Reality
Posted: February 21st, 2011, 3:19 pm
I know some of you have already seen this, so, for you, nothing to see here.
I have to get some things off my chest. Some are personal, some, maybe not so much.
I’m going to post this to a few other places, so it’s going to be a form letter of sorts.
I’ve thought about this a lot, but I am typing this as I think of it now. It’s not so much prepared as overdue.
First, the personal.
I’ve been visiting a poetry site called Arcanum Café since 2000. As I was 50 years old at the time, I’d never seen anything like it before. The internet had only been at the fingertips of a large portion of Americans for a short time then, but there were people born in 1980 and a little after who couldn’t even imagine what life was like without a TV on a desk and a typewriter keyboard in front of it. Of course, there’s the mouse. Personal computers. What a wonderful invention the military finally decided to share with the rest of us.
So, I started to visit AC. I wrote a lot of what I called poetry from 1964 until about 1974. Unfortunately, in order to leave my parents’ home, I had to meet a woman and marry her. Well, at least that’s what they told me and, by the time I was 21 or 22, whatever, they had me believing everything they said. I guess I was too stupid to know that I could have left and they couldn’t have done a thing about it.
By the way, I don’t want this to seem like a woe is me message and I’ve already started down that road. So, I’ll swerve back.
I got married and gave my parents their first grandchildren. Obviously, as I had a degree in nothing, I had to get a job which didn’t require one. So, I worked for The Dow Chemical Company for 25 years. I was no more ready to be a husband than a father and I didn’t love the woman to whom I was married and she never loved me. So, after we had two daughters, we divorced.
I won’t go into details about the next three attempts at marriage, but one more daughter was one of the results.
My point, of course, is I worked for a chemical manufacturer. I worked rotating shift work and I didn’t touch my guitar nor did I write verse nor prose until The Dow Chemical Company delayered me in 1997.
That’s wrong.
First, as much as I now know and probably knew then that The Dow Chemical Company fought every attempt by the government and environmental groups to advance the cause of environmental integrity, I worked in a small plant with a bunch of wonderful people. When I drove through the gate I actually became an adult. When I left, I went home to someone or another who knew that I thought of myself as a child and treated me as such.
I did well making the chemicals that Dow wanted me to make. I worked my way up through the ranks, as they say. I actually became a front line supervisor. I supervised anywhere from 25 to 60 adults. Amazing.
The small site at which I worked busted the union in 1972 and I used to say, “Good, I’d never work for a union.”
I heard stories of having to call an electrician in at 2 AM to change a light bulb which, believe or not, was essential to keeping the process running. Our process was not computer controlled at the time, so we had to determine the level of this or that by actually looking into the tank with our eyes. The light bulb burns out, we can’t proceed until we know that the level is correct.
I’m talking about batches of 4500 gallons of material, of which we produced anywhere from 10-12 a day. Lots of money waiting for an electrician.
Well, the main thing was I became emotionally tied to The Dow Chemical Company and it treated me well. I probably wasn’t treating the environment too well and, once I became a supervisor, as much as I tried to use positive reinforcement to improve the productivity of my reports, the company had a very defined pay for performance policy and, without a union to help them, my reports needed to be “rated” by us supervisors. We had to have so many “Seldom Meets Job Requirements” and so many “Exceeds Job Requirements”, whether they existed in reality or not. So, I helped Dow Chemical screw my former workmates.
The point, again, is that poetry and music were almost forgotten entities at that time despite the fact that, up until then, they were almost everything to me.
I just wanted to be sure that it didn’t come across as if I wanted to write during those years, but my job kept me from doing so. I actually hated environmentalists and unions and I didn’t know what the Iran/Contra scandal was about or what NAFTA was about. It didn’t matter. I was getting promotions and bonuses.
The second thing that I may have written above that might be misleading is when I restarted to write.
Tina, my present wife, began working for The Dow Chemical Company in 1991. I didn’t have to look at her too many times for a flame to start burning. I wrote four poems in two nights. I thought they were good and so did Jane, the woman to whom I was married at the time.
I don’t know if NAFTA did it or some other governmental sleight of hand, but the entire “atmosphere” to which I’d become accustomed changed overnight. One of the first consequences of the change was Dow’s “empowering” my reports and thinning the layers of management globally. Of course, the front line supervisors were the first to go globally. It was funny how fast I went from receiving a yearly merit bonus to becoming a borderline non supervisory burned out corner lamp.
They gave me one last project to do for them, then they laid me off.
That was in 1997, as I mentioned.
I looked for work immediately, hoping to find something in manufacturing as a supervisor. Surprisingly enough, I did find two jobs. However, the managers of those places were not as into positive reinforcement as I was. I quit each job because I tried to redirect reports. The first one actually did something that could have been improved.
