Happy Halloween

I have to work a night shift tonight which means I won’t be awake to have fun answering the door and passing out candy to all the little costumed beggars.

Halloween restores my faith in humanity every year, because back around 1995 I took my son trick or treating and, instead of just leaving the house dark with no one home, I decided to put all the candy I bought in a big bowl and leave it on the front porch with a sign that read:

TRICK OR TREAT!!!!!

PLEASE TAKE A CANDY

HAVE A SAFE AND HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!!

My son and I agreed as we headed out of the yard that the first person to arrive would empty the bowl and steal all the candy. Oh, well…

When we got home hours later -- exhausted, cold, and lugging a bucket of amazing trick or treat candy --  we found our candy bowl 1/3 full. 

Faith in the integrity of humans: RESTORED

All Done With The Walking Dead

I’m officially quitting the Walking Dead. Since watching the Season 7 premiere, it seems obvious that the writers don’t know where to go, so they’re taking us on a bullshit journey of gruesome that I am simply not interested in traveling. The writers have fucked up and, being the unforgiving asshole that I am, I’m leaving.

Rick having his face plastered with blood has evolved into the new norm, but the bashing of skulls – especially of characters that seem to have the most humanistic personas – is a bit too much. The line has been crossed. 

And where the hell are all the women and children? Why are there all men in Neegan’s camp and is this a setup for a bordello of Neegan-owned women that he confiscated like inanimate objects from the men he coerced and tortured into submission? The guise will, of course, be that the women went to him voluntarily to save their husbands from having their skulls bashed by Neegan. Fuck that.

The writing is on the wall for a whole bunch of torture, gore, and perversion in the coming episodes so I’m bowing out now. 

Sorry Daryl. I’m gonna miss you. 

Eeeny Meeny Miney Moe

 Nothing Better Happen to Daryl Tonight ... 

Can't Forget Bernie

Courtesy of CNN posted on YouTube

Lost Generation (Palindrome)

Courtesy of Jon Reed created for AARP

Greenday Is Baaacccckkkk!!!

I got my copy of Revolution Radio at Bull Moose and I'm thrilled to hear some new stuff from Greenday ... the band that never ages. They're all just as cute as they were 20 years ago and I still love their sound and their message.

In Case Anyone Noticed ...

I've taken quite a while off from blogging with a lot going on. Sold my house, quit my job, moved away, found a job, quit that one, found another, looking to quit that one, found a house I hate .... waiting for the lease to run out, looking around, thinking, waiting.

Blah, blah, blah, blah.

Back now. Blogging again ... in case anyone noticed I was gone.

2004 March for Women's Lives Anniversary

Pussy Riot Pays Tribute to Eric Garner

Russian punk rock protest group Pussy Riot has recorded their first song in English and it's a tribute to Eric Garner - the man who told NYPD officers he couldn't breathe 11 times while they had him in a chokehold during an arrest for selling cigarettes. Paramedics then arrived and did nothing to help him as he lay unresponsive on the sidewalk. He died an hour later at the hospital.

"Saving Christmas"

Spending Christmas Day reading reviews of Kirk Cameron's "Saving Christmas" movie is really the best present anyone could ever ask for. Cameron is a religious conservative who thinks homosexuality is detrimental to society and evolution is fiction, so what fun it is to see his movie tank.

I admit to not seeing the movie, but based on the reviews I've read and the clips I have seen it seems to be a creepy-weird scary-vibe religious movie with a subliminal pervy undertone that forces a shudder down the spines of both christians and non-christians. Oh, and one of the main character's names is actually Christian (how fucking cute is that?)

IMDb rated "Saving Christmas" a 1.3 out of 10 (not sure if this is the lowest rating ever) and Rotten Tomatoes rated it 1.9 out of 10. It was the #1 most hated movie on Rotten Tomatoes, but in all fairness, that was after Cameron saw how low his ratings were and encouraged his evangelical friends to go to Rotten Tomatoes and vote it up (which they did to the tune of 94% likeability). This cheating strategy pissed off so many people that his opponents (who Cameron referred to as 'haters and atheists') stormed Rotten Tomatoes and down voted the movie to 36% (which I think seems to be a higher rating than it even deserves).

Anyway, the Lifetime television network is full of frilly, happy, quirky Christmas movies for the holidays that are actually stress-free and entertaining and family-oriented, so, why did Cameron think he could horn in on this happy movie market, anyway? Hmph.

