- Published on
My first job in a bike shop was for two pricks who didn't like bikes at all, but one inherited a store, and so it goes, that he grew to own a few branches. His near disdain for cyclists wore like a badge on a border patrol agent. He'd look you over with X-ray eyes for parasites, flaws, and weakness, before snatching your money. Fortunately he never visited the stores. He and his partner were both married to other people, but They seemed to also be romantically affiliated with each other, which made their judgement incongruous. The second bike shop I worked for was owned by a one eyed drunk who was kindhearted, and generous, but mostly a complete train-wreck. He also inherited the biz, and the family squeezed a lot of cash from it before the next changing of the guard. More on this Guy later...
So Bike shops are a strange and magical place, where every day feels like Christmas, mostly because you are always rewarding yourself with a new gift in the form of component upgrades, and infinitely aspiring toward the next glossy ride. The thing with this lusty enthusiasm, is that it does not make for good business sense, any more than the dealer who shoots-up, or a Pizzeria owner who can't get enough zah. You will end up the overzealous snake who swallows a bichon, and then can't slither out of the road. You will end up an addict... You end up with a lot of toys, and inverted cash-flow. This I suppose was the fate of many independent dealers, and so in the Late nineties, Trek Bicycle set about to coach dealers on how to be "business-people", and not just enthusiasts. They built a training program called "Eye on 2000". (ION2000) was a look forward to the millennium, and how to market, brand, and sell more shit and stop eating all of your own pizza, or Bichon's. Anyway, before the fin de' siecle, when Lance was likely learning to dope, and the way things were done in Europe, Le Mond was haggling with Trek about another partnership... In that enchanted and fictional shit-hole called Las Vegas, the world was spinning on it's perfect axis. Our restaurant was also spinning. The Inter-bike trade-show was in Vegas that year, and we sat above it all spinning atop the Stratosphere with our vendors and those who would change everything, again. Our table held several key influencers. (but back then the word 'influencer' had not yet been invented). The Key principals at Trek were the venerable Dick Burke, and his well heeled son John Burke. (they sat across from us.) Beside me were a few other big shop owners, and some fictional characters; Greg Le Mond, Lance, Keith B, Gary Fisher, Missing from this epicenter of talent was Gary Klein, (who was not yet on Trek's radar). Another Brilliant thinker and tinkerer who dined with us was Rolf Dietrich, who was exhibiting in a side flank of the Trek Booth. Rolf reinvented the wheel. At this day in time, Trek was not yet a complete corporate monster and it's patriarch dined with us holding the helm, and our attention. Before Trek 2.0. SRAM, (at the time Grip-Shift) was exhibiting in the margins of the convention center, They began with nothing more than a folding table, some print collateral, lithium grease and a dream. Being from Chicago, we spent time with them at their booth, and with several others, like stoned kids in Wonka's Workshop. If you blew-up that table, that night -- It is fair to say the cycling world would have been Way way different. Under John Burke Trek would Sue Le Mond, acquire Bontrager, Grind Fisher into a pulp, and ruin perhaps the most coveted brand in the biz, and arguably the sexiest maverick in the spray booth, Klein.
Trek inked deals with Le Mond to Build Bikes under his name, and secured the wunderkind from Texas to Keep America Great again, and again... (and to keep it squarely upon the medal table of a wholly European sport). Before Amazon, before The Dot Com Bubble, and the Y2K apocalypse, There were magical places called bike shops. Independent retailers, and not Franchises. Generally shitty business people an infectious passion for shiny toys. In those days, this seemed to be enough. Certainly before Bikes were bought from strangers over the phone, and shipped unassembled to your door, Bike Shops were rather important. At this time everything magical came from a cool crusty place with a greasy floor, bad marketing, a coffee maker, parts washer, and a gray box to write a buyers name and address in triplicate. Bike shop consolidation...seemed far off. In this Fantasy land there was a torrent of way cool innovation. Trek's affable and enthusiastic founder was about to hand the keys of his kingdom over to his posh ivy-league son John. Trek's founder Dick Burke, scored a business degree from Marquette University in Milwaukee, and later worked at an appliance distributor. He was a business man, and a tinkerer like many of those who sat with us that evening. He saw a gap between Schwinn and Asia, and Like so many others who envisioned something new in a schism -- He set about to exploit that gap. We chatted it up with the intelligentsia at every Interbike show; Keith Bontrager, Gary Klein, Le Mond, Rolf, Fisher, and even Stan and FK Day, of Grip Shift. The Day Brothers saw their space for inventiveness in a simple shifter. In this spirit of invention, whether it be four-bar linkage, the press-fit bearing, or a dual cylinder thingy that indexed your derailleur -- All of these exploitations of market gaps were being filled by Americans. They were all tinkerers, inventors, and enthusiasts.
You could definitely say... These were extraordinary times.
I remember Trek's Owner Dick Burke fondly, because he was like a kind uncle full of inventive stories, always oozing with interest and ideas. He was a sponge. He asked good questions, seemed charmed, and truly engaged with people. At a trade-show, you would find him, much like Klein, Keith, or The Day brothers showing you what they'd recently come up with, and asking you what you would do to improve it. It was a name-dropper tour de force that evening. I asked Le Mond what he thought of Carbon bikes, and we digressed into the nuance of all sorts of whacky new innovations.
From a trade show folding table, to a leader in an industry -- Stale trade-show air seemed to blow new ideas up from the convention hall basement -- This wind is not the rarified air of elites & MBA's. First the idea must be born, and those ideas come from enthusiasm.
So the business would boom through the "Cross Bike", and the "Mountain Bike Boom", would flourish with crazy and useless Full Suspension Junk, The "Y" Bike, Klein's Mantra, Pong's Super V, and soo many more gears were yet to come. Specialized and Trek who first looked incredulously at Raleigh while they glued tubes of "Technium" (round aluminum) into traditional lugs to speed construction. This was soon imitated. John Tomac, would break several parts before they were near perfect but never that glued joint, and..., Then Raleigh would advance into Titanium. Trek stared, and took it all in. Sinyard listened, and re-tooled. The two giant American bike makers would covet, drool, and spurn Kestrel, Merlin & Ibis as they shaped carbon and Titanium into smooth organic forms. Later Trek and The "S" Word, would steal the profitable ideas rejecting Titanium as too tough to tool for, and they'd both begin to glue, screw, and bake bikes together at the bleeding edge of demand. But demand only comes when the product is lust-worthy. Meanwhile Klein quietly advanced toward their 20th year in Aluminum with perfect double pass welds, indestructible enamel, oozing sex.
The whole military industrial complex had recently unraveled, gutted -- it later bleed out so many mat-sci wonders, and innovative tooling, into the open I.V. of an industry ripe for such innovation. Downsized Engineers, and Literal Rocket-scientists, CNC operators, and CAD grads, made the perfect pedigree for what was about to boil. As the Cold war fizzled like a spent bottle rocket..., every type of carbon, & composite, rare metal and exotic material process was about to be homeless. Bikes, Cars, Boats and Motorcycles, seemed prime to dip their bread in that trickle-down. Specialized marketed M2 Metal Matrix, which was basically decommissioned helicopter Alloy. Cannondale looked to new engineers, while stoically sanding smooth gloppy 6061 welds in Bedford Pennsylvania. Trek & Specialized began to Glue and screw carbon to aluminum, and so it began.
Bikes, and parts were being churned out in the USA in volume like a brand new war machine.
It was awesome.
So Bike shops are a strange and magical place, where every day feels like Christmas, mostly because you are always rewarding yourself with a new gift in the form of component upgrades, and infinitely aspiring toward the next glossy ride. The thing with this lusty enthusiasm, is that it does not make for good business sense, any more than the dealer who shoots-up, or a Pizzeria owner who can't get enough zah. You will end up the overzealous snake who swallows a bichon, and then can't slither out of the road. You will end up an addict... You end up with a lot of toys, and inverted cash-flow. This I suppose was the fate of many independent dealers, and so in the Late nineties, Trek Bicycle set about to coach dealers on how to be "business-people", and not just enthusiasts. They built a training program called "Eye on 2000". (ION2000) was a look forward to the millennium, and how to market, brand, and sell more shit and stop eating all of your own pizza, or Bichon's. Anyway, before the fin de' siecle, when Lance was likely learning to dope, and the way things were done in Europe, Le Mond was haggling with Trek about another partnership... In that enchanted and fictional shit-hole called Las Vegas, the world was spinning on it's perfect axis. Our restaurant was also spinning. The Inter-bike trade-show was in Vegas that year, and we sat above it all spinning atop the Stratosphere with our vendors and those who would change everything, again. Our table held several key influencers. (but back then the word 'influencer' had not yet been invented). The Key principals at Trek were the venerable Dick Burke, and his well heeled son John Burke. (they sat across from us.) Beside me were a few other big shop owners, and some fictional characters; Greg Le Mond, Lance, Keith B, Gary Fisher, Missing from this epicenter of talent was Gary Klein, (who was not yet on Trek's radar). Another Brilliant thinker and tinkerer who dined with us was Rolf Dietrich, who was exhibiting in a side flank of the Trek Booth. Rolf reinvented the wheel. At this day in time, Trek was not yet a complete corporate monster and it's patriarch dined with us holding the helm, and our attention. Before Trek 2.0. SRAM, (at the time Grip-Shift) was exhibiting in the margins of the convention center, They began with nothing more than a folding table, some print collateral, lithium grease and a dream. Being from Chicago, we spent time with them at their booth, and with several others, like stoned kids in Wonka's Workshop. If you blew-up that table, that night -- It is fair to say the cycling world would have been Way way different. Under John Burke Trek would Sue Le Mond, acquire Bontrager, Grind Fisher into a pulp, and ruin perhaps the most coveted brand in the biz, and arguably the sexiest maverick in the spray booth, Klein.
Trek inked deals with Le Mond to Build Bikes under his name, and secured the wunderkind from Texas to Keep America Great again, and again... (and to keep it squarely upon the medal table of a wholly European sport). Before Amazon, before The Dot Com Bubble, and the Y2K apocalypse, There were magical places called bike shops. Independent retailers, and not Franchises. Generally shitty business people an infectious passion for shiny toys. In those days, this seemed to be enough. Certainly before Bikes were bought from strangers over the phone, and shipped unassembled to your door, Bike Shops were rather important. At this time everything magical came from a cool crusty place with a greasy floor, bad marketing, a coffee maker, parts washer, and a gray box to write a buyers name and address in triplicate. Bike shop consolidation...seemed far off. In this Fantasy land there was a torrent of way cool innovation. Trek's affable and enthusiastic founder was about to hand the keys of his kingdom over to his posh ivy-league son John. Trek's founder Dick Burke, scored a business degree from Marquette University in Milwaukee, and later worked at an appliance distributor. He was a business man, and a tinkerer like many of those who sat with us that evening. He saw a gap between Schwinn and Asia, and Like so many others who envisioned something new in a schism -- He set about to exploit that gap. We chatted it up with the intelligentsia at every Interbike show; Keith Bontrager, Gary Klein, Le Mond, Rolf, Fisher, and even Stan and FK Day, of Grip Shift. The Day Brothers saw their space for inventiveness in a simple shifter. In this spirit of invention, whether it be four-bar linkage, the press-fit bearing, or a dual cylinder thingy that indexed your derailleur -- All of these exploitations of market gaps were being filled by Americans. They were all tinkerers, inventors, and enthusiasts.
You could definitely say... These were extraordinary times.
I remember Trek's Owner Dick Burke fondly, because he was like a kind uncle full of inventive stories, always oozing with interest and ideas. He was a sponge. He asked good questions, seemed charmed, and truly engaged with people. At a trade-show, you would find him, much like Klein, Keith, or The Day brothers showing you what they'd recently come up with, and asking you what you would do to improve it. It was a name-dropper tour de force that evening. I asked Le Mond what he thought of Carbon bikes, and we digressed into the nuance of all sorts of whacky new innovations.
From a trade show folding table, to a leader in an industry -- Stale trade-show air seemed to blow new ideas up from the convention hall basement -- This wind is not the rarified air of elites & MBA's. First the idea must be born, and those ideas come from enthusiasm.
So the business would boom through the "Cross Bike", and the "Mountain Bike Boom", would flourish with crazy and useless Full Suspension Junk, The "Y" Bike, Klein's Mantra, Pong's Super V, and soo many more gears were yet to come. Specialized and Trek who first looked incredulously at Raleigh while they glued tubes of "Technium" (round aluminum) into traditional lugs to speed construction. This was soon imitated. John Tomac, would break several parts before they were near perfect but never that glued joint, and..., Then Raleigh would advance into Titanium. Trek stared, and took it all in. Sinyard listened, and re-tooled. The two giant American bike makers would covet, drool, and spurn Kestrel, Merlin & Ibis as they shaped carbon and Titanium into smooth organic forms. Later Trek and The "S" Word, would steal the profitable ideas rejecting Titanium as too tough to tool for, and they'd both begin to glue, screw, and bake bikes together at the bleeding edge of demand. But demand only comes when the product is lust-worthy. Meanwhile Klein quietly advanced toward their 20th year in Aluminum with perfect double pass welds, indestructible enamel, oozing sex.
The whole military industrial complex had recently unraveled, gutted -- it later bleed out so many mat-sci wonders, and innovative tooling, into the open I.V. of an industry ripe for such innovation. Downsized Engineers, and Literal Rocket-scientists, CNC operators, and CAD grads, made the perfect pedigree for what was about to boil. As the Cold war fizzled like a spent bottle rocket..., every type of carbon, & composite, rare metal and exotic material process was about to be homeless. Bikes, Cars, Boats and Motorcycles, seemed prime to dip their bread in that trickle-down. Specialized marketed M2 Metal Matrix, which was basically decommissioned helicopter Alloy. Cannondale looked to new engineers, while stoically sanding smooth gloppy 6061 welds in Bedford Pennsylvania. Trek & Specialized began to Glue and screw carbon to aluminum, and so it began.
Bikes, and parts were being churned out in the USA in volume like a brand new war machine.
It was awesome.
This industry was born of innovators, enthusiasts, and excitable bike junkies who could not get enough, like Tom Ritchey, Phil Wood, Race Face, Hershey, Paul, Avid, Control Tech, Ringle, and many many more. Bridgestone marketed ridiculously light steel Bikes in a whole new way, selling lifestyle in muted tones through near perfect hard-bound varnished catalogs. The world was perfect.
The Bikes were glorious, and we could now begin bad arguments with ludicrous statements like, "Steel is Real".
I like to recall fondly this torrent of cool historical sponge-cake, so we can take a break from our news-feeds -- Simply because these too, are also extraordinary times.
I remember sitting at the top of the Stratosphere in a pair of loosely fitting pants, these bad khakis were not my style. These were Extraordinary pants, with a poorly matched wrinkled button-down, Bike shop people had trouble dressing up for dinner. I suppose you could say that was the very issue Trek sought to tame; Later it would take a Franchise model to fix it. We were going to ride the rollercoaster next, around the top of the spinning restaurant; pairing up with our fellow dinner guests. I recall fondly talking to Dick Burke like he was my estranged uncle, just before he handed the keys to the chocolate factory over to his son. He told me the secret to success is listening, that ideas are not born in a vacuum, but come from people we meet every day. He Told me he was ready for something else. Dick Burke built a beautiful brand and a beautiful reputation by being a good human being. Sinyard turned tire imports, into the "S" Word, ceaselessly innovating, and SRAM came up from the basement to dominate the kit market.
Yesterday I wandered into one of my old bike shops to kick a few tires. Naturally I had to wear a mask. I was selected and ushered in to chat it up with a sales-kid, and we both noted that the place looked as if it had been looted. Empty racks, Open space like missing teeth, where bikes had once filled every conceivable slot. It was the new way. Bike shops are booming, and the supply chain is faltering. He said, "...we can't build them fast enough, and we are out of everything that's not a road bike above 5k." "It's a rough problem to have today", I said -- Meaning in this reality, Bike stores still with inventory are either doing something wrong, or they are quite lucky. But Bikes will now line the garages and Hallways of many more homes, and perhaps everyone will see them again as an indispensable way of moving forward. Sadly a Klein will no longer hang from a venerable TV set -- But perhaps the next Sit-com will feature an Allied, or an O.P.E.N. This too is an extraordinary time for Bikes, as it was in the mid to late nineties.
"Here is to our next generation of enthusiasts," Dick Burke said... -- And so I suppose, that the lovely products will lead, and good business will follow.
The Bikes were glorious, and we could now begin bad arguments with ludicrous statements like, "Steel is Real".
I like to recall fondly this torrent of cool historical sponge-cake, so we can take a break from our news-feeds -- Simply because these too, are also extraordinary times.
