Tagged: poetry
I Am SOAD Toxicity, A Review of Toxicity (Full Album), by System of a Down.
Wired (not “wide”) were the eyes of a horse on a jet pilot, one that smiled when he flew over a bay
My voice can sound most like Serj’s out of all Rock front men, if I do say so myself. Even at the age of 42. What can I say?
In seminary I used to put music on while writing and editing my papers, but I have recently fell away from the habit. Yesterday, however, I was feeling good (been lifting weights again for the first time in 5 years) and while the post-workout euphoria was in effect, I decided to put on music as I resumed some editing. I hadn’t heard Toxicity in a while, but I remembered loving that album and so searched it up.
One thing that I will never forget about the album is how seamless the entire thing is. One song flows right into the next. Whatever the actual production process felt like to the band, the Muse was clearly running the show. With my adult brain, I am very aware that these things are completely controllable, but in my child brain, I am to this day awestruck by how even the changing track on a CD, on every CD and every player, can happen at the right moment and in the correct and desired tempo. If you haven’t listened in a while, take the required 11 minutes to feel the special delight from the effect of the transitions from “Needles” to “Deer Dance” to “Jet Pilot” to “X”. Is it really four songs, guys? Be honest.
Whatever it is, it is perfectly sublime rock.
I remember being so enraptured by this album when I first heard it that I tried to have my dad listen to part of the album on our cool Bose speakers (like how I said “our”?) as a college kid, still living at home between semesters. But as is normal with spontaneous listening parties, he was not immediately impressed.
Over two decades later, the impression I gladly couldn’t shake at the completion of the album was how formative that album was for my current perspectives. One example should suffice.
In “Prison Song”, one lyric states, “All research and successful drug policy show that treatment should be increased/And law enforcement decreased while abolishing mandatory minimum sentences.”
Now, I can imagine that some folks might want to take this as a prescription. IE, some folks might say that, “the band is using its platform to call attention to the need for prison reform” blah, blah, blah.
No! I say again, H to the E-L-L’s No!
What they are saying is, “Burn it all!!”
The fact that the lyrics seem to make an argument is not to be interpreted as the band’s own intent to make that argument, no! The correct interpretation is to add the music and voice and realize they are calling out the entire system’s evident incongruence. Put another, less effective way, they could have sung, “You know it’s broken. You, yes you, know it’s broken! And you still are impotent. Even your supposed self-correcting design doesn’t work. It’s time to go!”
In a word, they “rock.”
And by giving us definitive boundaries to the meaning of Rock music, they help us fans understand that life doesn’t have to be a dog, which we train to stop eating our shoes by replacing them with a chew toy—no. Life can just simply be messed up. And the proper response sometimes is to call it out for what it is—period. Those in charge of the prisons, most immediately, and the rest of us in the society eventually, are forced by SOAD’s work (among others) to be uncomfortable at the least. And at the most, we find our calling and do something with our indignation. (Admittedly, this hasn’t yet happened for me, but after yesterday, I feel like it could any day now.)
In a glass-is-half-empty way, SOAD manifests the adage, “misery loves company,” but only if you also think any agent who forces you to consider that you are not almighty god does.
For the rest of us, SOAD’s contribution Toxicity extends life. Well done.
The White Devil
Now the serpent was more crafty than any beast of the field which Yahweh God had made…And the serpent said to the woman, “You surely will not die! For God knows that in the day you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”
“Come on!” he smiled mischievously, “Come on, just tell me. It’s not like we don’t know the nickname. I just want to know it in your language.”
“Oh, no,” the brown mohammedan said, head-shaking, embarrassed and uncomfortable. “It is not right.”
“Seriously, just tell me. How much have we shared with each other so far? I only want to know it to make people laugh. It’s not like I mean any harm to anyone. It would make me betam yetek’eburu if I could whip out that phrase when appropriate. Ehbakahin? Please?”
The mooslims are different in this respect. They are Old Testament in their belief in the power of utterances. The man wouldn’t budge.
“Oh well. Here comes another,” he said to himself. “Hey!” Pointing back down the hall towards the man he just left, the same smile still on his face, he said, “Abdi there won’t tell me how to say White Devil. How about you? I need it for purely social reasons. Please?”
