Confessions of a Starving Artist

Y is why the sequel sucks

With the recent addition of my new TV set, cable television viewing has unfortunately reinserted itself into my daily life.  For the record, mine is not HD or flatscreened or plasma, rather it is the same sort of set that you and I grew up watching as children.  Except bigger.  Do you know how inexpensive these “plain” TVs are nowadays?  They’re giving these puppies away!  And to be quiet honest, I don’t notice any sort of difference.  True, I’ve never owed a plasma-flat-HDTV, and maybe someday when I do, I’ll never go back, but until that time, I’m digging what’s parked in my living room.  Anyways, like I was saying, I am back to being a bit of a vidiot.  CNN and FOXNews are staple again, even though I still trust John Stewart more than any of those bozos.  And with Jack Bauer being shanghaied off the air until sometime next January when Season Six come out, I’m kinda and often at a loss as to what to watch.

So yesterday, I’m flipping through the channels in my usual fashion; start at CNN and FOXNews until I’m throwing my popcorn, popsicle wrappers, chex mix, the remote, etc. at the screen, then flip up to Comedy Central at station 70, and finally work my way down the dial one by one.  Now some channels you expect to show a lot of similar programming.  For example when I get to Lifetime I expect to see a made-for-TV movie about a woman in a bad relationship who finds strength within the bonds between her and her female friends, and when I get to Spike I expect to see fighting, titties, or both at the same time.  One this occasion I solidified a trend that I had been noticing for a while:  MTV2 has become a Rap and Hip Hop station.  Forgive me, but we already have one of those - it’s called BET.

To be sure, today marks one year of me being stateside from a year in Korea and a year in Iraq - a full two year deployment.  That being said, before I left, MTV2 was always a bastion of ‘good’ music videos, featuring the type of music that you might never hear anywhere else, and some of these nuggets would just show for a quick blip of their music, then be gone, leaving things totally up to the listener to find out who the Hell you just saw… because owning that CD or downloading that track would be the coolest.  And nothing is more important to a Gen. Xer than “out-hipping” the next guy. 

But MTV2 seems to be yet another thing that Gen. Y has ruined.  With everything so seemingly packaged up as to what is cool and what isn’t cool, there doesn’t seem to be room for non-conformism.  Even within the counter-cultures (the goths, the preps, the retro, etc) there are rules that must be followed.  Trend setting, well, isn’t cool.  Fall in line, kids, next thing you know you’ll all be goose-stepping to Hot Topic. 

Now, I won’t be that parental-type character that goes a pulls the routine of, in my day things were how they were supposed to be, because I get that things, especially pop trends, change.  I guess I just thought that the actual width of the mainstream would stay the same breadth.  Music and pop culture seem to have really brought in the banks of the river down, so to speak.  What I mean is, is it just me, or has music just gotten to be a watered down poppy joke of itself?  Indie music used to be honest-to-God independent artists that just weren’t mainstream enough to work to those who weren’t musically savy.  Now Indie seems to be an interchangeable term with Emo, which is this annoying pop-punk rip off.  Further, it’s not even punk, it’s just punk sounding with whiny undertones, and the dress isn’t real goth either, it’s like this sad-black-bastard version of those rebels with real no-shit dark scary hearts and minds.  To note, real punk has completely fallen off the map, with the shocking exception of American Idiot, one of the only real punk offerings in years, which I find shocking in an America and England who are in the current political throws we are experiencing.  Pop music is as lame as ever, and “Hot, New County” is also as laughable as it has always been.  Even Rap music is a sad shallow shadow of its old-self.  The rappers today are now just ballers and young horny men talking about who’s got more bling.  The real Gangstas are gone, and to anyone who even thinks otherwise, I ask you this: do you really think Nelly or Jay-Z is as “thug-life” as 2PAC, Smalls, or Suge Knight?  No diggitty, no doubt.  Word.

The only really salvation for music right now is the alternative country scene which is this shit-hot blend of cruisin’ rock and country soul.  The real thing, but there is no venue for it, which is good, I think, because it preserves its integrity, and based on lessons learned and good musical lost to the coroprate music industry, maybe it should stay that way.  Still, I can’t believe that the sanctity of MTV2 has been soiled by the likes of wincingly continuous half-hour specials featuring “Slamming New R&B” and R. Kelly’s Hip-Hoprea “In The Closet”.  Well done, Gen Y, once again, you’ve spoken… or rather, just bought what they were selling.

