Genie In A Bottle

We modern Amerikkans certainly are lucky, amirite?

We have every convenience that science (if you believe in that stuff) can offer. Spacephones that provide all the information we could ever want right there in our hands unless we drop the damned thing and the touch-screen goes CRUNCH.  We have cars that are also Wi-Fi hot spots and mobile entertainment pods, with ass-vibrators to warn us about other cars or slow-moving skin bags because we’re too busy looking at the spacephone while we’re backing up.  We have mega-screen plasma HD 3D teevees that will stream digital movies, browse the web, order a crappy pizza and display multiple basketball games so you don’t miss a single point or foul or cheerleader up-skirt.

Yep, we sure are lucky. Unless, of course, you are a woman who decides she doesn’t want to be pregnant.

Here we are, in the second decade of the 21^st century, living in arguably the wealthiest and most liberated nation on the planet, yet still having a terribly dividing discourse on whether or not women have the right to decide for themselves if they wish to have children or not.  It’s a real-world issue that is muddied-up by sanctimonious morons who champion their Bronze Age religious dogma as justification for making sure their personal beliefs are codified into laws for everyone else. First Amendment?  What First Amendment?

But that’s not primarily what this essay is all about, nope nope nope.

This essay is about big stiff dicks… raging hard-ons… massive cocks… turgid penises… throbbing dongs.  You know, that which is held most exalted in the male performance-dominated psyche, fixated on what all  men are supposed to be truly concerned about:  getting a great big dick whenever it suits him.  And we have the technology to make sure that happens, thanks to modern medicine.

Are we a nation filled with men who are obsessed with having huge, stiff boners that will stay hard as a Louisville Slugger for hours at a time?  This is a serious question, and I think the answer is “Yes”.

Consider the amount of advertising dollars being spent to market the promise of a raging hard-on for any man who wants one, who needs one, who simply is not a real man unless he has one.  It’s becoming almost comical, this intense focus on the erect male member.  We dare not refer directly to the throbbing boner, nor can we EVER actually show one (unless PORN), but obsessed with the throbbing boner we are, and it is big bidness, baby.

 I never watch traditional stick-and-ball sports on teevee because they bore me to death.  However, I watch a lot of network news and NASCAR racing and OMIGOSH it seems like every commercial break is peppered with ads for Viagra and Levitra and Cialis (what's up with the damned bathtubs?!?) and Androgel 1.62 and all the other modern meds that work wonders on flaccid dicks, making them ramrod-straight and potent.  The ads are filled with are not-so-subtle phallic imagery, from sailboat masts to redwood trees, from Doric columns to muscle cars, from surfboards to large rock formations… anything that issues the subliminal message that you too can be ‘ready’ at a moment’s notice to have sexual relations with your significant other, your medically-induced boner leading the way.
 

 

Can't get much more phallic than that, right?

And the people in the ads who are ready to bang away, they all have the same insipid grin on their faces, hee hee hee, because he’s gonna have a BIG DICK in about 5 minutes and she is just so happy about it.  I wonder… is she using birth control, or is she too old to get preggers? Think he’ll use a condom? And the men in the commercials, so handsome and craggily virile, all hetero male and no guessing.  Sure, they might look slightly middle-aged, but they are in CONTROL of their lives… er, that is, they can control their hand that pops a pill in their mouth so that in a few minutes they can wave their fresh boner around and stick that thing right where they want to.  He knows how to MAKE THINGS HAPPEN.

Now, don't get me wrong... I totally understand that our sexuality is a very complicated point of reference, whether male or female. We all want to remain vital sexual beings as long as possible, so it's no surprise that some women turn to hormone-replacement therapy to stay sexually active and satisfied as their baby-making years wind down.  For men, getting older also means lower testosterone levels and the resultant impact on popping a successful boner.  The problem with the male plumbing is that the big dick (or lack thereof) is a clear visual indicator of liftoff or crash-n-burn, and it can be devastating to the terribly fragile male ego when things go awry.

There’s a reason why male and female hormone levels drop as we age.  It’s called GETTING OLD, and it was something that adults just dealt with until boner pills and HRT became readily available. Yes, I know all about modern medicine, why we should take advantage of it to make our lives better yadda yadda yadda, but this medical dick-stiffener thing has me wondering why it’s become so pervasive, so important.  It makes perfect sense to me that as we age, our body’s natural chemical cocktail would begin to curtail hormone production because no more babies, but I also understand that we want to extend (heh heh heh) our recreational sexual lives for as long as possible because even us olds like to fuck.

There's another layer to this medically-induced boner thingie, and it has nothing to do with the phenomenon of 'erectile dysfunction'. Boner pills are doing a huge business with men of all ages who simply want to guarantee they can bang for hours, thus creating a false reality for themselves. Why (the advert-centered thinking goes) should ANY man not have an insta-boner at his beckoned call? I have known many guys, all younger than me, who made it a point to have the boner pills in-hand for their next big date, their weekend in Las Vegas, their next party run, no thinking necessary.  Just eat the pill, stand back and watch the fun begin.  What happens when they don't have that pill, that guarantee of being able to perform?

Here’s what I really wanna know:  why does it seem like there are never enough ways to market boner pills for men on the teevee, but it is verboten to do the same for meds and procedures for women who want to prevent or end an unwanted pregnancy?  Why are erectile dysfunction and ‘premature issues’ such pressing and urgent concerns that hundreds of millions of advertising dollars are spent to market boner pills, but don’t even THINK about airing ads for condoms or birth control (when was the last time you saw a birth control ad?) or family planning, all to prevent those medically-induced wild boners from knocking-up every fertile female within ejaculation range?

Why indeed.

It’s all about the big dick.  It’s why men take their countries to war (LBJ would actually whip out his dick in cabinet meetings during the Vietnam war to tout his mastery of the situation).  It’s why mouth-breathers buy huge 4WD trucks that never go off-road, or insanely fast sports cars that never see the inside of a race track. It’s why guns of every imaginable type are so popular in this here US of A.  They are all proxies for the big dick, snickering allusions to what supposedly really matters to modern males. Mine is bigger than yours, and here’s a nuke to show you just how much bigger.  Here’s a matte black assault rifle slung on my back to stand in for my tiny penis but you’ll act like I have a massive dong because I have a gun that looks like a big dick.

While the Republican-supported War On Women continues to scythe through women’s individual medical decisions, the boner pill issue hasn’t gone unnoticed by female legislators.  In state houses across the country, female representatives have tried to turn the tables on their male (and many female) counterparts who are bound and determined to eliminate access to birth control, contraception and abortion.  The gals decided to amend the anti-choice laws with their own bills, ones that would issue restrictive guidelines on ‘male enhancement’ medications, forcing men to jump through the same hoops women now must navigate in order to get their dirty slut baby-killing pills or patriotism-hating soshulist abortions.

