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...TELL ME ANYTHING!

I'll be in Provincetown from tomorrow until Wednesday, so don't expect a lot from me.  EXCEPT ME HAVING A GAY OLD TIME.


So, you know, be good, and all that. 






And lay off RWHN for a while.  No one's changing anyone's mind, and you're not going to drive him off the board.  Just a suggestion.

Some bosses talk about "work/life balance", and use it to try to get you to work late, and off the books. They stress family, and decompressing, and "recharging", but what they really want to do is make sure you're committed to the company, you'll work over the weekend, you'll put in the extra hours. 

Your responsibility is to take that control back. "Work/life balance" means "how much work do you have to do to live the life you want?"  If you're comfortable living in a shitty apartment with an all-Ramen diet in order to spend your time painting, then you need a job that will give you flexibility in your hours, and requires the minimum amount of attention needed so you can get out and go back to your easel and palette.  If you want a condo and a car and nice meals, then you need a job that will provide for that. 

Sure, sounds like nothing new. But people don't DO this. They consider "work"and "life" to be the SAME DAMN THING. They get a job, make some money, then work harder, get more money, and soon they're working so fucking hard they've forgotten what they wanted the money FOR.  Everyone WANTS, but they don't know WHY they want.  Believe it or not, comfort comes cheap.  

Figure out what you want to be doing when you're not working. That's your price point.  Look for jobs that will allow you the freedom, in both time and money, to do what you want to do.  Then, of course, you have to get off your ass and actually do it. But that's a different topic. 

[Note: this post was apparently written from a perspective of privilege. I know there are some people for whom the concept of "choosing a job" is an impossibility. Apologies.]

Many thanks to Judas for posting (hosting?) a bunch of non-broken links to stuff.

The government does not exist, unless it benefits me.

What's shaking?

I had several hours of free time to work on my music tonight, obligation free.  And nothing, I mean NOTHING, happened.  There are things that NEED to happen, I can see them in my head, hear them in my mind, but.  Nothing.

Fuck.  Have I trained myself to only be able to create at 5:30 in the morning? 

This is when I feel most useless.  I see th road in front of me, but I can't get there.  I can't even find my shoes.

Damn.  Guess I should go wash the dishes and fold laundry.

So, the wife and I are going to Barcelona in May.

Other than a riot sheild, anything I'll be needing in particular?

[not]

Yeah, so.  I was reading this article in Slate (you can mock me for reading Slate later), and I have to say that the conclusion reached seems to be both accurate and disturbing.

Basically, the effort to repeal the ACA is essentially an effort to give us the freedom to ignore people in need.  Scalia even said that we need to rethink our social norms of hospitals treating injured people without insurance in emergency rooms.  "I want the liberty to let a fellow citizen bleed to death outside a hospital!" is the battle cry.  "I want The FREEDOM not to care about the suffering of others!"

Once, Mel Brooks made a joke about the Roman Senate: "Gentlemen, do we want to give money to help the poor?  Or do we want to save the money for ourselves?" a senator asked.  The response was unanimous.  "FUCK THE POOR!"  Not so funny now, though, because we are living in that joke.

I've said it before: The strength of a nation is, in part, comprised of the strength of its citizens.  Supporting the citizens of a country is helping strengthen the nation.  The constitution is there to provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure justice and tranquility.  So no, the government does not have the freedom not to care about the people.  To ignore suffering is UNCONSTITUTIONAL.


Fuckers.

My deepest apologies.

I had a Micheleda on Sunday.  It was awesome.


It didn't have the tomato juice, though.  It had tequila, worcestershire sauce, tobasco, lime juice and... a Bud Light Lime.  I couldn't believe it.  And it was GOOD.

So, yes.  Apologies.


Love and inebriated kisses,
LMNO

[Pol. Pot. Pol. Pot."]

Friday saw the two of us on a bit of an adventure.  Loosen the tie, ditch the jacket, hit the bars.  Have a drink, get a little food, have another drink.  Place starts getting a little douchey, head to another bar.  This one's pretty fancy, gotta admit.  Against principles, we wait in line to get in.  Before and behind, self-centered men and women gabble and gossip about trivia.  They get basic facts wrong, not just about the news, but about basic physics and, quite amusingly, biology (although if Melinda could do that, she'd be very popular at parties). 

We get in, are shown to the bar, we set up shop.  These bartenders are, well.  Hipsters, yes.  But useful hipsters.  I don't care if they call themselves "mixologists" or have earlobes stretched out to the size of silver dollars; they know how to make a fucking good drink.  And another drink.  Maybe three, maybe five.  Ambience is good, dark wood, chalkboard drink menus, bugs under glass (must remember to take pictures for Kai).  Good music.  Really good music.  The stuff I grew up on: Post-punk from 1985 or thereabouts.  Wire, Gang of Four, The Fall and... Wait. 

