Posts
. . . . . .Alrighty then, we're starting to get back on track and rolling.
. . . . .Like I said before, gotta get up everyday and do it, regardless.
. . . . .My Mom's tribute, which will now be 2 posts below this one, if you scroll down, you can catch it there. After it's rolled to the bottom, I'll give it a permanent parking spot and it's own permanent website, so if you want to go leave a message, a comment, just spend some time hanging out with her, you'll be able to.
. . . . .A couple of quick notes for new readers:
(1) If you're reading this on the Facebook Notes page, I would suggest going to the external site, The Desolation Angel - An Idiot's Ravings, and checking it out there, there's a podcast and playlist that always accompanies this, kind of like the prize in a Crackerjack box, but you can't get them if you don't go there. The same goes for any embedded videos that I may put there.
(2) And when it comes to that playlist, if you're trying to watch one of the embedded videos, to keep it from crossfeeding, and allow yourself to hear it plainly, go to the upper left hand corner of this post to the Podbean player, look for the long, narrow horizontal bar with the word "Podbean" on it, look to it's left hand side and you'll see 3 buttons, the middle one is the play/pause button, you can pause it, watch a video and then go back to the music.
(3) The same goes for the music, I provide a large playlist, go to the Podbean player, look at the list and click on any song there that you may want to hear, you don't have to listen to it in order, and if I haven't shuffled the order in a while, you may want to check out some of the tunes near the bottom.
. . . .And while we're still on the tech front, as I promised yesterday, we'll go a little deeper than surface on the Facebook re-design that was launched over the weekend.
(1) It sucks, of that there is no doubt, however, there isn't a lot that can be done about it for a lot of reasons. (By the way, I spent a good part of Sunday and Monday researching and coming up with fixes for it, if you're a friend of mine on FB, go to my profile and pull them up).
(2) Remember that whole dumbass group that got started along about 3-4 months now along the lines "We will not pay for Facebook"? It was dumbass for a couple of reasons. (a) What it guaranteed was that Facebook would be entirely advertiser supported and not subscriber supported. In other words, if you're a Facebook member, you have an opinion, (which everyone is entitled to), but you don't have any say and you don't have a vote, period. That's just economics at work, there isn't a soul at FB that has to, or is forced to listen to, the "will of the people". It's about dollars, and no one, anyone has the weight or the value to force any change at all "back to the original". The membership made that plainly clear to them when they told them that they didn't value it enough to pay for it, which leads to (b) they let them know, with that group, and their voices, that they actually were arrogant enough to believe that somehow they were entitled to the service it provides, so the only people that now count to them are the ones who turned their cash flow positive last month, their advertisers, who due to being the ones that support the service that everyone believes now that they're entitled to, now have 100% of the say in what's in the newsfeed that's seen.
(3) The solution to all of it is so simple, and it's staring everyone in the face, but no one is doing it. I became an advertiser on Facebook, the cost is relatively low, for this column, for my businesses, now I have a real say in what the future shape of it will look like.
(4) With that same dumbass group and stunt, FB's membership has actually put them in the driver's seat, instead of the 3o million members. They now have hard data to come back at everyone and say "you didn't want to pay for it", so it's all up to the advertisers. C'mon, you really, really didn't think that FB's founder, Mark Zuckerberg, the 24 year old billionaire, and his developers were doing this for your convenience and fun, did you? They also can come back now and look at the membership and say "Hey, if you want a say in it's look, it's functionality and feel, pay up, and make it worth our while." Didn't think of that, did you?
. . . .On a sidenote, I'm absolutely dumbfounded with the number of conservative and wingnut people I know who are screaming about the change, and essentially, demanding a "socialist" service that they don't pay for, and somehow believe that they have the inherent right to have a say in how it should be tailored to their demands.
. . . . Now, what's amazing to me is the number of people who consider themselves "tech literate" that couldn't go figure out the fixes to at least bring it back to 70% resemblance of what it used to look like. These guys are not stupid. They knew very well that if they launched in on a weekend and there were attributes that people didn't like, there's enough good hackers amongst their 30 million members that people would come up with workarounds on their own and those fixes would go viral quickly.