Merry Christmas (and Happy Holidays to all you Merry Christmas opponents.) 

Happy Thanksgiving

There's a lot to be said for keeping with tradition, but this year my family and I are making homemade pizza for Thanksgiving dinner. Just pizza, nothing else. Maybe ice cream, too.

Why? Because we want to. People can't help but pause, give us "that look" and then invite us to their house for a traditional dinner ... they do it out of pity or out of some built-in godly, spiritual obligation, whatever. It's commendable that anyone would reach out to us because they think we need help or need some lookin' after. That is what Thanksgiving should be about, after all.

I usually don't wish anyone a Happy Thanksgiving.

I usually just bitch about the slaughter of turkeys or the whole pilgrims fucking over the American Indians.

But, this year I'm just sayin' "Happy Thanksgiving" to everyone.

That's all.

Ebola Nurses Love Bike Riding

Let's start with the latest fear monger topic in America: Ebola.

Jesus Christ. This is a bad one. It's a disease caused by a virus that produces hemorrhagic fevers that cause liver damage, kidney dysfunction, and bleeding that is severe enough to cause death 50% of the time. Ok...this is scary stuff. It originated in Africa (of course) and if you want to become an Ebola Virus expert, the CDC website does a nice job of explaining everything about it, because I'm not going to do that here.

An Angel of Mercy aka a Nurse named Kaci was working with Doctors Without Borders, treating Ebola patients in West Africa. When she returned to the United States, she was held against her will at the airport in NJ. She says she was forced into substandard living conditions in a tent for 3 days before being transported to her home in Maine. Her complaint is that she tested negative for Ebola and had no signs or symptoms of the disease, but was automatically quarantined anyway.

Once home in Maine, she continued to be under quarantine (for 21 total days) and had to stay indoors and stay at least 3 feet away from family and friends. But, she got antsy and she wanted - no, not wanted - NEEDED to go for a bike ride with her boyfriend. Yup, she said she just had to have a bike ride in Maine to get some fresh air and sunshine. So, she did.

Big shit fest. Now there are lawsuits, anger on both sides, Doctors Without Borders is complaining ...  the Governor doesn't seem to care ... some Maine residents are not happy ... the ACLU is defending Kaci's rights.

Whatever. Is 21 days really that big of a deal?

Eric Garner

A man (Eric Garner) selling single cigarettes (loosies) in NY was stopped by the police because apparently selling cigarettes singly harms the city (or the state, I don't really know or care) by causing a loss in tax revenue from the state sale of cigarettes (that are ridiculously over priced anyway). So, this serious offense warranted a stop by the police who said Garner - who happens to black, which doesn't matter, but totally does - had been caught doing this before.

So, when the man got upset and resisted being arrested by the 20 something year old cop (who thinks he's changing the world by arresting a guy selling cigarettes on the street) he was put in what appears to be a choke-hold until the man said "I Can't Breathe" approximately 11 times, then fell (or was knocked) to the ground and his hands were cuffed behind his back.

There are multiple internet videos online of this incident, but the most astounding one is about 7 minutes long and shows what happens after Eric Garner is on the ground and cuffed. He is not moving. He is not speaking. His breathing appears to be shallow or absent. He appears to be dying.

He is surrounded by multiple police officers (who I have to assume are trained as First Responders) who just watch him and do nothing to help him. An ambulance is called and no officers do anything with the exception of a few putting their fingers on the side of Garner's neck in an apparent attempt to find a pulse and determine if he was still alive or not.

There was no rescue breathing, no defibrillator called for, no attempt at raising his head or uncuffing his hands (having hands cuffed behind your back interferes with breathing). No attempts at anything ... just standing around, waiting for the ambulance. WTF.

Finally, the ambulance arrives. You can see one paramedic (or EMT) standing and doing nothing. Then, a female paramedic (or EMT) is apparently in charge of treating Garner. It appears that she does not count his respirations, does not take his pulse, does not check his oxygen saturation level, does not administer oxygen, does not attempt to put him on a cardiac monitor, does not take his blood pressure, does not demand that his hands be uncuffed from behind his back, does not offer any rescue breaths.

She puts her fingers on the side of neck, (because she apparently can't tell if he's dead or not) then talks to the unconscious man in a way that tells us she thinks he is playing possum or refusing to talk to her ... "Come on now, we're here to help you." A police officer also urged the dying man to answer the paramedic's questions. WTF.

