn. I don't blame the President for this, or the Congress – they are only as confused as the rest of us. We hold something around a 40% approval rating for our sitting President, and around a Nine percent approval rating for the acting Congress. The headline I'm reading says: “Even Congress hates Congress,” and I don't think hate is the right word, but we don't understand ourselves these days.

madbob@madbob

The American Dream, Inc.

2011-10-19T21:46:00.001-07:00

I was listening to a call-in radio station the other day, and heard about the most appalling statement I have ever listened to. A caller was talking about the controversial Supreme Court decision that gives corporations the same freedom of political speech as an individual. That decision (Citizens United vs. Federal Election Commission) has basically opened the flood gates for any group with money to run as many political ads as they can afford. It's a truly horrifying prospect; but apparently it has its fans.

This caller made the statement that corporations are comprised of people, (never mind that no corporation I am aware of is comprised entirely of people who agree politically, that's another issue for another day) and furthermore, that corporations, because of their accumulated wealth and power, are essentially “successful people.” Therefor, corporations deserve to have a brighter and louder voice than individuals. I am paraphrasing, but this was the gist of it.

My jaw nearly hit the floor.

I'm not against capitalism, or corporations, necessarily. But I am vehemently against the idea that those who prosper financially in a business environment comprise the be all and end all of what it means to be a “successful” American. What a mediocre, unimaginative, derivative, and utterly disappointing American Dream that would be!

This Dream is Your Dream, This Dream is My Dream

What defines us as Americans, in my opinion, is our ability to determine for ourselves what makes us happy, what constitutes “success.” While society may tell you you need that fancy car and that big house to be successful, the Declaration of Independence calls bullshit.

Our forefathers believed that our Creator (I know, I know, also another issue for another day) gave us the inalienable right to pursue our happiness – and that means we also have the right to determine for ourselves, individually, what that happiness is.

And we were also given voices, and votes, so that we could express our individual points of view to our representative leaders; because they need to understand what is important to each one of us.

Americans have, since our inception, been the most unique people in the world. It's partly because of our country's make-up as a nation of immigrants – a blend of different cultures and ideas; but it is also partly because there is a certain character inherent in a person that is willing to pick up and leave their homeland, everything they have ever known, and travel across sea or land to get to some foreign country, where they might not know the language, and certainly won't no the customs – in order to chase after something as amorphous and undefinable as “The American Dream.” Every one of us has ancestors who picked up and left everything they knew to come to this country.

Corporate America cannot be allowed to define the American Dream. They cannot they cannot they cannot they cannot they cannot...

For someone to tell me that a corporation, because they have more money than I do, should be entitled to a greater voice within our political system – well frankly, that person can go to Hell!

madbob@madbob.com

Michelangelo Picking His Nose

2011-10-19T21:45:00.000-07:00

Say You Want a Revolution?

Okay, let's see – it is time to orient myself. We are in the midst of a world-wide revolution. I am feeling a combination of exhilaration and terror. Every moment of every day, my mind is screaming along, trying to understand what is happening all around me. It's weird, to be going about one's daily routine while the social and political tectonic plates are shifting underneath our feet. Like Michelangelo picking his nose in the midst of painting the murals under the canopies of the Sistine Chapel. These things happen.

Narratives are being shaped around what is happening – but personally I am not comfortable with any of the narratives I have heard thus far. It seems to me that the ones spinning the narratives are relying on old traditions, historic precedents; leaning into the comfort of the status quo. I believe we can come up with something more dynamic, more conscious-shifting, more trans formative than the traditional explanations for complicated times.

Patience...

Words right now are hard to come up with – so let's give ourselves the luxury of patience. The thing is though, if we are going to be patient, we've got to work together to deflect the assorted, fundamentalist narratives that are going to definitely and inevitably emerge. Push those aside. Make room for the new consciousness to emerge by rejecting the remnants of the old consciousness. This will happen; I can't tell you when.

I think the traits we are going to need for the revolution will include a certain amount of self-reliance, complete accountability, and an immense dose of compassion and empathy for our fellow human beings. More than ever, we are all in this thing together. The time for choosing sides and selecting enemies is passing – the time for understanding is emerging.

Maintain positive energy. Sing, dance, flirt, cry, smile, make love, laugh, and laugh, and laugh, and laugh, and laugh.

One Love

I was imagining a world in which we could all read one another's' minds. It's not the most original thought; but there would be no secrets. We would be constantly revealing, contemplating, understanding, and empathizing with each other. I don't know that we would become homogenized in our thinking - I would like to think the individualities would remain, but maybe some of the rougher edges, and the more dramatic pitfalls, of individual personalities would be assuaged.

The Fall

Anyway, in the mean time the weather has shifted. Right now rain is drizzling down and getting heavier, clearing the dusty valley air. Beautiful. Gives us all a chance to think and to meditate and to visualize; figure this whole thing out. Together together together. That word keeps floating into my thoughts. Together together together. No more “isms,” no more “definitions,” no more “ideologies,” no more... Together together together. Anything ending in an “ism” will let you down. Capitalism, communism, socialism. Marxism, nationalism, nihilism. Theories only work in the theoretical realm.

You and me, we aren't theories; we are flesh, blood, and spirit.

madbob@madbob.com

Cooking Candy for Violent Babies

2011-10-19T21:43:00.000-07:00

Taking Several Readings...

I really don't know what is going on. Trish just explained to me that there is some temperature the oil must reach, and that she thinks we have a meat thermometer somewhere; but then she thought a candy thermometer might really do the trick. We do not have one of those. I feel like I've heard that you can't let the oil get too hot. We talked about how to measure the height of a particular oak tree in the yard by using paces, and a protractor, and a formula involving a triangle. It all sounds like it could work out fine. It sounds like, if someone knew what the hell they were doing, it would work out fine. That's not our current situation.

Confusion is all around us these days. I mean, you turn on the television or pick up the newspaper, and you cannot really figure out what the hell is going on. Fortunately I spent a lot of years of my life in a state of perpetual confusion; I've got this, I have been here before. There is a collective thing going on that makes this confusion slightly different - you've got a whole bunch of confused people all being confused together. That sort of wild and subdued energy can manifest itself in some bizarre and interesting ways. Still, I've got confidence when it comes to confusion. Over here, follow me.

So when you cook, your ingredients have to reach a certain temperature – so that the different chemicals can melt and congeal. Cooking is chemistry and art. A good cook is a chemist. Sugars, oils, fats, plant material (starch?); heat, temperature.

Things are cooking; you can smell smoke in the air.

Violent Babies

We start out brutal. No matter what we do, elegance develops over time, and with practice. We all start out heavy-handed, clunky, and generally violent. Think of your average baby. Sure, they have their moments, peace, and innocence; then in between there is the rage, the torment, the anguish and the destruction. I don't think we ever get completely under control, but we develop patience, and we learn to act more gently.

I mean we all do, as individuals, as nations, as cities, states, as a whole people, as the human race – we are continually improving upon a really shaky start. I keep wanting to write that we aren't perfect yet – but that's not precisely how I feel. I think we are perfect, we only have to figure that out. It's like there is some form embedded in this beautiful, coarse chunk of rock; and we are continually chipping off the exterior pieces of stone to reveal the underlying skeleton.

Details are Murky...

I was planning to get more precise with this, and to give greater, detailed explanations of strategies and philosophies, but now I'm seven or eight “banquet beers” in, and the details of strategies are evaporating like so much heated vinegar.

So for now, I'm just going to forget it – simply ride the thing out to... who knows where? Who cares? I may end up shell-shocked and out of it, stuck between the couch and the wall, drooling, coughing, puking. I'm just going to ride the thing out, for now, and see where it takes me.

madbob@madbob.com

Upgrades, Relaxation, and a New Member of the Family

2011-10-19T21:40:00.000-07:00

Tuesday's gone. The fan is moving hot air around and my fingertips feel like they are on fire - I can't figure out exactly why that is. It could be from tile grout, or maybe I cut my fingernails too short last night. Whatever the reason, it hurts when I strike down on the keys - I am suffering for you tonight. Now it's your turn to suffer for me. Queue the sinister laughter.

I Want Candy!

We've got a new member of the family – a 6 or 7 year old chocolate lab who goes by the name of Candy. She's been with us now for only a couple of hours, and right now Bill and Candy are in the process of figuring out how exactly they are going to get along. So far the results are mixed. There is a lot of herding, a little humping, some snarling, and the occasional baring of teeth followed by some biting. Par for the course in doggy world I guess. As I am writing this, Candy is exhausted and lying near me, while Bill is lying next to her and staring intently at her – as though daring her to make a move. This too shall pass. Now they're both finally starting to relax a little.

Relaxation

I'm not sure if I will ever be able to relax again. It's never really been my strong suit. I'm not exactly anxious, or nervous – but I always tend to be thinking about things: stories, politics, sex, music. Some people describe their mind as a continuous monologue – but I'm not like that. The thoughts are distinct, and clear; they just always keep coming. I enjoy it, I guess; I don't think I have much of a choice. The brain is a mystifying organ.

Hillbilly Watering Phase 2

We've made a serious upgrade to the “hillbilly watering system” I had described in an earlier column. The old system was comprised of a series of water vessels, including several five gallon water jugs, a couple of coolers, and a bathtub, that were all piled into the back of my old F-150. The truck is still the same, but yesterday I drove down to Orland and picked up a 255 gallon water tank. It's a sweet set-up that saves me both time and effort. Instead of having to dip buckets into the bath tub to get the water out, now I simply turn a lever. The next piece I need is a hose attachment, and on my watering wish-list is some sort of pump and generator combination. Oh that would be living. Until then though, I'll have to dream.

Well it looks like I've got one jealous dog to deal with here, and the other one's homesick and crying. On top of that, it seems that the night is starting to get away from me. I hope I can manage to get a decent night's sleep – it's been awhile now.

madbob@madbob.com

Rambling Thoughts from a Semi-Old Man

2011-10-19T21:38:00.000-07:00

Be Here Now

Back to school. Jesus. I haven't been in school for decades, and I still experience anxiety-ridden dreams involving classrooms I can't find, or tests I haven't studied for. School and I do not really get along. I got through it, but I'm glad to be done with all that. I much prefer the role of a plain old working citizen. These days some of my time is occupied by the nine to five, but otherwise I do nearly exactly what I want. Still, good luck to you. Welcome back to those of you returning, and welcome to town to the incoming students. For some of you, college will be the best six years of your life, and you probably won't remember five and a half of them. Sad, really, but that's the way it goes.

Ann Landers, I am Not

I used to give advice in these columns, for the back to school issue: for what to do, and what not do; but you know what, figure it out. I don't know any better than you do. At this point, I would probably give you obsolete information that wouldn't do you a damn bit of good anyway.

I start writing out advice and it sounds like the fucking motivational posters some of you will see when you end up sequestered inside cubicles, your souls slowly being sucked up into the gently humming fluorescent lights and air conditioning. I've been there. It's not that bad at first – you don't realize how rotten it is until the element of time makes itself clear. Time is a bastard. You probably can't really understand that right now – unless you've been diagnosed with some sort of early onset cancer, or spent time in prison. At a certain point, time feels meaningless – infinite and abstract. You'll find yourself waiting for time to pass, waiting for something interesting to happen. I can remember being bored, endlessly craving action and excitement.

That will shift on you. It will flip. Eventually, you won't be wanting time to pass, you'll be wishing time would slow down, stop, or move in reverse. But it won't. It's a horrifying realization, and one that you can't make until you can. There's nothing I can say, nothing that hasn't been said a million times before. Youth is wasted on the young. Don't waste it. Use your mind while it is sharp, your eyes while they're strong; use your body while it is still supple, and hot.

Ah shit, there's the advice I said I would not give. Oh well, who gives a shit? Not me.

madbob@madbob.com

Primitive Systems

2011-10-19T21:35:00.001-07:00

I'm dirty right now. There's a lot of dried mud – dirt – on my pants and on my boots. There are streaks of dirt on my vee-neck undershirt, and there are streaks of dirt on the skin of my face and arms. My hands are relatively clean on account of the gloves, and the subsequent cooking. This is the way things are around here sometimes. There is a wine cooler at my feet where the dog should be – but Bill hasn't been feeling too well the last couple of days and so he is sprawled out on the carpet, about seven feet away from me. He's looking in the direction of the bathroom, where Trish is soaking off the day's leftovers – including a sharp thorn that has embedded itself in the bottom of her right heel. My left hand is blistered from neglecting the gloves while planting a crab-apple, or was it the maple? Well, the end result is a peeling pocket of translucent white skin, and clear puss, on the left side of my left palm, as I'm looking at it, just above the “head line” and beneath the “heart line,” (for those of you who know anything about palmistry.)

Hillbilly Watering

We have this system for watering some of the trees we've planted in the further reaches of the yard, beyond where the irrigation will reach. It's really an insult to hillbillies to name it as I have. I am sure that hillbillies have much more efficient means of watering their trees. But anyway, I have my old Ford pick-up loaded with containers: a couple of 5 gallon water jugs, an old 5-gallon paint bucket, two coolers, and a bath-tub that came with the yard. I fill all of these vessels up with water, pour a little more water in the truck's radiator, and then drive around the yard pouring the water onto the various trees and shrubs. All said and done, this way I give water to eight flowering plum trees (dark purple foliage), one maple, four magnolia trees, four patches of bamboo (two different varieties), two rhododendrons, two flowering cherry trees, one bald cypress, two “dragon trees” (weeping, gray colored evergreens), four azaleas, and a newly planted ficus that is supposed to grow like a vine. Don't ask me, I dig the holes, I run the water. Trish is the brains of the operation.

It's a kick though, driving the truck over the bumpy, rutted dirt road that cuts through the property – the water sloshing out of the bath-tub and running out of the truck's bed. I collect as much as I can at each stop with one of the empty coolers. I'll either dump it into the five gallon paint bucket with the handle, or pour it back into the bathtub. With this primitive system we've managed to keep the bulk of the trees alive through this temperate summer. We really couldn't have asked for a better weather pattern to get us started – lots of moisture in the spring to soak everything in, and now basically low temperatures for the summer; everything hasn't fried.

UPDATE: I dumped my fucking wine cooler all over this table, computer, and onto the linoleum floor.

madbob@madbob.com

3,000 Jokes

2011-10-19T21:34:00.000-07:00

Okay so it is time to write something... I have so many conflicting, and harrowing thoughts right now. There is a fan beating wind down on me. The dog is gnawing audibly on a cut-up cow's joint – maybe a knee joint, or an elbow. Do cow's have elbows? The dog is chewing, loudly, on a thick, leftover cow joint that is starting to putrefy and really smells bad.

I don't feel bad about giving the dog beef bones. These come straight from the butcher and they are the leftovers, so far as I can tell. I don't believe any cows are being killed specifically for their knee joint bones - I think it's more for the meat: the steaks, loins, and hamburgers. Meat is fucking weird. That's all I'm going to say about that tonight – the wine is kicking in and I've got to move onto more uplifting topics of conversation.

Trish and I started talking about concerts, she's seen the Clash a couple of times – tells me they could hold an audience in close and tight; even when they were playing a bigger auditorium, like The Olympic, in Los Angeles. Not an arena, but Trish tells me they used to stage boxing exhibitions there; I mean, it was a bigger place. She also saw Kraftwerk, at the Santa Monica Civic – tells me that band managed, with unreasonably loud synthesizers, to lock the crowd into a trance-like state, and to simultaneously redirect everyone's heart beats...

I have completely lost my train of thought [mind].

6,000 Jokes

Six thousand jokes. Six thousand jokes. You make jokes because otherwise life becomes too sad. But then if everything is either sadness, or maniacal laughter and ecstasy -well, that doesn't really add up. Somewhere, in between, there have to be periods of relative meaninglessness.

I read something today from Yoko Ono, about balance, and power. She decisively dismisses the concept of logic, and I think she is dead right. I listen to people, everyday, who argue that there is some kind of intrinsic, deeply entrenched logic behind this all - and I feel pity for them. Does that make sense? I don't know if it does or doesn't – but I don't consistently catch the logic, if it is there to be admired.

Ha ha now I am really just lost at sea. Thoughts have stretched out far beyond my words' capacities to capture them.

Memory Loss

Our computer is apparently 98% full right now, and It is expressing dissatisfaction. Fuck it – fuck the computer. We made it – it didn't make us. I can remember a time when we had no computers. It wasn't better, or worse – but it was really fucking different – before we all had a phone with us everywhere we went, or a weird machine that corrects our grammar and, almost immediately lets us fact-check anything we read. Great improvements, and I mean it – but we also lose a certain amount of naivety – and with that, a certain amount of fun.

madbob@madbob.com

The New Consciousness...

2011-10-19T21:27:00.000-07:00

The world just keeps right on spinning around, doesn't it? I'm functioning on very little sleep - I don't know what it is, maybe the change in the seasons or something, but if I pull down four hours of shut-eye I'm doing well. I've been sleeping lightly, dreaming a lot, and waking up early every morning. The dreams seem important, but I can never remember them.

But who cares? I don't have many important decisions to make. I do my job, I write this column once a week, I try and take care of my business. Who can know the thoughts that lurk inside someone else's mind?

Win at Any and All Costs

I'll tell you what I'm glad I'm not Obama right now. The guy has got to feel like he's running through an obstacle course. He comes into office and his own party is telling him “health care, health care, health care!” So he gets right on it and gets the health care legislation pushed through. Meanwhile it gets scuttled by the Republicans and, frankly, by the cowardly members of his own party. Then it's jobs jobs jobs – so he tries to move forward on jobs, but then oh no, it's not jobs anymore – now it's a debt crisis! So Obama does an about face – ditches his Keynesian economics and agrees to start slashing – no scalpel, we're talking machete. The debt commission is established, but now it's back to jobs! Meanwhile the two wars we are fighting have morphed into three, or maybe four, depending on how you count them. And underlying all of this mess is the pledge by the Republicans that they will not allow one penny of tax hikes to pay for it all. Speaker of the House John Boehner says one day “We've got to get rid of this 'my way or the high way' mentality;” and almost the next breath is “no tax hikes period.” I'm paraphrasing – but seriously, Obama must feel like a pinball, or one of those morons in the “cowboy poker” competitions – the ones in which an angry bull is unleashed and a bunch of nutty cowboys sit around a poker table trying not to move as it kicks their heads off. The one who remains seated the longest is the “winner.” I don't know – I'm starting to think there is something to the theory that Obama's political opponents are willing to scuttle the economy for another year in order to win next November. It's an ugly thought, but it's there. But the fault is Obama's as well – he's letting himself be lead around by the nose – by his own party, by the Republicans, by the special interests, by the power-monger of the day. He hasn't articulated a clear vision, and he hasn't communicated a way forward. And now, with over a year to go, he's already back into campaign mode. Was he ever out of it?

This is the game in the national political arena in this year 2011. Eleven years into the new millennium – where the hell is the new consciousness that is meant to be emerging? Maybe not here – in America. Not in the shopping malls, or on the internet, not in the pages of some free weekly “newspaper.”

madbob@madbob.com

Dick Cheney is Right! (And So Are You.)

2011-10-19T21:25:00.000-07:00

I've been tuning in to some of the recent interviews that former Vice President Dick Cheney has been giving. He's got some new book out about his time in the Bush White House. Anyway, the guy is 70 years old now; thin, feeble, pale as a ghost (of course he's been that way since he was born, probably). And he's espousing his ultra-right wing... no, it isn't even fair to call Cheney “right-wing.” He's a paranoid, slightly insane, firmly-rooted, well-meaning, megalomaniac. He is what he is. His world view is reptilian, he sees an enemy lurking under every rock, he is the classic archetype – the guy who strikes first before he is struck (whether or not he was ever going to be struck remains open for debate.) That's Cheney. He says himself: “I didn't change – the world changed.” I don't know the context of that remark, but it's dead-on. All the shit went down while he was in office (and he was in office since fucking Nixon!) - He didn't change an iota. This is the kind of person we ought to look out for (cull?); but this is also the kind of person that inevitably gravitates up the power chain.

Look, Bush Junior buckled under the power. He had second thoughts, reservations, deep, dark hours; because, in spite of popular belief in some circles, he's a fucking human. Cheney is something else – another species, a mutation, an abomination. And he's also fucking right.

He's not right because he has to be – he's right because of our stunning lack of vision and execution as a people – not just us in the U.S. - but everywhere. We collectively, consistently, let the wrong people into the hallways of power.

The problem is us, but it isn't. Most of us, 95% of us, maybe 98 or 99 – we don't ask for much: a roof over our heads, a toilet to shit and piss into, some food, a little entertainment and fuck it, we're good to go. We are not really the problem. The problem is that little wad of people, those “1 percenters,” who crave power, who crave impossible wealth, who relish the opportunity to engage in wars – hell, they'll never fight in them. It is a gluttonous, detached, schizophrenic and manic condition – and totally unnecessary. We don't have to let these assholes lead the world.

Obama was elected as a counter-point to this madness. Now he is battling against the very traits that put him in office: He is humble, he is thoughtful, he compromises. All he does is give a good speech (When is the last time you saw a politician pick up a shovel or pull a trigger?) He is who we wanted – now we don't want it, because the fear has crept in, and we need someone more determined, less reasonable.

Well, no problem; there are plenty of candidates out there to fill that criteria. Have at them.

madbob@madbob.com

Empty Nests and Cheap Talk

2011-06-15T11:22:00.000-07:00

"Worms" - our new baby bird

My American Dream is going to put me into an early grave. The advent of the long-absent sun has sent every plant, weed, tree, and grass growing rapid-fire, and almost overnight I find myself doing battle with a jungle of vegetation; I am under-armed and overwhelmed. I go home from my 7 to 3:30 each day and start in on my 4 to 10. Passed out stone cold by 11, up again at 5… spin, lather, rinse, repeat; until infintum or death – whichever comes first. Ah but this is the life, and in those sparse moments of rest, total relaxation is possible out here in the country.

“Worms”

Right now we are nursing a baby bird. The little guy fell out, or was pushed out, of a tree. I tried to give him to a wildlife refuge, but they won’t take fallen birds anymore – “let nature take its course” is basically what the guy told me. But it’s too late for that now – little “Worms” and I have bonded – there is no way I’m going to toss him back out to the fend with the cats and the snakes, to face certain death. So I’ve got the little guy in a box here with me and I feed him soggy puppy chow every fifteen or twenty minutes. He lets me know with a few chirps, then I give him a few blobs of food, then he goes to sleep for a little while. I kind of like having him around. I have this fantasy that when he is grown, he will perch on my shoulder like a sailor’s parrot. I’ll be happy though if I can get him to adulthood and he flies off to live on his own.

Honestly Worms is lucky to be alive – not just because he fell or was ejected from his nest, but also because I am a fairly incompetent baby-bird caretaker. My learning curve has been steep and fast. I came damn close to killing Worms on Tuesday – I found him Monday afternoon in our driveway, just after getting home from work. I don’t know what baby birds eat and I fed him earthworms – that’s a no-no. By Tuesday afternoon he was looking really bad, his chirps were muted, and his energy was waning. I was beside myself; sure he was going to die on my watch. But Trish came to the rescue with the puppy chow tip – gleaned from a co-worker, and within a couple of hours on the new diet Worms was on his way to recovery. Things could still go askew, but I’m optimistic.

Your Days are Numbered

All of our days are numbered. We could count them, more or less, if we wanted to – they are not infinite. So figure out what you want to do with those days you have left and then go out and do it. What are you waiting for? If you need direction, here it is. Get off your butt, stop talking your talk, and go walk your walk. Make your way in this world and let me know how it goes.

madbob@madbob.com

Wiener’s Weiner and the Animal Politic

2011-06-08T12:57:00.000-07:00

Photo used without permission from Robby Virus

I suspect that by the time you read this, Representative Anthony Wiener from the State of New York will have resigned his post. Unless you’ve been floating down the Green River for the last couple of weeks, by now you know about the infamous twit pics Wiener sent to a variety of different women – pictures of his, uh hum, package. Initially I would have said stick it out (no pun intended?), fight through it, but that was when Wiener was alleging only one picture was sent. Since then the thing has snowballed and now it’s more or less out of control. I’m not so bothered by the indiscretions (though I’m not married to the man) as I am by the cavalcade of lies Wiener has told since the gig was up; lies for no reason – the truth was hanging over his head like an anvil. What is the point in persisting in lying when you know the truth is right around the corner in the form of a snide, moral crusader who is telling you he has the goods?

