Announcing my Candidacy for U.S. President!

J.P. WHIPPLE FOR PRESIDENT

“Because I could really use a white house.”

I know. Most candidates lie and say that they want to “serve their country”. We all know it’s bullshit so I am not going to lie to you. I need some money and a place to stay and I am willing to be your President to get those things!

WHY AM I RUNNING?

The President of the United States is guaranteed government housing while he serves in office. Of course, there are other ways out of a homeless situation such as getting a job but I figure it is probably easier to gather 70,000,000 votes than it is to get a response from a resume sent out into the abyss. Of course, becoming President also comes with a job of actually being President and I would be more than happy to do that in my spare time. I have been second guessing decisions made by Presidents since I was a small child and I have no doubt that there is no one in the country more capable of running this country than myself. I have great ideas! Just read below!

THE ECONOMY –

Clearly, banks have too much fucking money. To help put money back into the hands of people that will spend it we need to bring back that old fashioned American spirit of banditry. It’s high time we welcome back the bank robbers. Bank robbers are well known for spending their money fast and stimulating the local economy. Restaurants, strip clubs, motels, and dubious used car dealers will see an immediate boon. I want to encourage these hard working Americans any way I can. I will instruct the FBI to stop pursuing bandits. I will start offering courses to young people caught up in our overcrowded prison system to prepare them for an exciting career in bank robbery. Let’s face it America, banks have been robbing us for centuries. It’s time to get off our lazy asses and rob THEM.

SOCIAL ISSUES –

I am not going to ban abortions or try to stop gay people from getting married. These are God’s rules. Not ours. You know, quite frankly, I’m tired of the government having to do God’s work. We can’t afford it anymore! God has been given a free ride long enough! It’s time for Him to get off His lazy Ass and enforce His laws Himself. He has an army of angels, lightning bolts, burning bushes and INFINITE POWER!

Under my administration there will be no more government handouts to “deadbeat deities”. Your free ride is OVER God. Time to pony up just like the rest of us.

THE WARS –

It’s time to bring our troops home. I believe, as a favor to mankind, we should give the terrorists LSD. I know. This is a controversial tactic but LSD has been known to turn people into hippies. Even before The Beatles, the CIA was exploring tactical uses for LSD. Frank Olson, a CIA biological warfare expert, was in the early stages of becoming a hippie after being covertly dosed by fellow agents (Questioning authority… Ready to make a life change and do something more ethical…) before the CIA defenestrated him. And just think John Lennon of The Beatles went from writing violent lyrics like “Run for life if you can little girl” to shit like “All you need is love” after taking acid.

Sure, hippies are a drain on society wandering around smelling bad and not buying anything but it much easier to fight them. Let the fucking Taliban come at us and try to put flowers in our M-16 barrels.

“War is over if you want it.” John Lennon (post LSD)

CAMPAIGN FINANCING –

No more corporate underwriting, PACs, or annoying fucking emails sent to you every day with hyperbolic statements about how everything you know and love is in peril unless you waste your money championing some shithead who won’t do a damn thing on your behalf anyway.

Fuck that.

Under my plan, the government will pay for all political campaigns. Don’t worry about this raising the deficit. It won’t. I am just going to make elections fair again. Each candidate will be given a black marker and some cardboard.

Best pick a good off-ramp for your stump speech.

Good Luck!

DEBT –

Yeah… I have heard about the debt. Even while living in my truck. Debt blah blah blah… So what? Why don’t we just do what half the people and many of the corporations in this country have already done? Declare Bankruptcy. After seven years we can start borrowing irresponsibly again. We can sell off Texas too. I heard they wanted to leave anyway. Good riddance.

Another sensible strategy for balancing the budget is to invade the Cayman Islands. I know it means another war but we can conquer the Caymans on the cheap. Fifty soldiers and five hundred bartenders offering free Daiquiris would do the job. Once conquered all those US corporations headquartered there will have to start paying taxes on the ridiculous profits. This will generate billions in revenue! Problem SOLVED.

MORE IDEAS COMING!

This is just a few ideas on J.P. Whipple will save America! These are just my plans for the first hundred days!( Although I do intend to take the rest of my term off. I hear Camp David is more chill than the White House. I will be throwing one hell of a party. Stop by! The drinks are on YOU!)

