Marathon: Home Is Where The Books Are (5 of 13)

Fifth in the Marathon series. Fifth on the record. It's been a long time since Scalped #35, and while I'd say I have something for you all soon, I can't think of anything coming up in the pipeline except number six, which I'm not exactly jumping to write at this very moment.

(Of course this means I will probably find something that tickles the Eleven Names bud soon, but expect nothing.)

Oh. Station identification time. In May, we'll be completely down, as Blogger stops supporting the hardware behind Eleven Names because we're very obtuse in how we update. And, since Zach is in charge of the changeover, well, strike out June as well. Just in case.

Here's to life.

Number five, Home Is Where the Van Is, is about how scattered home is and not feeling comfortable in the suburbs or city, but living the spartan life of a touring artist, in a van. I know the feeling intimately. Well, at least one of those feelings. During my first draft, I jotted down these ideas before heading on a 4 hour trip to see my friend. I woke up once or twice in an antechamber to his house over the last decade and I always woke up feeling safe. Like I was home.

Keep in mind: Most days when I wake up, I don't have that particular safe feeling. I just have that feeling of "Oh, I'm up and I need to do things and the work is never done." It's not an obvious safe feeling so much as I do not expect violence or arguments to befall me as soon as I wake up. My first thought was being in somewhere familiar. My second thought was that I recognized where I was. And the third thought, completing the two was that I was safe. I could not be found by the demons in my life.

That feeling has always been home, where my doubts/fears can't find me.

What's great is that using the description of waking up in a friend's antechamber is that the feeling has happened twice, with two people I love to death. Life is good. But this doesn't mean anything for the place I reside.

Home as Allegheny is a different story. I returned to see Zach Marx and Thomas Carlyle, but Tom was in Pittsburgh, so we'll stick with Allegheny and Zach. I completely spaced on actually getting him to do some Eleven Names content, even if it was just voice and just about comic books and Blackest Night, since that's an easy topic of conversation. Just something, because that feeling of being together as part of a whole or a group towards a common goal is addictive and positive.

Home as Allegheny is different. This year, there is a cipher for an old nemesis of mine, whom among other things, is convinced that the BIble is the inerrant word of God. It's categorically inaccurate, but I didn't say anything. Mostly, home as Allegheny is based around the trinity of Zach, James and somewhere to sleep. (James wasn't around for much of the time I was at Allegheny, so the trinity wasn't entirely complete.) This time, I woke up safe on Zach's couch, then in James' bed (sorry!). Of course, I didn't end up getting that much sleep thanks to drinking and then early plans in the morning both days. Suddenly, I'll sleep when I'm dead carries more weight.

To the extent that I spent time with Zach and the fellow students, it felt immediately familiar and unchallenging, by which I mean nothing to prove. What (if anything) I have to keep up is more coherent and felt looser as opposed to tighter.

It's like playing a song on Rock Band on Hard, rather than Expert, basically. What I mean is that playing the song is less-twitch-and-you'll-miss-based. It allows for a little more expression and theatrics with the guitar controller while allowing you to interact with the other players. In this case, it just means I'm comfortable with the person I made myself into at Allegheny, though within that identity, there's still room for experimentation and ignoring what didn't work back when I was still trying to work and graduate.

Allegheny's more comfortable than it was before, a little bit because I don't have to work, but it only felt like home when I was playing Kings extremely drunk and explaining, loudly, that the point of the game is to facilitate embarrassment. Okay, I didn't use those two words specifically, but I'd been drinking.

Pittsburgh is a different story entirely and almost certainly a focus for later blogs. I am blessed with accomodating exes. Thomas Carslyle and another Tom were far too kind to me, inviting me to go dance, driving me home when I was drunk. As for the song this is attached to, I currently know the feeling of lying to my parents about how I'm doing. "If you see my mom, please don't tell her I don't have a home. Just tell her I'm a lightning bolt."

I guess home is evolution and growth with a sprinkling of safety. And if I'm not growing, or trying new things, then I'm not really home. I'm just waiting for something to happen to me somewhere comfortable.

Home as the United States is another thing. We've got the usual suspects of the conservative movement/Republican Party trying to whip up unfocused, ultranationalist bigotry into just enough of a frenzy that they'll be re-elected without pausing to look at anything. Growing up, there was always partisan sniping, but nothing this bad. I don't recognize this country, sometimes. Some of the liberals, though, are insufferable and callous and I don't want to discount that, but I don't remember anyone showing off loaded weapons to a presidential rally where they disagreed with the president.

Are pictures of Bush and Cheney around Christian images, twisted with Exxon Mobil, KBR or Haliburton equivalent to magic negro tapes and images of watermelon patches outside the White House? The Tea Parties seem to have no problem calling Obama Hitler, which I'm strangely sanguine about. God knows Bush was called that, so while I guess that's now part of the national debate, it means it's another feature of this country I don't recognize. I worry, at least on the outskirts of my mind about false equivalence. On the one hand, Bush threw people in an extra-legal gulag outside of terrestrial jurisdiction, started a war on false pretenses and said that anyone who disagreed with him was unpatriotic. Obama, on the other hand, has trouble closing said prison and wants to keep some of Bush-era wiretaps going. Not exactly the same.