"Holiday in Cambodia"? 

This isn't right.  The fucking Dead Kennedys are being played as background music for a bunch of ex-sorority chicks shrieking out their past glories, and desperately posturing Financial District scumbags?  I won't stand for this.  No, I will stand for this.  I stood up, palms on the bar.  I sang along.  "Pol.  Pot.  Pol.  Pot."  She stands up, grinning wildly, joins in.  "Pol.  Pot.  Pol.  Pot."

I'm starting to bounce on the balls of my feet  "Pol.  Pot.  Pol.  Pot.  Pol.  Pot."  She makes a fist and begins hammering the bar.

"POL.  POT.  POL!  POT!  POL!  POT!"

I grab a fistful of cash, throw it on the bar.  I look around wildly, and see horrified faces.  The herd is spooked.

"POL!  POT!  POL!  POT!  POL!  POT!"

We run out the door.  The bartenders are laughing. 

We head into Chinatown for dumplings and beer at midnight.

[I'm trying to rant about having too much fun to rant about things.]

A cloud.  I'm a cloud.  A miasma of chilled water vapor, suspended between the sky and the ground.  No substance, no form.  Pushed and shaped through no action of my own.  There is potential, but that potential is absent.

There is no moment of condensation.  There is nothing to gather myself around.  Nothing that causes me to fall back to earth.  Rage? Anger? Hate?  All absent.  Maybe I've been rechanneling to such an extent that the words aren't there anymore?  Maybe its because I've been having three or four Saturday Nights a week?

Maybe that's the secret.  Any night could be Saturday night, if you remember what that is anymore.  I give 40 hours a week away, but the remaining 128 are mine.  Secret? Problem?  Is...

What's with all the complaining?  I hope that's not what all this comes down to.  I opened up the page and started typing, and this is what comes out?  First World Problems?  Holy shit.  I'm trying to rant about having too much fun to rant about things.  That's pretty fucked up.

Maybe taking a left turn to absurdity... Or maybe I should dabble in horror again.  Perhaps conjuring up false mythos?  The only way to be creative is to be creative, as I don't know anybody ever said.

Let's see where this goes.

My rant gland seems to be jammed.  I can't get a reaction more intense than "weary eye-roll", even at the thought of President Santorum. 

Please advise.

In case no one noticed, today marks the beginning of the traditional Roman celebration of the BACCHANALIA.


This evening, I will be surrounded by alchol and perverts.  I hope you will all endevor to follow my example.

I know it's Fox News, but... LulzSec brought down by own leader.

Law enforcement agents on two continents swooped in on top members of the infamous computer hacking group LulzSec early this morning, and acting largely on evidence gathered by the organization's brazen leader -- who sources say has been secretly working for the government for months.

ET TU, BRTUE SABU?

If Jean Grey is so freakin powerful, why isn't she lifting the jet WHY SHE'S STILL INSIDE IT????

Anyone send me something from New Hampshire via UPS?

I ain't gonna be able to sign for it, if so. Sorry.

The language of the BIP was (often, at least when I did it) structured to point out the otherwise unnoticed limitations of our perceptions, both physically and mentally.  It was said that you can never escape the BIP, because it's necessarily made up of all the bits of you that make you the you that you are.  If you attempt a jailbreak, you end up in another cell.  So the task you set is one of architecture and interior design.  If you can realize where some of the limitations are, you can shift them if you try hard enough.

At some point, the metaphor got stretched to the point of cracking, and a lot of us got carried away.  Some really stupid shit got said, and denounced, and refuted, and we all got a bit wary of taking the BIP further than originally stated.  The problem with that is, the way it was described lends itself very easily to "special snowflake" thinking.  My cell is unique to my experiences, which must mean that I am special, too.  Crowley tried saying this in The Book of Thoth, that the star you see is different than the star I see, because I am standing in a different place, even if it's only two feet away.

But let's give that the ol' Barstool, shall we?  While we can nuance different walls in our BIP to ferret out the minute differences, that's functionally useless.  If I point at a boat and say, "hey, look at that boat," you are seeing the same boat, even if you can pedantically prove an infinitesimal difference.  Hofstadter introduced the idea of "high level chunking" when talking about consciousness in GEB, and we may be able to apply the same idea here.  Some of our experiences are familiar enough to be considered "Common".  For instance, let's say a bus crashes on the highway.  What happened to each individual on the bus is different, but by and large, they all had the "same" experience, something they can share without too much explanation.  You may even be able to identify "sets" of BIP walls.  "The Wall of Getting Shot", for example.  Or maybe "The Wall of Puking After Drinking Too Much".

