Plumping for a Reason

I know there haven't been any new posts around here (In ages! Jesus.) on the Days, but in the twilight of this electoral season my mother wanted to know how it is I'm leaning.  More than just a 'who you vote for' question, I guess it gives me pause to think more deeply about what it is I believe in, a 'why' sort of thing.  A good think for any of us to ask of ourselves, from time to time.


I guess I'd have to preface all this by saying that I can't believe in immutable rights, beyond those that are agreed upon as societal norms (which for better and for worse, do change with time). I trust that there are certain values that are almost universally held, which may seem self-evident when thought about objectively. But as there isn't any compelling evidence for a god (or gods), there really isn't anything proscribed or impossible except that which society will crush one for in reprisal. Moral values are then a product of human coexistence and the changing dynamics therein, rather than being a simple given. The nature, means, and measure of power - which to my mind is a thing of inevitability in any social grouping, the implementation of who gets what, how and when - isn't just innate; one can argue it to be beholden to a number of factors, like technology, economy, and even geography.

From that viewpoint then, I'd say our current, past-century set of circumstances make government the arm of the common good, ostensibly there to protect and better society in ways individuals can't or are unwilling to do, modern society being large, complex, and as a unit fairly unwieldy. The tumultuous nature of the free market system upon which we base our daily existence lends itself to conflict, inequality, and discord - conditions that the nature of said system cannot thrive in. This isn't medieval Europe, where power is measured by the crops you grow and your ability to wrest what you will by force. Force is still a potent means of control, but is by no means the end-all appropriation.

In terms of governance, the problems I have with the private sector are absolutely borne from a personal cynicism held that a for-profit motivation is inherently going to be selfish; when one tries to apply free market principles (which are great, from a business perspective) to what one might call the 'social good', you necessarily find gaps where there's no profit to be had. Worse yet, conflict of interest dictates that a money-making approach to government invites corruption and further solidifies the placement of 'haves' and 'have-nots', simply because people who can afford to invest and turn a profit (call them 'producers') will become the focus and primary beneficiaries of any such government. 

Conversely, one can make the same argument that governments are poor at running businesses. This is generally true because the motivations and goals of government are intrinsically different from those needed to successfully maintain a business. In a successful economic system such as ours, it wouldn't be too insane to suggest the existence of a symbiotic relationship between the two, the one being the engine powering the other, which maintains the stability the former requires to do its thing.  Kind of the essence of Keynesianism, really.

So I voted Democratic because I believe in people, and in society. There's a disparity that has been widening in America over the past forty years, and I believe our democratic virtue requires us as a society to redress them. That's my problem with the Tea Party, in that they are actively working to redefine those values that make us 'American'. Not that there's any problem inherent in evolving public interest, or with debating policy. But it's the cheap political tactics and fairly transparent self-interest that I disagree with the most strongly.  No system is perfect, just as our very bodies - while standing the tests of time and selection - are neither perfect nor even well-suited for all contingencies. But at some point we need ask what best serves the greatest common denominator.

What's New, Pussycat?

Dear, but how time flies!  March to May in what seems like a week; of mold, of shit, of utter decrepitude.  My life finally feels consumed by the job, that most dreadful of all nouns.  Up at six, fix a to-go salad and eat my yoghurt.  The daily walk to 4610 26th Avenue - I've calculated that as of last Wednesday I've walked five-hundred miles exclusively to and from work since starting in October.  It's two miles each way, so I suppose it adds up.  But my god!  I could have (very slowly) walked to San Francisco from here, rather than the punch-in and early morning meeting that begins each and every weekday with unflinching regularity.

I dream about work now, so far gone are my free time aspirations.  Sometimes I'll wake up and think up a way to go about a particular job that hadn't occurred to me before.  I'll return those two miles, feeling utterly efficient and utilitarianally clever.  Meanwhile my writing notes grow into a small stack of of yellowing paper.  My blog (poor blog), untouched for nearly two months that felt as a week.  Before I know it I'll be in my mid-thirties, wondering where it all went, dreaming my workaday dreams (if I dream at all, by then) and crawling into a bottle after every second set of two miles in the evening.

Whole lives are sometimes used this way, and it frightens me. 

"The War Hero"

            Orson Hayes smiles twice at the readied camera as the production assistant gives the thirty seconds sign.  Silly Sally sells sea shells, ink pink blink, cognitive gymnastics.  Across the desk to one side sits a clean cut young man in an immaculate set of dress greens, a few dozen multicolored ribbons arranged over his heart.  He sits with folded hands resting on the knee of his crossed leg, the placid and quite photogenic war hero, a sort of latter-day Ollie North.  Orson can feel the glow of patriotic greatness emanating upon him; if he could but touch the hem of his Silver Star-

            Three, two, one, “And we’re back, tonight’s guest freshly returned from his triumphant tour of duty overseas, Private First Class John Bollard.”  The audience roars approval; every red-blood loves PFC Bollard.  “Proud to have you with us, John,” smilingly wresting back the spotlight, the gracious late-night host.

            “Pleasure to be here, Mister Hayes,” Bollard smirks saccharinely.  Orson doesn’t appreciate the formality, and casts a wary eye at his guest.  Perhaps he doesn’t care for the spotlight?  A touch of PTSD, maybe?

            “As many of you know, John here was the hero of last month’s harrowing Haiftatabad siege, in which over a hundred militants had his squad surrounded in an abandoned hospital.  Completely out of contact and beyond support, isn’t that right?”

            “The ruins of a hospital, but yes, you’ve got the facts correct.”  Orson doesn’t much care for Bollard’s tone, or his sarcastic smile.  If the little shit doesn’t want to be on television, why come at all?  Just play ball, dammit.

            “Surrounded and outnumbered, your fellow warriors injured and spent, you courageously volunteered to infiltrate enemy lines in order to cause a distraction that would allow your squad to escape.  Not only did they escape, but he single-handedly neutralized more than fifty insurgents, completely breaking their ranks!  How do you like that, folks?  A modern-day Audie Murphy!”  And suddenly Hayes feels old- would people even remember who Murphy was?  “A real John McCain-style maverick,” he adds, still a little out of touch.  But who else in this day and age comes close?  Team Six, maybe, but none of them have names or recognizable faces.  He looks at Bollard with an almost real feeling of admiration, “You display the true American spirit, young man.  If only the current administration could better honor heroes such as yourself and the other men and women in uniform with better support.”

            And then his guest laughs, actually has the balls to snicker during Orson’s oratory to the American people.  But he’s not laughing; John looks scathingly upon him, a frighteningly sneery expression of disdain clouding his heroic visage.  “Hero?” he scoffs.  “You keep saying hero, but really you’re only dancing around the glaring reality that I’m a mass murderer in a uniform.  Hero,” he spits.  “Honestly, how can anyone in this day and age condone the things we do, much less applaud my actions?  Standing me up to be some sort of role model, so that when I’m old and spent and working a civvie contract job you can send today’s sons and daughters-” and the private scoffs again, “sons, send people’s sons to become murderers of their own, to fight and die or grow old and land more civvie jobs to enable more young people to fight and die.  Of course,” he continues matter-of-factly, sitting back in his seat, “it’ll be mechanized by then, all drones and robots and IEDs blowing up other IEDs and whatever civilians get in the way.”

            Orson is appalled, looking to the set director for guidance.  Keep it going, she mouths back at him.  Hayes struggles to find an opening, struggles to rally his riled feelings of public betrayal and ire.  “Do- do you mean to say you don’t support the war?  That you don’t support our troops?”  A few people in the audience boo, shouting commie and coward.  But John has obviously seen worse; he simply laughs at them.

            “Support our troops?  Have you spent any time with our troops, Orson?  They’re all either poor or fools or monsters, or fools waiting to become monsters so you people can idolize them.  Sending them off to fight wars for things you don’t really understand, simply to attach yourselves to a feeling like remoras on a shark.  You’re leeches, every last one of you.”  The stage lighting is bringing out the dark shadows around the eyes, bringing out the exhaustion in Bollard’s features.  Orson shakes his head reprovingly; the boy’s obviously delusional, speaking ill of his country and his fellow warriors this way.  And the crowd is getting ugly, inflammatory.

