Thursday, March 31, 2005
Wednesday, March 30, 2005
Couple of Things & A Vignette
I've been thinking about Hunter S. Thompson's suicide.
His friends and admirers have been describing his decision to commit suicide as the logical, perhaps inevitable act of a man who was determined to control his own destiny.
A few years ago, I began a short story with: "Melissa Jaffries pondered her mind's image of Ernest Hemingway cramming the business end of a shotgun into his mouth and pulling the trigger which -- for every action there is an opposite and equal reaction -- probably vacated his brain from his skull in a New York minute and, like toilet paper spitwads, most likely mucked-up the walls and the ceiling of that bedroom in Idaho with the most god-awful mess one would ever want to see or, indeed, even imagine. "But, then, one would never want to see something like that, would one?" she asked, smiling at Gertrude, her red-ribboned Calico; smiling at the absurd notion that death was Hemingway's final frontier which he quite deliberately intended to conquer before it conquered him. She had determined that one could never really conquer death; one simply slipped into it by accident, deliberately, regretfully or furiously, depending upon luck, health or psyche. No, Hemingway hadn't conquered death. He was just dead. Period. No great, final, symbolic statement to the world there, Ernest. Just fucking dead."
And, I've got to say that's how -- at least for today -- I feel about Hunter Thompson's suicide. The guy was probably so fucking drunk or high or both at the time he pulled that trigger that he probably didn't know what the fuck he was doing.
And, by the way, I thought Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas was for shit. Truly, for shit.
But, that's unfair, isn't it. The man's dead, for heaven's sake. (It was for shit, though.)
**
You know, I've suddenly realized (yes, I know, most of you have understood this for a very, very long time) that the day a sitting President of the United States is reelected, he is immediately a lame duck. Politicos really don't have to kiss his ass as deeply as they had before he won reelection ... witness just a wee bit of Republican dissention over Dubya's social security bamboozlepalooza; witness just a wee bit of moderate Republican disconcertion with Dubya's and DeLay's embarrassingly obvious suckass machinations (feels good, huh, James Dobson, Archbishop Chaput) with the Schiavo tragedy. (God, please, let that dear soul pass!)
**
Vignette - Ronnie Coombe
Ronnie Coombe, apartment 3C, who is in middle management at a downtown Denver investment firm, steps from the shower and towel dries himself while still standing in the bathtub. He has called in sick to his work, "Fuckin' flu, man," and has arranged to see a man about a horse.
Ronnie Coombe stands about five-six, blond hair, emerald green eyes, well-defined musculature, slightly bowed legs. His thirty-three years do not show physcially; he appears to be no more than twenty-four. But, if one is able to get Ronnie aside and listen to his soft-spoken, serious story about the way it was in Viet Nam; about the blood and deaths; about the American soldiers high as kites traipsing around the green muck of Southeast Asia with known futures of lost legs or severed spinal cords or mangled arms or. "...gettin' your balls shot off, man or losin' your ass, man, just havin' your ass blown off your body..." Yes, if one is able to get Ronnie off to himself he will tell you about the way it was and that he is not as he appears. He has seen hell and has flirted with the devil himself.
But, today, Ronnie Coombe is off to see a man about a horse.
Ronnie Coombe grew up in west Texas, on the hell-hot, dry and stingy earth where the color green was as rare as a cool breeze in July. But, it was there that Ronnie began to understand that the most beautiful, precious thing about that inhospitable existence -- and, perhaps, about the world in general -- was a horse. And, horses he had had. His father had kept no less than six horses on the ranch. And, from shortly after the time Ronnie had mastered the art of walking, he was on a horse. Always riding. Always loving the strength, the giving strength of the magnificent animals which he not so much rode as became one with.
"My horses got me out of the war whole," Ronnie would tell those of us who had managed to get him alone. "When the shit was flyin' in Nam; when you knew there wasn't any fuckin' way you were gonna live through that shit, man, I would just let my mind go and, in my mind, I would climb on Bingo or Blackjack and I would fly; I would fly through that fuckin' mud and grime; fuckin' bullets and artillery whizzin' by my head and I would get out of it, man. They would take me out of that shit. Every time, man, Bingo or Blackjack would just carry me away."
