Out of Touch Out of Time
But I have a hall and plenty of oates in the kitchen.
These are interesting times, but I can't pay attention to them the way that I would like to.... Or participate in them. Like everybody else, I'm too busy trying to shovel myself out of the hole I'm in.
In the movie Patton, the General addresses his troops and prepares them for the battles ahead, for their task ahead. He pulls no punches in describing how they're going to murder the enemy. But he tells them that they'll be glad some day, when their grandsons ask them, "Where did you serve in the war?" Patton assured them they'll be happy they don't have to say, "Well, I was shoveling shit in Louisiana."
These days we've got plenty of "Where were you?" moments to go around.
These are the weeks our 21st century economy, whatever that will be, is coming into being. It's as historically significant as the week Obama was elected, or his inaugural week. When I grew up there were certain moments we asked our parents about all the time, and these weeks, like it or not, will be right up there with them in the years to come.
My parents were born in 1921 and 1924, depression era children and World War II veterans, so they lived through significant times. Pearl Harbor was attacked on my father's 17th birthday. He heard the gunfire the night of the St. Valentine's Day massacre in Chicago. I would ask about the week JFK was shot, the week after FDR died... My mother listened to Orson Welles infamous 1938 broadcast of War of the Worlds and from out in Illinois believed the east coast was toast at the hands of invading Martians for several hours.
Those are all large events, more singular in time. There was also the market crash of 1929. A single day, yes, but it was really the years that followed the crash that marked that "event," history to me as a child asking questions at the end of the chapter in my history book, memories to my parents. Literature to me as a teen writing a report on The Grapes of Wrath, a story to provoke more stories to survivors of the era.
The economy is being shaped these days and weeks, but other tides are turning, too. Thursday morning the California Supreme Court will hear arguments over Proposition 8, the people's choice award that went to gay marriage last November, thus voting it off the island. (We're California, we have a weird intermingling of the four branches of government here: the executive, legislative, judicial, and entertainment. Check out our governator for proof of this.)
I had intended to go tomorrow evening, downtown, for a vigil, but I'm too "out of touch and out of time" this week. Too focused on my own economy. Be like David Bowie, stay home, get things done.
I'm too much in the "go to work, get shit done, come home and get more shit done" mode to go listen to Melissa Etheridge debut her new song about hugging Rick Warren while holding candles with a crowd of couples in the rain. I mean, yeah, it'd be a beautiful moment and I'd cry, sure, but what else is it going to get me? I mean, what the hell am I so riled up about? I'm fucking single. Why should I give a damn about all these selfish bastards around me who have someone? Right? It's Wednesday, I'll be thinking, I just want to get home and feed my cat. Leave me alone, I'm watching Lost.
Of course Thursday morning I'll care again. About the arguments before California's Supreme Court that may... nay, will decide what happens next for all those gay married couples out there. It's one of those "Where were you then?" moments again. We're living through so many of them lately, aren't we?
And California may, what, did I read this? Legalize pot and tax it? That'll be great. It may generate a billion dollars a year in revenue. More great! This war on drugs has been such a curse on our society, with the irony that pot's ban was ushered in at the end of the last depression in order to eliminate the competition for rope. Now, at the edge of what some say is our next historical economic chasm, perhaps we'll make it legal again. Morals? Posh. `Give me this day my daily bread' comes first it seems.
Tax porn. Republicans see this now as the salvation in some places, I'm told. Tax porn. I just like saying that. Gambling and porn will save us all. I just got off the phone with a friend who said that some state is considering making gay marriage legal right now in order to bring in tax dollars. How our morals do shift in the wind when your livelihood is at stake. Everybody say after me: Tax porn! It's a red state thing.
Are we about to see a revolution, people? Will gay marriage save the U.S. economy? Years from now, will this Obama era be the beginning of a brand new 21st century iconography of change that includes that Obama Hope piece of art, two men or two women atop a wedding cake, and a pot plant all seen for years to come as the saviors of our new economy? The way we looked toward FDR's happy optimism symbolized in his upward turned cigarette in that long, pristine holder, people in the bread lines, that photograph of the mother in one of those camps at the edge of California, nowhere to go, the sinking of the ships in Pearl Harbor, the faces of the interned here in California, the kissing "couple" (who were not a couple) in Times Square, what images will crowd our historical memories in years to come of this time?
