Irony

Because I have little experience

I don't know

if faith is an emotion

or a decision.

It doesn't matter. 

It doesn't matter at all.

2:21 PM - 3 Comments - 4 Kudos - Add Comment

Pondering Activity Illuminated by an Urban Street Lamp on a Long and Lonely Summer Night

It isn't snow that shelters these

and provides protection

but moths instinctively seek

that which can not last long.

Your love was this to me

pursued by moths

decomposed before its time.

These lamps light

not valuable knowledge

but crumbling emotion. 

6:37 PM - 1 Comments - 2 Kudos - Add Comment

Platitudes (not horse latitudes)

Platitudes (not horse latitudes

Grieving is all the same

sometimes lack of rain

is mistaken for pain.

All kind words bring shame

and show plain.

Whether pining for the loss,

or the loss of the loss

or for what has been lost

or because I know that you know

that I know that you know

that I know that you know

feelings are lame.

Endurance is fame.

My boat sails slow

it gets the job done

with gear in tow

with oars in stow

with oats to sow

you know?

And so it goes…

1:17 AM - 1 Comments - 4 Kudos - Add Comment

Kids These Days

I haven't heard a phrase that old-fashioned since I heard the Rolling Stones say it about President Clinton.  I spent some time yesterday hanging out with a couple of teenage boys.  One was my son Steven, the other my nephew Patrick.  Steven is seventeen and is about to graduate from high school.  Patrick is sixteen and is finishing his sophomore year.

These two guys have grown up to become very different kids, though in a few ways they have faced similar challenges. 

Steven, as you know, was born to a couple of idiot teenagers.  In spite of all this, his mother has done a pretty good job with him.  I have been distant at best.  I am a guy he has always known and has seen regularly.  He calls me dad when he is with me, Mike when he is not.  He has a step-father who is much older than me, who has been around since he was a tiny little kid.  All the same, I am beginning to suspect I have had some influence over him.  He is a champion smart-ass and a world-class underachiever.  He and I have a unique, but very cool relationship these days.  I honestly could not be more proud of that kid, and he is one of my favorite people to spend time with.  I love him more than he knows. 

Patrick was born to two of the most selfish people I have ever met.  His mother is my sister.  I love her dearly, and I consider her a great sister and a good friend.  But she is a shitty mother.  I don't think she or anyone else would disagree with that.  This wouldn't be such a problem if it weren't for the fact that Patrick's dad, my sister's ex-husband, more or less disappeared from his life when he was a baby after he beat up my sister and a few of us tried to kill him.  Recently his mother more or less abandoned him to move in with her boyfriend and his kids a couple hours away.  They see each other sometimes.  This latest development just makes official a situation in which he has lived most of his life.  My parents are raising him.  I like to spend a fair amount of time with Patrick.  He is a very cool kid, but he is very different from his cousin. 

These guys have known each other, and have spent time together in various places their whole lives.  They have always been good friends and have gotten along very well.  If they went to the same high school, and were not related, neither of them would ever know the other existed. 

One of these kids is a theater nut, sings in the choir, and is a talented obo player.  The other one plays bass in a garage band called "White Headphones."  One of them relates every movie he sees to Star Wars, and everything else to Harry Potter.  The other one has seen Star Wars, and a couple of the Harry Potter movies.  One of these boys dates an eighteen year old model, and gets attention everywhere he goes from women of all ages.  The other one sort-of had a girlfriend last year.  One of them will have a successful undergrad and graduate career at UCLA, the other on will go to community college for a while, then who knows what?  One of them is my nephew, the other is my son, and I love them both. 

So we were sitting in a restaurant eating sushi while these two guys compared their notions of "what the world is all about."  I listened intently with a high level of amusement, because it wasn't all that long ago that I was a young man who was sure I knew what the world is all about.  This is both a pissing contest and campfire sing-a-long for kids this age.  They brag, they commiserate, they renew an odd sort of friendship. 

Anyway I was amazed to hear both of them say, and both of them agree, that they never use email anymore.  They haven't really used email much since they were "little kids", which I imagine means like ten minutes ago.  I should know. I was there. 

Now one of these kids recently bought himself a new laptop and the other one is constantly bitching about it.  They are both heavy users of technology.  This news about email seemed odd to me.  When I was in college, I was the seven hundred and twelfth person, at a school with 20,000 students, to sign up for an email account.  And I wasn't in college all that long ago.  At least I thought it wasn't that long ago.  Email was the future.  And it has been the future since then.  I spend much of my day reading and responding to email, with other old people.

And then I remembered the way in which I primarily communicate with my son.  In fact, it is the same way in which I primarily communicate with his mother, and with most of my friends.  We exchange text messages. 

Both of these boys told me that they consider email to be too slow (you never know when the person on the receiving end will get around to reading your message), too "clunky" (because of the software or web interface needed to access email), too inconvenient (because most of the time it actually requires the use of a computer), and just plain "old-fashioned." 

