Fallout Friday - The Nuclear Edition

There are certain questions which keep finding their way into my thought patterns.
This is one that has circled around for a while.

Why is the U.S.A. seemingly in charge of policing nuclear weapons worldwide when it is the only country which has actually used nuclear weapons against other human beings?

As you ponder this question, I leave you with a very literal video for Ani DiFranco's "The Atom" made by a fan and posted to Youtube. Happy Friday! Enjoy.

Woman - Hear Her Roar? or Open The Door!

A strange thing happened in September of 1968. A protest against the miss America pageant literally eurupted into groups of women burning their bras (among other things).
This was one stop on the long bumpy road toward equality for women, which many argue is still going on to this day. A mere 4 years later in 1972 a young woman named Helen Reddy shot to the top of the billboard music charts with a song titled "I am Woman" as in I am woman hear me roar. The song became an anthem of solidarity for many women at the time.

I am by no means a historian or expert on the women's movement. Yes, I know these are only two instances, blips if you will in a long struggle towards equality for women. It's a struggle that has become convoluted to some extent in a post feminist world.

There are two questions I would like to pose and I will clarify shortly. Can women be treated equally to men? (and) Do all women really want to be?

I know there are some women who feel completely content and fulfilled baking cookies, ironing shirts and driving the children to soccer practice. If that is their choice, that is perfectly fine. There are still others who wish to grab the corporate world by the balls, fly into outer space, become professional body builders, or even run for president. Recently we saw the confirmation of Sonia Sotomayor as a justice for the US Supreme Court. She is only the third female justice to hold that honored position. Still it is progress.

So, the two questions I have posed were presented with a promise for clarification. Here goes. There is one thing I have never understood and that thing is this idea of chivalry. If women wish to be treated equally to men in society (as they should be), then why is it not offensive to them that men open doors for them, give them seats on the subway, let them walk out of the elevator first. It's the strangest thing to me. It makes no sense.

To me, seeing a man open a door for a woman comes with an implication of weakness. as though a woman is too feable to open the door for herself and needs a man to do it for her. My one exception to this thought is when it involves an older woman for example with a cane or a walker or a woman who is pushing a baby stroller and fighting with a door. That also goes for a man with a cane or walker or a man with a stroller. To me, yes opening the door for someone is a very sweet polite thing to do, but this whole idea of men specifically opening doors for women bothers me. Perhaps it doesn't bother women. I have not seen a woman once complain or see it in this way or at least expressed such feelings to me.

I have been given dirty looks by people on the subway because I sat in one open seat and there is a perfectly healthy able bodied woman standing there. It's as if I have slapped that woman. Why should that woman be more entitled to that seat? Why am I being rude when I am merely treating that woman the same way that I would treat a man? Should I treat her as weak and feable and give her the seat? I'd rather see her as strong. In these instances I find an inconsistency which to mean is in conflict with feminist principles.

So, should women have their cake and eat it too? Is it I am woman hear me roar? Is it, I am woman, open the door? Is it both?

Nov. 4th

Today I find myself in an odd state. I am tired beyond words.
Je suis trop fatigué pour les mots. I will start with a confession, something that I generally keep very quiet because it enrages some people and starts long drawn out conversations with no resolution, conversations for which I have distaste and which I have already had before.

Before this week, I have never voted.
I know it is my right, my civic duty, but honestly I have always felt and still to a great degree believe that the system is broken. If we didn't learn this in the 2000 election, then learning anything may be a hopeless cause. The electoral college is a system set up by rich white men who wanted a safeguard should the results of the election not meet their liking...regardless I've had this conversation before. I will not go into the details of my reasons for protesting a very non-democratic system for many years.

I am tired beyond words because I was restless on Monday night. I felt so tense. I stopped in the middle of the street in soho to call K. A homeless man standing 10 feet away began ranting in my direction about how white people are going to be exterminated from this planet like the disease that they are. I pretended I did not hear him, and walked away. I couldn't fall asleep that night. I think I fell asleep around midnight or 1am. I got up at 5:30 in the morning on Tuesday. Mind you, I am not a morning person. I seem to see everything in double vision until the clock strikes noon and two cups of coffee have churned away in my empty stomach threatening to bring a future self-induced problem with acid reflux. I'm sure there's a drug for that, a purple or blue or pink pill. There's a pill for everything.