If this is starting to sound a lot like tribalistic memes, well... I can't deny the similarities.  If you start grouping together experiences at higher and higher levels, you start slapping labels on things like, "The Wall of Liking the New Wave of British Heavy Metal" and "The Wall of People Who Believe in Christ Our Savior".  But at that point, things start to get unstable.  There comes a point where the "color" of your wall (as in, the kinds of experiences you have had) becomes significantly different than your neighbors'; like when Teal Green becomes Cyan.  At that point, the grouping becomes as meaningless a viewpoint as the isolationist one: You're not actually saying anything about a person's BIP; and at worst, you're giving misleading information.

So, they key to creating Common Walls seems to be not to rush into and entire wall of  commonality, but to carefully determine which bricks and bars share the same properties.  Sure, it's hard work, but if you go the easy route, it will transform into bullshit, and ooze between your fingers.

http://slatest.slate.com/posts/2012/02/07/proposition_8_constitutional_california_court_decides_tuesday.html

"Proposition 8 serves no purpose, and has no effect, other than to lessen the status and human dignity of gays and lesbians in California, and to officially reclassify their relationships and families as inferior to those of opposite-sex couples," Judge Stephen Reinhardt wrote for the majority.

Sure, there's gonna be an appeal, but at least someone was acting rationally...

So, rather than stay silent, here are the things I've started and found myself unable to finish.  Feel free to pick and run with any.



The morning walls are cold.  And dark.  They smell like shivering plaster, as if the silent world outside is throttling the cottage, trying to shake loose the warm things inside.

I've hit a wall of some kind.  My brain won't physically move through it.  Everything is avoidance, and exhaustion, and

His eyes had glazed over by the third day.  What little functions he possessed, his brainstem used to keep the heart and his lungs pumping.  I don't know for sure if he heard the words I whispered to him in the quiet morning air.  But something made him smile, and for a brief second, he was still with me.  He was gone by the afternoon.

My own brain tricked me when I was a child.  To be fair, I hadn't known about the Law of Fives, and quite frankly, I enjoyed the possibility that I could see into the future.  Too bad everything I saw was both depressing, and eventually came true.  I stashed the old cloth bag of runes in the bottom shelf of my closet for years, convinced that I not only had mystic powers, I really, really shouldn't be using them.

Quit cigarettes cold turkey.  Gave up pot just as easily.  Even smoked crack, snorted coke, and did PCP on a couple of occasions.  None of that appealed to me.  But the bottle... What the fuck is it about that foul-tasting garbage?  If the Spider's fangs struck me anywhere, it's been directly in the liver.

"It can't be that easy," I said.  Even if you've created a magnetic field so powerful to slow down a photon, that's not enough to get you into a universe that's only postulated, not proven."
"Yeah, but either way, why would you want to stay here?" Brian asked, as he pulled another InfoLeech from his neck.

What holds us back?

Spiders.

What holds us back?

The Machine™.

What holds us back?

Authority.

What holds us back?

The Black Iron Prison.

What holds us back?

OURSELVES.

In the end, it all boils down to this.  At least for anyone reading this.  For the most part, we didn't ask for these restraints.  They were given to us; we were tricked; we never noticed they were there.  Before we could make rational decisions, they were placed on our shoulders, wrapped around our ankles, diffused into our brains.  They're even part of the hardware.  And, in the course of our days, we don't see them, or feel them.  Like the suckers in Harrison Bergeron, we find ourselves weighted down, and masked.  Distractions are enforced, and vision is dimmed.  But we don't realize it.  We've grown used to the weight.

What we sometimes refer to as transcendence can simply be the recognition that we've handicapped ourselves without really thinking about what we've done, or what we've had done to us.  To let go of these blinders is not a freedom from this world, it's freedom into the world.  But this isn't some simple Bartleby the Scrivner tale, proposing that freedom is a rejection of existence.  This isn't about Making Choices, nor is it a sociopathic narcissism of acting only in your personal self interest.

This is about why you have the thoughts you have, why you act the way you do.  Who gave them to you?  How much of your personality is actually from inside yourself, and how much accreted onto your soul from years of wading hip deep through the muck of the world?  How many of your thoughts have been twisted and warped after travelling through the biology of your brain, which was clearly not designed to handle rational thought very well?  I <3 Huckabees asks, "How can I not be myself?", and here's your answer:  By letting your history and your body overwhelm your mind. 

So, our first steps are to recognize what our various manacles look like, how the locking mechanism works, and how to pick the lock.  The intention of this thread is to figure that shit out.  In detail.

Oye, chico. Bienvenido a la prisión.


¿Crees que se acaba de despertar aquí un día, ¿verdad? Piense otra vez. Fue toda tu vida que te trajo a este. El hecho es que han nacido para estar aquí. Vaya por delante, mirar a su alrededor. Estaré aquí cuando vuelvas.