They actually used that word.  These punk-ass kids said email is "old-fashioned." 

I was offended.  I tried to explain to them the history and significance of the introduction of email to the modern world. 

And I stopped myself because I realized. 

Aw hell.  I didn't think it would happen to me. 

Damnit. 

4:56 PM - 8 Comments - 12 Kudos - Add Comment

Word Games

fucking Pacific
coldest ocean in April
my kids run from waves

My friends and I play dumb word games.  We play them mostly with our mobile phones.  We exchange text messages.  These messages contain the intellectual pieces of whatever game we may be playing. 

One of the early games we invented, and my personal favorite, was screwing up clichés on purpose.  We dreamed this up, like all other dumb word games, while we were drinking.  The idea is that you write a cliché into a text message, but you fuck it up, either by mixing it up with some other cliché, or missing the point all together.  As an example, one of us would send all of the others a text message that read

Don't throw stones in glass houses.  You'll get burned.

Or else we would send a text message referring to being "up a tree without a paddle." I think you get the idea. It really isn't very complicated. 

For the record I think it is fair to mention here that some of us do use capitalization and punctuation in text messages.  I don't always do it.  But I do it most of the time.  Also, I have no idea the way to properly cite text messages in an essay. I am sure some college kid could tell me. 

As you can imagine, this kind of game cannot go on forever. There is a finite number of clichés available to be fucked with.  Speakers of English have been historically very efficient at dreaming up and using such idiomatic phrases that almost anything can quickly become "cliché."  And my friends and I tend to frequently engage in a couple of specific activities.  We read a lot. And we drink a lot.  We are a Hemingway novel waiting to be written. We still sometimes think of phrases not previously considered, like when my buddy's new house was built from "the best laid bricks of mice and men" or when I wished I could "walk a mile in his hat" but as you can imagine, we quickly ran out of pieces and players for that particular game of genius. 

More recently we switched to haiku.  This seems to have a longer shelf life than previous dumb word games.   

Our haiku are not traditional.  In fact, they only have two rules.  They have to stick with the old 5 - 7 - 5 syllable scheme, and they have to begin with the word "fucking."

Two syllables are lost as soon as you start.  It is a sacrifice which must be made. 

I don't see my kids as often as I would like.  As most non-custodial single parents would tell you, it sucks.  When we first have babies, we all plan to be there for them every day, for every milestone, for every issue, every important conversation.  But life is kind of fucked up and gets in the way far more often than it should.  Something always happens in our lives that ultimately screws things up for our kids.  It is tragic.  But I have never known even the most selfless parents who can avoid such trappings.  Lots of people make claims, but their kids are usually pretty small.

Recently I have new opportunity to spend time and do new things with my kids.  It has become a goal and a routine for me, and for them, that we spend much of our time together learning, seeing, and experiencing new things.  With their mom they get so caught up in the daily routine.  And she is a homebody with them.  She never takes them anywhere.  My job, as their new weekend dad, is to help them learn to gain new knowledge and new experience so that they can keep it up the rest of their lives, maybe eventually turning some of it into the ever-elusive stuff known as wisdom. 

Like all parents, I want my kids to be better than me.  I also want to have some great times with them along the way.  As long as I am going to be a weekend dad, I may as well take advantage of the opportunities weekend dads are afforded, which are difficult to match for married, full-time dads.  Below, my readers will find a partial list of some of the benefits associated with being a weekend Dad. 

Benefit 1 –           I don't have to fight with them. 

Example –              "Dad when we get done swimming can we have spare ribs and ice cream for dinner?"

                                "Well hell yes.  That's just what I was thinking." Their mother will feed them well.

Benefit 2 -            We have nothing but free time when they are with me. 

Example -               "Dad if you let us stay up until just 1 a.m., we promise to sleep in tomorrow"

                                Fuckin-a. I wanted to watch more Spongebob anyway.  That dude is hilarious. 

Benefit 3 -            Everyone gets out of our way. 

Example -               Pick the best spot on the bank for fishing.  No matter who is there first, when I show up with five little kids, the spot is all ours. 

I make a point to do something with them, and take them somewhere, every weekend they are with me. It is our routine.  Most times we just do the same stuff.  We go the lake for swimming or fishing or rock climbing or hippie-watching.  We wander around geocaching in odd places while they bitch and moan about how much they hate geocaching, then almost pee their pants with excitement when we find something.  In the winter we drive up in the mountains to play in the snow at frozen-over airports.  This summer we are planning an epic camping road trip to see the Grand Canyon. 

We also have a list of things to do (roller-skating, mini-golf) when we have the chance (I am fairly certain that these activities will end with grave injuries – for me) and places to visit (Monterey, Las Vegas, Washington D.C.) which they haven't seen.  We always have an agenda for the weekend. 