You are probably wondering why I was up at 5:30 or maybe you're clever and know the answer. It's all the rage and all the buzz. Black is the new white. As a person who happens to be gay in a predominantly carribean neighborhood, I find that the word minority has a special meaning. It's all about where you are standing. Plop me on the upper east side and I'm an economic minority. Plop me in a sports bar and I'm a "social" minority. Plop me in any church and I'm a religious minorty. I am a card carrying member of a native tribe. I look white as a sheet but don't let it fool you. Plop me on an indian reservation and I am an ethnic minority even though I share bloodlines with the people. Plop me in a "whitebread" town and I have a supressed desire to put on war paint, do a rain dance, scalp my enemy...no I kid and scalping can be traced to Mexicans. It is not a tradition of native culture. Push anyone far enough though and you better hold onto your hair.

At 6 in the morning I found myself in a line of people that wrapped around the block. Beaming smiles were painted on their faces. There was a sense of excitement, an energy that was palpable and electric. Parents with children took pictures with cellphone cameras. Most of the crowd were caribean americans/african americans, speckles of white like myself, all of us knowing that we were voting for the first black president, a pretty big deal. Though, honestly I don't think of Obama as black. He's half white, raised by a white woman in Hawaii. Much of being black in america is cultural. It is a shared experience that goes back to africa, crowded unsanitary boats, whips, chains, songs ripped from the soul, marching, death, rebirth, collared greens, the art of intriquite hair braiding, and the beating of a distant drum that you can hear if you listen hard enough. people kept coming, the line kept growing and growing. after an hour I was still in line, now double in size, almost triple. As I got closer, I began to get more and more excited, my heart beating like a hammer against my chest.

There was a woman who voted right before me. She had to be 80. She had a man holding her up on one side and a cane on the other side. She was glowing, an old african american woman who was voting in an historic election.

When it came to my turn, I stood in front of a closed curtain. Apparently the curtains are supposed to open, but mine was broken. There were no instructions or anything. I looked at the woman who was a volunteer in the process and said.

"What do I do?"

A girl behind me laughed. The woman smiled and told me to pull the lever, vote and then pull the lever back the other way...not the most eloquent or detailed of instructions but enough to get me where I needed to go.

When I pulled that lever, I felt like I had pulled down on a slot machine that was spitting out gold. It was like an electoral orgasm. My whole body tingled with power and satisfaction...uh huh. god it felt so good. I voted for the skinny man with the floppy ears and ooh did it ever feel like big ol' slice of pecan pie with whipped creme and sprinkles. mmmmm hmmm.

That evening K and I were sipping wine from a cheap bottle that tasted a little better than cheap, watching the results. When they called the election for Obama, we both started chearing and clapping. We heard yelling, clapping chearing in other apartments, people in the halls yelling OBAMA! We grabbed egg shakers and our Obama sign and took to the streets. People flooded the sidewalks and the streets, holding signs, banners, wearing t-shirts and buttons...hooting hollaring. Screaming. Cars slowed down honking, people hanging out the side, people drumming, dancing, playing music out their windows. We went to the bar right around the corner and the bartender who is our neighbor began pouring shots and handing them to everyone. We all raised our glasses together, cheering.

I mistakenly called my family. They are a group of conservative christian McCain supporters. I sometimes forget the pervasiveness of lies in negative campaigning and how they can seep into people's heads. I cannot repeat some of what came out of the mouths of my family members most noteably my sister. It absolutely horrifies me. Racist things, idiotic, crazy things. between coming down from this great historic victory and grappling with the evil discriminatory propositions that were passed in California, Florida, Arizona and Arkansas, I have found myself in a place of one who has had a sugar rush, bouncing off the walls and now everything has crashed a bit.

Last night, I went to visit my friend Beverly. Last week I was supposed to help her set up her cellphone. When I arrived at her building she was in the lobby holding a towel covered in blood, blood gushing out of her mouth, choking on her own blood. I had her doorman get in touch with her son. I rode in an ambulance with her to St. Vincent's hospital, truly the waiting room to purgatory. They managed to stop her bleeding and cauterized a broken blood vessel in her nose. Her son arrived and it was odd to look at him. He looked so much like his father, Norman Mailer, a notable writer who died earlier this year. Beverly had been involved in a love affair with jazz musician Miles Davis, but left him for Norman, became his 2nd wife and gave him two sons. She was a model on the price is right many many years ago and has acted in multipe movies, plays and commercials. She is full of so many stories. There are tales of spain and Hemmingway and of a New York that isn't here anymore. She is a special woman with a touch of southern charm and a dash of crazy...two elements I have as well.

