In Your Navy Uniform, Standing in the Grass

Forty years before you wrote your own end,
before you did your worst in a spoiled field,
before you drew from our swollen eyes
your own greedy tears -- left us searching,
sifting for answers among your sullen gray ash
-- before all this, you posed for a photograph.

On our dusty white window sill, your photograph
now rests. We keep you far away from the end
and near to the others -- the smiling faces now ash
or bone, soil or cypress. Guards and citizens in a field
of ancient stone. But for them, we are not searching
for meaning, clarity or life behind their eyes.

They see us and we return their gaze, but your eyes,
lost in the shadow of your brow, lost to a photograph
and to us -- your eyes, where are they? Searching
for something clean? A great escape? A winning end
to a losing life? Your eyes, they found a lonely field,
an outraged family, a shattered son, a broken body of ash.

Once a soldier, a father. Now 6 lbs. of pointless ash
on the wind, the leaves. We'll never know -- our eyes
and our minds -- never know why. Why that fucking field
instead of our arms? Why a God damn photograph
instead of our home? Who said you could choose your end
and send my father south to join the others already searching

for you? No one said a thing, I suppose. And no searching,
sifting or slamming our fists to the dirt will change ash
to a man -- a Grandfather. So we bury our questions. We end
our self-righteous suffering and look to our dreams for your eyes,
your weathered hands, cracked smile. All that a photograph
can not, will not provide. It's not enough to make that field

disappear. But it is something. It's re-tilling a tainted field,
planting sweet-pea and peony. Sending the cypress searching
for a new place to weep. It's holding your photograph
with both hands, thinking not what could have been -- not of ash,
but of a caring man -- strict and stern yes, with fierce eyes
that crumble. A man who maybe loved too much in the end.

All that remains is a photograph, a memory, the outline of a field
somewhere. And in the end, we're still, all of us, left searching,
sifting through the ash, trying to find your eyes.

-jkh

Waiting

propped at a stop sign
sleepy and shifting in a ceaseless rain
I nod in solemn acceptance
to a dark and docile morning

January claws at my cheeks
bites at my nose
street lamps murmur and hum
casting broad galaxies
upon the shadowy face of the road

twin comets scream
flashing tails of rubber and steel
oil-spill nebulas shiver in their wake
and my breath disappears
swallowed whole by the universe before me

a house, small and gray
comes alive across the street
an explosion of light
we watch, every one of us

the waiting

as an old woman
short hair, faded bathrobe
enters the frame
our window to her world

she runs the tap
carries the kettle to the stove
infuses the fragrant leaves
pours for herself an ashen mug
of the steaming soothing tea
and she looks out at us
this collection of reddened faces
across the road

the waiting

wishing, every one of us
that we stood not here
but sat in there
in her kitchen
at her table

waiting

for our old friend
to pour the tea

-jkh

The Thief

When I saw the boy steal
the Chocolate, I did
not know what to do.

Should I tell?
Like kids tell.

Should I glare?
As if to say,
you're bad.

He was small, pale and whips
of cinnamon hair hung
over his eyes – oily limbs
reaching out for his
freckled nose.

From the corners of these
sheltered eyes he
watched me as I
watched him, and I
pondered his crime.

Ready buddy? Let's go,
a fussy voice called out
from somewhere beyond
the processed meats
copper-top batteries
travel-size medicines

– more telling than asking,
four words to sever
our silent standoff.

If I told the man
about the boy,
would he scold
him in front of everyone?
to teach humility.

Would he march the thief
to the front
to make him apologize?
to teach shame.

Would he beat the boy?

The man and the thief
walked to the door
beyond the door
to an aging, rusting
blue and white car.

On his way out, the thief
turned to me
and smiled.

And so did I.

-jkh

The Tick

In the company of wolves
I wear the Teeth,
the sly grin.

But am I too a wolf?
Eater of the weak,
claimant of the dead?
Not so.

I am but a tick,
sipping steadily from the fount --
the wolf's blood.

And falling down
to the dirt
when I am full.

-jkh

Alarm Clock Gnomes

An interesting phenomenon has occurred in our household. You see, when we went to bed last night I set the alarm clock for 6:15am, same as I did every night this week. But this morning, when I woke up and saw the time, 7:17am, I knew something extraordinary had happened. Here is my theory as to how it all went down:

[int. bedroom]

Jack and Anastasia are settling in for sleep. The cat is nestled between them, purring and pleased to finally have some company in the bed she's been occupying all day.

"Did you set the alarm?" Anastasia asks.

"You bet I did," Jack answers, then double-checks the alarm. "Ready to go, 6:15 as always. Boy, I love getting up at 6:15. I love getting up early and going to work."

"Oh yeah? How weird! I love getting up early and going to work too!"

"Cool!" Jack exclaims. "That's great that we both love getting up early and going to work. It's like we were meant for each other! Good night Wife."

"Good night Husband."

...Meanwhile...

[ext. front yard]

The Alarm Clock Gnomes have assembled beneath the rhododendron in front of the bedroom window.

"Did you hear that?" One gnome says to the others. "These people love getting up early and going to work."

"Yes," answers another gnome. "We must terrorize these people. We must sabotage their alarm clock."

The gnomes all nod in agreement and begin their gnomey walk (which looks much like a regular walk, except that it is done by gnomes) toward the secret access point near the northeast corner of the house. Once inside, it is a simple matter for these small things to navigate the house, moving from room to room in complete silence until...

"Dog!" a young gnome screams. Just as he's turning to run back the way they came, an elder gnome grabs him by the arm.

"Quiet you insolent! This dog is no threat to us. I've met her before. She may appear as a great white beast, but believe me, her ferocity couldn't fill the pointy hat on that dim head of yours."

The elder gnome slowly approaches the big dog who is looking down at him inquisitively, cocking her head from side to side and making little whimpering sounds.

"Okay now big girl," the elder gnome says to the dog. "Let us rub that marvelous belly of yours. How does that sound?"

At that, the dog lays down and rolls to her side. Three of the gnomes stay behind, stacked atop each other's shoulders, rubbing the dogs belly while the others push forward to the bedroom -- the object of their mission.

Once they reach the doorway they decide they must make sure the humans are asleep.

"Squirrels are raiding the garden," one gnome proclaims. And the woman does not stir.

"There are delicious pancakes out here," another gnome calls out. And the man does not stir.

"Okay, they're definitely asleep. Our time has come fellow gnomes. Let us now do our worst to that alarm clock!"

What happened next, I cannot say. No one has ever witnessed what feats of magic or simple engineering these gnomes perform on the innocent alarm clock. I only know that in the end, we slept right through the clock-radio's cues for us to start our day and upon close examination of said clock, all was in order and we should have woken up.

-- Which is why I firmly believe these gnomes -- these Alarm Clock Gnomes, are the only reasonable explanation for our late start this morning. Please beware, my friends. You have been warned.

ABC = Liars

In other 9/11 film news...