The second report took time off to attend her father’s funeral in Puerto Rico. She was otherwise a wonderful asset to the company and when the time came to write a progress report for her, I said as much. I was reamed out unsympathetically by those above me. How could I write all of the positive stuff I wrote about her when she’d just lost all of that work time? I quit, then and there. I turned to the guy who was sort of my back up and said, “You got it.”
I then got a job as an inspector of buoys at a buoy manufacturing place. I remembered seeing buoys out on the water. That was my experience. The training was on the job and didn’t include time for patience. I then became a patient and began to collect Social Security Disability Insurance.
So, it’s 2000 and I find this place where people, for the most part, read all of the poetry that I’d written throughout my life and respond with kind words. Some responded with constructive criticism, but I was once again getting into a positive place. My marriage was still good at the time as well and things were going well.
I made lots of “friends” at AC. In fact, I got a crush on a few of those that I liked, not the least of which was a woman named Jo. We flirted online and my wife saw some of it and, rightfully, became upset. It didn’t split up my marriage, but it was interesting.
I became a moderator, then an administrator. As an administrator, I inadvertently wiped out everyone’s post counts by going where no Michael had gone before and shouldn’t have ever gone. I was forgiven by almost everyone except me.
I was an embittered “victim” of what I began to call The Corporacracy and began to visit a forum that AC called “Open Discussion” more than the poetry forums. I don’t know if I had a right to be bitter or not.
However, I read the book WHEN CORPORATIONS RULE THE WORLD written by a man named David Korten. If everything Korten wrote/writes is true, I learned about the people for whom I worked, what their place was supposed to be in society and what it was becoming. I became even more incensed.
Then 9/11 happened and, after watching David Ray Griffin on C-Span and reading his books, as well as those of others, it made perfect sense to me that those in power in the United States would absolutely want to carry out 9/11. I’m not about to argue that point in this thread, it was just another step in what happened to me after that.
I took a class in html and bought a domain name and a web site from Bravenet. Bravenet, for some reason or another, had gotten my email address and had been pestering me for a couple of years to buy what they were selling. I also got a “free” blog on blogspot.
I wrote at AC, on my blog and on my web site. I also used my web site to post my poetry and music.
I had found magic software which allowed me to play my music on many tracks, sounding like the Mormon Tabernacle Choir if I wanted to and I posted my songs on my web site as well as at AC.
Doreen was a member of AC, as some of you may know, and asked me if I wanted to write a “column” for a message board she’d created called Studio 8. I would write anywhere anyone would let me write at that time.
I hated the Iraq War. I hated the fact that people looked at many of us who thought/think 9/11 was an inside job as if we were equal to those who’ve seen flying saucers or the Lochness Monster or Big Foot. I know that most of them never opened Griffin’s book or any other book or paper written by people with advanced degrees. It just gave me more to write about.
I finally learned what NAFTA was and what so called “free trade” is. I began to hate the lies that CEOs who were pulling in millions and millions of dollars were telling to convince us that it was necessary in a “global economy” to send jobs done by Americans for a living wage to countries whose workers would work for 1/20th or less of the wage that Americans were willing to work for. I was angry that these millionaires made certain that the countries to which they sent the jobs had lax, if any, laws which were meant to protect the earth from which they were extracting their wealth.
So I wrote and wrote and wrote and wrote. I read sites like Common Dreams, Truthout, Tom Paine.com, Information Clearing House and Anti-War.com. Inasmuch as people at AC were so kind as to at least compliment me on my ability to write, even if they disagreed with me, I began to submit my “rants” to these places. None of the places which I read accepted any of my submissions.
Then I found a new site called OpEdNews. It was brand new and was accepting anything from anyone. I got in so early that I became an assistant editor almost immediately. Everything I wanted to publish was published. OpEdNews has worked very hard to increase its readership by leaps and bounds over the years.
I also learned about a place called CD Baby. I believe that one of the lyricists or songwriters at AC told me about it. I recorded all of my songs on CDs, attempting to make them look and sound as professional as possible and submitted them to CD Baby. CD Baby distributed the CDs to iTunes, Rhapsody and many other digital music outlets.
The one other personal thing that I was doing was working very hard at learning to speak Spanish. It was my opinion that, as the US has no government mandated official language and 12% of the American population speak Spanish as a first language, Americans should know how to speak Spanish and English, in spite of the argument that “When my ancestors came here they had to learn how to speak English. “Those people” should be no different. They should learn how to speak English as well.”
Of course, I responded by attempting to remind people that many of “those people” didn’t come here. We went there because someone convinced a very narcissistic people that it was our “Manifest Destiny” to do so. We violently annexed the land of people who speak Spanish and complained/complain that they won’t learn to speak English like “my ancestors from Bosnia or Sicily had to do.”
