Sometimes you just have to say

This day I just have to say that I that my mood is more than reflective. I blog on even though I haven't made a connection with anyone. So more and more this becomes my journal. I used to try and write for ten minutes without stopping to think what would come out. I'd compose pieces of poems and parts of deep thoughts. I'd comment about books and music. Like today I should say something about the tremendous new music I bought. But first I should say how it all began. I was checking my email and found an offer from a promotion firm to win an apple Ibook. So what I thought, and entered the survey which turned out to be a series of questions leading to a set of offers for selling me everything from credit cards to cds. So I joined a music service www.bmgmusicservice.com offering me 10 free cds if I'd sign up to buy one. Now I'm sitting here listening to a mix that includes Dido's Life for rent, www.futureforests.com/dido, Keb Mo's self titled Keb Mo, and Kindred Spirits, a tribute to the songs of Johnny Cash.

Barack Obama

It is with an interested heart that I try to sort out my thoughts about what is happening today in the Democratic Party national committee meeting. Howard Dean is the computer generation's fave, and Arianna Huffington at http://www.ariannaonline.com/columns/column.php?id=748 sure has a valid point when she says it is time to get out of the middle of the road. But my favorite candidate right from the start is Barack Obama, the only black senator in the 2005 congress. Even though the usual bullshit applies in that he is young. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/3936013.stm. I listened with amazement to his speech at the Democratic convention, and I knew in my heart right then that this was the one for whom we should be voting.

This ain't nothing . . .

Today was one of those days when the weather seemed to fit the news so I wasn't surprised when I opened up www.latimes.com/California to find a new list of war casualties, 35 in all. But I am surprised at how few people appear to agree with columnist Michael Kinsley on the reasons why there is so little response to the ongoing loss of lives. See www.latimes.com/opinion, Nov. 21,2004. Or maybe they agree but just don't care? So where is the anti-war movement and why is the daily carnage so obviously ignored? See http://antiwar.com I quess.

A thought ...

Some people see cause and effect, I see cause and reflect . . . Down the road from my house is a beautiful blue ocean. Several of my surfer friends sport ear aches, respiratory illnesses, and constant skin irritations. As of 11/2004, 5000 new homes have been added to the sewer system. And the city of San Diego almost finds itself with a write-in mayor. Hmmm?

No More War

Yellow ribbons gather on the trees and,
Yellow ribbons garnish their sleeves,
As citizen's blood becomes the red we spill in war,
And colors are what dead eyes can see no more.

So yellow ribbons wrap the trees,
While bombs blast the sand to its knees,
And countries begin to sew,
Yellow ribbons to the body bags,
Let yellow ribbons become refugee rags,
And remember that dead yellow eyes cannot see their own toe tags.
@ RH Bee 4/19/03

Move On ???

I attended the www.moveon.org meeting last Sunday, and via teleconference, we hooked up apparently with over 1500 of the same type meetings being held all around the country (US of A). Two things struck me about our local group: I asked if any of the 20 or so people present were bloggers? Nope. And when we were discussing the possible issues for consideration, the silence was stunning, or should I say stunned was the response I perceived, when I asked what they thought about decriminalizing drugs. I was reminded of the play, The Persecution and Assassination of Jean Paul Marat as Performed by the Inmates at the Asylum at Charenton, wherein Marat describes why all revolutions ultimately fail, everyone wants to hold onto at least one thing. That's us in a nutshell. People are incredibly afraid of losing what they have. And if I were really good at probing into things psychological I probably could discover of what it is that we are really afraid. Coulf it be the fear that we will be discovered cowering in the shadow of ourselves that was left from 9/11? Or is it the fear that we are going to lose the wonderful sense of gluttonous satisfaction we derive from simply being better than everyone else? Or maybe it's the fear that in order to make the world better we will have to do more that share?

Well, whatever it is, it can't be more ironic than the situation that christians are in as they condemn science while welcoming DNA profiling.

Real Mustard

So the real mustard is that no matter how hard you try to do everything right you can still screw it up and then many years later with a lot of money and luck it can all come together and in four sweet games the World Series is yours.

Sunday, and I just finished reading Deadwood by Peter Dexter. It's the novel that the HBO show is based upon. I like the way the characters have been changed and yet left unchanged from novel to tv show. And it seems to me that Swearingen and Charley Uttter have commingled as have Trixie and Lurline and Al's wife. There is of course no China Doll but the Chinese are as separated as they always were in both. This story put me in mind of Welcome to Hardtimes by E. L. Doctorow.

