Weapons Grade Stupidity

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I apologize for the following post. I'm sailing another sea of unbloggableness, and the political slant is something that won't leave me alone, so I must purge. Like kidney stones and bad dreams, this too shall pass. Thank you for your patience...

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There is a bit of conventional wisdom that goes something like this:

If the person you are having dinner with is nice to you but rude to the waiter, that person is not a nice person.  Avoid that person.

I think there is a corollary to that advice, and it goes something like this:

If a public figure emphatically claims something to be that which it never was, and their claim can easily be refuted, they are insulting the intelligence of the listener.  And that figure is not a nice person.

On January 8th, Rebecca Mansour, an official for the Sarah Palin PAC, appeared on the Tammy Bruce* radio show, claiming that the symbols on that infamous map of theirs were never intended to be gun sights.  Laughably, at Tammy Bruce's suggestion, Ms. Mansour agreed that they weren't gun sights, they were "surveyor's marks".

Surveyor's marks.   Really.  And I suppose "Don't retreat, RELOAD!" really meant "Don't back up the minivan, just rearrange the luggage!"

I really cannot fathom why so many people seem to think that Sarah Palin and others of the same mindset are worthy of our votes for public office.  Not only are they blind to their own shortcomings, they expect us to be blind as well.  

These people aren't exhibiting much intelligence of their own, and they are blatantly insulting our collective intelligence.  Would you really want them in positions of power?


They are not nice people.  Don't have dinner with them.


*To be fair, I was only vaguely familiar with Tammy Bruce before this past weekend.  The miracle of the Interwebs made it easy to rectify that, although now I'm ambivalent about the knowledge.  Ms. Bruce has described herself as "a gay, pro-choice, gun owning, pro-death penalty, Tea Party Independent Conservative", with her show promoted as "a chick with a gun and a microphone."  That kind of glib, moronic attempt at a 'ballsy' persona is just as unimpressive coming from a woman as it is coming from a man.  Too bad she doesn't take that gun and shoot her microphone, thus sparing us all the irritation of another oxygen thief befouling the airwaves.

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To those who left comments on my "Politics and Violence" post of January 9th, thank you. It's nice to know I was not alone.

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Exhaust Ports on the Death Star

I don't know about you, but coming face to face with personal weaknesses always disconcerts me.  Lately, it has been happening more than the law of averages would account for.  In my opinion, any way.

It used to make me angry and embarrassed with myself.  Now I just seem to sigh bemusedly and mumble to myself.  Today, I underwent two separate episodes of Weakness Realization, of two very different sorts.  One made me self-conscious, the other made me a bit worried and sad.

Second one first.  It has to do with my internal struggles on being a writer, on wanting to be a novelist.  Two years ago I would have scoffed loudly at the idea that I could/would write a book.  In the light of those days, that notion would have reeked of absurdity.  It just didn't seem possible.

Then I stepped out of my personal journals and went Webby with the blog.  Not with the idea of writing a book, mind you, or becoming an author.  It was simply to get the noise out of my head, and maybe find out what other people would do with that noise.  With the positive feedback I received, I felt more empowered to keep at it.  Again, this was without a plan to become a writer of books.  It wasn't until I started writing some things in series that people (i.e. you, dear readers) began asking me if/when I was going to write a book.  The idea then took root and certainly fired my imagination.  So, then, to the book!

Astute readers will already be saying to themselves "But, Gumbo, where's the book?"

Ah.  You see the problem.  The elephant is in the room, and it's sitting behind me, isn't it?

I begin to hear whispers about the emperor's clothes, or something like that.  This is truly the nubbin of the problem (or the "Crux O' De Biscuit" as my late brother was fond of saying).  I have not written a book.  I don't have a hard outline for a book.  Writing a book...intimidates me.

And that is the real problem.  I have a lot of ideas, but they usually manifest themselves in poems and short stories.  A lot of one-off happenings, and I have been unable to find the bridges between them.

