...from the back of the check-out line at Wal-Mart

I appreciate that you're saving $5-$10 on a shopping cart overflowing with groceries but from back here at the end of the check out line it's easy to get a little aggravated with you and your Bible-thick stack of coupons, half of which are out-of-date. For every 5 coupons that scan properly there's that one where the bar code just won't be read until you finally give up and let the cashier move on to the next one. Funny how you never look back at those of us waiting behind you, ice cream melting, milk going sour, bread molding. Is that guilt that won't let you turn to the right to take in the sight of all the coupon-less shoppers whose patience was tested, long before getting into this line, by the mind numbing process of Wal-Mart shopping? It's not as if you don't save a dollar on a dollar-fifty bag of donuts with their "everyday low prices", you have to kick in a coupon for a dime off because, hey, it all adds up. Don't be such a cheapskate, man. Do your part just as we do, small as it is, in helping build back up the nation's dying economy. I know, it's almost like being tortured to have to give your money to Wal-Mart and I don't blame you for wanting to skim a tiny portion off the top, even if it's only to rankle the boys down in Arkansas. But for God's sake, we've got things to do, places to be. The magazines they put in the aisles to sell, Barnes & Noble style, are all lame and most of us wouldn't be caught dead reading the Enquirer or the Globe in public. There's nothing to do besides grumble and resent you holding us up, knowing that all the other lines are just as long and who knows how many of them will be populated with even more bargain busters each one wielding "War and Peace" sized stacks of coupons, all wrinkled from being stuffed in a purse with all the other useless crap, making the bar codes even MORE difficult to scan. Here's the deal, lady. Me and my friends here, at all points in the line behind you, are willing to throw together $5.00 CASH if you'll just forget about all the coupons. Let me re-iterate, that's CASH, doll. Mean green. You can take that to the casino and walk out with a whole butt load of money. Or you can buy a Happy Meal and sell the toy on eBay for a hundred bucks. $5.00 will buy you a copy of Vogue so you can sit back and salivate over all the fashion accessories you might could have bought with the money you saved at Wal-Mart...but WAIT! You can't get you no Gucci with coupons from the Sunday Oklahoman. Christian Dior and Tommy Hilfiger (sp) don't make no "$75 off" chits, now do they? Ma'am, take my advice. Cash is the way to go. And you might say that $5.00 doesn't seem like a lot when you consider how much money you'll save on Great Value Hominy, or Clabber Girl baking powder, or a Banquet liver and onions TV dinner, or a 12 roll family pack of John Wayne toilet paper... Great deals, I agree. I do love me some Bar-S bologna with Ramen noodles. But just take a look at the fine print on any of those coupons. See? "Cash value of coupon is less than 1/100th of a cent". Looks to me like $5.00 would be a real windfall for such petty work as snipping little rectangles out of newspapers and magazines. $5.00. It's what we have for you. Take it and accept out deepest gratitude. But if you refuse I guarantee you will never be forgiven when some proud-parent-to-be can't make it to the hospital in time to see the birth of his first child for no other reason than that he needed a can of discount priced Skoal and you held up the line. Selfish. Shame, shame, shame. $5.00.

Eric Whitacre's Virtual Choirs

Watch these. An incredible idea realized. Try to hold back the goosebumps the first time you hear the Virtual Choir during Whitacre's TED Talk. I'm late jumping on this bandwagon but oh well. Something completely original always gets me excited.

Don't be such a sore loser...

Please, please, please stop your bitching and moaning, whining about how it coulda been, shoulda been woulda been, and just accept the fact that the majority of the country voted for Obama so now he's our president. That's the way it works, you know. How about instead of bemoaning the hell-bound state of the nation as a result of this fact you DO SOMETHING, you GET INVOLVED, you work with your "enemy" for the GOOD. I guarantee you they want the best for the country every bit as much as you do, so why not try to reach some middle ground instead of mourning the death of bipartisan politics? Watch C-SPAN for a while instead of Bill O'Reilly and Sean Hannity so you can reach YOUR OWN unfiltered conclusions and the same goes for us democrats with Jon Stewart, Bill Maher (yuck), 99% of Hollywood. We've all got to realize that these radio & tv pundits are there "for amusement only". They're entertainment and little more.

