The Psychic Cowboy and The Many Wives Of Glenn Beck

After high school I went to work at a loading dock, because I had read a book about Gandhi and decided that my calling was that of secular saint rather than college graduate. While the experience would change my mind—it’s easier to be Gandhi when you have throngs of adoring followers—I did meet a few interesting characters, and learned the difference between a ‘skid’ and a ‘pallet’.

One of the characters I met was a guy we all called The Psychic Cowboy. He was compulsively clad in a big rimmed cowboy hat, was about fifty years old, 300+ pounds, and living on social security. Something was wrong with his legs.

He would come to visit his wife on lunch, and would talk to us occasionally about prophecies that had been revealed to him and fringe pseudo-science. He was really into a book called ‘psycho-cybernetics’, and talked a lot about a thing called biofeedback, and the mystical experience that can be had by those who suffer from Parkinson’s disease. The Psychic Cowboy was good to talk to, because our job was so mind-numbing and physically strenuous. From time to time, the cowboy would snap into a creepy-growly voice and make a sudden proclamation: “The Jordan River, which I believe to be a holy place…it is! It is a holy place!” After doing this, he would rebuke his creepy voice in his normal voice, and continue on talking about whatever he was talking about.

Over the course of about a year, I started talking to his wife more often, and learned that her family had disowned her over her marriage to the Psychic Cowboy. They thought he was crazy and dangerous, and apparently some of his prophecies and revelations had led to financial and emotional hardship for their family. Her family urged her to leave him, but she stayed true to him, and believed that he was who he said he was. She was content to live in a little apartment stuffed with strange books and newspapers, and to drive a broken down old hooptie as long as she could be with her prophet.

After a while, I realized that I wasn’t Gandhi. I switched jobs, went to college, and got a degree. While I was at school, word got to me that The Psychic Cowboy had fallen down dead in the parking lot of a local grocery store. It turned out that he had a gigantic tumor in the middle of his brain. After realizing that this was no doubt the source of his strange beliefs and behavior, my thoughts immediately went to his wife, who had allowed her life to take a fairly radical path based on the delusions that her husband suffered from. I wondered if she connected the tumor to the prophecies and weird hobbies that the man had. God only knows what other strange things may have passed from him to her over the years. Did she understand that he was suffering from an illness, and not a divine gift?

I haven’t run into her since then, but I hope she’s okay. She popped into my head as I was driving to work today, listening to Glenn Beck’s radio show. The connection was hard not to draw. There’s no way that Beck will be able to keep his fans all revved up and full of horrible anticipation over a prolonged period of time. Eventually, when the revolution doesn’t come, when white Midwestern conservatives realize that a black president with a funny name needn’t be a fascistic dictator, or that a handful of progressive policies may actually do the country some good, Glenn Beck’s influence will greatly diminish. I have to wonder if the reckoning that the Psychic Cowboy’s wife experienced will be analogous in any way to the reckoning all of those tea-partying housewives across America are going to experience when they begin to get a hint of what really animates their talk-radio icon.

Maybe the experience will be analogous. I mean, it's not like their going to start listening to Laura Ingraham again, right?



cross posted at Kos

UPDATE: This is the first essay I've written at Daily Kos that has made the recommended list. Pretty awesome.

My Posse

As I approach 30...

I find I have much more appreciation for this:

“A happy vicar I might have been
Two hundred years ago
To preach upon eternal doom
And watch my walnuts grow;

But born, alas, in an evil time,
I missed that pleasant haven,
For the hair has grown on my upper lip
And the clergy are all clean-shaven”


~ From 'Why I Write', by George Orwell.

The Medicine Cabinet Recommends

A few items that caught my eye in March:

1. Statues of naked men have been popping up all over New York City. The artists need to visit Cincinnati. I just think it would do us good. Naked man on the 5th third building downtown. Naked man on the Roebling bridge. Naked man on Fountain square. Naked man in front of City Hall. How could anything bad come of that?

2. Here's an interesting chart documenting the different personal majadjustments of various muppets, via Andrew Sullivan. I think they're onto something here.

3. P.Z. Meyers tells us How To make A Snake. Science is cool.

4. If you’re on facebook, you should consider joining the following groups: buddy grey, and The Drop Inn Center. If you want to volunteer or donate, or do some other creative thing to support our quest to end homelessness, leave a message on the wall of either page. We're always looking for innovative ideas.

5.Coming off the passage of the healthcare bill, Daniel Shore has good advice for the president’s supporters & enemies alike: Don’t Short Obama. Much like it was bad news to portray George W. Bush as a dumb-ass aristocrat, it's also bad to stick too close to the Obama=Carter line (or, the Obama=Mao idea).

7. vegemite spaghetti: one of my recent hobbies is trying vegemite on everything. This is a good, cheap and easy recipe that I just learned. Viva la Vegemite!

8. Extremism Slumbers In The Body Of Faith. What do you think?

9.Something about Spring screams out for David Lee Roth era Van Halen. What a great band:



Have a great weekend, y'all!

The Virtue Of Pragmatism

Recent articles by Russell Blackford and Michael Shermer have gotten me thinking about pragmatism, and the importance of evangelizing not a particular software ideology (Marxism, Christianity, conservatism, etc.), but the proper use of hardware thinking (skepticism & pragmatism).

Not too long ago, I wrote an essay on the importance of teaching your kids how to think, not what to think, in which I estolled the virtue of skepticism. There’s another piece I would like to add to my list of thinking hardware: Pragmatism.

