I Have a Pull Chain in my Head

I originally wrote this post on February 22nd, 2005 under the title "When the Going Gets Weird", but some jack-ass comment spammer got to it and tacked their advertizing into my comment section. So I'm killing the old one and reposting it here. And because I liked my sister's response so well, I reposted that too!

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Hunter Stockton Thompson is dead.

In typical Thompson fashion he wrote the very last chapter with his own hand, only this time his super-charged Smith Corona sat, untouched, on his desk. There just wasn't enough power in that old warhorse for the task ahead. No sir. This last, huge act needed something thunderous. A chrome-plated .44 mag or jet black 12 gauge were the only things that could tackle a job this important.

In the past the old type-writer had churned out some important work. Things like:

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"The towers are gone now, reduced to bloody rubble, along with all hopes for Peace in Our Time, in the United States or any other country. Make no mistake about it: We are At War now -- with somebody -- and we will stay At War with that mysterious Enemy for the rest of our lives."

"It will be guerilla warfare on a global scale, with no front lines and no identifiable enemy.... We are going to punish somebody for this attack, but just who or what will be blown to smithereens for it is hard to say. Maybe Afghanistan, maybe Pakistan or Iraq, or possibly all three at once. Who knows?"

"This is going to be a very expensive war, and Victory is not guaranteed -- for anyone, and certainly not for anyone as baffled as George W. Bush. All he knows is that his father started the war a long time ago, and that he, the goofy child-President, has been chosen by Fate and the global Oil industry to finish it Now."

Hunter Thompson, Fear & Loathing in America, Sept.12, 2001

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No one else could sum up exactly how I feel the way H.S.T. did in the following:

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"We have become a Nazi monster in the eyes of the
whole world--a nation of bullies and bastards who
would rather kill than live peacefully. We are not
just Whores for power and oil, but killer whores with
hate and fear in our hearts. We are human scum and
that is how history will judge us...No redeeming
social value. Just whores. Get out of our way or
we'll kill you.

Who does vote for these dishonest shitheads? Who
among us can be happy and proud of having this
innocent blood on our hands? Who are these swine?
These flag-sucking half-wits who get fleeced and
fooled by stupid rich kids like George Bush?

They are the same ones who wanted to have Muhammad Ali
locked up for refusing to kill gooks. They speak for
all that is cruel and stupid and vicious in the
American character. They are the racists and hate
mongers among us--they are the Ku Klux Klan. I piss
down the throats of these Nazis.

And I am too old to worry about whether they like it
or not. Fuck them."

-Hunter S. Thompson

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But, finally, the time had come to pour more than just ink and vitriol onto the page. The going had just gotten too weird and the situation was desperate. Only blood was thick enough to carry a message this brutally honest. The time had come to really open the throttle. One last blast of flame from the fiery anus - flat out and full-fucking bore into that curve - knowing that no matter how far you lay that bitch over you're leaving the road on this one and you're crossing that edge.

Mahalo, H.S.T.
Only you know if it ever got fast enough for you.

My heart weeps for Anita (his wife) and Juan (his son).
And it weeps for me, because one of my heroes is dead.

Star? Angel? Alien? 

Ha! Completely out of context, isn't it? That's because the pictures of the 'tree' are below this detail shot of the 'star-like thingy'. That's because I loaded them this way and bolluxed up my intended order. And this blog-thing is a tougher task master than I am a student, because I haven't figured out how to change the order of my posts short of deleting and reloading...and I don't feel like it right now.

Anyway, this is the top of the Christmas Tree that I made for this years Christmas. It won't be everyone's cup-of-eggnog, but we like it! And after being together for three of Christmas seasons with no tree, it felt past time to do something that was in the spirit.

Christmas Tree 

So this is our pre-decorated Christmas tree. Not sure what I can tell you about its genesis that might shed any light upon the 'why' of it, but it definitely reflects the both of us. A little heavy grade colored paper, some wire hangers, a heavy duty wrapping paper tube, and lots of Elmer's glue.

I'd considered the traditional tree, which would have been our first, but I don't like them dead and I don't need a live one for my yard. I had finally decided not to bother when I had the urge (yesterday morning) to try and make this. Came out just as I wanted and it changed the mood of the house. My Sweetie came home and got holiday energized enough to pull out some of the goodies she has and we did a little more decorating! It was nice to pull the presents from around a 'tree' this morning.