Ronnie Coombe buckles his belt, grabs his keys and heads out the door of Apartment 3C to see a man about a horse.
His friends and admirers have been describing his decision to commit suicide as the logical, perhaps inevitable act of a man who was determined to control his own destiny.
A few years ago, I began a short story with: "Melissa Jaffries pondered her mind's image of Ernest Hemingway cramming the business end of a shotgun into his mouth and pulling the trigger which -- for every action there is an opposite and equal reaction -- probably vacated his brain from his skull in a New York minute and, like toilet paper spitwads, most likely mucked-up the walls and the ceiling of that bedroom in Idaho with the most god-awful mess one would ever want to see or, indeed, even imagine. "But, then, one would never want to see something like that, would one?" she asked, smiling at Gertrude, her red-ribboned Calico; smiling at the absurd notion that death was Hemingway's final frontier which he quite deliberately intended to conquer before it conquered him. She had determined that one could never really conquer death; one simply slipped into it by accident, deliberately, regretfully or furiously, depending upon luck, health or psyche. No, Hemingway hadn't conquered death. He was just dead. Period. No great, final, symbolic statement to the world there, Ernest. Just fucking dead."
And, I've got to say that's how -- at least for today -- I feel about Hunter Thompson's suicide. The guy was probably so fucking drunk or high or both at the time he pulled that trigger that he probably didn't know what the fuck he was doing.
And, by the way, I thought Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas was for shit. Truly, for shit.
But, that's unfair, isn't it. The man's dead, for heaven's sake. (It was for shit, though.)
**
You know, I've suddenly realized (yes, I know, most of you have understood this for a very, very long time) that the day a sitting President of the United States is reelected, he is immediately a lame duck. Politicos really don't have to kiss his ass as deeply as they had before he won reelection ... witness just a wee bit of Republican dissention over Dubya's social security bamboozlepalooza; witness just a wee bit of moderate Republican disconcertion with Dubya's and DeLay's embarrassingly obvious suckass machinations (feels good, huh, James Dobson, Archbishop Chaput) with the Schiavo tragedy. (God, please, let that dear soul pass!)
**
Vignette - Ronnie Coombe
Ronnie Coombe, apartment 3C, who is in middle management at a downtown Denver investment firm, steps from the shower and towel dries himself while still standing in the bathtub. He has called in sick to his work, "Fuckin' flu, man," and has arranged to see a man about a horse.
Ronnie Coombe stands about five-six, blond hair, emerald green eyes, well-defined musculature, slightly bowed legs. His thirty-three years do not show physcially; he appears to be no more than twenty-four. But, if one is able to get Ronnie aside and listen to his soft-spoken, serious story about the way it was in Viet Nam; about the blood and deaths; about the American soldiers high as kites traipsing around the green muck of Southeast Asia with known futures of lost legs or severed spinal cords or mangled arms or. "...gettin' your balls shot off, man or losin' your ass, man, just havin' your ass blown off your body..." Yes, if one is able to get Ronnie off to himself he will tell you about the way it was and that he is not as he appears. He has seen hell and has flirted with the devil himself.
But, today, Ronnie Coombe is off to see a man about a horse.
Ronnie Coombe grew up in west Texas, on the hell-hot, dry and stingy earth where the color green was as rare as a cool breeze in July. But, it was there that Ronnie began to understand that the most beautiful, precious thing about that inhospitable existence -- and, perhaps, about the world in general -- was a horse. And, horses he had had. His father had kept no less than six horses on the ranch. And, from shortly after the time Ronnie had mastered the art of walking, he was on a horse. Always riding. Always loving the strength, the giving strength of the magnificent animals which he not so much rode as became one with.
"My horses got me out of the war whole," Ronnie would tell those of us who had managed to get him alone. "When the shit was flyin' in Nam; when you knew there wasn't any fuckin' way you were gonna live through that shit, man, I would just let my mind go and, in my mind, I would climb on Bingo or Blackjack and I would fly; I would fly through that fuckin' mud and grime; fuckin' bullets and artillery whizzin' by my head and I would get out of it, man. They would take me out of that shit. Every time, man, Bingo or Blackjack would just carry me away."