            “People, please,” he tells them in a soothing hush, trying to be his own sort of hero now.  “Post-traumatic stress is a very serious condition, affecting tens of thousands of our-”

            “Do you know why they get that way, Mister Hayes?  Because war is an unnatural thing incompatible with modern society, especially with a functioning democracy that believes in human rights and the sanctity of life.  We get sent off to see and do terrible things, get told we’re doing good, and then have to wrap our little minds around it all for the next thirty, forty, or however many years it takes before finally dying.  And it’s painful, so eventually everybody adopts the same language of lying, heroes and neutralizing and all that sanitized garbage people like you spread around.  For your ratings and your public image.  So yes, I do support the troops.  Fire them all, or else keep them home,” John trails off, tired and by now drowned out by the awful voices raining down upon him.  “Do something.”

            Security has been dispatched to keep a few audience members back from the stage.  Orson stands, feeling a bit like Springer as he looks to camera 3.  “Well that’s all the time we have for now.  Stay tuned for our next guest as we discuss the wolf problem in the mountain states.”  The On Air sign blackens and he looks around for Bollard, but the soldier is gone.  “Coward,” Hayes mutters, and begins trying to settle the tumultuous crowd back into their seats.

Decline and Fall of the Demure Right

            Obviously it has been happening for years, as steadily as a runaway glacier: the polarisation of American politics and the rightward thrust of the current Republican Party.  Nothing by way of news, though some stories from the past couple of weeks bode ill for a perfect union.

Super Tuesday Fizzle  Super Tuesday - called such because it generally concludes the primary stage of any opposition party’s election run-up in an explosive fashion - has fallen flatter than a tired metaphor, as Romney wins in a disappointingly lacklustre fashion and rival Santorum loses in such a way as to come out a slightly stronger candidate.  Not only does this underline that there’s money to be made in drawing out a foregone conclusion, but it is painfully indicative of a split among Republican voters.  Viz, that there are about as many conservative, bland, yet somewhat responsible primary voters that support (reprehensibly oily as he may appear to be) at least a plausible presidential candidate who has leadership and (reprehensibly as it may also be) successful business experience and a history of compromise to his credit, (deep breath) as there are voters of the vehemently Tea Party, post-Moral Majority set that (ever increasing in dictating party lines) have already shattered the efficacy of the House of Representatives, and now seem intent on crashing the gates on the Senate and Presidency.

Snowe Moves On   Senator Olympia Snowe, a moderate Republican representing Maine, announced a week before Super Tuesday that she would not seek reëlection, citing “an atmosphere of polarization and 'my way or the highway' ideologies [that have] become pervasive in campaigns and in our governing institutions.”  What this does to limit congressional bargaining (and ultimately large-scale bipartisan projects, such as the debt reduction supercommittee) and the ensuing gridlock that follows would, in her opinion, make another term in the Senate personally unproductive.  She closes her announcement with a bittersweet flourish,

“As I enter a new chapter, I see a vital need for the political center in order for our democracy to flourish and to find solutions that unite rather than divide us. It is time for change in the way we govern, and I believe there are unique opportunities to build support for that change from outside the United States Senate. I intend to help give voice to my fellow citizens who believe, as I do, that we must return to an era of civility in government driven by a common purpose to fulfill the promise that is unique to America.”

Unfortunately, as she hangs up her legislative hat another potential intransigent may usurp her rare position as an aisle-reacher, further exacerbating the already static cling to party unity (over coöperation).

Pledge Drives  And the one that really gets me are the ill-fatedly indefinite pledges (read my lips) that have been getting the pass-round among Republican congresspersons.  The first is Grover Norquist’s pledge to never under any circumstances increase the marginal tax rate of either person or business (living or dead), signed by all but six Republican representatives and most of their senators.  No wonder Snowe (who did not sign the pledge) has decided to leave; if maintained the pledge effectively eliminates all possibility of compromise over the reduction of America’s debt.  The other pledge (because bad news comes in pairs) is the brainchild of the right-wing Susan B. Anthony List, directed at Republican presidential candidates and maintains a strict policy of appointing only demonstrably pro-life judges and appointees if elected.  Mitt Romney (again, the only thing by way of a plausible GOP candidate this fall) is the only of his rivals to not sign, arguing that it would be a limitation of his abilities as president.  Yes, the future of America’s Right seems to lie in the unmovable foundations of uncompromising ideology.  

So what then might anybody expect to be the Democratic reaction?  Eventually, trenches shall be dug, and the American moderate will indeed be a thing of the past.

Balut

I like the Asian grocer's.  The aisles of exotic, cheap foodstuffs, the smells and familiarity of being surrounded by the unfamiliar.  It puts a smile on my face as I browse with a basket slung over my arm.  Picking, choosing, thinking.  I grabbed a sixer of duck's eggs on a whim yesterday; they seem larger than those of chickens, and I can't recall ever eating one before.  The gal at the checkout seemed a bit perplexed.  In broken English, asking if I knew they were ducks'.
"Aye, ducks' eggs," I nod on amicably, glancing at my watch.  My lunch hour's nearly up and I've yet to get back to the office.  I have a stir fry planned for later, minced garlic and peppers and cabbage, chicken and graced with a duck's egg at the last.  Which is why it came as an unpleasant, hilarious sort of surprise when I went to crack open that extra-extra-large white oblong egg and found the sharp rift pulsating with ruddy afterbirthage.
Rushing the thing to the sink for fast inspection, an embryonic duck flopped out amid yolk and runny white.  It was horrible, hysterical.  I couldn't stop laughing.  The checkout gal had said they were ducks, not ducks'.  One by one, I pass the others in front of the overhead light.  Cloudy, every one.  Fertilized to the last.  Bugger.
I did a bit of research, the odd wiki page and a question or two to an old friend.  These are a specialty, balut in the Philippines.  Supposedly a proteiny snack and aphrodisiacal booster steeped in folklore and local culture.  It seems barbaric, disgusting; I must try it, if only to pit myself against my blander inclinations.
Day next, I've boiled four for a solid ten minutes (as per an instruction I found in an online Q&A column), the lime juice, salt, and an emergency glass of Polish vodka at the ready on the dining table.  I run an egg briefly under the tap, to a holdable cool.  I'll try at least one, and if it doesn't work out I'm okay with throwing the rest out.  Hesitantly, gingerly, I crack and unroll the shell, catching what flumps lifelessly out into a small bowl below.  Knife and fork in hand, I take it to table with impending dread.

It's veiny, grotesque.  I don't want to eat it, would feel terrible doing so, can't even look at it directly.  I poke at it with my knife - it feels soft, like organ meat or an overdone Spam.  Gradually I fork up a bite, half of a meaty embryo and a bit of golden yolk solids.  This first bite is surprisingly good.  Yolky, yes, but past that there's a subtle crunch of feather and bone, and the overall flavor of liver.  Yes, by all the gods, it's good!  I press on, ironically only unable to eat the familiar white, which is as hard as a stone.
I'm back to the kitchen for more, shelling and seasoning and consuming the other three with an awful sort of relish.  They're good, better than good.  As the feelings of guilt and disgust slip away I'm overcome with a feeling of triumph, that I can accomplish anything now.  I can overcome any fear, prod myself past any discomfort.  Eating balut is more than just an exotic meal; to do it once is to dethrone God himself, to push one's sensibilities and sympathies to a backseat and embrace an entirely new sort of existence.  It's an abortion of finickiness, and I feel liberated at having undergone the venture.

Overtly British Toad in the Hole

Or, three flavors that seem to get along just fine first thing in the morning.  You will need:

one egg
one slice of bread, with a hole punched through the centre
one pad of butter, creased to resemble the union jack

Place the pad of butter onto a small skillet and begin frying on MED-HI, placing the empty bread down and dropping the egg into its cavity.  Fry, fry, fry, for about a minute or two until you can see the bottom (through the translucent top) of the egg whiten.  Flip it over swiftly, careful not to get raw egg all over the place.  Now, take a dash of mustard powder and a squirt of Worcestershire and slather it over your toad in the hole.  Let the egg fry another minute or two, then flip once more (making it three flips in total) and add a dash of malt salt (or failing that, just the slightest dashes of salt and vinegar).
Accompanied by a cup of tea in newspaper, breakfast slowly and think of England.

-13… 2012… 2011… A Year Reflected, Juxtaposed

            Sitting here at the desk amid the piled chaos of Christmas packagings, empty beer cans and a bottle of amber Bulleit at my elbow.  Thinking about the year behind, wondering about that ahead with a degree of mixed whimsy and apprehension.  But the year past has been an interesting one:  apartment in Portland, a fascinating sort of new job, and a few good friends on hand in the area.  Gratifying days of coffee, microbrews, cribbage and darts.  Glorious days of a life well going to mush, precipitous edge of the downward slide into a comfortable dead end.

