As Long as You Have Your Health

I've seen fire and I've seen rain
I've seen sunny days that I thought would never end
I've seen lonely times when I could not find a friend
But I always thought that I'd see you again

Growing up where I did in Massachusetts, my parents had a couple run-ins with James Taylor. For a time we lived near him, but I still don’t care for most of his music. That being said, the words to some of his songs still resonate with me to this day. Even taken out of context, they seem to have a power that makes them live on their own.


A couple weeks ago I spent several days tooling around the area where both Kela and I graduated from high school. When we lived in the area it was fairly well off. Now, with the median household income nearing $100,000 and the median home price closing in on $300,000, it is safe to say that it is quite an affluent area. And it was in one of my retracing of old haunts that I realized how insulated that area is from most of the country. In the middle of a recessions their restaurants overflow, their Bentley and Porsche dealerships flourish and, even in the most deprived areas, they still seem very comfortable by national standards.

Spending time in a city like such as that, I can understand why some people don’t grasp the weight of poverty that smothers so many in this county. I would like to stereotype them as people who think that the poor are those who can’t afford organic food or drive cars with dents in them; that their biggest gift back to the world was that trip to Africa where they traded food and medicine to anyone who would accept Jesus as their lord and savior; or as people who never had to explain to a child why it needed to sleep through their hunger, but that would not be fair. You cannot judge someone by what they have never had the chance to learn. Instead, I fault our ever increasing segregation into socioeconomic classes, devoid of class mobility, and encouraged by companies catering to those specific sects. We have become a society who does not want to be reminded of those we’ve left behind.

From my generation back to the baby boomers, we are at best one generation out and two thoughts away from any true understanding of hardship. For the most part, we don’t go places in this country where they are likely to see it pain, suffering or poverty. Sure we may encounter a homeless mother on the street, but they will never see where and how she and her children live. We no longer understand what poverty means to them.

So maybe a quick reminder is due: Poverty and its outcomes are hunger and the lack of shelter. It’s the knowledge that if you get sick without insurance, it will mean living on the streets. Real poverty is not having access to school, not knowing how to read, not having or being able to find a job, having an all-consuming fear of the future, living one day at a time or losing a child or family member to illness brought about by living conditions. Real poverty is powerlessness, lack of representation and an absence of freedom.

When I see people speak up against nationalized health care, I wonder who these people think that this is for. Do they honestly think that people don’t want to work, want to live off of the system and are truly a mass of degenerates who deserve nothing but our scorn? These are real people, stuck within a system that we created and support, and whose numbers are expanding at an extraordinarily fast rate. Every day, former middle-class Americans, previous neighbors of you and I, become part of their numbers. Of course no one knows that because they are forced out of their communities, to places their former neighbors would never visit, to be forgotten and treated as soulless government welfare recipients.

Ted Kennedy died this week. He died before having a chance to see his lifelong goal of health care for all Americans become a reality. And it was during one of the blisteringly long memorandums televised in his honor that Fire and Rain, performed by Boston born James Taylor, was played in the background of rotating stills of Kennedy’s life. Inappropriate as I found the touted connection, the words struck me as poignant.

Even though I’ve lived a life of reasonable comfort and have done what I could to pass that on to others, I have seen true poverty, I have seen politics, organizations and well-meaning individuals fail to save the weakest among us, I know the smell of depravity as it heads toward the inevitable and I have seen death for sheer lack of powerlessness. Still through all that I have seen and experienced, I always thought that when called upon, we as a country would come together, rise up as one and reach out to help those in need, one more time again. Now I’m not so sure.

Entry for August 26, 2009

Tho' much is taken, much abides; and tho'
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
- Alfred, Lord Tennyson

Or so he said on his blog

To help with some research for a friend of mine, I've spent the last couple of weeks reading over various blogs in search of a specific pattern that he believes might exist. It was during that time that I realized that never before in the history of man have so many people with so little to say said so much to so few. My hope now is to spur a revival in selective illiteracy to save humanity from having to read the drivel of the rest of humanity. Feel free to start now.

Entry for August 10, 2009

Something that I noticed today: TV manufactures don’t want you to buy their products. I’ve come to this conclusion after looking at their ads and noticing that everything displayed on their TVs are things that you could be doing if you weren’t sitting on your ass watching TV.

