Nor the sensibilities of anyone else, for that matter. In the same article linked above, it’s noted that Random House pulled a book about Mohammed for fear it would offend Muslims. If this keeps up, we’ll all be down to reading Dick and Jane books. No, wait, gender stereotypes. I’m sure that must offend someone so forget about Dick and Jane.

Man, the more I think about this, the more I see how far we could run with it. I say let’s don’t just pull them from the shelves, let’s have us a real ’save the world’s sensibilities’ book burning bonfire. We’ll be heroes!

We could start with all of Clive Cussler’s books cause I know for a fact they offend a friend of mine on Backspace. For myself, I would love to see all of James Patterson’s books burned because, really, they are all the same story over and over and I find his lack of creativity offensive. And I can’t be the only one who finds stories with long drawn out middles and no beginning or end offensive so pull Glimmer Train and other such post-modern literary mags off the shelf and toss them in the fire.

Might McCain supporters find Obama’s books offensive? Pull those puppies and burn em.

Ghosts, goblins, witches and warlocks, vampires even? We know these horribly satanic things offend some so off to the fire they go. Violence? Sex? Violence and Sex? Sex and Death? Death? Books about gays? Books about gays as normal, loving couples? OH MY! Burn baby burn and then superheat the ashes.

Mark Twain and Jon Clinch both used the *N* word in their respective books about Huckleberry Finn. I’m pretty sure that must offend someone so off to the bonfire with their work.

Richard Dawkins‘ book The God Delusion offended a whole lot of folks. Come to think of it, so does Dawkins himself, or so I’ve heard. Hell, throw em both on the fire.

I could go on and on but let’s face it, we already know it’s gonna be a tough job just as we know the job must be done. The really tough and important tasks in life are like that. And, as big and powerful as they are, it’s really too much and too important a job to leave to the likes of Wal-Mart and Random House alone. We’ve got lend our collective hand in this noble cause. We can start by burning down all the bookstores and public libraries, narrowing our objective to personal and private libraries once the larger objective is accomplished. We’ll remove all the people from harm first, of course. After all, these poor, misguided seekers of the written word know not what they do. We don’t want to hurt anyone. We’re just trying to save their delicate sensibilities.

Technorati Tags: Wal-mart, Random House, My Sister Jodie, Jacqueline Wilson, Barnes & Nobel, Mohammed, Muslims, Clive Cussler, James Patterson, Glimmer Train, McCain, Obama, Mark Twain, Jon Clinch, Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion

But I have to say I’m thankful that I always knew the number of houses I owned, or more likely rented, at any given time.

Poor John McCain. Must be a real bitch not knowing how many houses you own. I mean, imagine the confusion that could cause. And think of the number of keys you’d have to carry around. I wonder if he color codes them?

Unlike the news media, which has pretty much ignored this, Barack Obama has been all over it. Not that it matters. This ain’t a pitch for Obama, though I’ll probably vote for him. Lesser of two blahs and all that. If he wins, it’ll just be more of the same old shit. A different texture, maybe, a different smell, but shit nevertheless.

As you might have noticed, I’ve grown a bit cynical about politics in this country. Hell, truth be told, I’ve been cynical about politics in this country since Nixon was king and for the most part the political theater of the absurd has gone down hill since. How can you tell when a politician is lying? Their lips are moving.

Have you ever wondered why movies like Dave or TV shows like West Wing were so popular? I think it’s because such shows portrayed politicians as people with integrity and honor, people who actually gave a rat’s ass about the folks they represented, and not just the ones with money. And I believe we want that, really want that. Pity those shows were only fantasies.

Is there no one in this country with the balls, real or metaphorical, who will stand up and say what’s really going on? That the rich keep getting the gold mine while the shrinking middle class get the shaft and the poor get the toxic sludge? That our government is more than willing to spend billions, trillions even, to destroy another country and rebuild it again, lining the pockets of their cronies along the way, while our own infrastructure goes to hell? That the educational system in this country has become little more than a joke? That families have to pay more and more for the basic necessities while CEOs are paid in the millions regardless of whether their companies fail or make huge profits? That these same families are in a constant state of fear over the loss of their job, the house they live in, having to decide which meal to skip, which bill won’t get paid should they or one of their kids get sick and have to see a doctor?

