Eyes Wide Open

Many of you avid readers of the funnies may have already hear the news, but for those of you who haven’t: Last week our intrepid local government in the city of Boston Mass turned its’ morning commuters into a bunch of lollygaggers when they, oh so brilliantly, came to the conclusion that a few lite-brites scatter about the city were big bad bombs placed by those evil emboldened terrorists that have supplanted the Boogie Man as the modern day monster under the bed.

The lite-brites in questions, set up to promote the Cartoon Network series Aqua-Teen Hunger Force, got the royal treatment as police cordoned off the T stations and Bus stops where the little advertisements had been comfortably sitting for the past two weeks.

Following the “D’oh” that could be heard echoing from Mayor’s office later that day just about every News Outlet found it self carrying the same story, ‘How can a marketing firm be so damned irresponsible?’ Which of course is ludicrous seeing that we’re talking about an industry has successfully lobbied to keep laws regarding subliminal advertising purposely vague. And let’s not forget how they’ve co-opted communism filmmaker Sergei Eisenstein’s work making it the model for modern TV advert.

Seriously how can anyone stand there with a strait face no less and blame this industry? Maybe they just haven’t “had there break today?”

But since I have I’ll continue with my critique by pointing out that this ‘buck doesn’t stop here’ attitude demonstrated so forcefully by the Boston Mayor’s office is common in politics today. It seems that no matter the mistake the politicians think all they need do is cry “boo-hoo” then pass the blame. As if they were elected to some juror high school office where dropping the ball doesn’t mean that hundreds of commuters in Boston were left stranded in the cold for hours, or that out of the 3 major cities where these adverts were place only Boston spent millions of dollars to remove the two week old toys.

-Huff-

I half expected them to say, “By the way aren’t you impressed by our great response time… once we actually noticed them, that is. Not to mention how fast we located and arrested the poor shmuck who was paid 7 bucks an hour to hang them! Doesn’t that make you feel safe?” Like some fawning child waiting for a Werther's Original and a ‘Good job!’

So I honestly don’t know if I should be mad at the genuinely irresponsible men and women that make up the Massachusetts government or sad that fear of the unknown had so blinded them that what amounts to a child’s toy could garner such a paranoid response…

If this had happened last century would we have seen such a red-faced reaction?

We live in a country that’s been at war for the last several years. A shell shocked country in war that most of the ‘free world’ (and a decent amount of her our own citizens) knew to be a mistake. And now as American’s collectively opens our eyes, with maybe’s & perhaps’ floating about the Senate and House, has anything actually changed? Has anyone taken the responsibility for those mistakes?

In the real world we take our mistakes and fears, we face them, we take responsibility for them. What kind of example is being set when our leaders don’t take action, when they don’t take responsibility? How are Ad Agencies and Children going to lean if they have no role models or worse, if their role models are passing the buck?

For a generation already supposed to live shorter lives this doesn’t seem fair at all.

It’s been said that the only folks that need fear are folks with something to hide. If that is true what are we hiding from? Life?! Growing up?!

Well I hear someone else once say, “We have nothing to fear but fear itself,” it’s a shame the higher ups at the Boston PD hadn’t hear the same. So do me a favor STOP being afraid. Fear really is the mind killer. Turn off the radio, the TV, the computer and do something about… well, do something about anything.

Hell, just stand up somewhere and start people talking and thinking and marching. Stop the fear and stat growing up!

Free Market America!

To start with there’s nothing wrong with the Free Market. I feel I must begin with that statement because I’ve had comments from readers trying to argue with me that the Free Market is one of the oldest and most important social/economical creation in human history. They go on, in excess, about its discovery in every emerging culture since Babel.

So here I state with out malice or corrosions that it is indeed a great and powerful creation, and in many forms has served to expand and strengthen many societies from Hittites’ to Toltecs’. But the Free Market is not in itself a moral institution, it is simply an idea. And ideas are as malleable as clay. There is no moral to the idea of the trade of goods or services. There is no moral to it save what we impose and if there ever was then slavery and child labor wouldn’t have to be illegal. So to you who believe that the mere presents of Free Market is good please put down the remote, turn off The Big Valley and pick up a book on Slavery in the Americas or Sweat Shops!

Those are just a few small examples of Free Market America’s higher profile ‘issues’, there are many-many more. Yet despite all it’s shortcomings I do believe in a Free Market economy. It is a vital and important part of our social expansion. But without a moral focus we can all see how the opportunists, who are out there selling American Flags on September, 12^th 2001 can poison a good and healthy world.