In Virginia, as the Senate debated requiring trans-vaginal ultrasounds for all women seeking legal abortions, Senator Janet Howell proposed mandating rectal exams and cardiac stress tests for men seeking their Very Important erectile dysfunction baby-making pills. Her amendment failed by two votes, while the girlie-parts-probing sneak-a-peek bill was overwhelmingly passed and signed by the Governor.  Hypocrisy much? In Ohio, a bill introduced by state Senator Nina Turner would have compelled men to get psychological screenings before getting prescriptions for boner meds. Her bill also failed.  Shocking. 

Time after time, in one state house after another, Republicans have passed numerous anti-choice laws, all to subjugate and eliminate a woman’s right to decide what is best for her.  But when the discussion turned to passing the same type of ‘we know what's best for you’ laws aimed at men, the male legislators suffered brain aneurisms at the very notion of MEN being subjected to restrictions before they could get their boner pills.  The misogynistic lawmakers even had the audacity to claim that while boner pills were a necessary ‘medical’ treatment, contraception was nothing more than a ‘lifestyle’ choice and not a health or medical issue.  The gals lost their arguments to the testicle-draggers in every case.

Excuse me?  Pregnancy prevention is not a ‘medical’ issue?

What I don’t get is the disconnect, the cognitive dissonance that leads conservative men to demand access to and cherish the boner pills and the rampant sexing that results, but to also denigrate contraception and birth control as unnecessary lifestyle choices, as if boners and babies have no bearing on each other.  It reeks of the longstanding fact that whatever men think is important to them is sacrosanct, but whatever doesn’t directly affect them, no biggie, don’t matter, perish the thought.

Assholes.

As the bumper sticker sez:  “If men could get pregnant, abortion would be a sacrament.”
 

I may be a dense wolverine, but even I can see the latent hypocrisy in this issue of boner pills vs. contraception.  I submit that since these two modern medicines are inextricably linked by sex and biology and human nature, for every teevee commercial hawking boner pills, there should be a matching ad for contraception or family planning. 

Yeah, I know.  It will never EVER happen, because our society is still ruled by the mostly dumb and always hypocritical Conservative Men's Club, at least for now.

So here's the crux of the biscuit: we USians are indeed wallowing in the most advantageous period of human existence to this point.  We have access to the best technology, the cleanest and healthiest foods, a lifestyle that allows us to live far longer than even our grandparents, and modern medicines that give us more control of our health than we could have ever hoped for.  It stands to reason that both men AND women should be allowed to control their own destinies when it comes to sex and procreation.  We are not dumb animals (at least not most of us), beholden to the ancient and primitive state of existence, living merely to eat, sleep, procreate and die.

If a man can legally buy and consume a pill to ensure he can get a stiff dick with which to fuck, a woman should be able to legally buy and consume a pill to make sure she doesn't get or stay pregnant.  Why is this such a difficult concept for so many of our fellow 'Murricans to grasp?

Why indeed.

"Today's so-called 'conservatives' don't even know what the word means. They think I've turned liberal because I believe a woman has a right to an abortion.  That's a decision that's up to the pregnant woman, not up to the Pope or some do-gooders or the Religious Right. It's not a conservative issue at all." -- Barry Goldwater

Pill image, gracias de mashangel.com; transporter image, gracias de jayski.com; Music Machine 'Talk Talk' video, muchismas gracias de youtube.com.

Take A Load Off

At 56 years old and counting, I have a confession to make: I'm addicted to (gasp!) FRUITS AND VEGETABLES... DUN-DUN-DUNNNNNNN!!!!!

The image above is evidence of my addiction, including the questionable paraphernalia that allows me to continue my downward spiral into the morass of natural vitamin intake, a shiny wolverine fur coat and a roughage-friendly alimentary system.  It wasn’t always like this, but now that I've outed my unseemly cravings, I can only hope this admission will serve as a warning to others who may fall into the trap of a semi-healthy diet.  I never planned for this to happen.

Now, don't get me wrong... I am a total Chocoholic, and I get all kinds of crazy if I don't have some of that sweet brown goodie within arm's reach if the craving hits. One thing we are NEVER without at home is chocolicious snackies that get sucked in so fast, the wrappers almost go in too.  On those rare occasions when the goodies have been scarfed and it's too much trouble to hit the store, a handful of semi-sweet chocolate chips will hit that sweet spot just right, I swear. The fact that dark choco is now my fave may explain why sometimes I'll go for the choco chips even if we aren't out of the regular stuff.  This chocolate craving has TEETH.

But for now, back to the healthy stuff.

I have a typical Virgo trait of being very process-oriented (read: anal-retentive), and since I do the grocery shopping for our home, I make it a point to hit the store first ayem on either Saturday or Sunday, depending on the weather (yardwork) and any plans The Artist may have for me/us that I haven’t been made privvy to, which she likes to spring on me with little or no warning… she’s AWESOME that way.  I pull cash from the ATM (I refuse to pay for groceries with a debit card), fuel up the sled, then head off to one or more stores depending on the list.  Yes, we keep a grocery list… you’d be surprised how many people don’t make a shopping list and just buy food commando-stylie, heh heh heh.

My first stop is the produce section for the usual suspects (lettuce, tomatoes, apples, oranges, bananas), seasonal fruit when available (grapes, cantaloupe, cherries, strawberries or watermelon), a selection of tasty veggies (cabbage, green beans, broccoli or artichokes) and ALWAYS the Big Three:  carrots, celery and radishes.  I cruise through the store, aisle by aisle, picking up items and ticking them off the list before heading to the cashier with my motley assortment of re-useable shopping bags.  My bags were collected from various sources for FREE, but the different sizes and colors makes me a bit sheepish when I’m waiting at checkout behind someone who sports a stack of identical bags, all neatly aligned and in the same color, mocking my pile of mongrels (bag envy?).

Sidetrack questions:  Do you have re-useable grocery bags, or still relying on the plastic or paper single-use disposables? Did you know that less than 15% of disposable bags ever make it into the recycling stream?  Did you know that you’re supposed to WASH your re-useable bags on a regular basis? Are you aware the store baggers like to stuff as many items as possible into reusable bags, thereby squishing items and making the bags way too heavy?  Did you know that those same baggers HATE using the reusable bags?