Is there no one in this country with the balls, real or metaphorical, who will stand up and actually do something about it?

Why do I have my doubts?

It’s the same old same old. Empires rise and fall and this one sure seems to be in decline. But then, it’s always been that way, hasn’t it, and I see nothing that makes me think this election is going to change anything. Regardless of who wins, we the people lose.

Technorati Tags: Detroit, California, John McCain, Barack Obama, Dave, West Wing

***

On a sad note, I heard yesterday that the great Palestinian Poet Mahmoud Darwish has died. Another important voice lost to us. What I find sadly interesting about this is the near total lack of coverage by the American press. The only American press coverage I found was on, of course, NPR. Are we Americans so self-centered, so selfish, that anything or anyone of any importance outside our own borders, excluding any war or conflict we might be engaged in, is somehow lacking the merit for coverage?

Poets are revered in other countries, looked upon as heroes. They are the voice of people who have no voice, eloquently expressing the pain and struggle inflicted at the hand’s of tyrants and mad men, and they all too often suffer the consequences of their words at those same hands. Here in America, with rare exception, the only poets of any note are those who write the cheesy greetings in Hallmark cards.

If you’d like to hear Mahmoud Darwish reading one of his poems in his native language, go Here. For BBC coverage, go Here.

***

The larger of the two stories I mentioned in The Story Zone post a few weeks back won the Backspace contest. That felt good though it also meant I had to come up with the parameters for the next contest and I hate coming up with parameters. The name of the story is Turnbuckle and I’ve been working on it whenever time permits. At the rate it’s expanding, it may well become a novella soon.

Meanwhile, I’m working on two other stories as well. One for the new Backspace contest and another that’s been wandering around in my head for so long I just want to get it out of there and on paper. I can’t talk about the first one, don’t want to give it away before the contest ends, but the second is called Descansos Man. I suppose, in a way, it’s for my daughter.

***

Here is a Really Bad Writer’s Joke my friend Gail in San Francisco sent me:

A lion was roaming the African jungle. He was terribly hungry. He came across two men sitting under a tree. One was pounding away on a typewriter; the other was reading a book. The lion devoured the man reading the book. He avoided the writer. Even lions know that readers digest and writers cramp.

***

Comcast was giving me the blues last week, working fine during the day but punking out mid-evening and not returning until mid-morning. One of those intermittent problems that so drive IT Guys bat-shit.

Called support. Lot of help there. Yeah, and I’m drop dead gorgeous. They sent a tech out. He got there around mid-morning and swapped out the cable modem. I suppose that was one possibility but it seemed a remote one to me. The Internet was up when I got back from doing the pay-the-bills thing on Friday. That lasted all of an hour and it went down again. Called support, got the same runaround and they scheduled another techy to come out on Monday.

Great! Weekends are the only real time I have to get online and get some work done. I’m also a Backspace junky and I start jonesing if I can’t get to it. I really didn’t need this so I dug up the old IT Guy persona that got me through twenty plus years of dealing with computers and computer-related stuff and set out to track down the problem myself.

I suspected the cable itself, somewhere between the little puke green thingy out on the street and the wall in my house. All I needed was a tester. That was easy enough. The modem itself makes a fine, if crude, tester. With a long extension cord to power the modem, I disconnected the coax at various points and connected the modem. If the Online light comes on, I’ve got a connection. If not, the cable is bad. I finally found the bad cable, up in the attic. Using some coax I had around the house, I rigged a somewhat messy work-around and have had steady service since.

The techy never showed on Monday. I guess I’ll have to buy 30 feet of coax and replace the bad cable myself.