Ronnie Coombe buckles his belt, grabs his keys and heads out the door of Apartment 3C to see a man about a horse.
Tuesday, March 29, 2005
Monday, March 28, 2005
Sunday, March 27, 2005
An Easter Post
The Mormons have a television commercial running that depicts what I suppose is their perception of Jesus and those to whom he ministered. (Or, indeed, does it depict who it is the Mormons wish to bring into the fold, as it were, through the commercial?) In the commercial, Jesus is a white guy with red hair. Every one of Jesus' followers are white guys and gals. The sick, the hungry, the dying to whom Jesus speaks and comforts, touches and heals are, yeah, really, really white people.
There's no real reason to spend any amount of time pointing out that Jesus wasn't an Iowa farmer; he was a Semite as were his followers, as were the folks he comforted and healed who lived in what we today call the Middle East and, well, those folks weren't white people.
But, in this new age of neocon revisionistic the truth doesn't matter, bucko, it's the message, dummy, it's the message that counts, I guess we could expect no less from the Mormons.
I was thinking about the term pro-life and, of course, the logical obverse of that term anti-life.
I was thinking about my own mother's and father's deaths, both of which were preceded by a familial determination that extraordinary medical measures to prolong their lives for an hour, a day, a week were just simply obscenely gruesome given what we knew at the time; given that my family seems to be -- although religious to a degree -- inclined toward the simple truths of what our hearts and minds communicate to us in a kind of evolution of the species (we have evolved!) understanding of what is right and wrong; of what is intellectually compassionate and what is emotionally absurd. No, no need to go into the Schiavo case.
No, when my family made those decisions about my mother and father they were not decisions that were anti-life. No, those decisions were made with the understanding that life is the greatest gift we have; that life is God's (whomever or whatever you believe God to be) greatest gift to each of us and that we make of it what we will. And, at the end of that great gift; when life becomes something more spiritual than real; more ultimately beautiful than bedpans and feeding tubes; yes, at the end of the days of our parent's or our sibling's or, yes, even our dog's (our precious children's) lives; at the end of the days of our loved one's lives, there is nothing anti-life in that equation when we, the living, nod our heads and agree that the pain must stop; that the obscenity of prolonging the pain must stop.
I've not run for four days now because my lower back is fucked royally; my hips ache immensely; I'm coughing and wheezing with the asthma I'd thought I had left behind more than forty years ago. But, life is good; life is worth the deal dealt. Life is ... a shot of Wild Turkey with a little 7Up just before bedtime. Huh!
No, I really don't believe Jesus had red hair. But, then, it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter that we found no WMDs; it doesn't matter that Tom DeLay is an absolute sleaze; it doesn't matter that Dubya's sixty city tour touting his social security fix is, well ... the ultimate Bamboozlepalooza of our time costing us -- the American taxpayer -- about $35Million; it doesn't matter that Dubya's out to get the United Nations and the World Bank. No, none of that matters.
What matters, on this day of Easter, is that I pray (hope) your family -- and not the President or the United States Congress or some judge somewhere -- will be the final decision-maker when it comes to letting a mother or a father or a sibling go on to a life that, oh, God willing, is as fantastic as what we, the benefactors of what began in a bubbling pool of primordial oooze, surely believe to be a better place where, hopefully, we'll all meet up once again -- dogs included. Blogs however... Well, I guess we'll just have to wait and see.
Jesus didn't really have red hair, did he?
There's no real reason to spend any amount of time pointing out that Jesus wasn't an Iowa farmer; he was a Semite as were his followers, as were the folks he comforted and healed who lived in what we today call the Middle East and, well, those folks weren't white people.
But, in this new age of neocon revisionistic the truth doesn't matter, bucko, it's the message, dummy, it's the message that counts, I guess we could expect no less from the Mormons.
I was thinking about the term pro-life and, of course, the logical obverse of that term anti-life.