Stonewalled again, and this time by a Christian no less.
That was six years ago.
Today, he knows the real meaning of White Devil. He had always assumed it had to do with brown people being more “spiritual” on the whole and white people being less “spiritual” on the whole. There also was the ever present, at least in recent centuries, technological advantages inherent to the (renowned as white) West that surely must have bedazzled outsiders into believing them to be derived from the dark arts.
Wrong on both points.
His own culture lauds literacy and learning. The greatest shame is an unexpected and unavoidable public display of illiteracy. If one can’t read, they hide that fact from everyone—and if it happens that they come to a moment when they decide to learn, upon taking that step, the choirs of the West rejoice more joyfully than the heavenly hosts when a new believer is baptized. Who, then, wouldn’t want to learn how to read?
But that is the White Devil describing itself, the White Devil marveling at its reflection in precious stones. As described by illiterate cultures, the ones who are lauded today for having “oral histories”, the White Devil is the absolutely ignorant and unfounded fear of what these cultures do not yet understand.
The truly ignorant are not the West’s unwanted newborns put outside to die by exposure like our own illiterate, no. He now sees that the truly ignorant are Adam and Eve, shortly after getting the boot from the garden. They know something is different. They know there is another power. They know they don’t have the power. And like Adam and Eve, they conclude those that do possess the power must be the enemy, the adversary, ha-satan. Or, plainly, the White Devil. And the only idea that populates the uninhabited landscape of their brain is to tell their children the story of the crafty serpent.
A Woman in 1899, Another in 1920, and One from 2024
Self-satisfaction begins with reading a variety of books. This morning, already, I have read from F Scott Fitzgerald’s This Side of Paradise and Jack London’s short story “The White Silence.”
The necessary vital stats of these two giants for this post include London’s work preceding Fitzgerald’s by about 30 years; oh, and London wrote about life in the wild, whereas Fitzgerald wrote about life in, what later would be called, the concrete jungle—the city, specifically high society.
In writing about “life”, they also wrote about women. Women are everywhere, it seems. And not to be avoided.
In order of my reading today, here is a blurb from F Scott on women.
“I’ve got an adjective that just fits you.” This was one of his favorite starts—he seldom had a word in mind, but it was a curiosity provoker, and he could always produce something complimentary if he got in a tight corner.
“Oh—what?” Isabelle’s face was a study in enraptured curiosity.
And, now for the real test, from 30 years earlier and a world away, Jack London’s entry on women.
“Yes, Ruth,” continued her husband, having recourse to the macaronic jargon in which it was alone possible for them to understand each other; “wait until we clean up and pull for the Outside. We’ll take the White Man’s canoe and go to the Salt Water. Yes, bad water, rough water—great mountains dance up and down all the time. And so big, so far, so far away—you travel ten sleep, twenty sleep, forty sleep”—he graphically enumerated the days on his fingers—“all the time water, bad water. Then you come to great village, plenty people, just the same mosquitoes next summer. Wigwams oh, so high—ten, twenty pines. Hi-yu skookum!”
He paused impotently, cast an appealing glance at Malemute Kid, then laboriously placed twenty pines, end on end, by sign language. Malemute Kid smiled with cheery cynicism; but Ruth’s eyes were wide with wonder, and with pleasure; for she half believed he was joking, and such condescension pleased her poor woman’s heart.
“And then you step into a—a box, and pouf! up you go.” He tossed his empty cup in the air by way of illustration and. As he deftly caught it, cried: “And biff! down you come. Oh, great medicine men! You go Fort Yukon, I go Arctic City—twenty five sleep—big string, all the time—I catch him string—I say, ‘Hello, Ruth! How are ye?’—and you say, ‘Is that my good husband?’—and I say, ‘Yes’—and you say, ‘No can bake good bread, no more soda’—then I say, ‘Look in cache, under flour; good-by.’ You look and catch plenty soda. All the time you Fort Yukon, me Arctic City. Hi-yu medicine man!”
Ruth smiled so ingenuously at the fairy story that both men burst into laughter. A row among the dogs cut short the wonders of the Outside, and by the time the snarling combatants were separated, she had lashed the sleds and all was ready for the trail.