I remember sitting at the top of the Stratosphere in a pair of loosely fitting pants, these bad khakis were not my style. These were Extraordinary pants, with a poorly matched wrinkled button-down, Bike shop people had trouble dressing up for dinner. I suppose you could say that was the very issue Trek sought to tame; Later it would take a Franchise model to fix it. We were going to ride the rollercoaster next, around the top of the spinning restaurant; pairing up with our fellow dinner guests. I recall fondly talking to Dick Burke like he was my estranged uncle, just before he handed the keys to the chocolate factory over to his son. He told me the secret to success is listening, that ideas are not born in a vacuum, but come from people we meet every day. He Told me he was ready for something else. Dick Burke built a beautiful brand and a beautiful reputation by being a good human being. Sinyard turned tire imports, into the "S" Word, ceaselessly innovating, and SRAM came up from the basement to dominate the kit market.
Yesterday I wandered into one of my old bike shops to kick a few tires. Naturally I had to wear a mask. I was selected and ushered in to chat it up with a sales-kid, and we both noted that the place looked as if it had been looted. Empty racks, Open space like missing teeth, where bikes had once filled every conceivable slot. It was the new way. Bike shops are booming, and the supply chain is faltering. He said, "...we can't build them fast enough, and we are out of everything that's not a road bike above 5k." "It's a rough problem to have today", I said -- Meaning in this reality, Bike stores still with inventory are either doing something wrong, or they are quite lucky. But Bikes will now line the garages and Hallways of many more homes, and perhaps everyone will see them again as an indispensable way of moving forward. Sadly a Klein will no longer hang from a venerable TV set -- But perhaps the next Sit-com will feature an Allied, or an O.P.E.N. This too is an extraordinary time for Bikes, as it was in the mid to late nineties.
"Here is to our next generation of enthusiasts," Dick Burke said... -- And so I suppose, that the lovely products will lead, and good business will follow.
Here is to enthusiasm, and the Attitude which always inspires
- Published on
Can we be straight with each other? How can you be sure that you are thinking straight these days? Me I cannot. I believe that honesty with oneself is an important step, because knowing I'm "not quite right" protects me a bit against the hijacking of my healthier brain from Zombies and Space Aliens.
If you don't wear tin-foil over or beneath your helmet, and you don't yet speak to trees and rocks, you may believe that you have this new world in the bag. But do you really "Got this"? The more I interview friends, and strangers, a noteworthy reaction which I'd never noticed prior, seems to leak out a bit. We all lack hugs, and earnest smiles, and what has replaced them is caution, melancholia, a wide berth, and sympathetic gestures like those waiting for news in a Hospital, or exchanging condolences at a wake. The thing is, that if you are not yet in the hospital, nor at a funeral, could you please dispense with the long face, because it's fucking bringing me down! I know for a fact that most people these days are wasting 80 percent of their time. Maybe you need some tin foil... Cuz if this thing had a moral it would be this, “Normal” happen when you act “Normal” — When will that be for you?
Whereas previously my elderly parents were THE ONLY people to send me re-hashed internet anecdotes, silly images, and awkward signs pawned from the stale innerwebs c. 1998 -- NOW, everyone seems to quip small B.S. sundries, like they are sharing a chiclet in prison. I now get texts with dumb-shit images, and Gifs created by someone so far up on the food-chain, that I'm not even certain of the context. The issue is that this crap now comes in torrents from formerly smart people. Small comics, a 'la The New Yorker, with self inserted quotes or quips, which are meant to make them clever'er, but which simply make me look away with disgust. I've tried to play the same game sharing an article or two from a scientific or nature journal, or by sharing a story from a friend or author, but now it seems that in our global malaise pandemic, we can only read gossip, jargon, crappy gifs, and anecdotes, that amount to a shit-soup and sandwich. I do love hearing from people, and really love to be engaged, and to feel busy ascending the social ladder, but -- That ladder broke in March, and we all tumbled back down into this murky well. You pretend that you will glean some clever intel from your news-feed, , and that by sharing it you will enlighten others, but the truth is that your addiction to a quick paragraph every ten minutes is a plastic carrot in front of your fucking peloton. You are getting dumber.
Quick Quiz
In your new relationship with a global pandemic do you:
A. Feel profoundly overwhelmed?
B. Feel like you have everything completely under control?
C. Feel nothing whatsoever?
D. All of the above?
If you’ve answered “D”, then go ahead and drink that whole bottle of Pinot Grigio tonight with your pizza, because you deserve a reward for your honesty — and you are at least partly in control over these somber emotions.
If you didn't answer "D" then Go Here
We now look up from your damp silo to that bright light, sometimes eclipsing into a half-moon depending upon our slouching posture here upon the bottom. You make-believe that "we are OK", but that is far from the truth. We are not OK. We will surely be stuck here as if in a mauve laundromat, fluorescent green glow flickering over your phone waiting for wisdom and your pants which never seem to get dry. And so here we sit, reading comics, giphy junk, this dumb blog, and trash novels, hoping to feel something akin to a hug. We will stand around in this laundromat forever if we don't make an effort to walk the fuck out without our pants on. Fuck it! Nobody wears pants anymore anyway!, Just break with the low-rent coin-op dungeon, and have a walk. Whatever side of the spectrum you dwell upon doubled up with masks, and a carabiner clipped sanitizer upon your belt like a holster to inoculate you or your friends like Jesus, you must know that you have become, well... Not quite yourself lately. If you are the fucking messiah, and you could squirt a bit of that magic juice on my forehead to anoint the doldrum out of me and my friends, then do it already! I'm, so over you Mr. Preachy Pants. I have reconciled my binge drinking, and my lack of follow-up, and I have cleared my calendar to spend every waking moment of free time slumped upon the couch in a wet-hot heap, like someone squirted me into it's palm. I am OK with being in a funk, and I've resigned a few months to figuring out just how bad, it is. But what the fuck is happening to us all? Today I realized that we are all waiting for a shot in the arm. We are all clinging to the kitschy "back to normal" cliche' such that we forget to do anything whatsoever in the mean-time. The best week I had this summer arrived last week when I forgot my phone in my pants pocket and laundered them. Peace and Quiet.
Did your 86 daily glances at your news-feed reveal some wisdom today?
Did your preachy-pants friend link you to a story in which some bad actor caused you to writhe again in anxiety?
Do you believe that the end is nigh, or that "normal" will return soon?
News Flash, there is no going backward. Just because you have been thinking of yourself as somehow walking this drama backward like a locomotive backing down to latch your comfort animal, that ain't gonna happen, and it's no joke. Don't be the brunt of this joke, You will not find a magic regression therapy once you test positive for antibodies. There is no "getting back to normal", THIS is NORMAL, Own it. The moment you begin to act human again, you will inspire others to become humans again. Kindness, Pass it on.
You cannot chum around with one real person for six months or a year and five imaginary stoned friends on your couch hoping to "get back there". Your only path is forward, through this. So, dear brother, when you are completely finished sucking at the teat of Social-Security CoVid Style, and marshal the courage to stand again -- You can walk quite upright straight through the front-door of your cave, and go look for a job.
Your recovery begins, when you call your friends back, When you make a date, When you stop popping xanax, and lunesta. Yes technically "a whole bottle of wine" is too much... Think of the whole world as being in the same funk as you in your slouchy pants, and a dirty T-shirt, and now try to imagine the weight of all that comfort food. Things get back to "normal" when you act it. By the way THE Surgeon General has determined that being a slob is bad for your health, (even though he also wants to quit his shitty job and shovel sleepless cereal upon the couch at 3 AM), He has nonetheless determined that you are not making the most of your free-time, and this is bad.
Grab that tin-foil and wrap it around your smart phone, toss it in a drawer, and go outside, it's lovely out, and it's humanizing.
If you don't, then you may be better lining your helmet with shiny foil like the rest of us, and sitting on your couch until the abduction is over.
If you don't wear tin-foil over or beneath your helmet, and you don't yet speak to trees and rocks, you may believe that you have this new world in the bag. But do you really "Got this"? The more I interview friends, and strangers, a noteworthy reaction which I'd never noticed prior, seems to leak out a bit. We all lack hugs, and earnest smiles, and what has replaced them is caution, melancholia, a wide berth, and sympathetic gestures like those waiting for news in a Hospital, or exchanging condolences at a wake. The thing is, that if you are not yet in the hospital, nor at a funeral, could you please dispense with the long face, because it's fucking bringing me down! I know for a fact that most people these days are wasting 80 percent of their time. Maybe you need some tin foil... Cuz if this thing had a moral it would be this, “Normal” happen when you act “Normal” — When will that be for you?
Whereas previously my elderly parents were THE ONLY people to send me re-hashed internet anecdotes, silly images, and awkward signs pawned from the stale innerwebs c. 1998 -- NOW, everyone seems to quip small B.S. sundries, like they are sharing a chiclet in prison. I now get texts with dumb-shit images, and Gifs created by someone so far up on the food-chain, that I'm not even certain of the context. The issue is that this crap now comes in torrents from formerly smart people. Small comics, a 'la The New Yorker, with self inserted quotes or quips, which are meant to make them clever'er, but which simply make me look away with disgust. I've tried to play the same game sharing an article or two from a scientific or nature journal, or by sharing a story from a friend or author, but now it seems that in our global malaise pandemic, we can only read gossip, jargon, crappy gifs, and anecdotes, that amount to a shit-soup and sandwich. I do love hearing from people, and really love to be engaged, and to feel busy ascending the social ladder, but -- That ladder broke in March, and we all tumbled back down into this murky well. You pretend that you will glean some clever intel from your news-feed, , and that by sharing it you will enlighten others, but the truth is that your addiction to a quick paragraph every ten minutes is a plastic carrot in front of your fucking peloton. You are getting dumber.
Quick Quiz
In your new relationship with a global pandemic do you:
A. Feel profoundly overwhelmed?
B. Feel like you have everything completely under control?
C. Feel nothing whatsoever?
D. All of the above?
If you’ve answered “D”, then go ahead and drink that whole bottle of Pinot Grigio tonight with your pizza, because you deserve a reward for your honesty — and you are at least partly in control over these somber emotions.
If you didn't answer "D" then Go Here
We now look up from your damp silo to that bright light, sometimes eclipsing into a half-moon depending upon our slouching posture here upon the bottom. You make-believe that "we are OK", but that is far from the truth. We are not OK. We will surely be stuck here as if in a mauve laundromat, fluorescent green glow flickering over your phone waiting for wisdom and your pants which never seem to get dry. And so here we sit, reading comics, giphy junk, this dumb blog, and trash novels, hoping to feel something akin to a hug. We will stand around in this laundromat forever if we don't make an effort to walk the fuck out without our pants on. Fuck it! Nobody wears pants anymore anyway!, Just break with the low-rent coin-op dungeon, and have a walk. Whatever side of the spectrum you dwell upon doubled up with masks, and a carabiner clipped sanitizer upon your belt like a holster to inoculate you or your friends like Jesus, you must know that you have become, well... Not quite yourself lately. If you are the fucking messiah, and you could squirt a bit of that magic juice on my forehead to anoint the doldrum out of me and my friends, then do it already! I'm, so over you Mr. Preachy Pants. I have reconciled my binge drinking, and my lack of follow-up, and I have cleared my calendar to spend every waking moment of free time slumped upon the couch in a wet-hot heap, like someone squirted me into it's palm. I am OK with being in a funk, and I've resigned a few months to figuring out just how bad, it is. But what the fuck is happening to us all? Today I realized that we are all waiting for a shot in the arm. We are all clinging to the kitschy "back to normal" cliche' such that we forget to do anything whatsoever in the mean-time. The best week I had this summer arrived last week when I forgot my phone in my pants pocket and laundered them. Peace and Quiet.
Did your 86 daily glances at your news-feed reveal some wisdom today?
Did your preachy-pants friend link you to a story in which some bad actor caused you to writhe again in anxiety?
Do you believe that the end is nigh, or that "normal" will return soon?
News Flash, there is no going backward. Just because you have been thinking of yourself as somehow walking this drama backward like a locomotive backing down to latch your comfort animal, that ain't gonna happen, and it's no joke. Don't be the brunt of this joke, You will not find a magic regression therapy once you test positive for antibodies. There is no "getting back to normal", THIS is NORMAL, Own it. The moment you begin to act human again, you will inspire others to become humans again. Kindness, Pass it on.
You cannot chum around with one real person for six months or a year and five imaginary stoned friends on your couch hoping to "get back there". Your only path is forward, through this. So, dear brother, when you are completely finished sucking at the teat of Social-Security CoVid Style, and marshal the courage to stand again -- You can walk quite upright straight through the front-door of your cave, and go look for a job.
Your recovery begins, when you call your friends back, When you make a date, When you stop popping xanax, and lunesta. Yes technically "a whole bottle of wine" is too much... Think of the whole world as being in the same funk as you in your slouchy pants, and a dirty T-shirt, and now try to imagine the weight of all that comfort food. Things get back to "normal" when you act it. By the way THE Surgeon General has determined that being a slob is bad for your health, (even though he also wants to quit his shitty job and shovel sleepless cereal upon the couch at 3 AM), He has nonetheless determined that you are not making the most of your free-time, and this is bad.
Grab that tin-foil and wrap it around your smart phone, toss it in a drawer, and go outside, it's lovely out, and it's humanizing.
If you don't, then you may be better lining your helmet with shiny foil like the rest of us, and sitting on your couch until the abduction is over.
- Published on
One Company's weak attempt to appropriate racial redemption. Here today gone tomorrow.
Lately it has crystallized that the "Good ol' Days", when 'Merica was great, was not so great for everyone equitably. Paper or Plastic?, VHS or COVID?, Red or White?, Ass or Crotch?, The Blue Pill or the Red Pill?, Fight or Flight?... The simplest decisions seem to rot up in my brain for several seconds now, as passers-by stare at the 'Blank-me', masked, emotionless. Like a deactivated dickhead robot, hands outstretched whilst burning sanitizer dries in the summer heat. I've frozen in place, stalled in my tracks trying to recall just what the fuck I was last doing or planning before I drew the white "Blank-Card", then the white-noise sets in upon my temples like a plush-bunny suffocating in a soft B.F. Skinner waterfall... And so today, right now I blankly stare at the cashier in front of me. I mumble (spital behind my face-mask,) a curt reply un-polite, as if the simple question took me to Mars as I gather my wits, ..."Of-fucking-course, I want a Paper bag, pfffft..!" 'who does he think prefers plastic, besides dog owners?' -- the "other me" thinks aloud; 'Do I look like I'm buying Dog Food?' ...I don't know, maybe I would if all the dogs weren't taken in April. My brain fizzles into the background with that soft hissing sound again, like static on the radio. I am almost always lost in this static.
...Then, I collect my thoughts, and my things, leaving my maligned misgivings & dignity at the register -- I parade away in a numb and collected manner to the sanitizer pump, which is either empty (of-course), or so ungodly caustic, that I imagine it is about as toxic as my mood before I zombie-walk out of the grocery waving my filthy hands in front of me like the monster I've become.
It's June., or or is it July? It has been June for a while and I can only know that because a few days ago, some people who say they knew me, sang me the brutal birthday song, and we ate cake together, until we passed out drunk, (again). This, I vaguely recall. I am so in touch with being a newly minted monster, that I am not really sure if this is all real, But I cannot focus on them, work, life, love, superfluous rants... and I can certainly no longer afford the intellectual energy to read; in particular the news. I now have the attention span of my neighbors shitty chihuahua dosed on adderall.
I seem to still be cogent enough to put underpants 'under', and slacks 'over', but Beyond that... I wonder when my faculties may return. Rallies, Protests, Racists, Riots, Looting, Shooting, Vigils, Range Practice, Antebellum Robert E Lee vs Aunt Jemima, all bathed in sanitizer. All of these ghosts have come like a chain-saw to liberate me from my former world. I have been cut down, weeded, detached from the earth like a bad haircut, and now I am floating above the sphere looking down at my shitty self -- I am without roots, free-spun random as cotton candy, and just as vile... I am without a reference. I say dumb shit, give bad advice, read questionable news coverage, and crave only potato chips. I'd best learn to navigate this new swamp and clean up my person before I land again... lest I become unrecognizable to myself, and my parts no longer fit together when I crash land.
So today I looked up how to use a compass, and for one thing, it turns out that I still mis-pronounce the word "Compass", as though it had a "U" like "Dumb-piss". I'm a dumb-ass, and so I know not what I do. But even before COVID, and far before Trump killed the universe, I thought I had a solid handle on the American English lexicon. Nope! It's "Com" pass, (Not like "some" or "come"), but "com" -(like comical) piss. I only want one so I can navigate my way to Canada for asylum on some upstate waterway.
But a "Moral Compass" may also be a good idea right about now.
Here I've found that what I thought I knew about navigation and dead-reckoning was wholly incorrect. I thought I was master of my domain until I got the new zombie virus. The Novel "Alone'a-Virus", which makes us all insane, and incapable of reading a map -- But it also causes us to spring a leak, and our senses begin to hiss out. If you have not yet seen your edges crack a bit, you are either lucky, or blind. As the leaks set into your imperfect hull, you may wish to learn to use a Compass too, before you become un-moored, and drown in this filthy pool with your soggy bag of crisps.
