Science fiction, fantasy, mystery and what-not
Bob Dylan won the Nobel Prize for Literature
But I still woke up
The Chicago Cubs won the World Series
But the sky is still blue
Donald Trump is the President-Elect of the United States
But I’m still drinking quad shot mochas and writing like crazy
And the trees remained beautifully cloaked in scarlet and gold, yellow and brown, and green and orange, a lovely tableau against a blue morning sky…
I was torn between three songs. ‘Don’t Look Back’ and ‘Look Ahead’. But the third song won.
I’m worn out. This election campaigning in the U.S. has worn me out. Like many, I’m suffering from rhetoric burn-out. Today is November sixth. The election is on the eighth. Then, I’m sure, there will be howling, gnashing of teeth, victory proclamations, and accusations, no matter who wins. Meanwhile, it’s going to be really intense until winners are declared.
So, do you feel like I do? Peter Frampton asked the question, ‘Do You Feel Like We Do?’ which is sufficiently close. I know I’m not alone in my bubble of friends and family. Besides, although the song title says ‘we’, you’ll hear Peter consistently sing , “Do you feel like I do?” Here it is, from ‘Frampton Comes Alive’, from 1976.
The self-appointed and full of folly brains on beer group met last night. I joined them despite its name, as I was off my green smoothie fast and had endured several weeks without a beer. For that, I felt entitled to be rewarded. The only porter on tap is vanilla infused and reminds me of cream soda. Opting out of that, I enjoyed Caldera Brewing’s Ashland Amber Ale. Although several IPAs were on hand along with Boneyard’s Red Ale, CB’s triple A is a good fallback for any venue.
Ron was celebrating his sixty-ninth birthday, so he bought. The rest put twenty into the kitty to support local schools’ STEM efforts. Conversations naturally skidded toward politics. Several members were leaving early to catch the debates. We’re on the spectrum from Reagan Republican to extreme liberals, and include several stops between those end points. None support Trump; none are enamored with Hillary. Several were Bernie fans. No one else really seemed to garner energy in our group.
Discussion swung around to Oregon issues and dropped into Prop 97. Disagreement bounced up. The most liberal disliked the prop because it was written too loosely. Another objected to 97 and was voting against it because it’s a sales tax and the floor for being taxed was too low. Logic, hyperbole, facts and opinions flew. Nothing was resolved, and nobody changed their minds.
But it was exhilarating to sit with friends and not agree, to discuss points of an issue based on its merits without diving into personalities or spewing invective statements and hate. In the end, we finished our beers, headed for the doors and called, “Good seeing you, see you next week.”
I’d like to declare a national day free of bullshit. We can call it National No Bullshit Day. NNBD. Although bullshit is spelled as one word, some call it as BS, or more colloquially, B.S.. So we could do NNBSD. Naturally, I like my idea better. We can have shirts and tee shirts, and raise money, or some other bullshit.
You know BS when you hear it and you call it by your expression. Mularky. Bull. Bullshit. B.S. Garbage. Crap.
We were used to it in the military. Bullshit inundated us, which, if you think about it, which I try not to do, is actually a lot of B.S. We had our bullshit meters. Hearing something that we knew as bullshit, we’d say, in a sort of laconic way, “That just pegged my bullshit meter.” That statement meant that the needle went all the way to the right. Another expression used was, “That buried the needle on my bullshit meter.” Buried the needle was an old expression referencing tachometers and opening throttles to the point where the needles entered the red zone or went as far as it could. Of course, the ultimate bullshit expression was, “My bullshit meter just broke.”
Most bullshit meters used to go to ten. Mine, of course, went to eleven. It was the Spinal Tap Special. (rim shot)
I suppose, in this precise digital age, that bullshit meters are way more accurate. They’re probably on a scale of one to a thousand, enabling the ability to assign a more accurate bullshit value to a given statement, action or news. There are probably apps that can be downloaded and installed on your smart phones, iPhones, iPads and tablets. Being sixty, I don’t need a bullshit meter, and will tell you, with a sniff, “I don’t need a meter to tell me when something’s bullshit. I’ve experienced enough bullshit to know bullshit when bullshit is around.”
But many naive and gullibles do not recognize bullshit. They believe you can get something for nothing. I, of course, believe that’s bullshit. Of course, the problem with bullshit is, once it’s in your system, you can’t get it out, debilitating your immunity to bullshit. You soon can’t even detect it.
Still, there times when my bullshit meter gets broke. For example, when a car manufacturer, like Ford, declares they’ve completely re-invented a car, I think, that’s bullshit.