I count pragmatism among the list of thinking hardware rather than thinking software because it is not proscriptive. It’s a framework within which a person can further their software thinking by dribs and drabs or all at once (if lucky). It allows for compromise, and coupled with the hardware skill of skepticism, allows for a change in one’s own opinion upon the introduction of better ideas. Skepticism and Pragmatism are virtues, because they allow for progress, and they lessen the chance for conflict better than any other idea. They sharpen the minds of everyone who employs them, and sidesteps our reductionist impulse to view every conflict as one between good and evil.

For instance, I am an epicurean, but I am not an epicurean above all else. I will forward the notions of Epicureanism in conversation, and I will practice them personally, but that software ideology is not my ultimate identity. It is subject to deletion, or revision. I am, above my ideological self, a thinking human, who is capable of many things. By putting my ideological identity second, I allow my humanity—and the humanity of others—to become evident to me. Interestingly, by putting my ideology second, I seem to be even more effective at spreading it.

Here is one of my favorite quotations, from Saul Alinsky:

"One of the most important things in life is what judge Learned Hand described as 'that ever-gnawing inner doubt as to whether you're right.' If you don't have that, if you think you've got an inside track to absolute truth, you become doctrinaire, humorless and intellectually constipated. The greatest crimes in history have been perpetrated by such religious and political and racial fanatics, from the persecutions of the Inquisition on down to Communist purges and Nazi genocide."

The software ideologue puts their ideology above their humanity, and because this is the case, they feel they’ll lose their identity by compromising on it. They don’t realize that software ideologies are not inherently rational. They believe they are carved in stone commandments, sent down from whatever authority they depend on for guidance. A person doesn’t have to look any farther than the creation museum in Kentucky, or pre-healthcare flip Dennis Kucinich for evidence of this, just to stick with my own area of the world.

Blackford’s essay reminds us that we are human beings with genetic proclivities, but it also points out that even though this is the case, we are also thinking creatures with relatively free wills:

Blackford:

“Generally speaking, it is rational for us to act in ways that accord with our reflectively-endorsed desires or values, rather than in ways that maximise our reproductive chances or in whatever ways we tend to respond without thinking. If we value the benefits of social living, this may require that we support and conform to socially-developed norms of conduct that constrain individuals from acting in ruthless pursuit of self-interest. Admittedly, our evolved nature may affect this, in the sense that any workable system of moral norms must be practical for the needs of beings like us, who are, it seems, naturally inclined to be neither angelically selfless nor utterly uncaring about others. Thus, our evolved psychology may impose limits on what real-world moral systems can realistically demand of human beings, perhaps defeating some of the more extreme ambitions of both conservatives and liberals. It may not be realistic to expect each other to be either as self-denying as moral conservatives seem to want or as altruistic as some liberals seem to want.”

Much as we have been programmed by evolution to crave the fatty, high calorie foods that are now killing so many of us, so too have we been programmed to enjoy sex, which leads to greater reproduction rates, which is now counter-productive to our continued survival as a species.

Blackford also has this to say:

“On this picture, realistic moral systems will allow considerable scope for individuals to act in accordance with whatever they actually value. However, they will also impose constraints, since truly ruthless competition among individuals would lead to widespread insecurity, suffering, and disorder. Allowing it would be inconsistent with many values that most of us adhere to, on reflection, such as the values of loving and trusting relationships, social survival, and the amelioration of suffering in the world. If, however, we are social animals that already have an evolved sympathetic responsiveness to each other, the yoke of a realistic moral system may be relatively light for most of us most of the time.”

Giving our rational selves over to our pet software ideologies and natural impulses is a recipe for disaster. But, in Michael Shermer’s recent essay close to this subject, he puts forward the idea that some genetic ideological impulses are only subject to so much revision:

“Over the years (Jonathon) Haidt and his University of Virginia colleague Jesse Graham have surveyed the moral opinions of more than 110,000 people from dozens of countries and have found this consistent difference: self-reported liberals are high (on the Haidt Scale) on 1 and 2 (harm/ care and fairness/reciprocity) but are low on 3, 4 and 5 (in-group loyalty,authority/respect and purity/sanctity), whereas self-reported conservatives are roughly equal on all five dimensions, although they place slightly less emphasis on 1 and 2 than liberals do. (Take the survey yourself at www.yourmorals.org.)
Instead of viewing the left and the right as either inherently correct or wrong, a more scientific approach is to recognize that liberals and conservatives emphasize different moral values…”

This may be the case, but with the right tools (pragmatism and skepticism), we can—if we are brave—understand exactly what inclines us towards our respective software beliefs, and put parameters on how far we will allow these inclinations and biases to take us. It takes a certain humility to admit that we may not possess ‘the lord’s truth’, but doing so frees us to hear the software ideas of others, to compromise, to change our own opinions, and to live in a pluralistic society.

Everything In the Medicine Cabinet Has Expired

My Religious Beliefs, Summed Up:

Apples were made for eating.

Spencer Troxell: Sports Philistine

Worthwhile blogger Lodo Grdzak has a post up about his excitement over an upcoming boxing match. He writes with enthusiasm and the commentary of an afficianado, but I am not fazed. It's not on account of some lack of writing ability on Lodo's part. I read and enjoy his blog regularly. Something else is preventing me from being able to enjoy boxing in a visceral way.

Much like my relationship to every other sport, I like the idea of boxing much better than boxing itself. The mythology of boxing as portrayed in movies like 'Cinderella Man', and Mark Knopfler's 'Song For Sonny Liston' makes me a little sentimental about it from a human angle, but when I sit down to watch it, nothing happens. Maybe I'm deficient in some kind of man-gene, but watching two guys hit each other is boring to me, and watching a crowd of people cheering two guys on as they hit each other reminds me of how bloodthirsty and herd-stupid people can be.