ABC is soon to air it's "docudrama" Path to 9/11 and there's a lot of heat over this movie.

The reason:
It's full of shit.
The film is full of inaccuracies but ABC claims:

"The Path to 9/11″ is not a documentary of the events leading to 9/11. It is a dramatization, drawn from a variety of sources including the 9/11 Commission Report, other published materials, and personal interviews. As such, for dramatic and narrative purposes, the movie contains fictionalized scenes, composite and representative characters and dialogue, and time compression.

Not a documentary? A dramatization? Fictionalized scenes and dialogue? What the fuck?

This isn't a story about a kid who was trapped out at sea, on a desert island and we don't really know what happened to him, except that we found his journal so we made a movie about what his last days may have been like. No. This is the story about something that really fucking happened. Something that affected people's lives all over the world. Something that has reshaped each and every one of our everyday lives in this country and many other countries. This was an event that set into motion an onslaught of new laws, new policies, new crimes, new lies, new wars and new death.

The point is, you don't fucking fictionalize an event that changed the course of world history. You don't "improvise" dialogue by people supposed to have played a major roll in the 9/11 timeline.

Another quote:

ABC is marketing its docudrama, The Path to 9/11, as “based on the 9/11 Commission Report.” It is defending the films multiple inaccuracies by claiming some scenes were “drawn from a variety of sources.”

But yesterday, writer and avowed conservative Cyrus Nowrasteh admitted that the films most controversial scene was based on nothing at all. Nowrasteh told a right-wing radio station that the scene was “improvised.” From the New York Times:

Mr. Berger’s character is also seen abruptly hanging up during a conversation with a C.I.A. officer at a critical moment of a military operation. In an interview yesterday with KRLA-AM in Los Angeles, Cyrus Nowrasteh, the mini-series’ screenwriter and one of its producers, said that moment had been improvised.

“Sandy Berger did not slam down the phone,” Mr. Nowrasteh said. “That is not in the report. That was not scripted. But you know when you’re making a movie, a lot of things happen on set that are unscripted. Accidents occur, spontaneous reactions of actors performing a role take place. It’s the job of the filmmaker to say, ‘You know, maybe we can use that.’ ”

Nowrasteh’s attitude appears completely inconsistent with ABC Entertainment President Steve McPherson. In promotional materials accompanying the film, McPherson said, “When you take on the responsibility of telling the story behind such an important event, it is absolutely critical that you get it right.”

Additionally:

FBI Agent Who Consulted On Path to 9/11 Quit Halfway Through Because "They Were Making Things Up."
James Bamford, an author and journalist who has written about security issues, appeared on MSNBC to discuss “The Path to 9/11.” Bamford revealed that an FBI agent who worked as a consultant to the film quit halfway through production of the mini-series because he believed the writers and producers were “making things up.” [watch the video here].

Disgusting.

take a shit, call it news

I was reading Tom Tomorrow's blog today and came across this quote by Glenn Greenwald:

The White House is sure to follow suit any minute now, insinuating; or explicitly claiming; that this incident proves that Bush was right about the whole array of our country's foreign policy disputes, from Iraq to the current Israel-Lebanon war. This naked exploitation of terrorist threats for political gain occurs every time a new terrorist plot is revealed, no matter how serious or frivolous, no matter how advanced or preliminary, the plot might be. Each time a new plot is disclosed, administration officials and their followers immediately begin squeezing the emotions and fears generated by such events for every last drop of political gain they can manufacture.

But this effort is as incoherent as it is manipulative. Nobody doubts that there are Muslim extremists who would like to commit acts of violence against the U.S. and the West. No political disputes are premised on a conflict over whether terrorism exists or whether it ought to be taken seriously. As a result, events such as this that reveal what everyone already knows; that there is such a thing as Islamic extremists who want to commit terrorist acts against the U.S.; do nothing to inform or resolve political debates over the Bush administration's militaristic foreign policy or its radical lawlessness at home. Opposition to the war in Iraq, for instance, is not based upon the premise that there is no terrorist threat. It is based on the premise that that invasion undermines, rather than strengthens, our campaign to fight terrorism.

Invading and bombing Muslim countries do not prevent terrorism or diminish the likelihood that British-born Muslims will blow up American airplanes. If anything, warmongering in the Middle East exacerbates that risk by radicalizing more and more Muslims and increasing anti-U.S. resentment. And the more military and intelligence resources we are forced to pour into waging wars against countries that have not attacked us, the less able we are to track and combat al-Qaida and the other terrorist groups that actually seek to harm us. There are few things that have more enabled terrorism than turning Iraq into a chaotic caldron of anarchy and violence; exactly the environment in which al-Qaida thrives.

I wish more people understood this. Most of us just can't be bothered to think things through logically. We'd rather get our news from Fox TV and belch our foul, belligerent opinions based on what "side" we're on. It's disgusting, the level of ignorance, disinterest, and overall stupidity so prevelant in this country.
The media doesn't help either. Local news agencies cherry-pick what they're going to cover based on how sensational it can be made out to be. Case in point: The recent shooting in Seattle at the Belltown Jewish Federation Building. Without knowing anything at all about the suspect, the local anchors made presumptions that the crime had to do with the current Israel-Hezbollah conflict. As it turned out, the shooting had absolutely no connection to what is happening on the other side of the world. -The guy was found to have a history of serious mental illness.
The local media is just part of the problem though. There's Fox News, who's motto, "fair and balanced," is an ironic joke. And CNN? Hah! CNN used to be a respectable news agency until they started paying attention to their ratings and replacing distinguished anchors with cutesy, glossy-lipped women straight out of Perfect 10 magazine.
No, today you have to work a little harder to get the real news. Forget the television. There is no news on TV. -Only the blabbering of bubbly brunettes with plunging necklines. To get the real news you have to go here, here, here, here, or here, and maybe here.

A World Away: A Short Travelogue

After three days of sea-salt air and playing on the beach, we didn’t know if we could leave this place. We’d stepped out of life for awhile – abandoned our homes, our jobs, our cars, pets, worries, calendars, phones. We’d deserted our own music, in favor of the surf, the eagle’s clever tongue, jokes by friends old and new, the sizzle and pop of damp driftwood on fire.

Kyle and Z had spent the afternoon building a beach shelter about twenty yards from our group’s campfire. It was a lean-to structure, with a solid roof of long, fat trunks of driftwood – held up by two support beams, looking scanty in comparison to the massive roof. I’d decided that I wouldn’t be sitting under Kyle and Z’s shelter that night – not with toothpicks holding up a small forest.

At the same moment, my wife, Anastasia, was up the beach a ways, pointing to the sea and gesturing with her hands – explaining to Kathryn which direction she believed the looming storm was headed.

