Voice

Still trying to find my "voice" here. I maintain my insistence that this is not a political blog, there are already plenty of those. I suppose I am just posting my observations mostly, which occasionally tends to include current events in the news, as well as more personal issues. I don't tend to be too opinionated. I simply observe. I don't make strong opinions until I've done a lot of observing. But that tends to make me seem vapid and weak minded. I know what I like but I don’t push that onto others. So I beg your indulgence while I struggle to find my voice in this medium.

I hate fucking liars

I hate fucking liars. Lying liars everywhere.

I even hate white-washed lies that fall under the guise of exaggerations. I get it all the time. From the benign “I’ll be in at ten.” from a co-worker who doesn’t arrive before 11. Why not just say ‘I won’t be in until 11’? Does it make you feel better to have me think that you’ll be in a ten when you won’t. And if I tell people you’ll be in at ten and you’re not does that make me a liar by association? In all honesty, I’ll admit I’ve done this myself. For example, when I have a personal appointment across town during my workday and I know there’s no way in hell that I can make it back in under an hour but I say I will anyway, hoping that my co-workers will be so busy that they won’t notice I’ve been gone for almost two hours. So I am guilty of that. But I still hate it.

Some people exaggerate all the time. They’ll say “I’ve talked with ten potential clients this week.” or “We’ve represented fifty other clients with that same problem.” I take everything that people like that say and just divide by two. Probably gets closer to the truth that way. In the end it simply dilutes everything they have to say.

But I really hate the bald-faced lies. Like when someone tells me they’ll have what they owe me by the end of the week, and then it never happens until a week or more later than that. Or that they paid the storage bill when they knew full well that they had not. Believe you me, I’ve lived with a liar and I looked past the lying eyes long past what was even healthy much less forgiving. So I know.

People can be so gullible. I’m sometimes guilty of that too, although I’m getting better at being skeptical in my advancing years. Take the American public, for example, and their believing Bush’s lies about the so-called need for this war in order to protect us from this invisible enemy called terrorism. WMD? CIA? Cheney apparently lied to the grand jury in the Plamegate affair. Who can we trust?

Indeed.

Not the Who->. Yes, the rock band. Or perhaps their marketing people. But there are rumours circulating that in the upcoming DVD release of Quadrophenia, a performer, who has had some less than socially-acceptable behaviour associated with him, has been digitized out and replaced with another performer, who played the character some time later and who supposedly has a less-controversial personal life. I have no actual proof of this, so I could be guilty of spreading vicious rumours but it makes me wonder...where will it all end?

Can you see the real me...doctor?

Changes

To all one of you out there who are reading this blog regularly you may have noticed some subtle changes I made recently to the Links column. The old Favorites are still there. While I’ve been linking around, trying to still figure out what the buzz about this blogging thing is, I have stumbled onto a few that I wanted to share, or if nothing else, provide quick and easy access to for myself.

I started reading Leonard Pitts when I subscribed to a daily newspaper. I think I am agreement with him about 90% of the time. I since stopped subscribing to the daily newspaper convinced that it only brought sad/bad news into the sanctuary of our home. So I look up Leonard online. He writes for the Miami Herald but his columns reflect a national conscious.

I remembered reading something by Robert Scheer that I liked around 9/11. I found him again recently on Truthout. He’s a straight shooter. I like that. I’ll be getting re-acquainted with his writing in the near future.

Working For Change is a site I found today while researching Prop 80. We’re having a special election out here next month and I am determined to vote against everything Arnold is pushing. But the wording in my voter pamphlet on this proposition was more confusing than most. So I went to the Secretary of State website to see who was putting funding behind it and against it. Discovering that Working Assets is in support of it I am comfortable maintaining my straight line against all of Arnold’s initiatives. If you have some information with which you feel might sway my vote the other way, I welcome it. But be forewarned I plan on mailing my substitute ballot by early next week.

Wunderground is a site I’ve linked to for quite a while. Members can upload photos. Some of them are quite beautiful and professional in quality. I can waste several minutes a day here.

My Wish List is just what it says. I saw some other bloggers post their wish list and so I thought I’d be shameless too. It’s just for fun. But just in case you’re wondering what to get me for Christmas or my birthday, I’ve made it quite easy for you now, eh?

Bitch PhD is yet another liberal blog. I’m still getting to know this feminist liberal blogger, but I could not resist linking up to her once I saw the photo in the header. I’m the shocked one in the background.