You can support my campaign by giving me money, buying my CDs or books, offering me a place to stay for a couple of days, or buying me a drink. Together we can put me in a nice home and save America!

http://jpwhipple.com

Keep Doing What You're Doing...

“Keep doing what you’re doing.”

Yeah… I hear that again and again. Terrible advice but I follow it anyway… as quixotic as it is. For what it’s worth, after two years on the road I have become one hell of a musician… in a time when no one buys music anymore… in a time when few people go to clubs to hear music… whether they can’t afford it because of the economy… or whether it is because they don’t want to risk the police gauntlet at a time when being near someone who drinks is enough to get you a DUI… or whether they would rather watch something on their Netflix or one of their ten fucking billion channels… or whether they would rather hang out “liking” shit on facebook…

Keep doing what you’re doing.

At the time when I started to seriously pursue music… the early nineties… it seemed like one of the few ways to express yourself that had some potential for success. Being someone whose artistic needs cannot be suppressed or ignored without serious fucking mental and emotional consequences, I had to find some way to get this shit out. I tried painting, drama and photography but all that seemed so… well… antique.

But music seemed fresh and very much alive in the early nineties. People look back on Nirvana now and think… well… “Kobain was such a genius” Bullshit. Nirvana was a pretty average garage band with unapproachable lyrics. They would have been completely ignored if not for their very fortunate timing. Independent labels were flourishing. A large college aged population were craving something more interesting than the bullshit that had dominated the 80’s rock scene. I mean… seriously… fuck Motley Crue. Yeah… go ahead and tell me how great you think they were. I assure you that they sucked in every way. They had a decent drummer. Like I give a fuck.

“Girls girls girls”

I have spelled out better lyrics with my vomit after consuming a fifth of Jack.

So suddenly there was “alternative” rock. The big labels couldn’t completely dominate the market anymore. There was room and an audience for someone with some fucking vision. “Smells like Teen Spirit” rocked the world. There was room in this business for someone like me.

That was a long time ago. My ambition back then was to make great albums and sell enough of them to get by. Then came Napster, torrents and cheap recording equipment. On the one hand every fucking wannabe could make an album and on the other no one was buying records at all. Sure there is still great music out there and perhaps even more of it than ever but no one buys it anymore. But by this time, I had sold my soul. I had invested so much into learning to play instruments, sing, and entertain that there really is no turning back. The economy has tanked. Permanently (I hate to break it to you). Obama can’t put Uncle Humpty Dumpty Sam back together. The idiots on the other side can only make things much much worse. There really isn’t much point in sending out resumes back to the “real” world. The corporate world HR person will Google my ass and instead of seeing someone with serious skills… someone who can build a website… write clever songs and stories… design packages… play instruments… engineer and produce quality music… they will see a degenerate… a rebel… loose canon… a barefoot weirdo…

Forget it.

Keep doing what you’re doing.

Like I have a choice here.

The sad thing is this time… as horrible as it is… is my time. I know this not by how awesome I think I am but by my CD sales per audience member… by how much money gets thrown at me… how many people come up to tell me how awesome I am… by how many people tell me…

Keep doing what you’re doing…

But it’s rough… hitting half empty clubs on a weekend night. Some nights are better but I still haven’t figured out how to get that “give-a-shit” quotient up. I beg and beg my few fans to help me out. Share videos and shit… but it’s hard. We are so distracted. So I hit the road. I barely have change for gas to the next town. I am totally dependent on an old Toyota truck. It is my home now. The bad news is that it is old. The good news is that it is a Toyota. Thank god. I would be done by now if I drove a Ford.

I do love what I do. It took me awhile to accept the whole one man band thing but now I am enjoying it. I like always being able to have my lyrics heard over the racket. I love that I am able to get people to dance. It’s a good job for me. I am kept insane by going insane in a controlled environment (the stage). The hours are pretty good. I get to work barefoot. It suits my stubborn duct taped together personality.

But it’s a bad time. Clubs are struggling. Musicians are struggling. I am not sure what the solution is. Some say selling out. Indeed, one commercial would be a year’s income for me. Others think maybe crowd-funding is the future. You want me to “keep doing what I am doing”? Help me out.