O Christmas Tree 

So this is the thing that is passing for our Christmas tree. I'm not sure why it's all a-tilt, perhaps that's the way Becky sees it. Maybe she sees everything that way, which might explain why she's always looking at me with her head cocked. And here I was thinking that it was because she found me to be so interesting. Or odd.

And it seems to be stuck 'ON'. It's almost 2 am and I'm wide awake. Maybe not wide awake, but too restless to sleep. Is this where I start turning into my dad and become an insomniac? Not sure what keeps him awake all hours, but I think my problem has something to do with too much Yerba Mate. A little something we opened early for Christmas that I just had to try...4 times since around 6 pm! Guess that'll learn ... oh what am I saying! There's no way that'll learn me. I love hot drinks and caffeine far too much to let this learn me.

It's a shame I don't have anything interesting going on in my head to pass on here. Mostly I was laying up there hearing noises (We've had one mouse in our pantry this winter and may have another.) and letting my brain try to figure out what - or who - could be making them. I suspicion it was just the house cooling after I turned the heat down to go to bed. But I finally had to get up and sit in the livingroom to make sure.

Simply riveting, isn't it?

'Bells are chiming and tears are falling
It creeps up on you without a warning
45'

Funny that I pulled this Elvis Costello off the cd rack a couple of days ago and that '45' is the first song on it. Not sure if the choice was a case of synchronicity or an instance of subliminal thought or just sheer coincidence, but it's certainly appropriate.

Then again, the name of the album is 'When I was Cruel' and maybe that's the connection....

Anyway. I'm officially 45 years old and I'm not sure what I'm supposed to do with it. I guess I'll just put the old turntable to 45 rpm's and hope there's gonna be a 78 in my future.

'Every scratch, every click, every heartbeat
Every breath that I bless
I'd be lost, I confess
45'

In this case the 'It' in question is:

Birthday number 45.

How'd this happen!? Who did this to me!? Someone has to be to blame!

Actually it doesn't really bother me so much, although I am finding myself asking the question: 'Is our children learning?' Wait. That's not the question I'm asking myself. It's: 'Am I doing anything useful with my life?' But I'm asking myself that one every day, so this 45 thing isn't anything new. And the answer is 'No', of course. I mean, with all the computer games out there to be played how could I possibly find the time to be useful?

Anyway. If ya care to you may wish me a Happy. Becky has some wrapped presents sitting out in the living room to tease me, but I'm not letting on that I'm the least bit curious. Not the least bit....

Posted by: Dean / 11/28/2004 08:42:00 PM 0 comments

The other day I was wandering around at work, listening to the voices in my head, when my Nextel phone went off. (It's a work phone with 2-way paging, just so's you know.) It was one of my co-workers.

"Is that you?" he said.
All the voices in my head stopped chattering and all of us replied, "What? I didn't call you."
"No," he said. "I was wondering if that was you walking like an old man."

At that point I realized that he was where he could see me because I had, in fact, been pretending I was an old man and had been walking accordingly...

.....

It's good to know that I've already mastered 'the old guy walk'. One less thing to worry about.

Dear Mr. Nader,

Sir, I like you. I really do. You make sense when you speak and that means a lot to me, but I still don't think I'd like to hang out with you and this seems to be the problem you have in these runs at the Presidency.

Ralph. As one guy to another,...you're a scold. And that doesn't work in politics.

Oh, I completely agree with you. You've been talking and talking to the people, but they just aren't listening. So, like any good scholar, you've studied harder and re-visited the issues, then talked to the people some more...and they still aren't listening. And all this study has made you knowledgable and that has made you certain that you have something meaningful to say. And that has made you hungry for a bully pulpit.

Well, I'd like you to take this last Presidential showing as an indication that you aren't going to find that bully pulpit in the political arena. You've built your fame upon the "outsider to power" persona. A smart man trying to make us safe from the greed-heads and safe from ourselves. When you make these inside runs, your own reputation is stopping you, Ralph. And when we see you trying to turn into an insider, well, it looks like hubris.

You're wasting your legacy. Now is not the time to be co-opted into the political system. Now is the time to get your ass back in the kitchen and start cooking up the sort of organization you're better suited too. You need to get it into your head that it's not about the cook, it's about the food.

Here's what we need you to do.