Beverly seemed to be on the mend but still recovering. I helped her put some numbers into her new cellphone and show her how it works. I rushed from Beverly's to Mr. Dennehy's for the Leonard Cohen tribute night. K was waiting there for me. On my way I got into a heated discussion with my mother over the election. She preached doom and gloom, the coming apocolypse, her misguided view that Obama is a socialist and things bordering on racist....actually not bordering...truly racist. I became disgusted, angry. I said something with proceeded by the word *Fucking* and hung up on my mother. Oh my god. I hung up on my mother. She called back. I didn't answer. She called back. I didn't answer. She left a voicemail.

I called her back to explain that I was upset and horrified by what was coming out of her mouth. She apologized. I suggested reinstating our moratoreum on political discussions. She said it was not necessary. I love my mother deeply, but I am still horrified at the inherent racism of my family.

As a child the dreaded "N word" was used in our house. I had to train my parents, to tell them that it was offensive and not acceptable to me. The word disappeared, but I guess it is hard for some people to shake their surroundings. I carry the mud of radical christain hate which has been smeared on me like some coat of paint that might make me right. I don't know if it will ever wash off.

My parents have come a long way. I know they love me, but they think I am misguided and living in sin. They don't speak it, but I know it is there. I said that I wanted to spend christmas with K.. Instead of inviting him my mother made up a lame excuse about how there is not enough room in their house, of course meaning that K and I would have to sleep in the same bed, a horrible sin in the eyes of god for them. A part of me wants to cut ties with my family at times. It goes in waves. They love me. I love them. That's good and all, but they do not fully accept me for who I am. At times, it makes me feel like they are ashamed of me or embarrased of me.

It has been 12 years since my parents found out that I am gay. I knew long before that. I made out with my first boy in the 3rd grade. It felt innocent and natural. I hadn't learned yet that to some people I was stepping down the slippery slope to a heathen lifestyle. I live in a country which claims to be free yet has the highest per capita population of people incarcerated of any industrialized nation, a place where I cannot marry the man I love and have equal protection under the law. This election was an amazing powerful thing. I do think that people want change and that there is a renewed sense of hope in a new direction, but this nation is by no means free or equal. Gay people are second class citizens who are tollerated. There are not seperate water fountains or seperate seats on the bus, but we are not equal. Until every man and woman in this country has equal rights. This nation is not free. There is not freedom for all in my america. I hope that is the next thing to change.

Bowing down to the greatness of Leonard Cohen

The day after the big election, next Wednesday, I will be performing as part of a night of tribute to the music of Leonard Cohen.
Come one, come all. It's a free show and if You don't know Leonard Cohen's music then you are missing some amazing poetry.

I will be reading from the novel Beautiful Losers and singing my version of Famous Blue Raincoat.

9 to 5

Something rather alarming happened over the weekend. For many this wouldn't seem alarming, but for me, well, it's a different story. We ran out of beans in the cupboard. I being a crazy stockpiler of canned goods and former grocery store employee, maintain my cupboard like a grocery shelf. As soon as I buy a can of beans, it goes behind the previous cans so that the oldest can is at the front and will be grabbed first. This is something we called "Rotating Shelves" in my previous life.

Being aware of shelf rotation when shopping, I pull cans off the shelf and buy the cans at the back knowing that they are the freshest. I do the same with milk and almost everything I buy, digging until I find the items with the latest expiration dates.
These neurotic behaviors most specifically the stockpiling have been brought into question in the past. With slightly raised eyebrow and subtle smiles, my boyfriend looks at me with that adoring look given only to one capable of coupling with someone as neurotic as my self.

We went to the corner store to put a bandaid on the situation and buy a few cans of beans only to discover that the beans were marked at 95 cents a can. I was shocked. 95 cents a can, really? I thought for sure someone dyslexic must have just started working at the grocery store, switching the 9 to a 5 and vice versa. Unfortunately, I was wrong. Upon visiting another store I discovered an outrageous bean price of $1.29 a can, I accepted the sad state of affairs with a tinge of regret. If only I had bought more cans of beans 6 months ago when they were 59 cents a can. It's amazing that the price of beans, a staple of my poor man's diet has doubled in less than a year.