I looked seaward then, at the black wall sailing toward us. Rain. Lots of rain by the look of it. If it made landfall, it would be the fourth time we’d be hit on this trip. Unlike the day before, we’d be prepared. The day before was our second on the beach, and had started with a morning downpour for all and a hangover for many. In addition, half of our party had not arrived at camp until very early that morning, tired and wanting nothing more than to set up their tents and crawl inside for the last remaining hours of predawn sleep. And since they were the ones who had brought the rain shelters, they’d not been assembled yet.

It was a miserable morning, that second day. Heads pounded, fingers fumbled, wet sand clung to anything not completely wrapped in plastic. All we wanted was some coffee and a moment without sand between our fingers, in our shoes.

No, if it rained this day, as Kyle and Z built their questionable shelter and others played on the beach, it would only be a minor annoyance. The canopies were up and anything out in the open could easily be moved beneath them, including ourselves.

As Anastasia and I both considered the probability of rain from opposite ends of camp, I heard roars of laughter and turned to see that Levi had fallen on his ass for the second time since the start of this day’s Buoy Olympics. He’d had a bit of whiskey and had overzealously spun himself dizzy while launching the buoy for the distance event. Now, the buoy wasn’t really a buoy, so much as it was a float for a fishing net – a large, black, heavy plastic sphere with two eyes on the side, through which a blue and white rope was tied. For ease, we just called it the buoy. From the rope, we’d swing the buoy either as far as we could for distance, or, for the accuracy event, into a tire that had somehow beached itself near our campsite. As there are no roads in the area, we decided the tire must have come from the Pacific somehow. Funny that this made the most sense to us – a tire arriving by sea.

No roads. The trail to Toleak Point is about seven miles with alternating stretches of beach and overland trail. A handful of rope ladders moves people between the two.

Our journey begins on Friday afternoon, Memorial Day weekend, in a dirt parking lot alongside Highway 110, La Push Road. It’s raining and we’re beginning to wonder if this is what we’re in for. Four days of rain? But our packs are on, their waist-belts digging mercilessly into our abdomens, keeping the impossible weight of three nights’ supplies off of our shoulders. It’s Eliza, Z, Kathryn, Albert, Anastasia and me. The other six people in our group will start from this same spot after the sun has set tonight. They will hike in under a New Moon (moon-terminology meaning “dark as hell”), led by Eliza’s husband Levi. They’ll wear headlamps so they can see the trail before them and nothing else. They will think they see things that are not there. They will miss things that are. They will hear things.

As we set forth on the Third Beach trail, our first obstacle arises. Pants. A few within our group are not used to such weight sitting on their hips from these heavy packs, and their pants are falling down. Z notices his jeans have dropped halfway down his ass and says, I feel like a gansta, sagging like this. Like I’ve got a load in my pants. After some adjustments, some rolling up of pant legs so they’re not dragging through mud, we continue.

The trail to Third Beach is pleasant, broad – roomy even. Couples can walk side by side, and they do. It’s a mile and a half of virgin rainforest, a gradual drop in elevation, and there you are. The beach. Most people take this trail simply for this beach – day-hikers, families, picnickers. They look at you, with your massive pack, your look of determination, and they wonder, Where could he be going? The beach is just ahead. But they don’t ask. They nod, smile, say Hi. They look over their shoulder as you disappear around the bend, into the trees.

The sudden sound of the Pacific Ocean meeting the rocks and stumbling onto the shoreline somewhere ahead of us, causes a stir inside. The heart works a bit harder. The lips start to curl up at the corners. Laughter feels imminent. We stop looking at our feet so much and start looking up – expecting, any second now, to greet the infinite gleam of the Pacific.

The sound grows louder, and soon we can see open sky just beyond the last bit of forest separating us from the sea. We round a corner and someone says, There it is, and, God, that’s beautiful.

Before us is the Pacific, with its shimmering horizon and massive sea-stacks launching toward the sky. We stop and take it in for a moment. Z takes some photos.

I ask Anastasia, Where’s my camera?

She squints, smiles, and answers, Um, somewhere about halfway down in my pack.

Great. We’re at the ocean, this spectacular view before us, and my camera is inaccessible. She reminds me we’ll have plenty of time and plenty of pictures to take. Plus, she’s sure Z and the others would gladly share their photos. She’s right, of course.

We move on, down the semi-steep trail to Third Beach. The rain has stopped. We’ve removed our jackets and strapped them to the sides, tops and fronts of our packs. The sun warms us and I can’t believe how beautiful this place is.

Geography and the tides make it impossible to reach Toleak Point without making a couple climbs up and away from the beach. As we head toward the first overland trail, our boots slide a bit with every step in the loose sand. Before long, our group stands at the base of a steep bluff, looking up at a rope ladder tied to the trees above. The ladder itself isn’t actually rope, but a pair of steel cables fitted with large wooden rungs for stepping. From the same trees above, a heavy rope sags alongside the ladder for additional support, as the climber makes his or her way up the steep, loose earth.

We decide to send a guy up there first, in case any of the girls need a hand at the top. Albert volunteers and starts the climb, and we watch and study the difficulty he does or doesn’t have. For fun, we cheer him on as he journeys upward. Go Albert, it’s your birthday, someone sings. We applaud him as he releases the rope and smiles back to us from his little summit.

Once we’ve all scrambled up the first rope ladder, we continue our steep, zigzag accent through trees and thick groundcover, eventually stopping at the base of yet another ladder. This one is a bit steeper than the last and places its climbers another thirty or forty feet up.

The trek goes on, through dense rainforest – up, then down, then up again. Around this corner and that one, and Hey, watch out for that rock. It’s loose. And that puddle. It’s deeper than it looks. At one point, a narrow wooden stairway helps us down a hillside too steep to otherwise navigate. Near the bottom of the stairs, off to the left, sits a wooden platform to get us back onto the trail.

Talk about a stairway to nowhere, Z says. Look at that thing!

I look and notice that the stairway actually continues its descent for a few steps past the platform. The stairway really does lead nowhere, or rather, it ends abruptly, hanging over a washed out part of the hillside. I picture Wile E. Coyote unwittingly continuing down the steps and falling to the rocks below.

I think about the rest of our group hiking in tonight, in the dark, and I feel for them. I can’t imagine making my way through here with only a beam of light from my forehead.

The next day, the night group will recount tales of nocturnal jumping spiders. Accounts vary as to how big they really were, but all agree that they had freakish hind legs, like a grasshopper, and that, They fucking jumped.

Elyse, Levi’s sister, does not like spiders. In point of fact, she is mortally terrified of them. While others at camp argue over the true size of the jumping things, Elyse stares into the sand, lips tight, brows furrowed, arms crossed rigidly across her chest. She is lost, somewhere else, until her boyfriend, J.P., changes the subject. She looks at him and smiles.

Another stretch of beach, another overland trail – this one not so intense as the first. There is no ladder this time, but a pair of ropes hangs from above to help negotiate the unstable dirt. One rope is weather-worn, crusty and hurts the hands. The other stretches too much and is awkward to use. Both make for a difficult climb.
Following this overland trail is the final stretch of beach that will bring us to Toleak Point, our home for the next three nights.