And so we float on, Those of us who are honest and know enough to call it shit. We drift from one empty street, to another shuddered business, covered in Plywood painted with "BLM", and as "Already Looted" graffiti, replaces vibrant commerce, Once hip edgy streets with cool shops, (our former way-points), are all completely shuddered. And so we float without bearing. We are adrift amidst the boarded up North Face, and Lululemon, (ok fine so what) but self-tagged and monogrammed, brands sport R.I.P. G.F... Corporate posers carrying condescending Woke-Signs and Rainbows like Disney actors carry skate-boards for street relevance.
Tonight iTunes would like to offer you "12 Years a Slave" "Blood Diamond" or Something Purple with Oprah in it, at a very special rate and something else by the Wayon Brothers, or Eddie Murphy for .99 cents, In case you were feeling strong empathy. You can watch them at a reduced rate this week only while discontents are lighting your trash cans ablaze. Or you can watch white trash for $5.99... or, are you too appalled?
Amazon and Netflix still feed me blond Chinese soft-core lesbian bank robber films... but are NOT concerned with my ethical re-education. Please everyone jump on this woke bandwagon at once, and let's see if we can sink it. VHS won't save this hissing raft of horrors.
I have thought about this so much lately that I can now say as a monk, or Shaolin master may teach me, That I have arrived on the other side of this chasm completely unenlightened. "We are sorry", they will tell me, before bowing me goodbye, "We cannot help you". Enlightenment seems to be for those who study, but what we weak eager ones have been doing lately is an awkward immersion therapy in idiocy, liquor and re-runs. Breathe in and you may absorb more than a virus -- Hold your breath, and you may succumb to madness. Neither action will let you up for air. My detached cranium held down, submerged by a big harry cop's arm, as I thrash in a chocolate brown river of shit. Then I snap out of my daydream and find myself crossing a street far too slowly for traffic.
We are all immersed in this fiction, and as always have been lost in "The Big Game". Being drowned in shit, stuff, and junk food won't crystalize your thoughts into a clear blue picture. The only way to manage these murky rapids is to not struggle. Go smoothly with the current. Drink it in... I am Augustus Gloop eager for the chocolate river to swallow me, I now see the error of my lily-white ways, as I drown a white linen seer-sucker in dark cacao. I am a balding Ricardo Gonzalo Pedro Montalbán soiling my linen in the next episode of Fantasy Island. 'Make yourself small like a ball, like a pill, hold your breath, and hope to be spat out', (he thinks).
We do need The Big Cleanse you understand. We need to rinse ourselves of the filth of our forebears, and unpack our suitcase of racist, materialist complicity. We need to get clean of being terrible humans; Of fights, disparities, and bickering. There is no moral compass-heading to adhere to here, no spirit guide for white glibness gleaned from a discounted docudrama. Accumulated shit just sits there in your home to remind us that none of it helps. Stuff won't change you, and religion won't change you... So far this month, shootings in Chicago, Philadelphia, and NY have nearly doubled. The areas with the most gun crime, suffer from endemic racism, & built-in societal disadvantages. When we add to that Covid19, food insecurity, housing insecurity, job loss, police violence, we plateau with stratospherically high crime rates, and low case closure resolution. There is no mystery why lawlessness grows. There is also a complete lack of any leadership from the top-down.
Some have said, that, "...If they don't kill us, and 'it' doesn't get us, then we will likely kill each other". Socially we are isolated, and divided, while the perfect storm brews, the broken trifecta seems to be:
1. Citizens become scared to call 911 from fear of police,
2. Officers become reticent to rush-in, facing heavy scrutiny & unresolved procedures,
3. It's damn hot inside and out and cool beaches, cooling centers, and parks remain closed.
Violence skyrockets, and as an organism we are all complicit, watching it burn. Leadership blows on the embers exhaling more venom threats and gun violence.
What will change you?
There is no lesson, taken in pill form as seen on TV. There is no lesson written here. The lesson is everywhere. We So-called 'Americans' are in need of a revolution, and this revolution will be televised.
(Gill Scott Heron R.I.P.)
So last night as things settled a bit, we sat outside sipping a glass of wine in the stifling heat, watching strollers & bicycles silently drift by. Far off music played through a cheap speaker, and the heavy humidity blanketing the rest of the darkness in a hush. The street lights halo'd from heavy humid still air. Where were we? ...We were discussing my friends recent bike crash, and beside the abrasions which seemed to be healing well... The deep set aches which follow a bad tumble at speed were barely anesthetized by wine. He hadn't yet seen a doctor, or got an X-ray, but we surmised he'd be OK, once the aches subsided. I tried to imagine what my last crash felt like, and what my next one would look like. We all shuddered at the thought.
Our chilled Chenin Blanc reverie ended abruptly when an aggressive driver intentionally swiped a trio of cyclists in front of us, knocking two down in the street, and then stopping to get out, the driver and passenger (a woman), pounced upon the downed riders' and beat them with their fists. They then stood up, got back in their car and sped away, shouting expletives into the hot still darkness. There was nothing anyone could do. Just a rogue wave of lunacy, perfectly aligned with the times. Staggering to stand back up, the light changed again, and traffic and onlookers froze. Everyone survived this attack, and as the burst of intensity ratcheted down to stillness, we discussed the many possible outcomes, as if their story was in need of our fictional ending... One suggestion was that the cops chase them. Nah! Another ending reminded me of the Scene from Unforgiven, when the bad-guy tells his Barber that what America needs is a King. Someone like a king would not be as likely to be assassinated as Lincoln... Because people love and fear their king. "If one of the cyclists had a gun... then the outcome would have been different..." someone conjectured... but that more violent remedy would not have changed this evening much.
We talked about some joggers and cyclists who carry pepper spray. We seemed to relish in an ending where the bad guys get sprayed in the face... and they register that bad experience within their lizard brain -- But alas that too would only tip them farther towards the dark-side.
Revenge he said, (the anonymous phrase), "Revenge is a dish best served cold." became the next hypothetical ending, but this being the most remote of chances; If anyone even got the plate number, the likelihood of retribution was close to nil. Still it is sweet to plot and plan to get ones revenge in a cooler moment when the adversary is "off-guard". Not to give blanket forgiveness to the idiotic act of rage carried out tonight, but this toxicity is a scourge, and it comes from the top down. We the People are under siege from a shitty torrent of spite, rage, plague and fear, whilst the White House plays golf.
Today we still have to choose from only two pills. These same two prescriptions have long been offered. The Blue Pill (the cooler one) prevails and we rise above the occasion painfully swallowing our pride, and pressing-on to form a more perfect union. The Red Pill (the Hot mess) simmers in our prefrontal lobe igniting a vengeance that never seems to extinguish. What does change look like? As for the bully on the playground... There will always be one, how you handle them is a rough dialectic, and you can't even have a dinner guest for discourse now.
Revenge and Revolution are not the same thing.
We really aught to swallow the Blue pill, (even if only for the time being) because almost none of us have the nerve to see this "vengeance thing" through to it's ultimate end, do we? I'm struggling with this. And...As I've already admitted I'm struggling with things as small as potato chips, so I am certainly not the sage advice you seek. We can watch politically correct Netflix shows, but only the good ones take those morals to heart. You can rent all the films you like, but if you are already on this side of the fence -- then here is where you belong. If you peer over that fence, you will find Judge Judy, and perhaps Ted Nugent. What is clear through this milky lens however, is that we have one hell of a toxic cultural dialog today, and as with a bad bully in school, no one is safe from his white hot pathogen. So a jump in the dark river seems soothing. We may be fortunate that we don't have a King or Queen, as I can definitely say that my hand may shake a bit, but that won't last.
'Nobody would shoot the king', "There is a dignity to royalty, a majesty which precludes the likelihood of assassination..." as your hands begin to shake in the presence of that royalty, The bully, the autocrat... for that revenge, you would lose your nerve... right? But would you? It is a temporary solution to a sustaining issue. We are fundamentally un-equal, and We The People, the disenfranchised, and the unheard cannot stay silent forever.
Revenge he said, (the anonymous phrase), "Revenge is a dish best served cold." became the next hypothetical ending, but this being the most remote of chances; If anyone even got the plate number, the likelihood of retribution was close to nil. Still it is sweet to plot and plan to get ones revenge in a cooler moment when the adversary is "off-guard". Not to give blanket forgiveness to the idiotic act of rage carried out tonight, but this toxicity is a scourge, and it comes from the top down. We the People are under siege from a shitty torrent of spite, rage, plague and fear, whilst the White House plays golf.
Today we still have to choose from only two pills. These same two prescriptions have long been offered. The Blue Pill (the cooler one) prevails and we rise above the occasion painfully swallowing our pride, and pressing-on to form a more perfect union. The Red Pill (the Hot mess) simmers in our prefrontal lobe igniting a vengeance that never seems to extinguish. What does change look like? As for the bully on the playground... There will always be one, how you handle them is a rough dialectic, and you can't even have a dinner guest for discourse now.
Revenge and Revolution are not the same thing.
We really aught to swallow the Blue pill, (even if only for the time being) because almost none of us have the nerve to see this "vengeance thing" through to it's ultimate end, do we? I'm struggling with this. And...As I've already admitted I'm struggling with things as small as potato chips, so I am certainly not the sage advice you seek. We can watch politically correct Netflix shows, but only the good ones take those morals to heart. You can rent all the films you like, but if you are already on this side of the fence -- then here is where you belong. If you peer over that fence, you will find Judge Judy, and perhaps Ted Nugent. What is clear through this milky lens however, is that we have one hell of a toxic cultural dialog today, and as with a bad bully in school, no one is safe from his white hot pathogen. So a jump in the dark river seems soothing. We may be fortunate that we don't have a King or Queen, as I can definitely say that my hand may shake a bit, but that won't last.
'Nobody would shoot the king', "There is a dignity to royalty, a majesty which precludes the likelihood of assassination..." as your hands begin to shake in the presence of that royalty, The bully, the autocrat... for that revenge, you would lose your nerve... right? But would you? It is a temporary solution to a sustaining issue. We are fundamentally un-equal, and We The People, the disenfranchised, and the unheard cannot stay silent forever.
"When they kick at your front door, How you gonna come? With your hands on your head Or on the trigger of your gun? When the law break in How you gonna go? Shot down on the pavement Or waiting on death row?"
"Guns of Brixton" -The Clash
As you find the will to steel yourself, catch your breath -- Steady your hand, as you get up from the ground, if you fight back, (whether it's pepper spray or protest) -- As you flip the safety off, remember that revenge and revolution are both better served cold.
"Guns of Brixton" -The Clash
As you find the will to steel yourself, catch your breath -- Steady your hand, as you get up from the ground, if you fight back, (whether it's pepper spray or protest) -- As you flip the safety off, remember that revenge and revolution are both better served cold.
- Published on
There is a place in the universe where all good things converge. This condensation of goodness, and kindness, and boundless energy to put everything right, guides the lucky with an indominable spirit. The magical force doesn't come in a bottle or in a brown box to your doorstep.
The place where you will find the power to heal anything, and to steel yourself against adversity, will not be televised. That gravity which holds it all together isn't illusive, nor pressed between the pages of an ancient text. At that intersection of all great things, where we all work together to better ourselves, to help each-other, and to feed and nurture one another is a connective tissue unlike any other force in the universe. That place is your Mother — And we can go there on a two-wheeler.
The place where you will find the power to heal anything, and to steel yourself against adversity, will not be televised. That gravity which holds it all together isn't illusive, nor pressed between the pages of an ancient text. At that intersection of all great things, where we all work together to better ourselves, to help each-other, and to feed and nurture one another is a connective tissue unlike any other force in the universe. That place is your Mother — And we can go there on a two-wheeler.
Bad men don't sin from fear of punishment, Good men won't sin for love of virtue.
-Juvenal
Whichever side of the knife edge you fall will depend largely upon your Mother. In fact your very character flowed into you from your mother like an I.V drip., and you never knew it. Sadly without a good one of those, or without a reasonably tight bond to Mum, you now lack character. When you meet someone, and later reflect positively about them, you are likely paying compliment to the home they came from. I have all sorts of friends like this, and some souls who sadly don't fit that mold at all. If you've ever been punched in the face, then the person who did that didn't have a good mom. If you've been sued, or robbed, then you can also surmise that there was something lacking in their relationship to Mom. What I would like very much to acknowledge, is the secret dendrites which stretched like branching roots throughout your developing brain as a kid, and remain the reason that you don't completely suck. What is most amazing in the Nature v. Nurture thing is that once you develop, your skill to be your best, or in the least a little less terrible, seems to stick. I know a lot of people who have been thoroughly saturated with latter-life crappy experiences, but they always seem to emerge through the same super powers imbued by their moms; often with some to spare. It's no surprise conversely that there are people who didn't have the benefit of a right-good Mom — and they became the daily tide we swim against.
Enter the asshole.
In politics, the misguided minority who's unnatural upbringing flood our daily dialog with every form of "Ism", are the unfortunate few who didn't benefit from a solid Mom. Many learned people and many more lay-public regard Freud as a dickhead. Treatises about strange attractions to one's mother may seem preposterous, and to resent our fathers for their relationship to mom is also far from a universal accord... But looking at it the other way, it may simply be that Freud had an unhealthy maternal rearing, which he never overcame. Freud, as with the bully-pulpit of political discourse, manufacture myths & agendas from misguided and dangerous ideologies. Racism, fascism, and sexism, all emerge from either an unhealthy relationship with one's mom, or none at all. You know the saying, 'I know it when I see it'? -- Well that certainly applies to Dickheads, Hitler, and Napoleonic douchebags with little hands. All of these infect the weak, and this may re-wire future generations, when toxin spills upon the “fairer sex”.
The only quote from Freud which does not seem absurd to me is, "If it's not one thing -- It's your Mother".
In truth, with tongue stuck in cheek, I've no idea what he'd meant -- But for me, it may mean that one's mother has the attribution of being the single largest influence upon ones formation, and certainly one's psyche, and soul.
As a teen, without an alarm clock, my mother made sure I got up each day with a kind voice, instead of a brash beeping. She fed, clothed, consoled, and taught me nearly everything I know now, and many unconscious things I am still discovering. She also did that for 7 others, and most of my friends.
From My mother, I learned to cook, shop, swim, sew, tie my shoes, brush teeth, and how to be kind. She also taught me how to care for others, and to be careful. Her techniques were always calm, considered, and cogent. My father is great, (no Freudian resentment here), but this too is likely attributable to my mom. She taught me to forgive and forget, and to seek only to control the faculties important to the task at hand. I learned that to complete something, presently, leaves more time later to address that which was less pressing. "We'll do that later...", she would say.
Through many recessions, we ate well as a family, (or so I thought), and very seldom did I think -- "Man I wish I had...'X'". We learned to shop, select, cook, bake, and portion.
Food at my home, at a picnic, or in my lunchbox, was typically the envy of others, and neighborhood kids would often skulk around at meal-time, hoping to "eat over". "Mom, can so and so eat over?"... was so common a phrase, but nearly never was the answer 'No'.
I could trade one home-baked snack in the school lunchroom for several cellophane wrapped Hostess or Little Debbie's. This was perhaps my first legit currency. Later, like most kids, I would become bad with cash, but with every trip to the store, I would return with change, and a receipt and then we'd count it out. I'd become thrifty by example.
One fateful Spring day, perhaps today, my magical Mom held the chrome loop behind my glittery banana seat until I coasted without falling or dabbing a foot. I soon learned to ride a two-wheeler down the block, and when too far to be assisted, I’d learned to ride it back toward her. She was proud, as she beamed, but I was taught again to be proud of myself. My mom handed me the keys to the kingdom that day, riding a two-wheeler became my first true sense of freedom to travel anywhere. She taught me to ride a bike, and like so many others, I’d begin to plan adventures. I was proud to be her son, and in a sense I’m still turning around and riding back to her today. I thought decades later, that I could teach my Mom the same tricks, that I’d learned.
My Mom mis-spent her youth in a body cast from a barbaric spinal surgery. She lay in repose while her sister envied the ‘attention’ she gleaned in recovery. She’d be wheeled on a table into the lawn to get some sun, until she shed her chrysalis. Time lost to doctors, and procedures, she never learned to ride a two-wheeler. One Summer when I’d returned from college for a few days, I brought with a new Bike just for her. It was a gamble, met with surprise, and trepidation... She was not feeling it.
Now topping 50, she’d harbored the nostalgic desire, but falling was not the downside risk she had always longed for. She said, "Thank you, I really love the idea, but I'm rather sure I shouldn't... I may fall and break my hip."
