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The Truth About Drunks
2009-06-07

It has been years since I spent any time sober in the company of drunks. Typically, if people around me are drinking then this means I am at a party or out with friends where congregating and imbibing are the names of the game(s). Really, the only such incident I can recall outside of my childhood involves my time bartending in Granada. That situation was different on many levels including the healthier ratio of drunk to sober people, the smaller crowds and the propensity of the owner to break out his finer quality alcohols for friends and staff to partake of (a condition which happened with such regularity that I wonder how many nights I actually remained sober.) So for the present, I'm inclined to gaze upon my experiences as a doorman at Buster Belly's as unique.

Certainly being forced to stand sober, for hours in the midst of large packs of inebriated strangers is unique, and there's a lot I'm able to see with sober eyes that less focused or crossed ones failed to appreciate. A lot of what I've learned so far seems to boil down to the often referenced but I think rarely appreciated association between drunkards and children.

My friend Chris broke it down in a way I found hard to find flaw with, suggesting that drinking is a slow but absolutely linear progression backwards. Initial drinking will usually take five or ten years off, and among the twenty somethings you do see a quick resurfacing of the loud, high energy, low common sense, self entitled teen they were just a few years ago. Opinions and ideas become more forceful if less coherent. Bravado abounds. Social markers become more important and interests and values become decidedly petty.

The women I was especially unprepared for. The combination of (I suspect) facial clarity inflicted by enforced sobriety along with the authority that being an employee of any status whatsoever brings simply lends to the air already gifted me by being a decade older than a good portion of the patronage. This array brought to bear against the weakened inhibitions and common sense of the mind on alcohol means that merely by smiling and looking relaxed I can charm the socks off of a good portion of our female clientčle.

This can actually be a problem, an example being my first night working there when a “friend of the bar” drank herself silly and had to be corralled while we went through our closing routine until a ride could be found for her. One of the bartenders was being rather gruff with her in an attempt to get her to just sit still, drink some water, and not do anything stupid or self destructive. So as I swept alongside her, I tried to give her what I felt was a reassuring smile. Suddenly I find her draped over me, breathing heavily in my ear, with me fighting off all the instincts I was born with which were never equipped to simply ignore situations like that.

A few more drinks and people gleefully regress to their juvenile preteen years. Here, I think, is where its decided whether or not people will become happy drunks or surely drunks. At this point, the physical rambunctiousness often kicks in, and empathy takes a real nose dive. A lot of the caginess and inhibitions, things which only start to mature in high school, vanish, and conversation seems to rely mostly on strongly declared personal likes and dislikes, the, “I love you, man,.” stage (or the beginning of the endless recrimination stage for surly drunks.)

A few shots later and we reach that special age between three and eight, and it was the similarities here that really caused me to accept Chris' formula as absolutely on the money. To explain: at the end of each night, herding people out of the bar is one of they inevitable, unpleasant tasks I must perform, and one of the few times I have to actually do anything that could really be considered work. It's not just that we have to scream at these people over and over again that they need to get their shit together and get the fuck out, it's that they willfully refuse to listen, just like any five year old trying to ignore calls for bed or bath time. Pretending that somehow if they just act like they didn't hear an authority, that authority looses its ability to act.

The scenarios become uncanny in their uniformity when I finally have to stand up and force people out the door, because then the crazy excuses and attempts to stall crop in. Just like kids, they'll pull every trick and lie in the book to try and get their way, “Oh, can I go use the bathroom first? I'm just waiting on so and so, then I'll leave! I can't find my shoe. We called a cab can we just wait here?” because, you know, lingering inside a closed bar that refuses to serve you drinks is the fucking highlight of anyone's social career. Fucking flabbergasts me.

Of course, the obvious next step is infancy, when drinking has reduced you to an incoherent, floundering mess in real danger of urinating on itself. And just a few solid steps beyond that, they stuff you into a small box and bury you in the earth, which is really about as close as most people are likely to get to returning to the womb, so I do buy into the “regression” hypothesis for the time being. On the plus side, for once one of my goofy social theories comes with pragmatic benefits, because so far applying the idea has worked perfectly in finding ways to deal with drunks. Whenever I'm forced to contend with a contentious drunk, I just try and remember what's worked to motivate children which match their regression stage and utilizing this technique has yielded nothing but positive results so far. A little tough love works every time.