The point itself is a widow’s peak of hard-packed sand, cutting into the Pacific. It is marked by a magnificent rock formation – an immense, whimsical fortress of pointed spires thrusting skyward.

Piles of bone-white driftwood adorn the pale body of this beach. The wood serves as windbreaker, as furniture, as fuel for fire. Beyond this, amongst the trees, are our tents.

There are certain precautions that must be taken when camping in these wild places. Since we are as far downstream as one could get from any freshwater source, water must be filtered and treated with chlorine to kill the bacteria; flavored powders such as Crystal Light are then added to kill the chlorine taste. Bear canisters must be packed in and all food stored within them, to prevent black bears and raccoons from making a mess of camp. In this regard, scented items like toothpaste, lip balm and deodorant must also be locked up, kept away from the tents. Attention must be paid to the tide charts, so as not to find yourself trapped on a rock you’d been exploring at a low tide.

Anastasia or Z or someone else would sometimes ask about the time. On the first and second days, I had the answers. About three-thirty, I’d say, or, Nine o’clock – the sun will be setting soon. On the third and fourth days, I didn’t have the time. I left my watch in the tent because I didn’t care what time it was. It didn’t really matter. Also, no one was asking about the time anymore. The only place we had to be was here. Our only appointment was with each other, on this beach.

Time had danced off into the night with the smoke of our campfire. We learned to nap when we wanted, eat when we wanted, play when we wanted, sip whiskey when we wanted.

It didn’t rain as much as we’d feared on that third day. And I did end up sitting under Kyle and Z’s impressive beach shelter. It would have been rude not to.

* * *

It’s the first night I’ve ever spent on an ocean beach. I’d imagined being lulled to sleep by the waves making landfall, the way a stream or river soothes when sleeping in the mountains.
But the ocean at night is deafening.

Laid Off

Before you freak out, no I haven't been laid off. This is the story of when my roommates and I lost our jobs many years ago.





Laid Off

The alley behind Dimension4 Inc. was accessed by a one-way locking door, kept propped open by a short stub of two-by-four pine. I spent so much time back there, in that alley, that it’s really the first thing I think of when remembering that place. Not my desk, nor the kitchen, nor the receptionist, nor any of the other guts within the office’s stale body. That alley, with its landscape of cracked, uneven concrete – that’s where the mind goes first.

There were generally between four and ten of us back there at a time, sometimes more. There were the appointed hours, the givens, when I was assured company in the alley: First thing in the morning, before and after lunch, and before heading home. But then there were also the random, spontaneous meetings in between. I’d be propped up at my desk, maybe working, maybe not really, and someone could at any moment, tap me on the shoulder, do a little sign language – two fingers to the lips, followed by a nod – and I’d follow them out to the alley.

We kept each other smoking. It was resource reciprocity really. Like those Eskimos up near the Arctic Circle, the Netsilik tribe. Everyone eats no matter who hunted and killed the seals on that particular day. We didn’t deal in seal meat of course. Our commodity was cigarettes, and if anyone ran out, that person was provided for, because we knew they’d have us covered when we’d run dry ourselves. We were a tribe of smokers. And we loved to play hackey-sack.

We spent hours every day, standing in the alley, in a poorly drawn circle, smoking and kicking that small, dirty sandbag around, trying desperately to keep it from touching the ground.

“Ah shit. Hold on.” Alex got on his hands and knees to retrieve the hackey-sack he’d kicked underneath a car in the parking lot abutting the alley.

“Nice kick Alex,” I’d prodded. Alex was a small, wiry guy with pale skin and sparse facial hair that showed either laziness or sheer dedication on his part.

“Got it,” declared Alex. “Game on bitches.”

Dimension4 Inc. had provided me my first job after moving to Washington State. Located in downtown Bremerton, a modest city across Puget Sound from Seattle, the company specialized in the conversion of old hardcopy drawings into digital CAD files. The work was easy. One would essentially sit there at the computer, tracing over existing lines with new ones. Literally anyone with eyes and fingers could do the job. Brains not required. Seriously. My friends and I would often go drinking during lunch. Vodka mixed with whatever juice sounded good that day. There was even a group who would spend their lunch break smoking joints at some guy’s house. They’d come back to the office high as a kite, eyes glossy and bloodshot. It didn’t matter though. Nobody bothered anyone. We sat at our desks, sometimes intoxicated, blasting music through our headphones, doing our mindless work. And we loved it.

Though there was really no way to move up in the company, there was also no reason to leave as we saw it. We considered ourselves lucky. There were about twenty-five of us, all about the same age, some of us roommates, most of us friends and hanging out on our off time. The money wasn’t great, but it was better than I’d made before. Towards the end of my time there, I got to be the highest paid drafter on staff (which really wasn’t saying much), because I’d taken a lead role on a couple projects. I was playing manager to a group of about six people, all straight out of high school. This granted me the ability to delegate work to the newbies, thereby freeing up more of my own time for the important matter of downloading music online. There was nowhere else to go from here. Either I’d reached the top, or the ladder had fallen out from under me.

In December 2000, a couple weeks before Christmas, our manager, Jeff Rochford, asked Jason Green, Jason Munich and me to please meet him in the conference room. Jeff was a character straight out of Gary Larson’s “Far Side” comics: Small eyes hidden beneath a heavy, protruding brow, and a miniature head, disproportionate to a greater, pear-shaped torso.

Jeff had been pacing around the office all morning, making strange noises with his lips and carrying a look of guilt upon his face. We didn’t think too much of it at the time. Thought maybe he’d screwed something up again and was trying to work his way out of it. Jeff had a knack for making mistakes in the drawing files and trying to fix it himself (thereby aggravating the problem further), then asking for one of us to help him out.

The Jasons and I sat waiting in the dull, lifeless room with the big table. These guys were my best friends, and at the time we were sharing a two-bedroom townhouse in Silverdale, a sleeper town just north of Bremerton. Green resided on the couch most nights, unless I was away at my girlfriend’s house, in which case he’d occupy my room.

We sat there for a few minutes, the three of us, wondering what this was about. Maybe we were getting a raise? Each of us had, after all, taken lead roles on a project or two.

After a few quiet moments, Jeff finally entered the room, looked at each of us, and then put his eyes to the floor as he made his awkward way to a seat across from us.

“Hey guys. How we doin?” he asked.

“Uh, okay,” Munich answered. Green and I sat still, silently watching Jeff’s nervous movements: One hand sliding across the table before him, the other tapping the side of his chair, his buttocks shifting around like he was training them to use chopsticks.

Finally, he sat back, looked up at the three of us and said, “So, you’re all aware we’ve had to make some adjustments here.”

“Yeah,” I answered. I understood. Our teams would get smaller, our workloads larger.

“Things are slowing down,” he added. “Money’s tight.”

I glanced over at my roommates. They stared at the floor, like they could see what was coming. I couldn’t see anything.

