Rewards

I want to start by saying I love my blog, and I love that people read it, or used to read it, as the case may be. The following paragraphs are not written in anger, but with profound sadness.

I write plenty of other things. I am working on... something. Maybe it's a novel. I'm not sure yet. We'll see where it goes. I also keep various paper journals. They are many and have different focuses. I also spend a great deal of time on correspondence with friends and loved ones.

But this blog was different. All that other writing was private, even the correspondence was always meant for an audience of one. But not the blog. Poopshute was a way I kept a conversation going. It used to be a fun place. I used to daily rush to my comments to see what somebody had to say about such and such thing I wrote.

Sometimes I wrote provocative things for the sake of being provocative. Sometimes I told funny stories from my day or my past. But always I came here to converse, and to share, and to be part of a community of people that used to talk across several blogs.

In more recent times my readership has slowly and quietly shrunk. Week by week I saw fewer and fewer hits on my site meter and at the same time I was writing fewer and fewer posts. I don't know which came first. Did I get too busy to write often enough and people stopped coming, or did I lose interest because people stopped coming? I don't know.

For months and months now I feel like I'm talking to myself. Or at least I'm writing to myself. That's fine, like I said, I do it in my paper journals all the time. But the paper journals save me time and effort over this format. I don't edit with painstaking effort on paper... hell, I don't really edit at all unless I take a piece from it to use in the maybe-novel I'm writing. I also don't go looking for fun graphics for my journal, or relevant links or any number of other things I do for this blog.

The point is simply this: All those things I did for this blog were a labor of love, and gave me a feeling like I was making a contribution (however tiny) to the lives of those who read it. But lately, as I said, I feel I'm just doing this all for myself lately, and if that's the case, I will just redirect my energies onto paper.

I thank each and every one of you who ever stopped by to see what I was up to. I send you all love and hopes of joy and peace. Unless I see a response letting me know that you are still out there, I may not be coming back here much, if at all. I realize that may sound a bit manipulative, but I don't mean it to be. I just honestly want to know if my energies really would be better spent elsewhere.

It was Friday, a warm, summer evening after a long work week. I did what most of us do every day. I walked into the kitchen and opened up the fridge, not having the slightest clue what I really wanted, but fairly certain that I would not find it in there. But we've always got to look, just to be sure, don't we?

I could have an almond butter and jelly sam'ich.

Nah.

Hummus and pita?

Nope.

Mixed veggie salad?

No way!

Ah-Ha! There it is! That is what I want. An ice cold beer.

I deftly popped the cap with the opener, a move that I have had much practice at over many years of dedicated beer snobbery. I took a sniff. The aroma was crisp and clean. Slightly sweet. Even without reading the label, I knew it was a lager from the smell. My mouth was watering with excitement for a good summer beer.

I was about to take my first taste when I noticed the writing on the inside of the cap, which I was still holding in my left hand. In block letters it said simply:

Let's Toast, Dude.

I stared at the cap for a moment, one eyebrow raised. I had never seen a "fortune" on the inside of a beer cap. Snapple has done it, and Jones Soda (I think) but I had yet to see it on a beer.

After a moment of contemplation, I shrugged and gently clinked the neck of my bottle to the side of the cap and quietly muttered "SLAINTE" to nobody in particular.

Recently, it has occurred to me that I have worked a number of different jobs over the years. My resume, if I were to write an all-inclusive one, would be sprawling and likely a few dozen pages long.

My mind started to wander over all the things I have done for money over the years, and a list began to form. Keep in mind that this list is all the things I have done for money. Strictly speaking, some of them weren't "jobs." Putting in work ("work" may be defined loosely for a few on the list) and receiving payment for it is the only definition for "job" I am using.

The jobs are listed in chronological order to the best of my memory.

Landscaping
Car-washing
House-keeping
Waiting Tables
Bus Boy
Bread Dough Roller
Zoo Lights costumed character
Birthday Clown
Singing Telegrams
Movie Theatre Usher
Illustrator / Image Editor
Video Store Clerk
Video Store Manager
Short Order Cook
Office Supply Store clerk
Actor
Fight Choreographer
DVD Bootlegger
Film Extra
Writer
Producer
Publicist
Director
Graphic Designer
Costume/Makeup Designer
Sound Designer
Composer (guitar only)
Voice Over
Personal Trainer
Fitness Consultant
Fitness Program Designer (as in building a boot camp program from the ground up)
Marketing Director
Janitor
Maintenance Man
Marketing Copy writer
Massage Therapist
Dog Behaviorist
Birthday Party Entertainer (different from clown job. still for kids, but very different)

There's no particular reason for this list. I just wanted to see it all on paper.