I know, I know. Way more from London. But it’s to serve a point, my point.
The earlier-dated passage from London required more words as the task before him included also announcing the different cultures.
But they both offer the same comment—and oh, how detestable the situation!
They both convey a man telling a fairy tale to their woman, and they both convey that women are beholden to men.
We are now one hundred years from F Scott and this question is, by my thinking, the pre-eminent question of our time. My generation has no other issue of more importance on the docket.
And for my part, I have determined resolution of the question. This will not shock regular readers.
I can put the matter in one of two ways, a kind of “glass is half-full” version and a kind of “glass is half-empty” version.
Half-empty: Women are no longer beholden to men. And without men, women are actively disintegrating civilization.
Half-full: Wise women would do well to choose to live as if beholden to men, regardless the true nature of their plight.
****
For the record, Ruth is infinitely more attractive to me. According to the text, she displays taking “pleasure” and “ smiles ingenuously.” (Look it up, if you don’t know. I had to.) She also lashed the sleds.
What did Isabelle do? Nothing that an animal in heat couldn’t.
USAFA Hoops vs. All Socks
I surprised the family and took them to the Air Force Academy Men’s Basketball game the other night. The Academy puts on a good show in all the ways they can plan and perfect (sound and lights etc.), and then everyone knows that the basketball skill just isn’t going to be there because it is a military academy. But the game was fun to be at and I have to admit this was my first time back on an Air Force base/installation since I separated over 11 years ago and it felt kinda awesome to be around like-minded folks. The highlight of that like-mindedness was when the grandpa-type guy behind us saw A- light up when she saw his popcorn and he just offered her some straight out of the red pin-striped box. It was more than wonderful moment.
Also the other day, I did the toddlers’ laundry and when I folded their clothes, I found that all the socks still had their pair. That too was a moment covered with awesomeness.
Which moment felt better? Hard to say. But it’s been a good week, that’s for sure.
To “Anyone Who Would Listen”
I’m so fucking strong. That’s why Life can’t ever get to me. But as I drove home—daughterless—from the court-ordered, though in the main respect unsuccessful, transfer of child for Christmas (odd years are mine), I couldn’t help but think, “Man. I can handle these things because I’m so strong. But imagine if every, or even just a few, of these other schmucks behind the wheel were dealing with this blow. Surely it would destroy them.”
Good thing I’m strong. That’s all I have to say.
My ex actually answered the door. That was a surprise. I think it’s been over 5 years since I have seen her. I wasn’t sure if her father would make the protective trip like he did last time when she first revealed her desire to kidnap my daughter. H- was still innocent those few years ago and believed the lies they told her about his visit. Ah, the good ol’ days.
Let me just say, for the record, my ex looked terrible. She looked like she had lost her entire sense of humor. The years have not been good to her.
I, if I do say so myself, looked as good as I can get. I had a suit on. Blue, with brown belt and shoes. Grey polo underneath. My nice gold-colored watch. I was going for the “I choose the wrench” look. You know the one, right? End of “Good Will Hunting”? Matt Damon is explaining how his step-dad used to layout the tools from which he, as the step-son, could choose to get beat with? A hose, a stick, a wrench (or similar). Good ol’ loveable Will says, “No, I chose the wrench. ‘Cuz, ‘Fuck him.’” Yup, I want my gold-digging ex to see that she has more to take from me, that is, if she was only smart enough to figure out how.
Which brings me to why I even continue to breathe in air. It’s for moments of pure clarity that the clear mountain air brings to us on mornings like this one. Moments like I had on the drive home.
The Deputy I spoke to when I called in this “incident” told me she (lady cop) didn’t have to come out if I didn’t want her to. I told her I wanted as little drama as possible, but I did want a formal record of the non-transfer-event. The deputy continued to explain that the incident is recorded and she can text me an “incident number” that I can use should I file a motion for contempt of court etc.
Hahahahahaha. Ah, bliss.
If you missed it, that was the moment of pure clarity.
Imagine it. Me, a divorced dad, American citizen, filing a motion of contempt of court against my ex. Hahahahaha. Like that would do anything.
I don’t know why I didn’t see it before. While being terrifically strong, sometimes I think I am not that smart.