To get bak to the people flinging anti-government rhetoric around now: I remember all those Freep-ers kneeling and kissing George Bush's ring when he was expanding government, throwing people in Guantanamo Bay for the crime of other people's bigotry, so hearing they're up for big social change is something I view with skepticism. I remember all those Freep-ers who were perfectly down with running the moderates out of the party, then wondering aloud what's going on and why the Republican tent is folding in on itself.

I'm okay with debate. I'm okay with getting angry, but the bigotry and disdain for logic is something that I don't recognize. Clinton at least got shit done with Congressional Republicans, but it seems like the posturing has become more important than doing the job. I don't recognize this political culture as home. I recognize it as painfully off-center, like a top long since winding out of a tight orbit. Eventually it's going to crash and somehow, I just don't see the end in sight. I'm convinced this is a rough patch in our political history, magnified with the glass of the first black president.

This as home, man? No. It's something familiar, almost comfortable, but twisted. I understand the contours of the discourse, but something sits wrong. Water and vodka are both clear liquids, but they weigh differently on me. Same idea here. Kenickie as performed by the Pussycat Dolls is what this political climate feels like. And somehow, it doesn't frighten me too much. To tie this back to the song, somehow, the political climate is something I rest in that could explode any minute. I have a frightening amount of comfort sleeping on a mattress filled with gasoline. I just hope I'm not near any lightning bolts.

Mission Convincers.

I've written pretty often about Trap Them, about how they're absolutely wonderful and about how they make me happy. Well, the title is the last track on their much venerated (by me) 2008 record, Seizures in Barren Praise, it's seven minutes long and might count as a d-beat opus.

Anyway. I wrote this originally for the Loyola Phoenix, but cleaned it up a little for here. A person called Michael Coyne wrote in pretty much saying that Guantanamo Bay was reasonably comparable to a Hyatt. We disagree.

You can find the original here. But! This is a cleaned up version. With links! And me talking.

I feel compelled to respond to last week’s Letter to the Editor from Michael Coyne.

It is my opinion that the Guantanamo Bay prison is not as comfortable as Mr. Coyne believes. First and foremost: He says the U.S. Congress has reviewed the facility and deemed it fair. Given that Congress reviewed the evidence for the war in Iraq and found it sufficient, their approval does not satisfy me.

Second, whatever the formal religious accommodations are, they’re undercut by the guards spraying urine on the Qur'an and sexually assaulting the prisoners, according to an internal U.S. military review and the FBI, respectively.

Third, the Red Cross has reviewed the detention center and is far less charitable than Mr. Coyne, specifically using the phrase “tantamount to torture.” But ignoring the Red Cross, most striking is what the FBI (and the Department of Defense) allege about the facility: That the prisoners were shackled for 18 hours at a time and forced to urinate and defecate on themselves.

As for the idea that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed should be tried in a civilian court and kept in maximum security prisons like any other criminal, I say yes. The point is not to throw suspected terrorists in a gulag that resembles limbo or a relatively high circle of hell, but to expedite justice.

Apparently, the increased security supposedly needed for the trial will cost more money. It’s money well spent, in my eyes. The U.S. has a budget of trillions of dollars. Money can be found. This is about the vindication of our justice system when the entire world is watching. This is what you spend money on. And yes, we have a sizable deficit. At this point, another couple million is comparative pocket change.

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed should be held in the super maximum security prison in Illinois. The building was created to detain the most dangerous criminals we can apprehend. The idea that it’s going to make the prison or the surrounding communities a target is a bit late. The prison created to detain the the worst offenders we can find and capture is already built. It is a target, by virtue of its existence, even if it didn't house people from Guantanamo Bay. And I do mean people. Specifically, human beings, to whom we have an obligation.

Mr. Coyne ends his letter throwing his support behind the execution of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. I believe this to be unwise. Killing Khalid Sheikh Mohammed brings back no victims from the grave and gives our enemies another martyr and recruiting tool.

In short, I think Mr. Coyne is mistaking revenge for justice. Our criminal justice system makes tragic mistakes on a daily basis, but Khalid Sheikh Mohammed doesn’t have to be one of them. As much as it hurts, I believe this country ought to give Khalid Sheikh Mohammed a better trial than he deserves, and, if at the end of it he is found guilty, then we let the rule of law decide what to do with him.

Revenge is cheap. Justice is time-consuming, boring and expensive.

Demos: Mexico 4 Life

Again, a little something stop the bleeding of no posts here. We've got a good theme week coming up, Zach, Catherine and I are just real busy at the moment.

I have recently been reading the accusation that Senator Barack Obama has been throwing down the proverbial gauntlet in his stump speeches since Senator Hillary Clinton has put into circulation her 3 a.m. phone call ad, suggesting that Clinton has the experience on the first day she takes office to answer the dreaded early morning impending doom call that Obama doesn't.

Obama, then, has responded on his stump speeches by questioning Clinton's experience. This, I understand, is proof positive of his "taking the attack to Hillary", as the New York Times said on the sixth of March. For some readers, this counts as dirty politics.

