Good Against Remotes

Greek Fire

2008-12-21T11:37:00.000-08:00

A little fixated this week.

http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2008/12/2008_greek_riots.html

I can’t stop going back to these images. They aren’t the greatest photos ever taken. Some are pretty damn good, but it is content over composition, connection over color that devastates me. I just keep going back. I keep shaking my head and finding myself at a loss for words. I scroll down to the mannequins on fire, or the yelling-man’s face, or the boy offering the flower to the cop, or the fist dripping blood, and I wonder how big a sin it is to sit on the couch and listen to the ticking of the clock.

When I first saw these pictures, my immediate impulse was to quit my job. I wanted to sell everything that I own except my camera and laptop and get over there now. Go to Greece. Be there. Experience it, and capture it. This is real life. This is one of those moments that defines history.

Because, in a way Greece’s history defined riot and rebellion.

Where else in ancient times were argument and dissent glorified rather than squelched? Who first applied democracy on a grand scale? Greece: where science and reason replaced religious authority as the foundation of knowledge. And even before that—before Percales and Socrates—Greece was the place where you go to war for ten years over one woman, where you are admired more for your craftiness than your virtue, where the gods were noted more for their faults than their feats, where Prometheus would rather push a boulder up a hill until the end of time than tell Zeus he was sorry.

Later a Macedonian named Alexander would take this attitude to the rest of the known world, and Rome would establish Greek culture as the West’s most foundational influence for the next 2000 years.

No, it wouldn’t be the first time Greece made history with a good fight.

Writers and historians love to trace social disturbances, be they riots, revolutions, or world wars, back to some single act of violence: a lone bullet, the spark that set off the powder keg. The Boston Massacre, catalyst of the American Revolution, started when a British Soldier struck a boy on the side of the head with his musket. World War One was triggered by a gunshot assassination. A single drunk driving arrest sparked the Watts riots. These are the shots heard round the world. Tiny butterfly wing things unmasking society’s towering jenga-like structure. When the right lynchpins are yanked, down she comes.

In Greece, December 6th’s lynchpin was 15-year-old Alexandros Grigoropoulos, shot dead by police officers in a ghetto-esque district of Athens. It has not been determined whether or not the killing was intentional. Defense attorneys claim that the officer fired warning shots, one of which ricocheted into the boy’s heart. Early forensics reports seemed to agree, but the latest analysis suggests that the bullet entered his body directly.

Murder or accident, the angry demonstrations began within minutes of the shooting, resulting in violent confrontations with police. By Sunday many of the demonstrations had turned to riots. Two weeks later the outbreak continues, resulting in dozens of protests throughout Greece, while demonstrations of solidarity spread across the continent from Spain to Moscow. And yet all this energy is not really about Alexandros Grigoropoulos. He was only the trigger to a chain of explosives set by high unemployment rates, a Greek economy in Catch-22, and the weakness of a corrupt government desperately clinging to power. It is a familiar feeling to hear people speak of the majority of Greece’s wealth in the hands of a tiny minority. Is this the economic fate of all democracy—hidden oligarchies?

I was not surprised to discover that Greece’s recent past has been shaped in part by student uprising. Post-WWII. Like so many other small nations Greece was caught up in the Cold War between the US and the USSR. In 1974 the US-backed Junta was overthrown, due in part to the aggressive protests of students. The rebellious student activity took place in the Polytechnic University in Athens, and though military tanks and soldiers eventually put down the rebellion, the students’ impact on the social consciousness dealt a crippling blow to the Junta. Since then protests and activism have been placed in a position of high political esteem. It is now conventional for the police to stay out of the Polytechnic campus, allowing students the luxury to plot their demonstrations, and to regroup and rearm. In short, protest is all part of the process in Greece. I don’t know about you, but this makes me a little jealous, living in a country that is supposed to be grounded in dissent, but too often reclines to disillusion.

For the record, I never grew up around riots of any kind. I didn’t go to the WTO protests in Seattle. I didn’t even make it to the tense arrival of the Hells Angels in Missoula, an event that brought out cops in riot gear, possibly for the first time in Montana history. I’ve never been beaten or tear gassed or arrested. So I have no experience, and I’m a little self-conscious writing about it, for fear that in my ignorance I will over-glorify something that doesn’t deserve the glory. But something about my American heritage has given me a permanent hard-on for revolutions, uprisings, and people coming together to get shit done. I know all about the tyranny of the masses and the irrationality of mob mentality. I know that most police are out there because they love their community and want to keep it safe. Both sides are doing what they feel is right, and if there’s any real enemy he is probably cowering behind locked gates. Like wars, riots and revolutions are often leverage mechanisms for a power-hungry few. But when an uprising is spontaneous (and it’s hard to know when it is), for good or ill, it is the realest of the real. If we could figure out how to extract the passion from the violence, we’d be better off. Until then I can’t help feeling that fighting back is always better than lying down and taking it.

For weeks the fires of Greece have merely simmered on the horizon of America’s consciousness. In the shadow of world economic tremors, the Mumbai attacks, and the first black President, maybe the flames of Athens aren’t very interesting. Or maybe nobody feels like wondering aloud whether these riots are a harbinger of things to come. We get occasional headlines, and images like these, but most of us have no idea what civil unrest is really all about. We’re a far cry from the protests of the 1960’s and the rebellions of the 1760’s. Wherever Greece ends up in the next few months may greatly impact what the rest of the world feels capable of. There is an awareness of the need for some sort of revolution, peaceful or otherwise. There is a general consensus that these economic problems are a result of a deficiency in the system, and that system needs a rapid overhaul. I’m not saying the consensus is entirely conscious, but when you have the President of the United States saying things like: “I’ve abandoned free-market principles to save the free-market system”, you can see how the cracks are starting to show.

I try to imagine what an uprising would look like in this country. Some days it feels like we’ve outgrown them; other days they feel a hair’s breadth away. I see hundreds of houses mashed together, apartments filled with humans and all their weird-ass stories and vibrating emotions. What social configuration might set the stage for the flinging open of these doors in the middle of the night? What lynchpin would pour strangers into the streets to release their pent up frustrations, to get out and burn, tear down, and destroy—to decide today is the day to do something about it.

