Archive for July, 2015

The Unbearable Whiteness of Being

If you have medical insurance and you make less than $50k a year and you still get a bill from the emergency room you should just toss it. I had to visit the emergency room about eight months ago. I was passing a kidney stone and was really only there for the morphine. I wanted to land on a cloud instead of the bathroom floor if I crashed again.

I knew there was nothing else they could do for me.

They did some scans of my torso and gave me an $800 saline drip ( $1.75 wholesale).

Long story short, I got the morphine.

Now I drink lots of cranberry juice and lemon in my water.

So far so good.

I don’t care about that bill. If I ever make any money again I will. If I can’t pay you and I’m not even sure why I owe you, I could not give less of a shit.  The hospital can sue me.  It will still be my go to emergency room if I ever have to go through that again.  It’s really close by.

I live in Los Angeles. If you make less than $50k a year here you should qualify for food stamps. I want a handicapped placard for my rear view on account of my ingrown toenails and sciatica.

I don’t qualify for shit.

It’s not like ever I tried.

I’m your typical liberal.

Lazy and shiftless and just looking for a free ride.

I don’t have a goddamn thing, not on paper at least.

I used to.

A good job, a house, cars.

I didn’t lose my job or my stuff because of the recession. But afterwards it took me a couple years to find something that paid at least a living wage. I had to sell a lot of my stuff.  I had to live with my parents. It’s been a struggle ever since. I’m not complaining. I’m a hell of a lot luckier than millions of other people. I’m a white male with a resume in the best country in the world.

I doubt I’ll ever be able to retire.

We live in amazing times.  We work harder, longer and more efficiently than any other country.  We are afforded less vacation time and sick leave than any other country.  Education and healthcare cost about a ten times more than they used to.  Seriously, a thousand percent more.  Way more than any other country.  I don’t make any more than back then and neither do you.  We can no longer afford either.

Something like half of us are living check to check.

That’s insane.

It’s not sustainable.

This is why we’re fucking nuts.

White people need to stop voting republican and scare this shit out of democrats by overwhelming them.  We simply don’t have time for a third party, it’s too late for that.  White people need to understand that we are no longer the shit in America or be complicit in becoming a third world country.

Acting like it matters in the scheme of things that an immigrant mother gets $12k a year in government subsidies for her seven children is moronic. Standing in front of all the modern horrors we can casually survey everyday and thinking this is worthy of anyone’s attention is moronic. We live in a country that blows people just like her to fucking bits all over the world every day.

Find something meaningful to give a self righteous shit about.

White people can still save us.  But only if we stop worrying about black men running amok and Mexicans raping our women.  Only if we actually realize this isn’t any longer about the color of our skin or the content of our character.

This is not about takers vs. makers.

This is about a concentration of wealth.  Income redistribution but not like on the TV.  The wealthiest one percent have always gotten that way with a leg up and by shitting down the backs of thousands but now they are getting away with too goddamn much.  Power is their crack. They drool and careen behind closed doors, drunk with avaricious obliquity.  These fuckers are out of control.  They hate us.  They’re no longer bothered by what anyone else thinks.  It’s a harbinger.  An omen.

Us white folks used to be somewhat excluded from the military industrial complex, the financial industrial complex and the energy industrial complex leveraging the political industrial complex.  The beginning of the the end of that was Vietnam.  These days it’s rolling over all of us with impunity and without regard to complexion.  These days being fucked is an equal opportunity liability.  Rich people no longer despise the poor and minorities nearly as much as they see the middle class as an inconvenience.  An obstacle not to be gotten over or around, but eliminated.

They disenfranchise voters, craft and pay for the passage of profitable legislation, implement policy and ultimately buy our elected representatives and the very elections in which they run.

It’s a goddamn disaster and they don’t give a mad fuck what color we are.

The quicker we understand that we are no different than anyone else and never have been, the quicker we can get on with what needs to happen next.  We need to get over all this bullshit they would have us spend the rest of our lives in hand wringing self righteous despair of.  They have at least half of us pining and whining to take our country back from the other half by jerking at the strings of a sense of entitlement that is now archaic and obsolete.

Take our country back from what?

From who?

