The Strength of a Word

"I hate you one and all. Damn your eyes!" Sam Hall - Johnny Cash

Hate has always been a strong word. Sure I am hate work at times but do I really hate everything about it? Ok, I do hate the Packers, well sometimes. I guess not so much when Ryan Grant & Aaron Rodgers are on my fantasy football team leading me to a championship in my league. I used to say I hated Elton John & Micheal Jackson, yet here they are on my IPod shuffled in with the rest.

Maybe it has just me but I have learned there isn't much to hate in the world. Really most people are even keel and probably feel the same way. Sure there are things I don't prefer but at this moment I cannot think of one thing I truly hate. Nor could I ever find a reason to be hard headed enough to say that I hate all of something or someone.

Yet right now there are millions of people in the world that say they truly hate someone else, or a whole race/country of someone elses. But I guarantee they really don't know those people. It is easier to hate things you don't know or understand, especially people. Dehumanizing them, not looking into their eyes and seeing them looking back at you. Yanks said they hated the Rebs and vice versa, yet every night they would stop fighting to sit and chat with each other as brothers.

Why do we have to be so inclusive in everything we do. Why does all of Israel have to hate all of Palestine and so on. Is there someone leading the charge of hatred or is it just because it has always been that way? When you fall into the rut of the back and forth, it takes a bigger person or a stronger will of the people to change history to stand up to the hate.

Hate is a pretty strong word. One that I try not to use and I wish others could take up that cause.

Death Magnetic - A 2nd Review

Back in September I posted a review for Metallica's new album Death Magnetic. As I was listening to one of the songs in the car this morning I started to think back at how my opinion has probably changed from this original review, so here is an update on it of sorts.

The lyrics are still mostly trival although I have found a few that have grown on me. "How can I be lost when I've got no where to go" from Unforgiven III this probably one of the best lyrics I have heard this year. In fact that song is probably the only bright spot lyrically in the entire album. I also finally found the reference of Death Magnetic in the last song on the album called My Apocalypse talking about the end getting closer and death pulling him in. At least I maybe have a little more perspective on the odd name.

My biggest gripe is over the sound quality. The crazy thing was that it took Guitar Hero to make it obvious to people. The entire album was released as extra download for Guitar Hero III and when people began to play them there is noticeable less distortion on those tracks than the other on the CD. It turns out the music is compressed on the CD in order for it to be louder (similar to the way that commericials are always louder on your TV). The side effect is a loss in sound quality which in today's world is a big deal. I can really hear it towards the end of The Day That Never Comes and spotty on those tracks. But the better the stereo you have the more glaring obvious the distortion becomes and it is really kinda of annoying and unpleasant.

This time around I believe I would give it 4 stars and notch up from the original review. This is better than about anything out there and is a true rebirth of Metallica. I love the album and I think it deserves all the praise it has received. The songs are energetic, heavy and well put together. The beginning riff of The Day That Never Comes still gives me chills. I could see myself at a Metallica concert screaming out some of these songs along with the band.

Despite my limited listening, this is my album of the year hands down.

Sharing Smiles

Note: This topic has kind of been stewing in me for over a week due to some recent talk and debate. I think I probably could have pulled this out of any lyric so I don't know how free this writing is but I've found it is all I can think about. So I need to get it out here to free my mind a little bit.

"SoCal is where my mind states, but it's not my state of mind" Inside Out - Eve 6

"Oh my God, can you believe that?!" He was pointing at a portrait on our family board at work of a female coworker with her arms around her female partner. They were smiling some of the biggest smiles I had ever seen. "What do you mean?" was my only reply. I must have said it in that way that he knew not to go any further "I dunno." Probably could tell that I was proud it was hanging their sharing their smiles with our work force.

In this previous election, California had a proposition on the ballot to end a temporary ordinance (or something like that) allowing same sex marriages. The proposition passed and they are no longer legal in California, what seemed to be the most liberal state in our union. Mike Huckabee and John Stewart also had a mini debate on the topic on The Daily Show a couple weeks ago. Same sex marriage and gay rights are the hot topic of the times. I wouldn't say it is like the civil rights movement of the 60's but it is probably the closest our generation will get to such a
thing.