I hate buying dried beans, but it looks like I will now be stockpiling dry beans in mason jars.

As a child, I remember being at my grandparent's house on their farm in Oklahoma. They had this walk-in pantry with enough food to survive for months without going to the store. Something about it always creaped me out because half the labels were faded and tinted a shade of green. The brands were some I had never heard of and I even think perhaps some of those cans had been placed in the cupboard during the 1st great depression. We find ourselves on the brink of a possible second great depression. My grandmother, having been forced to move to California during the dustbowl (see grapes of wrath aka her life story) has been preparing all her life for a second great depression. Knowing it was only a matter of time, she has been patiently building her reserves.

I live a world away in New York. I was born into the commercial excess of the 1980's and the proliferation of Public relations and marketing to the masses. I was part of the MTV generation but grew up in a town that didn't have MTV. I didn't even see MTV until it had morphed into the epicenter of reality television, a plague that has swallowed popular culture and vomitted out people like Paris Hilton, Clay Aiken, and a heard of forgettable ladder climbers clinging to their five to fifteen minutes of fame. Despite the distance in time, space and generation, like my grandmother I find myself stockpiling canned goods, building my reserves and preparing for some sort of tragedy. Sometimes I wonder if this makes my cynical, practical, crazy or all of the above. No matter what it means, instinctively, like a squirrel burying nuts, I forage through the isles of grocery stores looking for choice nuts to bury until some sort of winter brings hunger. It is impulse. It is instinct. It is what needs to be done. The urgency for which this task holds in my conciousness is ever growing. It is this urgency which scares me most.

David Letterman=Brilliant

John McCain was scheduled to appear on David Letterman's program, but canceled at the last minute to save the country from economic ruin. haha.
I have to say that I think David Letterman is brilliant.

T-Shirt of the Day

Brilliant. I think I may need to get one of these vulagar T's.

Flocks of Paper

snow covered balcony in brooklyn
Flocks of Paper
flipping through the air like birds
little burnt edges falling like broken wings
we closed all the windows and chainsmoked
pretending the smell was from our cigarettes

next day flags waving, so many flags
reminiscent of black and white images of Germany
off to war with a fishy smell in the air

Seven years of war
people disappearing in the night
people with brown skin whisked away for questioning
by men with white skin
never heard from again
torture
murder
lies, lies, lies
death of freedom
death of liberty
death of young men hoping only to pay for a college education
in a failing economy
failing foreign policy
failing war

prices growing
jobs disappearing
cities and flesh have burned
History repeats itself
what have we learned?

Bravo John McCain

I am not a big fan of John McCain, his policies or his party, but I have to give it to him. He is excellent in his role as colonel Tigh on Battlestar Galactica. It's also great to see that John McCain has been able to appreciate the experience that his costar Mary McDonnell has gained from playing Laura Roslin,leading the 12 colonies after the occupation of Caprica. Her years of experience playing a fictional president on a science fiction television show make her ready from day 1 to lead this country. She is the perfect pick for the VP slot.

I couldn't pull myself away from Battlestar Galatica on DVD last night to watch the Republican National Convention. John McCain and Mary McDonnell are just that good.

Meth=Death

In case you haven't heard, these two dashing young men were
arrested in connection to a possible assassination attempt on presumptive democratic nominee, Barack Obaama. Meth really does equal death, and if you can't handle looking this lovely, then I highly suggest you stear clear of it.

These dear readers are the poster children for the Rant's anti-drug campaign.

The Olympics in retrospect (from someone who didn't watch)

cartoon by Adam Zyglis for the Buffalo Daily News

Wrought with controversy, China was host to its first olympic games. I haven't written anything about this latest installment of the olympics mainly because I can honestly say that I've only watched maybe 30 minutes (if that) of olympic programming. There is something about the olympics that is steeped in nationalism in a way that I find a bit unsettling. Maybe it's because I am a child of the cold war, with memories of everything olympic being all about beating the Soviets in some symbolic pissing contest.

I have followed a few stories regarding China's preparations for the olympics, including relocating thousands of people from their homes to build facilities to house the olympics, removing dog and other "undesirable" items from restaurant menus, closing gay bars, covering up deaths, falsifying passports so underage olympians can compete in gymnastics, and of course replacing a young girl in the opening ceremony with a lipsyncing stand-in because the child was not cute enough.

