Like our business is murder and business is booming
Like bombs dropped on children
Like drone shadows looming
Like lies from the puppet on pulpits of policy
Like teachers telling students that we live in a damn democracy
Like the trail of tears disappears from a History textbook
Like we forget about all of our fears with this season’s new best look
Like Mrs. King sued the government for the murder of her husband
Like they settled with the family for one hundred dollars, hoping that it would hush them
LIke every twenty-eight hours a black man is shot down by police
Like corporations are more people than people and have more rights to free speech
Like you can’t trust the cops or the courts for justice
Like rape victims are scorned, informed they’re not to be trusted
Like internment camps for Japanese Americans during World War Two
Like Guantanamo Bay, which by the way is still in use
Like the terms Alien and Sedition aren’t just Social Studies facts
Like it’s held many different names, always the same, what is the Patriot Act?
Like the sizes of the countries on the map on the wall
Like little kid’s report on the greatest country of them all
Saturday, February 21, 2015
Saturday, January 24, 2015
unrequited love (take 942)
Dear Internauts,
If you’re like me and fall in love with everyone instantly, a great way to deal with the pain associated with such feelings is turning your problem into your craft time or baking time or movie time or coloring time or hit the books time or pop a wheelie time or run for office time or find your real father time or fly a kite time or skip some rocks time or overthrow the establishment time or learn some new dance moves time or spaghetti time or write a poem about it time or remember that unrequited love isn’t about what someone has done to you but about the great capacity you have to notice loveliness in the world and there’s so much more beauty and wonder and hope and friendship and love and life left to live far beyond a rush of endorphins or when they laughed at your jokes and you really felt hilarious and special for once but that wasn’t them making you special but a bit of your special showing through the cloud that makes us think we need constant reciprocation of everything we feel to make it real and an endless loop about how great we are when really what we love in others and makes our heart go WOW is probably just we’re hungry or tired or lonely or maybe everything and everyone is lovely and sexy and beautiful and it’s not their job to tell you that or make you feel that way cause it’s your job to find out who you wanna be in this beautiful and lovely and sexy and totally crush-worthy of a heartbreaking world and chase after those dreams instead of someone with their own life to live and then when you least expect it the hole inside you is no longer a defect but a part of your story and it is your problem and your life and your story time...
(Every minute you waste on hating yourself is just another wasted minute.)
If you’re like me and fall in love with everyone instantly, a great way to deal with the pain associated with such feelings is turning your problem into your craft time or baking time or movie time or coloring time or hit the books time or pop a wheelie time or run for office time or find your real father time or fly a kite time or skip some rocks time or overthrow the establishment time or learn some new dance moves time or spaghetti time or write a poem about it time or remember that unrequited love isn’t about what someone has done to you but about the great capacity you have to notice loveliness in the world and there’s so much more beauty and wonder and hope and friendship and love and life left to live far beyond a rush of endorphins or when they laughed at your jokes and you really felt hilarious and special for once but that wasn’t them making you special but a bit of your special showing through the cloud that makes us think we need constant reciprocation of everything we feel to make it real and an endless loop about how great we are when really what we love in others and makes our heart go WOW is probably just we’re hungry or tired or lonely or maybe everything and everyone is lovely and sexy and beautiful and it’s not their job to tell you that or make you feel that way cause it’s your job to find out who you wanna be in this beautiful and lovely and sexy and totally crush-worthy of a heartbreaking world and chase after those dreams instead of someone with their own life to live and then when you least expect it the hole inside you is no longer a defect but a part of your story and it is your problem and your life and your story time...
(Every minute you waste on hating yourself is just another wasted minute.)
Tuesday, October 21, 2014
Fury.
Hey Internauts,
For some reason my uncle wanted to see the Brad Pitt helmed WWII flick FURY.