I am a Protestant Christian raised going to church every Sunday although since I graduated high school I hardly make it to church. I still like to think I hold a good knowledge of the teachings of the Bible. But I will say I have learned to distinguish between what people tell me it says and what I get out of it. Through school and everywhere else we are always told about the separation of church and state. After all the churches can't afford to pay taxes and really it is a better way for government to stay neutral. Yet we as a country always seem to put religious state of mind onto our representatives and it is always a hot issue at election time. So where is the separation? The biggest arguments against same sex marriage has been religion based on enough Bible quotes to make a catechism student cry. But isn't the Bible all interpretation? I mean if a Catholic and a Lutheran can find different meaning in the same text then who is to say what is right.

Same sex marriage is a civil rights issue and we as a country need to do the civil thing. I believe the overall message throughout the Bible is that God wants us to be happy, that we need to love him, and that we need to be good to each other. The Bible condoned slavery and yet we overcame that. At one point marriage in the Bible was portrayed as polygamy but we overcame that. The main text for marriage is that two people become one through a spirtual bond of love. I believe there is no way to consciously choose who you love, you just do.

There are all sorts of arguments that I don't have the time or the research to get into now anyway. But when I saw that picture, I saw two very happy people with enough pride to not be ashamed to put it up there for everyone to see. We cannot be a society of shame & fear but instead of tolerance & understanding. It shouldn't matter your state of mind, color of skin, religious beliefs or political stances. Agreeing to disagree is one thing but that doesn't mean we shouldn't deny people the same rights because they don't agree.

There's gotta be a reason

"She's up and waiting for more and I know he's only looking to score." - Mutt - Blink 182

I started a post the other day with the focus being on Ace Merrill – a character that appears in at least two Stephen King works. To give you a visual Ace Merrill was played by Kiefer Sutherland in the movie 'Stand By Me.' He's the leader of a pack of high school thugs looking to gain glories by discovering the corpse of a missing boy.
Anyway I got halfway through and started to wonder what the point was. There really wasn't one. I also got to thinking it was kind of bizarre to free write about a fictional character.
After deleting my post, I did some research. I typed in the name Ace Merrill into a google search. Maybe not surprisingly, I wasn't the first to expound on Mr. Merrill on the world wide web. There's a wikipedia page (naturally) devoted to Merrill and the two works he appears in. There's a fanlisting devoted to Merrill with images of Sutherland holding up a knife. That's right people love a bully.
I guess I am getting halfway through again and I am not sure I've still found a reason to write this.
What made me think about Ace is that in the written version of Stand By Me (titled the "The Body"), Merrill is only one of two main characters that live into their 30s. The other being narrator – Gordie Lachance – who is a thinly veiled fictional version of the author.
The thing about all this is that at points it seemed obvious to me that King was only writing this probably because it was in his contract to write something that could be turned into a screenplay. Its more rushed and less detailed than his other works. But at points, he also seems to use the character of Lachance to free write about his own life. The value of writing about death and murder and horror and all those scary things.
And through it all Merrill is really only a name till his appearance very late in the book. Yet it's Lachance and Merrill that survive life. (At least until the book "Needful Things" where Merrill perishes while destroying King's fictional town of Castle Rock, which most of his early stories were based in).
I thought why? Why Merrill? But I think its because Merrill is the real scary in the world. All the beasts and phantoms King created were imagination. Merrill is scary because he could be any number of people that have passed through all our lives. That human terror motivated by urges.
Urges are the scariest thing about people and they seem to be running the world. Just google 'porn', 'naked women' or 'violence' sometime and see the infinite websites about those subjects pop up.
Almost all reason is lost.

Excel & BS

"All the people we used to know, they're an illusion to me now"  Tangled Up In Blue - Bob Dylan

I was walking up into the school although it didn't quite look right but it was my school.  He was walking the other way in that leather coat and his girlfriend clinging to his arm.  I waved to Ted and even tried to say hi but he didn't acknowledge me.  He just kept walking the other way.  Why was Carrie with him, I thought they broke up?