You will not see me shouting from the rooftops that my man won...nobody in this town would ever speak to me again if I did, not to mention the death stares. The idea of prolonging this whole ugly mess by posting "nyah nyah nyah nyah nyah YOU LOST WE WON!" memes on facebook. It's not for me to jump into the fray of figuring out why Romney lost. That's for the Republicans to sort out...like I said earlier, as far as I'm concerned the reason Romney lost was because he didn't get enough votes (I'm being facetious, of course).

And then I see so many people saying "pray for the president" and I think that's great. We hopefully prayed for Bush, Clinton, Bush Sr,, Reagan, Carter, Ford...yea, even Nixon (especially Nixon)...meaning to say that when we pray for someone we are supporting them and I only hope that such support will be manifest in other ways which manifest in physical ways. This action is the stuff with which God answers prayers. Pray for sure, but don't sit back and wait for God to somehow intervene. Remember that in this world WE are His hands, eyes, ears, etc. His will cannot be done if we use them seeking discord, division, isolationism, and all the other things that run contrary to the Law of Love.

Which is all to say that people have the power to change. A friend of mine once wrote, "Everything changes, change is all that there is" and that's so true. By it's very nature change is inevitable. I wouldn't presume to tell my conservative friends that they need to move over, get out of the way and stop holding that change back. Because I don't see them doing that. There's a cautious aspect to progress and I believe it's their job to reign in change that's unproductive and out of control. Unfortunately the definition of "unproductive and out of control" often seems radically at odds with the vision democrats have. Perhaps it is this balance that allows change to flow at a rate which supports social harmony. Just thinkin' to be thinkin' here...

...which I suppose means that there will never be a time when we're all gonna get along (an opinion which perhaps puts me at odds with the goal of a "Utopian" society I've been told is the goal of the Left). Hopefully I don't sound too esoteric to suggest that the very duality of the universe would seem to even REQUIRE the push and pull of our differing views.

But that does not mean we shouldn't nevertheless strive for harmony, peace, goodwill, and a willingness to overlook a few faults to achieve those things. Bipartisanship is only as dead as you say it it. It's only as dead as you want it to be. Of course there is no such thing as PERFECT bipartisanship. But there certainly is bipartisanship of a DYSFUNCTIONAL sort. If our nation can hold claim to any bipartisan politics at all there is no doubt that they are of the dysfunctional type. It's up to us to do something about that.

Re-reading those words I could almost see how someone might take them as a call for revolution. Encouragement to overthrow and topple the government. No, that's not how I mean it. Just get involved on a realistic level. Our elected officials should be prepared to do their job provided with INFORMED requests. House and Senate representatives should either have a case built by people who cared enough to seek out the facts FOR THEMSELVES or they should not even consider that they have a case at all. If this were the norm I bet things would look a lot different. People should not only know about the facts themselves but understand the whys and hows of PACs and other organizations/corporations that desire to influence votes and elections.

I could go on and on and on...I hope I didn't offend anyone, especially with those opening lines. It just seemed like so many people are dragging the negative aspects of this election out further, stretching them to see how far they will go before turning into something even uglier. I can't count how many people have said "I'll be so glad when this is over" and I definitely agreed. Some of these same people are still regurgitating talking points learned from Limbaugh, Beck, Levin, Hannity, O'Reilly, the usual lot. It's time for all of us to get serious about politics. It's become obvious that social media is going to be a hugely influential aspect of 21s century politics. Since everyone and their long deceased great great grandfather are on facebook and twitter there's no escaping it. Peer pressure to become involved is and will become even more strong. This is a good thing, but also not so much so. The viral misinformation and vitriol will likely continue into infinity. But hopefully more and more people will take it seriously, seeking out facts in the morass of bullshit.

And with such knowledge true change can hopefully be recognized by those cautious of it's dangers as well as those who would embrace it in hope for a better future than they were given. Recognized, acknowledged and unchained.