OK, enuf of that. So, once I get back to the homestead and drop the loaded bags onto the kitchen floor, the very first thing I do is pop the teevee on the Classical Masterpieces cable radio station and crank up the volume.  Ahhh... Stravinsky! After the groceries have been stowed, I begin the Sacred Cleansing and Preparation Ritual. Cantaloupe gets washed (with soapy water because salmonella!), sliced in half, cleaned out and sectioned into an awaiting container.  Grapes, strawberries or cherries get a fast rinse. The Big Three are a bit more labor-intensive, but the process has become strangely satisfying for me, especially with that amazing classical music streaming in the background.

Carrots have their ends lopped off, then I peel and slice them lengthwise into quarters, which are then cut into 2-inch chunks before being washed and fridged. Celery gets the ends lopped off as well, and each stalk is sliced lengthwise into halves, cut into 2-inch chunks, washed and fridged. Radishes get snipped from the green tops (bagged ones were all they had when the image above was snapped), have both tips sliced off, then are halved (quartered if they're lunkers), washed and fridged. Once these veggies are prepped, it’s a snap to slap a handful of each into a sandwich bag to munch on at work, a great alternative to a bag of Doritos snaked from the vending machine.

Lately I've been bringing peanut butter to work for veggie dipping. I'm a bad wolverine with sticky paws.

Here’s the weird part:  my little ballet of washing and slicing and cutting has become a chore that I actually look forward to each weekend.  The elements are all there… the healthy food, the great music, the unrushed time spent in preparation, the idea that The Artist is working in her studio mere footsteps away, her brushes flying and her own music pumping.  It creates an aura of serene and purposeful work that is nothing but good.  On top of that, having recently acquired a really nice set of cutlery, I get to use a sweet little paring knife that makes me feel like Giada DeLaurentis gave me personal prep instruction. OMIGOSH a good knife is a thing of beauty, a tool to be used with deftness and care so as not to lop off a fingertip or skewer a palm.  It’s true… a sharp knife reduces the chance of cutting one’s self, and I can say that with certainty. Ouch.

There’s lots more going on here than just cutting up veggies, of course. In recent years, I’ve become more aware of my overall health and fitness, have worked hard to reduce the amount of salt, bread and butter in my diet (oh man that is SO HARD to do because I lovelovelove butter) and avoid fried foods that have become ubiquitous in all our lives. During the work week, my office food stocks are chock-full of goodies that are mostly good, but I am a weak wolverine so there's also the occasional choco bar or bag of chips or cookies.  However, it has become a running joke among my workmates when I walk through the shop while chomping on some veggies, an apple or a banana that it should be chicken nuggets going into my pie hole instead of wabbit food.

That ribbing comes from a group of guys whose sole intake of vegetables consists of the nasty tomato slice and shredded lettuce on a triple burger from Wendy’s. Almost to a man, they don’t eat fruit of any sort, walk in first thing each day with a Red Bull and a cigarette as breakfast, and scarf down sucky fast food for lunch EVERY SINGLE DAY.  My boss has his standard breakfast in-hand most mornings:  a pack of choco donuts and a 32 ounce soda from 7-11.  The healthiest thing I’ve ever seen him munch on is a chicken bowl from Flame Broiler, which I can attest to as surprisingly tasty.

I can trace the roots of my banana fetish to a boss I had many moons ago, a barrel of a man with a terrible hairpiece who ate a banana every single day at work. He got me started on that and I pretty much have followed suit, bananas being one of my abfab go-to snacks.  My love of fresh fruit goes back even farther than that, back to the mid-1960’s when I lived in La Puente and our back yard was teeming with apricot, peach, plum and nectarine trees.  From Spring to Fall, we kids were always munching on fresh fruit, and we’d toss some over the fence and into the three swimming pools adjacent to our back yard as bribery to be invited for a swim. Just writing about it now, I can taste the sweet-yet-tart flesh of a barely-ripe nectarine, hard to the touch and offering a loud crunch at every bite. We never EVER let fruit rot on the limb and fall to the ground, because we raided the fruit from the tree the millisecond it became edible.  Who says there’s no free lunch?

The weight thing was also a bugaboo for me many many moons ago.  At one point in the mid-70's, when me and my street-racing friend Jerry were out late most weekend nights, we’d stuff our faces at Bob’s Big Boy or Carrows sometime around 1AM before crashing at home, and my weight ballooned to around 220 pounds.  Thankfully that regulated down to around 190, but 10 years ago I had a real-world epiphany about weight and food and health.

I was working the season-opening NASCAR race at Daytona International Speedway in 2003, sporting about 200 pounds of wolverine flesh and not paying attention to my daily nutritional intake because I was doing so much travelling for my job. Our mobile marketing area, consisting of several tractor-trailers with huge enclosed canopies and interactive displays, were on one side of the exhibitor area and the track’s operations center was on the other, perhaps a quarter-mile away. 

After the first few days of set-up, I found myself having to traipse between the two sites many times each day due to the complex nature of our set-up and the needs of our primary client.  Halfway through the event, I found myself running the route in order to make things happen when I began to get really winded, really fast.  By the last event day, it was almost impossible for me to keep up the pace, and it suddenly dawned on me that I was overweight, out of shape and had no one but myself to blame.

I started my caloric intake change that very day, avoiding airport food for some fruit and nuts that I had bought on the way outta town, drinking water instead of sodas and forcing myself NOT to chow down fast food at every opportunity.  I cut way back on most breads and (more recently) sugar, although I had yet to curb the salt thingie.  Lo and behold, I began to see a dramatic change, shedding weight and getting my stamina back, settling in at about 170 pounds and maintaining that pretty much to this day.  I’m at about 175 now, have seen a max of 180 but freaked out and found that I could drop the tonnage pretty damned fast if I put my mind to it.

Thankfully I’ve been able to keep some discipline in my diet and not balloon back to my old rolled mold. The Artist and I regularly enjoy a wide spectrum of healthy foods that include a lot of roasted whole almonds and her jabbing me whenever I get out the tub o’butter.  I struggled mightily with the salt shaker, but now I almost never touch that vile glass vial.  She also has a stellar way with cooking fresh veggies, using a combination of microwave and stovetop to maintain taste, freshness and the heavenly aroma of really good healthy foodstuffs.

One veggie in particular that has become a staple for us are brussel sprouts, those delightful mini-cabbages that have a pungent aroma during cooking but are so delish!  She’ll wash and halve them, nuke until just barely soft, saute’ them in a pan with olive oil to get a bit of char, then sprinkle with toasted pine nuts… NOM!!!!!  The best part: she’ll use the leftovers on HOMEMADE PIZZA! I simply cannot tell you how good this is, you just gotta try it, get over the weird concept and go for it.