Last Sunday morning we woke up late, had burritos for breakfast and did some laundry.

We decided we needed to leave Sacramento, and maybe scratch some locations and/or activities from our lists.  My poor kids have lived in California for more than a year now, and in that time they have not seen the ocean. So we drove to the Pacific Ocean. It seemed the closest and most convenient ocean to visit. 

We got dressed, and piled into the Suburban at the crack of noon.  

We drove West from Sacramento, about two hours total, to Sinson Beach.  Stinson is a little tiny Northern California beach town nestled in a sandy spot between two sets of gigantic cliff to the north and south.  The drive into Stinson along California's highway one is precarious.  It is all hairpin curves, cliffs, rocks and ocean.  The drive made all the kids just nauseous enough for it to seem like a real adventure. 

Northern California beaches are not known for their warmth any time of the year, but particularly not in April.  And as soon as we all parked and walked out on the sand we were freezing to death.  Being a weekend dad, I did not pack jackets.  That sounds like their mother's job. 

But we had come to Stinson under the notion that we would dip our toes in the Pacific Ocean or die trying.  And we were all motivated.  We shed our shoes, rustled up as many sweatshirts and blankets as we could from the Suburban, otherwise tucked our arms into our t-shirts, ran as fast as we could to the waves, and dipped our toes in the salty splash.  Then we ran as fast as we could back to the car.

As we drove back up highway one through the curves and cliffs, we decided we should score some lunch somewhere, so we hit a fancy seafood restaurant near San Quentin.  As we walked in with our arms tucked into our t-shirts, I told the hostess we had one adult and five children in our party.  It was awesome.  I am such an obvious weekend dad.   

Our lunch conversation centered around why on earth we each had two forks but no spoons, and who washes all these napkins anyway? My children, being out of their normal element yet each confident in his or her ability to try and master new things, behaved perfectly.  They were so awesome.  My kids are the fucking coolest.

After a $95 lunch (with no booze, my kids can't hold their liquor), we drove south across the Golden Gate Bridge and into San Francisco.  This was huge for them. They had seen pictures of the Golden Gate Bridge.  They had heard rumors of the Golden Gate Bridge.  But they had never imagined that it could be located on any given Sunday afternoon.  And we could drive on it!  They watched all the crazy people walking over it and freezing to death as they each imagined out loud what the results might be of hurling various objects, people, and animals over the side of such an infamous bridge. 

After a quick driving tour of San Francisco's Palace of Fine Arts, Golden Gate Park, China Town, and Embarcadero Plaza, we headed east on the Bay Bridge to get them home to their mother right on time. 

We did all of this Sunday afternoon between noon and six p.m.  We crossed no fewer than four bridges (though two were really the same one twice), and drove through three tunnels.  Those of you with kids know how amazing that can be. 

Some experiences are difficult to describe. Some emotions associated with experiences are even more difficult to describe.  Dropping my kids back "home" on a Sunday night, is one of those experiences that involves some of those emotions, particularly after a day like Sunday.  It is the silence that seems overwhelming as I drive away.  The silence of my huge car full of empty seats mocks me as I count the days until our next adventure. 

And all I can do is write haiku to my friends, and tell my favorite bartender, Siobhan, how great my day, my weekend, and my life really is. 

I am an incredibly wealthy man two weekends per month. 

My friends, and dumb word games fill in the rest. 

I have nothing to complain about today. 

fucking dumb word games

keep the silence from my mind

I wait for the noise

6:42 PM - 11 Comments - 12 Kudos - Add Comment

Definitional

I am a writer of non-fiction.  I accept this about myself.  I embrace it.  I am not opposed to fiction.  I love it.  I greatly admire the masters.  I have never tried to write fiction.  I think about it from time to time.  But then I remember that there are too many people writing fiction these days and that I am not a very competitive person.  I am generally happy to let other people win. 

My favorite pieces of "actual" literature these days tend to be non-fiction pieces written by authors who are superstars of the fiction world.  It seems that people who write excellent fiction can also kill with non-fiction.  I don't think the opposite is true.  

The thing that occurs to me sometimes about non-fiction, and this is one of the aspects of the genre I most adore, is that one can write almost anything, with enough conviction, and the reader has little choice but to assume it is true.  After all, it has been labeled as "non-fiction."  We all know that those writers of fiction (as opposed to "fiction writers" whose authenticity could be misinterpreted) are a bunch of fucking liars.  They have to be, it is definitional.  They write lies.  It is only logical to assume that this description must bleed somehow into their personal character.  Fucking writers of fiction, can't tell the truth if they want to.    

Is definitional really a word? 

But when a body's work is classified as "non-fiction" the world can be his or her oyster.  The general populace is obliged to accept your words and your work as truth.  Books about propaganda are labeled "non-fiction."  Think about it. 