Meme-Warrior Politicians and other ruminations on the current political climate

For every informed citizen caught up in the "game" there are hundreds who don't know their heads from their asses with regard to even the surface intricacies of the issues. Too many of these people shape their opinions on little more than memes like this with maybe a dose of Rush Limbaugh, Chris Matthews, Glenn Beck or Jon Stewart to help shape their viewpoints with little if any regard to the strengths of the opposing party or the weaknesses of their own. It's a game, but so few know the rules and even fewer know why those rules are put into place. People who wouldn't watch 10 minutes of C-Span but will spend two hours stroking their position with Mark Levin or Alan Colmes neither of whom seem to give a rat's ass about anything more important than discrediting the other. You put these people in a room together and you won't get a single moment of intelligent discourse. No, but you just might see an all out bar room brawl. These people have absolutely no respect for their opponents. NONE. I despise George W. Bush and believe some of his actions were not only ill advised but maybe even criminal. Yet if I were sufficiently predisposed I could probably find several things he did that were good for the American people. I would recognize those things. And I'm not defending the democrats, either, because there are just as many on the left who refuse to admit that their "enemy" could do ANYTHING right. I don't think you're going to hear Sean Hannity or Ann Coulter throw out a positive remark about the President. He may as well be the anti-Christ and God knows there are plenty meme politicians who actually think he is just that.

Never mind that he's had a few victories of his own. Conservatives won't even give Obama credit for even playing a role in bin Laden's take down. And that's such bull. The man with his finger on the button is the man with the responsiblity, which makes him the brunt of the blame or the praised victor. Come on. "Obama called the SEALS and THEY got bin Laden". Who do you think gave the order to kill Saddam Hussein? Who killed him? Nobody remembers the guys name, and that's too bad because soldiers deserve recognition, but the fact is that history will show that George W. Bush got Hussein. History will show that Barrack Obama got Osama bin Laden. History shows that because in the end they were the ones whose careers were on the line. To give the impression that Obama was not directly responsible is to feed the fires of hatred that too many armchair politicians thrive on. Which I only bring up because it's a prime example of what I'm talking about. Let's not give credit to the man who would have been crucified if the SEAL mission had failed. What a double standard.

So...and here's the crux of my point I'm probably failing to make. Politics is some deep water. It is for the few to manipulate the many. It is too deep for most people to know what they're getting into and that's why it's easy to best them with facts because they just don't know them all, and most of the ones they DO know have been twisted beyond recognition by candidates who have no use for them. One of the reasons I consider myself a liberal is because I see it as an affiliation that questions everything and wants to know WHY. That's the most important thing I want to know, because if you can't tell my WHY something is I would say WHY BOTHER THEN? I get the feeling that a lot of meme-warriors have little concern for the whys and wherefores. A lot of the time it's just like an ego stroking club. Romney is the leader of one and Obama the other. "Like" their page and get a daily boost. Keep up with all the memes in favor of your party that are floating about in wanna-be-viral land by subscribing to "I am going to vote for Presiden Obama in 2012". It IS like the Super Bowl...Pittsburg Steelers versus Podunk Junior Varsity.

It's why I hate to go into much detail about what I believe politically because at some point I'm going to get in just deep enough to be unsure and there's always some sharks armed with just enough ammunition to make me question the validity of what I have felt in my heart and tried to put in my head for most of my adult life. And sure enough when I get out of the waters and dig a little deeper I can find my own ammunition for when I want to best those pesky sharks. And I will, but it's like Dante's Inferno. It just keeps getting worse.

If I may continue with the analogy...those sharks don't know anything more than I do. But they stay where they're at and wait for the next diver. They aren't looking deeper. They're happy where they are. That's politics to me. It's way, way too complex for me to be so absolutely sure or get to the bottom of any issue. Maybe that's a weakness on my part, but I believe an election should be about weighing pros and cons, not trying to knock each other off the scales. I've given up hope that this generation will ever respect the office of the presidency itself as opposed to the man who sits in the Oval Office. Isn't that sad?