. . . . .As for the real fix, since in no possible way now can it be fixed so that your FB "friends" see both your status updates and links, photos, etc at the same time; either you pick status updates or News Feed (and there are two of them, the Live Feed and the News Feed, where FB's algorithm "picks" what you'll see); again that solution is simple, but requires thinking outside the box. Get a Twitter account, set your Facebook and Twitter accounts to feed one another, install TweetDeck so you can see them both; embed your links in your Twitter updates (using "short" URL's) and post to TweetDeck and it will simultaneously feed both your Twitter and FB accounts, and once again, allow you to provide links to things "outside the wall" within your status update on FB.
. . . Alright, I'm sorry, I was talking geek again, just get a hold of me, and I'll walk you through how to set it up.
. . . .Sheesh, good thing I didn't decide to throw FriendFeed in there as well, at that point, I may have well as have been talking about differential equations using calculus. . . .Just. . .get a hold of me, I'll help you set it up.
. . . .Now, on another tech front, and one which truly is vital to everyone who is reading this in the way you're reading it, let's talk about Net Neutrality, an issue that will come up over and over again this week. Net Neutrality is simple, it's about all content, by all providers being carried at the same speed. It's not about government controlling the Internet, as cult leader Beck, who is the bought and paid for dancing monkey by the big telecoms would have people believe. They dropped some dollars on him due to his ability to create conspiracies out of thin air and his cult following which repeats everything he hypnotizes them to say. Again, it's about all content by all providers being communicated at the same speed. Now, Republican Senator John McCain of Arizona has introduced an amendment to the Net Neutrality bill that would allow the provider to control the bandwidth and speed of all content. He was paid $879,000 to do so by the lobbyists. What it means is that if this bill passes with that amendment; then Charter, Comcast, AT&T, Verizon, BellSouth, Knology, WildBlue et al will control the speed with which content is streamed, and have openly stated that they would slow down all content except their own. We already have truly shitty broadband performance, as a matter of fact, the U.S. is 15th in the world at broadband performance and rapidly dropping down the list. Before you sputter at that number, it's data and fact, get over it, it's kind of like health care, you can wave a flag and shout "USA,USA" all you want to, but the bottom line is, we suck. Net Neutrality legislation would make it better and raise us up near the top again, but the lobbyists and the big telecoms will win out unless you do something about it.
. . . .OK, on to the international front:
- Let's set the stage:
- Karzai's brother is the CIA contact inside the Afghan government, which is a huge mistake. He is a drugrunner and a go-between for the Taliban, and brother to an illegitimate leader of a corrupt government.
- Troops in Afghanistan presently outnumber the Taliban 12 to 1
- We've been in Afghanistan now longer than in Vietnam
- A car bomb rips through a marketplace in Peshawar, Pakistan hours after Sec'y of State Clinton arrives in Pakistan, killing 100, mostly women and children
- The Taliban attack a UN guesthouse in Kabul, Afghanistan killing 12, including 1 American
- October has become the deadliest month yet in the history of this engagement for U.S. troops.
- This is actually two wars, the war against the Taliban, and the war against the drug lords. Those were DEA agents who were killed last weekend in the chopper crashes, not troops.
. . . And I put all that together as a prelude to this piece by Ron Kovic, whom you may remember as the author of Born On the Fourth of July, a combat vet from Vietnam who served with honor and was decorated, and lost the use of his legs there, who has this letter to the President:
. . . The man served with honor and dignity, and gave the use of his body to the flag, and knows things, has experienced things none of us can know or imagine, we need to consider his words carefully and give them gravitas and weight.Dear Mr. President,
As a former United States Marine Corps Sergeant who was shot and paralyzed from my mid-chest down on January, 20th, 1968 during my second tour of duty in Vietnam, and who has lived with the wounds of that war for the past forty one years, I am writing this letter to you deeply concerned with General Stanley A. McChrystal's request for a troop escalation in Afghanistan.