In his once-renowned, currently-highly-offensive, and often-out-of-print work of non-fiction Roughing It, Mark Twain describes the actual events of the youthful years he spent "out west" in the Nevada high desert silver-mining towns.  Because it is autobiographical, describing many events that actually happened, it is classified as non-fiction, though it reads very much like every other work of fiction for which this hero is celebrated.  One of my favorite stories in this book involves a buffalo climbing a tree.  No really.  Twain describes in great detail, to the reader's utter amazement, the particular situation and unique series of events that led up to the buffalo climbing the tree.  It is difficult to dismiss, however much you think you know about buffalo.  Furthermore, Twain explicitly testifies that the events he describes are absolutely true, and implores the skeptic to investigate for his or herself, suggesting that if you don't believe him, you could ask any of the other witnesses, and the bison itself, insisting that they would all gladly, and without hesitation verify every word he has written.  It is hard to argue with that.  And to make the matter worse for the skeptic, the entire work is classified as non-fiction!  It must be true.  

I find that personally, I am unable to exercise skepticism when it comes to Twain. 

I am willing to admit that there are strange and amazing things that happen to each of us.   We all experience phenomenon which, given the nearly perpetual absence of credible witnesses at the moment of said phenomenon, could never be described in any believable way.  We know at the time these things happen that "no one will ever believe this."  We have all said it many times.  

For example, I once saw a six-month-old baby, bald, no teeth, maybe 25 or 26 inches tall, very baby-looking, stand straight up on two legs, and walk 20 paces across a room to retrieve a toy. Then it marched the same 20 paces back to where it had been sitting and began to play with the toy.  It was simply incredible.  But of course, I never tell that story.  My ex wife was with me at the time of this phenomenon, and saw exactly the same thing, and we shared exclamation at the sight.  We even talked about it amongst ourselves for years to come.  But you will recall from above the tragic circumstances under which these types of things are always experienced, there is never a "credible" witness available.  No one would believe her.  Jeeze. 

Steinbeck, in one of his best works of "non-fiction", The War with the Ospreys writes quite literally about having an argument with a bird.   The bird appears to win.  They share hard feelings, and part ways.  In what appears to be a moment of guilt, old John decided to write an essay perhaps as some means of apology.  He goes as far as to write "I hope that they Ospreys, wherever they may be, are reading this."  It is so fucking brilliant I can hardly stand it.  How can you argue with that?  It is non-fiction.  

As a writer of non-fiction, I feel compelled to describe another of these actual experiences that I have never discussed because no one was ever going to believe me. 

As a teenager, I once greeted myself walking down the street.  

I was not inebriated in any way.  My readers really should expect a certain level of mental incapacity from me these days, but as a teen I was a fairly straight shooter. 

I worked a job, most afternoons and Saturdays, at a very large suburban apartment complex.  The tasks assigned specifically to me were fairly simple.  I mowed thirty-seven lawns, fertilized those same lawns when needed, watered those lawns regularly, and made repairs to any sprinklers vandalized or otherwise lacking proper function.  Most of my time, oddly, was spent repairing sprinklers.  

One Saturday afternoon I was working very diligently and peacefully on a particularly troublesome length of quarter-inch PVC with three outlets attached.  It seemed that when a passer-by kicked one of these sprinklers, all three would move simultaneously, breaking the water line that fed them all and producing more mud than is really necessary in a lower-middle-class suburban environment.  For five bucks an hour, it was my duty to think it through.  It was clearly a function of the interaction between this particular length of PVC, and the earth which surrounds it.  I was in the zone. 

Some of you old-timers will remember that back in the days before ipods, we sometimes carried an insanely small portion of our entire music collection around with us in the form of a magnetically charged cassette designed for storing, and fairly easily accessing reproducible sounds.  We called them "tapes."  I had Motley Crue "on tape."  We, well those of us who were cool anyway, listened to our tapes on a clunky device referred to as a "walkman."  A walkman was about the size of six or eight iphones all glued together.  But they didn't do anything even remotely similar to making phone calls or downloading your favorite movies.  They were sometimes referred to as "wireless devices" but back in the old days this meant that they ran on batteries.  The innovation was that they didn't need to be connected to any alternating-current household circuit.  Walkmans burned through a lot of batteries.  They usually came with headphones similar in function to those of your ipod, but they went outside of your ear, and were attached to a system of headgear adjustable to fit even the lamest head shape.  

So there I was with my walkman clipped to my belt, slightly pulling down one side of my jeans (they were heavy because of the batteries), listening to Motley Crue on tape, concentrating almost wholly on the non-commercial-grade landscape irrigation problem of which I had been charged to make short work, otherwise minding my own business, when something made me look up. 

It was a sunny California day and I could see quite a distance up the hill to the north of the position in which I was standing.  I spotted a kid off in the distance, walking down the hill toward me.  I don't know what it was that first made me notice this kid, but I think it was something about the way he walked.  He had kind of a lift to his step that made him seem to bounce a bit at a certain speed and gait.  I was reminded of the little girls who, in sixth grade made fun of me about the bounce in my gait.  