Today, I am stuck in a Catch-22. Most of me really wants to live inside and stop this fucking merry-go-round… at least for a month or two… but I would need some income to do that. A job. That’s a dodgy thing. Even in good times, jobs have been hard to come by for me. The rub is that if I end my tour and try to settle and can’t find work, I am really screwed. Most clubs are booked three to six months in advance. That means I would be stuck without income for three months. Plenty of time to turn my truck into a shopping cart. Plenty of time to get kicked into the gutter without any way out.

Keep doing what you’re doing.

I hope the truck has a few more miles in her but I know she won’t run like this forever.

And neither will I.

Capitalism is DEAD... or Welcome to the New Economy... Good Luck!

As we keep rehashing the same old debates in Washington and elsewhere, we have all become complicit in a lie that we feel we must convince ourselves is true. That this capitalist we endure today can survive. Indeed, like many a poor doctor, we try to treat the symptoms because we have either misdiagnosed the problem or simply have no way to address the disease. The disease being that capitalism, as we know it, is dying.

It is a slow death for sure. It is not something that will happen suddenly (barring a Zombie Apocalypse of course…) nor is it something that will happen completely. There will always be markets but our current economic system is going to fail us. It has been failing us for decades already and it is only going to get worse.

When we think back on the most recent stock market crashes what does not stand out is the corruption. There has always been schemers out there who have figured out a way to make a lot of money by selling something that has no real value. It is neither surprising that our emotional stock market’s prices had grown to be way out of line with the real value of the stocks offered. This has always happened. It is the nature of the beast which we depend on way too much.

Instead, what does stand out is that nearly all the growth of the US economy since the 1980’s has been fictional. Indeed, those good years in the 1990’s were largely fueled by the unrealistic and unfulfilled expectations of the emerging technology sector. Sure, a few companies would eventually emerge as economic powerhouses but one has to consider that even though they have some financial might, they employ relatively few people. They are in many respects multinational small businesses. Their financial good fortunes affect a very small group of people and, consequently, their impact on the overall economy is minimal.

In the last decade, we were treated to less of a collapse than a brutal reality check. Americans growing up in families with parents who had succeeded and bought houses and kept jobs expected they would do just as well themselves… if not better. As children, they witnessed their parents working hard, advancing in their careers and making more money. They naturally assumed that their lives would follow a similar arc. They bought homes that were too expensive for them when they bought it but they assumed since they worked hard, they would be making more money soon enough. The people that gave them the loans had the same assumptions. Similarly, all those schemers on Wall Street who sold those mortgages figured that real estate would keep going up. After all, real estate had been rising their entire lives. It was as sure of a bet as spring following winter. Nobody was telling the homebuyer that his expectations of as good a life as his parents was unrealistic. No one was saying that housing market was inflated. Nobody was saying that the real economy was far behind Wall Street. It is not that we could not see such things were true at the time. We just did not want them to be true.

So we did not look.

Not surprisingly, our increasingly corrupt and corporatized government reacted to the crash like they always do. They stuck some bubble gum in the biggest leaks, repaired the engine with a blunt hammer, put a little duct tape on the exhaust and sent it merrily on its way. They say “We have hit bottom now. Things will get better now. It always has.”

Which is exactly what we want to hear.

Nothing could be further from the truth. By interfering to save the big banks, we have preserved the system which has failed us and will fail us again. I know that gets said a lot but it usually gets said for all the wrong reasons. The real reason is that corporate capitalism, which in the past centuries has brought us some progress, is now unfit and unable to serve humanity.

What?! You say. Is this some leftist rant? You ask.

Not at all.

I would never advocate the resurrection of communism. It deserves to be left in the past. What I think is apparent now, however, is that our form of capitalism will soon join it.

Why?

The very nature of the beast relies on the unrealistic principle of endless growth. For the last couple of centuries, the Earth was abundant with resources, the people were always hungry for more and there was always more to be done. While those things were true, capitalism did pretty well for itself. There were a couple of busts here and there not to mention wars but, overall, we progressed and even prospered a little. Still, the question everyone seems to be afraid to ask is how much of those above conditions still exist?

None.

Resources.