***

I remember back in the days when the clothes in my closet were secured by wire hangers, it seemed as if those wire hangers reproduced themselves whenever the closet doors were closed. You’d start out with twenty or so and in no time at all the closet was overflowing with wire hangers. Now that I’m using those plastic hangers, the opposite seems true. I buy twenty and a month later there’s only ten left. Where the hell are they going? Probably the same place one-half of a pair of socks go after an hour of tumbling in the dryer.

You might think this has something to do with the basic difference between metal and plastic, the former being more promiscuous than the latter, but how then to explain Tupperware type containers? At some point in my life I vaguely remember buying a couple of those, surely no more than three or four and now I have an entire kitchen cabinet full of them. How did that happen? And why is it the number of lids is less than the number of containers?

***

Why are Yellow Transportation Inc. trucks orange?

***

Why are the authors of two of my favorite blogs, Anatomy of Melancholy and Deviant Behavior, even slower than I am about posting new material? And where in the hell is the Grumpy Old Bookman

***

Do you ever wonder what happened to certain people you knew in the distant past? Would you know what to say to them if you ran into them again? I’m not sure I would. Hell, I’m a bad dog at staying in touch with the people whose locations I know (sorry Gail, Denise, Linda, Ryan, Rebbecca and Richard, to name a few). I suppose you could rattle on about old times but I get a sense it might be uncomfortable or get there pretty fast. But then, that might just be me. People tend to make me nervous.

Still, I do wonder what became of certain folks and so, with the Internet being so far reaching and search engines so efficient, I’ll toss some names out there and see what happens. Could be interesting. Could lead nowhere. Hope no one’s holding a grudge.

Skip Knapp (that’s the name most people I knew in the past would know me by) would love to know what happened to some of my old Michigan friends: Deborah Hefka, Robin Hefka, Linda Ford, Jackie Pickford, Scott Barringer and Marty Herman. Then there are some old friends from my college days at the University of Detroit: Larry Tribula and John DeLuca; and my dear friends from Greece: Maria Ambatielou and Gerasimos Ambatielou. I’m sure I’m having a senior moment here and that there are others I’m not recalling. And then there are those whose name I can’t spell and wouldn’t even attempt a stab at it or else I don’t remember their last name or never knew it.

And since I’m on about this and since I have no idea where my daughter is, I’ll toss her name out here as well. Who knows, it could turn something up. And with her I’d have plenty to talk about. So, Courtney Mackenzie Pawlaczyk-Knapp, married name Courtney Cline or Courthey Kline, if you’re out there, send me an email. If someone who knows her reads this, let her know I’m looking for her.

If anything comes of this, I’ll post about it.

***

And speaking of friends, old and new, what’s your best friend’s phone number? Bet you don’t know. In fact, I’d be surprised if you knew anyone’s phone number. If asked, you’d have to look it up in your cell phone. Be nice if not having to remember all those numbers left room for remembering other stuff like where you left your keys or your glasses but it doesn’t seem work that way. I guess technology does have its limitations. Oddly, I still remember the phone number I had when I was a kid: KE2-9106. Man, does that alpha prefix date me.

***

And, on a final note DEATH TO SPAMMERS! May your fingers be invaded by painful fungus, your ass grow blisters the size of baseballs, your computer’s innards overheat and melt, and your Internet connection loop back on itself and blow you out of your filthy little hole with the crap you foist on everyone.

Technorati Tags: Palestinian Poet, Mahmoud Darwish, NPR, Backspace, Comcast, Yellow Transportation Inc., Anatomy of Melancholy, Deviant Behavior, Grumpy Old Bookman, Skip Knapp, Deborah Hefka, Robin Hefka, Linda Ford, Jackie Pickford, Scott Barringer, Marty Herman, Larry Tribula, John DeLuca, Maria Ambatielou, Gerasimos Ambatielou, Courtney Mackenzie Pawlaczyk-Knapp, Courtney Cline, Courthey Kline, cell phone

The second question is a lot easier to answer. No, I don’t write poetry. If they persist and ask why, I tell them I’m just not good enough to write it.

