Throwing Rocks...

Throwing Rocks


I am going to make a departure for a while and we will see how this goes. I am going to try and veer away from the commentary blogs that I am so famous for and take off in another direction. My normal blog is mirrored on myspace.com. I have been reading, writing and commenting on some friends blogs in myspace.com ( http://www.myspace.com/lotus07 ) and some of the other stuff that my fellow bloggers have written has got me thinking. There is a bit more to life than pointing out the failings of society and the hypocrisy of the world. Mind you, I won't stop doing that all together, but expect the unexpected in the coming weeks.

But before I go, there is one little blog idea that has been rattling around my head for the past couple of months that I might as well spit out into cyberspace.

I suppose that it could be termed the loss of etiquette as a result of the mask of the internet, but I am wondering if it isn't a bit more than that. As though it were like shining a bright light into the darkened subconscious of society and finding things that we really don't want to admit to.

I will tell you how this all started. I have a bunch of bookmarks on my homepage.

http://homepage.mac.com/lotus07/Link_Page.html

I sort of use these bookmarks as my morning newspaper. I go in here and check out various news items, entertainment stories, my bank accounts, my ebay listings, stuff like that. One of these links is called Hedonistica (http://www.hedonistica.com ). This is a site that posts daily clips of the odd and bizarre. It is worth checking out if you like that sort of thing. The reason I keep looking in on it isn't necessarily for the content, but for the comments that are posted for each of the clips. There is a whole cast of characters that comment and leave opinions on these various articles and video clips, and the comments are not necessarily high brow or intelligent. Quite often they degenerate into shouting matches with a lot of finger pointing regarding politics, race relations, gender bashing and what have you.

In leaving comments for some of these clips, I have been slammed to the wall and flamed repeatedly by various folks that have a hair trigger regarding certain issues. Not that this bothers me much, since I have to assume that quite a few of these commentators still ride a school bus every morning. I still jokingly refer to myself as the 'racist' on this site since I have been accused of being such on more than one occasion. Which I suppose is better than the never ending accusations of being 'gay' that everyone else seems to get.

However, here is my concern. It is exactly this type of mud slinging that I see time and time again in many a forum or public discussion on the internet. It would appear that when someone can get the attention of others, but not fear immediate repercussions from them, the base nature of their personality comes out and in those base natures there is a lot of anger, bigotry, hate and fear that we don't see in regular 'face to face' society. So when the mask is off and we are in a large dark room, we can shout out whatever we want, because who ever else hears it won't know who is talking. When we turn the lights back on, we all smile, wave and say "good morning" and "thank you very much".

So basically, the internet can be a closet where the lesser angels of our nature take flight and become these little demons with pitchforks. A free-for-all where no rights are respected and no repercussions are likely.

Just like the unforeseen affect that television had on society in the 50s and 60s, there is an affect at work here with the internet and the compression of global time and space. I am not sure where it is taking us, but I have a bad feeling about this.

Revisionist History

Only Leonardo Knows For Sure


I watched the Peter Jackson remake of King Kong the other night. It was a good movie although a bit depressing. Nothing like killing a helpless animal all because he falls in love with something he can't have (or society won't allow) but that gets totally off the topic.

While watching this film I noticed something that keeps popping up time after time in the current crop of entertainment from Hollywood. The studio executives are slowly changing history over time. Soon the past will be a fabrication and not the truth. But in a media society, I guess that is to be expected.

When I was a young man working in a classical radio station in Oregon back in the 1970 I read a book. The book was a little known science fiction novel called 'Choral'. It had to do with a society that had to travel back in time and 'relive' history in order to keep the present alive. The theory being, that if history no longer existed, neither would the present. Seems a bit far fetched, but I recall it being a rather interesting read. The fact that it also had to do with the classical music of Ludwig von Beethoven sort of connected it to my job at the time.

What I have noticed in the current output from the boys at Dreamworks and Universal/MCA is that they ARE changing history and passing it off as fact. I don't know where this is going but it concerns me. I will give you some examples of what I am talking about.