I disagree.

I have seen dirty politics, and this is not it. Obama is asking for the evidence to Clinton's conclusion that she has the experience necessary to lead the country, which, when pushed, appears to be her eight years in the White House as her husband's de facto chief of staff, and her seven years on the Senate Armed Services Committee. That's a reasonable, if pointed question. By comparison, Obama has been on the same committee for two years, and the Republican nominee Senator John McCain has been on the committee since roughly the fall of man.

If you want real dirty politics, then I have a story to tell you. This story starts in South Carolina during the Republican primary in 2000 and stars Senator McCain and then Gov. George W. Bush during their campaign for the Republican nomination. Senator McCain has a lead and has won Iowa and New Hampshire. Anonymous polls begin in neighborhoods where McCain was strong, with a loaded question to the effect of "Would your opinion of Senator McCain change if you knew that he had fathered an illegitimate black child?" (It's important to note at this point that the McCain family had adopted a girl from Bangledesh, which lent a bit of anecdotal evidence to the whisper campaign used to discredit him morally.) Not surprisingly, McCain's numbers dropped in the polls; Bush took South Carolina; leaving McCain shaking and unable to regain the advantage.

Reports from multiple sources including the National Review, the New York Times (years later, of course...) and other reputable outlets could only confirm innuendos, but prevailing wisdom awards the credit to Karl Rove, operating as Bush's chief political strategist.

That's dirty politics. Dirty politics is suggesting that your white opponent had a child with a black woman in a conservative state without putting your own name on the smear. Dirty politics is firing anyone in the Justice Department who isn't a "loyal Bushie". Dirty politics is outing a deep cover CIA agent to get back at her husband for criticizing your basis for starting a war.

Asking for evidence to a debatable conclusion doesn't even come close.

Hateful Screed; Politics Edition!

Benazir Bhutto has been killed. It is a sad day. The primary impact is always one of loss - here was a person who let us understand the movement she represented, who was willing to die for it. That kind of political devotion is unheard of in America, which brings me to point two of why the day is sad - our own political race, and how the candidates are going to try to use the death of this noble person in order to further their own careers. If they mention it at all, that is. I understand most of the republicans have something against People Who Are Not White, and want to hide them all behind fences.

I once recall hearing that although you are white and American, it does not mean you don't suffer - just that your suffering pales in comparison with what other people have to go through. Which is true. There's been a push with recent American policy to appeal to use what sounds like the logic of the suburbs internationally - the fence metaphor returns. If you don't like your neighbors, block them off. Don't do anything to upset your important neighbors, too - the US can't come down too hard on president Musharef, because if they did, where would the US stage it's forays into the middle east? How many people even know or care about what's happening?

Before I am swept away by the tidal pull of despair, I must try to come clean about some things. I am cynical because deep down, I feel that I'm helpless in the situation. I'm not even sure that if I knew how I could help that I would. At my core, I hate politics, and all that they stand for. I think that they're nothing but an outlet for the most vile, bullying, putrescent pieces of semi-sentient human waste to achieve something resembling, in it's most exterior aspects, a respectable life. I even hate the candidates I like. There's nothing admirable about public office. It's a circus of balding old men and their sycophants, mistresses, and saducees.

And the worst part seems to be that, like a disease, it's spreading. Ted Haggart, Larry E. Craig, Rush Limbaugh. People who abuse the faith that the public has in them, who lead tiny, pathetic shadow-lives behind the public image that constitutes all that they really are. Say what you like about Marion Barry, at least DC knew what it was getting when they re-elected him.

Why do these drug addicted whoremongers get to continue with their unusually wide-stanced ways, whenever someone so generally admirable as Benazir Bhutto gets blown up? The American Political/Fame system seems to be irreversibly corrupt, where one achieves power through falsehood, lowest-common-denominator appeals, and apparently, the guiding hand of Satan himself. The person who stands up is the person who gets cut down. I hate to sound like them, I hate the thought that this post even echoes something that they might suggest, but perhaps ignoring the problem will no longer make it go away. The American Way, anymore, is about access, and as long as you have an iPod, radio, satellite radio, TiVo, elaborate smoke message system, or effing telegraph, these people are going to be worming their way into your life. We're like Whatsisbucket in A Clockwork Orange, tied to a chair, and forced to witness not atrocities and horrors, but rather, the overwhelming cowardice, lies, and pabulum of the modern age. Is it any surprise, then, when America produces not monsters, but yawning, gawking sociopaths, unable to feel anything other than greed?

I, too, am a victim. I strive for something resembling legitimacy, morality, respectability. Would I even be able to recognize it, if it would present itself? Probably not. I am one of the yawners, the gawkers, the ones who casually shrug off increasingly depressing systems of jurisprudence in favor of talking about who should have "won" Tila Tequila's show. I may be suffering, but it does not mean that I have any idea to what degree others are in pain. I can only hope to take some lesson away from the assassination, some aspect of Benazir Bhutto's work, that maybe there are worse things that can happen to you besides death - you can live a life of complete mundanity, dulling your senses from a universe full of wonders.