More anger. More writing. More arguing. More heartburn. More frustration.
I cut way back on how much I visited AC or Studio 8 and, ultimately, stepped down from my position as administrator at AC. I was making records, writing new songs, writing columns for Studio 8, which fell off quite drastically, as well, working on helping to edit an ever-growing queue of submissions at OEN, learning Spanish and, oh yeah, keeping my wife and dogs company.
Here’s a major reason I’m yet again already writing a War And Peace length post. I’ve had no problem posting new songs at AC or Studio 8. At first, people did give me the time of day. Thinking back at that, I wonder why they didn’t stop immediately. However, they did stop and rightfully so. I thought my writing was important and, of course, it was important to me. However, so was yours to you and yours to you and yours to you, etc. Did I stop by to comment on any of your stuff? No. I stopped by to show off my own shit.
Of course, my excuse had always been I didn’t have time to spend the hours I used to spend at AC or Studio 8. Then, I didn’t have time to help with the queue at OEN. Then I couldn’t figure out what I didn’t have time for because I unofficially stopped doing the other stuff. Let me explain. The other stuff was the stuff I didn’t have time for when I was working on that which I was working at any given moment.
I’ve sort of recently gone back to AC and I’ve tried to comment on the work of others. But I’m kidding myself. I’m kidding myself in so many ways.
My poetry has been published. That’s right. I have, on more than one occasion, received two free issues of whatever poetry publication published my poetry.
I’ve sold at least one copy of every CD thus far. I’ve sold some individual songs on digital music sites. Many of the songs pay as much as 0.09. That’s nine-hundredths of a penny. Thus far I’ve received one check for $20 from CD Baby. One check in six years.
I wrote about the unfair treatment President Obama was getting in the beginning of his administration, but see him now as just another actor on the stage of lies.
And I’ve written about the lies. The political theater. The fact that we don’t want to pay for healthcare for our fellow citizens because it will take money out of the pockets of our kids and grandkids, although none of that money would have gone towards making CEOs in the health insurance industry wealthy through spiraling premiums, deductibles, co-pays and join-up fees.
I’m sixty years old, folks. Where in the hell do I think my music is going to go? There are about 7 billion people in the world and 6 billion of them are using the very same software I’m using to make CDs and MP3s.
Of that seven billion, 129 read books of poetry. Where’s my poetry going and why is it so much more important to you than yours is to me?
Oh, and trying to tell people that a “we” society is better than a “me” society is an insult to the matron saint of “mes”, Ayn Rand.
This is the part that’s just a little less personal, yet narcissistic just the same.
I’m fucking goddamned sick of the meanness in The United States Of America. I know there’s meanness everywhere, but “sea to polluted sea” has perfected it.
But just look, will ya? Why should I have to pay for lazy Leroy’s or wanted Juan’s health insurance? I made up the names this time, but anyone who claims that this is not the meaning, overtly or dog-whistled, when people say, “I’m not paying for someone else’s life, those lazy bums,” is insulting those who make such statements. “They’re all lazy” - as if the person speaking knows at least half of the African Americans or Latinos who live in America. That’s my cutoff and I think it’s more than fair. If you know one half of the population of any ethnic group and know them personally, then, maybe, you can start stereotyping. Short of knowing one half of them personally, you know none of them.
“It’s my hard earned pay and I deserve to keep all of it!” Sure you do, but stop lying about how hard earned it is.
Well, I guess it’s all relative. For some people, having to get up out of bed in the morning makes it hard earned.
“And stop bitching about jobs going to third world countries, Michael. If the bleeding hearts didn’t regulate and tax these companies, they’d stay right here in the good ole USofA.”
Is that right? We can stop regulating and taxing demonically wealthy businesses that wouldn’t pay a penny to try to save the planet and they’d turn their backs on workers who are satisfied to make under $2.00/hour? Bet me!
No, that third element would have to be included as well. Americans would have to agree to compete with a wage of under $2.00/hour and promise not to be involved with any organization that might protect their right to live above the subsistence line in order for our global corporate friends to return the jobs to this country.
Here’s the meanness.
Why shouldn’t Caucasian Americans have the right to carry weapons of any capacity they’d like. We’ve stopped talking about protecting the rights of hunters. Now we want automatic weapons with thirty rounds of amour piercing ammunition to protect ourselves against the common criminal or even the government which is trying to pry into our private lives.
People who are of the same sex have no right to love each other in a romantic way. It’s wrong. They will burn in hell if they do that. The book of one of 8 thousand religions says so and god himself wrote that book and if you don’t believe, you’re going to burn too and I’m glad of it. People who marry people of the same sex deserve to burn forever.