All of this is just ancillary to the idea of eating better, cooking with fresh foods, planning ahead when grocery shopping and making sure there’s always something healthy ready to go in the fridge.  Yes, my blood pressure is a tad bit higher than I like (130/80), but my doctor sez that I’m in pretty damned good shape for an old Messican, which means that our healthy eating efforts are not in vain. Even after two knee surgeries, I have full range of motion and take care not to abuse them complex joints like I used to, yet another sign that I am get both older AND smarter. I’m sure The Artist would take issue with the ‘smarter’ part.

This isn’t rocket science, the healthy-eating thingie. It just takes some of that ‘self-discipline’ goo that we always seem to have a shortage of, an eye and nose to find a really good cantaloupe, some bangin’ classical music, a sharp knife and the brain power to use it all without needless bloodshed.

 

 

I’m a healthy, shiny-coated wolverine.

 

Lead image de Oblio; The Clash 'Lost in the Supermarket' video, muchismas gracias de YouTube.

The Church of the Blessed Bullet

 

"You go into these small towns in Pennsylvania and, like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing’s replaced them, and they fell through the Clinton Administration, and the Bush Administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not. And it’s not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations." – Barack Obama, Uppity Socialist Kenyan Usurper Not-The-Real-President (black man)

Ya, I know… another essay about guns, but this time I think perhaps I’ve learned something that so far has eluded me.

I think I finally get it.

The gun-fondling thing, that is.

Through all the media baloney, political posturing, pearl-clutching and hand-wringing. Through all the school and shopping mall and theater and home and gun show and vacation spot shootings and the bloody aftermath of each.  I finally get it.

I finally understand the bug-eyed screeching, the waving around of loaded weapons, the invocation of what it means to be a ‘true patriot’, the threats of secession and insurrection and watering the tree of liberty with Type O positive. The notion that ‘an armed society is a polite society’. The idea that if every law-abiding citizen was armed, no one would DARE try to rob or hurt or otherwise be mean to anyone else for fear of being blasted by other law-abiding citizens packing heat.

I get it now.

It’s not really about the Second Amendment to the Constitution, because anyone who actually reads those few words… ALL of them, not just the part they like… and then allows their grey matter to cogitate for a few scant moments will realize the pro-gun arguments now being flung at every wall are simply wrong, outdated remnants of an antiquated mindset from a bygone era.

It’s not about the right to bear arms, because when the Second Amendment was written, the modern firearm of choice was a flintlock musket, not a matte black dildo-with-bullets. Really, you want to own a whole bunch of guns as you imagine the Founding Fathers intended?  Fine… as long as they’re muskets.

It’s not about personal freedom, because if there’s one thing that will NEVER EVER happen, it’s that someone from the Black Helicopter Brigade will come knocking at your patriotic door to take away your guns and register you with the ‘Hates Government’ FecesBook page.

It’s not even about the inherent and implied violence that surround guns like a stinky brown fart, something that gun fans use as their unspoken-yet-always-evident threat to anyone who even hints at the notion that a household with guns is 40 times more likely to have someone living in the home shot with that very same gun.

Nope, it ain’t any of those things that propel the rabid supporters of unfettered and unregulated gun ownership.

It’s a RELIGION, this gun ownership/fetish/fondling thing. I’m serious here, so think about it… HARD.

Doesn’t matter if you are a Obama-hating libertarian or a solid church-going registered voter/citizen.  Doesn’t matter if you hoard guns to fend off The Takers who will inevitably come around when the Zombie Apocalypse finally starts, or if you just enjoy hunting or target shooting or the mechanical nature of firearms. How else can one explain the love and devotion and passion and sheer blissful ecstasy that is demonstrated by The Armed Ones when they are fondling their beloveds?

Religion is the reason, and I’m not taking about a sectarian religious belief writ in any book or scroll or sheaf, although that kind of religious belief more often than not allows followers to rationalize their use of guns to mow down infidels who do not agree with them, amirite? Nope, the religion I speak of surrounds the very notion that guns = power, guns = authority, guns = don’t tread on me, man, or you’ll be eating lead.  Governments believe it, so it’s no wonder there’s always a shooting war happening somewhere, with opposing sides blasting away with fire in their eyes and their deity-of-choice right there with them, weapon in hand, spewing out their power one bullet at a time, in rapid-fire succession.

“Onward, Christian soldiers, marching as to war, with the cross of…” well, you know the rest.  The Church of the Blessed Bullet. Holy, Holy, Hole-y. ALL MUST KNEEL AT THE ALTAR OF THE BLAZING MUZZLE! “Body of Glock… (amen)… Body of Glock… (amen)… Body of Glock… (amen).” 

Let’s take a look at this long-standing religious belief that centers around, and holds as most exalted, the Almighty Gun, PRAISE THE TRIGGER.

Think about it: even if you adhere to the basic tenets of the Bible or Qur’an or Talmud, you cannot possibly take every word, every phrase, every concept written in those ancient tomes as literal, actual facts and specific unerring guidelines to live by in our society unless you are a fundamentalist religious zealot, in which case please stop reading this now and forget you ever heard of me. 

EVERY religion now being practiced on this planet cherry-picks their teachings and follows those precepts they like, glosses over those they don’t and simply ignore the ones that harken to a much more brutal and hostile world than the one we live in today. Enlightened believers understand those religious tomes are allegorical, not literal… they are morality plays written for uneducated masses of the past to be lulled into acquiescence and servitude at the hands of the learned religious scholars who sought to control them. Don’t believe me?  Look it up.

It’s the same for The Church of the Blessed Bullet. Here, read this:

“A well-regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”

As anyone who doesn’t get all their information from Fox News knows, the gun-fondlers currently pointing their death sticks in our direction never EVER refer to anything in the Second Amendment before the second comma.  They prefer to quote the abridged version that doesn’t speak to ‘a well-regulated militia’.  In fact, we are now learning the version above was actually a re-write of the original text so as to allow state-sponsored militias, also known as ‘slave patrols’ in the South, to continue their activities to track down escaped slaves and keep them on their respective plantations, without interference from the federal gummint. Don’t believe me?  Look it up.

Like the followers of sectarian religions do with their ancient teachings, the gun-fondlers cherry-pick the Second Amendment to mean only what they want it to mean and disregard the part they dinna like, PRESTO CHANGE-O! It’s what religions do and have always done to try and stay relevant. So it is with The Armed Ones, who love invoking the Founding Father’s (abridged) words about gun ownership for the masses without the tiresome chore of actually understanding the context of their words. That’s what blind faith does to people.