            But I take pause.  Where was I, one year ago?  Back in a North Dakota basement, in much the same condition only at a ping pong table instead of a desk.  And before that, Zambia, gin-soaked and bittersweetly spending the day with my fellow exiles.  Learning, I’d tell myself.  Experiencing life and always learning.  I’d tell myself, and tell myself still; probably have the words on these same lips in another year from now.

            It’s been a hell of a year, though!  Bitter winter storms, the tumultuous Minot flood, fry cookery, cross-country travel and acclimating to a new – marvelously new – city.  Bit of a demoralizing job search, firsthand view of our bit of the Occupy [your noun here] movement, house parties and happy hours and gratuitous what-have-you’s spinning into a nonsensically vomitous blur.  A good time, with scant reading so much as a ton of writing.  Some fifty-four shorts, plus a few others posted elsewhere.  Then there are some articles, some rants, some et ceteras.  Productive, in a very small way.

World events have had their ups and downs as well.  The end of two evil despots and a similarly malignant militant – bin Laden, Kim Jong Il, and Muammar Gadhafi – neither of whom I’ll much miss.  The economy is a shambles, ours and that of the Euro Zone.  But life goes on; people still can afford stuff, and the stuff we already have isn’t going anywhere.  At any rate, we can laughingly divert ourselves with the wacky world of politics, asinine candidates and an unending barrage of half-helpful policy decisions.  Thinking toward the future, I’ll still vote for Obama but I won’t have near as much hope or enthusiasm as before (a grey-ballot day).  It’ll be a vote for continued drone expansion, mollycoddling the rightwing fringes and galvanizing the golden parachutes of another batch of Goldman-Sachs academians.  But on the other hand, there’s always the second-term wildcard chance of a radical medicare overhaul or the odd war.  With the last troops pulled from Iraq America’ll be a theater short this spring.

But I raise a glass to the new year, tipping my hat to the old.  Onwards and ever forwards do we trudge, jaunt, march, bounce, happenstance, and drag on.  May yours (dear reader) be as interesting as you attempt to make it, and may we all find ourselves surprisingly more prosperous, a tad wiser, and a bit happier for it the next time around.

"Oktober"

            And for a brief tumultuous moment you’d wondered if the universe had any purpose to it.  Couldn’t possibly, reflecting.  You go back to the job search, glossing over an unending array of varied terms and specialized coinage.  Land Surveyor.  Chief Executive Officer.  2 Month Intro Promotion.  Social Media Sales.  Dancers 18 And Over.  Digital Marketing Manager.  Hardworking Drivers Wanted for Compassionate Positions.  Experienced Optician Wanted. Front Desk Agent.  Seismic Bracing for MEP Systems.  Graveyard Maintenance Mechanic.  Painter – Temporary.  The list goes on, unfamiliar garble as you lose interest entirely.

            So this is it, you think as you fetch another cup of coffee.  The economy.  The dawning of the age of Malthus, dog eat dog, ‘Warriors, come out to play.’  You finally un-liked Barack Obama on Facebook today, tired of the uplifting updates that have fuck-all to do with you.  2.5 million new health beneficiaries.  Pah!  Who’s to pay for health insurance without a job?  Same as last week with his bolstered education initiative:  ‘Congratulations, son, your newfound essay-writing skills will be a boon sourcing up a job.’  As if!  Labor.  Jobs.  Careers.  The people are starving and all we have is cake, cake and iPads.

            Shit.  The coffee doles from the carafe thick as sludge, heavy and black as fetid hangover dung.  Haven’t laid out one of those in a while, liquor being damned expensive out here.  Or maybe it always was more or less the same – just now begins the slow forward crawl into antiquity, the vague specter of inflating currency and rising prices about you.  Always an afterthought, wasn’t Ramen fifteen cents once sort of thing.  It’s Orwellian.  Bradburian.  Philip K. Dickensian.  Why does it happen?  You sit on the couch and stare bleakly past the darkened old-world television ahead, right on through it into the world beyond.

            Money ever-inflating, has been for decades and decades and shows no sign of stopping.  But what do you know, you’re no economist.  It seems like an unstable sort of system at first glance.  But hell, what’s two dollars on the loaf to a corporate big shot?  What’s four or five in twenty years if business can keep on booming, keeping on- something.  Liquidity comes to mind, but you know it’s not the word you need.  The rant grinds to a halt and all you can think about is the subtle rattle of the electric heat and the dank, impenetrable muck in your mug. 

            People.  Love them, hate them, it always comes down to people.  Maybe there’re too many of us?  Sounds likely, but only in the vaguest of gut instinctive sorts of ways.  Seething people copulating, breeding in too-big piles until there’s no place left to put them, swinging from apartment balconies like monkeys and stuffed into trailers on the outskirts of society.  All of them clamoring for the necessities:  Give us food!  Give us shelter!  Jobs!  Money!  Health care!  A sense of worth and accomplishment, the moon and the very stars!  Make us gods!  People.

            And you’re a one to talk, sitting there on the hide-a-bed second-hand sofa in a tattered terry, mug of muck in hand without a care, without a purpose.  You add nothing to the world – and you wonder how many others do as likewise.  It’s a weigh-down, a real dragalong.  An anchor!  Positive spin, it’s the jobless that keep the workforce at-the-ready, tag teaming in with the lackaday and insufferable degenerates that are always getting fired.  We’re like sharks then, waiting to dig into the misfortunes of others.  That’s game theory, eh?  One man’s win is another’s loss.  Schadenfreude defined, neatly repackaged as a lifestyle and imbued with a capital piety, doing the good work for the economy.

            Rambling angry thoughts, roving toward the coffee pot for mug three before jumping back onto the computer.  C/Linux Software Engineer.  Client Services Specialist.  Massage Therapist.  Dental Hygienist.  AFH Caregiver – CAN/NAR.  Fish Biologist.  More exotic dancers.  A somebody for society’s each and every, myriad niches to be filled by the capable.  You are none of these things, at least – you can’t imagine yourself as any of these.  It’s like picturing yourself with a goatee or imagining non-consciousness; beyond any sort of conjurable imagery, too far-fetched to visualize like.  You as a massage therapist.  Fixing people’s broken teeth.  Filing taxes and filling forms and johnnying a desk until the five o’clock punch-out each and every weekday. 

But those jobs don’t seem to exist, or at least – not for you.  You sitting there on a nice but still fold-out metal chair at a prefabricated stick-together desk, feigning interest in a list of job openings in the false hopes that one will say ‘You! We Need Somebody With a Flair For Cooking, Encyclopedic Knowledge of History, And a Smattering of Zambian Dialects.  Foreign-born Preferred.’  Something epiphanal and grand and worth shoving off an application towards, tie around neck and tremendous toothy grin on the face.  Something instead of wanting to just crawl back into bed with a bucket of valium and sleep until the economy picks up or a major war breaks out.

People.  It always seems to come down to people and bad coffee.

Hunting the Hunter Within

            So maybe the art of debate is dead in America.  Lord knows it’s been missing in action so far in the presidential debates, has perhaps never seen any air time on talk radio, and suffers insurmountable stupidity on the forums and comment swathes of the internet.  Reminds me of a recent conversation I had about the deficit, tax loopholes, and a budget slash.  Try as I might to employ logic, reason, and ( yawn ) sourced facts against what I consider broad generalizations and gut instincts, we just couldn’t come to any suitable conclusion on the matter.

            Maybe that’s the problem with American politics – or possibly politics in general, or even humanity today – that the overload of noxious talking heads and the seemingly endless supply of information available to anyone with internet access suddenly makes everybody feel knowledge-empowered.  Masters of various subjects.  Intelligent, I suppose one could say.  But rather than actually trying to answer questions, a terrifying many people seem to go about picking out fact blurbs and twisting figures (and the very question) to suit their predispositions.

            And I wonder, has it always been this way?  I can recall the bitter (at time acidic) arguments of the Federalists and Anti-Federalists two-hundred and twenty-some years ago (eleven score, by Lincoln’s reckoning).  Yellow journalism, caricatures, inquisitions, libel and name calling and Elijah Lovejoy.  McCarthyism and countless panics.  Are people generally stupid?  Or is there more to debate than knowing your stuff and presenting it in a straightforward fashion?  Many tools in the arsenal, maybe...