Often the catalyst is an abuse of authority. The police bullying instead of protecting, a government corrupt and self-serving. When it goes on unchecked, what else do you expect to happen? Over the past couple months my own neighborhood has seen several incidents of police violence against homeless youth. In Golden Gate Park, a kid named Ashtray was sitting down playing guitar, perpetrating what he called “Random Acts of Music”, when cops started beating the shit out of him. What became of this abuse? A printed story, words passed around the streets, percolating emotions—but not enough to spark an uprising. Maybe our society is no longer configured to shudder and strike when our lynchpins are pulled.

I don’t know what’s needed. I won’t even pretend to have a clue. What I do know is that the pictures of the Greece riots have grabbed me by the balls. There is something going on over there that is lacking here. Maybe it’s just that passion and a willingness to take big risks for what we believe in. Maybe it really is a bit of broken glass and bloody fists. When the looming threats are as unwieldy as global economic collapse and climate change, perhaps it takes some old school anger to get things done.

The difference between riot and revolution lies mainly in the outcome. In a revolution the mob wins; but riots don’t have enough power to hold out against authority. Revolutions put down tyranny; riots are themselves eventually put down. Revolutions are an intoxicating shift in power; riots are more like a power hangover. But take a look at how many riots and rebellions broke out across the colonies before the “real” American Revolution started. Riots are unorganized outbursts of raw passion that can pave the way to real change, and that’s part of the beauty of this particular series of pictures. The riot itself may be ugly, but the passion can still be beautiful. The passion I see in these images is not just raw violence. It is desperate to make a place in which desperation is no longer the norm. And it is exploding out of the very rocks upon which the Western world was built. The roots revolt against the tree. Maybe all that passion will be squandered, maybe it’s counter productive and stupid and wrong, but at least it tells the world that something troubling is lurking in the shadows, and that there’s more that you can do about it than sitting on the couch and wishing things were different.

love is a Virus that

2008-12-20T00:55:00.000-08:00

by Jacques Fiennes the Cynic

Love is a virus that you spread by breaking up with people. There is no first cause, but you think you are in love. You get wrapped up and go down deep until you find out it wasn’t the same on the other side. Shell-shocked and stumbly you head for the door, looking for someone to make the pain go away. Looking for Mr. or Miss Methadone. When you find her you latch on for dear life because the shakes are uncontrollable. It doesn’t matter how strong a person you are, how independent, those first few days are hell even for the ruggedest individual.

But while you strap in for the treatment, he or she is so enticed by the combination of passion and pain and detachment that they feel free to fall for you. In turn. The shoe has changed foots.

Love is a virus that you spread by breaking up with people. The broken-up-with becomes a wild crawling thing, an addict. The dumpee is dumpsterdiving for hope, and once they’re on their own two feet again, once they can stand and see things clearly, they no longer need Mr. or Miss Methadone, now do they? In harsh or gentle fashion they turn and walk away leaving the former injection of affection to be the new addict in the sequence.

And on and on it goes.

Like any clever virus, this one latches on symbiotically, leaving traces of itself to flare up again. Once the drained is refueled, he or she is ready again to take the strain from the next dazed and stumbling charmer.

It’s in the eyes, the shiny diamond glow of the sickly betrayed. Seductive, sensual, brimming with new loss. Fresh magnets, newly dissected with plenty of free floating electrons screaming out in radiant photon desire. These are the symptoms of the fresh addict, the ready-to-infect, and having tasted it once, our skin crawls like a bungling blindman until we can get it again.

Love is a virus, but it also has a built-in backup plan. At some point, a baby or two might emerge from all of this back and forth. Because love realizes that people grow old and dry up and stop caring so much—that they become, in a way, immune—babies are plan B to replenish Love’s stock of hosts.

How many babies are we responsible for? Think nine layers down the tree, from breaker-uper to ninth-generation break-up-ee. How many apples do you reckon bloomed along the way? How many offspring of exes and exes-of-exes (and so on) could trace a thread back to your latest bounce-back wind-em-up propagation of this love, this virus, that you spread by breaking up with people?

Maybe this is the key to a just economy. A computer traces all affairs of the heart, assigns values to connecting lines and layers of separation, weighs the fallout and the fact that some poor sods might need five or six Mr. or Miss Methadones to get by, and redistributes a fractional monthly fee for each fractional infant that everyone is fractionally responsible for. They say it takes a village to raise a child; I say it takes a village to make one. That the uberfertile, the unlucky and the stupid should shoulder all the blame seems unfair.

How many slices of baby do I have floating around out there? At least one that I can think of, but the line goes deep and the chain links long. Could be dozens. Hundreds.

Rhythm, Romance, and Jerks

2008-12-03T18:03:00.000-08:00

I believe I have figured out the secret to one of life's most impenetrable questions: Why do chicks dig Jerks?

After reading and discussing a whole slew of theories for this phenomenon, none of them left me wholly satisfied, particularly since the digging of jerks tends to be universal, at least through certain periods of every modern woman's life.

I boldly step into this arena, being an ignorant man, and welcome the dissent and abuse that is likely to follow.

Here's a related question: Why is music so entwined with love? This is a bountiful zone of speculation. Music resonates with biorhythms, with our psychological memory of sexual rhythms. Music links our rational minds to our intuitive selves in incomprehensible ways, and often concerns other subjects that do the same, primarily our passions. Specifically love.

And what is it about love that we love? Is it not this very sense of harmony between these rival aspects of our souls? Is not love a microcosm for the rhythms and season of all life? For it encapsulates so many of these rhythms within itself: sexuality, which is still tethered to an ancient seasonal swell; family, whose stages trace most great patterns and roles of social life; reciprocation, in its ultimate form, the giving and receiving of ourselves with others.

Music illuminates and focuses these elements within us; elements often too broad to encompass five minutes of thought, are stripped to their essence in music--that bittersweet pill of temporally experiencing the eternal (or close enough to eternal, in the recurring significance of these elements through human history).