Escalating this war and deploying more of America's sons and daughters to this conflict is a huge mistake -- another Vietnam disaster in the making. We are at a crucial turning point Mr. President and the decision you are about to make in the coming days and weeks may very well be the most important decision of your presidency. I cannot begin to comprehend the thoughts going through your mind as you contemplate this difficult decision, the awful burden it must be.
Many of us who served in Vietnam promised ourselves long ago that we would never again allow what happened to us in that war to ever happen again. We had an obligation as citizens, as Americans, as human beings to raise our voices in protest. We could never forget the hospitals, the intensive care wards, the wounded all around us fighting for their lives. Those long and painful years after we came home.
In your recent address to the VFW on August, 17, 2009 in Phoenix, Arizona, you stated that the war in Afghanistan was a "war of necessity." I remember as I watched and listened to you that day wondering if you had any idea what you were getting us into, if you knew anything of Vietnam and the painful lessons I and others of my generation had learned from that war. You were three years old when I joined the Marine Corps out of high school in 1964, seven when I was shot and paralyzed in 1968, ten when I joined the Vietnam Veterans Against the War and began to protest against that war.
There were the trials and days and nights I spent in jail in my wheelchair feeling more like a criminal than someone who had once risked his life for his country, but I continued to speak. Perhaps it was survivors guilt or my own need to be forgiven and keep others from coming back like me, but as I sat before those crowds I began to open up my heart in a way I had never done before, sharing everything; all the horrors and nightmares, all the things I had locked deep inside of me, and had for so long been afraid to say. It was an extraordinary time Mr. President, an agonizing time, a time of great conflict, a time of great sorrow, and a time that would forever change the way we saw our country and the world.
In your book, The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream you spoke of that time, the Sixties, admitting that you were, "to young to fully grasp the nature of those changes, too removed to see the fallout on Americas psyche." I write this letter to you Mr. President as both a survivor and witness to that time and someone who must live with the consequences of a decision made by our government and it's leaders four long decades ago.
Physically and emotionally Mr. President I have struggled to live with the enormous challenge of being paralyzed. It is not an easy wound to live with. There are the bedsores and the catheters, the urinary tract infections and high fevers, the lack of sexual function, spasms, and terrible insomnia that torments you in the night. Each morning you wake up wondering how you're going to make it through another day. There is an entire body that does not feel or move from your mid-chest down and constantly you are lifting yourself up from your cushion in your wheelchair to keep your skin from breaking down.
You struggle to look normal, to fit into in this world again after all that has happened to you. It all seems so overwhelming at first Mr. President, but somehow you find a way to continue on. There are the anxiety attacks and the horrifying nightmares, the depression and thoughts of giving up. You're scared and you try your best to hide all that you've lost, all that you're going through every day, you can't move or feel anymore. It is an overwhelming and unspeakable injury Mr. President, but you go on. You do your best. You've got to keep living. You've got to keep getting up every morning no matter how crazy it all seems.
The years pass and you're still alive. You're amazed that after all these years, all the frustrations and confinement, in and out of bed, hospitals, fevers, IVs, wetting your pants, soiling the sheets, nightmares, anxiety attacks, insomnia, that you are still here, still in this world. Yet you continue on to make the best of what is left. You try to sit proudly in your wheelchair everyday trying not to lose your balance. It is amazing how normal a person can look if he only tries. You do your best to get back into life again but you know deep down inside that nothing will ever be the same, that you have lost more than most people could ever imagine, sacrificed more for your country, short of dying, than most of your fellow citizens could ever comprehend. It is a horrifying wound.
You watch your friends and fellow veterans die year after year from alcohol, drugs, suicides, a shot gun blast to the face, a car crash, an over dose, festering bed sores, toxic shock syndrome, pneumonia, homelessness, destitution and the loneliness of being forgotten. You see it all and you know that there is no flag, no parade, no welcome home that can ever make up for what you and the others have lost, for all that you have seen and endured; all those speeches, Memorial Days, Fourth of July fireworks, slogans and rhetoric about freedom and sacrifice and how, "necessary" this or that the war was, and If we did not stop them there than they would surely come to get us here.