I wish I could lose myself in sports like Lodo seems to be able to. His response to my comment is full of passion:

Spence:

Boxing is man to man--one on one. No one can win it for you except yourself. Or possibly Don King (or after this last fight--I'd say Bob Arum).

The individual personalities of the fighters take center stage. As Miles Davis said when talking about musical artists, you see a man's carriage, the way he carries himself outside the ring, and you almost already know how he's gonna fight.

The shirt's off, nothing but a pair of trunks--you're practically naked out there except for gloves. Your soul exposed. People would like to see you get hurt. How're you gonna react?

I like that there's no commercials. The fight just plays out in real time. I like the toughness, like my man Miguel Cotto. His skills have declined, but he's got such great heart! You almost respect him just as much when he loses as when he wins.

But I like the skill fighters best--Floyd Mayweather, Manny Pacquiao, and my personal favorite--Sugar Shane Mosely. Until you see a really good boxing match (few and far between these days), you haven't seen the best sports has to offer.

The biggest problem nowadays is that the skills of the boxers have really declined. Blood lust for knockouts (brought on by Tyson, and MMA) has taken over an appreciation of real boxing skills.

Good stuff. I can dig the passion, I just can't dig the subject. I had a professor in college that was nuts about Shakespeare's sonnets. He had memorized a lot of them, and would pepper his lectures with references to them. He was such a good professor, and was so clearly in love with the sonnets that I ended up buying a collection of them, and dug into them with great anticipation. Unfortunately, the connection wasn't meant to be.

I guess that's where I am with sports. I love the enthusiasm that it arouses in others, and appreciate the art that they inspire, but--in spite of the efforts of such artists as Russel Crow, Mark Knopfler, my college professor, and Mr. Grdzak--it's just not going to be for me.

And that's frustrating, because it sucks to see people getting such joy from something that only seems to make you yawn.



cross posted at Kos

Harlan Ellison: Dreams With Sharp Teeth

add this movie to your netflix queue right now:

Harlan Ellison: Dreams With Sharp Teeth

It's fantastic, and worth your time. You'll thank me.

excerpt:

Bird In The House

There's a bird in the house, and I’m chasing it around with a white paper shopping bag from some fancy clothing outlet. The bag has tightly wound paper handles that I’m grasping in each hand, and its aggravated mouth must look very threatening to the little char-colored bird, because it’s flying around like crazy, bumping into every shut window it can while completely overlooking the wide open door that it flew in through in the first place.

I’m thinking, ‘If only you were a little less stupid…’ as I climb up on a big pile of mats to reach the thing as it catches its breath up in one of the high windows. We’re in the homeless shelter—it used to be a meeting place for teamsters, but the guy bought it back in the seventies and turned it into a place for people to drop in and sleep, and get a meal, and maybe talk to someone about their addiction (if applicable) on the way out. It’s got these high, barred up windows, and the bird is sitting up there with its mouth open like it’s thirsty, panting, trying to figure out what its next move is going to be. Probably not out the door, I’m going to have to catch it I think. One of us is going to get tired eventually, and I’m betting on the bird. I’m pretty big and wide, full of energy, plus I just ate a big meal and I slept pretty well last night. One of the guys who stays in the shelter (we call them clients) comes into the dorm: ‘Somebody’s gonna die in here.’ He says, ‘Bird in the house means somebody’s gonna die.’ And I wince because that stuff always gets to me. Even though I’m a professed skeptic, science doesn’t go all the way to my core; There’s a lot of voodoo under my skin. ‘Hey!’ I say to one of the other clients ‘Go get a sheet!’ and the guy runs off to get a sheet. The other guy stands there shaking his head and watching me run around with the bag, although I’m a lot more thoughtful about my movements now than when I was alone; I’m a little self conscious with an audience. The client I had sent away comes back in with a big white sheet to match my white paper bag, and we’re running around while the other guy is still standing there just shaking his head, like it’s our fault or something that the bird got in; like it’s just one more shitty thing he has to deal with. ‘Somebody’s gonna die in here.’ He says, and I want to tell him to shut up talking like that, but I can’t.

The little creature isn’t going to get into the bag. I might’ve had a chance that first time I approached him, when I tripped and blew it, but now he thinks I want to eat him.

There’s some pride on the line now. These two clients are both older than me, and much harder. Instead of trying to support some kind of stupid illusion that I’m not comfortable with in the first place, and have no right to even if I were comfortable with it, I give a palms-open shoulder shrug. This bird is kicking my ass.

Many of the clients at the shelter have my deep respect. Some of them are sad cases, for sure; People who have given up on life, or have never gotten started with it in the first place. Many have mental issues, and are unable to get appropriate service because the system is broken, and there’s no money to be made helping crazy homeless people. Many struggle with addiction, which is the closest thing to demonic possession there is in this world. Many are a mixture of the two, which is a destructive cocktail. Others are something else. There are a lot of war veterans, and what people refer to as ‘unskilled laborers’, although I hate that word. This last batch I mention is the first group of people in our economy to get fucked when someone on Wall Street makes a stupid or greedy move and everything goes haywire. They spend a lot of time hanging around at temp agencies, waiting for some hours doing hard labor for very little pay, or hanging around on the street outside the shelter at night waiting for some contractor to come by and pick them up in his truck, which is a kind of soft slavery in my mind.