Over the last two centuries, exploitation companies had it not only good… but great. The Earth was filled to the brim with untapped, easy to get, natural resources. They had virgin forests, oil reserves literally in people’s back yard and mineral deposits just below the surface. Now the forests are scarce and often defended by a slowly rising environmental movement. Mining companies are forced to dig deeper. Oil companies are drilling through a mile of ocean to find new reserves… sometimes with disastrous results. In every case, what was once a low risk and high reward industry has become a high risk and limited reward industry. Sure, some of those companies still reap huge profits but they know their day is ending. Of course, they are not about to stop enjoying that slow ride downhill.

Labor.

We have always had this unfortunate habit to point to the other little guys first when we feel threatened rather than the big guy who is actually bullying us all. People in America like to say the Chinese or the Mexicans took our jobs. They are slightly less quick to blame the executives who outsourced their jobs and usually too daft to realize that, more likely, no one took their job.

Indeed, for every outsourced job there are just as many, if not more, jobs that have completely vanished. Corporations merge and throw out thousands of redundant employees. The corporate beast has been getting more and more efficient and while we should like to think of that as a good thing, it has not been so good for the worker… no matter where he lives.

Every year we become more productive per worker. Every year, new machines are invented to do the work of hundreds or even thousands of people. Since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution we have been making machines to do the work of people and now we have reached the point where most people can be written off entirely. We have robots to stand in our assembly lines. A farmer that not that long ago would have struggled to manage forty acres now struggles to pay the bills while managing forty thousand acres.

This is not a simple matter of factories becoming more and more automated. Our consumption is becoming more and more automated as well. I love my computer but it is an economic disaster. I can purchase music without every setting foot in a record store. I can take a thousand pictures without ever visiting a film lab. I can find out what is going on without reading a newspaper. I can make an album without ever going into a studio. On and on it goes. Entire industries are going the way of the dinosaurs.

President Obama likes to speak of building up a new technologically savvy workforce able to compete in the new economy. Sure, that sounds pretty good but what he does not tell you is this new economy will not offer anywhere near the amount of jobs it has already replaced. In fact, no matter how well people prepare themselves, jobs will be increasingly tenuous. More and more people will only find employment as subcontractors or temps. They will be brought in for a project and discarded when it is completed. People will be forced to become dynamic. They will have to constantly update their skills or get left behind. This might keep people going in their thirties but as they get older it will be a lot harder to convince employers that they are as dynamic as the new crop of young hotshots. Given the new mantras of raising retirement ages emerging from governments in Europe and in the US, people who find themselves unemployed in middle age are going to be in serious trouble.

We can’t all be Wal-Mart greeters.

Similarly, while the new “green economy” will grow, it offers only limited job opportunities and those opportunities may be further limited if our economy continues to struggle and people lose their ability to address long term issues in face of clear and present dangers.

Demand.

With the American economy limping, if not sinking, that ever increasing hunger on which capitalism depends will take a hit as well. The world economy can no longer depend on American over-consumption. Increasingly, not only are Americans going to buy less crap overall but they are going to demand that what they do buy outlasts its warranty. As a culture, we are beginning to realize the perils of our disposable lifestyle. While this is perhaps a great thing in many ways, it is yet another economic disaster. It would be naïve to think that the emerging economies in China, India or Brazil will ever become the big mouths we once were. Those markets will grow some but the peak of global consumption is likely much nearer than people today realize.

…

It is hard not to guess the results of these emerging trends in the global economy. You can see them already. Long term unemployment. This not likely to go away any time soon. We can “throw the bums out” every two years and it will make no difference. A great many jobs are gone and will never return. Those who do find work will often find themselves underemployed. Even people who equipped themselves for the modern job market with education will find themselves languishing in minimum wage service industry jobs waiting for something better to finally come along. Even more people will find themselves knocked down into a life of perpetual panic… living paycheck to paycheck… one bad break from complete disaster. Those of us who manage do a little better should not be surprised to find their thirty-something child with a college degree sleeping on our couch or even their fifty-something parents needing our spare bedroom.

Welcome to the Real New Economy.

