Grown Tendencies

There was a little girl, maybe three or four years grown from birth, who was dressed as a princess. A Disney princess would be a more fulfilling description, but for little girls her age, and others who are not presented daily with the pomp of an established monarchial society, her pink and purple dress, and plastic tiara placed haphazardly on her head would be easily communicated as that of a princess; and the terms real or fantasy would be irrelevant. This princess played on the playground with my son and several other children for a while this afternoon.

I watched her and vainly tried to determine if she would grow up to be the type of woman who looked back at pictures of herself at this age and raged at her parents for allowing her to dress that way in public, or would she praise her parents for allowing her the freedom to pursue her own idea of creativity and live without social persecution within the structure of her imagination.

Another scene came to mind; one with a little girl aged about the same as the princess on the playground, perhaps even a year older and having already outgrown the luxury of the princess attire. This other scene is situated nearly a full year prior and is in no other way related other than the path of my thought as leading to a memory. The little girl of the past year announced to me that she “used to be a princess, but that was when [she] was little.” She spoke these words as a former President might speak of his previously elected title which has since been passed along. Without need, and more to feed my humor, I asked her age. “I’m four, but when I was a princess, I was just a baby,” she said.

That this story is about two little girls and both little girls are, or have at one time been princesses, is mostly irrelevant. The situation could have just as easily involved two little boys: one of whom dressed as Superman, the other a four year old who has outgrown the days when he was Superman. The question which arises as I connect the current scene with the scene of the little girl in my memory is: Do we ever really outgrow this stage of our lives?

It seems humorous from the perspective of an adult, or grown-up, as childhood vernacular allocates, that a little girl who has aged only four years would have already outgrown the fantasy of being a princess, or that she has outgrown the status of being a baby. Again, do we ever really outgrow this stage of our lives, or do we become more competent at hiding this level of creativity and imagination from the world around us and eventually ourselves? Are our “grown-up” selves merely disguises employed to distance ourselves from our childhood? Do we disguise ourselves so well that we begin to believe our own facade? When does the masquerade become the reality we have tried for years to suppress for the sake of becoming adults from the distanced perspective of children, and not adults as a continuation of the lives we began as children? Why must becoming a responsible adult mean sacrificing our childhood imagination and playfulness?

There is an ancient practice of disguising the firstborn male child of a family as a female to protect the child from what were perceived as demons, and oftentimes real dangers of persecution. It is a simple matter to relegate such a seemingly absurd practice to the ancients, or to suppose that it belongs solely to other cultures and not our own, but the reality is that this practice continues in varied form and is so integrated into normalcy that the practice is effectively disguised as something else, something different than what it is. This practice goes beyond the conversion of male to female, princess to former princess, or Superman to common man. The process in which we engage to disguise ourselves from ourselves, as witnessed from the perspective of childhood to that of adulthood, is really the death of our original selves.

We begin our lives with hope and promise, and somewhere along the way we sacrifice these ideals for acceptance and security. Hope and promise are viewed as idealistic because each are abstracts which never mandate final verification. Acceptance and security somehow become tangible because when enough people talk about them, anyone who disagrees is cast as an outsider and is thus estranged not only from the comfort of childhood through self-willed sacrifice, but is also estranged from the security of community which one needs to survive and potentially prosper.

The only moral to this episode is that which we determine for ourselves. No ready-made answers exist for any question of authenticity. The only fruit established from our labor is that which we cultivate based on our needs and the demands we allow external control. Internally, the question must be visited and ultimately harvested based on our individual abilities and subsequent desires. Answers are not the only companions to Questions. Often, it is more beneficial to continue questioning than to arrive hastily at an answer which may not even be recognized by the question. Perhaps the face behind the mask has withered from neglect; in which case a new disguise must be sought, or the exposed must be determined to stand firm with or without an answer, and to do so is to stand mired in authenticity. For most of us, our only experience with authenticity is in the imagination of childhood. With luck, the sacrifice wasn’t too severe.