Uh-huh, you say, so what exactly does all this flowery shit have to do with jerks? Obviously it is not that jerks are in tune with these romantic ideas. Well, probably not, but women generally are, and it is in the jerk that a woman is best able to experience these things--at least on the surface.

Whoa, whoa, whoa, Josh. Are you just talking about drama? The drama of being with a jerk? Kind of, but I think the real answer is far more subtle.

It all comes down to a theory I have about emotions in general. Anyone who has ever been a teenager probably remembers a time that they were depressed for no damned good reason. And love itself, sometimes, seems to strike for no damn good reason either. Usually the two (depression and love) are entwined, but my question is: are they entwined with each other like a pair of dancers, or are they entwined with some third element--like two planets orbiting the same sun?

To be depressed about nothing is a horrible experience. It may be the most horrible experience there is. The mind has nothing upon which to hang the depression, nothing to blame as its source, and therefore no direction to go about fixing it. But what if all depression were truly this way? What if every time you got depressed you were really depressed about nothing at all? What if depression were just something that happens to you because you are human. If it were merely an experience of the world that comes and goes with the tide of your brain chemistry?

But wait, we're often depressed about things and we know exactly what those things are. Do we really? Or has our rational brain merely trained itself to cope with these rhythms through reason? Maybe the rational brain is just a control freak who even wants to lord it over our emotive and intuitive side (yes, rational brain, don't deny it). Okay. Imagine yourself as a child, developing patterns of needs, and the denial or fulfillment of those needs. As you get older this behavior develops into a more sophisticated form of meeting needs--desires are born. Don't get these two terms confused. Desires are the ordering principle that regulates (and often disguises) our needs. Desire stacks on top of need in such a complex way that I'd have to hire a psychologist to describe it, but I think you all know what I mean. Through desire, needs eventually becomes psychological entities rather than biological ones. Needs spread out and becomes multifaceted, and eventually Desire comes in to represent, for example, maybe a sort of storing-up for future needs. It may do so wildly and neurotically, or it might do so in a fairly healthy fashion. "I need sex. I know I'm going to need sex in the future--wouldn't it be more efficient to have a long-term girlfriend?" But you'd kind of look like a chump if you said you NEEDED a girlfriend. This is an example of a desire generalizing a complex of needs over time.

And you guys thought I wasn't a romantic!

Anyway, the point is, most of our emotions express to us this complexity of needs through the conduit of desire. Desire is the pipeline from emotion to biological need, and further to the biological rhythm that those needs bear out. The rhythm that was once based on a physical craving has become a psychological craving, and a psychological rhythm. The rhythm may or may not connect with any particular circumstance. We could just have an emotion slap us in the face one day, out of the blue, like a stray memory. And because the emotion is a complexity of desires which are a complexity of needs, we might not be able to draw any rational connection between what we're feeling and what our self really has to have.

Buddhist's speak of the wheel of suffering. I'm going to steal this image for my own ends. Imagine a cycle of suffering that comes and goes in your life. Imagine it driving your emotions in a complex pattern. For simplicity's sake, let's pretend the wheel turns in a very simple way: every winter you will be depressed. Thus spake the Wheel of Suffering! So winter comes along and you start to get depressed, fine, and being no longer a teenager, you start to wonder why you're depressed and you start to look for the cause. (I imagine this first phase happening at a very subconscious level, but again, for simplicity, we'll pretend this is all going on in your inner monologue). So you say, what could be the matter, and most likely something in your life is not going as planned. Well maybe that's it! And you assign that problem to your depression. You do this because you are no longer as in touch with your unconscious as you were when you were younger, and your brain, that has developed its tidy system of wants and needs, requires--no, demands!--some source for the depression, in order that it can run that source through its desire-satiating system, and do (or believe that it is doing) something about it.

This theory may or may not have any validity. I've often thought about it mostly for fun, but the tendrils certainly grab onto obvious truths. Rhythms are important and are a part of our emotions. They are psychological requirements, and even if they are not the all-powerful source of our emotions, they are at the very least strong influences, and deeply entwined.

Just like this apparently wild digression is deeply entwined with our topic: the jerk.

Imagine a woman in love. This is a tremendous place for her to be in. This is the crystallized expression of all of her emotional needs and how she intends to deal with them.

BUT! Ahhh... something is amiss. Relationship expresses our conjoined rhythms just as feelings express those rhythms (and by "express" I mean a form of inner communication, say, from subconscious to conscious--"feel that? yeah, that's hunger. eat something.") Similarly, the relationship rhythm, extending from the individual biorhythms, might indicate that something is wrong with the relationship.

Or it might just indicate that life is a series of epicycles, of swells and release, of motions and emotions. But what is the rational brain to do with all that?

What if you're dating an absolute prince? What if he is fulfilling all your needs with the utmost loyalty? Sounds good on paper, right? But most women will admit a certain anxiety arising from this situation. Suppose that anxiety is nothing more than the conflict between experiencing an ebb in relationship, and having no rational explanation. Nothing to DO about it! "I feel lonely, but he's right here attending to my needs. The fucker!"

The loneliness comes with the tide, as does feelings of inadequacy, fear, anger, and countless others that we still don't really have names for.

But with the nice guy there is no tangible way to confront it. With the jerk? Ahhh... now there's another story.

The jerk undoubtedly will have any number of recent neglectful behaviors that the rational mind can assign to the emotion. And whether or not they are connected is not the point. What matters is that they are there to be confronted. "I feel like hell. Why? I don't know, but he stood me up the other night, so maybe that's part of it."

Don't get me wrong, I'm not slamming women. This is just as much a guy-thing, and anyway, I'm exaggerating a point. In fact, I'm convinced that women are generally the only ones who eventually figure this shit out and come up with more creative ways to deal with it. Which is why the older women get (hopefully) the more they start to stray from the jerk-attraction.

In the meantime, you have your emotion, and you have your jerk, and now you have the recipe for living out the great... yes, here comes the word... the great drama of life's rhythms. You can express your frustration, and you can do it in a way he understands. You did this to me, you fucker. And if he's a crafty jerk, he will finally relent and apologize, and the cycle of reconciliation will be complete.