Although it is probably hard to accept the notion the economy is not going to really “recover”, it is easy enough to make that case. What is harder, of course, is finding a solution. What is known for sure is that we will get no help from either the Democrats or Republicans. Hopelessly lost in the past, all they offer us is a choice between bad ideas and terrible ones. Obviously, neither was able to conceive of the very real possibility that had we let the big banks collapse, it could have possibly cut off a great deal of the cancerous growth or what could be best described as the “fake economy” and given room and fertile ground for smaller… more ethical and nimble… new economy to emerge. No one can know for sure but the prospects of success for a repaired broken system to work are somewhere between limited and hopeless… at best.

As I said at the outset, this is no time to argue for huge government interference or any of the “isms” of the past. I think history has panned out that simple solutions don’t fit complicated problems. It would be nice if the government became responsible to the people rather than the corporate interests that fund their campaigns. Fighting for a voice in Washington is something we have to do but Washington cannot save us. It serves us no better to have the government take over the economy than to continue to let mega banks have the reigns. If we can learn one thing from history it is the veracity of this one simple equation:

Power given to the few equals misery for the many.

So where is the “hope” in the new economy?

It is all around you. It is in the local farmer’s market. It is down the street at the local brewery. It is in the communities that most of us have long since abandon behind our white picket fences and down the aisles of Wal-Mart. We have been duped into thinking that we need these mega-corporations for everything. It is perhaps this terrible mistake that dooms us above else. Sure, maybe you need to get the latest smart phone from Apple or Motorola but there is no reason you need to go to Budweiser for beer or Wal-Mart for food. There is no reason you can’t go to a cobbler instead of Foot Locker or a reupholster instead of Ikea. We can no longer afford to sit and whine about our jobs going away. We need to start employing each other ourselves. It is either that or we will have to live in a country with a lot of people sleeping on couches or under bridges feeling useless.

Like it or not, the party is over. Corporations will not help you. The government will not help you. We are all going to have to help ourselves and each other. If we are going to survive as a people, we are going to have to start thinking outside the box… and outside the big box. It is sad to say but it is probably true that there is going to be a lot of suffering ahead no matter how our government acts. Like it or not, our great swaths of outer suburbia are unsustainable. No amount of government intervention or idiotic attempts to resuscitate the asinine concept of laissez faire economics will save them. We cannot afford to live in little isolated castles anymore.

Though the prevailing winds of the great economic machine of our time would have us all believe that there is only enough for the few and none for the many, deep down we know they are wrong. We are a smart, efficient and technologically advanced race. There is enough. We just need to offer it to each other rather than let the greed machines take it from us, hoard it, and then distribute it as they see fit.

Nothing is going to be easy. We have for far too long lost our way. Conservatives like to suggest we need to return to traditional values and you know what? They are right… but not in the way they like to think. We don’t need to return to a day when the government allowed business to run free and rape and pillage as they see fit. We do need to return to an ethic where people are worth more than property. We need to look at our neighbors not as competitors for jobs and resources but as… well… neighbors. We need to return to a time when we understood that our quality of life has little to do with the quantity of crap we have but, instead, a lot to do with… well… the quality of the life we live.

The hardest change is… sadly… is getting off that “ME!” trip most of us are on. This ethic of grabbing all you can and screwing the rest is no way to survive as a country… a people… or a race. We need to think a little deeper than just ourselves and, unfortunately, it will take a long time for the people in this country to develop that skill. We have no choice but what remains to be seen here is the amount of pain people are willing to endure before they can accept that fact that things will not be as they once were and the solution is no longer keep doing what we have always done.

Tour de Belgium II - De Crayon

GIG ONE: CAFÉ DE CRAYON
Oostende Belgium June 26th 15h00

The Nazi pillboxes still line the Belgian coast complete with artillery aimed out into the North Sea… waiting for the Americans.

Filthy and I outflanked them…. storming in from the east… via a train from Brussels… meeting light resistance in the form of broken glass dropped by an English tourist blocking our path into De Crayon. At the bar, a punk rock Belgian tells us that he was attacked by Nazis a few months back… these bad ideas sure do stick around. I know I may seem a peaceful barefoot musician but I do believe if I should encounter a Nazi in Oostende and get the upper hand… I think I would keep pounding that skull… madness on madness… not stopping until that idea… that horror… was hammered through the brick streets… back into the sewers from which it came.

I am only human after all.

But there are no Nazis around the De Crayon. Still, Filthy and I are greeted like conquering heroes with La Chouffe and Thai food. The walls are decorated with cartoons depicting the Bishop of Brugge… recently defrocked and shamed for pedophilia… these bad ideas sure do stick around…The captions are in Dutch but I get the punchlines.