Parece más pequeño de lo que es, no es así? A veces, ni siquiera se siente tan mal. Pero aún así ... Ves a través de los bares, y ver todo lo que te estás perdiendo. Esperanzas. Sueños. Lo que podría-haber-sido. En este caso, poner las palmas hacia arriba a la de Hierro Negro, tomar las barras, deja que te enseñe algo.


¿Lo sientes? Eso es todos los libros que he leído. Y que toda la pared de allí es la adolescencia. Mire para arriba: Es la colección de CD. El piso que se despertó en? Sus padres. Como he dicho, que han nacido para estar aquí. Es tu vida, es la trampa de frío de su propia existencia. Te pintado en una esquina.


Así pues, ahora usted se está preguntando por qué usted se siente atrapado aquí, en tu propia vida. ¿Por qué ahora, ¿por qué hoy en día, puede ver los barrotes de una prisión de Hierro Negro que hiciste para ti? Debido a que dejó de reaccionar, y tomó un par de pasos hacia adelante. Usted pensó que usted podría hacer lo que quería, que trató de ser autosuficientes, y explosión. Le golpeó la cabeza contra la pared.


¿Qué es eso? Sí. Fue entonces cuando la claustrofobia fija adentro cuando usted no sabía que estaban atrapados, todo estaba bien. Pero ahora que usted sabe, usted puede ver toda su, vida cansada y monótona se extienden ante ustedes, atrapados en estas cuatro paredes, los seis lados. Respira, chico. Es sólo el pánico abyectos que estás sintiendo en este momento. Algunos incluso dicen que esto es lo que se siente: Una vida inmutable, inmune e insensible a lo que realmente quiere.


Mira a tu alrededor. Mira estas barras de frío y negro. El techo de color. El duro suelo. Ese es su universo. Ese es el mundo va a estar viviendo en el resto de su vida aquí en la prisión. Vas a vivir tu vida en silenciosa desesperación. O, no tan tranquilo si usted decide tomar el camino plagado / campanario. De cualquier manera, a largo o corto, que va a sentir lo mismo. Muerto, no cambia.


Por lo tanto, si usted está interesado, me gustaría invitarte a una fuga de la cárcel ...


Sólo da la vuelta.

http://slatest.slate.com/posts/2011/12/12/domestic_drones_north_dakota_police_use_predator_spy_plane_to_arrest_suspects.html

The Los Angeles Times reports that police in North Dakota this past summer made what are believed to be the first arrests of U.S. citizens with the help of a Predator spy drone.

Local police said they have also used Predators for at least two dozen surveillance flights in recent months. From the LAT:

The drones belong to U.S. Customs and Border Protection, which operates eight Predators on the country's northern and southwestern borders to search for illegal immigrants and smugglers. The previously unreported use of its drones to assist local, state and federal law enforcement has occurred without any public acknowledgment or debate.

So, I guess my only downtime for content here will be from my phone, so we should try to see how that goes. 

I, the people, deserve more than these half-dead automatons who never even tried to open their eyes. The first whiff of adversity, and they do one of two things: give up, or try to cheat their way past it. At no time do they realize that the way to get past it is to just KEEP GOING. Not beat your head against the wall, that's one of the definitions of insanity. Plus, those monkeys already do that-- it's one of the worst ways to give up, to never change, to ignore what's going on around you and just keep doing what you're told. 

So they come to me, because they see that I'm riding over top of it all. And they don't want to do it themselves, they want to take it from me. They want me to show them what to do, as if the obvious is some sort of secret. Worse yet, they want me to do it for them. But even if I tell them the Truth, they refuse to accept it. 

And then, the pragmatic: I can/ I must stay friendly with them. More than that, they can be used. And I start feeling dirty, and powerful at the same time. I'm taking advantage of sleepwalkers, which isn't a win, it's just kicking puppies. 

That's what it is. Day in, day out. Idiots that try to take advantage of you, while you're obviously using the fuck out of them. And they don't even notice. It would be sad if it wasn't so funny. 

http://slatest.slate.com/posts/2011/11/28/barney_frank_retiring_16_term_massachusetts_congressman_won_t_run_for_re_election_.html

He wasn't perfect, but he was one of the more powerful openly gay politicians, and I think congress won't be better off with him gone.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-15901363

How will this add to the current clusterfuck with US/Iran/Afghanistan/Syria?

Ask me anything.

...if you're a congressman?

http://www.npr.org/2011/11/17/142472051/rep-bachus-defends-trades?ft=1&f=1001
http://onpoint.wbur.org/2011/11/17/dirty-politics-and-big-money

in the late 1990s, members of the Senate earned 12 percent more than the average investor. A more recent study of House members found a 6 percent annual advantage.

The thing is, insider trading is perfectly legal.  Congress passed a law indemnifying them from that, and a lot of other crimes.  No transcript available yet, but may be up in a few days.  If you have the time, listen to the show.