I stared directly at him for a long time as he approached. 

He was wearing jeans and a t-shirt, different from mine, and otherwise fairly unremarkable.  His t-shirt was teal as I recall, and I am almost certain the one I was wearing that day was black and said "Whitesnake."  His hair gave me my first eerie feeling.  It was dirty blond and long, wavy over his forehead, and more curly in the back where it was somewhat longer.  His hair was exactly like mine, though it appeared to be groomed more toward the purpose of meeting a girl for lunch as opposed to digging in the mud all afternoon.  

By the time I noticed the familiar black line which hung loosely between his ears and the walkman in his hand, I was obviously staring.  As he came close enough for me to notice the blue-green of his eyes, leveled perfectly across an artificial plane with my own, I freaked out a little.  He seemed somewhat apathetic as he appeared to look directly at me.  I looked away, staring momentarily back at the hole in the ground beneath me. 

A couple thoughts crossed through my mind in that moment. The first was that I had an overwhelming urge to greet him with a handshake or a pat on the back the way I often greeted my brother Jon.  I also wanted to call him Jon.  I wanted to ask him if he was Jon.  I felt this urge at the same time I recognized that he didn't look anything like my brother Jon.  My brother Jon had short brown hair, and brown eyes.  Furthermore, having helped him obtain summer employment at the complex, I knew my brother Jon was a few buildings away with the other guys in the crew trimming shrubs.  I could hear the gas trimmer running in the background.  I could hear the guys yelling at Jon for fucking something up. With all my logical understanding of the situation, this kid seemed to me so similar to my brother Jon that I couldn't shake the notion. 

Another thought that crossed my mind in that moment was that I was hallucinating.  I hit myself on the knee with a hand shovel.  It fucking hurt.  I looked up.  He was still there.  I noticed some more details.  His shoes were different from mine, and they were like no pair of shoes I had ever owned, or had ever seen as I could remember. 

I looked at his face again and he stared me directly in the eye and nodded his head, now walking just a few feet from me, maintaining his pace as he passed.  He nodded his head in a manner consistent with that universal "what's up" gesture practiced so diligently and maintained so sacredly by suburban boys for so many decades.  I nodded in return, in a manner consistent with the customary acknowledgement.  He walked past, and I stared behind him until he disappeared around a corner.  

I knew I had just greeted myself, in alternate physical form. 

I spent two more years standing on that lawn and looking around.  I never saw me again.  I have never seen me again anywhere since.  

I couldn't make this up.  It was absolutely real.  I have nothing but faith in any man's ability to recognize himself clearly and absolutely when faced with himself during an otherwise peaceful daily routine.  Anybody who would suggest to a man's face that he couldn't recognize himself is an imbecile and a damn fool. 

This experience was the first to lead me to investigate modern physics, particularly alternate universe theories.  You all, of course, know about alternate universe theory.  And you know that there are several varying details amongst the highly-educated physicists who propose and research these theories.  But the basic idea is that our universe is one of several similar universes that exist simultaneously, often pushing and pulling against each other, or physically overlapping in the space-time continuum.  The theories suggest that these universes sometimes interact with each other in unpredictable ways.  

In college a few years later I would discuss these theories at parties as a way to blow chicks' minds.  I have spent many years since then attempting to get them to do something similarly described but somewhat different to me. 

The best explanation I have ever conceived for this interaction with myself which clearly and inarguable happened exactly the way it is described is one of parallel universe interaction.  

I sometimes think that I was standing on that lawn, beside that street, unbeknownst to me, in a thin corner of the universe we all call home.  The amazingly handsome young man I saw walking down the street was similarly transversing a corner of his own universe so close to our own that the two seemed almost indistinguishable.  We recognized and greeted each other at that moment.  For the rest of our lives we have both moved further into the depths of our own respective universes, where we are at best unlikely to ever cross paths again. 

5:18 PM - 8 Comments - 10 Kudos - Add Comment

Give to Deaf Charities
Current mood: amused

The Knights of Columbus were at every major intersection in San Antonio today collecting donations. They wore smocks that said read "Give to Deaf Charities."

All I could do was wonder why they discriminate against charities that can hear.

8:14 PM - 2 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

The Sins of our Monsters: How Public Television Betrayed us All.

I like to think of myself as a student of my own culture. I am a big believer in a North American Culture. I try to notice and consider different patterns in the things we do as Americans. I always pay particular attention to the experiences we share in common because, after all, isn't that what a culture is made of? Isn't it the set of commonly shared thoughts, beliefs, and experiences that make us who we are as a people? Regardless of our backgrounds, religions, race, or ethnicity, there are some parts of our daily lives that are almost universally shared. Perhaps a love of French fries is something you share with all your neighbors. Maybe it is a television program we all love to watch at one time or another. And we certainly all share the same problems. Whether you are black, brown, yellow, pink, or blue and fuzzy, gas prices are too high, and missionaries at your door are annoying.