Because of the way our society is structured, a lot of people have to climb hard to get to anywhere reasonable in their lives, losing fingernails and a sense of dignity on the way up. I respect that struggle. They’re at war for their very lives in a country that loves and glorifies war, but refuses to honor these particular soldiers with any kind of mythology of patriotism and purpose. No talk radio host is going to thump their chest to raise awareness of the very real dangers these soldiers face on the battlefield. No Republican politician is going to sound the horn in honor of the sacrifices that must be made by them to preserve their mere being, the country of themselves. They are P.O.W’s in their own nation.

I grew up in the suburbs, have never been cold for too long, am lucky enough to have been born white and male and American, and have had plenty of time to ponder the academic and esoteric with friends and family over food and drink that costs way too much. I’ve had trials in my life just as everyone has, but there’s always been a safety net there for me that’s probably curbed the reality of a lot of what I’ve experienced. It would be silly of me to start barking orders, or to act out on that twinge-impulse that I feel to ‘save face’. There’s nothing to save. It’s a silly situation, and these guys have seen it before: white liberal in dress pants and a button down collared shirt can’t resolve a sticky situation. One of the guys laughs, and I laugh too. Even Mr. Superstitious cracks a smile. ‘That fucking thing is fast’. I say. ‘How’s your cholesterol man, your face is flushed!’ says the client with the sheet. ‘don’t die trying to save a bird!’
‘No one gets left behind.’ I say grimly.
‘Ooh-rah!’ says Mr. Superstitious.

Suddenly, the bird takes flight, and dips low towards the door, landing right in front of it. We can all feel each other tense up as we lean forward, waiting to see what happens. Casually, the bird hops out into the courtyard. We smile at each other and follow it out.

The other birds are waiting in an unbroken black mass across the street in the park. When our accidental captive rejoins them—disappearing vertically down into their numbers—it is as if a hand grenade had been thrown at a solid body; pieces explode upwards and outwards, flapping frantically in all directions. The earth erupts with birds. Eventually, a swirling coherence is established and in one dark cloud they all fly off together across the cobblestone road and over the spires of a crumbling church. ‘There.’ I say. ‘No one died.’

*****
cross posted at Kos & Fictionaut
*****

Give Cincinnati's homeless population a helping hand. Click on the link below to visit The Drop Inn Center's website, and click 'Donate' on the main page. Every little bit helps:

Drop Inn Center

Coyote With A Bellyful of Roadrunner

I have Mondays off. Typically, I guess because it's the official first day of the work week, I use this day for chores & paperwork. Most Mondays I'll sleep in a little bit longer than usual, but that's about it as far as frills are concerned.

Today I had to get up early to take my wife to work, because our other car is in the shop. It was kind of a late night, and normally I would feel a little groggy getting up as early as I did this morning after a night like that, but I felt fantastic this morning. I think it's because I've been lifting weights and doing some minor aerobic stuff lately, have cut out sugary drinks, and am taking vitamins. These are small changes, but they've had an impact.

Anyway, We got my 8 year old on the bus, and my preschooler and I took my wife to work. After we dropped her off and collected our bye-bye kisses, we went to Dunkin Donuts for breakfast. We ordered our food and sat down at a little road-facing booth.

It was one of the most relaxing experiences I've had in a long time.





I have a hard time unwinding. I'm always moving on to the next thing, always war gaming the next big victory. It's just the kind of guy I am. For the last 8 years the trophy was a bachelor's degree in psychology, and a job in my field. Before that, it was to save up enough money to buy a house. Before that, it was kids, and before that, it was finding a life partner to set up shop with. Along the way, I've had a slew of somewhat quixotic goals to move towards as well. In high school, I was in a rock band, and later tried my hand at stand up comedy. When those things didn't work out, I started writing. Writing hasn't been a money maker, but it's something I enjoy, so I keep doing it. The point is, I'm Wile E. Coyote, and for my entire life up to this point, I've had some kind of roadrunner that I've been chasing after, but no real plan for what to do after I caught the thing.

Well, I've caught my roadrunner (several times over), but I'm still ordering things out of the ACME catalog. It's time for me to shift to maintenance mode. I've found a wonderful partner in my wife. The courtship is over. Now it's time to be a good husband. We had two beautiful kids. Time to be a good father. We bought a house. Time to cut the grass. I've got my degree and a good job. Time to punch the clock.

Relaxing in a Dunkin Donuts with my son was an epiphany for me. There were no homework assignments on my mind, and the anxiety that 'I may not come through!' was nowhere in sight. I was comfortable. Amazing.

Shifting gears from 'go-go-go' to 'keep the ship afloat' might be a challenge, but I think I'll enjoy it. I like being able to read what I want to read and do what I want to do in my spare time, without feeling any anxiety about what other people may think or some looming deadline.

After we left Dunkin, we drove to a hilly, wooded part of the city I'm not very familiar with. The road zig-zags around hills and passes by farms and historic buildings. Instead of taking the route I'm used to, I asked my son which way I should turn at every stop sign. Eventually, my internal compass was totally confused. Along the way we stopped at a playground, and hung out there for awhile. After that, we tried to make our way back home. We were ridiculously lost, and it took us about an hour to find our way back to the interstate, but it was time well spent.



cross posted at Kos.

Jazz Code In Cincinnati

Have you heard Rebecca Coupe Franks? The security guard at my work loaned me one of her CD's this week, and I'm pretty impressed:



The CD that I'm borrowing is called Suit Of Armor, and it's a nice, smoky sounding album. My wife pointed out to me the other day that I use the word 'smoky' where most other people would say 'sultry', or 'sexy'. I'm not sure what that means about me, but I don't think any of these words would be wrong to use as descriptors of the Suit Of Armor album.