Movie: U-472 - Story of a bunch of sailors that highjack a Nazi submarine in World War II. Only problem is, one of the sailors is African American. Not going to happen folks. American society was highly segregated back in the 40s and blacks and whites didn't serve together on the same ships, EVER. So the fact that we have this token black as a part of this otherwise all white crew is sort of like putting a Japanese-American in Roosevelt's war cabinet. Just wouldn't have happened.

Movie: Pirates of the Caribbean - In the later half of the movie, Jack Sparrow (excuse me)...Captain Jack Sparrow is rallying his old crew to go after the bad guys that stole the Black Pearl. Among this group of rag tag lusty ex-shipmates is an African American woman in her 20s. Once again folks, it ain't going to happen. Women were not sailors in the 1600s. Women were not even allowed on ships back then, it was considered to be bad luck and against the current moral code of the time.

Movie: King Kong (remake-2005) - When onboard the 'Venture' on the way to Skull Island, the first mate is an African American. Excuse me? Back in the 1940s, there were NO blacks in the merchant marine of almost any navy in the entire world. In the 1940s, the number of African Americans that were literate and educated numbered in the thousands and most of them were servants. Most would not have been running a tramp steamer around the globe, the fact that he was an officer and in charge of lesser white crewmen makes it even more unbelievable.

What is going to be next? Is there going to be an openly gay George Washington at the battle of Valley Forge? Is Brad Pitt going to portray Martin Luther King in the Selma Bus Boycott movie?

It is nice to make believe that in the past we weren't prejudiced, or sexist, or racist, or cruel, but I am sorry folks. That is not what really happened. We got to where we are today, because we lived that way, changed over time and evolved into what we are now. The fact that there are Hollywood studio executives saying that we need to have a token black in this movie or make the next James Bond and Asian dude isn't serving any purpose except to make people assume the wrong thing about what actually happened in the past.

We need to be enriched by how far we have come and how far we have to go and not be ashamed about our past and lie about it.

Material Wealth

Sorry for the lack of posts. The end of the 2005 Holiday Season was a bit of a tumultuous affair. Between taking two trips out of state, hosting a holiday party and attending four others in the span of 4 days, there was little time left for working in the office or wrapping presents for that matter. However; look on the brighter side, the more time I spend away from writing these things, the more my head fills up with stuff to ponder.

Which brings us to today's topic. Toys....



Bonnet


I spent the first half of my life (like so many others) believing what I was told on television and on the radio and by pushy sales people and my peers. This belief was that material possessions would bring me happiness. At about the age of 40, it all started to fall into place and I realized that it was all a big lie. Material possessions only bring happiness to those that sell them because they make a profit. The stuff that we collect so greedily, ends up in a closet or a garage until eventually making its way to Goodwill or Savers...and from there it is just a hop, skip and a jump to the nearest land fill. Nothing lasts forever, except land, death and taxes.



Quarter Panel


Which is why this past holiday season really made this point pretty clear. I don't give 'things' as presents for the holidays. I gave up on that a long time ago. I give experiences as much as I can. Gift cards or certificates that require the recipient to 'do' something and not collect things. Sadly, I am one of the few. The amount of cheap presents I saw bestowed on folks by the truck load neither made me joyous during the holiday season, nor filled my heart with good cheer. I just thought of how big all the land fills were going to get and all those 50% off sales at Goodwill in July.



Fender


Even though I figured out almost a decade ago that I needed to start getting rid of all my crap, we always fall back into a slump once in a while. Like a recovering alcoholic sipping that glass of beer after 10 years of sobriety, or that reformed smoker puffing on a cigar on New Years, the pressure is always on us. Those Hollywood actors do make Hummer's look attractive and if Angelina Jolie wears Versachi, then I might look sexier in one of their gowns as well.



Door Latch


So thanks to a sudden windfall of cash at the end of last year, I let the lesser demons of my nature take control and started looking for what I planned to be the last great American toy. That one thing that I had always wanted, but could never afford. Something that had no real functionality and served no real purpose. Just something for me. The mid-life crisis possession. The different sexes go through this in different ways. Women usually think in terms of jewelry. Men think in terms of horsepower. After searching for almost three months, I settled on something that I had never planned on buying. The stars just aligned right and it sort of fell into my lap (with a hefty price tag).



