Sticky Message

Dear Don:

You may not recognize me, but I'm the sticky note you've had on your computer monitor for over a year now. I say you may not recognize me because you've obviously forgotten me, I've become just another piece of accidental decoration in your bachelor's office.

I don't want to make you mad, because I do treasure our time together, but don't you think that if my message were important enough to jot down and press onto this monitor that it would have been important enough to take care of, I don't know, eleven months and three weeks ago?

You've re-stuck me several times in the past year, from one edge to the other, once or twice sideways as if you were trying to remember to do something with me. I recall you once dusted me; what kind of commentary is that?

What I'm trying to say is my life as a sticky note is supposed to be like Kurt Cobain's, brief and spectacular, not like Courtney Love's, drawn-out and desperate. I'm supposed to be there for the aha! moment, for that idea that has to make it from your head to your fingers right now. You refer to me, put the idea on me into a more permanent form, and then set me free to join my brethren in the wastepaper basket. This half-life, this undead purgatory you've consigned me to just isn't natural.

Please, Don, for the love of 3M and all that's holy, do something with me! Don't leave me on your monitor for another year.

I'm begging you....
   Your Sticky Note

Criminal Gut Bugs

I was just reading an article in Scientific American that outlined how various animals' gut biota can affect their behavior, including choice of mate and, perhaps, their evolution. It's already suspected that gut biota play a large part in propensity to obesity, asthma, etc.
   This got me to thinking...
   Shouldn't some microbiologist do a study of hardened criminals, harvesting their intestinal bugs to see if there is some commonality, some bacteria or yeast or what have you, that non-convicts do not have?
   I know, this sounds like phrenology, and people with 'low, criminal foreheads,' but it is an idea grounded in science. And what if you find something? What if treating recidivism among convicted felons were as simple as a course of antibiotics?
   Just putting it out there.

What Do You Do... What Do You Do?

Another way I know I becoming an old codger far before my time: I actually write my political representatives, both State and Federal. So sue me, I think it's important to be heard.
   Which brings me to my point...
   What do you do when your elected representative doesn't understand the legislation before the very committee he serves on?
   I wrote to one of my Senators - Federal - about a piece of legislation that had come before the Senate Finance committee. Which he serves on. I got a very polite letter back explaining that my issue wasn't really a Federal government issue, and that I should take it up with my State representatives.
   Let me make this point again - this was concerning a piece of legislation that has been pending business on the Senate Finance committee since November. He's telling me that my issue isn't a Federal issue, when there's a piece of Federal legislation on his desk HE SHOULD ALREADY KNOW ABOUT.
   Choking on my own bile, I wrote him back and explained that this was indeed a Federal issue, and as a matter of fact the entire reason I wrote him was to voice my support for a Senate-sponsored bill referred to the Finance committee. Which, I reiterate, he serves on. I was polite, don't worry, I don't need the FBI knocking on my door.
   While I wish I could say I'm surprised that my elected representative is ignorant of a piece of important legislation that he should be considering carefully, I'm not surprised at all. Very disappointed, but not surprised. And I'm stuck with this nimrod until 2014. I don't know what to do. Other than vent my spleen online, that is.
   I'm trying not to become a cynical and jaded old man, really, I'm trying hard. But crap like this isn't making it easy.

Here Come The Judge...

So I was driving to work this morning, stupid early, and there was something on the radio about the Supreme Court. I don't remember the context, it may have been just a passing mention. It did, however, spark something in me. Hands gripped tight to the steering wheel I loudly proclaimed:
   'Here come the judge, here come the judge, order in the court 'cause here come the judge.'
   Now, let's put this in context. I barely remember this line. It's from Laugh In, which, if I recall properly, went off the air before I started kindergarten. It's from another time, my parents' time, and yet there I was, spouting off a catchphrase like it was 1971 all over again and people hadn't grown completely jaded with catchphrases.*
   Why am I appropriating pop culture from a time when I couldn't even tie my own shoes? I have no idea. None. I'm pretty sure most people who were around to see Laugh In on broadcast TV - three channels, no waiting, plus PBS - don't even say 'here come the judge' any more. Who would? And why?
   I'll just chalk it up to my synapses firing randomly and bringing up associations that would have made sense to Nixon when he said 'sock it to me.'
   Crap. Just did it again.

* where's the beef?

