Like a Train Wreck

It was spoken in the Confederacy that the Federal government was a tyranny, and that Northern industrial interests and immigrants were trying to change the traditional American way of life. They insisted it wasn't just slavery, it was freedom itself that was under attack.

I didn't buy it. I never thought that there would have been a Civil War without slavery. I'm beginning to re-think that. I think at some point the "progressives" (the same assholes who brought us Prohibition) would have caused a revolution against the government anyway.

I'd fight in it.

As speaking of assholes: Here's one. What a scumbag.

Honestly, I have no words.

I should. But I don't.

I'm not even angry so much as sad.

In Iceland, they've almost eliminated retards via abortion. In Wisconsin they elect them mayor.

Seriously. And if you don't know what that means, learn! Shitheads.

Sam Shepard died today.

When you were a kid, say 25... did you ever dream of setting meetings with more senior level people in your organization and then not attending? Or showing up late? Or passing the buck to the invitee without ever speaking with them?

No?

Me neither.

I think I've figured something out... and it's kind of sad.

I... I... I think I'm growing up.

That's not necessarily a good thing, either. I mean, yes, I'm mumble mumble years old and I'm a good provider and fantastic breeding stock and many, many, if not all women find me incredibly attractive to the point of distraction and even, in some cases, tragic results. But those are just facts, and growing up, well... When you grow up you live in facts.

What I mean is that I used to be able to take flights of fancy, to daydream, to imagine. Now I can't. Well, maybe I could, but I don't. I don't play. I don't dream, I don't lie. I just don't. And it's no fun.

I can't even get into someone else's daydream. And that sucks too. Take for instance this movie called "Patterson". It looked cool. It looked like the kind of thing that I would have love, love, loved when I was younger. But I couldn't even sit through the whole goddam trailer. I couldn't because I figured out the punchline as soon as I saw who directed it (Jim Jarmusch). Like I said, I would have flipped out over this movie just a short time ago.

My problem is that when I watch movies like this I can read the daydreams of the director. This is the romantic version of ME screams Jarmusch's id. My brain says, "yeah, yeah, I saw a movie where this kid moved rocks with his brain." And that's sad.

Because in the technicolor bullshit cartoon movies that I can stomach now nothing realistic happens. I can't daydream that I'm some writer of sordid novellas who nonetheless can afford to live un-subsidized in a loft in Tribeca and drink top-shelf liquor and do hyper expensive drugs with my incredibly hot and smart and successful and doomed friends at super cool dive bars who witnesses the murder of an under aged prostitute by the Mayor's girlfriend and his bodyguard during a drug-fueled blood orgy and ends up blackmailing said mayor via anonymous letter into hiring myself to be his PR guy who accidentally falls inexplicably in love with the poisonously decadent and self destructive mistress who committed the murder and together we spend three and a half movie hours plotting to pin it on the Mayor who manages to turn the snake back on the two of us, but really just me and so I have to be the one to drown the mistress murderer in the tub during a wild election night party because we need a fall guy and the bodyguard can't be implicated because he has a special needs kid, so I do it for the promise of a McArthur-type grant because as much as I love the junky bimbo I love my dream of being a writer more. I just can't. But I can be entertained watching a giant lizard beating the shit out of the NYPD, even if no one but one old man and a cabbie die in the whole damn movie.

Why? Because that would never happen. The director of the giant lizard movie isn't putting himself in place of the heroic little girl who kung-fu's the immense geko back to the hell he spawned from.

But Jim Jarmusch wants to believe that he could have been a fucking bus driving poet. He even wants to believe people still care about poets. It stinks up the movie. It's LESS believable than a giant lizard dry-humping the Empire State building. And that's just a fact.

It's good when things get back to normal. I'm back on an even keel. Home for a week (thanks for cancelling my meetings assholes) and I'm feeling generally upbeat. It's nice when the biggest complaint I can muster is that my computer won't make a PDF from the scanner.

Seriously, it won't. It's been chugging away for an hour. It's a goddam receipt. What the fuck. I can stream movies that haven't even been filmed yet to my phone in a moving car but I can't create a PDF of my $8.99 salad receipt? What gives? Will we be riding horses to the fucking apple store now?

Last Saturday my son, the prince, graduated from the United States Military Academy at West Point and was commissioned Second Lieutenant in the United States Army. So ends a journey that began when he was in sixth grade and decided that he wanted to be in the Army.

I'm not sure if he would do it again the same way if he had to do it all over, but he picked it. And despite having the opportunity to back out with no penalty during those first two miserable years, he didn't and has now joined an extremely select group of men and women. Probably THE most select group of men and women in this country.

I am extremely proud of him. You all will be too.