Category Archives: agree 2 disagree

Candy-Coated Election

Posted on by
Reply
President Chump

*** Order your T-shirt now! ***

I know a lot of people are trying to candy-coat the election – chin up, move on, put our best foot forward, teach love by giving love, reach across the aisle – and that’s where I falter. Let’s not forget that the Grand Ol’ Party stone-walled President Obama on every single thing he tried to do whether they agreed with it or not. When he reached out, it taught them nothing. “Grand Ol’ Party” is the nickname of the Republican Party for those who didn’t know what GOP stood for – I confess, I did not, but now that I know, I guess I can loosen up and have a good time….

Right. No. No, I can’t. I tried for two days. I thought about how my life would be better now that the Grand Ol’ Party had swept the nation on Tuesday and how I might capitalize on it – ’cause God knows I’m not going to be spiritually uplifted, even by a party that claims to be Jesus loving. As I sat in the woods with my chainsaw trying to find a reason to get up and get working, I suddenly didn’t feel like embracing the candy-coated attitude about this election because I was struck with this thought:

Our new President-elect is a racist, a sexist, and blatant liar. He’s not even a good liar. He will lie knowing he’ll be found out, but he doesn’t care. There is evidence that he is such a pathological liar that he may not even be aware that he is lying. The lie has become his new truth. That’s pretty fucking scary to anyone who can add two and two.

I’ve always thought of America as a country built on principals and occasionally good sense, but I’m feeling a “bigly” vacuum of both. This election taught me that both education and parenting in this nation are substandard (that means “sucks” for those of you who are confused). Only ignorance of the principals of democracy and a complete lack of manners could account for our president-elect’s rise to power. Yes, I know, the forgotten middle class; we can’t eat dignity, right? But…

When someone degrades your women and lies to your face, then tries to sell you magic beans to fix all your life’s ills, do you trust him? You do? God, you’re stupid! I have never been more ashamed of being an American. Worse, I’ve never been more ashamed of being a white male who’s American. Yuck! My kids have to grow up in this shit! [please excuse my lack of manners there]

As I said to my daughter, “It’s okay, Trump didn’t win the popular vote, so less than half of Americans are insane.” I can breathe easy knowing that.

So, I’ve decided to do two things:

1. I’m going to speak up. I’m not going to be all peace and love with these people until they give me a good reason. If they are going to continue to support policies that poison our drinking water, block policies that could mitigate climate change, grow our prison economy for people of color, submit our women’s bodies to federal control, and continue to centralize the money to the very top percent, then I am going to consider their grand fucking party an act of war against my person and my tribe. It may not sound it, but my tribe is the one who believes in Love over Fear and Diplomacy over War, but also Intelligent Knowledgeable Awareness over Blind Insensitive Stupidity. I am not going to Love you if you Hurt me, and I will not be Apathetic if you try. That’s where I stand.

2. I am going to embrace one thing that the Grand Ol’ Boys will be proud of. I am going to monetize and capitalize on this presidency the way comedians capitalized on President Bush, starting with this T-shirt I designed (see image). Want one?

I can swallow this election, but it’s a bitter pill.

A Lesson in Etiquette from Stoners and Drunks

Posted on by
Reply

picnic table remainsA couple days ago I was up stupidly late when I heard a voice outside. I live in the sticks, so this is unusual. I turned out the light and slipped outside with bo stick in hand–yes, I watch too many of those shows when I’m too exhausted to move, but too awake to stop the mouse wheels in my head. After a moment, I heard a stoner’s hacking down the road followed by a loud drunken rap, subject matter revolving around “that damn bitch.” I could hear hip-hop in the other direction emanating from a car parked by our spot of the river and the party was happenin’.

I was in my pajamas. Evening had ground well past midnight. I decided to spare them my “I don’t care if you party here, just don’t leave any trash behind” speech. I enjoy drunken fools, even hostile ones, but I didn’t even have energy to find my shoes–which is why I was standing in the wet grass in my socks listening to another passed over artist make his way up the road.

