In light of recent events, it's time that I get a few things off my chest. Lately, I've been watching our nation in decline under the 'so-called' presidency of Donald Trump. I've seen it become a more hateful place, more of a narrow view of freedoms, and generally a 'less' American country than what I grew up in. This isn't what we're about in this nation. Hate, racism, and the overarching greed of capitalism have been with us from the inception, but those are the ideals of our nation.
  I feel like I've got a somewhat unique viewpoint to consider. Yes, I am white. But, my roots are from Scotland and from the native peoples of America, either the Cherokee tribe. My grandfather's mother was a full blooded Cherokee, and my Father's family came from Scotland. Specifically, there were three brothers from the MacGregor clan that escaped to the New World to avoid death by the English, at least that's what I've been told for most of my life. So, as a white guy, my own heritage is persecution by Europeans, by the English Crown in Scotland when they apparently came to run the MacGregor's off their lands and forced three of those brothers to flee to the New World in the 1600's and change their names, and then again when a fledgling America couldn't find a way to live with the people who were already living in America when they "discovered" a new continent.

  Fast forward to today when we're living with this idiotic racism as a part of our national dialogue, I'm left wondering what these 'white' people are thinking that their entitled to in this nation. They didn't build America, they stole it, killed women and children for it, and massacred the warriors who were defending their homes. The French, English, German, Spanish, Portuguese, and Italians all came to these shores, rounded up the native people and localized them in what amounted to concentration camps, much like what the English Crown did to the Scottish people under the guidance of Oliver Cromwell.  I'm just wondering what any of these 'white nationalists' or 'supremacists' or whatever they want to call themselves are fighting for because this land has never belonged to them. The USA has been built on theft and murder. After stealing and killing from everyone in Europe, (I'm going to use 'whites' as a balloon term for all Europeans) the whites came to these shores and took this land from people who had a thriving civilization that was closely aligned with the Earth. They called those people savages, but they weren't savage until they were threatened. Much like the Scots who came under the rule of the English, they had a thriving culture until they were suddenly deemed savage by the the English.

What exactly are any of the White Supremacists under the impression that they deserve from these lands that they don't have any entitlement to? These are not their lands, and they never have been. This country isn't their "homeland" it's the domain of the Cherokee, Blackfoot, Iroquois, Cheyenne, and a thousand other tribes that were here long before the white man ever set food on these shores.

But, here we are in 2017, and the weight of history lies upon all of us.  The whites brought other nations into the mix from other vibrant cultures that have been lost to history, and today in 2017's America we have a gorgeous mixture of all of those stolen cultures. At least we have that, in spite of all of the terrible things that man and woman have done against their brothers and sisters. And now, in this age, when you'd think we have advanced to surpass these narrow minded views, we have been thrust back into the same racial tensions.

As I've grown older, I've lived through times when I thought that we'd gotten past these tensions, but perhaps I was blinded to them. Perhaps these seething hates were being hidden in small towns bereft of sophistication, but not anymore. Under our recently elected mistake, Donald Trump, the racists and White Supremacists have found a new voice and permission to spout their hatred into the mainstream for everyone to see. They never went anywhere, but all of us were blinded by the illusion of the ideal of an America that worked for everyone, when in reality it wasn't working for anyone except the engines of control that drive us all to a weekly paycheck that is taxed to maintain this nation and it's inequality of race. 

If anything good comes out of this Trump presidency, it will be a greater consciousness of  this divide and a drive to get the ideals that fostered the creation of this nation correct as they were intended when this country was founded. We are all created equal. We all have a stake in this Earth, in this country, and we all want the same things. To live our lives, find some modicum of happiness and to love and be loved by our fellow humans. We don't come into this world with hate in our hearts, and we need to become conscious of when it's being ingrained into us by the very systems we create for ourselves to govern our world. If our government is fostering the hatred and divisions, then it is time to rethink our allowances of that government to control our lives. The current administration is such an example. It is fostering division and hatred, not just domestically, but internationally. It isn't working and we seriously need to rethink whether it is working for us all or not.

Updates, diatribes, and ramblings.

I suddenly notice it's been quite sometime since I've updated this. Well, I guess I've been distracted by EVERYTHING. The globe is heating up, the countries are warring, the presidents are electing, and everything is generally falling into disarray. How can anyone find time to do anything with all of the incessant noises of noisy noising? Bells dinging, buzzers buzzing, and alerts alerting all of the time every day it's a wonder that we even find the time to take a breath. Yet, we persevere in this crumbling infrastructure of a structured society where our dimes are snatched up by the greedy and the greedy aren't eager to spend those dimes on improving the lives of any of us.

Anyhow, I will give you a little rundown. I was working in the payday loan industry for nearly a decade.  I can't say that I recommend anyone entering that field, and anyone who works in that industry should seriously consider other work soon. As the regulators are regulating it into the abyss, so much so that those that profit from it won't make much for too much longer. Face it, the Big Banks don't like these little guys sucking up any of those dollars, so you payday lenders are on the chopping block. It's really been a good thing for me to get shaken out of my little comfort zone and have to seek other work. And, I've really wound up in a significantly better place than I was when I was still employed.

Other missives, when I got fired. I applied for unemployment. Well, I finally got that check for unemployment, after three months. I was out of work for 2 months, I applied for around 100 or more different jobs in that time period. I documented all of those jobs for the unemployment agency. Admittedly, I was lucky. After working in my previous job for nearly a decade, I wound up with a bit of a severance package. So, I didn't so much need the unemployment when I was applying for it, but I was looking forward to the time when I needed it. I have obligations and expenses like most all of you, and some of them have dire consequences if they're not met. So, the question I've been asking myself, as a taxpayer, how can my State expect that I would be able to meet my expenses after losing my job through no fault of my own and make it on vapors for three months? You can't. There's no conceivable way that if you lose your job and don't have some kind of net to catch you, you're going to wind up on the streets. And that is what is happening all over this country to ordinary people like you and me, shit happens, and the social safety net is not there to catch you and you wind up in poverty through no fault of your own. What's happened to this great nation? We need to take it back, but unfortunately...we're not going to get the chance this election. So, we're going to have to make our own luck on an individual basis, plan for our own futures, and bury our savings in a jar in the yard beside those cans of beans.