This country and that country and the other and even this one here or that one there has a president, prime minister or king that said the word “nuculer” eight years ago. I think we should bomb all of the men, women, children, babies, animals and trees who live in those countries. Kill ‘em all. They don’t believe the same about spirits as we correctly believe, so they shouldn’t live here on earth anyway. We need to bomb ‘em into last century before they throw a grenade on to Times Square and force us to use one of our 2,400 “nuculer” weapons.
(This was already mentioned, but…) It’s a proven fact (it’s always a proven fact) that those people don’t like to work or those people are intrinsically dirty or those people are still in a stage lower than we are in the process of evolution, a lie which I don’t believe anyway. Look at their skin. They’re like animals.
They should have to learn to speak our language. Why should we learn to speak theirs? White, English speaking Canadians, Danes, Swedes and others have it all wrong. They speak two or three languages flawlessly. I’ll be damned if I’m going to do that for those no counts.
(This was also already mentioned, but…) It’s my money. I want it all. I’m not giving it to the government to squander. (Let’s not forget the meanness above that talks about bombing babies into kingdom come because that doesn’t come cheap, yet it always seems to be a solution for people who want to keep “their” money). It’s my money. I’ve worked hard all of my life for it and those people don’t even look for jobs. I know it because it’s a proven fact written in The Bible.
The baby and the mother will die if the mother doesn’t get an abortion? Well, I don’t care if the whole neighborhood dies, it’s illegal to kill so let’s kill that “abortionist” before he or she kills to save the neighborhood.
Ice melts, ass-hole. If we cut back on carbon emissions, I’m going to lose my job and I won’t have any money, all of which I’ve earned and should keep. It’s been this way for the six thousand years that the world’s been around and it will never change. Nothing we are doing is making it any worse. Especially not here in America. American scientists are, by far, the best scientists and the overall vast majority of real American scientists say that the earth is going through the very same kind of natural stage it’s been going through for lo these six thousand years. It gets hot, it gets cold. You bet my company isn’t doing anything wrong. We’re the best because we’re an American company.
I want my money. I earn my money. I don’t want any of it to go toward bullshit electric mass transit. There’s no need of it. There’s so much oil under the earth that everyone could drive a hummer for a million years and we’d still drown in crude. Those do-gooders all have a Socialist, Communist agenda. Those people who want to keep intruding into my person life, who better not marry people of the same sex, better keep their hands of off my hummer. The naïve little girls and boys who believe in global warming should face the death penalty. The only good (commie, liberal, conservative, tall person, short person, black person, white person, person person) is a dead one. I want my hard earned money. I’m not sitting next to one of “them” on an unnecessary electric train. Electric trains are toys for kids and that’s what they should stay.
America is the greatest nation in the world and other countries are happy to have American military bases. It puts us closer to all of those countries whose leaders may have said the word “nuculer” some time in their lives. We can launch a “nuculer” bomb from anywhere and bomb ‘em into next Tuesday. So, babies will be killed. Wouldn’t you kill a maggot to stop the infestation of flies?
My number here is anecdotal, but too fucking many Americans feel that way. And they have shows on the radio and on the television and they just cultivate those feelings among other Americans who are mortally afraid of a world in which people look different, speak differently, look at love differently and, omg, especially believe in the improvable differently than they do.
So, the answer; keep all of your money because taxes just go to lazy people who look and/or speak differently; somehow pay for a military whose task it should be to wipe out half, if not more, of the world’s disbelieving, dark skinned, foreign speaking population. Kill civilians in war, save fetuses, even if it kills them to do it.
I’m sick of the meanness. Don’t give people health care, but send them to war. Don’t let people love who they want to love and don’t even send them to war. This would be a good use of the death penalty. (And they don’t mean lethal injection) Too easy. Make ‘em suffer. No Jesus, no mercy. No Allah, no mercy. No Yahweh, no mercy.
We are the chosen people, not them.
Americans have the best of everything. It says so in the Bible.
The meanness is too overwhelming. We are a mean people. We love the death of those we hate and we hate almost everyone else in the world, including those who call themselves Americans but who we believe should never have been allowed to become Americans.
See? I’ve proved it by posting my stuff and not commenting on others. I’m no better than anyone else. I’m an American. I’m important and you’re not.
But I’m copping to it. AC and Studio 8 are wonderful communities and I just don’t belong. You care about one another and, although I never thought this was true, it seems quite obvious that all I care about is me. I’m an American, after all.
I won’t disturb this great place anymore. I guess this was enough to last forever anyway. But I’ve imploded and exploded. I’ve turned against meanness and that includes my own.
Honestly, this isn’t a woe is me message. Because, no it’s not me. It’s all of you, doing the right thing, caring about one another.
No more stupid music “countdowns”. No more rants. No more nothing.
I think I love all of you, but I’ve had a very strange way of showing it.
