2242 and Counting

I never intended this blog to be political; I created it to talk out loud about things I have thought about, things I think about in order to raise larger questions, in order for people to start dialoguing and conversing with one another. And, after the news this weekend, about Woodruff and the coverage which ensued, I find myself stewing and thinking about the war, again. And, maybe it's time I got personal with the blog too, providing insight into who is writing this.

I am a veteran of OIF (Operation Iraqi Freedom). I was there with a medical unit on the outskirts of Baghdad and have seen the many who comprise (and who are not included) in total casualty count. Those who know me know I am completely against this occupation and this war. They know my reasons and thinking. I stopped watching the television journalism in college because they had nothing to say, there was no real investigation going on except to espouse further the governmental and party lines (democrat and republican alike). It made me nauseous to watch and lurid knowing people accepted everything without question. It took great effort to deny my political urges in this blog, up to this moment, because I am a political person with strong and deviating opinions about policy, economics, class, and conflict. I don’t tow lines period. I never have, I never will. It’s a fact about myself I’ve come to accept. There are those out there whom can follow blindly, relate everything to themselves in a centric way, which is to say, “As long as it does not affect me personally, I will not take an interest in it.” I cannot. Whether we choose to admit this to ourselves or not, the world is inter-subjective and inter-connected: one life affects and ripples through all lives. Enough digression.

Bob Woodruff. Why are we so concerned? To be frank, I could not care less. Where is the concern raised for 2242 others no longer with us? This man has topped the headlines throughout the country, and for what, doing his job? Bob isn’t even dead, so he isn’t even considered in 2242. He’s just injured, a casualty, and there is a whole separate list of the maimed, why don’t media organizations talk about that? If Bob doesn’t make it, then what, will the media turn on the hand that feeds them? Will they then start doing exposé pieces on what’s really going on in Iraq and start putting chinks in the armor of this incredibly corrupt government? Going further, if Bob is getting this treatment on the news, why not every single soldier who has been injured? Would it become too much for the mindless sheeple to stomach? Would people start demanding real answers and real solutions and not just listening and swallowing what that old fucking hack Don Rumsfeld talks about: modular forces in the Middle East, and the necessity of troops there is for the stability of the country, turning the military guerrilla warfare tactics and specialists and lessening the need for support unit: essentially turning the United States Military into one huge band of Spec Ops?

Not until an exposé is done on every single soldier who has been injured or slain in this “skirmish”, will I accept Bob Woodruff as legitimate and news worthy. Stop allowing the media to decide for you what you will hear, what you will see, what it is you should care about and how you will care about it. For those of you in the media, or a working cog in the media, and have taken offense, know I don’t feel remorse for a single word I’ve written. If it upsets you, or you feel I’m not justified or validated, tough shit. Change your ways: be a muckraker, dig into something which means something, and report some truth, not just the varying side of truth which happens to put money in your hand. Fuck Rupert Murdoch and his heavy-handed dictatorship of a news model. All it takes is ONE person to stand-up and do something meaningful, be that person. And, as for Bob, take care and good luck, if you make it out maybe you’ll have something meaningful to say.

The Soundtrack Of Your Life

It seems as though I always land on this topic; however, there is a good reason for it this time: someone very dear to me raised a question about music and its influence over a decisions one makes, "Could the sound of that music possibly change your decision or merely reinforce?" (http://www.mindracewithin.blogspot.com/)

And, well, that's what I aim to investigate, briefly, before I indulge in the Top Ten Soundtrack of my life, which, make no mistake about it, will not be easy, as there are literally thousands of songs and tracks to choose from. And, after the last post, I really needed something light to write about.

The question is meaningful, and though the originator of the question chooses not to answer it, I believe they (yes, I'm using an anonymous pronoun as to not genderize and sway opinion of the person who asked the question) knew the answer to this question, at least what was true to their mind, but passed it off as digression. With that said, here's my two cents: the mind is more mysterious and cunning than we give it credit for. I know we like to believe we control ourselves and our mind, and, for the majority of the time, we do. We tell our mind to make us stand up, to shoot electrical currents through our bodies; the nervous system reacts, and our bodies move. We tell ourselves to eat, or not eat, to move our optical nerves across a screen and interpret strange sticks of curvature and straightness into words into meaning. These measures we can control, of course, this all depends on socialization as well, which I cannot go into here because it shifts the discussion to a socio-political arena, and I promised myself it wouldn't happen today.

The measures we cannot control are fairly obvious: sleep/dreams and the subconscious. I include this in the answering of the question because I believe this is where the origination of conscious acts arrive from, the subconscious. What this means: your actions are all premeditated on some level; you were going to act in a certain fashion before you actually acted, and your actions throughout the course of the day led you to arrive each premeditated action. So, the music you chose when you were feeling a certain way, merely reinforces the feeling you had chosen before you even knew you chose it. Does this make sense? Argue if you like, but you know I'm right.