This isn’t Vietnam, Donnie, there are rules here…

When I was much younger growing up in Maine (The Principal and Diamond Dallas should back me up on this), I used to hypothesize that the World of the future would no longer be defined by the boarders of countries, but rather by ideologies, cultural norms, and geographical regions.  Of course, looking at those statements, there are obvious unanswered questions, for example, what then establishes governing bodies, economies, education, militaries, etc.  Nonetheless, I have always felt that sooner rather than later something close to this would come about, a New World Order if you will, and no, I do not think that this is too radical of a term.  The precedents that are evolving in the Middle East in all levels of politics are, quietly, setting the standard for what the World both approves and disapproves in this fledgling global society. 

For this first part, let us set a little background with what I sometimes take for granted as unspoken fact.  Fact: there will never be open ground conflict with nuclear powers.  In case anyone was thinking that the Cold War was just a lucky fluke that we, the Soviets, and the rest of the Third World got out of unscathed, think again.  Turns out that the hippies were right, nobody wants nuclear war.  Nobody.  There are multiple times and events in history where world powers have not only had the means, but the opportunity and right to lay waste to a deserving opponent using nuclear capabilities, and no one has done it.  The reason why is that to do so would be to sign one’s own death sentence; the response would be nothing short of apocalyptic.  Let’s face it, no matter how much your people are suffering or how much you really may hate another set of people, the person who ultimately holds the power to “push the button”, has some power, probably some considerable amount of power.  He would not only have to forgo that, but also his own life, his ambitions, and whatever amount of personal status he has gained at this point.  I don’t care what fanatical or zealot in the world arena may or may not have a warhead, none of them are willing to give up what they have amassed for themselves as far as power, history, and comfort.  The Bomb is not something that these countries are trying to gain as far as weaponry - they are trying to take the military invasion of their countries off the decision-making table.

I’ll put it this way; if Iraq was a nuclear power three-and-a-half years ago, do you think that we would have invaded.  No.  Because Saddam would have launched (just like he would have if he had actually had WMD, but that’s beside the point).  My favorite Bob Dylan quote is at work with this thought in mind: “When you ain’t go nothing, you ain’t got nothing to lose.”  If it looks like these power-players are going to lose said power, history, and comfort, you can bet you last rocket booster that they’ll launch because at that point, who cares?  So again, The Bomb is a deterrent, an exclusive pass to the bartering table at any given time.  If Iran gets that technology, we as a globe now have to listen, not because they will launch, but rather because we can’t make them do anything they don’t want to do any more. 

Fact number two: the flipside of that is how then does a country that does not have nuclear weapons defend itself in both the political sphere as well the militant realm.  This is now where we see the rise to the Insurgent Warfare, which is the warfare of the future.  No more are we going to see tank-on-tank battles in open fields, large echeloning of troops in Division-sized battles, driving to capital cities and breaking counties will to fight, unless all-Hell breaks loose and half the world population is shivering in nuclear winter.  One reason for this is that we are too connected as a global marketplace.  Destroying a factory in Iraq causes ripples felt in the European Union and South America.  Also, our non-nuclear weapons are becoming more and more surgical, making much less of a mess on and of the battlefield.  These points factored against a non-nuclear opponent makes regime change a very easy and inexpensive thing… initially.  Again, to use Iraq as a model, America defeated the world’s fourth largest army twice in just over a decade, each time in a few weeks effort.  However, the Insurgency is not something that is as easily defeated.  This is the new defense of a non-nuclear county; it’s Will to defy.  Invading powers now have to ask themselves how much time and effort they are willing to put into not just defeating a country, but rather, holding a county once it is defeated as well.  In the cases where nuclear powers are the invading force, insurgents recognize that not only are they major players economically involved the global market, which makes them less likely to create collatorial damage, but also they are bound by rules of the international engagements, that is to say, they recognize the Geneva Convention and carry-on with what we Americans would consider normal rules of engagement. 

