All posts by texbatmart

Writing

Blast From The Past: Terracrats

I was going to do a fancy piece with lots of flowery words and statistics to celebrate this milestone, but then I figured that there wasn’t any reason to punish those of you who helped me get here. I don’t have any funny stories ready to go, and I’m feeling too sentimental for the self-deprecation to kick in. So I thought that I would share something from the original Vaults From Uncle Walt. I’ve picked through the stories which survived the Purge of 2000, and chosen one of my favorites. It sums up pretty nicely who I was half my life ago, and it brings back… memories.

Here, reprinted for the first time in at least a decade, I present for your reading enjoyment:

Terracrats:

Lords of this World

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Our next door neighbors were dead. Our house was stolen. The alcohol on our breaths was owned by someone who didn’t even know we existed. We toasted our dominion of the dead and abandoned over a bottle of Tequila. The smoke of clove cigarettes filled the air, mingling with the stench of grief, fear, and loss. Lords of this World.

The house had been well kept, and even the emergency crews that had forced everyone out after the loss of their next-door neighbor and his family had been unable to prevent the touching, but all-in-all, futile gesture of packing all the furniture in plastic wrap. Their homes would be just as they remembered them, though they would never be back to know. And it was thus that we found them, everything perfectly preserved, the final moments of the tragedy recorded in the dust collected in these modern pyramids: no longer homes, now just simply empty tombs of buried lives, of hopes, lost dreams.

The Lords of this World had to climb around the back, where the mudslide had been convicted of breaking and entering: a lesser charge than that of the quadruple murder one door down. So underneath the soiled blue tarp we crawled. And into a house filled with all those buried memories of terror. As the sun sunk beneath the hills, the shadows gave leave to these to bums hiding from the world.

It smelled of mud. That may sound obvious, but it wasn’t at all expected. Maybe we wanted the distinctive odor of the couple who had previously resided. All we got was mud, and the trunk of a pine through the downstairs bathroom. There was no excitement for two seventeen-year-old wannabe dreamers. Just the decay of ruin. There was no inherent glory in defiling an abandoned red-tagged house. So we became Lords of this World. This was to be our domain. This was our place to pretend that the world could be different. This was highly illegal.

The liquor cabinet was on the second storey. A couple of bottles of Monarch Vodka- sure, the cheap shit!- a fifth of Gin, half a bottle of Rum, three-quarters a fifth of Tequila (maybe ten sips of Chambord), a bottle of homemade Kristmas Kaluha and 2 litres of Tonic Water in the miniature fridge that hadn’t worked for a month and a half. Oh, and one can’t forget the forty home-brewed beers just outside the sliding glass doors.

We grabbed the Tequila and Chambord and headed upstairs to check out the view. Just a couple of bedrooms and a plugged-up toilet. So much for the Palace of the Lords: it was a real fixer upper.

It had been dark for maybe twenty minutes, so naturally, these seventeen-year-old Terracrats grew less cautious (until, it is reported, they sang quite loudly with joy- and just a smidgen of drunkenness- and, as I recall, we were severely out of key). We settled down on the third floor to make a dent in the Tequila, but I think it put more of a dent in us. I had a state-imposed curfew I would be missing, my associate had emotional issues we had yet to deal with, his girlfriend (my ex)’s old house was two doors down, and a high school Biology teacher, his wife, and two children had died next door, not even two months prior.

“Lords of this World.” we mumbled back and forth to each other that night. Carpe Nocturne. The music of youth and death played loudly that night, creeping us both out.

Before leaving our Estate, we snuck back down to the second floor in search of flashlights. Considering how drunk we were, that we had only a lighter by which to navigate, and that they were right in front of our faces the whole damn time, I’m surprised we beat the sunrise.

Dread filled my stomach upon our departure across Herren’s graveyard. Sea-stained toys rusted across our path, memorials jumped in front of us like black cats, and the moon howled right back at us. We were traveling from dream through reality to memory:

A week before the slide, Henry, their dog, after two years of uncompromising animosity, suddenly reversed his decision and befriended me, following me home twice. A week before that slide I was ripping my heart out over the love of my life… and investing in another. A week before the slide, I’d had nothing. A week before that slide, I hated him, the son of a bitch.

The morning of:

I awaken to an ambulance in my driveway. “What the hell’s an ambulance doing in our driveway?” “A house slid into the Sound.” “Whose?” “I don’t know.”

The morning of:

I run up the hill, turn the corner. My heart beating through tears on Stand By. Gotta make sure she’s okay, just a little further. Stop. She’s okay. Walk slowly back. Cry tears of grief for my relief.

The morning of:

“Did you hear about Dwight?” “Yeah! There’s a goddamned ambulance in my driveway!”

The mourning of:

“Could you describe him? Was he well liked?”

“Sure, he was hard teacher, but definitely a great guy. Everyone who got to know him liked him.”

Except me…

That night:

“They all died.” “I know… But what about Henry?” “How could you ask that?”

Tears slid down like mud and rain, killing a part of people as surely as it had done Dwight Herren. But there was so much doubt. No one had the answers they so desperately needed. No one knew. At least, not until it was too late. Herren’s memory was crucified on Network News for having violated housing code.

The Lords of this World walked across his grave.

I have left everything as it was ten years ago. Like the tarped-off ruins of life gone sideways, I’d like to leave this “memory” intact. I will say that I’d forgotten just how short my stories were back then. But then again, I was inspired by nearly everything, and had a lot more adventures than I can seem to muster now. Maybe I just needed to be reminded of… things which I seem to have forgotten. Thank you, everyone, for inspiring me to take this stroll down NE Battle Point Drive. I’ve talked a lot about the last time when I was writing almost every day, but I’d forgotten just how much I really liked it. Could I do a better job of it now? Probably. But I don’t know it it would feel the same.

I’ll make a deal with all of you: I’ve got, as of my writing this, 108 views until I reach 2,000 for 2015 alone (December wasn’t my best month), and when I get there, I’ll not only do a special podcast with the Derpdevil (and possibly guest appearances from a couple of other people!), but I’ll sit down and try to do a modern take on Terracrats. I’ll warn you right now, though, that there’s a good chance it will suck. If it doesn’t work, I’ll hang its carcass up as “Bonus Feature”, and think of something else.