There is no enforcement! What is the judge, the Court, going to do? Slap her wrist? Lecture her? Make her pay a fine? I should be a freakin’ attorney for women. “Ahem… Pardon me. Here’s all you need to do. Nothing. You just do nothing. Don’t do a thing. Just think ‘rock on a flatland’ anytime you begin to stress. Don’t move. Not one inch. Got it? Good. Total for today’s chat will be $12,786.42–but don’t worry. He’ll happily pay.”
Now here is the interesting, truly fascinating, part. I used to know this! I did. In fact, I distinctly recall writing, and could probably search for, a blog post about the complete impotence of divorced dads in America. It was like 3 years ago, I think.
But then something odd happened. Hope was kindled. But apparently my iceberg of penguins is so full, that when Hope appeared, the Facts of Life had to drop off the edge, if there was to be room.
That, and the fact that, as a strong mother-effer, I have to say that I love proving it. I love flaunting it. Right next to “pure being”, I live to flex. And I love—I think this is why I married two weak women—I love getting punched in the face by puny little children. I feel like Tyler Durden must have when persuading Lou in “Fight Club”. I love it.
So I drove the hour to visit my longest-standing ward. Again, she looked terrible. But me? I drove home unruffled—unlike all the other folks on the road. God help them this Christmas.
Saving the Planet
“I’m kinda particular about these things. It’s really just that I have a rule. It’s only one rule, but it means that I don’t have many friends. I like alignment. The car is about travel, not about the environment. Get it? Buy whatever you want. Build whatever you want. But when you build a vehicle and tell me that you’re using it to help save the environment, I can only say, ‘That is too complex and too complicated (there is a difference) a goal for me to believe in. And if I can’t believe in it, then you can’t either because I am certain I have read more about it than you. And if you can’t, then you really haven’t even thought about the meaning of the words and are instead doing some sort of unthinking parroting or propaganda.”
Okay, I didn’t say that last bit. I didn’t attack. I ended my thought on the complex line. But I wanted to continue it here. For fun. Because I’m serious.
Life is weird as I get older. As a boy, a knife was sharp or dull. It was big or small. The basketball was inflated or needed air. The Bible was heavy. The pizza was good. The soda, too good.
Cars were fast. Motorcycles, faster. F-14’s even faster and the SR-71 fastest.
Now people drive a car alongside me on the road and act like they are, besides traveling, saving the planet. And, get this, they believe that I—little ol’ insignificant spec of a flesh on a forgettable rock floating through the universe—am destroying the planet.
There is a better way, folks. I am not destroying the planet. I am driving to work. Same as you.
So don’t tell me that your Tesla is somehow doing something more than carry you from A to B quicker than horses could. Don’t tell me that 20% (or is it 40%?) of all bad gases are caused by automobiles alone. Don’t tell me that America needs to act. Don’t tell me these things, not because they’re wrong, but because you don’t even know if they’re right.
You have no sources. Any sources available have no credibility. And there ultimately is no authority to judge the matter anyhow! We don’t live under the Pope. We don’t act by leave of a King. Musk does not need to be persuaded in order for the Sun’s insolation to reach Earth.
You, yes, you, neo-Copernicus, have only yourself to persuade and pat on the back. And you’ve done a bang-up job of it. Way to go!
Is that what you need to hear?
I’d rather talk about something interesting. There are so many interesting things to spend time considering. And not-a-one of them is your Tesla’s ability to save the world.
Boring.
More interesting already is a path of discovery on the topic of what you think you need to overcompensate for.
It’s okay. You can be an expert at your job, a good parent, and not save the planet. It’s okay.
Effort vs. Execution, A Joint Review of Equalizer 2 & Equalizer 3, by Antoine Fuqua
My wife mentioned that she wanted to watch the new Equalizer, but I couldn’t recall ever taking time for Equalizer 2. So we started with 2, and then moved to 3. “Decent and in order.”
Oh, and we have this new TV which does that thing where even Hollywood films appear like they are home videos. Know what I am talking about? Probably not. I have not found many who can see what I see, but having taken about 12 years off TV, I can tell that the image is far, far different than it used to be.