It's way too much for a young man to see -- way too much for anyone to comprehend. Yet you go on. You do your best to block it out, to focus on the beauty of life -- the more positive things. You are amazed at the resiliency of the human spirit. You tell others how grateful you are to be alive, how you believe your wound is a blessing in disguise. And though that may be true, there are still moments in the early morning as you lie alone in your bed, slowly awakening to the wound one more time. You think, you ponder, you reflect on all that you have lost -- all those years, all that sorrow -- they come flooding back. For all the healing, despite all that you are now grateful for, all that you cherish and love; for all the goodness and kindness, despite the beauty of this still very beautiful world and all the hope and promise that it represents. But it lingers, that sorrow, that sadness. If but briefly for all that was lost for all that can never be again.
~ Ron Kovic
. . . .I've said it before, and I'll say it again. Alexander the Great and Genghis Khan both broke their armies and their empires trying to conquer the provinces that would comprise the present day Afghanistan; the British Empire walked in there 100 years ago with the what was then the world's finest military machine, and left in defeat. The Soviet Empire walked in there 30 years ago, with what was then the world's finest military machine, and left in defeat. So will we. We, as a nation, in our arrogance, refuse to look at the lessons of history and continue to think of ourselves as somehow exceptions to the rule. It will be our undoing someday.
. . . .The day that the previous Administration (and now this Administration is following the same path) abandoned the hunt for the psychotic mass murder of 3,000 people and lied to invade a sovereign country and do a nation building exercise (how's that worked out for us?). The day that the previous Administration decided to removed the secular Christian leader of Iraq (yes, Saddam Hussein was a Christian, that's what Ba'athists are), the only man that both Ahmadenijad and bin Laden were afraid of (Hussein couldn't stand either one), we completely destabilized the Middle East and allowed Ahmadenijad to concentrate on obtaining nuclear weapons, and bin Laden to concentrate on embedding al-Queada all throughout Taliban councils in the region. Typical neo-con arrogance that now has led to this.
. . . .On to our incredibly skewed society and how we've perverted the meaning of the words capitalism and free-market. Les Leopold:
. . . .Read the entire piece here.Democracy, socialism, capitalism, neo-liberalism -- none of them do justice to who we are and where we're headed. Socialism left the planet several decades ago, except in the minds of Fox News pundits. We're not sure what capitalism really is anymore, now that we've bailed out the entire financial sector. Neo-liberalism is so passé, as major governments around the world intervene to halt the financial collapse. And democracy is still with us, we hope, but we wonder for how long as our politicians and policies seem so easily bought and sold.
Perhaps we need a new vocabulary, one that helps us describe a society that promotes the accumulation of vast riches, bails out the rich when they take too many chances, and avoids responsibility for the common good. Even Milton Friedman would have trouble calling that capitalism.
How about the Billionaire Bailout Society?
Here are its salient features:
1. We promote accumulation of vast fortunes without limits.
2. We shun progressive income taxes that could narrow the gap.
3. We keep most of finance deregulated even after it has collapsed so spectacularly.
4. We let the minimum wage atrophy.
5. We discourage unionization.
6. We let middle class jobs disappear.
7. We allow a revolving door between public office and high paying private sector jobs.
8. We let our public infrastructure deteriorate.
9. We belittle government and public service.
10. We promote private gain as the best way to promote the common good.
11. We force our children to pile up debt in order to get an education.
12. We live with a porous safety net.
13. We encourage health care to be a profit maximizing enterprise.
14. We allow institutions to become too big to fail.
15. We bail out the largest financial institutions when they do fail, even if that means transferring trillions to Wall Street.
16. We allow Wall Street to use its bailout money to lobby against the public interest.
17. We let Wall Street keep its bailout-created "profits" and bonuses.
18. We have no clue if the financial sector provides any real value to our economy.
19. We permit financial hucksters to buy up solid companies, load them up with debt, take the cash, and then drive them into the ground.