I wonder if this list will be longer in 10 years, or if I will settle in to something.

Time will tell.

What The World Needs Now...
A Rant On the State of the World

Burt Bacharach would have you believe it's "love, sweet love."

I agree, but I think there's more. I think it's more guys like ABBIE HOFFMAN.

I just finished watching CHICAGO 10, a fantastic documentary about the 1968 Chicago Riots, and the trial that followed. I wish you would go rent it and watch it, America, but I won't pretend that you will.

I was moved to tears for many more reasons than one. There was actual footage of the riots, which were brutal and jarring to watch. There was the farce of a trial, re-enacted by some very talented voice actors from the actual official transcripts. All worthy of tears, but not why I cried.

Worse than all that, it highlighted for me what we are sorely lacking today; Radical Activism.

More than lacking the presence of the thing itself, we have watered down that term to be all but meaningless. It used to mean guys who lived and worked outside the system and lived to shake up that system, and push us out of our comfort zones. They made us questions things, everything, down to the very nature of the system itself. I'm talking about guys like Abbie Hoffman and Allen Ginsburg. Go back further in history and find people like Martin Luther King and Cesar Chavez. Go back EVEN further and you'll find the men who stirred shit up on purpose by drafting and signing the Declaration Of Independence. Yeah, that's right. I said it. Our founding fathers were RADICAL ACTIVISTS.

Now people on the all-day Noise... er, I mean News channels, will occasionally toss out terms like "radical activist judges" when it comes to a judge who might disagree with a historical precedent or two.

A judge? Someone who has eaten, shat and breathed The System for years, and clawed their way up through it, becoming it, to get where they are today. THAT is the closest thing to a "radical activist" that we can come up with?!? No, I'm sorry. Unacceptable. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying judge's are bad guys, but I am saying that they couldn't have gotten where they are unless they played the game, and successful players of the political game are not radical. Ever.

TANGENT: And while I'm at it; as much as I enjoy Barack Obama's rhetoric and public persona, I'm not seeing much of that change he was talking about. Nor am I surprised, really. All I mean to say is, simply by virtue of getting elected at all in this country, he couldn't really be that "radical" or "activist."

Truth be told, I know radicals are out there. Guys like Morgan Spurlock, and the guys over at Last Chance For Animals, and many many other organizations and individuals are out there, bucking convention and chipping away at corruption. But in the golden age of radical activism Abbie Hoffman had rock star acclaim. Spurlock, and guys like him, are on the fringe, mostly preaching to the choir, and easily written off. The media followed Abbie Hoffman's every move. They had to. Whether you loved him or hated him, you wanted to know what he was up to.

But not today. We don't follow our radicals anymore. In the modern 24-hour news cycle we'd much rather hear about yet another school-shooting, or another celebrity death, or worst yet: Obama's dream date with his wife and we want to hear about these things for days on end, in every permutation possible. We listen until we've memorized it down to the minutiae. and we'll do that with every piece of Un-news they throw at us so long as it fits with our idea of what is safe, uncomplicated, and unchallenging. We don't want a pop culture figure to tell us where and how we're wrong, and we certainly don't want to elevate that figure to rock star status.

We'd rather be massaged and rebranded and soothed by flashy new Orwellian vocabulary than actually stop and think.

As a country we're apathetic. I personally am not, but I fully recognize that living in this culture that most certainly IS apathetic has done severe damage to the attitude I once had. It's so easy, living here in the good old USA, to feel crushed by it. Swallowed. Subdued.

You can almost hear the voice of the masses talking to you. Really? You're angry about X or Y thing that is happening on a wide scale? Meh. What can you do? Clearly, none of us care, so why should you? I mean, really, what are you going to do about it? Give up. It's so much easier. Here, have a Big Mac and a Diet Coke and settle in for some Fox News. And don't forget to special order your extra large burial casket. Never hurts to plan ahead...

Speaking of death, at his funeral, the Rabbi of the synagogue that Hoffman had attended as a child said that Hoffman's history of antic protest was in the prophetic tradition to "comfort the afflicted, and afflict the comfortable."