True, conventional warfare should not be entirely ruled out, as it will still occur periodically.  As a nuclear power, you’ve still got to make it to Baghdad, so to speak.  And even more so, if you are a non-nuclear power facing a similar non-nuclear power, traditional warfare still exists to a considerable extent, and insurgencies are less likely due to the totalitarian ability of the conquering nation; things become a bit more draconian for the victor.  I digress; the bottom line is that with the loss and / or execution of a formal and controlling government, there are increased visable militant entities in what were and are Third World Nations which then becomes as integral to national security of said nations as the military of the government itself, regardless of the fact that they are not actually part of the government at all. 

Which brings me to my third and final observation.  As we have all been watching, Israel has decided to more-or-less wage open war on Hezbollah, a militant organization existing within Lebanon which is not truly affiliated with the elected government of Lebanon and yet holds more militant strength than the Lebanese military or government agencies have been able to control on their own.  Israel entered into this conflict with Hezbollah on Lebonese soil when Hezbollah kidnapped two Israeli Soldiers.  Now, whether or not I think Israel’s reaction is excessive is irrelevent; what is relevent is that the vast majority of the European Union, America, and a strong majority of the Middle East has said that it does not think that Israel’s reaction is over the top.  Media stations across the board are looking into the nitty-gritty of what is going on, the legitimacy of Israel’s actions, and how to handle Hezbollah in the long run; all of which will come out in the wash as far as that is concerned.  What no one is talking about is what the rest of the world’s reaction states and what this means for the future.  To be sure, and this is my third tenant, what we seem to be saying is that it is now okay for a country to militarily cross another countries boarders, even to attack another countries troops, based on the actions of a non-elected, even unsactioned, militant (or maybe just armed) group’s actions.  This is the political version of being able to jail the parent if the child is caught drunk driving. 

That’s huge, at least to me.  The big question is that if the globe is saying this is okay, when who is next to act on this new rationale for military strikes.  Anyone with a seat at the table (nuclear powers) now have the authority to attack targets in other countries provided they are provoked, which is this case can be something as simple as kidnapping two Soldiers.  Imagine if the hijacking of PAN-AM Flight 103 over Lockerby, Scotland could have given us the international right to enter Palestine and kill ol’ turban head himself!  Also, what does this mean if a nuclear power suddenly finds that it has a cell network that it cannot (or will not) control acting out of it against another government, one that may or may not be a nuclear power?  Does the assaulted country send it’s own “non-governmntaly affiliaded” splinter cells against it?  Does this not equate to gang warefare on an international level?  Or perhaps the ambitions of corporations are now capable of becoming political and militant entities whereas their funding can reach as high as some of the governments that house them, nay, rely on them?  To what extent do private citizen become catalysts for their country’s fate…?

And where have the boarders suddenly gone?

Getting keyed in

I’ll keep this brief because while this may seem like an angry little rant, which perhaps yesterday it would have been; the past forty-eight hours have been a little slice of reflection and meditation.  Up front, my car was keyed, fairly extensively, on the wee hours of Wednesday morning outside of the Railhead Bar in Lawton.  The bill is estimated at around eight hundred dollars worth of body damage, and furthermore work cannot be started until Monday morning.  Best of all, I find out today that somewhere along the line my deducible for my insurance has somehow jumped from five-hundred dollars to a cool grand (USAA has no record of my authorizing this increase and they are “looking into it”).  As far as work goes, I’m currently taking the Army’s Modern Combatives Course: Level 2, so my day isn’t bruises-free either.  To add to my irritation, today I missed Rugby practice because I was on the phone with my insurance.  And while this is not confirmed yet, I think that the group of guys whom invited me up for box-seats behind home plate for tomorrow’s Oklahoma City game have decided to cancel.  All in all, if this week is any indicator, my weekend is going to consist of something or someone that will put me in jail.