I was thinking about my own mother's and father's deaths, both of which were preceded by a familial determination that extraordinary medical measures to prolong their lives for an hour, a day, a week were just simply obscenely gruesome given what we knew at the time; given that my family seems to be -- although religious to a degree -- inclined toward the simple truths of what our hearts and minds communicate to us in a kind of evolution of the species (we have evolved!) understanding of what is right and wrong; of what is intellectually compassionate and what is emotionally absurd. No, no need to go into the Schiavo case.
No, when my family made those decisions about my mother and father they were not decisions that were anti-life. No, those decisions were made with the understanding that life is the greatest gift we have; that life is God's (whomever or whatever you believe God to be) greatest gift to each of us and that we make of it what we will. And, at the end of that great gift; when life becomes something more spiritual than real; more ultimately beautiful than bedpans and feeding tubes; yes, at the end of the days of our parent's or our sibling's or, yes, even our dog's (our precious children's) lives; at the end of the days of our loved one's lives, there is nothing anti-life in that equation when we, the living, nod our heads and agree that the pain must stop; that the obscenity of prolonging the pain must stop.
I've not run for four days now because my lower back is fucked royally; my hips ache immensely; I'm coughing and wheezing with the asthma I'd thought I had left behind more than forty years ago. But, life is good; life is worth the deal dealt. Life is ... a shot of Wild Turkey with a little 7Up just before bedtime. Huh!
No, I really don't believe Jesus had red hair. But, then, it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter that we found no WMDs; it doesn't matter that Tom DeLay is an absolute sleaze; it doesn't matter that Dubya's sixty city tour touting his social security fix is, well ... the ultimate Bamboozlepalooza of our time costing us -- the American taxpayer -- about $35Million; it doesn't matter that Dubya's out to get the United Nations and the World Bank. No, none of that matters.
What matters, on this day of Easter, is that I pray (hope) your family -- and not the President or the United States Congress or some judge somewhere -- will be the final decision-maker when it comes to letting a mother or a father or a sibling go on to a life that, oh, God willing, is as fantastic as what we, the benefactors of what began in a bubbling pool of primordial oooze, surely believe to be a better place where, hopefully, we'll all meet up once again -- dogs included. Blogs however... Well, I guess we'll just have to wait and see.
Jesus didn't really have red hair, did he?
Vignette - Missus Crawford
Missus Dorothy Crawford taught geometry at Abraham Lincoln High School when I was fifteen. She was a large woman; not fat, but quite tall and -- as they say -- big boned. She was a woman who obviously, if she had not become a teacher, would have become a real-life Mame. She was outrageously outgoing, colorful, irreverent. She was fond of wearing brightly colored clothing and huge clumps of jewelry not only around her neck but on her wrists as well. And, the jewelry was usually strings of quarter or half-inch orbs which would click constantly with her incessant movement about the classroom and by her habit of fingering the orbs; a calculatingly self-induced click, click, clickclickclickclickclickclickclick which helped to produce the atmosphere of her classroom.
Missus Crawford taught geometry. And, Missus Crawford taught us a great deal about life, as well.
"Alright," she would holler -- she never merely spoke -- let's discuss what I have put up on the chalkboard." She would then rise from behind her desk, begin fingering her orbs and walk to the back of the classroom, behind us ... the silence of the room broken only by the click, click, clickclickclickclickclickclick of her jewelry.
The figures on the chalkboard would be a few of the problems we had been sent home the day before to solve.
"Mister Richardson," Missus Crawford would suddenly scream from behind our backs, "tell me about the problem marked number one."
Mister Richardson who, like the rest of us, was attempting to catch his breath from the shock of Missus Crawford's unseen although not unexpected outburst from his rear, studied number one for a moment and said, "Isosceles triangle."
Click.
"Any fool knows that, Mister Richardson," she would shout, moving silently to Mister Richardson and placing her big-boned grasp on his shoulders. "Tell me something about problem one that any fool does not know," she would say, applying pressure to her hold on his shoulder.
Clickclickclickclick. Click.
"Ah," Mister Richardson would say. Dale Richardson was a good-hearted boy who was, I believe, one of Missus Crawford's fools who would never catch on to the program; who would never understand the point of Missus Crawford's geometry class.
