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A Mother’s Love

A kid named Brian joined the United States Army last year.

I don’t know why on earth he would do such a thing while the current Dimwit-in-Chief is in the White House. Kids really should talk to me before they make such decisions. But this isn’t going to be another of my anti-war rants, though I’m sure you’re spoiling to read one right about now. It’s just a little story about a mother’s love and the good that can flow from it. Forgive me if I don’t get all these details exactly right. I’ll give you two links at the end of this, so you can read about it yourself.

Brian made it through basic training, as most do, and he got bigger and stronger and faster and tougher. His mother Lori, whom I am proud to call my friend, used her blog to keep us all posted on his progress. They spoke on the phone whenever they could — never often enough for Lori — and they visited in person a few times. The pictures often showed them happy but exhausted after all-night drives to spend a day together. Eventually the orders came for Brian to go to desert training.

A couple of months ago, Brian was deployed to Iraq.

Lori knew this was coming for quite a while before she told the rest of us. Maybe she hoped it wouldn’t happen, that by not saying it out loud she could keep it from being true. But as the song says, “This ain’t no foolin’ around,” and so, inevitably, Brian the young soldier had to go and do what he’d been trained to do.

Once he was gone, there were long periods when Lori wouldn’t hear from him. Think about that. Try to be Lori for just a moment, with your only child on the other side of the world, in a place where everybody has a rocket launcher under their shirt, and most of them would like to shoot you. Live with that fact, and get up and go to work every day and smile at the people, not knowing.

Lori sent care packages, of course, and Brian was properly grateful, when he was able to communicate. He asked for little: wet wipes (?), camera batteries. Who knew?

And this tough soldier asked for soccer balls, for the Iraqi children he was meeting on patrol. Lori complied, and threw in a Beanie Baby or two, reasoning that a toy is a toy. If the kids wanted soccer balls, why not stuffed animals?

Brian responded that the Beanie Babies were a big hit with the kids, and the other guys in his unit enjoyed giving them to the children, and could Lori maybe send a few more?

She could, and she did. She mentioned it on her blog, and soon she had 20 Beanie Babies. A week later she had 80 of them. Her bloggin’ buddies were also sending them directly to Brian’s unit. Lori started to doubt herself, figuring they must think she’s insane, a crazy mom, one step away from the shopping cart. Brian reassured her that the kids were loving them, the guys were loving them, and keep ’em coming.

I think war is the ultimate degradation of the human spirit. I have come to believe that nothing is so important that we must mount armies, invade nations, kill and be killed. As I have said here before, has anyone noticed that it never ends, that nothing is ever truly resolved?

And yet, against a backdrop of brutality, car bombs, assassinations, IED’s, RPG’s and suicide bombers, in the middle of this insanity, young soldiers (at least one of them barely past childhood) are handing out stuffed animals to children. These are the next generation of Iraqi’s. Someday they might be asked to do some killing themselves. I know it’s stupid to think that a remembered kindness could change their answer. It’s stupid, and yet…

As Lori says,

If world leaders can’t come to terms, at least we can, as mere citizens, shake one another’s hands, hand a few toys to their kids, and put smiles on their faces. If that’s not one step toward world peace, I don’t know what is.

One mother’s love has reached around the world and touched the hearts of some kids who have not had much to smile about lately, and by “kids” I mean both Iraqi children and U.S. soldiers. Maybe it won’t bring world peace, but maybe it will.

If you want to read about this yourself, Lori has started a new web site devoted to her “Toys For Troops” campaign. The Beanie Baby craze is over in the U.S., but it’s just beginning in Baghdad. Maybe you’ve got a few you’d like to send, or maybe you’d like to help in some other way. Check it out at

http://www.toys-for-troops.com/

This whole thing is merely days old. Lori admits that she’s still spinning from all the activity and the unexpected generosity from across the country. This is not some slick campaign put together by rock stars. This is people reaching out to people, a pure grass roots effort and a labor of love.

Lori’s blog, where it all started, is at

http://gnightgirl.blogspot.com/

Click on these links. Get to know Lori and Brian. Leave a comment. Find out if there’s a way you can help. I guarantee you’ll feel better.