Gun Show Musings

Well, I did it again, I went to another gun show. I went partly because I had Saturday afternoon free and partly because gun shows still fascinate me. It's like when you roll past a car wreck on a cold, rainy night, you know you should just stare straight ahead and not gawk - it's really none of your business - but you can't help but take a peek.
   I think my fascination for gun shows is related to my love for Vegas, both are honest in their enthusiasm for separating you from your money, and they don't pretend to anything else. Mostly.

At the gun show:
   Elmer Fudd. Seriously. A thin, tiny man with a huge gimme cap on his head the size of Elmer's hunting cap. His cap, his shirt, and his pants all were the same non-color of beige, like he was the janitor of his hunting lodge. And he carried the largest hunting shotgun over his shoulder, almost as tall as he was.

   Vacuum-packed cheese. I guess it doesn't need to be refrigerated? Because vacuum-packed cheese don't melt? Best part: the lady was almost sold out for the day.

   Eat N Tool. I'm certainly not one to do commercials for stuff, but it is a marvel of modern engineering. THIS is what the President means when he says that manufacturing should come back to the USA. There is nothing more American than one tool you can slip in your pocket that will absolutely, positively save your ass in the event of a zombie apocalypse.
   I'm assuming, of course, that it's made here in the US. If it's not I don't want to hear about it. Especially if it's from Canada.

   Neck tattoos. Maybe I was just noticing it more, but there seemed to be an awful lot of young men with neck tattoos. It's just so ill-advised. And icky. If you're thinking about getting one, don't.

   Baby strollers. Like ten different ones. Really. What better place for a man and his toddler to bond than next to a table full of Glocks? I know parents want to get out too, especially if they've been cooped up with crying little poop machines. But this is like the neck tattoos: just don't.

   A surprising lack of anti-Obama stuff. The last few guns shows I attended* were chock-a-block with all sort of vitriol for our Commander-in-Chief. Didn't see one 'guess he can't' poster this time. I don't know, it's anecdotal and only for this one particular venue, but the Pres may be widening his voting base. Or the GOP nomination debacle is doing it for him.

   The knife-sharpening yokel. There's nothing more unsettling than seeing someone's gap-toothed, dim-witted relation lazily scraping a hunting knife across an oiled whetstone like he's on the set of Deliverance.



* a phrase I never, ever expected I would write

The Undying Sandwich

My food is zombie food.
   And I don't mean food for zombies, I mean the food is a zombie. It'll never get moldy, never get stale, never go bad. It'll never die.
   I was talking to a friend today and I told her that back over Christmas - when I had two weeks off - I noticed one day that I had about 1/3 of a loaf of bread on the counter. Which got me to thinking: 'how long has it been since I've made a sandwich?' So I picked up the loaf and looked at the expiration date.
   Three weeks before.
   Time was, if I picked up a three-week old loaf of bread, especially here in San Antonio, it would have long since turned into a science experiment. I can't count the number of times I had to throw out half a loaf or more because it had started growing colonies of the newest form of penicillin. But not now. This loaf was soft, spongy, and growth-free. Pretty much like it had been when I bought it. A month before.*
   In the words of my Texas brethren: that ain't right.
   Bread goes stale. It gets hard. Or it gets mold. Or first one then the other. It does not, under any circumstances, remain 'edible' for a month at a time. That crap I had on the counter wasn't bread at all, it was preservatives swaddled in a brown dough wrapper. I mean, seriously, think about it, what kind of vile, terrible chemicals does HEB put in their bread to make it shelf-stable for 3 to 4 times longer than nature intended? Because when I eat that bread I'm also eating that preservative. And evidently a LOT of it.
   It's just gross. Really, really, really, really gross. I thought things were bad ten years ago, but manufacturers still keep screwing with our food. You want to know why Americans are fat, diabetic hogs? Don't blame Paula Deen - not too much anyway - blame the people who put never-stale bread on our shelves.
   Despite my years living in SoCal, I am not some hemp-wearing hippy. But when I'm faced with a chemical stew masquerading as lunch, it makes me want to hug a tree. And then punch the son of a bitch who made that loaf of bread.