You see it is the things we have in common that define who we are. And if, like me, you grew up in North America, you know that there are some memories and influences from childhood which can not be overcome no matter what we try. Some parts of our culture become part of who we are, and we carry them with us wherever we go. No one who has been a child since 1975 will ever forget cabbage patch kids, Pac Man, or Star Wars. They are part of our cultural psyche and are referenced over and over again in various types of media. And certainly there is not one among us who can claim not to have been at least partially raised and educated by watching Sesame Street.

In fact, Sesame Street has been so pervasive of our culture over the last forty years that it may just define many of the activities we still participate in as adults. I suspect that many of our current cultural norms and mores originated with Sesame Street, and have been carried through the years into concrete parts of our culture without reference to, or maybe even realization of their source.

Think about it. How many of us, raised in North America with all manner of our own dialects, mysteriously hear an Eastern European accent when we count to ourselves in our heads? How many of us equate California hippies with giant, scruffy, over-friendly dogs? How many of us expect cookies as snacks every day (check any Starbucks, McDonalds, or Hotel caterer in the country)? Would you freak out if giant, insecure birds walked the street, or if something orange and furry wanted to play with your baby? You probably would not. We have been conditioned to think these things are normal. We are totally cool when Ernie lives with, shares a bedroom with, and takes a bath in front of Bert. We all think Snuffy might just be real. We are sometimes afraid to get yelled at by metal trashcans. And do you ever wonder which letter this week's episode of Lost was brought to you by? Of course you do.

While many of these influences can be positive, others can be purely destructive. Tolerance for ambiguous homosexuality is really great, but we should all worry about some of the other behaviors and lifestyles that we, and our children have been indoctrinated into accepting. I am afraid that the Children's Television Workshop is not exactly what it appears to be. This not-for-profit organization that has long been considered a gold standard for caring and public well-being must be considered in a new light. It is imperative that we all realize the truth behind the puppets.

Some of the biggest problems that face our culture today can be attributed to Public Television. Many of our most destructive behaviors, activities and illnesses, so common to us as a people that we all know someone who is afflicted, can be traced back to Sesame Street. And one character, above all others, can be considered to be the sinister bearer of these plagues. Cookie Monster has ruined America.

As a culture in the twenty-first century we face extinction because of our own neuroses, behavioral, and health problems. Every health care official in the country is screaming about the impending medical crisis our lifestyle dictates for us. Teachers are facing classrooms full of children who are unable to learn using conventional methods. And the number of therapists and prescriptions needed to combat an increasing number of social disorders is alarming.

We weren't always this way. There was a time when self-reliance and conservation were corner-stone values of American culture. But over time, these values were eroded by popular culture. The increased availability of disposable income and new technologies on which to spend it brought new influences into our homes. No longer was the family bible the instrument used for teaching children to read. Soon they had monsters to help, and cartoons that also made them feel good about themselves.

What happened to America? Cookie Monster happened to America. All of the disorders from which we so universally suffer can be traced to this diabolical beast.

I think most obvious to everyone is obesity. One can not really eat cookies every day and expect to stay fit. And yet we watched as children, over and over again while this blue devil consumed plate after plate of yummy cookies. No one ever told Cookie Monster to stop because he might get fat. He was already fat. The message to children was clear. Not only were we told that eating cookies all day and never getting full was a funny thing to do, we were at the same time taught to believe that being fat was cute, like being blue, or having a speech impediment.

If responsibility for America's obesity problem not enough to convince you, let's talk about eating disorders. Dictionary.com defines binge eating disorder as "an eating disorder characterized by recurring episodes of binge eating accompanied by a sense of lack of control and often negative feelings about oneself but without intervening periods of compensatory behavior." Cookie Monster is quite obviously a binge eater. Cookie Monster could not stop eating cookies. He would devour anything put in front of him that even resembled a cookie. Cookie Monster obviously hated himself, yet he was unable to stop and eat anything else, or take a walk around the block. It was cookies all the time. He taught us that this type of behavior was funny and cute. And we adopted it for ourselves. Now we hate ourselves. We eat too much of the things we love, and we wonder why we can't just stop and eat an apple now and then. I'll bet those fat cat public television executives don't wonder.

It would not be fair to blame Cookie Monster for our problems with obesity and eating disorders if we did not also blame him for the increase in diabetes among the North American adult population. If Cookie Monster had any blood flowing through that cold, fluffy heart of his it would most certainly be diabetic. If anyone is in need of daily injections to remain stable, I assure you it is that blue bastard.