Pretty Worthless Girl

You are in line in front of me again. I see you everywhere talking on the phone, with a gaggle of other girls, adjusting your bra and skirt. You’re usually smiling at nothing and happy to be you. I can’t blame you, you are very attractive. You have curves that make me play out hopeful scenarios in my head and a face that tells me that, if I just said the right thing, maybe.

Then you speak and it’s like Jessica Simpson being called upon in a college physics class. Legally Blonde in reality - except sometimes you’re brunette or black. That’s when I realize, again, it’s all that you have. Sure some extracurricular activities exist, but they are all forgettable and add nothing. Sugar-free eye candy, a sports car lacking a soul, just a picture of the most beautiful woman in the world.

I’ve had you more times than I care to admit. You are horrible in bed. Unskilled and boring. An effigy to beauty.

I cannot remember why it was that I thought that you would be different this time. That all of your talents would be equal to your shell. Again I realize that I’ve been deceived by advertising and bought the new model because it looked just different enough to renew my hope. Again you were a mythical white deer caught in the headlights. Again you made me long for you and again my victory was empty. No different than the worst of anyone else.

Maybe it’s the height from which I pushed you. Perhaps there is no way for you to have proven your worth. It could be that I tire of you in each of your forms, but I don’t ever remember when the effort was equal to the reward. Again I see you in line in front of me and I’m hoping you are the same.

Astroturf

For those of you who aren’t sure how politics works behind the scenes, let me take a minute to give you an example of what the average American never sees or hears. This is how current anti-health care reform movement was created and how it is still run today:

Almost all grassroots movements, whether Liberal or Conservative, usually have, at their root, organizations run by heavily sponsored corporate interests that orchestrate the dissemination of information and organize the movement of pawn-like individuals to represent their interests in the most public places possible. If you ever want to find out why the latest grassroots movements came into being or where it is going, simply look at who backs them.

For information on current anti-health reform faction, simply check out Americans for Prosperity website, currently working under the subsidiary of Patients First. Their Director is Art Pope, who has North Carolina Republican Party Headquarters named after him, and whose National Chairman is David Koch, the 19th richest man in the world and the co-owner of the largest private oil company in the US. Their organization perfectly represents the real driving force behind this current anti-health reform drive. Furthermore, their website claims that they are run and comprised by normal, hardworking middle-class people, who just happen to be busing people across the country to cause disruptions at Town Hall meetings, sometimes thousands of miles away from their own homes.

This is what these groups do. They are experts at fake grassroots campaigns that promote corporate interests. Americans for Prosperity is the exact same company that drummed up support for its anti-stimulus rallies earlier this year and organized a national campaign against the notion that global warming exists. It is the same company that paid for Joe the Plumber to travel around the country to protest the Employee Free Choice Act’s pro-labor legislation. This oil industry and Republican Operative millionaires club is, according to the Republican Party Spokesman today, “just regular, average American folks.” I can almost see them now: just sitting around the kitchen table talkin’ about whether or not they can get away with saying that the government has a secret plot to kill old people.

These guys are the pros, this is an industry. Americans are now being bused to these events to stop the discussion and rattle congressman. Sure they are enraged, but it is in part because they are being riled up by over-the-top fabricated conspiracy theories about health care. And they are being directed and orchestrated by the corporate interests that do this for a living and do it very well. Add to this a media company that directly caters to, and is funded by these same special interests, and you have a formidable publicity movement with a very specific goal in mind.

So none of these protests are grassroots in any way. This is about as organic as the McRib. This is how corporate America creates the illusion of a grassroots movement to support their own interests. This is their job, they are professionals at this and this is an industry. To talk about these town hall events as some sort of natural outpouring of average American folks that have concerns about health care is to be willfully blind as to what is really going on. What is really going on is that there are professional PR operatives, generating exploitive, manufactured, strategically deployed disruptions in order to line their own pockets. These PR people get paid a lot of money for doing it and the corporations that pay for it get to kill legislation that would hurt their profits. And the real people, who they launch into these town hall settings, after they’re told that health care reform is some evil socialist plot to kill old people and to mandate sex changes, those real people get angrier and more alienated every day. Ultimately they will get left, like the rest of us, with a health care system that is broken, doesn’t work in the interests of the American people, but does work in the interest of the corporations that profit from the way the system is now.