Rear Deck


So that is the story of my fall from grace. Pictured here is the Red Rocket. A 1991 Lotus Esprit Intercooled Turbo. A rare car. Only 113 were manufactured in 1991. Not that it really matters. It will occupy a junk yard someday, just as my ashes will make up a beach somewhere before the turn of the next century. But I realized one thing while doing research on the car and going over the mechanics with a fine toothed comb. Something that I had forgotten about since riding that first bike without training wheels.



Engine Cover


Accelerating from 90mph to 130mph in 6 seconds while passing a semi on the interstate has a certain satisfaction that cannot be described in dollars. I am sure this car is going to be a sink hole of huge proportions. But while we last, I won't be forgetting what its like to be a kid again.

For those that want a better look at the Red Rocket, follow the "Material Wealth" link at the top of the blog to its temporary web page.

Fading To Black...

Arizona Memorial


I got sick last week during the Thanksgiving holidays. Don't remember much of it. Actually, Sue got sick first and then after 36 hours the bug made the leap to a new host. The price I pay for loving her, but hey, it is worth it.

This was a good bug. Not that it was a mild illness, it was anything but that. This germ really kicked my ass. Haven't had my mind, body and soul worked over like this since I got a 104 degree fever in high school. When I have no arguments about going to Urgent Care and waiting for 2 hours to fill out paperwork just to get some antibiotics, you know I have thrown in the towel.



Arizona Memorial


While there was not a lot of pain involved with this illness, there was a lot of coughing, running nose and some extreme muscle weakness which made just getting out of bed to make it to the TV almost a triathlon event. So the predominant thing that that I did for 72 hours was sleep for about 60 of them. And brother, let me tell you, that is all I wanted to do.

With this sort of extreme exhaustion and fever, the things that go through your mind are not really under your control. I recall trying to lie down and think about things, but my thoughts eventually ended up on some really weird subjects as I lapsed in and out of consciousness for 10 hours at a stretch.

My overly analytical brain had enough power left to speculate that this is what the start of the 'final journey' must be like. That slow descent into the afterlife as the present life slowly drains from your body. There isn't a lot of fear or pain here. It is pretty much the most relaxing thing you can do. I recall struggling to crawl between the sheets just so I would not have to tax my brain to keep my balance anymore and the relief I felt after getting all cozy and just letting gravity do all the work once I was laying there.



Arizona Memorial


All the thoughts that kept running through my mind were some sort of bizarre "life passes before your eyes" movie with no particular order or reason and with a Fellini-like twist of surrealism. Inside the womb of the bed, I was relaxed, tired, and had this strange catalog of video memories that seemed to be stuck in the 'random view' mode. These were not visions of material wealth or great accomplishment, they were recollections of emotions and what had caused them. It was that whole sort of life's lesson movie that Frank Capra tried to teach us in 'It's A Wonderful Life'. All that stuff about virtue and value and the things you leave behind that can't fit in your coffin / urn because they are intangible.

In a way it was almost enjoyable (except for the hacking and the sweating, not to mention the inability to eat anything). These scenes from marriage, childhood and work would float through my mind and then I would cock an eye open and look at the alarm clock by the bed. It read 2:37pm, and I thought I should get up and get something to drink. After 'thinking' about getting up for about 12 minutes, I dozed back into the movie theater of life for another 25 minute screening. I was finding it enjoyable to be able to be totally exhausted and totally content in that bed and let my deeply stored subconscious just play away.



Arizona Memorial


I was thankful that this was a holiday week since I was not missing much work and could just let this virus run its course.

It has been over a week since that fun filled and fever induced experience, and I am still not quite over this thing. The concrete that formed in my sinus is still being chipped away at with medication and deep breaths still make me cough, but I am getting back to normal slowly. I guess sometimes, Mother Nature has more than one way of forcing you to slow down and re-examine things.

The Final Passion

Kaiser / Fraiser Authorized Service


It is amazing what comes to mind during my walks to work in the morning and during the trek home each evening. Little things that make you think. Your mind is an awesome tool when not bombarded by stop and go brake lights and Howard Stern every morning.