There is nothing self-effacing in that statement. I think I’m a pretty damn good prose writer. But poetry? No way. Poetry is a whole other world, no, it’s a whole other universe. The structure, the form, the words used, where they’re used, when, the meter, the flow, even the damn commas, periods and line breaks, everything about a poem is different than prose. The only similarity I can see between a finely written poem and a finely written piece of prose is the spelling of the words used.

Just as there are many bad writers, there are many bad poets. If they continue at it, learn the craft, maybe they’ll get better. Indeed some of them must because there are some damn fine prose writers out there and some damn fine poets. On very rare occasions you’ll run into an exceptional prose writer, an exceptional writer of poems. I’ve read my share of each in this latter category. Recently I added a writer to the poet side.

The writer in question got his MFA from the University of Oregon. Anyone who knows me knows I don’t put much stock in having an MFA, leastwise writers with them. They all seem to write unintelligible clap-trap for obscure little magazines that maybe a total of five people actually read. He also spent seven years in Uncle Sam’s employ, serving in Bosnia and Iraq at a time when neither place was exactly Disneyland.

I’m not a trees and flowers and sentimental love poem kind of lover of poetry. Oh, some of it is nice but in general my tastes run more to the South American liberation poets, the persecuted Russian and German Jews, the survivors of famine and war in whatever country they reside in or have run from. I love the passion, the rage, the defiance, the fear. I want my breath to catch, my heart to hammer, the tears to flood my eyes. I want to feel that sense of loss, that pain, that rage and defiance. I want to feel that passion in their words.

Brain Turner got me on all counts with Here, Bullet.

I first heard of Brian Turner just last week while listening to Terry Gross’ Fresh Air on NPR. She was interviewing Lt. Col. John Nagl who wrote the textbook on counterinsurgency. I was sort of half-heartedly listening when the conversation came around to a review Lt. Col. Nagl had written for a poetry book. A poetry book? Now that got my attention. And oh what a review it was. Terry read some of it and it brought tears to my eyes. When she asked Lt. Col. Nagl a question, it took him a long moment to get it together and his voice, when it came, was thick with emotion. I had to like the guy.

But, after the kind of review Lt. Col. Nagl wrote, it was the poet I wanted to know more about. I wrote his name down and the name of the book, thinking I would look for it later. I guess Terry was as impressed with the review as I was for her next guest was Brian Turner himself.

You can hear a podcast of both interviews HERE and read a sample of Mr. Turner’s poems HERE at the publisher’s, Alice James Books, website.

Not since reading Bruce Weigl’s Archeology of the Circle, especially the poem Song of Napalm or Yusef Komunyakaa’s Dien Cai Dau, have I read words written by a warrior in the depth of war that moved me as Brian Turner’s Here, Bullet moved me. However you may feel about Bush’s folly in Iraq, or war in general, if you love great, and I mean cry-your-eyes-out great, you’ve got to read this book of poems.

Technorati Tags: poetry, poem, prose, Iraq, Brain Turner, Terry Gross, Fresh Air, NPR, Lt. Col. John Nagl, Alice James Books, Bruce Weigl, Archeology of the Circle, Song of Napalm, Yusef Komunyakaa’s, Dien Cai Dau

It seems that just the act of writing that down hardened the ground for me. Amazing what writing can do.

Not only did I come away with two stories written and currently simmering on the final draft burner but there are currently two stories cooking away on the first draft burner. I also came up with some interesting observations.

First, I’d forgotten how much I love being in the story zone, being so up inside your head the world around you recedes into the hazy background. As I drove around Albuquerque doing the pay-the-bills thing I found myself turning up streets for no reason and looking around to find I had no idea where I was or turning into businesses I had no reason to be at. The few people I had occasion to talk to probably thought I was on drugs. Here I was, a big silly smile on my face and I couldn’t complete a sentence, think of a coherent answer to their questions or even say ‘have a good day’ without twisting the words around or forgetting one of them.

