A Hundred Some Days

A long time ago, in a country far away, there were Democrats in the Midwest.  A longer time ago, Democrats controlled the South.

More recently, Democrats decided these thirty or so states weren’t important.  In my lifetime, the following states were traditionally Democratic, and have shifted to Republican:  Missouri, Wisconsin, Florida, Ohio, Michigan, Louisiana, Arkansas.  States that shifted earlier or around my birth were all the other states in the deep south, including Texas.

Today the Democrats are the most enlightened people in earth’s history.  Don’t believe me?  Just ask one.  Most of them won’t hesitate to remind you how much better their ideas are than almost any other ideas ever concocted.

Barack Obama was a lucky man on several fronts.  His timing was great.  He faced the worst national political candidate in our nation’s history in the primaries, and was a member of the opposition party during the beginning of a world depression.  Yes, it was a depression.  The only way these knuckleheads continue to call that mess a recession is be REDEFINING THE DEFINITION OF A DEPRESSION!  That’s how stupid we’ve become in the county.

If a fucking reporter ran a headline announcing “Sky is Blue” with a full color picture providing proof, the editor of that paper would have to issue a correction the following day if a single person’s feelings were hurt.  “We’re sincerely troubled about the misrepresentation of yesterdays turquoise sky.  We regret the error of our ways.  Please don’t vote Republican.”

We’ve brought all this on ourselves.  The Democrats doubled down on stupid, because Hillary Clinton is the smartest, most qualified presidential candidate in our nation’s history.

Want to confuse a Democrat, and see for yourself what cognitive dissonance looks like in person?  Ask any Democrat to name ONE THING (besides marrying Bill) that Hillary Clinton has done in her lifetime that demonstrates above average intelligence.

I don’t want to spoil the fun you’ll have with this question.  The most likely response will be some achievement on some level that didn’t require anything but basic motor skills.  I’m pretty sure she can feed herself, but that really shouldn’t count.

If you want to have even more fun, press on with the qualifications.  Her first political act was blatantly unconstitutional.  During the Watergate frenzy, she filed a brief to strip President Nixon the right to counsel in congressional hearings.  (Fortunately, this was thrown out as the rubbish it was)  The Democrat does not understand that she was an unqualified disaster as Secretary of State, and previously was as bland (though every bit as crooked) as any Senator ever produced by the State of New York.

Now, of course I’m a deplorable sexist for bringing up her obvious LACK of competence and fitness for the office.  As soon as someone calls me a sexist for not voting for HRC, I just start rattling off women I’d vote for before HRC from both parties, which is pretty damn easy.  I just mention just about any woman that’s ever held political office, and then about any other that might be semi-lucid.  The bar isn’t very high for me.  Trump never got close to this level of competence in the campaign, except that he won the campaign.

The Democrats could have run 1,000 different candidates who would have beaten Trump in a presidential election.  I stand by that number, though it may be awfully low.  I believe the true number is much closer to 60,000,000 than 1,000.

And I’m a voter who wouldn’t vote for Trump in ten thousand lifetimes.  That’s how far the Democrats are from even being in at least one game.

I used to wonder a bit about all the newspapers laying around my folks (and especially, my grandparents’) houses.  The Times came every morning, and the Star and Journal World came in the afternoon.  There were newspapers everywhere every Sunday.  And we’d all have sections, read things, and talk about some of the stuff.

This doesn’t happen anymore.  Everyone is cordoned off in their own cubicle, straight-faced to their solitary choices, and the discussion is now to be found almost exclusively with those who think very much like that individual.  It doesn’t take any sort of damn genius to understand this is a poor idea on many fronts.

Is this about to turn into a “back in my days…” sort of rant?  I hope not.  Maybe it’s too late.  Oh well.  This is about the fundamental changes in society over the past generation or so.  In a few years there will be a majority of people who don’t remember life without internet.  This seems so odd.

I’m as guilty as anyone.  My life was quite a bit better when internet wasn’t here, I think.  I haven’t figured out how to adjust to it yet, and I am making an attempt.  It isn’t coming quickly or quietly.

I know for damn sure what granddad was up to—he was seeking a bunch of different views on the events of the day.  There were additional newspapers and magazines not mentioned here, and the man was a voracious reader.  I’m pretty sure he’s read WAY more than I ever will, and I go out of my way to read.   Sometimes.  There were big gaps where I wasn’t reading much at all.  It shows.  I’m dumb as shit right now.

It’s hard to keep track of the dingbats running the media outlets these days, but I have to make an attempt.  Here’s how stupid I am:  I will attempt to name the owners of various media groups, and we’ll see how far I am from the actual owner.  It will be fun!  Play along if you like, my guesses and the actual answers are included below.  I know I will do poorly on this, because there is no longer a great need to commit things like this to memory, but it’s a decent exercise.