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Chapter X
2009-05-15

When writing in my hardbound journals, I tended to measure 'chapters' of my life by the filling of one and the purchasing of another. Chronologically, the method was sketchy, since I'd often buy another journal before I had entirely filled its predecessor, and would write in whichever one I picked off the shelves first, but from an emotional/personal point of view, the concept was sound..

Writing in the online journal removes this easy boundary, and so the task of deciding when my life shifts gears is left entirely to my imagination. Later in life, of course, the in and out markers of various phases of my own personal story may seem more apparent, but a certain subjective bias tends to infect my ability to perceive these at the time which they occur. After all, its very easy to suppose that events around you are more significant than they ultimately turn out to be.

That being said, I think we could safely call this the beginning of a new chapter in my life. My troublesome job at the floundering and mismanaged Technicolor dubbing labs is long since over, after the scum fuckers tried to screw me over by cutting my employment short a good three weeks. I recently heard on good authority that my replacement has, as predicted, already been canned and that quite possibly the calmest element among the work force blew up at one of the incompetent middle managers, so that brings a radiant smile to my face.

I have skipped town on Los Angeles for a few months to go and bask in the hearts and hearths of my friends and family in Fayetteville, and I can't believe a better choice could have been made. It was, admittedly, a choice largely made for me, but that's like claiming that I was just a victim in that cheese and wine tasting all girl orgy that I got dragged into. Fayetteville has changed a little, but seemingly for the better, if I had to make the call. The slowly expanding web of cycling trails continues to wow me and is sort of a weird focal point for all my attentions and plans, a backbone of recreational potential cementing my social and personal interests together into one uniform entity.

I have found a simple, easy job which will take up very little of my time, giving me plenty left over for riding, writing and funnin' around. A sudden massive increase in socializing seems likely to eat away at some of this, but that's hardly much of a complaint. Pete has begun tutoring me in the use of Ableton Live, and as a result there might even be barely tolerable music broadcasting from my corner of the world sometime soon. Overall, I expect this to be a glorious, fun filled summer.

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Dream Country
2009-04-14

I try to avoid dream talk most of the time because experience has taught me that the often severely personal and inanely surreal nature of dreams tends to weave together a tapestry of a singularly bland design, sure to bore even the most devoted of friends or fans. There are, of course, exceptions, but for the most part I figure its a topic best reserved for when everyone is drunk or high and will actually get off on a little dream talk action for a change, or for when a dream deviates notably from what dreams usually do. Anyway, what I'm saying is I'm going to recount a dream I just had now.

The setting of this dream begins aboard a train drawn by an old steam engine. Open box cars are filled with a variety of livestock which we're moving cross country to some unnamed destination. I and several hobo clowns walk back and forth across the backs of the livestock rather like log rollers, and cast large fishing lines out into the surrounding plains, trying to hook some of the wild steers that dot the beautiful countryside we're passing through that we might add them to our herd. Every now and then, one of the hobo clowns will hook a steer and reel them in, and when this happens, a deep male voice will suddenly boom, 'Home Team...ONE apparently announcing our score.

So we're riding along through these pleasant plains, and suddenly one of the clowns is yanked from the train by his line. Everyone thinks this is funny until the voice suddenly booms, “KILL,” and we look over to see that the steer he had been trying to reel in has just trampled him to death. Only its no ordinary steer, it appears to be some weird, violent mega-steer. We all go a little silent as the steer looks up at the train, then charges.

”Oh good, we'll get the bastard now!” we think as he comes at one of the cars. Instead, he takes out the entire train car, livestock and all, and vanishes over a hill. The voice calls out, “Steers...TWELVE and the entire group, livestock and clowns alike, just stare in mute horror at the space where the missing boxcar used to be.