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The Poetry of Spam

Some junk mail is too beautiful to keep to oneself:

ScrollIf your “prick-horse” is not glad for you
and give brake for you
come to us.
You’ll feel that curb “it” is impossible.
You must come to us now
and you’ll be a real cowboy legend.
We wait you today, because the hot week
of discounts is now.
Don’t miss your chance.

As with most great literature and poetry, I don’t know exactly what it’s about, but I know I don’t want to miss my chance.

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Shame

I’m aware that my previous post represents a dark vision.

Sorry. That’s how I feel. I don’t support the troops, or the generals, or the politicians who hold onto power by scaring the daylights out of us and pandering to our bigotry and fear.

I don’t wish any harm to the troops. I wish them the best. I want them to be at home, or on the road, wherever they want to be, surfing, going to school, making babies, playing music, painting pictures, working or just hangin’ out. But I don’t care if I ever get another chance to “honor our fallen heroes,” and if the United States has decided that it’s necessary or even heroic to blow the fuck out of other countries and snuff hundreds of thousands of their citizens, well, you can just keep that. I want no part of it.

I know people with sons, brothers and friends in the U.S. military, and they — you — are afraid, and proud, and brave. Those of you who wait and hope, my thoughts and my love are with you. It tears my heart to see your worry and pain, and it makes me angry that you have to be “brave” over this bullshit. Where does it get us? Has anyone noticed that it never ends? That every time we “win” a war we set the stage for the next one? That the assholes who promote these conflicts are never the ones who suffer the amputations, the blindness, the bleeding, the total goddamned devastation?

I’m ashamed of this country, which I grew up loving, for the depravity it now carries out in the name of — what? Safety? Democracy? Jesus? Give me a break.

I’m ashamed of my party, the Democrats, for not having the courage to stop the killing now. We gave them majorities in Congress, and they are playing politics.

I’m ashamed of myself, for letting things go this far, and doing so little to help.

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Memorial Revisited

Two years ago on this day of remembrance I posted Another Memorial.

I want to say something on Memorial Day that means something, but I don’t understand the event. I’ve lost friends and relatives to war, and I don’t think it was noble. I just want to forget it. I wish I could. I have no new words today, so here’s that post again, this time read aloud.

Turn your speakers down a little (off if you’re at work) and click the blue arrow to hear the audio post.

I’m sorry about the sound quality. I had a hardware failure in the studio while I was experimenting. I won’t be able to fix the equipment until next weekend, so I am forced to use this unfinished mix.

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What Kind of Nutcase Am I?

So I went through my closet a while back.

Old Shoe

I was going to say “…cleaned out my closet” but you don’t even know all the shit that’s in there, packratted for decades, wedged on the shelves, stuffed all the way to the back, boxes stacked on boxes, unopened since the Reagan administration. Come to think of it, neither do I, and it’ll probably be a long time before I do.

But my wardrobe was getting wrinkled, ya know? I needed space, so I had to at least weed out some of the Qiana disco shirts, bell-bottom cords and heavy coats from the San Francisco days.

So after I made a little elbow room in there, what did I find but a pair of perfectly good work shoes. They weren’t new, but they were in excellent condition, in the original shoebox. They were brown, which might explain why I stopped wearing them, since I went to all black pants, all the time. I may be a dork , but I’m not about to wear brown shoes with black pants.

OK, I know what you’re thinking: Brown shoes don’t make it. But I was sick of the black pants thing. I wanted to wear black shirts, but jeez, black shirts with black pants? I’d look like Trini Lopez. Not even Johnny Cash, that old faker, but fucking Trini Lopez. If I had a fucking hammer.

So I got some tan pants. This made the black shirt acceptable, but holy shit, the black shoes, sticking out beneath tan pants! The horror!

Anyway, these brown shoes would save the day (not to mention about a hundred bucks). For some reason, back whenever it was that I squirreled them away I had stuffed them with those tight little balls of paper that you find jammed into new shoes, that you have to take out when you’re trying on shoes at the shoe store. So I took the paper out and stuffed it, one wad each, into the black shoes, then I put the black shoes in the brown shoebox and stashed them in the closet.

