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(from an idea jointly by me and Max)
On the 12th day of Christmas, my zombie gave to me;
infectious extremity gnawing,
a statue of Simon Garth,
four human fingers,
And a dead partridge in a dead tree!
Here's hoping that each and every one of my readers has happy and relatively undead-free holidays!
I was supposed to be going over to Kroger's for sausage, celery & low sodium chicken stock. You can tell it's the holidays - we're making food we don't normally make. Casseroles. Everyone secretly loves a casserole, if only because you can take it back out of the fridge a dozen times and slowly eat away at it. Anyway, Kroger. I hit the doors of the store and right angled around the Starbucks kiosk-blot when I heard the cheering crowd white noise coming from the big flatscreens in the little cafe area they put in when they removed the photo finishing counter at the end of '07. I glanced up at the screens to see 1:43 left in the fourth quarter, Titans and Dolphins tied at 24.
So I stopped. Dead in my tracks, hands in the pockets of my sweatshirt, all in black with my hat pulled down to touch the top of my glasses. Next to me was a petite woman in her 40s, done up still from church, a little too much make-up, nice smell. Behind her were a couple of the guys from the meat counter, white coats and logos. Seated at the tables were a homeless guy in a rotting Michelin-man-type winter coat, a skinny Korean kid with a Mario Brothers hat and girl pants, and a matronly black woman with a bright red Christmas sweater on and two pre-teen boys in tow. Others gathered - a tall white guy in a banker's tie and black London Fog coat, a teenage girl with a "visitor" sticker on her tan coat, and a huge black guy with a scarred nose and his iPod headphones still in. The point is, it's a melting pot all walks of life kind of thing going on.
And we cheered together. In overtime, the Titans intercepted and Rob Bironas kicked a 46 yard FG FTW 27-24, and a collective gasp went up and then changed into scattered claps and cheers, some verbal exclamations. The Titans won after ditching an 18 point lead, then pushing into OT, and keeping us as fans on the edge. It has been a difficult season to be a Titan fan, but when it works, it works well, and today it brought people together in the grocery store, closer than they would normally tolerate, with a singular interest. There were some handshakes, joking and nervous laughter as we all broke up to the image of the players hugging each other on the field, and the experience was over.
Except that I put it here.
The whole rest of the world gives me a headache. A consistent stabby thing that moves around the back of my head like a boxer in ballet shoes, fucking with my ability to feign interest and civility.
I get so blasted tired of "conventional wisdom", established conversational rules and interactive order based on cowardice and the inability of my fellows to think things through or be even and direct with one another, like grown ups. Confrontation, apparently, is hard. Honesty is even harder. And they almost got to me, today, just like last Friday. I was one quiet, thoughtful moment away from the abyss - I almost cared what they thought of me, and then it hit me: They don't matter sweet fuck all. They're empty, flawed vessels, just like me, except, in many cases, dumber and less aware. More paranoid, if such a thing is possible. More focused on the minutiae of things, missing the forest while staring at the same petrified fucking tree for days waiting for a change to come. Not just tunneled vision - earthworm vision. Naught but dirt ahead, hole behind. Thinking that they have earned respect, and believing that they are in control. No one is truly in control, and these least of all. So - we must invite them to shut the fuck up occasionally.
I have lost patience. Again. Time was, I could smack someone in the head when the world got me frustrated. Or have a drink or seven. I don't really drink anymore, and smacking motherfuckers is far more problematic on the back end than it used to be. The only solution now seems to involve putting up with the shite until your higher brains cry "uncle," and then shaking things up by laying your big, scary cards on the table and making everyone else do likewise.
So I did that a couple of times today. Picked a "fight" because no one else was going to do it, and frankly, because the status quo (such as it was), to my mind, was far more costly than the flinging of verbal jabs. One fox is among the chickens, and the coop is as yet quiet, the other created a series of awkward conversations filled with repetition and jabbering. Have I accomplished anything? Well, you know people - they fucking suck, so probably, all is for nothing. I feel briefly better, though. The catalysts for my frustration have received their boon of the blunt end of my expansive tact and negotiation skills, and the most egregious parties served what they produced. So much better then me trying to blend into mall traffic on the Friday before Christmas and taking it out on passers-by or some misbegotten bell ringer.