Another hallmark of hardcore religious belief is the ability to reject any facts or information that does not confirm those firmly held beliefs, no matter how solid or educated or confirmable those facts might be. “The Earth is 6,000 years old… God created man and Earth and the universe… evolution is bunk… ancient men rode dinosaurs… no other life exists beyond our planet… man has no impact on climate change… the Constitution is based on the Bible… a fertilized egg is a human being… the United States is a Christian Nation...”  You get the drift, right?

For The Church of the Blessed Bullet, the firmly-held beliefs around gun ownership are rooted in the same type of ideas devoid of facts, context or even historical precedent.  “The Founding Fathers would approve of unfettered and uncontrolled gun ownership… the Second Amendment helps the citizenry to prevent tyranny… the government should have no say about what kind of guns a citizen may own… more guns in more hands means a safer world for everyone… anyone who lawfully owns a gun is automatically a ‘good guy’ that we should not fear… guns don’t kill people, people kill people…” Blind faith as reality, armed and dangerous, with a hair trigger.

It doesn’t stop there. Whether they will admit it openly or only within their cloistered circle, followers of sectarian religions typically make the assertion they are somehow better than either non-believers or those who choose another non-approved path to redemption (whatever the hell that means). Their belief makes them special, a cut above, chosen, imbued with the glory and promise of life everlasting with their savior when they finally take the dirt nap, as long as they believe. The Armed Ones are blatant about how special they are, whipping out their death sticks and holding them close to their hearts, comforted with the knowledge that anyone who deigns to question the bullet’s superiority can be silenced from a distance, in rapid-fire succession. The Armed Ones believe they are the only true patriots, and they will point their sacred scimitars of freedom at your face in an instant if you beg to differ… PRAISE THE TRIGGER!

About the comment made by NRA spokesmodel Wayne LaPierre that “The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun… is a good guy with a gun.” Two words:  CHRISTOPHER DORNER. Trained by the military to be an assassin, hired by the L.A.P.D. and given access to as many assault weapons as he wanted, he was the quintessential ‘good guy’ until he snapped and became the vilified ‘bad guy’.  He was a law-abiding and well-armed citizen soldier until his addled brain convinced him that The Church of the Blessed Bullet would give him the justification he sought to right some wrongs and… well, after a week of terror and four dead bodies and many wounded and thousands of spent rounds and a couple of lobbed tear gas canisters... BBQ! Yep, he was good, then he was bad, then he was crispy.

Pity Chris The Assassin. His world was steeped in gun love, in gun worship.  Watch the videos of him in action and see a man totally and completely enamored with the strength, the power, the authority bestowed upon him merely because he chose to kneel at the Altar of the Blazing Muzzle. It was his deity, and he lived to use that power for what most would consider ‘good things’… until they weren’t good any more. He used his blind faith in guns to mete out his own warped sense of justice, making himself the arbiter of death and the one we all fear is probably standing right next to us in line for coffee, loaded weapon hidden from view, angst gnawing at his consciousness, a worn-out spring wound far too tight.

Chris Dorner was a good guy until he was a bad guy.  Sorry Pastor Wayne, your concept sucks donkey balls.

Religion has a unique tendency to alter the worldview of ardent followers, and it doesn’t really matter what philosophy makes up those belief systems. Arab against Jew, Christian against Muslim, Tutsi against Hutu… it all runs together, it all degenerates into the same anger and bloodshed, the same zealotry and insanity. The Armed Ones are the first to say that they hold all that cards, hold the power, hold the ability to mete out patriotic justice and death one bullet at a time, in rapid-fire succession, and they wave their loaded cards at everyone else.  They smile broadly, hearts and minds devoted to the trigger and the bullet, convinced their guns mean they will be in control, convinced their guns mean they are always gonna be right, convinced the rest of us will just blithely cede power to them because BULLETS.  Holy, Holy, Hole-y.

I don’t have any answers here, and I don’t pretend to know what will come of our current national dialog about guns and death and good guys and bad guys and armed janitors and 100-round drums and school shooting drills and blood-soaked liberty trees.  I don’t understand the gun fondlers, or why they worship the idea of holding the power of instant death in their hands. I don’t understand the wide-eyed fear of ‘the other’ that spurs so many people to buy as many guns as they can, as if the Zombie Apocalypse was on the news just last night, right after the Weather Goddess predicted acid rain for all eternity.

 

As a non-believing anti-theist, my only guess is that FEAR is the driving factor in the religious fervor surrounding the death sticks, and the Uppity Black Man seems to have hit the nail on the head in his remarks during the 2008 Presidential campaign.  Fear is what gives religion its power... fear of death, fear of the unknown, fear of failure, fear of pain, fear of not mattering, fear of weakness, fear of loneliness, fear of 'the other', fear of being inconsequential.

 

The Church of the Blessed Bullet is based upon a foundation of fear that, at least from my perspective, has no place in a modern, civil society.

 

I do not fear death or spiritual emptiness or being involved in a multi-car pile-up on the 405 freeway. I do worry that The Artist will someday realize she could find someone much better than me, but as long as I show her love and tenderness and support and keep making tacos and cleaning bathrooms, she will accept me for my shortcomings. I do not fear pain or old age or infirmity or being extraneous in the grand universal scheme.  I worry that an adherent to The Church of the Blessed Bullet will make the decision to take me out without my prior acknowledgement or approval, Holy Holy Hole-y.

Guns = death. Guns = sorrow. Guns = hatred. Guns = violence. Guns = humanity de-evolved.

 

I do not live in fear.  I am made from the stuff of stars, and when my spring can no longer be wound, I will freely give my life's force back to Mother Earth to use as she will.  There's nothing to fear about that, and I don't need guns to make me feel safe or better about myself, about my world or my place in it.

"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies in the final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed." -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
 

Lead image, gracias de theird.org; Tom Lehrer 'National Brotherhood Week' and Jimi Hendrix 'Hey Joe' videos, muchismas gracias de You Tube; Fuck the NRA; muchismas gracias to Alan Eggleston for introducing me, a weirdo high-school Freshman, to Tom Lehrer in 1970.

Shooting From The Hip

Initially, I was at a loss for words. 

I know that may come as a surprise to anyone who knows me, but it took some time to process the facts about the horrific massacre in Newtown, CT before I had a cogent line of reasoning about the whole thing.  That is, if anything that happened in that sad burg has even the faintest relation to reason.  There’s been a tidal wave of words written about the shootings, the shooter, his Mom, the dead kids, the town, banning assault rifles, arming teachers, throwing buckets… all of it is now so much news fodder.