I’m very sorry.
Michael
I have to get some things off my chest. Some are personal, some, maybe not so much.
I’m going to post this to a few other places, so it’s going to be a form letter of sorts.
I’ve thought about this a lot, but I am typing this as I think of it now. It’s not so much prepared as overdue.
First, the personal.
I’ve been visiting a poetry site called Arcanum Café since 2000. As I was 50 years old at the time, I’d never seen anything like it before. The internet had only been at the fingertips of a large portion of Americans for a short time then, but there were people born in 1980 and a little after who couldn’t even imagine what life was like without a TV on a desk and a typewriter keyboard in front of it. Of course, there’s the mouse. Personal computers. What a wonderful invention the military finally decided to share with the rest of us.
So, I started to visit AC. I wrote a lot of what I called poetry from 1964 until about 1974. Unfortunately, in order to leave my parents’ home, I had to meet a woman and marry her. Well, at least that’s what they told me and, by the time I was 21 or 22, whatever, they had me believing everything they said. I guess I was too stupid to know that I could have left and they couldn’t have done a thing about it.
By the way, I don’t want this to seem like a woe is me message and I’ve already started down that road. So, I’ll swerve back.
I got married and gave my parents their first grandchildren. Obviously, as I had a degree in nothing, I had to get a job which didn’t require one. So, I worked for The Dow Chemical Company for 25 years. I was no more ready to be a husband than a father and I didn’t love the woman to whom I was married and she never loved me. So, after we had two daughters, we divorced.
I won’t go into details about the next three attempts at marriage, but one more daughter was one of the results.
My point, of course, is I worked for a chemical manufacturer. I worked rotating shift work and I didn’t touch my guitar nor did I write verse nor prose until The Dow Chemical Company delayered me in 1997.
That’s wrong.
First, as much as I now know and probably knew then that The Dow Chemical Company fought every attempt by the government and environmental groups to advance the cause of environmental integrity, I worked in a small plant with a bunch of wonderful people. When I drove through the gate I actually became an adult. When I left, I went home to someone or another who knew that I thought of myself as a child and treated me as such.
I did well making the chemicals that Dow wanted me to make. I worked my way up through the ranks, as they say. I actually became a front line supervisor. I supervised anywhere from 25 to 60 adults. Amazing.
The small site at which I worked busted the union in 1972 and I used to say, “Good, I’d never work for a union.”
I heard stories of having to call an electrician in at 2 AM to change a light bulb which, believe or not, was essential to keeping the process running. Our process was not computer controlled at the time, so we had to determine the level of this or that by actually looking into the tank with our eyes. The light bulb burns out, we can’t proceed until we know that the level is correct.
I’m talking about batches of 4500 gallons of material, of which we produced anywhere from 10-12 a day. Lots of money waiting for an electrician.
Well, the main thing was I became emotionally tied to The Dow Chemical Company and it treated me well. I probably wasn’t treating the environment too well and, once I became a supervisor, as much as I tried to use positive reinforcement to improve the productivity of my reports, the company had a very defined pay for performance policy and, without a union to help them, my reports needed to be “rated” by us supervisors. We had to have so many “Seldom Meets Job Requirements” and so many “Exceeds Job Requirements”, whether they existed in reality or not. So, I helped Dow Chemical screw my former workmates.
The point, again, is that poetry and music were almost forgotten entities at that time despite the fact that, up until then, they were almost everything to me.
I just wanted to be sure that it didn’t come across as if I wanted to write during those years, but my job kept me from doing so. I actually hated environmentalists and unions and I didn’t know what the Iran/Contra scandal was about or what NAFTA was about. It didn’t matter. I was getting promotions and bonuses.
The second thing that I may have written above that might be misleading is when I restarted to write.
Tina, my present wife, began working for The Dow Chemical Company in 1991. I didn’t have to look at her too many times for a flame to start burning. I wrote four poems in two nights. I thought they were good and so did Jane, the woman to whom I was married at the time.
I don’t know if NAFTA did it or some other governmental sleight of hand, but the entire “atmosphere” to which I’d become accustomed changed overnight. One of the first consequences of the change was Dow’s “empowering” my reports and thinning the layers of management globally. Of course, the front line supervisors were the first to go globally. It was funny how fast I went from receiving a yearly merit bonus to becoming a borderline non supervisory burned out corner lamp.
They gave me one last project to do for them, then they laid me off.
That was in 1997, as I mentioned.
I looked for work immediately, hoping to find something in manufacturing as a supervisor. Surprisingly enough, I did find two jobs. However, the managers of those places were not as into positive reinforcement as I was. I quit each job because I tried to redirect reports. The first one actually did something that could have been improved.