            So if the art of debate is alive and thriving, I wonder if there was ever a real spirit of acquiescence and grace.  It could be those were just bullshit ideals too, Jesus preaching meekness sort of thing so that basilicas could be built and empires forged.  The information revolution has not only freed the people to boundless porn, but has given them the tools to be obtuse experts of most everything.  It’s the end of empires, the harbinger to the end of human progress.  It’s alive in politics on the floor of the House, on the angrily-lettered or else overly-worded pickets carried by protesters and occupiers and tea partiers.  It’s soon to be an end to bipartisanship and compromise.  Just wait – we’ll be living in an overbearingly effective dictatorship by the decade’s end, democratic principles having died the previous winter. 

            Not as bad as all that, perhaps, but it makes me wonder.  An example of things to come, conversing with a future leader in the world of business:

[Guy 1]  Ok, so I have $100 debt and will decrease spending by 50 ($50) and will increase spending by $50 ($100). So we are left with a grand total of $100! That is a Democrats idea of cutting the budget.

[Guy 2]  Hold up, Mr. Specious Reasoning; you'd lower your spending by $50 (freeing up $50 that you normally throw away - say on designer socks) and you'd be bringing in an additional $50 (Christmas card from your grandma). $100 debt would be paid in that scenario.

[Guy 1]  100-50+50=100???  [eyes boggling facetiously]

[Guy 2 shakes head, fist at God]

            

“Look on the Bright Side – You Might’ve Been Noticed”

"Tut-tut, what language!"

Look at me.  Fucking look at me.  I’m not sure if I’ve quite mastered mind control, but it’s a decent attempt.  There she sits, iPod buds in her ears and polar blue eyes looking at the ceiling, the seats, out the wide side windows; anywhere but at me.  C’mon, bitch.  Look at me, just once.  Nothing.  I’m less than nothing, just a thing to not acknowledge like a lump of shit or a dribbling pile of vomit.  But I’m handsome.  So look at me.

              It’s impossible to meet anybody in this city.  I try, God but I do.  Maybe it’s just me, maybe I’m just too old-fashioned a kind of fashionable.  C’mon, everybody likes a guy in a polo.  It’s a fucking Lacoste.  Look at these Ray Bans on my head.  Look at me.  It’s not like this stuff comes cheap either, I’ve got money.  I’ve got money, if that’s all you really want.  She’s not looking.  Maybe she’s just being coy, or can’t help being stuck up, or maybe thinks she’s a dyke.  I can’t make odds or ends of it.  All the girls in town are like this.

            I’m checking my collar – still popped, standing upright.  Hell, nobody seems to do that anymore.  What happened to style?  What the hell happened to cool, to partying?  Nobody parties anymore.  C’mon bitch, I know you like to party.  Beneath that knit scarf and those funky leggings there’s a little girl just aching to party hardy.  I used to be able to talk like that, and girls liked it.  At least, they reacted to it.  They fucking well looked at you, for one.  I can do fifty chin-ups, no sweat.  I can go all night if you like.  Just look at me.

            Fucking bus.  I need a car again.  Three more months and I’ll have that license back, be able to rescue the Mustang from the Admiral.  Fucking Admiral.  Never been on a boat in his life.  Never lived a day, that tight bastard.  I’ve lived.  I’ve lived, baby.  Look at me:  Mister Life Experience here, the goddamned article.  It’s these hipster cocksuckers that are spoiling my game.  It’s been a few years in the making, but the little shits that used to be all Emo took off the makeup, grew shit beards, put on shit flannels and read up on making beer.  I know their game, fucking phonies.

            Fucking phonies, girl.  I bet you like them, yeah?  Bet if I had a beard you’d look at me.  Christ, is there shit on my face or something?  Am I so out of touch?  I’m still me.  Same guy everybody loved in college.  Fuck, the Greeks couldn’t get enough of me.  Ol’ Brother Dawg Rawlins.  D-Raw.  The Rawster.  The fucking article.  I didn’t need to change, still don’t.  Look at me.  I voted for Obama – I didn’t really have a choice in it, but hey!  He got Osama, that’s something.  Last time I vote Democrat, weak bastards.  Last time I do anything just to be popular.  Maybe I should flex an arm muscle, pretend it’s all achy.  Yeah-

            That’s got her attention, just for a second.  You haven’t really changed.  Nobody has, bitch.  Five years ago I put all the girls like you to my sword.  D-Raw.  Back when whey protein and a Bowflex made a guy into a god.  Look at these; do you remember?  You were in a sorority – every girl was once.  Every girl that mattered, except for those Tri-Delts.  The Dairy Farm, we used to call that one.  Man, this sucks.  Just now going over the bridge, ages before we get to my stop.

            She’s turning, sitting sidesaddle with her face against the window so she doesn’t have to look at me.  Pretending to take in the river, the cityscape.  It’s nothing, all man-made.  I’m the real article.  Look at this, this perfect specimen of cool.  Look at me, you slut.  This is starting to piss me off.  And now I think I spy some skinny bearded faggot at the back looking away too quickly, checking me out.  I remember you guys too, punk.  I remember having to get a little physical, keep the gyms clear of you boys and your wandering eyes.  I hate you.  Look at me again and I’ll come back there and squash you.

            What’s wrong with this world?  Gays in the military, married in some places.  Girls chasing after bearded queers, the economy all to shit and Iran building a nuclear arsenal.  And weed still isn’t legal!  I’m glad I haven’t changed.  Shit, I’m glad life is all cyclical.  Give it a few years, and we’ll be back – people like me.  I don’t know where my bros have all disappeared to, but they’ll be back.  And I’ll be their fucking king, the guy that never stopped being real.  Dawg Rawlins, King of Cool.  Look at that, bitch.  You and all the bitches like you’ll be crawling back, standing in a fucking line for my bread.  Then I’ll get to yawn, act all nonchalant and look out the window while the begging begins.

            My stop’s coming up.  Fucking city.  The park is still blocked off from those commie occupiers, probably because it’s a biohazard with all their piss and shit.  That shit wouldn’t have flown five years ago.  There would have been more sane people like me to send them home.  Fuck, send them to a fucking hospital!  Whiney protesters and thieving bums, nothing but hipsters.  But my day’ll come.  Just you wait.

Rudian Days Gone By

            My, but how the days have flown!  October gone and nearly halfway into November at the blink of an eye, I come back and see my last entry was nearly a month ago.  Cliché as it sounds, I've been tied down traversing the ropes of my new job.  A far cry from fixing sandwiches, I inspect folks’ homes for water damage, jot it all down into a file folder for insurance purposes, then harvest up the unsalvageable remnants of hearth and comfort with a keen brutality.

            An interesting line of work though, a steady 8-5 (or 8-17 by the Rudian reckoning) M-F sort of gig with overtime and benefits.  My first ‘real’ job, one might be inclined to say, two steps shy of a 401k account and family to stabilize my days into a steady trickle toward antiquity.  Up before dawn, cup o’ tea, commute thither, morning meeting, endless coffee, world’s-your-oyster service calls and the accompanying paperwork, clock off, back, and retire – a dizzying array of routine that is both comfortable to fit into yet unfamiliar to me in its rigidity.

            Steady and good, but already I’ve found myself cast into previously unimaginably detestable tasks – navigating the Portland highway system in a bulky yellow crate with a shitey-at-best GPS navigator to gods-know-where, crawling about on my back in the dank darkened crawlspaces pulling abrasive fiberglass insulation, gutting the charred remnants of a lethal apartment fire (unenthusiastically wondering the while where it was the unfortunate gal’d died), stepping on nails and picking up innumerable splinters and bruises on the way.  A knockabout fashion to experience the Portlandia, say.

            But what an experience!  A month and I’ve already seen most every corner of Portland and its surrounding burbs and near-off neighbors.  Posh mansions of West Linn and decomposing tenements off North Killingsworth, tax-dodge Washington communities across the river, countryside burb-ettes, and all the forests and hills and mountains in between.  A glorious state, this, and such a happening little corner of it I happen to currently find myself in.

            So my, how the days have flown this crazy month.  Not much of anything by way of writing in the meantime, but lots of little notes here and there, lots of time to think and mull and ponder et al.  About houses, mostly; the American Living Space.  I’ve worked most every variety of dwelling our society has to offer, and in all – from mansion to studio – they’re all built of the same cheap shit.  Pine beams and papered gypsum walls, staples and particle board and plastic odds and ends; less homes than cardboard cut-outs of an ideal, a grand keeping of appearances.  Wastefully without any hope of lasting a hundred years, if even twenty.