"Thank you, Mister Richardson," Missus Crawford would say after Dale Richardson's silence had, once again, formed a heavy, oppressive, uncomfortable pall over the classroom. "Miss Montgomery," she would then scream and Miss Montgomery would recite one-hundred and fifty things we all should know about an isosceles triangle; the unseen things which are whispered by reasoning called deductive which, obviously, Miss Montgomery had picked up somewhere along the way. Equal sides, the angles, the result of bisecting and that of turning it on its side. Miss Montgomery's dissection of problem one left the utter, essential, unseen -- but nevertheless there -- guts of the isosceles triangle hanging palpably from the ceiling to the floor.
After Miss Montgomery had finished her recitation, the resulting excitement from Missus Crawford would erupt with, "Yes! Yes! Yes! It's there! This is not geometry we are talking about," she would scream, barging to the front of the classroom, holding her arms extended as if directing a choir in adulation of a God more robustly Baptist than Catholic. "This is life, ladies and gentlemen. Look at it, study it, know it. There is so much more here than any fool is capable of seeing. And you are not fools. You are not! Believe it! You are so much more than what you see when you look in the mirror. We all are. If the isosceles triangle is more than what it appears to be -- Glory Be! -- you and you and you," she would say, pointing at our faces and clicking to beat the band, "are infinitely more than what you see and infinitely capable of achieving your most outrageous dreams."
Silence.
Click. Click.
"Mister Anderson," she would bellow, moving to the back of the room, "problem two."
Missus Crawford is a remembered teacher from a time when American education was still devoted to the insistence that students learn without the empty and phony rhetoric of politicians demanding that no child be left behind.
I suspect no teacher would ask of their students any higher honor than to be remembered.
Missus Crawford taught geometry. And, Missus Crawford taught us a great deal about life, as well.
"Alright," she would holler -- she never merely spoke -- let's discuss what I have put up on the chalkboard." She would then rise from behind her desk, begin fingering her orbs and walk to the back of the classroom, behind us ... the silence of the room broken only by the click, click, clickclickclickclickclickclick of her jewelry.
The figures on the chalkboard would be a few of the problems we had been sent home the day before to solve.
"Mister Richardson," Missus Crawford would suddenly scream from behind our backs, "tell me about the problem marked number one."
Mister Richardson who, like the rest of us, was attempting to catch his breath from the shock of Missus Crawford's unseen although not unexpected outburst from his rear, studied number one for a moment and said, "Isosceles triangle."
Click.
"Any fool knows that, Mister Richardson," she would shout, moving silently to Mister Richardson and placing her big-boned grasp on his shoulders. "Tell me something about problem one that any fool does not know," she would say, applying pressure to her hold on his shoulder.
Clickclickclickclick. Click.
"Ah," Mister Richardson would say. Dale Richardson was a good-hearted boy who was, I believe, one of Missus Crawford's fools who would never catch on to the program; who would never understand the point of Missus Crawford's geometry class.
"Thank you, Mister Richardson," Missus Crawford would say after Dale Richardson's silence had, once again, formed a heavy, oppressive, uncomfortable pall over the classroom. "Miss Montgomery," she would then scream and Miss Montgomery would recite one-hundred and fifty things we all should know about an isosceles triangle; the unseen things which are whispered by reasoning called deductive which, obviously, Miss Montgomery had picked up somewhere along the way. Equal sides, the angles, the result of bisecting and that of turning it on its side. Miss Montgomery's dissection of problem one left the utter, essential, unseen -- but nevertheless there -- guts of the isosceles triangle hanging palpably from the ceiling to the floor.
After Miss Montgomery had finished her recitation, the resulting excitement from Missus Crawford would erupt with, "Yes! Yes! Yes! It's there! This is not geometry we are talking about," she would scream, barging to the front of the classroom, holding her arms extended as if directing a choir in adulation of a God more robustly Baptist than Catholic. "This is life, ladies and gentlemen. Look at it, study it, know it. There is so much more here than any fool is capable of seeing. And you are not fools. You are not! Believe it! You are so much more than what you see when you look in the mirror. We all are. If the isosceles triangle is more than what it appears to be -- Glory Be! -- you and you and you," she would say, pointing at our faces and clicking to beat the band, "are infinitely more than what you see and infinitely capable of achieving your most outrageous dreams."