* a week before expiry and three weeks after

New Culture

Does it bother anyone else that pop culture seems to be devolving into an ever-tightening spiral of self-reference?
   It seems to me that the art and drama and literature and music we produce all depend on knowing and understanding what happened in movies, TV and radio for the entirety of the past forty years. And it's not like the references are passing, there for amusement or for spice on an otherwise savory bit of new work. These references are integral, they're vital to your understanding of the joke, or the pathos, or harmony.
   I think 'The Family Guy' is the worst offender, the leader of the pop culture self-reference pack. I love that show, I watch it every chance I get, but I don't see how someone who is not my age with the same background could find any of it funny. I don't see how it's going to remain funny ten years from now, when its new audience has grandparents who don't get most of the references.
   Think about 'I Love Lucy,' a show that displays pure genius, that was funny 60 years ago, and is still screamingly hilarious now. I'm sure you've seen it, that's one pop culture reference most Americans really do all understand. But think about those instances the show veered into the pop culture of its time. You've seen episodes where there's a knock on the door and when Lucy opens it the audience erupts into applause. They recognize the famous face on the other side. We do not. We have no idea who that person is or what the context is for their clever one-liner that gets thirty seconds of cheers. We don't get the joke. This is what's going to happen to all the self-referential pop culture of our time, it's not going to last.
   We need new pop culture, not rehashes of stuff that's been around for 35 years. Yes, George Lucas, I'm looking in your direction here; matter of fact I need to shine a spotlight in your direction and hit you in the nose with a rolled-up newspaper. Stop it. And for the rest of you, no more vampire crap, no more kid wizards, no more 'one last heist,' no more dystiopian computer-run future, no more cocky kids with inept parents, and especially no more sassy young women trying to make their way in the big city.
   We need a wave of new stuff, creators that don't pick through the bloated corpses of material that came before like trope-hungry vultures. Come up with something new, something innovative, something we haven't seen before. Sure, it's a risk, the marketers won't know what to do with it, but art is risk. And if you're not risking something for your art you're not really making art at all, you're painting with someone else's brush.

Since When...?

I got to thinking the other day, about how things have changed since I was a kid. There's a lot of stuff we didn't have, like all the electronic conveniences that were fantasy to an eight-year-old me, there are corporate farms churning out genetically modified almost-food, and even a Europe that gave up all the beautiful country-specific money for a bland central currency. There's also an Internet full of porn and foreigners waiting to rip me off, thank you Al Gore. Amazing stuff. But somehow, some way, other things changed too. Things that bother me.

Since when did 'conservative' become a synonym for 'asshole?' Maybe I missed something, I was kind of young, but in earlier days conservative used to mean a more measured approach to government versus, say, a progressive. They may have wanted a smaller role for government but they did agree that we're all in the same boat together, their difference was just one of degree. Now 'conservative' means someone who's essentially a whack-job Libertarian as far as government's role in business, but - in a stunning contradiction - all for every kind of governmental intrusion in your private life. It must be mentally taxing to try to hold such contradictory views and still fight off Eisenhower's ghost every night.

Since when did 'liberal' become a synonym for 'milquetoast pushover?' Liberals gave us the Progressive movement and safe food and drug laws and women's suffrage and the Civil Rights Acts. That's decades of seriously bad-ass rabble-rousing for worthy causes. David going up against a never-ending series of Goliaths and winning every time. Now 'liberal' is synonymous with 'skinny-jean, fedora-wearing urban douchebag,' someone who just can't be bothered to stand up for what they believe in if it's going to make them spill their $5 cup of coffee. Where are the tough working men, where are the ladies with fire in their eyes and axes in their hands?

Since when did getting elected become the full-time job of our representatives instead of actually representing us? I remember when elections didn't start until May or June of the year the election was actually held. Now, as soon as someone takes office they start campaigning again.

Since when did the media stop reporting the news and start creating it? Time was you'd turn on the TV to find out what happened. Now you turn on the TV to find out what the media is telling us happened, and how to interpret it. Reporters are as much the story as the people they're reporting on, and they handicap elections like Vegas odds-makers.

Since when did it become okay to lie with a straight face? It used to be that when someone - businessman, public official, man of the cloth - was caught in a lie it was a scandal, something parents used as a cautionary tale to educate their children. 'Don't be a liar like Nixon.' Now lying has become so common, such a spin-doctor publicity tactic, that it's almost expected people lie their guts out before admitting the truth everyone knows. It's a terrible waltz, one-two-three 'I don't know what you're talking about,' one-two-three 'it wasn't me,' one-two-three 'okay it was me but I'm not responsible.' How can you trust anything when everyone you see in positions of authority is lying?

Since when did ignorant people become proud of their ignorance? And since when did educated people decide it was okay to coddle the stupid ones? Especially in this day and age, when it's a matter of a few button presses on a cell phone to find out the answer to almost any question, why do the idiots get a pass? It's time to call them on their bullshit and make them think twice before they fling their poison.

I don't know... something's gotta change. People need to stand up again, fight the power like Public Enemy advised us to do, and make a difference.