 These are dire times, and we've got to look out for ourselves.

Mysteries of the 1980's: A-ha! Take On Me, WTF does it really mean?

One of the signature video's from the MTV years, A-ha!'s Take On Me is a beloved song and video, but what does it really mean? Any of it? The lyrics tell one story, and the visual contains another narrative. Do they form some cohesive image together, and are they cemented together in our minds to one narrative or the other?

A-ha! Take on me

B/W Comic book panels depict a race, panels flash on racers, there is violence, and the young hero of the comics

In a diner, we find a lonely girl, she sits alone in a cafe. She is reading the comic intently focused upon the panel depicting the young hero. Through some magical occurance, the young hero comes to life and pulls the lonely girl into the comic book.

They fall in love.

Meanwhile, the waitress returns to collect the tab for the lonely girls meal. The lonely girl is gone, and has stiffed her. She angrily crumples the comic book, and flings it into garbage bin behind the counter.

They fall in love, but suddenly these evil looking racers brandishing wrenches appear from the newly warped world. They are intent on making our young hero pay for some sleight he committed against them during the race. They are very angry.

The young hero, realizes that he must save the lonely girl, so he opens a portal back into the real world. Though sadly, the evil racers catch up to our young hero.

Return to the diner to find all of the customers aghast at the lonely girl's reappearance behind the counter in the greasy floor, covered in newsprint. The lonely girl is confused, covered in ink, and terrified about the fate of the young hero of the comic book. She rushes back to her apartment to discover that the young hero has been pummeled with a wrench. Her horror and simultaneous love is so strong, that it resurrects the young hero and transports him into the lonely girl's reality.

It is a pure matter of speculation about what followed. Whether the lonely girl and the young hero lived a happy life, or whether they were plagued by evil racers bent on their destruction will likely remain a mystery of the 1980's.

Part 2. A-ha! Take on Me Lyrics

If you read the lyrics, they tell of a chance meeting. We don't know if these are acquaintances or random people in bars; only that two people are talking. One person, says that they don't know what to say so they're going to say it anyway. It's a cryptic statement that, this particular day when these two people are sitting and talking that today is another day to find the other person. The first detects that the second person is taken aback, and reiterates to them that they will be coming for their love if that is alright with them.

 The first person, who was confused about having something to say, then challenges the other person to take them on, as if in a fist fight, or a battle of wits, possibly a romantic entanglement. As their conversation proceeds, the first person gradually becomes more insistent that they should fight, or have some other implied altercation. Then, the first person, in a passive-agressive tactic, claims that they will be gone in a day or two. The first person, then tells the other that they are wary and they need to realize that he will be coming after them in a day, or two. These threats persist, until at the end the first person has told them they will be coming for them in a day.

Is 'Take On Me" the story of an insistent drunk trying to score, or a fantasy tale of an over-imaginitive girl in love with a comic-book hero. Until later, it remains a Mystery of the 1980's

2013

2013

I find it a little remarkable when I find people who think that this planet has only been around for 2000 years, or 10,000 years. I can't understand how limited your views of reality would have to be to accept such a thing as true. I can look into the sky with my eyes and see stars that are obviously far away. I can see the sun, burning my eyes on a summer day. I know how long it takes to get from one point to another, and I know that we're on a rock in space held together by a force that was named gravity about 300 years ago by another human. I think that we have been a civilization, a race of humans on Earth for far longer than we truly know. So, it just seems silly to say it's 2013 when it's probably closer to the year 800,000.I don't know.
Have we just told ourselves these things for deceptions to maintain order throughout the centuries, to build cities, raise temples, and establish governments in the name of religions? What stories are we telling ourselves today to sell adult diapers, floor cleaners, hard-on pills, lipsticks, ipads, Audis, and belief systems that are foreign to our long history? We have entire bureaucracies to administer our lies, organizations to maintain our truth, and associations to ensure that all of the i's and t's get tagged in every single transmission. We've turned the magnificence of our Earth into a tiny plastic box we can carry in our hands with the wealth of our narcissism illuminated within.

I'm depressed lately. I don't think I want to admit that to myself.
 
I've not been writing at all lately. I think I'm in some daze. This, 2013, this point in the history of Earth and this quadrant of the galaxy that we've chosen to mark as the 2013th year of our civilization at this age of humankind has been one of the worst years of my life. I've been sued by the company administering my student loan for a portion of the loan that they loaned to me, that they were loaned to by the Federal Government. I've been told by my home state that I should pay my former spouse more in child support because I haven't been getting my son for visitation when she broke the parenting plan and turned my kid against me. So, yes, 2013 has turned into a remarkably wonderful year of Catch-22. It's been one of the first years where I've actively contemplated suicide, not to the point of carrying out anything, but just as an out to this idiotic world that we are living in now. I've been playing defense and plotting offensives all year, and I'm exhausted mentally, spiritually, and emotionally.

I'm increasingly sick and tired of all of this consumerism, want, need, must-have, must-see, gotta get me one of those, new app, fantastic, amazing, spectacular, fuck it all. I hardly feel like I can trust what I get in the grocery store, especially something in a bright-colorful box with a misleading photo of the contents.