I like that. Has a nice ring to it. But who does that now? Michael Moore? I don't think so. He lies and misrepresents left and right. His tactics are suspect, making him just another game-player with different stripes. Bill Maher? Maybe. He's never seemed a game player, and always seems ready to point out game-playing when he spots it. I do so enjoy his consciousness-raising rants... but, I don't know. Despite having a decent following, he still doesn't seem to be doing much beyond squawking a lot. He's entertainment, he's not actually DOing anything that I can see. And don't even think about suggesting somebody like Bono. He does some good work throwing his money and fame behind a cause or two, but that's not really activism either, is it? He's also not in-your-face enough. In that regard, Bill Maher makes Bono look like a sniveling punk.

The sad thing is as I continue my ranting about what we're missing I keep hearing the words of Mahatma Gandhi bouncing around in my head:

"You must be the change you wish to see in the world."

Hmm. So, if I wish there was a huge, polarizing, stir-shit-up activist in the world...

Crap.

I guess I have a lot of work to do.

Sadie Goes Potty

It's a balmy night. Not warm. Not cold. A perfect temperature for a short stroll to pee. It's quiet. The only sounds that make it to us, behind our apartment building, is the pulsing soft hum of the freeway on the other side of the hill.

A car pulls up beside the patch of grass I'm standing near. It's brakes make an almost inaudible whine right at the last second before stopping. I hear the parking brake engaged, and the loud purr of the engine shuts off.

It's 9 pm and I'm waiting under a street light for my dog to find just the right spot to pee. Sadie, like many dogs, is keenly aware that every pee has a preordained perfect spot. Every pee has it's own destiny and she will be damned if she won't find it. Sometimes it's right at the outset of the trip. Just two simple sniffs and... AH-HA! There's the rub. Mission accomplished, and the bladder empties. But not tonight. Tonight she's taking her time, so I let my eyes wander over the newly arrived car.

It's just outside my orangey pool of light, so I can't make out the model, but I can plainly see it's expensive. You can tell by the shape, the lines of the thing. It is a car that makes a statement. I can see through the window the vague shape of a female driver with a cigarette between her lips. In my mind I decide to call her The Duchess. Then I quickly realize that I'm being judgemental. For all I know she could be a nanny and it's her employer's car. Still though. I decide to stick with Duchess.

A blond woman in her mid 40s steps out of the driver's side. She sighs for a moment, looks around and then stubs out her cigarette butt with her high heal shoe, and smiles at me. It was a weak smile. Calling it half-hearted would have been giving it too much credit. It was a smile that made it very clear that it was the minimal possible effort she could manage at being pleasant. As if to say "you don't look important enough for a full smile. I'm saving those up. You get this one instead. It's the same one I give to the neighbor whose dog shits on my lawn."

Yep. The Duchess it is.

Apparently. Sadie was finishing her potty break. That head-to-toe shake that dogs do when wet is something of a tick for Sadie. The Duchess is startled by the sound of Sadie's ears slapping against the sides of her tiny dog head as she gives a good shake, a compulsory finishing move for her, akin to the human male's "follow up jiggle." The Duchess's attention shifts from me to Sadie. On first sight of the dog, suddenly the woman's fake-almost smile grew to a full beaming ear-to-ear. This is the one she probably gives to the pool boy who is secretly banging her behind her husband's back. There I go again. I don't even know if she's married. Or if she even has a pool.

She then looks back to me, gracing me with this new, second smile. "Your dog is SO adorable. What's her name?" Apparently I'm also SO adorable by association. Suddenly now I'm worthy.

I might have responded favorably if it were not for the sickening smell of stale cigarettes and hand lotion pouring off of her.

No. Who am I kidding? There was never any way I was going to respond favorably. "Go fuck your pool boy," I righteously shout as I walk on by with my SO adorable dog.

A text message interlude

John: You know, I would save the world for free.

Me: ...um... what?

John: You only get it once.

Me: ...um, okay. I too would save the world for free... but world-saving is bound to be taxing on the body and mind and a a brutha does gotta eat. Just sayin. :-)

John: Ha ha. Locusts and honey, man. Locusts and honey.

Me: Well there you go. In that scenario the world "paid" you in another way. Aint No Such Thing As A Free World-Saving. :-)

John: Well, shit. Then I want a raise!