I awoke from my dream, my illusion of life, flooded with memories from my college years.  Ted & I met junior year in our operations classes.  We became friends, at least that is what it seemed like at time.  Today I would probably call it business partners.  Ted was short, I was tall.  Ted liked to BS and gamble, I wanted to mess with computers and be left alone.  He was the kind of guy that I would normally despise but somehow we got connected through team assignments.  I was good at Excel and doing the stats, Ted loved to write and BS.  I did the research & spreadsheets then Ted wrote the papers & kissed the teacher's ass.  It was a good business relationship.

Mark was different.  We just had some of the same classes together.  Mark would have been more of a true friend had we known each other better.  The semester we meet we had the same two classes back to back in the same room with the same teacher.  We would sit there in between the two and chat.  Or most of the time not talk at all.  That was the problem we were too alike, just wanted to be left alone even though every time we chatted we hit it off.  We really didn't know much about each other at all yet there was some kind of connection.  For group work we would pick each other probably out of convenience.  

The last time I saw Mark was at my graduation party/wedding shower.  He made the trip with his wife.   They played badminton with my now wife & I.  Then we all sat around and chatted before they left.  I asked Mark to be in my wedding but he declined.  Having landed his first job after college he felt like he couldn't get the time off to come out for it.  I was mad at the time if not hurt.  Although when it came time for my wedding I could only muster the courage to ask for 1 day off from my new job.

Ted made it to our wedding and was an usher.  I picked up his tux for him and we played cards before the wedding.  He brought a Jewish girl for a date that had to be back home by sundown for Yom Kippur.  So he was gone before the reception.  I gave the room I had reserved for him to my brother.  I am sure he felt out of place after all he wasn't like me, us.

My memories of the two have really faded over the last 4 years.  I have a picture of Ted being in my wedding party.  I think we got rid of the deep fryer Mark gave us as a present.  I am sure my wife remembers some of these moments but maybe not.  She wasn't there for most of them.  Now Ted & Mark are just people I used to know.  I think.

Show Me The Money

"Line the locals one by one, filling bullets with their guns" Havana Gang Brawl - The Zutons

I still remember the conversation very distinctly standing there in our garage. "You don't wanna be a cop! Be something where you can make some money." My dad was actually talking to me about what I wanted to do with my life. He suggested I go into accountancy because this guy from our church was a 'bean counter' and he made good money. I always thought it was about the money.
On almost a daily basis he would meet some of the lowest 'scum of the Earth'. That kind of daily interaction can really mess with a person. We lived out in the country surrounded by small communities without alot of opportunities for diversification. The only time he met someone different was when he had to come lay down the law. I would figure that doesn't make for good first impressions.
I always found it funny the perception of law enforcement. They are every one's hero until they have a reason to come after you. And when one of them messes up people sure do like to rub it in. Favoritism is a term I've heard alot before. But really someone has to look out for them and all they have is each other.
I know he loves his work, you can hear the pride in his voice when he talks about his record. Yet there is something behind all of it that is probably harder than anything else to deal with. You meet people on their worst day and most others are out to get you thinking you are the enemy. That is something more important than money, it is life with a smoking gun.

It Adds Up

"It stung like a violent wind that our memories depend on a faulty camera in our minds" - What Sarah Said - Death Cab for Cutie

"I am going to stab you in the neck." He said elbow on his desk, grin on his face and pencil pointed in the air.
"No, you're going to finish that math." I said without so much as a blink.
Being threatened is a rare thing, for most people anyway. In a lifetime, maybe they have a handful of times when they are really in a situation where another person is willing to cause bodily harm. For three years, I was threatened on a regular basis while I worked in a school system.
After the first dozen times or so, you're blood doesn't even really get pumping. Not every threat was serious. The one above wasn't even one that warranted any discipline. After awhile, you actually hope they act. Just to see what happens.
But I remember this instance because it was my birthday. But which birthday, I am not sure. Maybe 23. Maybe 24. I don't know they run together.
In fact as I consider it more, he may have said "eye" not "neck."
But what does that matter. I guess if he did it not much. A pencil through the eye or in the right place in the neck would have the same result.
He wasn't going to do it. Not that it wasn't in him. He'd kill if pushed to it, but I don't think a page of third grade math really bothered that high school kid enough. For the two years he was in our program, he was a daily pain in the ass. For me, more than anyone.
Why?
While I don't think he'd admit it. He liked me. After he graduated, he stopped by a time or two. But then he went to prison (for the second time in his life). Math was never what he really needed to learn.