She contested that perhaps "she was just too old", or even "it may be too late" (for her to learn). I said, "I totally understand Mom, this was a lark on my part, and you certainly shouldn't feel obliged to ride a bike just because your silly kid bought you one". The truth being, I was broke, but working in a bike store for barely 8 bucks an hour meant that (even with a fair discount on a whimsical bike) this discretionary spending would decimate my pocket money. Never matter, I was home, the fridge was stocked, and expenses were low at the moment. I beamed with anticipation, while placating her, that “I still thought she'd like riding, if she found the courage”.
A few evenings passed through light sleep, and bundled anxiety from each of us. She went to bed with the pressure of her stupid kid's encouragement to break her hip, and I slept poorly under the anxiety of knowing I'd take the rap from siblings if my lovely mother did in fact find the courage to fracture her hip. As I stared up at the scars on my childhood bedroom ceiling, beneath adhesive stars, cuts from knives, darts, and scotch-taped posters.., I resolved to tell her the next day, that I agreed it was a bad idea -- And that she should definitely not try to learn to ride a two-wheeler ‘at her age’. The fact being that I wasn't even sure of her true age. With this resolution, I'd tell her not to try, I finally slept through the rest of the night.
-Juvenal
Whichever side of the knife edge you fall will depend largely upon your Mother. In fact your very character flowed into you from your mother like an I.V drip., and you never knew it. Sadly without a good one of those, or without a reasonably tight bond to Mum, you now lack character. When you meet someone, and later reflect positively about them, you are likely paying compliment to the home they came from. I have all sorts of friends like this, and some souls who sadly don't fit that mold at all. If you've ever been punched in the face, then the person who did that didn't have a good mom. If you've been sued, or robbed, then you can also surmise that there was something lacking in their relationship to Mom. What I would like very much to acknowledge, is the secret dendrites which stretched like branching roots throughout your developing brain as a kid, and remain the reason that you don't completely suck. What is most amazing in the Nature v. Nurture thing is that once you develop, your skill to be your best, or in the least a little less terrible, seems to stick. I know a lot of people who have been thoroughly saturated with latter-life crappy experiences, but they always seem to emerge through the same super powers imbued by their moms; often with some to spare. It's no surprise conversely that there are people who didn't have the benefit of a right-good Mom — and they became the daily tide we swim against.
Enter the asshole.
In politics, the misguided minority who's unnatural upbringing flood our daily dialog with every form of "Ism", are the unfortunate few who didn't benefit from a solid Mom. Many learned people and many more lay-public regard Freud as a dickhead. Treatises about strange attractions to one's mother may seem preposterous, and to resent our fathers for their relationship to mom is also far from a universal accord... But looking at it the other way, it may simply be that Freud had an unhealthy maternal rearing, which he never overcame. Freud, as with the bully-pulpit of political discourse, manufacture myths & agendas from misguided and dangerous ideologies. Racism, fascism, and sexism, all emerge from either an unhealthy relationship with one's mom, or none at all. You know the saying, 'I know it when I see it'? -- Well that certainly applies to Dickheads, Hitler, and Napoleonic douchebags with little hands. All of these infect the weak, and this may re-wire future generations, when toxin spills upon the “fairer sex”.
The only quote from Freud which does not seem absurd to me is, "If it's not one thing -- It's your Mother".
In truth, with tongue stuck in cheek, I've no idea what he'd meant -- But for me, it may mean that one's mother has the attribution of being the single largest influence upon ones formation, and certainly one's psyche, and soul.
As a teen, without an alarm clock, my mother made sure I got up each day with a kind voice, instead of a brash beeping. She fed, clothed, consoled, and taught me nearly everything I know now, and many unconscious things I am still discovering. She also did that for 7 others, and most of my friends.
From My mother, I learned to cook, shop, swim, sew, tie my shoes, brush teeth, and how to be kind. She also taught me how to care for others, and to be careful. Her techniques were always calm, considered, and cogent. My father is great, (no Freudian resentment here), but this too is likely attributable to my mom. She taught me to forgive and forget, and to seek only to control the faculties important to the task at hand. I learned that to complete something, presently, leaves more time later to address that which was less pressing. "We'll do that later...", she would say.
Through many recessions, we ate well as a family, (or so I thought), and very seldom did I think -- "Man I wish I had...'X'". We learned to shop, select, cook, bake, and portion.
Food at my home, at a picnic, or in my lunchbox, was typically the envy of others, and neighborhood kids would often skulk around at meal-time, hoping to "eat over". "Mom, can so and so eat over?"... was so common a phrase, but nearly never was the answer 'No'.
I could trade one home-baked snack in the school lunchroom for several cellophane wrapped Hostess or Little Debbie's. This was perhaps my first legit currency. Later, like most kids, I would become bad with cash, but with every trip to the store, I would return with change, and a receipt and then we'd count it out. I'd become thrifty by example.
One fateful Spring day, perhaps today, my magical Mom held the chrome loop behind my glittery banana seat until I coasted without falling or dabbing a foot. I soon learned to ride a two-wheeler down the block, and when too far to be assisted, I’d learned to ride it back toward her. She was proud, as she beamed, but I was taught again to be proud of myself. My mom handed me the keys to the kingdom that day, riding a two-wheeler became my first true sense of freedom to travel anywhere. She taught me to ride a bike, and like so many others, I’d begin to plan adventures. I was proud to be her son, and in a sense I’m still turning around and riding back to her today. I thought decades later, that I could teach my Mom the same tricks, that I’d learned.
My Mom mis-spent her youth in a body cast from a barbaric spinal surgery. She lay in repose while her sister envied the ‘attention’ she gleaned in recovery. She’d be wheeled on a table into the lawn to get some sun, until she shed her chrysalis. Time lost to doctors, and procedures, she never learned to ride a two-wheeler. One Summer when I’d returned from college for a few days, I brought with a new Bike just for her. It was a gamble, met with surprise, and trepidation... She was not feeling it.
Now topping 50, she’d harbored the nostalgic desire, but falling was not the downside risk she had always longed for. She said, "Thank you, I really love the idea, but I'm rather sure I shouldn't... I may fall and break my hip."
She contested that perhaps "she was just too old", or even "it may be too late" (for her to learn). I said, "I totally understand Mom, this was a lark on my part, and you certainly shouldn't feel obliged to ride a bike just because your silly kid bought you one". The truth being, I was broke, but working in a bike store for barely 8 bucks an hour meant that (even with a fair discount on a whimsical bike) this discretionary spending would decimate my pocket money. Never matter, I was home, the fridge was stocked, and expenses were low at the moment. I beamed with anticipation, while placating her, that “I still thought she'd like riding, if she found the courage”.
A few evenings passed through light sleep, and bundled anxiety from each of us. She went to bed with the pressure of her stupid kid's encouragement to break her hip, and I slept poorly under the anxiety of knowing I'd take the rap from siblings if my lovely mother did in fact find the courage to fracture her hip. As I stared up at the scars on my childhood bedroom ceiling, beneath adhesive stars, cuts from knives, darts, and scotch-taped posters.., I resolved to tell her the next day, that I agreed it was a bad idea -- And that she should definitely not try to learn to ride a two-wheeler ‘at her age’. The fact being that I wasn't even sure of her true age. With this resolution, I'd tell her not to try, I finally slept through the rest of the night.
The next day I slept late, (no surprise), but when I did wake up the house was empty. In my collegiate illusion, the day of the week meant nothing, and so I'd missed the Monday through Friday queue, as days blended. My Mom and Dad both beiing at work, I was the only kid home. I put my tacky foam avocet helmet on, Crocheted gloves, and some still gaudier neon-esque lycra shorts, with a concert T, and left for a bike ride. By mid-afternoon, starving -- I returned home to scrounge for food. The fridge was a wonderland filled with left-overs, cold-cuts, several orange cheeses, and bountiful condiments. I made a sandwich, drank loads of water, and watched some TV, while writing a letter to a girl.
When my mom came home from work, she was ready. She said she, “wanted to try to learn”. Initially, I was clueless what she meant -- Then it hit me... She wanted to have a go learning to ride a two-wheeler. I had my speech prepared, so I told her that I may have been wrong about the whole idea, and assured her that the bike was basically free, and would be re-purposed. "Mom", I said, "just because I like to ride bikes, doesn't mean it is going to become your thing too", Let's table it, and go to the beach. She declined.
I think I'd like to give it a try.
When my mom came home from work, she was ready. She said she, “wanted to try to learn”. Initially, I was clueless what she meant -- Then it hit me... She wanted to have a go learning to ride a two-wheeler. I had my speech prepared, so I told her that I may have been wrong about the whole idea, and assured her that the bike was basically free, and would be re-purposed. "Mom", I said, "just because I like to ride bikes, doesn't mean it is going to become your thing too", Let's table it, and go to the beach. She declined.
I think I'd like to give it a try.
And so we started the same way she had with me nearly two decades prior. I held the seat, and ran beside, holding her upright, while she pedaled -- Until I let go and she fell into the grass. We continued, until the falling and the bruises turned from exhilaration to exhaustion. On the final try she made it down the alley, no hip broken. Whether she ever rode the bike again was of no import. I fetched some ice in a zip-loc bag, some bactine, and a few band-aids, and we rested on the same giant couch which like my mom had held our whole family together. "Today", I said with a childish smile, "You learned to ride a two-wheeler at 50 something". While she rested I made a delicious dinner, both of us thrilled & exhausted, we each enjoyed the first time, I ever really needed to tend to my magical mother.
The indominable spirit of Mom, to whomever she belongs, is the good force in the universe which creates everything we are. They never stop inventing, creating, and overcoming; and neither should we.
Live your life as though your mom will be home soon.
The indominable spirit of Mom, to whomever she belongs, is the good force in the universe which creates everything we are. They never stop inventing, creating, and overcoming; and neither should we.
Live your life as though your mom will be home soon.
- Published on
Signing Papers to Buy The Texas School Book Depository Building
In the early eighties, people had the Eagles, and Waylon, but they also had The Dead Kennedy's & Grand Master Flash -- Music's primordial soup evolves of chance, deal-making, and of not taking oneself too seriously. To make something requires tools and knack, but to make something new, often requires invention of a new tool. Music as with all art, reflects life, but the reverb behind this change is only heard by the bold. A little known man named Aubrey Mayhew was bold.
Disco was dead, but it's legacy like a mutating virus changed things as equal parts reaction, and retaliation.
In the late 70’s Ben Cenac was a young DJ competing with other DJ’s In battles in Brooklyn.
After winning a battle to another crew, The losing DJ taunted them saying “You guys are bad, but you can’t do this”..., followed by some quick scratching on his turntable “wiki wiki wiki wiki”... introducing lay-public to a sound which was to become famous & also a parody. Surely we give full credit to Grand Master Flash, the Furious Five, Kurtis Blow, and The Rock Steady Crew as the progenitors of the Hip-Hop Movement, but it goes without saying that putting all of these new elements into a common language lies within the artists, and the Production. As far as production goes, the above video may seem silly and amateur, but that is precisely the point. This Band Newcleus, formerly Positive Messenger made a parody of rap, (curse them), into a hit. This actually ticks three boxes now. 1. Proto-Hip Hop, 2. Rap, and 3. B-boy'ing, or Break-dancing as it became known.
This onomatopoeia, "wiki" I suppose a nod to Grand Master Flash, and Curtis Blow, would also become the name of a place to find exactly such trivia on a barely gestating internet. It was1982, and these sounds evolved a musical sea-change. Scratching and Rapping may have existed in the late 70’s, but when someone begins to use it as parody, it has yet to peak. The oddest cosmic cross-fade of the early eighties came where Punk and Rap intersected. Blondie gave full credit in the song, Rapture, to her forebears, and crafted the first Rap track to hit Number one anywhere. The funny thing is that Blondie did it so well, that looking back at Cosmo-D, and Curtis Blow, without nostalgia as a back-drop, makes the latter seem a bit talent show-esque. A Punk Goddess brought rap to the masses, while Hip-hop was finding it's legs.
If you couldn’t dance or sing in early 83, you were not alone. There were simply too many new styles to refine a single. You could however scrounge a square of cardboard or a vinyl table cloth, press play on your boom box and break-dance to the ironic 12” single “Jam-on’s Revenge”, the ‘Wikki Wikki song’ (AKA “Jam On It”).
The baseline of this Top 40 track was its hook, but the odd addition of sped-up vocals & ’scratching’ on the track (made by mouth), would become the absurd special sauce that lifted it and others like it to the charts. Often you have to mock yourself to forge genius, and many would fall in line behind Newcleus, as the mouth became a mocking instrument, in the form of 'Beat-Box'.
To quote band member Ben Cenac, AKA Cosmo D, “I didn't really think much of the Rap records that were playing on the radio, so I figured as a joke I would make a parody jam ... I threw in an idea from an [event] that actually had happened in the ’70s”, this was the Wikki sound thrown back at them by a DJ who just lost their DJ Battle to Cosmo et al.
“...but You can’t do this…?" the vanquished DJ said tauntingly, “...Wikki Wikki Wikki Wikki”.
And so they packed this parody onto the end of their next album and set about to shop it around to studios. The track impressed Joe Webb from Mayhew records, and it was later cut as a separate 7” single that charted.
OK, so In the most reverential way, I need to say, that I was no wannabe, but if one watched “Breakin”, and also listened to this track..., you’d basically be hooked (at least for a week or so) in the vocational disaster of learning to break-dance. Taking risks is what the Music Biz does, and promoters who do not, don't make it long in the business.
Owing to one industrious Record Promoter, Named Aubrey Mayhew, some cosmic musical tides shifted.
Aubrey Mayhew was born in D.C. and served in Korea. He got his start in the music biz, as a booking agent, and promoter. He became a Country music producer & director of a country music TV program called “Hayloft Jamboree”, produced in Boston of all places… After this he became a Music producer for Pickwick records. In 1961 while working on a 99 cent budget line based in New York City, Mayhew was on the hunt for talent, but his heart lay in Nashville. Mayhew found himself in Dallas in 1963 the very day that Kennedy was shot, and had the brilliant idea to bring as much magnetic tape as he could find into a makeshift studio to record the news from a live TV set for 12 hours. They rushed the raw tapes to New York, and pressed the "Kennedy Speeches" album, which sold 3 million copies through nearly 300 Woolworth stores in four months. After that, Mayhew became obsessed with The Dead Kennedys.
Disco was dead, but it's legacy like a mutating virus changed things as equal parts reaction, and retaliation.
In the late 70’s Ben Cenac was a young DJ competing with other DJ’s In battles in Brooklyn.
After winning a battle to another crew, The losing DJ taunted them saying “You guys are bad, but you can’t do this”..., followed by some quick scratching on his turntable “wiki wiki wiki wiki”... introducing lay-public to a sound which was to become famous & also a parody. Surely we give full credit to Grand Master Flash, the Furious Five, Kurtis Blow, and The Rock Steady Crew as the progenitors of the Hip-Hop Movement, but it goes without saying that putting all of these new elements into a common language lies within the artists, and the Production. As far as production goes, the above video may seem silly and amateur, but that is precisely the point. This Band Newcleus, formerly Positive Messenger made a parody of rap, (curse them), into a hit. This actually ticks three boxes now. 1. Proto-Hip Hop, 2. Rap, and 3. B-boy'ing, or Break-dancing as it became known.
This onomatopoeia, "wiki" I suppose a nod to Grand Master Flash, and Curtis Blow, would also become the name of a place to find exactly such trivia on a barely gestating internet. It was1982, and these sounds evolved a musical sea-change. Scratching and Rapping may have existed in the late 70’s, but when someone begins to use it as parody, it has yet to peak. The oddest cosmic cross-fade of the early eighties came where Punk and Rap intersected. Blondie gave full credit in the song, Rapture, to her forebears, and crafted the first Rap track to hit Number one anywhere. The funny thing is that Blondie did it so well, that looking back at Cosmo-D, and Curtis Blow, without nostalgia as a back-drop, makes the latter seem a bit talent show-esque. A Punk Goddess brought rap to the masses, while Hip-hop was finding it's legs.
If you couldn’t dance or sing in early 83, you were not alone. There were simply too many new styles to refine a single. You could however scrounge a square of cardboard or a vinyl table cloth, press play on your boom box and break-dance to the ironic 12” single “Jam-on’s Revenge”, the ‘Wikki Wikki song’ (AKA “Jam On It”).
The baseline of this Top 40 track was its hook, but the odd addition of sped-up vocals & ’scratching’ on the track (made by mouth), would become the absurd special sauce that lifted it and others like it to the charts. Often you have to mock yourself to forge genius, and many would fall in line behind Newcleus, as the mouth became a mocking instrument, in the form of 'Beat-Box'.
To quote band member Ben Cenac, AKA Cosmo D, “I didn't really think much of the Rap records that were playing on the radio, so I figured as a joke I would make a parody jam ... I threw in an idea from an [event] that actually had happened in the ’70s”, this was the Wikki sound thrown back at them by a DJ who just lost their DJ Battle to Cosmo et al.