Oh, congratulations Michael Phelps for winning everything and breaking every record, but why did they put you on the cover of sport's illustrated looking like you're wearing a halter top? You kind of look like you're about to belly dance at a Moroccan theme restaurant. I know those are medals. I get it, but couldn't they have been arranged in a way that looked less like the 7 year itch and more like the breakfast of champions?


Time to sound off.
Who should be the next crazy human rights violating communist country to host the olympics? Cuba?
Oh wait, we keep Cuba off limits so as to look like we don't torture people. That will never work.

Just a note: Yes, I know there are 4 days left until the closing ceremonies, but for me, those 30 minutes of random olympic viewing were all my pretty little head could take.

What's wrong with this picture?

What's wrong with this picture taken of our president at the olympic games in
China?

You've gotta be kidding. ugh.
George Bush never ceased to amaze and embarrass us as a nation.

Liberty and Justice For All?

As you hit the highway this holiday weekend and fill your tank with the most expensive gas that's ever been sold, take a moment to think about liberty and justice for all, an ideal on which this nation was formed.

The United States has per capita the most people in prisons of any country in the world. For every 100,000 people, 715 are incarcerated. It seems that a lot of people lose their freedom to keep this place "the land of the free."

We are slipping as a nation, not just economically. Democracy is a precious thing.
We've unfortunately been trampling it for some time.

Starbucks To Put 12,000 people out of work

Go to almost any city in the center of this country and you will find that its beating heart has been ripped out and replaced by a strip mall. Everywhere you go, you see the same chain restaurants, wal-marts, Best Buys. Our country is wrapped in chains.

I think that large corporate entities like these are inherently evil. Their focus is purely on profit and lacks a real connection to the community whose money they gladly suck out of their pockets. The small acts of "community involvement" in which they participate are calculated acts of public relations.

This is part of what I loved about New York City when I moved here a decade ago. Every neighborhood had its own flavor and it was not a strip mall like the rest of this country. Over the last ten years I have seen the monster that sucked the life and individuality out of every other city, wrap its clammy hands around the neck of my beloved New York with a stranglehold that brought forth a starbucks and a gap on every corner. Yes, I exhagerate, but not too profusely.

Today it was announced that Starbucks would be shuttering 600 retail locations and throwing 12,000 employees out onto their asses.

This is where the problem lies with large corporate beasts like starbucks. They come into an area and put all the mom and pop places out of business. These are businesses that are a part of the community and would struggle through hard times to stay afloat. Starbucks however looks at a larger picture of profitability on a national scale devoid of caring on a community level. They will gladly close 600 locations that are underperforming, leaving vacant those spaces to maintain their profit margins.

They essentially leave the community with a gutted building that used to be a starbucks and an empty boarded up "tea and bean" or whatever the coffee house was called that preceeded them.

The bloated underbelly of capitalism is showing itself more and more these days.

I urge you to support small american owned businesses. They are the lifeblood of this country. They are the real american dream. If we all work together and quit feeding the beast of corporate america, we might just be able to take back our country. We might just be able to destroy the structure that feeds Washington lobbyists. These are idealistic thoughts, I know.

There is one thing I have come to learn. This place runs on money. The way you choose to spend your money may have more of an impact than pulling a lever in a voting booth.

On that note, Your recommended listening for today is Dar Williams' Play the Greed, lyrics below

Play The Greed

I finally learned that the market's righteous holler
Comes from a pale face on a paper dollar
And I betcha got few bucks in your hemp wallet
So throw a tiny wrench in the fiber optic wires
Morals are cheap and you can be the buyers
We can let 'em poison and perish foreign lands
Or we can play the greed right into our hands

Oh, woah - oh, woah
Everybody says it can't happen here
Everybody says it can't happen here
Things'll turn around just as sure as they said it
Hell, things change and they all take credit

So ask why there's only forty songs on a station
And ask your cafe about their coffee's plantation
And why is it Arizona hasn't gone solar?
And tell your print shop that hemp grows faster
And it doesn't mean a back room clear cut disaster
The market doesn't care but it wants to understand
And you can play the greed right into your hands

Oh, woah - oh, woah
Smiling man says it can't happen here
Channel 4 says it can't happen here
Things'll turn around just as sure as they said it
Hell, the change comes and they all take credit

