No Rest For The Wicked

So I started feeling sick on Friday, I knew I was coming down with something, I had a moderate sniffle, my face felt flush and I had that mysteriously spicy feeling on the roof of my mouth, as if I had just consumed a barrel of citrus fruits followed by an entire shaker of salt. So I took it easy Friday night, matter of fact, I took it easy all weekend, I barely left my house, I ate soup, took lots of meds, drank Orange Juice and slept whenever possible. Where did this leave me? With a missing recovery day, because whilst most people I work with had the glory of Columbus day to wallow in their own hangovers, I had to be downtown at eight sharp, already holding two downtowns, five giant social law books, pretending not to be cold in the beautiful shade of Winthrop Square with only Bill and BG to keep me company. Gradually others showed up, it seemed that every company was represented by one or more of it's folk and we all commiserated about the fact that there was no work, it was cold as hell for October and we'd all rather be having a ditch day at someone's house. But, to our own surprise, we held fast, we endured, we got jobs, we made deliveries on a day when no banks, no post offices, few law firms and zero government buildings were open. At about one, I was given the option to leave early, which I jumped at, even though in reality, and I knew this to be true, leaving then meant I would be leaving at three, which I did. So I set off to make a productive day of the remaining sunshining hours I had left. I managed to; buy a box of Emergency, get a cup of coffee I easily could have made at home, peruse records I didn't need and didn't want, smoke a bunch of cigarettes, buy new pedals, take a bath, eat a candy bar and ultimately screw around on the internet for what may be the better part of an hour. Meanwhile, I need to; do the dishes, a load of laundry, install the new pedals I purchased, eat some real food(probably soup), and pick a creative endeavor to begin commencement upon. Why do we put off the easy things in favor of time-consuming difficult shit? Because we need failure to inspire us. Not really, because we fear not having the energy to do them later, which we ultimately don't. Instead, we burn ourselves out on useless shit leaving nothing done and plenty of self-loathing to go around. Hooray, I'm a slapass. Fuck.

Stumped and Rooted

Being in a creative rut is kind of like having your foot stuck in a bear trap. It hurts, terribly. No matter what you do, it will take something awful and painful to gain your freedom, the equivalent of gnawing your own foot off or severing it with the trap itself are two of the less graphic options for forward movement. I suppose the best thing to do would be to try and walk with the trap attached and reach a place where you can get help removing it. Though, to be sure, you would be dragging a painful, bloody useless limb miles before you reached any signs of help. So now, for the past few months at least, I've been dragging a bloody limb of creative limbo everywhere I go, and though I loathe the cold infinitely, I know the sheer trauma, pain and aggravation of it, not to mention my tendency to dig in and hibernate when not working, will hopefully create some form of inertia for me to regain the inspiration I'm yearning for. This is not an invitation for anyone to amputate any of my limbs, or remove my organs and leave me in a bathtub full of ice in a strange motel room in Burlington. Simply a very complicated excused for why this page has been left so desolate and empty for such an extended period of time. If I were a bear, I would have eaten the friendly gentleman who was making a documentary about me and/or become a decorative floor covering where a wealthy ivy-leaguer would currently be banging the lady friend he rufeed at a Manhattan nightclub in the ass. Either way, I suppose I'm better off with a bloody stump.

Bear Chesting

As far as science has come, it has yet to surpass the rowdy superiority of pop culture's endless influence and misguided trajectory through modernity. Take, for example, the detective drama; for years, from Murder She Wrote to Law and Order, we've watched murder deconstructed, reconstructed, explained and itemized, one would think we as a culture had learned how to 'get away with it'.

A Canadian car model, who was in California at the time, was found with her teeth extracted and fingers severed, leaving seemingly no way for anyone to trace or track down the poor woman's identity. However, allow us to site item two on our tour of science's short comings in the face of pop culture, the breast implant. Said woman was identified solely by the serial numbers implanted below the surface of her skin, an area, though penetrable and retrievable, not scoured by our poor victim's assailant.

Now I've heard of serial numbers on all sorts of transplants, synthetic hips, knees, shoulders, pig heart valves and such, and I'm pretty sure I knew breast implants were numbered for the purpose of tracking manufacturing failures. Though, never would I think that this would be the way authorities would track the identity of a murder victim.