            Like everything else housing is simply another commodity, a thing to pick up, use or patch up, then shell off for a profit at some future date.  Or if it’s an apartment the aim is to pack as many people in as possible, charge the living hell out of them with as little maintenance as necessary, and find every which way to cling on to their deposits with cyclical regularity until the structures eventually cave in on themselves or the HUD buys them out.  With such a crassly impermanent mindset driving the market there’s really little wonder the ‘housing bubble’ ever happened, or the real estate crash, or any other geo-financial tragedy that has befallen us.

But I dunno.  Days flown by, this boyo needs to fit a bit of writ into the malaisey mix.  More to come, eh?

Call Me a Communist, But...

So another weekend skiffles along full-pat, a stomach full of shepherd's pie and a mug of wimpy tea to salve a crampy cold I've succumbed to.  Uncharacteristically of me, for the first time in perhaps a week I've finally looked at the online news stories - Times Square and various city spaces around the world have been occupied by protesters decrying wealth disparity and a perceived lack of representation in government direction, Steve Jobs has suddenly passed on, Sonic Youth fronts Moore and Gordon separate (marriage now, band soon?), and the Treasury has delayed its final ruling on the fairness of China's currency valuation.

And then in lighter news, there's an interview with presidential-candidacy-hopeful Herman Cain on the NPR.  When asked by interviewer Scott Simon about the economic ramifications of Cain's proposed 9-9-9 tax scheme - in this case, instancing the proposed nine-percent sales tax on the price of bread paid by both prince and pauper - the Godfather's Pizza magnate responded:

On a gallon of milk or a loaf of bread, Bill Gates and every rich person is going to pay the same tax as someone who's on the lower end of the spectrum. But Scott, I'm not going to play the class warfare card. You have to compare the taxes they pay today. If you pick a certain income level — and I'll pick one and walk you through it, OK?  (Simon: "Sure.")  I'm going to use $50,000 a year, since that's approximately what the median income is for a family in this country. [For a] family of four, $50,000 a year. Under the current system, based upon standard deductions and standard exemptions, they're going to pay $10,200 in taxes. Under the 9-9-9 plan, the middle 9, they're going to pay $4,500. That leaves $5,700 to apply to that milk and bread in terms of the taxes. You have to go through the numbers of each individual situation.

Golf clap, Mr. Cain.  As suggested, going through the numbers every rich person will pay the same tax, in dollar amounts rather than proportionally.  The $5,700 that average family may save still has to go towards the mundane (and now more expensive) task of paying for the groceries, the wares, the thingamajigs.  That average American family spends nearly all its cash on (you guessed it) these expenditures, with little by way of money to save.  An overall raising of the levy on purchased goods will really do little by way of a tax break for the Jones', and in many cases will end up being a tax hike.

Believe it or not, but beyond the investment of assets and grandiose luxury purchases, the very wealthy consume roughly the same by way of living necessities as their less-than-wealthy peers.  Check out this informative graph.  The top fifth of American earners spend roughly $65K a year of their average $145K income, proportionally less than the middle fifth's $35K/$45K or the bottom fifth's deficitous $18K/<$10K.  There's only so much money a family can really spend on consumer goods before the rest of that money simply piles up to multiple zeros on a banking ledger.  Rather than further improving the affluent's quality of life any, beyond a certain point the money apparently makes no difference.

Not that I'm a commie!  But I'm simply saying that a consumptive-based tax plan is a bad shake for the majority of Americans.  9-9-9 - basically a flat tax scheme - is just another thinly veiled proposal to make the wealthy wealthier at the spending class' heavy expense.  You (dearest reader) and I are essentially indentured servants in this life, scraping together the dough (by serving the proverbial Man) to buy the essentials, enjoy/discard/replace the baubles, and live in the apartments of (or pay the mortgages to, if You are a home-owner) said loosely-defined and still very metaphorical Man.  Mind you, that's just one way to look at it.  Negative lens, mayhap.

But that's largely what the Occupy Your-City-Here movements are so miffed about, for those who've until now not 'got it'.

The Tao of Ba-gel

Halloa, my fingle-dingle friends! Another weekday morning in the Land of Dan, swilling a lukish kinda cuppa and prepping for a bit of work this aff.  Another day, another dollar. Yet somehow I feel vaguely energized and upbeat, settled stomach and the lot.

The cause isn't a hard recollect: morning bagels make my day. Normally not wont to eat breakfast, for the past few months I've begun getting back into the habit. Grits and eggs, single-servings of fruity Greek yoghurt, the odd bit of fruit, and most recently the insert-Spam-here breakfast sandwich. English muffs at first, topped with fresh tomato, cheese, egg, and Vegemite. But I've stumbled onto the hard stuff now, the things good bagels are made from.

Salmon cream cheese spread, fresh red onion, soon to be capers and sweet red peppers and a varietal blend of other things. The best part of this comestible gospel I'm spouting is that anyone can do it, if'n they have ten minutes. One minute of prep, four to cook, and a civil five to enjoy. And most anything'll work; to wit, I topped my egg salmon bagel with five thin slices of fresh fried sweet potato! Sweet potato! Magical stuff that'll leave one feeling warm and good-humoured and not at all peckish til the after-work pub crawl.

Give it a go sometime.

"The Roughest Farewell" pt. IV

IV.

            I awake from my nap after what seems like weeks, the sun by now just passed the sky's highest point and beginning its way toward the western horizon.  I sit up and stretch the stiffness from my shoulders and lower back, a hearty yawn on my lips- stifled, when I see the distant clouds of dust kicked up on the southern road.  Four horsemen, maybe five approaching our Skokie Pines.  Five horsemen.  Trouble.

            I leap to my feet, a chill in the pit of me as I begin to leg it back to town.  Five horsemen, doubtless after Ned.  Would they be state marshals?  Pinkertons?  Federals?  Unrelated?  How much did they know; could they know what horrors transpired the night before?  A chill in the pit of me, as cold and horrible and lifeless as they come.  What could I say?  What should I say to the townsfolk?

            On the rocky path back, sprinting and bounding over odd stones and dusty ruts as the little township draws sluggishly nearer.  I can’t run fast enough, it feels.  Legs of iron, knocking hardened heels on stagnant earth.  Kicking up a dust trail of my own.  I’m finally running past the First Church – mounds of flesh in the yard behind – past the tailor, the smithy, to the office.  Dead empty and lifeless, the lot of them.  Heat of the day, it comes as no surprise.  Were it not for the icy pit in my stomach I might succumb to the stroke.

            I burst through the heavy wooden door, surprising Angus and little Cousin Clara playing the tarot on the great wooden desk.  “Ye gods!  Men approaching town- fetch Horus,” I tell to her, surprisingly out of breath now that I’ve reached my purpose.  I falter on towards the gun cab as the two remain standing on, watching me with ignorant fishes’ eyes.  “Now, dammit!” I wheeze as I pull out a brace of Winchesters.  I hurl one blindly at Angus and grab up a box of cartridges.  Gods, but my hands quiver.  I drop them, one-two, as I make to load up.

            “Man Jesus, Sheriff!  What’s got you all huff n’ puff?” Angus gawps with the rifle hanging in his arms.

            “Men!” I cry breathlessly.  “Five men approaching town on horseback.  Moving fast.”

            “God Zeus,” he whispers, at last understanding.  He scrambles for the cabinet, changing out the rifle for the double-barrel ten gauge and a box of shells.  I’m still struggling to load, still dropping cartridges on the floor 6-7-8.  Hands everywhere as I stumble towards the door.  At last I’ve got the thing locked and ready and I’m stepping back out onto the porch as Horace walks briskly up with Clara close behind.

            “I hear there’s trouble approaching, Cousin Spur?  To do with the outsider?”  Despite the raised eyebrows and the gapen mouth of concern, Horace seems excited; positively excited.  I nod and he raises clenched fists towards heaven.  “If the government wants trouble, then they shall have it!” he exclaims.  “I’ll alert the folk.  We shall meet them prepared.”  Horace rushes off shouting, “Invaders!  Marauders!  Arm yon selves!”  Skipping, dammit.  Skipping down the street and shouting.

