Unfocused Thoughts

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1) There will be some major changes around here soon, mostly in the arena of me actually posting with some degree of consistency. 

2) I'm a fairly mercurial fellow, as anyone with the patience to pay attention to my rants and ramblings can attest. I won't apologize for the inconsistency as it relates to me as a person, as it tends toward a genuine reflection of where I am at given moment as a person and with what I struggle in a perhaps futile (but always hopeful) struggle to become whom I would like to be. I do, however, sincerely apologize to anyone who follows this site or my twitter account (@destroy_time) and expects consistency; in failing to be consistent, I let down you, my readers, my friends and family, and myself. This is the sort of thing I have in mind to remedy. You, dear (potential) reader, may have read this before; to say "I mean it this time!!!" is well... meaningless. So bear with me; this ship will turn around.

3) The nature of contemporary media seems to be colonized entirely by the marketing machine. 

4) The above statement is entirely intended to inspire debate and I will have a great deal more to say on said topic.

5) And yet (with regard to #3), we in 2012, in the affluent and connected global middle- and upper-middle classes stand confidently and often without a second thought in the midst of the most powerful and least-contained torrent of information in human history. That's pretty much a fact. Never in human history has so much knowledge been available so easily and so cheaply.

6) The immediate above has in no way changed humanity, either for the good or the better. We were, are, will be, and remain animals, physical creatures created perhaps by a deity, perhaps not, but bound to the necessities of food, sleep, sex, parenting, competition, and all the other messy things that constitute the necessary preconditions of our humanity while hemming it in on every side. 

7) This, a leap. What defines "humanity" and what could *possibly* redeem our essential animal nature is the indefinable drive toward creation; creation makes of each human being a potential god, capable not only of surveying a given landscape and passing judgment thereupon, but of reconfiguring that landscape itself in ways that can alter the course of other lives.

8) This is a very good thing.

The X Factor 2009 - Jamie Archer - Auditions 2 (itv.com/xfactor)

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How the hell had I not heard of this guy until now -- I can't stand the Kings of Leon, but this is one of most natural and at-ease stage presenences I've ever seen, not to mention a great voice.

Family

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Fair warning: this post isn't going to have any particular direction, just riffing on something's that's been on my mind of late. I've always been envious of my friends and acquaintances who have had particularly rich family lives, either from a surfeit of cousins (my first girlfriend) or from just general closeness (the girlfriend to which I was closest and many other friends). My family hasn't ever been that close; our nuclear family is pretty tight-knit, but my grandparents and my aunts and uncles spent and spend relatively little time together. I'm down to one grandparent, my father's mother and she's not in the best of health, and at 86, not likely (I hate to say) to see better. As far as uncles go, one passed away this last year, and the other two are each difficult to access in their own way. And for cousins, I have but two: one on each side, with whom I've had but sporadic contact, and certainly never developed a relationship with, despite the fact that with my uncle's son I share a love for the fantasy genre, in fiction, film, and gaming, and with my other uncle's daughter, share a similar age and general perspective. And to the uncles: the one, my father's brother is a quite complicated human being with whom -- in terms of reticence to discuss one's own life -- I perhaps share more even than with my father. The other -- my mother's brother -- I just have little in common aside from a love of the Packers.

Yet as a child, visits with my extended family were rare, and a family reunion occurred exactly once in my life. I have great-aunts and great-uncles whose names I know but have never met. Now I don't lay any blame on any member of the family from this fact, as both of my parents had... fraught relationships with their siblings, and my father -- though I do admire him more than anyone on the face of this doomed planet -- is often an emotionally remote man, making it tough to gauge why exactly his relationship with both his brother and sister is so remote. I imagine there are years of complication to which I have no access and about which I couldn't really ask and he wouldn't tell behind that, all of which is okay. My mother I'm equally unsure about; she speaks in such laudatory tones about her family (which are merited, I must say) yet keeps correspondence to the off-week phone call, the obligatory Christmas letter. I'm not sure what motivates her seeming reticence to develop a more fulfilling relationship with our extended family, and again -- wouldn't feel comfortable asking.