Thank you guys for helping me drag my dream a little closer to reality! I’ll see you all again tomorrow as we return back to normal.

-Tex

Uncategorized

No News Isn’t News At All (With Lunch At Jupiter)

My faith in the universe is usually always tested right before everything works out. Either that, or I’m really good at making lemonade from lemons, but only at the last possible instant. I’d been hoping to hear back from a couple of people by now, regarding the gainful employment of yours truly. I mean, it’s not that I’m not proud of what I’ve accomplished with The Vaults of Uncle Walt since it began early December, but no one has come up to me with wads of cash, demanding that I must be paid, either. I suppose I could have ads, but I hate sites with ads, especially if those sites are blogs. I feel that the advertisements demean the flow of thought and distract from the enjoyment of the author’s written word. That being said, it is a source of income that does not necessitate my leaving my apartment. Something is going to happen within a couple of days; I can feel it. Just like the aches and pains flare up in my knees before there is a storm, I can usually sense something coming which will challenge a status quo, and in this case, that almost certainly means a source of income. Have I set myself a challenge? Sure. Is it impossible? Don’t know until I’ve tried. Any regrets? The damnable speed at which I operate, perhaps.

Even now, as I’m calming writing out these words to all of you, my mind is racing, coming alive with possibilities. I find it better not to interrupt myself when I’m travelling at top speed, so I’m going to keep focusing on the task at hand: distracting myself while I try to work out some solution. Tomorrow looks like it will be a busy day for me, with lots of walking and supplication. If I’m lucky, I can find something to pass my waking hours within walking distance of my home. If I’m luckier, it will pay me enough to actually do more that just keep my head above water. The longer I’ve waited to jump back into the fray, the worse my anxiety has gotten. In addition to not knowing which mindless task I might hate the least, I now have to deal with the prospect of acquainting myself with not only new coworkers, but new customers as well. There’s a pizzeria nearby that could seriously use some help. They’re not advertising it, but I’ve tasted what they have to offer. They need someone to overhaul their dough, and their sauce could use some work as well. Maybe I worked my last job for more than just the opportunity to find my future son-in-law.

In other news: Yesterday was Free Comic Book Day. I decided that it had been awhile since the Minkey and I had done anything fun outside the house, so we got up at a reasonable hour, got dressed, and headed out to Berkeley to see what free stuff we could wrangle. I’d called up a friend of mine a couple of days before, and made plans to meet up with him as well. I hadn’t seen him since Wildflower and I attended his wedding, and had been unable to actually figure out a time to go hang out with him the entire month of April, so I figured that we could, at least, decimate the local population of birds in just one go. Nick was coming from The City, and didn’t want to wait around in line for hours, and I wanted to be cheap and take two buses instead of shelling out for BART (not to mention that I still wanted at least a little bit of sleep), so figured we would see what the line looked like when managed to get to Berkeley, and go from there. I’m glad we didn’t get there any sooner.

David and I got there a little over half an hour before Nick. At first, the line didn’t look that bad. And then, as we walked toward what we assumed to be its terminus, our hearts began to drop: the line was stretched around the building, and down almost the entire block. It we had come out sooner, we would still probably have had to wait in line. There were people in costumes looking weary, like they’d been there for quite some time. David would never have made it. But it actually worked out. We didn’t have all that long to wait before Nick joined up with us, and once he’d joined our party, time moved a little faster. David, of course, began complaining he was hungry. We finally got inside, grabbed our free stuff, and shuffled out with the little one to go find something to fill his little belly. Of course, being Berkeley on a Saturday, the places which we wanted to patronize weren’t quite open yet. So we bummed around to kill some time until Jupiter finally opened. We bought something to drink, and smoked a cigarette, and tried to leave David wedged inside of Modern Art.

He escaped.
He escaped.

It was then time to go have lunch. I won’t go into too great of detail, except to mention that if you’re in Berkeley, and like good beer and pizza (and the most amazing garlic bread I’ve ever tasted), then make sure you stop in at Jupiter before you leave. That wasn’t a paid advertisement, until the fine folks at Jupiter would like to make it one.

Oh, and the Minkey picked up a new nickname: Derpdevil, The Boy Without Sense. My friend, Fed, has said that my son is either a genius, or its polar opposite, and most everyone else agrees. He’ll spout something so profound that you literally have to stop and process what he’s just said, and then he spazzes out and hits the people sitting behind him with branches which he’s scavenged from the street. And whereas Daredevil has heightened senses to compensate for the one he’s lost, David has all of his intact, and they seem to be having the reverse effect, making him less aware of what’s going on around him.

We paid the bill, and Nick said he was heading back to get a comic signed by Gail Simone. I had wanted her to autograph my Kindle Fire, but I saw the line and just knew it wasn’t worth it. So we said goodbye to Nick, and his friend Oliver (who had joined us at Jupiter for lunch), grabbed a shot with a TIE fighter pilot and Stormtrooper, and then headed home.

The high point of his day.
The high point of his day, despite that look on his face.

We could have taken two buses to get back, but David was bouncing around with an overabundance of energy, so I decided to have us walk almost two and a half miles to burn a little bit of that exuberance away. As any parent reading this will guess, that was a mistake.

He made it almost halfway before deciding that what he’d really like to do would be to stop somewhere and use the facilities. And of course we’d been zig-zagging through the residential zone, so there weren’t any shops around (or decent vegetative cover). With about a mile to go, we finally found a little cafe. The waiter was far nicer than he might have been, and allowed David to run inside to use the restroom, despite the foreknowledge that we would not be paying customers. I’m going to end the story here, because what happened next isn’t for the faint of heart. Suffice it to say, however, I’m seriously considering taking him to some sort of specialist…

Sportsball

Boxing: Mayweather v Pacquiao

1 Comment

by Dave Banuelos

 

I have loved Boxing longer than I’ve loved Baseball.