Also, more of a side note: If we're going to tax porn, will we need to bail that industry out first? They have been asking for a bail out ever since the bankers got one (pimps and crack dealers will be next, but they won't be nearly as sleazy as the bankers.) Also, even more of a side note: In the 21st Century economic icons I mention above, what would be the symbol for porn? The icon to symbolize porn. It can't be pornographic, but has to scream pornography all at the same time. We have to know it when we see it, that it is porn, without it being actual porn--which we would know when we see it. This is a supremely rich conundrum. The symbol for porn, please. Thank you.
If there's anyone ever still around in 2045 who cares enough to ask me, "Where were you? What were you doing when.....?"
What will I say? To this mythical runt who won't stop pestering poor, 82 year old me? What will be my equivalent to saying, "Well, I was shoveling shit down in Louisiana." ?
Well, I was watching Lost. Well, I was watching it all on the Internet. I heard the Left, Right and Center's discussion about the arguments, does that count?
We are each a part of some part of it, if not the main "it," the main event, some small part of this history in the making belongs to each one of us. Some of you dear readers are blocked from marriage at this moment, and so this means so much more to you, or rather the consequences are more immediate and real to you, than to me right now because I can't get a guy to look at me let alone propose. Yet who knows what part any one of us will play in the unfolding history we're all a part of? We're just like socks tumbling around in a dryer. Who knows who's going to end up where next, or on top of whom, or....?
I had to discontinue that sentence lest it grow too pornographic and I be heavily taxed for it.
Will I say to that pesky, inquisitive slumdog rugrat of my cranky 82 year old future, "I was on the front lines of that one!" ?
No. Kid, I was minding my own store, that week, minding my own economy, minding my own business... I was being just like David Bowie, kid, I was getting things done.
Shoveling shit in Louisiana.
These are interesting times, but I can't pay attention to them the way that I would like to.... Or participate in them. Like everybody else, I'm too busy trying to shovel myself out of the hole I'm in.
In the movie Patton, the General addresses his troops and prepares them for the battles ahead, for their task ahead. He pulls no punches in describing how they're going to murder the enemy. But he tells them that they'll be glad some day, when their grandsons ask them, "Where did you serve in the war?" Patton assured them they'll be happy they don't have to say, "Well, I was shoveling shit in Louisiana."
These days we've got plenty of "Where were you?" moments to go around.
These are the weeks our 21st century economy, whatever that will be, is coming into being. It's as historically significant as the week Obama was elected, or his inaugural week. When I grew up there were certain moments we asked our parents about all the time, and these weeks, like it or not, will be right up there with them in the years to come.
My parents were born in 1921 and 1924, depression era children and World War II veterans, so they lived through significant times. Pearl Harbor was attacked on my father's 17th birthday. He heard the gunfire the night of the St. Valentine's Day massacre in Chicago. I would ask about the week JFK was shot, the week after FDR died... My mother listened to Orson Welles infamous 1938 broadcast of War of the Worlds and from out in Illinois believed the east coast was toast at the hands of invading Martians for several hours.
Those are all large events, more singular in time. There was also the market crash of 1929. A single day, yes, but it was really the years that followed the crash that marked that "event," history to me as a child asking questions at the end of the chapter in my history book, memories to my parents. Literature to me as a teen writing a report on The Grapes of Wrath, a story to provoke more stories to survivors of the era.
The economy is being shaped these days and weeks, but other tides are turning, too. Thursday morning the California Supreme Court will hear arguments over Proposition 8, the people's choice award that went to gay marriage last November, thus voting it off the island. (We're California, we have a weird intermingling of the four branches of government here: the executive, legislative, judicial, and entertainment. Check out our governator for proof of this.)