“...but You can’t do this…?" the vanquished DJ said tauntingly, “...Wikki Wikki Wikki Wikki”.
And so they packed this parody onto the end of their next album and set about to shop it around to studios. The track impressed Joe Webb from Mayhew records, and it was later cut as a separate 7” single that charted.
OK, so In the most reverential way, I need to say, that I was no wannabe, but if one watched “Breakin”, and also listened to this track..., you’d basically be hooked (at least for a week or so) in the vocational disaster of learning to break-dance. Taking risks is what the Music Biz does, and promoters who do not, don't make it long in the business.
Owing to one industrious Record Promoter, Named Aubrey Mayhew, some cosmic musical tides shifted.
Aubrey Mayhew was born in D.C. and served in Korea. He got his start in the music biz, as a booking agent, and promoter. He became a Country music producer & director of a country music TV program called “Hayloft Jamboree”, produced in Boston of all places… After this he became a Music producer for Pickwick records. In 1961 while working on a 99 cent budget line based in New York City, Mayhew was on the hunt for talent, but his heart lay in Nashville. Mayhew found himself in Dallas in 1963 the very day that Kennedy was shot, and had the brilliant idea to bring as much magnetic tape as he could find into a makeshift studio to record the news from a live TV set for 12 hours. They rushed the raw tapes to New York, and pressed the "Kennedy Speeches" album, which sold 3 million copies through nearly 300 Woolworth stores in four months. After that, Mayhew became obsessed with The Dead Kennedys.
Johnny Paycheck was a country singer, with a disjointed capability, he left home at 15 roaming the country on freight trains, later he joined the navy, and was court marshaled when he punched a superior officer. he served two years in prison. It's said he was much like Hank Williams, brilliant, but unfocused, and not capable of completing much of anything -- Whisky of course plays a role. It's also said that Hank Williams never wrote songs, but he came with a flood of great ideas, Hank's Manager Fred Rose needed to write them down. and together Fred and Hank Williams finished nearly all Hank's ideas as a team. This duo was no different than Paycheck and his manager Aubrey Mayhew.
Mayhew gained co-writer credits for coming up with marketable if preposterous song titles, such as Pardon Me (I've Got Someone to Kill). Mayhew heard about a country musician he wanted to sign to Pickwick. Traveling down to Nashville he found Donald Lytle sleeping under a bridge on Shelby Street. Mayhew and Lytle wrote and finished a few songs together. Mayhew convinced his reluctant Label to sign him, and they changed his name from Donald Lytle, to Johnny Paycheck, after a Chicago heavyweight boxer. With the new-found talent, Mayhew tried to get his label to start a Country Line, but was turned down, "They didn't want me to do it, but they allowed me to release a record with him, 'The Girl they talk about'", said Mayhew. Later they recorded a hit called A-11" which brought some success to Mayhew & Paycheck. After the hit, Mayhew quit Pickwick and started his own label in New York, and in 1966 moved to Nashville to start Little Darlin' records. He lived and worked in the Renovated Roxy Movie Theater in Nashville, wholly immersed again in country music.
By calculated risk and bold gumption, He built a nifty empire for his small country label -- signing niche and even odd musicians in a genre they called "Hard Country". His label grew, but soon they ran out of cash. Mayhew convinced one of their suppliers, the magnetic tape company 'Certron' to continue Little Darlin's work under their brand, 'Certron'. With acts like Johnny Paycheck, Clint Eastwood, and Later Johnny Cash, The Music Division of Certron became a larger label with a strange name; "Certron Corporation Music Division".
Mayhew, also made some bad decisions and when he tried to re-start Little Darlin' Records, he chose to represent himself in a legal battle, and lost the label and Paycheck. Mayhew started Mayhew Records, his third label called Amcorp, which recorded diverse talent and not just country. But Oddly his passion remained with Dead Kennedys. In fact so obsessed with Kennedy was Mayhew, that whilst producing music, raising a family and collecting Kennedy things, he amassed a larger collection of JFK memorabilia than anyone, more than 300,000 artifacts. Whilst he collected a formidable farm of Kennedy stuff, he wasn't content with just plaques, and medals, or other trinkets. Mayhew became famous as 'the Kennedy collector' when he actually bought the Texas School Book Depository Building in Dallas in an auction in 1970, for $600,000.
Three years later Mayhew lost the building in foreclosure, although until his death he claimed he had removed the window from which Oswald shot Kennedy, and stored it in Nashville. Caruth Byrd, who's father owned the building previously, said that he inherited the real window from his father, who … removed the window just after the assassination. Mayhew argued Byrd, "...Removed the wrong window". The reporter David Hoekstra who interviewed Mayhew quotes him as saying, “I also have a letter from a very wealthy civic leader who was half-owner of the Texas School Book Depository, who said he witnessed them taking the window out and told them they were taking it out of the wrong window.”
To collectors Provenance is everything, but to the lay public it seems a waste of breath.
Dead Kennedys formed as a Punk Band in June 1978 in San Francisco, California, when East Bay Ray (Raymond Pepperell) advertised for bandmates in the The Recycler, inspired after seeing a ska-punk show at Mabuhay Gardens in San Francisco. The original lineup of the Kennedys was front man Jello Biafra (Eric Reed Boucher) on vocals, East Bay Ray on guitar, Klaus Flouride (Geoffrey Lyall) on bass, 6025 (Carlos Cadona) on rhythm guitar and Ted (Bruce Slesinger) on drums and percussion. The Original Dead Kennedys had their first live show on July 19, 1978 at Mabuhay Gardens in San Francisco, California. The Dead Kennedys, (the band) was of no interest to Mayhew, but were the ironic progenitors of the west-coast Punk scene after the band Black Flag. The Dead Kennedys have nothing whatsoever to do with Aubrey Mayhew, but his Son knew them well, as did anyone bent toward the counter-culture.
Mayhew had three sons and a daughter.
One of Mayhew's Sons, Parris founded a punk band playing lead guitar for the Cro-Mags. Which alone underscores the full effect of Aubrey Mayhew's colorful life. Mayhew made Country music in Nashville. Produced a Country Music TV show from Boston. Created iconic Country star Johnny Paycheck, from a guy sleeping under a bridge, Later he recorded Lightning Hopkins, Stonewall Jackson, Clint Eastwood, Newcleus, and even owned rights to some Charlie Parker, which he sold too soon, (likely to buy more Kennedy stuff). Mayhew Started Two Record labels, and became obsessed with The Dead Kennedys, but not the band, just dead ones... Later, his teen son who admired the Dead Kennedys formed a Seminal Punk-rock band in NYC called the Cro-Mags, who debut at CBGB, and seemed to incite a West Coast - East Coast Punk rivalry. In California The Dead Kennedys claimed NY Punk 'Nazi'fied' the more intellectual social agendas of "Real Punk".
Here is the Cro-Mags Bio told by Parris Mayhew himself:
“…The year 1980, it's sunrise on NYC's lower east side, Ave. A is a barren urban wasteland of empty storefronts in abandoned buildings. the streets are littered with junkies and freaks. Heroin and cocaine are the only flourishing businesses and the only sign of life in this ghost town are the local gangs and 40 or so kids in front of A 7 (hardcore club) where Urban Waste is still on stage. Little Chris, age 11, and Eric Casanova, age 12, sit on the curb still tripping from the night before, with no money, no hope and no future, just drive and dried blood on their clothes from a night they've already forgotten. This was hardcore and the streets were ours.
Across from Tompkins Square Park Parris Mayhew and Harley Flanagan are sitting in the back booth of the Park Inn Tavern (after-hours) pounding pitchers of beer and shots of Jack, planning their new band. Nothing unusual, except that Parris was16 and Harley was 14 and their band was to change the hardcore scene forever.
In the bar, Harley is recounting to Parris the details of a robbery he and Paul Dordal had perpetrated earlier that day. As Parris sits listening and looking into Harley's drunk, drugged and crazed eyes that seem to pierce the darkness, Parris thinks "What am I getting myself into?"
In the early eighties, while Mayhew's son was stoking the punk fire, an exec at his father's Label Mayhew Records / Amcorp finds talent in early Rap. Later hailed as Hip-Hop, Mayhew Records signed the Brooklyn Electro-Boogie band Newcleus. Who held onto a one hit wonder as a parody surprise that charted well, called "Jam On It" -- This track introduced most of America to the musical equation: Scratching + Rap + Dance + A catchy Base-line = Hip-Hop?
The Cromags, Now called the 'Real Cromags', have evolved into something else over time. While their wild- eyed front man remains. Like most punk bands, they became a hardcore revolving door of members. Meanwhile Parris Mayhew went on to Hollywood to become a formidable Camera Operator, and director, (a chip off the block). He has completed hundreds of films, TV shows, documentaries, and Videos. Mayhew also shot a documentary on Sufjan Stephens.
From Hard Country to Hard-core, Proto-Hip-Hop, to Punk Thrash, all genres converged in what was perhaps the most epic stone soup of any decade.
After Mayhew forfeited Little Darlin' & Paycheck, Johnny Paycheck went on to Epic, and charted with his seminal Country Hit, "Take this Job and Shove It". Which caused impressionable laborers to tell their bosses to fuck-off, in gastly large numbers.
Before Producer Aubrey Mayhew's death On March 16th 2009, he was embroiled in a custody battle of sorts for ownership of 'the actual window' through which Oswald shot President Kennedy in 1963. In London upon his death The Guardian wrote, "Mayhew swam against the current of mainstream music, in the nonconformist tradition of men such as Sam Phillips, Syd Nathan of King Records and the Chess brothers.”
The Infamous Texas School Book Depository Window, (...perhaps )
- Published on
fac et aliquid operis, ut semper te diabolus inveniat occupatum.
The antidote to smashing shit, is to create shit. Whatever your current mood, you will come upon an idle moment when you could use a full-on 'Tour de Smash'. You could order a new computer keyboard, and when it arrives, you can then re-read 'that one email', text, or post, which totally pissed you off, then take the old keyboard out-back for a thrashing.
...Or Not.
Time modulates our reactive urge -- the nervous response to being out of control. You really should have gone out back and thrown a bottle against the fence, but alas you hit send. Sending a bottle through the air, and 'clicking send' are really the same action. Neither genie can simply be stuffed back in the bottle, and while initially gratifying..., within moments you will come to reconsider. We all do it -- Humans that is..., but not surprisingly almost no other animals in this peaceable kingdom seem to re-direct so much of their own frustration upon others, and harmless objects. To remain unbroken, we need to build.
"Engage in some occupation so that the devil will always find you busy" -St. Jerome
When visiting the zoo, you may have cherished a charming moment when a chimp did the same -- Throwing something absurd at the glass... but this act holds a dark mirror to our own soul. When we reflect upon what we are thinking..., "Hey, that silly monkey just did something like I do sometimes." we hear Homer Simpson as narrator. Time is the factor, and even the ape, could broker time as a suppressant -- Soon to forget about whatever made them upset, and then setting about to masturbate.
While time, like a sedative may hold back a base urge for a while, the true antidote to the lonesome act of retaliation is to make something. We could build a long list, from baking a cake, to boat building, but your own knack will hone your short list. The key to making something is that when you really consider the new set of instructions, and materials list that which is just outside of your "ability" is the thing you really need to build.
The old adage, 'idle hands are the devil's workshop' is one which may seem quite relevant today. I'm not sure I have been sitting at idle long enough to summons my 'smash-twitch'. But my hands are almost always dirty, and this I trust as a gauge of productivity, more than a vector. Just the same, and because I cannot think of anything which could better underscore the fine art of making stuff; I'll just defer to our friends at: Craftsmanship Dot Net A breathtaking resource for inspiration.
Why not Drop in for ideas? When you finish making something, even a sandwich -- If you still feel the urge, you thereby have your permission to smash it to bits.
...Or Not.
Time modulates our reactive urge -- the nervous response to being out of control. You really should have gone out back and thrown a bottle against the fence, but alas you hit send. Sending a bottle through the air, and 'clicking send' are really the same action. Neither genie can simply be stuffed back in the bottle, and while initially gratifying..., within moments you will come to reconsider. We all do it -- Humans that is..., but not surprisingly almost no other animals in this peaceable kingdom seem to re-direct so much of their own frustration upon others, and harmless objects. To remain unbroken, we need to build.
"Engage in some occupation so that the devil will always find you busy" -St. Jerome
When visiting the zoo, you may have cherished a charming moment when a chimp did the same -- Throwing something absurd at the glass... but this act holds a dark mirror to our own soul. When we reflect upon what we are thinking..., "Hey, that silly monkey just did something like I do sometimes." we hear Homer Simpson as narrator. Time is the factor, and even the ape, could broker time as a suppressant -- Soon to forget about whatever made them upset, and then setting about to masturbate.
While time, like a sedative may hold back a base urge for a while, the true antidote to the lonesome act of retaliation is to make something. We could build a long list, from baking a cake, to boat building, but your own knack will hone your short list. The key to making something is that when you really consider the new set of instructions, and materials list that which is just outside of your "ability" is the thing you really need to build.
The old adage, 'idle hands are the devil's workshop' is one which may seem quite relevant today. I'm not sure I have been sitting at idle long enough to summons my 'smash-twitch'. But my hands are almost always dirty, and this I trust as a gauge of productivity, more than a vector. Just the same, and because I cannot think of anything which could better underscore the fine art of making stuff; I'll just defer to our friends at: Craftsmanship Dot Net A breathtaking resource for inspiration.
Why not Drop in for ideas? When you finish making something, even a sandwich -- If you still feel the urge, you thereby have your permission to smash it to bits.
- Published on
You probably already know this, but for the few who didn't grow up beech-side, here it goes. We lived inland from the water's edge, and this being so, summers were hot. Our windows could never open wide enough to gulp cool breezes. Fans sat on every sill thrumming on high, imbalanced metal blades ticking behind broken plastic slats. Myself, my siblings & stray cats lay still on our backs, with a cool damp wash-cloth on our forehead, chest, or neck to sooth steamy squalor. Humid red leaves shook outside, flicking behind amber street-lights glowing through our chattering box-fans. Wee children restlessly succumbed to sweaty sleep. During the daylight of Mid-July, the heat was nearly as unbearable as several sleepless children. By Eleven, My mother would cave under pressure to the mid-day sun, and we'd load spent ice-cream pails, buckets, and other crap into a cracked plastic laundry basket, PB&J packed, all takers would herd into a rusty suburban, en-route to the Beach.
Visiting the Beech
By late afternoon, scalding toes upon hot sand, we'd retreat from the beach as bright as blushing grapefruit. Starving, we'd transport an island of sand, deep set within our hair, ears, and socks back home, (if we could find our hideous socks at all). Arriving home, to the hose ritual, we'd stand beneath the shade of a massive Beech tree, before being allowed inside. The rinse cycle, like a prison delousing, liberated most of our sand... while it seemed to activate our sunburn. The Trunk of the beech tree beside the house swelled from our careless hose-play, and through a wet spring, it's roots swelled to heave the pavement squares upward, like an earthquake, so the steps became a hazard. Loosely rinsed beneath the purple canopy of the massive 'Silver Beach', we'd towel off; Only then were we permitted to enter the house buying my mother scant time to prepare dinner. By high school, it became clear that without these shady giants surrounding our home, we'd have all died like flies, or killed each-other. Our shade beneath one massive elephant-silver Beech tree was a critical sanctuary. Like a Hospital ship in wartime, other broke kids came to sit under it's cooler environs. As a child, three kids could not lock hands reaching around it's trunk. As it swelled from snow & spring rain, new eyes creased it's smooth grey bark, symbolizing my brother's birthday in a wink. In rainy years the mighty Beech roots wandered through and drank from every single drain and storm-sewer on our block. You could record the rainy years by the frequency of Rotor-rooter visits to our home and to our neighbors. Wrinkles formed and split the rhinoceros hide of it's huge trunk slowly. We thought it's bark was deliberately slippery, to remain the only of eight trees around the house which we could never climb. A massive grey and purple Beech Tree, protected our family from devolving into overheated chaos throughout summer. While growing up we knew it as "The Beach Tree". A singular phenomena, A super-hero which we never saw protecting another family in our town. Our "Beach" was our sanctuary.
So It happens that any tree is not so simple to understand. Carrying stories, histories, and secrets -- Trees are humanized in fiction, film, and perhaps in reality. They shed, and mate, multiply, fertilize, drop food for their children, and protect their young and neighbors much like the best of us. Arborists, speak of trees for what they can provide to humans, while "Tree Huggers" tend to obsess, and that reverence is well deserved, but of course it is inadequate. Each and every year of everyone's life is in fact etched somewhere deep within their tree.
L.G.Beech.T.Q.