This is what politics looks like behind your back. Both sides always have and always will do it. What I ask of you is this: don’t give them that power. The biggest secret in Washington is that you, the people, have the final say because it is you, the voters, who decide who stays and who goes. If enough of you tell your Congressman that this type of activity is not how you wish to see your country behave, it will stop. If enough of you say that you don’t want to be told what to believe, it will make a difference. If enough of you finally decide that you have had enough of this manipulative practice, the country may even have a chance to debate this issue in an open and honest setting – devoid of special interest groups, PR firms and lobbyists trying to dictate what you think. That is, if enough of you still think that you matter.

I Am Not Impressed by Your Tattoo

Everyone has a tattoo. Everyone.

Last week, while eating at a small diner in SC, I was talking to a 65 year-old waitress who was overjoyed to show me her new tattoo. It was a small dragon hatching out of its shell and was meant to commemorate the birth of her first grandchild. A week before ,I had to suffer through a muted conversation one aisle over at a book store in Georgia between two female seniors in high school talking about their matching Tinkerbelle tattoos. This has got to stop.

Now don’t get me wrong. I’m all for free expression and the liberty to do whatever it is to your body as you see fit. As long as you are of an age/maturity level to take responsibility for your actions, I’m all for experimenting. That being said, I’m sick of hearing about it. Woo-hoo, you have butterfly tattoo on your ankle. Gee whiz, no one would have ever thought to put a tribal-looking design right above her ass. Ancient Chinese symbols on your back; I bet you’re the first to get those. A bit of barbwire around your bicep? That sure looks tough on your skinny frame.

Look, the reason to get a tattoo used to be because they were slightly rebellious and cool. But now they’re passé. They are the Crocs of self-expression. It’s like telling the world, “Hey, look at me, I would have been cool 10 years ago!” So please, if you get a tattoo, just keep it to yourself. Because the rest of us are bored by your tired self-expression.

The Road Less Traveled

This last week heralded yet another awkward public moment: a white man of privilege took umbrage with someone of a stereotypically lower class for having the gall to say that her background was somehow better than his own. Republican after Republican took shots at Supreme Court elect Sonia Sotomayor for having the nerve to have once uttered, “I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn't lived that life”.

The media circus ensued, complete with a previously outed racist Republican, launching quasi-bigoted remarks and attempting to get her to respond in some sort of super Hispanic way in hopes that she would scare every white person within 10,000 miles. Overall, the all-white male Republican panel took great pains in claiming that they will not be discriminated against for working to keep their status quo.

The problem with their base argument is that they are completely dismissing taking pride in the difference in paths that some people are required to take to reach their level of importance. This is at odds with the fact that they are always claiming that anyone can pull themselves up by their bootstraps. So there sat a proud Latina woman, one of the absolute underdogs in our society, being grilled by some of the most entitled of our society about achieving the standard American underdog dream.

But maybe that’s just it. These guys have never been down a similar road; they have had life so full of privilege that they can’t even see the true value in overcoming grand obstacles. Anyone who came up through it, while noble, clearly doesn’t understand the way they believe things are and how they believe they should always be. If the system wasn’t fixed, wasn’t stacked in their favor, people like Sonya Sotomayor might just become the new entitled class. And that is something that brings out their true intolerance.

I Wish There Was a God

I wish that there was a God because I also want to believe in magic, super powers, dragons, Hobbits, telekinesis and vampires. If there was a God I would be able to walk through wardrobes into other worlds; I could hold conversations with animals and learn to fly; I would probably even take up a job as a teleportational travel agent. I wish that there was a God so that I could visit parallel dimensions and battle mythic creatures of evil. If there was a God any and all of my wishing could being true. But there isn’t and that’s okay. Enough exists in this world to keep me occupied and full of wonder for my entire life.

This is a blog that some people don’t want you to read

Hello,

This is a message that someone doesn’t want you to hear. It turns out that someone has been keeping some information from you and only we are able to tell you what it is. That’s right, for a small fee we can tell you what you are missing, what things those people have been hiding from you and what you could have right now if you only knew. Please act now because those people aren’t going to tell you any time soon. If you would like to find out what you are missing in your life, operators are standing by.
Thank you,

The People Who Really Care About You (and really aren’t just trying to sell you something)

Observations from Last Night’s Rusted Root Concert

To the girl dancing off beat behind me, rock on.

The best thing about the front row is being able to see the set list.

Why are you trying to take pictures of a music event? It's like just recording the audio of two people having sex.