So maybe it's just a generational or a Midwest Protestant sort of thing (guess I'll have to ask Garrison Keillor), but whatever point there was to this was to say that I want to change that. I don't know that I can get my father and his brother to see eye-to-eye, but a trip out to eat, a barbecue or something? Maybe. I guess what I'm really saying is that I've come to the realization that family is really everything, and at the end of the day your kin are the ones who will believe in you and stand behind you when perhaps no one else will. Now many of you will say "No shit, Ben," but it's a revelation for those of us who came neither from a large nor close-knit extended family. Anyway, it's well past the official resolution-making season, but a sincere resolution of mine for 2012 and thereafter is to do whatever I can to celebrate my family and bring them together.

To the Loves I've Had and Lost

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(mostly by my fault)

And to one in particular, with equal measures of regret and understanding:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dXLpXu9T7j0&ob=av2e

Maddow Annihilates Rush

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A bit delayed on this, as this was a Friday evening broadcast, and just getting to it now. Yet in this clip, Rachel Maddow (whom I unabashedly admire) completely demolishes Rush's slander of Sandra Fluke, who he demeans for being a sexually active woman, as if that were somehow a crime. He demeans her as a "slut," again, for the mere fact of being sexually active. I'm a progressive, and likely won't agree with Rush on anything, but this goes beyond the political divide; it's unacceptable to call any woman a slut and to demean her for being sexually active. It's ethically reprehensible and represents a stunning and vile (not to mention hypocritical) ad hominem attack on an intelligent and eloquent young woman for the so-called spokesman of the Republican party. And that's true if you're a Massachusetts socialist or an Alabama evangelical conservative: it's just beyond the pale. Mitt Romney, Rick Santorum, Newt Gingrich, and Ron Paul -- not to mention John Boehner and Eric Cantor -- distance yourself from Rush. You have nothing to lose but your dignity, if you don't take a stand against Rush.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26315908/ns/msnbc_tv-rachel_maddow_show/#46610339

And my video in support of women and against Rush:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RQny3zjdi9Q&feature=youtu.be

Speaking of Uematsu...

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Submitting this for your sonic pleasure.

Stunning

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Also why Nobuo Uematsu is a genius. Said it before and will say it again, so just hit play and drink it in.

Dream Tigers

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Last night I dreamt about my ex. This is not a common occurrence, as our split was rather acrimonious and didn't exactly represent the finest moments of yours truly. It's funny. We spent five years together, even were engaged for a brief while there before things got bad. And yet I hardly ever think about her, and never dream about her. She curled into the space my arms reserved for her warm body and hers only for so long, yet I never wake up in the middle of the night feeling her absence. I guess much of that has to do with the mind protecting itself from pain, regret, loss, whatever name you want to lend to a boundless guilt and a stubborn love.

Then last night. Out of nowhere really. I hadn't pored over the emails and chats I have saved; I've only done that once or twice since it all ended. They're all stowed away on my external hard drive, so that there are enough intervening steps to access them that a lazy bastard like myself won't take the effort casually. I have to be in a certain wistful or self-flagellating mood, in the former of which I find myself too often, and latter I avoid for the sake of what sanity to which I can lay claim. Even after dreaming about her, I haven't taken that step. It seems a silly thing, no? What harm could reading a request for a tea while coming home from the library late do? Or a quick note to let me know she'd be in the studio, just in case I'd be coming that way (which, of course, I would make sure to do). Just a few clicks and an entire past opens up before your eyes.

Honestly, it's the mundane things like that that hit harder and deeper than any long-winded professorial exhortation on my part (typical) or a simple "yes or no?" on hers. When all's said and done, it's not the breathless nights making out under a summer moon on a silent beach that stay with you; it's a Saturday morning waking up together with bad breath, blearily trying to decide what to do for breakfast, whether to go out with friends tonight or spend the night in, whether or not to check out the Unitarian church tomorrow morning. Most people will read that last sentence and respond, "well no shit, Ben," but it's taken me some time to get there. Chalk it up either to inexperience or immaturity: both are accurate. I'm 26, never been in a more serious relationship, and -- with no prospects on the horizon -- am not likely to be in the near future at least, but it seems that love constitutes itself out of the small moments, the seemingly irrelevant that can mean everything.

