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My Wife's Head

For those of you not paying the strictest attention, it was two weeks ago today that my wife shaved her head. I am intensely proud of her for being brave enough to do it, and so I shall give you the whys and wherefores and thoughts behind it now.

Her school decided to do an event with the St. Baldrick's people, those who go around shaving heads to raise money for cancer funding everywhere. Initially, it was just a bunch of guys, and my wife, being who she is, questioned this: "Why can't the female teachers do this?" When she was given a sort of "Well, I guess they can..." kind of answer, her students responded enthusiastically. She responded to this with "There's no way I'd shave my head for less than a thousand bucks." 

They raised $435 that first day, and she came home telling me that she might have underestimated them and would likely be bald by Friday.

By Thursday, they, together with the student council, had poined up the rest, and we talked about her getting it done, since she was pretty much on the hook for it by that point. She asked me if I would come and watch it done at what was essentially a pep rally, and I had two objections: one is the carnival/exploitation atmosphere that frequently accompanies such events, and the other was the underlying current of disease tourism that I feel can accompany such things. How does a person who must shave their head feel about someone who simply chooses to do so? Apply that logic to a wheelchair or a blindfold, for instance.

Ultimately, I decided to go. At the rally, the student energy was overwhelmingly positive, and there were only three people who said objectively annoying things to me (Objectively annoying = I get someone else's quick opinion about whether the thing that pissed me off was legit or just me. Think about how often I must have to do this.) and the mood was really high and sweaty and excited, and kids went and broke out band equipment, and Christie's head got totally shaved. She was solely responsible for more than a third of what the school raised, and there were like, 12 guys who did this thing that same time she did. Heh.

[This will be the part when, should you ask her about it, she has some media imagery / social context stuff that went through her head while it was happening that she'll share with you.]

And it looks great. She has a head for this, clearly. And the tourism thing? Well, when the little girl with cancer wants to give my wife a big hug and pose for pictures and some of the high school kids are moved to tears and want pix with my newly bald wife - that argument kind of sails out the window.

So, it was for a good cause, raised a bunch of money, made kids happy, and she checks off a bucket list item just before Spring and Summer when she wouldn't want to deal with a bunch of frickin' hair anyway. Nothing but upsides. Also, it looks great. Did I mention that?

I Am A Kite

I am a kite.

I am a kite and fuck you, I spend most of my time up in this tree, the tall elm just off the backyard.

Apparently, you think that leaving me on the wall of the garage for nine months of the year only to come out at Springtime is okay with me. It's not. I am a kite - being on the wall is not the same thing as soaring high above the grass and trees, touching the sky as sun illuminates my panels, briefly turning me into a piece of stained glass art against the backdrop of a temperate, windy day. I'm a kite, you prick, and you think you can just park me on the wall like a shovel and expect me to cooperate when YOU decide it's time for a little kite flying?!? Do I look like a shovel? Bitch.

I am a kite. I am a delicate construction of fabric and string arranged upon a light framework and held together not only with stitching and pockets and fasteners, but also with love and light and altitude and wind beneath the canopy of my bright colors, struggling to break free, holding me aloft against the firmament of the sky. I am a kite, trailing colors and laughter and fun. Ideally. I am not a simple toy to be dashed across the dirt and rocks because your legs and understanding of basic wind physics aren't up to the challenge. I am a miracle of lightweight aerodynamics, you dumb sonofabitch, and I will not be told what to do by you, or any grubby-pawed little simpleton with an itch - I obey the wind and whimsy, and I might decide to spend the whole Spring up in this fucking elm, or on the roof, precariously niched against the gutter's edge, my sun-bleached panels a silent rebuke, reminding you that if I'm not cooperating, it might just be because you stuck me in a darkened room until winds brought blossoms and barbecue smells to your nose and you thought, "Ooh. Kite weather."

Maybe I decide when to fly, and maybe it's the wind, but you're not the boss of me. I am a kite, motherfuckers, a majestic wing on the air, a symbol of hope and freedom, and an object of joy. When I want to be.

I am a kite.

Wake Up Track

I have always hated alarm clocks.