We need an independent and unbiased media in this country. I think there's a lot of that already going on with the small, hometown papers, but it certainly isn't going on in the big Media outlets. They're too interested in their bottom lines to want the truth and they've always been busy making, rather than reporting, the news. Many people believe them. (Or have come to just expect this trash and learned to live with it.) And the reason these people believe the media is...

...the sad state of our educational system.

Education is the major battleground, Ralph. I think you already know this. The creationists are sending in their skirmishers. Fact has become omission in the face of rampant, liberal 'political correctness' and supposed 'conservative compassion'. They all have their agendas, but educating a well-rounded human being doesn't seem to be on any of them. When those of us with working bullsh*t detectors compare what our authority figures (educators, politicians, parents) tell us to what the rest of our experience tells us, well...we stop listening, don't we? Trusting souls accept what they're told and wander through life lost in the comfortable 'certainties' they've been offered. Many of us stop thinking altogether.

If we taught Americans our real history, rather than our agreed upon folklore, then we might see a change in our political landscape. People might stop accepting the fiction of America's long history of 'freedom' and 'concern and sacrifice for the world'. Instead of believing we're 'already there' and 'just need to maintain our long tradition', they might learn to discern our facts from our fictions. And that might lead towards actually striving to achieve the ideals we're told we stand for.

So put your considerable intellect and energy into Education. Eviscerate our pathetic textbooks - not just the history texts, but our science and humanities texts as well. Get people to demand 'truth' and 'reality' over 'sensitivity' and 'insecurity'. At the same time, hammer on the media. Find an outlet to get out truthful, message-free, reporting. If unable to find one, create one! If unable to affect public education, open up alternative schools. If Montessori can do this, so can you and your people. Get your followers to be teachers and journalists. Support the small presses. Read Wendell Berry's Citizenship Papers and embrace the small.

Teach us something, Ralph.

And Ralph: get out of the limelight. It's ruining you. You give all the appearances of having forgotten your roots and that makes me more than a little sad. You're trying to be the beacon when you're best suited to be the power grid...and there are 2 generations of brand new bulbs among your followers just waiting for chances to keep lights on in their own windows. We want to find our ways home, but we can't see them past the shadow you're casting.

Love and respect to you for all the lives your safety measures have saved.

Dean Derby

Well I managed to last over a week (since the election), but the depression has finally set in. No higher ground for me, although I haven't given up wishing for it. But at this very moment I can't avoid the feeling that the world is an insane asylum and that there are only inmates here...no one is running this show. (And being up and tired at 3 am doesn't help my outlook any.)

I'd love to howl at the world, but where to begin? And who's really listening? I'm as guilty of the last one as anyone, which makes it all-the-more disheartening. There really is no chance for broader communication among humans. No amount of history seems able to teach us anything, so why should any length of conversation succeed where generations of bloodshed fail?

What would I howl about? Pollution. Violence. Waste. Religion as mental illness. Child Abuse. The sh*t-ass way you lame wads drive and the giant pieces of gas-guzzling crap that you drive. Pig Ignorance. The foolishness of posting a blog entry when one is tired and depressed. Ad nauseum and ad infinitum.

And to all you optimists out there I have one thing to say: Don't ever study history. Stay as far away from it as you can because you don't want to see the patterns. They'll ruin you. Just keep fighting the good fight.

I think what frustrates me most is that I can't let go and move on. I'm convinced humanity has no real future, just a steady repetition of our past failures played out with new background scenery. But I haven't been able to take that feeling and use it to free myself to act in the 'now'. To go for whatever gusto I can grab while my chance to grab is good.

Guess it's time to give myself permission to give up.

That there are many people who are being 'informed' by some very questionable sources and who are holding on to some equally questionable ideas.

A few examples. While visiting a friend in Vermont, I naturally flipped on the hotel T.V. (I killed my T.V. back in 2000....believe I mentioned that in the post previous to this one.) and came across a televangelist. He's a very distinctive fella with numerous obvious verbal and facial twitches and a passion for drawing while he preaches.

Anyway, he conveyed a story about 3 guys in a war prison forced to do hard labor...a regular guy, a christian, and a queer. (I'm using his word here...just so's you get the sense of his story.) Well naturally the regular guy griped all the time, the christian sang hymns and worked hard, and the queer was lazy. One day the regular guy had had enough of the queer (being so lazy) and was going to kill him, but the christian stopped him, saying: "You don't want to damn your everlasting soul to eternal hell do you?" He followed this up, not with a discussion about word choices or why all humans have value (in the eyes of God), or anything else along those lines. His follow-up was about how accepting Christ as your savior made you into one heck of a happy, hard-working guy...like the christian.

