Monday, March 28, 2005

Waiting Room Woman

I watched her coming into the waiting room. She has a pale face that is more pink than white, and an attractive look of wear rests lightly upon her skin. She tosses brunette highlighted blonde hair out of her eyes as she wheels through the door. The pink and white raglan sets off her skin, hair and eyes in a lovely medley. Her body is tight, and muscle cords in her arms as she effortlessly wheels the small chair up to the desk. I’m not really breathing as I watch her, just watching.
Her legs look too small, in light blue jeans and clunky brown shoes, and that seems to explain a lot. There is familiarity to her, it really stands out in her legs for a reason I cant quite put my thumb on. Her face too is familiar, and not just because she looks like Liz Phair. I have seen her beauty somewhere before. I cannot help but think a few lecherous thoughts, I cannot help it the chair doesn’t hide her beauty.
She sits in the cramped waiting room, between two rows of chairs backed against the wall, because there is nowhere else. She reads a large paperback; I can’t tell if it’s some sort of textbook or just another fashionably oversized novel. She is used to being alone, noticed all too much and invisible all the same. She is cocooned in an invisible shell of self, a maelstrom of being alone that seems to both shield and hurt her. I almost wouldn’t see the hurt her self-possessiveness gives her a strength and grace, a strong front to anyone just glancing up. It is deeply sexy to watch.
She loses herself in being alone, sitting there reading. She is right to everyone else she is invisible. They refuse to see deformity, crippling injury and other cruelties upon the body, these less than perfections. The chair especially makes her invisible to them. I can’t help but watch. She is lovely; in her small gestures; in the power of her movements; in the deftness with which she turns and rolls when the nurse calls her for a phone-call.
That’s when you see it, the body remains the same, the carriage of her frame upright in her chair, everything remains strong and beautiful, but her eyes change. When someone speaks to her, calls her by name, and she looks up at their eyes the tough shell slides back to reveal an almost desperate sort of hope. Her eyes are a crystal blue, beautiful like fire of ice, and filled with a desperate need, a hope that someone is there to make that better. Just as quickly as you see it, it is gone again and the beautiful but perfect eyes return, there is no need, no hope, her strength becomes a mask for dealing with a world where she is invisible.
I see a wedding band on her finger, gold with a diamond and I imagine what it must be like, waiting for her at home when she gets back from yet another doctors appointment getting ready for yet another surgery. It must take his breath away when she looks up at him and he sees no desperation in those eyes, and knows it’s not an act with him.

Sunday, March 27, 2005

Fire and Wine

Franks Wild Years
Tom Waits
Frank settled down in the Valley
and he hung his wild years on a nail that he drove through his wife's forehead
He sold used office furniture out there on San Fernando Road
and assumed a 30,000 dollar loan at fifteen and a quarter percent
put a down payment on a little two bedroom place

His wife was a spent piece of used jet trash
Made good Bloody Mary's
Kept her mouth shut most of the time
Had a little Chihuahua named Carlos
that had some kind of skin disease
and was totally blind

They had a thoroughly modern kitchen
Self-cleaning oven, the whole bit
Frank drove a little sedan
They were so happy

One night Frank was on his way home from work
He stopped at the liquor store
Picked up a couple of Mickey's Big Mouths
Drank 'em in the car, and with a Shell station
he got a gallon of gas in a can
Drove home, doused everything in the house
Torched it
Parked across the street laughing
Watching it burn
All Halloween orange and chimney red
Then Frank put on a top forty station
Got on the Hollywood Freeway
and headed North

Never could stand that dog

I can relate - sometimes you just get tired of being responsible, and you need a little fire and wine...


Sunday, March 20, 2005

Sex, Damned, Dirty, Sex!

http://www.healthtalk.ca/std_032005_80124.php
I've said it before, and now they're saying it with "proof" - abstinence is a for shit idea.
If thats your bag, and you've made the personal moral commitment to it, thats fine, but pushing this as the solution for all of teenage/un-wed America is insane.
As abstinence is pushed more and more, the actual education about sex gets to be less and less. Attitudes about condoms, birth control, the "morning after" pill, and so are are pushed back 60 years and they become "icky", "gross" things, that no one wants to talk about or think about, so no one uses them.
The knowledge of how disease is transmitted similarly gets "lost", and poof we get a bunch of kids with diseases or babies, because they couldnt hold to their vow (and most people probably cant - it is, after-all, our strongest human nature to fuck like bunnies, and one of the funner things we can do too) and when they did go after it like wild beasts they didnt use any precautions, and really had no idea about the risks of what they were up to.
Sex-Ed under the abstinence program is quickly becoming "Dont have sex, because sex is wrong, and its bad to even talk about it, so just do like your betters told you, dont fuck, and dont ask about what might happen if you do fuck, because fucking is bad and you shouldnt fuck."
Of course, many of the same people who are pushing the abinstenence programs are the same people who like to say that birth control, the morning after pill and even condoms are all forms of abortion, and that its murder and therefore we shouldnt be encouraging our high-schoolers and un-wed couples to use these items. Puritanical morality combined with Virginia hillbilly logic and knowledge. It is scientifically impossible for birth control, condoms or the morning after pill to be "abortion". No life is being created if those products are used, so no life is being destroyed. Its like jerking off - no life is created, so semen fertalizes the egg, no fertalized egg, no baby.
Yet people seem surprised that, after we've taught our children using these methods and this sort of "logic", that when they do finally loose it and have sex, they get some STD or get a baby. We teach them nothing about sex, except that its bad, and then when they sneak around, have no knowledge of "safety", and end up in a bad way, we're surprised.
Well... you reap what you sew.