This is a real shame because Wiener is a smart man and one of the few leaders in Washington who can actually articulate the progressive agenda, and make it sound feasible. He is also a staunch advocate of women’s reproductive rights – a voice desperately needed in a leadership body that is careening hard to the right.

This maddens me. Anthony Wiener is a very intelligent man; he should have been smart enough to know better than this; he had to be aware that there are people out there who want to get him. I know there are those of you out there saying “but this shouldn’t matter, it should be about his leadership, and his politics – not his personal shenanigans…” and I am with you. But let’s face it folks, it is 2011, and that ship has sailed. Talk to Bill Clinton or, better yet, Gary Hart about that one. These folks know the new rules of the game and they need to play by them. We are in desperate times, wherein the whole balance of this country’s character is on the line. Andrew Breitbart is only one of an army of right-wing McCarthyists who are just waiting for the opportunity to pounce – give those lizards a reason and they are tearing at sinew and drinking blood.

Nothing New Under the Sun, Yet

Politics is an ugly, ugly game. Something about wielding that kind of power must corrode the soul – or maybe the souls who choose to go into politics are already corrupted and void. But that being said, this is far from the first sexual scandal to transpire in politics on the Federal level. In fact way back in 1796 then Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton was discovered to be having an affair with a married woman. Hamilton was also married, and once the affair surfaced, he was blackmailed by his lover’s husband. Since then there has been a steady stream of sexual indiscretions, ranging from prostitutes to child molestation to alleged satanic ritual abuse.

No, the human animal hasn’t changed that much over the last couple of hundred years – heck probably not in the last five thousand years for that matter. We’ll just have to keep hoping and waiting for this next phase in the development of our collective consciousness to transpire.

madbob@madbob.com

Faces of the Doomed

2011-06-06T22:50:00.000-07:00

The Late, Great Doctor of Journalism
Hunter S. Thompson - Rest in Mayhem!

“Hope you got your things together,

Hope you are quite prepared to die,

Looks like we’re in for nasty weather,

One eye is taken for an eye.”

-Credence Clearwater Revival

Faces of the Doomed

The faces of the doomed stare back at me when I am on my morning walks with the dog. They aren’t always there on the physical plane, but right now they are: born to the slaughter, born without choice or possibility. They stand there on the other side of the barbed wire fence, watching suspiciously as I chase down impossible dreams.

Introduction

My forearms burn. My hands are wretched, mangled claws. Every time I stand up or lean over my back screams out in agony. This is my penance – the result of yanking at star thistle for several hours this evening, after getting off of work. Star thistle is the scourge of the Earth – a vicious, invasive weed that flattens tires and spikes boot heels. Allowed to go to seed, it will spread like some malodorous infection and take over acres of land in a season or two. It must be removed – all of it, every last thistle; and I should have been taking care of this creeping bastard of a weed over the course of the three day weekend, Memorial Day weekend, that just came and went in the bat of an eye.

All three day weekends go by in a blur when you work in a job that barely stimulates, but this one went by even faster as a result of a ridiculous challenge I decided to embark upon. A young woman I know has been stating that she is the “Hunter S. Thompson of the North State,” based on the fact that she posted a paragraph on FaceBook about sneaking beers into, and smoking weed from an apple at, the Fair. (Seriously, as if she is the first person to ever get wasted at the Fair – please) I could not let this stand, and so threw down the gauntlet of challenge. We agreed to use the weekend for gathering material, and then to write about our various exploits, the finished writing to determine who the real “Hunter S. Thompson of the North State” in fact, is. I know, as I said, ridiculous. The idea that there could ever be another Hunter is laughable. The world needed Hunter S. Thompson, the mad genius, the blazing poet, the inventor of “Gonzo” journalism; but the world doesn't need another HST; and it certainly doesn't need pale imitators who believe because they get drunk, or stoned, and write about it, that suddenly they exist on the same plane as the freakish visionary who lived on Owl Farm, blasted away with large caliber, automatic weaponry in the middle of the night, blew up tankards filled with fuel, and slept with a keg of TNT in his basement. Who are we with our puny camp fires, our cheap whiskey, and canned beer from Milwaukee?

But a challenge is a challenge, and I intend to win this one.

HST guns down a hapless Underwood

HST Ramblings

Thompson wrote his most famous, and arguably his most endearing work, “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas” in 1971, the year I was born. In that story he describes laying a “60’s style drug trip” on Las Vegas in the 1970’s – after the idealism and naivety of the psychedelic 1960’s had been firmly and definitely usurped by speed-fueled chaos and violence. He describes the 1970’s as a very ugly era in American history. Maybe the 70’s were similar to the times we live in now – hard economics with a period of seemingly endless war layered underneath. We’ve had troops fighting overseas since November of 2001, in Iraq since early 2003, and now, in the year 2011, troops are killing and dying in our name in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq, and, most recently, Libya. Our President, who rode into office on a sweeping sentimentality of peace and prosperity, has been unable to deliver on either count, and we find ourselves entangled in what appears to be a spreading, sucking whirlpool of economic despair and militaristic carnage.

Have we been steadily navigating away from the peace and beauty of the 1960’s? It feels so impossible now, and I know, myself, I hold those who came before us responsible for these failings. They had it, it was right there – nothing left to do but close the fist around it and hold on. Instead, the physical temptations overtook the spiritual dimensions of the movement. LSD gave way to speed, free love to pornographic cinema, peace lost its tenuous grasp and we plunged headlong and lustily into war; having soared so close to our spiritual apex, we collectively fell backwards and into our most animal tendencies.

But of course no individual, or even individual generation can be completely taken to task for our comprehensive failings.

Missives on the American Dream

Every new wave of youth likes to believe they are the doomed generation – that they’re the first to discovery debauchery and alcohol, to live with a sense of fatalism, the first to partake in bad behavior, and the first to discover their genitals (do they realize how they got here?). It’s the floundering of youth and the fatal flaw in collective wisdom; by the time you’re old enough to take advantage of all the collected knowledge, it’s usually too late to do anything with it.

The American Dream – Same as it Never Was

Here in America people have likely been talking about the death of the American Dream since the concept was derived. The American Dream is no more dead or alive than it ever has been; and life has always been balanced on the precipice of death. The American Dream is sticky – the name hints at the difficulties in trying to track down the damned beast. It is not a reality, a gift, a right, or a given – it is a dream; which means first and foremost, you have to dream the thing up! Then and only then can you actually go out and grab it. And so for many years, most of our lives in many cases, and sometimes never – the dream remains formless and ethereal. It is a frustrating mist that slips through our fingers because we can’t properly materialize it. Eventually, in time, if you’re lucky, the thing may finally take form. And then you’ve got to act with haste and precision before it weakens again. Even then, even after you have sunk your claws into the dream, it won’t last forever. It’s a dream, remember?

Over the Memorial Day weekend I got a taste of it – opportunity presented itself and I lunged and struck, and drew blood. In a bizarre amalgamation of events, on Friday I met with a couple whose wedding I will be officiating, and followed that up by watching a wrestling match between the forces of good and evil in the form of the “Born Again Becky Sagers” versus “WitchDick” at the Origami Lounge: wine versus whiskey, up-tempo raps versus down and dirty metal vamps. The night was a sonic swirl of pounding beats and snarling feedback, attitude and Armageddon – all pushed along by a variety of different, potent beverages. I won’t declare a winner, but Jeremiah of the Becky Sagers did confess to me that he was considering leaving town – that’s all I’m saying and I may have said too much.

A Harrowing Shot up Blood Alley

The show ran long, as they almost always do, and my earlier plans to stop and meet a friend for a coffee or a soft drink at Duffy’s were waylaid by the treacherous realities of time. It was quarter of three when I got into my truck and left the Origami Lounge. The beers, wine, and whiskey had taken their effect, and, while I wasn’t completely twisted, the controls of my vehicle were starting to feel slightly spongy. No rest for the weary or the wicked on this weird spring morning; I guided her down the side streets to Highway 99 North and put my foot to the pedal.

Once clear of the city limits I relaxed. It was late, and there wasn’t another set of headlights anywhere in sight. If I could stay awake and keep the truck’s rubber tires on the asphalt I would be fine. I made use of a technique I’d learned years ago when making a 45 minute commute between Chico and Colusa. The economy was in another one of its fits; that’s nothing new to us here in the North State, and I’d been maneuvered by the hands of fate into a pitiful job in an Indian casino – pushing a nickel plated cart filled with small change through the gaming room and filling up slot machines that had been emptied in the process of paying out some negligible jackpot. The job paid $8 an hour and, sadly, I was good at it. As a result they schedule me for all the busy shifts – from 6 o’clock in the evening until 4 in the morning I worked Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sundays in that tobacco soaked, cranked out, pit of human despair and wreckage. It was a three-month sentence until I could find better work (anything was better) and the best part of the job was the drive home. The trick I learned was to ignore the lanes. With one eye open, at 4 in the morning, you could straddle the center divide. This afforded two benefits: it was easier to navigate, which allowed greater speed, and it also gave a better chance to avoid the countless rodents and mammals that were attempting to get from one side of the road to the other all through the days and nights.

And so I took advantage of this scrap of knowledge, gleaned from a job I hated, working for fools and greed-driven miscreants in a corner of the world God must surely have overlooked or ignored – a cut-rate Sodom and Gomorrah, devoid of titillation. Any sexuality in the place was being poured into those shining, beckoning machines. It was a beautiful, grotesque testimony to the power of lust and madness over reason. Reason – that’s the greatest joke anyone ever came up with. The brain deceives us with the illusion of reason.

But this trip was not meant to be a reminder of that hatred and oppression – this was a freedom ride. The Friday night musical dueling was only a precursor of events that were yet to unfold. The truck and I shot up the highway like a cannonball, hurtling unseeing towards the inevitable. This was Memorial Day Weekend Goddammit! This was a celebration of what it means to be an American in the year 2011, already a decade and a year longer than we had any right or hope to expect we'd exist.

Inside Chico, Highway 99 is a divided highway with two lanes pointing north, and two heading south. The highway is relatively isolated by barriers of silvery barked sycamore trees and towering plumes of Oleanders. Beyond the city, the highway narrows to a single lane in each direction – cars and trucks heading opposite ways pass only feet from one another at combined speeds of 150 miles per hour. The highway slices through small farms, orchards, and grazing land. Sparse, barbed-wire fences nominally shield the wild-life and feral animals from the road. This is progress as seen through our collective American eyes – a straight, flat speed burn over rough land, riddled with knolls and creeks. Never mind the river of blood and carnage the highways generate; not only the horrific wrecks that mangle body and brain, and steal life, but also in the countless creatures simply trying to make their ways home: raccoons, squirrels, cats making their rounds, dogs running from booming thunder claps. The highway swallows them all and leaves them sprawled and lifeless on the shoulders, or, if they are able to crawl their dying carcasses away from the scene of impact, rotting in the knee-high grass – the scene of their deaths evidenced by the red-headed buzzards and the sharp-beaked ravens who tear at the drying entrails.

The spirits of these doomed beasts swirl around my vehicle as I make the harrowing streak North – one eye closed, one hand on the wheel, my arm out the window and the music blasting loud tuned into the classic rock station: AC/DC, Rolling Stones, Black Sabbath. The wind, the cool night air, and the pounding music are managing to keep me awake – only 30 minutes and then I can piss in the bushes before staggering inside and collapsing into bed; not before a quick glass of pink wine though – for whatever, reason I have no idea. We’re on the train now – there is no stopping until sometime around Monday. Around 60 or 70 hours to go.

Me with diesel fuel - ready to burn

“But our trip was different. It was a classic affirmation of everything right and true and decent in the national character. It was a gross, physical salute to the fantastic possibilities of life in this country – but only for those with true grit. And we were chock full of that.”

-HST

Seeing a Man about a Tractor

Trish went into work on Saturday morning and then I waited a half hour after she was gone. I had some business to conduct. We got a line on a tractor for the farm – an old Ford NAA (pronounced: “N – double-A”). It was down at a tractor dealership on the main drag. I am not a great negotiator, but I prepared myself to wheel and deal. The money was pulled from a tertiary savings account – one we squirreled money into, and tried to forget about. They were asking $2500 for it – and I was going to offer $2000. I dressed with purpose – neat black pants, a shirt that I imagined a hard-working, but shrewd and attuned man might wear. I pulled on black cowboy boots. I took the money and slid twenty folded hundred dollar bills into my front pocket – the other five went into the back pocket. Then I left the house and made the ten minute walk down our street and then right onto the Main street. I convinced myself about halfway down that I was assuredly going to be mugged by one of the tweakers that make their way from the gas station to the trailer park in a wavering, sporadic flow. But I made it to the dealership, and then I found my way to the office. I took a deep breath and pulled open the tinted glass front door, ready to take on whomever I might encounter inside. I pictured a squinting, gnawing personality waiting to put the screws to a naïve rube like me – a rocker from the suburbs moving up to the country. Oh I was ripe for the picking, and now sure I would be fleeced.

I stepped inside and found the lone office denizen. A young kid, maybe twenty one, twenty two years old, with thick-rimmed eye-glasses and wide eyes said “hello” and welcomed me in. I told him I was interest in the NAA. He looked up the price on a computer and said they were asking $2500. I made my best move: “Would you take $2000?” He looked at me, frowned a little. “Well... it's on commission so I'll have to ask the owner.” I waited for him to make a move towards the phone but he sat right as he was. “Can I get your phone number? I'll get a hold of him before the end of the day.” The end of the day? Would I be able to get the tractor today? After all, the dealership would be closed on Sunday, and again on Monday, for Memorial Day – and this was exactly why I needed the tractor! I nearly panicked and offered him the whole $2500, then caught myself. I wrote my number down on a sticky note, and my name, and handed it over to this kid, who introduced himself then as “Michael.”

I left with the entire $2500 still split between my pockets. I decided to take the back way home, down Aromoyo Road and over a fence into our east pasture, the one on the other side of the creek from the house; then made my way along the length of the property. The rest of the day I waited, not drinking in case I may have to resume negotiations on the 1953 Ford. I worked inside, vacuuming, cleaning dishes, staying close to the phone. Trish came home around 4. I was getting nervous – starting to assume that it wasn't going to happen – not today anyway. It finally rang at around 4:45 – the business was scheduled to close at 5:00. Michael's kind voice: “The owner says $2300 is as low as he can go.”

“I'll take it,” I was excited by the prospect of having the tractor in my possession: “Can I get it today, right now?” He told me to hurry.

Trish gave me a ride down there and dropped me off – I'd be driving the tractor home or walking and that was the way I wanted it. I counted out the bills and slid them across the counter and Michael wrote me out a bill of sale, with a dated “PAID” stamp. He slid the bill to me and I took it, examined it quickly (there wasn't much to it), then folded it twice and tucked it into my recently emptied pockets.

Then we went out to the tractor. He tried to fire it up, but the battery was dead. We wired a couple of extension cords and plugged in a battery charger, and then when Michael pressed the ignition button, the engine would turn over, but it wouldn't catch. He called the owner of the dealership on a cel phone and explained the situation. “Choke?” I heard him say and then we both located it, a pull rod with a threaded end where a metal hoop should have been fastened. Michael pulled the rod out a few times and then tried the ignition again. It fired right up, the simple engine steadily chugging. He let it run for a few minutes, and then drove it out of the dealership's yard, one wheel climbing over a heap of gravel and forcing a sharp turn to the right. He maneuvered the tractor until it stood between the front gates, pointed down towards the road. I took over from there, pressing in the clutch and dropping it into gear. I could only find first and second, and as a result it was a slow ride home; but there wasn't far to go.

"New" Tractor - 1953 Ford NAA

I drove it in our own front gate, then made a lap of the front half of the property – driving the old Ford down and along the creek, and then back up into the yard closer to the house. Later I would test the front loader by attempting to move a couple of sets of old automobile axles that are resting in the lower yard. Then I used it to move some of the larger pieces of wood I was going to need to build a proper Memorial Day fire. It was a good day, and I was pleased as I backed the tractor (since named Easy-E, you know, N – Double-A) onto the cement bad before our garage. I was feeling more prepared for our Sunday celebration – the challenge, the gathering of material.

The Indie 500 is UnAmerican

The Sunday before Memorial Day was a day dedicated to high-speed motorcars turning laps in stadiums – around asphalt tracks. The Indianapolis 500 ran early in the day. In this race they run the formula cars – the low slung, aerodynamic speedsters that look like a cross between rockets and build it yourself airplanes, with wide tires in the back and narrower steering ones on the front. The cars achieve incredible speeds – well over two hundred miles an hour; but Indie racing is too European for my taste. The speeds necessitate that the drivers give each other a wide buffer, and the crashes are unspectacular, generally involving a single car losing control towards the top of the track, where debris accumulates, and then glancing off into the wall. Once the body of a formula car is damaged in any way, its day is done. The velocities attained require an integrated structure. I can only stomach formula racing because, in the end, it is still a race, with a single victor – the purest form of competition.

Stock car racing is more attuned to my way of thinking. These cars don't match the speeds of their formula racing counterparts, but they run close together and make contact throughout the race. The crashes, when the occur, are a result of this close-quarter combat. One car will badly disturb the air around another and send it spinning up the track – the other drivers making a mad, split second scramble to try and avoid carnage. For every driver involved in a wreck there are three others who narrowly avoid disaster through a combination of reflexes, guts, and pure luck. And a wreck doesn't mean the end of the race – the drivers hump their mangled machines back to the garage where their crew works feverishly with wrenches, hammers and blow torches to get the beast back out onto the track. Stock car racing is a classically American style of racing.

Stock Car Racing is American!

Nascar ran their race in the evening – the Coca Cola 600 held in Charlotte, North Carolina. I watched the beginning of the race, and then guests arrived – the Fryers: Jewel and Brent, along with a cooler filled with various liquors and snack foods. The benefit of a 600 mile race is that it lasts for hours – you can tune in and out over the course of the race and find excitement in whatever segment you happen to be paying attention to.

We made our way out to the back yard, to take advantage of the lingering sun. This property is new to Trish and I – we moved from our little city lot down in Chico to our 10 acre stretch of land here in Los Molinos in January, only five and a half months ago. We're still in the process of learning the lay of the land – probably will be until we die, assuming we are lucky enough for the inevitable event to happen while we are here. The four of us, beers in hand, make a slow tour of the landscape.

This property is a long, narrow rectangle of land – about one hundred and fifty yards across and running between two east/westbound roads. It belonged to the Southern Pacific Railroad until 1917, and was used as part of a switch yard. Berms of earth, about six feet high, span the length of the grounds. In the nearly hundred years since the tracks were in use the land has been allowed to go feral, and now it is dotted with over a hundred mature oaks – valley oaks and blue oaks, and a variety of native and imported grasses spring from the soil. There is a creek that cuts the property in half length-wise, and an irrigation ditch that runs along the north edge of the lot and feeds into said creek. That is, according to an old-timer who owns the land adjacent to ours, the “Los Molinos Creek,” and it feeds into the mighty Sacramento River – only about a quarter mile from us, to the west.

Figs grow around the creeks, as well as willows, wild grapes, a peculiar vine with a horn-shaped bloom called “Dutchman's Pipes,” and of course the ubiquitous and tenacious blackberry vines. A vast, sprawling “lady banks” rose bush has already dropped its bloom – a flowering carpet of small white blossoms. Now it is a mass of deep green, glossy, fingertip-sized leaves. Away from the water there are the oaks – a few towering, ancient specimens and the smaller, seventy to one hundred year old trees that still stand at their full height, and are so thick that when I wrap my arms around them my fingers do not meet. There are also a handful of other mature trees – a towering cottonwood hangs right on the border between our westbound neighbor's land and our own. There is a lone, beautiful sycamore I can see through the kitchen window – recognizable by light green, broad, maple-shaped leaves, and for its unique, mottled gray and silver bark. Between the oaks there are wild elderberry bushes, their billowing yellow blooms are giving way to hard, green berries. Wild plums provide sweet, yellow fruits. On the back side of the property, the side across the creek and away from the house, there are a handful of un-manicured almonds, maybe the remnants of an orchard attempted many decades ago.

The four of us rested awhile at a spot on the far bank of the creek. A joint was passed around and we talked about the wonder of potential – the immaculate freedom of the dream. For a moment anyway we allowed ourselves to forget the struggle, the work and the hardship of hammering that dream into tangible form. In that moment it was enough only to be, enjoying the company of friends and the beauty of the space immediately around us – ignoring the temporary nature of the perception of joy.

Eventually we meandered back across the creek and planted ourselves in patio furniture positioned on a leftover concrete pad – pointed so that our view was of the first stretch of property; a small valley formed by the intersection of two of the grass covered mounds that used to be railroad berms. I constantly wonder at those massive machines of steel and steam that once rolled across the land I now own.

We started in on the tequila – a finer brand of the stuff than I am accustomed to drinking. I am always amazed at how good and smooth a decent bottle of tequila can be. Schooled in San Diego, only forty five minutes from the border between the United States and Mexico, I was weaned on a cut-rate version of that cactus distillation – Jose Cuervo: the cheaper the better. We were in college. The result was a decade of aversion to that particular strain of liquor. But the tequila Jewel drinks is quality stuff, and it goes down easily. A few shots in and, coupled with those drags from the marijuana cigarette, my second real head buzz of the weekend was taking form. This is where events start to take on a cinematic, disjointed quality – a series of sepia-toned still frames and short scenes cut together in a hypnotic, spasmodic rhythm. Time loses its linear quality and reality becomes a mish-mash of memory, feeling, and dream, tempered with the punctuation of laughter and the creeping intoxication – the spirit of the great Doctor invoked and present, watching over us. What he's thinking I couldn't begin to guess. Fascination, horror, contempt, disgust? Humor, I hope, I would like to suspect. The realization is slowly starting to dawn on my slow-witted brain – that humor is the most important emotion, the quintessential state of being, that – strive for is not the right phrase – it needs to be there, all the time, underlying every action, hardship, misery, and pain that we will suffer. Without humor we are totally and completely lost and doomed. With it we are only lost and doomed, and laughing as we spiral down into the Abyss.

Heartbreak at the Coca-Cola 600

Brent lets us know that there are only 15 laps to go in the 600 – how he stumbled into the TV room and discovered that I can't say – maybe he went inside to urinate. 15 laps to go – every driver still in the lead pack wide-eyed and tense with the knowledge that a Memorial Day Weekend victory is within their grasp. My eyes also widen, and my heart races, when I realize that Dale Earnhardt Junior, in his green and white number 88 car, is in the lead. Earnhardt is the son of the legendary maniac driver known as the “Intimidator;” a driver who died on the track. “3” – you still see Earnhardt Senior's number emblazoned on pick-ups and muscle cars across the nation. “Junior,” as the currently competing Earnhardt is nicknamed, is the sport's most popular, current driver, of an exponential order. It's stated that about 50% of Nascar fans label Earnhardt as their favorite driver. Consider that there are 43 different drivers out on the track at the start of every race, and heavy hitting, highly-qualified contenders: Jeff Gordon, Jimmy Johnson, the wild Busch brothers, back-flipping Carl Edwards and my personal favorite - the once maverick, asshole, driver turned cool and methodical owner/driver Tony Stewart. Out of a field populated by supremely talented and charismatic, star-quality drivers, Dale Earnhardt Jr. stands alone as the sport's pied piper, the golden child, the chosen one.

It's cruel to say that Earnhardt has disappointed, and I won't make that claim here – but he hasn't won much. His career, spanning over a decade now, has been one of turmoil and transition, all under the heavy cloud of massive expectation. He's had his wins, over the years, but never been the consistent, cut-throat champion that his father was. But here he is, with a dozen laps to go, in the lead and looking strong – his car fast and under control. While he has been performing well as of late, demonstrated by a number of top five finishes, Junior hasn't had a win in nearly three years. The newer point format of Nascar has made the sport less about consistently wining, and more focused on finishing races in solid position – but it is undeniable that wins count in the psychological connection between the race car drivers and the fans who show up and tune in to watch them. A win, in a big race like this, in front of a Memorial Day crowd, would be undeniably meaningful for Dale Jr., - it might even knock that cruel and mocking monkey off of his burdened shoulders. 12 laps left...

