Tuesday, November 04, 2008
dems election
Sunday, November 02, 2008
Saturday, November 01, 2008
Need more be said about the tragedy that was the last 8 years in American history? By the looks of it, Bush was a one-term president who basically was fucked by the WMD debacle and never ruled again after that. He was conned by his henchmen, but also my his own lack of curiosity. Never again should a president be afforded secrecy and omnipotent powers that Bush got in his first term. His father son hangups cost America big time. we may or may not ever recover.
As we sit here in the waning hours before the Nov. 4 election, it's easy to feel a moribound sense of loss. It's like we've been beaten and are waiting for the settlement from the divorce. W took everything, he wrecked our sense of selves, the kids are scarred for life and now the only question is whether he and his politics will go away and we can start over. there's not much left to salvage.
I wonder why i'm still here. The world is becoming a place where U.S. is less relevant. It's like the dying giant that ruled the earth for a good short time and now the rest of the world is picking up the pieces. We as Americans think we have some say. the rest of the world is licking its chops.
Sunday, July 06, 2008
But I'm deeply troubled by what what appears to be an unraveling of the country that is accelerating by the month.
There's so much I don't know, but all I can do is try to be a better person. That means making friends this weekend with folks at the Moon Mountain Music Festival.
I enjoyed hanging out with Nina and Alice, two friends I made who live in the city of Bend.
We ate sausages and bacon, danced, and drank coffee and smoked a little. It was aieet.
The festival was incredible. I arrived up at Elk Lake, which is situated along the Cascade Lakes Highway in the shadow of Mt. Bachelor, at around 2 p.m. Saturday - grabbing the last available tent site.
I immediately ran into friends that I know - my yoga teacher and hair stylist Sundari and her husband John and family. Piper, who brought her cousin James from Philadelphia and my work mates Jen, Katie, Laurel and Wayland. All good times were had.
Laurel Brauns and Julie Southwell played an amazing set, but I hid off on the side not wanting to converse yet.
After seeing Piper, I began a walk around the lake, which is about 7 miles but looks a lot less from the start.
My walk started on some nice forest road, which became a manicured trail winding along the lake. Long-time residents enjoyed the Fifth of July sunshine on their docks while the music from the festival echoed across the lake.
I asked a young looking woman about the quality of the trail around the lake, and she told me I could get around it. She had a look on her face that didn't quite get it, I thought.
She said I might encounter some rocks.
Later, I ran into a nice woman Justin and her friend I forget her name who were tanning. We chatted for a bit about the festival, which they thought was sold out because they had tried online and couldn't buy tickets. I told them it wasn't and they said they might try it later.
Eventually I hit the end of the trailhead, but it was too far to turn around so I began the bushwacking.
I got through it eventually with some trials and tribulations.
I made it back to the festival, where I ate a delicious bowl of ravioli with wild mushrooms in a cream sauce and savored two pints of Cascade Lakes brews.
Long-lost friend Drew showed up too. Good talks.
Danced the flamenco with Piper. Hot. Spanish. dancing.
Enough said right now about the Festival/Gotta go to work again tomorrow...."(
Tuesday, June 03, 2008
Tuesday, May 06, 2008
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/2008/02/28/2008-02-28_barack_obamas_dream_ticket_mike_bloomber.html
But now I'm going to give the counterarguments. Namely, his choice of a veep also should somehow shore up the loss of white working class voters that has prevailed over the past several months. How is a billionaire Jewish guy from New York going to do that?
As much as I'd like to see Bloomberg on the ticket, I'm afraid Obama is going to have to find someone else. Something about mending political fences and keeping his enemies close to his vest prevails in the argument to select hillary clinton as his running mate. As much as I grew tired of her act and her husband's around February of this year, I think she's rebounded and garnered a lot of support. Barack could show a lot of hutzpah and rally both working class whites and retired women, to his cause.
It would be interesting to see that ticket. How would the Republicans top it?