But I spilled coffee on the tan pants that day, and I had to go back to the black pants the next day, so I took the black shoes out of the shoebox, pulled out the paper and stuffed the wads of paper into the brown shoes, which I stored back in the shoebox. Maybe I was half asleep or having some kind of flashback. Why would anyone do such a thing?

Who knows, but for the next month or so I kept switching back and forth between the different colored pants and shoes, pulling the paper wads out of the stored shoes and stuffing them back into the shoes to be stored. I saw myself doing this as if I were watching some other nincompoop. It was an out-of-body thing, if not completely out of my mind. I said to myself “This is stupid. What are you saving these wads of paper for?”

I switched the paper wads back and forth for a week after I knew it was really aberrant behavior, but you’ll be glad to know that today I threw them away.

That’s what kind of nutcase I am. I won’t blame you for backing slowly away.

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Big Noise, Big Fun, Big Changes

Hope I still have some friends here.

Krazy-Eyed Killer

I know what happens to bloggers who don’t post often. Most of us say we’re only doing it for ourselves, but of course what we want — what I want — is to be read, to be understood, to have a chance to explain myself, to demonstrate to the universe that I’m a good person.

But I don’t have time for that right now, so here’s the short version quick catch-up:

  • The new band is now called Big Noise, and it took up most of my free time for the last two months. We’re doing a few songs that I wrote, but mostly it’s a party band, so we’re doing fun covers that you can drink to. I don’t like to sound like everybody else, so I’ve spent a lot of time finding obscure music to play, learning it, transcribing it, arranging it and teaching it to the band. This has been hard for me, but exhilarating at the same time. All the pressure of trying to showcase at The Roxy and get a record deal is off, and what’s left is pure, sweaty, rockin’ fun. Still, it’s time-consuming work, so, no time to blog. (I’m not apologizing, just sayin’.)
  • Now I find out that even the cheesiest dive in town (yes, I’ve checked) wants an audition CD before they will talk to me about booking. I guess I’ve been out of circulation too long, but I thought I’d be able to go and talk myself in at some neighborhood bar, and they’d be grateful to have me. But no: now I have to book a recording studio and record a demo. Rehearsing for parties is different than getting ready to record, so now I have to start a new phase with Big Noise, wherein I try to hear if the bass and the kick are working well together, if the harmony intervals are as they should be, etc. This is because if you make a mistake at a party, someone may hear it, but no one will really care as long as there’s dancing and an adequate liquor supply. But if you release a recording with a mistake on it, people will be able to play back your bad playing or singing as many times as they want, and sooner or later any lame-o will detect the errors and from that day forward they will hear nothing else, just the mistakes. Not conducive to getting booked.
  • The strutting, loudmouth egomaniac about whom I have previously written, the executive who has ruined all my fun for the past year at my day job, was fired. Actually, sources tell me he sneaked into the building on Friday morning before we opened and cleaned out his office, sneaking away again without speaking to anyone. I know he was fired, because if he had left voluntarily he’s the kind of jerk who would have called a meeting and given a speech, a speech in which he would have talked about himself for an hour or so, then told us that he loved us and he hoped that the things he’d taught us would serve us well, but he was moving on to a higher calling. In fact, he practically killed our business, decimated our staff and destroyed the morale of everyone who didn’t resign. He wore a suit like nobody’s business, but he had no idea how to run our operation, or, I suspect, any commercial venture. I guess I shouldn’t be, but I continue to get amazed that a big, fancy corporation like HugeCorp still gets taken in by con artists like this guy. I could tell he was jive as soon as I spoke to him. Why can’t they? Anyway, leading up to this blessed event, pressure at the office had been building to an exquisitely high pitch, as I and the few professionals too stupid to leave tried to hold everything together. Once again, not much time to spend with you, my precious few bloggin’ buddies, although if you would pay my rent I’d blow off the job in a minute.

I compose blog posts in my mind all day, and — also in my mind — I email all of you with love and good cheer at least once a week. I hope you’re getting it all. More soon.