How about instead of slinging horse**** at our opponents we make better use of our time and try to educate all the people who need to be shown how to ask "why" and how to spot a lie when they hear one. Show them there's a higher path than posting negative images and stupid cartoons trying to best the other team. (I should take just a second here to admit that I have done that as well, so I understand the fascination). Teach them what they should know before they go to the ballots and if they don't want to learn we should do everything in our power to keep them FROM the ballots.

I know there's a long standing tradition of political rivalry that stretches back all the way to the founding of the country. It seems negative campaigning has been with us from the start. But do you know what? It's so stupid. It's counterproductive. Some traditions, through the passage of time, become good for nothing and no one. Those are the traditions that need to be tossed. And IMO this is one of them.

dream journal: truckers en masse & unlucky pilots

Two nights in a row now that I've had vivid dreams (see post below). This one wasn't quite as uplifting, to be sure, but quite spectacular in it's own morbid way.

Not a whole lot to it, really, though quite powerful. First I noticed that there more 18 wheeler semi trucks driving through town. Many more than usual. Broadway and Main Street in the town where I live are the intersections of two important state highways so we do get quite a few big trucks hauling their goods across these roads. Some are on the way to the Interstate seven miles away. Others may be trying to avoid the Interstate for whatever reason. In this dream there were at least twice as many coming through town than was normal.

Next thing I found myself at the car wash. I wasn't washing the car or doing anything that might need to be done at a car wash. I think I was talking to someone on the phone. The signal was becoming very sketchy. I heard the announcer on the radio saying something about how there would be a lot of jet airplanes in the sky today so I figured the airplanes had something to do with it (why, I don't know. It was a dream, right?). Sure enough I see a plane flying over to the east.

Then I heard one of them flying particularly close, heading toward me. From a very high altitude and at full speed the plane's nose turns to the ground. It only took a few seconds before I saw the explosion. Incredibly violent. It had been flying so fast that it was basically consumed in the fire the second it hit the ground. The crash couldn't have been much more than a hundred yards from me, but there was no shrapnel.

I turned away and tried to call 911...or maybe I called my wife first and then tried to call 911, I don't remember. Before I could get off the phone there was another brilliant explosion to the north, near a cafe on the side of Broadway.

A period of time passed until I became keenly aware than no fire trucks or ambulances had been dispatched to the scene. Not even the sound of a police siren. I walked toward the scene of the second crash and there was smoke bellowing out but it didn't look nearly as wrecked as I thought it would.

I got back in my car and headed home on a back road I often use as a short cut. I almost never see any other cars on this mile long stretch of what used to be part of the highway a long, long time ago. But in the dream there was a solid line of 18 wheelers all headed in one direction (south). They weren't crawling slowly as if they were in a line at a parade. They were really tooling along.

It was at this point that I woke up. Thinking about it now I can see that it was an unusual, rare dream. I've had many dreams over the course of my life about planes crashing. Usually they are smaller passenger planes or huge commercial airliners. I'm sure I've dreamed of jets, too, but apparently they were not remarkable enough to have been retained in my memory. Yet that's not what made it rare.

Every time I've ever dreamed of airplane disasters I've woken up immediately after the crash. These are the kind of dreams I feel kind of shaken by upon waking. Yet in this one I stay in the dream after the first crash...I even stay in the dream after the second crash all the way up to getting past the back road convoy. I'm not sure at all what that means, if it signifies anything. I read some interpretations earlier this morning and the most logical was the one that postulated the jets as goals and ambitions, things I want or need to do before I leave the planet. The crashing of the planes symbolizes fear of those hopes and dreams being left unrealized and undone. It's supposed to be a warning that I should get my shit together and carpe deum.

All of which may well be true but I really think it's more complicated in my case. So much so that I fear I'm full of crap. Even if I'm not full of crap it would take a long, long time for me to explore the labyrinth of my psyche hoping for significance in a dream. The things I'd find would probably not be stuff I'd want to relate here so it's probably best for myself and everyone else if I simply leave it at that...

...an awesome, action packed dream with just enough David Lynchian weirdness to set it apart from others.