Last week it was the Kaiser / Frazier Owners Club. Most of you young'uns won't have clue about what these are. They were automobiles produced after WWII in the heady days of the 1950's when we were on top of the world (figuratively). In those booming days after we had defeated Tojo and the Nazis, there were all sorts of car companies started up from all the excess production capacity of those plants that had been building Sherman Tanks and B-29 Superfortresses. There was Tucker, Hudson, Kaiser and Nash, to name a few. They are all gone now. Either bankrupt or bought out by bigger fish in the Capitalistic Ocean. I believe that Kaiser and Nash were eventually swallowed up by American Motors, which was swallowed up by Chrysler, which is now owned by Mercedes. It is hard to keep track.....but I digress....this is all just background.

I still have a lot to learn in life, but a couple of the blocks keep falling into place as I get older. One is the realization of the 'Final Passion'. The last great thing that we do in our lives. That thing or activity that we are passionate about when the old ticker stops working.

We all start out as pretty impressionable lumps of clay and we get molded by a bunch of factors over the years. We are told what to want, by our parents, our peers, the media and others. Rare is the person that charts their own course when they are young. Most are steered in various directions by the environment where they are raised. When we are young, and the sky is the limit, we collect passions like baseball cards. The desire to own the nice car, to have the BIG house on the hill, the perfect husband / wife, the yacht anchored off the Hamptons, the penthouse in downtown Manhattan. Capitalism sort of does this to you. Makes you want a lot of stuff. Most of it we don't need.

Then that awful thing called reality and maturity comes into play. Children don't raise themselves and they aren't cheap. Taxes....man, taxes, what a bitch those are. And who would have ever thought that we would need medical care when we were 20 and that when we did, it would be so damn expensive!

As these hard facts of life start to weigh down on our shoulders, we started to drop our passions to lighten the load. Gone are my dreams of that Ferrari TestaRossa and sailing around the world solo. Last week I sort of scratched hang gliding off the list as well.

This all leads up to the final passion, that one thing that we hold onto and continue to pursue because we can't let go of everything. Life can't be all about work, taxes and death. And this final passion tends to be what we are labeled with. Think about it. Anyone that you know that is retired tends to have one, "You know, Bob. down the street...the guy with that huge stamp collection."

I recall my neighbor who lived across the street from me. He was a retired prison guard and had lived a tough life. He was pretty happy-go-lucky guy and he had some medical problems, but he didn't let it get him down. What was his final passion? His hot tub. It was in his back yard and it was huge. Totally enclosed, with a TV and little mini-bar. He had decorated his backyard with little lights in the trees and cute road signs and nick-nacks as well. Not a bad final passion I thought. He let me use it once or twice and it was sweet. He passed away about 2 years ago and the new owner tore it down.

On my way to work there is another such man. I have never actually met him, but I have seen him out in his driveway working on his 3 Kaisers. He has to be in his 70s. Neither the cars or the man are in perfect condition. The cars need new paint and I think the upholstery could be replaced, but I am sure they all run. They are not terribly attractive cars. They are big and round and must weigh as much as a tank. But they are his final passion. That one thing that he is good at, and brings him a lot of joy. A simple thing. A simple passion.



Kaiser / Fraiser Owners Club


That is where most of us are headed although we don't tend to realize it. It just sort of ends up that way. So if you think about it, what might our final passion be? And when we are gone, what will we leave behind for folks to remember us by?

Bread Basket

Shopping Carts
(All Pictures Taken With My Palm Pilot)


Once the symbol of American Prosperity, they are now the icon of its decline.

In the old days, they were filled with Fruit Loops, glass bottles of milk, Ovaltine, large heads of lettuce and a toddler riding in the fold-away seat.

Today they are the conveyance of the down trodden, the homeless and the mentally ill. They are the automobile with a trunk for those that can't afford a car. Like the numerous check cashing stores and greedy politicians, they are easy to overlook until you start seeing things with a critical eye.





I first started noticing them a couple of months ago near my home. Abandoned, like lost puppies far from their litter. They sat forlorn on the street corner, overturned in my yard, pushed up against the curb on a busy downtown throughway. I started to ask that age old question, 'why'? Why were they there and how did they get there.