Heavy D just died.

http://music-mix.ew.com/2011/11/08/heavy-d-dead/

The Overweight Lover has left the house.

Who wants one?

PM me yr address, you'll get one.  Additional horribleness not guaranteed, but likely.

Frost Heaves play Fontana's in the Lower East Side TONIGHT, 8:00. No cover.
#occupyyourlittlesister

I totally forgot to set up meatups-- NOLA Discordians, I'll be in the Quarter until Wednesday.

PM me, fools!

The other night I was sitting on the couch, listening to some records, drinking wine, and the now-familiar melancholy washed over me.  Which, I suppose, isn't surprising, given the environment I put myself in.  I thought about dad, and a passage from a play came into my head:

No, not for us, not like that... Dying is not romantic, and death is not a game that will soon be over. Death is not anything, death is... not.  It's the absence of presence, nothing more... The endless time of never coming back... A gap you can't see, and when the wind blows through it, it makes no sound...

That's from Tom Stoppard's Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead.  I read that back in high school, and loved it so much I built up a conceptual music piece around it; which is probably why I remembered it.  Back then, I was fascinated by the existential humor and light-hearted darkness of it all.  I felt really clever for liking it, because it was clever.  But that when I was young, and we were all going to live forever.

I went to the bookshelf, found my old worn-out copy of the play, leafed through it, reading out some of the more appropriate passages.  The whole thing changes when someone close to you dies.  Where once all I saw was bleak jokes and linguistic pratfalls, there was now an echoing depth, an aching sorrow between the lines.  These minor characters, struggling to make sense of a labyrinthine plot they could only see fractions of, only to disappear into the wings, unheralded.  And then, to vanish.  To see the lights go out in his eyes—

But that's for a different essay.  This is about the implications of an atheist's death.  Because dad was an atheist, in the most literal way possible: He was a scientist.  He made it his life's work to understand the forces in the universe, and none of them ever pointed to God.  More to the point, he didn't believe in the afterlife.  The brain was the mind; there were no informational fields that existed beyond when the brain stopped spitting out tiny pulses of electricity.  The Self, the core of identity, disappears.  And he was right.

Some people, when faced with another's death, start believing that their spirit watches over, or is "present" in some sense, or has "gone to a better place" – for them, any sort of continuation of the narrative is better than nothing.  But that's not what I discovered.  I found that gap you can't see.  All I sense is the absence of presence.  Nothing more.  Watching dad die, and continuing my own life only shows me he's not there.  He didn't "go away", he just stopped.  All we have now are the marks he made in the world to show a mind once existed. 

As least I'm fortunate, in that he left a lot of marks.

I've been blocked, lately, in a creative sense.  Especially writing.  Normally, I like to crawl around in my head and see what's sticking to the walls, turn over some rocks, and sweep out the cobwebs.  But these days, I've been avoiding it.  Not consciously.  But I never seem to have the inclination, or make the time... I always had a good reason not to be writing.

But then I took a step back, and I noticed that I was almost repelled from even thinking about it.  And if I look at my current context for any recent changes in my life and/or my brain, a large and fairly substantial one was obvious.  In July, my dad died.  It was a rather long bout of Lymphoma that kept mutating faster than the chemo could wipe it out.  So yeah, that happened. 

I suppose it's in my nature not to get too outwardly emotional, other than when I'm playing the drums, or dancing.  I've always been more-or-less introverted as a default setting.  I'm not withdrawn or anything,  I'm a friendly guy, but I don't "share" my feelings or deeper thoughts all that often.  This means that while I was upset at dad's death, I didn't show very many outward signs of grief (not that I was stonefaced, either.  I wept, but I didn't break down or collapse, or anything).  Actually, that's not completely true, but we'll get into the specifics later.  Right now, I'm trying to tell you why I haven't been writing.

I think what's been happening is that the reality of dad's death is still bouncing around inside my head, and my subconscious doesn't want to touch it while digging around for ideas and thoughts.  Which means I'm avoiding the subject.  Which means I shouldn't be doing that.  And so here we are.

Through the next X number of essays, I'm going to go surfing down the cerebral cortex and grab this thing head on.  I don't know how it will turn out, but I'm pretty sure it needs to happen.  It might get depressing, it might get weird, it might very well get boring.  It'll be... Type Therapy. 

So, there's a heads-up about what I'll be doing for the next few weeks, months, or who knows how long. 

I had a burst of something last week – maybe two weeks ago – after one of your kick-in-the-pants epistles, I believe.  Made vows, cranked up the ®ant Machine, Got ready to blow out some carbon and get moving again.  I knew I had rusted up, my mental joints creaky from underuse, and from being corroded by grief, as I understood it. 