This here is my perspective.

As the details began to emerge, it became apparent (at least to me) that the bloody rampage was yet another in a string of unfortunate-yet-wholly-avoidable death marches that involved readily-available weapons of mass destruction.  What, you think I’m wrong to classify the semi-automatic rifle that Adam Lanza used to reign down death on his victims as a WMD?  I’d say his Mom’s Bushmaster AR-15 death stick should be the very definition of a WMD, as anything that one man can use to mete out instant death to twenty-six people in 10 minutes fits the category quite nicely.  I’m just sayin’.

In keeping with the WMD theme, I’d also categorize the bloodletting as a terrorist act perpetrated on innocent victims.  I dinna care why the shooter decided to lock, load and pull that trigger… no one will really ever know, it will all be supposition and speculation.  But make no mistake:  this was a textbook act of terror, no different than the ones in Blacksburg (VA) or Oklahoma City or New York City or Aurora or Columbine.  Mr. Lanza had obviously made enough lucid and strategic decisions to ensure that he exacted the maximum level of chaos before he decided to cap himself once he realized The Man was on him like flies on shit. 

 

A couple of points to ponder:

HE SHOT HIS MOM IN THE FACE MULTIPLE TIMES.  Think about that for a minute.  HIS MOM.  She had to know she was gonna die in the split-second before she actually, you know, died.  What went through her mind in that brief moment before her skull was pierced by the first of many projectiles vomited from the muzzle of her own gun?  Was she sorry about all the shooting range practice she enjoyed with her now-a-killing-machine son?  Did she regret his ease of access to HER GUNS that were being used to remove her from among the living?  Did her mind’s eye flash to the basement walls of her home, the place where Adam holed up and played first-person shooter video games all day, the walls covered with military posters and images of weaponry and firearms?

HE BLASTED THOSE LITTLE KIDS WITH MULTIPLE ROUNDS, BUDA BUDA BUDA BUDA, JUST LIKE IN A VIDEO GAME.  I don’t blame video games for the violence that Adam wreaked in that school.  However, I do believe that first-person shooter games desensitize the player to the results of real-world violent acts.  I believe the ubiquitous and violent network television programming, where seemingly every other prime-time show revolves around pointing guns and shooting guns, desensitizes the viewer to the violent acts being portrayed on screen.  I also believe that we as a nation, by historically using our military forces when and where they don't belong, sanctify the notion that guns = strength, a piss-poor way to enhance international relations in the year 2012. 

Adam’s Mom knew about his predilection for playing violent video games, that he knew how to shoot real guns, that he was mentally ill and that he had easy access to her arsenal of death sticks. How could she not know he was a dangerous threat?

HE WAS WEARING BODY ARMOR AND CARRIED MULTIPLE LOADED WEAPONS.  This was not an accident, his all-Black wardrobe with Kevlar shoulder pads, lapels and boutonniere.  Before his rampage, did he browse the web, looking for just the right shirt, the right pants, the proper footwear, the right grade of anti-ballistic but not-too-binding-in-the-crotch outerwear?  Did he buy the stuff with a credit card, and whose card was it?  Was his Mom monitoring the purchases being made by her mentally-ill son, her Asperger’s Syndrome offspring, or was he able to build his stash of deathwear in the privacy of his fully-optioned basement apartment without her ever having a clue?

(facepalm)

These are not random factoids.  This guy knew what he wanted to accomplish and, for whatever fucked-up reason he decided was valid, he definitely succeeded.  His Mom is the most culpable party in this whole sad sorry tale, and she’s as dead as dead can be.  I try to find some sense of grief or sorrow over her demise, but it just ain’t there.  I blame her for the actions of her son that day as much as I blame him.  So sue me.

Naturally, this all gets me back to the flaming brouhaha now bouncing from coast-to-coast in this Land of the Armed-and-Dangerous.  We have one side screaming for a ban on assault weapons (the ‘AR’ in AR-15 stands for ‘Assault Rifle’) and banning large ammo magazines, while the other side screams “SECOND AMENDMENT!!” and rapidly buys up every legal assault weapon in stock, threatening anyone with a spray of lead if they try and take away their death sticks, all while recommending that schools become fortified sites with armed teachers and armed principals.  Truly, it makes me laugh out loud, the stupidity being demonstrated by both sides of the argument, the same one that blows up after each and every massacre.

As I’ve written/argued/discussed numerous times before, we are a nation that TOTALLY LURVES our guns, the idea of guns, the notion that guns make us free, that guns solve problems, that there’s nothing that can’t be solved with a point-and-shoot implement of destruction. Firearms are as Amerikkan as apple pie, baseball, Wal-Mart, diabetes, obesity and NASCAR. Those who spout the insipid trope that ‘Guns don’t kill people, people kill people’ seem to forget that a gun cannot fire itself, and therefore the correct insipid trope should be ‘Guns don’t kill people, people with guns kill people’. 

As BHO stated in his excellent (and IMHO, most Presidential) speech to the Newtown residents and the nation on the Sunday following the bloodshed, nothing will change unless WE change, and that is going to be one large order of chow mein.  We’re talking about a seminal shift in the gun-loving culture we wallow in, along with a shift to real-world solutions that are more nuanced than just banning things right and left.  All of this will take time, but we may just be at a spectral moment where we can find reasonable solutions to our national epidemic of gun violence.

I think one of the main stumbling blocks is the notion many gun owners have that the gummint is coming to take away their death sticks.  While this is a massively uninformed viewpoint, it is one the NRA has successfully injected across all strata of gun owners, making it real to them regardless of how nonsensical it really is.  There is not a single instance that can be pointed to during the Obama administration that could even remotely be considered as harmful to gun ownership, yet the notion persists in lieu of, you know, facts and stuff.  The NRA has poisoned the well, and they have much to answer for because they espouse ZERO restrictions to gun ownership, registration, use or any variation thereof. 

The time has come to treat firearms in the same way we treat automobiles.  Anyone who wants to own a gun must first study for and pass a use test, demonstrate their ability to properly operate one, register and insure the weapon, and surrender it if misused in any way.  You know, JUST LIKE A CAR.  Assault weapons have no place in the hands of civilians, but if someone has cause to own one, they can submit a request and state their case and, if approved, may possess that assault weapon subject to the same regulations as every other gun.