Now, down to the nitty-gritty, the Top Ten Soundtrack of my life: (in no particular order, just as they came into my head, after premeditated deliberation)

1. The Talking Heads: Naive Melody (This Must Be The Place)
2. Bob Dylan/Grateful Dead (Fall Out From the Phil Zone): Visions of Johanna
3. Bob Dylan: Subterranean Homesick Blues/Leopard-Skin-Pill Box-Hat/A Hard Rain's Gonna Fall
4. Eric Clapton: Wonderful Tonight and Lay Down Sally (All from the Slow Hand Album so it counts)
5. Bob Marley: War/Jammin'
6. Phish: Maze/Reba/Simple/Mike's Song/Strange Design (pick any live version you want: dynamite)
7. Miles Davis: So What
8. John Coltrane: A Few Of My Favorite Things
9. Grateful Dead: DarkStar/The Other One/It Must Have Been the Roses/Black-Throated Wind/Cosmic Charlie/Throwin' Stones/Unbroken Chain (too many more to continue)
10. Dave Matthews: #41/Minarets/Crush/Lover Lay Down

I realize this is cheating, but for a music lover, it's impossible to choose just ten songs. I chose ten artists, which I thought was more than fair.

Getting Older: Peace or War?

I know it has been a while since I rapped about anything reasonably serious here for quite some time. It's not to say that critiquing music and its influential control over how we, as a society, think and feel about situations we are in isn't important, because it is. But, it's important like the way you take vitamins. I'll leave the poetic mystery in that, because, sometimes, it's all you can to make something beautiful without ruining the road leading to it.

So, I'm getting older and my life is different at 26 than it was at 20. It's this difference I began to think about on a road trip I took a week ago: financial security vs. Societal-Cultural-Global issues. I suppose, for me, it comes down to privilege and how I am using that privilege. It helps that I was born white, it helps my father gained affluence throughout his life, which in turn, gave me affluence: I went to a better grade schools as a child, went to better high schools, and got into a good university. The cycle moves forward and upward, the cycle of white privilege.

Rather than digress about myself, because I just typed a couple of paragraphs and realized it could go on forever, it's best to just get on with the point, which is this: as we get older we have to root for America's dominance in the world market. I would like to dissect "dominance" because the word is large and general; we have to place our faith in markets (stock, real estate, commodities) and capitalization of our world in general. We have to root for war and destruction because these are sure-fire methods which stimulate economy to grow exponentially. We have to root for our cultural dominance to blossom in the third world, second world, and other first world countries. Thus far, I belive the progress we have made is impressive, and soon every country in the world will care about the most inane and ridiculous bullshit happening in Hollywood, everyone will be wearing Calvin Klein, and watching reality television. Which always puzzles me as to why reality televsion caught on, is real-reality not fantasic enough? In what other reality can you get a promotion, lose your left leg, total your car, find someone to love, get divorced, overthrow a government, send aid in the form of peanut butter and Pop-Tarts, and slaughter a thousand peasants fighting the militaristic government newly put in place all in the same day? Do we really need hyper-reality, where the consequences are drastic, where outcomes are spectacular, and you have very little involvement personally? Just look around you, seems like things are heading this way now. Is this illusion and escape necessary? (Enough digression)

When these countries open themselves up to our lifestyle(s), the dams release for our corporations to dive in and capture up those newly emerging markets, raising their stock. And, as soon as these corporations have raised their values enough, they'll slash their workforce (shutdown plants/move operations to third world nations) and jump out the window with all the money and resources and products in the bag. And as a shareholder you have to be happy because their stock continues to progress. We don't have to consider how we have affected the town, the country we just shit-canned because we are making money, gaining the coveted fianancial security. This is where my white privilege comes into play. I have the opportunity to emerge myself in all of this, and have; whereas countless other people do not and cannot because they were not born with nor into this privilege. Is that brutal honesty, yes. And, I ask myself, how can I stand for these things, how can I participate in a system as ruthless and uncaring and unresponsible as this? Simply, what choice does one have? You're in the game or you're out. So I am already taking advantage on a certain level, should I fully press this hand? Should I root for the unraveling and destruction of this world for my own benefit? These are the questions I am left with to answer, alone.

I have been on both sides of the argument. I have seen destruction first-hand; I have felt death first-hand. And the only tears shed for the 20 year boy who died in my arms nearly two years ago, were Tony and myself, the crew who watched him be carried to the Blackhawk, and his family. No boardroom was kept silent on his part. He was not considered nor counted; they were too busy finding ways to exploit his presence in this country to create more money. I have seen the devastation poured on third world countries because of trade policies and politics (GATT/NAFTA). The children rooting through industrial dumpsters, eating the remnants of military waste, sometimes eating toxic materials in those meals, the neon signs of your favorite brands blinking high above the Nicaraguan skyline, casting shadows on tar-paper shacks. These things can be helped, these things can be stopped by being responsible and taking ownness for what "we" have committed: responsible captitalism.

As I get older, I am always approaching this crux: financial security or justice? And, I know, that I can never give either up fully because on both sides there are things that mean too much too abandon. I guess one must keep on fighting for something everyday and hope they make a difference.