Nobody is coming for your guns, gay people don’t lust after your brats, black men just want a decent job and Latinos wouldn’t mind finally being recognized for how unbelievably fucking hard they work. We don’t all want man caves and nurseries and lawns and cement ponds and fancy eatin’ tables.

We aren’t all the same and we need to stop being distracted by that.

The big secret to equality and justice is one of economics. Racism is a symptom.  Greed is the disease. Class warfare has always been the hallmark of an aspiring plutocracy.

You gotta hand it to them, they swindle us with our own egos.   Rob us blind with fear and gyp us out of our dignity.  White people are kinda new to this.  We really need to catch up.  White people today are indisputable proof that the cancer of absolute power has metastasized absolutely.  We aren’t as bad off as other races yet but it won’t be long.

Yes, we need to take our country back.

From the people who actually took it.

Drinks for my friends.

 

 

It Berns

Every time, they say this election is the most important of our lifetime and I’m sure it’s been true of each one.

This one looms and it’s definitely true.

If democrats lose the presidency, we’ll all end up in FEMA camps.

A saw a list a few days ago of top donors for Bernie and Hillary.

Hillary is all banks and Wall Street law firms.

Bernie is all unions.

I’ve said it before, Bernie Sanders is the best presidential candidate of my lifetime.  He’s not perfect I know and I have real reservations.  I honestly don’t give a mad fuck about his foreign policy experience because I realize that the only existential threat to the American way is greed.  ISIS and Iran ain’t got shit on corporate American avarice.  My country tis of thee  isn’t broke at all.  I’m getting tired of pointing this out.  There is plenty of money.  We spend it on the wrong things and give it to the wrong people.

We the people are broke though.  This time it really is the economy stupid.  Inequality is always leveraged by the distribution of capital.  That’s why we have culture wars. There are actual social democracies where earnest students pay little to nothing to study and healthcare is a right.  And they aren’t out of their goddamn minds all the time.

What is working for Bernie now is what will work for him as president.  He stumps and big ass happy crowds show up.  President Sanders will have to continue all anachronistic like FDR and adopt the bully pulpit as policy.  As a tactic.  Without losing stride,  he keeps talking to the people in public all the time.  He has to make the people make him do things and he can only do that if he keeps doing exactly what he’s doing now.

I understand how archaic it is.

He’s a populist, that’s what they do.

Whatever the telegenic euphemism  is. Town Hall.  Webinar.  Cable news.  Keep stumping.  This is where accountability begins with the elected and ends with the electorate.  Bernie Sanders is doing this now.  It’s pretty goddamn cool.

Apoplexy if a republican wins.  Just look at them.  It may or may not get too much worse under plutocrat owned Hillary.  Or we can roll the bones for Bernie, who never squanders an opportunity in front of an audience to say say exactly what he’s saying.

Door number one is Donald Trump or Jeb Bush according to today’s forecast. Door number two is Hillary who gave a big 45 minute speech on the economy the other day that was 43 minutes of generic, pine scented air freshener.  Low calorie pablum almost indistinguishable from Scott Walker’s announcement that same day. Door number three is Bernie Sanders who hasn’t been fucking kidding for over half a century.

We are in a shit storm here and Bernie Sanders is the only one talking only about the biblical proportions of it.  He is the only one talking about what continues to cause it. He actually talks about what happens if we don’t do anything about it.  He is the only one talking about what absolutely must be done about it.

Whether or not Bernie Sanders is electable, whether or not he can prevail over whatever bozo the republicans foist is ultimately up to us.

The fulcrum of the sale rarely rests on reason but almost always reclines on romance.

Drinks for my friends.

It was going to be huge

I am watching the Donald Trump and I am in awe.  I have never heard a man say so much stupid with so much conviction.  So willing to suck his own dick in front of everyone.  He is as absurdly pompous as he presents.  Forcing every  interview into an agenda of toxic racism to riot the willing.

He pisses in the republican pool by  pissing on and pissing off brown people and he’s the most popular bigot at the club.

Awesome.

It’s an early grand finale.  He’s gonna walk away and it will be boring.  I’m sad about it already but I love that the only reason he got in was for the money and of course the auto erotic asphyxiation angle and now it’s actually costing him money and strangling him.