Saturday and the rain which came in hard and fast like a grey hound on the run, is gone and I am left with clean air and sunshine and the depressing feeling that I've done everything I can to kick GW out and still I'm down about the stupidity of accomplishing this and still being stuck with the same old same old. Why couldn't the Democrats choose to confront the issues of the economy as reflected in the War on Drugs or in the use of our tax money to bring peace not fight war. And by that last, I mean put our money and effort into achieving something beyond chest thumping?

So here we are just seven or so weeks from the election and one can feel the fear. Change the only thing we can't. Things change, people change, and yet like the song says it's seems to be deja vu all over again. The question I hear most often though is what is the difference between Kerry and Bush? Well, how about Bush wages war, Kerry wages peace. And it's not that I think that that will make a difference to the opposing sides in this world, it just makes a difference to me. The opposing sides seems to be content to win their issue. Liberals get abortion rights, Conservatives get assault weapons. No matter that each case, no matter how many cases, is an individual matter. No matter that the collateral damages are real.

So here we are at mid-summer and life is racing along at its usual heated pace.  Every day comes more news that what we think is worthless compared to what the people in power seem able to ignore.  I do see and hear more people speaking up about their sense of frustration over the world situation, though.  And that does give me hope that change is still possible.  The question is what will this election change?

I wish for the sake of us all that we could trust that this whole deal over Kobe will turn out okay. Right now I don't have much confidence that the situation will do anything but just worsen, and we will end up stuck with the Gary Payton Lakers. Yuck, does that suck or what?

So on and on it goes. Reagan passes and I wonder what the folks will think. Will the old folks mourn, the hippies remember with scorn, and will the young wonder why all the ink over someone who was important before they were even born?

Today's LA Times (pg.A7) reports that the death of Pat Tillman was the result of "friendly fire" and that this information was/is available in an "unclassified executive summary". I have to believe that this is not NEW info but was available at the time of Tillman's death. Since this is true, I have to ask what kind of political game is being played and who is being served by this deception? His death was praised as the ultimate sacrifice, the ultimate American sacrifice (he gave up millions) and we, the American public, were allowed to participate in the orgy of public breast beating that ensued. How could this happen? How does it continue to happen that our prison warders, our politicians, our corporate leaders; everyone it sometimes seems; act as though they can continuously get away with lying about what they're doing? If media matters and has a responsibility, it has to be to accurately report the truth regardless of the political ramifications.

The more I work with computers the less I understand about them. I know that much of the programming is set up to be transparent but I can't see the value of being left in the dark when things don't appear in the right places.

I wish, I wish, I wonder why? The things we do, they make my insides cry. Vomitus that's another way I feel, sick sick of all this deal. Like Harlan Ellison, I have no mouth and I must scream. And what good are all the warnings, writings, fortellings; if we are still here right where we began?

Well, what can I say, the pages of the LA Times are loaded with the catastrophe that is Iraq. And the defenders of the American way are at bay, and all I can think about seriously is Fisher's 0.4 shot and the effort of the Laker team that I saw exhibited in the last four games. I know that I am avoiding reality in doing this but I find myself on some secret level really glad that I can do it. Because you and I know, that really things, are not okay. Things like the politics of the world, the business of the world aren't going to disappear or somehow change into a reality where what we actually should have learned from all of our so called human progress will bring us to a peaceful cessation of our constant wars with each other. I think I actually believe we should elect to be the real country that stands for peace and the progress of humankind. If we are going to sacrifice our young in war, why not instead put our selves on the line for peace. Put away our weapons. Live up to our own ban on weaponry of mass destruction by putting down our own first. In a word, prove what we mean by example.

Tis passing strange this new congfiguation but I guess we work with what we have and then go on. Today, my mind can't help to wonder about those prison guards in Iraq and how they could do what they did while knowing they were being photographed? What were they thinking, smiling at the camera while abusing someone with a leash, a club? Did they want their moment in the media? Did they need some verification that their behavior was all right? I have to think about this more?

This is passing strange. Yesterday I posted a blog and was informed that it had posted but now I look and it is not there.

Finally, after many, many months of wanting to add comments then not wanting to add comments (who needs the hassle anyway?), I've done it. Of course, this may only add to my frustration if no one sees, reads, wants to respond to my ongoing thoughts about this messy world in which we live.