My thoughts can be summed up with how they treated the only two actresses with lines: Main characters break into their house with guns. The "hero" is implied to sleep with the younger of the two, which in this case no matter how nice he is or cute they are, that's definitely rape. More soldiers come in and the older of the girls makes dinner for them as they harass their hosts and threaten them. Then three minutes later the house is bombed so I guess they outlive their usefulness for food, sex, and showing a more human side to the guys(?) so now they die...ugh.
With the amount of major violence and tragic valient sacrifice the movie was masturbatory patriarchy at its most conniving but then brad pitt and logan lerman may still get fucking nominated cause soldiers have feelings or some shit.
My dad says he hopes folks can learn from this, but maybe I'm a little jaded after my entire life of being presided over by war-mongering snake oil salesman. Gotta support the troops no matter what right? What about what's done to them to get them to that point? What about the horrors that could have been avoided if not for greedy fascist politicians years or decades before (oil, anti-communism, the treaty of Versailles) who never learn from History?
It's okay to be afraid of the future, but a fearful future should not be the goal of any society. Be proactive in preventing violence abroad and at home before it goes that far. After all, how many civilians must die before you're willing to question your damn jingoistic bullshit?
[in other news, I've been in New England this week getting something special cooked up for you lovely folks so feel free to get inappropriately excited]
For some reason my uncle wanted to see the Brad Pitt helmed WWII flick FURY.
My thoughts can be summed up with how they treated the only two actresses with lines: Main characters break into their house with guns. The "hero" is implied to sleep with the younger of the two, which in this case no matter how nice he is or cute they are, that's definitely rape. More soldiers come in and the older of the girls makes dinner for them as they harass their hosts and threaten them. Then three minutes later the house is bombed so I guess they outlive their usefulness for food, sex, and showing a more human side to the guys(?) so now they die...ugh.
With the amount of major violence and tragic valient sacrifice the movie was masturbatory patriarchy at its most conniving but then brad pitt and logan lerman may still get fucking nominated cause soldiers have feelings or some shit.
My dad says he hopes folks can learn from this, but maybe I'm a little jaded after my entire life of being presided over by war-mongering snake oil salesman. Gotta support the troops no matter what right? What about what's done to them to get them to that point? What about the horrors that could have been avoided if not for greedy fascist politicians years or decades before (oil, anti-communism, the treaty of Versailles) who never learn from History?
It's okay to be afraid of the future, but a fearful future should not be the goal of any society. Be proactive in preventing violence abroad and at home before it goes that far. After all, how many civilians must die before you're willing to question your damn jingoistic bullshit?
[in other news, I've been in New England this week getting something special cooked up for you lovely folks so feel free to get inappropriately excited]
Wednesday, October 1, 2014
Yo No Home but Phones Though, So...
My oldschool little brick of a phone finally went kaput today after
over two years. Now, with my family's verizon contract, I can get an
upgrade free of charge for certain kinds of phones.
I've gone this long without a smart phone, but it looks like the only ones that are free or below thirty bucks are smart phones.
The cheap-looking flip phones? between 100 and 150 bucks easy. Now, I don't know the business reasons behind this and i don't really care too much.
However, the next time i hear or read someone goin off about "why all these homeless folks walkin round with iphones?" I can inform them based on actual first hand experience that a lot can change in one or two or however many years before your phone breaks.
Need a new phone and don't have much money for anything, well the contract you signed way back in the day says you can get this iphone 5c for free or this iphone 4s for 99cents or all this samsung for...well you get it.
Whether folks got a nice phone before their situations got as rough as you can see or they got it for free under a plan they've had for a long ass time (or whatever the situation because it's none of your business) it's not and has never been about some sort of irresponsible allocation of resources.
Those with affluence have always looked for ways to justify why others go without, and this tactic of pointing out the little that those on the bottom of society's food chain do have is purposefully distracting from real social ills.
If you have money, that does not mean that you are in any way better equipped to handle the responsibility of having money.
And speaking of smart phones, what kind of patronizing, hypocritical a-hole do you have to be to care more about a human being who is starving will do with your pocket change than what a multinational corporation will do with a huge chunk of your paycheck every month?