Or the unfortunate readers of my blog. Good night.
"Verily, it is said that the man who pimps his friends enobles the world entire."
There are other places on the Internet, you know. People doing stuff besides me. Many of them are maintained - so to speak - by compadres of mine, fellow travelers on this meager width of band we all share. As a holiday treat (and indeed, in some cases by request) I would take this opportunity to provide you with some links to some other folks you should check out:
First off, go read what Brett Turley has to say over on Blithering Idiots. By his own description, his blog is "my personal forum for political commentary, expose' of social injustice, and demonstration of just how awkward reality really is." Brett's older & wiser than I am, so you should check him out.
Now, with the holidays coming up, you need to go buy something from Kat's Kats. There're cats for every occasion, and because it's Cafe Press, you can get them on virtually anything. Sign up for her email list and get shiny special things in your inbox. Things that purr.
More beautiful things to look at can be found on both Cayce Callaway.com and Amy Jester Photography.com. Go there and hire them to make you and your event look prettier than it was in a way that lasts longer than your spotty memories of the thing. Also, for several different kinds of things, head over to That Oliver Guy Productions.
If you're tired of looking at stuff, go listen to something. Check out Nashville bands The Coolin' System and Atomic Blonde. Or you know, if you're in the frozen Northeast, go see Arjuna on New Year's.
These are all brilliant people doing good work that should be better and more widely appreciated. Follow the links, enjoy stuff, buy things, read.
Oral Roberts died yesterday at the age of 91. Ninety-one years. Conclusive proof that God didn't want him in paradise any more than many of us wanted him on Earth. You can almost picture God keeping Oral here, then God nips out for a nap and some cheese crackers, and Oral dies while he's not looking. And St. Peter gets the blame. Or so I would assume.
During the early years of my life, I concluded that televangelism was ridiculous and disgusting, and made a mockery of anyone who believed that they had a personal relationship with any deity. Here was church recast as the Home Shopping Network; just send in a faith gift of your last few ducats, and we'll shoot you this lovely scrap of blessed prayer shawl and some redemption. Courtesy the USPS. Ernest Angley was the first one I noticed, with his shoe lifts and toupee, healing deaf kids (BA-BA) and preaching that Jesus cures AIDS. He was a target for my derision when I was still in single digits, and not just because he's the proud owner of the Cathedral Buffet Restaurant. He is Pride personified, the walking embodiment of egotism writ large.
If Angley is Pride, the Bakkers were Greed. Jim and Tammy fucking Faye. They wore too much make-up, had fancy clothes, slept with their secretaries and the fucking name of their organization sounded like an exclusive club that I wouldn't have been allowed into. Like you weren't going to heaven without a special card in your wallet. They built a theme park with a water slide and used it as a tax deduction. 'Cause that's what Jesus would have done. They were suburban white ambition coupled with an entitlement that came from on high and run riot over television and the higher ideals of faith in doctrine. And, of course, they fell. You can't come on your secretary's face, take pictures of it, and then expect to be treated as holy. You know who wouldn't have done that? Almost anyone.
I don't remember when I first became aware of Oral Roberts, but I know that my awareness of him is simultaneous with thinking that he was a crackpot lunatic continuing the grand legacy of emotionally crippled men of a more expensive kind of cloth. This is an individual who claimed to have had a visit from a 900 foot Jesus telling him to build a hospital in Tulsa, Oklahoma and cure cancer. In His infinite, or at least, 900 foot, wisdom. That ranks right up there with Moroni and Mother Teresa muffins, to be sure, but Oral didn't stop there. His evangelical and rhetorical fire drove him to extort his flock for 9.1 million dollars, lest Jesus "take him home." He became almost a parody of himself, pulling millions from the organization he founded, using the Jesus as a Business model that's been so popular in recent years. He founded a university based on the Christian No-Fun Doctrine - no smoking, no drinking, no swearing, no dancing, no fucking - and his son later defrauded it of millions. Other than being a semi-successful businessman, a heretical joke, and the Uncle Milty of televangelism, it's unclear to me why Oral Roberts matters at all. But I'll leave you with this quote, representative of the lack of clarity and perspective possessed by some Christians:
"Other than Billy Graham and Martin Luther King Jr.—and maybe Jerry Falwell—it would be hard to name a different religious leader of more importance," Grant Wacker, professor of Christian history at Duke University Divinity School.