I ended up talking to our security guard about jazz by accident. One day he overheard me use the name Ron Carter in conversation, and interjected, 'Ron Carter, huh?' and I said, 'Not the bass player.' and he smiled and said, 'So you know what I'm talking about then!' and entered into the conversation I was having, which quickly became about jazz music. I had never really talked to him too much before, but apparently jazz was the topic we needed to break the ice. He's a mountainous guy with a stoic demeanor who doesn't really seem to invite conversation. He lit up on this topic though. Apparently he had a public access jazz talk show back in the day, and was a connoisseur on the subject, whereas I am merely a hobbyist. This was established right at the beginning of the conversation:

The Mountain: 'You listen to Jazz?'
Me: 'Yeah, I like jazz.'
The Mountain: 'I love jazz. I live for it, Jack.'

Okay. The conversation was fairly rudimentary. We engaged in a ritual that I've discovered is necessary every time one jazz enthusiast meets another one. We tossed out names of jazz musicians we liked, and then responded with excitement when it turned out the other guy knew and liked that guy too, as if we were paleontologists rejoicing over new fossil discoveries. When one of us would name a guy the other didn't know about, we'd say, 'oh, man. You've got to check him out.' and give a little background on the guy and cite some of his better work. I exhausted my list of names much faster than The Mountain, but it turned out we were into the same kind of stuff, more or less. Once the initial name trading was done, and once we had gotten the stories of 'how we got into jazz' out of the way (he was brought up in a house full of jazz musicians. I owe my interest in jazz to my grandfather for loaning me a copy of 'What A Wonderful World' and Woody Allen's film scores), I assumed the role of Padawan and he assumed the role of Jedi master, which was more than appropriate.

Neither of us cared for the smooth, studio sounding jazz too much. If it was studio, it had to be innovative. We both have huge Andrew Hill collections, and both like Joe Maneri. Our point of diversion was on John Coltrane. The Mountain thinks he's the greatest, but I'm turned off of him because his music reminds me of the scores for a lot of kung fu movies from the seventies.

One thing that we agreed on was that unlike a lot of music, good jazz demands that you listen to it. It's not for the background. Not white noise. I think that's why I've never been able to really get into classical music too much, unless it was kind of jazzed up Uri Caine kind of stuff. You can clean the house to Mozart's 'A Little Night Music', but you have to sit down and listen to John Zorn's 'The Big Gundown'. It would be impossible not to.

That's all, just wanted to share that little exchange. Jazz fans are a specialized breed in Cincinnati. There are people who may like the idea of jazz, but there are much fewer who have taken the time to investigate it. More often than not, if you run into someone who says they like Jazz in Cincinnati, one of the first names they're going to drop from their mouths is going to be Norah Jones or B.B. King. Not that there's anything wrong with Norah Jones or B.B. King, but, you know.


Zorn:



Caine:




Maneri:




Cross Posted at The Daily Kos

Richard Feynmann on Religion

"If there is a God, it's going to be a whole lot bigger and a whole lot more incomprehensible than anything that any theologian of any religion has ever proposed."-Richard Dawkins, From a TIME magazine debate with Francis Collins (2006)

I know I always trot out this Dawkins quote, but it rings so true to me. All of our religions, while explicable in scientific terms, just don't seem to give proper credit to the largeness of whatever possible initiating intelligence might exist. Our religions can be made sense of as coping mechanisms, mythical space savers that have been taken too literally, devices for empowerment, unification, and oppression, etcetera. They can tell us things about the kinds of animals we are, but they don't seem capable of affirming any truth about any possible creator. That's why I'm with Feynmann. Doubt is a far better life companion than religion.

Cloud Interlude 6/ The Medicine Cabinet Recommends

1. Crossing the 'Macaroni Bridge' (as my son calls it) into Cincinnati:



2. My response to every teabagger I meet who wants to argue about our country's economic model and the relative usefulness of various socialist concepts:

So, you think 'socialism doesn't work'?

You mean to tell me that you don't appreciate national parks, the mail service, the fire department, and public libraries? All socialist ideas, you know. How about the 40 hour work week, vacation pay, the police department, snow trucks, child labor laws, and stop lights? More socialism. You mean to tell me that Canada, England, France, Germany, Spain, Switzerland, Sweden, and The Netherlands aren't functioning countries?

I'm not arguing for a pure socialist system, but I will argue that our current mixed-model economic system is worth preserving, even though it is imperfect. We can talk serious economic theory if you want, but I'm not convinced that you're able to go there with me. All I hear in your arguments are simplistic echoes of Sean Hannity/ Glenn Beck/Rush Limbaugh talking points. They don't reflect independent thought, and aren't even good representations of conservative ideology. Personally, I think you could do better.

3. Roger Ebert is dying, but that is only secondary to the way he is living. Inspiring.

4. It was a Stimulating Stimulus. Reading material for embattled pragmatists. Here.

5. I'm going to see this band with my wife at the end of March. I'm excited. We haven't been to a rock concert in awhile. Portugal. The Man:



6. And, finally, my wife was kind enough to post this video for all of our friends on Facebook to see the other day, so I thought I would extend the damage by offering the video up to the public at large. When you are your own worst enemy, you have a lot fewer corners to peek around, you know?

I had been doing the dishes, but then 'Beast Of Burden' by the Rolling Stones came on the radio. I would like to meet the person that can resist dancing to that tune. Okay, let the seduction ritual begin:



Okay, everyone. Have a great weekend!

Googling Dead Friends

We were trying to break into a scene together. What scene wasn’t completely certain; a literary scene, for sure. An edgy scene that would welcome two self absorbed and combative misfits from the Midwest would be perfect, and in the ideal scene, we’d get to meet Woody Allen someday, and he would like us.