Returning to the main point, the question that I have asked myself it thus: what did I do to deserve this, and by “this” I mean nearly a grand worth of damage to my car.  I’ve mentioned Kismet and Karma here before, and as such, I wonder where this negative energy has come from.  I haven’t slept with anyone’s girlfriend in a really long sometime (at least I don’t think so….), and I haven’t been particularly or intentionally malicious to anyone either.  All in all, I’ve been pretty humble and self-serving these past days.  Which got me thinking: maybe that’s it.  Perhaps my self-oriented nature for these past two months or so has lead to an implosion of energy into said void.  Normally, I think that I am fairly outgoing, but lately, I have a very limited number of “real” friends in the area due to my transient state of affairs, which therefore adds a general vaccum of outlets for good deeds.  My situation to remedy my position is difficult; my time here is too short to make any new and lasting friends, and those that I made early on have left.  It’s lonely at times to be sure, but the ability to focus on one’s own affairs for a change seems like a fair trade off.  My theory is that apparently it’s too much shift cosmically and spiritually, at least for this pantheist.

Another interesting piece to all this is how much I was troubled by this incident.  I mean truly troubled.  I remember the best times in my life where those middle years of college when I was living off roughly two-hundred dollars a month, a broken-down ‘86 AMC Eagle, and whatever University life would offer as amenities.  I remember saying to myself that such bohemian-style living was an element of grace; your days and adventures were your possessions, and money was trivial because you had none - payment was what you could offer as a person in labor or skills or insight.  Realizing the when my car was vandalized that it was actually a large part of me being vandalized as well; this was shocking and disturbing.  Tyler Durden’s words, “The things you own, end up owning you,” came shouting into my ears all day.  I honestly hated my car, my mindset, and for a minute, myself.  Small changes happen to us in the mirror that we do not see, and we only recognize what we have become when we see photographs of our old selves in albums or the mind’s eye.  It’s disheartening, and at these times resolve does little to comfort the loss.  At these times, I think of Lester Burnam and feel a bit better about the radical nature of redemption, but that is neither here nor there.

Still, what’s done is done, and it looks like I’ll finally get a chance to use my new credit card for something… necessary.  Moreover, I feel that it is never too late for a turnaround as far as your outlook is concerned.  Rather than feeling foolish for driving a maimed sports car in public, I feel the irony and perhaps even a level of tasteful dichotomy, maybe even art?  I feel better.  I feel that no one really notices ”the scar” as much as me.  And I also feel like eight-hundred dollars is a lot of money for cosmetics.  Humph, a guess I will chalk that one up to necessity.  My opinions on Vanity I will save for another day… suffice it to add, I was a very poor but good looking college student. 

If The Trojan Horse is an internet virus, who then will protect us from the cyber-herpes? 

This is the question that I have been asking myself for the past several weeks, and finally this weekend it came to a head… no pun intended.  Because, you see, my computer had the cyber-herpes.  This means that my computer didn’t necessarily have a virus that kept it from meeting more single and downloadable documents in a consequence-free environment, but rather it simply had a few “nasties” that gave it out-breaks from time to time.  My internet would lock-up midway through an email, word docs. just refuse to open, and downloading becomes a nightmare of Wes Craven proportions.  And thus, as I was saying, this weekend my computer just crashed.  No internet, no nothing would open.  Luckily, I saw this coming and had everything backed up on my external, sort of cyber-herpes medication so that my computer can lead a normal downloading lifestyle; but I did not want to go through the agony of reformatting a hard-drive.  This is mainly due to the fact that I have no reformatting “stuff”.  Somewhere between bouncing my shit over a war zone and traveling across three countries, my “stuff” must have been misplaced.  If the Army ever finds my super-expensive travel-sized color printer and external speakers, I’d be willing to bet my reboot discs are with them.  Oh well, better to lose a printer than an eye or leg over there, I guess. 

So nada.  No internet and not having a television for the last three weeks make me wonder what I was paying the cable bill for.  So I unhooked by computer and took it down to my buddies house of a quick look about, as he is a bit of, how can we say it politely, a computer nerd.  And thank Bil Gates for people like him!  After a bit of hacking, we somehow slip onto the internet long enough to download some sort of disk-doctoring program for the reasonable price of 39.95.  This is a scam, I think.  First of all, they say it’s good for a year’s subscription, but anyone who knows a micro-bit about computers will tell you that within a two month time frame that little shred of cyber-spermicide will not protect you from so much as hornyteenageboys.com  (I hope that’s not a real site… ewwww)  Apparently, spyware and virus’ upgrade faster than the protective purchases you make, which, of course, force you to buy more protection.  But from what?  I’d be willing to be the same people that are making the cure and making the disease, but I digress. 