A bystander asked why no one was starting CPR and a police officer responded to him by saying "because he's breathing." This level of stupidity in a police officer is astounding as anyone trained in CPR knows that agonal breathing requires rescue breaths. WTF.

Eric Garner died at the hospital an hour later. He was a married man with six children, 3 grandchildren, and a whole lotta friends and family who loved him.

Sources: Wikipedia

Maya

Maya Angelou died today. 

A sad day and a great loss, but her passing in no way diminishes the spirit or the wisdom or the strength she shared through her words and her life. She fought for Civil Rights alongside Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X. She survived and healed from growing up in the Jim Crow South and once said that writing I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings was therapeutic for her as it was the first time she could let go of the tragedies of her childhood and not be ashamed or afraid to speak of the unthinkable violations she endured because of the color of her skin. It was cathartic, it was healing. It was freeing. 

Her essence didn’t allow negative energy to enter her life. She once said that negative people carry negative energy that gets in your clothes and your furniture and your carpet and your hair. It fills the air that you breathe and she’d have no part of it. The “N” word was not allowed in her home. It’s a word that she said was “vulgar and dangerous to the Black community” and there was no place in her life for it.

Caged Bird was the first book I ever read by Angelou. I still have it and keep it, with its somewhat tattered paperback cover, on my bookshelf. Her words are simultaneously poetic and coarse. There was no way for Maya to pretty up the life she wrote about – her life – the one she endured and was brave enough to share. It’s a poignant, stark, necessary reminder of how sadistic and inhumane people can be and the strength it took for Black America to rise above the injustices, the abuse, the raw hatred that White America heaped (heaps) upon it. 

This book has earned itself a perpetual place on banned book lists as critics claim it is too vulgar, too graphic, too dirty for young adults, for teenagers (or maybe for all white people) to read, but what they really mean is that it’s too disturbing, too sickening, too horrific to read because it is too truthful and too real. It is an undeniable lesson in American history. A lesson that people who keep their heads buried in the sand don’t want any part of. They prefer facts glossed over or forgotten or, at least, minimized. These are the same people who conveniently refer to the systematic imprisonment, dehumanization, abuse, rape and torture of humans for multiple generations as "The American Slave Trade", making slavery a mere business transaction for savvy white men who had enough money to buy and keep humans. Maya wouldn't allow that. She was real. She was honest. She was a survivor. 

Goodbye Maya Angelou. You've taught me a lot.

Stinky Noisy Snowmobiles

A New Hampshire couple is in the news today. This duo has spent 20 years riding noisy, smelly, obtrusive snowmobiles through beautiful landscapes, apparently earning them the bragging rights of claiming to see many moose over the years. The wife carries a handgun and a video camera as proof of the couple's bona fide outdoorsy-ness.

They recently encountered a young moose, as the news stories go, directly on the snowmobile trail. Instead of stopping and giving the wild animal the right of way, they continued to drive their loud, stinky snowmobiles down the trail directly behind the frightened animal as it ran down the trail away from them. When the animal finally stopped and approached them, the husband ran from it and the wife fired her gun into the air. (She said she didn't shoot the moose because she knew the gun would only injure and anger the animal rather than kill it).

The local news channel has a misleading headline that reads, Moose Charges NH couple Snowmobiling in Jackman, suggesting the couple are victims of the moose rather than the other way around. Now the Maine Warden Service is investigating the couple to see if they should be charged with harassing the animal. The couple posted video of them following the moose online for the world to see. Since the investigation started, the husband said that he and his wife, " ... inadvertently rode closer to the moose than they anticipated, but were not chasing it ..." 

Can't adults find something better to do with their time than ride big, noisy machines through the woods ... machines that frighten wild animals who are searching for food and trying to survive? Animals that are forced to burn their energy reserves running from noisy, intrusive humans, rather than finding food and escaping predators? Not to mention how disturbing snowmobiles are to people who choose to quietly, respectfully hike through the woods.

It is a bit amusing to see people who fuck with nature get indignant when nature fucks them back.

2004 March for Women's Lives Anniversary

Fred Phelps Is Dead

Fred Phelps, the infamous founder of the Westboro Baptist Church, is dead. 

Enough said.

Mental Health Patients In Prison

I woke this morning bitching about having to shovel snow today.