The War Machine

Memorial Day – a day we set aside each year to honor the soldiers who have died in the almost seamless string of bloody wars our country has been involved in since its inception two hundred and thirty five years ago. And now we find ourselves again immersed in wartime – young men and women fighting and dying in foreign lands thousands of miles away, in the deserts of Iraq, and the mountainous regions of Afghanistan and Pakistan.

“Generals gathered in their masses, Just like witches at black masses,

Evil minds that plot destruction, Sorcerers of death's construction.

In the fields the bodies burning, As the war machine keeps turning

Death and hatred to mankind, Poisoning their brainwashed minds.

Oh lord yeah!”

- Black Sabbath

Dammit if we don't let them do it. The war mongers have figured out the game. The reptilian brain adapts, the focus on violence and destruction is so finely honed that the adaptations do not have to be made on a grand scale – they are subtle shifts, diversions and misdirections - that point our collective perception to other stories and attractions. The war machines keep churning – battlefields soaked with blood, serenities shattered by the percussion of bombs, bullets, and the screams of the wounded and dying. Only it isn't happening here, and nobody from this country is being forced to take part in it. Hell, we haven't even been asked up front to pay for the damned exercise. All in the name of security and protecting the bloated, nauseating icon to materialism and gross consumption that is the prepackaged, focus panel-tested, mom approved, pasteurized and sanitized, “New and Improved American Dream™.”

Our current President rode in on a wave of popular sentiment and rhetoric about “change,” and “hope,” mantras that suggested a peaceful, humanitarian Utopia was within our grasp, dancing on the tips of our fingers – if only we make just the right move. He was probably right about that. Our politicians, our Presidents, consistently make the wrong moves when it comes to war and peace. On the television and in the newspapers, the pundits tell us we cannot leave the battlefields now, that if we do, indescribable atrocities will transpire. Our collective hands will be awash in the steaming, copper-scented blood borne of our negligence, impatience, and selfishness. It may have been wrong to go into war, but we're there now, and the responsible, moral, and upright thing to do is to finish the job – create “stability,” cut the heads off of all the god damned snakes. They say we don't understand our enemies and they are right – we don't even understand who our enemies are. But we know people, we know human nature – those of us who have human brains. There isn't any “complicated calculus” (the current phrase du jour babbling and gurgling to the surface of the apologist media stream) that we need to work out. Most people want peace. They want the basics – some food to eat, a fire to warm them, a roof to keep the rain out. They want to raise their children in an environment without constant death and bloodshed, they want to experience a bit of comfort at the end of a hard day's work. This is universal, this is the way 97+ percent of the people in the world think, regardless of race, religion, creed, or tribe. It is that small percentage, estimated between 1 and 3 percent, that are sociopaths - the power mongers and star fuckers – those are the ones we need to keep our eyes on. These people would tear at the memories and guts of their own grandmothers to feed an insatiable lust for conquest and ego. They are the ones we should be fighting – they are the true enemies of everything good and decent and reasonable that exists on this planet, in the forsaken year of our Lord 2011 – two millennium, a decade, and a year and a half, since the birth of a man who spoke simple, sublime words that we still can't seem to get our malformed, feeble, entangled brains wrapped around.

“Turn the other cheek,

so that your enemy might strike that one too.”

-Jesus Christ

We had an opportunity to do that – to demonstrate the combined forgiveness of a people, of the world. After the towers were felled, by a wave of force and darkness that has existed since time, there was a chance to end that cycle forever. The gates of Utopia, Heaven on Earth, of peace, were opened to us; maybe just a crack, but enough to get a foot in and then wrench the things apart. We could have, in the wake of that mass-killing, in the smoldering ruins that became a grave in the heart of American commerce, simply turned the other cheek. Think about it. The message that simple non-action would send: “Our way is right, your way is wrong. Peace wins out over barbarity.” The whole world would have taken notice of this conscious, restrained decision; not an indication of weakness, but an affirmation of strength! The extremists would have been through. No one would join up in their fight against an “enemy” that shouldered their best punch, and shrugged it off - walked away, chose not to fight.

Ah but of course that wasn't going to happen – never mind that the man in charge at the time happened to be a “devout and born again Christian” man. Presidents tend to lose site of the simple message and power of those good words once the mantle of power is in their hands.

“The people who need democracy don't even know what the word means; and the people that know what it means don't need it and don't mind saying so.”

-HST

The war machine had been triggered and now the behemoth is rolling down hill with a momentum all its own – the shackles of inertia finally broken. Time to feed. As if the beast is ever unmoving – the winds of war are always blowing somewhere. The sociopaths are hard to stop – the peaceful are always vulnerable to the random whims of the violent. But that doesn't mean we have to always be lead by them.

Two laps to go and our golden child is still maintaining his lead over the other competitors. The fans are giddy, the sense of impending triumph and joy is looming as the white flag signifying a single lap to go waves. But we, come in from our wandering and tequila and cannabis smoke, haven't seen the race's back story. And so I am completely mystified when, with the black and white checkered flag only a couple of hundred yards away, Junior's car loses power and drops speed – the closest drivers angle around his faltering vehicle and maneuver deftly around. A collective gasp rings out – in an instant it is done, the bulging bubble of anticipation has burst. In spite of a collective will – and I can guarantee to you that 99% of that crowd wanted to see Dale win that race – the anticipation of joy is undone. The race is lost. An instant later my brain makes the connection – he's run out of gas. The pit chief had taken a gamble and left him out when other cars came in for fuel. It was a gutsy call, the only call that gave the team a chance at a win – it was the right call and the crew chief would have been hailed “genius” if it had panned out. But the gods of fate and fuel interceded, and depression manifested from the shared vision of ecstasy. A massive wind went out of the crowd on hand in North Carolina, and across the nation, where racing fans had tuned in on televisions to watch the finale of a grand spectacle.

A Big Fire and Lots of Beer

Late night fire

The post-race interviews were heart-wrenching. Dale, who'd ended up coasting across the start/finish line in 7th place, was nearly hysterical, and his crew chief was in tears. But that was their pain to endure - I had other emotional plans in store for the evening and the rest of the weekend. It was time to disconnect from the national consciousness and plug into our own, individual trips; the beginning of Memorial Day was only about four more hours away.

The party shifted outside where we doused the pile of brush and logs with diesel fuel and set it ablaze. The flames reached skyward as the initial dry fuel burned off and then the fire settled into a simmering boil of orange, yellow and black.

As the fire burned down my inebriation grew greater and the rest of the party of four went away. First Trish excused herself and staggered off to bed, then Brent and Jewel said good bye and took off down the road. The gate was latched behind them and I was by myself, with the fire and the spirits of the doomed and the dead dancing around me.

Woke up Monday Morning

The darkness faded to light and I was no more sober than I had been when the lights went out; but it was Memorial Day, and the 18-pack of 16 ounce beers we'd started in on the day before was still more than half full. I started in and the buzz was back. The day was glorious. I walked out of the house and a finch was just leaving the nest for the first time and flying confidently off into the world. It was the second of three that we had watched hatch and grow in a nest tucked into the beam that held our front porch roof up. I climbed up on a step ladder to peer down into the nest and saw the third bird remained – timid and trembling. God what a thing – to fly out into the world for the first time, to leave that external womb and test the feathers on those fine, light wings. I couldn't blame the little finch for its fear, I shuddered in empathy. I was happy to watch him a half hour later step up out of that nest, walk down the beam, shake itself off once, and then fly away, shakily at first but gaining momentum. It traced an arc-shaped, swooping pattern and landed on a lower branch of a nearby oak tree. That was the last I saw it, so far as I know. Now that finch is part of the flock.

It was an easy thing to keep the fire going – the larger pieces of wood from the night before were still smoldering atop an gray bed of coals that turned black and orange when the wind blew. I found more fuel – fallen oak branches – and piled them onto the pit. I discovered some branches that looked like they'd been cut long ago from a juniper shrub, and threw them onto the flickering fire. They created a tremendous amount of smoke, which worried me; but the day was gray and the neighbors all seemed content to wait it out inside. I was alone with the animals and the trees and the passing trains; alone with the fire and the wind, the grass and the ticks. I was alone with my thoughts and my beers and my inebriation. I drank and drank, staggering off repeatedly to find more fuel – must keep the fire burning, must have heat, must have flames. I drank and drank, tossing the empty cans into a neat pile beside me, sitting in a rounded, low-slung chair wrapped in artificial pink fur. I wore an artificial gray and silver fur coat to try and match the chair, topped my ensemble with alternating hats: a cowboy hat owned by John LaPado and a plaid fedora, complete with a brightly colored feather tucked into the hat band, that my grandfather had acquired on a vacation trip to Scotland. These were my ancestors, men not related to me in any way by blood, but nevertheless men who have taught me kindness and determination – men who possessed qualities of character I still struggle to realize. I like wearing those hats – knowing that they have rested on the crowns of those fine heads. I like thinking that those hats covered the scalps, skulls, and the brains, that made John, and my grandfather and namesake Robert, who they were.

Me and Bill, grabbing a hold of the American Dream!

Eventually the beers caught up with me. I went inside and got myself a couple of blankets – one a fine-threaded cotton sheet, and the other a coarse, thick piece of material that might have been used for draping over delicate furniture during our move. I positioned the coarser rug on the ground by the fire, lay down on it, and pulled the finer blanket over myself. The top sheet was not so much for heat, but rather for protection from the afternoon sun that had finally decided to make an appearance. I drifted in and out of sleep, thinking about the weekend, the world.

I slept for some time and when I woke up it was still bright out. My throat felt scratchy from the fire's smoke and my eyes itched, but otherwise I was perfectly sober, not even hung over. My head was clear. I rolled over and opened my eyes. They focused quickly and easily. A dark, bulky buzzard floated overhead, circling on invisible air currents only twenty yards over my head.

I croaked up at it: “I'm not dead yet!”

The End

When Chaos Ruled...

2011-05-10T21:43:00.000-07:00

We are such fussy monkeys. We crave order so badly and we hack it out of anything we can find. We'll take knives, axes, chainsaws to wood and form it into the physical shapes of animals or humanoids. We manipulate and mash together words until we can apply an independent label to every particle and feature of the Universe around us. We are constantly developing new language; news ways of seeing and viewing and writing; new ways of perceiving the shifting energy field surrounding us. Argh it's a crazy nightmare frustration exercise – this unbridled obsession with order. Fuck it. Order is an illusion. Order is a myth. Order is only a word – meaningless beyond the context of language; and language is only a creation of our puny, frightened, human brains.

Right now we have a name, some stupid, contrived name, for every phantom that might jump out at us from the darkness. “WHAT THE FUCK WAS THAT?!?” Oh, it's just a _______.” Fill in the blank. It's just a cat, just a bat, just a rattlesnake, a Black Widow, a Brown Recluse. It's only Tuberculosis, or Influenze, AIDS, SARS...

It's all bullshit – that's the, I can't break out of this language either. But these words aren't right – they aren't even close.

Imagine when everything was an image, a blast of light and color, a sound, a feeling... Back when there were no words, when all was mystery and magic. Nothing but swirling, crashing energy. Imagine back to when chaos reined.

madbob@madbob.com

Doom Prophets and Death Cults: A Shake Down in the Halls of Love

2011-05-09T22:06:00.000-07:00

I hate the doom prophets – the foul, stinking, carrion eaters. These people prey on a powerful human instinct and exploit it to gratify their own egos. That's my opinion anyway; but I have evidence to back up my point of view. Here it is:

Everything dies.

We all know this. Almost as soon as we are conscious, we understand that we are mortal. Ah, we don't really totally grasp it until certain periods in our lives force the reality upon us – and after that we work hard to forget it – but we know that we will die.

And we see it all around us, every day. In the course of any life we wrestle with the specter of death. We are bombarded by it. Peripherally or directly, we are all bombarded by death all day long, every day. There are dramatic examples – soldiers dying in wars, citizens gunned down in the streets of the cities, lovers murdered by jealous exes. Incredible seismic shifts in the very surface of the Earth have pulverized Haiti and caused the ocean to boil and swallow so many people in Japan. There are countless examples of lingering deaths – two days ago I met the most beautiful, charming person; a towering, kind man of Scandinavian descent, with a stunning woman by his side; he has been diagnosed with terminal brain cancer, and less than a year to live. There are the horror stories of youth: suicides, abortions, overdoses on drugs. Death can come as a complete mystery. Death can come randomly. So many die on the roads every year, every day.

So what compels a person to calculate the date on which the world will end?

Personally I think it is ego. There is some fascination with being the last of a dying breed – Charlton Heston in “Omega Man” - Ishi with his brain in a specimen jar. People want to think they will be the last to experience this crazy, terrifying life. Miserable people – I find them miserable, and pathetic, and beneath contempt. We all fight and work so hard to find the good and the reason for this life, and these doom prophets want to tell us it is meaningless, and that we live this life as a sacrifice, to move onto some “better place.” This is a “death cult,” plain and simple. You can gussy it up all you want with talk of peace and love; forgiveness – but it's still a death cult.

The world will end. A meteorite, or a massive environmental catastrophe – maybe the atmosphere will degrade, plague, disease, who knows? At some point we know the star that provides us our warmth and light will burn out, or explode. There will be an end to this planet, and to life as we know it. I can't tell you when that time will come. If I could, I wouldn't want to. The best we can do is to live our lives knowing that death is always there – and to carry on.

madbob@madbob.com

Germs, Anecdotal Sources, and Penny Dreadfuls

2011-05-03T21:39:00.000-07:00

“I bet Narcissus had some amazing wanks.”

Peter Serafinowicz

Argh I don't know. I had this great piece sort of structured in my head on the way home from work but now it isn't making any sense. The computer is barely functioning – now it seems to have come to life; sprung up at last. Jesus.

The place is abuzz with activity. Bill is licking out an empty carton of sour cream. Trish is reading, and eating microwaved food. I am lamenting roasted lizards. I am considering work loads and feeling my shoulders rise. They are just about to hit the bottoms of my ears. “The tension is palpable” is probably how they would write it in a hard-boiled detective story; or in a “penny dreadful.” At times like these I feel it is necessary to drink red wine. It sounds dumb, but it works out, mostly, more often than not. That is the best we can ask for.

This is the face of a twitter addict. I can't string two coherent sentences together anymore. Life has become a series of disjointed, chain-reacting, one-line jokes – maybe two – so long as it fits into the allotted 140 characters.

And the point, what I am getting back around to, is the narcissism involved in writing. “LOOK AT ME!” I scream it in this column, when I sing, play music, dance, post to my FaceBook account; tweet...

Hard Times

I'm having the weirdest time right now. I have this friend who is a very devout Christian, and he has been sending me some really strange information, that I am absolutely convinced is bullshit. He is so Goddamned convicted though! Any piece of information he gets, that fits into what he already believes, he is totally willing to believe that shit: 100 percent! 1,000 percent! I mean, I'm not even going to get into the content, it's horrible, offensive stuff; but the material is being generated by authors of, if any, dubious distinction; and their entire works will rely on a single, anecdotal source. It... I can't really even bring myself to formulate an appropriate rebuttal because I can't figure out where to start. What these “authors” are doing is making stories up to fit with an agenda.

A part of me feels like this is beautiful. If you have the ability to sculpt words like this – to more or less completely fabricate in order to advance your ideology – more power to you. I'm sure the anecdotes are based on a germ of truth. Everything is based on at least a germ of truth. These kinds of stories are a brilliant, warped, reflection of our innate desire to understand, to believe... in something.

See, the word is fickle, the word is manipulatable, the word is lugubrious. Nothing is at it seems; there is no fixed point in this Universe – save, possibly, that dense, dark, immaculate spot in the very center of the thing... there, maybe, finally, we could find some sort of order. Do you think? Now I'm not really sure...

madbob@madbob.com

18 Beers to L.A. - Sobriety, Ron Paul, and the Bright Side of Death

2011-05-03T21:32:00.000-07:00

Well the World's favorite reality show has finally come to an end. An on-going nine and a half year narrative – with a deep and tangled back story – culminating in a daring late-night raid on a fortified compound; a blatant and calculated assassination. Brilliant. I think a lot of us forgot that narrative, or rather pushed it into the background, into the semi-conscious, to get on with things. Heads down, move forward: progress, progress, progress. This killing brings about a full stop - finality.

Death is sobering. In this case, folks are celebrating, going crazy, rejoicing that this plane of existence has been freed of a certain bodied energy that had spread a taint onto everything. The hangover is coming. The reality of what has been done – everything that has been done, will set in soon enough. Now we remember: the good, the terrible, the inconceivable – the waste and loss and the human suffering for no real reason; for ideologies and borders; boundaries, rules, religions, resources... (resources are real, sure enough. I'm not sure a war has ever been fought that didn't involve resources. I mean, really, what would be the point?)

Anyway – life goes on. We'll pick ourselves up, shake off the blood and the sweat, experience our psychological trauma. For a second we will empathize with the dead, and then we will get back to the act of being alive.

Flying in a Jet Airplane

I'm going to brave the intense security of our state's capitol airport and fly down to Los Angeles this weekend. I was hoping that the recent damage discovered on an assortment of Southwest Airline jets would result in a reduced fare. Maybe it did, Southwest appears to still be the cheapest airline – but the fares are not cheap, not even reasonable – they clock in right around the tail end of “barely affordable.” But it is this, or to drive my 1989 Toyota pick-up over a thousand miles in a handful of days – risking break-down on the side of the highway, death smeared along one of the L.A. freeways, or just die of pain and boredom somewhere on a tired stretch of I-99. Not worth it; and the gas and necessary beers would probably set me back more than the plane ticket – assuming the whole thing went off without a hitch.

Not that I have such great faith in air travel. I heard Ron Paul talking today about the “moral hazard” created by government programs and protections. His way of thinking explains that, because there is an FAA, or whatever governing bodies, that exist to find fault – it takes some of the pressure off of industry to regulate itself, and to expect and demand a higher level of safety and efficiency. It sounds great on paper – I am ready to sign up; but then that cynical part of my brain kicks in and says: “hey wait a minute – if the markets self-regulated, then why did we ever need these governing bodies to step in in the first place?

Anyway, my chief reason for confidence in flying doesn't lie with the airlines, or the planes, or the pilots. No, to my way of thinking, one of the chief benefits of flying is that, if I should go down in a fiery wreck, at least my family would be compensated for my death. It doesn't get much better than that, these days.

madbob@madbob.com

Re-Ermgence of the Lizard Brain - Donald Trump and the New Old GOP

2011-04-20T08:43:00.000-07:00

Donald Trump is claiming to be in the 2012 Presidential Race. I don’t know what to think about that. Trish tells me he can’t be serious – that between his well-documented philandering, multiple wives, and potentially controversial financial wheeling and dealings, there is no way he would be willing to be dragged through the proverbial mud. She suspects it is all a big publicity stunt, another opportunity for the Donald to stand in front of cameras, and a boost for his popular Celebrity Apprentice series on television. She’s pretty smart, and probably right; but still, the announcement by the Donald, and some of his ensuing interviews, leave me troubled.

What bothers me more than any of Trump’s personal shenanigans is the world view that he holds. It is an old-school, reptilian mentality – eat or be eaten, kill or be killed, screw the other guy before he screws you first. He avows a philosophy of greed and materialism, and holds that his financial successes mean that he is, by extension, a successful person, a worthwhile human being, a “winner” in the game of life.

I don’t share the Donald’s shallow, harmful view of human-kind. I’m sure in his day to day life that he saunas with other reptiles and they all slither and dither and enforce one another’s vicious perception of the world around them. People are so good at seeing what they want to see, and filtering out any information that counters our established world view; or that reflects badly on our persons.

You Can’t Always Get What You Want

You know if we look back on the 2008 election, we had a President, and especially a Vice-President, that synched up more closely with the beliefs Trump is espousing, and we, as a country, didn’t like the direction they took us in. We elected a man who was more willing to compromise. The right has done their damnedest to paint Obama as a radical leftist – but he isn’t. If there is a complaint to be made against Obama, it is that he capitulates too often to the demands of the right. But that’s who we wanted, and that’s who we got. Now people want to go backwards and try the path of the lizard again? No thanks.

If the Republican Party is leaning towards the lizard brain, the Democrats are in full monkey-brain mode – scattering and chattering, unable to stay on task or in focus. The positive for the Republicans is that they have a plan. This puts them ahead of the Democrats. The problem is that the Republican’s plan is a shitty one that funnels all the wealth up the corporate chain to the top reptiles.

We are entering into a crucial era wherein we need to leave behind the monkey brain, and the lizard brain, and tap into the new emerging human brain. I don’t think we can look to Washington for the human brain – the job descriptions of Federal politicians won’t allow for it to emerge. The government can’t help us on this count. We’re going to have to get there ourselves.

Madbob@madbob.com

Damn the Word - Is it Enough?

2011-04-14T09:14:00.000-07:00

Another long week. I'm away now – out here on our small compound, a half hour north of the fertile mid-sized berg that is Chico. I'm away and out of the loop. I try and keep track of the goings on there by reading the various newspapers and tuning into assorted social media sites. I see that the Chikoko fashion collectives' springtime Bizarre Bazaar will be taking place in the near future. Those ladies are pure, positive creative energy and fun – the collective is a perfect synergy of the high-minded affectations of the fashion world combined with local charm and welcoming. The Bizarre Bazaars attract like-minded vendors hawking some of the most clever and unique wares: clothing, dolls, whimsies, art, craft, etc. etc. - that you could ever hope to see in one place.

A Hundred Years Ago

The train is going by right now – it nicks the back corner of our parcel. In fact this piece of land used to belong to the Union Pacific Railroad. They turned it over to the city of Los Molinos almost a hundred years ago. There are long, tall berms of earth running through the property. Railroad tracks used to run along those berms. Now they are grown over with grass, and valley oaks dot the land. Walking along the old railroad beds affords a view of the surrounding areas.

Rome is Burning

The politicians in D.C. are squabbling about the budget now. It is a funny system we have set up – this idea of a Republic. It is a great system in relative good times – but I have my doubts about the ability of the system to act with enough haste when times really call for action. It is a system set up and administered primarily by attorneys. Attorneys are great at impeding progress – not so when it comes to fostering change. Anyway, that's the system we have – we will live and die by that sword, I suppose.

14 Million Years Old and Counting

Myself I have been wrestling with questions of love, faith, and meaning. Born under no particular God and raised with no religion, I have come to a point where I struggle to relate meaning to events. For so long I have leaned on the art, the writing, the music – tried to persuade myself that the work was enough, that the words had meaning, and that the collective communication fostered by arts and music would generate its own sort of faith. It hasn't held up. I'm thinking about giving up and giving into the concept of meaninglessness, randomness, chaos. I may end up becoming what the theists fear the most from the atheists – the godless, immoral, lost non-soul – adrift in this spinning cosmos of ancient stardust and dark matter. Here we are, hurtling through space, spinning around some unimaginably massive, dense, sucking hole in the sky. My nose is running, moles are sprouting hairs, ticks are crawling into my increasingly hairy ears. This is life – I am another particle of matter, a piece of a greater whole, or at least a larger whole. This separation I am feeling is false – simply a manifestation of a treacherous ego.

Like I said, it's been a long week.

madbob@madbob.com

Bob Parsons, The CEO Culture, and Therapy

2011-04-07T08:17:00.000-07:00

Bob Parsons is a Fucking Idiot

There are really no better words to describe the guy. It's the year 2011 and everyone is Tweeting or Facebooking, or what have you; and this asshole decides it would be a good idea to a. ambush and kill an elephant, and b. post the video of said elephant-slaughter as a “vacation log” on his hugely popular, domain providing website. It is almost as though Parsons actually hates his own company, and all who work for him. If the blogosphere is any indication, there is presently an exodus of website owners who are moving their domains from GoDaddy to wherever the hell else.