20. We bad-mouth as protectionist all efforts to keep jobs in this country.
21. We don't have any serious plan for returning to a full-employment economy.
22. We live in awe of billionaires.
. . . With some data and back-up for that above, Yglesias:
Bubbles and Inequality
There’s something that’s pretty . . . suggestive about the apparent historical link between huge runups in the share of income controlled by the very wealthiest people and the emergence of asset price bubbles and the subsequent crises:
But what would explain the link? Steve Randy Waldman speculates that it’s all about the difference between loose monetary policy creating consumer price inflation and loose monetary creating asset price inflation:
Whether an economy generates asset price inflation or consumer price inflation depends on the details of to whom cash flows. In particular, cash flows to the relatively wealthy lead to asset price inflation, while cash-flows to the relatively poor lead to consumer price inflation.
This is because richer people have a lower marginal propensity to consume. As Kevin Drum puts it:
So: as income inequality goes up, more money flows to the well-off, who use it to buy financial assets. Conversely, less money flows to the poor and middle class, who respond by increasing their debt level. Both of these mechanisms produce a higher demand for financial assets and therefore promote asset inflation.
This seems reasonably plausible to me.
. . . .There was a little ruffle when I mentioned that the Fox News cult only has .6% to .8% of the viewing audience during the daytime, well, since I am a firm believer in numbers, I won't do it myself, but I'll let our buddy Chez over at Deus ExMalcontent speak for it himself with the Honorable Mention Quote of the Week, and it's centered around Fox News Shepard Smith apologizing on-air, live for one of the stories he was presenting not being "fair and balanced". Chez:
"2.5 million Americans watch Fox News, which means that 297.5 million Americans don't.". . .Speaks for it all, doesn't it? I stick by my label. . .a cult.
-- Commenter "Underoath" at the Huffington Post, responding to the story about Shepard Smith apologizing on-air for what he called Fox News's lack of balance in covering the New Jersey governor's race
I post this comment because it brings up a point I've always wanted to mention here: Fox News's perceived power within the news media -- it's supposed absolute domination of both the medium and the message -- is really nothing more than a product of the media loving to talk about themselves. Yes, Fox has a firm grip on the cable audience -- particularly one relentlessly loyal facet of the audience, which clings to its every word and indulges its every whim -- and that makes for much hand-wringing among its competitors and detractors. But let's be honest: In the great scheme of things, how many people really watch cable news regularly? Sure, O'Reilly or Beck can pull in a couple of million viewers -- on a really good day -- but even now, with its authority waning, network news still nets up to 25-million viewers a night (with even the lowest-rated show pulling around 6-million people). And keep in mind that we're talking about national numbers -- as in a couple of million Fox viewers out of around 300-million people in the entire United States.
To put things in perspective, during the heyday of network dominance, a local news 11pm show in New York City could occasionally come close to that kind of number.
Yes, Fox News is powerful among the select demographic that watches it. Big picture, though? It's nowhere near the inescapable cultural force that it and the media echo chamber it inhabits would have you believe.
. . . .And while I'm doing charts and numbers, let's go on to the next one. I've said all along, that I call it "climate change", and I've always made the assertion here that numbers, that data, that the Laws of Mathematics, of Physics, of Thermodynamics, reign supreme. They're universal, logical and always true and it's impossible for a religious or political twist to be put on them. I also will say, and have said that it's human arrogance, plain and simple, which would lead people to either (a) assert that they know the reasons and causes or (b) assert that somehow it isn't happening (stick fingers in ears, shake head side-to-side rapidly, saying "lalalala" loudly). These are eons long cycles and bald fact is, that engine is turned on and cycling, and like all large engines, once the cycle is turned on, it's too late to do anything about it. (BTW, cap-and-trade is insanity, trading pollution to speculators? C'mon!). Anyhow, finally, finally, someone got smart enough to take the numbers to some statisticians, who are my very favorite type of geeks. They sincerely don't care about the political, religious or cultural implications or labels on things, they only care about the numbers. They came up with the following chart, which has been published in USA Today, the A.P. and widely through other sources. In a blind test, a group of statisticians was given the data and told to trend it without being told what it represented, the effect being to remove all bias. Here's what they found:
Graphic shows the departure from normal annual world temperature
. . . .More on that dirt and water thing tomorrow.