This cycle is expressive of who we are. I'm not dogging on it. It is a powerful and pervasive force. The "nice guy" leaves no room for reconciliation. He allows no rift and so there is none to repair. There is no great movement of emotions (which, recall, are an expression of our deepest rhythms), in which the woman and her man can participate. And without that, what's the point?

(Is life not really, as Shakespeare said, a great play? And whether we drive or are driven by these little psychic cogs and wheels through the movements of time--of course what we really want is our counterpart to play their part.)

Am I saying guys should be jerks? Not really. I guess if I were to give advice I'd just saying be your damn self. There's a little jerk in there somewhere, I guarantee it. But dating a super-jerk for a long time is probably a little psychotic, and way on the other extreme. For all of this to work, the subject must be a normal jerk-faced jerk. He must be able eventually to come around and do this dance with the girl. If he doesn't, he'll be just as unfulfilling as the purely nice-guy. Women don't want "jerks" per-say, but they want the expression of the natural rhythms, the ups and downs that are life. And they want someone to share those rhythms with, to participate in the conflict-resolution experience.

Or maybe it's just that women have to be right all the time, and the jerk offers them the best opportunity to do so. *ducks*

Prop 8 is Gay

2008-11-06T10:22:00.001-08:00

But I'm not. Let's get one thing straight: me. Straight as an arrow. So straight it's probably un-cool. I'm not even a twinge bi. There are some pretty men out there, but I won't be sleeping with any of them. So believe me when I say that I have no personal stake in this battle…other than a love for freedom, reason, justice, and maturity.

I'm not an avid blogger. Most issues have two strong sides to them, and I'm usually more interested in the dynamics of these sides than in who is right and wrong. Probably not the most exciting way to blog for the masses. But I heard something on the radio this morning that set me off. I have long felt that the issue of gay marriage is the SINGLE political issue out there to which the opposition has no valid, rational, or convincing argument whatsoever. Not one. I will conceded strong opposing arguments in almost every topic that I care about: foreign wars, abortion-rights, evolution, the electoral college, whether Mr. T could win in a fight against Underdog; but gay marriage? Nothing. Not one single reasoned or informed argument. Not even close. The whole thing is a sham.

Before I get into that, just what did I hear on the radio? What set me off? It wasn't that Prop 8 passed in California. Nope. In fact, I've always been a strong supporter of popular elections overturning supreme court decisions. I think it makes for respectable democracy. Yes, I think Prop 8 is stupid, and we need to fight against it starting right now, but you know, at least we can say that in some sense, the people have spoken. We should respect that; and prepare for the counter attack.

But apparently SOME people… Ooooh, my cackles are prickling. Christ, I can feel the hairs on my neck stand up just thinking about it! SOME people are arguing that not only should California stop marrying same-sex couples; they should ANNUL the previous same-sex marriages made over the last several months.

Fuck. Off.

I'm not often rash to make moral judgments, but anyone who supports annulling an existing marriage is a cold-hearted, loveless, shriveled up old son-of-a-bitch, and needs to be punched in the face repeatedly until they cry.

Have you never been in love, you heartless slugs? Do you have no idea of the challenges and emotional nightmares that are involved in getting to a place where two people decide to commit their lives to each other? And you want to tear that away once it's done?

It turns out that a large chunk of the funding to support Prop 8 came from the Mormon church. From out of state! They are taking mind-your-own-business to a new level. If I thought there was any money to waste on giving these people a taste of their own medicine I'd say we throw a major campaign together to ban door-to-door proselytizing. Or at least force these missions to be between a man and a woman. It really makes me uncomfortable when two well-groomed, well-dressed men come to my house side-by-side to preach the revelation of Joseph smith. Mormons! Like they have any latitude in speaking up about "traditional" marriage.

Okay. Deep breath. Let's take a quick look at the so-called "arguments" against same-sex marriage, and see just how vapid they are. I'm collating the major arguments into three basic groups: Social, Natural, and Religious. There's no way I can cover all the details of every argument, and many people have done so far better than I could. Instead, I'm going to take a very broad approach in my comments, but if anyone wants to tussle with the details, bring it on.

Social. The most often spouted nonsense from opponents of same-sex marriage is that it shatters some traditional concept of marriage that binds society together. One of the wisest tenants of Confucianism traces a link from the successful governing of the state down to a grounded individual comportment of the mind in traditional virtues. If the mind is good (educated, liberated, reasoned), everything builds on that up through family to community to the state. Solid families are the bedrock of a nation. This is not a bad basis to begin with. A state cannot rule from the top-down. It's just logistically impossible. So, conservatives, you have my support in wanting to prop up solid families. But let's take a look at society. Skyrocketing divorce rates, child abuse, incest, poverty, and homelessness abound, and you think same-sex marriage is our biggest threat to family? How about putting our energy into dealing with child abuse? How about spending our money on reforming our absurd education system. Yeah, families are being ripped apart, but not by homosexuals. One clever blogger put it this way: "Threaten marriage? By allowing people to marry?"

Natural. So they say homosexuality "just ain't natural". As with most of these topics, the internet abounds with finely-crafted responses to this. I won't repeat. Instead, I want use this moment to make a point. To all you straight folk out there like me, think about it. Think about the revulsion you feel to the idea of banging someone of the same sex. Now you run around and spout off that homosexuality is not natural, that it's a choice, not an impulse akin to our own heterosexual drives. Um. That means that ALL of these people have the exact same gut revulsion to this as you and I do. And yet, they still choose to be gay. Right. We're one step shy from alien-mind-control conspiracy to gay-ify the planet here. Nuff said.

Religious. We'll stick to Christianity here, because we're all good Americans. Let's start with the Old Testament, and this takes us back to our "tradition" argument. Traditional marriage in the OT consists of a host of crazy laws for marriage. Adulterers were to be killed. No inter-racial marriages allowed. Men could sell their daughters. If a man raped a woman she was bound to marry him. Widows were forced to marry their brothers-in-law. This sound like the "traditional" marriage conventions we should abide by? As for homosexuality, it was an abomination, and anyone caught practicing the act was to be killed. You people going to stand by that? Don't give me your religious arguments unless you're willing to go all the way. Nothing chaffs me more than a Christian claiming Biblical inerrancy and the UNCHANGABILITY of morals who won't stand by the laws that they profess to believe GOD instituted. (And by the way, Jesus himself opposed Lavitical law by stopping the men from stoning the adulterous woman. He was a revolutionary who understood the evolution of moral progress, and that the true spirituality transcends legal, cultural, and semantic boundaries.)