Silence.
Click. Click.
"Mister Anderson," she would bellow, moving to the back of the room, "problem two."
Missus Crawford is a remembered teacher from a time when American education was still devoted to the insistence that students learn without the empty and phony rhetoric of politicians demanding that no child be left behind.
I suspect no teacher would ask of their students any higher honor than to be remembered.
Saturday, March 26, 2005
Thursday, March 24, 2005
Lower Back Pain, Tragedy at Red Lake, Schiavo and Robert Novak
I suspect about ninety percent of the population of the world experiences, at one time or another in their lives, what is called lower back pain. It's a bitch. Actually, it's more than a bitch. Sometimes, when you get it bad -- really bad -- you conclude that you've probably got incurable cancer of the hip or spine or kidney(s). Then, after popping a few anti-inflamatories, the pain eases a bit, and you're kind of reassured that it's probably just lower back pain ... regardless of how dramatic the whispers from that little voice in your head happen to be.
My lower back pain began as pain in my left hip two days ago when I crawled out of bed and immediately plopped down on the floor -- as I always do, hooking my feet under the bed -- to do my sit-ups. Fuck! I said to myself, as I knew, I just fucking knew ! that the pain in my left hip was going to become lower back pain and that it was going to rule my life for probably the next week or so. So, I didn't run my daily mile-and-a-half two days ago (hoping that I could preclude the exacerbation of the insidiousness of this stupid little glitch in my life), nor did I run it yesterday.
Today, I crawled out of bed, hooked my feet under the bedframe and, nope, wouldn't you fucking know it, I couldn't even complete one sit-up. Fuck!
And, those of you who've had lower back pain and have visited your friendly physician to report your malaise, will recall that your friendly physician has suggested Tylenol or Aspirin or some other anti-inflammatory, pain-easing pill. No x-rays, no CAT scans, no MRIs to determine if you're in the throws of a life-grabbing cancer of the spine or the hip or the kidney. Nope. Take a pill. You'll be fine in a week or so.
Those of you who run every day will know the fucking disgusting frustration I am currently feeling.
I like that word, fuck.
Now, the Denver Post provided an article on the Red Lake killings, which provided some insight into what it was that led Jeff Weise to kill nine people and himself there in Red Lake, there on the Chippewa reservation. But, of course, we don't have Jerry Weise around anymore to explain to us what it was, what the real pain of life was that led him to do what he did, there on the reservation there where: "... local residents sorted out raw feelings, they also broached some tough issues: too many guns, not enough parenting, persistent alcohol and drug use and not nearly enough for kids to do on a reservation 32 miles from even sleepy, small-town Bemidji."
Interestingly, the story in the Post notes that they, the Chippewa, once had a roller rink where the children of the tribe could work out their adolescent energy. And now... Well the roller rink has been turned into a casino.
Of course one must wonder where Dubya was on this one. Oh, yes, Dubya was able to cut short his little vacation on the ranch to come back to Washington to sign the disgustingly hypocritical and blatantly political Schiavo bill, placing jurisdiction of the case in the federal courts. But, for the Chippewa, for the pain and suffering of the Chippewa, Dubya was nowhere to be found. Just no fucking political hay to be had with the Chippewa in Red Lake.
The Schiavo case is a sad one. The politicalization of this sad, sad situation is embarrassing. The party of Lincoln has become the party of the born again theocracy. Fuck State's Rights! Fuck the familial responsibility!
Finally, Robert Novak's column today -- I'm not even going to provide the link -- provides that the Schiavo case is not about politics but about the deep-felt passions of the politicians advocating the reinsertion of Schiavo's feeding tube. He ends his op-ed piece by suggesting that it is a crime to starve a dog to death but, apparently, not a crime to do the same thing to Terri Schiavo.
Step back a bit, folks, 'cause this hits a nerve with me and my vitriol may cause unintended consequences (spit in the face of the innocent!).