To those who espouse the idea that we need EVEN MORE GUNS in the hands of citizens to stay safe… arm everyone and then no one will risk bad behavior, I have only one question:  ARE YOU FUCKING NUTS?!?!?!  This is the single worst idea ever in the pantheon of bad ideas to address gun violence in our country.  We do not live in Tombstone, Arizona circa 1875… we need to act like civilized humans and reject the notion of an armed populace.  Same with the idea that gun owners don’t want the Feds to know how many death sticks they own, just in case there’s a revolution and they have to take up arms against the evil soshulists.  COME ON… does anyone in their right mind think an untrained force of self-described ‘patriots’ will last a single day against a modern military machine?

It shouldn’t have surprised me in the least that the gun store next door to my work, a vile place that sells (among others) exactly the kind of weapon used to murder all those little kiddies, has been doing a crapload of business in the last week.  There’s a line at the door every morning by 10am, their parking lot is always full and their customers try to sneak their cars into our lot, even though we have signs posted everywhere blaring ‘PRIVATE PARKING’.  I reckon they think we’ll leave them alone because, well… guns!  No doubt every one of those patrons are simply buying their freedom death sticks to make sure the Kenyan Usurper Socialist Communist Muslim Illegal Alien gun-grabbing President won’t deny them of their Second Amendment rights to own military-grade weapons with which to hunt deer and fend off moochers and takers when the revolution goes down.  I doubt any of them even know what the Second Amendment says. It is truly sickening to know what their money is buying, and why.

Of course, none of this matters to the devastated citizens of Newtown.  They grieve and bury, bury and grieve, all under the watchful eye of the ‘no sparrow shall fall’ national news media who are looking for an angle to report.  If things roll as they always do, this sad event will fall off the radar in a few weeks when another shiny object diverts our national ADD-addled psyche… unless it’s another massacre.  I know this much:  we are way past the time to have resolved the issue of unfettered gun ownership and uncontrolled gun violence in our country.  I’m sick of the mewling and bullshit arguments, sick of the death and the death sticks that cause it, sick of the arrogance and stupidity that causes people to buy weapons like candy and horde them as a hedge against the Zombie Apocalypse.  I’m sick of the gun fetishism that permeates every aspect of our ‘civilized’ society.

Whatever we do, we gotta do it RIGHT NOW.  The scarred families in Newtown, and every other parent who has lost a child to senseless gun violence, deserve nothing less.

Update: in a press conference today, Wayne LaPierre of the NRA stated their official position...  an armed guard in every school across this country will solve the problem of nutjobs attacking schools. Fuck that guy, and every other moron who says the answer to our national epidemic of gun violence is to have more guns in the hands of more people, especially around kids and their teachers. 
 

Lead image, gracias de smirkingchimp.com; Sinead O'Connor 'Throw Down Your Arms' video, muchismas gracias de Youtube.com; fuck the NRA.

Lost In La Puente

Tell me if this sounds familiar.  Saturday morning, sometime during the summer of 1970:

Me: “Hey Dad… I’m heading over to Ken’s house.”

Dad: “OK.  What are you two gonna do today?”

Me: “I dunno… maybe go grab some fries and shakes at Randy’s Burgers. Ride around.”

Dad:  “OK… just be sure to get home before dark. and stay outta trouble.”

Me: (whooshing sound as I blast off into the Great Unknown)

I would jump on my metallic purple 10-speed and haul-ass from home as fast as my pedaling could take me.  Yes, I would make my way to Ken’s house for a few minutos, maybe even find some time to make out with his sister Julie (if no one saw us), but that was only the start of a typical teen-age Saturday morning.  The possibilities were endless, and my hard-earned allowance of $3 a week (handed over to me just before I left) guaranteed that I would not go hungry or thirsty, no matter what adventures came our way.

We might ride up to the top of Pee Hill and tempt injury or death by racing down the steep streets like imbeciles.  We might ride to the (outdoor old-skool) mall in West Covina to look for girls or ride The Broadway elevator up and down 14 times before getting kicked out by the ancient security guard.  We might ride up into La Habra Heights and careen down the steep and twisty tree-lined streets while the neighborhood dogs would race after us to try and bite our legs and tires.  We might ride to Workman High School to watch the cute cheerleaders bouncing and prancing around during field practice.  We might even ride the 35 miles all the way to Huntington Beach to hang out on the sand and eat hot dogs and just be stupid hormone-soaked teenage Cali boys.

We might wind up doing some or all of those things.  Or not.  The point is, once I left the house, I was GONE, baby... totally lost.  The only way Dad would know where I was and what I’d been up to was if I got hurt or in trouble.  Otherwise, he didn’t have a clue where I was, who I was with, or what I/we were doing.  There were phone booths all over town if I had to make a call for any reason, but I had no reason to call unless I was hurt or in trouble, see?  He trusted me enough to let me roam about unhindered, unsupervised, uncontrolled.  That’s how it was for a relatively-good 13-year-old boy in 1970 in La Puente, California.  I know it wasn’t the same for girls… or was it?

I WAS FREE.

No smart phone.  No mobile phone at all.  No tablet.  No pager.  No e-tracking.  No live feeds.  No GPS.  No electronic tethers of any kind to worry about.

I WAS FREE.

No closed-circuit cameras were mounted on buildings, ready to catch me doing brodies on the smooth concrete loading dock at Food Giant.  No motion sensors were activated when we climbed into dumpsters behind the liquor store, looking for ruined copies of PLAYBOY or STAG Magazines.  Active surveillance was limited to being seen and/or heard doing… whatever.

I WAS FREE.

I feel awful for 13-year-old kids in our modern climate change age, with their (not very) smart phones and Fecesbook updates and Twatter feeds and I(B)Ms and all the things that hold them in electronic hostage, whether they are conscious of their condition or not.  Yeah, they might think they have it all… all the electronic goodies and the interconnectivity we modern humans think we cannot live without.  But they are NOT FREE, now way no how.   They can NEVER be as free as I was in 1970, riding my bike (without a helmet) across town, hair flying and sweat streaming and skinny tires glued to the ground by gravity alone.

I’d been thinking about this issue for some time when I read a column in my local paper, written by a school teacher who answers questions posed by unbelievably dense parents.  Seems a Mother’s kindergarten-aged daughter was having trouble making friends at school or her pre-scheduled ‘play dates’ and Mom asked what should she do.  The teacher’s answer was surprising… she basically said that play dates usually don’t work out for kids, because it’s really about the parents being friends and getting together. 