So what about Jesus? What does he say about marriage? Well he's pretty clear. Don't do it.

Whoa. What? Yeah, you heard me. Jesus said it was better for a man not to be married. Better… wait, what about marriage being the bedrock of society, the sacred institution of a religious community? Let's break out the quote in case you don't believe me. From Matthew 19:

"And I tell you this, a man who divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery--unless his wife has been unfaithful." Jesus' disciples then said to him, "Then it is better not to marry!" "Not everyone can accept this statement," Jesus said. "Only those whom God helps. Some are born as eunuchs, some have been made that way by others, and some choose not to marry for the sake of the Kingdom of Heaven. Let anyone who can, accept this statement."

Obviously Jesus is not forbidding marriage, but he says only to do it if you just can't help it. The apostle Paul repeats this sentiment in 1 Corinthians: "Are you free from a wife? Do not seek a wife. But if you marry, you do not sin, and if a virgin marries, she does not sin. Yet those who marry will experience distress in this life, and I would spare you that." Jesus also declares that there will be no marriage in heaven. "The men and women of this age marry, but the men and women who are worthy to rise from death and live in the age to come will neither marry or be given in marriage…" Does this sound like he's talking about a sacred institution? Is this some great eternal moral system of God? Seems to me Jesus and Paul both view marriage as a stumbling-block to spiritual life.

I've barely scratched the surface, but the fact is every argument is devastatingly weak. And if every argument is weak, then the question remains: why do all these people oppose same-sex marriage?

Here's the bottom line. The opposition simply despises homosexuality. They won't admit it. They cover up their feelings with absurd arguments. I'm pretty sick of these people retaining the moral high ground by saying, "We aren't against homosexuals. We think they are equals," while driving this hard campaign against their right to publically express the reality of their love on a level footing with the heterosexuals. They say, "Okay, we'll call it civil unions, but the word marriage is ours." Well I'm not buying that. You don't even get that word. Not until you can present me a clear argument demonstrating the stable, traditional, and meaningful definition of that word throughout civilization in a way that lines up with your beliefs on the matter. Your logic is flawed and your words are weak, and you are masking a psychological state with legal, moral, and religious milquetoast. The veil needs to be torn away. Let's call this what it really is: Hate. I'm not saying everyone opposed to same-sex marriage hates gay people, but I am saying they hate homosexuality. Period. There's no other explanation. If you think there is, I'd love to hear it.

The Free Dictionary defines hate as: "1. To feel hostility or animosity toward. To detest. 2. To feel dislike or distaste for."

So let's just admit it please. You hate the idea of homosexuality and you want to repress it in the best way you can without looking like a monstrous bigot. I have never seen this more prevalent than this morning, when I heard people are attempting to force courts to annul actual marriages. Get in touch with your true motivations, people. Own up. Admit that there is no "reason", only revulsion. Then maybe we can start moving forward.

For some wonderful articles hammering away at more specific "arguments", check out the following links:

http://www.jewcy.com/post/same_sex_marriage

http://grove.ufl.edu/~ggsa/gaymarriage.html

http://civilliberty.about.com/od/gendersexuality/tp/Arguments-Against-Gay-Marriage.htm

Pilgrimage to San Diego... Or, "Katie Manifests a Giant Hamburger"

2007-08-18T21:00:00.000-07:00

If you're wondering why Fiction Clemens isn't on the shelves yet (I keep hearing, "It was supposed to come out in July, right?")... or if you just want to know the madness that is the great 2007 Montucky ComiCon adventure, this post is for you.

Since this post is insanely long, Let me get the first question out of the way. I haven't been able to announce it publicly until now, but Fiction Clemens has changed publishers. I signed the contract at ComiCon, and my dear little cowboy is now on his way to a February release through SpaceDog Entertainment. So I apologize to those of you who bought characters and expected to see a final product last month... but just hang on a little longer :)

Now, onto the journey. The entire trip lasted exactly three weeks and a full moon cycle, which began as a sliver, hit the full at the end of the convention, and then waned as we wandered home. Summing up a three week adventure is a difficult task for a lazy bastard such as myself. Some parts that I should probably explain in detail will be glossed over, while other parts will drone on and on for all you care. If I'm lucky there will be one thing I get just right.

So it all began with ladypajama (Katie), Creature, and myself packing up the truck and camper and heading west. I'd left Lucy behind with my dad and Katie was leaving her new boyfriend. The first part of our trip consisted of a subliminal argument over who had the most right to be more sad.

As we slipped sneakily into Washington (I'd say at least 92% of the population had no idea we were even there), the conversation somehow wandered to "the Secret". I'm sure you've heard of this. It was Oprah's book of the month, it was a movie, it's been blah blah blah'ing all over the place for months. Apparently Katie can't go anywhere without someone bringing up "the Secret". The last time it came up was right before she left LA. Somehow she segued from that conversation into an affirmation that would later prove to manifest her boyfriend. Despite the overwhelming evidence of Katie's story, I still think "the Secret" is mostly the Ridiculous, so I offered this challenge right there on day one: "Manifest a giant hamburger," I said. "I'm talking life-size."

Without batting an eye, Katie said, "Done. By the end of this trip we will see an enormous hamburger."

Hoping for ground beef glories ahead, Katie and I pressed on. We reached Portland late in the evening, and the next day had a wonderful time with the Portlanders, whose ranks continue to grow. Um... I know we did something culturally interesting and devilishly unique there. Oh yeah, we drank lots of beer. Portland is just a Missoula for cool kids. Katie and I decided we are definitely not cool enough for Portland. But our friends are, and that's good enough for us. Also Portland has seventy-five thousand bridges. Last year I hated that. This year I love it.