“Guys, they’re letting you go. Laying you off.”

The words were fists. They punched me in the chest, broke ribs and made my heart skip.

“Seriously?” I asked, for no other reason but to break the silence. I hated the silence. I hated that I could hear the fluorescent lights humming above me. Most of all, I hated Jeff for telling us we’d just lost our jobs. I knew it wasn’t his decision, but I hated him just the same.

“Yeah, seriously,” Jeff answered. “It sucks. I want you to know, I fought it. Brandon really fought it.” Brandon was the senior office manager. He’d been the one to hire us, and the one to party with us from time to time.

“Alright,” Munich said flatly. We looked at him, expecting more, but that’s all he had to say.

“The good news is, well, if you want to call it that,” Jeff looked embarrassed for trying to rationalize the situation, “you’re being laid off, not fired. So, you’ll be eligible for unemployment benefits.”

It seemed a full minute passed, then, defeated, I asked, “So how does that work?”

Jeff explained the process to us. Said there were forms to fill out. He’d get them for us, show us what to do. Said it was easy. You just send in this form each week, stating that you contacted three potential employers. As long as the form is sent with the three contacts, you’d get a check every week. Simple as that. Said it wasn’t much, but enough to get by on until we found new jobs. He finished by assuring us that he’d give us a good reference. He’d already started our letters of recommendation. Been working on them all morning.

I made my way back to my desk, careful not to look at anyone. I was desperately trying to keep it together. Jeff had said we could either clean out our things now or come in on Saturday to do it. There was no way in hell I was going to do it now. Not in front of everyone. I walked to my desk, grabbed my jacket, my keys, and turned to leave. My friend Mike stopped me, a worried look in his eyes.

“Hey, Jack, where ya goin?”

I looked at him, making eye contact with the first person since walking out of the room where I’d just lost my job. “I don’t know,” I replied, my voice cracking. I felt ashamed that I was being made to leave, ashamed that I was fighting back tears, ashamed that I was taking this so personally. They didn’t understand. This wasn’t just a job. This was my life. These were my friends. This is where I went every day after waking up. This was the first place I’d ever been where I felt important. The first place I’d ever been where I felt that I was part of a group – a group of people who actually liked me, thought I was funny and fun to be around. The first place I’d ever been where I was actually respected.

“I don’t know,” I’d said to Mike, hardly slowing my step as I feebly answered his question – a question which, unbeknownst to him, was much larger than he had meant. The question itself was what did me in. Where are you going? I don’t know.

The fists hit me in the chest again and again as I rushed down the stairs, toward the back door of the building. I threw the door open, didn’t bother closing it, and stood in the alley for a moment. I lit up the last cigarette I’d smoke in that alley, and then walked off to my car, feeling the first tears of rejection show themselves past the lower rim of my sunglasses.

Hey, Jack, where are you going? I’m going to the liquor store, Mike. I’m going to the liquor store and then I’m going home to get drunk with my newly unemployed roommates. I’m going to smoke a pack of cigarettes, drink too much, and call my girlfriend. She’s going to come over and have sex with me in the garage because she’s so sorry. Feels so bad for me. I’ll take the sympathy, and then I’ll rejoin my roommates, drink more and get sick. That’s where I’m going Mike.

As it turned out, unemployment wasn’t all bad. Jeff was right about the checks. We’d send our little forms into the state, promising that we’d tried real hard to get a job that week, and they’d send us money. And between the three of us, we actually had plenty to pay the rent and still have a good time. Of course, some car payments were deferred, some utility bills paid a little late, but we always had beer, cigarettes, and enough money left over to subsist on peanut butter & honey sandwiches and Kraft macaroni & cheese. We slept late, played video games, and drank beer. We stayed unemployed for three months. A paid vacation, courtesy of Dimension4 Inc. and the great state of Washington.

Late one morning, Green and I were lounging on the couch, watching reruns of “Friends,” when Munich suddenly came around the corner and into the living room. He carried a smile on his face and a bright orange bowling ball in his hands. He was excited because we’d decided we were actually going to leave the townhouse that afternoon and hit the lanes.

“Nice ball, Jason,” Green had said, just as the strangest thing we’d ever seen was about to take place.

We watched as Munich took his bowler stance, raised the ball about eight inches before his face, brought it forward and down in a graceful arch, and then forward again as if to practice his follow-through. Except, he followed through. For real. His right arm brought the blazing orange ball to an angle perpendicular to his upright poise, and then, he released it. He released it!

His thumb had gotten stuck.

Life suddenly slowed to a crawl as we sat there, unmoving, unflinching, on the great, gray sectional couch, snaking its way around the edge of the living room. Green and I watched as the bowling ball hovered through the air – a cratered moon orbiting a carpeted planet. Only, this moon was headed straight for the sliding glass door at the other end of the room.

The sound of the glass shattering and showering to the ground was heart stopping. We watched as the bowling ball continued past the exploding vertical plane, took a bounce on the concrete patio outside, tumbled into the grass beyond.

We sat still, staring at the disaster for a few seconds, allowing time to adjust to its proper pace. Then we looked back at Munich: pale, mouth hanging open, eyes wide. Then we looked at each other, both of us surprised to see the other one smiling a crazy kind of smile. A smile neither of us had seen on the other’s face in a long time.

That was awesome.

That’s all we could think of: Holy shit. That was awesome.

That’s when I knew the stars were, in fact, not against me. Life meant something again. This was the turning point, when life and all its unfortunate humor had slapped us in the face. Woke us up. Got us moving again. Got us filing a fake police report over the phone, so the apartment complex would pay for the damages. Vandalism, we’d said. Kids. Damnedest thing.

It was easy. Cops don’t actually show up to check out a little broken window. I gave the woman on the phone the carefully constructed white lie. She gave me the case number which I was to pass on to the apartment manager.

I don’t know what it was exactly about that bowling ball, exploding through the glass door like that, but it seemed to have woke us up – reminded us we’d been laid off for a reason. We got off the couch. We got new jobs. I moved to Seattle and made many new friends, including the wonderful woman who would become my wife.

That bright orange bowling ball, soaring through the air with its shimmering tail of glass.

A comet careening toward the Earth.



jkh

On Envying the Faithful

It seemed the whole world was holding me. Why had I ever thought I was alone? I was in the embrace of the earth, of those who loved me no matter what they thought or understood, of the very stars.
“Father,” I said. “I am your child.”
-Anne Rice,
Christ the Lord, Out of Egypt

Death has always been the only phenomenon to bring about the resurrection of God in my life. Not birth, nor marriage, nor love. When a new baby is born into the world, I see not a miracle, but an act of biology. When I said my vows and exchanged the symbolic rings with my wife on a Catholic altar, I agreed with the Monsignor that the words and the act were sacred, but not because we’d just been wed before the eyes of a God. To me, these words and these acts were sacred because I loved, adored, and most importantly, respected this woman I’d just married. They were, and are, sacred because I made a promise before the eyes of all our friends and family – a promise before the eyes of the faithful.