And I was loving every minute of it.

I got the idea for the larger of the two stories on a Tuesday. Got the first line actually, a line I later didn’t use because it was too abstract but that line opened the gates. Friday was the Fourth of July and a day off for me. I sat down before the sun rose and started typing it out. Spent all day Friday and most of Saturday writing it, completely lost in the world of my characters. I let it simmer a bit over Saturday night and tweaked it on Sunday.

Damn but I missed that feeling, crossing back and forth over the line that separates the world of the real from the world of make believe. I get that when reading a really good book but the experience is so much more intense when the make believe world is one which I am creating.

The second observation I came up with was how important it is to have writing peers. I’m not the most social person in the world. Indeed, there are those who see me as borderline hermit-like and I guess I am. People make me nervous. The path that words have to travel to get from my head to my mouth is so strewn with obstacles that by the time they get there, they’re all jumbled and twisted around. When I communicate solely with the written word, I’ve found I’m less hermit-like as the path the words take from my head to my fingertips is relatively obstacle free with a lot of resting places along the way.

I’m thankful for Backspace in that regard and in regard to having writing peers.

I was so happy about being in the story zone after so long a dry spell that I mentioned it, perhaps a bit maniacally, to a couple of non-writing friends here in Albuquerque. They listened to my tale, as friends will do even when you babble, and then gave me an indulgent smile that could be read as, ‘oh my, is EJ off his meds or something?’

They just didn’t get it at all. Luckily I have friends at Backspace who understand such madness. I called one of them, the great and soon to be published A. S. King (The Dust of 100 Dogs, due out in Feb 2009 from Flux) and before I had completed my description of events, she was on it completely, relating her own dazed and confused up in the story zone story.

Thank the muse for peers. Thank the muse for Backspace.

And, for those few who visit this blog and might be interested, I’ll post at least the longer of the two stories soon.

Technorati Tags: Albuquerque, Backspace, A. S. King, The Dust of 100 Dogs

Plain fact of the matter is, life’s been hell this last year, even worse, in my eyes anyway, than the previous two or three. Not going to go into detail or anything so you won’t have to wade through a pity-river rant here. Suffice it to say that I’m adhering to that old adage, if you’re going through hell, keep going.

The one intolerable thing about this last year is that I’ve been unable to write. It’s not so much a block, more like quicksand. The idea bank certainly hasn’t failed me but for reasons I can’t, or don’t wish to, get into here, I haven’t been able to translate those ideas into a story. Every time I try I find myself sinking beneath the weight of a lot of things that never bothered me before and the harder I struggle against it, the deeper I sink. Bottom line, I’ve lost the ability to write for myself first but I’ll explore that whole morass in another post.

This inability to write hit critical mass about a month ago and I decided to give this blog a try again. My idea was this is, more or less, non-fiction, I’m not really looking to impress anyone, I control what I want to write about and how I write it, I have no idea if anyone is actually reading what I write and, though I care about that to be sure, it doesn’t seem as important as someone reading my fiction. Not sure that makes any sense but who cares.

It also occurred to me that writing in the blog might, A) get me back in the habit and, B) help me to sneak up on my fiction. Weird, yeah, but whatever works and nothing else has thus far.

Which brings me to the point of this post, the first to fall into ‘The Literary World’ category since I resurrected the blog.

First, I read a novella recently, or more accurately, had it read to me by the author. I’m a big fan of audio books as what I currently do to pay the rent doesn’t leave me with a lot of time to read and I can’t live without books.

The author is Alan Bennett and I’ve been given to understand that he something of a famous playwright and author. Sorry to say I never heard of him but, considering the direction my taste in reading generally leads, that’s not saying much.