1) Washington Post
2) New York Times
3) CNN
4) NBC
5) Fox
6) ABC
7) Drudge Report
8) Huffington Post
9) Chicago Tribune
10) Los Angeles Times

Wow, that was fun!  I’m dumber than I thought!  Now, we’re finally getting somewhere.  This list is biased, of course, because it’s MY fucking list.  Tough shit, reader.  (there are no readers, which makes this a great forum for self-flagellation.)

So anyway, now that you’ve had your fun as well, I’ll point out that google didn’t give me much help finding out the owners from #7 on, so I don’t know if these handy-ass helpful windows that appear to the right in chrome are for these poor little guys left on the edge.  What a shitshow.

I’ve become a fan of the Tribune and Times because they run stories the others don’t.  I know exactly where to go to find lunacy, right-wing and left.  It isn’t tough.  It’s fucking everywhere.  I have no way of knowing the news consumption distribution across the board.  I’m sure it’s sickening, though.  People have zero tolerance for views that fall outside their own.

Folks have lost the ability to listen like they used to.  There was a time in my lifetime when people could have civil conversations.  There were some people I was often told to not get started into any political arguments, even back in the day.  These folks are the ones now out in the pharmacy lines spouting off about how some fucking elected official was ruining their world.

I’m going to give these motherfuckers a hint here:  You dipshits pointing fingers across the aisle don’t need a political foe to ruin your goddamned lives, you’re doing it quite well on your own.  Every single motherfucker voting either Republican or Democrat to a national office is some sort of a complicit war criminal anyway, so fuck both your whored out and used up parties.

How ya’ like that hyperbole, warbird?  Who has your favorite R/D bombed the shit out of today?


Fun Quiz Results:  Mine first, then actual, as of 5/25, 2017:

1s) Bezos, Jeff, Amazon dude.
2s) Times Media Group
3s) Did Turner sell this to NBC?  Who the fuck owns NBC?
4s) GE?  I think GE owned CBS.
5s) Murdoch, or some Murdochesque franchise.
6s) Disney.  But who the fuck owns Disney?
7s) Matt Drudge
8s) Arianna Huffington sold this thing to a bunch of junior high cheerleaders.
9s) Tribune holding company of some sort
10s) Same as 9s.

1a) WP Company LLC, Nash Holdings LLC, Bezos.
2a) New York Times Company (Carlos slim, 17%)
3a) Turner Broadcasting System (Time Warner)
4a) NBCUniversal (Comcast)
5a) Fox News Group (21st Century Fox)
6a) Disney-ABC Television Group
7a) Matt Drudge
8a) AOL
9a) tronc, inc. (this is, in fact a NASDAQ traded company shed from the Tribune Company in ’14.)
10a) tronc, inc.

The Conspiracy of Conspiracies

Last 4.5 billion (or six thousand—we’ll get to that later) years been bringing you down?

Never fear—there’s a conspiracy for that!  In fact (or alternative fact—again, later…) our more enlightened friends know that conspiracies are the answer to all our questions!  If something doesn’t make sense, it’s probably a conspiracy.  If something does happen to make sense, we likely have a conspiracy to thank for maintaining the delicate balance of life on our planet.

How did we get here?  Fortunately for us, the gently thuggish invisible wand of those guiding the conspiracies maintains at least a little order.  Otherwise, we’d all be goose-stepping (but only selectively holocausting) Nazis clucking a bizarre dialect composed of Russian, Arabic, and Japanese grunts, all the while bowing tribute to our alien overlords at the Antarctic Capitol.  And we’d damn well like it.  Count your blessings, people, for we are fortunate souls, indeed.

Have you ever wondered “What’s wrong with those physicists?  Why can’t they just concoct a unified theory?”  Have your feelings ever been hurt?  Why won’t anyone just come out and tell you how much infinity is?  Did the chemtrails pull your hamstring?  Whatever happened to the dossier that proved Hoffa killed Kennedy after they lost Marilyn Monroe in a Super Bowl bet with the Bush family’s oil cabal and the mob, at one of J. Edgar Hoover’s annual cross-dressing parties at the World Trade Center?  Conspiracy.  It makes sense, even if you don’t want it to.  And THEY certainly don’t want you to understand.

We all know the CIA is up to something.  That’s what THEY do.  If it weren’t for THEM, the FBI, ATF, NSA, and Area 51, wouldn’t the NWO be calling all the shots with the Bilderbergers?  Or has it already happened?  Why do the illuminati have all the fun?  Where’s our fun?  What did THEY do with Atlantis, anyway?  Just about everyone who is anyone has a cool acronym to boast—what the hell happened to our cool acronyms?  We need to GTFO of our old way of thinking, and take charge of our more thoroughly defined and crowd-sourced THEMS.