So now we're all on foot, running in a blind panic towards some nearby cliffs, which we're hoping to clamber up and be safe from the steer. On closer inspection, this dread beast has revealed itself to be some nightmarish bull/wolf hybrid. There have been plenty of opportunities for close inspection as the animal charges wildly back and forth, obliterating our numbers. We finally reach these sheer, massive cliffs, and in desperation a few of the goats line up and start head-butting the rest of us, causing us to fly up to the top of the cliffs. When this happens, the voice yells, “SAFE! The goats get me and a handful of pigs to the top of the cliff before the Steerwolf is upon them.

Suddenly, our old guard dog, this weird little hairy pit bull thing, charges the Steerwolf! It leaps and latches its teeth firmly onto the back of the Steerwolf' s neck, and the Steerwolf suffers a brief moment of panic. His expression quickly turns to confusion, then annoyance, as it becomes apparent that this snarling, gnashing thing dangling from his neck simply can't harm him in any way. As the Steerwolf's eyes take on a truly murderous look, and it becomes clear that the dog is about to get brutally offed, the voice booms, “METHUSELAH...ONE!” Methuselah clearly being the dog's name, and the irony obviously being that Methuselah, having achieved no real success and being on the verge of gory death, still has earned a point. And then I woke up, wondering at my subconsciousness mind's sense of humor.

However, I also wondered at its choice of names. Methuselah? Where had that come from? And so I opted to look the name up. The wiki has this to say on the subject.

”Methuselah is mentioned in the Bible in the book of Genesis as the son of Enoch and the father of Lamech (who was the father of Noah), whom he fathered at the age of 187. A close reading of the dates in the Old Testament reveals that Methuselah is said to have died in the year of the Great Flood, but the Bible does not say that he was among those who died in the flood. Some have interpreted his name as a prophecy: when he dies, the Flood will come.”

Now, I've had prophetic dreams before, and the only thing that they all have in common is the fact that nothing they ever prophesied has yet come to pass by even the most generous interpretation. Still, when a dream this off key with a reference point that direct occurs, it always gives me pause. I guess what I'm saying is that if it rains for more than a week anytime in the near future, everybody panic!”

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A Day in the Life of Mein Pope
2009-03-18

With apologies to T.C. and Beth

In all seriousness, my Catholic friends may want to take a step back from this. I am always loathe to rant about beliefs that those I know and love might hold dear, but this Ratzinger guy, I mean, enough is e- freaking-nough.

Also, before writing any more, I would like to quote my personal favorite chapter from the Bible which is, oddly, one of Paul's, from his letter to the Romans.

12:1 I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, [which is] your reasonable service.
12:2 And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what [is] that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God.
12:3 For I say, through the grace given unto me, to every man that is among you, not to think [of himself] more highly than he ought to think; but to think soberly, according as God hath dealt to every man the measure of faith.
12:4 For as we have many members in one body, and all members have not the same office:
12:5 So we, [being] many, are one body in Christ, and every one members one of another.
12:6 Having then gifts differing according to the grace that is given to us, whether prophecy, [let us prophesy] according to the proportion of faith;
12:7 Or ministry, [let us wait] on [our] ministering: or he that teacheth, on teaching;
12:8 Or he that exhorteth, on exhortation: he that giveth, [let him do it] with simplicity; he that ruleth, with diligence; he that showeth mercy, with cheerfulness.
12:9 [Let] love be without dissimulation. Abhor that which is evil; cleave to that which is good.
12:10 [Be] kindly affectioned one to another with brotherly love; in honour preferring one another;
12:11 Not slothful in business; fervent in spirit; serving the Lord;
12:12 Rejoicing in hope; patient in tribulation; continuing instant in prayer;
12:13 Distributing to the necessity of saints; given to hospitality.
12:14 Bless them which persecute you: bless, and curse not.
12:15 Rejoice with them that do rejoice, and weep with them that weep.
12:16 [Be] of the same mind one toward another. Mind not high things, but condescend to men of low estate. Be not wise in your own conceits.
12:17 Recompense to no man evil for evil. Provide things honest in the sight of all men.
12:18 If it be possible, as much as lieth in you, live peaceably with all men.
12:19 Dearly beloved, avenge not yourselves, but [rather] give place unto wrath: for it is written, Vengeance [is] mine; I will repay, saith the Lord.
12:20 Therefore if thine enemy hunger, feed him; if he thirst, give him drink: for in so doing thou shalt heap coals of fire on his head.
12:21 Be not overcome of evil, but overcome evil with good.