We end up downloading a program called SystemDoctor2006.  And what was the good doctor’s diagnosis?  Five-thousand eight-hundred and thirty-five pieces of spywear and junk files on my C-Drive alone.  Oh, and for those of you who think that is a lot, my drive is only a 40 GB weenie-machine.  That’s the computer equivalent of a four inch penis, I think.  Regardless, after five-and-a-half hours of system cleaning, defragging, and general drive purging, I am now ready to return home and get back on-line… so I can download more porn, funny movies, music which will no doubt be riddled with more of the same little evil spywear elements that got me in this mess in the first place.  Almost makes watching the porn feel pure.  But it was not to be.  No, I got home to find that I am still not capable of finding my way on the internet.  What unholy act could be keeping me from the new episodes of the bangbros.com?  What did I do?  Who have I wronged?  I then did what I always do in this sort of uncertain situation.  I ask Jesus.

This is true.  When shit just straight-up is not going my way, and somehow I still am managing to shake my head and smile about it, I take the time to reaffirm to myself and whomever is around that if He does, in fact, exist, that Jesus hates me.  Here is what I do; first I take the time to call to the Lord and ask for an audience.  Once I feel that He has had sufficient time to come and listen to my prayer, I offer Him a little deal.  In this case it went something like this:  Jesus, if you fix my internet by eight o’clock tonight, I promise to go to church for three weeks and also hand out fliers on the corner of the street spreading the gospel every night for a month.  I ask you, what more could Jesus want then to get his holy (pun intended) hands on a little heathen like me for a little God and Country duty.  And for the record, I have not been to church since Catholic University.

Turns out that the problem was with my wireless modem.  This afternoon while reconfiguring the plug-ins on my extension bar to fit my new TV, a quick unplug and replug somehow re-energized my pathway onto the world wide web.  Simplicity is often my greatest nemesis when dealing with computers.  I miss the easy things like “on” buttons or “just right clicking”.  But for me, what is the means to an end doesn’t matter - I’m back on.  And to note, it took more than Jesus to get me here; it took a impulse buy from Sears and Roebuck.

Homecomings and Shortcomings

Well, I’m back in the land of milk and honey and all that is southwestern Oklahoma.  I touched down in the middle of a massive thunderstorm that dropped three inches on the OKC area.  It was one of those landings that has the cabin of the plane give a short round of applause on the touchdown.  Nonetheless, the conditions couldn’t have been better, as I always feel good about returning to Ft. Sill / Lawton after any duration of vacation.  I get to see my Okie friends, catch up on the drama (of which missing a week’s worth is like missing an episode of “24″ mid-season), and for a few short blissful days feel as though the government is paying me to do relatively nothing.  But the bullshit always caves in before long, and I’m back to being a cynical brooding git; I’m just waiting for the other cowboy boot to drop.

But of Maine.  Most of you that log-into this forum have, by now, read about my 4th of July so I won’t rehash all that.  I will say two things that revolve around it though.  First, my mother, one of my more avid fans of this site, made a comment to the effect that I first blasted my sister for being unable to bring about a good time, and yet I was as unable to bring about a good time as she.  I think that is unfair.  First off, I come home twice a year if I’m lucky, so my rights I don’t have the resources to pull together an MTV-level house party.  My sister, the ever-boisterous barkeep, should.  Second, I did end up having a fairly decent time, and I did so all by myself.  The other round about consideration that I have from my last post is such: if you are reading this, and you have any thoughts, any thoughts at all, from the most mundane appreciations or even the (perhaps) most profound observations, please please please post these thoughts as comments.  Had my mother done this with her aforementioned observation, perhaps I would not have had to slow you all down with it’s reply; you could have just checked the comments portions should you be so inclined.  I do appreciate seeing those who I have reading, as well as engaging in points of clarification, discussion, and difference.  A quick shout-out to Amanda and PMAC for posting.  Cheers… and moving on…