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Just Wondering

The mission was “accomplished” four years ago.

Bush in flight suit

Since then several hundred thousand people have died in Iraq, our military has been stretched to the breaking point, a half-trillion dollars has been wasted, worldwide terrorist incidents have more than doubled and the American voters have sent a clear message to this president that they want out, NOW.

Yet the President continues to insist that we stay there, even escalate our presence there, despite all the evidence that the fun is over, and we have lost all our marbles.

Bush could have signed the current funding bill. Politically, it would have made a lot of sense. He could have acted as if he hated the idea of surrender, but the Democrats were forcing it on him, and if he wanted the money to keep our troops safe and well-equipped he had no choice but to sign the odious funding bill with the timetable for getting out. Then when it actually came time to get out, it would be right before the next election and he could claim credit for ending the war. Nixon called it “peace with honor,” but I’m sure the current crop of Orwellian spin doctors would have come up with a better slogan. There’s no way the Republicans will win the White House in 2008, but this strategy would have cut their loses in the Congressional elections, and Bush would come out of it looking like a statesman. Completely aside from the rightness or wrongness of it from a moral standpoint (like, what does he care about that?), it would allow him to write a fitting end to the fairy tale of his life that he’s been spinning for the past six years.

So why didn’t he do it?

Is it because the war is an excellent diversion from what the neocons are really up to? Is it because they’d rather have us all angry and frustrated and incredulous and demonstrating against the war, when what’s really going on is something else altogether, something more important to them than human life and the honor and reputation of their country?

Is it because they don’t want us to notice that they are looting the United States Treasury, destroying labor and the middle class, redistributing all the money into their own pockets? Are they using this insane war to distract us from the sight of their curly little tales wiggling and the sound of their rapacious snorting as they belly up to the public trough and take their fill of your tax dollars? Are they hoping the war will keep us from noticing that we are being turned into worker drones, working more and more hours for less and less real compensation, and always with the threat that our jobs could be done for even less by someone overseas if we don’t like it?

Heck, I don’t know, Maybe they’ve got an even stinkier plan. I’m just wondering.

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The Noise Begins

This weekend the new band travels to sunny San Diego to play its first gig.

Big Noise Girl

The occasion is a party for a couple of hundred attorneys. I think we’ll open with “I Fought The Law.”

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George and Dick In The Woodshed

I was not aware that Vice President Cheney has recently been slandering former Senator George McGovern,

George McGovern

…but today in the Los Angeles Times I saw a rebuttal of sorts from McGovern. Actually, it’s more like an ass-kicking, something that I think the old Senator might still be capable of in person if Cheney ever dares show his face when George is around.

I’m not going to analyze the story. You can read it here, and you’d better hop to it before it disappears behind the news-for-money firewall at The Times.

But for younger readers. let me just say that George McGovern was the Democratic presidential candidate who lost the 1972 election in a landslide to the corrupt, unbalanced Republican incumbent Richard Nixon. It was an era of civil unrest, anger and alienation. Then as now, our government was involved in a war overseas with a small sovereign nation (Vietnam) which had not threatened the U.S. Like our current Iraq adventure, we were there on false pretenses fabricated by powerful corporate interests who are always the ones to profit from the slaughter. It seemed that the war would never end, and anyone who said it should was labeled a traitor or a defeatist. Sound familiar?

McGovern was not the first national figure to speak out against the war, but he was the one who mounted a real challenge to the snake-pit in the Pentagon and the White House, and he captured the imagination and the loyalty of a generation of disaffected youth, not to mention all the leftover pacifists from the fifties and the sixties.

Of course he had to be crushed, and the Nixon stink machine raised dirty campaigning to a new and slimy art form. McGovern’s defeat that year was a heartbreak that I still haven’t gotten over, and to think that the certifiably evil Dick Cheney (I certify it myself!) has now reached back into history to vilify this honorable man…

just

makes

me

SPIT!!

Go read the article. If you’re already in the choir, you’ll enjoy singing along. If you’re not, how do you sleep?

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