I favor myself, perhaps, when supposing that the message here is quite clear. Enjoy a quiet, modest faith, a sincere love, hope and trust in God. Do your best to be charitable and to live in unity with others. Help those who suffer, rejoice with those who are happy and don't get all judgmental all the time because, hey, God can take care of that bit without your help, thanks anyway. And this is hardly the only part of the Bible that reminds us of this key message. And yet, to watch the ranking members of the Catholic church behave, you'd think that some hippy secular humanist wrote this.

Imagine what it must be like to live with a mind like that of Mein Pope's.

[The Pope] Alright, first order of business, everyone, we need to issue forth a decree of renewed interest in peace and brotherly love. We must all of us try and unite to work together to build a brighter future for humanity.

[Some Lousy Bishop] Except the queers!

[Mein Pope] Well yes, naturally, not the queers. Unity and hope for all mankind except filthy homos.

[An Cardinal] Also, Muslims! Too violent!

[The Freakin' Pope] Well, yes, I didn't think I'd have to explain obvious stuff like that. Of course we don't mean violent heathens like the Muslims.

[Some Catholic Goy] Or the Jews!

[Yon Pope] Well, maybe sorta the Jews.

[Entire Congregation] GASP!

[El Popo] Look, we like the Jews now, but we still admit that they're all going straight to hell, alright?

[Vatican Spokesperson] Speaking of, there's apparently been some outcry against you for considering a holocaust denier for a position of authority within the Church.

[Popemeister] Lord preserve us are they STILL whining about that whole incident. That was, what, almost two whole generations ago!

[Lackey] You said it, your Eminence! I mean, forgive and forget, am I right?

[Pope Benedict Arnold] Mostly forget. Is there maybe something a little less controversial we could discuss for a bit?

[Vatican News] Well, there is this issue with this nine year old Brazilian rape victim which had the almost certainly life saving abortion. We could....

[Kid Pope] Excommunicate everyone involved.

[Vatican News] Your Eminence?

[Pope-a-rama-ding-dang] You heard me! Cut 'em off at the source! God's law takes precedent here!

[Bishop 2] Actually, no aspect of God's law recommends being a belligerent dick to a rape victim and her family at the risk of her life, sir

- The Pope simply glares at Bishop 2 until he suddenly catches on fire and flees the chamber screaming -

[Pope on the Half Shell] Alright, next order of business.

[PR Department] Well, we have this idea for a campaign where we explain how using condoms increases the risk of contracting AIDS...

[Sir Popes-a-lot] I see....but, wait, I thought that condoms decreased the risk of contracting AIDS

[PR Department] Well, yes, but see, what we do is we SAY just the opposite.

[The Pope Be With You] I see.... Clever! And this would put the complete eradication of the species at what year?

[Junior Demonic Entity] We're predicting no later than 2150, sir!

[The Pope to end all Popes] Eeeeexcellent

End of Act One. Is it satire, or merely insightful reenactment? Only my hair stylist knows for sure.

Its important to understand that all of the events alluded to here are absolutely true and recent. Shortly after paying bizarre and hollow lip service to brotherly love, the Vatican made sure to remind its two favorite competitors, Islam and Judaism, that despite whatever mixed signals regarding harmony it might have been sending, they're both heathen scum doomed to roast in a lake of fire. It then went on to launch an aggressive, hateful campaign against homosexuals. The Knight of Columbus went so far as to donate a million dollars to the California Proposition Eight war because, you know, apparently the world just ran out of impoverished single parents, starving refugees, uneducated third world children and orphans. That million was just burning a hole in their freaking pocket.

Then, realizing that this act of unmitigated evil was STILL too subtle for about half of humanity to grasp, they decided that they'd really get peoples' attention by excommunicating the doctors and family involved in granting an abortion to a nine year old rape victim, now pregnant with twins. This one only really requires a little thought. Birthing twins at age nine is a really good way to ensure that everyone involved dies (except the doctors obviously, and that's only so long as they manage to cut the right wire before the twins detonate.) Added to that the insane and inane trauma involved in forcing a nine year old, having already suffered through rape, to endure such a pregnancy and you only have one possible moral or ethical choice. You know, the one the Catholic church elected to sneer and spit at in their quest to be finally embraced as truly and utterly infernal.