I bring up this image quality thing because it is part of the problem with Equalizer 2, but not 3. On these new TV’s, the CGI, if any corners were cut, looks terrible. Like it used to look before it got good and seamless, really, with the Avengers film. So 3 must have had a bigger budget—itself no surprise as they were probably caught off guard by how many went to see the sequel to a standard action film. Apparently, they were not monitoring Mr. Wick’s success. If they make a 4, I’d rush to see it because they will surely be in full stride (and direct competition) with John.
The story in 2 was also less than compelling. The start was great, but the moment we hear the “bad guy” stop pretending he is innocent, the movie, for all intents and purposes, ends. And this happened near the half-way point. And the CGI wasn’t even introduced until the end. So we went from worse to “worser”, to play off David Ayers’ Street Kings opening.
But again, we were only watching 2 to get to feel right about watching 3. And 3 delivered.
These two films (I can barely recall the first one) are incredibly violent. Shockingly so. So don’t think you should bend the rules with your kid and show them their first R-rated feature with one of these. You’ll regret it. But they do the right thing of making the bad guys really bad, and Denzel, well, he’s Denzel. And in 3 we got to see a CGI free Denzel film. Or one that had the budget to make it look like CGI wasn’t used.
You know what makes Denzel great? He’s almost a one trick pony. But the trick is the equivalent of harnessing the power of the Sun. He is so great because of how he, in almost every movie, can give a particular look which makes you sympathize whole-heartedly with his character. Of course his speaking and speeches are excellent. And who doesn’t want to move like he moves? And think like he thinks. But the silent look he gives is something that I want to never be able to produce. I don’t want that pain, that history, that store of feeling. I don’t want that library of unspoken, but not forgotten, words. But I do sympathize.
Final note: his other recent film, “The Little Things” is decent. Don’t skip it if you are at all intrigued.
Name Change Coming Soon
I’ve been thinking it’s time to more accurately entitle this blog of mine. So a name change (just superficial—website will stay the same) from Captain’s Log to something else is coming soon.
The point of this post is to say, “Don’t be alarmed. It is still me. I just feel like I need to admit that I’m hijacking the mood when I drop the lure of being an interesting pilot/Captain who can also write well and has a unique perspective, but, really, I am just a blogger who blogs fearlessly—which means writes well.”
More to follow.
Free Vacuums
Mindlessly, perhaps distractedly, I sat at a stop light, patiently waiting my turn on this December evening. My eyes fell upon a sign over to the right on a building that said, “Free Vacuums”.
Now at work, the vacuum we have is terrible. It is one of those canister kinds that lets you see the dust swirling as evidence that it is working—that is, until it isn’t working and the dust just sits and now the volume seems to loud and you wonder if it always was this loud or has it just gotten louder when it stopped working correctly? I hate the canister kind. I’ve always preferred Oreck and bagged vacuums, myself. Just keep it simple.
Back to the sign, I thought, “How could they possibly have enough vacuums for any and all comers?” I wish, for your sake, you could have seen what I imagined the inside of this store looked like. Just a smorgasbord of refurbished (that’s surely the only type that could be free) vacuums. The old chrome ones, and maybe an Oreck a day was set out for a lucky shopper.
It didn’t seem real, but then who does like vacuuming? And I have been trying to give away a washer and dryer and am resolved that it will simply cost money to have someone pick them up. Maybe the vacuum market is similar? And maybe there is a government program to help encourage clean houses? Who knows?
Let me be clear, I almost re-routed in the direction of the sign.
Then it hit me. I almost couldn’t look again for shame and embarrassment. And I have barely been able to stop laughing long enough to type this out—of which the only reason I type is because the two people I called to share a good laugh with didn’t answer.
It was a car wash! Ha. Free vacuums!
As if someone would just give away vacuums.
Hahahahahahahahaha.
American Divorce: The Way I See It
I believe in writing. I have been at this blog for a decade now. In the beginning, I liked encouragement. These days, I couldn’t care less when someone encourages me about my writing. It always has this air of “I wouldn’t have thought you were a good writer…” and that kinda bothers me. Why not? What about me sounds like bad writing? My job? My hobbies? The things I like to talk about? My clothes? Seriously, there is no signal that suggests that I wouldn’t be able to hold my own with a pen/keyboard.