So roll up your pennies and do your battle
The chairman will start quoting Chief Seattle and
Put little tree frogs on their letterhead
'Cause the market resists and the market absorbs
With a five-pointed leaf on the cover of Forbes
The very same people turned valleys to dams
These are the ones that drain prairies to sand
And they'd just as soon you didn't know this land is your land
But we can play the world back into our hands

Oh, woah - oh, woah
Malcom's gonna say it can't happen here
Rupert's gonna say it can't happen here
Things'll turn around just as sure as they said it
Hell, things change and they'll always take the credit

Oh, woah - oh, woah
Oh, woah - oh, woah
Oh, woah - oh, woah

Hell the change comes
Let's let 'em take the credit

Be Prepared!

I have been saying for almost two years that the United States is heading into a
2nd great depression. We live in what I call a false economy or a credit economy.
It's simple. We spend more than we make. We are a country of consumers, not producers.
We have been financing a war that we didn't have money to fund in the first place.
We've been borrowing that money mostly from China.
People have heard me say this and looked at me like I am off my nutter. If you remove the facade, I believe that we have been in recession for the last 5 years, an invisible downward slope.

I stockpile canned goods and large bags of rice, the kind of behavior that crazy people on compounds in Idaho do.
K used to laugh at me for this and then this year what I have been seeing is finally starting to rip through the facade of the false economy. Costco started limiting the number of bags of rice that people could buy at one time. People began losing their homes at alarming rates. The layoffs have begun. If that isn't scary. I don't know what is.

It's not comforting to know that what I have been seeing is probably true, however it is comforting to know that I am not the only one who sees it.

Capitalism is folding in on itself

Sometimes I wonder if every generation has felt like the world was ending.
Apocalypse seems to go in cycles, but when will it stick? When will this planet
get fed up enough with human beings that it will unleash enough incurable diseases,
earthquakes, mudslides, wildfires, cyclones, floods and reality tv shows to drill into the skulls of humanity
that we have royally fucked this place up and Mamma earth aint happy about it.

Regardless of whether you imbue the planet with a personified emotional state, ready to shake off humans like flees or see this place as a godless rock in a meaningless void, you must surely have noticed that the small corner we've cut for ourselves isn't doing so hot. Blame Bush. Why not? He seems like a good scapegoat. I'm all game for digging in the toolshed to find granddad's old torch, stop by the hardware store for some tar and eagerly pluck the feathers out of my luxurious bed bath and beyond comforter. Really though, as much as king George II has done to flush the economy, world relations and human rights down the drain, I think one would be hasty to paste a stamp of blame on his empty cavernous head.

I blame capitalism. The very thing which has made this nation such a world power is the very thing that is causing it to implode. Ok, so capitalism is great in theory, but it's structure has no checks and balances to help control greed. Everyone wants a piece of the pie, but once they've had one slice, they want another. Before you know it they have the whole pie. Why find satisfaction in one pie when you can have the whole pie shop? Why not two pie shops, the pie factory, all the cherry trees, flour mills and every pie tin. Now that they've got all that and the millions, make that billions it brings, they're still not satisfied. They have to buy out all the competition and desimate the towns where they had built factories. God, this money is like a drug. How can they make more money. Fire all the local workers and ship the factories to china or india. Yes, they don't have to pay them very much and they can have more money, piles of it.

I think of this as trickle up economics. So the people who worked at the pie shop and the pie factory aren't doing so well. They start putting expenses on credit cards because they can't afford to live in a nation with so little pie. The banks that loaned that money aren't doing so well, so they have to borrow from the government. The government isn't doing so well, so it has to borrow from china. Well, china's got all the factory money coming in from all the pie manufacturing, so they don't mind making the most powerful nation in the world their bitch. It, afterall is part of their plan for world domination. Stupid Americans, so arrogant.

While this is going on most people are so fascinated with buying crap they don't need because it takes their minds off the fact that the carpet is being pulled out from under them in their foreclosed homes. Btw, that crap they don't need was made in china by people who took away their jobs.

I found it fascinating to watch elaborate arrangements of dominoes stacked and stretched for miles. All that work and then one little flick and you watch this chain of events that is quite breathtaking.

Adam Zyglis+HuffPo

Oh Adam Zyglis,

How I love your political cartoons.