So yes, of Maine.  My sister in a note-worthy but lame attempt to make up for her 4th of July debacle asks me to come watch her Farm-League softball game.  I show up (mostly because of the drink-up afterwards), and to my chagrin discover that my sister’s team is two men down and would forfit should they be unable to field a full team.  What this effectively means is that Roddy (my sister’s boyfriend) and I must know suit up and play against this team that not only has been playing together for nearly ten years or so, but also hasn’t lost more than a game or two in the same period.  To be sure, I am a fairly capable athlete, and I would humbly rank myself in probably the top five percent of physically fit people on the planet.  But of all the sports in all the world that I have ever had the ability to wander on the court for or stroll down the pitch in recovery, baseball / softball has to be, by far, my worst.  Which leads me to believe that this was all planned.

I’ll spare you the details.  Highlights include committing three errors in left field in the first inning alone, swinging a bat at a relatively fast pitch for the first time since seventh grade gym class, and being pulled out of the line-up after only three innings of play for some guy they found in the bleachers.  Final score of the game was notable as well; 29-4.  We lost.  I’ve had better drink-ups at a funeral.

So the next day the parentals come home.  Good to see them, though like the lesson in wine that Diamond Dallas has seemed not to quite embraced in full; all things in moderation.  What I mean to say is that one can’t be expected to sit at home and watch sitcoms on CBS with mother and papa until it comes time to get tucked in.  The weekend comes as quick as it does when one is on vacation, and I set about to explore the bustling nightlife that is downtown Skowhegan, Maine.  Sarcasm is deeply rooted in that last sentence for those of you from Away.  I went to the local bars and planted myself within them for the evening, talking to whomever would like.  Those of you who have not had the privilege, nay, the honor to drink in Skowhegan, I will relate to you that talkative drunk Mainers are never really in short supply; the depth of conversation sometimes is.  Those of you who have had this pleasure know exactly what I mean.  Regardless, I did have a very good weekend out among the locals, one that lasted well into a Sunday night outing, much to my pleasant surprise.  Always important to make new friends to roll with, even if your sister who lives and breathes in the area can’t…

Monday morning was a bit more grounding, however.  I woke to the unpleasant realization that “my boys” had swollen to the size of a mandarin orange and itched like I had humped a poison oak.  For those of you who are wondering what I mean when I mention ”my boys”, I mean, my two bits, my wedding tackle, my angry dotson, my wetskin-slappers, my hanging heated refrigeration unit; in other words: my balls.

My gut reaction was much like yours: who did I piss off who knows voodoo?  Honestly, this wasn’t like anything I had dealt with or even heard of before, and due to my more shoddy past, I have a fairly good understanding of diseases that effect one’s neither-regions, .  I thought that I must have gotten into some poison ivy or something when I was at the beach on Sunday, because lets just say I was about 99.9% certain that you can’t catch an STD from the beach.  But hey, I could be wrong.  So symptoms are swollen grundle and itchy crotch, and I’m due on a plane in the next few hours.  Where is Dr. House when you need him?  Oh, and for posterity I was seated next to a a large black basketball player from the OU squad on the flight from Atlanta to Oklahoma City… not the aisle seat either.  I don’t know what menstruation pain feels like, but I can relate now.

By the time I got back into OKC, it was fairly late - remember the thunderstorms?  My ride, whom I used to date but is now practically engaged to one of my military buddies (that’s called the Circle of Life, kids), was the first person that I felt the need to tell about this.  To be sure, I’m not sharing this with the parental units unless I know what I got; they tend to make assumptions, and I didn’t need the recovering-Catholic moral rig-a-marole.  But Dena used to be a nurse once-upon-a-time, so I tell her what’s going down… down there.  Further, in a completely clinical encounter, I even give her a mug-shot of the goods in a truck stop bathroom, simply to get a better diagnosis.  She offers up that maybe I have shingles.  So now at 2 am driving in torrential lighting and rain with a nutsack that forces one to sit with one’s legs spread open like a log-drivers splitting wedge, I am now definitely scared into going to see the doctor first thing in the morning.

Three hours later, I’ve got my pants around my ankles in the doctors office.  I have a rash all over my inner thigh.  My boys resemble more of a bullfrog than …well… you know.  The red itch has spread to my left arm, my chest, and behind my ears.  I’m tired, a bit hungry, and all I want to do is roll around in a pile of sandpaper.  Diagnosis: allergy.