Hans puts together a sound system for us. Melissa and Alexander arrive. Kris and faithful dog Walter show up. Knowing my taste for fine ale, he greets me with a box filled with Rochefort, Duvel, and Hommel. Filthy and I are worn from the late night in Bar-le-Duc… early morning… and long travel…. but we are lifted by knowing we are in a good place… in the presence of good friends… We have home field advantage and we are going to kill it. Melissa and Croy circle around with their cameras. We are rockstars for one night in Belgium.

Oostende
June 26th 11h30

After a late night of listening to records with a local DJ, Melissa and Alexander head off to get some seafood for breakfast. They think they can just run off and ditch us but they are wrong. I know these two Belgians. They are going someplace good. Melissa looks behind and finds Filthy and I are not too far behind.

We are stalking you.

We follow them to a place called Oude Stad Kortrijk. It is a small place serving simply prepared fresh seafood. I have zeetong… seared in butter… with some white wine Alexander picked out…. breakfast is served.

Delicious.

Filthy and I drop our excess baggage off at the De Crayon. We head off to Brugge to pretend to be tourists for the afternoon. Brugge is probably the most well preserved city in Belgium but after a month in Europe, it is a bit underwhelming. The shops and overpriced tourist cafes don’t do much for us but we do find some solace in that one store with the two hundred Belgian ales. We grab a few for that ten minute trip back to Oostende.

Delicious.

…

stepping out to a greater love...

stepping out to a greater love...

Perhaps when all is said and done this is the challenge of our age... never mind the hype... where every emphasis is placed on how we can make ourselves more marketable... profitable... oh.... sensible.... practical... logical. They are all distractions. When we seek profit and marketability we're just looking to take from others. We buy in... to a belief that self aggrandizement is good for all.... that an iPod in the hand is better than a Zimbabwe free from cholera....

This is not a condemnation... this is how we were built... had to be built.... to last this long... but to last longer we need a new evolution. We need to step out to a greater love.

Sadly we are often born and raised into a smaller love. An easy love. Many of us have a love of family... friends.... of country but then only "our country" and no love for the rest. They are, after all, the other. Whether they be the Mexican, the Black, the White, the Arab, the Asian, the gay, the punk, the hippie, the jock, the urban elitist, the redneck, the Joe Six Pack, the burner..... Whatever they are the small love excludes them. They are radical and will destroy society. They are a menace. The small love doesn't want to know about "their" loves, ambitions, their ideas..... the small love dismisses.

I know plenty about being dismissed. I dress funny. I don't always wear shoes. I say strange things that have to be thought about. Rather than "apply myself" and go through the motions of a routine life, I sought to make an art, and to speak a truth even though the cost is very high.... ridiculously high I might add. Yeah.. I am the "other"... plenty of the time. It can be a pretty lonely and terrible place to be sometimes.

Last week, I went out to a redneck bar and shot some pool. I watched a little of March Madness. I even went to a Hooter's. The waitress sat and hung out with us (....as is their job.... sadly). She talked about having dinner with family on a Saturday night. Bland conversation for an urban elitist for sure and she was a terrible waitress.... but I do not dismiss her... or the yahoos rooting for Michigan State (...as am I). I know enough about people that they will all go back to a family and love them and try to make happiness and get by as best they know how.....

That is not just the way I feel about the people at Hooter's though. It is the way I feel about Republicans, Palestinians, Afghans, and jocks. Whatever.

I could hate... that is easier but I found the greater love is better. Though not easy, it is something that can be taught and is far more rewarding than the small love. I would not trade anything for all the good that has been brought to me from people of different points of view and persuasions...

The trick is simple. Question authority. Your authority. When you feel or think a certain way... step outside.... and look at it from there. You may find that you were right. You may find that you were wrong... in a bad way or a good way... we do love to accept way too much of what we love and deny way too much of what we hate.... there is always that risk but the Truth is well worth having in any case.

Today... the Divide and Conquers are enjoying their last feast. Their time grows shorter by the minute in this fast changing world. They will go but they are such assholes... and we allow them to be such assholes... that they may take us with them. The best we can do is be what they aren't and to teach others to step out into the greater love with us. We are in a world of miracles. We can grow food for everyone. We can teach a world what it takes to make a world work so that we all have what we need. We are working on it in spite of ourselves.