Do you really care more about how that guy might be lying to you—the one who politely asks if you can offer anything so he and his family might get some bread or water or tickets for a bus to a better town? Is that legitimately more important to you than the amount you hand over gratefully to corporations whose track records are well known to care so little for human life or worker's rights or the environment?
Because we know this isn't really about whether or not your quarter or your dollar bill goes to a sandwich or to booze.
It's a good excuse for a distracting tangential conversation about socially conscious macroeconomics and other bullshit we don't really care about while we sip our lattes. Maybe later we can smoke some pot and listen to covers of Pete Seeger and act like we give a damn about the world before Monday comes around and we head back to a job we hate but it pays the bills and for our xbox live gold membership.
Nah, what this is about is karma, plain and simple.
We still believe that we deserve the good stuff that happens to us while all the bad stuff is unjust.
We still believe that others most have done something to deserve the bad stuff that happens to them, while growing ever jealous of how all the good stuff happens to other people who don't really deserve it.
And on the off chance some real person could really use some real help, why bother, right? I mean, c'mon, some of "those people" have smartphones.
I've gone this long without a smart phone, but it looks like the only ones that are free or below thirty bucks are smart phones.
The cheap-looking flip phones? between 100 and 150 bucks easy. Now, I don't know the business reasons behind this and i don't really care too much.
However, the next time i hear or read someone goin off about "why all these homeless folks walkin round with iphones?" I can inform them based on actual first hand experience that a lot can change in one or two or however many years before your phone breaks.
Need a new phone and don't have much money for anything, well the contract you signed way back in the day says you can get this iphone 5c for free or this iphone 4s for 99cents or all this samsung for...well you get it.
Whether folks got a nice phone before their situations got as rough as you can see or they got it for free under a plan they've had for a long ass time (or whatever the situation because it's none of your business) it's not and has never been about some sort of irresponsible allocation of resources.
Those with affluence have always looked for ways to justify why others go without, and this tactic of pointing out the little that those on the bottom of society's food chain do have is purposefully distracting from real social ills.
If you have money, that does not mean that you are in any way better equipped to handle the responsibility of having money.
And speaking of smart phones, what kind of patronizing, hypocritical a-hole do you have to be to care more about a human being who is starving will do with your pocket change than what a multinational corporation will do with a huge chunk of your paycheck every month?
Do you really care more about how that guy might be lying to you—the one who politely asks if you can offer anything so he and his family might get some bread or water or tickets for a bus to a better town? Is that legitimately more important to you than the amount you hand over gratefully to corporations whose track records are well known to care so little for human life or worker's rights or the environment?
Because we know this isn't really about whether or not your quarter or your dollar bill goes to a sandwich or to booze.
It's a good excuse for a distracting tangential conversation about socially conscious macroeconomics and other bullshit we don't really care about while we sip our lattes. Maybe later we can smoke some pot and listen to covers of Pete Seeger and act like we give a damn about the world before Monday comes around and we head back to a job we hate but it pays the bills and for our xbox live gold membership.
Nah, what this is about is karma, plain and simple.
We still believe that we deserve the good stuff that happens to us while all the bad stuff is unjust.
We still believe that others most have done something to deserve the bad stuff that happens to them, while growing ever jealous of how all the good stuff happens to other people who don't really deserve it.
And on the off chance some real person could really use some real help, why bother, right? I mean, c'mon, some of "those people" have smartphones.
Monday, August 18, 2014
Superheroes
Hey Internauts,
It's that time of year again. You know what I mean, those few weeks a year where a lot of horrible stuff seems to happen all at once. For those of you like me, that's kinda how I feel most of the year anyway. So in the spirit of positivity, let's talk about a topic I love.
I love superheroes. In books, comics, graphic novels, movies, stickers, action figures, and whatever other medium they may appear. I love superheroes. I have my whole life and I probably always will.
But let's talk about the problems with crime fighting as a central theme in a world where laws are very often not a good basis for morality and those who enforce them often act like more like badguys.