In the morning the kids and I went to see if our guests left us any presents. They always sign the registry with the usual burn marks, spinning tires tearing up the grass as they exit. Their donation to the tip jar was equally common, a miserly fifteen cents in returnables, with the other portion of the donation burned or broken in the sacrificial fire. Superstition is alive and well, it would seem. However, they added a special caveat I hadn’t seen before.

I believe in the “make it better when you leave” philosophy, but I felt outdone by my unexpected company’s etiquette. After carrying my picnic table a hundred feet for something to sit on, they decided that its slowly rotting frame and crumbling paint job were finally in need of replacement. They must have been moved by the images painted on the picnic table by my children of hearts and rainbows with words like “love” and “peace,” those age old axioms of empathetic humanity.

Out with the old, in with the new? If you want something to come into your life, make room for it? Grow new seeds in tilled dirt? IDK? WTF?

This is why their customs challenged me to open my mind:

1. When I am a stupid drunken fool, I tend to burn branches. I identify with branches. I grew up around them. Despite this, when I looked around the dead fire in the morning, all I could see were signs of my sylvan neglect; undisposed fallen branches were everywhere. Yet here were people whose experience was more “refined” than mine. They identified with furniture, aware that it possessed flammable qualities, and were willing to sacrifice their place to sit to do me the honor of burning my picnic table. Wow and huh.

2. Their spirited dedication in honoring me was further demonstrated when they left evidence behind. No, I’m not talking about the sales slip identifying them as people who bought Corona at Scumbies on October 1, 2016. It’s the illegally burned painted boards arranged around the fire’s perimeter like the spokes of a bicycle wheel as it breaks apart from sonic speed. That’s what happens to my mind when I try to think fast enough to comprehend the profound wisdom of my guests, and all I get instead is “duh…..” To be bold enough to do me such a favor while dodging the deft grip of law enforcement AND flaunt it in their faces by leaving evidence behind! Incredible.

Taking Up Space

Posted on by
Reply

notinmynameDo you ever have those days when you realize you are just taking up space and sucking up air? Let’s not forget burning money, creating need, and consuming food. And to justify your existence…there is nothing. You have not contributed to the world in any way or made it a better place. Maybe, just maybe, by your own passivity, you have not added to the endless pool of hate mongering and ignorant divisionists in the world. And there it is! You have done your part.

Right now, when I listen to the news, I think “Oh my God, these people will never stop killing each other.” Why can’t they just be cool? Why can’t they accept that they will always feel insecure around strong women and then just suck it up? What’s the aversion to “shit happens” and “let’s forget about it” and “I was wrong, I’m sorry” and sometimes just “I’m okay.”

I think most jihadists need to get laid and have a drink. I think the CIA needs to stop meddling in other countries politics because they obviously suck at it. I’m thinking Bin Laden and the rise of ISIS here, both of which they had a hand in. Dig further back and you find more CIA mistakes, lies, corruption, manipulation of “we the people,” and serving and answering to corporations not our elected officials. “I’m sorry, Mr. President, you don’t have a need to know.” Ah, who’s in charge, then? Apparently, not a person elected by the people.

I know I’m rambling. I haven’t had much sleep–babies, ya know? So unpredictable. But speaking of babies, I watched a video of this kid my son’s age after most of his family was bombed. He seemed level headed, smart, angry and asking the same questions every other person on this planet is asking who doesn’t have their head up their ass or are watching FOX news (maybe the same thing?) and that’s “WHY?”

Whenever I see bombs drop, I hear the money sound in my head–Cha-ching, cha-ching–and I wonder who just paid for a new yacht or political campaign? Making big money is the main factor in our world contrary to common sense. We know statistically that bombs make jihadists, yet we keep dropping them. Hmmm. I love money, but I think it is made out of the same stuff that’s in the sun. If you have some, you get a big warm lot of fun. If you have too much, it collapses in on itself and forms a black hole. And that’s what we have, too many people with black holes where their warm heart of fun should be, sucking all the light from the planet.