© 21II09 Le Meme War Press

Satan 2008

101208
Satan 2008

A string of recent conversations brought up what I believe to be the real problem surrounding the upcoming Presidential Election. There are only two candidates, Obama and McCain. Ralph Nader and his campaign have been working diligently to resolve this pending issue, but the truth is, no one who makes that type of decision is willing to make that type of decision. There are other third party candidates besides Nader, and many of them might even make decisions based more squarely on what you believe, but that isn’t the point. I mention the Nader/Gonzalez ticket because I have read several of Nader’s books, and I know that more than wanting to become President himself, he would like to see the political machine in this country overhauled and re-geared. And why shouldn’t it? As it stands we are doing nothing more than exchanging a few hours of our time for who we think is most likely to win based upon our own deluged ideals of what a President should be.
For many of us the decision comes down to picking “the lesser of two evils.” This argument is a self-sustaining reservoir of brackish flood water and is difficult to escape. In 2004 Bush was re-elected to a second, excruciatingly painful term primarily because many people believed that Bush was somehow the lesser of two evils since we had a war going on and a changing of the Commander-in-Chief might display weakness in the face of our enemies, etc.
The sad truth is that an election in which the leader of this great country will be chosen, not by you, the voter, but by an Electoral College, voting loosely on the premise of what they believe a majority of Americans might have at one time said or felt regarding who should be the next President. Our collective message to the Electoral College is, and has been, “Pick the one who will screw us up the least.” Unfortunately, that hasn’t sat well since the last Presidential Election. It turns out that a majority (depending on whose count you followed) of voters, and the esteemed Electoral College made a bad decision. Now we face another one.
Obama or McCain? Just pick the lesser of the two evils. The V.P. choices aren’t helping. Palin is hot. (Every pretty girl lives in fear of a bad photograph leaking out with bad lighting, so don’t jump on that one.) Biden is an accomplished speaker, if your idea of a good speaker follows Biden’s method of speaking. Besides Al Gore, can anyone tell me what a Vice President has even done that excites the memory? Probably not, but I welcome all takers.
The lesser of two evils is a way to justify that you’re going to spend a couple of hours of your time to vote for someone in whom you really don’t believe. Where else besides a Presidential election do you justify picking the lesser from a decision to be made? If you’re like most people with any amount of self respect, you probably don’t make decisions based on “lesser.” Kudos, if you’re such a person! I like to think that I am, but come election day, I wonder.
My solution seems bizarre, but no more outlandish than the two candidates I’m supposed to pick as representative of my beliefs towards politics. I say, and I can’t take full credit for conceiving of this, but I did develop it to its logical conclusion. Why settle for the lesser of two evils? If you’re going to invest your time, do it for the greater evil. My first choice was Bin Laden, but that would still be catering to the media anomaly known as “News Coverage.” No, my opinion is that we should exercise our right to write-in our vote and vote for Satan. Who is more evil than that guy? We all admit, by the arguments we use to justify our election day choices, that evil is in fact a consideration in the process of our decision making. If we are to tolerate any evil, why not go for our own jugulars and quit with the overly dramatic pinky cutting ceremony and vote for Mr. Freakin’ Evil Himself—Satan. At least with Satan we’re assured that something will get done in the next term of the Presidency.

Satan 2008. Get on board or burn.

© 2008 Le Meme War

Tax Payer Bailout and the Myth of Home Ownership

093008
Le Meme War

Tax Payer Bailout
and the Myth of Home Ownership

This morning I finally learned where and when I “missed the boat.” If you are unfamiliar with the phrase, “missing the boat,” it means sailing away to a lifetime of happiness without worry, financial or otherwise. It means getting on the biggest, unsinkable ship in the history of the world and sailing around with the other wealthy members of society and not having to worry about anything else. Certainly, God would take care of such a ship deemed unsinkable and populated by the ultra-wealthy, right? That is the point of view of certain right-wing ultra-conservative Christians; the point of view that God prefers the wealthy because the wealthy know how to take care of themselves and they donate to charity. What’s more holy than taking more than your working share and spitting out a few thousand dollars to qualify for the next lowest tax bracket?
Anyway, I learned that I missed the boat as I was driving in to work this morning, my stab at the American Dream, and I heard the weather update on WSB, a local A.M. radio station that features news, news, more news, and talk radio. The weatherman stated, “don’t rule out late afternoon showers, but I wouldn’t bet on it.”
I thought, WOW! There’s a career I can wrap my brain around and do something with. “Don’t rule out late afternoon showers, but I wouldn’t bet on it.” How much stress could possibly be trickling down from his bosses? Such a weather update would be the equivalent of me going to a customer site and saying, “It’s probably fixed, but don’t count on it.” That is the ultimate denial of responsibility and a much more stress free existence than what I’ve been doing in my so-called quest of my so-called American Dream.
Another low stress position which is popular in the news seems to be that of Mortgage & Loan Lender or Bank CEO. Imagine the freedom of going to work and being able to report, “Yeah, I kind of tried, so since we have all these taxpayers who are rightfully concerned about our future, let’s put all my mistakes, and all the mistakes I’ve allowed to be covered at their expense and if you’ll just float me several million dollars, I’ll happily be on my way and not sit here where I can ruin your institution any further.”
I certainly missed the boat. I’m not the hardest working man in America by any stretch, but I do have to maintain a level of accountability that much wealthier people “on the boat” are able to live without. For example—I would love to hold a press conference next month and inform, say, Visa Credit Card Company, that some carelessness has happened and that I will not be able to make my monthly payment. I would also like to be able to demand that since I will not be able to make a payment, they need to pay me a few thousand dollars so that I can quit using their card and quit continuing to be a burden to their esteemed collection efforts.
I’ve certainly considered incorporating myself into a large enough entity that I wouldn’t have to worry about rules and regulations of mortal men and women. Why shouldn’t I have deistic rights to pass through this world, wholly unaccountable to myself or to those around me, on whom my very livelihood depends?
Many of us, me included, would like to believe that each of us is as important as, say, The CEO of a large Real Estate Agency or Financial Investment Institution. Many of us would like to believe that our mothers worked just as hard to squeeze us out of their respective tubes. Allegedly, some people were shot out of a cannon rather than squeezed out of a tube like the rest of us. Maybe that’s what Dr. Thompson meant when he created the analogy. Maybe that’s why he decided to be shot out of a cannon at the end. At least in death he became equal to the tie-wearing supermen who dictated his rules of existence because of a real or perceived inflated financial status. For the rest of us who don’t have large tracts of acreage deep in the mountains of Colorado, we’ll just have to keep imaging what it’s like to live on the other side.
Neal Boortz is a favorite Atlanta talk show host on WSB. He usually declares himself as a Libertarian or Independent with regards to political parties, but within the last few months he has swung far to the right with his assessment of the current economic crisis. His view, and the view of many prominent right wingers, is that the crisis is a sabatorial result of leftist policy to coerce big banks into making questionable loans to people who normally wouldn’t qualify for such loans, particularly in the housing market. Brother Neal could stand to sit in the pews of the Church of the Painful Truth and see that he is not independent on this issue, and that he is looking at a very narrow aspect of the current crisis.
The other side, most recently exemplified to me by Tim Wise, claims a different sort of intellectual honesty by stating that yes, in fact, the wealthy rightists are to blame for this fiasco. The culprit behind their motives? None other than Greed itself.
The current crisis, fiasco, failure, etc. must be deeper than these two sides of the coin illustrate. After all, the fact that we even have the phrase, “two sides of the coin” points to something deeper, and that “something deeper” is currency, with regards to the coin phrase. The economic situation we now find ourselves in is too a result of something much deeper and much more complex than anyone is willing to attempt to tackle—the myth of home ownership.
Who is responsible for this myth? What is responsible for this myth? Why this myth? How is this a myth?
Many a person, couple or family has proudly announced after filling out mountains of paperwork, “I am officially a home owner!” The well documented aspect of what is popularly termed “home ownership” is a mortgage. I’m hardly the first to notice this, or even mention it, but even with my rusty French, I think of the French word, “mort,” meaning death, and see an invisible “u” in gage, spelling “gauge.”
Death Gauge.
An indicator of death.
Maybe if you’re very fortunate, thrifty and never have need to take out a second or third mortgage, that little gem of a home will be yours for several years before death realizes that you accomplished something and begins stalking you.
The point is—good loan, bad loan, most people never own a home. A home is something you make. It can be made from a house, an apartment, a condo, a townhouse, etc. To advertise the home ownership as integral to the American Dream adds a puff of smoke to a brimstone burning fire, and who wants to die from asphyxiation when the house must be saved before the mortgage is paid?
There exists a category of people known as “House Flippers.” I don’t know if they use this dolphinic term to refer to themselves, or if people point at them and say, “There’s a House Flipper!” Regardless, these people engage in activity known as “flipping” a house. The simple definition is that they buy a house at a reasonable deal and apply often a minimal investment and sell the house at an even higher price. Believe me when I say that this is a tough argument to counter. Some people go so far as to live in the house while they’re fixing it for re-sale!
There appears to be no harm in these activities, and I’ll not be the one to launch an argument against them. What I do take issue with is how gullible these House Flippers allow themselves to be and take me to be. Sure it’s possible. Sure, it’s been done countless times over. However, there are too many factors that can contribute to the declining price of a house. If the neighbors let their yards resemble the jungle scenes from Full Metal Jacket, your granite cabinet tops won’t make a bit of difference.
I have known several people to make a great deal of money from House Flippery, but the overwhelming majority of “homeowners” will barely make enough money off the sale of a house to cover any of their expenses, much less make a profit. Houses do not have an automatic up-sell clause built in. Sorry. Most Americans work plenty hard enough to just keep themselves in their home.
Who’s to blame? Everyone religiously points at the other as sinful and full of blame. The other side always finds a nugget of honesty in their intentions and polishes this nugget to shine like a mine.
The sad fact is not that you are being dragged into this mess, the sad fact is that mess exists and pointing the finger is more politically strategic than finding the root cause and re-building from there. The root cause is a myth, and myths, like rumors, are disastrous and demeaning to everyone involved. We’re all involved.

© 2008 Le Meme War

Bumper Sticker Politics

092408

Two bumper stickers on the back windshield of a shiny black car; the owner probably upper middle class, judging by the shininess and model of the car. His tag and tag frame indicates that he received his post high school education at a little known university somewhere in Kentucky, and now he drives his car through a wealthy section of Atlanta and doesn’t look at all out of place. The first of the two bumper stickers contains the following message:
God is not a Republican or a Democrat
and the second of the two, placed squarely next to the first has
Obama ‘08
printed familiarly on its shiny surface. The two stickers are similar enough in color to suggest continuity, but not the same, as to suggest inseparability. The two messages are intended to imply difference and to suggest continuity.

I’m not qualified to advertise myself as a political scholar, but I immediately detect tension between these two messages. I will attempt to properly demonstrate this tension by setting forth this argument in logical increments. The illustration, as my representation of the texts of the bumper stickers, will be italicized.

God is not a Republican or a Democrat. Obama, who is running for the office of the President of the United States in 2008, is running on the Democratic ticket, and is therefore, for our intent and purpose, a Democrat. The man in the shiny black car supports Obama’s campaign for the Presidency.

Perhaps the tension is not as evident as I first supposed. Perhaps this man is merely stating his Atheism through controversial political channels. The problem with this supposition is that most people don’t make such bold statements of religious preference through coded bumper stickers which support either party’s candidate. Not to generalize, but I would dare go so far as to say that people from obscure schools in the Kentucky university system don’t think that far out of the box to make a theological statement of such proportions; and if they happened to be the type of intellectual who would, they would also be the type of intellectual to know that their message would fall squarely on deaf eyes, for the most part. No, if the intent was to establish the driver’s theological assessment, other, more suitable, bumper stickers would have served his in greater capacity.

Instead, my belief is that this man, this product of the Kentucky university system, is trying to tell me something much more sinister than his profession of Atheism; this man is trying to tell me, and anyone else who dares to pay attention to this stickered transmission, that his support for Obama transcends the traditional boundaries of intellectual party lines, and that only he (the driver of the shiny black car) and God possess the ability to understand how this new demarcation of party lines within the political spectrum is possible with Obama commanding the driver’s seat.

The choice for Obama is not one of standard political viewpoints. Classifying Obama as a Democrat is only necessary to allow lesser minds the ability to understand how he was allowed into the political race from the outset. Even if Jesus himself returned and decided to change the world through the accepted political process, he would have to declare a party stance before he was allowed to participate in any sort of election, or world changing activity. Obama, as dictated my this man’s intellectual superiority, and religious convictions, is less than Jesus, as Jesus is, after all, the son of God, and God has no need of children born two thousand years after his first born walked, died and was resurrected on this earth; and therefore Obama must pick a political affiliation just to appease the process.

I think that what this man, the driver of the shiny black automobile with the Kentucky tag, the Kentucky tag frame and the two pseudo-political/religious bumper stickers placed high enough for anyone to see, is trying to tell me, to tell us all, is a confirmation of his theological affirmation. Yes, God exists. Secondly, we should all ascertain that, Not only does God exist, but He is wise, and God’s wisdom transcends conventional human knowledge; and therefore, He can not be relegated within political party lines. By the simple act of acknowledging God’s wisdom, and by doing so with an oil based product designed to stick semi-permanently to his mid-priced vehicle, this man is asserting that his knowledge, perhaps the one ascertained from the obscure Kentucky university, is somehow inseparable from God’s wisdom. Why else would this man be the one chosen to remind us of God’s everlasting wisdom, which certainly transcends election year politics? This man’s support of Obama therefore violates accepted human knowledge and classification of political naming and becomes an evolutionary process of God’s very wisdom. This man has selected Obama as his choice for President, not based on established party lines, those lines are defined by man, and man alone. Obama is his choice for President because, through the gift of God’s wisdom, only available to him and anyone else blessed enough to have this combination of bumper stickers, he has seen through the political whitewashing of man’s definitions and gone straight to the source of absolute wisdom to determine who is best capable of leading our great country during the next four years of continuing crisis.
How do I know that our country is due for four more years of ongoing crisis? There exists a fairly well known outlet of intellectual superiority and theological declassification which tells me what I should know is happening in the world, and how Obama, despite never defining himself, his policies, or his desired actions to anyone’s satiable satisfaction; and this outlet is known simply and poignantly as “the news.” CNN, Fox News, MSNBC, . . . There is no shortage of network support for telling me what I should know and what is important to my day to day affairs. Newscasters, News writers (because nothing really happens in the world without being sensationally scripted), and News reporters are the new clergy– the new delivery method of God’s revelationary message.