I've heard Parsons' explanation of the affair and there is a sort of twisted logic to it; but it is so wrong. Parsons claims he was acting at the behest of the local tribal elders, who needed to be rid of an elephant, because it was destroying the village crops. This is a very valid concern, as an elephant can destroy an entire season's worth of crops in a single go. So yes, I will grant Parsons that simple point – that, for the sake of the villagers, the elephant had to be kept away from the crops. But that is where our agreement ends. Now, of course, to a relatively austere tribe, the most feasible way to get rid of a rampaging elephant is to destroy that animal. But Bob Parsons is not a member of an austere tribe – he is one of the richest men on the face of the planet. He is capable of gathering numerous resources that could be used to, oh, I don't know, BUILD A FUCKING FENCE. Jesus. All it takes is an electrified fence and the elephant is not going to get to the crops. Heck, Parsons has enough dough he could have flown the elephant first class to the San Diego Wildlife Reserve. I don't know, but I do know that killing the elephant and bragging about it on-line was not a great way to boost business. If I were a GoDaddy employee I would be royally pissed; particularly if I worked in customer service.

It really makes me wonder about these assorted CEOs living in their ivory towers. I mean, you get your Tony Hayward crying about how he “wants his life back” in the midst of a catastrophe that has left 11 men dead and thousands out of work – the guy is still pulling down millions and yachting to boot! Do these people have anyone around them who is even remotely grounded in reality? Aw whatever, it's enough to drive you into...

Therapy

That's right, yours truly has started seeing a therapist (I can hear a collective “about time!” out there). So far I am digging it – for an hour a week this poor man is forced to listen to me talk about myself. Really though, it is good. Left to my own devices, my thought patterns can get very circular – the therapy helps me straighten some of those paths out a little bit. If you're thinking about doing it, go for it – the stigma is long gone on this one. Happy sailing!

madbob@madbob.com

Let's Talk About Sex

2011-03-30T09:48:00.000-07:00

I hate talking about sex – I really do. I am forty years old, have been married for over eleven years, and sex still scares and confuses the hell out of me. I don’t get it. (Read that last sentence any way you want.) No but seriously – there are so many ways you can have sex – and I am not talking about positions. There is emotionally attached sex, emotionally devoid sex, sex for fun, pleasure, pain, hate, humiliation. Sex can be used to boost, or tear down the ego.

For myself, sex has always had strong emotions attached to it – but then there are times when it has not. I’ll tell you this: the best sex I have had is with a partner I love and also like; but that doesn’t mean I haven’t had some very good sex with a person I barely know, or with a person I don’t even like very much. Then of course there is the classic adage: “Crazy fuck is a good fuck.” There is some truth to the statement. There is something to be said for a partner that is wild and uninhibited, or someone who is working through their chaotic emotions through the act of intercourse. So bizarre.

Sex is scary. There are a lot of physical negatives that sex can bring about – abortions, disease, unwanted pregnancy; and there are loads of emotional negatives that can accompany the act as well. It can cause shame, anguish, self-loathing. Sex can be debasing. But there is something alluring about being debased; hence our fascination with the drug addicts and the rock and rollers – people who have the ability, the folly, or the guts to transmute to the level of beasts. I have, on occasion, gone out of my way to have a sexual experience that debased me, solely for the sake of being debased.

I’m not a notch on the bedpost guy, but that is probably because I don’t have many notches on my bedpost. If I had a hundred notches, maybe I’d be advocating for the thrill of the conquest – heck, if I had thirty notches… Admittedly though, that thrill of new flesh is very strong and very exciting.

I don’t know – there are those out there capable of compartmentalizing the emotions that accompany an intimate act like sex: porn stars and prostitutes come to mind. They compartmentalize out of necessity. Then there are the swingers and the free-lovers who actively choose to divorce the intimacy from the act. I don’t know if I could ever do that – I don’t know if I would want to. I mean, sure, jealousy and possessiveness are negative emotions that can come with attachment; but being able to exclusively love and trust someone you are intimate with is a wonderful feeling.

Anyway, what do I know? Not a damn thing really. I guess my advice would have to be this: find a partner you really like, really love, and who is a little bit crazy. Hey, it works for me!

madbob@madbob.com

Love Conquers All And Sometimes Chaos Prevails over Order

2011-03-30T09:45:00.000-07:00

I’m going crazy these days with the packing and the cleaning, the paperwork, and the general stress of moving from one location to another. Unfortunately the news lately isn’t giving me much respite from the ungodly process. I’m writing this just a few days after the mass shooting that took place in Tucson, Arizona. An apparently crazed gunman, Jared Loughner, used a converted automatic pistol to gun down over a dozen people – six of whom were killed. Nine were injured including Arizona Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, who was shot point-blank in the head. As of this writing, Giffords is alive and in critical condition, breathing on her own in a medically induced coma. My thoughts today are with the victims of this tragic event, and their families.

Immediate speculation following the shooting blamed right wing extremism. This seems to be proving false; Loughner is being described as a apolitical, and potentially disturbed by women who have rejected him. He may have had contact with Giffords going back to 2007. Politics probably had nothing to do with this event.

This being said, I don’t fault people who have tried to connect this shooting to politics – and specifically to the firebrand rhetoric of former Vice-Presidential candidate Sarah Palin. Palin had featured Giffords on a map of political targets – people Palin wanted to see removed from office. That map drew criticism when it was released on Palin’s FaceBook page; including an ominous statement from Giffords herself that: “words have consequences.”

The human brain is hard-wired to make connections. We don’t like disorder. The idea of a crazed gunman acting out on totally esoteric instincts is difficult for us to handle. We want reason, we crave order. Unforunately for Palin her rhetoric and actions provided a compelling trail of evidence. Her map, which featured what could arguably be rifle sites focused on the targeted politicians, coupled with her pro-gun rhetoric (phrases such as “Don’t retreat, reload!”) caused many to leap to the conclusion that this maniac must have been influenced by that rhetoric.

So we learn yet again not to jump to conclusions. Sometimes a duck is not a duck, in spite of the quacking and the flapping. Interestingly Ronald Reagan was also shot by an apolitical would-be assassin. John Hinckley Jr. tried to gun down the Republican President not because he was a left-wing extremist, but rather because he was in love with actress Jodie Foster; and his assassination attempt was a grand gesture to try and gain her affection. It turns out that love, and conversely hate, are more powerful than politics.

I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately. I spend a lot of time squabbling about politics; arguing back and forth about this policy or that law. I’m steadily starting to come to the conclusion that politics are just about meaningless when it comes down to the reality of our daily existences. If we want change, it doesn’t come from Congress; if we want hope, it doesn’t come from the President. It comes from that face staring back at you from the mirror.

madbob@madbob.com

Midnight Confessions and Buying the Farm

2011-03-30T09:42:00.000-07:00

My name is Bob Howard and I have a confession to make. I (pause) am a (deep, drawn out sigh accompanied by shoulder shrug) hoarder (drop head to chest). I didn’t realize this until Trish and my recent move from our residence in South Chico to our new home/farm in Los Molinos. You would have thought the fact that I had to high-step through my garage to get from one side to another would have clued me in, but I am fairly stubborn when it comes to admitting my own faults and flaws. During the move though, my problem became undeniable. After about 14 round trips in my truck and a couple more with not only my truck, but a 14 foot panel truck, a full-sized pick-up truck, and another full-sized pick-up truck towing a flatbed trailer, we managed to move nearly everything out of our house, garage, and root cellar/basement. In the process we managed to fill up another house, a massive shop, and part of an open pole barn. The place is full-up – unbelievable. The only saving grace is the fact that I no longer have to high-step through the shop – I had enough foresight to lay out some narrow pathways in between the stacks of boxes.

As a result of this move I don’t really know what’s been going on for the last few weeks. I know the play-offs are happening, and somebody told me whose going to be playing in the league championship games, but I’m not going to try and guess whose going to play in the Super Bowl. If anybody gave me even odds I would have bet my house on the Saints defeating the Seattle Seahawks, and that about tells you how proficient I can be at betting football games. I think I was 1 and 3 during the first week of the playoffs. I heard the Patriots are out, taken down by the unlikely Jets. I’d like to see a ring on LaDanian Tomlinson’s hand some day.

I have no idea what’s been happening in the news; I haven’t even had a chance to glance at CNN or Drudge – my usual news source staples. NPR this morning was reporting on political fencing. I tend to take that as a sign that nothing really tragic has happened in the last few days – so that’s good.

So I live on a farm now – 10 acres complete with a creek, wild oak trees; and I’m informed by our neighbor that we have some coyotes that roam the property during the winter; then strike out for higher ground during the hotter months. I’ve dug a few holes and Trish has put our first few plants in the ground, and I’ve even had a moment or two to sit by the creek and suck down a cold beer. But nothing has really set in yet; the adrenaline is still flowing and my mind is scattered.

I am anticipating a restful night of sleep sometime in the near future. I’m hoping for it – because I could really use it.

madbob@madbob.com

Fall from Innocence

2011-03-30T09:40:00.000-07:00

I am learning that reclusive author J.D. Salinger, author of “Catcher in the Rye,” carried with him the first six chapters of his novel with him when he landed on Normandy Beach during World War Two. At the time he hadn’t come up with the title of the book and referred to it as “my Holden Caufield novel.” Apparently Salinger’s master-work was shaped and informed by the horrifying events he witnessed and lived through during the “Great War.” This is from a recent biography of the author, who died just about a year ago, written by Kenneth Slawenski. Interestingly, prior to writing this biography, Slawenski’s primary literary claim to fame was maintaining a blog on J.D. Salinger called “Dead Caufields” (deadcaufields.com).

Salinger’s story of the bitter and scalded Holden Caufield and his struggle to emerge from adolescence into adult-hood is one of the few novels I actually read during my sentence in the public education system. Most of the books, my hormonal, forming brain couldn’t get into, couldn’t wrap around. I’ve since gone back and read a lot of those books we were supposed to read, and a lot of them are really good and worth reading; but at the time, my brain couldn’t hold onto and understand he words. Holden though, that acerbic, sarcastic, vulgar voice – I could definitely get my head around that one. I still think of the final image of the book – Holden trying desperately to keep the children from going over the edge of the cliff – often, maybe on a monthly basis.

The Emergence of the “New Media”

The blogosphere is quickly becoming the new media. Some people are mystified by this shift away from trained journalists and towards “citizen journalists” who are not compelled by any particular code of ethics. I heard one fashion blogger today talking about her ethics essentially being composed of her duty to her readership. But what is that duty? Accurate information? Or entertainment? And is this really very much different than the current, ratings-based system of commercial television news?

Myself I welcome the shift. For one thing maybe it will get the far right-wingers to stop whining about the “liberal media.” Get over it already. On top of that the expanding blogosphere will, at least in the short-term, break down and disseminate the sources of information. I believe strongly in de-centralization of power: the closer we are to the sources of power, the more influence and access we have on it and to it. This break-down of the traditional media sources; the newspapers, print magazines, and television news broadcasts; affords us with an opportunity to rise up and form our own organizations. Knowledge is power, language is power, information is power. When we get that power from some media conglomerate we are removed from that power and we have no influence over it. If we can shape the power so that it is smaller, comes from more sources, acts more responsively, and comes from closer to home – then we have greater ability to use that power.

Chaos, Instability, Misogyny on a Global Scale

2011-03-30T09:39:00.001-07:00

Crazy things are afoot these days. Governments all across the Middle East are in turmoil as the citizens take to the streets to demand political reform. Tunisia and Egypt’s respective governments are already defunct and it looks like Jordan and Yemen may be following suit – while rumblings in Syria and Iran are being put down the old-fashioned way – with batons and tear gas. As usual, America is walking a fine line between ideals and total hypocrisy. We gave a sort of quasi-support to the Egyptian people and a whole-hearted “heck yeah!” to the citizens of Iran – while our response to the protests in Yemen and Jordan has been much more muted. Of course in those countries the governments tend to side with America, while the citizens, well, not necessarily so. Hence the tepid response in Egypt as well.

Like everyone else I am curious to see how all of this shakes out. Democracy is dicey business. Even here in the States where we’ve supposedly been practicing the stuff for over a couple of centuries we seem to get handed a phony bill of sale more often than not.

Not “Sexual Assault” – Rape

My thoughts and prayers right now are with CBS News correspondent Lara Logan, who was apparently attacked, beaten, and raped by a mob of “celebrating” Egyptians after the fall of Mubarak. Maybe it’s too soon to be writing about this – most of the media is staying away from the story and for good reasons of privacy and decorum. Myself I shudder at the thought. My hope for Logan is a speedy recovery, but it’s going to be a weird one, played out in the public eye. My hope for the rest of us is that her ordeal sparks a lengthy and long-overdue discussion on the treatment of women both in the Middle East and around the world. The plight of women and children in some parts of the Middle East has troubled me ever since reports of the Taliban’s cruel and draconian enforcement of Sharia law made the news a few years before 911. Since our invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan even more disturbing reports have continuously seeped out of that region. Granted some of it may be propaganda – but there is too much to chalk up entirely to the whims of government-sanctioned media bias. From the mandatory burkas to the stoning of teen “adulteresses” to the systematic molestation of “dancing boys” revealed in leaked military documents – there appears to be a sinister, misogynistic culture in place in much of the Middle East. I don’t mean to give the U.S. a pass – we certainly have our issues too – but at the very least people are not beating and raping journalists in the streets.

I don’t understand this – I mean, a rapist who takes something so personal from someone else – that scars the women for sure, but it must scar the rapist as well. There must be a hardening of the heart and soul that takes place, or has taken place, that allows someone to carry out that kind of action.

Dehumanization, I guess. Isn’t that the story again and again? Xenophobia – the fear of the other. Segregate, stereotype, dehumanize, attack. A tried and true series of tactics used throughout the ages to perpetrate inhuman acts of violence and aggression against otherwise ordinary citizens. Where does it come from? Why? Any ideas?

madbob@madbob.com

Winning and Losing

2011-03-30T09:35:00.000-07:00

Two Consecutive Championship Titles

First and foremost I want to congratulate Nashon Garrett on his second consecutive California State wrestling championship. Garrett won the title as a junior in the 103 pound weight class, and this year took the 119 pound title. This is an amazing accomplishment. To understand just how impressive Garrett’s consecutive championship wins are you need to know a little bit about California wrestling.

Most states divide their championships into divisions; so you may end up with three or four different champions in the same weight class. California throws all the wrestlers into one tournament; the winner in each weight class is the single champion for the entire state. Add to that the fact the overall population of the state and the competitiveness within the wrestling community, and the odds of winning one championship, let alone two consecutive titles, are slim. A wrestler who makes it to the California state championships needs to make weight, stay healthy and bring their A-game. Apparently Garrett did all this and more, as he defended his title in dominating fashion. I watched his final against Josh Rodriguez from Rhigetti High; Garrett won the match 5-0 by using a combination of skill, strength, quickness, and probably most importantly, incredible endurance. That final was a clinic in focus and toughness.

A wrestling match is broken up into three two-minute rounds – a total of six minutes. That may not sound like much if you haven’t wrestled, but let me tell you, those are the longest six minutes you will ever experience. A wrestling match is a constant struggle that uses every muscle in the body. To get an idea of the experience you might try doing a combination of push-ups, pull-ups, rope climbing, and jumping jacks, for six minutes straight, with a ten second break every two minutes.

My Own Private Purgatory

Myself I did a little wrestling in high school. I might have been the polar opposite of Garrett, who seems to have a genuine passion for the sport. I was talked into it my sophomore year by a friend of mine who promptly quit the squad. Wrestling for me is a form of purgatory. If I die and end up in that ambivalent state of being, I am sure it will look a lot like a wrestling tournament. There was so much about that sport I did not enjoy, from weighing in, to the between match jitters, to actually taking to the mat. I guess you could say I hated the sport; but I suffer from a streak of loyalty, and so I couldn’t bring myself to quit on the coach and the team.

I’ll tell you what though, that sport helped to make me who I am. It is the purest form of competition – two people in the ring, one winner. No teams, no special gear, no gloves; out there on the mat you win or lose on the basis of your own merits and talents. You can share your successes with your team-mates and your coaches, but when you lose, you lose on your own.

madbob@madbob.com

Reason?

2011-03-30T09:30:00.000-07:00

“He who makes a beast of himself forgets the pain of being a man.”

-Hunter S. Thompson (RIP)

Please be forewarned – I am writing this on my birthday. Birthday’s, for me, are not joyous, happy occasions. They aren’t depressing, suicidal affairs – but they are tinged with melancholy, loss, and heartache. I am always glad when they come, and even more so when they go. So if you are looking for positive, uplifting rhetoric, this probably won’t be the week for you. Anyway, onward and inward.

I have a good friend I converse with on occasion who happens to be a devout Catholic – so much so that he is currently studying to enter into the priesthood. We got into a discussion recently about whether or not animals are capable of reason. I was arguing that they are. My examples included the ability of chimpanzees to manufacture tools they use for fishing termites; and the fact that both elephants and chimpanzees mourn their dead. But I think my friend is on the right side of the argument; I’m not sure if animals are capable of reason. They understand how to do things, and they understand their feelings; but reason requires asking “why?” Why do the termites live in that log? Why do we die? Ultimately why are we here? Animals have no reason for reason. They don’t have to ask why they are here; they just are – and that is enough.

Humans on the other hand, we have a lot of good reasons for asking why we are here – because our existence in this weird, semi-hairless, big-brained, dim-witted form raises more questions than answers. Other animals are part of the natural order of things – every creature in its place in the chain of life and death. But we manipulate, we excavate, we desecrate and destroy all that is around us. We exert our will onto the earth and we exploit her and the rest of her creatures for everything they are worth. Most of the good things we do on this planet are for the benefit or entertainment of other humans. Eventually, now that we have wreaked so much havoc on the natural order, there are those amongst us working to the benefit of the planet and her creatures. But even these noble souls, at humanity’s very best, are only trying to undo the damage we have already done. The animal shelter is for the domestic animals we have recklessly allowed to breed, without considering how they will be taken care of. The animal sanctuary is for the creatures who have managed to escape from our factory-modeled food systems. Those who reforest only patch the work done by the exploiters who came before them. We are a parasite.

My Catholic friend says we were put on this planet to admire God’s creation – that He created this beautiful world and then realized there was no one to appreciate it. My friend also won’t concede that we have overpopulated the planet. He says: “the problem isn’t overpopulation – the problem is greed.” Again, he’s right – but I have to remind him that we live here on Earth, and while we are allegedly capable of reason, we apparently haven’t learned how to use it yet.

Madbob@madbob.com

Fierce Winds and Satanic Rites

2011-03-30T09:07:00.000-07:00

There is a hell of a wind blowing across the North State today. The reports say gusts could reach 70 miles per hour. Across the world different kinds of winds are blowing through the Middle East. There is some kind of mess going on in Libya now, with the United Nations implementing some kind of helter-skelter “no-fly zone.” Apparently the mandate is to protect civilians, not to support the rebels who seek to overthrow the government of long-time dictator and certified whackadoodle Moamar Quadafy. Quadafy (who

m I often confuse in photos with psychedelic guitar god Carlos Santana) has been ruling Libya for the past 40 years. During the 1980’s, then President Ronald Reagan, referred to Quadafy as the “mad dog of the Middle East.” There was a tremendous amount of anti-Quadafy sentiment here in the United States. I was in high school at the time and I recall clearly when a friend of mine showed up to school wearing a t-shirt with a print of Quadafy’s face in rifle crosshairs. The caption on the shirt read: “Get Quadafy – Waste Him Now!” No one even batted an eye.

Those were slightly different times though. Another friend, Mark, regularly wore a shirt with the Coca-Cola label on it that read “Enjoy Cocaine.” Event

ually the school caught on to all the “Just Say No” bullshit that Reagan’s wife Nancy was spouting and sent Mark home to change his shirt. Nowadays they’d probably label both my old friends as terrorists and suspend them from school forever. Times they are a changing. While folks in the Middle East are rising up against tyrannical governments, civil rights here in the United States are being consistently curtailed in favor of corporate interests and the omnipresent excuse of “security.”

Security

What a joke. Forty thousand people die in car acc

idents every year. The terrorists who pulled off the 911 job did a hell of a job and managed to kill nearly 3,000 Americans in one shot. Horrific, by any stretch – but now we are ten years removed and since then we haven’t had a meaningful attack on American soil. I am not convinced this is due to the fact that we are putting old ladies through invasive body searches and eavesdropping on American citizens phone conversations.

Ah anyway, who cares about all that? We live here in Northern California. Drink a beer, pop a pill, smoke a joint and forget about all that craziness out there. We’ve got the food, the water, the good looking, natural women. There is no place on this Earth I would rather be in these weird times than right where we are.

Witch Dick

Oh, and sorry about that bummer trip I laid down last week. My mid-life crisis is tempering – I’m going to channel the negatives into focus and get to work. That’s really the best we can do I think. On that note – I want to end this column by telling you to go out and see With Dick if you get a chance. This two-person act is one of the most original and interesting I’ve seen in a long time. The last I saw them Tim and Kenny were dressed in nuns’ habits with their bearded faces painted jet black. The Satanic imagery accompanies a music that is dirge and driving. The whiskey makes it all work out even better.

madbob@madbob.com

The Palace of the Fool

2010-02-06T22:58:00.000-08:00

The power is back on and I am up and running. Oh man, the last few weeks have beaten me up, but what's new? So a lot has been going on as I've been lost and grieving the loss of my sweet old puppy. Apparently Haiti almost got knocked right off of the map. I am absolutely amazed at how cynically people can spin an immense tragedy. Pat Robertson has apparently come out and said that Haiti was hit by a magnitude 7.0 earth quake because the people of Haiti made a “pact with the devil.” Are you serious Pat Robertson? You really believe that nonsense?

Fear-Based Logic

I get Pat Robertson though, I understand where he is coming from. Pat Robertson is patently afraid to die. Most of us are, I suppose; but Robertson's fear of death is exaggerated and extreme. This is the basis for loads of religious fervor. You are terribly afraid of dying, and so you have to set up in your mind a reason that other people die. The logic is, that if you follow just the right path, you might be able to avoid dying. Of course, no one's managed to do it yet; but that's beside the point. People like Pat Robertson have to condemn massive tragedy as based upon wickedness, or else the Robertsons of the world would have to admit that there may not be “divine providence.” The world might just run on plain old chaos, random probability, and luck. Of course, the Robertsons of the world are incoherent anyway; they bless a child who dies and condemn a teenager. A woman who dies at 92 has lived a good life, while a man who dies in his 40's must have done something to bring about this awful, premature demise: he must've danced with the devil.

Save it Robertson, everyone gets theirs. It doesn't matter what you or Mother Teresa or Alister Crowley has to say on the matter. Truth is truth and death is inescapable.

Forgive Them, They Know Not What They Say

I had someone else tell me that the reason so many Haitians were killed in a magnitude 7.0 earth quake is because “they are dumb.” He was referring to the building codes and regulations. I wonder if he's ever given a thought as to what might happen in just about any Mid-Western town if a 7.0 earth quake were to strike. I wonder if he considered that there hadn't been a major quake in Haiti since the late 1700's.

I heard this same kind of logic applied to the people who suffered through the flooding in New Orleans after Katrina struck. I was told they were “too dumb to get out before the hurricane hit; too lazy to walk out of town.” Frankly Pat Robertson's idea makes more sense to me than this – what, an entire city, or country, is only occupied by people too dumb to make a proper building or too lazy to walk out of town in the event of a terrible flood? No, there has to be more to it than this.

I get tired of this nonsense. The simple fact is that luck plays a greater role in all of our lives than we ever give credit. Right now the weather is howling outside – out power was down for 5 hours today and many residents and businesses are still in the dark. That's nothing, a run of the mill storm; and our town and our buildings are made to weather these kinds of storms. We'll be fine. But you know the weather is changing. I don't care of you believe in global warming or not; if you don't believe in change you're a fool – it's the only thing you can count on. Things will change – temperate zones will become dramatic, where the Earth once stood still it will shake, rattle and roll.

So what are you going to do? There isn't much you can do. Wear death on your sleeve, keep it in your pocket. Let death be your companion and your advisor. Let every decision you make be tempered by the knowledge that you might not be here tomorrow. Like your grandma might have said, you could be hit by a bus. You might be sucked off to Oz in a tornado. You might be crushed under a stack of Marshall amplifiers. It doesn't matter, there isn't anything you can do about it. Don't live in fear, like Pat Robertson, and those of his ilk – always searching for the reason that other people die.

