ain't no time to stash the gumbo

salutations, interwebs. my communiques have been waylaid by a couldn't-put-it-down novel, which is really what my free time needed. the only problem is that when i read a novel this good, i really don't look forward to it ending. after one gets comfortable in an artificial world, the real one feels that much colder when one is forced back into it. strangely enough, this book included an unimportant list of something an incidental character was hauling out of a car he was trading to more central figures of the story, and this list included only a book that happened to be the last book that i felt strongly about, namely the manifesto known as "stranger in a strange land". a passing reference, but no doubt a tribute to an author who had exhibited a marked influence on the writer whose work i was actually reading at the time. indeed, the whole thing had a heinlein meets douglas adams quality to it. something of the transcendent quality, enough to admit no distractions of life's daily problems when one is engaged with the work. one of the few that truly deserving of the mythopoeic mantle too often tossed around. oh, yeah, the book is "american gods" by neil gaiman. i could link to something about it, but you're really better off just reading the damn thing. it'll go quick and you won't be the least bit sorry you checked it out. i guess if you have that i read books networking thing you could track it down on there, but on the other hand i believe i've told you all you should really have to know about it at this point (on a side note, megan, i didn't get the notion with the queen cd, figured it was coming but it didn't, you must be referring to another gaiman work, let me know what it was and read this if you haven't). overall, it left me with the feeling that i would be happier or somehow better off if my life consisted of reading a lot more books i chose on my own while working for a living. if that is what you are doing, cheers. i'm jealous.
i've had some occasions to consider the structure of my life in similar ways recently. a friend of mine who i met here recently moved all the way across the country to semi-rural oregon. this guy has done a fair amount of bouncing, hither and thither. well-accomplished squatter with skills to pay the bills, like basic carpentry. not that he has much in the way of bills; in fact i wonder if he has ever paid rent. not in a bad way, just musing on whether he has found a better way. i find the notion that one can navigate the twenty-first century in a rambling romanticist manner comforting in a way. but once again, i find myself a little jealous. they say the grass is always greener, but something like this gives me pause to wonder if perception is not the only thing at work. i spent one month in the netherlands, collecting college credit, looking at churches, and sliding by on the myriad connections of my school and goodwill and financial support of relatives. he spent four months there, trading small-batch homegrown for vast quantities of industrial crops, hanging out with a girlfriend and participating in planned squat takeovers of abandoned property, remaining for the legally required time while other organizers brought him food, beer, cigarettes, and other supplies, eventually providing the table, bed, and two chairs required to seal the property takeover. i might have learned a little more about the language and the culture writ large, but he at least took home gezellig, even if he couldn't pronounce it. right now he is on his way across the whole of the country in a pickup he paid for fairly rigged up like a collapsed covered wagon for the journey, probably seeing friends in chicago, recharging via partying. i mostly doubt that i am cut out for that kind of life, but it lends a spark to the imagination that i imagine joining the circus held for some several decades back, or perhaps being a mercenary or pirate centuries before that. i don't really know what i think about it all, but it is definitely something to consider. like anything else, we gaze from our own vantage point and take from it what we wish to see.
after all, it can only be a reference point. i sit here, nominally a student, with the existential angst that is usually reserved for my previous tenure as a philosophical undergraduate. i'm not a square peg going into a round hole, no, its a round peg into the square slot: it is not meant to be, but it can be accomplished with enough force. for all the value i put into my contemplations and deep-seated opinions about the world, with all my skepticism and desire to find my own way, i cannot help but crave the stability of a comfortable middle class lifestyle. ironically, i find myself at my present juncture based on that unshakable longing for what i perceive as an overarching comfort coupled with those very same notions about doing my own thing, manifested here by skipping dodge. i just had to do it, it all seemed like such a good deal. give em all the finger, but set out for something substantially similar at the end of the day. the sum of all this found me today reading about the supreme court's review of a federal law about possessing firearms at or near schools of all stripes. like many cases worthy of casebook canonization, the decision was a narrow five-four. the majority thought it was too much for washington to claim it had the right to pass what looks like a police-power criminal statute predicated on the idea that regulation of guns in educational areas falls under the commerce clause of the constitution, which grants congress the power to regulate commerce among the several states, and to foreign nations, and the indian tribes. the claim was that guns in and around schools harm education, and damage to education translates to an inadequate workforce, which assuredly is deeply connected to interstate commerce in our modern mobile economy, according to both congress and the dissent. it made me mad enough to spit. the post hoc ergo propter hoc monster (conveniently linked for non latin/logic/look it up types - i just like to say and write the phrase) was pissing on my leg and telling me it was raining, as they say. wait, nobody says that. nobody. the point is, i think the problems keeping people who deal with guns at their schools from getting good jobs are the same problems responsible for guns being at school in the first place, rather than the guns themselves or the people who wind up carrying them to school. we're not talking about columbine, we're talking about unions and centrals all over the country. i'm just offended that none of the nine most deferred-to justices even went there in their sundry opinions.