. . . .Because what the dirt and water do is provide the food we eat. Cesca:
The next step has to be focused upon doing something about the poisoned filth we've collectively nicknamed "food." Without any real changes in how our food is produced, the health care system will continue to bloat and fall apart. Not unlike the insides of an average American body.Corporate agribusiness has invested nearly $1.2 billion (and growing) on lobbyists -- more money than even the defense lobby. Naturally, much of this lobbying has been aimed at deregulating how food is processed and manufactured, as well as how corporate agribusinesses raise and process livestock. It's an industry that's entangled in everything from Big Tobacco to human trafficking and illegal immigration.
Most recently, and speaking of poisoned filth, you may have watched as Rick Berman was eviscerated by Rachel Maddow on MSNBC a few weeks ago. In case you missed it, Berman's Center for Consumer Freedom is financed by corporate agribusiness, among others, and tasked with deceiving the public about everything from high fructose corn syrup to transfat, mercury levels in fish, obesity issues, food labels, and tobacco laws. CCF is all about confusing the public by muddying scientific fact and skewing the debate onto ridiculous tangents to the point where it's difficult to tell the difference between what's healthy and what's crap. It's Glenn Beck's rodeo clown strategy applied to food.
The consequence for you and me, of course, is that the food is becoming increasingly toxic, both in terms of what goes into our bodies, and in terms of how deregulation and deception is hurting the economy. What good is health care reform if we're still being fed poison? What good is an economic recovery if big business is still gaming the system?
. . . . .Full piece here
. . . .. . . .And that's the way it is:
. . . . .. . . .We can salvage this shipwreck of a Nation. It will take all of us working together. It will take all of us understanding the concepts of the Great American Experiment, the political process of the Republic. It's amazing, I don't see eye-to-eye on every issue with my friends, but we respect one another's opinion, share information, share facts, and we don't talk over one another or at one another, we talk with one another. It's amazing what happens when a group of people who share the common goal of leaving a better country for their children and grandchildren can do when they sit down with one another as human beings, and realize that we each have power, and together, we are unstoppable.
. . . .I'm going to ask this of you for the next 30 days. Turn your TV off, turn your radio off. Start to use that beautiful mind that your Creator gave you, that your underpaid, underappreciated High School teachers tried to develop. If you hear something, if you read something, if someone sends you an e-mail that says "this bill will do this", or "this politician says this", I'm asking you to check it out. Check it out this way, use some of the following fact-based sites, who exist solely for the purpose of data and fact-checking.
- If whatever you've heard or read concerns a bill in Congress, use the following -
- Open Congress, it's non-partisan and devoted to a complete tracking of every bill in Congress, both houses. How a bill is developed, who is sponsoring it, what the riders are, what the discussion around it is.
- GovTrack, again non-partisan, non-commercial and open source; devoted to the same things, tracking Congress.
- Open Secrets, one of the most important ones, it tracks the lobbying money and campaign contributions flowing to your congressperson, and most of the time is a pretty good predictor of how they'll vote.
- Political Party Time, non-partisan, devoted to solely tracking political fundraisers, and letting you know exactly what parties your Representative and Senators are throwing for fundraisers and who is attending and how much money they're throwing at them to gain influence.
. . . .If someone sends something to you saying "this is so" or "that is so" or "the President/Senator/Representative said this" use the following:
- Fact Check, non-partisan, designed to separate fact from bullshit and fiction
- Snopes, devoted to the same thing.
- Politifact, devoted to getting to the truth, and separating out the lies that are spread.
. . . .I keep doing this not because I don't have faith, but because I do have faith. I have faith in the ultimate triumph of the spirit, intellect and heart of the American people. I have faith that the people I know want to leave something better for future generations, and know that something is terribly wrong, and want to do something about it. I do it because Paine and Jefferson were brilliant, unique singularities and were right.