So, here it is, what’s the answer? How can you balances an idea based on selling people what they want at a profit with not exploiting those same, or other people, in the process? Indeed should it matter? Well there are those who would say, of course it doesn’t matter. So many of us have been taken advantage of by Free Market ideas isn’t it only fair play to pass it along?!

NO! No, it’s not fair play. It’s pain, its fear, and it’s hatred. It is! Don’t dismiss this, it is! It’s everything that pissed you off when it first happened to you. It’s that anger you can’t get ride of because God is no longer there to absolve your pain. It’s just you and your sins now. No you’re too busy to worry about your soul. It’s just you’re body you fill, with booze and music.

But you don’t need to go so where or pray to let go of your anger. To see what’s right and what’s exploitation. All you really need to do is think about that silly little Golden Rule, you know Huey, Dewey, and Louie taught you as kids?!

Because sure it may have just been a big advertisement to buy Disney, but don’t be so angry at the Dollarfication that you miss the modern tale of morality the writers tried to pass along.

The Myth of the Left!

That’s right I called it a Myth! You’re not imagining things, nor have I been dipping into the office Scotch (though don’t think I haven’t thought of it).

So then what do I mean when I say “The Myth of the Left”? Well if you’re in the know, and let’s be honest it’s not that easy to be in the know, after all it seems that the News is made up more of speculation then fact. And when the facts do come out they tend to be on page 27C, underneath the advert for herpes treatment. But if you make that extra effort and distil all that subterfuge into the truth then you may realize that the so-called Left is really just the Center.

Let me ‘esplain; There is a Right (sort of). And as Mark W. Smith goes on, and on about they have an agenda. They’re organized and work towards a common goal, we all know that. But this so-called Left is not organized, they are a mix-match of all the other ideas and opinions that are either ignored or deified by the Right. It seems easier to find a quantum theory of gravity then get this Left to advance any sort of unified agenda for anything that the public isn’t already making waves about.

Yes the so-called Left is mislabeled, they should really be called the Center. For after all they are a super juice-o-matic version of what most people want. In the case of Iraqi, or safety, or power; they just find the middle ground in the issue and try to push it thinking (and reasonably so) that this would be a good compromise. They if they can’t get peace or clean rivers they’ll slow down the death or pollution. But of course the reaction from the Right is to deify then many times do what the Center suggests.

If there really was a Left they would stand up and fight, they would have an agenda full of truly Leftist/Revolutionary ideas. They would, like those Leftist George Washington and John Hancock, be storming government halls calling for a tomorrow where everyone can get married and not have to worry about deforestation, global warming, or outsourcing of jobs to foreign sweatshops.

And for the love of Mike don’t give me any of that, that’s what they want you to think dogma. Despite what they what they might think of themselves they are not that clever. As Freud reportedly said, “Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.”

So when I hear that the new 'Left Congress' did this or that, I can’t help but laugh. We’ll be lucky if the Center can even get its act together enough to figure out how to not totally lose what creditability America has left if the Middle East, let along advance any of those supposed agendas we all know they don’t have.

In short good luck to us all and I hope you’re New Years resolution has something to do with getting involved in your community, ‘cause we all know Left, Right, or Center we’re still in the same boat as last year, and it's not the oarsmen that have changed only the drummers.

Faith

Recently my Gran passed and as I waited for my turn to eulogize at her service I couldn’t help thinking about FAITH. The men and women who stepped to the podium ahead of me spoke what she brought to their lives, of her devotion to her faith and to others. Talked about her wonderful afterlife, a place where she would be able to walk unhindered… finally.

And despite this better place where she had be taken, how we who are left behind, would miss her terribly. But what did this all mean? What did my Gran feel, and what did these people feel this afterlife to be? They believed she wouldn’t need her leg brace or crutches there. They believed, as my Gran did, in a better place beyond the vale of life.

This wasn’t the first time someone in my life passed though that vale. Indeed some were older then my grandmother and some where very, very young. But then so was I. So young perhaps that I though myself immortal or simply felt it to far off to consider. I could leave the thoughts of where my family and friends had gone to others, content as I was to struggle with the pieces of life now missing. Never examining my faith, where I believed they had gone.

Yet after I spoke to those faces floating before me and we began to console each other, talking about her and the way just knowing her was enough to bring this crowd here to celebrate her passing. It occurred to me that despite the foxholes we were sitting in and the theists before me talking about her 21 grams floating above us with grandpa I felt hollow inside.