But then, just to top all that off, this fucking guy stands right up and lies his fucking face off to the world about the nature of a nightmarish disease and ways to prevent it. There are people, perhaps numbering in the millions, who are going to listen to this horrible lie regarding condoms and AIDS and believe it. They WILL contract this grotesque, incurable, lethal disease because the scum running the Catholic church told them to, and they will die. And when they do, the blood WILL be on the hands of every single person who stood behind the Pope and said, “hey, yeah, I follow THAT guy! He's my LEADER!”

A lot of people like to pretend that figuring out how to live life, how to run society, how to make the world a better place is a very hard thing to do. In some cases, it is. For instance, an economy in the real world is actually a fairly tricky thing to operate. Trying to eliminate or at least reduce suffering in a world filled with disaster, death and disease is also troublesome. Curing cancer alone will probably require years more of dedicated effort! There are portions of life that are 'hard' to figure out.

How to treat one another isn't one of them. In fact, the rules here are so easy that some jackass religious nut managed to spell them out in a letter the Romans many many centuries ago. We know what it takes to make the world one worth living together in. Unity, forgiveness, understanding, lack of judgment, happiness, sympathy, charity, hope. Easy fucking stuff. There is a very clear, right way to do this, and what the Catholic church is doing right now is just as clearly not it. They are doing just the opposite, not only of any possible interpretation of ethics, morality, law or common sense, but even of their own dogma and religious scripture.

The fact is that if you insist on clinging to this religious form, its not because you're Christian. Indeed, you're not Christian in any sense that could possibly be derived from an honest reading of the Bible. The Bible spells out explicitly what its about, notably in the New Testament. Its about individual social behavior and spiritual belief. It has nothing to do with paying homage to some human hierarchy. So if you're putting the hierarchy above the believe, above the behavior, then you aren't being a Christian, you're just belonging to a club. And right now, as a Catholic, club members have elected to affiliate themselves with one of the least Christian, indeed one of the least HUMANE religious organizations around. To get worse you really have to go all Taliban. At least the Catholic church merely condemns their nine year old rape victims to hell instead of stoning them to death.

And so you have a few choices. You can lie to yourself and try and claim that this awful, horrible, behavior on the part of the Catholic church is somehow justified, despite the Bible itself stating clearly that its not, and (far more importantly) all ethics and common sense also dictating otherwise. If you do, then you're not a Christian. You're just an asshole. And you insist on being a member of a club with a clearly anti-human agenda. Alternately, you can shop around for a slightly better faith. Seriously, I still don't get the thought process here. There are plenty of Christian faiths which focus on the important part of the Christian religion in all the same ways Catholicism does (you know, the social behavior and the faith,) but without the clearly insane, destructive and unnecessary tyrannical power structure. Why not affiliate with something like that? But then, if faith could be supported rationally, it would be science, so its hard to impose reason so cavalierly. But STILL!

The final option is, of course, is to go all Luther on their asses and force a reform or a schism. And that would be fine. If Catholics stood up in arms, pointed a finger at the Vatican and shouted to the heavens, “start being real Christians you psychotic assholes,” then I would personally sponsor “Hug a Catholic,” week. But the point of all this is that change MUST occur if Catholics don't want to become as reviled as the most insanely fundamentalist Muslim sects, because how can I, as a human being who cares about my fellow man, see the current Catholic church (and by association anyone who insists on calling themselves Catholic,) as anything other than an enemy of the species?

As a caveat, I clearly don't consider many people I know personally, who are Catholic, to be enemies of the species. Rather, I recognize that all of this involves types of social inertia and evaluation, hence the fact that I'm still a citizen of the USA and didn't flee the instant we invaded Iraq and murdered a bunch of people unjustly. It is possible to see what's being done wrong without reacting aggressively against it. Still, I really believed (rightly, as it turned out,) that our nation would reform without my reacting that violently, and also its a hell of a lot harder for me to stop being a US citizen than it is to stop being Catholic.

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