Taut and twisted

Note: This may be an example of when free writing doesn't turn out good. I don't know I am a little conflicted with it.

"Going to free fall out into nothing, gonna leave this world for awhile." Free Fallin' – Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers.

Our mutt of a dog named 'Buddy' pulled the leash till it was taut and twisted. His head was bent forward like a mule heaving to get the plow blade through arid soil. I pumped my sore, out-of-shape legs behind struggling to keep up with the fervor of Buddy to walk down the road to discover new smells, new sights. To reach a spot. To see.
It was late in the afternoon, the December sun hung low in the horizon, sizzling as it hit the snow covered earth. Everything was golden even the white and black fur covering Buddy's boney structure. There was a serenity to it.
I learned the word "verisimilitude" in college. It means the 'appearance of being true or real.' I fell in love with that word. I like the idea of things appearing to be true because to me there is a connotation that they are not.
What was true for Buddy yesterday as we walked was that he wanted to see the journey come to a conclusion. Animals are like that. They're singular in their goals no matter how brief they hold onto them.
What felt real to me was the feeling of being rushed and being tired. I had set out to write yesterday and it didn't happen because I ran out of time. I slept. I did chores. I walked the dog. I went to work. I went back to sleep.
I do that a lot especially with my writing. I set out to do it and never get there. Over the years I've started a handful of projects – novels, stories, etc. – that I never finish. One such project I've wrote over 50,000 words on, that's about half a standard novel, and now it rusts on the hard drive of my labtop.
I tell myself at some point I'll step out of the daily bussle and focus on that. But I can feel that slipping. I am falling through time. My head is down, the blade grinds in, I look up and 1/3 of the field is done.

The Only Way To Go Is Up

Note: Ok I am gonna try my hand at this and I already know it will be a little too literal but I am just starting. I am wired to be more literal, that is why I am trying to do this. So here we go.

"When that morning sun comes beating down, you're gonna wake up in your home town. But we'll be scheduled to appear 1,000 miles away from here." The Load Out - Jackson Browne

I haven't traveled much in my life, granted I am still young but it seems like I am behind the curve. I have only flown twice, once for work and once for a mini vacation with my wife. We flew to Atlanta for a weekend seeing the sights and ending with a Cubs game. Flying is a very odd sensation, in less than 2 hours I am long way from home. What happened? How did I get here? When you drive somewhere at least you see the landscape. My brain can comprehend the gradual changes in landscape as we cross the US. Instead, I walk up a ramp and boom everything is different.

The sun is hot in Atlanta, I have never felt air so thick that I was afraid I couldn't breathe. Nothing but high rises all through downtown. Feeling so small standing there since up was the only direction you could see. At least I knew which way was up if I didn't know East from West, North from South. Take away the ability for someone to have their natural survival instincts and you will see panic. Not that I was panicking, more of an unnerving sensation. Still we were young and foolish walking through downtime past all the homeless people and guys begging me for a dollar to get a Big Mac.

We made it everywhere we were trying to go, somehow we just did it. There was a light rain for most of the Cubs game. It felt good and kept the sun from beating on us for awhile. I think they lost I don't remember other than watching Zambrano warm up in the bullpen. Really it was harder to navigate our way to our seats than the streets and rail system of Atlanta.

The whole trip is a blur, there and gone in a flash. Hour and a half and we were back home. The next morning I woke up and went to work as if I was never really gone. Back safe within my bubble of this world.