The most commonly increasing types of disorders among adults and children alike seem to be behavioral disorders. Problems with things like Obsessive-compulsive Disorder (OCD) and Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) are on the rise in North America and I am sure that every one of us knows someone who is afflicted if we are not afflicted ourselves. We all recognize that there may be many individual factors contributing to the overall increase in identification of these behaviors, but we also recognize that the increase began during a time in our country when every child was watching Sesame Street. I am sure that I don't need to illustrate "cookie obsession" or the inability to count simple numbers without screaming for a tasty snack very clearly for my readers to get my point. We watched this behavior as children and found it to be normal, even funny. But when we model that behavior as adults, and when our children can not pay attention in school, we don't think it is very funny anymore. We think it is time for therapy, medication, and individualized learning plans. That glass of milk may as well be a glass of tears.

As ff modeling and glamorizing the worst behavioral and health problems to ever face a people was not enough, there is one more problem for which that illiterate, saggy, shit-head must not escape responsibility. The overall decrease in manners and self-pride, along with an increase in petty theft among the children in our culture can not be ignored. There can be no mistake that we have Cookie Monster to blame. Think about those crumbs, everywhere. Did your mother want you to eat like that? Do you want your children to eat like that? If you were made of blue fur wouldn't you be inclined to take a little better care of it? Consider the message it communicates.

And let me ask you this. Did you ever see Cookie Monster make a cookie? Did you ever see him in front of the mixer or slaving over a hot oven? Did you ever know that cookie-junkie to have a job? Was he slaving at the office all day so he could drop by the mall to pick up those sweet Mrs. Field's in the evening? I don't think so. He stole them. Cookie Monster is a thief.

I am interested in my culture. And I am interested in the problems it faces. I understand that the best way to solve a problem is to get right down to the root cause and eliminate it. If we are going to solve the problems that face us as a people we must recognize the root cause of those problems. I like to think we are on our way. By understanding and exterminating the cause of the problems that face us as a people, we are so much closer to becoming the greatest culture that ever existed. Let's not let our children watch us destroy ourselves. Let's be very careful about what we let our children watch. Let's really think about the blue, fuzzy source of all our problems, and let's do whatever we must to eliminate that monster.

10:34 PM - 2 Comments - 4 Kudos - Add Comment

Reasonableness

The intensity of a moment can not be shared

though we always imagine it so

in poems and day dreams we construct

emotions entwined as physical embrace

we conceive inhuman sharing

the simultaneous intellectual orgasm.

It is almost certainly not so

the masters had it wrong

as their entombed lovers may now confess

their indulgence haunts us still.

Two hearts never beat alike

and laws of relative experience dictate

the author of a moment is loved less than its subject.

We will agree in definition

as far as language can manage

each confident in understanding

but the heat that I feel

though we use the same name

may merely be warmth in your soul

intensity has no scale

and we will never know. 

6:01 PM - 16 Comments - 20 Kudos - Add Comment

I Had a Dream About Utah...

I Had a Dream About Utah, Serpents, Volkswagens, Community, and Deals That are Too Good To be True

And that morning hit me hard

a summer storm blown in

across the west desert

and sneaking over the mountains

it hit me when I wasn't looking

though I had prepared

and knew what to expect

tumbleweeds piled in my yard

I really was alone

going nowhere

I needed new starts and horizons

"Life for sale

Will trade for new

All reasonable offers accepted"

just keep it together man

keep it together

no one is thinking about you

they have all moved on Happy

as if mansions of gold

waited for the taking

and ghosts disappear from view. 

Who wants to love them anymore anyway?

My van is sage

it wants to move

the land of my birth in winter

beckons

just keep it together

tamales must be made

and your mother still loves you

the kids will be here later

they will

No big deal

Feel.

8:48 AM - 9 Comments - 19 Kudos - Add Comment

Right Lane Must Turn Right

Because we must

is what they say

or else we'll falter,

fade away

but stay black and die

is all I need

to do

my light won't dim

because of you

if commies come then

commies be

there is no wolverine

in me

and terrorism?

Well I don't know man

I don't believe your stories

Just remember

to save me a place in the tall grass

where I can hear the drums

and see the sky

I will meet you there

and together we'll idle

while the rest of the world

5:58 PM - 7 Comments - 12 Kudos - Add Comment

Maybe Next Time She’ll Think...

Who doesn't love Carrie Underwood?  Even people who claim not to love Carrie Underwood secretly love Carrie Underwood.  She is our newest sweetheart.  We like her only slightly less than Kelly Clarkson, and everyone in America loves Kelly Clarkson.  These women are our idols after all.  Even if you claim to abhor the commercial sensation that is American Idol, and hate the kind of glitzy pop music it produces, you have to admit that those ladies singles are some pretty catchy tunes. 

Since I have been in San Antonio the last week and a half or so, I have been listening to the radio again.  See the radio in my cheap little Texas car works fine.  The big fancy Bose system in my Suburban back in California ironically does not work.  Fucking Chevy. 