I’m not sure exactly when I lost my faith. Though, I seem to remember elementary school science classes playing a role in it. I was on a fourth grade field trip once, to Estes Park, Colorado – an overnight excursion to learn about the natural world. We’d studied plants, trees, birds, compass orientation, and now we were to learn a thing or two about the things above us. We gathered in a dark room, on benches made of trees split in half, lengthwise (which quickly numbed our behinds), to watch a film about the origins of space and the fate of our planet. It was in this dark, uncomfortable room that I learned about the theory of the Big Bang, and about how the universe will eventually cease in its expansion and draw back in upon itself, essentially reversing the Big Bang and imploding. Now, this in itself might have been enough to make a nine year-old boy question God, but there was more. We then learned that the sun is growing, and that some millions or billions of years into the future, the sun will eventually envelop the Earth.

Why is God going to let this happen? I wondered. I was nine years old and didn’t exactly have a tight grasp on concepts of time, and even events millions of years into the future seemed imminent and terrifying.

Why would God let this happen?

A year earlier, I’d been called out of class by the principal of my school. He had a message for me stating that my mother was there to pick me up, and that I should meet her outside. I didn’t understand, as it was early in the day, but I packed my things and met her in the bus zone where she waited in the car. My sister, Molly, was there too, in the backseat. There was nothing curious about her being there, because Molly was only three years old, and my father had left town the night before, "for work," I'd been told.

Mom was quiet. We drove out of the school parking lot as I began my interrogation: Why did you pick me up? Where are we going? What’s going on?

I could see the hurt in my mother’s eyes. Her lip quivered for a small moment and she pulled the car to the side of the road.

“There’s been an accident,” she said, her voice cracking a bit. “There was a gun. It was an accident. Your Grandpa Jack is dead. We have to go to Denver.”

I could see that she didn't mean to say it like that. But there it was.

She watched me. She knew how much I loved him – how close we were. She put a hand on my knee. “The funeral is in a couple days. Everybody’s going. Are you okay?”

I stared at the road in front of us – the unmoving, unchanging road and the dead grass lining the ditch at its side.

Dead?

It wasn’t that long ago that I was in my Grandpa Jack’s basement. I was drawing dinosaurs with oversized teeth on the green chalkboard at the bottom of the stairs when he hurried down, threatening to “get me.” I ran, as quick as my little legs would carry me, to the other end of the basement, but he got me. I let out a scream, muddled with laughter, as he lifted me up, spun me, turned me upside down, shook me a bit and set me down on the floor.

“Grandpa!” I yelled. He tickled my ribs, neck and hips with his bony fingers, sending me into a desperate fit of giggling and gasping for air.

“Are you okay?” She said again.
I looked into her eyes finally and I knew it was true. Grandpa Jack was gone.

Two days later, I sat upon a harsh wooden pew in a church in Denver – an unforgiving seat in this, a house of forgiveness. My mom sat to my left with Molly in her lap, and my dad to the left of her. I knew what we were here for. I knew that this was a funeral for my grandfather, but there was something off about it. I’d seen funerals before, on the television. There was always a casket at the front of the aisle, near the altar. But there was no casket here and I didn’t understand.

The funeral began. People said things. There was music. But I didn’t understand. I looked around at the people –my aunts, my uncles, my mom and dad, their eyes all fixed on something in front of them – not the speaker, nor the singer, nor the organist – something else. I looked forward and saw it: A small, simple, vase-looking thing sitting atop a white tapestry-covered altar. Despite the words and the song and the music, everyone looked at the thing.

I looked to my mom, her eyes moist and locked on the object before us. I looked to my dad. No tears, but a blank, sort of lost expression on his face, like he was staring at something beyond that which I could see. I looked back at the thing, then to mom, then to dad, then back to mom as she looked into my eyes, then back to the thing. I understood. My grandfather was in there.

I lost it and buried my face in mom’s shoulder, barely breathing for the remainder of the ceremony.

I would learn some years later that the shot fired that night was not an accident. My grandfather had had too much to drink, and an altercation with his new wife had pushed him over the edge - something about an ex-boyfriend or ex-husband of hers. He threw his wallet at her, muttered something about them not being able to identify him, and left. His body was found the next day. Beside him, an empty bottle of scotch and a pistol. A hole in his head.

On the night before mom picked me up from school, dad had left town “for work,” so that he could search for his father.

I prayed. I prayed all the way back to Cheyenne in the back of our car. I prayed for several nights after we’d returned home. I prayed that Grandpa Jack was happy and that he knew how much I loved him.

I wish today, that I could feel the kind of faith I felt as a child, even if only for a moment. I wish I knew in my heart that God was here right now, watching over me and my family. I feel something, but it’s not faith. Perhaps it is hope. Hope that we really are more than mere bodies. Hope, that in some shape or form, my soul will meet those of my loved ones after our physical selves are gone from this Earth.

It was summer's morning when I saw you
Lying there.
With lights dim, surreal
Was the moment.

I found my place among one of the plush, violet chairs
Lining the interior of the room.
I could not believe it was really you.
I allowed my eyes to fall upon you as you rested.
Tried to see where you must have been
That very moment.

I drifted,

Searching the banks of my memory,
Careful to stow away
Each and every piece of you left
Untouched by fog.

Silence was broken by cries of others,
And truth settled
Within itself.
My vision blurred.
Heart sank.

You were beautiful,
Grandfather.
You are still beautiful.

I wrote these clumsy words during a lonely night years ago, on the dock next to a decaying house I rented a few miles outside of Bremerton, Washington. I sat at the dock’s warped wooden edge, thinking about my family, many of whom I hadn’t seen in some years. I reflected on those I felt I’d lost, and those I’d actually lost.

Eventually, I thought about that warm summer day. I thought about my mom’s father, Grandpa Kenny, and I wished he knew how much I missed him. The only way I could tell him it seemed, was to write to him.

As I wrote, I was seventeen again, sitting in that room, staring at the elevated coffin holding my Grandpa Kenny. There he was, lying there, so calm. Not moving, not laughing his throaty laugh at the expense of my mother and my aunts, not teaching me how to properly swing a 9-iron, not torturing me with the dreaded “whisker-rub,” wherein he would pin me down and scratch my rosy cheeks with his second-day beard growth, and not reaching for the little mint candies he kept on the dashboard of his mammoth red and white van. He just lay there, sleeping it seemed.

It settled in, as it often does, when I looked into the wet, swollen eyes of my mother and her sisters. That’s when my vision blurred. That’s when I begged God to take my Grandpa.

I prayed.

Please God, accept my Grandpa in Heaven. Invite him into your home, your arms. Make him content and at peace. Let him meet and embrace those he has lost through the years. And let him know that we love him and he will see all of us again. Thank you.