This may seem like a tangent, but hey, like I said, I haven’t had much sleep. I listened to this commentator on the Global Climate Summit in France. His voice shook with suppressed rage, stating that he was from the only government there that had a faction determined to undermine anything that came out of the summit–no matter what it was. What is that about? What country would have a powerful faction determined to go against 99% of the world’s scientists and ignore their recommendations for change? Who would be so arrogant as to disregard the conclusions reached by “all the nations of the world?” Who should be tarred and feathered, run out of town on a rail, or…sorry…how about simply going home and getting out of the way? Nothing violent. Nothing angry. Just go home and try to connect to your compassion.

Stop thinking your ideology has all the answers. Stop being a black hole. Stop killing the innocent. Stop being such fanatical fundamentalists–I’m talking about the Republican leadership here. Chill out. Relax. Do some yoga. Be cool, man, be cool.

Building Seven?

Posted on by
Reply

WTC7_in_FreefallThis morning I was looking for the medium sized pot lid and I had to stop and think. Since I had looked everywhere, it could only be one place: right in front of me. That was exactly where it was. I am surprised at how often this happens, but I think it is allegorical to the human condition. How often do we dismiss what is right in front of us? Of course, the answer is we have no idea.

In my writing The D Generation, I am faced with this truth over and over. I have researched many topics from alternative energy sources, 9/11, shadow governments, to the existence of aliens. That’s right, the fringe. I have run into a lot of facts, the kind that are like elephants—no, mammoths—in the room, and I think “How could anyone ignore this?”

Yet, it’s really easy to ignore it, miss it, or forget it. That’s the way our minds are engineered. If some bit of information isn’t repeated it gets downgraded until eventually the cells holding on to that information die off without being replicated, or the neurons that once fired to connect to that knowledge are dead. And this is especially true if people want to ignore it. Think about one thing you’ve asked your partner to do or change in their behavior that’s so obviously wrong to you and still they continue to do that thing their own way (and totally screw it up, of course). You would scream at them, but you know it’s just habit, and habits are hard to break.

This is a small and personal example, but let’s look at a really big one that effects millions.

What happened to building seven? What the @#%& is building seven, you ask? You are not alone, in 2006 a poll showed that 43% of americans didn’t know about building seven, and I imagine that number has only grown. I even added to the misinformation by calling it building nine in Prussian Blue (I am not proud), which will be corrected in the second edition to come out this month. Building seven was the building in the World Trade Center complex that fell down in free fall during the 9/11 attacks even though nothing hit it. The 9/11 Commission Report didn’t mention it, and the media quickly forgot about it.

I could believe like others that nothing important happened there and that is why the media has forgotten about it. However, the investigator in me is quick to spot this anomaly as one of 9/11’s major smoking guns. If you go to a crime scene and you ignore half the clues (or maybe all of them), what are your odds of finding the real criminal?

Now that I’ve said that, what is your immediate reaction? I figure you fall into one of three categories: (1) I knew that. (2) This blog is bullshit. (3) I’ve heard this, but the theories are so ridiculous I’ve dismissed it from my mind.

Well, it doesn’t really matter how you feel about it. This isn’t an emotional question, this is a factual question. Pretend this is high school and your taking a test. Before the test you’re teacher reminded you to do what? Read the question, and then ask yourself “Did I answer the question?”

What happened to building seven?

This is my answer. I have no idea. For some reason I wrote building nine, I think it was due to some kind of mass hypnosis. I think the effects have finally worn off because I am now releasing new editions to all The D Generations, with most (but not all) typos fixed, and corrected covers. The first book never had a title since it was an only child, and now it does. The third book, though I love the cover, never fit the motif of the other two, making it look like it was in a generation of its own. So, I have to live with the Dgeneration of Skyclad’s cover…

…but do I have to live with the Dgeneration of my leaders, my media, my mind, my country, and building seven?