I am a dog lover. I love dogs in the way that many people find really weird. Dogs are my children. They enrich my life immensely. I have had to make the decision to put down more than a few of my children because it was not only the humane thing to do, but it was the right thing to do; it was the right thing to do because it preserved the dignity of my children's existence; it assured that their death would preclude the unnecessary suffering that would, naturally, accompany their continued painful, hurtful suffering in this world.
Fuck Novak, who, incidentally, ought to hang it up, 'cause he's become just a wee bit irrelevant in today's world.
I do like that word, fuck!
My lower back pain began as pain in my left hip two days ago when I crawled out of bed and immediately plopped down on the floor -- as I always do, hooking my feet under the bed -- to do my sit-ups. Fuck! I said to myself, as I knew, I just fucking knew ! that the pain in my left hip was going to become lower back pain and that it was going to rule my life for probably the next week or so. So, I didn't run my daily mile-and-a-half two days ago (hoping that I could preclude the exacerbation of the insidiousness of this stupid little glitch in my life), nor did I run it yesterday.
Today, I crawled out of bed, hooked my feet under the bedframe and, nope, wouldn't you fucking know it, I couldn't even complete one sit-up. Fuck!
And, those of you who've had lower back pain and have visited your friendly physician to report your malaise, will recall that your friendly physician has suggested Tylenol or Aspirin or some other anti-inflammatory, pain-easing pill. No x-rays, no CAT scans, no MRIs to determine if you're in the throws of a life-grabbing cancer of the spine or the hip or the kidney. Nope. Take a pill. You'll be fine in a week or so.
Those of you who run every day will know the fucking disgusting frustration I am currently feeling.
I like that word, fuck.
Now, the Denver Post provided an article on the Red Lake killings, which provided some insight into what it was that led Jeff Weise to kill nine people and himself there in Red Lake, there on the Chippewa reservation. But, of course, we don't have Jerry Weise around anymore to explain to us what it was, what the real pain of life was that led him to do what he did, there on the reservation there where: "... local residents sorted out raw feelings, they also broached some tough issues: too many guns, not enough parenting, persistent alcohol and drug use and not nearly enough for kids to do on a reservation 32 miles from even sleepy, small-town Bemidji."
Interestingly, the story in the Post notes that they, the Chippewa, once had a roller rink where the children of the tribe could work out their adolescent energy. And now... Well the roller rink has been turned into a casino.
Of course one must wonder where Dubya was on this one. Oh, yes, Dubya was able to cut short his little vacation on the ranch to come back to Washington to sign the disgustingly hypocritical and blatantly political Schiavo bill, placing jurisdiction of the case in the federal courts. But, for the Chippewa, for the pain and suffering of the Chippewa, Dubya was nowhere to be found. Just no fucking political hay to be had with the Chippewa in Red Lake.
The Schiavo case is a sad one. The politicalization of this sad, sad situation is embarrassing. The party of Lincoln has become the party of the born again theocracy. Fuck State's Rights! Fuck the familial responsibility!
Finally, Robert Novak's column today -- I'm not even going to provide the link -- provides that the Schiavo case is not about politics but about the deep-felt passions of the politicians advocating the reinsertion of Schiavo's feeding tube. He ends his op-ed piece by suggesting that it is a crime to starve a dog to death but, apparently, not a crime to do the same thing to Terri Schiavo.
Step back a bit, folks, 'cause this hits a nerve with me and my vitriol may cause unintended consequences (spit in the face of the innocent!).
I am a dog lover. I love dogs in the way that many people find really weird. Dogs are my children. They enrich my life immensely. I have had to make the decision to put down more than a few of my children because it was not only the humane thing to do, but it was the right thing to do; it was the right thing to do because it preserved the dignity of my children's existence; it assured that their death would preclude the unnecessary suffering that would, naturally, accompany their continued painful, hurtful suffering in this world.
Fuck Novak, who, incidentally, ought to hang it up, 'cause he's become just a wee bit irrelevant in today's world.
I do like that word, fuck!
Wednesday, March 23, 2005
The Schiavo Case - A Local Opinion
I don't think I've ever agreed with an editorial opinion that Al Knight has expressed in the Rocky Mountain News or the Denver Post for over thirty years. This is an exception.
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