The Novella in question is titled “The Uncommon Reader†and it is a most charming little story about the joy of reading. The ‘uncommon reader’ in the story is the Queen of England and it revolves around how she accidentally becomes a reader and the subsequent changes that come about because of this. The author’s obvious talent and feel for the story and that dry British wit and humor I love so much makes for a wry and entertaining little tale that will keep you turning the page (or changing disks) right up to the very last words. “The Uncommon Reader†was one of those rare stories I wished wouldn’t end and Alan Bennett does an excellent job of reading it.

The second item is a bit more perplexing.

I’ve never read Lawrence Block. No particular reason and he’s certainly prolific enough that I wouldn’t miss noticing him. Reading him just never happened until recently.

“Small Town” is a beautifully written, complex story that, from my understanding, Mr. Block was working on when the Twin Towers came down. Not sure where the story was going before 9/11 but the course Mr. Block put it on afterward makes it one of the most compelling and haunting stories I’ve read in a long while.

The story takes place in - where else? - New York, the ‘small town’ of the title, roughly a year after the tragedy. It is, in one sense, a murder mystery but it goes way beyond that in many ways. And one of the ways in which it does is the antagonist.

I’ve always had a fondness for the antagonist, both in what I read and in what I write. In general, if there is one main character in most genre novels that comes off as flat or cliched, it’s the antagonist. Not sure why this is but that’s been my experience so finding an antagonist such as the one in ‘Small Town’ has been a real joy, and a real study of a master writer at work.

So why am I perplexed?

I am by no means a prude. Sex in stories, right up to, and including, soft porn, doesn’t bother me so long as it’s integral to the story. Which, sad to say, it ain’t in “Small Town”. And believe me, this story is full of sex. Kinky sex, hetro sex, homo sex, you name it sex. Hell, I do believe there’s more sex than story. Indeed, if one performed a Reader’s Digest surgical procedure on this book, removing all the sex, you’d cut its size in half, if not more. And that’s kind of sad because the story itself is so wonderfully wrought and in no way needs all those throbbing cocks and silky vaginas not to mention the banana.

Would I recommend “Small Town” despite this nit-pick? Oh yeah. You bet I would. In, well, in a New York minute.

Technorati Tags: Alan Bennett, The Uncommon Reader, Lawrence Block, Small Town

I get up at 4:30 in the morning. On weekdays it’s work related. On the weekends it’s the cats. As any servant of the feline knows, cats don’t do weekends.

My usual routine at that hellish hour is to first plug in the IV bag of caffeine while groping about for a cigarette and trying not to trip over the cats in the process. Next comes the feline feeding frenzy, of course. Once the clamor has died down, I’m free to check; 1) Backspace, and 2) my email. This morning I wish I’d checked neither.

Not that it would have mattered. I would have found out soon enough. Once at work, I listen to NPR all day and the news about George was all over that station today.

It’s strange the way the death of a celebrity can affect you. And in different ways, too. When Kurt Vonnegut died last year, I was depressed for days. Yet, when Sydney Pollack and Utah Phillips, both of whom I greatly admired, died recently, it was sad hearing of their deaths but the sadness wasn’t lasting.

I’ve been sad all day. Profoundly sad. It’s like the universe has lost some essential part of its structure. To say that the man was an icon of my generation would be a vast understatement. And as hokey as it may sound, he was one of my heros.

I was first turned on to George back in the sixties. I don’t remember the exact circumstance. Hell, I don’t remember much of the sixties or early seventies come to think about it. Be suspect of anyone who does. But I remember listening to George on the stereo and seeing him a half-dozen times at different venues. The pony-tail, the gruff voice, the way he dressed, the combination of extreme intelligence and defiance in his words had a profound impact on this twenty-something kid. He had a way of surgically cutting through the bullshit, of saying fuck you to the rules, of exposing the emperor in all his naked absurdity.

In this, the twenty-first century, with the political and religious absurdity in the world at an all time high, he will be sorely missed.

If there’s a heaven, George, give it hell.