My brain's a ball of mush, but I know that Pat Robertson is an ass; and instead of looking for the reasons other people die, he ought to be wondering why he's alive. I don't mean that like it sounds, I am talking to myself as much as anyone here. What are we doing with this strange, sometimes beautiful, sometimes horrifying life we have been given?

madbob@madbob.com

Chewing on God's Couch

2010-01-13T20:18:00.000-08:00

Last Monday night I had to put my older dog Pooh Pooh, a.k.a. Gummo, a.k.a. Campeón, a.k.a. Long Dog, to sleep. The years of frenetic, constant movement had finally eroded his wheels to a point where he had a lot of trouble getting around; even standing up was hard on the old guy. It was the hardest, saddest decision I’ve ever had to make. It would have been really easy to justify keeping him around, but it would have been selfish.

His last day was a good day. We fed him a lot and loved him up. He seemed in pretty good spirits, even playing around a little bit. It was a contrast to how he’d been acting for weeks before – anxious, scared, and confused. It was good to see him having a good day, and that much harder to take him down and do what I knew had to be done.

Pooh has been with me for the better part of 12 years. He lived with me in an apartment in Los Feliz and traveled north with me when we came to Chico to live with Trish. He was a wild dog – but we didn’t know it when we adopted him. Pooh had been living as a stray dog on a nursery in Los Angeles. My room mate’s dad discovered him and learned that the people at the nursery were going to send him to the pound. We got him instead. He was mangy and frail, and completely mellow. We figured that was good, because he was going to be living in a cramped apartment with three humans. It turned out he wasn’t mellow, he was dying. We got him antibiotics and good food, and every day for the next three weeks he gained more and more energy; until finally he was running figure 8 patterns through our apartment, leaping onto the furniture, and generally resembling a Tasmanian Devil or a minor hurricane. He tore up couches (multiple), chewed shoes, hats, wallets – anything he could get his mouth on. I saw him mellow one more time after he ate a bag of weed.

When I fell in love with Trish and decided to move to Chico, my room mates were thankful that I took the dog with me. It was a good move for both of us; though Trish must certainly have had her doubts initially. One of the first things Pooh did was to dig out every single flower bed in the yard; Trish had recently fertilized them with bone meal. Then he decided to use her 10 year old Bonsai tree as a chew toy.

He never really mellowed out – though over time his mania tempered slightly. Eventually he even outgrew his chewing phase, though not before taking out the seat belts in my old station wagon. Pooh was an absolutely sensitive, loving dog. He was always looking out for us, and saved Trish’s life once when she was choking.

It was hard to see him towards the end. His back legs had become almost functionless. He’s not a dog with the ability to be still. He remained constantly in motion; he would take choppy little steps with his front legs and sort of drag his hind legs behind him. Now I am struggling to remember him when he was young, fast and spry. I was talking with a friend of mine on the phone who remembered seeing Pooh run in upper Bidwell Park. He said he had never seen a dog run so fast.

Dogs are something else. On Monday I was so sad, so disturbed by the decision we’d come to and the knowledge of what I was going to do. I was upset, and there was Pooh, sensing my emotion and coming over to comfort me. The damn dog was comforting me because I was saddened by the fact that I was going to put him down.

That trip to the vet was so hard. He must’ve been reading my vibrations, because he did not want to go in. Neither did I. I held him while they administered the lethal cocktail that took his life; and then he was gone.

I’ve been drinking wine at night and so I haven’t had a chance to dream. I want to dream – I want to see that crazy, wild dog running, playing and laughing. I don’t really think there is an afterlife, but Pooh passing makes me wish there was. I can see him up in Heaven, eating God’s shoes and tearing up his couch.

Farewell my furry friend – I miss you so much.

madbob@madbob.com

Strong Medicine

2010-01-13T20:17:00.000-08:00

Ah back to the grind. I had a few weeks there where I was free of obligation. It's a strange feeling – one I don't often experience. Now it's time to jump start these writing reflexes and get things going one more time. Luckily, there is strong medicine for just this type of situation. So strong medicine it will be – until the scientists or the sociologists come up with something better. Maybe meditation is the key, or stretching, or masturbation without achieving ejaculation. But these are contrived, cliché, or just downright improbable feats of willpower. I won't challenge myself to that degree.

I've made no resolutions for 2010. I gave up on those a long time ago. The last resolution I did make was over a dozen years ago, when I vowed to drink more gin. That was successful – that's the benefit of setting likely goals for yourself. A self-help guru I stole some snippets from and posted on my wall says to “think win-win” and so that was a win win resolution, I managed to drink more gin and obtain a goal I had established for myself. Sometimes you have to think outside the box, and inside the bottle. Strong medicine.

Burn Ban – Framing the Debate

I get frustrated every time I hear the way the news reports the potential burn ban hear in Chico. They make it sound like its an argument between environmentalists or health advocates, and semi-rich members of the bourgeois class who simply will not do without the luxury of burning fires in their living rooms for the sheer pleasure of the combustion. We burn wood for one simple reason – because over the course of a winter, it costs about three or four times less than heating our house with gas. We're talking a savings of many hundreds of dollars, money we don't have in the first place. Yeah, I feel badly about the air pollution, but unless someone wants to supplement my gas bill, then more than likely I'm going to resist any bad on burning. This isn't an issue of freedom of expression, or the government infringing on personal liberty – it is plain and simple economics 101. Wood costs less than gas.

Plus, I can't help but think about the “not in my backyard” aspect of this argument. Here the whole community is continually talking about keeping it local, and we are surrounded by orchards and forests, and yet we're getting our heating gas piped in from God knows where; and God only knows what the people with the gas mines in their communities have to deal with, in terms of environmental contamination.

Paving the Way

Thirty year old heiress Casey Johnson passed away last Monday. She was the heiress to the Johnson and Johnson empire, and allegedly was engaged to Internet fame glutton Tila Tequila. Johnson once sited her turning down of the co-starring role in Paris Hilton's quasi-reality show “The Simple Life” as the greatest mistake of her own life. I don't mean to downplay the significance or the tragedy of Ms. Johnson's death – it's a genuine shame. There is always a tendency amongst the youth to glamorize an early death, and the older I get, the sadder I find that. I get it – when you're a certain age, you don't think you'll ever be middle-aged or older, it just doesn't make sense. I get it, but it just makes me sad, the waste of it all. I mean, if there is any reason to this chaotic, crazy existence, I can't help but think that reason has to be to clear a path, cut through some resistance, and just try and make things a little less cruel for those who follow you. We break ice with our lives – we clear detritus from old paths, or forge new ones. So live as long as you can contribute something to those who will follow; and pay attention to those who have gone before you.

Wrapping Things Up

I am currently wearing a sweet Winston Cup Racing jacket a friend of mine gave me for Christmas. It's an absolutely amazing garment. It's light-weight, but warmer than anything I own. It must be made of some crazy 70's asbestos or something. We've got the fire burning and Trish is making fettuccine Alfredo – or, I think that's the name of it. It's a new year, my fingers still seem to work, and my brain isn't any deader than it was two weeks ago. Things are looking up.

madbob@madbob.com

2010 Here We Come!

2010-01-13T20:16:00.000-08:00

Phew. Made it through another one – not just a year, but a decade, and the first of a new millennium at that! In spite of myself, I have now seen the better part of four ten year spans come and go. Contrary to what some might tell you, I'm not convinced yet that things get any easier. Enough of that though – this is a moment of optimism and potential. A whole new span of time sits open and beckoning to us, waiting to see what we will make of it.

I limped out of that last epoch, and now it is time to regenerate the creative juices, muster energy, and move forward with decisiveness and purpose. I see 2010 as a year of bounding creativity and joy. New pathways will be opened up, different ways of thinking, the world will no longer appear in varying shades of gray, but instead in complete color saturation. Limitless opportunity will be the starting gun, and realized potential the end result, for those who don't allow themselves to be bogged down in the matrix of distraction and defeatism. I can already feel psychic muscles starting to stretch out, warm up, and relax. Smooth, confident action will get it done.

Updates...

Anyway, I don't have time for updates. Updates, it's like every single day there is a new update. How does anyone have time for it all? Do they? Does anyone update as much as we are meant to be updating? According to the powers that be? The voices that percolate from my... I feel time running out. I feel time running out as fast as I feel the need for something to happen to happen. It is a race to the finish. Either it happens, it manifests, and things go on; or it doesn't, and they don't. These are the times we live in.

I enjoy writing – but the events, and the powers that be: the politics, and the history, and the patterns I continue to expel, expunge, and expurgate – man, they start to tire me out in a serious way. The damned word processor is always trying to guess the words I intend to put down, the increments between pay-checks just get longer and longer, and no one ever complains about the diminishing quality of the writing. It makes one start to wonder. Couple that with increasing isolation, continued paranoia, and an awareness of encroaching impotence, and things start to get very disquieting. Tonight I have exercised incredible common sense, and sensibility, in realizing that more hard alcohol was probably not going to take me down the best path. Instead, I am only nursing a solid three day buzz with diluted beer, clamato juice, and hot sauce. They want me to act like the year is over, when the egg nog is still... right... there – in front of my face, and teasing me like a Moldavian mail-order bride – the kinds you can find if you know the right key words. There are no mysteries anymore – are there? God, when I was a kid, you had to practically commit a felony in order to see what a vagina looked like. I once dug up a friend's pornography – he had literally buried it underground. He showed me where he'd buried it and I dug it up with a shovel. I used to relish my bi-weekly trips to the barber because he had Playboy Magazines – airbrushed bush and not a clue what really lurked there between a woman's legs. Now the great mysteries are all a Google search away. I don't know – I was trying to keep this thing positive, but it is heading in a decidedly neutral direction.

I used to dream about things I couldn't understand. I understand a lot now – a lot more than I ever used to, back then, a million years ago. Our Declaration of Independence inscribes our inherent right to the pursuit of happiness. It represents a tectonic shift in human consciousness. But it doesn't guarantee us the right to be happy, only the right to pursue that which might make us happy – to choose, of our own volition, to follow those paths that might possibly lead us to that Shangri-La, Eden, Paradise. Our founding fathers had the wisdom to suggest to us, a few hundred years, give or take, down the road, that we might be able to manifest that world reserved for those who have passed from this life, here, in this life, while we shall live. People could only imagine a state of being we, you, I might actually live to experience. So, yeah, I guess I might have gone a little silly in the navigation there – but I think this thing is starting to turn and move in a positive direction.

madbob@madbob.com

Bunch of posts

2009-12-24T08:28:00.000-08:00

I've just finished posting a bunch of old and new columns on the old Blog here - some of these have already been printed, and others will be coming out shortly. Anyway, these are in no particular order, so you may notice they skip around in time. What do you expect? It's a free website! Enjoy, and if I don't post anything here before 2010, Happy New Year! Hope it's a great one for you and yours.

- MadBob Howard

2009 - Adios and Good Riddance!

2009-12-24T08:26:00.000-08:00

2009 has been one stinker of a year. It started out with a lot of promise and aplomb, but as events wheedled their ways along it seems to have ended with more of a whimper, or a whine, than a bang. In fact, on a more personal level, the year has ended with a good solid kick in the crotch. I can taste my testicles. Some years are like that, the bar has to be set somewhere. Anyway, the main point of this is that I will not be displeased when 2009 ticks away into the history books. Of course there is no guarantee that 2010 will be any better, but what the hell? You take a roll of the dice every time you drag your sorry ass out of the bed.

Come to think of it, this entire damned decade has been about as wonderful as a cactus turned inside out and used for an artificial vagina. First some little pissant apparently steals an election, rides around on a golf cart for nine months, the Twin Towers get knocked down by 19 assholes from Saudi Arabia, and ever since then it's been one war after another. That same little son of a gun goes on TV and tells everyone to keep spending all that money they don't have so our phoney-baloney, credit driven, consumer economy can keep running so the folks sitting at the top can keep skimming off their cut. He compresses interest rates to a point where you can't reasonably resist buying with money you don't have; and then the banks, in their infinite wisdom, decide it's a great idea to start lending sizable chunks of change to people who can't possibly pay it back so they can buy houses they can't possibly afford. This creates a housing bubble that screws just about everyone, just about everywhere, in the world Way to go American lenders! Way to go!

Of course, none of the economic gurus are complaining when their house's value is going up 25% a year for five years straight – hey, no, nothing out of the ordinary there! We are just super fantastic investors with big, capable brains – never mind the hair on our knuckles and nuts, we are advanced goddamnit, advanced!

Now we have Obama, who wants to give himself an A-minus if this bullshit, health care, nothing bill manages to get ram-rodded through Congress. I'd like to see something pass in order for us to have something to change, because this particular package is not likely to help many of us at all. It has been so watered down that Howard Dean is on the record seeing it needs to be scrapped, start again, mulligan. What is going on around here? When are people going to come to their senses and realize that the folks in Washington, be they well-intentioned or not, just aren't capable of steering a ship this large. It is getting to a point where it is too big not to fail. We need to step back, shift power away from the power centers, and start letting the people have a say in this whole system again. It's no amazing coincidence that Obama seems to have been sucked up by the system so quickly. They call it a system for a reason – it exists all by itself. There is not much that a single person, even one as powerful as the President of the United States, can do to change it. These Frankenstein monsters tend to have minds of their own. War, special interests, corruption, money – welcome to the status quo. The President doesn't answer to you and me. That was out of style before it was ever in.

So yeah, you can take 2009, you can take the whole damned decade. I won't miss it much. We've had our moments, but all things considered I wish this pain emanating from my groin and arching into my solar plexus would, at the very least, begin to subside. This is the situation I am talking about – the state of being that requires the creamy, white, helliday lubrication that is egg nog. Son of a bitch! This is necessary!

There is blood everywhere. You don't need special lenses to see it. The stuff is oozing from the walls, from the floorboards, out of the heating ducts. With your eyes closed you can smell the coppery goop. I don't know how we've made it this far. I don't know why we keep living and breathing. We are strange, strong creatures – maybe stronger, and definitely stranger than we have a right to be. The nog is kicking in, the nog is kicking in. Oh come on egg nog, rum, magic. I need that dull feeling, I can tell it's coming on, it's starting to overcome me – just... about... now...................................................

madbob@madbob.com

Happy Birthday to You

2009-12-24T08:24:00.000-08:00

Sometimes things happen much faster than they ought to. Oftentimes the drunkest person in the house is the one who takes that last drink. Clearly you need it more than they do, but that has nothing to do with it at the time. Things like that happen with alarming regularity.

Dogs bark. Stating those simple truths, the things you know that you know – this can help you through the trying times. Why else do you think prayer would be sited as such an effective exercise? All kinds of people swear by it. There is not one single solitary drink in my house right now. It's not even nine o'clock – but it's Sunday, and I don't feel like going out. I really don't want to leave right now. The fire is going, it's dark, and cold – I just want to stay in here and finish doing the things I need to do.

I get tired; we all get tired. Birthdays will leave you tired. I have had birthdays during which I felt wise, and arrived. That feeling will dissipate. The older you get, you will vividly remember those times when you feel wise – that's how rare they are. There is nothing more annoying that these early 20-something year olds, who think that, through some magical endowment, they have figured out so much more than the rest of us; and they figured it so much faster. They don't know much – and I know even less. That's my edge. Anyone who thinks they know anything is a fool.

You ask for this drivel on a Sunday night, after the rum, and the nog, and the coffee, beer, and wine – this is what you are going to get. I do not make the rules. These things were set in motion a long time ago by beings more together than you or I will ever be.

We are halfway there. Is it still Sunday? This is the day they told me these things must be done. Cryptic language can probably be blamed for 20% of what ilks the world. Natural disaster accounts for 3, and human nature makes up the other 77%. We are strange, fussy monkeys. People who have thought on human nature have advised me not to think of it at all. That kind of exploration can leave you feeling under-confident for your next date.

Try to ignore you birthday, but if that becomes impossible, then confront the beast head-first. People enjoy a spectacle. A birthday is like a sacrifice. It's improbable that we are alive to have birthdays in our honor, so a sacrifice is not entirely futile. These things happen.

Have I mentioned to you that there is not a single drink in this house at the moment? There might be a half-beer left somewhere, and I may endeavor to track it down. That's where we stand right now. Not pretty.

Between your birthday, and the time this comes out, we will have celebrated Thanksgiving. This is honestly my favorite holiday. No matter how crap your life may be, there is always something for which to be thankful. It's back to the whole improbable nature of this... scenario? I can't find the word. You know what I mean. It's Sunday night, and I don't usually even start thinking about this business until Tuesday; but it's your birthday, so for you I will push things forward. There is a natural order to events, but sometimes we meddle with the natural order, and push things forward, or backward, or from one side to the other. This can work out well, badly, or indifferently.

You know, if we didn't expect anything, we'd never suffer disappointment. What is going on around here? Man, I am reaching for it tonight. This may require a trip to the liquor store – except that I think we're making progress without it. Just a glass of water might do the trick.
On my best birthday, I felt as though a fog had lifted. For maybe the first time, I felt like I had figured some things out; and that I was starting to get a handle on the world, and my place within it. It was a really good feeling. That feeling went away really fast.
Whatever you think you might know, you could think that's wrong by this time tomorrow. Stimulus will be injected into your brain by life's events. The best thing I can figure is just be happy that you have a birthday; and be happy, and thankful, when another one comes around, and you're still with it enough to enjoy it and have a good time.

madbob@madbob.com

Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is...

2009-12-24T08:19:00.000-08:00

“Brother if I stepped on a worn out dime, I bet a nickel I could tell you if it's heads or tails.”
-Hank Williams Sr.

Giving up on Trickling Down

Well I just heard a report that the infamous insurance agency AIG has been issuing massive bonuses to their executives – their profits fueled by a $180 billion tax-payer hand-out. Wow. I don't really know what to say about that. I will say this – we've been dicking around with this “trickle-down” economic theory since Ronald Reagen was in office back in the 1980's and every year it gets more difficult for working class Americans to make their ends meet. Bail-outs aside, all these folks who decry the government paying out welfare or giving medical aid to the poor never seemed to issue so much as a peep at the tax-breaks, subsidies, and grants enjoyed by big businesses. I get the premise of trickle-down policies – give money to the wealthy and they will generate jobs that will employ the rest of us. I just don't think that premise translates into reality. People and businesses don't grow rich by spending their money – they maintain wealth by holding onto money. In turn, I'm well convinced that if the government had taken that bail-out money and put it right back into the pockets of the working class Americans, that money would have immediately been put back into the economy. The reason for this is that working class people have to spend money – not on yachts or servants, but on food and clothing. People have got to eat and pay their gas bills.

Burn Ban

Speaking of gas bills, the Chico City Council seems to be embroiled in an on-going debate over whether or not to ban burning, either via wood stove or fireplace, on certain days of the year when the air quality is poor. I'm ambivalent about this idea: on the one hand I agree with the notion that we need to be doing everything we can to improve air quality. On the other hand, relative to wood, gas is extremely expensive! There are a lot of folks who are burning wood, and it isn't because they enjoy the nostalgic flicker and glow of a traditional fireplace – it's because with a chain-saw and an $8 permit they can cut themselves a few seasons worth of wood. Compare this with a $200 monthly PG&E bill to keep a modest house warm through the winter and you start to understand the real-world economics that a burn ban would bring to bare.
I get the idea that a lot of folks are really out of touch with those of us who just barely manage to make our ends meet – those of us who are working a wage job and scraping by, month after month, keeping our fingers crossed and hoping that the squealing dryer can make it through another year. This segment of the population isn't technically poor, they're not collecting any government benefits and they pay their taxes year in and year out – but there sure isn't much left in the coffers when it's all said and done. Saving $500 a year on heating costs means something tangible to those who are living on that cusp – and there are a lot of them; us.

Wal-Mart Mania

The Wal-Mart controversy is another one of these economic issues, but I think a lot of the working class aren't reading this one right. People want Wal-Mart to move in because they believe it means greater availability of cheaper goods. To me, Wal-Mart means low pay for the workers they employ. If I were Scott Greundl and the City Council, I wouldn't be telling Wal-Mart to pay a million dollars for environmental rehabilitation, I'd be telling them to promise a higher wage for their workers here in Chico. That money, the money they pay their employees, would come right back into the community – it would flow into the restaurants and local businesses.

Blame it on the Tooth Fairy

One bright spot has emerged from all of this economic gloom and doom. I have it on good authority that the Tooth Fairy is now paying between $5 and $20 per tooth! I don't know if the Tooth Fairy organization received a government bail-out or what, but by my calculations this indicates an increase of between 2000% and 8000% since I was getting a quarter per tooth from the little lady back in the middle 1970's. Cash money, off the books; losing teeth might be the best business in town these days.

madbob@madbob.com

Circles, Spirals, and Clogs

2009-12-24T08:15:00.000-08:00

Sometimes nothing flows. Right now the sink in my kitchen and the sink in the shop where I work are both clogged. Water does flow through them, but very slowly. One extraneous egg-shell or a spot of grout, and I'm down on my knees with a drill and a $25 Home Depot pipe snake for the next several hours. Cursing will ensue.

But I can't help think these clogged sinks are symptoms of a clogged spirit. Tension and tedium have combined to create a particularly sticky stasis. I just can't seem to get moving very quickly, smoothly, or even in the right direction sometimes. I still produce, but it is only through tremendous effort; and the results are not always satisfying.

A long time ago I figured out that there was an ebb and flow to things. Some cycles are so easy to pick out. Tonight the moon is almost full, and I feel like I can almost breathe. There are those surface-level, easy to identify cycles. The sun, the moon, the stars. But there are other cycles, less obvious. There are cycles nested within cycles, or spinning off of them. The whole thing acts like a pinball machine sometimes. Hundred year cycles, thousand year cycles; and, conversely, cycles that take seconds, or milliseconds, to complete.

Well I suppose we trudge onward. It's either that or just sit still and wait for this thing to pass. I prefer movement to inactivity, for the most part, even if that movement is only around and around in ever-expending circles.

I read once about a people who inhabited what is now the Northern Nevada desert. They survived in this desolate and inhospitable environment for tens of thousands of years. These people lived in caves during the night. When day broke, they would leave the caves together and walk in circles around their dwellings. With each pass around the location of their cave, the circle along which the people traveled would grow slightly larger. They foraged whatever berries and small game they could. In this way, they covered a tremendous amount of ground, without ever straying too far away from the safety and security provided by the cave. As the sun began to set, they headed in a straight line back to their cave. There, the rested and waited for the next day to break, when they would begin their circular travels again.

Most of us don't live all that differently from the Northern Nevada cave dwellers. We have a home we leave in the morning, and we spend most of our day traveling here and there, covering a lot of ground, but never getting so far away from our homes that we can't get back as the sun sets, sleep in a comfortable bed, and return to our circular travels the next morning.

Traveling along longer, straighter lines is more difficult, or rather, it requires greater courage. There are so many more uncertainties. You don't know where you are going to spend the night, or where you might awaken the next day. Everything is memorable though, because so many things are new, or in a different context, or unfamiliar. Moments are seared into the brain.
Don't be fooled though, even when we think we are traveling in straight lines, we spin. There's no avoiding it, we're on a ball. The itinerant traveler is sure to eventually acquire island fever. The Earth spins in a circle around the Sun, the Sun around some black hole, or dark matter, or who knows what? Maybe we're all being sucked into God's great anus.

I have a fondness for comets. A comet probably moves in as straight a line as any other body in this Universe. The fact that these comets return and visit us ever decade or every fifty years, or every a thousand years, reveals the circles they travel. They are longer, and stranger. What does a comet get to see? Is the comet nostalgic when it finally sees the Earth again?
People are crazy for fame these days. It strikes me as the ultimate tread-mill. I'm sure fame is an amazing high for awhile, but where do you go from there? Now you've got the monkey on your back.

