semper fry

Dispair and hoplessness.....no opportunities except for street life or incarceration. These are the choices awaiting lower and working class poor when they get out of school. Not too jolly of a prospect......scrape, steal or die-not the thing middle or upper class kids think about when they turn eighteen. But there is an alterlative for these kids with seemingly little chance of advancement-it's the military .The armed forces becons, welcomes and even challenges the youth from across the tracks with promises of college money, travel and skills for higher paying jobs. What do they really get ? A chance to defend the country ? A way out of poverty ? Perhaps, but for some the way out is in a flag draped casket. Recruiters sit in offices waiting with brochures and rote monologues detailing the wonderful world of the army,navy, national guard or marines. "Here's a chance to belong to something really huge, be in a real 'family'.....get the recognition and purpose that has evaded you since your birth". Sounds good to me, it does. They do leave out some important facts, though. This all-voulenteer force that is now attempting to police the middel east and change certain countries into demoracies is stretched to the limit. Politicians know that instituting the draft would cost many votes so the armed forces are under-manned, under armored and basically abused by this government. The end result is a bunch of well-meaning kids trying to escape dead-end lives winding up being used to fight illicit wars and have the prospect of delayed and/or substandard medical care if they get disabled from active duty. Psychological help for veterans is in really short supply as well so an alarming number of young veterans wind up emotionally troubled or worse yet, suicidal. It's a cruel irony that awaits the young vet upon coming home after active duty. Being shot at or shooting at people, seeing fellow soldiers die forever changes these kids. They join up to find glory only to get used up and spat out by the very organization that promised them a brighter future.I wonder what the recruiter knows of the potential misery that awaits these unfortunate kids....the betrayal, not of their fellow soldiers but of the system that sends them out in the world to do the bidding of politicans who have never served in active combat and who will protect their own children from having the experience of war up close and personal. It is the greatest insult to humanity, this treatment of the poor as a commodity to be use like fuel to burn for the sake of some pointless and exploitive conflict that kills thousands of innocent people, uses innumerable resources, causes unimaginable pollution and destruction and benefits a handful of rediculously wealthy war-profiteer buisnesses. Recruiting is a dirty job and someone has to do it, but who is this person and what do they really know about the fruits of their labor ?

the smell of defeat, the taste of chicken

Viewing life in normal terms usually yeilds familiar thoughts. Turning things on their side or upside down is much more entertaining and less predictable, therefore much less boring. I like to start with popular catchphrases and deconstruct them so that they more accurately portray the human condition. I'll cite some examples: 'Live and don't learn" ...words not to live by but isn't it funny how a lot of the time it appears that we are experiencing things while gaining absolutely no enlightenment from them. " Don't get even, get mad" perhaps a less wise path but more natural in the face of human failings. " The name goes on before the quality goes in" I'm dating myself with this one.....

bad dream

Heroes have a bad habit of showing us how it is likely that at one point or another they will fail us. This weeks failure is Alexander Vinokourov-hero to zero overnight due to a positive blood transfusion result after an appearant heroic effort in the Tour de France time trial where he wone the stage despite many stitches in his knees and elbows from a bad crash earlier in the race. On the T.V Vinokourov had the look of a real hero riding his guts out inspite of the pain and handicap of his injuries. Vino was the odds on favorite to win the tour before his crash. Now, he and his team have been excused from the race and he has been dismissed from his team pending further tests. This was a respected rider in the sport of the highest profile-well liked by riders and fans alike. One thinks that if a man like this resorts to blood doping to win, what about the rest of the sport ? Maybe it's all a bad dream, we just can't seem to wake up.

bad neighbor

Every neighborhood has a bad guy......someone who doesn't really act like there is anybody else that matters in this world, only himself. This is my next door neighbor. This guy has an illegal buisiness in his backyard-a cabinetry,contractor, builder...human termite kind of vortex. He hires all sorts of wonderful folks to work for him-runaway felons, guys with restraining orders, his own family members ( not much different,really) just the kind of people that might make one a little edgy being just six feet from your house. This guy moved into the neighborhood about five tears after I did and the drama hasn't let up. He had a bit of a drinking problem and he and his wife got into some really nasty fights. After about six years the wife left and took the kids. Ever since the house next door has been a sort of halfway-house for all sorts of losers, down and outers needing a source of shelter and work. The buisness involves the use of power tools, sometimes on weekends, sometimes late into the night. There is no garage so work proceeds right out in the open - no buffer from the noise or the hits of the '70's blaring out of the radio. I call this guy " Dollar Bill" as this is what some of his aquaintences call him-a guy always in the pursuit of a dollar. Don't get me wrong, I work , too. I guess I just think a little differently that Dollar Bill. My way of doing buisiness involves having a shop, a buisiness license, paying taxes, not creating a vortex of noise for my neighbors to endure. I have confronted Dollar Bill on a few occasions....some times he will talk about it, other times he is indignant and downright nasty. This aspect of my life has been going on for about fifteen years.Today's talk was most discouraging and I fear that the next step is to get the police involved. I wonder what retribution Dollar Bill has in mind for people who dare to impede him in his quest for the next dollar. I guess I'll find out soon enough.