Next morning we caught up with the Seattle crew. Joel, Craig, Freedom, and Oisin pulled up in Sven and dragged us to breakfast. From there we headed south to Crater Lake, which turned out to be a sunken mountain. As Katie said, "Screw you guys, I'm going to be a lake." The campground was absurd. Tightly packed little sites. People swarming about. A grocery store. Camping, my eye. Apparently there were bears in the campground and each site had a little locker to store food in. Oisin fell in love with our camper and demanded to sleep in the snail shell. Her dad relented, hanging off the edge of a table/bed/thing way too small for him. What that boy won't sacrifice for his kid...

After Crater Lake I have a vague memory of getting lost and how somehow this made us awesome. We hit California and made our way to the Coastal Highway. The plan was to take Highway 1 all the way to San Diego. Other than a few cheats here and there, we came pretty close to doing just that. Next stop: Redwoods. Please refer to last years post if you don't know the otherworldly glory that is Humbolt National Forest.

The next day Katie and Joel traded places. This turned out to be a disaster that I do not have sufficient journalistic integrity to report. But the drive with Joel was nice. We geeked out on audio-courses (Mostly lectures on Herodotus), and took several long stops by the ocean. We also stopped in Santa Cruz where I found a hundred dollar bill in a gas station. Being the unscrupulous sort, I snatched it up, but being the paranoid sort I gave it to Joel. Who wants that kind of cosmic responsibility? Besides, Joel deserved it. However, the universe decided to take the money back as if it had never been... such a display of quantum schenanigans, I have never seen. The above-mentioned disaster resulted in having to get an $88 dollar hotel. Joel handed over the hundred and did not get his change. Clearly the hotel clerk knew what was up, was in on the cosmic joke, and has by now slipped away into some other dimension.

Katie demanded to be returned to my vehicle for the final driving day. So after a wonderful breakfast at the hotel across the street, we were back on the road. Despite her penchant for car sickness, Katie was awesome enough to let us take the Coastal Highway through Big Sur. They say Big Sur is beautiful, but that's something of a misnomer. The first beautiful place we hit into Big Sur was not Big Sur at all... it was the Coast of Ireland. Somehow they'd transported a bit of the Irish coast over to California. Katie and I hopped a fence and headed across a field of yellow flowers to a gorgeous zigzag of cliffs overlooking several jutting pirate-cave rocks, sexified by the slow in-rolling fog. We spoke in Irish accents, picked flowers, and acquired several ticks (discovered later, dammit!!)

After Ireland we got into a big discussion about Jack Kerouac, the Beat Writers, and their impact on our lives. Those of you who know what I'm talking about should reminisc over this for a moment. The rest of you probably wouldn't care anyway.

Any geographer can tell you that if you drive down from the Irish coast a few miles you will come across the Spanish coast. It's only logical. The Spanish coast consisted of several highlights including Bird Poop Rock, the first tick discovery, several starfish, my near-death in the vicious ocean, the conquering of Pirate Cave Rock, the death of my favorite boots, and way too much exercise.

Okay, let's see... Big Sur, yada yada... we drove through LA and listened to Katie's favorite radio station, arrived in Oceanside and went to bed. The next day we strolled the final 40 miles into San Diego, where the first order of business was to pick up Joiton (design and pencils for Fiction Clemens) at the airport.

Now, the actual San Diego part of the trip is kind of a blur. Thanks to the organizational wizardry that is Joel, we were able to afford a luxurious 2 bedroom suite with full kitchen by packing 10 people into the place. Overall the stay was excellent and we managed to avoid any homicides. We also met Vero Gandini, the colorist for Issue 2, and her boyfriend Leo. As soon as they arrived the room was flooded with Spanish as they and Joiton tried to dizzy our brains with their crazy moon language. We hit the zoo, as well, which was touristy bliss.

Schmoozing and wheeling and dealing all went well at the Con. I signed my contract with SpaceDog and got comp copies of 24Seven, vol. 2, an Image anthology I was lucky enough to get a story into. I met lots of great creators and people in the biz. Freedom, Joiton, and I ended up hanging out with a former gameshow host from "The Weakest Link" for a while and had some sparkling conversation.

I found myself emotionally invested in the convention this year. It was more than business, and it broke my heart to leave. The people in Comics are amazing, wonderful, enthusiastic humans, and I can't wait to see you all again in New York!!!

The journey home was relaxed, but all were anxious to get back. A few highlights from the return trip: visiting my godfather and his family, my great uncle the magician in Burbank, photos with the Warner Watertower, dinner and touristing with Higham in San Francisco, Jenna in Oakland cooked us a delicious masterpiece, my old Publisher Jeremy took us to a crazy restaurant in SF called AsiaSF where Asian he/shes danced on the bar (the curious are encouraged to google a bit on that), good cozy talks with the Khans and my mom in Santa Cruz, a dead battery, the people's park in Berekely, and an AMAZING walkabout at a place called "the Albany Bulb". We also hit Portland again to see Theo's gallery, then Seattle briefly to carouse with a thousand freaks.

And now for the moment you've been waiting for. On our way to Pier 39 in San Francisco, Katie and I stumbled upon... you guessed it... a larger-than-life, enormously huge hamburger. Amen.

Curses!!!

2007-05-29T10:12:00.000-07:00

Listening to a monologue, overheard actually, where every other word was 'fuckin' or 'goddamn'... seemed almost musical if not a little ridiculous. Malice-free and habitual, curse words have taken the place of pauses. They fill the gaps in broken thoughts. The 'um' was transitional, and offensive to public speakers. fuck is offensive to old churchgoing ladies and people with small children. Back in the day was speech unbroken? Was it offensive to have gaping holes in a sentence with nothing to glue it all together? Maybe not behind closed doors, but in public! My god, who utters such lapses of synapse in public!! Heavens!!

dreamtime aborigine #44

2007-04-15T07:23:00.000-07:00

i took a little trip up a mountain road in my truck. except i wasn't in my truck, i was in a pull cart behind my truck. i had a mechanism that could ram down the gass pedal and i thought that was all i needed. halfway to bedlam i realized steering and breaks might be handy. somehow my brain invented a crude steering mechanism that allowed me to swerve wildly back and forth, slamming into parked cars and fences.

later, on the floor, i picked up an issue of Marvel Comics presents "Vs. vs. Vs." ... which turned out to be the issue where "Dracula vs. King Arthur" takes on "the Fantastic Four vs. the Mole Men" in a mighty struggle against the others' mighty struggles.

dreamtime aborigine #18

2007-03-20T07:36:00.000-07:00

and then she was texting me boyfriend problems. she kept referring to him as josh, and she was in love with him. "is it me?" i thought, "am I the boyfriend?". there are a lot of people named josh.

moments before, i'd been in a car, trying to get across Seattle to fine, cheap pizza. the offramp to the 405 was sheer like a waterfall, and we decided it was a bad idea.