Check out more of Adam Zyglis' work at Adamzyglis.com


And while we're on the subject of politics. Check out this article from the Huffington Post. It's all about...
Dirty Politics
This disgusts me.

Did you see the debate?

Hey, nice top

I was mindlessly wandering through the local Brooklyn Target looking to buy things I didn't need. We all have to do our part to plug the holes in this rotten boat that is the US economy. Unfortunately everything you buy is made in china, so stimulating the US economy is a bit trickier these days. You have to seek out lesbians by the side of the road with signs that say "will macrame for food" selling organic fruit and hemp bracelets made at their weekly knitting circle.

Just an FYI...If you need a guitar case to toss your $600 IRS check into, I have one. Just let me know the street corner where I should stand on to serenade you. I'll even wear my jeans with holes in them and something that looks slightly hipsterish. Art is cool. Suffering for art is soooo cool.

I've decided I need to buy a sewing machine. Apparently watching too many episodes of project runway makes me think that I might have that special undiscovered talent to turn left over cheetos bags into one-of-a-kind couture creations.
No. I'm serious. I have sewing fever people. I made a skirt out of an old pair of jeans once, using a dinosaur of a singer sewing machine from the 1950's.

Now I find myself reading sewing blogs from crazy old women complaining about bobbins and tension and things that matter most when your body hasn't been touched in a desirous way for years. These are the people who are eaten alive by their 20 cats, lying motionless next to a half opened can of fancy feast. I trust their opinions beyond the shadow of a doubt.

I like the concept of vintage sewing patterns, but I noticed an odd recurring theme. The men's patterns are really gay. I showed one to K and he said it reminded him of a Tom of Finland print. This brings about very chicken or egg questions.

Was it the sewing pattern that made him gay or was it the gay that made the sewing pattern?

Discuss.

Political Fear

I have never felt that the US political system was really designed for common people to have a say in elections, but rather was designed to give them the illusion of having a voice. Let's face it. We operate under a system designed by rich white men who wanted to protect their own self interest. Otherwise, we wouldn't have something called the Electoral College. There wouldn't be (it's a bird. It's a plane. It's...) superdelegates.

Is our country great in many ways? No doubt.

Is it better than many countries in terms of freedom and liberty? Of course, though I would say that it has slipped a bit since 2000. The patriot act, the botched Bush Gore Election, the war in Iraq over Weapons of Mass Destruction that never existed in the first place, unconstitutional searches, federally sanctioned warrantless wiretaps, CIA torture in Cuba... I could go on and on until your eyes glaze and you shut off.

I think my eyes glazed over a long time ago. When did things go so terribly wrong??

So a bi-racial "black" man came along preaching hope and talking about gay rights not just in whispered tones at gay events but in black churches. Of course I was more than a little excited by this. He spoke of change, hope, tax breaks for the poor and college tuition credits. He talked about ending the war in Iraq and spending the wasted money on bridges, schools and the creation of jobs. Some people thought it to be naive. I thought it revolutionary. He talked of changing Washington and the death grip held by lobbyists on our democratic process. Most of all, he backed his up by not taking their money and campaigning with funds from small donations given by regular people. I even gave him $20. In the grand scheme, it's not a lot, but it filled me with pride.

Now something strange is happening that transcends my optimistic belief in hope. It is a churning of acid in my stomach that is eating away at the lining and threatening to rise in my chest like fire. It is the forest I see and not the trees. This ongoing battle between Barrack Obama and Hillary Clinton is dividing the voters who would put a democrat in office. The democrats need to rally behind one candidate but unfortunately they can't decide who that is. I fear that when they do, it will be too late and to the victor will go the spoils of a sour victory.

The danger in Hillary winning is that supporters of Barrack are part of a movement. It is a ferver, a fever, an ideology. If she crushes that, she disenfranchises a large group of people many of whom normally do not even vote. Somehow Obama struck a chord with them, a chord I don't feel Clinton is capable of capturing.

If Obama wins the nomination, I fear that he will be so damaged by negative campaigning and a prolongued nomination process, that he will have lost much of his momentum and the message of his campaign.

No matter the outcome of this process, my biggest fear is a crack I see forming and growing, splitting right down the middle of the party. A divided party is falling apart at a time when it needs to unite for the greater good. I fear that the division will only grow. I fear that we are lost. What do I know? I'm only a musician.