What about the Pyramids of Giza?  Cuzco?  Stonehenge?  What on earth were THEY thinking?  It probably wasn’t of this earth.  We should all be happy we don’t have to do all the thinking for THEM.  Our tiny little heads would hurt.  Shouldn’t we all just drop what we’re doing, and go make sweet love to our local freemasons in a wildly insufficient, yet filthy and wholly inappropriate expression of our deferred gratitude for their protection and guidance?  The choice is yours. 

  

Think about it, people:  If we really went to the moon half a century ago, where is all the moon cheese at the grocery store?  Wouldn’t we be eating the moon by now, so we could concentrate solely on war, instead of growing crops, working, living, etc.?  Thank your local conspiracist for this relative peace we endure.

Like so much fluoride in the water supply, conspiracies are an everyday part of our existence.  Love ‘em or hate ‘em, they’re going to be here, no matter what.  There’s already too much hate in this world.  Have you hugged your favorite conspiracy today?

There’s still hope for all that moon cheese.  Well, there’s hope unless the moon is a hologram, and then we’d just have to eat holographic moon cheese and like it.  But what if we lived in a world where all the conspiracies tied together neatly?  Shouldn’t that big spotlight hovering 28 miles above this flat earth of ours actually illuminate a better way of thinking?  Wouldn’t we all be less confused and bewildered?  It seems like most of us could use a new THEM, anyway.  Let’s all figure out what THEY are really up to, so we know where to more properly focus our individual (and collective) angst, contempt, and disgust.  

We must create a Theory of Hypothetically Executed Melees that explains the bonds intertwining all conspiracies.  If you’re a time traveler who has already accomplished this feat, thank you in advance, and please disregard this notice.  But shame on you for doing it in the future, if time actually exists.

However, if the rest of us (those still bound by the artificial time-space constraints—you know who you are!) work together, we’ll create a better and more perfect THEM.  Only one thing can stop us, and that’s paranoia.  Well, paranoia and THEM.  That’s two things, but it’s only that way because that’s what THEY want you to believe.

Let’s do this, people.  It seems like we should be the judge for a change.  Do you think THEY want that?  If you have links between existing conspiracies, or have budding knowledge of a conspiracy not yet listed here, please share.  It’s a big, bad world out there, and we all know it’s out to get us.  

Let’s just live, laugh, and love this thing out, because that’s exactly what THEY don’t want us to do.

A Toss of the Coin: Soundgarden at Starlight Theatre, Kansas City MO

Lots of decisions around here come down to the toss of a coin.  What does it matter?  Not much.  Unless it does...

Burn bright, fade away, etc.  Soundgarden, Starlight Theatre, KCMO, May 14, 2017

Sunday night I went shopping for Willie Nelson and Tom Petty tickets.  I ended up at the Soundgarden show.  It was Mother's Day, and we'd gathered at the folks, and it was nice.  Then, I was restless.  Truth be told, I was restless on the spot, because family gatherings tend these days to a reflection of my own shitheadedness on many levels.  It shouldn't be uncomfortable.  Sometimes, it is.

The tickets were cheap.  It was a thirty-five dollar show, or something like that.  Heads, I'd be going.  Tails, well...I'd have Nebraska or Acadia or Eagle to blame.  It was heads, of course.


The Soundgarden was sold for liquor years ago.  It hasn't been replaced.  Of all the bands that took major hits during the liquor-fueled selldown, none were hit harder than Soundgarden.  Other bands were cleaned out as well, Sonic Youth, Spoon, and too many others to mention here bit the bottle.

There have been moments of reconsideration of this rule once established around here:  Any record could be sold, I just wouldn't have permission to replace it.  For the most part, this has been adhered to around this place.  I picked up a copy of Eric Clapton's "Slow Hand" a few year's back, but I had made an exception to that purchase.  It had an exemption.  There may or may not be further exemptions.

"Kill 'Em All" was the one I couldn't sell.  I knew I was done drinking, but didn't know quite how it was going to occur.  I think someone offered me $3 for the thing, and I was in bad fucking shape, but I wasn't in that bad a shape quite yet.  It appears "...And Justice For All" was hawked.  That one surprises me a little, but not too much.  Anyway, it was a matter of days after that "Kill 'Em All" incident that I was done.  Maybe that's when all the Soundgarden bit the dust.

Chris Cornell was my drinking buddy.  He didn't know me, but I'm sure he'd met thousands of me, everyday, and all over the world.