Sunday, April 27, 2008
I woke up at 7 this morning and joined a group of about 50 runners at Phil's Trail for a 9-mile run. The run was part of a training group for the Dirty Half marathon in June. I took it slow, listening to my mind which knew this was an early part of my training, and my body, which couldn't go faster than 10 minute pace. It took me about an hour-forty minutes to complete the 9 mile run, about an 11 minute pace.
My body aches from the run, but my mind is lucid.
After the run, I went to Columbia Park off the river, laid down a towel, and read a chapter from An Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, by Tom Wolfe. It tells the story of Oregon-native Ken Kesey, who lived the dream of drug-induced psychosis. I remembered that lifestyle, which is so far distant from my current life.
I tasted it briefly during the summer after my freshman year in college. I went back to Danville and hung around with a couple of high school friends, smoking pot, doing a little LSD and working as a camp counselor in a day camp in Orinda, California.
My two friends would later live that life to its fullest extent in San Francisco. I would forever remain a prisoner of the suburbs.
Saturday, April 26, 2008
Guess I can't move to California. Way too many sharks there.
I worked probably 60 hours this week, got paid for 50 of them, and now I have to wonder about whether I say the right things to get a raise.
It's all rigged against me, I tell you.
Woke up yesterday and got a speeding ticket about a half-mile from my driveway. In a school zone. Which doubly fucks up both my driving record and the amount of fine I will pay. The peach fuzzy cop looked kind of annoyed when I had the gall to ask him to show me the radar gun that said I was doing 40 in the 20.
He had to get somewhere, I think.
Watched Before the Devil Knows You're Dead last night. I've gotta say, one of the better movies I've seen in awhile. PSH, EH and Marisa Freakin Tomei showed a few things about acting, great script and directed by Sidney Lumet. It worked for me because of the interaction between siblings.
Each of the characters has a reason for doing what otherwise would be horrible acts against family members.
This morning my brother called at 8:15 a.m. just to leave a message that he had already rode his bike to Pilot Butte and run up to the top. He's going to have paternity leave! from his teaching job in a week and said he would be working out everyday sometimes twice! Good luck beating me in the Deschutes Dash, he said.
I am not interested in triathlon training, I thought to myself, still lying in bed on this glorious sun kissed day. I'm going to run tomorrow.
Message to self: Marisa Tomei. Thank you.
Sunday, February 03, 2008
Laney Grace McDonald
Saturday, January 26, 2008
what to do...??
I've had these thoughts myself about my house. If the shit hit the fan, would I continue to pay the $1,200 per month that is going towards interest so that some bank can continue to stay afloat and my credit intact? I know there is some personal responsibility involved, but I think a lot of people will do what this couple is planning. It's going to lead to chaos. Our nation's individualist culture is rearing its ugly head. we have a generation that feels entitled to rising home values and easy money. It's going to get ugly.
But I've decided to approach this whole moment in history with a different take. Sure, things could get bad - banks could no longer have money to disperse, credit cards could stop working - but it would be bad for everybody. What are people going to do? Starve? I think not.
I will stick it out as long as i can, five years if necessary, but if I get laid off, what then? I will likely walk away, join the military or something. It could be liberating...
What will happen to all these houses sitting empty in the High Desert of Central Oregon? They will sit empty, become havens for meth addicts, lower housing values for all. It's not a pretty picture and doesn't offer any hope that the market will eventually rebound.
Saturday, January 19, 2008
economic malaise
Thursday, January 17, 2008
My first letter of intent goes out to those people who still think media is an honest business. I mean really now. Do you know who you're talking to here? It's the bug behind the leafy green vegetable that knaws against the back of your mind when you sleep. It's the irate, irresponsible media person who can't get enough because he doesn't get enough.
It's easy to be new at something. The hard part is being the old hand. It's hard because you have a taste for it and it eats away at your very being until you can't sleep and can't rest either. Even in yoga class, you're a wreck.