Anyway – tonight is French fries, coleslaw, and leftover Thanksgiving lasagna. These are the days. The moon is nearly full, the fire is warm, I'm almost there. Now if only I had a two month supply of egg nog and rum, things would be lubricated. At least they would seem lubricated, and if they weren't, I'm sure I wouldn't care.

madbob@madbob.com

The Ghosts of Winters Past and Halloween

2009-12-24T08:13:00.000-08:00

The end of October, almost November, almost December. Winter is just around the corner. From what I understand Boreal is already open for business. Years ago I spent a winter in Tahoe, picking up odd jobs and snowboarding as often as humanly possible. It was the tail end of summer, a few months after I'd finished with college and grown disenchanted, for the first time, with San Diego. I moved to the mountains and scrounged work as a bus-boy in a Tahoe City restaurant. During the fall months, before the snow and ice started to accumulate, the drive from my North Shore condo into Tahoe City was no problem; it was pleasant really. After the snow fell and ice formed, the drive became treacherous – even with a four wheel drive SUV. The bad weather meant that the resorts were finally open though, and so then I was working in the rental shop, tightening bindings and grumbling about the manager – he couldn't seem to figure out how to get us out on the mountain very much, even if we were dead slow. I never could figure him out – but I suppose the 45 year old coke addict, whose seasonal job is running the rental shop at a small-time Tahoe ski resort, was probably not graced with the innate ability to generate success. Still, it was a frustrating experience, and one that ultimately ended in confrontation, followed by termination: my own. That was alright though – after the rental shop I floated into a job as a short-order cook in a restaurant that was not as fancy as the owner wanted it to be. We prepared too much of our fare in the microwave oven; but it paid, until it didn't; and then I drifted out of the mountains and down into the Bay Area. By then it was late March.

When I worked at the resort I had a season pass, but that was taken away from me when I was fired. That was no biggie, I had an extra pass because I thought I'd lost the first one. That second pass was taken away after a girlfriend of mine tried to use it. After that I hiked up Mount Rose for my boarding pleasure and it was the best. The highlight of the winter was snowboarding under the otherworldly light of a full moon on fresh powder. It must feel something like that to be on another planet. I recommend it to everyone.

It was during those first few months in Tahoe that I seriously concentrated on writing for the first time. I spent several hours every day with a notebook and a fountain pen, and I wrote non-stop. None of it was worth a damn – I was working through a process advocated by Natalie Goldberg in a book called “Writing Down the Bones.” Goldberg calls it automatic writing, and the idea is to write so fast and steadily that your conscious brain can't keep up with your pen. It generated a lot of nonsense, but it also helped me to hack out a style of writing, and to get comfortable with it. It's a process I still work on (obviously) - but those initial three months in Tahoe were a formative experience for me.

Happy Halloween

Halloween is the holiday my wife and I really celebrate. We actually decorated the house this year, with cob webs and these bizarre skeleton garlands Trish found at the $.99 Store. They are really creepy – each garland is a series of a half dozen very realistic, six inch tall skeletons, hanging from their necks on a piece of twine that stretches from one side of a window to the other. We also have a metallic life-sized card-board skeleton, spiders, a foot tall skeleton, and a series of pumpkins that volunteered in the back yard this summer.

This time of year is my favorite. It is a tenuous, delirious time; the days grow shorter, things grow weak. I've been told that this is the time of year when the worlds of the living and the dead are in their closest proximity. It is harvest time for weed, almonds, and a host of other crop. If you listen and look carefully, you can hear and see the spirits of the dead quivering in the air. Fogs will start to accumulate in the nooks and crannies of the valley floor and the light will become rich and saturated.

Right now I am looking forward to the fall and winter months.

madbob@madbob.com

Climate Chaos, Celebrity Mayhem, and Stupefaction

2009-12-24T08:00:00.000-08:00

Leaders and activists from all over the world have converged on Copenhagen, Denmark, in order to discuss climate change and what we can do in order to keep temperatures from rising dangerously. The theory is that greenhouse gasses and carbon dioxide emissions create a layer that traps in heat and causes these unnatural and excessive global warming. As of this writing, the temperature is 25 degrees. They should consider holding these talks in the summer, here in Chico, just for dramatic effect. I saw John Stossel years ago reacting with disdain to the idea of global warming. First he argued that it wasn’t happening, and then, in one of those classic twists of logic distortion, stated that even if it was happening, what’s the big deal? He suggested that the temperatures would rise most in the coldest regions, and that the people who lived in Siberia for example, would likely appreciate the increased temperatures anyway.

The problem is bigger than temperatures of course. The issues are: rising sea levels, changing weather patterns, droughts, storms, melting polar ice caps, and so on. Personally I understand a branch of the skeptics- those who admit global warming is happening, but won’t correlate the rising temperatures with human activity. It is hard to conceive of us pesky humans actually having the capacity to screw something as large and robust as the Earth up so utterly. But experience does suggest that if humans are good at anything, it is screwing things up in a very serious way. The first town that had two automobiles, had the first automobile accident shortly thereafter. The world’s first unsinkable ship, sank to the bottom of the sea on its maiden voyage. The Hindenberg, the atomic bomb, the leaning tower of Piza, eviction from the Garden of Eden, the Tower of Babel, the twin towers… Our collective ego is the only thing greater than our ability to erect and construct – that and our incredible myopia.

Celebrity Mayhem

Holly Sampson

I try not to focus too much on the celebrity nonsense, but Tiger Woods, wow. His life is screwed up now to be sure, but for awhile there apparently he was paid billions of dollars to play golf and sleep with a wide variety of different women. When he wasn’t knocking his balls into holes on the golf course, he was just doing it with waitresses, models, a porn star, a newscaster, and one “sex-crazed cougar” from Great Britain. What a life. Now it looks like the bill has finally arrived in the mail. This morning a blond woman was taken from Tiger Woods’ Florida home in an ambulance to the hospital. I hope nothing too terrible happens there.

Alexa Ray Joel, daughter of singer/songwriter Billy Joel and supermodel Christy Brinkley, apparently may have tried to kill herself by taking 8 homeopathic pain pills. I am doubting that would even give me a good head buzz. The Joel’s don’t seem to have a solid grip on the more successful methods of snuffing oneself out – Billy Joel admitted that at a particularly low point in his own life he tried to kill himself, by drinking furniture cleaner. That must have been quite the hangover.

Egg Nog Season

Myself I've been avoiding the hangover by slipping into that smooth, creamy world that is egg nog and brandy. The residual effects of the concoction are more of a delayed stupefaction than they are a traditional, painful headache and nausea. It is just the lubricant one needs to successfully navigate the emotional and psychological labyrinth that is the holiday season. While the world around us descends into consumer-driven chaos, those of us on the nog can manage to ooze through the mayhem and maintain a semblance of alcohol-induced sanity. It's the only time of the year the stuff really works – one of those perfect symbioses, like the parasitic worms that help certain people deal with allergies, or those little fish that swim into the mouths of the larger species and clean their teeth. It's a combination that has evolved from necessity and endured because it is effective.

News Flash!

Danica Patrick

This just in! Danica Patrick will be attempting to make the switch from Indy car racing to stock cars. I know there aren't a whole lot of Nascar fans out there, but this is exciting stuff. Patrick will apparently be racing in a limited number of races in Nascar's Nationwide series – the series a step below the premier Sprint Cup events. She'll be driving for JR Motorsports, a team co-owned by Dale Earnhardt Jr. and his sister Kelly. Kelly Earnhardt is the General Manager for JR. Now I am seriously looking forward to February.

madbob@madbob.com

Madmen and Monkeys

2009-12-24T07:48:00.000-08:00

I'll tell you what, when you get older, you come to the realization that you don't know much. I do anyway. It's an odd phenomenon – I would have expected that I would know more as I get older. It doesn't work that way though. I know more facts, and I have a little more knowledge of myself, but with every passing year I come to understand that I know even less than I thought I did about simple human nature. We are random creatures. I suppose that's what I finally have come to realize. Trying to get your head wrapped around human nature, I don't know if it's a good idea.

Fundamentalism

I have little tolerance for fundamentalists – and I'm now willing to admit that might stem from a little bit of jealousy. Fundamentalists know exactly what they are here for – they have a pretty solid understanding of their purpose, and the purpose of life and existence in general. Sure, I may think that understanding is based on nonsense, bad science, and a certain amount of fear of the unknown, but that makes no difference to them. Their purpose is to establish a relationship with God, maintain that relationship, increase their intimacy with their God, and then die and meet their God. Life couldn't be simpler.

The rest of us, we have to wade through all this incredible magnitude of information and belief, culture and science, and somehow distill from this a working world-view – something that gets us through the long days and the cold nights. It is no small task.

When Sex Ruled the World

When I was younger I used to think the world ran on sex. I thought everything, boiled down to its essence, was based on people trying to get with one another. Not in order to pro-create, because I've never been interested in that, but simply for the sheer, ecstatic act (or acts) of sexuality. A businessman works his way up the ladder so he can make more money, buy nicer things, woo a beautiful woman, and have sex with her. A politician goes through the rigmarole of the campaign, puts their life out their for everyone to see, and attains a position of power so they can attract beautiful women and have sex with them. Everything, in my mind from the age of about 13 through 30, revolved around sex and sexuality. That's how I thought (think), and so I assumed that's how everyone else did too.

I see now that my world-view was completely egocentric, and that people are motivated by all kinds of emotions other than just screwing. I understand that empirically, intellectually, but it still doesn't make sense to me on an emotional level. Why would people really want all the hassles that go along with attaining power if it weren't for all the hot sex? It breaks down though, because, while I'd like to think Presidents and Senators are orgying it up every night in some dirty D.C. hotels, another part of me, my brain I guess, knows this is entirely improbable at best. No, it seems these people actually want power for the sake of power. It seems that the businessman may actually want money for the sake of having money. Because really, even high-class prostitutes don't require billionaire clients... or do they? The paranoid part of my brain, it swells sometimes. I can't imagine the brain is a static organ – blood pumps to it and certain parts swell and contract. Maybe there are billion dollar orgies somewhere and shipping magnates are making it with powerful Senators. Maybe the world really does run on sex. No, stop it! Stop it... what was I talking about?

We're not all the same. Hell, none of us are the same. None of us share the precise motivation, purpose, or identity. Space separates and defines us.

Fussy Monkeys

I hear they are raising the fees at the schools again, and that students and professors are striking on college campuses across the state. What fussy monkeys we are – with our shiny speeding cars and our Wal-Mart superstores. A colleague of mine told me that, in spite of the genocide that nearly extincted them, the Native Americans have never had it so good. I guess he meant the trappings of modern convenience. My head swam a little. People lived for tens of thousands of years a certain way, with an ingrained understanding of the world around them, with a purpose that was so sublimely woven into their way of life that they were not apart from the world around them. There was no schism. Now they have cars and bills and casinos. I am confused – this is better?

madbob@madbob.com

Quotation on Morality...

2009-11-05T09:49:00.001-08:00

I lifted this quote from Anthony Peyton Porter's Facebook status - it's a good one:

"Moral certainty is always a sign of cultural inferiority. The more uncivilized the man, the surer he is that he knows precisely what is right and what is wrong. All human progress, even in morals, has been the work of men who have doubted the current moral values, not of men who have whooped them up and tried to enforce them."

Henry Louis Mencken, journalist (1880–1956)

Set and Setting

2009-11-04T15:26:00.000-08:00

My sleep patterns are completely screwed up from a combination of the shortening days and the switch off of daylight savings. This morning I was out of bed shortly after 5 a.m. – in the tub and reading Joseph Conrad’s “The Secret Agent.” I am enjoying it, but my brain can only handle a single chapter at a time. I’m just into chapter four. If I try and read beyond a chapter in a sitting, my eyes go buggy and I have trouble following the story. My brain used to be much sharper than it has become.

This morning, after I’d finished reading, I lay there, staring at the wall, feeling badly about how I behaved the night before. I get really moody and I take it out on people around me. That means Trish and the dogs. It is unfair – when I get into those states of mind, it would be better if I were far away from people; particularly the ones I care a great deal about. (For the purposes of this column, dogs are also considered “people,” – people with four feet and fur coats. Cesar Milan will probably want to have a talk with me.)

Winter Gardening

We took down the hanging tomato containers over the weekend, and Trish planted them with lettuce and spinach seed. I need to get those re-hung – already a squirrel has been digging around in the buckets and disrupting the soil. Winter gardening is a misnomer. A lot of what gets planted doesn’t grow vigorously during the colder months. What it does is put down roots – then when spring arrives and the ground starts to warm up, the “winter” crops burst to life and grow with gusto. We’ve never had a great deal of luck with our winter gardens. We don’t use pesticides, and snails and slugs love the sprouting vegetation. That is why the idea of using the hanging containers seems like a good idea. I will let you know how that works out for us.

Legalize Ibogaine!

I have heard and read several recent articles touting the success rate of ibogaine therapy in treating serious drug addictions: cocaine, heroin, and methamphetamine. Ibogaine is a powerful hallucinogen; it takes the user on a journey that lasts for several days. Scientists and pharmacologists do not understand exactly why it works, but there is a school of thought that believes the deeply introspective trip the ibogaine user undergoes provides them with the psychological insight to understand the reasons behind their addiction. This knowledge may then allow the addict to break those mental chains. I have read similar studies from the early 1960’s that suggest LSD helped hardcore alcoholics to escape their addictions as well. It’s my opinion that our brains are prone to developing ruts; sometimes a powerful psychotropic can smooth out those ruts and break the circles. The problem, of course, is that both ibogaine and LSD are scheduled drugs, illegal in the United States.

This is something lawmakers really need to take a close look at. Methamphetamine addiction, in particular, is so prevalent and damaging that I would think politicians would be leaping at any opportunity to help alleviate this epidemic. Right now there are ibogaine clinics operating in Canada and Mexico, but sadly not here in the U.S.

Set and Setting

I read a lot about psychedelic drugs when I was in school. One of the important elements of a successful trip is making sure that one is in the proper set and setting – essentially you should be in a safe place surrounded by good people that you trust. My personal opinion is that drugs can be good, and drugs can be bad. It has more to do with the context – the set and setting – in which the drugs are used, than it does with the drugs themselves.

CIA Sentenced in Absentia

Twenty two Americans, allegedly members of the CIA, have been convicted by an Italian court of illegally kidnapping an Italian Muslim cleric, Abu Omar, back in 2003. Omar was literally grabbed off of the street as part of the “extraordinary rendition” program that George W. approved after the attacks on the World Trade Center. After his kidnapping, Omar was held without charge for seven months in Egypt, where he claims to have been tortured relentlessly by his captors.

I’ve often heard rumor that the CIA used psychedelic drugs in order to extract information from their captives. This would definitely fall under the category of an undesirable set and setting for your psychedelic experience.

madbob@madbob.com

Lost: One Mojo

2009-10-28T15:19:00.000-07:00

Lately I just haven’t had much mojo. The things that used to give me great pleasure now seem more like chores. I feel a little like the instructions on a bottle of shampoo – lather, rinse, repeat.

Years ago if I had this feeling for too long, I would have just packed everything I owned into my hatch-back and gone somewhere else. The years between college and Chico I lived in San Diego, Lake Tahoe, San Francisco, and Los Angeles. During that time I worked as a short order cook, a video tape runner, a marketing director (for two separate companies), a pizza delivery specialist, and a human resources assistant. There were other jobs I can’t recall off the top of my head.

Things are a little different for me now – I am a married man, and a home-owner. I have a wife and dogs who place some reliance on my being around and bringing in a steady income. I’m not complaining; it’s just different; it’s a totally different set of circumstances.

Life does that – it changes the deal on you. One day you are surfing three times and day and the next your stranded on a couch a mile from the beach smoking weed like a chimney. It’s hard to even figure out what happened – or why? Then you’re living in the mountains, watching the moon rise over Lake Tahoe, or buying a bag of drugs in a dirty fast-food restaurant on Haight Street. Sometimes I feel like I’ve lived a hundred lives – and sometimes I feel like I haven’t even started living.

When I’m Old

I will wear cheap suits and carry a hollow cane filled with liquor. Sometimes I will carry a brief-case around with me and act as though I am in a hurry to get to an important meeting. The brief-case will contain well-thumbed skin magazines and shiny steel canisters of nitrous oxide. Maybe I’ll attach it to my wrist with a pair of hand-cuffs just to make the contents seem that much more valuable. I will be leaner than I am now – I won’t be working so I won’t have to eat as much. My teeth won’t hurt like they do now. I will have either gotten them fixed, or I won’t have any - either way, they won’t hurt, and I will smile all the time. I will hang out in dark bars in the middle of the day and strike up conversation with floozies. I might write, or I might play music – but it won’t matter whether I do or not. I might live in a second story apartment where I can look down at the people walking by on the street. Maybe I’ll whistle at the pretty girls. I’ll be old and harmless, so they’ll think it funny, instead of creepy like I would be if I did that now. I plan on getting away with those kinds of things when I am old.

In the Mean-Time

Enough of that – there are miles to go before then. Isn’t it strange that a spy would affix an important brief-case to their wrist with hand-cuffs? This would seem to me to be a huge beacon indicating that there might be something worth stealing in the case. I suppose it’s a moot point in this day and age – a would-be spy would probably carry any information around in a data-stick on their key-chain.

I’ve got data-sticks and RAM on the brain these days because our office computer seems to have taken a serious turn for the worse. I think the daily exposure to internet gossip and pornography has finally rotted the poor thing’s brains. Last night I tried to print out a paper and ended up having to re-boot, then waited for a good solid ten minutes before it finally performed the simplest of tasks.

Oh to have my problems. I literally weep over the plight of the people living in daily violence over there in Pakistan and Afghanistan. The photos on the news websites look like something out of the big-budget action films. I can’t even imagine it – living in a world where going to the supermarket poses a genuine threat to your health and well-being.

I don’t know, I don’t know – it’s just getting crazy out there. Has it always been this way? Is it a product of a hyper-active media that relies on horror to generate ratings?

Money Makes the World Go BOOM!

The latest I am hearing is that Obama is going to approve payments to Taliban fighters in order to get them to renounce violence and lay down their arms. There are a host of questions regarding this policy, but the one I come up with is where the hell is all this money coming from, and why the hell don’t I seem to be getting any of it?

madbob@madbob.com

A Desire for More

2009-10-28T15:17:00.000-07:00

If you are paying much attention to global politics, economics, and business, you will hear the term “corporate America” come up frequently. From the political left the term is almost always used derogatorily. Politicians to activists to anarchists point the finger of blame for a myriad of economic and ecological woes at “corporate America” – and there is merit to their allegations.

Here is the problem with corporations as I see it. First off, it is helpful to understand what a corporation really is. Following is the definition from my Webster’s Pocket Dictionary:

cor’po-ra’tion: n. group given legal status of an individual

Why would a group want the legal rights of an individual? There are loads of good reasons for incorporating your business – even if you are just a small fish in the economic food chain. First and foremost, by incorporating your small business, you deflect fiscal risk away from your personal holdings. For example – let’s say you own a pizza parlor. A customer has a slip and fall and breaks their hip. The customer consults a high-paid doctor/attorney who decides they are going to take you to the cleaners. If your business is incorporated, then the attorney can only go after the specific business holdings. If you have not incorporated your business, then the attorney may also go after your personal property in order to satisfy the damages levied by the courts. This could mean you lose your car, your house, and whatever other property of value you might own.

Incorporating your business essentially provides you with a layer of protection. So what’s the big deal? What is so bad about corporate America? Well here is where I’ll get a little more subjective – but my feeling on the matter is that there are probably good corporations, and bad corporations. Unfortunately a bad corporation, particularly a large one, can wreak an incredible amount of damage on the fiscal and ecological environment. Because the incorporated company is its own entity, and because it answers first and foremost to the shareholders, it can become a moral-less and unethical being. It is like a body with no head; or a body with many heads who are all working in their own self-interests.

The underlying economic environment that fuels this unethical being is the relentless drive for profits. These days a company is expected to show a profit every single quarter. Anyone who has been in business understands this is not completely realistic – markets go up, and markets go down. A good, ethical company projects into the future. The ethical company leaders are looking five, ten, twenty five years into the future. It is for this reason that the family owned banks have weathered this financial storm much better than the publicly held mega-banks. (For the purposes of this explanation, never mind the massive corporate welfare in the form of tax-payer funded bail-outs.)

If you are in charge of a business, and you have to report a profit to your shareholders every single quarter, you are bound to make decisions based fundamentally, if not solely, on the generation of profits. If this means cutting down rain forests to grow beef cattle – so be it. If it means polluting rivers in order to produce a certain commodity, so be it. By putting profits above everything else – we have created an environment where it becomes much simpler for decisions makers to step into the gray ethical areas and cross completely over into the unethical and often illegal areas. To deal with this, corporations employ batteries of lawyers. It is easier to make profit by doing unethical and illegal things, and then hiring lawyers to clean it all up, than it is to do things ethically and legally. That’s the mentality anyway – whether or not that is 100% true in all cases – I don’t know.

Whose fault is this? There’s plenty of blame to go around. We all want a return on our investment. If we own stock – we want to see its value rise. If we have money in the bank – we want to collect interest on that money. Anyone who holds a 401(k) owns a portion of the blame.

Most of us want more than we have. That desire is fundamental to the American character. Come to this country and make a life for yourself – it’s the American dream. I don’t know – I don’t have any answers for you here. Why would you be in school, or working at a job, if you didn’t want more for yourself? Why would I be writing this, or you reading it? I really don’t know.

madbob@madbob.com

Ejection

2009-10-07T10:29:00.000-07:00

The changing seasons are doing a number on me; my

knees creak, there are developing pockets of pain in my armpits, my head feels like a lump of warm wax. This is what we look forward to. Troublesome dreams relentlessly played themselves for me last night – dreams of strange communists living together in their filth and feces – huddle waist deep in the sewers and reveling in the fact that the water they drink is also the water they pass their waste into. It was a pale, underground world;

and its residents were soft and white. In another dream I played the chorus to Dylan’s “Knocking on Heaven’s Door” on a string-less guitar for a crowd of seated on-lookers who sang along. It was the Guns and Roses version of the song, complete with my attempts to channel the high-pitched nasal whine of Axl Rose. The guitar was amazing really – it was nothing more than a strange piece of painted plywood barely shaped like a guitar neck. By placing my fingers in the place where the chord shapes would go and strumming along the face of the wood, it would emenate a beautiful, ringing sound. It also had a strange finger of wood that was screwed onto the top of the “neck,” it served as a sort of primitive tremolo bar; but it kept getting in the way of my playing, so at some point I tried to snap it off. The screw held fast though, and so the piece ended up just sort of hanging there – but I could live with that.

Long Live Glam Rock!

Friends told me they recently took a trip down to the Sleep Train Ampitheater to watch Def Leppard, Poison, and Cheap Trick perform. I think I saw the same show, only it was fifteen or twenty years ago. I came of age in the era of glam-rock and hair metal. I am proud to say that one of the first concerts I attended was Motley Crue, Whitesnake, Poison and Jet Boy playing a Day on the Green at the Oakland Coliseum in 1987. There was a thriving punk scene then too, with the Dead Kennedy’s, Agent Orange, and the like tearing it up, but my leanings were towards metal. Metallica was just coming onto the scene with a new, meaner style of music. They represented a shift away from the pretty boys in make-up playing for the ladies. Then grunge emerged and no one was allowed to smile anymore – music was serious and sad, for the depressed and the misfits. The excesses and debaucheries of the middle eighties were replaced by the addictions and disorders of the early nineties. The pendulum is always swinging: back and forth, back and forth.

Vietnam, er, I mean Afghanistan

Can you believe this? U.S. troops have been fighting in Afghanistan for eight years now. From what I can gather, we’ll be there for at least another eight years unless we give up our constantly shifting mission and just call it a day. Back in the 1980’s – when I was listening to Motley Crue and Ratt, Afghanistan was known as the Soviet Union’s Vietnam. They were stuck there in a war without end, fighting a fanatical, tribal, vengeful, vicious enemy that, it was well understood, would never give up. Our military advisors and politicians chuckled at the folly of the Soviets. Now, twenty short years later, we are in Afghanistan acting like we can positively change the attitudes of a country that has been fighting one enemy or the next for the last fifty years. Crazy – it’s absolutely insane.

Back to the Garden

My wife told me yesterday that historically, the single most important factor in determining which people are prosperous, and which people are poor, is soil quality. The reason they grow poppies in Afghanistan is because poppies grow easily in bad soil, with little water. Civilizations emerged in fertile valleys where the soil allowed people to establish a stable food source; which in turn afforded people with the luxury of time – the ability to think, write, create art, and experiment with different forms of government.