The answer seemed obvious but it has variations. People had to move things around and had no other option.

In the suburbs, it seemed likely that someone had a large family but no vehicle to drive to Safeway or Albertsons or Piggly Wiggly. When Jose is off putting up a new roof on the job site the little ones still need their pampers and tortillas so Rosita takes the long walk to the supermarket with their 6 kids in tow and then makes the long push back home. Once there, why push an empty cart all the way back the 3 miles you just walked? Just push it into the alley.





For the urban carts left downtown, the story appears a bit different. This is the transient's mobile home. This is the conveyance that they use to pick up the metal cans to be exchanged for money at the recycler. This is where they carry their bed roll and spare shoes pilfered from a dumpster. This is the cart that holds what is left of their shattered lives.

Even though the American Dream has failed them, they still cling to the concept that material possession is a form of wealth. They haul their throw-away trinkets around in a stolen four wheeled shopping cart to remind themselves that they still have some form of value.

All of these shopping carts were photographed miles from the nearest grocery store. There has to be a medical term for the precursor to cancer. That word would apply to these shopping carts. Regardless if they are urban or suburban, if the American Dream is a living breathing organism, these are the precursor to societal cancer.

Single Mothers of New Orleans

It Sucks Being Black Sometimes


I am off on another tangent here that will tick people off but bear with me until the end. There is a method to my madness.

I am sick and tired of the media images that I keep seeing coming out of New Orleans and elsewhere that depict the 'American Family' and how it is suffering.

In the past few weeks I have seen news story after news story showing black mothers with their 3 to 6 children (all under 10 years of age) lamenting about their loss, and how their 'babies ain't got no food or shoes'.

On a local news channel last week I got so see an Hispanic mother whining about the State not paying for her daughters eye cancer surgery because it was 'experimental' and not covered by publicly funded state health care. The mother didn't speak English and had to complain through an interpreter.

Needless to say, that the fathers of this little sea of humanity were no where to be found. They are all single women that have managed to have multiple births (possibly through multiple fathers) and they are lamenting their situation now that they have run into difficult times.

Now, I realize that a lot of these women had little choice in the matter. The sad truth about today's society is that women in low economic classes don't have much opportunity outside of childbirth and are often the victims of domestic violence or rape. They are often denied the 'choice' of having a child and the type of man they end up with. So we can't necessarily blame the women for the plight that they are in. We have to give them kudos for at least caring for the children and not abandoning them.

What has me upset here is the way in which the media feasts on these images and uses them to perpetuate the norm. The media is not about information; it is about imagery and normalcy. Here in Phoenix, Arizona, the morning news shows morning traffic backed up for miles and commute times of 45 minutes to travel 10 miles and speak of it in terms of, "Wow, I-17 sure is backed up this morning, consider an alternate route to work."

It is the same with these single mothers. "Oh, well, mommy got knocked up and daddy ain't around no more, so let's all pitch in and help poor Tonisha and her 6 kids."

Where is the media responsibility to show that this is incorrect? I don't see the media reporting on all the affluent 'nuclear' black families (with fathers) in New Orleans that saved their money and planned for the disaster. They aren't holding these people up as examples to be followed. They show the poor down trodden and say 'What a shame'. Where is the media pressure on fathers to be responsible? None of these news stories even asked the mothers about the children's fathers or if they were helping out or doing anything. It was just 'assumed' that the biological fathers weren't around and accepted as a norm. Instead of eliciting sympathy from the American Public in Minnesota or Arizona, why isn't the media tracking down the deadbeat dads and saying to them, "YOUR kids are starving. You remember Tonisha? The woman you 'popped' five years ago....she had your baby."

Instead of showing the interstate backed up for miles every morning, where is the social responsibility and editorial content to say, "Why the hell isn't government looking into alternate transportation systems?" Instead, they are telling us to 'put up with it and be happy' instead of telling us to 'get angry and think different'.

The media is becoming the Prozac of modern society. It is perpetuating a norm that is neither healthy nor beneficial for society. They are glossing over or ignoring the issues that make up the fundamental problems in the modern world. Instead of acting to change the norm, they are 'teaching' us to 'react' to the consequences.

This is nuts!!!