It's the color purple on a field of green. It stands out in a kind of beautiful way, but only because it's old. There's nothing getting in the way of it getting somewhere except itself. Its own decisions mar any kind of consistency that would help it get ahead. There's nowhere to go.
The future is kinda scary, if you didn't know.
We have for so long lived in the ever present fear of this happening, and now that it's about to happen, the fear grows greater. Will that lead to some kind of peace when it does happen? Or will there be some kind of reckoning to be faced? I fear the latter.
Just some rambling thoughts from a high, low and chemically altered newspaperman.
Wednesday, January 02, 2008
Tuesday, January 01, 2008
elections
Mitt Romney is so diabolically manufactured and trying to be Reagan, it makes me sick!
I used to sorta like Huckabee, but c'mon, the guy believes in Evolution! That God created man and woman came from man's rib.
Barack Obama is my number one, but I fear that Americans won't vote for him.... I could be wrong. Edwards I have always thought was a phony, but he's starting to appeal to me. Hillary is just plain evil, and her husband is not much better.
Who would do best for the country? Probably Hillary, because we need someone who's not going to take shit from nobody. I kinda think the others might. So I'm conflicted obviously. I'm not ready to vote yet, and neither is America until we know these people a little bit more.
Sunday, December 09, 2007
see/read into the wild
"It's time to retire the language of the sublime, with its implicit class snobbery and muddling together of aesthetic pleasure with social hierarchy, and look freshly at the relationship between the ungussied-up townships of the American West and their natural surroundings."
you'll have to pick up a copy of Playboy to read the rest of the article - couldn't find the link.
But it's interesting, because I think of Christopher McCandless, subject of the film Into the Wild and book of same title, and his obsessive quest to throw off his suburban, well-to-do upbringing and live among the impoverished during his journey, which ultimately took him into the wilds of Alaska.
Chris McCandless is the young romantic searcher - with an almost unhealthy reverence for nature - which ultimately kills him. You're pulling for him, but you just know he's trekking towards disaster.
There's a poignant scene during his journey when he reenters society from a long, isolated journey down the Colorado on a kayak, which ultimately took him into a Mexican desert.
He hops on and off a train and visits LA, where he's aggrieved by both the plight of the homeless and its seediness and a trendy restaurant, where he could envision himself with other social climbers if he weren't the rough and tumble Alexander Supertramp.
He flees in desperation from the scene, back onto the trains, just like other romantics who view society with abhorrence and revere nature.
I say to hell with nature and Thoreau-esque journeys into the woods.
Try to live ethically in society - that's got balls to it.
I wonder how Raban would view him - did he escape his family - or did he try to create order in nature where it had been lost in his parents' lies? Were his intentions -similar to Tolstoy in his renunciation of money - socially conscious or elitist in their scope?
Because how can someone raised in wealth ever understand what it means to be poor? One cannot cast off his social umbrella completely. it's always there, isn't it?
It's present in his elevation of nature to the level of majesty. Noone who was truly penniless would see beauty in living in a stinky bus by himself in the middle of the woods. Maybe his priorities were out of whack.
The film, which I loved by the way, is shot in locations that are almost all what are considered majestic beauty-type shots. Grand Canyon, the coast, the top of a rock mountain near the Salton Sea where an old man and Chris climb to the top and see the light of God. It's all about some "higher" elitist? reverence in nature.
It's the difference between Western and Eastern Oregon. The warm fuzzies come out when you think of the Cascade and coastal ranges and thick evergreen forests. That's the type of environment that environmentalists protect. It's also got more $$$ than Eastern Oregon.
But I'm not so sure he would think of lost middle of nowhere towns in Eastern Oregon with the same reverence as say, the Oregon coast. Maybe that's the problem with young Chris McCandless, who would be approaching 40 if he were alive today.
He saw things from the eyes of a young romantic, not as they really were. He lived in the 19th Century, not the late 20th. What's so wrong about setting a forest fire that would have attracted the planes or at least someone to come rescue him? Probably didn't realize that the trees would grow back or that he squatted on millions of acres of forest.