The second report took time off to attend her father’s funeral in Puerto Rico. She was otherwise a wonderful asset to the company and when the time came to write a progress report for her, I said as much. I was reamed out unsympathetically by those above me. How could I write all of the positive stuff I wrote about her when she’d just lost all of that work time? I quit, then and there. I turned to the guy who was sort of my back up and said, “You got it.”
I then got a job as an inspector of buoys at a buoy manufacturing place. I remembered seeing buoys out on the water. That was my experience. The training was on the job and didn’t include time for patience. I then became a patient and began to collect Social Security Disability Insurance.
So, it’s 2000 and I find this place where people, for the most part, read all of the poetry that I’d written throughout my life and respond with kind words. Some responded with constructive criticism, but I was once again getting into a positive place. My marriage was still good at the time as well and things were going well.
I made lots of “friends” at AC. In fact, I got a crush on a few of those that I liked, not the least of which was a woman named Jo. We flirted online and my wife saw some of it and, rightfully, became upset. It didn’t split up my marriage, but it was interesting.
I became a moderator, then an administrator. As an administrator, I inadvertently wiped out everyone’s post counts by going where no Michael had gone before and shouldn’t have ever gone. I was forgiven by almost everyone except me.
I was an embittered “victim” of what I began to call The Corporacracy and began to visit a forum that AC called “Open Discussion” more than the poetry forums. I don’t know if I had a right to be bitter or not.
However, I read the book WHEN CORPORATIONS RULE THE WORLD written by a man named David Korten. If everything Korten wrote/writes is true, I learned about the people for whom I worked, what their place was supposed to be in society and what it was becoming. I became even more incensed.
Then 9/11 happened and, after watching David Ray Griffin on C-Span and reading his books, as well as those of others, it made perfect sense to me that those in power in the United States would absolutely want to carry out 9/11. I’m not about to argue that point in this thread, it was just another step in what happened to me after that.
I took a class in html and bought a domain name and a web site from Bravenet. Bravenet, for some reason or another, had gotten my email address and had been pestering me for a couple of years to buy what they were selling. I also got a “free” blog on blogspot.
I wrote at AC, on my blog and on my web site. I also used my web site to post my poetry and music.
I had found magic software which allowed me to play my music on many tracks, sounding like the Mormon Tabernacle Choir if I wanted to and I posted my songs on my web site as well as at AC.
Doreen was a member of AC, as some of you may know, and asked me if I wanted to write a “column” for a message board she’d created called Studio 8. I would write anywhere anyone would let me write at that time.
I hated the Iraq War. I hated the fact that people looked at many of us who thought/think 9/11 was an inside job as if we were equal to those who’ve seen flying saucers or the Lochness Monster or Big Foot. I know that most of them never opened Griffin’s book or any other book or paper written by people with advanced degrees. It just gave me more to write about.
I finally learned what NAFTA was and what so called “free trade” is. I began to hate the lies that CEOs who were pulling in millions and millions of dollars were telling to convince us that it was necessary in a “global economy” to send jobs done by Americans for a living wage to countries whose workers would work for 1/20th or less of the wage that Americans were willing to work for. I was angry that these millionaires made certain that the countries to which they sent the jobs had lax, if any, laws which were meant to protect the earth from which they were extracting their wealth.
So I wrote and wrote and wrote and wrote. I read sites like Common Dreams, Truthout, Tom Paine.com, Information Clearing House and Anti-War.com. Inasmuch as people at AC were so kind as to at least compliment me on my ability to write, even if they disagreed with me, I began to submit my “rants” to these places. None of the places which I read accepted any of my submissions.
Then I found a new site called OpEdNews. It was brand new and was accepting anything from anyone. I got in so early that I became an assistant editor almost immediately. Everything I wanted to publish was published. OpEdNews has worked very hard to increase its readership by leaps and bounds over the years.
I also learned about a place called CD Baby. I believe that one of the lyricists or songwriters at AC told me about it. I recorded all of my songs on CDs, attempting to make them look and sound as professional as possible and submitted them to CD Baby. CD Baby distributed the CDs to iTunes, Rhapsody and many other digital music outlets.
The one other personal thing that I was doing was working very hard at learning to speak Spanish. It was my opinion that, as the US has no government mandated official language and 12% of the American population speak Spanish as a first language, Americans should know how to speak Spanish and English, in spite of the argument that “When my ancestors came here they had to learn how to speak English. “Those people” should be no different. They should learn how to speak English as well.”
Of course, I responded by attempting to remind people that many of “those people” didn’t come here. We went there because someone convinced a very narcissistic people that it was our “Manifest Destiny” to do so. We violently annexed the land of people who speak Spanish and complained/complain that they won’t learn to speak English like “my ancestors from Bosnia or Sicily had to do.”