Like many of you, I know. I used to go through a couple of them a year in high school; I would just break them, which I blame on the deplorable state of the alarm clock industry at the time. Later, I just handed them off to my wife, like my CD alarm clock, which she still uses. For years, I used an old Nokia cellphone - three years past when it had any kind of service on it - until I lost it. Lately, I've been using my laptop, and programming various tracks into it by which to wake up.

I'm going to list here a few of these and then ask for suggestions - Rage Against the Machine's "Wake Up" is off the table because 1998 or so, Christie used it for almost a year. Anything else will be considered.

All Things Must Pass by "Harry Heck" (otherwise known as "the best thing to come out of the Punisher movie" and a terrible choice, because it doesn't work)

The Firefly Theme Song

Snickerdoodle (Original) - Vincent's Twinkies

Barbra Streisand (Original mix) - Duck Sauce

Come On, Let's Go - Girl in a Coma

Christianity Is Stupid - Negativland

Put the Gun Down - ZZ Ward

Wild Cats of Kilkenny - the Pogues (sounds good in theory, but waking up to a digital scream every morning takes a psychic toll)

Don't Stop Believing - Journey

Eddie Izzard's "Bunch Of Flowers" bit

Roar - Katy Perry

the old Iron Man TV cartoon Theme

Wasted - Pere Ubu (also a bad idea, but perhaps not for the reasons you'd think)

Black Betty - Ram Jam

Overt Enemy - Slayer

Kickface - Little Foot Long Foot

Desolation Row - My Chemical Romance

Professor Farnsworth saying "Good news, everyone!"

Tomorrow's going to be some De La Soul, but after that, I wait for your suggestions.

Parabnormal Behavior

Apparently, being a witchy demon-spirit thingie robs you of all perspective.

I keep watching and reading and otherwise allowing these stories of possessions and hauntings into my life, mostly because the intrusion of the creepy into everyday life is the only thing that even remotely works for me in terms of scariness anymore - slasher movies have always been pretty dumb & dull, accomplishing nothing; even Rob Zombie's efforts in past years have been more shockfest than frightfest. I don't mind a good horror flick, but it needs to do something else while being scary, and it needs to do it with something besides just gore. The Walking Dead was filling this niche for me for the first three seasons, but then I gave up on it because I felt that it had no place else to go except for nihilistic examinations of the fracturing of personal relationships under pressure and the inevitable deathwatch that accompanies zombie films, which in this case, could go on for years. Fuck it - that's not something I need.

Anyway, I watched the left-pictured thing. It was on Netflix, so there was no additional out-of-pocket, it was only 90 minutes long, and it featured no credits, which accentuated the "found footage" feeling quite nicely. Having covered everything the film has going for it, we can now get into the troubles it has, which are numerous.

I watched this, primarily, because of state pride. One of the things every Tennessean knows about Tennessee is that we have our own witch/ghost. Much in the same way that Ed Gein & Henry Lee Lucas are the roots of every serial killer / cannibal / drifter with a knife murder story you've ever seen or heard, The Bell Witch is the source for most of these haunting / possession / poltergeists stories. But this thing sucks. I can't recommend this film - it's awful. The continuity is fucked, the characters are stock cookie-cutter people who don't react like normal people to the events in their lives (What about watching the footage? You're really going to let your kids go into the woods where your friends got their faces ripped off last weekend?) there are pool parties and palm trees in Tennessee in January - the list goes on and on. I actually began to create a film within the film while watching - the same unfortunate police officer keeps getting called to their neighborhood - he responds to the aforementioned faces ripped off, a hanged teenage girl, another teenage girl eating a raccoon, raw, in a drainpipe, the dad of the family seizing and burping up bloody poo things, and so on. Eventually, this fucking guy hands in his resignation, or at bare minimum, a request for transfer. "GET OUT." Yes, good, fine, I'm going.