They were celebrating her life, just like me but they were also celebrating her death and this had the strangest effect on me. I was left wondering if I believed in an afterlife?! Well I was taught to, but if I hadn’t been would I have come to this idea myself? And indeed why would we deserve such an afterlife after the gift of living?

For looking around me there I couldn’t get around the idea that all this, the joy and sadness that my Gran gave us just by living, wasn’t that the greatest gift we could receive from our creator? And if that is true then shouldn’t my FAITH be in the living, letting the afterlife take care of itself just as it has since the beginning.

What does it matter that my Gran can dance after her life is over for from the looks of these people that surrounded me she did make mankind her business and for that she would surely be dancing in all our heart’s. Maybe even giving us all an example of where heaven truly is.

Frustrated & Tired

I’m barley 3 decades old and I’m already regretting my choices in life… Well regret is a harsh word here:

re·gret /rɪˈgrɛt/ Pronunciation Key - Show Spelled Pronunciation [ri-gret] Pronunciation Key - Show IPA Pronunciation verb, -gret·ted, gret·ting, noun –verb (used with object)

1. to feel sorrow or remorse for (an act, fault, disappointment, etc.): He no sooner spoke than he regretted it.

2. to think of with a sense of loss: to regret one's vanished youth.

3. a feeling of sorrow or remorse for a fault, act, loss, disappointment, etc.

So let’s just say I’m frustrated with where I am. I hit the road early every morning. Sit on the same train. All of us making sure to get a seat far away from each other, so when the train gets into the city, people wall to wall, we’re far enough from our neighbors there’s no danger of getting to know them.

Yup, that’s the first 30 minuets of my morning; get to the station and get ready for the same day. See the same people and not change a damn thing in the world… ‘cept maybe a word or two.

My life isn’t even all business, I don’t hate my job. It’s legal, even vital for my company. I give back what I can on the weekends, and enjoy myself the rest of the time. But in truth it’s like this: My job is just that, a job and I’ve had a hundred just like it before. I hold no feelings for it one way or the other, it doesn’t challenge me. It doesn’t change my view on life or society. It doesn’t even affect my moral choices, just my financial ones. And a life without a challenge 40 hours a week, well it makes me lazy and tired.

Tired of just being the same cog in the same machine every day and too lazy to do more about it then criticize advertising when it fails to drill it message properly into our brains. I then smoke and drink and worry my grind into drams not worthy of TiVoing on a Friday night.

Weather it’s spending time in soup kitchens or in election offices the frustrating thing is, if I don’t waste my time with all this cannon fodder then what can I do to forget how little my actions influence the track my country’s on?

And what’s left of me without these distractions, these excesses? Just another tired and frustrated young urban professional living in a country who’s struggles have evolved from physical to spiritual. Who’s morals are not lost or forgotten but straining under the pressure of our Speed Racer Cultural. Dazed, just like us who live in this great and powerful country that much of the world sees as evil. We have no rivals in power or influence. If Joe Strummer wrote “I’m so bored with the USA” in the 70’s what are they thinking in Europe now? Or China, or Canada, or Africa?

No one country in the world today has our political, economic, or cultural influence yet the average American has little influence on in his own countries actions. He or she is just an equation on some spread sheet, some Nielsen Rating on a corporate dry-erase board. So yeah I’m frustrated.

Frustrated at our ease of living, of corporate pitfalls, of possessions, of creditors and college loans… I’m a 30 year old yuppie with the world at my feet and the taste of victory on my lips. But that taste isn’t ambrosia, it’s ink from the contract I signed for an education. It’s red Powerade and it’s making me hungry for money not life.

And I’m so tired of Powerade, TGIF, Monday Night Football and Skinamax. I want something to fill that void I pour my one weekend a month, sit-coms and liquor into. I want something real to believe in. Something that challenges me, that makes me feel part of my world not just a cog in the ex-machina… I want to feel that no matter how frustrated I am with my life I’m never tried of living it.

Let my body be tired, but let my soul be full of hope. The hope you get from a strangers smile on the subway, a helping hand to get you to your feet or a good conversation. The hope you get when like minded people vote for a better world.

Maybe I’ve just been Frustrated and Tried for too long but I just want more then excess and easy living from check to check in Free Market America.

“Listening, Not waiting to talk.”

Ho, there gentle reader and very merry holidays to you! It is with great excitement, and no little pleasure, that my idle hands once again put finger to keyboard in an attempt to spread this fine, if somewhat underground, publication. To my luck we even begin our talk at this, ‘the most wonderful time of the year,’ or so Perry Como has so often mused on while we try digesting our daily helping of office dogma in our remodeled lunch room.