But, I suppose that I'll go on fighting this stupid reality. I'll make my appeals, file my bankruptcies, and somehow make the system work for me to carve out some tiny space here on this harsh rock, no matter how insignificant it is in the scope of the Universe.

Will it ever happen?

Well  it looks as if it's been a while since I've updated this tirade. I think I'm moving toward a stage where I just don't give a flying fuck about what is happening in society. I don't know if I just got completely burned out during the election cycle, or what it is, but I am nonetheless burned out. I'm finding that every time I visit the websites I get news from, there are about 90% of things contained therein that I simply do not care to hear about, and the bulk of that is entertainment news. I don't know why, maybe I'm depressed, or getting depressed; but really who cares what Hollywood starlet is banging which star, or what they wore to what event, or what young punk is embroiled in whatever dumbass conflict. But, regardless it seems impossible to avoid hearing about it.

Maybe I should go to different websites, or just take a long holiday from the always-on, constantly connected world that we live in today. I'm betting that a few weeks in the woods would cure all of what is ailing my spirit, because this idiot world just seems to get worse by the day.

We're feasting on the trails and tribulations of others, the secret domestic lives of denizens of trailer parks, and the retrograde politics of morality are creating constant friction amongst us in our connected lives. Frankly, I find it a disappointing time to be alive. I suppose growing up, I thought that by this time in my life, humanity would have solved so many of the trivial things that seem to be major issues of conflict today, many of which were solved by previous generations, but old wounds are stirred again and some segments of society, that happen to have power, are driving wedges into society and undermining the very fabric of mankind for the sole benefit of profiting at the expense of others.

The governments of the world are heading towards new wars before they even solve the conflicts from previous wars. There doesn't seem to be much hope that things will change and we'll get that peaceful world that has been talked about for so long by so many, instead society seems to be in decline and retreat toward a draconian age where rights are diminished instead of expanded, peace becomes fleeting at the most simple levels, and the individual is shackled to debts they can't meet with a burdens that will never be lifted. This is an exhausting and uncertain time to live, which is sad, because we as a race have the capabilities to live in a veritable paradise, if it weren't for the widespread oppression brought about by unchecked global capitalism.

The human race should, by now in my opinion, have found greater capabilities to tolerate the differences which strengthen us, instead of allowing those differences to become the weaknesses that divide us. Yet, there doesn't seem to be a lot of hope that this will ever be the case. All of our separate ideologies simply won't coalesce into widespread peace. We can't even respect our planet enough to protect it, instead we are hell-bent on turning our lands into massive desolate wastes, fracked, and raped into uninhabitability.

I made a joke last week by pondering that someone at NASA once said, "We'll never get to Uranus if we don't work together." Of course it's juvenile sounding, but it sums up one of the greatest failures of the human race in my opinion, and that is the constant urge to 'get there first' among the nations of the world. It's foolish to think that mankind will ever make it to another planet without the cooperation of multiple nations, it's simply too resource and capital intensive for one country to attempt to send a manned mission to another planet, or deep into interstellar space, instead our national pride leads to failure, and those dreams are cast into the waste bin.

Perhaps I've always naively believed that there would be a day on this rock that all of the  races of men would find a way to cooperate to achieve together the unthinkable, such as solving all of the problems of the world hunger, strife amonst nations, interpersonal relationships, but those things are apparently just dreams. We're still far to immature to make it off this rock and into the depths of space, we can't get along with each other over the most trivial issues, how would we ever cooperate on massive projects that could advance all of mankind?

The jugular of good taste

Recently I have viewed  a series of new Clorox commercials, under the overall message of cleaning up life's messes. I found two of these commercials to push the envelope on tastelessness, as they directly refer to urine and defecation. While they attempt to use a 'cutesy' angle and obviously are targeting mothers, the remainder of the bleach using public...of which I myself am a member, likely would find them to be tasteless. I happened to see one of the commercials during my dinner, and I immediately found it disgusting because of the images that it generated. I don't know about anyone else, but I suspect that a sink full of baby shit or a hallway full of kid piss aren't conducive to good digestion.

  I've noticed this phenomena in advertising for some time, but in the previous years it seems to be more prevalent to utilize imagery that is borderline disgusting to sell a product. One of the earliest instances I can recall is for a foot odor product that featured an animation of a sweaty foot, the swamp foot as it was referred to in the advertisement. Granted these are powerful images, and they do communicate well, but come on, there has to be a more effective way of selling a product than to make people lose their appetites with your calls to action.

Further, why in the hell do I want to see someone's pustules on a large screen, even if I did need to acne medication, I don't think that I want to see a pustule ridden face in high definition.

Can we please get some taste control back into the messaging in advertising these days? Would it kill any art director to say, "Okay, this is going to drastically affect some viewers, I'll take a different tack with this."    There are better ways to sell products instead of resorting to  the  jugular of good taste by relying on bodily waste, pustules, sweaty feet, throbbing corns, hammer toes, and all other manner of formerly taboo images.

I think that it's indicative larger forces at work in society today however. It doesn't seem that there is respect for the sensibilities of consumers in this day and age, or respect for the fellow humans in general that there was at one time in our society. You have only to look toward the current state of presidential elections and the smear campaigns that they are generating for proof of this. Half messages, misquotes, untruths, obfuscation, faulty claims, all of those things are present in the current campaign, specifically on the republican side of the coin if you've paid any attention to current events, you likely would have heard at least a few stories about the distortions in the messaging.

The only course that any of us have of late, is to vote with our dollars in regards to the products we buy and vote with our conscience in everything else.