But a few days went by, and it all tapered off again. I found myself flinching at the thought of putting pen to paper fingers to keys.  My usual rituals weren't working; I was unable to burrow down into my Id and scrape the walls of my UnderMind looking for images, connections, resonances.  Something was making me recoil at the inclination of getting down into it and dredging whatever it is I found up to the surface, and then poking at it with a sharp stick.

Looking back at the last few weeks, I was horrified to notice that I was throwing my energies into my job.  I found myself writing exacting, well-structured emails and reports of completely innocuous and inane shit.  I was wielding rationality and logic to argue useless positions during meetings.  I was acknowledging my co-workers as sentient, and actually letting them talk to me.  Clearly, something was wrong.

Was it a creative block?  No, because I was writing new songs at band practice, and working on a commissioned mash-up for a new club night.  Was it creeping anti-socialism?  No, I was hanging out with friends, going out on weekends, having dinner parties.  I was still being creative behind the drums and in the kitchen, so it wasn't some sort of creative block.  It was only the act of writing, of getting the kind of content PD demands, that was being blocked.

And even that's not completely true, because I've been completely able to write up stuff about the Nutrino experiment, and I discovered I could WOMP using my iPhone, and I even had a thing or two to say in a politics thread.  No, it's fairly singular... I can't seem to tap into my emotional consciousness and put it into written language.  And that's when it started to dawn on me: I don't think my brain wants me to do that yet.

I think that my grief is presenting itself in an unexpected way – unexpected for me, that is.  It's pervasive, but not present.  It has permeated my mind, but isn't calling attention to itself.  Except when I'm trying to dig down past my frontal lobes, and then it pushes back.  It feels as if it's settled into my bones, and has merged with who I am, and that I will never be able to separate one from the other, ever again.  I think that it isn't ready for me to go poking around down there.  Speaking the Wise Man's eulogy was a good thing for me, and it felt good to do it, and at the time it felt so much like something was being completed, that I foolishly thought I was through it.  But no.  There's a lot more to do.

So, yeah.  Apologies for the radio silence.  Will resume when allowed.








PS – Fuck you, cancer.

[LOOK UP]   This is... Odd. Usually, when I'm on stage in front of this many people, I'm behind my drumset. And they don't give me a microphone.

What I wanted, was to tell you about how I knew dad, what he meant to me, and what I learned from him... and I found myself staring at a blinking cursor for a few weeks.  What I saw in my head were moments, phrases, images that spread like ripples across thirty-eight years.  Everything was connected, but at the same time there's no possible way to provide the context to give these disjointed moments any sort of narrative.  

But two things kept coming back into focus, a quote and a memory.  So if we're going to start anywhere, we might as well start there.

The quote is a line from his book Constructing Reality:

"If we agree that life is more than a dream, that our consciousness dwells in a universe that includes things other than itself, then what is the nature of those things?"

What is it about that quote?

I mean, there are  plenty of memories to choose from: How he coached me through my first bloody nose; struggling with him and my brother, John, to drag a sizable rock out of the woods to use as a focal point in dad's garden;  or the time when I was five, asking him how a calculator worked, and he actually told me, by trying to explain Base-2 numbering...

that didn't quite pan out at the time. 

That quote speaks of a curiosity about the world – a practical curiosity.  There's no room for idle speculation, for delusions.  There are things out there, and they can be understood.  In a way, it's the basic premise, not just of Science as he knew and taught it, but of rational thought in general -- and he used that line of thought throughout his life, to help him in whatever situation he found himself.

So, when dad made his transition away from primarily physics and into administration, that attitude stayed with him.  If being a scientist means always asking another question, and never quite getting a complete answer, once he started trying to figure out how people worked, he was bound to end up with more questions than answers.  

And that's something dad loved doing:  Interacting with different ideas from different minds, finding out new pieces of information... He wasn't interested in people who knew the same things he knew, or even agreed with him.  He was looking for new perspectives.  Even if there was disagreement, dad would always take the time to listen to a well-supported viewpoint.  He showed us that the way to grow wasn't to hear your own opinions mirrored back at you, it was to interact with new and different ideas, out there in the world.

Which leads to the other thing that surfaces when I remember dad.

It happened a few years ago, when we were in Montana, talking over some of the early drafts for his book.  

[ASIDE] This is a near perfect summation of dad, to me:  There he was, on horseback, riding through a pine forest on a hot summer's day in Northwestern Montana, discussing the finer points of particle physics.  

Anyway, we were talking about probability equations, and quite frankly, I started feeling like I was five again, trying to comprehend binary numbering.  Then he said to me, "you can do all the math, work out the equations, but in the end if you want to know what happened, you have to go look."

Five simple words, fairly obvious, but I was struck by them.  You can read all the books, spend your life in the classroom, but that's all still prep work for the real task, because you'll never truly know until you go look.  Words are not experiences.  Reading about laughter isn't the same as laughing.  You have to get out there, get your hands in it.   