I think in titles.  I think in short stories.  My brain seems to compose writing like DNA: small molecules of few components that have the potential, potential, to grow into something great.  Under the right combination of nature and nurture, all the noises in my head could maybe be turned into a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts.  Yet, this has not happened, and I'm unsure as to why.

Well, that's not quite true.  I have an inkling of a trace of a ghost of an idea as to why.  I think there is a certain courage, or discipline, or nerve one needs to make that leap from random scribblings to coherent novel.  And I?  I can't figure out if I have it.  Maybe I do, and am just scared of the commitment.

But I sure would like to write books.

The first thing I mentioned above, in the second (long ago) paragraph?  Is not so much a weakness (or weaknesses) as it is something that could be potentially be used to take advantage of me and the soft spots in my heart.  Not necessarily for malevolent purposes, mind you, but that which could put me in a position of not being able to say no due to not entirely unpleasant befuddledness (is that even a word?).  It has to do with a realization I had today, one that I voiced to myself in the safety of my car...and put into words some wants long held but never acknowledged out loud.  Talking to myself, I had to laugh.

I'll let it go at that.  Stories for another time, perhaps...

Devils' Advocate? Me?

For all the arguing and pontificating and frontin' I have done, and sometimes still do, I am a terrible advocate for myself.  I can talk at length on just about anything I know (and often on things I don't), but the one subject with whom I have the most difficulty...is myself.

Teller of tales I am, and the only story I cannot write is who I am.

More accurately,  I have a terrible time talking about me, with giving people a way to know me.  Maybe this is because in large measure, I don't know me.  This condition has been magnified in the time since I was laid off back in June.  Rewriting a resume, or defining the "brand" that is one's self has that effect.

I can get excited about all sorts of things.  I can be engaged on any number of topics, sometimes with more feeling than reason.  I tend to be a person of causes or positions rather than ideologies or dogmas.  Those causes or positions can change quickly, often driven by shifts in emotional winds rather than anything demonstrably logical.  Which is ironic, because I also tend to cling to logic, especially when under pressure to get things done or solve a problem.

Growing up, my Big Bro and I developed a facility with language that seemed to be ahead of the curve relative to many of our peers.  We both had this ability (for better or worse) to just start talking about something, anything, and eventually make ourselves sound plausible and engaging.  This gift of language* could be practical (such as talking ourselves out of trouble) or useful (such as chatting up the ladies**) or exasperating (such as talking ourselves into trouble), but it was always a near-endless source of amusement.  My brother and I often marveled together, in private, at the amazing things we could say and have people buy it, even when we knew it was hot air.***

This deeper realization of mine comes at a time in my life where I am actively looking for honesty, in myself and in others.  I do this because I have realized it is too exhausting and resource-intensive to constantly build facades and fit molds made by others.  To be successful at that, though, requires enough content about which to be honest.  It requires faith in ones' own self, thoughts and feelings.  Faith that the Self is strong enough to stand on its own, that it is okay being the individual that it is, rather than striving (and failing) to constantly meet the expectations of the universe.

This explains, perhaps, my dilemma.  The past two years have really taken me down a peg, undermining what little faith I had in myself (misguided though it may have been) to the point where I don't trust me.  I have received a ton of advice that I need to have confidence in myself, I need to believe in myself...and I have done that in the past.  But I also know that the ego can tell itself whatever it wants to hear.  The ego is free to disregard objective reality, if that reality doesn't match expectations or desires.  The ego is free to lie to itself.

This is why I have a difficult time advocating for myself.  Am I saying that which is really true, or is it all smoke and mirrors?  Mirrors in the funhouse of the mind, distorting and misdirecting.  A near-impassable thicket of reflections and illusions constructed of beliefs, not always grounded in facts.  I'm looking for a way out, even if it means I have to talk about myself.

*Uncharitable wags might say "gift of bullshit".
**To be fair, Big Bro was waaaaaay better at that than yours truly.
***Big Bro had a motto: "If you can't dazzle them with brilliance, baffle 'em with bullshit".  He. Was. Good.

I'll Stop The World And Melt. Not With You, Just Melt. All By My Lonesome.