Now this: http://www.halifaxlive.com/artman/publish/fda_plan_b_032005_38992.shtml
This is appropriately progressive.

This nation would be a lot better off if we didnt treat sex like a dirty little secret. Its the proverbial elephant in the living room, and because of that we have a nation of varying degrees of sexual dysfunctionals.
The ultra-conservative would-be minders in our government (or who have governments ear) who keep trying to impose their morality, puritanical standards and backwards thinking on everyone else, arent helping this one damned bit.

Saturday, March 19, 2005

John Couey

In regards to the man responsible for kidnapping and murder of Jessica Lunsford, from The Boston Herald:
"Couey has an extensive criminal record that includes 24 arrests for burglary, carrying a concealed weapon and indecent exposure. In 1991, he was arrested in Kissimmee on a charge of fondling a child under age 16. Records don't show how the case was resolved.

During a house burglary in 1978, Couey was accused of grabbing a girl in her bedroom, placing his hand over her mouth and kissing her, Dawsy said. Couey was sentenced to 10 years in prison but was paroled in 1980."

The system failed.
The system failed everyone in Homosassa, it failed a 9 year old little girl and left her to pay the tab on everyone elses sin.
In twenty four arrests, two of those directly for criminal sexual behaviour and one for burglary involving the same behavior, no one ever thought to lock this man up for the rest of his natural life.
After a certain period of time, any hope of rehabilitation should go out the window like a chamberpot being emptied. Twenty four arrests says "I can never be rehabilitated, I am a skel". The system has a lot of problems, not the least of which is the management of offenders. The politically correct attitudes that "everyone needs to be treated like delicate flowers", "anyone can be rehabilitated" and "everyone wants to be a good person, and just needs love and compassion from others to get past the emotional issues that make them 'act out' like this" need to go. These attitudes and concepts should have been put away by now - how many dead children need to serve as coffin nails?
Some, a very small number of, offenders can be rehabilitated, and I wont begin to say any differently, but the rest never will be, never can be. Yes, I am giving up on some people, because some people are only worth giving up on. They make a choice to do the things they do, and they find out that they wont get any sort of meaningful sentances if caught, and even if they do time will only get to hang out with all their friends and practice their tradecrafts of violence and deception in the "gladiator school" that is prison. They make the choice to accept that pattern of behavior, and to continue commiting the crimes they want to commit. And they can safely make it because they know the punishment will be a joke. They know that nothing exists that can truly stop them. They can safely make that choice to be criminals over and over again for decades without fear, until they finally decide to act out their biggest fantasy, and the blood of some little girl goes to pay the tab on all our sins.
Jail is not a rehabilitation, and it is sure as hell not a punishment for these people. Leniency and slaps on the wrist dont do anyone any favors, they just reinforce to the criminal mind that its okay to keep taking and hurting, and that nothing that bad will actually happen to them. Leniency and slaps on the wrist, unreasonable kindness to our fellow man, lead us to this point - 9 year old little girls having to suffer horrible abuses, and being brutally murdered.
Some people make the choice to be evil, they can never be rehabilitated and they deserve no kindness. Awarding them such only gets others hurt. John Couey is one of these people.

He needs to be taken care of the way they should have long ago - Get a confession, get DNA confirmation, and then take him out behind the court-house and put a bullet through the middle of his forehead. Throw the body in an un-marked hole in Potters field, and leave it there to rot back into the earth. He deserves no spectacle, and certainly no memorial, simply to be loosed of this mortal coil and sent forth to make up for his sins in his next lives. He'll have a lot of really awful ones to go through before he's anywhere near "made up" - and he wont be wasting our oxygen anymore.
And if you dont think that is compassionate, I ask you to look very hard at what you personally define as compassion. John Couey showed no compassion, of any form, to Jessica Lunsford when he kidnapped her, raped her and murdered her. He did it all for his own pleasure, and nothing more. He enjoyed it, beggining to end. If he wasnt caught, he would have continued his life-long pattern and done it again. Killing him, quickly and without spectacle, takes away any spectacle or "romance" that may be applied to his actions and his eventual fate; it saves the tax-payers money (DNA testing + bullet will cost thousands less than DNA testing + court costs + keeping him in jail for another 15 years or more + the cost of the death-juice); and it is merciful and compassionate to everyone on the planet, including Couey. It would get him out of all our hair, set an example for others like him (there is a consequence, and a goddamn dire one), and it would free him of this existence to pay for his crimes in whatever manner the universe chooses. There are much, much worse fates - and they are all probably deserved, I would shed no tears to see Couey broken on the wheel while his intenstines were spooled out - so dont you dare accuse me of lacking compassion.
If you think Couey doesnt deserve a quick execution without glamour or show, then it is you who lack compassion.