When they announced literally no longer means literally, I shook my head and said, “What bullshit.”
When I see the price of my quad shot mocha is five dollars, I think, that’s outrageous bullshit, even though it’s not, really. Bullshit often depends upon your frame of reference. I have some years behind me so my frame of reference has gotten pretty damn big. First, I would tell you, “Nobody sold mochas when I was a kid. We didn’t have a Starbucks or coffee house on every corner. Coffee houses were part of the beat generation. Only artists and poets went there, not people.”
And then I will tell you, “I remember when a cup of coffee cost less than a dollar.” Someone with a bigger frame of reference will naturally top that and declare, “I remember when it cost ten cents a cup,” and another will say, “I remember when it was free.” I’m not sure if coffee was ever free, so that moves my old bullshit meter needle a little bit, but that’s okay, because they’re old, and it’s honest bullshit.
The Internet doesn’t help. I mean, come on, there is so much bullshit on it that it seems possible that the bullshit will take it down. Which would be a pretty good news lead: “In today’s top story, bullshit broke the worldwide web. More coming up, after this word from your sponsors.” Which is bullshit in its own right, to need to wait to hear about this important news until you’ve heard someone try to sell you something.
I may be showing my age there.
You’d think some tech company could design an application that not only detects bullshit but blocks it, just as intrusion detection and prevention software works. Then, as you’re downloading a page, a little popup arrives on your screen and says, “Warning. Bullshit was detected and blocked.”
We could even assign the bullshit levels of threat: faint, mild, average, serious, dangerous, and OMGWTF infuriating.
I dream of a time when television commercials could contain the disclaimer, “This commercial contains no bullshit,” and you can sit back and listen and know, you’re not hearing any bullshit. Because if they were spreading bullshit when they made the commercial, some great Bullshit God would zap them with a laser and declare in a thunderous voice, “No bullshit allowed. Not on my watch.”
But, yes, that’s a fantasy. For now, I’ll dream of a bullshit free day, or even just, like an hour when I don’t read something and say to the cats, “Can you believe this bullshit?”
I don’t think it’s going to be until after November 8th.
I try to follow the news and escape the echo chambers. Demoralizing as so many American newspapers essentially offer the same take on every story. So vanilla. Meanwhile, columnists along the political spectrum are generally predictable about what they’ll claim, reducing their value. I like jumping out of the US and checking the news on BBC America, and British, Canadian and Australian newspapers for coverage of American events. I still dance through WaPo, SFGate, NYTimes, Boston.com, Forbes and a few others on a regular daily/weekly basis.
I’m following theSkimm because a friend recommended it. They read so I can skim. I wanted to see how they read and interpret.
Longreads take me into places I wouldn’t otherwise know. Longreads offer compelling, vivid stories. They take a lot of time to read. Yes, I read the Nation, the Atlantic, and Rolling Stone, which also have long articles. Oi.
Haven’t seen anything on theSkimm or Longreads about Lionel Shriver’s opening address at the Brisbane Writers Festival regarding cultural appropriation, but there’s an eruption of blog posts, newspaper columns and editorials about the complex, challenging situation. Wow.
Trying to drift into a different direction, I’ve been checking out Merry Jane’s website. Marijuana is morphing into a large and legitimate business in Oregon, with signs like ‘Exit here for the BEST marijuana’ emerging alongside Interstate 5, right beside signs claiming to have the world’s BEST pie.
I delve into Pinterest, FB and Instagram to see what’s bouncing around those places. I still check Flipboard and BillMoyers daily, and read an overabundance of writing blogs and newsletters, along with Wired, Popular Mechanics, the Smithsonian, Union of Concerned Scientists, Delancey Place and EPI when their newsletters arrive.
What are you reading out there? You have any sites that you recommend?
Never is a big word, easily used. “I’m never going to Texas,” she said. “It’s full of racists and rednecks.”
I have family in Texas. They are somewhere on the spectrum of both of those things. Reliable Republicans, they think whites are getting a raw deal and distrust the M&Ms of Mexicans and Muslims. They’ve never actually experienced deprivation, never went hungry or without a roof, but still, they hear stories.
“I’m never riding on trains. They’re so dangerous.”
This was brought on by a train wreck in Spain that killed four. Wrecks happen. They’re never riding on trains because of an accident. What does that leave? Cars, bikes and planes? Because no one has ever been killed using those. People walking are killed, as are people in bed, suffering from nature’s attacks (quakes, tornadoes, hurricanes) to human events (gas line explosion). What are you going to do, hole up so you don’t die, with a plan to live forever?