I have long thought that Genesis, particular the story of Adam and Eve, is a parable representing our emergence as humans from a hand to mouth existence, to an agriculturally based existence; and then a fracturing of that peaceable existence and a return to a more ruthless and sustenance level lifestyle. Afghanistan was once a beautiful, lush land. Its people were peaceful and scholarly. War has turned it upside down, placing the most brutal and vicious into positions of power, destroying the thoughtful, and castigating the meek. They’ve been ejected, by bombs and bullets, from the garden.

madbob@madbob.com

It's a Mad, Mad World

2009-10-07T10:25:00.000-07:00

Here is an interesting and disquieting situation I learned about the other day: the Italian mafia is involved in the illegal disposal of nuclear waste. Apparently they have been scuttling ship-loads of the highly toxic by-product in the seas off the coast of Europe. Now, all of the environmental horrors of this episode aside – I had always been under the impression that something as potentially deadly and menacing as the disposal of nuclear waste would be monitored, by someone, anyone. In this age of the war on terror, and after all this hype about the threat of a “dirty bomb,” I am having a hard time coming to grips with the idea that nuclear waste can find its way into the hands of an organization that is motivated by one thing and one thing only: money. What is to keep the Italian mafia from selling nuclear waste to the highest bidder? I don’t know – it makes no sense to me. On top of that, it’s going to be interesting to see what kind of fish are developing in those dump zones over the course of the next hundred millennium.

There seem to be a growing number of people advocating nuclear fuel as the solution to our global warming crisis. Myself I have a hard time understanding how a fuel that leaves behind a toxic by-product that remains lethal for hundreds of thousands of years is not a truly viable solution to anything – but it remains consistent with the short-term, egocentric uniquely human way of looking at the world. The Yucca Valley in central Nevada has been proposed as a dump-site for all of the United States’ nuclear waste. Because nuclear waste will be here long after we humans have disappeared, artists have been drafted to convey to future life forms the toxicity of the proposed dump site. Early concepts include a massive structure of black metal skeletons – the idea being to let any intelligent life know that this is a place of eminent death.

Glory Hole

Well Al Queada has given the phrase “take it to the hole” an entirely sinister and new meaning. Suicide bomber Abdullah Asieri managed to penetrate a series of security systems, including metal detectors and searches, by hiding an explosive device in his rectum. Asieri posed as a repentant suicide bomber and arranged a meeting with Saudi Arabian Prince Mohammed Bin Nayef. Nayef is the acting head of Saudi Arabia's counter terrorism operations. The attack was unsuccessful, Nayef was only slightly wounded by the bomb that blew Asieri’s body in half – but it has created a sinister buzz in the security sector, as apparently Al Queada has figured out a method for carrying a bomb that is undetectable by standard security systems in place in airports around the world.

Mixed Messages

Back to the issue of nuclear energy – Iran appears to be moving forward at full-speed with their nuclear agenda; but no one seems to be in agreement regarding just what that policy is. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad recently revealed the existence of a second nuclear power facility within Iran. Ahmadinejad has always maintained that the nuclear program in Iran is only intended to produce energy and is in no way associated with creating nuclear weapons. Of course the powers that be within the United States can’t believe that for a second and therefore the sabers are rattling viciously. By contrast though, the International Atomic Energy Agency seems to be taking the revelation of a clandestine nuclear facility hidden in a mountain-side near the holy city of Qum with remarkable calmness. The IAEA is working with Iran to develop a schedule for inspections of the facility. There seem to be many who are willing to give Iran the benefit of the doubt – and I might be inclined in that directions as well; except it bothers me that high-level Iranian officials continue to mention the “destruction of Israel” with alarming regularity. This time, on the heels of a successful long-range missile test, an Iranian defense minister reportedly stated that “Israel’s days are numbered.” If history is any example, Iranian officials will probably say that the statement was misinterpreted or taken out of context – but it seems suspicious that they keep making the same verbal gaffes time and again.

Who knows? Media is a funny thing – the facts, motivations, and intentions vary depending on whom you are listening to. If you take a look at a map, Iran is in a serious hole – surrounded on all sides by American troops and allies. It’s got to be an unsettling feeling.

madbob@madbob.com

Changing Light and Bad Business

2009-10-07T10:24:00.000-07:00

I am writing this on what is officially the first day of fall – the autumnal equinox. Today, night-time and day-time are the same length. From here on out in the Northern hemisphere, the days will grow shorter and the nights longer until we work our way around to the winter solstice in late December. Fall is my favorite season here in Chico – while the days are still nice and warm, the evening temperatures drop way down and cool everything off. The leaves will start to turn color soon and eventually the rain will come down. We’ll be able to burn backyard fires in our outdoor fireplace, and the new woodstove will be used to warm the house. My favorite element of fall though is the changing light quality. I moved here about a decade ago from Southern California, where the light quality is so consistent year round that the motion picture industry established its home-base there during the first half of the 20^th century. Here, between ten and fifteen degrees longitude further north than that flat-lit fantasy-land, the curvature of the Earth and the path of the Sun combine to give us a wonderfully saturated light quality. Normally whitish porch lights take on a glowing orange luster. The early evening’s sky blends from brilliant blue to purple to deep, star-speckled, blue-black.

It was this light quality that inspired me to pick up painting again a few years back; it is undeniably inspiring. When we eventually get a little more moisture in the air, the fogs will settle into the valley, and with them another entirely unique quality of light will make its appearance.

The Black Cat Bazaar

Speaking of painting, arts, inspiration; the Black Cat Bazaar will be happening this Sunday October 4^th from 3 p.m. until 9 p.m. The bazaar will feature a bevy of local artists, craftspeople, and performers selling their wares and sharing their talents. The event is being held in a newly refurbished adjunct of Mim’s Bakery on Humboldt Avenue and is advertised as follows:

“This event will promote creativity and fun! It is in celebration of our 20th year in business. The proceeds will go to the Butte Humane society and the craft vendors themselves!”

In the interest of full disclosure, Yours Truly will be behind a booth there selling a variety of different metal-works, paintings, and unique plantings put together by the illustrious indie-rock icon turned horticulturalist, my lovely wife Trish Howard. Stop by and say hello.

Continuing Local Attacks on Small Business

In the North State’s continued crack-down on small businesses bar doormen are the latest targets. This has been an on-going campaign that started with screen printers and garment manufacturers and has gone on to assail auto detailers, and now, apparently, local bars. The state employees have been raiding businesses and looking for whatever obscure, ticky-tacky violations they can find in order to levy fines on the typically unsuspecting business owners.

This sincerely gripes me. Chico has a small business economy, and anyone who has ever run a small business understands that it is a genuine, constant struggle. As a result of these fines, several businesses have decided to shut their doors. The short-term interest of generating revenue by levying fines leads to the long term detriment of loss of sales tax revenue and loss of jobs. It’s just as dumb as it could get and I have serious problems with the people who are making these decisions. It seems to me we are suffering through an economic period in which the state ought to be helping businesses to keep their doors open and keep people employed. Instead it seems to be us versus them.

I have long thought that Chico is a great place to start a small business. A number of truly innovative businesses have been formed in this fertile, inspiring oasis. This free weekly publication you are flipping through is just one example. Most of us make our livings working for a small business.

I want to believe that Chico is a great place to start a small business – but they certainly aren’t making it any easier by allowing these regulators to come in and shut business down for petty violations that oftentimes the business owners didn’t even understand.

There is a misguided way of thinking out there – the idea that regulations will help to rein in big business. Big business isn’t bothered by regulations. Big business has a whole floor of lawyers whose entire livelihood comes from filing injunctions and keeping regulators at bay. The regulations hurt the little guys – the business owners who are handling everything from taking orders, to making product, to making parole. They don’t have the time to also comb through the regulations.

It isn’t hard to understand why people have the impression that California is an unfriendly place to do business – not hard at all in the face of these cheap tactics coming from the state.

madbob@madbob.com

Fear Monger in Chief

2009-09-02T09:06:00.001-07:00

“Fear is the foundation of most governments; but it is so sordid and brutal a passion, and renders men in whose breasts it predominates so stupid and miserable, that Americans will not be likely to approve of any political institution which is founded on it.”

John Adams - 2nd President of the United States

Dick Cheney wants you to be as scared as he is…

I’ve been looking through high resolution photographs of former Vice-President Dick Cheney and I have come to a realization which is this: when I look into Dick Cheney’s eyes I see fear. His face is generally a scowl, a look of scorn and utter contempt. Cheney has a complete inability to crack a genuine looking smile. He has the appearance of an impatient, annoyed, and angry man. But his eyes are intriguing. It is said that the eyes are the window into the soul, and if true, Cheney’s soul is a tormented, scared, cowering one. His world-view is constructed on a foundation of fear.

I came away from my impromptu study of the former VP, the head cheerleader for the most grotesque and gruesome practices being employed by the fringe elements of the U.S. military and intelligence services in the ubiquitous and ambiguous “War on Terror”, feeling a greater sympathy for this man. I am mad at myself for feeling this way, because it is my opinion that Cheney, specifically, has taken the U.S., with the world in tow, in such a dramatically skewed moral and ethical direction that it will take generations to recover from his paranoid, gun-barrel approach to leadership and foreign policy. Even George W. Bush eventually turned away from the ominous, doomsayer advice that Cheney was giving him.

Every decision Cheney makes comes from a position of fear. He sees danger lurking around every corner, behind every closed doorway. The assumption that everyone is out to get him fuels every action, and unfortunately for all of us, Cheney was in a position to do something about it. One of the basic tenets of negotiation is that you should never make your decisions based on fear – but we did just that for eight years, and Cheney is still at it, advocating for more fear-based policy, working double-time to instill in the rest of us Americans the very real terror he feels each and every minute of every day and night. From this point of view, any action is acceptable. It would be foolish not to act in whatever mode necessary, because we are all in eminent peril of losing our lives. This is Cheney’s opinion, or rather my opinion of Cheney’s opinion.

I understand that there are reasons to be afraid – the world is based on a cycle of life and death, and death is a frightening concept. The idea that, someday not that far in the future, we will cease to exist as a living, breathing entity is a daunting one – one that humans have wrestled with since the genesis of consciousness, since we ate of the forbidden fruit and realized that we were naked; since we understood the fact of our own mortality. But death is also the inevitable conclusion to our brief time being alive, and death is all around us, all the time. 40,000 people die on America’s roads, highways, and freeways every year. That is nearly 15 times the amount of people killed in the terrorist attacks on the Twin Towers. On this note, I am approximately one million times more afraid of driving down highway 99 than I am afraid of being attacked and killed by a terrorist.

“Accentuate the Positive – Eliminate the Negative”

-Frankie Manning

I’m not trying to scare you or get too morbid here – the point of this rambling diatribe is to emphasize that we, as individuals, need to steer our attention away from the fear; there will be time enough to deal with that when it comes. In the mean-time, focus our energies and attentions on the positive energy and life that also surrounds us.

Things are Tough All Over

Well whatever, the world is a mess. There’s blood running through the streets of half the countries in the Middle East, Cabo San Lucas was just blasted by Hurricane Jimena, Indonesia is buried under landslides triggered by a massive earthquake, the Mid-Western United States are either out of water or under it, Southern California is burning away, and we live in a virtual paradise on Earth. Here in Chico we are just emerging from the oppressive heat of summer and gliding into the temperate beauty of fall. The leaves will start changing as the days grow shorter. Soon enough the rain will come and we’ll be having backyard fires again and drinking warmed drinks by the wood stove. We could be doing a whole lot worse.

madbob@madbob.com

Dead Senators and Conditional Freedom

2009-08-26T11:03:00.000-07:00

R.I.P. Ted Kennedy

Senator Ted Kennedy passed away early Wednesday morning. He had been suffering for over a year from the effects of brain cancer. Kennedy was a fixture in Congress, where he was known as the “Lion of the Senate.” He was a great champion for those causes he believed in. To me, Kennedy’s is a story of trial, struggle, and personal redemption. I cannot imagine the agony of losing two brothers, and that loss is made particularly bitter by the fact that Robert and John Kennedy were both taken by assassin’s bullets. Ted’s own career was not without its share of controversy; the low point coming when he drove a car off of a bridge in a stupor. That accident which took place in July of 1969 caused the death of Mary Jo Kopechne, a 28 year old woman who had worked on Robert Kennedy’s Presidential campaign. Since that time, Ted Kennedy went on to be a prominent Senator. He took an ill-fated run at the Presidency in 1980 when he ran against the Incumbent Jimmy Carter. Carter won the Democratic nomination handily but went on to lose badly to Republican nominee Ronald Reagan. Throughout the 80’s and early 90’s Kennedy seemed to become embroiled in one embarrassing event after the next – all sexually tinged and apparently fueled by copious amounts of alcohol. Frankly, in reading through the litany of minor and major personal scandals Kennedy was involved in, I’m surprised he could have held a position as the local dog-catcher – much less serve in the Senate for 46 years! But I digress. Somehow, during the Clinton years, Kennedy managed to reform his image as a lecherous boozer and continued to be a prominent champion of the Democratic Party. Through it all Kennedy was vastly productive. His influence is imprinted on tomes of legislation. A few lasting pieces include Title 9, which granted women’s athletics in schools the same resources as their male equivalents, the vote being extended to 18 year olds, and an array of civil rights legislation. In recent years he stood against the Iraq War and was an ardent advocate for healthcare reform. Along with Eunice, Ted represents the passing of a generation of the Kennedy family.

Obama – Multi-Tasker in Chief

President Obama boasted during his campaign that he would be able to do more than one thing at a time, and to a degree I’d have to say he is keeping to that promise. In the midst of the raging health-care debate, the Obama administration decided to jump into the controversial torture debate. By releasing classified documents that detail the torture techniques employed, the administration has enflamed passions on both sides of the argument; the liberals are seething about the human rights abuses, and the right-wingers are pissed off about the release of materials that they feel compromises American security. The most prominent proponent of the harsh interrogation techniques, former Vice President Dick Cheney, went on a speaking tour before the release of the memos; stating his opinion that, from the interrogations, the Bush administration was able to glean actionable intelligence that saved lives.

Give Me Liberty, but not if it’s too Scary Out There!

This kind of gets under my skin; what Cheney and company are proposing is a sort of “smoking gun” scenario. The example I hear time and again is this: “what if your mother or sister were kidnapped, and you were able to grab one of the kidnappers? If the lives of your relatives hung in the balance, would you torture the kidnapper to get information?” It is such a disingenuous argument on so many levels. By claiming we are at war with this amorphous group of people called “terrorists” who are purported to be always plotting the death and destruction of Americans and America, the right-wingers have essentially declared that there is a constantly smoking gun, and that the kidnapped sibling scenario is always in play. Following that logic through to its conclusion, there is no reason for them to draw a line anywhere. They are suggesting that they have the right, no, the obligation, to stop at nothing to insure the security of Americans from an eminent threat of attack. It is a stunningly dubious proposition.

The torture of foreign “enemies” is one thing; the abridgement of our fundamental rights here in the U.S. another. Our founding fathers were not interested in limited freedom depending on the circumstances of the time. The founding fathers knew that there was a risk that came with being a free people – and that risk was so great that it often involved death. But they were willing to die for the cause they believed in.

Don’t let the bastards scare you.

madbob@madbob.com

Be Good To Yourselves, and Each Other

2009-08-19T13:56:00.000-07:00

Here We Go Again

Well it has to be said, so we may as well get it out of the way right off the bat. Welcome back returning students, and welcome to those of you first year students who have just been dropped into our cozy little berg here in the Northern California valley. You may not realize it yet, but you’ve done well for yourselves already. Chico can be many things for you, it’s up to you to get out there and figure out just what those will be. There aren’t too many places I know of where you can spend the day by the river, the evening in a pub, and the nights soaking in a rich, rocking local music scene. Take advantage of everything Chico has to offer.

The Sad Saga of Jerry Springer

Most of you are probably familiar with late-night talk television show host Jerry Springer. Some of you may be aware that Springer was once the mayor of Cincinnati, Ohio; and those of you familiar with this detail of his political past may also know that he was discovered to have been frequenting a brothel in Kentucky. What facilitated this dubious discovery was to the fact that he’d paid for the services offered therein with a personal check. The popular sentiment is that, this personal check, and the fact that Springer was busted visiting a house of ill repute, ended Springer’s political career.

This is erroneous. In fact, Springer’s prostitution/personal check episode took place well before he was actually elected to the office of mayor; it happened when he was a member of the Cincinnati city council. Springer actually managed to rehabilitate his image after the prostitution scandal, and did it so well that he was elected mayor a few years later. After serving effectively as the mayor, Springer moved into a role as a local newscaster. He was extremely popular and drove the ratings of the newscast he joined from worst to first. It was in his role as newscaster that Springer coined the catch-phrase that ends each episode of the Jerry Springer Show: “Be good to yourselves, and each other.”

Political insiders will tell you that Jerry Springer was one of the very best natural politicians they’ve ever seen – right up there with Bill Clinton. He had that innate ability to get people to support him, even when they didn’t agree with him. He has a personality that builds bridges. Springer is still active in Democratic politics and will make occasional appearances at fund-raisers and conventions. He has never lost his desire to play the politics game.

When Springer started his talk show, he envisioned it as another “Phil Donahue” type show – a biting show that would delve into the pertinent issues of the day. Early guests included Oliver North and Jesse Jackson. Unfortunately, the ratings were low. A new producer came in and decided to turn things around, and the modern incarnation of the Jerry Springer Show, complete with shoe-throwing and a regular parade of freaks, was born.

Don’t be Hard

My advice, for what it’s worth, to those of you starting out in school and figuring out who you are is this: Be kind. Don’t screw the next guy over, don’t act hard. It seems like there is a lot of pressure these days to act tough, hard, gangster. Forget that noise. There are people who have to be hard, because life has been cruel to them; and life has a tendency to harden us all over time. Eventually, no matter whom you are or where you come from, life will deal you a vicious blow, and it will be difficult to get through. You will become hardened by events that befall yourself and others. The battle at that point will become fighting to stay supple, un-cynical and kind. In the mean-time, don’t pretend to be hard. Be careful with the people around you. Understand that relationships you form, with friends and lovers, family; they are precious, and they can be damaged irreparably.

As you go through this world understand that your actions, and your inactions, affect those around you.

Keep in mind that when something needs to be done, and you don’t do it, someone else will – because someone else has to. Be the one that acts consciously and with compassion.

I cannot guarantee that by living this way your life will be made any easier. More likely, if you choose to be the one who acts with consciousness and compassion, your life will be that much more difficult than the life of the next person. But hell, if you wanted an easy life you picked the wrong planet to be born on.

madbob@madbob.com

A Funny Story about Para-Gliding

2009-08-12T14:12:00.000-07:00

I was just remembering this time when I lived in North Lake Tahoe and this friend of mine convinced me to help him go para-gliding off of a mountain-side. He totally looked pro - he had a jump-suit and a helmet, and the parachute and everything, and he needed me to help him keep the parachute unfurled while he ran down the mountain-side and theoretically caught air, then updrafts, and floated around for awhile.

I couldn't manage to keep the parachute spread out and unfurled very well on my own, so we flagged down these two passing tourists who were heading up the road to Reno. They were curious and sort of amazed by the whole process, and more than willing to help. With the three of us it was no problem to keep the parachute spread out and unfurled.

My friend gave us the signal and went running down the mountain side and we let go of the parachute. It filled with air and he managed to get off the ground; but he didn't get very far off the ground. Instead he floated along about five or ten feet off of the ground until he got hung up in some trees about 30 or 40 yards down the mountain.

Well the tourists high-tailed it out of there pretty quick, maybe sensing some kind of pending litigation or something, and I was left to help fish my friend out of the tree.

That was funny.

Media Distortion and Misogynistic Tendencies

2009-08-12T08:22:00.000-07:00

I listen to news on the radio for the better part of my workday. Then when I go home I tune into the network newscasts, and I sometimes catch the morning talk/news programs before I head out the door. I primarily tune into those television programs in order to see how they are distorting the news of the hour.

Every piece of media news is a distortion; but the television programs really have to twist and compact a given story in order first to fit it into an allotted 3-5 minute segment, and second to lend the story a sense of drama and entertainment value.

Two stories cycling through the media have caught my eye recently, and I’d like to take this opportunity to share my thoughts on them.

The first is Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s “outburst.” Clinton is in the middle of a massive tour of Africa. This is a historic venture, and she is traveling to some of the most war-torn and dangerous regions in the world. While she was fielding questions in East Congo, a question was mistranslated but essentially it seemed that Clinton was being asked how her husband, Bill Clinton, felt about a certain issue. Clinton was visibly perturbed by the question and responded that she was the Secretary of State, not her husband, and that she would give her opinion and not his.

That’s it – this is the “story” that has been run on every major, and many of the smaller internet and independent radio, news program. Now I don’t know about you, but it isn’t news to me that Hillary Clinton is a tough person who can occasionally have a temper. She is a politician at the highest level of the game – is she supposed to play nice all the time? I get sick of this nonsense. Not withstanding the fact that the question was apparently mistranslated, it is fundamentally misogynistic, and Clinton had every right to be angered by it.

But aside from all that – is this really a story worthy of major media attention? It is over-shadowing the whole reason Clinton was even in the region, and that is to highlight the rampant sexual violence being perpetrated against women and children in the Congo – sometimes this despicable behavior is being carried out by government forces.

The second story is the anger and outrage boiling to the surface at various town hall meetings throughout the United States. Of course, as far as I can tell this outrage consists of about a half-dozen episodes caught on video that are being played on endless loop. Even in a 3 minute news story, the networks are running footage of the same episode 2 or 3 times.

Don’t get me wrong, there definitely is outrage out there – people are scared and confused. The government has had to act fast, and that naturally scares people. It scares me. The last time the government acted this fast was after 911 when the Patriot Act was rammed through – of course no one made a peep back then because we were all cowed by the fear of terrorists. But the media is latched onto these handful of outburst and are trying desperately to turn them into a real story. Senator Clare McCaskill of Missouri was on the Today Show this morning being interviewed by Ann Curry. McCaskill astutely pointed out that the one violent outburst that occurred during her recent town-hall meeting overshadowed the other 2 hours of healthy, rigorous debate that went on – that questions were asked and answered and that the meeting was actually, in her opinion, very productive. That didn’t satisfy Curry, who brusquely moved past McCaskill’s optimistic statement and ended the interview saying “that must have been very hard for you” in reference to people booing and being rude to the Senator.

Once again, I think Senator Claire McCaskill can take it. She is a powerful politician who has fought tooth and nail to attain the position she has. Curry’s “poor little woman” tone offended me. She didn’t ask a single question about the health-care plan being debated – the story has just become about a bunch of misinformed, talk-show driven yokels who think that by yelling at the top of their lungs they can obfuscate the issues and steer the train off the rails.

And I’ll be damned if it doesn’t seem like the bastards might be right.

madbob@madbob.com

No Competition

2009-08-12T08:19:00.000-07:00

Healthcare Reform

I haven’t written much about the current healthcare debate that is literally raging across America right now. The reason for that is that, frankly, I don’t have a very clear understanding of the proposals and the potential results of those proposals. I do know that something has to change. From my personal point of view I know this: My healthcare costs have gone up like clockwork every single year since I’ve carried health insurance. My healthcare insurance premiums have doubled over the course of the last decade. My wages have not really adjusted at all over the course of the last decade. That could be my own fault; but even if I were a competent, productive member of society, I doubt very much that my wages would have doubled over the last decade.

I also know that the Republicans are suggesting that they have a number of their own proposals that they say will reduce health-care costs. This makes me angry. The Republicans had their opportunity to pass whatever legislation they wanted, and they chose not to act on the issue of health-care. For them it was apparently not a priority. Now that the Democrats are choosing to address a growing problem that affects nearly every citizen, the Republicans want to chime in and say they have a better plan. Well where was their plan four years ago when they had control of the Congress and the White House? To me, through their inaction, the Republicans have made it clear that they don’t mind the status quo, and that they side with the insurance and pharmaceutical corporations.

My wife and I also have had the misfortune of dealing with a major medical issue – one that has involved multiple surgeries and treatments. Even with a good insurance plan, including our premium payments, a solid one-third of our income has gone to medical expenses over the course of the last three years. This is untenable, and luckily we are seeing the light at the end of this horrific tunnel. Our current system literally adds insult to injury – the very worst situation befalls you, and you get a nice fat bill for it that can put you in the poorhouse; unbelievable.

I don’t know; I get that we’re in a capitalist society and that the free market is supposed to be the driving mechanism behind everything we do – but health, it feels like there is an ethical dilemma in there somewhere.