I dreamt of her. In the dream, she came to me -- I forget where we were, some nebulous here or there in dream time -- and forgave me. She held my hand, and we went out to eat and then theater, though it wasn't relevant where. Whatever my brain was telling me in my midnight haze, it had nothing to do with cuisine or film. I drank in those cheekbones, those electric eyes, alive with everything that inspires passion, held her (always cold) hands in mind, and took her back to our place, made love (I hate that phrase for its stock-ness, but can't think of a better one that takes in both the physical act and its meaning for the pair involved), and woke up around three. Her thin arms were draped around my neck and her breath was soft and low. I looked out the window and saw snow and stars.

That was the dream anyway. Its interpretation seems pretty straightforward, yet what was jarring was just the fact of finding myself entangled in this girl again, this girl I loved so much and still do in a complicated way, yet will likely never see again. C'est la vie, no?

Conundrum

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I've been intending to plant an herb garden for the first time in my life this year (first time I will have, in fact, planted anything aside from my face), and just realized how dangerously close to spring we're getting. So seeds need to get planted sometime in the very near and approaching future. Research and planning done pronto, and so on.

Problem is, I know absolutely nothing about this shit -- aside from that it takes seeds, sunlight, water, and dirt. And a truly anal tendency to fret about your plants day and night, which should be no problem. I know what I want to plant and where, so I guess it could be worse. But I want fresh basil to garnish my tom kha gai, fresh dill for my scrambled eggs (am I the only one who does this? I get confused looks every time I mention this particular practice I doubt I will ever abandon), fresh rosemary for my pork tenderloin, etc. So I need to figure this out and quickly. I think I'm going to take a trip over to the nearest nursery and have an extended chat with someone there who can remedy my ignorance, has a spare minute and can point me in the right direction for next step.

There's really no particular point to this post, other than that this is weighing on my mind and feel like writing and don't feel like writing the pieces I probably should be writing. Although if anyone who reads this has any suggestions on, say, a book or documentary, a website, somewhere I can do some research? I'd appreciate it. Of course, any personal learning experiences are much appreciated as well. I have the feeling I'm going to spend a lot of time kneeling in dirt just to wind up with some truly pathetic shoots, if I'm lucky even to get that far.

Annoying Yet Less So Than It Should Be

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listening to a song that's on brain repeat on some serious terms repeatedly, even knowing that you're going to hit "play" once more. now that shit is annoying. but so good.

The Best Story in Sports Practically No One is Talking About

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Linsanity. I know, I know. It transcends sports, attracts the attention of the President of the United States, makes one of the most maligned NBA franchises other than the Charlotte Bobcats suddenly relevant. But the real story is in Texas, as inspiring and electric as Lin has been.

That story with the himself electric and in his way enigmatic Josh Hamilton, the 2010 AL and ALCS MVP who also was the first player drafted in the 1999 MLB draft by the Tampa Bay then-Devil Rays. A man who struggled with drug and alcohol use for the better part of the '00s -- famously, if you pay attention to this sort of thing. It's no secret he dropped out of baseball entirely from 2004 to 2006, only to re-emerge in stunning fashion as the Roy Hobbs of the Texas Rangers.

His recent (much-publicized) relapse with alcohol abuse wasn't the sort of thing that surprises an addict. His frankness in admitting to his personal failures and human nature testified, however, to both his willingness to change the former and attest to the latter. It showed his family, friends, and fans that Josh Hamilton knows he screwed up, but wants desperately to change.

Josh Hamilton is a fortunate human being. He's a preternaturally gifted athlete, a man who can drive a ball further with a flick of a ham-sized wrist than I can probably see. He's got more money than I'll probably make in my life. His failings are public, because that's the way of baseball, and of professional sports -- or even high-profile amateur sports -- in general. People care about him, what he does, what he doesn't do, because he matters. To a substantial investor class and largely disappointed fan base, he matters.

So what he does in his off time matters. There are few things that make a fan sad than a wasted high draft pick. Ask Wizards or Blazers fans alone about Kwame Brown or Greg Oden (just to name recent examples from one professional US league alone), how they feel about management bollocksing top draft picks. They don't exactly come around all the time. To draft a guy and watch him waste it all on alcohol and his particular drug cocktail is not only a nut-blow to the fans (and management) but a sad thing to watch.