            “Mind you do nothing drastic, Our Horace!” I cry after.  “Let me talk to them!  Mayhap it’s nothing!”  But there’s a sickly foreboding about the words as I say them.  “Mayhap it’s nothing.”  I stand there with my rifle in the shade of the porch, Angus poking out his head through the doorway.  We both stand, taut and unnerved for one minute, three minutes, on to ten.  Finally with a hissing sigh I relax my whitened grip on the wooden stock.  I tell to Angus, “Just sit back tight in there.  If’n there’s trouble to say, come out blasting.”

            He nods and largely closes the heavy door, and I take a seat in the creaky rocker with the Winchester in my lap.  There is movement in the buildings across the street; I can hear the creaking of the floorboards grind away to stillness, an awful sort of stillness that precedes a thunderbolt before it tears the sky apart.  And then…  hoofpats from the east.  Clolloping calmy round the last upward bend into town.  I set my rifle to one side against the office wall and make to light my pipe.  I can’t for the quavering hands, so I simply hold it in my lap and wait.

            The five horsemen ride up the main drag, two to the front with the others hanging behind.  The laggers seem awful nervy, the fat man up front right on edge.  But the slender fella with the drooping moustaches rides with a buoyant calm – though he also seems eye the place with a keen regard.  It is him I fear, my instinct tells me.  I raise a hand to them in halloa.

            “Greetings, y’all,” I chirrup in a slightly crackling voice.  I make to stand on warbled legs, pressing an arm nonchalantly against the roof beam for support as I lean to one side, pipe still in the other hand.

            “Greetings, Sheriff,” the thin man replies in a robust, haughty sort of voice that sends shivers down my spindly spine.  His is a look of triumph, the cat that caught the canary.  “I suppose you would be the one to know what became of a friend of ours, what passed through here yesterday morning?  He was about on business, specifically to see your office.”

            I clear my throat, an idea sprung to mind.  “Yessir, a Mr. Norris it was.  Collecting renders for Caesar.  He came and went by noontime, once he’d seen to his business…”  I’m starting to feel a little more confident, the blood returning to my hands and feet and hopefully face.  But the gangly horseman nods on in that knowing way as he pouches and rolls himself out a cigarette.  It’s unnerving, him sitting there atop his Appaloosa nodding on in silence with that smirk.  Pressing out the lumps and rolling that cigarette between his thumbs and fores.  He places the thing on his lip and produces a match, shooting me a sharp glance as he lights it.

            “Afraid that isn’t possible, friend.”  He inhales deeply and tosses aside the matchstick.  A cloud of smoke explains, “Afraid he was to meet up with us outside of town once he was finished up hereabouts.  Straight up, if you understand me.  We waited til nightfall and a bit through the morning, on the off chance he was enjoying your town’s hospitality.”  He pauses there, taking out his cigarette with two fingers and admiring it at arm’s length a bit.  “We waited.  He didn’t show up.  Now we’re here to figure why, precisely.  So?  Where is Ned?”

            The blood again flees my appendages, my knees feeling like lead weights.  The man is clever, alleys covered and all.  But what is he?  Contract?  Badge?  “I told you what happened,” I tell him, trying to rouse some semblance of authority to my voice.  “Now who are you to question me?  I’m a sheriff, after all.  I’m the law round here.”  I tap my pentangle with a thumb for emphasis, yet can’t rid myself of the nervousness.  I’m playing a losing hand, too far gone to fold with not enough guile to bluff it out.

            “Me?”  He laughs, a husky smirky sort.  “I’m the Lord on High, in these parts.  I’m Marshal Conniff Starks.  And I’m afraid I've heard a few things about ol’ Skokie.  S’why we decided to escort Mr. Norris along.  S’why we’re here now.  S’why I’m asking you what it is you’re doing with that Winchester perched up against the door frame, and why you’re shitting bricks at a simple question.”  His dark-eyed gaze is slicing right through me now, cutting me to the very quick.  He spits out his cigarette and puts a hand on the revolver handle jutting from its holster.  His men are already guns-in-hands, ready to follow suit should the necessity arise.  Never have I been so close to death, I’m feeling through every last strand of myself as I stand there on the open lopsided porch outside the office.  As the man says, shitting bricks.

Starks sucks the spittle off the side of his great moustache.  “So I’ll ask once more-” he begins, cut short by an explosive report from above Weebleman’s.  The five of them are cut short as the first report is followed by a dozen others, horses trying vainly to wheel around as they and their riders drop to earth left and right.  The door swings wide as I scurry over for my rifle, catching me hard atop the head and dropping me flat; Angus comes out a-screaming and empties both barrels.  Catching Starks square in the chest, I believe.  As I roll over on the porch I can see him sprawled out lifeless and bloodying up the dusty earth, his mates all strewn about him.  One of his boys had the horse shot from under him but has managed to sprint off behind our Sheriff’s Office.

“Get the outsider!!” Horace shouts wildly as he comes charging out with a bayonet-tipped Springfield, followed by a dozen screaming fellows brandishing pistols, cleavers, and axes.  A few fall upon the fallen marshals, laying in to chopping and kicking.  The rest run off in pursuit, and after an exchange of shots and a bloodcurdling cry of anguish return with the decapitated head of the last.  I can’t climb onto my feet, legs unwilling to support me – legs made of lard, you might say.  I sit on the porch, shocked at this gratuity opened up upon the road of my town.  Carnage.  Bloody, horrible carnage.

And more yet to come, I realize with added horror.  Starks wouldn’t have been fool enough to come without a plan of contingency.  We could well have the Army sent down upon us!  Carnage tenfold, if that were the case.  Angus strides up, shotgun tipped across his shoulder in a cocky disposition.  “That’ll show’m.  Goddamned federals.”

I shake my head as Horace stands amid the corpses, admiring the scene.  “The day is ours!  The bloody business is finished, and there shall be much feasting the night!”  There’s a general whoop as men, women, and children step out onto the road with their weaponry, exulting with each other in the afternoon’s ambush.  “Prepare the fires!  And prepare a pit to inter the desecrated fallen.”

I still shake my head.  Fearing the worst to come, I suppose.  And perhaps also lamenting our collective action, the rashness of our nearest past.  Uninvolved in the melee, I can see now with outsider’s eyes the town for what it is.  We are outsiders, soon to be given a rough farewell of our own once the world-that-be figures what’s become of its representatives.  “We’ve lost,” I mutter, throwing head into hands.

“But none of’m escaped,” Angus corrects me, perplexed.

“None of them had to.  Now all we can do is wait for the rest.”

*          *          *      christ! see what transpires next, soon    *          *          *
or check out the previous installments:  I  II  III

"Picket"

            Erik needs work.  Needs work like a body needs air and food, like the human spirit requires open space and an undue sense of importance.  He realizes it one afternoon as he sits down with his first cup of coffee, waiting for his computer to boot.  Deju vu, as though he has done all this once before.  Nausea, as he realizes not once but many times with nigh-on religious repetition.  Awake piss percolate coffee computer email porn porn porn email coffee jobsearch porn and a Hot Pocket.  Every day, burp on cue.  The same old song and mirthless shuffle, the ever present curtain of despair, the weighty metaphor wrapped in a flimsy simile. 

Erik needs work, like the protesters downtown all have for a week.  Longer than that, but for a week now they’ve made a note to air those grievances, blocking traffic and picketing the various offices and establishments of the Man that be.  Tie-wearing champagne-tossing golf-playing gracious-tipping fuckwads, 401k stock options and the golden parachute – In Case of Emergency Break Glass.  The 1% at the top of the totem heap, pressing down the cornerstone 99.  Cornerstone folk like himself, Erik thinks angrily as he leaps into action.  Rummaging through a clothes-heaped closet looking for a flattened box, big black marker and a bit of duct tape on a cricket bat.  It reads-

Erik Needs Work

BS in Accounting, 3.7 GPA

Some Experience, Dependable

Give Erik a Chance!

            A chance.  Entry-level boot licking, extra hours on the weekends.  I’m-not-desperate-but-I’ll-do-anything aim to please can-do spirit.  The sort the market thrives on, the reason the system’s now broken down; not enough chances being taken.  All the fat cats and their connected underlings simmering in a big incestuous pile of corruption and complacency.  Letting the country go to the dogs, letting the dogs get gobbled up by the Chinese.  Metaphors, dammit.  Apt generalizations catching a broader swath of the forest, a broad-thinking Erik thinks to himself as he leaves the apartment with the weighty sign propped up on his shoulder.  Slung like a rifle, ready to fire off a few rounds at the Man.