Can I just stop for a moment? Or a long series of moments? I need to, in a bad way. Dislocated is no way to wear one’s head. I don’t like living life that way. The way things are going I’m feeling like maybe, just maybe the Universe could use a few moments of stillness. If not the Universe, then the Planet Earth. And if not Earth, then at least my head.

My poor, aching headbone.

Layoffs. Wars. Economic meltdown. Recession. Personal crises and generalized anxieties and change. Not knowing my ass from a hole in the ground some days. It all seems too much, sweeping the legs out from underneath me. Sticking my head into the torrent of information flowing around me is akin to drinking from a firehose, or walking through a high-speed wind tunnel. I cannot drink that fast, or walk effectively into a hurricane. It’s exhausting and too much is missed.

I am tired of missing things. Picture sitting in a boat, on a broad and swift river. The wind is blowing hard, chop is on the water. And try as you might to stop it, cargo continues to fall overboard, and you watch helplessly as it falls to sternward and forever out of reach. There is no turning back. It wouldn’t matter anyway if you could turn around; the current is too swift and turbulent. You’d never catch up to the stuff you lost while trying to comprehend the new stuff coming at you.

I find myself weary of even trying anymore, to understand the vast cloud of sensory impressions swathing me in overload. Pecked to death by lunatic chickens. Trapped in a tent with hyperactive angry bees. The mere act of filtering such quantities becomes a tremendous task unto itself. The sheer time and energy involved easily robs me of the ability to comprehend that which I have filtered.

You know those movies or videos where one person is on screen, moving real slow while people and cars zoom by at manic speed? That is me. Feels like that all the time. I’m trying to catch up, or at least comprehend the people and events zipping by. It makes me feel…lost. Sort of “in” the world but not really “of” the world. Does that make sense?

Perhaps I am looking at this from the wrong direction. I keep looking out but really I should be looking in. The dislocation I feel could be coming from having gone down the rabbit hole in the center of my head. Sort of like turning a sock inside out, or maybe a Möbius strip in the guise of a human body. If I drew a line down the middle of myself, would I return to my starting point having traversed all sides without crossing an edge? Ow. Ow. Ow. Mistake. That just made my head hurt even more.

All this data, coming at me at light speed. Why did I ever believe that I wanted to know everything there was to be known in the Universe? When did my head become such a strange attractor for information? Somewhere along the line my brain collapsed in on itself, incurring an accelerated process of densification, the grey matter congealing into a black hole with an event horizon defined by my skull. Data goes in, but where does it come out? Some days it feels as if nothing leaves only to increase the pressure threatening to blow the top of my head off. Wouldn’t that be spectacular! An exploding black hole! One can only imagine what that would look like. Maybe it would create a white hole, discharging the accumulated contents of my overheated brain into another universe, or into a different place somewhere else in this one.

If only I could stop time. No, stop motion (but isn’t that in some ways the same thing?) on a molecular level. Climb inside my own skull and scoop up the quantum goo and pack it into some kind of snowball. A grey matter snowball squeezed between my palms in a desperate effort to quell the vibrations, bring time and space together in a hot-cold singularity. Freeze it at the level where even the atoms slow down, doing a languid Brownian dance of slower and slower rotations while time ceases to pass.

I know the Universe does not revolve around me, I don’t expect it to. But just once, even if only for a few ticks of the atomic clock that keeps Standard Time, I would like everything to just stand still so I can cool off.

I need that. And a beer. A beer would be nice, too.

Cattle Raiding In My Youth

I was visiting with Braja over at Lost and Found in India reading a delightful post on COWS yesterday, and as usually happens when I read her posts, it got me to thinking. I know what you must be thinking: Cows? Delightful? Come on, Gumbo, you must be yanking my chain.

I yank not your chain! I like cows anyway, so I may be predisposed to like reading about cows. In this case, though, the photos were so cute and so well done (especially considering they were taken with a cell phone camera), and the writing itself very engaging. I have to say it was one of the few times I was looking at cows without thinking of cheese, fine tooled leather or a pot roast. (Forgive me, Braja, I am still struggling with my animal nature.) The calf in the pics is also goshdarnded cute, too. What the pictures got me to thinking about was, instead, Irish folklore and my own childhood. Go figure.