In Hamilton's case though, there seemed to be a happy turn: traded to the Rangers in 2008, he completely annihilated opposing pitching in spring training and won the starting CF job. With a .304/.371/.530 he hadn't even gotten started with AL pitching, feasting on division cohorts like Felix "The King" Hernandez, posting a .359/.411/.633 line with a 7.0 WAR and a 170 OPS+ (all stats cited courtesy of baseball-reference.com) in that 2010 MVP season. And aside from the production, he led the Rangers to consecutive World Series, falling respectively to the Giants and the Cardinals. But he led them there, and consecutive pennants is nothing at which to scoff.

The man's a great ballplayer. That he slipped in his battle with addiction recently comes as neither a surprise nor a disappointment. I'm not going to judge the man for slipping; if anything else, a crime, any other ethical misdoing occurred, then it's on him. Yet so far, Hamilton has been forthcoming, saying he did wrong, he slipped, he's seeking and working toward help, and most importantly earnestly desires it.

Hamilton, however, is a flawed dude seeking redemption and desperately hoping to find it. Isn't that us all?

Update

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Relaunching soon, stay tuned.

Number Two

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“She Walks in Beauty”

Byron told me that.

In many ways he lied.

This wasn’t one of them.

I used to worship Byron and his ilk.

Starry-eyed true believers,

Believers in what – in a past era –

Might have been termed faith.

You read Byron and imagine

The Greece of a Homer who never was,

A land of sunsets and gods and tall men,

Clasped in armor, devoted to their Patroclus,

Hey, likely even sleeping with that Patroclus.

A world of grapes and blood,

In which a man is a man,

Yet twenty years gone desires only return.

Shelley and Wordsworth too.

You live long enough on these blank spaces

You internalize certain things.

Ozymandias, for example.

You take in the nothing in your eyes

You begin to understand emptiness –

Whether it’s inside you or not.

You don’t gain an appreciation for –

No appreciation isn’t quite right

You look in yourself and – despair

Yes, despair; appropriately

It’s time translated into geography

Green everywhere, as far as the eye can see.

Infinity in all directions,

Not even ten minutes from civilization.

Lone and level sands.

That takes care of Shelley.

Wordsworth’s important here as well.

I’ve not yet been to Tintern Abbey,

But I know what the bloke saw.

Sitting on a hill a few miles above the place,

He had a glimpse of something far greater

Or maybe far purer than he would ever be.

Maybe confronted with endlessness

He saw Dorothy, or Dora, or

I don’t know – God?

Don’t take my word on the God part

I’m a veteran unbeliever

But a firm believer in whatever we call the Infinite.

Shelley looked and despaired

Byron looked and was caught

Wordsworth looked and was transfixed.

I look and don’t know

I, of far less genius than those three

Have stood at all points

Yet there is marrow in these bones

There is blood

There is time endlessly

Not city time

But time of the prairie

Of the land and those who came before

Germans and Scandinavians like me

And those who loved this land

Long before my forebears took breath.

Of course this is their land.

It’s my land.

Byron’s, Shelley’s, and Wordsworth’s too.

It’s infinite, this land.

Re-Up take... what?

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Yeah, back again. Talked with a dear friend who reminded me that this outpost is my cobwebbed window out of a murky self. So let's go.

Poem

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Rare, I know.


“A Love Song to New York”

You dirty piece of shit

Your multitudes

Your masses.

You teem with poets

Artists and bankers

Your kimchi is perfect

Your Tom Kha Gai unbeatable

Your subway disgusting

Your cabs overpriced

Yet

You vibrate, you live

Every moment of you lives

Whether your 30 Rock or your Queens

Every inch of you moves

Energy – just the energy

It’s electricity

It’s lightning

You can’t feel it anywhere but Berlin

It consumes you

Those of us who stare at the moon

At the corn rising high and alone

Who consume solitude as you

Children of glass and steel

Grown to love high things

See the Chrysler Building

And long for it; long for the moon empty in the black

Long for the moon smiling on your spire

On your light

On the blackness we share

I often laugh at your hipsters.

I imagine what effort it must take to seem so effortlessly cool.

I never could live up to that.

I have fucked many who presume to.

I have walked down Broadway and Fifth, through Williamsburg and Bushwick. I have heard Whitman echo in my ears. Burroughs call to me from the grave. And I, dear friends, have listened.

And so I open this door to stare at the moon

And I think of New York

And wish for it with all my heart

I think of friends I know who are there

I think of the MOMA and all those who made perfection

And the Met and the river and the unending light.

I think of New York in the moonlight.