            He gravitates downtown into the belly of the unblinking city, playground of the elites and self-important and their cringing toadies.  He can hear cars honking and as he follows the sound he can start to hear the roar of his fellows.  The 99%, stopping up a traffic circle as if it were a cork in a bottle.  Diverting bourgeoisie traffic and the slave-ship bus lines, waving signs and drawing honks of support and ire from the detouring cars.  Two cops stand uncomfortably on the corner opposite, watching the swell and talking amongst themselves.

            Erik gravitates across the way toward the human barricade, an unnatural conglomerate of recession.  High school punks and bums and college dropouts, soccer moms and truck drivers; black white and every-color credo under the sun intermingling amicably.  All shouting and chanting and singing in one big harmonious din.  Aging hippies passing the mantle to youthful hipsters who’ll post a picture then scrap it first chance on the Ebay, when it’s lost its luster.  Joe the Plumber rapping with the local Stitch n’ Bitch as tribal tatted ama-bras dick about with a yo-yo.  It's a jam band atmosphere, complete with the frazzle haired groupie woman dancing unconsciously with wild hands.

Dueling speakers blare against each other, both over the top of the ideologues with the megaphones and clipboards and agendas.  They’re trying desperately to organize, to get this thing in order before the police show up with the fire hose and wash it all down the gutter.  Directing the directionless, stand here, more signs there and the occasional nothing inflammatory.  Trying to separate the chaff and chavs from the posterboard 99%, to make a marketable representation of the unpleased whole for the vis-ed student orbiting about with his camera.  Erik gets tussled along towards the front of the north-facing line, hold your sign high like.  Set shoulder to shoulder between a tobacco-chewing Vancouverite and a middle-ager come straight off from Denver Street.

It’s an exhilarating thing, standing there in the face of traffic after spending a lifetime scurrying across roads.  Three lanes of vehicles being dumped off at them, having to jerk off to the right down another one-way sidestreet.  Delayed from the precious, indifferent business of the day.  Erik can see their faces through the windshields:  irritable and awestruck, smiling and fearful and confused.  Some downright upset as they roll down a window and shout something unintelligible as they drive off.  “I oughtta run you bastards down!” one screams.  Others wave and honk supportive blips of their horns as they continue on toward their jobs, affable scabs. 

More police are arriving, hats wrapped in plastic to ward off the gentle mist that collects on their yellow raincoats.  Massing on the corners while a few direct the traffic, a pair approach the crowd and begin arguing with one of the bullhorn-carriers.  But the Body stands resilient, each member a part of a larger defiant clog in the commercial chain.  Everybody doing their bit.  Erik feels an integral part of the group, feels he can really puff out his chest that he is the 99%.  And then he hears his name.

“You there!  Erik!”  A well-groomed head calls from the back of a limo car stopped on the street.  Erik wonders if he’s being addressed.  “Yes, you!  Erik, with the sign!  Do you really have an accounting degree?”  He nods dumbly, remembering what it was he’d written on his picket.  “We’re looking for somebody in our accounting department, entry-level.  Hop on in!”  The door opens up as the well-groomed man scoots over to one side of the seat.

“Man, fuck that Wall Street shitbag,” Vancouverite shouts into Erik’s ear.  Denver puts a hand on his shoulder, reminding him about solidarity.  There are honks coming from behind the limo and the driver looks like he might move along.  Meanwhile sirens are perking up from  the southern side of the protester's circle.  To stay or to go, Erik feels torn.

“You need a job or not?” Well-groomed calls from the car irritably.

Erik needs work.  Needs work like a customer needs satisfaction, like a sports utility vehicle needs a wider place to park.  He breaks free of Denver’s grasp and ignores Vancouverite’s reproaches as he jogs up to the limousine.  Setting down his picket on the damp tarmac he makes to get in.  “No, bring that along,” Well-groomed instructs him.  “You’re going to need a resume.”  Erik and picket slide into the car as the door shuts behind them, driver pressing on the gas and taking them uptown as the police start unpacking their great orange nets from the backs of their vans.

Misplacing My Ire?

So the other (week, was it?) I furrowed a single brow at news that a CIA drone had successfully found and killed Anwar al-Awlaki, the charismatic talking head of al-Qaeda.  Not because of who he was or what he stood for, but because of his American citizenship.  I'd been similarly nonplussed back in May when another drone strike targeting al-Awlaki instead killed a couple of others (reputedly al-Qaeda operatives themselves).  I'm not the only one ruffled by this incident:  the ACLU and CCR have launched lawsuits against the United States government, and a slew of literary ire has been pulled from the quivers of bloggers and op/edders.

Citizenship bears with it certain obligations, but it also yields certain unalienable rights- although then I have to second-guess myself when I remember the rationale of Rousseau's Social Contract, that those bonds can be broken.  But then bearing in mind al-Awlaki's location (questionably neutral but neutral Yemen), the lack of due process, the mode of execution-  I don't know!  My opinions are all in a bally muddle in this somewhat singular set of circumstances.  Because the man was undeniably inflammatory and rather possibly linked to the operational doings of al-Qaeda.  But is that worthy of targeting him for assassination?  Is it assassination, in this instance?  Again, a muddle.  Is this a precedent for wantonly targeting American citizens for courtless death, or is al-Awlaki's citizenship merely a side-note in a larger campaign?

In any case, I posed the question on the Facebook (while generally an open invitation for vitriol and disappointment, I have faith enough in the friends I keep that the conversations will be insightful and interesting) for a bit of discussion, citing the instances of Kaczynski and McVeigh as examples of home-spun terrorists caught and tried.  Perhaps a more apt comparison might have been David Karesh, but I received some good responses from a variety of sources, including a professor from my old college days.  Most notable among these was the lengthy and I'd say well thought out series of arguments posed by my friend Nate:

It's a tough call. Kaczynski and McVeigh were caught alone in the U.S., not hiding in a foreign country with a lot of protection. If it is true he was waging war against the U.S., he becomes a combatant. This doesn't forgo his citizenship, but open war against the U.S. does put you a bit beyond normal due process. And as compared to Osama, Al-Awlaki moved around a lot more, preventing a planned raid of the same scope. Unfortunately in the current global threat scenario some information simply won't be fit for public consumption. There is certainly a line in which government can and cannot infringe on a person's rights. It is my opinion that those rights may be infringed upon when that person makes war upon the people that government represents. To try and make a point of paramilitary ignores the forest for the trees. Surely lives are being diddled with on both sides, in the end it mostly washes out. I would agree as a concept a bombing should be avoided when civilians are at risk, but there are things to consider beyond that one angle. There are equally many scenarios in which more civilian lives are lost in other ways of dealing with Al-Awlaki. Take for instance the infamous Blackhawk Down, in which a raid meant to reduce civilian casualties ended up creating tenfold. In a perfect situation Al-Awlaki would have been arrested and brought to trial with full due process. It is not a perfect situation, and I believe the situation warranted the loss of that privilege. I will say that I would have supported the same tactic used were McVeigh hiding in Generic Lawless Christian nation attempting further attacks against the U.S. Or Generic Liberal terrorist in Lawless Socialist state. Unfortunately, many of the people who agreed with the death of Al-Awlaki would have disagreed were he White/Christian. There is definitely an anti-Muslim undercurrent in the public support of the War on Terror.

While I can't argue with many of his points- well, precisely because I cannot fully argue with many of his points without that vague sense of doubt, I wonder if this may be a waste of time on my part.  Another panic worth abandoning, like so many others cast aside in this decade-old War on Terror being waged.  Besides, there may well be more important things afoot, like the Occupy (Your City Here) movement sweeping the nation or the impending reelection of Vladimir Putin.  Or ending the death penalty.  Yet as I move on I cannot help but wonder in what ways this undermines the value of citizenship, or if (like patriotic buzzspeak 'liberty' and 'freedom' and 'democracy') it really hasn't any intrinsic value at all.

What strange and odious things does this abandoned panic portend?

"The Roughest Farewell" pt. III

III.

            Morning next.  Sitting in the dark and smoke-filled office with my boots propped up on the pinewood desk, throat raw and dry from a night’s sit.  Like pemmican, I suppose.  Heavy lids dip low upon my tired eyes as I take another sip from the earthen triple-x jug set beside me on the floor.  It’s been a long night, a real hoo-haw of a thing.  My stomach muscles ache, my back hurts, my knees are scuffed, and the piles are acting up again.  But worst of all are the memories.

            “Lest we forget,” I prost myself as I tipple back anew.  Another facet of the First Church plot, another little hump of earth to forget, more water in that vast well of souls.  Lest we forget.