That was how dad lived his life, and if there's anything this memory of him can still teach us, it's that the universe is out there, every day, whizzing by.  What he would want us to do, is get out there and go look.

"Let go, and let God." 

What the hell is THAT all about? What makes humans so desperate to give up their independence? This isn't just laying down in front of an Alpha, with all their charisma and personality, this is laying down in front of a story you were told as a child-- a fantasy. 

There must be something wrong with our wiring that allows us to shirk our personal responsibilities so easily to our imagination, to accept so readily an obviously flawed false memetic consciousness. 

Sure, we say that Chaos doesn't care, and anything we try to Order creates it's own Disorder. That you should never piss against the wind. Some even talk of Wu-Wei, flowing with the river. But mostly, we talk about surfing the Waves of Chaos-- and when you surf, you don't just let the wave take you against your will. You get on TOP of that fucker, and you make CHOICES, and you STEER YOURSELF down that wall of water. It's up to you to USE that wave to do what you want. And if you forget that, the wave is gonna swallow you whole, and rub your face across the coral bed on the bottom. 

Tearing the cobwebs from his mind and body, Jim struggled to his feet, and staggered out the front door into—

Blast like a furnace, but light not heat.  A silence descended.  His bare feet scraped the pavement as he took another step forward, and another step, and he was grabbed—

Concerned faces peering at him, concern turns to suspicion turns to fear turns to anger turns to Jim, who recoils from the savage emotions hurled at him feels the pressure—

Pushed into the street, turns and runs back into the house, where the noise of the TV strokes his mind like a mother quieting a baby,  he shakes it off, looking for a third way, looking for—

Somewhere between the Spider and the Monkey, between sleep and fear, between giving up and joining in, a somewhere that must exist, has to exist, because Jim can't be the only one out there, right?


Right? 

Inertia is a pretty fucking terrible thing.  It pulls you towards the status quo, it tells you that just getting by is good enough, it tells you to hit the snooze button just one more time.  The snooze button.  That's what it is, really.  It's some inexorable force, like a giant hand that slaps you across the face and says, "go back to sleep." 

Doubt feeds it, too. Not the doubt that you use as a tool to cut through bullshit, the doubt that stands in your way every time you try to escape the gravity well of The Average.  That bullshit voice that tells you that it can't be done, you'll never finish, no one will care...  As if the goal is the point. 

That "finish line" focus is a killer – for real.  It stretches out in front of you, and you're told to race for it, to get the prize, but the closer you get to it, you realize that just on the other side of that ribbon is a six-foot hole, and you want to slow down, but at that point there's something pushing you from behind, forcing you down the track, and you get so tired, and you give up because you want to sleep, and they give you a dirt nap.

Is this just another rehashing of "it's the journey, not the destination"?  Probably.  But that's not where I wanted to take this.  It's back to the old problem: You know you should get off the couch, out of bed, but you just can't work up the energy.  It's like willpower has a shelf life, and it only comes in limited quantities.  But that's not it.  It's like you're in an elevator that's stuck between floors and playing "Copacabana" on loop, and the only way out is that panel on the ceiling of the elevator, but there's a 300 pound weight (72 cubits for eurospags) on the it, and you have to lift that fucking thing with no leverage and no good place to set your feet, so you just look at it for a while, then shrug your shoulders and say, "fuck it, I'll wait.  Barry Manilow isn't that bad."

When it's easy, it's easy, and you don't think about it.  The neurons are firing, you're right in the thick of things, you're getting your hands dirty, and it all feels right.  And there's no time to stop and think about how you're doing this, getting up an hour early to get some recording in, using your lunch break to create some mindfuck, or simply making a phone call to hang out with some friends after work.

And then, when it's hard, you have no idea how you were able to do all that stuff.  You're tired, and don't want to deal with all that shit.  Just sleep in another fifteen, twenty minutes.  Or maybe there's something else on TV.  Sure, another drink or two would be great.  Or fuck it, I'm just going back to bed.  And you wake up with a head filled with wet cotton, and you have no idea how to get it out.  And the color fades from the day.  And work starts feeling like a blessing, because hell, at least you're accomplishing something, even if it's filing papers.  And then it's a week later.  And then it's a month later.  And then it's a year later.  And then you notice that the finish line is getting closer.  And you try to figure out just what the hell you've been doing for the past decade, and you look back, and all you see is a straight line.

Here's the thing about me and hateshitting: My anger doesn't run hot, it runs cold. You piss me off, or get in my face, or step up, I go icy. I won't come at you with an axe, I'll come at you with a scalpel. Any violent exuberance, I leave on my drumset. What most FUCKOS are gonna get is more withering critique than spittle-drenched rage. I can see the monkey wearing the man-suit, and I know what buttons to push, and I know how to hide my own buttons. You have to toy with them a bit, get them wound up, and then all it takes is a slight push, and they're ready to explode, and then you show them a bit of HORRIBLE TRUTH, and it's all over. And I laugh. 