How about violence as not only the main way but often the only way to solve a conflict, when in real life it tends to only make more conflict.
Not to mention that even though we're slowly getting better at writing female superheroes, we still draw most of them like they're bikini models, even when it makes no logical sense to do so, and dole out decent characterization in film adaptations, in large part, to the dudes.
And what's up with changing the main character in a lot of these films from a complex and well-rounded (thought admittedly most often white and male) misogynistic douchebag? [i'm lookin at you GoTG]
But like I said, I still love superheroes. I love what those stories can teach us and inspire in us and reflect back at us when they are at their best.
At the end of the day, I would rather boys and girls grow up wanting to save people and work as a team and believe that good can prevail than I would have them think that all they have to offer can be counted in dollars and cents.
And for those of us who are no longer so little, remember that we can still be heroes when we work together to stand up against the forces of injustice in the real world.
"When the mob and the press and the whole world tell you to move, your job is to plant yourself like a tree beside the river of truth and tell the whole world, 'No, you move'." -Captain America
_____________________________________
Pigs on Patrol (Acoustic)
It's that time of year again. You know what I mean, those few weeks a year where a lot of horrible stuff seems to happen all at once. For those of you like me, that's kinda how I feel most of the year anyway. So in the spirit of positivity, let's talk about a topic I love.
I love superheroes. In books, comics, graphic novels, movies, stickers, action figures, and whatever other medium they may appear. I love superheroes. I have my whole life and I probably always will.
But let's talk about the problems with crime fighting as a central theme in a world where laws are very often not a good basis for morality and those who enforce them often act like more like badguys.
How about violence as not only the main way but often the only way to solve a conflict, when in real life it tends to only make more conflict.
Not to mention that even though we're slowly getting better at writing female superheroes, we still draw most of them like they're bikini models, even when it makes no logical sense to do so, and dole out decent characterization in film adaptations, in large part, to the dudes.
And what's up with changing the main character in a lot of these films from a complex and well-rounded (thought admittedly most often white and male) misogynistic douchebag? [i'm lookin at you GoTG]
But like I said, I still love superheroes. I love what those stories can teach us and inspire in us and reflect back at us when they are at their best.
At the end of the day, I would rather boys and girls grow up wanting to save people and work as a team and believe that good can prevail than I would have them think that all they have to offer can be counted in dollars and cents.
And for those of us who are no longer so little, remember that we can still be heroes when we work together to stand up against the forces of injustice in the real world.
"When the mob and the press and the whole world tell you to move, your job is to plant yourself like a tree beside the river of truth and tell the whole world, 'No, you move'." -Captain America
_____________________________________
Pigs on Patrol (Acoustic)
Thursday, July 31, 2014
The Unrequited Shove
Hey there, Internauts!
Just got back from a really cool show, opening for Whitney McCombs. Always a true honor and pleasure to see her perform live. Kasey Williams accompanied her on guitar, bringing a whole new level to the game. There will potentially be some audio and/or video stuff from that show coming soonish, but first I'd like to write about something that's been on my mind lately...
Here's the thing, bro. You think you're mad at her. You think you're upset because she chose some guy she just met over you, her friend of however long. You think that what really pisses you off is her decisions and how they've affected your life from what you hoped it would be.
But you're not mad at her. Not really.
Truth is you're mad at yourself, but it's way easier to direct that negativity at her. You've been taught how to treat women like shit your whole life. You're confusing yourself, lying to yourself, and in this way becoming just another guy treating a woman like shit. Stop it.
JUST STOP.
Breathe.
Remove yourself from the immediate situation—whether that be physically leaving the room or maybe just logging off the social media.
Think about why you're really mad.
Perhaps you feel it took a lot of bravery to confess your feelings, and your expectation of reward led to disappointment.
Perhaps you see your friend’s response as somehow a rejection of you as a person, instead of simply a reasonable response to a difference in attraction.
Perhaps you feel led on for some reason, or that you’ve worked hard to earn some kind of favorable response.