The Bears' QB Futility

Kyle Orton had a bad game last night for the Bears. But I heard no outrage today over how he lost the game, people seemed more level headed. Last year they would have been screaming to lynch Rex Grossman. But at this point right now are they really any different? Kyle came out and had the offense clicking towards the beginning/middle of the season. Really that is a pretty similar scenario for when Rex was putting up amazing numbers in '06. Kyle missed one game due to injury and has come back with 3 sub par games. Sure maybe it is because he isn't 100% but what if it isn't? Does your ankle affect your reads on safety coverage over your outside receiver? They looked like Rex throws to me.

Now let me put it out there that I have always been a Rex supporter so much in the way that I feel sorry for the guy cause it isn't all his fault. This is a team game and yet the entire city of Chicago continues to boo the guy just for walking on the sidelines. Doesn't this really stem from larger issues?

My point is this, it really isn't alot of difference between Rex & Kyle. Both are decent QB's that at least half the league would probably take over what they currently have, well maybe 1/4. Name one top rated passer that does not have a top shelf receiver to throw to? This system, this team, this management simply doesn't know how to play offense. The biggest problem with that is that their defense is broken. Running the ball is simple, look at Denver for proof. Just block each man and give the ball to anyone that can hold onto it and still move fairly quickly. I know it isn't that simple but compared to putting together a true passing game it is. Takes 1 to run, 2 to pass.

Basically stop booing Rex and don't think Kyle is the answer. The system and the supporting cast are bad. Drew Brees wouldn't be able to throw to these guys.

What sticks inside

Note: This is sort of a free writing exercise I created while I was growing up. I'd turn on some music and latch onto a lyric from whatever song was playing and just wrote whatever came to my mind. Someone once said that free writing is the gateway to the soul. "Now, I don't know about that" as Forrest Gump would say, but I always found the end results interesting. Here we go. Let's open Pandora's box. (ha. ha. I am listening to Pandora right now, get it :)

"Last night I lived more than one thousand lives, not one of them survived" from the song Nearly Beloved - The Wallflowers; album - Rebel, Sweetheart

Last night I got to thinking while watching the Bears play the Vikings. Not about the game or how bad the Bears are, although that was hard to avoid.
I was thinking about second grade. That year I had a teacher who rewarded good work with stickers. Not on your paper, but still on the film so that you could stick it anywhere. So I started sticking them on my desk. Soon the kid sitting next to me took to the idea and before long we were racing to see who could cover the top of our desk first. It didn't take as long as you would think. Especially when we started bringing stickers from home or trading to get more from other friends. By mid-year the tops were full. Then we moved to the sides, the seat and legs and every spare spot we could find. It was like in an instant we wanted to beat each other in that and everything else. When we were on opposite sides during recess football or basketball, we were fierce. But at no point did we dislike each other. We just wanted to see each other lose.
So it was no surprise that my favorite team was the Bears and his was the Vikings. He wore a bright purple Starter jacket everyday to school. I had a blue and orange Bears one to answer.
I believe the Bears played the Vikings that year on Monday night in Metrodome. My memory might be wrong, but I believe it was the infamous game where Kevin Butler missed a last second field goal and a conspiracy grew that the air conditioners were turned on full boar when the ball was kicked forcing it left.
Anyway I remember him reveling in the win.
That's how it was. After that year, I don't think we were ever that close again. That's how things are sometimes as a kid in a school system. Each year you get a new desk neighbor. A new friend. A new rival.
But I always think about him every year when the Bear and Vikings meet up north in the dome. I remember when he died that I thought about how he liked the damned Vikings. So I guess I get over loses to Minnesota a little easier now.
I laugh a little actually. Because I remember second grade and our two desks covered in bright stickers and how we each lost about a week of recesses at the end of the year when the teacher made us clean them off. We sat there alone in the room. A wash bucket of soap and water on the floor and a sponge in each hand. Grinning as we tried, in vain, to get the sticky grime off the surface of our desks. We counted each one as they came off. Of course we did.
Now all these years later, I have a memory for each sticker in time, probably more than 1,000 all together. Where we'll each go? How many will I lose in a year or two? Will any survive the night much less a lifetime?