But my friend killed himself, and now we’re not a ‘we’ in the same sense that we were, although he’s still with me, lazily hitch-hiking on my journey, free-riding his way in my psyche. He doesn’t contribute anything; he just gives me the creeps. He doesn’t mean whatever he thought he would mean to me after he did what he did, and now it’s me that’s getting fat and old and biting my nails and trying to be a good person and live a life that means something. I’m not hauling his corpse around with me as much as I used to, although I still do Google him from time to time. For awhile I got a twisted sense of accomplishment as my hits increased and his stayed the same, but now, I shake my head at the silliness of it all, how painfully serious we were about ourselves, and how unnecessary his self murder was. I never made the scene. He never made the scene. I don’t even like the idea of a scene anymore. Never die for a notion that you haven’t really articulated, because all clothing goes out of style at one point or another.

After my friend jumped off that overpass, I developed a little problem with alcohol. I don’t mean to set the two things up as cause and effect, because I’m not sure they’re related that way. I know it affected me, but I wouldn’t say it drove me to drink. I was already drinking a little bit because I wanted to understand scotch, and overtime I did understand scotch. Ask and ye shall receive. It wasn't the suicide that brought me to drinking, although I may have buckled under the pressure of dealing directly with the suicide, and other things in my life. Once you realize what a wonderful ‘hold’ button alcohol can be, it’s hard not to use it from time to time. It’s like commercial breaks for life.

There were other things. I was (and am still) a young father, and am desperate to help my children find health and happiness, even though I am not always healthy and happy; I am an unskilled mechanic, a brain surgeon with no eyes. This causes stress, and alcohol provides temporary relief from stress. I don’t know what it means to say I believe in God or don’t believe in God anymore, and I was once a big person to say I did believe in God, and it colored everything about me. I don’t believe anything anyone tells me about God, and I don’t believe what I read about God in any book, and I don’t think God talks to people, and I don’t even know what ‘the ground of all being’ means, although I suspect it is some serious bullshit. But I don’t disbelieve in God. It seems possible to me that some initiating intelligence might have put us here, who knows, it certainly seems more likely than teapots in space or fairies at the end of the garden. A shrug of the shoulders seems more appropriate to me on the issue of God than does a loud proclamation of belief or unbelief. If God wanted to talk to us, she certainly knows where to find us, and could probably come up with a better method of communication than private revelation and esoteric bronze age literature. I mean, even I know how to set up a blog.

When my friend killed himself, I had just given up pretending that I cared about W.H. Auden, and was exploring poetry that actually resonated with me. Charles Simic. Carl Dennis. Thomas Lux. Billy Collins. Guillaume Appolinaire. I was happy with my new, more authentic poets, especially since I had at least one French name on my list. My friend didn’t like poetry, because he thought it was elitist, although he was surely an elitist. So was I. Why pretend you’re milk and potatoes when you’re something a little more special? Our ideology was very confused. We knew we wanted to aspire to higher thoughts and higher art, yet we needed to remain in touch with the proletariat, even thought we hated and made fun of a lot of the thought and art we decided they liked and had. Kids, right?

My friend missed out on Billy Collins, and that astounds me. I had just begun reading him, and was so in love with what he wrote. I wanted to give my friend a copy of ‘Nine Horses’ the next time he was in town, because I thought I might finally be able to crack his resistance to poetry with Collins’s calm and humble voice. But, he killed himself, and now he is a sigh. He’s a corpse, he’s in the ground being transformed into all kinds of other things, filling the earth with his carbon, while I am up here getting bigger, wiser, trying not to bite my nails or drink as much, and playing games of checkers with my kids every chance I get. My dead friend is a freeloader in my life, and I’m doing all of the heavy lifting for him. When all of us who knew him are dead, he’ll be gone forever too, but we’re all still here making our case while he plead no contest.

My friend and I both loved Kurt Vonnegut, and my friend always wanted to be written about, so I feel I am in good faith to sum up thusly: So it goes.


Cross posted at The Daily Kos.

Canadian Patriotism

I'm posting this video not so much because it's a good interview with Louis C.K. (a comedian that I admire and think is awesome), but because as I was watching, it occurred to me that Canadian interviewers and celebrities are often very conscious of their nationality, and pretty reliably try to put a 'canadian spin' on their interviews, work, etc. The reason this is noteworthy to me is that I am incredibly irritated by nationalism in general, but Canadian nationalism doesn't irritate me. Is it because Canada is millitarily harmless? Is it because Canadian patriots are quaint, and cute, and cuddly? Is it because the nationalistic nuts in my own country are so loud and vulgar and stupid that the mild and thoughtful sounding patriotism of many Canadian public figures seems so reasonable in comparison?

I don't know the answer to the question, but I feel a little bit patriotic about Canada, even though I've never been there, not even on vacation.

Enjoy:




Cross Posted at The Daily Kos

I Heart Valentine's Day

I.The following comments about Valentine's Day always irritate me:

1. Valentine's Day is just a made-up holiday that the greeting card industry uses to make a quick buck.

2. My man/woman (usually man) should love me all year 'round. If he/she needs a holiday to remind him/her, I'm not interested.

Sigh.

Regarding the first instance I say, of course Valentine's Day is just a made up holiday. All holidays are just made up holidays. Do you think the first of mankind to crawl out of the primordial sludge was greeted with specific instructions on how to carve the Thanksgiving day turkey? Of course not.

Regarding the second part of the first instance: this is America. We're a capitalist country. to survive in a capitalist society (and any society for that matter), you need to make capital. Besides, what else is the greeting card industry going to make money on?