Now-13.5 H- has shared that she reads these posts, and that the result of my “woman hater” (which would be “female hater” if I want to encourage the child to learn reading comprehension–I do–it’s “female hater” and I define “female” in contradistinction to “woman” in the post, H-) post from the other day is that she doesn’t want to see me or talk to me (at least for now). In any case, and this is the point of this opening, with encouragement, with discouragement, I maintain that writing is good. The rest of this post, then, the part that pertains to the title, is Exhibit A.
The last two posts have been on the topic of men and women and our relationships. In the background, many more thoughts and conversations have been taking place because of these posts and the events which inspired them. So again, I want to write, to catalog. I want to think on them.
The most important result of writing about my friend’s looming divorce (in which his wife of twenty years is going to steal his military retirement and hold hostage his two children in Europe, all with the blessing of Missouri and general American Culture), is my own wife and I have come to a shocking realization and subsequent clarity of our perspectives. We laid in bed the other night and bickered about whether I was claiming my friend was ‘perfect’ when I asserted that ‘he did nothing to make her steal from him’. In other words, we realized that even the two of us, husband and wife, see the eternal institutions of marriage and divorce TOTALLY different. (Makes ya wonder what any of us are even doing.)
(You with me thus far?)
I believe this woman–er, this female–, E-, is a terrible creature–less than human–worse than Hitler. I wrote as much a few days back. She is terrible, not for crimes committed, but for crimes she is going to commit until one of them dies. And I further maintain that my friend did not and does not have any influence on E-‘s decision to commit these twin crimes (to keep it simple, we’ll just call stealing his money and stealing his children the only two crimes–but there are more).
My wife hears me say this and responds, “Oh yeah! I’m sure he is perfect. All your friends are perfect!”
(The point of this post is to report to you, dear reader, not the entirety of the conversation, but the fruit.)
With this, I finally saw the stumbling block to my wife and I’s communication.
So I began again, in a new vein, “Do you remember that video of the blacks brawling at Disneyland several years ago?”
“Yes.”
“Remember how the dude just punches his girlfriend in the face? He just turns and punches her. It was horrific. I had never seen anything like that ever. That’s why I showed it to you. Do you remember?”
“Yes, I remember!”
“Okay. Did that woman have anything to do with him punching her? Was there anything she did that caused him to punch her? Were any of his needs not met by her and so he punched her? Is there anything she did that alleviates his punch of its evil?”
“That’s totally-“
“-‘No’. The correct answer is, ‘No. She had nothing to do with him punching her. A man punching a woman is wrong. It is always wrong. It is squarely wrong. It is never her fault. It is never something she caused. It is just wrong.’ And I am saying that, for precisely the same reasons, these women who divorce a man and then proceed to steal from him are likewise wrong. They are likewise committing evil. My friend has no more responsibility for E-‘s evil actions (continual actions keep in mind) than that woman did for her boyfriend’s punch (probably plural). And stop with ‘the Law’. The ‘Law’ has no bearing on my opinion, and, in fact, is the reason I am so adamant about this belief of mine. All these wives hide behind the ‘Law’ and comfort themselves with the thought that they are somehow not accountable for the evil they are committing since it is the ‘Law’. The ‘Law’, in this case, is immoral and needs to adapt to the times. Whatever the reasoning that went into ‘woman gets half the retirement’ was, it is now different. The ‘Law’ needs to change. You can’t take a husband and expect him to somehow ‘prevent’ divorce, when all the while, all that is required for a divorce is the wife saying, ‘I want a divorce.’ The way a wife would prove her innocence, would prove she had endured something terrible, is to not take the money. Just divorce him and move on with your life. ‘Thanks, but no thanks.’ What E- and all the wives are doing is morally wrong–evil.”
****
What do you think, dear reader? Think my wife bought my rant? Have I made a dent in your thinking with this analogy, ex-wife collecting retirement as same ‘obvious’ evil as man punching woman? Or do you need it in codified writing? Is it possible for my friend to have been an unqualified good husband and father and this still be the result of his behavior?
Or is the fairer sex just too pure to sow and reap evil? Too feeble to ever work for a living? Too unstable to ever reach old age without the financial backing of a man?
Captain’s Log 