A good live band will make you resent their studio albums.

You with the tambourine, thanks for participating.

Later, as you’re watching your cell phone recording of this concert, you’re going to wish you had paid more attention.

Any band that will meet with their fans after the show deserves higher t-shirt sales.

In every good concert there is a moment where the audience and band fuse and this new singularity howls, sweats and ungulates with a unified purpose. If you stop to recognize it, you'll miss it. So it’s best to shut up and enjoy the show.

Brian’s Favorite Overstuffed Breakfast Burrito

Most of my breakfasts are fairly involved as I believe that morning is the time to put your best foot forward. It sets the tone for the rest of the day and tells those around you that you are willing to put in the work for a good payoff.

Note: This is best made with the leftover steak (steak from the night before, fajita meat… anything not stewed) or uncooked white mushrooms.

Ingredients:
¼ cup meat, diced or ¼ diced mushroom, diced
¼ diced onion
¼ diced green pepper
½ cup medium tomato, diced
¼ cup Monterey jack cheese with jalapeños, grated
¼ cup sharp cheddar cheese, grated
3 large eggs
1 tbsp heavy cream
2 tbsp sour cream
2 dashes Red Hot or Tabasco
1 12” flour tortilla
3 tbsp butter
2 tsp fresh cilantro, coarsely chopped

Melt 1 tbsp of butter in skillet and cook onions and peppers until soft, add meat (or mushrooms) and tomatoes, cook for 1 minute longer and turn out on a paper towel to dry.

Beat eggs, heavy cream, Red Hot or Tabasco in a bowl and set aside.

Wrap tortilla in a damp paper towel and microwave for 20 seconds, leave in microwave until eggs are cooked.

Reheat pan and melt 1 tbsp more of butter, add eggs and start to scramble by slowly pushing eggs from one side to another with a large rubber spatula. When about halfway cooked, add drained onions, peppers, tomatoes, meat (or mushrooms) and both cheeses. Continue to cook until dry and turn out into the center of tortilla.

Fold in tortilla like a burrito (without an open side). Add 1 tbsp of butter back to the pan and add burrito folded side down to pan. Flip when browned and remove to a plate when both sides are golden and delicious.

Top with sour cream, cilantro and serve immediately.

Assiduous

I've received a number of complaints that I haven't been blogging much lately.

To this, I cannot disagree.

Happy Cinco de Mayo

Cinco de Mayo - the day where the Mexican forces, led by General Ignacio Zaragoza, defeated the French Army by throwing empty Corona bottles at them.

Tea Party Protests

Bitter that your side lost? Angry that the majority of the country thinks that you're wrong? Wanna pretend that your corporate sponsored, news endorsed, political action party scripted values are grassroots and spontaneous? Then I have an event for you!

Today at your local Hooters, they will be serving beer and hot wings. I suggest that you go sit at the bar, have a drink and some wings, and try to get a grip on reality.

Frantically Doing Nothing

There is a presumption that in times of crisis any action is better than no action. It is commonly thought that this failed dichotomy is nothing more than a manifestation of our fear of failure through inactivity. If you have ever seen someone drowning, you know all too well that the natural instinct to thrash around supersedes the basic knowledge that our bodies naturally float. The same is true for many other predicaments as well. The second someone believes that their situation is in peril, fast and frantic movement of any kind is naturally preferable to simple, slow-paced logic.

This phenomenon isn’t new. In Greek Mythology there is a God of drowning named Charybdis, whose actions caused her to be turned into a sea monster and lead to phrase "between Scylla (another monster) and Charybdis.” It was the ancient version of “between a rock and a hard place” and was designed to teach not only how to stay out of harm’s way, but why we do so poorly once engulfed within it. What I contend is that our evolutionary defenses against physical danger has slowly descended deeper into our psyche and now acts to protect us from ourselves.

What we are now afraid of is the quiet moment preceding any test; we fear that beneath us is nothing but failure and that drowning in the lake of one’s being is a fate far worse than death. And if one were able to dive further, past their faults, doubts and death itself, they would encounter the horror of who they truly are.

Our intuition knows what the truth never hides and our subconscious responds in defense. We fear what is most precious; something so valuable that it must be protected at all costs. We fear that our inaction will force us to see ourselves honestly and death holds no fear of the truth. My recommendation is to let yourself drown. Let life consume you. Maybe you will float and maybe you won’t. Either way, you will have faced yourself and won.