More anger. More writing. More arguing. More heartburn. More frustration.
I cut way back on how much I visited AC or Studio 8 and, ultimately, stepped down from my position as administrator at AC. I was making records, writing new songs, writing columns for Studio 8, which fell off quite drastically, as well, working on helping to edit an ever-growing queue of submissions at OEN, learning Spanish and, oh yeah, keeping my wife and dogs company.
Here’s a major reason I’m yet again already writing a War And Peace length post. I’ve had no problem posting new songs at AC or Studio 8. At first, people did give me the time of day. Thinking back at that, I wonder why they didn’t stop immediately. However, they did stop and rightfully so. I thought my writing was important and, of course, it was important to me. However, so was yours to you and yours to you and yours to you, etc. Did I stop by to comment on any of your stuff? No. I stopped by to show off my own shit.
Of course, my excuse had always been I didn’t have time to spend the hours I used to spend at AC or Studio 8. Then, I didn’t have time to help with the queue at OEN. Then I couldn’t figure out what I didn’t have time for because I unofficially stopped doing the other stuff. Let me explain. The other stuff was the stuff I didn’t have time for when I was working on that which I was working at any given moment.
I’ve sort of recently gone back to AC and I’ve tried to comment on the work of others. But I’m kidding myself. I’m kidding myself in so many ways.
My poetry has been published. That’s right. I have, on more than one occasion, received two free issues of whatever poetry publication published my poetry.
I’ve sold at least one copy of every CD thus far. I’ve sold some individual songs on digital music sites. Many of the songs pay as much as 0.09. That’s nine-hundredths of a penny. Thus far I’ve received one check for $20 from CD Baby. One check in six years.
I wrote about the unfair treatment President Obama was getting in the beginning of his administration, but see him now as just another actor on the stage of lies.
And I’ve written about the lies. The political theater. The fact that we don’t want to pay for healthcare for our fellow citizens because it will take money out of the pockets of our kids and grandkids, although none of that money would have gone towards making CEOs in the health insurance industry wealthy through spiraling premiums, deductibles, co-pays and join-up fees.
I’m sixty years old, folks. Where in the hell do I think my music is going to go? There are about 7 billion people in the world and 6 billion of them are using the very same software I’m using to make CDs and MP3s.
Of that seven billion, 129 read books of poetry. Where’s my poetry going and why is it so much more important to you than yours is to me?
Oh, and trying to tell people that a “we” society is better than a “me” society is an insult to the matron saint of “mes”, Ayn Rand.
This is the part that’s just a little less personal, yet narcissistic just the same.
I’m fucking goddamned sick of the meanness in The United States Of America. I know there’s meanness everywhere, but “sea to polluted sea” has perfected it.
But just look, will ya? Why should I have to pay for lazy Leroy’s or wanted Juan’s health insurance? I made up the names this time, but anyone who claims that this is not the meaning, overtly or dog-whistled, when people say, “I’m not paying for someone else’s life, those lazy bums,” is insulting those who make such statements. “They’re all lazy” - as if the person speaking knows at least half of the African Americans or Latinos who live in America. That’s my cutoff and I think it’s more than fair. If you know one half of the population of any ethnic group and know them personally, then, maybe, you can start stereotyping. Short of knowing one half of them personally, you know none of them.
“It’s my hard earned pay and I deserve to keep all of it!” Sure you do, but stop lying about how hard earned it is.
Well, I guess it’s all relative. For some people, having to get up out of bed in the morning makes it hard earned.
“And stop bitching about jobs going to third world countries, Michael. If the bleeding hearts didn’t regulate and tax these companies, they’d stay right here in the good ole USofA.”
Is that right? We can stop regulating and taxing demonically wealthy businesses that wouldn’t pay a penny to try to save the planet and they’d turn their backs on workers who are satisfied to make under $2.00/hour? Bet me!
No, that third element would have to be included as well. Americans would have to agree to compete with a wage of under $2.00/hour and promise not to be involved with any organization that might protect their right to live above the subsistence line in order for our global corporate friends to return the jobs to this country.
Here’s the meanness.
Why shouldn’t Caucasian Americans have the right to carry weapons of any capacity they’d like. We’ve stopped talking about protecting the rights of hunters. Now we want automatic weapons with thirty rounds of amour piercing ammunition to protect ourselves against the common criminal or even the government which is trying to pry into our private lives.
People who are of the same sex have no right to love each other in a romantic way. It’s wrong. They will burn in hell if they do that. The book of one of 8 thousand religions says so and god himself wrote that book and if you don’t believe, you’re going to burn too and I’m glad of it. People who marry people of the same sex deserve to burn forever.