I just got back from the Nashville in Harmony "Jingle This!" show, and they were awesome, as always. I really liked the Jingle Bell sketches and the songs were particularly powerful tonight. They're going to have to be more careful, wielding the tool of music that way. Sucks that you weren't there - you missed a hell of a show. Moving on, one of the songs they did was "True Colors," and it got me to wondering the above question. How do you see yourself? What color are you?
A couple of quick clarifications: I know it's a metaphor, and meant to be regarded in the way that we describe others using supposedly universal concepts of color, anthropomorphizing the chosen hue in the process - yellow for cowardice, "true blue," that sort of thing. I also couldn't care less about racial identification when I pose a question like this, and can't believe anyone else still does, either. Step over the societal speed bump, folks, it's only this high. So, yes, I understand about cleaving to one's internal nature, being who you are, and possibly I am fucking up the metaphor - but this is where my head is at, and you shall come along for the briefest of rides.
As a synesthete, (see previous entry) I associate color (tactile sensations, too, but we're not discussing those) heavily with people I know, since their voices and smells all radiate color to me, and my relationships can sometimes be hindered or helped depending on how harmoniously their personal color blending is. (I would reiterate at this point that up until four years ago, I thought everyone was this way.) So yes, if you are a personal acquaintance of mine, you have a color. It occurs to me that I should not share these with everyone, since some of you are likely to hate your color, or be offended or something, or you think of yourself as an entirely different color. Whatever. I had a question up there.
So yeah - what color are you? I think of myself - for the record - as an almost black violet. Like a can of purple ink or paint that you think is black until you stir the surface or get some on you and then you realize; Oh, purple. Mood ring before it reacts color.
You?
Would you ever use a wine-based condiment called Chardonnaise? Whipped eggs, oil - fine wine. No? What if it tasted really good and/or could get you drunk? Gettin' hammered on rye over the lunch break?
When you touch/see/smell something really gross, is it the thing itself that grosses you out, or the idea of the thing? Like picking up an eyeball - it's either the wet firm/not firm factor, or it's the "hey, this is someone's eyeball." Say you stepped in a turd with bare feet - is it the squishy warm brownness, or the idea of a thing, teeming with germs and bacteria squirted out of an ass that disgusts you? Or is it this paragraph?
If you were a god, what would you be doing differently? Along those lines, of you could be in charge of a country, would it be this one, or would you take the opportunity to whip a little fascism or religious intolerance on some people?
Think of someone with whom you're really tight. What would they have to do for you to not speak to them ever again? I mean, presumably, you're cool with each other now because you're counting on them not opening Davy Jones' locker of deplorable behavior, but what's the thing that you think they could do that would be the absolute living end? Cheat on you? Kill someone? Lies and betrayal? Peeing in the sink? When the dishes were in it?
What do think your spouse or S.O. will be like in ten years? How different are they now from 10 years ago? Do you think we change more as we get older, less, or not at all? Do people change, or do they just learn to repress, hide, and bury better as they become more adept at getting along?
Is there anything so abstract or ridiculous that it cannot be fashion? Fighting terrorism was fashionable, now change is the big thing. Coming out of the closet is still cool, but there was a time when it was more fashionable, I think. Lesbians seem to be more in fashion than gay guys right now, too. Green's in fashion now, but I still see a lot of Hummers and small, small people behind the giant pirate ship wheels of SUVs. I don't even know what retro-era we're in right now.
When I was a younger man, the conceit of many people around me was that I liked being right. This was to some degree true, although for me it was more important to not open my mouth until I felt I had thought things through, which led to my being right perhaps more than others would have liked. The rest was pure-D arrogance. Now? Now, I could give a shit. I can't stand it when people talk complete bullshit, so I tend to wade in and step on that, but otherwise, I don't mind being wrong. I usually learn something. If I'm wrong too many times in a row it can bother me, as I begin to reflect on past head injuries. In point of fact, being right is often a burden these days as two things occur more often than not: 1. there is resentment on the part of the other parties involved, often accompanied by drama, or 2. I develop long and slow-boiled contempt for people who are wrong and who take it out on others. The exchange of ideas is interesting, but I find that most people don't barter in ideas.
My neck hurts now and it's one AM.
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