Hiking on Vacation

I love hiking and over the last several years I’ve done some hikes that I’m very proud to have completed (I’m even proud of a couple that I couldn’t finish). There is just something about heading out into nature with nothing but a day pack and a well worn pair of shoes that is thoroughly invigorating. What I don’t care for, more than anything else, is some of the other hikers.

Barring serious weather conditions or an actual emergency, when I am in the middle of a hike I do not want to stop and talk to people I pass, I never want to compare gear and I am not looking to add people to my party mid-hike. Just a nod or a “hello” as we pass is just fine. You know what, if you can fit in a sentence, “the bridge is out,” “rock slide ahead,” “lovely weather today,” without breaking stride – that’s just fine. But please, please, please don’t expect me to stop and tell you about my socks or hold me up with prolonged weatherspeak. I just don’t care.

The reason that I now feel compelled to write about this is because this last week Kela and I did some wonderful day hikes while carrying Sebastian. I did not know this beforehand, but there is something about carrying a kid around with you that people interpret as, “Hey, we could use a break. Ask us a stupid question.” While I did my best to ignore most of these people, Kela felt compelled to be polite and talk to them. Doing my best to ignore her and her new friend, I usually just kept moving and forced her to offer a hasty, “Sorry, my husband really doesn’t like to stop” before jogging to catch up. As you can imagine, I’m still making amends for my bad manners. In doing so, I would like to answer all of your questions, in the exact same fashion that I would have on the trail, so to prove to my wife that it was better that I just kept moving:

1. Thank you, we think he’s cute to. Now please get out of my way.
2. He weighs 25 pounds and we trade him off as much as we can.
3. Yes we own one of those baby-backpacks, but didn’t bring it with us to California.
4. You wore flip-flops to do a 5 mile hike that rises 1800 feet and you want to talk gear? Seriously?
5. You are very clever, you are the first person to joke about making him walk.
6. He’s one year old and I’m not wasting his time on someone as uninteresting as you.
7. There are directions every quarter mile and this is the middle of a three mile trail, if you don’t know where you are now, I’m not going to tell you.
8. No, I don’t know where on the trail you can get cell phone reception.

I hope that answers any and all of your questions.

Entry for March 16, 2009

Patience for people’s intellectual abilities should always be directly proportional to the opportunities that they have had to develop those skills.

It's Good to be Well

Everywhere that I have lived has had some colloquial communication conundrums for those who are not from their area. In Jamaica “Seen” meant “Yes” or “Do you understand,” whereas in Michigan, “Seen” could be used in either past or present tense: “I seen him coming this way.” So when I moved to South Carolina I expected some provincial differences, but I instead noticed exaggerations of common grammatical mistakes. The most egregious, by sheer volume, is the inability of the local population to use “Good” and “Well” properly.

People often use good when they should use well, especially in speech. For those of you searching your brain for 6th grade English terminology, “Good” is an adjective (a word that describes nouns) and “Well” is usually an adverb (a word used to describe verbs). Good’s meaning indicates the noun is above average or better than normal. As an adverb, Well describes or qualifies an action or to tell how or to what extent an action is carried out. You also can use "well" to describe someone's health. The trick is to remember that you do not use good to describe verbs.

Before moving around the world I always assumed that certain spoken grammatical mistakes were either sloppy slips of the tongue or a sign or a poor education/upbringing. What I’ve learned is that some words or phrases can be local accepted by all classes and educational levels. While I find this uncomfortable, I am trying to see it as part of a dialectic difference. With any luck, I’ll maintain my good grasp of the English language and still fitting in well.

Seek Medical Attention

You may not know it, but your stink requires a health professional. If there was an emergency room for BO, you would need to go there. If you smelled any worse, it might be fatal. Your pits could kill Dracula. If you were slightly more malodorous, the military would preemptively invade you. You reek so bad that there should be a team of doctors examining your underarms.

But not to worry, Procter & Gamble has just launched prescription strength deodorant, because they know that you are so far above the normal level of reekatude, that your scent could make an onion cry, you odor is so foul that a priest couldn’t exercise stench off of you and if you were a color is could be called funky tuna.

That is why you need prescription strength deodorant – so that the bouquet of rotting corpses that is your natural aroma might become manageable. Humanity awaits your purchase.