This vacuum sucks: A mini-documentary

I finally saw a good commercial on television the other day. I doubt that I'd actually buy the product at this moment in my life, but nonetheless a great advertisement in a sea of sickening sameness and in-your-face pressure to buy is a nice thing. It's for a new Dyson vacuum cannister model that they've apparently improvinated in a redesign thinkfestamajig, I just made those words up, so if you use them that's a dime each time.

The things that actually work well with the commercial, and granted I've only seen it one time as of this writing, is that it does an excellent job of presenting the product by the designer of the product itself. That's a rarity these days, because we really haven't the slightest clue who owns what, or why they want us to buy whatever it is there actually selling. Beyond that, the Dyson advertisement actually demonstrates the product effectively and believably.

It's increasingly rare that there is any believability in advertising when so much of the message of advertising is buried beneath situational obfuscation. For examples of this, see any Geico advertisement for the last decade or so, but it's not good enough to be frank and honest about pricing, we have to bury the message in a metaphor that is hilarious the first time, but later becomes tritely irrelevant and torturous in repeated viewings.

The Dyson ad which I happened to catch was about a minute and thirty seconds, it had a great deal of information contained in that time, it seemed to focus more on educating about the shortcomings of older-cannister designs, as well as illustrate how they've improved upon that design in several specific ways. Further, they accomplished all of this in a very well designed piece of film with polished visuals. It is an effective piece of advertising, it will make you want this thing that you likely do not even need.

 PS

I came away from that ad thinking that it's a very different approach from much of the advertising that I've seen lately. Most advertising, at least from my observations, have been direct appeals.

"Hey you, YES, you! Come over here and buy this, y'know....for kids!"

If it's not the direct appeal, it's the surreal situations that disarm viewers for the stab in the face of product necessity!

I was thinking of ways that Dyson could do those kinds of ads, and they all came away seeming like Dr. Strangelove selling their vacuums. 
 

Cleveland, The City with Spirit

   So, recently my hometown decided to seek out a slogan to describe itself. Rather, I believe that the Mayor decided the town should have a slogan. Good Call! Why shouldn't we have a slogan! Chattanooga, Athens, Atlanta, Knoxville, Nashville, they have slogans. So, after a contest of submissions from the local population they settled on: "The City With Spirit".

While, it seems kind of vague. Most slogans really do, and should have an amorphous meaning. They are supposed to 'generate dreams' in the listeners mind through branding. But, as a native of Cleveland, it's actually a good fit to convey the sense of the town. 


Cleveland, TN The City with Spirit.

That could mean almost anything. Well, maybe three interpretations spring to my mind when I first hear it.

1. An obvious reference to the thriving Christian population of many denominations springs to mind, as well as a reference to being the site of the World Headquarters of the Church of God of Prophecy, many churches, and generally a spiritually oriented population.

2. It's a spunky little city. Spirit, spirited.

South Ocoee and Inman St.

Well, the people in the town are some of the best on Earth, but they're all products of the best that Earth has to offer. Cleveland sits at the inside of a spur of larger cities, so it's become more culturally diverse over the years.  It's always felt like a sort of nexus, and it's always been growing  as long as I've lived in the town. So, yes it does have spirit in more than one sense of the term.

3. There's a ghost who lives near the courthouse square.

Cragmiles Mausoleum

As well, it has 'a' spirit as well.  The Cragmiles family had a very tragic history in the early days of Cleveland. They built this mausoleum after their young daughter was killed in a traffic accident. Shortly after the interrment, the walls of the mausoleum began to bleed.There is a better history here  here.

All that I can say is that one year a friend and I were walking downtown near the mausoleum late at night. I think it was around Easter, perhaps on Easter morning. There was some kind of activity going on, police cars or a fire truck, I can't recall for certain. But, the door to the mausoleum was standing open, and there was what appeared to be a large bird of some kind flying around in the general vicinity of downtown. It was creepy that night. 

Walking with a limp because of exploded glass

I sumbitted the following letter to consumeraffairs.com and the newly created Consumer Protection agency after I had first-hand proof that the internet myth of 'exploding pyrex' was a proven reality. I think at this point in my life, I'm so sick of coping with the tactics and efforts of the purveyors of products, their messages, and the overall insult to my own intelligence that I just don't give a literal fuck anymore that I'm ready to start speaking out to governing bodies about the conditions that normal everyday people are facing in this country on a daily basis.

C'mon, let's face it. People like Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich, and Barack Obama aren't preparing their own food, cleaning their own toilets, or doing their own laundry today. So, clearly they haven't the faintest idea of what typical people like you and I are facing everyday. 

The stupid things like I'm mentioning in the following submitted letter are just a miniscule percent of the frag mines that normal American citizens are facing on a daily basis thanks to the dangers of a globalized economy.


Let's just say that I'm okay. I've still got all of my limbs, both eyes, a fully functional respiratory system, and a working way of eliminating wastes from my God-given body. But, I can imagine that there are those that are less fortunate from the experiences that I've endured. Those with worse outcomes, they are who you should concern yourself with, and they are the subjects of the letters which I have written to the consumeraffairs.com and Consumer Protection Agency.


Things could have been a lot worse for me. I've got the burned lineoleum, scars, and photos to bear that out.
The following is a paste of the letter I sent to consumeraffairs.com. 

(The letter was only edited mildly for the Consumer Protection Agency)

I was preparing dinner, a fillet of S'wai baked in the oven. I wrapped the fillet in tin foil and set it down in a pyrex casserole dish. I cooked it for about 22 minutes on 400 degrees. When I pulled out the dish and set it on the top of the stove, the dish exploded! Maybe, exploded is a bit drastic sounding, but let's just say it blew itself apart into shards all over the kitchen, otherwise a small explosion of the materials.

As a result, the bottom of my foot got burned and I got a couple of cuts on my legs. I wasn't wearing shoes since I was fairly certain that I wouldn't have anything to worry about cooking in my own kitchen.