That was before I saw the headline about an ex-veteran who was reportedly 'baked to death' in a jail cell in New York. It seems Rikers Island, a prison that quarters over 12,000 inmates, has malfunctioning ventilation and heating systems, so this inmate died of probable heat stroke (probable, of course, because the autopsy was inconclusive).

The man who died was a 56-year-old veteran who served in the U.S. Marine Corp. He was homeless and suffered from schizophrenia and bipolar disorder.

While trying to keep warm, he was arrested for trespassing and had an unattainably high bail set -- one he obviously couldn't pay -- so he went to Rikers Island because, according to our justice system, this homeless, mentally ill, former Marine was a criminal who should be thrown in prison.

Didn't this man deserve medical treatment at a hospital?

Didn't this man deserve to be taken care of?

Didn't this man deserve to be treated fairly and humanely?

Didn't this man who served his country -- the most powerful country in the world -- deserve better?

Rikers Island is one of the top ten worst prisons in America, according to Mother Jones. The man who was allowed to die was in a special unit of the massive prison where inmates with mental health problems are 'housed.' No one checked on him and, when he was found dead, his defense attorney was not notified for three days and his family was never notified by the prison, they found out through the media. 

As a society, how can we stay silent about billion dollar healthcare industries and broken prison systems that fail any of us who suffer from mental illness? How can budgets continue to be cut when it comes to mental illness, and how can people who should be patients in hospitals continue to be thrown in prison because there is no where else to send them when they've broken the law?

Statistics show that untreated mentally ill people eventually end up facing police officers for crimes their mental illness, homelessness, drug or alcohol addiction or extreme poverty drive them to. According to the U.S. Department of Justice, National Institute of Corrections:

Prison and jail inmates with physical health, mental health, and substance use problems experience more reintegration difficulties upon release, and typically have poorer outcomes with respect to employment, re-offending, and re-incarceration.

While I will not suggest that every prison system employee is a callous asshole who has no concern for the inmates they are sworn to care for, I will suggest that prison administrators need to collectively manage the problem and refuse to accept inmates who should be in hospitals and treatment centers, rather than prison.

A 2010 report cited in USA Today found that certain states have higher rates of putting mentally ill people in jail than others. Why is that? Would an investigation of these prisons find that privatized prisons -- ones that view inmates as commodities -- have higher than average statistics of incarcerating men and women who need medical treatment rather than punishment? Just asking a question here. I don't know the answer to it.

New York's Acting Department of Corrections Commissioner Mark Cranston assured the public that an investigation is underway. Wow, that puts my mind at ease. In his statement, Cranston labeled Jerome Murdough's death 'unfortunate.' Unfortunate?! Try Appalling. Outrageous. Sickening. Needless. Doesn't a system that accepts the responsibility of holding human beings against their will have a legal duty to make sure those people are not allowed to suffer cruel and unusual punishment or untimely deaths? Maybe 'Criminal' is a better word to describe Jerome's death, Mr. Cranston?

The Justice Department admits that mentally ill prisoners are easy targets for other inmates, are more often preyed upon, and have more trouble with guards for failing to follow rules. Yes, that makes sense, because mentally ill people do not think or act like people who don't suffer from mental illness. That's why they need medical attention. That's why they shouldn't be thrown in prison. That's why people like Jerome Murdough are found dead in their cells.

For more insight into our problematic criminal justice system, visit ACLU: Prisoners' Rights.

H.P. Lovecraft

"The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear. And the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown."                                                          H.P. Lovecraft


On this very day, 77 years ago, H.P. Lovecraft died in a hospital in Providence, Rhode Island at age 46. His horror stories, more popular now than when he was alive, created dark, rancid, hopeless worlds where humans were stalked and overtaken by evil other-worldly spirits. Lovecraft's fictional entities tortured their victims psychologically rather than physically, making them more cryptic, more terrifying, more thought provoking.

His stories create a sinister, stifling atmosphere where beings lurk in the dark and dwell in the deepest chambers of our brain while they wait for us to let our guard down. He drives imaginations wild and takes readers on a terrifying journey that starts with a sliver of normalcy and ends at the brink of insanity. Lovecraft's stories make people die of fear, yet never let them know what exactly killed them.

Here is an excerpt from one of Lovecraft's scariest short stories called "The Book" courtesy of Dagonbytes.com, a site that offers free online stories that will scare the shit of you. Read it if you dare.