Well, as for that last one: NO. She doesn’t owe you anything. If she’s really your friend, then she gave you the best thing a friend can give, her honesty. Whether she let you down easy or quick and fierce like ripping off a band-aid, her reasons are her own for why she felt that was the best response to what will always be a difficult and uncomfortable situation. She owes you no response, whether physical or emotional or otherwise, that was somehow earned by your friendship. Friendship isn’t about capital. It’s about caring.
For the second case, no one can decide for you how you see yourself. You are a person. You have worth and life and plenty of uniquely attractive features to your complex self. None of this was being brought into question by your female friend telling you she doesn’t want to date you. I repeat, your worth as a human being has nothing to do with who does or doesn’t want to be your significant other.
I know it can feel like you just risked everything for the sake of these grand emotions. Honesty is always brave, definitely. Keep in mind, though, that your part was solely to share how you felt. Her response is not in your control nor should she be held responsible if it doesn’t match with your expectations. You are two separate people. Emotions don’t always match up. Just as said previously, there’s nothing you can do to place another person in relationship debt to you.
If all you wanted was a dating relationship, then it probably wasn’t the greatest friendship anyway.
Move along.
However, if you really do care for this person, then you’ve just survived one of life’s more awkward conversations and can go back to being friends. This may take a while, as your heart may need time to heal. You may have to separate yourself so you can get over these feelings. Ultimately, your friends with this person because of all these great things about them anyway, so it’s okay to still think highly of them. The key is releasing pressure on all sides.
No one should feel pressured to be in a relationship with anyone else. Nothing healthy will come from that.
You are not worth any less as a person because someone else doesn’t reciprocate your feelings.
It may take longer than you’d hope, but feelings can change. It’s better to have saved a friendship, than to have lost both a friendship and a relationship that was never gonna work anyway. Do what you need to so you can heal and accept your friend’s decision. In growing to respect how they feel, you’ll be growing as a person, too.
Remember, no one owes you their love, their body, their time, their attention, etc...
The only one you can decide for is you.
It’s gonna be okay.
Breathe.
Step away.
Think.
And don’t blame others when you’re really mad at yourself.
(Obviously, every individual situation will be different, but what this really comes down to is respect. Respect for another person enough to consider her feelings and not hold her to unreasonable expectations. Respect for yourself enough not to base your worth off who does or doesn’t want to make out with you or marry you.)
It’s gonna be okay.
[Note: A lot of the above language fits into a stereotypically heteronormative situation of a male reacting to a female reacting to the male. The advice can certainly be applied to many relationship situations, no matter the gender constraints. However, this choice of language was due to the disproportionate number of males who have decided to ostracize, abuse, and even in some cases violently murder females in the name of what said males thought they deserved. A better world is possible, but it starts with respect.]
Just got back from a really cool show, opening for Whitney McCombs. Always a true honor and pleasure to see her perform live. Kasey Williams accompanied her on guitar, bringing a whole new level to the game. There will potentially be some audio and/or video stuff from that show coming soonish, but first I'd like to write about something that's been on my mind lately...
Here's the thing, bro. You think you're mad at her. You think you're upset because she chose some guy she just met over you, her friend of however long. You think that what really pisses you off is her decisions and how they've affected your life from what you hoped it would be.
But you're not mad at her. Not really.
Truth is you're mad at yourself, but it's way easier to direct that negativity at her. You've been taught how to treat women like shit your whole life. You're confusing yourself, lying to yourself, and in this way becoming just another guy treating a woman like shit. Stop it.
JUST STOP.
Breathe.
Remove yourself from the immediate situation—whether that be physically leaving the room or maybe just logging off the social media.
Think about why you're really mad.
Perhaps you feel it took a lot of bravery to confess your feelings, and your expectation of reward led to disappointment.
Perhaps you see your friend’s response as somehow a rejection of you as a person, instead of simply a reasonable response to a difference in attraction.
Perhaps you feel led on for some reason, or that you’ve worked hard to earn some kind of favorable response.