ok, ok

Yeah, so I was wrong about the election........glad, really. It's about time that some views from average working people began to permeate the halls of the federal government. For the last 6-odd years it's been rhetoric and ultimatums raining down upon the citizenry......talk of fear and resolve against a mostly ficticious enemy, while the real enemies go largely unchecked. Same old same old.....large corporate interests buy the politicans and are free ( not entirely,although the profit they make pretty much pays for the expenses incurred..) to rape and pillage the earth and all of it's inhabitants. The world leaders are mostly reptiles employed by vampires......a few very wealthy people unsatisfied with making 400-1000 times the average living wage-so unsatisfied with what they have that they have to steal what you and I have.....pensions,healthcare, property,freedom of speech, etc. It is they who hate our freedom, not some poor people on the other side of the world getting the shit bombed out of them.

prepare to be hoodwinked

Does anyone remember the 1918 world series? The Chicago white sox players threw the series for a promise of money from a big time New York gambler. After the series the players were put on trial and eight of them received a lifetime ban from professional baseball. The entire nation felt cheated, betrayed......hoodwinked by their heroes in the national pastime. The reason I bring this up is that the country is on the verge of a midterm election and the same type of betrayal looms in the background......the hoodwinking of the American public at large. Polls show the Democrats poised to regain control of the house and/or the senate after this election. Most of my friends are convinced that this is going to happen, a sure thing. My prediction is based on the current government's record of the last 6 years. The republicans have done some criminal things recent history and have slandered opponents with lies and character destructive campaign ads. Imagine politicans attacking the military record of say, John Mc Cain, a veteran and prisoner of war......it's amazing that any thinking person would give any credibilty to such nonsense but the result was Bush winning the primary . It wans't long after that when in Florida a scandeous rigging of the ballot count and wholesale elimination of black voters created a win for the republicans there. The same thing happened four years later in Ohio. This government went to war on a false premise and continues with the waste of human life and resources, all the while continuing to lie to the public about the cost of the bad decisions that led to and keep this war going. It seems to me that the republicans rigging this election is not only possible, it is higly likely. The american people at large do not seem to be capeable of standing up to this kind of unacceptable government and demanding a fair and unsullied election. There is a hope that most people have that the government is honest and has the common people's interests at heart. The platform of the republicans in '2000 was " compassionate conservatism" ....what we have now is a form of festering fascism, the rest of the world knows it and is fearful of it for good reason. A compassionate government doesn't abandon it's poor, it's under-educated,it's un-insured, it's working class or the environment. The claim of 'compassionate conservitism' was and is complete nonsense by this government and this next election will showcase just how little our votes and our voices-even our lives mean to this government. A nation that elects reptiles will most likely be consumed by them.

ralph my world

What can bring a man to violent madness and dispair in fifteen minutes or less? Plumbing....at least today that was the case. The bathroom faucet had been dripping for about a month so today I figured that it would be a good thing to take care of. Maybe it was good to fix the faucet in the larger sense but the experience was awful. First, this operation is at home and the tool selection here is grim.Of course I proceed anyway with totally fucked up and inadaquate tools, experience and patience... as if my positive spirit will carry me through this miserable task-trouble is I do not posess a positive spirit. The only spirits I posess of any kind are the ones in the liquor locker.Problem #1. I like to tighten nuts and bolts to thier limit. This is precisely how I installed the last faucet. I really had a bitch of a time loosening all of those fittings that I had gorilla-torqued on three years ago.problem#2. The faucet I had installed last time had no replaceable parts so I had to buy a new faucet. I went and bought the faucet at a big hardware store that was going to close early as it was Sunday. If I needed anything else to finish the job I would and did have to go elsewhere-twice actually. Three trips to the hardware store, a big chunk bashed out of the sink pedestal ( it's now 'antiqued' I would like to say....) and about 1 1/2 hours of knuckle-scraping wrenchwork and it's done. No leaks yet, anyhow. I hope that the next time I can afford to have someone else,let's say a plumber , perhaps do the job.