I’ve jumped on the Never train many times (oooh, like that as a title for something, “The Never Train”), irked by Microsoft, Google, Lenovo, IBM, Comcast, HP, United, Delta, AT&T, Geico, McDonalds, Hillary, Trump, Republicans, Democrats, the NFL, the Senate, the House, the SCOTUS, Obama, Bush, Cheney, Clinton, Monsanto, police shootings, mass shootings, terrorist bombs, drone attacks…. Never comes easily but it’s rarely forever.
“I’m never going to stop drinking coffee,” I say, but with the rust disease, who knows? Yesterday, I bought a quad shot mocha for over five dollars, a bottle of wine for six dollars, and a pint of beer for six dollars. The QSM was purchased on the road in another town. “Too much,” I said, with a grimace, but held back from loosing the N word. “Six dollars for a bottle of Pinot Noir?” I asked. Seems too good to be true but I refrained from saying, “You can never get a good wine for six dollars.” It was hard to not say. Six dollars for a pint of Ninkasi Sinister Black Ale? That seemed steep, too. What is my Never point, I wondered.
My wife illuminated the never point in later conversations. While the prices of coffee, wine, beer (and gas) were striking, we have money that provide us a large comfort zone. The prices are noted and shrugged off. Sure, the comfort zone experienced a little nibble on the edge, but it’s a broad space, and that makes strides of difference.
We remembered when a car repair would mean a budget analysis to see what we would do without or reduce to save enough money to fix the car. Pennies were hoarded to purchase a treat, like ice cream at DQ. We didn’t drink wine, rarely drank beer, and our coffee was bought for fifty cents a cuppa. We never thought any of that would change.
But life is full of nevers. We never imagined video games being such a massive business, with their primary demographics being adults. We never thought Ashland would have the country’s record high, 108 degrees F. We never thought we’d track and study wildfires and El Nino and La Nina, never thought we’d quit subscribing to cable television, never thought a friend would do the things she had, never thought violence would come to our neighborhood. But it all happened.
So, I think, as I write like crazy and work, saying never rarely holds. I don’t think I’ll never say never again, but I will be more mindful about it.
At least, I’ll try, because always is a lot like never.
My HP Envy is on the way back to my home. Although I’m happy, that’s not news, and it’s not prompting this post.
What prompts this post is how it’s coming back. Sent Fed Ex 2-Day service, picked up on 5th, it’ll reach me on the 9th. That’s a sign of our times, that 2 days = 4 days without a wince of embarrassment. It goes right along there with logic that says the answer to gun violence is to arm more people with guns. That ketchup is a vegetable. That water boarding is not torture, and that torture rewards us with the truth.
That America is the world’s greatest country. That corporations are people, my friends. That companies care about their customers above their profits, that market corrections will fix problems, that climate change can be ignored by legislating the words out of the public’s view, that charter schools run for profit will do better than public schools supported by taxes, that professional sports stadiums are good for the local economy and do much more than serve the wealthy owners, that things were better for everyone ‘in the good old days,’ and that the answer to war, is more war.
Heartbreaking, dispiriting, infuriating…these were my pissed off reactions to headline news of Hillary’s nomination.
Yes, I’m a Bernie but I’m not a DEB. The political cacophony ended part 1. Part 2 will begin after a short intermission. I can enumerate the madness of a Trump presidency, but if asked, I’ll put to others who do it better. As a progressive, Hillary is a middle of the road choice, but I accept her as the nominee best suited to my agenda and principles, and I’ll vote for her.
What triggered my reactions wasn’t about Trump vs Hillary, nor Republicans and Democrats, or Progressives battling Conservatives. This was about the media’s business as fucking usual, blind to their own fucking faults, and continuing as a catalyst to America’s mess. So many headlines touted Clinton as in, and displayed photos of Bill Clinton. Some barely bothered mentioning her name. As the hype that Hillary had shattered the glass ceiling was furthered, these neanderthalic publications displayed the man Clinton instead of the woman Clinton. I mean, damn it, really? Why?
As weighty discussions about Clinton vs Trump circulate, they’re asking, is Hillary warm enough, ignoring the frothing, shouting, threatening buffon opposing her without asking, is he fucking sane enough? Do they know they treat her differently or are they too deep into their shit to see it? And if it’s the latter, what does that announce about their professionalism, objectivity and just plain critical thinking?
These editors, publishers, and their instruments revealed much with their misguided headlines, and yeah –
I trust and respect them less, because there it is, their blind sexism in their front pages.
Michael Seidel, writer 