Anyway Carrie Underwood's single about women's liberation has been all over the radio.  You know the one I mean.  And I have to admit she has done it again.  That is a fun and catchy song.  As she runs through the incredibly simple lyrics you can see the dumb drunk girl and the stupid guy so clearly.  I loved it the first time I heard it. 

But this morning I was lingering in bed the way I do Sunday mornings.  Gay Randall and I closed down a new bar we found within stumbling distance from both our places.  And to our delight and surprise this bar was packed with hotties.  And they were all listening to hair metal and singing along.  I haven't heard so much Motley Crue and Bon Jovi since 1989.  It was super awesome.  But I digress. 

I was laying in bed the way I do, thinking about the state of the world, social causes, the creepiness of puppets and working hard to avoid a headache when Carrie Underwood's song crossed through my mind.  But something about it really bothered me this time.  It might have been the influence of the puppets, but I was definitely bothered by that catchy tune. 

One of the things I like to do when I play the guitar is make other people's songs my own.  I love to play acoustic versions of metal and disco, changing arrangements and timing as necessary to suit my purpose.  I make a song my own.  I like to play and sing songs that are familiar to everyone.  But I try to make them something new at the same time.  One of the simplest and most fun ways to do this is to cross the gender barrier.  Like when Willie Nelson sang "Me and Bobby McGee" or when Cake covered "I will survive."  They took classic favorites and made them their own, at least partly by changing the gender of the expected singer.  Sometimes lyrics need to me modified slightly to make this work.  I have been trying lately to work out all the chords for an acoustic guitar arrangement of Lisa Lisa's "All Cried Out."  But I sing it all myself, with a fairly deep country-style tenor.  We will see how it works. 

I was singing Carrie Underwood's song in my head and thinking it would be pretty simple to play if I had a guitar with me.  But sadly all my guitars are currently in Sacramento.  To amuse myself I sang it out loud, with the style and intention of switching the gender roles in the song.  And here is what I heard myself sing. 

I dug my key into the side

Of her pretty, little, souped-up, four wheel drive

I carved my name into her leather seats

I took a Louisville Slugger to both headlights

Slashed a hole in all four tires

Maybe next time she'll think before she cheats. 

That is really fucking creepy right?  It shocked me to hear it that way.  And I think it would shock anyone in America these days.  It occurred to me that this is a song for which the gender barrier can not be crossed.  It would not be politically acceptable.  If Willie Nelson sang that song, we would never hear it on the radio. 

So this got me thinking about the obvious larger problem.  Why do we think it is fun and cute to sing about women being violent toward men?  The "establishment" freaked out in the late sixties when Hendrix released "Hey Joe", and sang an old song with an even older theme about shooting his woman for cheating on him.  These songs had obviously been around for a long, long time in the form of blues and folk songs.  But Hendrix made it popular.  Hendrix released this idea to suburban white kids for the first time.  Even still, I understand there was a fair amount of concern about it causing the recording to be banned in several places. 

But everyone loves Carrie Underwood.  And everyone loves that song.  It is about women fighting back against their oppressors right?  It is about liberation and taking control instead of just laying back and taking it right?

I don't know.  When I sang it out loud I sounded like a crazy, bad, scary, stalker. 

I also think women cheat as often, if not more often, than men do. 

And while violent reactions to hurt are natural and I hate the idea that we should systematically repress that stuff to somehow seem more civilized, I think it is probably a good idea for all of us to consider when and where, as well as the consistency with which we alternately celebrate and abhor violent activities.  It seems that sometimes only gender makes the difference.  Should it really be that way? 

I don't know. 

But man, that is a catchy song. 

1:13 PM - 11 Comments - 9 Kudos - Add Comment

Trashcan Full of Smiles

I have bottles

in my can

so many that

it overflows and

each time I

toss a new

one the noise

can shatter my mind

like pain

And each one

seems to carry

in its murky

bottom backwash a

dream lost, goal abandoned

like hate

My friends leave

theirs and I

add  mine and

together a menagerie

all yellow, brown,

green and silver

represents all things discarded

like love

I leave them there

like peace. 

7:08 AM - 4 Comments - 10 Kudos - Add Comment

Evolutionary Infancy

These days I find that I am very concerned with how little knowledge we possess.  As a species I am afraid we are particularly ignorant.  Like many of you, I have spent my life so far as a person who seeks knowledge.  I look for it everywhere.  I am self-taught and classically trained.  I try to be street smart and book smart.  And every time I think my near decade in college was a worthwhile experience, and my ability speak eloquently on literary concepts is something to be proud of, I learn something much more important and useful from bikers at a pub. 

I have been thinking quite a bit lately about emotions. 

Emotions are strange and elusive.  They aren't particularly tangible. They are difficult to describe in any clear way, which is why we invented art, music, poetry, and little animated smiley faces.  We all seem to share a fairly common set of emotions, and even agree on definitions for hundreds of them.  We experience emotions every moment of every day.  They are always with us.