Why the hell hasn't someone said that there should be some kind of warning label put onto these dishes bearing the PYREX trademark? It's utterly ridiculous that people are risking being maimed by their cookware in this day and age just because someone wants to save a few dollars on a cook pan.

Someone needs to bring a class action lawsuit against the makers of these damned things until they finally agree to put a big bright label on the cartons that reads, "The use of this product may lead to random explosions during food preparation. Thanks, have a good day."

Admittedly, I got off easy, but the burn on the bottom of my foot could have been a burn on my face, a burn on any other part of my body, or a shard of 400 degree glass in my eye. Someone should sift through the thousands of anecdotal accounts on the web and bring a class action lawsuit against these people who are still producing this volatile cookware. Geez, it sounds like such a joke! But it happens, I can attest to it! I can show you the photos of the injuries if necessary!

It's like a terrorist attack from the manufacturing industry every time that someone heats something made of this stuff up in the microwave.

I know that there are some differences in the materials, borosilicate glass  vs. soda lime glass, well someone needs to make sure that there are different trademarks for these products so people aren't putting their lives in their hands when they are baking a lasagna!

Slightly injured but making it,

Mark k. McGehee

Distractions

I'm distracted lately. I knew I would be, when I treated myself to Christmas with an Xbox360. Like for instance, right now. I'm making myself write this entry. I'm thinking very much about some virtual violence right about now. But, instead I'm trying to regain some sort of discipline to sit down and continue writing, instead of falling into a non-stop distraction. I guess it really is about self-discipline. Which, at times I tend to have a bit of, others not so much.  But, I suppose that's everyone since all of us face similar temptations in this mad media-saturated century.  Distractions are prevalanet.

This is an age of distraction, a golden age of man. An age set to implode upon, or be exploded by from unknown forces at any moment. However, it is apparent that we have had to recover from global catastrophes in the past. When mankind likely was at a comparable level of civilization, with a different set of distractions, but all of the same problems of human nature.

I  began this blog a few years back to get myself writing on a regular basis. But, it's been greatly hit and miss, often at fulfilling that initial function since I've updated it so sporadic. Not sure whyy that is, just that I've been on a writing hiatus for a couple of years now. Not creating much of anything more than a random scribbling in a notebook  I keep, or a scrap of a dream I might have woke up and wanted to remember.

I knew when I finally bought the Xbox360 that it would be another distraction for me on many levels from getting this piece of fiction I've been trying to finish.  But, here I am today writing random rants in here. Trying to get warmed up so I can continue the story of Ken Phalanx.

Samuel Adams Salt n' Vinegar Garlic Ginger Chicken

One of my hobbies, pet projects, or past times making up dishes from whatever is in the kitchen. This has been becoming something I've come to enjoy more and more lately. Dammit, another creative outlet.
Anyway, here's.......Tonight's chicken experiment.

6 oz. chicken breast coated with salt and vinegar potato chips, with  Samuel Adams Boston Lager, garlic, ginger marinade.

Yes, it's yet another kitchen exploration this evening. Here's the proposed recipe.
1 6oz. Chicken breast
1/4  cup of Samuel Adams Boston Lager
3 cloves garlic diced up
1/4 teaspoon each
salt, ginger, black pepper


Dice up that garlic and thaw out the chicken breast.
(I usually buy a big tray of them and put them into the freezer in single portions for whenever I want them,  usually the last me about three weeks, maybe more if there are other meats in the freezer. I just wrap them up in foil, they usually keep pretty well and the foil can be used to cover the marinade dish, hint)
Sprinkle all of that ginger, salt, and black pepper onto the chicken breast and throw it in a bowl.
Take all your diced up garlic, then sprinkle it onto the chicken breast.
Next, pour that beer over the chicken and let it set for a while in the fridge until you're ready to cook it, maybe two hours or so from when you've put it in the fridge, just so all of that spice gets absorbed into the chicken.

When it's finally stinking like a vampire's worst nightmare, pull out those Salt n' Vinegar potato chips, crunch them up and coat the chicken.


Pop it into a hot skillet, fry it up, and I'll have to wait to tell whether or not you should enjoy it or not. Since I haven't tried the finished product yet.
It might be another in my long list of failures, but it can't possibly be as bad as the bananna burger.
I tend to think it will taste pretty good. I can imagine what the flavor might be.


I'll be adding in some veggies, maybe brussels sprouts, some white northern beans, or a sweet potato, haven't decided that yet.

Two Centuries and Thirty-Five Years, and needing a change today.

   As an independent voter who has been following the circus that is the Republican nominee process, I've found that I really only like one member of that field, and it's Ron Paul. He's the most consistent of them who makes the most sense, and actually will answer a question that is posed to him directly. Unlike all of the other candidates for the Republican nomination, he doesn't stay with the party's talking points, and hasn't had some jaded past where he has groped someone in a car, hired a dubious groundskeeper, or become the definition for a mixture of lubricant and fecal matter. He doesn't have a spouse that runs a farcical treatment for homosexuals, nor has he brought a significant amount of baggage into this campaign from his previous political career. Granted, his ideals of an isolationist America that  is concentrated on the rights of the States is rather 1776, but do we really need to maintain this corporate status quo that we've been living under for the last 20 years? I don't know if Ron Paul is really the answer that this country needs right now, but I know that none of the other field of candidates who have a snowballs chance in hell of unseating President Barak Obama are worthy of assuming that title from him.