This country and that country and the other and even this one here or that one there has a president, prime minister or king that said the word “nuculer” eight years ago. I think we should bomb all of the men, women, children, babies, animals and trees who live in those countries. Kill ‘em all. They don’t believe the same about spirits as we correctly believe, so they shouldn’t live here on earth anyway. We need to bomb ‘em into last century before they throw a grenade on to Times Square and force us to use one of our 2,400 “nuculer” weapons.
(This was already mentioned, but…) It’s a proven fact (it’s always a proven fact) that those people don’t like to work or those people are intrinsically dirty or those people are still in a stage lower than we are in the process of evolution, a lie which I don’t believe anyway. Look at their skin. They’re like animals.
They should have to learn to speak our language. Why should we learn to speak theirs? White, English speaking Canadians, Danes, Swedes and others have it all wrong. They speak two or three languages flawlessly. I’ll be damned if I’m going to do that for those no counts.
(This was also already mentioned, but…) It’s my money. I want it all. I’m not giving it to the government to squander. (Let’s not forget the meanness above that talks about bombing babies into kingdom come because that doesn’t come cheap, yet it always seems to be a solution for people who want to keep “their” money). It’s my money. I’ve worked hard all of my life for it and those people don’t even look for jobs. I know it because it’s a proven fact written in The Bible.
The baby and the mother will die if the mother doesn’t get an abortion? Well, I don’t care if the whole neighborhood dies, it’s illegal to kill so let’s kill that “abortionist” before he or she kills to save the neighborhood.
Ice melts, ass-hole. If we cut back on carbon emissions, I’m going to lose my job and I won’t have any money, all of which I’ve earned and should keep. It’s been this way for the six thousand years that the world’s been around and it will never change. Nothing we are doing is making it any worse. Especially not here in America. American scientists are, by far, the best scientists and the overall vast majority of real American scientists say that the earth is going through the very same kind of natural stage it’s been going through for lo these six thousand years. It gets hot, it gets cold. You bet my company isn’t doing anything wrong. We’re the best because we’re an American company.
I want my money. I earn my money. I don’t want any of it to go toward bullshit electric mass transit. There’s no need of it. There’s so much oil under the earth that everyone could drive a hummer for a million years and we’d still drown in crude. Those do-gooders all have a Socialist, Communist agenda. Those people who want to keep intruding into my person life, who better not marry people of the same sex, better keep their hands of off my hummer. The naïve little girls and boys who believe in global warming should face the death penalty. The only good (commie, liberal, conservative, tall person, short person, black person, white person, person person) is a dead one. I want my hard earned money. I’m not sitting next to one of “them” on an unnecessary electric train. Electric trains are toys for kids and that’s what they should stay.
America is the greatest nation in the world and other countries are happy to have American military bases. It puts us closer to all of those countries whose leaders may have said the word “nuculer” some time in their lives. We can launch a “nuculer” bomb from anywhere and bomb ‘em into next Tuesday. So, babies will be killed. Wouldn’t you kill a maggot to stop the infestation of flies?
My number here is anecdotal, but too fucking many Americans feel that way. And they have shows on the radio and on the television and they just cultivate those feelings among other Americans who are mortally afraid of a world in which people look different, speak differently, look at love differently and, omg, especially believe in the improvable differently than they do.
So, the answer; keep all of your money because taxes just go to lazy people who look and/or speak differently; somehow pay for a military whose task it should be to wipe out half, if not more, of the world’s disbelieving, dark skinned, foreign speaking population. Kill civilians in war, save fetuses, even if it kills them to do it.
I’m sick of the meanness. Don’t give people health care, but send them to war. Don’t let people love who they want to love and don’t even send them to war. This would be a good use of the death penalty. (And they don’t mean lethal injection) Too easy. Make ‘em suffer. No Jesus, no mercy. No Allah, no mercy. No Yahweh, no mercy.
We are the chosen people, not them.
Americans have the best of everything. It says so in the Bible.
The meanness is too overwhelming. We are a mean people. We love the death of those we hate and we hate almost everyone else in the world, including those who call themselves Americans but who we believe should never have been allowed to become Americans.
See? I’ve proved it by posting my stuff and not commenting on others. I’m no better than anyone else. I’m an American. I’m important and you’re not.
But I’m copping to it. AC and Studio 8 are wonderful communities and I just don’t belong. You care about one another and, although I never thought this was true, it seems quite obvious that all I care about is me. I’m an American, after all.
I won’t disturb this great place anymore. I guess this was enough to last forever anyway. But I’ve imploded and exploded. I’ve turned against meanness and that includes my own.
Honestly, this isn’t a woe is me message. Because, no it’s not me. It’s all of you, doing the right thing, caring about one another.
No more stupid music “countdowns”. No more rants. No more nothing.
I think I love all of you, but I’ve had a very strange way of showing it.
I’m very sorry.
Michael