The Book by H.P. Lovecraft (excerpt)

My memories are very confused. There is even much doubt as to where they begin; for at times I feel appalling vistas of years stretching behind me, while at other times it seems as if the present moment were an isolated point in a grey, formless infinity. I am not even certain how I am communicating this message. While I know I am speaking, I have a vague impression that some strange and perhaps terrible mediation will be needed to bear what I say to the points where I wish to be heard. My identity, too, is bewilderingly cloudy. I seem to have suffered a great shock- perhaps from some utterly monstrous outgrowth of my cycles of unique, incredible experience. 
 
These cycles of experience, of course, all stem from that worm-riddled book. I remember when I found it- in a dimly lighted place near the black, oily river where the mists always swirl. That place was very old, and the ceiling-high shelves full of rotting volumes reached back endlessly through windowless inner rooms and alcoves. There were, besides, great formless heaps of books on the floor and in crude bins; and it was in one of these heaps that I found the thing. I never learned its title, for the early pages were missing; but it fell open toward the end and gave me a glimpse of something which sent my senses reeling. 
 
There was a formula- a sort of list of things to say and do- which I recognized as something black and forbidden; something which I had read of before in furtive paragraphs of mixed abhorrence and fascination penned by those strange ancient delvers into the universe's guarded secrets whose decaying texts I loved to absorb. It was a key- a guide- to certain gateways and transitions of which mystics have dreamed and whispered since the race was young, and which lead to freedoms and discoveries beyond the three dimensions and realms of life and matter that we know. Not for centuries had any man recalled its vital substance or known where to find it, but this book was very old indeed. No printing-press, but the hand of some half-crazed monk, had traced these ominous Latin phrases in uncials of awesome antiquity.
 
I remember how the old man leered and tittered, and made a curious sign with his hand when I bore it away. He had refused to take pay for it, and only long afterwards did I guess why. As I hurried home through those narrow, winding, mist-cloaked waterfront streets I had a frightful impression of being stealthily followed by softly padding feet. The centuried, tottering houses on both sides seemed alive with a fresh and morbid malignity- as if some hitherto closed channel of evil understanding had abruptly been opened. I felt that those walls and over-hanging gables of mildewed brick and fungoid plaster and timber- with eyelike, diamond-paned windows that leered- could hardly desist from advancing and crushing me . . . yet I had read only the least fragment of that blasphemous rune before closing the book and bringing it away. 

More ...

Lena Dunham and "Girls"

Despite criticism of it being misogynistic, casting only white people, starring four women who secured their roles through nepotism and airing uncomfortable, gritty scenes that simulate rape, discuss mental illness, show people degraded and flaunt unhealthy relationships, I’m a fan of Lena Dunham’s Girls on HBO.

Dunham’s insatiable need (and extreme courage) to display her imperfect-in-the-eyes-of-society nakedness raises the hackles of critics hell bent on perpetuating the notion that only size zero women have the right to freely display their bodies, and the true message of their critiques is loud and clear: If we (meaning the judgmental dicks of society) consider you beautiful, we want to get off on your nakedness, but if you don’t fulfill our fantasy of what beauty is supposed to look like (a make-up plastered skeleton), we call it offensive and take swipes.

Lena Dunham’s spirited lack of self-consciousness makes her a role model for women, young and old. She’s unafraid of what others think of her and proudly defends her artistic style and her personal choices to be who she chooses to be. She’s shows us her ugly side (on the inside) in Girls and shows – dare I say it – normal human flaws. Ones that all of us possess. 

Yes. We. Are. All. Flawed. Inside. And. Out.

Let’s Focus On Ourselves, Own Our Flaws.

  

Let us question why sit-coms, over and over again, cast midde-aged, overweight, balding, frumpy men as the proud, mismatched husbands of young, thin, vivacious, sexy women. Why aren’t critics hucking it up over this instead of fretting over a young woman who is comfortable in her own skin?

Girls' main character loves a man who, at times, borderline rapes her yet at other times, shows us how much he, in his own fucked-up way, loves her with all his heart. I think Lena Dunham deserves credit for screenwriting that borders on therapeutic journaling by letting the characters unabashedly share their hopes, dreams and shortcomings without concerning themselves with what anyone will think of them.

Perhaps we would all benefit from a healthy dose of introspection and self-exposure.

Here are a few YouTube clips of Lena Dunham's Girls: