On the Subject of Kings.

This has been up my ass and in my craw for a while now and I just feel I need to vent. I recently watched "Excalibur" again, it's a movie about King Arthur and it has Patrick Stewart in it and if you haven't seen it, you should. At any rate, I was watching this movie and once again I had to think about how hard it used to be to rule a kingdom. Really, watch "Brave Heart" or "The Three Musketeers", Not the Disney version but the Micheal York version from 1974, or even "Hamlet", really most of the Shakespearean stuff will do since they are, for the most part, just the same idea in a different part of Europe. Study the history of the kings of the past and you will find some interesting stuff. In the old days, to rule a kingdom, you had to be slier, more cunning, more ruthless and more wicked in general than your counter parts to stay in control. Look at the history of Charlemange, or Harold Hardrada and let's not forget Alexander the Great and Napoleon, These guys were ahead of the game always one step ahead of their opponent. Now, look at world leaders today, it's like half our world is run by the manager Chili's. You know those pushy assholes that think the sun shines out of their Joe Boxer briefs. We live in a world where idiots hold the reins and even though some very intelligent and ruthless people are helping them navigate the likelyhood of careening off a cliff is very high. Some how we have allowed the lunatics to take control of the asylum and dole out the medication. There is no challenge for world most world leaders anymore. They know they will not be over throw as long as the masses remain dumb and lazy or hungry and too weak to fight. Sure in the former Soviet Union you still have to have your wits about you to keep from getting all blue tongued and dead but not in Europe, Canada or the good old U.S. of A. I guess it just really got to me for a while there, I mean, I will bet that I could outsmart, out fight and all around house about 95% of Washington D.C., and I would too, if it didn't mean missing the new episode of "Reaper". Oh well, so it goes.

Music thoughts again.

I was thinking about music last night, I guess I was listening to Fugazi and I never really thought about the fact that they were really Emo. That's when the idea hit me, Emo was about things back in the late eighties and early nineties, well, things other than being sad and angst ridden. I suppose back then we had an American full of nuclear fear and cold war pressure and that's the part I don't get. Remember all the protest music of the Vietnam war? What about all the political Punk and Hardcore that came out of all the eighties because we lived in a corrupt system and under constant worry that we could all be burnt to ash any second due to a crazy Russian button pusher? The invasion of Panama, Castro, Qaddafi and his stuff we bombed, did these things stop existing? No, however people don't want to sing about politics anymore, that is too depressing, they would rather sing about depression, that's more cheerful. I am sure the bands are out there and they are trying to become public with their music but this system of media and government being bedfellows really helps keep subversive thoughts and ideas quelled. I have to think that Jello Biafra, Ian MacKaye (not dead by the way), or Kieth Morris, have a few younger counterparts out there that can bring something to music that has been missing for so long. Sure Bad Religion gets radio play but mostly for songs about the decadence of Los Angeles and not for anything particularly political. All this whiny crap gets my undies in a knot, we live in a world that is involved in a war because of things that our government started in the late seventies, (Iran Contra anyone?) so why can't we have some music that is a direct offshoot of the musical ideology of that period? How about this, we disband ABC and FOX broadcasting, burn Disney to the ground, crush Freechannel under a massive chukka boot and beat the holy monkeys out of Linkin Park and that whiny bitch singer? You know, give him something to cry about, as my dad used to say. Maybe once all the "pop" music garbage was off the radio people would have to start using their brains again long enough to actually transmit and electrical impulse from one node to another, causing stimulus, causing thought. Oh what a world that would be, when Emo music didn't suck so hard once more.

I ain't afraid of Hell because I been to Kansas.

To continue on with my writing about my trip through Americas Heartland, wherein there is a whole lot of land but not a lot of heart, I would like to point out one of my odd yet deeper thoughts that would not have come to me if my mind was not so devoid of entertainment. You see, as you travel across the great, flat, treeless expanses of our nations prairie land, one can not help but note how horribly depressing everything beyond your windshield seems to be. I believe it was just minutes before reaching Liberal, Kansas, which should be renamed Conservative, or Sparse, they just seem more fitting, when I had a deep thought. the thought was this, " No wonder all those loony rapture religions come from areas like this". That was it, simple but enlightening. really if you think about it, the most devoutly religious people in America seem to live in the parts of the country with the least to do. Perhaps the thought that one day God will summon you to his side and float you straight up and outta this hellhole is the only thing that keeps those folks going. It has to be easy to believe in the bibles "literal" time line when you have nothing to look at. Of course he created the universe in six days. After all how hard is it to create absolutely nothing? Not too damn hard I would think, that is if I had grown up in nowhere. Don't get me wrong, I didn't grow up in New York or San Fransisco but I did grow up around trees and lakes and let's not forget books, gotta have them. These are the things, that if you are a believer in a higher power, make you think that creating a universe might take a smeeutch longer than a week. I saw several signs as I drove as well, not signs of the end of times but signs of the end of intelligent times. These signs stood, planted on the edges of farm land or hung from overpasses. " Get on your knees and for your sins to be forgiven?" That was a good one because it made me wonder if getting down and praying at that point would cause some sort of horrible crash on the freeway resulting in several deaths and I doubt that I would be forgiven for them even though prayer caused the accident. I saw another sign near a casino that said, "Gambling is a sin, double down on Jesus". I don't know the idiot that wrote that sign but I can say, without any forbearance, he or she was an idiot. You could never bet against Jesus, he really holds all the cards against you and he has God for a pit boss and I suppose the Holy Ghost would be, i don't know, running the buffet I suppose. There was another that said "He is coming, will you be ready?" Next it was a mid-eighties Camero with a "For Sale" sign taped to it. this must have some deeper meaning, like perhaps Jesus is expected to make his Earthly return rockin' the mullet. Once again I am no expert, just guessing. Oh so many stupid signs of stupid did I see I wish i could chronicle them all for you but, alas, i do not have time. I leave you with this parting thought. It seems to me that people believe harder in something when they are surrounded by nothing.

I'm sorry Wal-Mart

I did learn a few things on my way across the country this time. First, if you ate three pounds of spicy burritos, pooped on a hot frying pan, waited till it was burning and then urinated on it to cool it down you would get the basic idea of what a methane plant smells like, only on a lesser scale. Second, the mom and pop diner is dieing out and being replaced by taco stands, don't get me wrong, I love tacos but there is something special about a little place with a fat, ex-trucker cook and a retired rural prostitute for a waitress that is just, well, comforting. Third, I learned that Wal-Mart isn't as bad as I thought before. I have always laid claim to Wal-Mart stores destroying the economies of small town USA. That, sadly, is only partially true. Sure they may not pay too well and, in larger towns, not cities but towns, they may absorb main street and the businesses therein, however, in really small towns it seems that Wal-Mart actually helps them stay out of ghost town status. I was in a tiny burg in the center of New Mexico where there were big box stores of any kind. Guess what, Main Street was dying. Over half of the businesses on Main street were closed and had looked to be deserted for years. There was nothing else, no town, no trading post, not even a wise Indian Shaman for the next seventy miles. Odd, don't you think? Even without the intervention of a big box, the town was dieing. Now, as I crossed the desolate Oklahoma Pan Handle into Kansas, which is it's own story but I found a town that was alive, due, only to their having a Wal-Mart. The town was as boarded up and rotten as any I had seen however, this one still had some hope left in it's shuttered windows, all that hope, due to Wal-Mart. I was shocked, see in big cities they do ruin the living wage and bring small business to it's knees but in tiny towns they keep the economy afloat and give the poor a job and a better wage than they would otherwise be making. Now don't think I have gone soft on these companies, they are still bad for most of us but at least now I have learned that they harm but they can also help. Screw Home Depot though, they can go straight to hell and burn therein.