I had intended to go tomorrow evening, downtown, for a vigil, but I'm too "out of touch and out of time" this week. Too focused on my own economy. Be like David Bowie, stay home, get things done.
I'm too much in the "go to work, get shit done, come home and get more shit done" mode to go listen to Melissa Etheridge debut her new song about hugging Rick Warren while holding candles with a crowd of couples in the rain. I mean, yeah, it'd be a beautiful moment and I'd cry, sure, but what else is it going to get me? I mean, what the hell am I so riled up about? I'm fucking single. Why should I give a damn about all these selfish bastards around me who have someone? Right? It's Wednesday, I'll be thinking, I just want to get home and feed my cat. Leave me alone, I'm watching Lost.
Of course Thursday morning I'll care again. About the arguments before California's Supreme Court that may... nay, will decide what happens next for all those gay married couples out there. It's one of those "Where were you then?" moments again. We're living through so many of them lately, aren't we?
And California may, what, did I read this? Legalize pot and tax it? That'll be great. It may generate a billion dollars a year in revenue. More great! This war on drugs has been such a curse on our society, with the irony that pot's ban was ushered in at the end of the last depression in order to eliminate the competition for rope. Now, at the edge of what some say is our next historical economic chasm, perhaps we'll make it legal again. Morals? Posh. `Give me this day my daily bread' comes first it seems.
Tax porn. Republicans see this now as the salvation in some places, I'm told. Tax porn. I just like saying that. Gambling and porn will save us all. I just got off the phone with a friend who said that some state is considering making gay marriage legal right now in order to bring in tax dollars. How our morals do shift in the wind when your livelihood is at stake. Everybody say after me: Tax porn! It's a red state thing.
Are we about to see a revolution, people? Will gay marriage save the U.S. economy? Years from now, will this Obama era be the beginning of a brand new 21st century iconography of change that includes that Obama Hope piece of art, two men or two women atop a wedding cake, and a pot plant all seen for years to come as the saviors of our new economy? The way we looked toward FDR's happy optimism symbolized in his upward turned cigarette in that long, pristine holder, people in the bread lines, that photograph of the mother in one of those camps at the edge of California, nowhere to go, the sinking of the ships in Pearl Harbor, the faces of the interned here in California, the kissing "couple" (who were not a couple) in Times Square, what images will crowd our historical memories in years to come of this time?
Also, more of a side note: If we're going to tax porn, will we need to bail that industry out first? They have been asking for a bail out ever since the bankers got one (pimps and crack dealers will be next, but they won't be nearly as sleazy as the bankers.) Also, even more of a side note: In the 21st Century economic icons I mention above, what would be the symbol for porn? The icon to symbolize porn. It can't be pornographic, but has to scream pornography all at the same time. We have to know it when we see it, that it is porn, without it being actual porn--which we would know when we see it. This is a supremely rich conundrum. The symbol for porn, please. Thank you.
If there's anyone ever still around in 2045 who cares enough to ask me, "Where were you? What were you doing when.....?"
What will I say? To this mythical runt who won't stop pestering poor, 82 year old me? What will be my equivalent to saying, "Well, I was shoveling shit down in Louisiana." ?
Well, I was watching Lost. Well, I was watching it all on the Internet. I heard the Left, Right and Center's discussion about the arguments, does that count?
We are each a part of some part of it, if not the main "it," the main event, some small part of this history in the making belongs to each one of us. Some of you dear readers are blocked from marriage at this moment, and so this means so much more to you, or rather the consequences are more immediate and real to you, than to me right now because I can't get a guy to look at me let alone propose. Yet who knows what part any one of us will play in the unfolding history we're all a part of? We're just like socks tumbling around in a dryer. Who knows who's going to end up where next, or on top of whom, or....?
I had to discontinue that sentence lest it grow too pornographic and I be heavily taxed for it.
Will I say to that pesky, inquisitive slumdog rugrat of my cranky 82 year old future, "I was on the front lines of that one!" ?
No. Kid, I was minding my own store, that week, minding my own economy, minding my own business... I was being just like David Bowie, kid, I was getting things done.
Shoveling shit in Louisiana.