Very few bands or artists bring with them today a vivid memory of my first exposure to the product.  The late Philip Pell introduced me to Soundgarden sometime in 1989 or 90 in Rick McCaffrey's class.  I might be a year too high, but I think this is the timeframe.  I didn't know who Soundgarden was, and my first listen provided evidence that it was rubbish, but a hell of a lot better than the subject matter of the class.  All subsequent listens brought a whole lot of something else.

I didn't know how many of Soundgarden's songs had been committed to memory until Sunday night.  It was a gorgeous night in Kansas City.  Absolutely beautiful night for Starlight Theater.  Cloudless, with just a light breeze to move the air about a bit.  I sang along for the better part of the show.

The show was damn impressive.  The thought crossed my mind more than once to make a point of seeing these guys should they ever come again.  I hadn't seen them live in better than twenty years, unless I have blacked out one or more of their shows.  It is certainly possible.  I think Lollapalooza is the last time I saw them live, though.  I was with a pretty chick for that show.  I wonder what the hell she was thinking.  She was wearing a watch, but she always wore a watch.

This show there weren't any accomplices.  When a person buys tickets for a show thirty-five minutes in advance, there sometimes isn't a great deal of foresight or planning involved.  Mostly, I sat in the back row.  I spent a lot of the time looking up in the cloudless sky, a lot of time singing.  So much of it mindless (at first) but reflective.  Soundgarden had been a pretty damn big part of my life.  Going up to Starlight on this Mother's Day was one of the damnedest coin tosses I'd ever won.

What had it meant, that I'd given up the Soundgarden for a buzz?  That is something I'm still trying to figure out, but going to that concert shook me a bit.  More than a bit, but it was more or less expected.  I didn't figure the Soundgarden crowd to be terribly sober.  It wasn't.

Sunday be damned, this was a hell of a party for a lot of folks.  The band finally took the stage around 8:45.  I looked at my phone.  These days, I always seem to have to look at the phone.  Then, they played one of the best rock shows I've seen in my life.  I thought often of recording some of the numbers.  I decided against it.  Perhaps a coin should have been tossed.  I just didn't want to feel like a douche recording something on my phone when I was enjoying the live experience as much as is possible (for me at least.)

The Set List  (Stolen directly from Tim Finn's review at the KC Star):
Incessant Mace; Hunted Down; All Your Lies; Spoonman; Outshined; Black Hole Sun; Crooked Steps; My Wave; The Day I Tried to Live; Been Away Too Long; A Thousand Days Before; Burden in My Hand; Rusty Cage; Drawing Flies; Ugly Truth; Fell on Black Days; Jesus Christ Pose; Slaves & Bulldozers

And that was it.  You know, there was a time when I was so crossed up I probably thought Chris Cornell was dead.  I suppose he'd already died eight years ago at the Love Garden, when I took him back home.  Not too many months ago, I saw a copy of Superunknown going for $80.  It was the transparent pressing like the one I'd pawned many moons back.  I hope I got a kick out of the generic vodka I likely guzzled.

I've said many times that there aren't too many albums that I sold that are actually missed.  This is more than a little disingenuous by this point.  For at least some period of time, there was an actual need to get rid of these noises in my head.  Turns out, they will always be there, and that there are better ways of dealing with issues than others.

Soundgarden is a permanent part of me.  This feels like a hangover, but it isn't.  It's a thing.  Yordano Ventura's death ripped me up as well.  These things suck when liquor and drugs are involved.

I spent a lot of time wondering why the hell I was more torn up by this baseball player's passing.  He's a guy I've never met, a guy that would piss me off and thrill me within minutes, days and years.  So it is with Chris Cornell.

Shelter, someday.

Sitting there, looking up in to the stars Sunday night, I had to consider further exemptions to this whole record replacement bullshit.  Soundgarden never made me drink.  I forced Soundgarden to put up with my drinking.  This band, and Chris Cornell's lyrics are woven in the fabric of my existence.  This cannot be undone.  The show Sunday night took me through some of the darkest corners and brightest lights of my past.  Little time was spent in the middle ground.  Such is the life of a drunk.

There was a time around here when I couldn't have the Soundgarden in the house.  They weren't alone, of course.  Almost anything that I felt gave an unwanted representation of the time spent drinking had to go.  A lot went.  I spent years without a record player at all, perhaps fearful of some stone that might be turned in time.

Turn over the wrong stone, and a trigger could direct me back to an unwanted place.  For eighteen months, Soundgarden had no place in my life, except its housing of eternal dimension.  I could stay away from it, but that wasn't quite all.  It was always there.  Ignored or not, it will always be there, and I came to realize this on Sunday night.

I didn't go to the Soundgarden show to say goodbye.  I went to say hello again.  RIP CC, simply one of the best lyricists and artists a person could ever find.  I'm glad I found him this one last time.