 We have been in the midst of a vile political climate for a while now, that would rather we just grant carte blance to Big Business no matter the cost to each of us who are struggling every day to maintain our own status quo of existence. The costs of our daily lives have increased as a result of our complacency, its harder to put a loaf of bread on our counters, or a carton of eggs in our fridges, and that's not to mention how much more difficult it is simply to get to whatever job we're lucky enough to have in this day and age. We simply can't carry on the way we've been going where we pander to a select group of companies and individuals who seem all to happy to deprive us of the very luxuries that they enjoy on a daily basis.

I've not written this as any encouragement to vote for Ron Paul, but he really is the only logical choice for a significant change in the ideology that has dragged this country down into the sewer that it is in today.

Further, Barak Obama has had a difficult mantle to assume. I will publicly grant that to him. He has faced hostile Republican Congress that has publicly proclaimed that they want him to be a one-term President. So, it has been difficult for his Presidency to really embrace the "Hope for Change" that his campaign sought in it's infancy. But, from my observation I've had to ask myself often, has he really done enough to face that conflict head-on like he should have as the head of the Executive branch of our government? He had ample opportunity to make those changes, and promulgate the HOPE that he gained the office of President, and each time in his presidency, he fell short. Perhaps he was captured between a rock and a hard place, perhaps he was limited by position, politic, or some lobbyist pledge. I don't know. Who the fuck am I to know this? But, through my own observations of his Presidency, it isn't until recently where he has taken advantage of his office to make the wave of hope that got him elected a reality have I seen any worth in my part in getting him elected to that post. If only he would have been working for typical Americans like myself over the four years he has enjoyed as President, I might not now be considering a replacement for his job as a voter in this democracy.

Honestly, I feel that it is well past time for change. We need a drastic renovation of this political system. That needs to begin with the removal from all corporate influence of any kind upon our government. I seriously doubt that any of the framers of the great document which we base our democracy upon had in mind that one day the government they envisioned would someday be tasked with regulating the fish in the seas, the life in a woman's womb, or the plants which grow upon the Earth. Provide for the common good, I don't see the US government providing for the common good for all of the equally created men(and women) upon this great continent any more in this system. Instead, it has become a business that makes cuts where the common good is concerned and allows  businesses to put that common good at risk with water that is flammable.

We are well past 'Hoping for Change'. America is in a predicament now. It has reached a fever pitch that is set to explode, be shaken apart through fracking related earthquakes, or to be pepper-sprayed in the face of it's freedoms. It's well past time that we awake from our complacency and make some drastic alterations in our systematic disregard for the freedoms that we embraced as a nation 235 years ago.

The sad casualty of captalism

I was at Wal-Mart early this morning. And, like most times when I go there, I found myself stricken with the realization that there are 40 checkout lines, and only 3 that are operational with a long line in each of those three lines.
For a logic problem, this has two solutions.

A. Either staff more cashiers
B. Decrease the number of checkout stations.

Yet, there is apparently no logic at work in the reality of the situation. There may be only one time of the year when it is feasible for Wal-Mart to actually have all 40 of those checkout stations staffed, and even during that time period, they don't have all of them staffed. There's no reason for them to. since they have a Wal-Mart on the other side of town with the same 37 empty checkout lanes.
None of this makes sense in the grand scheme of things. But, this is the world we are living in today.  Wal-mart has likely consumed untold millions of tons of steel to create those same 37 empty checkout lanes at all of their 8500 stores(wikipedia) across the world.  That is a tremendous waste of resources when you really start to consider it. You could likely build an entire town from the materials which they've sank into those unused checkout lanes.

It's a sickening waste of materials.

These are the things that I think about while I'm waiting to give them my hard-earned money in a line of my fellow humans. Granted, I could go to another grocer, but much like everyone else I do like to save a few dollars  here and there, and Wal-Mart happens to have these enormous packages of chicken breast that will feed me for nearly two weeks for 12 bucks. So, yes...I am biting the hand that is feeding me, literally, it's my right.

This doesn't change the issue at hand, why squander resources on unused checkout lanes, or produce products that only last two months, or put every single item in it's own fucking bag when there are countries on this Earth that can't even feed, house, or clothe themselves. This is a huge problem, and it makes absolutely no sense.

If Wal-Mart isn't going to pay someone to stand at each one of those checkout lanes when they are open for business, then they need to get rid of them and use those materials for something that will benefit mankind, instead of consuming those materials for the most useless artifact of our capitalist society, the empty checkout lane.

Yet, this isn't even the dagger that pierces me square in the gut. They've taken the extra step to provide a self-checkout option. I've actually used those in the past, and I always leave with some twinge of guilt that I'm stealing from the store. But, aside from that, THOSE ARE ALWAYS CLOSED and there are typically at least 10 of the damned things, again with using up vital resources that could build someone a house, a car, a desk, or a brace  for the back that capitalism has shattered through it's grinding gears.

Honestly though, this is just a prime example of the extensive waste of resources that is at work in this modern world. Packaging is an enormous consumption of materials, especially when the packages are packaged, repackaged, and then packaged again in some other way such as a box full of your bagged groceries, or a vase of flowers inside of a bag that has been put inside of a box. This isn't even touching  on the multitudinous oceans of useless plastic objects that are generated for one-time use then cast away into the ocean to be diffused by the Earth for a thousand years, yes straws, ketchup packs, and all of those stupid little things we all use every day that we just throw away.

Case in point, Taco Bell sauce packs. Yeah, I like the sauce. I use a lot of sauce on my food from there. The sauce is one of the prime ingredients to me that makes their food at the remotest palatable. Suddenly, on a visit to Taco Bell over the summer, I noticed that their sauce pack contained significantly less sauce in it. So, my train of thought gets on the subject of resource consumption.
Does it cost more for them to put more sauce in the package?
Does it cost less for them to use more of the plastic packages, and put less sauce in the packages?
Why the fuck won't they just fill the goddamned packages up all the way, and use fewer of these fucking sauce packs??