The only black man in New Mexico

So to begin my chronicles of cross country travel, I would like to tell you all about my experience with racism and bigotry. It had been an interesting trip so far, Jaime and I had seen the most amazing truck stops in the southern part of California and Arizona. We had also stopped by my brothers house to visit and go get some pictures of the Chiricaua monuments nearby. We had stayed in a Super 8 in a town called Wilcox, it should have been named Fatdirtanus which would have been far more descriptive but alas, I do not choose city names. The next day we stayed in Truth or Conciquences, I could barely sleep as I was waiting to be assaulted by the ghost of Burt Convey for a large portion of my stay. The next day we stopped in a little place outside of Albuquerque called Tuccimacari ( I will point out that to get there I had to take a left turn at Albuquerque. If you miss the significance of that then you don't watch enough cartoons). There are these dirty little travel stores called Love's and TA's all over down there and we decided to go to TA's, mostly because the people who work at Love's seem one bullet shy of a killing spree. I was standing bye the broken video games looking Scandinavian, as I tend to do most often, when a black fellow walked passed me and just gave me the finger, no eye contact, no verbal taunts, just the finger and then walked out of the store. That's when I noticed that there were no other black people in the building. There were Latinos and Whitey had a majority presents but that was it. Suddenly I realized that Mr. Finger was the only black person I had seen since Yuma, strange? yes indeed but what is even more strange is that he must have decided that I was a nazi or a bonehead of some kind and it would be a good idea to flip me off. Now if I was a mad racist as he may have suspected I probably would have taken exception to his finger and cut him a few times with any of my various knives that I carry but I am not, so I did not. It is just as likely that he wanted me to get involved in an altercation with him because he had a knife or a gun and wanted to have a reason to use it. At any rate I just let him walk away and out of my life. Think what you want about me , I really don't care and the middle finger is a pretty weak insult anyway.

I'm back baby!

So it was that I traveled across this land of ours and am once again found, deposited upon the frozen vagina of our mother Earth. Yes, Minnesota, the coldest land inwhich I have ever lived. We Minnesotans now hold the record for coldest state ever since one of our Eastern tip cities achieved a wopping 40 degrees below zero and that was without the windchill. Yes it is cold here and, unlike my beloved California, there is little sun. The people here I find to be disagreeable, with their Midwestern passive aggressive-isms and their backstabbing wishy-washiness. I feel that it is indeed a terrible yet wonderful place to live, nothing really makes you appreciate warmth as much as freezing half to death simply walking from the car to your door. I tell you you, once you have had your toes stiffened while shoveling snow, you will never take a warm day in vain again. Bare foot in a hot sun beam, yeah that's the stuff. I have found that my beard grows faster here, which must be the Viking in me forcing the hair out, also the urge to build a long boat is getting relatively strong within me, the urges to burn, loot and pillage are at the same level as ever, that being very high. I am amazed to see that milk is more expensive in Minnesota than it was in California. That should tell you something about how retarded our corporate system is. For God's sake, we have all the cows up here and you need less refridgeration to ship dairy goods around, yet somehow it costs more to ship milk from Wisconsin to Minnesota then from South Dakota to California, cheese seems to be the same price which just adds to my theory of corporate retardation. Well I could bitch all day about the oddities of Minnesota life ( I will avoid, for now, getting involved in the MN policy of giving everyone who doesn't deserve it or earn it welfare but I am sure that story will come out once I have a steady paycheck that the state can rape so a few lazy idiots can pump out some more crack babies. can you tell that will be a good one?) The thing is, no matter how bad it is here at least I don't live in the Oklahoma Pan Handle or any part of South Western Kansas. Wow, what a shithole and I say that with all the love I can muster. In fact these next few blogs I will use to chronicle my trip across this desolate wasteland we cal America. It'll be fun, tell your friends.