It was the “Cattle Raid of Cooley” (Táin Bó Cúailnge) that sprang to mind, an amazing story from Irish (way, way back) folklore. I read about this many moons ago and the whole thing just stuck with me. ‘Cattle Raid’ doesn’t exactly scream ‘epic’, but the Irish have a knack (ahem) for storytelling, in case you hadn’t noticed. The gist of it involves marital jealousy, a pissed off bull and a tidy business arrangement undone by drunkenness. Somehow that escalates into a knockdown, drag-out battle involving magic, sex and mass slaughter. In other words, a typical day in the land of the Celts.

The hero of this story, who I sometimes wish was me, is Cúchulainn (pronounced ‘Cu-hoo-lin’. I know, it doesn’t make sense. This is Irish myth, remember?); Cúchulainn is the fierce-looking lad in the tricked-out chariot, pictured below:

Cúchulainn first big task was to defend the kingdom of Ulster from the army of the jealous queen Medb, who was out to get Donn Cuailnge*, the ‘Brown Bull of Cooley’ (the pissed off bovine I mentioned earlier). Brown Bull is a hot commodity, because he was, shall we say, ‘potent’. Potent as in, some sort of mega-stud that all the cattle-crazy Celts were quite keen on adding to their herds, cattle being the prime form of wealth. Cúchulainn, in typical lunkhead teenage boy fashion, manages to screw up his big task because he was off ‘trysting’ (i.e. getting’ his freak on) with some fair Irish lass**. So Medb and her army manage to waltz in and take Ulster like it ain’t no thang. (What’s Gaelic for ‘thang’?). Anyway, Cúchulainn does manage to get his breeches up and he makes a good effort to finally stops the invaders. Thing is, he fails to get his mitts back on our boy the Brown Bull. Half-assed attempts at redemption (heroic but unnecessary, because preventable) are endemic to teenage boys all over the world; a major reason I identify with the story.

The bull is also a central attraction for me in all this, and not because of my capacity to generate a fair amount of it, all on my lonesome! My association with bulls began many, MANY years ago, back when I was a little Gumbo biting the ankles of my blessed Mom. Back in the day, budgets were tight for my Ma and Da, so sometimes she would make her own baby clothes to save a few dead presidents. She made a little yellow shirt, like a tunic, stitched together with red thread. I don’t remember wearing the shirt, but by some miracle Mom had kept it for all the years since I was a toddler. I was delighted when I received it as a gift this Christmas:

Wow. That shirt is about forty years old now! Looking down in the lower right hand corner of the photo, you’ll see where she took a marker and wrote on it ‘The Bull’. The reason she wrote that is because supposedly I was a rather stubborn, contrary lad. (I know! Shocked, aren’t you?) And in my family, if one was being stubborn, that typically garnered one the epithet ‘bull-headed’. In my case I earned the title when I was quite the wee one. Hence, in honor of my clear identification with a heroic figure (big bull, a stud: a natural fit, yeah?) from Irish myth, Mom made this shirt as a memento. This set me on the road to a lifelong aspiration to be a hero.

My Ma and Da will tell you I was called ‘The Bull’ because I was stubborn and difficult. I prefer to think it is because I am perseverant, strong and virile. And hey, who are you going to believe, me or my Mom? (Wait, don’t answer that…)

* ‘Donn Cuailnge’ would be my Irish gangster boss name. Donn = Don. Get it? Ha! But only if I was an Irish gangster. Which I am not. At least, I wouldn’t admit to youse.
**In all fairness, I also probably would have chosen the lass over boring guard duty. That Cúchulainn and I, we like the ladies! See also ‘Goddess Belly: On Your Knees, Boy!’

Images courtesy of Wikipedia (Cúchulainn) and something I found on Amazon called
‘Shee-eire’ (Donn Cuailnge).