No shit.  Some reaction to a lotion or baby powder or something.  I was given some steroid pills and the notice that all would be “presentable” in the next few days as well as receiving the secondary news that none of the rash is contagious, unless someone is allergic to the same stuff that I am.  Basically, that meant that I can go to the gym without fear of causing a stampede in the shower room or being lynched for in-sighting an epidemic from weight bench sweat.

At this point, my boys are mostly back to normal with some minor itchies.  The rash is still a bit out of control, but some calamine lotion is keeping that in check as well.  So I guess what I’m trying to say is that Maine is home.  And home is where the heart is, if not the source of most of my confusion, nervous habits, and gut reactions that lead to events only seem to happen to yours truly.  I would not be surprised if there is some sort of cosmic Kismet that has tied my current adventures in the world-at-large to my crazy and humble beginnings in small-town New England.  Just think, a had I been born a few miles north in Canada, all this may have never happened. 

— This message was made possible by us.blog.com, a glass of petite shirah, and the continued subscription and comments of readers like you. —

If Europeans can start drinking at 10 am and last all day, then by God, so should Americans!

I will start by saying I already wrote this on my parents 1940’s level technology, which is enough to make a Bill Gates die from a brain aneurism induced by hysterical laughter. I truly am in a horrible mood right now, willing to write off returning to this part of the country again until I am ready to retire if only because of Mainer’s simple provincial outlook on all things. Provincial I can tolerate. Their simplicity borders on third world.

I spent last night sitting on a couch listening to alt-country and slowly drinking. Quietly, this is a very American way to spend the Fourth of July, a holiday that though I can’t quite remember the last time I truly enjoyed it, remains still one of my favorites that the year brings. Last Independence Day I spent recovering fragments of a mortar that landed not far from were I was sleeping in ar-Ramadi, Iraq. The year before that I was out in the mountains of Korea on a month long field exercise. Yes it was monsoon seasons, and yes I had been soaked for up to three days. Before that, Ranger School. I believe around the 4th, I must have been somewhere in the Tennessee mountain divide, rucking around the Appalachians, but specifically, I can’t be sure other than I was hungry and tired. And before that… well you get the idea.

I didn’t ask for much with this homecoming, and as usual with my job, I don’t know when the next one will come. Probably Christmas, but I’ve missed that before too. Like I said, not much, just a trip to the parade and a large-scale party at my house. You’d think this would be something that anyone could accomplish. Apparently, it’s too much for my sister and her friends. Now in the write-up that I wrote and this computer then ate, I did go through piece by piece and correct each little discrepancy one at a time. I’m not going to do that again, because one) I don’t want to, and two) because I’m not sure what that proves. The point is that throwing a party is not that hard, at least it shouldn’t be, especially on the Fourth of July. It obviously was too difficult for some, and it didn’t come to fruition.

Here are some of the highlights. I was asked to leave the parade before the parade officially was over, because one individual ran out of beer and wanted to leave. When we got back, certain people took naps, rather than insure people were actually coming. No one planned for dinner; the nearest store that was both open and had hotdogs with buns was thirty minutes away. Five people outside those who we left the parade with actually came to the house for the party, of those five two were related to me, and another two stayed for less than forty-five minutes… and who can blame them. So I have now about twenty-five hotdogs in the fridge, something like forty-beers down cellar, and a large-scare sense of being pissed off.

The problem, I think, lies with the fact that we are becoming very lame as a group of young adults, my sister as case in point. Some of you and I have had this conversation, not about my sister, but rather our collective friends in general. The old thought process was that a late-twenties / early-thirties year old at the bar having a good time was lame – as if something was wrong with him or her. I say that’s backwards. It’s the yuppie prick sitting at home with his wife that he married when he was 22 and straight out of college watching CNN on his HDTV thinking how he’s got to get to bed by ten so he can get up for work tomorrow at nine. That’s lame. That’s the next thirty to forty years of your life, guys. I hope your high school and college memories can sustain you. As for me, they can’t. There’s more to do out there, more to see, more to feel. I’d rather hang with a crowd of thirty-plus year old men and women who have struggled and continue to struggle through life realizing full well that there is no guarantee that anything will be rewarded, than chill with those who have not experienced failure or setbacks or for that matter life or America. That’s lame to me. So the weather here is nice. I’m getting caught up on some rest, and I have seen some old faces.