Well, as for that last one: NO. She doesn’t owe you anything. If she’s really your friend, then she gave you the best thing a friend can give, her honesty. Whether she let you down easy or quick and fierce like ripping off a band-aid, her reasons are her own for why she felt that was the best response to what will always be a difficult and uncomfortable situation. She owes you no response, whether physical or emotional or otherwise, that was somehow earned by your friendship. Friendship isn’t about capital. It’s about caring.
For the second case, no one can decide for you how you see yourself. You are a person. You have worth and life and plenty of uniquely attractive features to your complex self. None of this was being brought into question by your female friend telling you she doesn’t want to date you. I repeat, your worth as a human being has nothing to do with who does or doesn’t want to be your significant other.
I know it can feel like you just risked everything for the sake of these grand emotions. Honesty is always brave, definitely. Keep in mind, though, that your part was solely to share how you felt. Her response is not in your control nor should she be held responsible if it doesn’t match with your expectations. You are two separate people. Emotions don’t always match up. Just as said previously, there’s nothing you can do to place another person in relationship debt to you.
If all you wanted was a dating relationship, then it probably wasn’t the greatest friendship anyway.
Move along.
However, if you really do care for this person, then you’ve just survived one of life’s more awkward conversations and can go back to being friends. This may take a while, as your heart may need time to heal. You may have to separate yourself so you can get over these feelings. Ultimately, your friends with this person because of all these great things about them anyway, so it’s okay to still think highly of them. The key is releasing pressure on all sides.
No one should feel pressured to be in a relationship with anyone else. Nothing healthy will come from that.
You are not worth any less as a person because someone else doesn’t reciprocate your feelings.
It may take longer than you’d hope, but feelings can change. It’s better to have saved a friendship, than to have lost both a friendship and a relationship that was never gonna work anyway. Do what you need to so you can heal and accept your friend’s decision. In growing to respect how they feel, you’ll be growing as a person, too.
Remember, no one owes you their love, their body, their time, their attention, etc...
The only one you can decide for is you.
It’s gonna be okay.
Breathe.
Step away.
Think.
And don’t blame others when you’re really mad at yourself.
(Obviously, every individual situation will be different, but what this really comes down to is respect. Respect for another person enough to consider her feelings and not hold her to unreasonable expectations. Respect for yourself enough not to base your worth off who does or doesn’t want to make out with you or marry you.)
It’s gonna be okay.
[Note: A lot of the above language fits into a stereotypically heteronormative situation of a male reacting to a female reacting to the male. The advice can certainly be applied to many relationship situations, no matter the gender constraints. However, this choice of language was due to the disproportionate number of males who have decided to ostracize, abuse, and even in some cases violently murder females in the name of what said males thought they deserved. A better world is possible, but it starts with respect.]
Sunday, July 6, 2014
Courage
The stories that have meant the most to me growing up were usually tales
of ordinary folks facing extraordinary circumstances. They faced their
fears when what was frightful was fantastically frightful.
Now I face ordinary circumstances with extraordinary fears. Ordinary life is strenuous and anxiety-producing and difficult in ways that feel like fighting giants and dragons and climbing mountains but look like going to the store or making a phone call.
Still, the heroism in those stories helps me believe that maybe just maybe I can face the everyday monstrosities with the courage of an adventurer.
Real adult life is turning out very differently than I thought it would when I was a kid, but that doesn’t mean I am any less equipped by the morality, ingenuity, and bravery of those fictional heroes to face my real challenges and trials.
Now I face ordinary circumstances with extraordinary fears. Ordinary life is strenuous and anxiety-producing and difficult in ways that feel like fighting giants and dragons and climbing mountains but look like going to the store or making a phone call.
Still, the heroism in those stories helps me believe that maybe just maybe I can face the everyday monstrosities with the courage of an adventurer.
Real adult life is turning out very differently than I thought it would when I was a kid, but that doesn’t mean I am any less equipped by the morality, ingenuity, and bravery of those fictional heroes to face my real challenges and trials.
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