Time passes, as do the emotions that go with mourning the loss of a loved one. Before long, I am questioning the existence of God all over again. I wonder how there can be the type of God that Christians believe in, when so many people are hurting. I wonder why God sometimes lets bad people live and good people die. I wonder why I can’t feel Him when I’m told I’m supposed to.

My questions never get me anywhere. I cannot believe in the Christian mythology of Heaven and Hell, or the Book of Genesis, or that God is an omnipotent being - a creator, and final judge as to how we spent our time on Earth. However, I also cannot believe that we are nothing but biology – that we live, we die, and that’s it. There has to be something.

Now, doesn’t that sound like a desperate statement? There has to be something. Isn’t that a prayer?

Please, be there. Whoever or whatever you are. Just, please be there.

I envy the faithful. I want so much to believe what they believe – to feel the comfort and the warmth in knowing, knowing that God is there. For now, it seems, I will remain the hopeful.

My dad’s mother, Grandma Betty, passed away when I was five years old. She’d been sick for some time, though I didn’t know it then. I would later recall having dreamt that I was thirty thousand feet up, on an airplane with my mom. I don’t know where we were going, only that I was sitting in the window seat, looking out over the blooming landscape of bright white clouds below us.

“What do you see?” mom asked.

“Clouds,” I said. “I’m trying to find Grandma.”

We were after all, flying over Heaven.

Faith is to believe what you do not see; the reward of this faith is to see what you believe.
-St. Augustine

On Being Content

...

It was a Sunday, in the early afternoon, with the sun peeking through wisps of slightly translucent clouds, as my wife and I worked in our front yard. She was planting a new variety of snow peas and spring flowers, while I battled the weeds and grass threatening to permeate the garden. While driving a shovel into a stubborn family of dandelions, I glanced over at our dog, Annabelle, a husky-heeler-comedian mix. I ceased my shoveling activities and watched her for a while. Moments ago, I’d laughed as she shoved her nose, neck, and back into the earth, rolling and sliding around, loving every delightful second of it. She lay a few feet away from us now, her white fur inundated with grass and other bits of nature. I watched as she squinted in the sun, turning her nose up to sniff the air. She seemed to be smiling.

Quite suddenly, her ears popped up as her attention shot to the ground before her. She began pawing at something, a bug most likely. She let it go and looked up at me. Now she really smiled, her tail wagging wildly.

Those who claim dogs don’t smile are kidding themselves.

Dogs smile.

I looked away quickly so that she would not feel obligated to get up. I waited a moment and then looked back. She’d gone on with her squinting and her sniffing and her smiling. I could see that she was just happy to be with us. To share the yard with us. To be among us while we worked. Even though we were not playing with her, stroking her belly, or talking to her in that voice reserved for only her, I could see that she was enjoying herself. I thought about this for while; Here was this dog, lying in the grass, sniffing at the sweet air, taking pleasure in the simplest of things because she was with those she loved. She was content.

We all strive for contentment. Few of us actually achieve it. We mistake contentment as being that time and place where the chips have fallen and landed in perfect patterns of love and success. Often placing more importance on the latter than the former. We have the career we’ve always wanted. The house we’ve always dreamed of. The lover we’ve always fantasized after. We feel good about our bodies and we fit easily into our ideal pant size. We have money. And the dog never shits where it shouldn’t.

The problem with this idea of contentment is its practicality. Especially for those of us who have grown up in the United States and other capitalist nations. For, one of the most basic of principles on which capitalism is based is the principle of dissatisfaction. We are reminded daily that for every item we own, there is a better, faster, sexier version of it available for purchase. We are inundated with voices and images of commercial interest no matter where we are at a given time. Television, radio, billboards and the internet provide the more obvious examples. But there are others. Commercials found within songs and movies. Posters found on and inside busses, trains, taxis, stadiums, libraries, restaurants, theaters, parks, gas stations, even schools. We are told every day that we need new cars, homes, jeans, shoes, underwear, and razors with five blades because they work so much better than razors with four. For Christmas, we receive the electronic toy we’ve been drooling over for months! Only to learn three weeks later that a new version has hit the market. A far superior version if only for its sleekness and size. Thus, making the toy we were once so happy to have received, inferior. Even embarrassing. There is a word for this ongoing purchasing of items one feels he or she needs in order to get ahead in life: Yuppie. In the 1989 anthropological book Our Kind, Marvin Harris calls the yuppie, “perhaps the most voracious and predatory consumers of preciosities the world has ever seen,” and further, that “it is an unrelenting condition of success imposed from above in a society where wealth and power depend on mass consumption. Only people who can prove themselves to the ethos of consumerism are admitted to the higher circles of consumer society.” The problem with this trek for the next best thing is that there is no ceiling. Once one reaches the “higher circles,” there is only more room for costly ascension, and consequently, more debt.

So how do we stem this relentless consumerism? Do we live in the past, as hermits against commerce? The answer can be found in equilibrium. It is okay to want to upgrade your life, but it’s not an upgrade if you’re simply taking another step down a path of perpetual dissatisfaction. We can be humble and proud and thankful for all that we currently have, while still working toward improvements in our lives. In essence, contentment does not equal complacency.

The same can be said of our families and our friends. Whether vocally, or internally, we often treat the ones we love with the same regard as a pair of socks… “I wish she were prettier… I wish he would read more…” We apply the rules of capitalism to our human relationships. We are satisfied, for a time, with our lover, but we keep our eyes open in case someone “better” comes along. We worship and respect our parents until we realize they’re only people, and then we visit them from time to time out of a sense of obligation. We abandon our friends as soon as they do not fit the current mold of our lives. I’ve done that. I had a friend named Mike. Overall, a good guy. We hung out all the time. Got into trouble. Got each other out of trouble. Even shared a house once. But as I worked to better myself, my job, my place in society, he did not. It frustrated me that he did not wish to follow me on my course of ascension to a better life. Since I grew into a “new person” and he did not, I abandoned him. We have not spoken for over 3 years.

I have fallen victim numerous times to the molesting consumerism of our society. I have gone into debt and had nothing to show for it. I have forsaken high school flames because of the opinions of others. I have lost friends because of my own self-righteousness. I have accepted these failures of mine, and used them to try and gain a more complete sense of what it means to be content.

Today, I have a beautiful wife, a great house, and a funny dog.
I’m like anyone else. Sometimes I wish my wife would wear a sexier pair of jeans. I look forward to someday buying a bigger house (One with two bathrooms). And I wish the dog didn’t sometimes shit in the garden. But I am not dissatisfied, and I am not complacent. I am riding that middle line. I seek improvement, but I do not take for granted the things I already have. Life is far too short for perpetual dissatisfaction.