As it turns out Beeches are transgender (so to speak) monoecious, bearing both male and female flowers on the same plant. The small buds are unisexual, the female flowers are born in pairs, While male flowers are wind-pollinating catkins. Shortly after new leaves appear in early spring, The beech bears tiny fruit, known as 'beechnuts'. (This was also a Coffee brand when I was growing up, next to Folgers, and Maxwell House... All of them sucked) The 'beach' keeps it's secret burrs until autumn, when it's nuts fall to earth. These beech nuts are edible -- awkward triangle nuts, are as bitter as hops, although sometimes mild and nutty, like pine nuts. They have a high enough oily fat that they can be pressed -- But I never recall our Tree dropping any nuts. Our tree was too busy protecting my family from devolving into chaos, and death.
So what is to be said of a Beech Tree. Some arborists, (not Tree-huggers) say the Beech is good kindling. Some say it's Crappy for building stuff. I understand that there are many tree brands which build better, wear better, and seem to make the Man. But consider this:
This Humble Beech tree...
Visiting the Beech
By late afternoon, scalding toes upon hot sand, we'd retreat from the beach as bright as blushing grapefruit. Starving, we'd transport an island of sand, deep set within our hair, ears, and socks back home, (if we could find our hideous socks at all). Arriving home, to the hose ritual, we'd stand beneath the shade of a massive Beech tree, before being allowed inside. The rinse cycle, like a prison delousing, liberated most of our sand... while it seemed to activate our sunburn. The Trunk of the beech tree beside the house swelled from our careless hose-play, and through a wet spring, it's roots swelled to heave the pavement squares upward, like an earthquake, so the steps became a hazard. Loosely rinsed beneath the purple canopy of the massive 'Silver Beach', we'd towel off; Only then were we permitted to enter the house buying my mother scant time to prepare dinner. By high school, it became clear that without these shady giants surrounding our home, we'd have all died like flies, or killed each-other. Our shade beneath one massive elephant-silver Beech tree was a critical sanctuary. Like a Hospital ship in wartime, other broke kids came to sit under it's cooler environs. As a child, three kids could not lock hands reaching around it's trunk. As it swelled from snow & spring rain, new eyes creased it's smooth grey bark, symbolizing my brother's birthday in a wink. In rainy years the mighty Beech roots wandered through and drank from every single drain and storm-sewer on our block. You could record the rainy years by the frequency of Rotor-rooter visits to our home and to our neighbors. Wrinkles formed and split the rhinoceros hide of it's huge trunk slowly. We thought it's bark was deliberately slippery, to remain the only of eight trees around the house which we could never climb. A massive grey and purple Beech Tree, protected our family from devolving into overheated chaos throughout summer. While growing up we knew it as "The Beach Tree". A singular phenomena, A super-hero which we never saw protecting another family in our town. Our "Beach" was our sanctuary.
So It happens that any tree is not so simple to understand. Carrying stories, histories, and secrets -- Trees are humanized in fiction, film, and perhaps in reality. They shed, and mate, multiply, fertilize, drop food for their children, and protect their young and neighbors much like the best of us. Arborists, speak of trees for what they can provide to humans, while "Tree Huggers" tend to obsess, and that reverence is well deserved, but of course it is inadequate. Each and every year of everyone's life is in fact etched somewhere deep within their tree.
L.G.Beech.T.Q.
As it turns out Beeches are transgender (so to speak) monoecious, bearing both male and female flowers on the same plant. The small buds are unisexual, the female flowers are born in pairs, While male flowers are wind-pollinating catkins. Shortly after new leaves appear in early spring, The beech bears tiny fruit, known as 'beechnuts'. (This was also a Coffee brand when I was growing up, next to Folgers, and Maxwell House... All of them sucked) The 'beach' keeps it's secret burrs until autumn, when it's nuts fall to earth. These beech nuts are edible -- awkward triangle nuts, are as bitter as hops, although sometimes mild and nutty, like pine nuts. They have a high enough oily fat that they can be pressed -- But I never recall our Tree dropping any nuts. Our tree was too busy protecting my family from devolving into chaos, and death.
So what is to be said of a Beech Tree. Some arborists, (not Tree-huggers) say the Beech is good kindling. Some say it's Crappy for building stuff. I understand that there are many tree brands which build better, wear better, and seem to make the Man. But consider this:
This Humble Beech tree...
Standing on a Beech
Aging we may see a humble Beech tree, at roughly 132 feet tall and nearly 12 foot three inches in girth, its bole straight and branchless for 80 feet straight up. To comprehend a tall smooth tree, we need perspective, just like a castle needs an approach to give it context too the landscape. In a forest, most trees blend away any special reverence. Taken alone, a tall tree gives us the context to comprehend what a fascinating being it is. You may be 6 foot tall if you're well fed. Now divide 5 into 132, if you imagine standing on another's shoulders... (we subtract your head) Now stack 26 more people. Giant trees are mostly anomalies today, in cities, as they struggle for space, and food... but not unusual through history, mostly owing to abundant food resources, the endless deep earth, friendly neighbors, and the general advocacy of those who plant them. Trees like these grow, in lock-step with people, except that the trees get to stand while we disappear. Not surprisingly we will feed a tree like this, while they silently watch over our passing. A beautiful Beech tree like other deciduous kin seem to struggle with our clumsy tactics at living.
Beeches and the Jacobite consolidation
In Scotland, as the Jacobite revolution brought a peace under Prince Charles Edward, and later a United Kingdom consolidated under King George V; The union of English and Scottish Legislatures yielded a new peace and security within the Northern Kingdom unseen since the death of Alexander III in 1286. But for those who opposed the Scots' merger, Beech trees planted along the fast flow of the Arkaig river of Achnacarry hold a more sorrowful significance. It was the Land of Highland chiefs like the Lord (Laird) Donald Cameron of Lochiel, who was already advanced in age, when Prince Charlie landed at Borrowdale in July. The Prince who changed Scotland forever summoned the highland chiefs to Charlie's retreat. Laird Cameron's brother John begged him not to attend, saying, "I know you far better than you know yourself, and if the Prince once sets eyes upon you, he will make you do as he pleases". But... As it happened Laird Cameron's younger brother John was right predicting precisely how things would shake out. Initially resisting risks to his clan, Later Laird Donald Cameron leaving comfortable seclusion yielded to the Persuasive Prince Edward. He returned home and marshaled fourteen hundred highlanders to take part in Charlie's absurd campaign, until Laird Cameron was carried off the battle field of Culloden gravely wounded in 1746.
While Lord Cameron was away in battle, his order of young beech trees arrived at his home at Achnacarry, awaiting direction. The Beautiful beeches were heeled in a tight row beside the river where they drank, and gossiped, but the Chieftain never returned to Lochaber to plant them. Rather he lingered a few years in exile, his estates forfeited to the English throne, and Lord Cameron died in 1748, and with him Scottish Independence.
The Beech trees were never "planted" rather they remained closely moored in the trench beside the Arkaig river, drinking and growing. These royal Beeches were raised in a trench so closely set that a person could not squeeze between their silver trunks. It's said that the "Winds of winter wail a Coronach among the bare boughs" "No more pathetic memorial could be designed for a lost cause, and for him whom men spoke of as the 'Gentle Lochiel'".
Beeches and Budweiser
I'm an optimist in-spite of apparent reasons to the contrary. Let' s assume that it's OK to just expire while giants watch over us. This will in the very least allow us to cling to a dream -- To fade under the shade of a beautiful tree.
Beech trees like the one here are not, nor were they ever regarded fondly for making things. Beech burns hot, makes a beautiful fire..., but it does not stay straight, supportive, nor resist rot or pests, when cut; to that extent it is not necessarily cherished as a building material.
Beech trees burn hotter than nearly anything else, and Beech has a lovely flavor. So desirable is it's fragrant vein, the Beech is renown for creating the Budweiser Brand in America. Beech wood was lain upon the tempering vats of Budweiser for Twenty-one days as it's "secret recipe". Many other brands have touted "Beechwood Aging" as a way to temper the perfect pale lager; but you need to cut a shit-ton of beautiful trees when your public gets thirsty.
So what else lies in the sordid history of such a noble guardian, as it considers being cut-down for waste to make your average beer? Here is another blue-blooded reason that Budweiser may be deserving of gorgeous Clydesdales, and I assure you it is not the taste, nor the quality contained in your can of Budweiser.
Beeches Building Landmarks
There are several other more regal reasons to consider the humble beech tree as your best tree pal, namely it's blue-blood lineage. Take for example the word itself and the seemingly week utility of the wimpy Beech tree. Beech is Perishable, Hard, and brittle under most uses, and as such it is often burned, because that is what is best at. The Beech however was selected to support the footings of Winchester in the wet peat bogs which undermine support of such a massive landmark. It is Beech logs which were lain well below the building of Cathedrals under London, and rural palaces which may not still stand, were not for the magical capability of Beech to stay strong sweating under damp duress.
It may not seem real that the penultimate shade tree remain so durable when wet, but for upwards of seven-hundred years these beech trees set in the ground, faithfully supported their function beneath the Lady Chapel of Westminster, erected by Bishop Godfrey de Lucy only a few years before he died in 1204, Today the beech timber are still perfectly hard and sound. This is the humble beech which most forestry experts revere as great for S'mores. The Humble beech may support more than your perfect campfire.
The tree which prevented the decay of my Family whilst growing up, was just shade, for sure, but it's epic lineage was evident right upon it's surface... It's texture, and space-alien gray trunk looks like nothing else. The Beech is more than an eight-hundred plus year old foundation of the worlds most iconic architecture... The Beech Tree may also be progenitor for a royal name.
Beeches Royals & their Books
Miraculous by Nature and for fancier reasons the humble beech is better than you may have thought: So bring your skepticism to this story. "Trees, A Woodland Journal" By James Macklehose c. 1915
"In Northern England through the middle ages the Beech was coveted as drain-tile soles in wet-land Britain. The timber was put to far-higher purpose in Buckinghamshire, where extensive beech forests around High Wycombe and Newport Pagnell provided timber for creative wood-craft in England. These trees were regularly grown and felled responsibly to supply the chairmaking industry. Useful 'clean timber' commanded, higher prices as it was consumed. Historians recite the very name Buckingham to have been derived from the Anglo-Saxon boc, a beech; but it appears in the "Winchester Chronicle" as Buccingaham, which indicates its origin in the family named Buccing, descended from an ancestor or chief called Bucca, the Buck. Howbeit, we are incessantly, though unconsciously, using the Anglo-Saxon boc, for it was smooth tablets or panels of beech that formed the primitive "book." In like manner crept in the term "leaves" of a book, because the foliage of papyrus preceded paper, which is the same word. The Boc, or Beech is said to be the first root of the Family name becoming that of Buckingham. Naming a family, a region, a castle, a dynasty, and even a fountain in Chicago. The noble Boc, or Beech is not quite so noble, but it is fascinating.
And so the Humble Beech which we love to burn, became the Book, and it's leaves the pages and if beech it burns hotter than 451 degrees f.
By virtue of its' usefulness, the noble beech is notorious for its' productive leaf fall, creating abundant mulch, humus—and rich soil so essential for vigorous tree growth. In fact the Beech drops more helpful leaf fodder, more efficiently, and with more benefit than any other tree.
The Beech Tree bears shade better than any other broad-leaved tree anywhere. (Hornbeam and Silver fir, far behind). Because of it's primary two qualities, the humble beech is best of all trees for under-planting forests. Young beech trees nourish older trees through leaf-fall and keep soil evaporation in check. Beech trees seem to know that they are preparing for a successional crop, come the time when their older siblings are ripe for firewood.
The tree which protected my family as a child from certain apocalypse is perhaps a knight of sorts, a slap-dash royal order of mediocre trees which provide far more than they appear to.
The Beech like most trees fall prey to blight, bugs, and building trades; but most Beech live for only two centuries, and when it gets to that age, it seems to die in the night, suddenly expiring, while in apparent full vigor.
Beeches Building Landmarks
There are several other more regal reasons to consider the humble beech tree as your best tree pal, namely it's blue-blood lineage. Take for example the word itself and the seemingly week utility of the wimpy Beech tree. Beech is Perishable, Hard, and brittle under most uses, and as such it is often burned, because that is what is best at. The Beech however was selected to support the footings of Winchester in the wet peat bogs which undermine support of such a massive landmark. It is Beech logs which were lain well below the building of Cathedrals under London, and rural palaces which may not still stand, were not for the magical capability of Beech to stay strong sweating under damp duress.
It may not seem real that the penultimate shade tree remain so durable when wet, but for upwards of seven-hundred years these beech trees set in the ground, faithfully supported their function beneath the Lady Chapel of Westminster, erected by Bishop Godfrey de Lucy only a few years before he died in 1204, Today the beech timber are still perfectly hard and sound. This is the humble beech which most forestry experts revere as great for S'mores. The Humble beech may support more than your perfect campfire.
The tree which prevented the decay of my Family whilst growing up, was just shade, for sure, but it's epic lineage was evident right upon it's surface... It's texture, and space-alien gray trunk looks like nothing else. The Beech is more than an eight-hundred plus year old foundation of the worlds most iconic architecture... The Beech Tree may also be progenitor for a royal name.
Beeches Royals & their Books
Miraculous by Nature and for fancier reasons the humble beech is better than you may have thought: So bring your skepticism to this story. "Trees, A Woodland Journal" By James Macklehose c. 1915
"In Northern England through the middle ages the Beech was coveted as drain-tile soles in wet-land Britain. The timber was put to far-higher purpose in Buckinghamshire, where extensive beech forests around High Wycombe and Newport Pagnell provided timber for creative wood-craft in England. These trees were regularly grown and felled responsibly to supply the chairmaking industry. Useful 'clean timber' commanded, higher prices as it was consumed. Historians recite the very name Buckingham to have been derived from the Anglo-Saxon boc, a beech; but it appears in the "Winchester Chronicle" as Buccingaham, which indicates its origin in the family named Buccing, descended from an ancestor or chief called Bucca, the Buck. Howbeit, we are incessantly, though unconsciously, using the Anglo-Saxon boc, for it was smooth tablets or panels of beech that formed the primitive "book." In like manner crept in the term "leaves" of a book, because the foliage of papyrus preceded paper, which is the same word. The Boc, or Beech is said to be the first root of the Family name becoming that of Buckingham. Naming a family, a region, a castle, a dynasty, and even a fountain in Chicago. The noble Boc, or Beech is not quite so noble, but it is fascinating.
And so the Humble Beech which we love to burn, became the Book, and it's leaves the pages and if beech it burns hotter than 451 degrees f.
By virtue of its' usefulness, the noble beech is notorious for its' productive leaf fall, creating abundant mulch, humus—and rich soil so essential for vigorous tree growth. In fact the Beech drops more helpful leaf fodder, more efficiently, and with more benefit than any other tree.
The Beech Tree bears shade better than any other broad-leaved tree anywhere. (Hornbeam and Silver fir, far behind). Because of it's primary two qualities, the humble beech is best of all trees for under-planting forests. Young beech trees nourish older trees through leaf-fall and keep soil evaporation in check. Beech trees seem to know that they are preparing for a successional crop, come the time when their older siblings are ripe for firewood.
The tree which protected my family as a child from certain apocalypse is perhaps a knight of sorts, a slap-dash royal order of mediocre trees which provide far more than they appear to.
The Beech like most trees fall prey to blight, bugs, and building trades; but most Beech live for only two centuries, and when it gets to that age, it seems to die in the night, suddenly expiring, while in apparent full vigor.
- Published on
French Miche LaFournette Bakery, Image c. Paul Strabbing Photography Chicago
"Browne breede tostyd wyth hony in lyknesse of a butteryd loof" -Juliana Berners, writing ‘The Treatyse of Fysshynge wyth an Angle' 1496 the first known written mention on the delight of eating Bread and Butter. Under siege by Teutonic Knights in Northern Poland, Copernicus surmised that the soldiers holed up were dropping like flies from illness born by the bread that they schlepped up many stories over damp and soiled stones to the guard. His advice was to slather the bread in Butter, (plastic wrap being scarce), to coat the bread, and help indicate where it hit the ground. Slicing off the soiled parts became easy, and the butter also tastey. But, alas this mythology retold over centuries has largely been disproven. Neverheless Copernicus was not the first intellect to butter his bread.
Wood Cut Illustration from the worlds best guide to fishing, amongst other things. 1496
"Brown Bread toasted with honey, and Butter". What really could be better?
We reach for so much, and strive daily for junk, and money, and strain to be heard from above the drone & chatter, of every conceivable machine and vice, but when we find silence, and slowly chew a crusty heel of fresh bread, perhaps still warm, spread thick with butter, can we know a better thing? I think not... Perhaps though, if this delight happens on a walk through a wood, toward a river where we tie a snell -- cast a line, and if lucky -- pull a fish from the shimmering cold water... Then we are whole.