The second instance is irritating for its solipsism, and its shortsightedness. The solipsism is evident, but the lack of perspective regarding the definitions of who we are that can be derived from the holidays we choose to celebrate, is alarming.

Christmas and Thanksgiving are celebrations of family and communion. They also give us opportunities to be generous and thankful. Halloween provides our children with an opportunity to experiment with different aspects of their personality by playing dress-up, and it's the closest our culture ever comes to acknowledging death. New Year's is a chance to celebrate our successes and reset our goals. It also can serve as a good marker to measure our achievements against.

Valentine's Day is just as important. It's an opportunity for us to celebrate our partnerships, and to meditate on our loves. It's like a New Year's for the heart. And, besides, who doesn't like a little bit of champagne, dark chocolate, and Chet Baker every now and then?

There is also a certain hedonism to Valentine's Day that I find irresistable.

II. For 20+ years, Ted Kooser (a great poet) has been writing a Valentine's Day poem for an ever enlarging list of women, and mailing it to them. "Valentine's Day is a great holiday for the poet...It's not tied up with anything other than expressions of sentiment." Check it out.

III. Here is something of a universal Valentine poem that appeared in my e-book, Mule & Horse. I wrote it in honor of those wonderful devices that carry women from point A to point B.

YOUR LEGS

Your legs
Your olive legs
Your caramel
Snow-white
Ebony
Pink tan legs

Are the scissors
That cut my concentration

Through halls
Designed to indulge echo
You clip
My head
Turns

Your legs
Your thick legs
Your soft
muscled
Thin
Tattooed legs

Should require
A license to operate.

IV. And here's a poem I wrote more specifically for my wife, from the same collection:

LARGE OBJECTS MOVING SLOWLY

As your breasts
make their glacial excursion
towards your hips,

and my balls begin to droop
like a Halloween bag
full of too much candy:

I will pause
(from time to time)
and remember years before:

when our two taut bodies
were so easily entertained
by such equally firm surfaces.

We explored them ruthlessly:
Like conquistadors,
looking for golden cities.

I will smile,
and consider these current days:
Terrain complex. Unpredictable.

A safari nowadays of the many
curves and folds,
may take months of planning.

And only god knows
how many hired natives
will be lost along the way.

V. Have a fun, happy, sexy, wonderfully indulgent & celebratory Valentine's Day everyone!

Flight Of The Conchords:

Winning Quote Of The Week

"One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one's work is terribly important." - Bertrand Russell

Thanks to Paul Toth for making that quote his facebook status update. It made me laugh at myself.

More Russell:



Good stuff.

Hell? No.

Sometimes, when dealing with more moderate Christians, I can forget that although they are often extremely reasonable when it comes to political issues and compassion issues(and are basically completely sane and reasonable overall), their minds can still be affected by the unreason of some particularly scary and damaging religious ideas; Original sin, the scapegoat concept, various unhealthy attitudes about sexuality. The religious mind can also lack a sense of urgency to fix the problems in this world and resolve personal conflicts that might otherwise be felt by a secular person.

I am writing this post because I was reminded of the scourge that religion can be on a human mind very recently, when a community leader that I admire in many ways (and like personally) made a very public statement about the importance of ‘getting right with god’ in order to avoid hellfire.

The threat of eternal damnation coming from respected adult figures can be incredibly scary to a young person (or anyone) who takes religion seriously. It's one thing to warn about dangers that can be substantiated (the dangers of drugs, casual sex, careless driving, treating people poorly), but hell is a threat that can't be substantiated, nestled within a religion whose divine inspiration can't be substantiated, nestled within a concept (the existence of divinity) that also can't be substantiated.

I write this with a certain amount of heartache, because I've spent most of my life trying my hardest to believe in the divine origin of Christian doctrine. While I have intellectually accepted that it's extremely unlikely that Christianity is a divinely inspired religion, I still bear the scars and neurotic remnants of my former religious life. While there are good and beautiful doctrines in Christianity that can be defended and supported via strictly secular means, I hate to think that others are being exposed to, and internalizing, some of the more damnable doctrines of the religion. I think the hell-threat is one of the worst.

Hey, Republicans: Get On Board With Gay Rights

Sean Hannity likes to refer to the Democratic party as ‘the party of slavery’ from time to time, harkening back to the days of Republican abolitionists and conveniently ignoring that inconvenient piece of recent history that had democratic president Lyndon Johnson losing ‘the south for a generation’ by signing important civil right legislation.

The other part of Hannity’s useful (yet telling) omission is another recent historical fact: The modern GOP is the party of cynical opportunism. When democrats & moderates in the 60’s went to bat for our country’s minorities, the GOP at large--seeing the now disenfranchised southern racists--modified their party platform to welcome these bigots.

A generation later, not much has changed. In fact, the modern GOP is bending backwards to accommodate that same old dixiecrat/American Taliban/tea bag movement that has proved so useful for it in recent history. It’s well known that this constituency is very easy to get riled up and mobilized, and it’s also well known that social conservatives have a very short memory when it comes to the promises their elected officials make them while on the campaign trail regarding abortion, marriage, gay rights, etc. In fact, it’s very funny how vacuous these promises can be in order to slide by. Sometimes, a wink will suffice, although a wink can mean significantly different things to the winker than it does to the winkee.