My early childhood was far more defined by Hagler-Leonard than the ’87 Mariners, and watching Mike Tyson destroy people was just a little more exciting than watching Jim Presley and Ken Phelps (even though those two combined for 51 HRs that year…who knew?). That eternally divisive decision (I still think Hagler won), and that Godzilla-like rampage through the heavyweight division occurred a generation ago when the sports world still converged upon a prizefight.

This Saturday, the fight in Vegas is—once again— all that matters. I know there’s a horserace, and some semi-dramatic early season baseball games, and some playoff basketball, and some playoff hockey. The fight is all that matters in sports on Saturday.

And this might be the last time that ever happens.

As a bordering-on-hardcore boxing fan in 2015, I can tell you that there are fighters out there who are way more exciting to watch than either of the two first-balloters who will finally face each other tomorrow. Gennady Golovkin is currently laying waste to the middleweight division in Tyson-like fashion. Sergey Kovalev is doing similar work at light-heavyweight. There are even more dazzling technical boxers (Guillermo Rigondeaux), and offensive machines (Leo Santa Cruz) out there than either of the guys fighting in the main event this weekend.

But Floyd Mayweather vs. Manny Pacquiao has the buildup, the compelling and sometimes sordid backstories (Floyd is a woman-beating sociopath, Manny probably took PEDs at some point) that have brought more attention from mainstream media on a boxing match than I’ve seen in over 20 years. Boxing has had its share of incredible moments in the last two decades, but it hasn’t produced a truly awesome sports moment since Foreman knocked out Moorer in 1994.

And I’m disheartened to inform you that Saturday is unlikely to produce a moment like that. Tune in early, and watch rising stars Vasyl Lomachenko, and Leo Santa Cruz do their respective things. Just don’t go in expecting the drama of Leonard-Hearns, or the Hollywood ending of Tyson-Douglas after Floyd and Manny receive their final instructions from referee Kenny Bayless.

I’m not saying it’s impossible. We would all love to see PacMan clip Money with a straight left, swarm him, and stop him. We’d all like Manny to do better than any rational fan could hope for, and eke out a Leonard-Hagler like decision. I’ve even fantasized about it being a questionable stoppage, or a garbage decision. The post-fight interview with Mayweather would be fucking amazing.

But Floyd is the Kobayashi Maru brought to life. He is the no-win scenario, the unbeatable computer simulation. He has made virtually everyone he has stepped in the ring with look helpless and befuddled at some point.  The only way Manny beats him is to hit him so hard and clean that it reprograms the machine. I’m not sure I like his chances, but I have a fan’s hope that I am wrong.

And while I hope this isn’t the last time boxing own the sports spotlight in my lifetime, I plan to carry on watching it until—for whatever reason—I can’t anymore.

Family

Spring- Baby Showers

I may have mentioned it in passing once or twice before, but I’m not the biggest fan of baby showers. They are nothing but an excuse to get stressed out, spend ridiculous sums of money, and wind up hanging out with people who you shouldn’t really have to impress. We went through this all when Cream Soda was about to be born, but it seems that two-and-a-half years have erased the pain from our first attempt. The morning of the shower, I swore that I would stick to my guns and not participate in any way. My wife had learned her lesson from the parties which had come before, and had wanted to avoid the pitfalls of yet another get-together. But when I woke up, she was in the kitchen with our daughter, scrambling to help get a day’s worth of work done in just a handful of hours. I insisted that I wanted nothing to do with any of it, and took a shower, put on my suit, and then tried to blend into the background. I must not have looked busy enough, though, as I was soon dragooned into service. A ten-dollar bill was shoved into my hand, and I was sent off in search of two-liter sodas and six packages of tostadadas. Sure, it meant going to the grocery store in my one good suit, but on the other hand, it got me out of the apartment.

The whirlwind pace of food preparation continued with only minor breaks for bathing, and both my daughter and wife were still going strong well after the party was set to have begun. Our rides arrived a short while later, and it took all of us to load up everything which we were taking over. We had ribs, a pasta salad, a fancy regular salad with oranges and walnuts, a fettuccine alfredo with the one thing I fear more than whole milk: shrimp. There were also party favors and balloons, and a homemade lemonade. The six of us piled into our in-laws’ cars as nothing more than an afterthought. We were running at least an hour behind schedule, and we still had to set up everything at Lupe’s house. Fortunately, the drive was short. We started unloading the vehicles, and once everything had been brought inside, the ladies began the final touches on the party decorations. Nerdenn Events and I wanted to just stay out of the way, and help by not screwing anything up. To help us in our cause, Guillermo, brother-in-law to my sister-in-law, offered both me and my son-in-law a beer.

Pictured: Helping.
Pictured: Helping.

The place was still pretty empty, so Nerdenn and I managed to stay out of harm’s way while the women were running around, engaged in quality control. They were like a force of nature, and within a handful of minutes, the whole place looked ready to withstand an all-out assault of party-goers suffering from Baby Fever. The food was ready. The decorations were arranged. There was a nice little spot for the presents to begin piling up. The only thing we needed now was for the tide of people we’d been expecting to arrive.

You can see the fear of failing to host the perfect party in their eyes.
You can see the fear of failing to host the perfect party in their eyes.

Soon, the usual suspects began arriving (more family, and a friend not acquainted with the guest of honor/party girl), and it was decided that we’d eat if no one showed up in a little while. I was grateful for this, because I hadn’t had a bite to eat all day. I’d been saving myself for the ribs, which were, after a brief respite for transportation, back in the oven once again. In the meantime, we sat around in little groups and made small talk with one another, while drinking what appeared to be a never-ending supply of beer. Finally, we decided that we should just sit down to eat, so we grabbed our trays and served ourselves. I grabbed a little of the fettuccine, daring a shrimp or two, and was just about to resign myself to a life without my one true love (ribs), when a worthy opponent stepped up upon the stage. It turns out that Lupe had prepared some baked barbecue chicken, which I must admit, despite being against chicken in general, was juicy and delicious. I polished off two drumsticks (and my fettuccine), priding myself on the fact that I hadn’t spilled a single thing on my fancy white dress shirt. And then I was told the next batch was ready, and this batch was also made with habanero in the sauce. I whispered a silent apology to my shirt, and snagged a couple drumsticks more.