            “Man Jesus!” Angus whoops as he swings open the office door.  A blinding blade of light cuts in behind him before the door swings back to.  He plants his bony ass on the desk and motions over for the jug.  “That was a real hoo-haw, last night was.  Hell if they send any more tax agents round these parts!”  He swigs a taste and croaks, “Gods-blasted government.”

            “Yeah,” I sort of sigh tiredly.  Or is it wistfully?  Lest we forget.  “Those damned federals.”

            Angus hums his approval as he idles over the jug, neither drinking nor passing with the dad-gun thing set in his lap.  “Yeah, poking their noses where they dun’t belong.  Upsetting the general will, you know?  Greater good,” he mutters, quite definitely in wist.  Tottering the bottle in his lap, neither lifting for the swig nor passing it on.  Giving me the ants.  I stand.

            “Gotta get me some air,” I say, I fear with a trickle of the sweats and a shake.  Vomitous uprisings in the bowels, bit of the spleen upacting.  Lest we forget.  Hitching up my belt I decide to holster the shooter I’ve left lying across the desktop. 

            “Specting trouble?” he drawls from beneath the great flat brim of his hat.

            “Nah, just holds my pants up.”  I exit into another blinding swath of sun rising overhead.  Not nearly so high as to leave a shade on the porch, yet well above the spread of town to make it painful to the dank-weakened eye.  “Christ’s cross.”  But sun besides, there’s a mild touch of breeze about the air that seems pleasant and refreshing.  Quelling the troubles below, as it were.

            I saunter, but then there’s nowhere quite to go in town when a body wants to be alone.  I turn toward the hills, past First Church and the mounds of earth in the yard.  Mounds of flesh, sizable cups in the well.  Or maybe mere thimbles.  It’s beyond me to speculate at present.  Looking onward, the ancient shaggy Scarsdales hump along the sky’s bottom edge, a sort of earthen corrugate cut out.  Two silky plumes of smoke trickle upwards, mining camps in the hills’ midst.  No doubt still reeking of the morning’s bacon and saltpork and burnt coffee and distant shit.

            I walk along and off the dusty trail, hoofing it down a grassy knoll.  To someplace secluded and lonesome and scrubby-green.  Mayhap to laze about the junipers and sage and withered pines and ponder, or even to thoughtlessly gaze at the unending skies above.  In either case, to mull alone for a spell.  To lie upon Mother Earth and under our most distant relative, the Sun.  Among birds and mule deer and dozy bugs, to stretch out and reflect – lest we forget.  Because Ned’s world won’t forget where he’s got, and a hard rain’s bound to fall after him.

            I sometimes wish I could just up and ride away with the sun, to travel on like the unending day and ceaseless night.  But then, I don’t much like horses.  Sarta dee, sarta dum…  I find an inviting little spot overlooking the south plain and drop down in a grassy patch.  Tossing aside my hat and cradling head in hands I watch the azure skies above, clear and pure as a church pane.  Lazy clouds off to the east, drifting southward to Mexico, or the Gulf.  Hard to say for sure.

            Peaceful repose, badly needed serenity.  Lest we – and with a mighty mid-morning yawn – string ourselves up ado over nothing.  I close my eyes and it feels good, real good.  I can feel the breeze picking up, gusting the soft and pleasant scents of fresh sage to my nostrils.  Warm sun on my face, rather quickly I find myself drifting off…

*          *     is this the end? find out in our next installment     *          *

"The Roughest Farewell" pt. II

II.

            Grim dusk yawns upon us, the darkness of the sky pushing away the sun as another day meets its end.  Or at least, as another day in Skokie Pines ends.  I’ve been told the sun moves along, shining upon other lands west of us and far beyond and around until it crops up again in the east the morning next.  There really are no days, by that logic.  More like one endless day and an endless night, skulking about in an unending push and chase around our fair little firmament.

            The whole township is gathered in a great omega, facing myself, Angus, and a whimpering Ned between at the nadir of this celestial congregation on the steps of First Church.  Cousin Horace stands ahead, enrobed in the full regalia of his high office.  He prays upon this ritual in the old tongue, our denuded townsfolk bowed down over Mother Earth and saying their piece in response.  I say nothing.  I am the instrument of the body, nothing more.

            Ned is sniveling quietly, mouth agape and eyes a-popping at these proceedings.  “Easy on,” I whisper to him.  “Mussn’t heap further sacrilege upon your crimes.  Be worse if’n you do.”

            “Sheriff, this is madness,” he starts saying, and I’ve got to jerk him quiet by the collar.  Ned whispers on, “I mean, this is madness.  How can such heathenry exist in our day and age?”  And he looks at me imploringly for an answer, manacled and sweaty-browed.

            “Supposed to help the crops,” I shrug, thinking of the reasons laid down by the forefathers and yon.  “Harvest your spiritual energy for the township, in a manner of speaking.  Anyway, you shouldn’t’ve done what you did.” 

            “Hell’s bells, Sheriff… you can’t let them do this.  You’re a justice of the peace!”

            “Quit raising your voice during the ritual, dammit.”  I tap the tin pentangle pinned to my vest.  “And that’s your world, not ours.  Mine is a local office.  Anyway, it’s more or less like a hanging in other parts.  Only more meaningful.  You aren’t just dying… consider yourself becoming part of something bigger.”  Just tipping the earthen cup into the greater well, fluid and free and all-enveloping.  So we say.  It’s all one big communion by the endless day’s close.  But my counsel doesn’t comfort our prisoner any.  He mutters and shakes a right mess, I dare say beginning to go faint and fluttery as Horace ends the dedication.

            Arms upraised in a theatrical gesture, Our Horace addresses the very cosmos.  “We are now gathered before the First Church of the Aeon, to dedicate the life of an erstwhile unworthy individual – an outsider – guilty of trespassing upon the collected wills of our humble people of Skokie Pines.  Seni peikoks.  Have you anything to say before the bonding ritual is carried out, Brother Nedward Norris?”

            Angus gives Ned a shake, but it’s no good; Nedward is unresponsive.

            “Very well,” Horace continues.  “Place him in the well.”  Our cue, Angus and I drag Ned forward as the drums begin tattooing their primal thunder and the people become animated, exuberant.  Betsie locks each arm around the necks of her neighbors as they go to ground, while Anna Weebleman begins her siren song that sends shivers down my spine.  Many’s the night I awake from the sound of those drums, and that song.  Many a weary pipe I smoke ‘til our resumption of the dawn.

            Suddenly Ned leaps to life, the torso trying to tear itself from its very arms.  “Nooo!!  Nooooooo!!!”  Angus bats him in the eye with an elbow, but he rolls right with it as we drag him onward towards the center.  “You people are monsters!!  Pigs!  To Hell with the lot of you!!”

            “My my, but he’s a feisty one!” Angus squeals, baring his ugly chompers in a donkey bray.  The thundering drums pound on, a downpour upon my ears as we reach the hole.  With some pushing and kicking we get Ned’s legs in and push him down, him screaming and biting and vacillating as Angus begins pushing in the dusty red soil.  I’ve got to keep his shoulders pressed down, a hard feat considering.  Horace looms above us with outstretched hands and an upturned chin, chanting loudly away-

Mares away a fodder’s chum

Da prey ta bon num spake

In ta da erith bon num hest

Ayardi nigh da leaf.

            Sarta dee, sarta dum comes the refrain from all sides and I feel as though my very bones will jump free of my body, the pressure on my head explode in a shot of red.  Sarta dee sarta dum, sarta dee sarta dum and on and on.  Finally Angus presses the earth over Ned’s shoulders and I release them, rising to help pack it in with my spurless boot.

"GOD!!" Ned wails.

            “GOD!!” Ned wails.  “Oh Jesus Christ, Our Father who art in Heaven,” and so on, a parrying chant of his own against so many unburied others.  Horace hands me the burlap sack with the seventeen stars and I crouch down.

            “Sorry Neddy, sorry you have to experience this roughest of farewells.”  With a muffled shout the bag is placed over his head and I step away.  The drums, the thundering drums and Our Horace rising upon their rhythm with the wildest of ululations.  The mob goes mad.  Sarta dee!  Sarta dum!  They rise from their throng with stones held high overhead as the last ray of sun disappears behind the westward horizon.  All that’s left to us is darkness, darkness and a couple sundry stars as a kind of justice rains down.

*          *          *     to be continued yet     *          *          *