But why indeed has it been so very long ‘tween my last words and these, you ask. After all if George the Second can string syllables into a holier then thou rant, why haven’t I? Well you may as well ask why the radio’s played Paul McCartney’s Christmas song every hour and Lennon’s once a week?

Obviously John Lennon’s words mean so much more, and not just for Christmas, but for every day. Now gentle reader do not think me pretentious, I pretend not a comparison of my little web log to the melodic social commentaries of such a brilliant man. What I toil communicate is that words with weight are not so easily written. Yet still that is no excuse for silence, many a man hath written with far greater obstacles. So then why have I been silent? Why have I been missing?

Could it be that I, you’re humble auteur, had been swallowed up by the feelings of indifference that bleed through our televisions and magazines like Hayden Christenson looking for a clue? Or have I just been so self-involved that my ears have been closed to the cries of the huddled masses and the Dixie Chicks? Could the rub be just that simple?

Three days ago I stood in the midst our fair city and for the first time in what hath seemed a lifetime, just closed my eyes and listened. To my incredulity hear not a catch phrases or a jingle bell or even the meaningless three-cord candy which coats our Mtv. Oh no gentle reader, what I heard was simply the people around me; Living, crying, walking, talking and loving.

True when I opened my eyes the Sale signs and bubble-gum Christianity were still everywhere. True too that every child within my view whined about the presents they felt themselves entitled to. Even that self-gratifying reflection of myself in the shop window full of my own steam as I cradle not a penny for the poor but what I foresaw to be the ideal gifts for my own cadre of relations.

Realization that you may give, celebrate, even love at the high holidays without really understanding it, dear reader, might eluded us all now and again. And as salmon swimming up stream purely on instincts, or just because Mel Gibson is, we go on without that feeling held once to our breast as it was long ago.

So I ask you to be honest with yourselves and answer; what do these high holidays mean you any of you? But more importantly what do you think they should mean to you and yours?

Though I must warn you that if all you hold in your hearts is freedom from school or work, the pain of purchase, or your favorite time for movie releases, then well mayhaps you too should close your eyes midst the sea of Fifth Avenue or Sunset Strip or Newberry Street, or where ever it is you call home and think about it again.

Close your eyes and listen to the word with me, try to understand how much we have here and how little other people do. Not just around the word, but even a few blocks down and to the left. If the holidays are just another day for you, make it more. If they are a drain on your bank account, give it to those who need it in the name of those whom you love. Mad as I may sound truth is still truth, and what is more clever and more in the spirit then a bottle of wine with a card saying you have donated cloths or toys or money in thy name?

What have I been doing for a year, I have just been listening. Now I ask of you, listen too gentle read, listen to your cautionary tales and yours hearts alike Mr. and Miss. Scrooge. It is not for your family you are meant only to give, it is to man kind.

Now then I go to make merry and I wish for you a time that will fill you as mine hath filled my very being with the glory of the holidays.

Frustration Leads to Writing

I am confused. I am lost. I am stagnant.
I am all those things and more.

I have been living in neutral since college.

That's not to say I haven't done. I have. I have done many things and been many places. Yes I have done. I just haven't moved on. I have grown beyond my borders, but I haven't become.

I am still frightened of life, maybe now more then eva because I can see the realities that were beyond the borders of my youth. The death. The inhumanity. The fear of living that surrounds adults. That bestows power upon men like Ridge, Goering, or Robespierre.

I fear.

And fear does lead us all down roads which break us apart… a wise man once talked about fear as a demon that infests (wo)men's hearts… that all of us fear.

That the unknown is why we create. Why we study. Why we build. To take control of the that fear. To win against it. But that kind of control is an illusion. A myth.

It is a story we tell our children at night, like the Three Little Pigs or Paul Bunyan.
It is King Arthur and his Knights of peace and justice. It is a Myth.

And as with all myths, the truth, the fear, is buried deep inside it.

The only real control we have is in our actions. It is that control that gives us power. It is here that we can conquer those fears. And it is only here where we can build a world not of Congressional hearings on UnAmerican Affairs, or UnFrancisms, or whateva guise you hide your fear in.

It is only here where we can embrace the unknown.

In creation I am Stagnant. In the world I am Lost. In life I am Confused.

But I try.

I push at my borders. I try to be brave. I try to be strong. for me, for you, for us all.

I claim no divine knowledge, and wish for none.
I claim no monopoly on pain or fear. I am only a traveler, like you.

But I try… to become more.