The great unwashed adore him for exactly the same reasons I do.

He’s amazing.

So this sucks.  There is no substitute for the Donald. Who among them can comfortably circus his volume of ego the way he does?  There is no other capable of this noxious dumbfuckery.  It’s a shallow bench without him. No candle power or charisma.

I don’t believe he ever had any intention of becoming president.  He’s probably as amazed as the rest of us that he’s polling in first place in the first place.  All this means is he’s looking to bail even quicker than originally intended.  It’s costing him actual money, his brand is genuinely soiled and he’s getting over on the mouth breathers far better than he anticipated.  There’s a lot more of them than he thought.  He’s understandably afraid of them.  Scary shit for someone so full of himself.

It’s all a crying shame because as the absolute worst person to ever run for president, Donald Trump  is the best environmental disaster to ever contaminate the teabilly ecosystem.  He really is Fukishima for the conservative base.   His public masturbation has a political half life of well over fifty years.  Every month he stays is another reactor melting down and killing potential voters for at least a half century.

Bullies are cowards and he’s going to pull a fade.

The last interesting thing about him will be how much pride he leaves on the floor.

Dammit.

Drinks for my friends.

 

 

 

Pageantry

It’s rich.

I’ll grant you that.

The holy indignation.

It is intrinsically rewarding.

They say the supreme court made a law.  Nope.  They say removing the confederate flag from government houses is a violation of the first amendment.  Nope. They say it’s injection of racism into a historical context of proud heritage.  Complete crap.

The irony, it burns.

I’m a little disappointed though.

The sound of their heads exploding is not quite what I imagined.

I figured it would be louder.

But it’s like grapes imploding.

Sort of gassy.

I was hoping for some fire and brimstone moral turpitude kinda shit.  Maybe some kind of widespread stigmata outbreak or a gang of vampire exorcists descending on unsuspecting heathens with fire hoses gushing holy water.  The crackle of burning flesh and it’s lingering perfume.

But no.

More of the same narcissistic intellectually lazy binary crap about the sanctity of the institution of marriage and the ridiculous pride of an entire region of this country that lost a war a hundred and fifty years ago for the best reason I can possibly imagine.  That stupid goddamn flag represents nothing more than the enslavement, subjugation, oppression, rape and murder of an entire people.

If you’re troubled by conundrums like how is preventing the confederate flag over state houses any different than forcing bakeries to make and sell cakes to gay and lesbian couples for their weddings,  stop reading my shit now and stab yourself in the eye with a fork.  If you’re a redneck teabilly male experiencing any pleasure at all listening to Fuckface von Clownstick rhapsodize bigoted about Mexicans, stop reading my shit now and vigorously scrub your taint with a brick of pumice until you weep out loud.

Every action has an equal and opposite reaction.

The whole republican field is pathetic.

Mittens is back in I hear.

An equal and opposite reaction.

What we are seeing is act three of our first black presidency.

Act one was denial.

Act two was a more vociferous denial.

They have lost their shame and are feeling fresh.  They shrugged off that brief period when it wasn’t cool to be racist.  None of the republican contenders are even trying.  Not one of them can get out front and call Donald Trump a prick bastard for his racist rants.  There is no decency in Smallville.  They just can’t risk calling Trump a racist ass clown.

Act three.

It’s not worth it.

There are no heroes on this republican bench.

None.

Every single one is the worst possible example of what they say they stand for.

Work with me here because this makes it easy.  You’ve got this woman who has been around forever and has serious gravity and experience.  Sure, she’s compromised but she is regal and serene.  So adept she probably meets with Satan once or twice a week.  And then we have Bernie Sanders.  Bernie knows the devil but so far has not danced with him.  He has not danced with him.  He is not perfect but we can see him.  There is no mystery.  He is consistent.

On the other hand, you have a barn door wide open.  Zealots crashing out with the worst of intentions. All of them phony salesmen of halcyon days that never actually happened. They sell Norman Rockwell but you’ll end up with Ralph Steadman or even worse, Nagel.  They just want you to believe them.  Everyone of them will guarantee you an afterlife whether they believe in it or not.  Before  that, they swear you will prosper financially.  They’re not kidding about that. Just vote for them one more time.