...

My step father was a racist.... but he sold cars and he sometimes had to sell cars to black people. One black couple came in with their kids and bought a car from him. They spoke eloquently, had good jobs and credit, and their kids were respectful and well behaved. He came home that night and said "There are some good ones too". Of course, it is still sad that he failed to understand that they might all be good or trying to be good in a world owned and... at that time anyway.... ruled by people who have completely shit on their kind but... at least... that black family forced him to step out a little... and he copped as much.

John Lennon said all you need is love... and he died knowing he was right but he had to admit that a song wasn't going to do it. We all need to step out... even when it sucks and it is hard..... Me too... starting with myself.... which is very fucking hard.....

...but I'm stepping out.

In Defense of Barbie and Ken Dolls... after the VT massacre 2007

I sometimes rail against "Barbie and Ken dolls" and use them to symbolize the empty headed consumer of our plastic and disposable pop culture. It is, of course, satire. I do not really objectify people in this way.

Monday someone who had more thoroughly objectified people managed to get away with executing more than thirty of them. No doubt, behind dark and polluted eyes he saw a world of pretty young people having fun, partying, spending money, and having sex. This was, to him, a world he could never be a part of (or so he told himself in his demented isolation). He punished these people by ending their world. At some point, probably long ago, those that he looked out at had probably long ceased being people. They were "its" and "them" of some kind. That transference is necessary to kill someone. In our war the people our President objectifies as "insurgents" or "terrorists" get furthered objectified by soldiers as "targets". On the other side, young college aged kids with girlfriends and worried parents became "infidels" and "occupiers". This has always been the way of murder. This is the Great Sadness.

A lot of people feel like "outsiders" especially in high schools and colleges. I can only imagine there are hundreds of thousands if not millions of us that feel alienated in some way. I remember going to college for the first time and looking out at all these pretty young people and wondering how I could possibly fit in. Then, a couple days later, a pretty girl smiled at me and said "Hi". I was in too much shock to really respond. I think I might've grunted or something. I did see her later though and because she had said hi to me I mustered up the courage to approach her and fire off a joke.

It wasn't funny but she laughed anyway. We talked for awhile about where we were from and what we were studying and some time later we went back to her room and I kissed her. When I looked around and saw the pictures of her parents and her little brother, the rock posters on the wall and all the silly souvenirs of childhood recently left behind, I realised that this pretty girl was a dork. She was just as insecure and unsure about her life as I was.

I kissed her again.

Father's Day... Training Wheels

I asked my sister what death meant. She said it was like lying down and not ever getting up. My dad was napping on the couch at the time holding a can of Old Style on his belly. I asked my sister if he was dead.

I did not understand.

I got my first bike on Christmas. It was probably 1972. It was very patriotic. Red, white, and blue with a banana seat. It was just like Peter Fonda's chopper in Easy Rider. Only it was for a four year old. I don't think there was any coke in the handle bars. That bike would be cool now. Dad put some training wheels on it so I could get the hang of riding a big person's bike.

I practiced and practiced with the training wheels. Soon, I insisted I was ready to get those "sissy wheels" off and ride like the big kids. Dad took them off. He kept the bike balanced as I got on nervously staring down the long sidewalk. I was up so high and the pavement looked so far away from me. So dangerous. I had already broken my shoulder twice. Off in the distant, there was the big world. The Sunoco station. Paul Winger's house.

I was scared but dad was right there. Nothing bad would happen. Dad gave me a shove and off I went out into the big old world that day. I was only four at the time and I had no idea that was how he was going to leave me. On a wobbly bike heading down the sidewalk.

A month later I knew what death meant. It meant that we could actually use that front room with the nice furniture. It meant well dressed men would visit and sit with us in that front room. They told me that dad had gone to a better place. I was happy for dad and I didn't understand why all the big people were crying. I begged them to stop. I did not understand until I was there out on the oh so very green grass under the oh so very blue skies with the oh so white clouds passing over us. Soldiers shot at them. The clouds were not wounded. They moved on. We are powerless to stop them.

The training wheels were off for good.