My reaction when told about the second batch of drumsticks, debating whether I was too stuffed to try them.
My reaction when told about the second batch of drumsticks, debating whether I was too stuffed to try them. I totally did.

That was the most delicious chicken I have ever eaten. I just want to make that clear. Spicy in all the right ways, with a salve of sweetness. It almost got rid of the flavor of the Tecate.

When it become obvious that no one else was coming, we got ready for the party games. I had assumed that the photographer would not be required to participate, but I would soon discover just how wrong I’d been. We started out with the “Diaper Game,” which involved smelling, and tasting, various substances which resembled newborn poop while blindfolded, and then guessing what it was that had been “sampled.”

This was mustard, as I recall.
This was mustard, as I recall.

The ladies took their turns first, while the room erupted in laughter at their discomfiture. Then it was time for the men. As a group, we were more daring, actually getting around to tasting these vile substances. When I was forced into playing, I wound up with the Mustard diaper, which I guessed immediately, and then went back to snapping pictures.

The moment of truth.
The moment of truth.

With that done, I thought I would be free, but there was yet another game involving blindfolds which we were “volunteered” to play. Mr. Events and I were sat down and blindfolded, as were our significant others, and we were spoon fed something which we were told to identify based only upon its rancid flavor. Wildflower shoved the spoon- upside down- into my mouth, spilling its noxious contents upon my beard and fancy white dress shirt, the same shirt I’d managed to keep clean in the face of barbecue. I described the flavor as peas and Satan, and screamed at my wife to quit jamming the spoon into my face. It turns out that I was close: the role of Satan was played by liquefied turkey. I haven’t eaten baby food for well over three decades, and after this experience, I’m not looking forward to my senior years. I now know why babies spit back out the majority of food spooned into their trusting mouths. Not to mention that even in their most perfect state, I cannot stand peas or turkey.

Then came the moment in the evening which I had been anxiously awaiting. The balloons were re-purposed, and shoved up under blouses, and the competition of the Baby Bump began. This time, it all appeared to be done in good spirit, and the ladies, with their inflated bellies, fell upon the guest of honor in giggles and camaraderie.

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Meanwhile, back at the ranch, we men were just about finishing up with our sixth or seventh round of beer.

We still had some time to kill before my daughter was allowed to tear into her newly-acquired loot, so Guillermo put on some… type… of music, and the dancing officially began.

After that, it was just cake and presents, and the inevitable call for cleanup. I tried to argue that I was staying out of it, but my wife can be quite… persuasive… when she puts her mind to it. We got everything cleaned and packed away, thanked our hosts for the wonderful evening, and were driven back home. Both Wildflower and I were dead on our feet, and began to fade as soon as we crossed the threshold of our residence. The kids weren’t much further behind. We had survived another party, and maybe the stress of today would ensure that we wouldn’t have to face another for quite some time to come. We’ll see about that, though. Birthdays are coming up, and my granddaughter has yet to be born. I’d like to say that we had settled on small gatherings for family, as even the grandest of events wind up being just that, but mothers like to provide only the best for their children, so we’re not out of the woods quite yet.

Current Events

Hope

I’m mainly writing this for myself, because there are times when I just cannot bear to feel the overwhelming sadness any longer. I look at the long history of institutional violence in this country of mine, and I think that it is simply too much, too ingrained to ever hope to change. Our politicians have long since let us down, sold us to the multinationals who finance their campaigns. The police view everyone who dares speak up as a clear and present danger. Our military is engaged in diplomacy by drone strike, draining billions from the budget while failing to make the world a safer place. I am white man in mid-thirties, straight, and doing okay for myself. I should be the beneficiary of at least some sort of pandering, and yet even my voice is not enough to give consideration, let alone the voices of those far less fortunate than I. We have been marginalized and dehumanized, and told not to rock the boat. We are products to be bought and sold so that the ultra-rich can sleep in peace, and are kept comatose by shiny new distractions which we kill ourselves that we might have enough to buy them.

The only things which keep me going are a faith in the notion of what I believe this country might one day stand for, and the future which my son and grandchildren will otherwise be forced to endure. The system is broken. In a nation of riches, there are too many people who don’t even have enough to be considered poor. And while the folks in our nation’s capitol spend what little time they have allotted for their taxpayer-funded duties screaming about the legislation of morality, their words are undercut by a complete disregard for anyone who doesn’t live like them. It’s easy to say that all politicians are corrupt, and then do precisely nothing to change it. It’s easy to believe that if you don’t break any laws, the cops will have no reason to come calling, until, one day they do. As long as you aren’t the one oppressed, it’s easy to ignore the suffering of others; they must have done something to deserve it.

I’ve heard that from my family so many times it makes me sick. They agree that the police might be a little heavy-handed, but spout that privileged, clueless nonsense that if you don’t want to take that chance, then you better not do anything illegal. It doesn’t work that way, in the same way that corporations don’t generally change long-held policies for the benefit of their workers or consumers until they forced to do so. The Free Market will sort everything out, I’m told. Tell that to the polluted air, the warming climate, and the water we can no longer drink. Tell that to the barely-teenaged workers making dirt cheap crap that we don’t need half a world away. Tell that to the parents working several jobs just so that they don’t have to choose between a place to live or food to eat. And pray they don’t get sick. We are the property of other men.

Those who would represent us have sold us for blood money. The employers to whom we trade away the best years of our lives will only care about us as long as it doesn’t cost them anything. The moment we are no longer profitable resources is the moment when we are discarded. Local governments are funding themselves on the backs of those who can’t afford to pay, saying that they’ve lowered taxes, but then criminalized with monetary penalty the act of being poor. They ship us off to prisons which somehow got privatized; for-profit institutions that require a constant influx of new product. We are told that we don’t matter. We are told we have no worth. We are sold the lie that if we can just work hard enough, the world can be our oyster, and then criticized for laziness upon our inevitable failure.