Speaking of Insurance

I should start an insurance company. What an incredible racket. You charge your customers an ever-increasing premium; even if they make no claims their rates go up every year. Then, if they should ever actually make a claim on the insurance, you fight tooth and nail to deny the claim, drop their coverage, or raise their rates to a point where it is unaffordable. I think if I had the discipline to just pay into a fund every year, my own interest baring bank account, instead of paying the damn insurance over the last 20 years – I’d probably be able top pay any medical claim or automobile accident out of my pocket and still have money left over. Of course discipline is the missing ingredient. I’ve never had much of that.

Garbage Collection and The Majors

In New York City, all private businesses are responsible for hiring their own garbage disposal services, and by, the early 1990’s, the mob essentially controlled the entire industry. They had what has been referred top as a garbage cartel. Well a New York City police officer ended up infiltrating the mob almost by accident, and his investigation and the ensuing evidence that he turned up completely disintegrated the mob and their garbage cartel. As a result of competition being renewed in an industry that had been monopolized, businesses in New York enjoyed a 40% reduction in the price of private garbage collection. This was because suddenly there were a number of small businesses all competing with one another for the collection contracts.

Then a handful of massive, nationwide garbage services came in and bought up all the small private garbage collection businesses. Then, once those companies had firm control of the industry, they jacked their prices. The 40% savings businesses had been experiencing evaporated. Prices are now as high as they were when the mob ran the industry.

The mob guys refer to the themselves as “the Boys,” and they refer to the corporations as “the Majors.” It sounds to me like a term of respect.

madbob@madbob.com

Crappy Neighbors...

2009-08-07T08:52:00.001-07:00

I have some crappy neighbors right now. I'll go into more detail later. They aren't the worst neighbors I've ever had, but they probably are in the top 5. Anyway, in pondering these crappy neighbors I started thinking back through all the different places I have lived and all the crappy neighbors I have had. I had the bright idea to start writing these anecdotes down, and then I thought that probably everyone has a "crappy neighbor" story.

So to make a short story long I came up with the idea to start a zine or a blog focused on crappy neighbor stories. Do you have any good crappy neighbor stories to share? I would love to hear them. You can e-mail them to me at: madbob@madbob.com and I will format them into the aforementioned zine/blog and then we'll see what happens from there.

Driving While Stupid

2009-08-06T08:28:00.000-07:00

I just answered the CNN poll question: “Should Texting While Driving be Outlawed?” 92% of people said “yes.” You know darn well a lot of those 92% have texted while driving. Personally texting and I have nothing to do with one another. I don’t even have a cellular phone. But the question to me seems to be: “should it be illegal to drive while staring down at your hand?” or “should it be illegal to drive without actually paying any attention to the act of maneuvering the 2,000 pound hunk of metal and fiberglass that is hurtling through space and time at speeds of thirty miles an hour and up?” I know, I know – I just don’t get it. Those text messages are so important! They can’t wait 5 minutes until you are actually at your destination.

There’s an App for That!

You’ve heard this all from me before – I’m just not sold on all this technology. Yes I think if the technology is used efficiently and for the intended purpose of increasing productivity, then sure, it’s a good thing. I simply don’t think I’ve met a single person who doesn’t overuse technology in order to procrastinate, over-communicate, or just to make themselves feel cool and important. On that note, I recently received FaceBook updates from friends of mine who were on a camping trip! Does anyone else feel the irony in that moment?

Drunk and Productive

So I’ve been getting down on myself lately because, after being a good, responsible citizen, and working my ass off all week long, I have been tending to spend my weekends seeing how many Natural Lights and clamato juice I can suck down over a 48 hour period. As a result I haven’t been spending any time writing, creating art, or essentially doing anything remotely productive. I was getting close to giving up the beer when I had a break-through. My wife had asked me to build a bonsai display stand for her burgeoning bonsai forest. I poached a design from a recent visit to the Chico Garden Center and spend Saturday and Sunday knocking together a simple but effective piece of outdoor furniture. I also managed to build the stand, level the ground, wrestle the thing into place, and paint it, while drinking copious amounts of wine cooler and the aforementioned clamato beer. This worked out to be a cathartic moment for me. I don’t have to give up my weekend binge drinking – I just have to do more while I’m drunk! Kids don’t try this at home; I am a trained professional.

The Birds and the Bees

Our garden is absolutely stunning this year. Trish has been cultivating a sweeping variety of salvia and other long, flowing types of flowering plants. As a result, at any given moment the yard is populated with dozens of different pollinators: hummingbirds, native bees, honey bees, and a host of butterflies of differing sizes, shapes, and coloring. The plants dance from all the pollinating going on, even when there isn’t a lick of wind. We have also managed to grow a handful of tomatoes – this is the first year we’ve tried hanging them from a scaffold over the compost pile. I didn’t select enough large tomatoes though – we primarily have heirloom varieties of smaller tomatoes. There is one particularly interesting Russian variety that seems to be producing a large, dense tomato shaped like a heart. These are just starting to turn a deep orange color. The best part of this is that the tomatoes are growing high enough that Bill the dog can’t reach them. Our 100+ pound Labrador has a tendency to decimate certain tasty crops.

At Odds

Man I feel like I have been at odds with the world around me lately – like the chakras are clogged or the energy is jammed up. Sometimes all I want is a little peace and quiet; and all I get is a ton of noise and distraction. Interactions that used to be smooth are grating. My teeth grinding has kicked into high gear. My nubs are sore and crumbling. I have entertained thoughts of living in a box car, or on the sheer face of a hillside. This town living is starting to get under my skin. I’m feeling the confinement acutely, and the wanderlust is creeping in. My life is a little bit like Groundhog Day without the security that comes with monotony. I was actually never aware that you could have boredom and insecurity – but it turns out you can. You can be worrying ulcers into the lining of your stomach while at the same time getting so tired of the same four walls staring back at you that you want to scream. Who knew?

madbob@madbob.com

The Bible Should Be Taught in School

2009-07-31T11:11:00.000-07:00

I was looking for my Bible this weekend because I have been toying with the idea of putting together my own audio version of the Book of Revelations. I can’t find the thing though – I haven’t been able to find it for months. It’s not the biggest deal in the world – I have plenty of other books that mean as much or more to me than the Holy Bible – but to not have a Bible is a glaring omission in any decent library.

Those of you who know me well know that I am not a religious person. I was raised by a family of “non-practicing Presbyterians,” the kind of family who shows up in church on the major religious holidays, and is always eternally grateful to be driving out of that strange, uncomfortable setting at the end of the service. I never read a single word of the good Book when I was a child. The only reason I ever picked up a Bible was because one of my literary heroes, the late great Hunter S. Thompson, mentioned that often when he was in hotel rooms he would pick up the Gideon Bible and thumb through the Book of Revelations. He mentions that he was enamored of the vivid, wild language of that particular book – it is a major mind-trip.

It is ridiculous that the Bible is not taught, in a literary manner, in our public schools. The idea that teaching the literary aspects of the Bible in school is the equivalent of promoting a particular religious belief is preposterous – it’s similar to suggesting that if I were to read the Odyssey I might suddenly start bowing down to Athena. Hey, stranger things have happened – but these are literary works of such extreme importance they cannot simply be shoved aside. What I mean is, you can’t claim to be a learned person if you don’t have a basic understanding of the stories enmeshed in the Bible. Genesis alone contains several of the stories that form a cornerstone of literature: Adam and Eve, Noah’s Ark, The Tower of Babel, Cain and Abel… These stories have been re-told and re-packaged throughout our literary history. When you are watching James Dean in Steinbeck’s “East of Eden” you’re seeing a modern re-telling of the story of Cain and Abel.

You’ve got to know the roots of the thing. It’s hard not to laugh when you hear someone re-telling a re-tell – when you know they don’t know the real, underlying root of the story. We get that a lot these days in this post-modern era because, let’s face it, post-modernism grants a lot of artistic license to people who may not really know how to drive. I suppose sometimes artistic naivety can lead to some nice finished products, but to my mind the artist who understands the layers and history that lead to today’s stroke on the canvas has a better chance of creating an enduring and complex piece of art; a piece that is going to draw the viewers in for reasons they may not even understand.

The Erin Andrews Controversy

So I guess some pervert used a “peephole camera” to take nude video footage of popular ESPN sportscaster Erin Andrews. That’s a big deal – but it wasn’t as big a deal as it has become until every major network started running this bit of criminal titillation as a feature story – along with excerpts from the leaked video. I wonder how Ms. Andrews feels about that? Its one thing to have someone videotape you unaware and post it onto the internet – but quite another to see the same footage being run prominently on the national news casts! Oh, but the networks all blurred out Andrews’ naughty bits – so I guess that makes it okay.

Of course as a result of all the national media attention the story has snowballed or “gone viral” as the kids like to say. The most popular search on Google the other day was “Erin Andrews Peephole Video.” Wow – entertaining and educational.

Things I Never Thought I’d Say…

Folks seriously, we are crossing a line here. When I am saying people are getting too pervy, then you know things are getting weird. Looking at these pictures and watching this video, just because it is there, is a violation of a person’s privacy. This isn’t a sex tape that was willingly made by the participants – and even those leaked tapes pose an ethical dilemma. This, the Erin Andrews tape, is a completely criminal act because Andrews is completely non-complicit. Watching this tape is watching, and by proxy participating in, a sexual assault. It is a complete abdication of morality in exchange for a cheap thrill.

madbob@madbob.com

Banks and Battery of the Soul

2009-07-31T11:10:00.000-07:00

Shake it off – get back in there – give it all you got! Alright; I will. Here goes nothing. These days I have been shaking off body blows and head shots right and left. Life just seems to be landing upper-cut after body blow after jab and my arms are spaghetti noodles; flailing ineffectively against a vicious, proficient opponent who will not let up. It’s nothing specific – nothing I can put my finger on. Maybe it’s the continued economic crisis wearing on my brain. Maybe it’s the personal financial crisis I’ve been enmeshed in for the last 20 years. Maybe its middle-age closing in on me, or maybe it’s just the damned vibrations screwing with my molecular being. Who knows? Not me.

Believe it or Not! Bank Shows Profit!

Goldman-Sachs is showing a record profit – 33% increase over the quarter before. It’s all the rage in the economic and national news these days. I’ve heard two very distinct points of view on that situation. The first, optimistic, take on the success of Goldman-Sachs is that the profits are a result of hard work, incredible talent, and a clear vision for the future. The second, more cynical argument I’ve heard is that Goldman-Sachs’ profits are built on the back of cheap money doled out in the midst of the taxpayer funded bank bail-out, the elimination of key Goldman-Sachs competitors, and the favorable treatment of Goldman-Sachs at the hands of former company employees and current loyalists who are strategically positioned within the government regulatory structure. Frankly both positions sound credible to me. I lean towards the cynicism, but I’m so damned desperate for good news these days that I’m inclined to give Goldman-Sachs the benefit of the doubt and say “good job!” I’m tired and out of it though, and I reserve the right to change my mind without notice.

Lost – One Mojo

The synapses are just not firing today. Actually if I think back on it they haven’t been active for months now; lazy, beaten, defeated. The walls look a little too familiar, the food tastes bland, internet pornography doesn’t get me off like it used to. What is going on around here? Have a lost my mojo? Where do I even start looking for the damned stuff? Maybe I’ll put an ad up on Craig’s list and see what bites…

Lost – Mojo – If you have seen it, please let me know where to start looking for it. Appreciate it – Bob

Something like that. Craig’s List – killing print media since 2000-something. Who knew the Achilles heel of the entire newspaper industry was the classified advertising? It makes sense. Do the rise of Craig’s List and the fall of print media signify something grander? Is it true democracy, or anarchy, wrenching control away from the capitalists? Is Craig’s List a socialist endeavor? What does Obama think of all this? Sotomayor?

Oh well, about face, shift gears… My head feels like a brick, my stomach is knotted, my teeth ache. Large sections of this column may not be suitable for younger readers. That’s a disclaimer I just heard on the radio – slightly reworded – I should probably always include that in front of the column.

Vows of Silence

Today I was thinking about joining a monastery when a co-worker came into my office and asked how I thought he could go about joining a monastery. I guess it’s in the air these days. The rat race just isn’t cutting it for a lot of us anymore – racing is no fun when you never win. You know that the average Goldman-Sachs employee makes a little over $900,000 annually? Nine hundred thousand dollars. Can you believe that? It’s obscene – and that’s the average. Some of those folks make a lot more than that.

Smoke and spandex and dead eyes… Sometimes I miss the darkness, city nights, sleaze and scum. A recent sojourn down to the Bay Area reminded me of the days I used to roam the streets of San Francisco, drinking regularly in the Irish bars and sleeping with the windows open. The air there is so clean. Except maybe for the Sierra Mountain air I think the air in San Francisco is the cleanest, clearest air I have ever breathed.

My elbow still smarts from a bicycle accident I suffered over a week ago. The soda I am drinking coats my throat and soothes my stomach but my teeth still hurt.

I think tonight I’m going to take a long bath and read Herman Hesse’s Siddhartha for the umpteenth time. That book is a good one for soothing the soul.

madbob@madbob.com

Famous Last Words

2009-07-31T11:09:00.002-07:00

"I am about to -- or I am going to -- die: either expression is correct."

~~ Dominique Bouhours, French grammarian, d. 1702

Thought on Health Care from Jerry Springer - 2004

2009-07-31T11:09:00.001-07:00

“Here’s what’s stupid… rich people can already afford anything they want to buy. Do you think if I get a check in the mail suddenly I’m going to buy something? If I want something now I’ll go out and buy it! Don’t give me the money. Take that money and make sure that every citizen of the United States of America has health insurance.”

-Jerry Springer on health care…

The Itch

2009-07-31T11:07:00.000-07:00

I have got the itch right now. No, seriously; I managed to acquire a good dose of poison oak while I was helping Trish to tend some goats out on the Butte College Campus. I haven’t had poison oak in years, probably decades. I’m lucky in that I don’t get it that bad, but I’ve got it. There is an angry pink rash on my belly, on both wrists, and I managed to get a nice swatch of it on my face – right across the eyes – so I look either perpetually tired, acne-scarred, or as though I suffered some blows in a recent punch-up. I honestly don’t mind the poison oak though; the itching is vaguely entertaining. I don’t know why that is.

Understanding the Bass Frequency

Lower frequencies, like the sound of a booming bass, generate longer sound waves. These longer sound waves travel much greater distances and maintain their volume for a much greater duration than do the shorter sound waves generated by higher frequencies. Elephants can communicate over great distances by generating sub-sonic sound waves. The longer amplitude of lower frequency sound waves explain why, as you move away from a band playing music, or a blaring stereo, the vocals and the guitars tend to drop out and eventually you are left only with the constant thumping of the kick drum. Most people understand this intuitively and, in consideration of their neighbors, will make a point of keeping their stereo turned down low and the bass frequency rolled off; most people, but not everyone. Similarly most people have an intuitive understanding of the ‘cause and effect’ nature of our existence – a basic understanding that the energy we release into the universe is ultimately directed back towards us. Most people understand this; but not everyone. I really wish everyone understood this – it would make life run a little smoother.

Reluctant Proponent of Law

I’ve come to realize over time that I am not the anti-social being I once considered myself. My goal is not to disrupt the peaceful existence of others. In fact, I have come to a firm belief in a system of social conventions, and written or unwritten rules and considerations, in place to lubricate the wheels of society; and to keep us all from wanting to cause violent harm to one another. I believe in leash laws, noise ordinances, and good solid fencing. I feel like these kinds of laws have become the lesser of evils. The idealistic anarchist in me believes we should not need leash laws or noise ordinances – because ultimately we should all have such a strong sense of personal responsibility, accountability, and general common sense, that there would be no need for laws. Unfortunately, the pragmatist in me cannot ignore the fact that there is a painfully vocal minority that seems to actively refuse acceptance of any semblance of personal accountability. I don’t know if these people didn’t get enough attention as a child, or if they were spoiled rotten, or if they were just never imbued with a sense of social responsibility – but whatever the reason may be, the fact seems to be that there is a handful of people whose actions and behavior are so socially aberrant, that it demands we generate an ever-growing list of laws and rules.

It’s a damned shame really. Most of us are screwed by the actions of a few. Of course this is a trend history bares out again and again.

Health Care on the Fast Track

The Democrats are working double-time to try and pass some sort of health care legislation before a scheduled upcoming summer break. Does anyone else find it completely bizarre just how many vacations our politicians get? I finally worked in my job long enough to get a measly 10 days off – and our work schedule holds another 10 planned holidays. That’s it. The men and women who my taxes pay for would scoff at my piddly vacation schedule. I digress.

Trish and I were talking about the Democratic health plan and essentially we came to the conclusion that neither one of us has a clue as to what the health plan actually entails. Our ignorance aside; it seems like the politicians are moving forward so quickly on it that we have serious doubts as to whether they know just what it is they are actually cobbling together.

If You’re not Outraged…

Then I just have one more thing to mention in this column: the California state budget. The internet term “WTF?!?” comes to mind. At this point it is just an accepted fact that the budget will always be late. What a joke. Dear state legislators, give the money back. Really, what do we need these people for? I could successfully not draft a budget and then go on vacation. In fact, I’d probably be really good at that. Hmmm…

madbob@madbob.com

Dreams, Bad Bad Luck, and Crumbling Theocracies

2009-06-25T10:02:00.000-07:00

Last night a pretty young woman recognized me from my writing this column for Synthesis. I was in a crowded restaurant, a pizza and pasta joint in a mountain town. I don’t know exactly how I bought it up but at a certain point this woman whose name I can’t recall pushed back her chair and asked if I was “Bob Howard from the Synthesis?” I affirmed that I was and she extended her hand towards me to shake.

Then I woke up. Seriously – it was a dream. How’s that for the ego working overtime to get a little gratification?

Talk About a Bad Luck Run

If you are ever feeling sorry for yourself here is a story that will make your situation seem a lot less miserable. Apparently video footage has turned up of one of these Chinese Muslims known as Uighurs (pronounced roughly “wiggers”) being tortured by Al Queada. Then after those jerks were through with him, we went ahead locked the poor bastard up in Guantanamo for seven years. It seems that he may have tried to join Al Queada, but after only two weeks they’d decided he was a spy and so they tortured him and kicked him out. Then, in a stunning display of the competence of our nation’s intelligence services, we decided he was a member of Al Queada, and as such a terrorist, so we decided to lock him up for awhile. It turns out that none of these Uighurs pose much of a threat to anyone, but now nobody knows what to do with them. They’ve been ordered to be released by a U.S. Court – but nobody will take them in! They can’t go back to China for fear of religious persecution, and, save for the island nation of Palau, nobody is willing to let these religio-political pariahs settle in their country. To complicate the situation even further, the Uighurs themselves are wary of Palau’s offer because they are not guaranteed any protections from the Chinese government. ¡Aye Caramba!

How to Make Money On-Line

I finally figured out the secret to making money on-line. I’ve been searching for forms of alternative income. I know you’re thinking to yourself – ‘you write a high-profile column for the Synthesis, surely you must be rich beyond your wildest dreams!’ Well sure, I make big money here, particularly after you factor in the black market Duffy Buck sales, but Trish and I live a pretty lavish lifestyle and a dollar just doesn’t go as far as it used to in this mangled, burned out wreck we graciously refer to as an “economy.” Yes things have gotten a little tight around here. So in a moment of desperation I clicked on one of those “make money from home!” links and started entering my information.

Well I didn’t glean much information from that on-line visit, but over the course of the next few days I learned exactly how to make a ton of money on-line. What you want to do is gather people’s e-mail addresses and then sell them to the highest bidder. Since my on-line research I have been literally bombarded with e-mails from companies offering everything from home loans to quick cash to dates for lonely singles. My in-box and my spam box have been virtually over-flowing with possible solicited but definitely unwanted information. You learn from your mistakes I suppose – following that logic someday I should be an extremely wise man.

Insanity in Iranity

Last week I wrote that I wasn’t too impressed with the choices Iranians have for President and I’m still not. To quote Ralph Nader: “Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dumb.” But there is a truly interesting development happening and that is a rift opening up within the supreme council – the group of clerics who determine the country’s “Supreme Leader.” This is where real, genuine, 1776 style reform could be happening right before our very eyes! This could signify the cracks in the dyke that will ultimately bring down theocratic rule in Iran. Clerics have been openly marching in protest in support of the reform party – in direct defiance to the wishes of the Supreme Leader.

This I will be keeping a close eye on.

Hey I just noticed this will be the last column I write before the Fourth of July Weekend! So Happy Independence Day to you and yours. If you are so inclined, drink a few cold beers and eat a few tofu dogs, take in the fireworks, and take a moment to reflect on the freedoms we have grown so accustomed to in this country. People are dying for smaller freedoms in Tehran.

madbob@madbob.com

Winners and Losers - Trump vs. Seeger

2009-05-06T14:27:00.000-07:00

I caught myself watching Donald Trump’s “Celebrity Apprentice” the other night. This show is trash – but in its best moments it gives us a glimpse into the way these “successful” people think about themselves and others. I thought there was a revealing moment when Trump was talking to celebrity welder and motor-enthusiast Jesse James.

Jesse James – In-Crowd Outlaw?

Personally I don’t know what to make of James. On the one hand he claims to be a representative of the “working class,” but on the other hand he has capitalized off of his name and his genetic link to a famous bandit from the wild west – and he has used that link to catapult himself into the limelight; resulting in his owning a slew of successful businesses including body shops and restaurants; and he is married to one of the most successful and powerful actor/producers in Hollywood, Sandra Bullock. So this whole “working class hero” thing leaves me feeling a little suspicious of the guy. But whatever – that’s not the point I am trying to make here.

The point I am attempting centers on Trump’s assessment of James. James managed to get himself into the final 4 on the show by working hard, keeping his head down, and not making himself a target for firing in the infamous “boardroom.” But Trump can’t figure James out because he isn’t particularly ambitious, he won’t use his celebrity connections to raise money for his charity, and he essentially didn’t raise a thin dime for the cause he claimed to represent. As far as I’m concerned, James failed completely to understand the point of the game he signed up for and in the process demonstrated a sort of blandness of personality. I found James to be ineffectual and basically a worthless player who was never in a million years going to win the game. But Trump can’t accept this because Trump believes, like many rich and famous people, that other rich and famous people are necessarily gifted in some special, supernatural way. Trump comes back time and again to this idea that “Sandra Bullock sees something in you, and because she is so successful, you must also be an especially gifted person.”

God Favors Me…

This is how rich and famous people justify their lives of wealth and privilege. I believe it is pathological. When they look around in a world filled with people suffering and scrambling just to get by, and they live in a penthouse surrounded by servants and sleeping on a mattress filled with thousand dollar bills, their every whim and desire is catered to, they have to justify this to themselves. The way rich people justify their wealth is to say to themselves: “there must be something innately special about me personally that has allowed me to be so successful.” Essentially they come to the conclusion that” “God must favor me. And conversely: “God must disfavor those who live in squalor and suffering.”

This is the Protestant work ethic. I think it is a sickness passed down through generations of Americans; and a testimony to greed, pride, and gluttony – three of the 7 deadly sins.

Pete Does it His Way

As a really interesting contrast to Trump and his pathological cronies – Pete Seeger’s 90th birthday was on the same Sunday that the Celebrity Apprentice aired. I wonder how Trump rationalizes a man like Pete Seeger – a musician who has had a long and successful career without seeking the spot-light; Seeger is loved, and represents in his music and his life all the virtues that Trump would scoff and eschew. Trump equates winning with accumulating wealth and accolades. But Seeger is a successful person who has done it on his own terms and his own way. To my way of thinking Seeger is the winner, and Trump is sort of a pathetic loser. He’s got this over-blown ego, can’t maintain a relationship to save his life, and he doesn’t have a wit of taste or class. He has to know deep down that no one really genuinely likes him – they just suck up to him because of his wealth and power. Aside from that, Trump has played by the rules of the game as it is laid out, while Pete Seeger has shown the true courage and creativity it requires to live a life that is unbounded.

I run into kids once in awhile who have placed a high level of personal value on material wealth – they brag about BMW’s and how they can “do whatever they want” because they have a lot of money. They’re living in an illusion and I feel badly for them. Material wealth comes with its own demands and chains. Success doesn’t have the first thing to do with how much crap we can accumulate.

madbob@madbob.com