So I continue my journey towards self-improvement, while taking pleasure in all the small, special moments of my life, of which there are many. Such as… My wife’s inspiring intelligence, and her jokes at my expense… Curling up on the floor with the dog, rubbing the soft fur behind her ears… A great cup of coffee… A great glass of wine… Seattle in the summertime… Discovering new music… Discovering a great book… Sun and rain simultaneously touching my face… Seeing the true expanse of the stars, away from the city lights…

Fear and Loathing in the US of A - Part II

...As I was saying... I was high atop my throne, thinking about the dark and dodgy road our nation is currently screaming down.
We are the gas-guzzling 18-wheeler on the down slope of a mountain pass, break lines cut.
Maybe Keano Reeves will save us... He always does.

As we are now in the midst of the Congressional Confirmation hearings for Supreme Court Justice nominee Samuel Alito, we are reminded that there are those in the White House, the Congress, and potentially the Supreme Court, who would love to reverse Roe v. Wade, the landmark 1973 decision which recognizes a woman's constitutional right to privacy, thereby legalizing abortion. This decision has, for 33 years now, been considered a major legal precedence regarding not only what is right and wrong, but also a woman's inherent right to protect her own life as the case may be.
Whether or not abortion is legal, there will always be the pro-choice / pro-life argument. It is an argument based not only on individual morals, values, and faiths, but also individual philosophies on when "life" really begins... As in, when does a "human being" become a "person"?
But maybe it's not so bad... As my favorite comedian, David Cross, recently said (tongue in cheek), "What's the big deal? Last time I checked, all the wire hangers now have rubber tips..."
Criminalizing abortion will not stop abortion. Let's try to keep that in mind.
Women will have these procedures whether they're legal or not. Making them illegal will only make them more dangerous.
Question: What kind of free nation would allow a bunch of middle-aged, predominately white men to decide what is appropriate for a woman and her body?
It seems to me that this is one of those issues better left up to the individual. It is the individual after all, that has to live with the decisions he or she makes.

Energy…
This administration is hurting not only the United States but also the rest of the world because if its policies affecting this issue. Right-wing Republican leaders want so badly to begin drilling in the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge, and they claim that doing so will help the United States to wean itself off of its foreign oil dependency.
Truth is, if this happens… If we begin drilling operations in Alaska, the only thing it will improve is the lining of rich white pockets. It’s the senators and oil companies that will profit the most if we open ANWR to drilling. Common citizens like you and I would realistically save only a few cents per gallon at the pump as a result of ANWR drilling, and that would be at least 10 years down the road.
Apart from the financial aspect of the whole thing… what are we really accomplishing? Do we really have to develop every corner of the world and suck whatever we can out of it?

In 2000, the world had 6.1 billion human inhabitants. This number could rise to more than 9 billion in the next 50 years. http://www.prb.org

As the population of the world grows exponentially during the next century, we will be faced with some difficult questions about our level of world resource consumption.
All we really accomplish by opening ANWR for drilling is the extension of an outdated system.
We as a nation need to start looking for new modes of energy which will not only sustain us today, but carry us into centuries to come.
Additionally, we need to stem this republican philosophy of instant gratification when it comes to U.S. energy and economic policies. If our government spent as much money on the research and development of renewable energy sources (hydrogen, solar, geothermal, biodiesals, etc) as it does on wars to protect current oil interests abroad, we'd have a better foothold on our country's future.
...I'm sure there are many out there who would disagree with me (and have disagreed with me) regarding that last statement, but that's a wholly seperate debate, centered on pure emotion and so-called "patriotism" versus unbridled fact.

I'll wrap this up with this (some content copied from an earlier reply to someone's comment from Part I)...
Any time anyone questions our governments policies, actions, motives, or calls them out on something that is fundamentally wrong, you get accused of being unpatriotic. Truth is, I f**king love the United States, which is precisely why I pay attention to what's going on, and speak up when I don't think something jives with the principles this country was supposed to have been founded on. The biggest and best reason that this is such a great country, is that people like me are permitted and even encouraged to speak freely and dissent when necessary.
People say, "How can you say these things at a time like this, when our troops are dying for our freedom?"
Our freedom?
The Iraq war is tied to our freedom?
I would love for someone to educate me as to how this war is in any way protecting "our freedom."
Iraq did not attack us. Iraq did not have the means to attack us. There is a laundry list of facts confirming this.
Yes, yes, yes, yes... we are doing some great things in Iraq. I'm not questioning that. We're creating a democracy where there was once a violent dictatorship. Saddam was a bad dude and deserves everything he has coming his way.
-That does not make it right to ignore crucial evidence, and to LIE to the American public as a means to rush into a war that would sacrifice over 2,000 American soldiers and (as a new and highly accurate study shows) approximately 100,000 innocent Iraqi civilians.

In closing, those of you who claim that it is wrong for me to write these things "when our friends and relatives are dying"... could stand to learn a thing or two about patriotism.

Fear and Loathing in the US of A - Part I

I was sitting on the toilet recently, thinking to myself, "Self, why are you so afraid for the future of our country? Won't things just go on and prevail the way they always have? Why do you worry so much about our government, our citizens, and our future?"
I was pushing really hard for an answer... Straining to find some reason behind my worries... And out it came.

It is true that throughout our history there have always been right-leaning leaders with extremely conservative agendas, just as it is true that there have been left-leaning leaders with more liberal or progressive agendas. As a nation, we've always been on a political pendulum, changing directions from one generation to the next. The question is: What has changed, or has anything changed?
Will this simply be a phase in our political climate? A quarter moon crossing the sky one night... a half moon crossing the same sky some nights later?
I hope to God this is true.
But I do know why I fear the path our country is currently on...
The truth is, today's right-wing conservative leaders really are a new breed of political animal... and they're working to rein in decades of human progress...

The "War on Terror"...?
There always have and always will be terrorists. There is no such thing as "winning" a war on terror. Rumsfeld himself has stated that he believes the "war on terror" (I shall continue to use quotation marks because I think the term itself is almost as big a joke as the "war on drugs") may last up to 100 years (a number he surely found somewhere up his ass).
For as long as we exist on this planet, there will be individuals from other parts of the world that will hate the United States, and will be willing to give their own lives so long as they take some of us with them.
For as long as our country's foreign policies work to exert our will upon other nations, there will be those who fight against that will.
Now don't get me wrong. I'm not sympathizing with those who wish to kill innocent Americans. I believe these murderers must be dealt with... But to slap a patriotic label on it... "The War on Terror"... and to breed fear into the hearts and minds of Americans as a means to chip away at our constitutional rights of privacy, is just wrong. Our current administration as well as many members of Congress are committing a kind of psychological attack on its own citizens. Just think of the "USA Patriot Act". The Administration used a campaign of post-911 fear to get this unconstitutional document passed into law. After all, what congressional representative would want to be known as the one who voted against something named the "USA Patriot Act"?
-And what about these secret (and explicitly illegal) wiretaps the president authorized? Bush's argument is that the Constitution grants the commander-in-chief the right to do what is necessary to protect the American public. While this is true, it is a HUGE stretch to say that the president can go above the law and above the courts any time he sees fit.
I'd love to be able to break the law and then claim some vague interpretation of the constitution as my defense.

To be continued...