If the state wont do it, I honestly hope someone else will. All it takes is commitment to the action and one bullet. I fail to see why this is an unacceptable option.

Friday, March 18, 2005

Geocide

Ever wondered about destroying the planet?
No, not in the stereotypical ways everyone screams about, like pollution, nuclear weapons, disease or BioChemical war (ya know, the terms I use in this blog have probably gotten me on more government lists than I even know exist [yes boys, I do know of a few... nasty fedses cant keep secretses from us, oh no preciousess....]) - none of those things will actually destroy this Six Sextillion ton ball of iron we call home. But that doesnt mean its impossible, infact is may be quite possible... eventually, or with enough hard work:
http://ned.ucam.org/~sdh31/misc/destroy.html

Isnt that comforting?

Wednesday, March 16, 2005

I fail to see how there are people in the world, who cannot appreciate it.
Our cities: our paved; cemented; rebar reinforced; glass, steel and concrete monstrocities, sprawled out like steaming, teeming, turds on the soil - they are not natural, and more than that they are not honest. They are designed to lie, to look like something they are not - a false beauty overlaying an ugly core, all these things blotting out the natural land beneat them. Parks, zoo's, these artificial environments in the middle of these vast and ugly lies, they are lies too.
I dont understand how some people can love that lie, and hate the truth... but they do it with everything else, so why shouldnt they do it with the physical world around them?
We construct our own myths, legends and realities in our own minds, because the truth of all that exists is something so vast, and frightening, and honest that we cannot deal with it. Most people fall into this so deeply, they rarely if ever see truth. The create lie upon lie, so that they can see the beautiful happy facade and pretend that the honesty and truth that makes them uncomfortable isnt real, doesnt exist.
This is what a city is - it is a desperate argument against truth, that has been built into a towering, vast, lie to stand before all who desire it as truth. Built to look beautiful, but with an ugly black heart... and in the end far worse, far uglier, than the truth its architects and engineers and inhabitants seek so desperately to avoid having to face.
Facing the truth of the world, of existence, of the universe, means having to face the truths about yourself... and that is a journey few people are comfortable with, and will go to great and terrible lengths to avoid.
I am forever thankful to live in truth...

My Frontyard:
Click for larger image

Backyard:
Click for larger image

Sunday, March 06, 2005

Sandwich

Each careful slice, the cheese slowly rolling over as it is cut free of the block. Occasionally it crumbles, falling: an avalanche of sharp cheddar. Slicing cheese, especially a dry cheese, with a knife is not so much a skill as an art. Guiding the blade evenly through the cheese, keeping it on a straight path, requires concentration and precision.
Four slices of bacon, each one cooked up at just the right size for the bread selected. Three to lay across one side of the growing construction, atop the cheese, and a fourth one for eating right now.
A slow drizzling of the smokey chipotle sauce, a fresh creation all its own, across the bacon and cheese. The aroma wafting upwards, mesquite and spice hitting the nostrils.
Two delicate slices of smoked turkey breast, both broader than the bread, layed and folded back to the middle. More sauce drizzled over and between them, the random pattern of the drippings a delicate chaos.
A dusting of crumbled and shredded cheese dances across the softly folded meats, waiting to be entombed under the second slice of wheat bread, a rich and dark covering for all eternity.
Top slice in place, the construction slides easily into the toaster oven for its three minute trip to crispy edges and melted cheese.
The timer rings its sunset bell, and the thing is once more into the open air. Onto a small plate it goes, and then to the table. There is sits, a careful stacking of ingredients, delicately tended and prepared. A creation, a sculpture, a masterpiece, a sandwich.

Friday, March 04, 2005

Madness

Within our "civalized" society we have lost our sense of madness. Madness is today just that, madness... anyone who has any experience radically outside the normal is taken for mad, and either ignored, medicated or locked up (or all three).
I think if we look at the past, some of our greatest spiritual thinkers, the greatest experiences of our spiritual history, have come from men (and women) who are "mad", by the standard of today.
We no longer see any value in the visions or experiences of the "mad", no one seems to be able to percieve the foresight and prescience of so much madness. Our respect for it is gone.

Tuesday, March 01, 2005

New Template & RKBA Stuff

First things first, thanks to Faces of Yve for this amazing new look for herr-blog, making it look better than the rest of the site. Rockin' cool.
(Legal Dept.: Any and all errors on these blog pages are mine and mine alone, the template was perfect until I took my mutant talents for HTML to it to format it for the blog... so, ya know, bitch at me only.)

A friend passed the following link along to me earlier this evening and I felt like sharing it:
http://www.usdoj.gov/olc/secondamendment2.htm
Its the same thing I've said before, and I'll no doubt need to say it again, but a little bit of authority on the issue is nice.
The former AG (John Ashcroft) may have been a tyrant, but the office itself deserves high marks for that document, and possessing the honesty and integrity to publish it.