Tid-bits

2007-03-04T20:46:00.000-08:00

I continue to experience the unidentifiable taste in my mouth... or is it an unidentifiable smell in my brain? It's old, whatever it is. That is, it goes back years, probably back to childhood. Something I tasted once, or a taste I had in my mouth once. Or a smell I had in my brain.

Tonight the street was blocked off by police cars, flashing lights, officers talking to their shoulders. A car was parked on the other side. Someone down on their knees. This is the classic arrest-pose, but as I found out later, no one arrests were made.

It happened by a church. A beautiful old brick church where we once ate pancakes with peanut butter at a Sunday brunch, and I bought my denim oven-mit. Honest to God. Who was kneeling in the street outside a church, surrounded by the police? Surrounded by the new soft magenta police lights. Pink lights. When did they move from red to pink? Who thought it would be good to soften up police lights?

Since living here we've had our share of the cops. If downtown was a sledding hill, our house would be right at the frosty base where the screams emanate walloping WOOOO-HOOOs! And the main drag deviates here, left to the University area, right to the old Strip. Four months ago a high-speed chase ended on our lawn. Civilian car at apex, driver's side door flung wide. An inside straight of cop cars fanned out from behind. I guess the driver wanted a foot chase. A few weeks later I heard a car slam into garbage cans in the alley out back. Doors pop! "Get out of the car!", followed in short order by cries of pain, distinctly "Ow!", which is something people really say even as adults. I used to think it was only in comic books, but then I came across a devastating car wreck where a guy had cut right into a light pole, driven it right into the passenger seat. The steering wheel was jamming into his gut and they had to saw him right out of his car. No screams, no groans, just shallow breath and a recurring "owwww", like a child whining for desert. After the "Ow!" in the alley, the officer shouted a rousing "You are under arrest!" I swear to God in the very intonation of the archetype Game Show Host.

Sound-bytes are nothing new, and it isn't only laziness that attracts us to them. Life is made up of sound-bytes, tid-bits, things overheard, taken out of context. No one has the full story.

After I saw the road was blocked off, I messaged a journalist I know, a girl I met just a few weeks ago as the result of an experiment in social-anxiety. I met her on-line. We decided to get together and have a drink. I hate meeting new people, but I forced myself to do it, and it was good. She's a really sweet girl, sincere, sensitive.

There's the taste again. It only lasts a few seconds. It's a little like the taste in the mouth you get after you've been sick for a while, but that's not it. This is distinctive. I've tasted it before, but I can't place it. It's possible that I couldn't place it the first time I tasted it. A recurring de ja vu of the taste buds. Would be ironic if it tasted like onion, but it doesn't... and if it did, it really wouldn't. Be ironic that is. You may as well not have even read the last two sentences. Or this one.

My journalist friend came down and got the story. Walked right into the fray and took a statement from the cops. Braver than I who circled the scene like a vulture, batting away paranoid thoughts of stray bullets, martial-law, and mistaken identity.

"An 82-year old woman was hit by a car," she told me, shaking. Actually the first thing she said was "I hate this! I hate this!"

I saw the car, flooded with light. The back door was open. Someone was still sitting in the back seat. I couldn't see if anyone was in the driver's seat, but someone was sitting in the back. What did they see? How had it gone down? Who hit the breaks? Who called the cops? The ambulance must have come before we even knew what was going on. Just the cops now to clean up, give their statement, and deal with this guy who wouldn't get out of the back seat of the car.

"There were chalk outlines," she said. "I should have gotten more pictures." She was shaking.

The first thing that comes into my head is my Grandfather, surely asleep by now in the old-folks home. He's been there three weeks. First time ever in a home. He has a severe Parkinson's that has twisted up his spine so that he can't walk. He falls a lot and his new wife can't take care of him on her own. So he's in a home. This man is a riot. I saw him wheel down the hallway last week grinning like a six year old and shoving his thumb up like he was looking for a ride. He recently walked out of the home and crawled on his hands and knees into someone's yard. He thought they were trying to poison him in the cafeteria. He wanted to escape. Who wouldn't want to escape from a place like that?

The way my Grandfather tells it the cops came and got him. The cops! 80-year old men wandering into yards. 82-year old ladies walking out into traffic. Did she do it on purpose? "They'll put me in a home soon. Fuck that, I'd rather get the soul slammed out of me from the front fender of an Oldsmobile." People are getting itchier for escape. My mom says take her out to the woods before putting her in a home. "Go for a walk with my gun," says my Dad. I'm inclined to agree. My Grandpa probably would be too, but when it comes down to it, we can't do it. We put them in homes. We look away, look for alternatives. Otherwise we'd end up in the back seat of a car, trembling.

"I'm still shaking," she says, and we're about to part ways. "Can I tell you something?" she asks... "I'm very attracted to you."

Tid-bits. Everything we say and hear is out of context. There's not enough room in our heads for the context. The threads that belong to the end of each word, that go back to undefinable tastes on the tongue.

An 82-year old woman just walked in front of a car. I'm thinking, "Did she do it on purpose? And if so, did she mean to do it right in front of her church? Give the angels an easy pick-up and delivery?"

My friend is thinking, "I'm very attracted to you, and worried about how you'll react if I say so."

I'm thinking, "I'm crazy about a girl who barely acknowledges my existence, and I live inside that shell of longing every day."