The Bears: "Habitual Choke Artists"

It's been a long time coming, and I didn't want to write this one. They left me no choice after yesterday's dismal and bleak performance. Where are the days of old, when the Bears were a force to be reckoned with? Gone. Yes, that's right, I said it. It's time to face the facts on a fluke season: they choked, badly. It's something that most Chicagoans have dealt with for twenty years, since Super Bowl 20. As the old saying goes, "Even the sun shines on a dog's ass some days," and I'm not too sure what that means in describing luck, but it seems to fit here.

I felt they had a legitimate shot to get to the big dance, but they crumbled, as usual, under the pressure of a playoff game, under the pressure of expectations to excel. This seems to be the trademark of the Bears. It was a disgusting performance on both sides of the football: the offense was stagnant and the defense was picked apart systematically. It was embarrassing and frustrating to watch.

As my wife said, "there is always next season," but I'm not getting my hopes up. It's hard enough being a Chicago fan in the land of cheese, and when your team chokes as dramatically as they did yesterday, it gets even harder to defend them. It's just a game, it means absolutely nothing in the grand scheme of things; my life was not going to be any different today if the Bears had won; I wouldn't suddenly become a millionaire overnight, the air wouldn't be any warmer, and I still have to drink water throughout the course of the day. Sports are a simple way to displace yourself for a few hours, forget your troubles and invest in your team's troubles. It's an excuse to drink more than you should, use expletives in excess, and pretend to be bigger than yourself for a couple of hours, invest in a cause. And, if I can tangent for a moment, what city is actually a better place because they have a winning sports team? In many instances, cities become violent when sports teams are successful. There are celebration riots and chaos. If your team is too successful, the fans become obnoxious, for instance the Packers, and the fans who moon the visiting team's bus on the way into the stadium. They get violent when fans of the opposing team enter the city, maiming them at bars and in the stands. Not one city is absolved of this, and Bear fans, like Raider fans, Packer Fans, Cleveland fans, and Dallas fans, are a special breed. The only difference being, we've come to accept disappointment as the common denominator.

And, as for the Bears, yes, I'll root for them again next season. I'll talk them up when they've won, and shame them when they lose and dissassociate myself until next Sunday. We'll just have to face the truth: we'll probably never see another Super Bowl Shuffle in our lifetimes.

(Special Note: For those who have read this Blog previously, I do apologize for not using larger text. Any Optometrist Bills incurred, please send to me immediately.)

New Years: How New is it Really?

So, the New Year has begun. For many, it was brought in with excessive consumption of alcohol and other substances, and for some they whittled away the hours with friends and family, sharing the "good times". We assume, once the sparkle-ball of light descends upon the tens of thousands of hapless drunks in Times Square, as if by magic, everything is different. We celebrate the "new-ness" and imagine it as a clean slate. Our faults are wiped away, that zit which sprung up in the middle of your forehead at the beginning of the night has vanished at the stroke of midnight, a chance to start morally anew: wrong.

When did absolution become part of the New Years pact? I must have been in limbo when our culture decided on this: it's simple, if you were rotten in 2005, then you will be rotten in 2006. If one were to look at all the messages we send through media, you would begin to believe New Years is a pseudo-baptism: your sins are washed away. (Pardon the Catholicism reference, but once the church slips its hooks into you, it's hard to wiggle free. If I offended anyone just then, and you'll now spend three days consectutively in the corner of a dark room with whiskey and cigarettes, tough, get your own blog to release your feelings.) As if a "resolution" is a mystical, mysterious chant, and once it has been uttered those things cease to exist within you. It's a load of shit, but we buy it hook, line, and sinker every year. Why?

Perhaps there is something within humanity that wishes to be "clean", that wishes for renewal. And, I believe, this is meaningful and noble. Humanity, in general, should want to mend their ways, mend old wounds, and should try to live humanely. But, to stand in a drunken haze, chant a sentence about reform, and expect things to be different is beyond silly. It's foolish and bordering on dementia. But, that is what we, as people in this culture, expect to happen. If you really want to something to change, to be different; if you want see yourself and this world differently, you are going to have to struggle for it. All progress is made through struggle, through conflict, whether it's societal or cultural or personal, this is what needs to happen, must happen.

Your sins/faults/misgivings are not absolved: you will still be the pathetic, spineless, haggard, crooked, stubborn, two-faced, overly-narcissistic person you were. This applies to politics and politicians as well. Their policies and practices always precede them, long after they've gone to the great big pig troff in the sky. This belief that the New Year brings new things is completely false; it was crushed long before the advent of struggle could be born, it is doomed to repeat itself. Practices and policy don't change. It's hard thing to accept; it's a hard thing to learn about the world: it isn't as dynamic as we all believe it to be, things don't just change because we believe it should, or even because we've tried once or twice. For the most part, as cynical and miserable as it sounds, the world remains static. A New Year does not make the world suddenly dynamic and open to possibility, it's just the same year on repeat with a new fancy title.