The thing with bread and butter, as with fishing, is that while wildly different -- we know our worth and at the moment we have both, we are wealthy. Value is what we take from something, and being connected to the un-contaminated simplicity of either fishing or eating the simplest of foods, brings true humble joy. "He sees the young swans, herons, ducks, cock, and other foul, which to me seems better than all the honks and blasts and horns and cries that hunters and falkers and foulers can make..." (the hunt can be tedious & tiresome, but) "...if a person takes a fish, then surely is there no man happier in this sport"? -JB
Taken from the Middle English, it is without question that at least one other person (besides me) saw pulling a fish from the water to be a joyful moment. Simple fishing, or catching fish may reset a clock, as by Fishing while you may not have caught anything for hours, you may just sit upon a fallen tree, or stone to open your empty creel, unwrap a few simple slices of fresh bread slathered in butter. And... forget about the time?
"Half a Mile from the County Fair
And the rain came pouring down
Me and Billy standing there
With a silver half a crown
Hands a' full of fishing rods
And the tackle on our backs
We just stood there getting wet
With our backs against the fence"
- Van Morrison "And it Stoned Me"
In the original Middle English Text from this quintessential guide to angling, there is something far larger than positively liking to go fishing; perhaps larger than us.
He seeth the yonge swannes : heerons : duckes : cotes and many other fou | les wyth theyr brodes. / whyche me semyth better than alle the {4} noyse of honndys : the blastes of hornys and the scrye of foulis that hunters : fawkeners & foulers can make. And yf the angler take fysshe : surely thenne is there noo man merier than he is in his spyryte. ¶ Also who soo woll vse the game of anglynge : he must ryse erly. whiche thyng is prouffytable to man in this wy | se / That is to wyte : moost to the heele of his soule. For it shall cause hym to be holy. and to the heele of his body / For it shall cause hym to be hole.
We reach for so much, and strive daily for junk, and money, and strain to be heard from above the drone & chatter, of every conceivable machine and vice, but when we find silence, and slowly chew a crusty heel of fresh bread, perhaps still warm, spread thick with butter, can we know a better thing? I think not... Perhaps though, if this delight happens on a walk through a wood, toward a river where we tie a snell -- cast a line, and if lucky -- pull a fish from the shimmering cold water... Then we are whole.
The thing with bread and butter, as with fishing, is that while wildly different -- we know our worth and at the moment we have both, we are wealthy. Value is what we take from something, and being connected to the un-contaminated simplicity of either fishing or eating the simplest of foods, brings true humble joy. "He sees the young swans, herons, ducks, cock, and other foul, which to me seems better than all the honks and blasts and horns and cries that hunters and falkers and foulers can make..." (the hunt can be tedious & tiresome, but) "...if a person takes a fish, then surely is there no man happier in this sport"? -JB
Taken from the Middle English, it is without question that at least one other person (besides me) saw pulling a fish from the water to be a joyful moment. Simple fishing, or catching fish may reset a clock, as by Fishing while you may not have caught anything for hours, you may just sit upon a fallen tree, or stone to open your empty creel, unwrap a few simple slices of fresh bread slathered in butter. And... forget about the time?
"Half a Mile from the County Fair
And the rain came pouring down
Me and Billy standing there
With a silver half a crown
Hands a' full of fishing rods
And the tackle on our backs
We just stood there getting wet
With our backs against the fence"
- Van Morrison "And it Stoned Me"
In the original Middle English Text from this quintessential guide to angling, there is something far larger than positively liking to go fishing; perhaps larger than us.
He seeth the yonge swannes : heerons : duckes : cotes and many other fou | les wyth theyr brodes. / whyche me semyth better than alle the {4} noyse of honndys : the blastes of hornys and the scrye of foulis that hunters : fawkeners & foulers can make. And yf the angler take fysshe : surely thenne is there noo man merier than he is in his spyryte. ¶ Also who soo woll vse the game of anglynge : he must ryse erly. whiche thyng is prouffytable to man in this wy | se / That is to wyte : moost to the heele of his soule. For it shall cause hym to be holy. and to the heele of his body / For it shall cause hym to be hole.
Often the most eager dare to take your bait, but behold they are the brave ones. Image courtesy of my beloved brother
Surely then is there no man merrier than he is in his spirit..., For it shall cause him to be holy, and to heal his body, for it shall cause him to be whole." It's impossible to imagine such a thoroughly giddy incantation devoted to the basic pleasure of fishing. It seems ever more foreign to imagine an ode to fishing and well within it to find the first written nod to the beauty of Bread and Butter. The year was 1496, merely 4 years after a young Portuguese King set conditions upon Columbus to have a go at finding a new way to India. I suppose you could say that he failed, that trip, caught no fish along the way, and Bread and Butter rotted within each of three cramped galleons. Bread and Butter indeed, duly immortalized by Dame Juliana Berners well prior to anyone knowing about a New World.
It's not at all odd that a great woman poignantly brought science to angling within an elegant outdoorsman manuscript, Showing readers how to fight a fish without breaking the line, How to make ones own hooks, bait, and how to tie flys… But what is miraculous, is to so plainly underscore the preparedness of a person who wanders off to catch fish. It is as if Joan Cleaver were telling the Beaver to remember his bagged lunch as he leaves for school. But it's not that simple is it? In one very elegant treatise on how to be an angler, Dame Berners bothers to mention that Bread and Butter may raise the zen of angling many fold. Or at least in itself, it's important to consider your hunger, and the likelihood you may not catch any fish, and so don't forget your bagged lunch.
So what is there in either which makes them magic?
First there is Angling... Catching a fish is really never boring. Losing time, is a funny thing today, as we used to relish wasting time, caught up in headphones, or a good film, and today things tend to blur. While truthfully -- Casting, and sitting, and losing a lure or many snells is about as fun as sitting upon a cold stool in a frozen shanty on an icy lake in mid-winter. There is nothing more frustrating than setting out to Fish, or doing anything and returning in absolute failure. Fishing may be frustrating and even demoralizing, at times... but as one soon learns, empty handed fishing trips are still better than a productive day at work.
And then there is the miracle combination of Bread and Butter. Bread and Butter, like a candy-bar midway through a bike race, or Champagne upon a celebration become some of our memorable incentives to carry on. But bread and butter are a bit more than that. This dynamic duo, is nearly un-rivaled in a century or evolution. If you don't have some, then forget about your resolutions, and your fake aversion to Gluten, and get, buy, bake or steal some, and then find the best full butter-fat you can procure, Plugra & Kerry Gold being common -- And then do nothing more than lay it on thick to remind yourself of what it means to be truly completely content with two simple things.
The Beauty of Gutenberg.org where this angling book is published, is that you can discover a many thousand books for free without restriction to consider quote or copy. Free!
Here is an excerpt by M.G. Watkins preface which explains why this consummate manual on angling was so thoroughly plagiarized and revered as the ultimate canon of fishing craft: "Many pure and noble intellects have kindled into lasting devotion to angling on reading her eloquent commendation of it. Such men as Donne, Wotton, and Herbert, Paley, Bell, and Davy, together with many another excellent and simple disposition, have caught enthusiasm from her lofty sentiments, and found that not their bodily health only, but also their morals, were improved by angling. It became a school of virtues, a quiet pastime in which, while looking into their own hearts, they learnt lessons of the highest wisdom, reverence, resignation, and love—love of their fellow-men, of the lower creatures, and of their Creator."
It may seem a surprise that someone writing a guide to fishing in the fifteenth century could kindle such philosophic ideals amidst learned men. But its not surprising that they all took the best from this treatise, without giving credit to it's author.
But this Treatise on Angling, is not merely a manual to teach the craft of fishing, rather more a moral guide, and perhaps the first book of rules on naturalism, environmentalism, and maintaining good character. Again I quote the Preface:
"The last two pages of the book give us a portrait of her conception of the perfect angler, and it is no presumption to say that a nobler and truer picture has never been lined. Simplicity of disposition, forbearance to our neighbours’ rights, and consideration for the poor, are strongly inculcated. All covetousness in fishing or employment of its gentle art to increase worldly gain and fill the larder is equally condemned. She holds the highest view of angling; that it is to serve a man for solace, and to cause the health of his body, but especially of his soul. So she would have him pursue his craft alone for the most part, when his mind can rise to high and holy things, and he may serve God devoutly by saying from his heart his customary prayer. Nor should a man ever carry his amusement to excess, and catch too much at one time; this is to destroy his future pleasure and to interfere with that of his neighbours. A good sportsman too, she adds, will busy himself in nourishing the game and destroying all vermin".
May I remind you once more, that this was penned around 1494 or 5, and published as part of a larger volume of sportsman's guides in 1496. So there it is a primer to being a better person through fishing. Not the sportsman angling on a TV program with sonar, radar, and the chatter of motors... But the sublime contemplation of worldly things, whilst casting a line.
"So we jumped right in
and the driver grinned
and he dropped us up the road
and we looked at the swim
and we jumped right in
not to mention fishing poles
...and it stoned me to my soul"
-Van Morrison
It's not at all odd that a great woman poignantly brought science to angling within an elegant outdoorsman manuscript, Showing readers how to fight a fish without breaking the line, How to make ones own hooks, bait, and how to tie flys… But what is miraculous, is to so plainly underscore the preparedness of a person who wanders off to catch fish. It is as if Joan Cleaver were telling the Beaver to remember his bagged lunch as he leaves for school. But it's not that simple is it? In one very elegant treatise on how to be an angler, Dame Berners bothers to mention that Bread and Butter may raise the zen of angling many fold. Or at least in itself, it's important to consider your hunger, and the likelihood you may not catch any fish, and so don't forget your bagged lunch.
So what is there in either which makes them magic?
First there is Angling... Catching a fish is really never boring. Losing time, is a funny thing today, as we used to relish wasting time, caught up in headphones, or a good film, and today things tend to blur. While truthfully -- Casting, and sitting, and losing a lure or many snells is about as fun as sitting upon a cold stool in a frozen shanty on an icy lake in mid-winter. There is nothing more frustrating than setting out to Fish, or doing anything and returning in absolute failure. Fishing may be frustrating and even demoralizing, at times... but as one soon learns, empty handed fishing trips are still better than a productive day at work.
And then there is the miracle combination of Bread and Butter. Bread and Butter, like a candy-bar midway through a bike race, or Champagne upon a celebration become some of our memorable incentives to carry on. But bread and butter are a bit more than that. This dynamic duo, is nearly un-rivaled in a century or evolution. If you don't have some, then forget about your resolutions, and your fake aversion to Gluten, and get, buy, bake or steal some, and then find the best full butter-fat you can procure, Plugra & Kerry Gold being common -- And then do nothing more than lay it on thick to remind yourself of what it means to be truly completely content with two simple things.
The Beauty of Gutenberg.org where this angling book is published, is that you can discover a many thousand books for free without restriction to consider quote or copy. Free!
Here is an excerpt by M.G. Watkins preface which explains why this consummate manual on angling was so thoroughly plagiarized and revered as the ultimate canon of fishing craft: "Many pure and noble intellects have kindled into lasting devotion to angling on reading her eloquent commendation of it. Such men as Donne, Wotton, and Herbert, Paley, Bell, and Davy, together with many another excellent and simple disposition, have caught enthusiasm from her lofty sentiments, and found that not their bodily health only, but also their morals, were improved by angling. It became a school of virtues, a quiet pastime in which, while looking into their own hearts, they learnt lessons of the highest wisdom, reverence, resignation, and love—love of their fellow-men, of the lower creatures, and of their Creator."
It may seem a surprise that someone writing a guide to fishing in the fifteenth century could kindle such philosophic ideals amidst learned men. But its not surprising that they all took the best from this treatise, without giving credit to it's author.
But this Treatise on Angling, is not merely a manual to teach the craft of fishing, rather more a moral guide, and perhaps the first book of rules on naturalism, environmentalism, and maintaining good character. Again I quote the Preface:
"The last two pages of the book give us a portrait of her conception of the perfect angler, and it is no presumption to say that a nobler and truer picture has never been lined. Simplicity of disposition, forbearance to our neighbours’ rights, and consideration for the poor, are strongly inculcated. All covetousness in fishing or employment of its gentle art to increase worldly gain and fill the larder is equally condemned. She holds the highest view of angling; that it is to serve a man for solace, and to cause the health of his body, but especially of his soul. So she would have him pursue his craft alone for the most part, when his mind can rise to high and holy things, and he may serve God devoutly by saying from his heart his customary prayer. Nor should a man ever carry his amusement to excess, and catch too much at one time; this is to destroy his future pleasure and to interfere with that of his neighbours. A good sportsman too, she adds, will busy himself in nourishing the game and destroying all vermin".
May I remind you once more, that this was penned around 1494 or 5, and published as part of a larger volume of sportsman's guides in 1496. So there it is a primer to being a better person through fishing. Not the sportsman angling on a TV program with sonar, radar, and the chatter of motors... But the sublime contemplation of worldly things, whilst casting a line.
"So we jumped right in
and the driver grinned
and he dropped us up the road
and we looked at the swim
and we jumped right in
not to mention fishing poles
...and it stoned me to my soul"
-Van Morrison
- Published on
Boris Johnson from Fast Company Photo: Shealah Craiughead
"Hanging on in quiet desperation is the English way". -Pink Floyd
Cue the Moog Synthesizer compositions of Wendy Carlos.
In 1971 Kubrick released a masterpiece Social Commentary on a Crumbling Britain, and a social/psychological experiment adapted from the Anthony Burgess Novel A Clockwork Orange, ("the American edit"). As the adaptation progressed, Burgess and Kubrick got on swimmingly with similar tastes, philosophies, and literary interests. While Burgess only made $500. from the Film, one thing they had in common was their fascination with Napoleon Bonaparte.
The Seminal Dystopian novel chronicles a near-future lawless British teen through his crime sprees, and then a B.F. Skinner'esque psycho-social modification, called the Ludavico Treatment. The 'Ludovico Treatment' promised to cure 'Little Alex' of his penchant for lawless "Ultra-Violence", in no time. And so it was either the treatment or prison.
The American and future distributions of the Book would leave out the final chapter/s proving his redemption. Not surprisingly the Book, and the Film polarized audiences, but mostly because it seemed tangibly real -- Possible.
And so we know that the novel and film were good, because they forced followers to the bleeding edge of their comfort zone.
As we drift toward future Dystopian Britain, with their charismatic leader, I wonder how his behavior mods went whilst, 'in Hospital'.
I think that A Clockwork Orange was an amazing book, and I have read & seen it many times. You could say I'm a fan..., But, I never knew watching why the eye-dropper scenes of "ultra-violence", weren't in the book. It turns out that Malcom McDowell scratched his cornea on set, became blind for a spell, and the shots with the eye-dropper were an actual physician treating him. Fun Fact! This doctor visit was a clever directorial turn in production, which intensified, the peak. The audience shuddered to see their anti-hero endure ‘treatment’.
But for me the “Boris Moment” came earlier, when Alex is visited by his Probate Officer. You see, I keep seeing Boris Johnson as probation officer P.R. Deltoid, sitting beside truant lil' Alex mid-day on his bed. In this fateful scene he's being told by Mr. Deltoid that his days are numbered. There is this slivered implication that our Hero's destiny could maybe be adjusted before his fate is sealed... But for recklessness on both sides, the outcome is certain, and the writing was on the wall. Regardless — At that decisive moment, when Alex is un-phased by the ovations of Mr. Deltoid (AKA Boris) — His maniacal Napoleonic chaperone now shouting, presses Alex to the mattress and grabs his crotch.
(Exhale now as this is perhaps the end of a stretch to tie Boris to the script, however the image persists).
Now I know that The P.M. is not Mr. Deltoid, but one can wonder how far from this character he is. Of course analogs exist to anything if you stretch the facts and blur the lines. Mr. Deltoid doesn't know the outcome, so he comes with an ultimatum of sorts, and Alex believes his destiny is otherwise. I suppose the lesson here is one of Hindsight. When history is written, it is always by the winner. Outcomes are never assured, and the social experiment of the Ludovico treatment, as with a lobotomy, much like Brexit, wont necessarily put you (as they say) on the right side of history. Ludavico was an experimental aversion therapy to rehabilitate criminals into useful lawful citizens in under two weeks. (and when it sounds too good to be true...) It should come as no surprise that the real actor Aubrey Morris, who played Mr. Deltoid, also played Napoleon. This is not to implicate Boris is "acting" as P.M. nor as Napoleon.
One truth remains, that when Boris got the plague, and the fever came, and his O2 levels tanked, he saw perhaps for the first time the back-side of his own black mirror. When the shot resolved, he got to contemplating, but for a minute, "What If"?
The thing about the psychopathically self-assured is that they almost never have the opportunity to put on another pair of lenses. And the trouble with a lobotomy, is that it does work for some things, but history doesn't smile upon the treatment any longer. When we elect a single person to represent "us" in more than one thing... Can we be assured that they are capable of multitasking, or even competent at two things?