She's saying, "I have to tell you this or I'll burst." And I know the feeling. Is anyone ever attracted to someone who's attracted to them back?

This journalist friend of mine is very pretty. Really lovely eyes... my lord! Attractive, but not my type, and I can't bring myself to say that. The girl just put herself out on the wire, so I try to appreciate it and not ruin it, and yet she probably wants to know if I reciprocate. But I can't say anything.

I've been living a fantasy life in my head with a different girl who barely acknowledges my existence, and I know in my deepest core that this girl would make perfect sense as a partner in life. The girl who is very attracted to me, I know in my very core, would not. Suddenly the car chase juxtaposes over the chase of a boy for a girl or vice versa. Keystone romance. "You are under arrest!" I should say that to a girl some day, then tackle her.

I'm sick and overwhelmed with the bits and pieces that flash out of a normal day. So many have gotten lost already.

Somehow it seems unsatisfying to say that it is our disconnectedness which ultimately connects us... but if the only alternative is to say that nothing connects us at all, I'll take bad irony any day.

When I'm 82 years old I will feel exactly like I do right now. I will fell that THIS is the moment of my life. It does not reference anything but itself, and yet I experience it as a connected moment anyway. Like the taste. What the hell is going on? I couldn't trace it before and I can't trace it now. Maybe this taste will come into my mouth again, when I'm 82, and I'll think, "What is that taste? I know I've had it before... I've felt it... on the tip of my tongue. Can't place it," and distracted by thoughts I will step out in front of a car.

The girl I want, don't want me, the girl who want me, I don't want. That should be a nursery rhyme for infants.

Then there's the girl I am closest to these days, who I can talk to about anything, ANYTHING... and who clicks with me, laughs with me, cries with me... nothing there either. It's fucked. I only want the girl who barely acknowledges my existence. Are our souls carrot-and-stick machines, gnawing illusions in the dark straw corners of stray thoughts, disconnected ideas, tid-bits? I only want my future-self to wander out in the woods with a gun. But when my future-self becomes my real-self, he will probably have none of it. I feel no connection to who I was or who I will be. I'm severed even now, like an asshole who saw police lights out the corner of his eye and thought he was Kafka. Even this post should have ended paragraphs ago, but it's lingering on like a dying woman, like a bad news story, like an unrequited crush, like a church brunch, like a familiar taste in the mouth, like the back seat of a car you just can't get out of. God, you fucked your girlfriend in that car two days ago, and now the front fender has impacted with the hips of a frail ghost of a woman in the dark. Your hands are shaking and you don't know what she was doing in the street, why it had to be you and your car, what you're doing looking for stories in the shadows cast by magenta police lights, why I am confessing my feelings, trembling with paranoia, swallowing saliva, looking for an excuse to walk around the block.

If anything is true, it's that life lingers. It doesn't slam to a stop until someone steps out defiantly into the street. Please, make it stop. Here we go.

in the interest of posting something of interest...

2007-02-22T10:17:00.000-08:00

an older story... first published a few years ago at The Cafe Irreal. i'm fond enough to want to keep sharing it. also, it's short.

A long time ago I lived with a woman with whom I was madly in love. She had flat fingers and long white hair, and she coughed in the bathtub through the lungs of a lingering cold. We never spoke a single word to each other.

Instead of conversations we would make love. If she wanted to tell me about her day she would climb on top of me. If I needed to ask her to pass me the salt at dinner I would make love to her, and when we were done she would wink and hand me the pepper.

I always wondered what it would sound like for her to say my name. Would I even recognize the word?

In the early months of our relationship we made love as if we were planning an expedition to another planet. We figured let's at least plan it if we can't do it. Planning is the fun part anyway. The doing of the thing would only be a lot of peril and hard work and who needs that?

The old folks told me, You're wasting your time on this relationship. The two of you never even talk anymore.

We never talked to begin with, I told them.

Wasting your youth, they said. You're wasting your youth on pipe dreams and outer space and expeditions and silent romances.

But isn't that what youth is for--to be wasted?

My youth was like a spring storm in a monastery. It was making love with my clothes on in a field where those who have lost their faith come to be baptized into profanity. She was like a baptism of sleep, submerged in the dreams of the mute.

One morning I woke up after a good long three years with her. Three years with a woman I never spoke a word to. I was thirsty and she walked me to the door. She seemed to know what was coming even though I did not. I had only decided to go out for some orange juice.

She kissed my forehead and unlocked the locks and let me out. "Goodbye," she said.

Happy now, Brad?

2007-02-16T13:42:00.000-08:00

The idea of a writer starting his own blog seems like the most natural thing in the world. But to the dismay and repeated outcries of Brad (a.k.a "The" Brad, a.k.a "Kalimdor Wilson", a.k.a "Dave Smith Motors"), I have resisted the very idea of blogging for years now.

Part of my reason for this is that I am a fiction writer, and most blogs are arguably non-fiction. So branch out, you say... there must be something in the real world that you are passionate about, you say... Well, the fact is, I am a control freak. And fiction is a beautiful medium for a control freak. I make the rules. In fiction, stupid ideas (of which I have a surplus), are a benefit. They can be framed on a character, while reflecting brilliantly on the writer who framed them. It's fine with me if my characters have ridiculous opinions, or are morbidly wrong on issues. They can, and often should, make total fools of themselves. The question facing me now is, can I?

Am I comfortable enough to risk being absolutely wrong in public? As I mull over this question, one of my favorite writers, Soren Kierkegaard, keeps coming to my mind. He wrote in various persona's. Alter-egos, you could say. I imagine if I were to do anything non-fiction I would have to do something like that.

This is all a mater of comfort-zones. It is in fictionalization and outright LYING where my words really sparkle. Then again, I'm 31 years old. I finally have a grip on my fiction... maybe it's time to stretch my legs. Maybe it's time to wear a plain face somewhere.

Maybe.

The prospect still seems all too fucking boring. Who wants to read yet more self-conscious ramblings of yet another silly human in the thousand-full sea of blogg blogg blogg...

We'll see how it goes. Meanwhile, this post should keep Brad happy. For a few minutes anyway.