Technorati Tags: George Carlin

My second went a bit smoother. We lived together without benefit of legal formality for nearly two years, decided to do the nuptial thing and subsequently broke up less than a year later. I spent several months wearing out Bob Dylan’s “If You See Her, Say Hello†before she once again appeared on my doorstep. Looking back on it now, I think I was reluctant to start things up again. But I did. And it didn’t work. Less than four years later she was gone again.

My third? We never did the nuptial thing but the five years I spent with her, as chaotic as they were at times, were the best five years of my life. Losing her changed me in ways I could never have foreseen. I wish it would have worked out. But it didn’t. Life can be like that sometimes.

So why am I going on about this marriage thing? I’ve never been a big supporter of the institution of marriage nor have I been particularly opposed to it. I could say I’m not very good at it but would that be accurate? What I’m not very good at is a long-term relationship with a woman, with or without the formality of marriage, which has nothing to do with the actual institution of marriage. For me, living together or marrying are an either/or thing. If I lean in either direction, it would be more toward the living together side if only because there’s one less thing to deal with when the relationship comes apart.

Not everyone feels that way, of course.

83 year old Phyllis Lyon and 87 year old Del Martin don’t feel that way. They wanted to get married, have wanted to get married for a good number of years and did just that last week in my beloved San Francisco. I don’t know Phyllis or Del but their marriage brought a tear to my eye. I do know why it took them so long to get married. And I know why their first attempt at marriage four years ago failed. The law wouldn’t let them. You see, Phyllis is a woman and Del, well, she’s a woman too.

The institution of marriage has become something of a battleground of late and the battle heated up dramatically when, in a move that surprised more than a few folks, the California Supreme Court overturned the ban on same-sex marriages, opening the way for Phyllis and Del and thousands of other same-sex couples to finally have what I and the rest of the hetros so take for granted: a trip down the aisle or a few words before the judge and all the protections those actions afford.

The fundamentalists and the homophobes are going ballistic, of course. Oh me oh my these queers are gonna destroy the sanctity of marriage! Sanctity? What fucking sanctity? And what constitutes sanctity anyway? Love? Devotion? Read Paul Monette’s “Borrowed Time†and then come back and tell me it’s not possible for a man to love another man every bit as much and every bit as deeply as a man might love a woman.

Longevity then? Nah. Sure as hell can’t be that. ‘Divorced’ is as much a marital status today as ‘Single’ or ‘Married’. If longevity is part of what constitutes the sanctity of marriage, then Phyllis and Del have most hetros beat by a mile and a half. They’ve been partners for more than 50 years. Jim and Tammy, the ultimate evangelical, opposite-sex couple didn’t last that long before they divorced. And those 50 years of Phyllis’ and Del’s are 33 years longer than my three relationships combined.

The fundamentalists and the homophobes aren’t through yet. No such luck that the rapture will occur and rid us of their ilk. No, they’re gathering signatures to put a referendum on the next ballot, a referendum to amend the California constitution to ban gay marriage. I wish I could get enough signatures to put a referendum on the next ballot to ban them. As it is, all I can hope for is that the people of California do the right thing and shoot that referendum down in flames.

Technorati Tags: Phyllis Lyon, Del Martin, California Supreme Court, same-sex marriage, marriage, California, gay marriage

The anti-war and civil rights movements saw tens of thousands taking to the streets, dedicated, defiant, willing to face the consequences of trying to change a system they believed to be deeply flawed. Today I see a dozen people dressed in black standing outside the Federal courthouse here in Albuquerque, protesting a war as heinous, if not more so, than the war I fought against. And while the traffic streams by on Lomas Ave, those pathetically few brave, protesting souls are no more relevant to those self-absorbed drivers than shadows on the street.

A black man and a woman vie for the presidency while our government builds a fence across our countries southern border. Whatever happened to ‘Give us your poor, your tired, your huddled masses longing to be free…’? If the Statue of Liberty could weep, her tears would form a waterfall of despair.