New Book Review

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of Mark Wisniewski's Show Up, Look Good at bookslut.com.

Occupy Rockford

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I'll be doing most of my blogging at OccupyRockford.blogspot.com, as we organize direct action here in the Forest City, so apologies for prolonged absence.

Not One More Troy Davis

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Not one more. In the United States of America, we do not kill women or men who might be innocent. Or women or men who are guilty; we give them justice, but justice doesn't include killing individuals. Yes, we actually do, but it's going to stop. There is not a single rational reason to murder individuals either convicted or accused of a crime, even one as horrific as homicide. "An eye for an eye" comes from a fictional book and describes 16th-c. justice.

Georgia murdered Troy Davis last night despite legitimate doubts about his guilt. That isn't justice; it's vengeance. Retribution. Revenge. It doesn't bring the victim's family anything but the fleeting satisfaction of seeing another dead man. It doesn't bring them justice -- and if Davis is innocent, it puts them at a further remove from justice, as the state is far less likely to pursue other suspects now that Davis is dead. The death penalty is revenge that accomplishes nothing other than murdering someone, and enough of those someones are either innocent or have questions surrounding their guilt to make it what it is: barbaric. The death penalty is barbaric. It's the kind of thing you see Ned Stark do because Ned Stark would have existed 700 years ago were he real and if he lived on earth.

The death penalty must end. Republicans can laugh all they want about the state -- federal or individual states -- letting people die or actually murdering them, but this is a fight we're going to win. A lot of people had their eyes opened last night about how unjust this antiquated and barbaric institution is; some of them might even be willing to fight. It's insane that in 21st-century America, it's a "left" thing to be against the death penalty.

Here's what the ACLU has to say about the death penalty:

"The U.S.'s capital punishment process:
(1) is fraught with error;

(2) discriminates on the basis of socioeconomic status, race, and geography;

(3) is arbitrary and capricious, including its use against the mentally ill and defendants who did not kill anyone and did not intend that anyone be killed;

(4) costs taxpayers far more than life imprisonment without release;

(5) does nothing to protect people from crime;

(6) seriously harms the survivors of homicide victims;

(7) is plagued by cheap legal representation - the worst, not the best, of American lawyering; and

(8) greatly diminishes the worldwide stature of the United States and its ability to work to end human rights violations in other countries."

This cannot continue a single day longer. No more Troy Davises.

The Campaign to End the Death Penalty is an excellent resource for this, but it comes down to being active and demanding that your state representatives end this travesty in your state. I don't think the conservative Supreme Court will act on it any time soon, so it's a state-by-state fight.

Cross-posted at www.destructiveanachronism.blogspot.com

Troy Davis Again

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The state of Georgia is going to murder -- yes, murder, because I believe that's what it's tantamount to, and I don't blame the individuals who will actually do the deed, as they're just doing their jobs, and in this economy you can't really afford to tell your employer to go screw themselves. No, the murder is the responsibility of the fatally (no pun intended) flawed criminal justice system operating in the state of Georgia and in the United States of America. In any sane country, there would be no death penalty. I recognize that there's some controversy regarding the death penalty. Here's the short version of why it makes zero sense.

You can't. Take. It. Back. There are many documented cases of individuals who have been proven innocent after being executed. There are many more cases of alleged criminals being found innocent after having been convicted for non-executable crimes. If you put a convict to death who later turns out to be innocent, you're complicit in murder, the crime for which you put the alleged convict to death. That means you -- judge, officer, witness whoever are a murderer. Doesn't that irony seem poignant? The standard of evidence used to convict individuals in the United States criminal court system is "beyond a reasonable doubt," and I believe the number is considered 95% certainty. Could you kill a woman or man if there's a 5% chance she or he is innocent? I couldn't. Because if you're wrong state of Georgia, that's not the sort of thing you can ever make right. You kill someone and it's final; you can't bring them back, you can't console their loved ones.

As I wrote on Daily Kos yesterday, I don't know if Davis is guilty or not. But there are just too many questions to murder him without a new trial. Killing someone isn't something you just do. In my opinion it's not something you should ever do, but if you're going to, you have to be 100% certain. Not 95%, not a shoulder-shrug "meh, maybe," but absolutely certain. In Davis's case, that's not the case.

Troy Davis & Why He Matters

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Up at the Daily Kos.