But there is a glimmer of hope: It doesn’t matter it it’s always been, it doesn’t have to be this way. We are a species that has proved itself capable of eradicating some disease. We have put people on the moon. The moon, damn it! We have connected the entire world and found inspiration there. We have shown that we are capable of being so much more than the mere sum our genetic code and history of aggression. Before the clock runs out, before there’s nothing left to save, we need to find it in us to stand together and cry out, “No more!” It’s not about the individual. It’s not about the cliques. We are bound together by the very nature of our lives. And not just us, but all life on this planet. We’ve had our chance at infancy, and we’ve since outgrown our childhood. We’ve faced struggles in pubescence, and now the adulthood of our species is upon us.

We are kept isolated so that we can’t unite, for the power of a people demanding justice with one voice cannot be silenced, and those who would slaughter us just to keep the status quo know it. I know it seems too big. I know they seem too powerful. I know that it looks like things will never change. I didn’t add my voice when they were Occupying across America because I was too worried about the repercussions. Not that I would be arrested, or mistreated, or harmed in any way (I was born with mithril pigment in my skin), but that if I left my job to go and stand for what I felt was right, that my family would be forced to suffer for my idealism. We all have things which bind us to them and keep us from acting for the greater good. Except that when we do not stand, and do not speak, and do not defend the things we truly value, we will discover that those things which we thought we were protecting have been nothing but shackles all along.

It’s so easy to let someone else stand up to do the difficult things which must be done, but we don’t need another martyr. Let’s stand together and face down the darkness, hand in hand. No more! No more! No more!

Current Events

To Protect and Serve

I stand by what I wrote yesterday, but it seems that I left out some people in my scathing rant about civility: the people directly responsible for these protests. When it is your job to safeguard the populace, and yet nobody seems to trust you, then you’re doing something wrong. Too many people are winding up dead, and the use of lethal force has gone from a measure of last resort to the first line of defense. And local police departments are stocking up on military toys, excited at the chance to play soldier like they did when they were kids. It leads me to wonder exactly who they think that they’re protecting and what noble cause it is that they might be serving.

I get it though, we’re all afraid. If I was convinced that someone posed a clear and present danger, I would want to eliminate the threat which they might present. And who seems to be enraged toward law enforcement more than the specifically targeted, determinedly profiled (by said law enforcement) populace of African Americans? I mean, especially in areas of extreme poverty, who knows if they will be packing heat because they have committed to a life of crime? So the cops shoot first, and fail to ask a single question, or they beat someone past the point of no return, and then leave them alone to die. I mean, they’re terrified, right? And instead of trying to figure out why exactly that the citizenry might be (justifiably) upset, they do their best to tear them down, dehumanize them, so that they might not feel so foolish when they sprint from shadows. It’s easier to believe that you are slaying dragons than committing crimes against the people you are sworn to protect.

And before I get torn down for suggesting that police are animals, let me be clear: not all officers of the law are guilty of these crimes. In my life, I have met several decent men and women of various police departments who genuinely seem to care about those in their jurisdiction. But theirs is a profession of high stress and higher risk, where their lives are on the line in any given moment, and that tends to foster a protective group mentality. Like soldiers, or firefighters, the team is what you’re loyal to, as it is the team which is primarily responsible for making sure you stay alive. Unfortunately, this means that even good and decent people tend to overlook the heinous actions of a few, in the name of fraternal unity, until those actions become institutionalized. The vast majority of law enforcement will not turn upon their fellow cops, and even when it happens, the punishment is oft-times muted, or reflected back upon the accuser.

Well, that’s not good enough anymore, if it ever was. The police are afraid of the people that they are sworn to protect, and those same people live in constant terror of those sworn to protect them. The deck is stacked against each and every one of us (though more against the majority of minorities), with legislation regulating more and more of our private lives. We are becoming, the lot of us, outlaws in our homeland. It is not a crime to be born Black. It is not a crime to be born poor. It is not a crime to not speak English. It is not a crime to love another person (who has attained the age of majority and is capable of and willing to give consent). I was told that the United States of America was the greatest country in the world, a land of indomitable people of vision and tenacity, a leader in the world, last of the great superpowers. And yet we lock away our citizens by the millions, and bleed others dry to pay the bills. We tell them what they can and cannot do in the privacy of their own homes. We are a nation of hypocrisy, and maybe we always were.

It’s not enough to blame the bad cops who go out and hunt their prey. It’s not enough to blame the rioters for having endured more than they should ever have had to. While there are cops who go above and beyond the call of regulations to go out and “make the world a safer place,” the root of the problem does not lie with them alone. For over a decade we have mutely witnessed a stripping of our rights away, all in the name of “keeping our nation safe.” That’s not to say they weren’t being eroded long before, just that about thirteen years ago, there was no longer a need to keep it hidden from public view. Our representatives have taken it upon themselves to try to criminalize that which they do not understand. Add in an aversion to scientific fact, and a tendency to view the world in black and white (and the everflowing holy shade of green), and you get a situation like the one which we wound up with.

On a more local level, disgusting initiatives have been placed before the voters, appealing to the fear within them so that the politicians’ hands might not get dirty. It is easier to divide us than to bring us all together. We have no universal commonality between us, other than our most basic shared humanity (and history has shown that not to be enough). It’s the Blacks who are ruining everything! No, wait! It’s the Mexicans! Now why are the those women getting so damned uppity? It’s the Muslims! It’s the Atheists! War On Christmas! Gay people are trying to destroy marriage! We are constantly set upon one another so that we’ll be too busy to see what’s really going on. And there will always be the perfect spot to poke between any of the many groups with which we identify to make us turn upon each other.

There is a deeper problem here, one which we’re only just beginning to acknowledge. It’s not just cops, though they need to get their shit together. I am not the type of guy who is easily convinced to move to a philosophy of violence, but I have generally had a pretty privileged life. Maybe it’s time that we all stand up and take this country back. We will never all agree on everything, and there will always be those who seek to emphasize our differences for their own ill-gotten gain. To paraphrase Martin Niemöller:

First they came for the Blacks, and I did not speak out-

Because I was not Black.