Little did I know that when I set out for work this morning that a messenger of God, a harbinger of eternal wisdom, would cross my path and instruct, by virtue of a single lane of traffic, that I follow him for several miles, and that he would bless me with the time and material for a new way of looking at the upcoming election.

Or perhaps I merely found myself trapped behind some jackass who accidentally found two unrelated bumper stickers that he hoped would make him appear less ignorant than his vocalization of his political views would allow.

© 2008 Le Meme War

Parking Ticket

091708

What I’m about to relate doesn’t happen often, but I must mention it because it has happened at least once. My local government surprised me in a good way. This was City level local government, which made the surprise all the more genuine.
The quick rundown:
I parked my work truck in an alley between two buildings. Other work trucks were parked in this alley, but on the other side of the alley. I had to unload two DLP monitors, so I pulled to the wrong side of the alley, parked, ran inside and met my contact. A few minutes later my boss called and told me to move the truck; he had received a few angry phone calls. I went to move my van and found a pretty parking ticket stuck underneath the windshield wiper. I moved my van anyway as I have firsthand experience that they will ticket you even if you already have a ticket from just a few minutes ago. The best and brightest of our esteemed public school system do not compete for the prestigious position of Meter Maid, so arguments are futile. Having a ticket only means that you’ve been illegally parked for more than a few minutes and were too stubborn to move and most certainly deserve another citation. Everyone wants revenge on society and when you’re illegally parked, even questionably parked, you are the target of that revenge, you are society.
Printed on the ticket, along with your illegibly scrawled vehicle information is a website (click the link if you get really bored) to remind you that the city of Atlanta has in fact caught up with the cyber age. According to the ticket, you can even pay it online.
If you pay your ticket within seven days you pay one fine. (Mine was $25.) If paid after the seven days the fine doubles. After searching through the website, I finally found where I could pay my ticket online and I found it well within the seven day limit.
I entered my ticket number and tag number and received an error message that my ticket was not found. One could hope that the ticket was lost, but it’s best not to take such chances with Atlanta’s best and brightest parking officials. I called the telephone number well after business hours and heard the automated message, “It may take up to seven days for your ticket to be entered into the system.”
My first, and recurring, thought was What a scam! Of course it takes them seven days to enter the ticket. If you want the convenience of paying online, or even on the telephone, you’ll have to pay the doubled amount. Unless you’re willing to drive down to City Hall and pay the ticket in person. If you choose this option, you will pay at least $10 for parking, miss at least two hours from your day by standing in line listening to other people who are there to “fight” the wrong done to them by getting a ticket when they were completely innocent or “just a minute past the meter.” I know a lot of guilty people who never receive tickets for their misdeeds, but I’ve never seen an innocent person get a ticket for parking legally. I also see the prestigious Meter Maids (yes, many of them are men, but the name sticks) and know that they aren’t nearly fast enough, nor can they speed read well enough to catch a meter just as it expires. They are slow, but they are efficient.
Parking to pay my ticket and taking a two hour lunch break didn’t seem to be the best option for me. My day isn’t so busy that I don’t have the time, but I just didn’t want to. Besides, who gets the $10 I pay for parking in the city lot? $35 for parking illegally? No thanks.
I called again during business hours and subjected myself to the rigmarole of the auto-tele-mated system. (See blog in Technology.) I pressed “0” to speak to an operator which was an option I was only supposed to use if it had been more than seven days and my ticket still hadn’t been entered. I took my chances.
The operator asked the date of my ticket and scolded me because “it’s only been five days, honey. It takes seven to ten days to enter the ticket into the system.”
“Yeah,” I said, “but I don’t want to pay double just because it takes you a week to type seven digits into your system.”
Her silence indicated that either she wasn’t amused by my insane demand, or that she had hung up the call. She finally spoke and said, “No, you have seven days after the ticket is entered to pay. Even if you came down here, we couldn’t accept the payment because it’s not in the system.”
Not wanting to miss my chance to peeve her again, I said, “Great! Can you give me a call back when my ticket has been entered so I’ll know when the seven days begin?”
The click which immediately preceded the new silence told me that she had hung up the call.
Yes! I had peeved the peever! To top it all off, I was also pleasantly surprised by a city official.

© 2008
Le Meme War Press