Well, it has to be an issue of cost at the end of the day for THEM. But, in the grander scheme of things, IF they have determined that it's a lowered cost for them to add LESS sauce to their packages and instead consume more petroleum to produce more plastic packages for less sauce, THEN these practices are driving up the cost of all of our petroleum based products.

The worst part of the thing is that it's probably a smarter idea for them to just have a huge tank of the stuff delivered to their 5800 locations in the United States, and just ask customers if they want sauce on their tacos when they make the damned things, instead of wrestling with this conundrum that they've obviously been presented related to their sauce packages.

Sauce packs and checkout lanes, think about it. Think about all of the other tremendously useless items that this planet is generating on a daily basis that are just cast away, consumed, and left to decay over thousands of years.

The iFrack coming soon.

I've either become more cynical as I've aged, or stupid people have multiplied across the globe, into positions of power, and have promulgated their numbers onto the highways of America. They are apparently allowed to drive now! God help us all.

Case in point. Here in this town of Cleveland, there is an intersection that contains a monument in the center, two one way streets going each direction, and a road bisecting the one-way streets behind the monument. Well, I'm approaching that intersection to cross the one-way streets and on my way to the apartment when I find someone who has chosen to pause for a length of time directly in my way of ingress. I don't know what they were doing, there were no cars coming, but yet they persisted in their immobility, until after a minute they simply drive out of the way and cease their blockage of all of the traffic at the intersection. I don't know what the heck they were doing, whey they paused in the middle of the road to block up all of the traffic, but thankfully some glimmer of reason entered their mind to trigger their self-removal from the intersection in question.

I don't know if it's that ignorance has propagated itself, or has been bred into the bulk of humanity, but it seems to be on the rise. Common sense, has become uncommon. Politeness has attempted to replace common sense on the highways with great frustration to people who happen to retain some modicum of common sense and knowledge of traffic regulations. As a polite person myself, I won't just up and stop for someone to get out of an intersection if there's no traffic behind me because I know that would confuse the shit out of me if someone did that to me. And this sort of thing happens often to me on the road.

It's not just drivers either, pedestrians, at least the college age variety that I'm coming into contact with lately as a driver are apparently cluelessly hanging out on sidewalks near intersections where drivers find themselves often. They're checking emails, or carrying on inane conversations that are probably better suited to some commissary, public park, or ladies' room in a dormitory. Don't stand on the side of the road chit-chatting, get the fuck out of the road so the rest of society can get on with their business and don't have to pause to determine if they may accidentally squish your eyeballs out of your head as their SUV runs you down at the four-way.

If I have to assign blame for the rise of ignorance in society, I'll have to set that blame squarely on our technology and marketing machine. Lately, I'm finding my intelligence assailed on a regular basis anytime that I'm exposed to advertising. I think I've brought this up before, well I'm on it again. Back off Mr. Faceinyouriphonebooktuber standing at the crosswalk not communicating whether or not you're about to step off into traffic, you're part of the problem, you media consumer! But, I can't totally lay the blame on you. You've been subjugated to something larger, this consumer culture that we seem to have been completely subjugated. For any sort of proof, turn on a television for an hour, and you'll find the most pointless information being broadcast in large quantities by news organizations, advertisers, infomercial producers, and even some television programmers.  All of which want you to give them money for some dumb product that you don't need, really.  You could probably do without that smartphone, heck it might even make you smarter to not have it. You might have to actually use your brain to remember where you parked your car.

All that I'm really saying is that we've apparently reached our level of incompetence as denizens of this planet. The 'Peter Principle' we haz it.

Think about the lack of common sense behind 'hydraulic fracturing' or 'fracking' if you want to call it that. What a terrible concept! Who's the lamebrain who conceived that it was a smart idea to open up fractures deep in the planet with water, when the whole planet is made up of floating plates of crust surrounded by mostly water. It's a recipe for disaster, and I hope that the human race comes out of it's mental cloud and realizes that soon. Especially, since the consequences involve earthquakes, polluted waters, and humongous sinkholes forming.

I think when you really get down to what has caused this collapse in the general gregariousness of humanity is money. There is some wisdom in that old saying, "Money is the root of all evil."
Everything has become at its' core related to generating a profit at any cost, regardless to whomever the stakeholders in whatever project it happens to be, and how much profit that project can generate for the shareholders.

Faceless corporations have been happy for so long to supply mankind's wants, needs, desires, and fetishes, it's long overdue that humanity recaptures some smidgen of self-reliance and starts to think for itself again before time runs out and we're all killed in the crosswalks.

The warm up.

The warm up.

I've been working on some writing projects lately, and yes I've been using this format to get my fingers to cooperate and my mind to quiet down a bit so I can concentrate on this annoying habit that I've developed over these years. This drive to create things! What! Why are you naysaying, just sit in your tower already.
So, yeah...there it is I've admitted to you that I have some literary aspirations beyond just giving you the mundane rundown of my bowel movements, or the fluffy bunny slippers that I saw at Target, or whatever dish I might have eaten at some random restaurant. I want to sell something that I've written so maybe I can afford to upgrade the rattletrap aging automobile that I'm using to  lug my girth to work.
Maybe I'll succeed, maybe I won't. If I don't, I've only myself to blame. The main obstacles to that success are all around me and they are prevalent for us all today, this very vehicle that you're observing my madness through, it is one of the chief distractions in this modern era since it contains multitudious distractions, video, audio, chatter, shopping, gossip, sloth, sins, sex, and all of the numerosity that goes along with the human condition today.