Then they came for the Gays, and I did not speak out-

Because I was not Gay.

Then they came for the Muslims, and I did not speak out-

Because I was not a Muslim.

Then they came for me-  and there was no one left to speak for me.

As Benjamin Franklin once said, “We must all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately.”

Current Events

Anarchy and Activism

An Open Letter to the Anarchists and Those Engaging In Violence For Violence’s Sake

(And Those Who Tacitly Enable Them)

Listen up, because I’m getting really tired of repeating myself: While there may be some people fooled by the destructive actions of the handful of you who always seem to attach yourselves to whichever valid protest may be occurring like a tapeworm which has infiltrated the open wounds of injustice, the rest of us are not, and we’ve had enough. You idiots are the reason why no one takes a protest seriously any more. I know, I know: many people out in the streets make fantastic cover for your petty larceny and desire to break something. But all you’re doing is giving those with no desire to effect a change the ammunition they desire to maintain the status quo. It takes courage to stare down a police force armored in full riot gear, armed with nothing but the knowledge that you are in the right, and that kind of strength should not be undermined by callow, undeserving, self-centered malcontents who only know how to direct their agitation toward a narrow slice of personal gain. It is not the fault of local businesses, so stop destroying them. And if you take the law into your own hands and seek out vigilante justice, then you are no better than the authorities being protested for having done the same while on their narrow and misinformed personal crusades.

There is a reason why the best among us have always advocated peaceful protest: give them no excuse to ridicule your ideology, and don’t sink down to meet them on their level. The moment a rock or punch is thrown, your argument becomes invalid in the eyes of those whom you are protesting. See? they say, This is what we have to deal with. Maybe we crossed a line, but we had to protect ourselves. That’s all it takes. I was a stone’s throw (metaphorically, of course) from the WTO debacle in Seattle in ’99. My girlfriend’s daughter went over to town to bask in all the chaos. I remember watching the news coverage, and sitting with my girlfriend while worrying if her teenage daughter would make it through the night. And what did that accomplish? Not a goddamned thing! The rest of the country got to chuckle at the disorganized flailings of an obviously childish philosophy. Was the police response justified? On the one hand, obviously not. They are ostensibly there “To Protect and Serve.” But when your city is under siege by those who are engaging in acts of casual destruction? What then?

The Occupy a News Cycle protests wound up failing in much the same way. Sure, it would have helped if there had been a unified message with a handful of bullet points instead of countless voices trying to scream over one another, demanding redress for their grievances, but eventually a conversation might have finally been forced to start, were it not for the elements of rash destruction which tended to hang about the fringes of the protests in all the major cities. Instead of inspiring an open discussion of inequality and the erosion of our basic human rights, the entire movement allowed itself to be marginalized by the lawlessness and stupidity by which they’d already been forcibly branded. What should have been handled with the caution and determination of a siege mentality was instead wasted on a futile assault against the gates. You cannot give them even the slightest excuse to mow you under. The first brick thrown, the first fire set, and the whole thing comes unraveled in the interests of “public safety.”

Now, that is not a defense of the policies (and the police officers who enforce them) of brutal violence blooming out of their own fears and racism. The incidents which sparked the riots in Ferguson, Baltimore, and Los Angeles were inexcusable, and need to have been properly addressed. Crime exists when its perpetrators feel that they’ve no other option for survival, and there will always be those who will exploit their helplessness, and prey upon their fears. No one should have to live in fear of the police, unless they are murderers on the run. And even then, I’m told, there is the framework in this country for the public, through its appointed and elected representatives, to try an individual in a court of law. No one should have to worry that an encounter with a cop will result in death. No one should have to worry about being arrested without cause. It’s not enough to say that if you don’t want to risk a run-in with the Law, then don’t break any, when we live in a world where almost anything can be construed as an act criminality.

We have the right to peacefully assemble (at least for now). We have the responsibility to make our voices heard. We must stand up for one another before there is no one left to stand at all. And when rise, and when our voices carry, we must keep our house in order. It’s the same principle as the what many Christians have been facing. No one likes the Westboro Baptist Church, or thinks what they are doing is a good or decent thing. No one likes those dudes with megaphones and giant signs screaming “God Hates Fags!” And yet we allow them to continue. We allow their hate to permeate the conversation to distract us from the things which we need to say. The First Amendment ensures that government cannot censor what we say, but that doesn’t mean we have to let the worst among us spout their hatred without consequence. Call them out on it. Make them stop. Even if you didn’t throw that brick, you saw that dude who was about to. We are trying to stand up for civility, equality, and justice. We cannot allow ourselves to be undermined by those who simply want to watch the world burn.

Current Events

Weather: Summer Sun And Crazy Days

Every source I can find says that it’s only 64°F in Not Quite Richmond, CA, but I beg to differ. It feels like Satan’s asscrack outside, with the sun beating down in unrelenting waves of punishment for crimes against humanity that someone around here must have been planning for quite some time. I’m still a Seattle Boy at heart, and this tropical weather is something that I never will get used to. It’s funny that the main selling point of the Bay Area for me was the promise of Palm Trees, and yet I never quite got around to thinking about what type of climate that vegetation represented. It isn’t helping either that we’re in what I can only hope is the tail end of a years’ long drought. I’m just not prepared to go to war over potable water, but give me a few more days like this one, and I’ll unearth my swords and buy new tires for my bicycle, and ride around the Iron Triangle in search of something cool and refreshing that I can bring home to my wife and child. Now there’s an image: A balding man mounted upon a bicycle, wielding twin katana wildly with a look of desperation in his eyes. Surprisingly, I’m more or less okay with that.