Here, we have Brexited --That's the one thing. And here is this hushed moment, like the crotch grab -- We hold our breath, then... the "hut--hut--hike"!, and then the snap, the kick, and alas the ball is high in the air floating back down to the earth, and where it lands will decide the fate of the game. But it's not a game.
As we all seek a treatment, it's perhaps prudent to remember that maybe we were all wrong. That our collective Ludavico treatment will later be recalled as a lobotomy, we wont know today, and so we punt.
So we are back home in Boris' cozy bedroom, after a nice day's romp with some masked friends far afield, and we return as fast as we left to our agendas. The question is; Did being hospitalized serve as a negative operant, in this classic Behavior Mod. drama?
There is one way to look at our reactions to the dystopia, and it is always political. How does this affect electability? When there are no adults in the room, do the kids step up and make things work, or do they run amuck? It is the case that some want to try a strategy to stave political fall-out and prevent casualties, which sounds like a reasonable way to remain in power. The other is to let a wildfire burn the brush back, hoping the forest stands, and fills back in more lush than before. Neither is ever really wrong in the moment, per se', but judged harshly for certain through hindsight when they fail.
Through the lens of A Clockwork fiction, where Britain is de-stabilized, gangs patrol the night, criminals clash with curfews, and quarantines seem to keep the sanguine safe, while rogues profit by any means necessary, is there really a reason to keep up the façade? Wasn't it always this way? Didn't we always click agree to the terms when we began the game? A few people wield the power, and the rest work for them. Elites scatter scraps, and pittance to keep the masses in check? It is as Feudal as always. sSame as it ever was. Wealthy people like Madonna recite solidarity with commoners from a 300 square meter bath covered in fresh rose petals, while waiters move in with parents & friends and ration ramen & soap. Shall we admire what a great job they are doing?
We now have two camps.
1. Governors, States, Provinces, recognize that the emperor has no clothes. Kids decide that because there are no adults in the room, we should pick up the pieces, and put things back together, this way.
or
2. People aligned with the misanthrope wait for a rally, handouts, and some loose sense of direction, if not a soup-line. And then we all just go back to doing things the same way all over again, so we can forget.
Whichever way you lean, you might as well go for broke. Kubrick wanted a shot of Alex jumping out a window, to commit suicide -- So he dropped a Newman Sinclair Camera in a box out of the third storey window of the Corus Hotel, to grab the effect of falling from Alex's point of view. The camera survived 6 takes, until the shot was perfect.
Like any Dickensian tale, redemption only happens when one sees that there is something to recover from. Boris returns from the ICU, and isn't scared shitless?
Britain will either recover from a massive hangover by dumb luck, staggering home from the pub, and having a long nappy on the global economic stage, or they will not. But I'm not so sure Boris gets that.
In a Clockwork Orange the Book's ending closes the loop on redemption, while the Film version and American abridged printings leave a bit more up in the air. As with all great film and fiction, you are either the type who wants the Hollywood ending, or the Fellini finish.
Kubrick asked Malcom McDowell to try the jock-strap on the outside of his Cricket whites, and that made all the difference.
Cue the Moog Synthesizer compositions of Wendy Carlos.
In 1971 Kubrick released a masterpiece Social Commentary on a Crumbling Britain, and a social/psychological experiment adapted from the Anthony Burgess Novel A Clockwork Orange, ("the American edit"). As the adaptation progressed, Burgess and Kubrick got on swimmingly with similar tastes, philosophies, and literary interests. While Burgess only made $500. from the Film, one thing they had in common was their fascination with Napoleon Bonaparte.
The Seminal Dystopian novel chronicles a near-future lawless British teen through his crime sprees, and then a B.F. Skinner'esque psycho-social modification, called the Ludavico Treatment. The 'Ludovico Treatment' promised to cure 'Little Alex' of his penchant for lawless "Ultra-Violence", in no time. And so it was either the treatment or prison.
The American and future distributions of the Book would leave out the final chapter/s proving his redemption. Not surprisingly the Book, and the Film polarized audiences, but mostly because it seemed tangibly real -- Possible.
And so we know that the novel and film were good, because they forced followers to the bleeding edge of their comfort zone.
As we drift toward future Dystopian Britain, with their charismatic leader, I wonder how his behavior mods went whilst, 'in Hospital'.
I think that A Clockwork Orange was an amazing book, and I have read & seen it many times. You could say I'm a fan..., But, I never knew watching why the eye-dropper scenes of "ultra-violence", weren't in the book. It turns out that Malcom McDowell scratched his cornea on set, became blind for a spell, and the shots with the eye-dropper were an actual physician treating him. Fun Fact! This doctor visit was a clever directorial turn in production, which intensified, the peak. The audience shuddered to see their anti-hero endure ‘treatment’.
But for me the “Boris Moment” came earlier, when Alex is visited by his Probate Officer. You see, I keep seeing Boris Johnson as probation officer P.R. Deltoid, sitting beside truant lil' Alex mid-day on his bed. In this fateful scene he's being told by Mr. Deltoid that his days are numbered. There is this slivered implication that our Hero's destiny could maybe be adjusted before his fate is sealed... But for recklessness on both sides, the outcome is certain, and the writing was on the wall. Regardless — At that decisive moment, when Alex is un-phased by the ovations of Mr. Deltoid (AKA Boris) — His maniacal Napoleonic chaperone now shouting, presses Alex to the mattress and grabs his crotch.
(Exhale now as this is perhaps the end of a stretch to tie Boris to the script, however the image persists).
Now I know that The P.M. is not Mr. Deltoid, but one can wonder how far from this character he is. Of course analogs exist to anything if you stretch the facts and blur the lines. Mr. Deltoid doesn't know the outcome, so he comes with an ultimatum of sorts, and Alex believes his destiny is otherwise. I suppose the lesson here is one of Hindsight. When history is written, it is always by the winner. Outcomes are never assured, and the social experiment of the Ludovico treatment, as with a lobotomy, much like Brexit, wont necessarily put you (as they say) on the right side of history. Ludavico was an experimental aversion therapy to rehabilitate criminals into useful lawful citizens in under two weeks. (and when it sounds too good to be true...) It should come as no surprise that the real actor Aubrey Morris, who played Mr. Deltoid, also played Napoleon. This is not to implicate Boris is "acting" as P.M. nor as Napoleon.
One truth remains, that when Boris got the plague, and the fever came, and his O2 levels tanked, he saw perhaps for the first time the back-side of his own black mirror. When the shot resolved, he got to contemplating, but for a minute, "What If"?
The thing about the psychopathically self-assured is that they almost never have the opportunity to put on another pair of lenses. And the trouble with a lobotomy, is that it does work for some things, but history doesn't smile upon the treatment any longer. When we elect a single person to represent "us" in more than one thing... Can we be assured that they are capable of multitasking, or even competent at two things?
Here, we have Brexited --That's the one thing. And here is this hushed moment, like the crotch grab -- We hold our breath, then... the "hut--hut--hike"!, and then the snap, the kick, and alas the ball is high in the air floating back down to the earth, and where it lands will decide the fate of the game. But it's not a game.
As we all seek a treatment, it's perhaps prudent to remember that maybe we were all wrong. That our collective Ludavico treatment will later be recalled as a lobotomy, we wont know today, and so we punt.
So we are back home in Boris' cozy bedroom, after a nice day's romp with some masked friends far afield, and we return as fast as we left to our agendas. The question is; Did being hospitalized serve as a negative operant, in this classic Behavior Mod. drama?
There is one way to look at our reactions to the dystopia, and it is always political. How does this affect electability? When there are no adults in the room, do the kids step up and make things work, or do they run amuck? It is the case that some want to try a strategy to stave political fall-out and prevent casualties, which sounds like a reasonable way to remain in power. The other is to let a wildfire burn the brush back, hoping the forest stands, and fills back in more lush than before. Neither is ever really wrong in the moment, per se', but judged harshly for certain through hindsight when they fail.
Through the lens of A Clockwork fiction, where Britain is de-stabilized, gangs patrol the night, criminals clash with curfews, and quarantines seem to keep the sanguine safe, while rogues profit by any means necessary, is there really a reason to keep up the façade? Wasn't it always this way? Didn't we always click agree to the terms when we began the game? A few people wield the power, and the rest work for them. Elites scatter scraps, and pittance to keep the masses in check? It is as Feudal as always. sSame as it ever was. Wealthy people like Madonna recite solidarity with commoners from a 300 square meter bath covered in fresh rose petals, while waiters move in with parents & friends and ration ramen & soap. Shall we admire what a great job they are doing?
We now have two camps.
1. Governors, States, Provinces, recognize that the emperor has no clothes. Kids decide that because there are no adults in the room, we should pick up the pieces, and put things back together, this way.
or
2. People aligned with the misanthrope wait for a rally, handouts, and some loose sense of direction, if not a soup-line. And then we all just go back to doing things the same way all over again, so we can forget.
Whichever way you lean, you might as well go for broke. Kubrick wanted a shot of Alex jumping out a window, to commit suicide -- So he dropped a Newman Sinclair Camera in a box out of the third storey window of the Corus Hotel, to grab the effect of falling from Alex's point of view. The camera survived 6 takes, until the shot was perfect.
Like any Dickensian tale, redemption only happens when one sees that there is something to recover from. Boris returns from the ICU, and isn't scared shitless?
Britain will either recover from a massive hangover by dumb luck, staggering home from the pub, and having a long nappy on the global economic stage, or they will not. But I'm not so sure Boris gets that.
In a Clockwork Orange the Book's ending closes the loop on redemption, while the Film version and American abridged printings leave a bit more up in the air. As with all great film and fiction, you are either the type who wants the Hollywood ending, or the Fellini finish.
Kubrick asked Malcom McDowell to try the jock-strap on the outside of his Cricket whites, and that made all the difference.
"Well Hi Hi Hi there Mr. Deltoid!"
- Published on
Zombies who swallowed too many "Red Pills" protest outside the Statehouse: Image Credit Joshua A. Bickel/ Columbus Dispatch
OK so last time we tapped Orwell, and now we must float the class 4 cortisol river into the simean brain-stem, to discover how we become & and how to kill a Zombie. Let's say that you don't have a pet unicorn, and rainbows never appear to land at your threshold. That means you are normal (more or less), and you have no natural immunity to becoming a Zombie. Let's assume you check Fakebook regularly, and something someone says on that blog from hell, really gets your goat. You ride it out, or you react, but normally it just passes. Soon others choose sides, and you are faced with a choice; Turn off, and tune out the background noise, or jump in the pool with the rest. It was a shitty day at work, or wherever, so you choose the red pill, pop it like candy, and jump into the argument.
Whoops!
"...I understand too little too late, I realize there are things you say and do that you can never take back..."**
Shall we begin with a more clinical view?
Experts say that about 10 percent of women and 4 percent of men will develop PTSD. They said this for decades, but since the Plague came to call, we should expect to see a moderate spike in this affliction.
The Amygdala is a small almond-shaped structure located deep within the temporal lobe; It is designed to:
So back to jumping on the bandwagon -- We have found that the new bully-pulpit of anti-social media spares us from boredom, but the rub hits when we use our super-powers for evil. Temptation to tread into uncharted waters, leaves us at best awash in a torrent of new emotions, and at worst holding a pitch-fork, when we really need a paddle. The other chemical present in turmoil is our old friend adrenaline. This quick-setting glue can patch a hole, or sink us quickly depending upon how it's applied. Zombies have this in spades, but remember, "Guns don't kill people -- Zombies jacked on Cortisol, Adrenaline, and bad agendas kill people". 'FIGHT or FLIGHT' is the first "Bullet-point", and that's the one which will do you in. It's when "FIGHT" is chosen, that those ill-equipped for fighting, come out swinging, ...but they are not landing any punches, are they?
As they flail, with their arms out-stretched, they are learning some new dance-steps called "The Zombie". And so it was in reaction to rational "stay at home" directives that the Zombies gathered to mindlessly storm capitols to thwart the order.
As part of the body’s fight-or-flight response, cortisol & adrenaline are released during stressful times to give your body the energy-boost required to react. This boost can fuel your muscles to respond to a threatening situation. But when cortisol levels are constantly high, due to chronic stress, some collateral issues become: insulin resistance and type 2 diabetes.
(By the way these make it more likely that the Zombie Virus kills you).
So there we have it, the makings for a rowdy (unhealthy) bunch who want to get back to their so-called normal lives; So they gather in groups with torches and pitch-forks, mashing teeth, popping pills, and passing tiny globules of spittle through the air. Soon their groans infect everyone within ear-shot.
The good news is that Zombies are easy to spot:
1. Because they look stupid.
2. Because they wear a uniform underscoring their solidarity with a "red-pill addiction".
3. Did I mention they look stupid?
(For help spotting a Zombie near you reference above image Courtesy of the Columbus Dispatch)
www.dispatch.com/news/20200413/gop-lawmakers-protesters-call-on-dewine-to-begin-re-opening-ohio
Zombies are not fictional film fodder, they are (were) the person you tried to "set straight" on social media last month. You know the ones who keep sending you incendiary material? The thing with fires though, is that they always go out when the fuel is spent. If you don't stoke it, it smolders. But, tip a little petrol can, and well, ...You get what you give. Maybe don't fan the flames. Stay home, pop a blue chill pill, sit on your hands, and watch "Zombieland Double Tap".
And that's how you kill a Zombie.
"...But what would you be if you didn't even try?, You have to try. So after a lot of thought, I'd like to reconsider, Please if it's not too late, Make it a Cheeseburger."
-Lyle Lovett Lyrics from "Here I Am" 1989.**
Whoops!
"...I understand too little too late, I realize there are things you say and do that you can never take back..."**
Shall we begin with a more clinical view?
Experts say that about 10 percent of women and 4 percent of men will develop PTSD. They said this for decades, but since the Plague came to call, we should expect to see a moderate spike in this affliction.
The Amygdala is a small almond-shaped structure located deep within the temporal lobe; It is designed to:
- Detect threats in the environment and activate the “fight or flight” response
- Activate the sympathetic nervous system to help you deal with the threat
- Help you store new emotional or threat-related memories
So back to jumping on the bandwagon -- We have found that the new bully-pulpit of anti-social media spares us from boredom, but the rub hits when we use our super-powers for evil. Temptation to tread into uncharted waters, leaves us at best awash in a torrent of new emotions, and at worst holding a pitch-fork, when we really need a paddle. The other chemical present in turmoil is our old friend adrenaline. This quick-setting glue can patch a hole, or sink us quickly depending upon how it's applied. Zombies have this in spades, but remember, "Guns don't kill people -- Zombies jacked on Cortisol, Adrenaline, and bad agendas kill people". 'FIGHT or FLIGHT' is the first "Bullet-point", and that's the one which will do you in. It's when "FIGHT" is chosen, that those ill-equipped for fighting, come out swinging, ...but they are not landing any punches, are they?
As they flail, with their arms out-stretched, they are learning some new dance-steps called "The Zombie". And so it was in reaction to rational "stay at home" directives that the Zombies gathered to mindlessly storm capitols to thwart the order.
As part of the body’s fight-or-flight response, cortisol & adrenaline are released during stressful times to give your body the energy-boost required to react. This boost can fuel your muscles to respond to a threatening situation. But when cortisol levels are constantly high, due to chronic stress, some collateral issues become: insulin resistance and type 2 diabetes.
(By the way these make it more likely that the Zombie Virus kills you).
So there we have it, the makings for a rowdy (unhealthy) bunch who want to get back to their so-called normal lives; So they gather in groups with torches and pitch-forks, mashing teeth, popping pills, and passing tiny globules of spittle through the air. Soon their groans infect everyone within ear-shot.
The good news is that Zombies are easy to spot:
1. Because they look stupid.
2. Because they wear a uniform underscoring their solidarity with a "red-pill addiction".
3. Did I mention they look stupid?
(For help spotting a Zombie near you reference above image Courtesy of the Columbus Dispatch)
www.dispatch.com/news/20200413/gop-lawmakers-protesters-call-on-dewine-to-begin-re-opening-ohio
Zombies are not fictional film fodder, they are (were) the person you tried to "set straight" on social media last month. You know the ones who keep sending you incendiary material? The thing with fires though, is that they always go out when the fuel is spent. If you don't stoke it, it smolders. But, tip a little petrol can, and well, ...You get what you give. Maybe don't fan the flames. Stay home, pop a blue chill pill, sit on your hands, and watch "Zombieland Double Tap".
And that's how you kill a Zombie.
"...But what would you be if you didn't even try?, You have to try. So after a lot of thought, I'd like to reconsider, Please if it's not too late, Make it a Cheeseburger."
-Lyle Lovett Lyrics from "Here I Am" 1989.**
Image courtesy "Zombieland Double Tap" Columbia Pictures 2019.