. . . .I keep doing this because I don't believe in big imaginary friends for adults, I don't believe in alien conspiracies running the Government, I don't believe the Roswell bodies are at Wright-Patterson, I don't believe that a big portal will open up on Dec. 21, 2012, I don't believe that the spaceships will show up.
. . . I do believe that the people who have fucked everything up are greedy, avaricious human beings who have been able to steal from the American people, to harm them, who have run unchecked because no one calls it out for what it is. I believe that if we shine the light of day on it, if the people of this country have had enough, we can change it, and change it for the better.
. . . . I keep doing this because I do believe that people, human beings, unchecked will continue to do what they've done throughout history, and throughout the history of this country. Together, they will find the solutions and provide better for their children and grandchildren.
. . . .I believe in us, I believe in people. I believe in the beauty, power and grace of the individual.
. . . .I do this for everyone who's ever walked that lonely road of knowing what they do, what they believe, what they know is right. I do it for everyone who's ever walked that lonely road of faith, hope, love, hate, justice, war and peace.
. . . .I do it because I believe in justice, in all it's forms.
. . . .I do this everyday for the people and kids who are tattoed, pierced and inked and keep getting told to get "into the mainstream". I do this everyday for those guys who wear black that you don't understand, you just know there's something about them, and that when the chips are down, when you have to walk down a dark alley somewhere, and you know what's waiting for you at the end of it, and you can only take one person with you, that's who you want walking with you, because you know you'll come back out alive, and that guy doesn't care what it costs him.
. . . .I do this everyday for the outcasts, the misfits, the ones who don't fit and who will turn their back on you and walk away when you try to make them fit into a mold. I do it everyday for everyone who does it their way, knows that they're paying a high price for it, but the freedom is worth the cost.
. . . . I do this everyday for outlaws, cowboys, renegades, pirates and fallen angels. I do it everyday for the people who understand that rock and roll can save their soul, that redemption can be found in a 3-chord lick from a vintage Les Paul. I do it for the men and women who aren't afraid to turn it all the way up, who keep looking for an 11 setting on a volume knob that only goes to 10, who know that rock and roll's got nothing to do with age.
. . . .If right now, you're doing something you don't want to do, stop it. If you've surrounded yourself with people who want you to do or be something other than who you are, walk away. If you've got people around you who actually let it slip out that they think you "should be doing (fill in the blank here)" and it involves your life, your future, your existence as an individual, walk away, right now, and don't look back. You don't owe anyone anything. Live fearlessly. If the people around you can't accept it, can't accept you as you are, really are, they aren't and weren't friends anyhow.
. . . .Don't march to anyone else's drumbeat, don't drink the Kool-Aid, anyone's. Right, Left, conservative, liberal, Democrat, Republican, Christian, Buddhist, Pagan. Use your own mind, that's why you were given one. Examine, question, do what's right for you first, everything else will fall in place from there, quit looking for the path, you're already on it.
. . . .Come out of the gate each morning with both barrels blazing, pedal-to-metal, full-tilt boogie, all-in and balls-out, what's stopping you? Do you want to live forever? That'd be boring.
. . . .Got your back. somewhere out there in the night
. . . .Kiss your kids, tell the ones you love out loud that you do. Seize the precious moments before they're ripped away from you. This rodeo is a one-way ticket and no one, absolutely no one gets out alive. There aren't a lot of second chances, and we don't get to dictate terms and circumstances of how the ticket gets punched. This ain't no dress rehearsal, and the curtain's gone up, it's real and right now. It's not about yesterday or tomorrow. It's about right fucking here, right fucking now. This, what you're reading, what you're hearing, is the proof, the words, the sounds and the sights of someone changing his own life and his own world and not being afraid to put it out there. What have you done for yourself lately and why are you waiting? Do it now.
The Desolation Angel
from somewhere halfway to Heaven, and just a mile out of Hell
You know someone like me, there's still a few of us left. If we have to, we'll stand at the gates of Hell and hold the last train home for you.. . . . . .
[where: Gregory, MI 48137]
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