So, in truth, I don't shit my hate, I make other people shit themselves. 

http://slatest.slate.com/posts/2011/08/12/_2012_massachusetts_senate_elizabeth_warren_hints_at_scott_brown.html

Elizabeth Warren may be running against Scott Brown in the Senate.  I can't see much I don't like about her, except (of course) being a politician in the first place.

It could be a lot of fun seeing her kick Wall Street in the balls, repeatedly.

http://www.examiner.com/ufo-in-national/hurricane-irene-ufo-hoveres-over-port-jefferson-long-island


Well?

If I'm making chicken stock, and I happen to have a few lamb, beef or pork bones lying around, is it a good idea to toss them into the stockpot with the chicken bones?

Dad's gonna be, pretty soon.  I'm in NY, with the rest of the family, taking care of him in his final days. It cam on him fast: On Friday, he was working in front of his computer. By Sunday, he was bedridden and only occasionally coherent. I can say that he's in no pain.  He sleeps about 20-22 hours a day. I'd like to think that this speedy decline is a positive thing, as he was only aware his brain was getting muddled for only a day or so.

I've said what I needed to say to him in private, and he smiled when I was done.  That's all I could ask for. Now, we wait.

I'll be back in Boston on Monday if he decides he enjoys the rest (and the morphine), and then back to NY that weekend, or sooner if he decides to do the thermodynamic thing before that.

It should be noted that this whole thing has been made easier by accepting the disordered, random, and unpredictable events that come with a loved one dying.  I am in no way sarcastic when I say, "Thanks, Eris."

LMNO
- keeping his shit together.

In case you forgot, big Frost Heaves show tomorrow.  When you spags missed both the June 11 and the July 1 shows, there was talk that you'd be coming up for the 22nd.

Represent, spags. 

Gonna take our anniversare (9/17) in Maine, going to http://www.arrowsrestaurant.com/index.cfm for dinner.  It's in Ogunquit.  Any good/romantic/non-shithole Bed & Breakfasts in the area?

I've been invited this Friday to Mr Goodbar's SUPERPARADISE at Club Oberon.  Yes, it's as gay as it sounds.  The trouble is, well... Here's the description of preferred clothing:

"Dress Code: TOGA TOGA TOGA!|Fur Underwear|Leather Harnesses and broadswords|gladiators and temple slaves|breastplates and metal cuffs|Gorgon Realness|vestal virgins in grecian gowns|ceremonial headdresses|LOTS OF EYE MAKEUP|Viking horns|barbarians in animal pelts|well oiled muscle|animal masks|Red Sonja Effects!"

It might surprise you that I don't have any of this.  Or not.  It's been a while.  Anyway, I was hoping you'd have an idea for something that matches my personality: Cheap, Easy, and Fabulous.

Any thoughts?




PS - Gorgon Realness.  LOL.

Three Students Die after Hypnosis From Principal

In a three-month period, two students killed themselves and one died in a car crash (all separate incidents) just after being hypnotized by their high school principal, George Kenney. Kenney, who has been warned by the school board multiple times in the past to stop his behavior, has already hypnotized over 75 students, staff members, and their families.

Cancer. Father. It's back.


Fuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuck.

There.

[In Curly's name, I bid you Joy.In the rubble of the economic collapse, I bid you Joy.Dance with me, dance at the crossroads, waiting for the Dark Man.In the face of duplicity and political ambition, I bid you Joy.Dance to the descending cadence of the stock market ticker.As our Idols and Luminaries fall, I bid you Joy.Dance among our culture's detritus.Locking eyes with the depression and nausea of modern life, I bid you Joy.Dance through the landmines of passive-aggressive family meals.With your back up against the sun-speckled, bullet-ridden wall, I bid you Joy.With a heart full of Joy, bring your boot down on your own neck.Hurl yourself at the future, limbs flailing.Dancing into the mouth of a gaping void, I bid you Joy.]

In Curly's name, I bid you Joy.

In the rubble of the economic collapse, I bid you Joy.

Dance with me, dance at the crossroads, waiting for the Dark Man.

In the face of duplicity and political ambition, I bid you Joy.

Dance to the descending cadence of the stock market ticker.

As our Idols and Luminaries fall, I bid you Joy.

Dance among our culture's detritus.

Locking eyes with the depression and nausea of modern life, I bid you Joy.

Dance through the landmines of passive-aggressive family meals.

With your back up against the sun-speckled, bullet-ridden wall, I bid you Joy.

With a heart full of Joy, bring your boot down on your own neck.

Hurl yourself at the future, limbs flailing.

Dancing into the mouth of a gaping void, I bid you Joy.