But I miss my friends in Oklahoma.

The Right and The Wrong vs. The Man of Steel

Okay, kids.  To start with, I really enjoyed Superman Returns.  And I was a skeptical little monkey when I left out to see the next-in-line screen shot of another grown man in tights.  My game plan for last Wednesday was to go and hit up the Taco Bell, go to the movies to catch the new Superman flick, and then blast it on this forum.  I was shocked.  It was simply outstanding work compared to what I thought I was going to get spoonfed.  The first movie so far this year that is worth of the title “Blockbuster”. 

For those of you who liked Superman’s 1-thru-4, you will not be disappointed.  Brandon Routh absolutely delivers as The Man of Steel with a performance that is hauntingly close to Christopher Reeves with repects to both identities of the Man of Steel.  There are times when you swear it is Chris himself.  Kevin Spacey plays Lex Luthor just as Gene Hackmen played him back in the day.  Metropolis, The Daily Planet, the plot, the soap-opera style escapades between Clark Kent and Lois Lane - all feel like nothing, not a single detail (except one…) has been missed in the Superman series.  In short, it is a brilliant effort in the continuing deluge of comic book films.  Much better than X Men 3: The Last Stand anyway… which sucked ass.

However, and this is interesting, is the mixed review that this movie is receiving from the Christian Right.  Some pastors and evangelicals are angry that Superman used some sort of Biblical verse toward the end of the film, (“…and now the Son has become the Father, and now the Father has become the Son…”  or something…).  Other churches are pleased to see an obviously Christian film that isn’t being billed as a Christian film.  Maybe because it’s not a Christian film… it’s a Superman film.

I get the parallels.  Yes, Superman was sent from the Heavens by his father to protect and guide mankind.  Maybe it’s just a lucky break that Kal-El and Jar-El are names that in Hebrew mean God.  And maybe when Lex Luthor stabs Superman with the Kyptonite shard it is symbolic of Jesus getting stabbed by the Roman Spear.  And perhaps Lois Lane drawing him from the water is like the resurrection.  And maybe, and maybe, and maybe.

The biggest fault that I throw back at these Christians who look to see God in all depictions of humanity, even Superman, is this:  If Superman is Jesus, then God and Heaven are dead.  Remember, Krypton was destroyed by its own technology and Jar-El is no more.  How does that set with you, Reverend?  Kinda puts a hitch in things, huh?

This doesn’t really bother me, cause I at least see their point of view, and it’s an interesting one.  Also, Christianity has been the pop-topic of a lot of recent films, both positively and negatively, such as The Da Vinci Code, The Passion of the Christ, and The Chronicals of Narnia.  It would make sense to assume Jesus might work at The Daily Planet.  However, what does fry me up a bit is a comment made by the screen writers, Michael Dougherty and Dan Harris, that they had not even considered playing to Superman’s longstanding patriot act.  Harris is quoted as saying, “The world has changed. The world is a different place.  The truth is he’s an alien. He was sent from another planet. He has landed on the planet Earth, and he is here for everybody. He’s an international superhero.”

Bullshit.  In Superman II, there is an epic scene where Superman rescues the American Flag and returning it to the top of the White House.  Superman got his start on radio back in the 40’s kicking Nazi ass.  He still is cloaked in Red, White, and … er… yellow.. but it’s like White.  This is the same Superman that was in all the other Superman films, right?!  I mean, Superman was penned to paper just as WWII kicked off; or even if you are a conservative comic book nut, at the very least, he was around for the Cold War.  Superman may be an international superhero but he MUST stand for Truth, Justice, and The American Way as creator Jerry Siegel intended it in 1938.  Otherwise, what is next?  Cultural sensetivity classes for Superman?  Come on Hollywood, you were sooo close… then you went and got all stupid Liberal on me.

“Does he still stand for Truth, Justice, and all that other stuff…”  Frank Langella as Chief, Superman Returns