Just one more time.

They all believe in you.

Just one more chance.

It is the fourth of July.  I live in the San Fernando Valley.  I cleaned the shit out of my kitchen.  I stood on my balcony last night and listened to the fireworks exploding all over and tried to imagine it as the same sound all the other people hear in all the other countries where we wage war everyday.

Drinks for my friends.

 

 

 

 

Confessions Of An Electron Director chapter four

Then there was Joyce.

I never knew her last name or even the spelling of her first.

I don’t think she actually had an official title.

We called her Joycee.

She could neither read nor write.

As a runner, she could make or break you.

If she wasn’t on your side, you were fucked.

She actually carried things on her head all the time in a bright dress.

Joycee was a Jamaican woman of almost indeterminate age and an accent with the viscosity of syrup.   It took me a long week to even begin to understand her.  Medium height with a pronounced pot belly and a deep chuckle.

Despite her latent power she was almost entirely benevolent yet still a powerful ally.

My first day in the magic castle I misunderstood her so completely that I walked straight into the only public women’s bathroom and there stood Sheri Lazerus.  She was adjusting her stretch pants, approaching the mirror and looked at me like I was a serial rapist on fire.

“Wrong door honey”.

My face was hot.  Fuck me I was embarrassed.

I would clean that bathroom for years.

I was off to a brilliant start.

What I understand now is Joycee was directing me to the runners closet next door.

What Joycee did, if she had your back, is cover your ass and keep you from looking stupid.  She could do everything three times as fast and way better.  If you didn’t cross her, if you respected her, she was capable of delivering you into good favor.  She worked hard.  A sweet and kind woman.  We became friends once she decided I wasn’t a fool.  It took some time because I was a fool.  I loaned her a few bucks here and there and never asked for it back.  When her sentence started with “Grant me a favor” in that humid dialect, I knew she was about to hit me up for something.  She sold me shitty Mexican pot now and then.  Occasionally she sent me home with food.  Good food.  I sometimes drove her home in my shitbox VW Bug to an awful and dangerous neighborhood instead of her taking the bus.

She was always happy.  She was almost always smiling.  It was a sad day if she wasn’t.

She ran the grill out behind the studios on Friday afternoons.

She cooked like a mom.

Just about everyone respected, trusted and appreciated her.

We were rarely at odds.  She hated it when I brushed my teeth in the runner’s closet sink.  The same place we washed the dishes for all five studios every night and the fruit for every control room each morning.  She reserved her most furious anger for when the night shift runners would get drunk and high and throw all the dishes away instead of washing them but that’s a story for another chapter.

My favorite memory of Joycee is from one early morning when I was still on the day shift.  It had been one of those nights where all the rooms went down late and the entire complex was in chaos.  I walked in and just about nothing had been done.  The night runners cheesed it.  It was ugly.  The second studio on the right after the lethal door is Stuidio A.  I was late and and probably hungover and  Joycee is already there.  We start picking up trash and collecting dishes.  I go for a cart and come back.  We were loading it up,  filling trash bags back and forth when she makes a happy noise.  I look at her and she is beaming.  In one hand is an ashtray and in the other a big fat Jeff Porcaro kind of roach.

I put on a Toni Childs CD and we fire it up.   All of the sudden it’s an easy Sunday morning on the bridge of a starship.  Beyond the console and a wall of angled glass, is the basketball gymnasium live room lit by a sun that began by banging through the only window in the entire place and down a dark hallway to just then, politely invade the east loading bay doors of Studio A. Everything is fresh and glowing.  Time passes.  We are sharing the record, laughing, singing and dancing a little as we lounge.

I love that record to this day.

Time passes and we’re back on our feet and getting it done because urgency has replaced joy.

The rest of the morning she is beside me and apart from me but we are of the same mind.  Toni Childs in our heads, doing whatever we have to do to make it all acceptable before everyone else sees it.

Saving ourselves.

One day years later, Joycee retired.  We had a big party with presents and food and it was the first and only time I ever saw her cry.  As far as I know she went back to Jamaica to open a restaurant.

It’s the last anyone ever heard of her that I know.

I can still see her and hear her in my head.

I miss her a lot.

Drinks for my friends.

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