but that isn't even the half of it in the readings these days. i spent most of saturday really upset after reading a property opinion recounting and justifying the takeover of native lands in america. being pissed and depressed about it doesn't do anything, really, but i just could not shake the horror and injustice for a while. from almost ten million to about two hundred thousand over the course of only a hundred and fifty years or so. just wiped them out, piece by piece, parcel by parcel. all so i could live a comfortable life and study and thereby perpetuate the theoretical fictions our forebears utilized to perpetrate something that i had never properly regarded as so unspeakably heinous. on the other hand, it wasn't just for me. no, it was the foundation for the long, cruel building process of a nation inhering the enslavement and mistreatment of so many individuals and families. guilt hardly begins to describe it, and this is not or at least should not be something i or anyone else should feel because of the christian reformed church, or catholicism or anything of the sort. no, this is the sort of thing the majority of modern day americans can and should find repugnant for a number of reasons, chiefly because we would rail against an analogous process in this day and age. your human rights sticker does not make it alright, but nothing ever will. i don't think anything along these lines made it into the state of the union address this evening, but that is hardly the fault of our current figurehead, even though he did mention something about economic prosperity guaranteed by sticking to the philosophy this country was founded upon. it is not as if he wrote any of the speech anyway. same for whatever asshole next year, and the year after, and four years after, and so forth.
uplifted yet? i'm working on a career transition to motivational speaking.
let's talk about something else. music, perhaps. right now i am listening to a scintillating instrumental, nothing too drawn out, just enough to create a feeling. from a sterling quality uncle tupelo (all you too cool for wilco kids know they're still way better than son volt) show. the song is called sandusky, and the beauty of the tune belies the feeling of the locale. i was around the area for once, not counting youthful excursions to the finest amusement park around, and damn was that place a bummer. in other music news, the two newest live music archive back 40 downloads feature a recently penned number i thoroughly enjoy, an aptly titled newgrass tune called "play a little music and drink a little booze". great bluesy break two thirds or so into the track, along the same lines as lake erie but a more accomplished song and trading the reggae segment for something a little more classic. other than that, i just want dekking-ja to know how awesome steely dan is.
oooh, and in actually reported music-related news, the beatles are un-banned from israel. to be honest, i didn't know they got shut down there way back in '65. go figure. of course they would have corrupted the zionist youth and prevented national success against egypt and company. the whole thing just seems kind of surreal, state representatives meeting with john lennon's sister. also covered by the bbc today: marijuana vending machines in california. i don't know what to think anymore. mostly, i am amused by the fact that every other time the substance has come up in bbc coverage, it is always ALWAYS referred to simply as cannabis, anywhere else in the world. but today, in california, it was "the drug marijuana". maybe illegal was appended to the front of it; i cannot recall. but they're right, vending machines. finally, some credence for the middle school joke and confusion about pop machine/pot machine. with the rigmarole surrounding it all, i don't understand why they don't just treat it like any other prescription. more frightening, the article mentioned in passing how the developer behind the technology is naturally expecting more and more prescriptions to be distributed through vending machines. we're even phasing out pharmacists? is no occupation sacred? the whole thing is too much, kind of like the "marijuana" graphic included in the news page. looked like some pretty raw and rude clippings. perhaps to differentiate from the "yellow card civil offence" cannabis brits know and are comfortable with from the crazy shit those cowboy americans are up to. whatever the media says, they dig our style too dude, got that whole cowboy thing goin' on. lebowski was on the big screen here tonight too, costumes encouraged. i couldn't make it; six bucks or so i didn't have plus the temptation to spend more i didn't have on caucasians. finally enjoying the requisite loan problems endemic to pursuers of higher education. hopefully wrap that up in a week or so, ideally before i choose starving over peanut butter sandwiches.
that's about all for now i reckon, but as this has been a somewhat thoughtful and meditative post, i feel the need for a truncated lyrical addendum:
even the mole people they got to get religion; they gonna join that underground church.