This raises the perspective question, though: Why do ghosts and restless spirits handle shit they way they do in movies? First off, Casper, youse can manipulate lights, electricity, iPods, furniture, door handles and physical objects, yeah? Including making shit float through the air? Instead of scaring the shit out of people, then, why not just explode the dad's head (because he's always the one who doesn't want to leave) and write GET A REALTOR in brains on the dining room wall? Why mess around? And don't do the shit at midnight when everybody's sleeping, either. Fuck that - 7:45pm during everyone's favorite show. Just interrupt the feed - "Hey, I'm the restless phantom in your house; listen, fuck off, or I'll murder the cat and staple it to your ass. Cool? Cool." Results, is what I'm saying.

Secondly, when it comes to the level of violence, how many people can you justify, evil spirit? Okay, I get being mad at your family who done you wrong and maybe some of their descendants, but priests and postmen? Friends of friends? How many people do you get to just solidly fucking murder to balance your internal triple-beam, ghost? What is the actual plan, here, anyway? Are we possessing and murdering, or are we driving people out? If what you really want is the Garbo treatment, just rip the goddamn house down. Nothing discourages new tenants like an absence of domicile. Again: you can move chairs and shit, you can operate saws, drills, screwdrivers and small explosives. Fuck the house.

Yeah, just don't watch these movies at all. They make no sense.

This WILL Kill You.

In MY United States - that is to say, the United States culture with which I have adult experience - we have a grand tradition of overreacting to things BEFORE they actually happen. We like to go on and freak out about theoretical shit; saves us time when it actualizes and hits the fan later on. Additionally, in the happenstance where the shit never comes to pass, so much the better; we like to believe that it was (whatever application faction of) us engaged in a collective national bitch session that caused that negative eventuality. We spend a lot of time bullshitting ourselves.

Currently, there's a wave of anti-Obamacare sentiment. This is occurring despite the number of people being helped by it, because a large number of people have waded through the inconvenience of signing up, being made to conform, or paying more, often to the degree of preventing proper medical care. ACTUAL cases of this last one are kind of hard to lay one's finger on, since a lot of them seem to be apocryphal - that is to say, more bullshit stories.

Here's my problem with the national argument against any/some kind of socialized medicine - and make no mistake, us liberals would have liked it to be moreso, mostly because we're a bunch of pinko freeloaders - it centers on how much this - the current situation sucks. Did you forget about it sucking before? Or is this just personal suckage to which you're reacting - as long as it didn't shit in your garden it was free to roam the neighborhood, is that it? Yeah, it sucked before, for a lot of people, and moreover, was an untenable system with an expiration date stamped on it by Damocles. Let me put it like this for you: Let's say you live in a house with shitty, flammable wiring. Eventually, your house WILL burn down if you don't fix this problem. This expensive, difficult, and time-consuming problem. Maybe it'll kill your family when it happens, maybe it'll just wreck your stuff. Maybe it'll happen after you move and unload this fucking deathtrap onto some unsuspecting sap. Either way, if you don't fix it - burning and death. Maybe you start to see why doing this was a thing we did.

Maybe not. Let's try another. Let's say you ponied up the cash - you took out a home equity loan from that predatory fucking bank you deal with, signed in blood and tears - and fixed YOUR house, and so did Simmons, and the Raleighs, and even the Chocheskis from down the block. But the goddamned Joneses, right next door, right on your lot line - they've still got shitty, pre-1920s wiring in their place, and they like gro-lights and disco. Eventually, that place is going up like a tinderbox, and it might take your place with it - seems like the neighborhood watch, or homeowner's association or group of concerned citizens maybe oughta jump in and make 'em rip that old crap out for their own good - and everyone else's, right?

(Of course, none of this applies to the true Randian Objectivists, but since they're not people, I don't feel obligated to address them.)

So - whiny assholes everywhere, understand that this broken system WAS NEVER THE PLAN. It got watered down and changed and fractured by democracy and compromises being utilized by ill-informed people and the very afraid. This broken system is meant to replace the previous broken system, which was never meant to last forever. Unless you want to get a medical book, do your own procedures, get infections and die, then maybe you could wait for this one to actually be in place for awhile, with a majority using it, and less resistance from the states, before spouting useless nonsense words about it in my listen/watch space.

Our systems aren't eternal. Jefferson himself never meant for the living document which is the Constitution of these United States to last more than about 20 years - we're supposed to rip stuff down, fix it up and make it relevant and helpful again periodically. Bitching is optional.