This constituency is useful in the moment, but today’s republicans also love to take credit for yesterday’s progressive victories, i.e. Sean Hannity’s ‘party of slavery’ trope. Hannity can reach back to Lincoln’s republican affiliation to (sort of) validate his claim that the GOP is the forward thinking party, but I wonder who the Sean Hannities of the future are going to refer to while claiming the republican role in achieving gay equality (the inevitable next ‘progressive victory of yesterday’). There is no one, unless they want to try to squeeze Barry Goldwater or Cindy McCain into that role, which would be a stretch even for republicans.

It seems like it would behoove at least a handful of prominent republicans to acknowledge the opportunistic and cynical soil their modern party has sunk its roots in, and get out in front of this issue that is inevitably going to be viewed by history with progressive eyes.

Republicans can get a sugar buzz off of the support of the more dubious elements of their constituency by blocking and whoring on the issue of ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’, or, they can look to the future viability of their party, and join their voices with the president’s in ending it. The president has even created a space for Republicans to one-up him on the issue of gay rights by opposing gay marriage; but, I doubt the party of Palin has enough foresight to cash in on it.

My Dad Hates The Beatles

I can’t get over what a great rendition of ‘Stand By Me’ John Lennon does. It nearly makes me cry every time I hear it. Same goes for ‘All You Need Is Love’ and ‘Beautiful Boy’. What wonderful sentiments. The following lines tug at my heart especially hard:

“I can hardly wait,
To see you to come of age,
But I guess we'll both,
Just have to be patient”

They’re real tear-jerkers, for one because I know that Mr. Lennon didn’t get the opportunity to see his son ‘come of age’, and two, because I am anxious to be there for my sons as long as they need me, and I am very excited to see the men that they become.

I’m nearing the age of 30, and I’ve only recently discovered the Beatles. The reason for this is that my father had an active hatred of the Beatles as I grew up, and of all the other little iconoclasms I committed against his worldview as I struggled to become my own person, it never occurred to me not to disregard the Beatles. That is, until I had a son of my own.

One day, while my wife and four year old son and I were shopping in our local Meijer grocery store, the song ‘Free as a Bird’ came on the musak, and my son started swaying his head back and forth and singing along with the music. He said, ‘who is singing this, daddy?’ and the whole scene melted my heart. We immediately went over to the electronics department and picked up a copy of The Beatles ‘1’ album (the CD with ‘Free As A Bird’ wasn’t in the store), and it was an instant hit with my son. I recognized most of the songs on the CD, but hadn’t realized that they were Beatles songs. On one level, I was very happy that my son had found a particular musical group to be excited about. This was the most important level. On a second level (I’m a little embarrassed to mention it), I was excited to have found yet another way to rebel against my father, who loves me, who is mystified by my detractions and detestations.

My father has given me something precious that he may not realize. He may think that I've rejected all of his values, but this is not the case. Children learn what they live is the title of a famous book about child-rearing, and I have surely learned what I lived growing up in my father’s house. What I learned from my father is to ‘hate the Beatles’ even if I learn to love The Beatles. I learned to be skeptical of popular opinion and received wisdom, and to feel uncomfortable in a mental crowd. That’s why you’ll never see me in a tea party parade, gleefully hoisting a homemade protest sign with the world ‘soshulism’ scrawled indignantly across it. That’s why I’ll never be at home in church, because there’s just too much that you’re supposed to swallow without first chewing, and you know that none of what they offer you is FDA approved.

My father, a black sheep, taught me how to be a black sheep, and I believe that I’ve improved the art. When in school, I was led to believe that much of what my teachers were telling me was liberal bunk, and even thought that was the case, I was to remember what they were teaching and to spit it back out at them in order to get a good grade. So, going into school, an important authority group was already undermined. My family didn’t go to church until I dragged them to a local Baptist church when I was in third grade. We went there for a couple of years, and again, my parents helped me to understand that not even our pastor had a direct line to God. We left sermons with my parents making fun of my Sunday school teacher’s end time prophecies, our pastor’s complaints against Rock and Roll (my dad loved Van Halen, and was not letting that go, not even for Jesus), and the pastor’s wife’s exhortations against alcohol use.

It was also my father that introduced me to George Carlin.

So, it was only a matter of time before I turned my well learned skepticism of tradition and unbelief in the infallibility of authority against the conservative, modified christian belief system that I was brought up in. I regret that this period in my relationship with him was so messy, and I know that I was often unnecessarily inflammatory and less than respectful in my exploration of ideas at this point. But, so it goes. We’re in a better place now, but it took us a while to get there.

I don’t know if my dad sought out to teach me this skepticism and unwillingness to move with the herd, but it’s been an invaluable tool for me. I know he wasn’t the only one who helped me learn this lesson; I was very much not welcome in almost every peer group I sought out in school (partially for my unusual interest in ideas, and partially because I possessed a weird cocktail of interest in doing whatever I needed to do to fit in with that group and conversely doing anything I could to sabotage the group’s aesthetic at the same time). This experience in school surely helped reinforce my isolation and need to think for myself. But my father gave me the tool, whether he sought to or not, and I am glad for it. I hope my kids are able to learn skepticism and the value of being as fully themselves as they can easier than I did, but I want them to have it. I want them to hesitate when joining groups. I want them to probe their intentions if they ever find their entire worldview lining up perfectly with some party platform. I don’t want them to be fearful if they feel the call to dissent. But, I don’t think they should feel too terrible if their honest inquiry and passion leads them into a group or a community.

After all, we are communal animals. That’s one of the parts I have trouble with that I don’t want to pass down to them. I want them to be as fiercely themselves as they can be, but if they ever find themselves in honest awe of one of the various edifices that have been erected by our (or any) culture, like, say, The Beatles, I want them to enjoy themselves. Because, Christ. You know it ain’t easy.


cross posted at The Daily Kos