Yeah, I made up that word, 'numerosity'. So what...I can do that, so can you try it sometime.\



Addendum:

 I didn't actually make up the word 'numerosity'. I can't speak for everyone, but for years I used to write in a journal every night before bed. I fell out of that habit. Geez, I need to get back to that. But, what I was about to say before I so rudely interrupted myself was that I tend to dredge up some words that have languished in the depths of my vocabulary vault unexpectedly at times and have to stop to consider if they're actual words or not. That might sound weird, maybe.

Sure, I could just edit the above post to obfuscate my gregarious use of an existing word and then claim it as an original creation of my own, but instead I will elucidate at length for the sheer audacity of annoying you, the gentle reader.

Anyhoo....just wanted to clear that up before you're off telling people that you know the guy who came up with the word 'numerosity'. I'm not going to define it for you. Get a dictionary, or try this go to Google search and paste this in there "define:numerosity" and you'll get yourself defined there for your wordporn pleasure.

Any way you want it, that's the way you need it.

We've been trapped in the mid-1980's for the last 20 years, have you noticed?


When's the last time you turned on a "Classic" rock station and haven't heard some ridiculous ballad from that time-period? Yes, Steve Perry you insidious little twat, I'm looking at you and Journey right about now. Why have you endured, and why do you continue to assault the airwaves with your caterwauling and petulant balladry?

Well, I guess you're not going to tell me so I'm going to have to just go my own separate way and take these chains that bind me.  I think that you're still around because you're serving a purpose. You're keeping the rest of our Budweiser swilling, wrestling digesting,  infomercial culture enslaved to an idyllic little time in this odd little American History where stereotypes have thrived, the drug culture was pariah, and the aristocracy wiped it's ass with gold leaf toilet paper.


Yes, Sherry, It's true, you're motoring to a new age of  observation. You are stuck in an Orwellian time-slip of monumental proportions. Those sweet dreams where someone is watching you are all true from the pill you've dissolved on your tongue.


I think that we're entering a period in the history of this American experiment where we are being confronted with the problems of this system of religious freedoms. America has finally reached the hodgepodge of what the rest of the world really is, and those same Pilgrims which initially hit Plymouth Rock don't like what it's turned into. There's a ruling class that seems to be embracing that Puritanical mindset from the pre-cannibal colonies of early America. Instead, today we are eating ourselves slowly, digesting parts that we want but can't have with bitter pills, delusions of our self-grandiosity, and our utter return to feudalism more surreptitiously damaging than that of the Dark Ages.


We've allowed ourselves to be enslaved to ideals, concepts, brands, and chemicals, instead of what works for humankind, our own artifice is consuming us. It is a new age of cannibalism.

It's no wonder that films depicting zombies , the end of days, and anti-heroes are so topically popular. All of those escapes are what we fear and secretly hope for. We're exposed to rampant corruption daily by our media outlets who point to the failures of our long extant political and economic ideals, our entertainments leave us empty and devoid of true contact, our foods are poisoned, and our chosen leaders collude to cloud their motives for our control.


This is the system we deserve for our complacency.

All of our perceived, or prescribed history has lead us to this moment in time. Each of us has been fed a story through our shared timelines and we arrive at this moment today on our little blue orb. Governments across this planet are in shambles, economies are faltering, and there is a general dissatisfaction with the status quo regardless of race, social strata, religion, or creed.

If the current situation with the Occupy movement has accomplished anything, it has been to expose those in power who have motives for maintaining the stereotypical system of control which has been in motion for the last 30 years at least. 

This Earth has endured assaults from space, dinosaur defecation, and the pollution of plastics from pole to pole. It's doubtful that this current epoch of human history will be the last, or is even the first, but unless we chose our next steps wisely we are likely doomed to diminish as the prevalent life-form on this piece of rock until we rise through the centuries to a new era in our simian history.



Daily you're fed a storyline of want and need. You need this product to do that. You want that product to do this. There's some void in your existence that will be filled if you just would invest in this little box that lets you escape into a fantasy. You've allowed yourself to be deluded with space, time, paint that will cover your bald spot or make you look younger, or perhaps it was a knife that will cut through the fabric of reality itself because the edge is Japanese steel and never dulls when you are cutting through the nails in your 87% recycled fiber sheet rock. Everything has a cost, and you'll wind up paying for those things at least twice over what their actual value is all for the satisfaction of someone far removed from your daily existence.

You're too complicated. Get over yourself. Simplify your life and pay some attention to what you're doing to this tiny little piece of dirt in this transient part of the galaxy.


Who knows how much longer you can hang on before you're bitch-slapped by the Creator back into the Pre-Cambrian?




Now, how the hell did I get from JOURNEY to this?


I'm not exactly certain. But, it goes something like this.


Take those chains that bind you, Sherry and stop fighting that feeling because it is the year 2525 and man does love a woman. but sweet dreams are made of this and that is a reflex when all you want is your kiss.


I've often wondered why the music of the 80s has endured on radio for so long. It wasn't until I began to study advertising and marketing that I really started to form a concrete answer. The music of that era was purely human and fit into a stereotypical mold that could be used to shape our collective reality.


If you don't want to accept that, think of JC Penny and their corruption of Mr. Blue Sky by ELO, or Ritz Crackers and how they've chosen to bastardize the classic Modern English song "Melt with You" to sell you  buttery bleached-flour crackers.


This is not a new phenomenon.


Since the dawn of advertising, and capitalism, a clandestine group of mankind has been shaping your perceptions, shaving away your inhibitions, encasing your vulnerabilities in a thin sheen of desire so that you will conform to their worldview.
So, step in line there. Whip out that credit card at 19.99% interest with a 331/3% annual percentage rate and pay up. It's time to cover that tab and leave the bar, because there's an intoxicated world out there for you to get out in and sober up.