Blue Streak is one of those blogs that makes me wonder, “where do these people find the time?”. But at first glance, I like that she has a link to a Yiddish Dictionary. Knowing Yiddish and some Latin phrases makes me seem pretentious but I like it anyway. The blog has mega-links and seems to have some cultural depth with book and movie reviews. I can always use a little culture and not the moldy bread kind.

Ok, well that about does it for today. I’ve actually been handed some real work. Uggh.

Mired in Miers

So many things about this Miers nomination to the Supreme Court sicken me. Not the least of which is that I find myself in agreement with Pat Buchanan. Oh Lord, the end MUST be near. But Buchanan is merely stating the obvious which EVERYONE must see and that is that Miers qualifications are “utterly non-existent”.

It would seem illogical that’s she’s never ever been a judge, never once. Not on a muni-court, not small claims court, not even traffic court... nothing. What kind of message does this send up? That any lawyer (if s/he sends the required amount of flowery cards and kudos to da-man) can find themselves bound for the highest judgeship in the land? I mean, don’t lawyers have big enough egos already? The ones I know do. Does this means that I should be on queue for having novels published just because I’d like to be a published writer? Even though I have none of the credentials required for such an honor. All that I need to do is to start up a relationship with the head of a big publishing house and send them their favorite chocolates or brandy or birthday cards and I’m in. Right? That’s all it takes? Puleeez.

I can understand how the Roberts nomination went through (despite MY representatives objections). At least he had some creds.

But Bush seems to have really lost what little grip he may have ever had on his mind. The guy is out of control. But then I said this would happen back when I was preaching to the choir of my friends and family last October and November: If he gets re-elected he’ll be a loose cannon with no fetters on his boundless stupidity. And thanks to all those red counties in America that prediction has come to pass.

Why are so many opposed to Miers? I believe (and I’m not claiming to be some uber-expert on the matter) that the right is opposed to her because they can’t predict what she will do and thereby can’t control her. The left are opposed to her merely because she doesn’t have the criterion required for the job. A job from which she can only be fired by God herself.

Dreams

My needs are very simple. My wants are very few.

But my dreams...my dreams are huge.

My dream motorcycle a Triumph Tiger:












My dream car a Mercedes Benz 190 SL:

J.O.L. 1940-1980

And in the end the love you take is equal to the love you make.

Howl

October 7, 1955, fifty years ago today, the Beat poet phenomenon was ushered in by Allen Ginsberg at the first public reading of his passionate and electrifying poem Howl. Most “straights” did not get it. In fact, it was labeled as obscene and confiscated by US Customs. Lawrence Ferlinghetti was arrested by San Francisco Police for its dissemination. At the trial, upon hearing support for its release from poets, editors, professors and literary critics, Judge Clayton Horn ruled that it was not without even ‘the slightest redeeming social importance’. Subsequently, Howl became a harbinger for classics that followed it such as D.H. Lawrence’s Lady Chatterly’s Lover and Henry Miller’s Tropic of Cancer.

I believe Ginsberg was very courageous. In a time when it was taboo, he was not afraid to wear his emotion on his sleeve. He was not afraid to fervently proclaim the injustices of the modern era and to throw light on industrial and corporate mentalities and the escalating strangulation of the creative process. And while a few chose to focus on the so-called obscenities, many more saw the truth in the spirit of his words. Those who could see past the references to genitalia and into the heart of the poem were rewarded with a new vision of the coming age. And that vision was not entirely sanguine.

I try to imagine how it must have been that night for Ginsberg with his peers intently focused on his performance. Literary luminaries the likes of Kerouac and Snyder, Whalen and McClure all in rapt attendance. I try to get a sense of the butterflies that must have danced and spun in his soul and mind that night.

Last night, in homage to the event I announced at dinner that I would read the poem aloud to my husband my fourteen year old son. My son walked out about half-way through but Lew stayed sweetly present. He gets things like this. Like Ginsberg and Dylan. And me.

Any comments?

I have agreed to permit comments to my blog for all of the one of you who read it. I suspect that initially I was apprehensive about the comment feature because I a) loathe criticism, b) am afraid of some nasty spammer, and c) am simply shy. But I suppose that the whole effort of this blog is to practice my writing discipline and a natural part of that process is reader feedback, even if it be in the form of constructive criticism. And so with arms flung wide, I open myself up to your well-aimed arrows of commentary.