 

As for the kid making friends in her neighborhood (which the Mom doesn’t allow), the teacher talked about her own Mom letting her leave the house ON HER OWN and walk up the street to make friends, something ‘play dates’ just don’t accommodate.  Kids that don’t learn to make friends unless there is direct adult supervision are just missing out, so Mom needs to take kid to the park and let her run wild, make her own friends and learn how to assimilate into her own age group… on her own. Skip the play dates, lessen the hovering and supervision and little Missy’s ability to make friends at school would probably improve dramatically.

I read the question and answer over a few times to make sure I understood what was being discussed, and that’s when I flashed back to my yoot.  Even as a little kid, I somehow managed to find other kids my own age, whether at school or in the ‘hood, to play with and fight with and get into trouble with, to the betterment of us all.  Even then, the only time the parents got involved was when we drew blood or needed stitches or to be fed so we could rumble again.

It all relates to my original concern about too much electronic connectivity, parental control, covert and overt supervision.  When you grow up with those things as part of your world, you never know what it means to be without them, and therefore never learn to operate without them or know what it means to be so unencumbered.  This meme is probably not unlike arguments made about landline phones or teevee or any other modern conveniences that changed our lives during the last 100 years, arguments made by olds to youngs, the same arguments that are met with a heavy sigh and rolling eyeballs.  I think the newest digital demons are much more sinister, far more mind-numbing and ADD-causing, and are creating people who never really know what it means to be free, the way I was at 13 years old.

As I've asserted before, I reject the ownership of a smart phone, and will do so unless and until it becomes mandatory for my work.  I make no excuses for this Luddite tendency, even though my current work phone allows me to text and take pictures.  I understand how smart phones have become ubiquitous, their presence almost natural in many people’s lives. However, I draw the line at owning one for a wide variety of reasons.  Example: my boss recently called me into his office and we had the following conversation:

Him: “Here, I have a new phone for you to replace your old one, it’s a smart phone I just got.”

Me:  “Thanks, but I don’t need a smart phone.”

Him: “Whaddaya mean, you don’t need a smart phone?  It’s new and lets you browse the web!”

Me:  “I have a philosophical issue with smart phones and choose not to have one. The phone I have lets me text when I need to and that’s enough for me.”

Him: (sounding slightly confused) “But… you can check your e-mail from your smart phone no matter where you’re at.”

Me:  “I can check my e-mail when I'm working at my desk.  If I’m out and about, that means I’m busy doing something else and my e-mail can wait until I get back to my desk.”

Him:  (with a look of confusion and incredulity on his face, pauses for a few beats) “Well… OK then.  Have it your way.”

I know he didn’t understand my point, but then again his Droid calls out to him all day long, pulling his eyes out of his head in an instant.  For him, not having a smart phone is just… DUMB.  Every time I mention my aversion to smart phones, I get the same reaction, with varying degrees of flabbergast and disbelief.  I’m used to it, but it gets annoying.  I know it’s a losing battle… even my personal phone carrier is dropping their 2G service soon, which will render my ancient Nokia obsolete, forcing me to get a newer, more connected device.  I’m not looking forward to it.

Back to that whole teenage freedom thingie.  It only went so far (as it should), and my 13-year-old self sure as hell knew it.  In the case of being gone on my bike all day, there was one hard and fast Dad rule:  I had BETTER be in the front yard by the time the street lights came on or it was the belt for me, no questions asked, no excuses.  And he whipped HARD.  That was all the motivation I needed to keep me in line, the vision of him hanging on to my arm with one hand, his belt lashing at me with the other, both of us circling around in a weird dance of parental discipline.  Me no likey!

So here’s how it happened (more than once heh heh heh):  me and Ken are at Randy’s Burgers, eating fries and drinking choco shakes and trying to act all cool in front of some girls from another school.  Suddenly, I stopped cold… I realized it was getting dark and I was at least 2 miles from home. HOLY SHIT!!!  I dropped my food and jumped on my bike and blasted off for home, riding like a deranged rabid wolverine through the quickly-darkening neighborhoods, pedaling my ass off.  Somewhere about halfway home, my skinny front tire caught one of the recessed gutters at an intersection and I went down HARD, rolling into the curb and scrubbing flesh off my hands and arms. 

Without missing a beat, I jumped back on my bike and careened around corners, narrowly missing cars and curbs and pedestrians, riding like mad to get home please please PLEASE let me get home in time!!!!!  Rounding the curve near my home, I almost go down again, somehow managing to stay upright, slicing onto the sidewalk and crashing onto the grass in front of my house.  I jump up and see the street lights flickering on, then spin around to see Dad, standing in the front doorway, a stoic look on his face, saying nothing.  Her didn’t need to.  He slowly turns around and goes into the house, closing the door behind him.

I made it, but just barely.

I don’t begrudge the use of smart phones per se, but I do worry about the subliminal effects the electronic leash will have on the young’uns.  I am totally OK with how this technology has asserted itself into our daily lives, as all modern conveniences tend to do.  However, I can choose which of these tools to use, which ones to avoid, and which ones to rail against with vigor and contempt.  You know, just like Abe Simpson yelling at clouds… it will have the same impact.

For the time being, I’ll just keep using whatever mobile device(s) that allow me to have the least amount of connectivity possible and avoid the inevitable encroachment of streaming mega-data into my conscious sphere.  And I will continue to value that time in my life when I was pedaling around La Puente on a Saturday with my friend Ken, untethered, completely unattached from any web of any kind, thinking only of being on my own and away from home, eating fries and dodging cars, making out with Julie and getting totally and completely lost.

Epilogue: 

 

Ken was one of my best friends all through Junior and High School, and we spent lots of idle days cruising around town on our 10-speeds.  He was the first among my circle of friends that got his driver’s license and a car in 1972, and we managed to get into all sorts of bitchin’ situations in that faded blue beast.  I had sporadic contact with him after we left high school, and the last time I saw him was in 1990 when he stopped in to visit The Artist and me at our home in Long Beach.  I always wanted to reconnect with him again, but I found out just last year that both he and his sister had died under sad and unfortunate circumstances.

I was really depressed when I realized I could not and would not ever see him again, but that depression has passed and now I will always have him in my head and my heart. Sometimes I can almost hear him, calling my name and softly knocking on my bedroom window at 4AM on Saturday morning, ready to begin our 3-hour ride to the beach, climbing through La Habra Heights in the cool dark, careening down the other side and pedaling all the way down Beach Boulevard until we reached the sand and the ocean and the sweet escape it offered.

Thanks, Ken… we did it on the good foot, unconnected, lost in La Puente.

Lead image, gracias de flickr.com; Jimi Hendrix 'Freedom' and Bread 'Mother Freedom' videos, muchismas gracias de youtube.com; R.I.P. Ken & Julie Wallis.