Now this strikes me as wrong on so many levels, but obviously it doesn't come across that way to numerous other people. Not to the guy who was saying it and not to the people willing to tune into him every Sunday. I remind myself that these people vote and probably do so on 'issues of morality'.

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A second moment of instruction came from an encounter I had with a fellow co-worker whom I know to be technically/scientifically intelligent, relatively conservative (guns, smaller gov't, etc.), and highly opinionated. He said he didn't consider the abortion issue when voting this time, even though he feels strongly that women should have all rights over the control of their own bodies (liberal-think), because - now get this - he's sure that "the issue of abortion and Women's Rights over their bodies has already been decided. It's a done deal. They can't go back and change that."

What? Not only 'what', but 'WTF'!

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Paying attention to what other people are saying is, well, frightening. Reminds me of why I stopped listening in the first place. Carumba!

So the election results are in and I find that I just don't understand Americans. Not at all. And it's not just because Bush was re-elected, although that does have a lot to do with my confusion, but that Kerry was actually viewed as a desirable alternative when he was little more than 'Bush Lite'.

Who the Hell are you people? Why do I feel like a man without a country or a species? Why am I constantly reminded of phone sanitizers whenever I read or hear the news? (No watching, since I pulled the plug on my T.V. back in mid 2000.) When do I get to wake up from this dream?

I'm choosing a philisophical outlook towards this Election of our Future Sold (to the Highest Bidder tm). Kerry garnered more of the vote than I expected him to so I actually find it somewhat heartening that so many people tried to vote Bush out. Part of my choosing this outlook is that it brings me face-to-face with something so huge and so overlooked that I just have to investigate it. That something revolves around my first question:

Who the Hell are you people?

What makes you tick? What did Bush/Cheney say that resonated with so many of you? What did Kerry/Edwards say that resonated with the remainder of you voter types. (I actually voted this time and I'm getting sick of backing F-ing losers.) And what is keeping the rest of you from participating...especially you young punks who stand to pay for all of these present decisions with your blood and/or your money?

I want to - no, need to - understand. I want to write it off as part of what humans do and have always done...and certainly that's a factor. But if that were all it was, then we'd all be acting like our government and corporations do towards one another in our day-to-days...and we (generally) don't. So why do we hand that sort of power to our government(s) and allow (and even encourage) them to engage in behavior we would be embarrassed about if it were ours?

So I'm going to Puzz and Puzz. And I do expect it to make my Puzzler sore. And I may not understand what's going on any better than I do now, but at least I'll be able to say that I tried...because up until now I've written the lot of you off as lowest-common-denominators and I've wanted nothing more than to see all of you sterilized. As painfully as possible, even.

And that just won't do. Not because such thoughts make me feel bad, but mostly 'cuz I haven't got the time to get around to a job that big. And we all know that if you want something done right, well, you just gotta do it yourself.

Wallkill View Farm 

Just a few of the pumpkins Wallkill View Farm has out for sale. This is where I get my green groceries...and the most excellent of apple cider donuts. I'd show you the corn maze, but it all just looks like corn from ground level.

Looking at SUNY 

This is the reverse view to the Wallkill Valley picture. The town is behind all of those trees and the buildings you see are part of the SUNY campus.

Outside Handmade 

When Becky steps out the front door of where she works and looks up Front Street, this is what she sees.

My Neighbor's House 

Such an incredible day and such wonderful colors...and me with my Canon A80. These pictures capture so little of the actual quality of 'being here', but they're the best I can manage.

The Wallkill Valley 

This is the scene right after you cross the Wallkill river, which marks the west border of New Paltz. Farmland and the ridge of the Shawangunks behind.

5 Minutes Walk 

Only 5 minutes walk from my house. This picture doesn't do the feel or the actual colors justice. It was very quiet and still when I snapped this.

10 Minutes Walk 

This is just up the road...Old Route 299...from my house. Hard to believe there's a major throughfare just 500 yards away. Also hard to believe Lowe's wants to crowd in on this sort of neighborhood.

Main Street New Paltz 

This is from my car window with the camera resting on the steering wheel.