I remember one summer when I was living on the Island, I think it was sometime around August, if the explosion of blackberry vines were any indication, and the temperature spiked into the 90’s. That in and of itself might not have been the end of the world, but the humidity seemed to add another pound of misery with every degree above the high 70’s, and there was no escaping it. We tried shutting ourselves in, with all the windows and doors closed, but wound up roasting. We then opened everything up to admit whatever breeze might come, but the only guest to heed our invitation was a second helping of excruciating warmth. We tried splashing water upon our skin to encourage evaporation, but it was sucked in quickly in an attempt to rehydrate our sorry selves. Finally, with no other option available to me, having long since passed the point where I could even consider the notion that other people might exist, I took a couple of machetes to the creek which marked the boundary of our property and began to do some landscaping. It was going swimmingly, down there in the dried-out creek, until someone decided they wanted to pick a fight with me over the property rights of said machetes.

At this point, I would like to offer up some friendly advice to anyone who may someday be in a similar position: If you see someone with a couple of bladed weapons, sweating, swearing, and taking his frustrations out in a horrifyingly useful fashion, please, for the love of all that is good and decent in the world, leave him the hell alone! There will be nothing so important to impart to him that is worth the imminent risk into which you are so valiantly thrusting your life. I’ll leave out some of the more amusing (from my perspective, with a healthy dose of retrospection) details, but I can reassure you that everyone wound up walking away from the incident with the same number of appendages with which they entered. I will say that it was about this time that I realized why there could never be peace in the Middle East, and why the South always seemed a brewing cesspool of intolerance, and why the riots erupted in Los Angeles. Hot weather, put simply, pisses people off. You know where you don’t find a lot of hatred, nor a culture of institutionalized violence? Seattle. Sure, there have been incidents, but overall, everyone is so better adjusted to the concept of not being a complete tool.

It doesn’t rain all the time there, but it is overcast for a majority of the time, and can get pretty chilly when it isn’t June, July, or August. People there seem to be better equipped to get along because they have a common enemy: Californians. No, I’m kidding (kind of). Their real enemy is the unrelenting shittiness of the weather on any given day. And on the Island, if there’s even a weak breeze, there’s a 60/40 chance the power will go out. So people band together and support one another and even the crazy hobos are generally kind. Or at least they used to be. I remember being genuinely shocked when I moved down here, that even after I’d said I had no change to spare, people would keep following me, shouting after and harassing me, like that would change my mind. Just weeks before, back in my hometown, I also couldn’t help someone out, but instead of cursing me and any future offspring, he wished me a good day, and good health. Now, as the temperature continues rising, I’m afraid that Seattle will wind up like San Francisco, and only be good for the people rich enough to avoid having to actually experience it.

And in Mexico, my next stop on the slowest world tour of all time, it just hit 110°F in a place where actual people live! I mean, I’m not planning to go out roaming the countryside, but I’ve been told that it’s kind of rainy where I’m going, and I’d like a chance to get to see that before the whole damn place erupts into either a bloody jungle, or falls away to dustbowl. I know that I’ve made jokes about finding myself a nice cave somewhere in a mountain range (I’ve always been particular to the Olympics), I was mostly joking! I don’t want to have to live in some grubby little cave just to beat the heat! I mean, maybe someday I’ll be ready to dive right into hermitage, but that probably won’t be for at least another decade or so.

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I look out into the world as single tear rolls halfway down my cheek (before evaporating in the direct sunlight), thinking about what kind of place that’s been left for my son to have to face. And then I think about my grandson. And my unborn granddaughter. I’ll probably be dead before the final bowel blast, but them? What do they have to look forward to?

Family

We Will Always Party Hard

Sometimes I just need to psyche myself up before attending a baby shower. Like I’ve been saying, they’re not really in my wheelhouse. I mean, I have helped bring life into this world, but I’ve never been a human incubator, so I guess I’ve never felt like I really needed to be thrown a party. As a matter of fact, I’m not terribly all that into parties in the first place. I think that the only party which I’ve truly wanted to attend was one that never actually happened: For my thirty-fifth birthday, I wanted to rent a limo, and go out for a night on the town to celebrate my “Very Good Year”, but it all sort of just fell apart, and I wound up doing absolutely nothing, which to be fair, had been my backup all along. When in doubt, I always say, mope about the house.

When I was seventeen, it was a very good year. I moved out of my mom’s place and struck out on my own. I fell in love, and lost my virginity. I got to practice being a dad, write some tunes and my best short stories, start a business, and generally play at being an adult. It was one of the few times in my life when I can remember being so wholeheartedly happy. That, of course, would all begin to crumble within the next couple of years, but I didn’t know that then, and I honestly thought that it would last forever. Also that summer was soft, and we frequently hid from lights on the village green. And the Island was still kind of a small town…

When I was twenty-one, it wasn’t that great. I had a massive nervous breakdown, and spent a week in the hospital. I broke up with my girlfriend of the past few years. I moved from place to place, dating ladies so that I could have a couch to sleep upon. Eventually I wound up crashing in the woods behind the local Safeway. I did move to the city that year, however. My friends called me up at work, and rescued me at the end of summer. But really, the only thing that resembles the song is that, when I was twenty-one, “it came undone.”

So when my thirty-fifth birthday was approaching, I wanted to do better. I was happily married (as happily as a married man can be), so there was very little chance of hooking up with blue blooded girls of independent means, unless you could interpret it to mean that my wife had her own source of income and one slightly varicose vein. It wasn’t much, but it was all I had to work with. The only thing that was missing was the limousine. Plus, it would have been an excuse to get dressed up fancy and have a night out on the town, and I’d had to buy a suit when I’d attended my friend’s wedding just a couple of weeks before. Sadly, it was not meant to be. I guess there are still a little over seven months to make it happen, but as I’m broke, and my wife doesn’t go for that sort of tomfoolery. Maybe I’ll just put on the least crappy pair of jeans I own, and we’ll have a date night down at Weinerschnitzel. Yeah, that’ll go over well.