The infrastructure of this country is falling apart, children in the richest country on the planet go hungry, the education system is falling apart, the gap between the richest and poorest grows, the middle class is disappearing while our government tries to foist ‘democracy’ on other countries at the end of a gun. A very expensive gun. A gun we pay for, I might add. And they won’t even let us see the body bags of the children who held those guns nor the devastation those guns have wrought on other children.

The pursuit of fear alleviation has replaced the pursuit of happiness. We, the ‘common’ folk, pay the vast majority of taxes and few of us are more than one paycheck away from homelessness. And that paycheck is getting smaller by the day.

Retirement? The Golden Years? Fagetaboutit. If you’re lucky enough to have a job, you’re going to have to keep that job until you fall face down in your Cream of Wheat some morning to be replaced by some slightly younger poor fuck who will have to work until they fall face down in their breakfast cereal.

So, yeah, I guess you could say I’m angry.

Langston Hughes wrote of a dream deferred. Has the dream become the raisin or the sore or a heavy stone sinking below the surface of our waking self? Is there enough left to reach a critical mass, to explode again? I hope so, but I’m not real big on hope these days.

Technorati Tags: anti-war, civil rights, Albuquerque, Give us your poor, your tired, your huddled masses longing to be free…, Statue of Liberty, Langston Hughes

As most everyone not hiding under a rock is already aware, gas prices, food prices and unemployment are rising. A good many folks out there are losing their homes and those that ain’t are finding they owe more for their house than it’s worth. Ditto this last for the SUV owner but I can’t be real sympathetic toward that bunch. Bummer the Hummer. Credit card interest is rising and most Americans are all but buried in credit card debt. We’re involved in a costly, pointless war while the infrastructure in this country deteriorates, the homeless population rises, the number of folks receiving food stamps is increasing and our schools are seeing drastic cuts in their budgets.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, BP reported a 63 percent surge in first quarter net profit to $7.6 billion. Royal Dutch Shell posted a 25 percent increase to $9.1 billion. ConocoPhillips reported a 16 percent rise in net income to $4.1 billion. Exxon’s profits were up 17% while Chevron earned a hefty first-quarter profit of $5.17 billion.

In the midst of the mortgage meltdown, Charles Prince, former CEO of Citigroup Inc., Stanley O’Neal, former CEO of Merrill Lynch & Co. and Angelo Mozilo., chief executive of Countrywide Financial Corp made a whopping $460 million in compensation and severance packages (http://money.cnn.com/2008/03/06/news/exec_comp/index.htm). G. Kennedy Thompson, the recently ousted CEO of Wachovia, will receive an $8.7 million ‘here’s your hat what’s your hurry’ package (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/06/02/AR2008060200684.html?nav=hcmodule).

While food prices soar, Monsanto reported that its net income for the three months to the end of February 2008 had more than doubled over the same period last year, from $543 million to $1.12 billion. Its profits increased from $1.44 billion to $2.22 billion. Cargill’s net earnings soared by 86 per cent from $553 million to $1.030 billion over the same three months while Archer Daniels Midland, one of the world’s largest agricultural processors of soy, corn and wheat, increased its net earnings by 42 per cent in the first three months of this year from $363 million to $517 million (http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/2/story.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=10507919).

While food stamp use rises and the average human’s spending power decreases, in the ten years between 1995 and 2005, CEO pay rose 298.2%, corporate profits rose by 106.7% while the average worker’s pay rose by a puny 4.3% (http://consumerist.com/consumer/executive-pay/ceo-pay-up-298-average-workers-43-1995+2005-250838.php).

If you’re not outrageously angry, you’re not paying attention.

Technorati Tags: BP, Royal Dutch Shell, ConocoPhillips, Exxon, Chevron, mortgage meltdown, Charles Prince, Citigroup, Stanley O’Neal, Merrill Lynch, Angelo Mozilo, Countrywide Financial, G. Kennedy Thompson, Wachovia, Monsanto, Cargill, Archer Daniels Midland, CEO pay