In just a little while, everyone else will begin waking up. I had the fortune to be woken by my son, who rose before the dawn. That’s like the third or fourth night in a row that I’ve managed to wrangle less than six hours of sleep. At least I’ll have a fog about me (mental- I’ll be hopping in the shower as soon as I feel up to it) to protect my fragile psyche from the abuses of the dreaded Party Games. If I was going to be smart about it, I’d take a shower now, while everyone else is sleeping. No pounding upon doors, no waiting for my turn. Ten minutes in the bathroom is all I really need (there are benefits to being bald), and then the only thing which I would have to concern myself regarding, would be herding the Minkey toward his fancy party clothing after using a moist towelette to scrub his face and neck. But that would mean admitting that it was time to finally start doing productive things today, and I don’t know if I am ready to face that.

What I would like to do, more than anything, is to just curl back up in bed, and take a nap until the adrenaline of being late launches me forward like a juggernaut. This plan has some obvious merit. First and foremost, it means that I get to go back to sleep again. And secondly, by the time I’ve fully woken up again, I’ll have already arrived at the party, and been taking pictures for at least an hour. By then, the alcohol will have been flowing freely, and I can drown down my self-awareness with the help of my old my old friend, Tecate. That’s something that I always love about these get togethers: no matter what the occasion, there always seems to be almost enough beer to make it all a little more bearable.

So I’ll go and snap some photos, and drink a brew or five, and then before I know it, we can all go home. If I can get a good night’s sleep tonight, I’ll praise the mattress gods. I remember that this lack of sleep was one of the reasons why I quit my job. Of course, my commute is much shorter now, and it costs me significantly less.

Okay, it’s time to start getting it together. Just a few hours left before the festivities begin. If I time it just right, I can be in the shower or getting dressed when the rolling meltdowns begin.

Here’s to babies! And here’s to the people who incubate them, sacrificing form and figure to feed their unborn child!

Note to self: remember not to shave. You know the reasons why...
Note to self: remember not to shave. You know the reasons why…
Writing

Master Of Serenity

Somehow I seem to have maintained my zen-like state for the duration of the afternoon. To be honest, I am just the slightest bit impressed. Normally it takes me nearly forever and a day to calm myself when I have blown my top. Rage is just the flip side of depression, and if there’s anything I’m really good at, it’s being mopey as hell, sometimes for days on end. But today, after the incident with the grasshopper in the parking lot, I felt a level of serenity which I’m normally not accustomed to. I brushed aside all of the frustration and disappointment, and sat down to get back to work. I couldn’t get back exactly to where I’d been before, but the ideas were still there in my head, and I just had to trust that I could get them out again. Sure, they weren’t as beautiful as what had come before, and each near-miss, a tiny stab of heartache, but I stayed with it and managed to get it down, If I’m being honest, though, my favorite part of that entire piece was the epilogue, and that was mainly because it had almost nothing to do with what I’d (failed to have) written. Plus, it either made me look a little more or a little less deranged, depending on how one might view a bald coincidence.

But enough jabs at my lack of hair: it’s time to focus back upon the very best parts of me. I seemed to have discovered a surefire way to find my center in the middle of a storm, and the best part of it is that it only requires a pack of cigarettes and endless supply of grasshoppers. I used to be able to more easily access my happy place, but years and years of falling back in the face of a constant barrage of disappointment and injustice have made it nearly impossible to find. It’s hard to keep an upward glance when you’re caught out in the rain, and by staring at my feet, I’ve missed everything else around me. Pleasant thoughts, like summer breeze, lift upward due to warmth, and the only ones which sink below are scuttled by the chill of sadness driven down by winter winds. Simple serenity, I’ve found, can be discovered in the smallest things, just waiting to be seen. It’s just a matter of letting all the screeching ego simply fade away, and learn to view the world through the eyes of a child again.

I’ve spent the last several years drowning the innocence inside of me, hoping to find the answers I’ve been seeking in the cold reason of adulthood. But all that’s gotten me is an unending stream of stress and misery. In trading youth for understanding, I’ve been left with neither, and the only thing that I can figure is that I’ve gotten it all wrong. The happiest I’ve ever been was when I was still a child, and my whole life lay in front of me, with nothing but endless possibilities as far as I could see. Every day was a new adventure, inspiring me again. From astronaut to baseball player to astrophysicist, each new bit of information launching me ever forward. And through it all, I always knew that I would one day write about it. That was the constant through every other dream: that no matter what I did, I did it so that I would have something I could write about. And as the years marched on, and my options began to thin, much as my hair would in the years which (shortly) followed, so too did my primary dream begin to fade. With every drop in probability, the joy and hope which once defined me continued to recede. Eventually all that was left was the memory of who I used to want to be when I managed to grow up. It never occurred to me to think that growing up would rob me of the very best parts of me.

A Moment of Truth, Presented in the Omniscient Third Person
A Moment of Truth, Presented in the Omniscient Third Person

A single leaping grasshopper in the middle of a parking lot. A man rapidly arriving at the end of what little rope that he’s got left. A thing of beauty, never seen, lost forever in a digital world gone mad. Tensions within the man’s apartment are written on the walls in large, swirling, angry letters spelling in out in great detail each and every slight and misstep committed by the occupants. The smell of hopelessness now permeates the air, the byproduct of the late-night arguments and fading faith in one another. Seven lives, hanging in the balance, each one counting on the other, and disbelieving them, even so. Like animals roaming restlessly, trapped within their cage, these now-empty husks of once fully realized people pace about, bumping into one another, and feel the rage begin to bubble over without the slightest provocation. Hanging above them all, a sense of doom nears palpability. A single spark could set them off, and at least one of them is smoking. But the man outside, having just lit up his cigarette, takes notice of the insect as hops directly in his path. Everything, every little thing then resolves to crystal clarity. The grasshopper is a metaphor, the man begins to realize, for his standing as mere novitiate upon the path toward tranquility. It is a sign that he must let go of all of his pent-up anger, and seek out the words within him once again. He takes a breath, and extinguishes his cigarette, opening the door, and walking back inside. While he has not managed to recapture his inspiration, he has at least found some measure of composure by which he may attempt to finish what he started. He knows that it cannot be the same, but the flicker of his muse has been rekindled and the echoes of his madness still linger in his brain. He breathes deeply, clearing out the doubt and agitation and begins to write again.