It really makes you think twice about the things you decide to do to yourself. Bearing in mind that at any point you could wake up dead, or find yourself in a bathtub full of ice with an important organ missing, do you really want to be remembered as the woman identified by her breast implants, or the guy with a tattoo of a dinosaur copulating with a toaster oven. What if you were found in a foreign hotel room in ladies underwear hanging from a rope? Or hanging from your own belt?

Famed unabomber Ted Kazinski was found on the floor of his prison cell naked from the waist down with his underwear wrapped around his neck, someone jokingly mused at the time, "Either he tried to hang himself or he got lucky." But that would have been his memory. The more I think about it, the things I do on a day to day basis, make my death kind of sad.

If I were in a fatal accident tomorrow at work, they wouldn't find drugs in my system, no regrettable tattoos, nothing sordid in my past really, what they would find is a truly destitute individual with a stomach of iced coffee, bread and acid reflux, a bloodstream flooded with nicotine and the remnants of my thoughts, the physical manifestation, without any electric impulses, no ideas, just mass. I would be inanimate mass, and that is what I would leave behind.

I think the moral of this story is to get more shameful or regrettable tattoos, do as many terrible things as possible, be remembered as the most horrific trainwreck who ever walked the streets, endless head-shaking and tooth-sucking, shameful testaments to a life lived to it's utmost.

So from now on, I make this pledge, no longer will I be caught without food in my stomach, or the mar of drunk-decisions across my body, I vow to live out loud, to sing my own fucking praises and most important of all, to get breast implants, I haven't decided where yet, I'm thinking my feet, if they get long enough I'll have my pick of the best shit at City Sports Basement. Yep, it's going to be awesome.

Horse Puckey

I woke up early with plenty of energy, the sun was guarded and diffused by lime green curtains casting a euphoric glow over my bedroom. A beeping was going off on my dresser and I stumbled, bleary-eyed to end my early-morning suffering. Though I was awake and alert, I couldn’t seem to abide the constant nagging and ringing of an alarm clock that couldn’t take a hint. Alarm clocks should know when to shut the fuck up.

I walked into the kitchen to make some toast and put the kettle on for coffee. I settled down at the kitchen table and read some news from the internet, not much good in it and the bad wasn’t much better. The kettle whistled up a boil and I filled the French press with water. I buttered my toast and read about distant troubles, domestic miracles and a mysterious horse holocaust in Florida.

Having recently been in Florida myself, though not being a horse, it seemed interesting to me and I researched onward. It seemed that immediately before a polo match in West Palm Beach, a slew of the horses began dropping dead, some of them dropped dead later in the day on their way home and a total of fourteen were dead by the end of the day.

This makes me wonder if a horse is a horse of course of course and if it is a horse, it ain’t foaling anybody. Somebody had run afoul these foals, for what purpose? To what end? I know about doping racehorses and sending bad investments off to the glue factory, but polo is a game invented and played by the idle rich, who obviously do so to counteract their idle nature for the opposite of idle is galloping down a field wielding a mallet whomping giant balls from one side to the other and looking rather dapper doing it.

Naturally I always assumed the wealthy and privileged classes always had the best stuff, took care of their possessions and always spent the money regardless of personal cost, but maybe this isn’t the case. Maybe they cut corners, squeezed pennies and in light of the current economic climate killed their horses to escape some form of financial obligation. Maybe it was a pre-arranged club or cabal of struggling socialites who categorically decided to assassinate their own horses for the insurance money. Double indemnity pays off triple on business trips and these horses were at work, on the job, gearing up for the game of their respective careers.

I’m reminded of Alfred Hitchcock, a kind of The Birds meets Strangers On A Train. A kind of ‘you kill my horse, I’ll kill yours’ engagement and so it goes. I eat out fewer times a week, make far fewer indulgent purchases and a gaggle of debutantes off their ponies. Is this art imitating life or life imitating a poorly written serialized television program? Is it not enough that the proletariat feel the crunch and gnash of the economy’s teeth as it chews up the workforce, must we punish the upper classes too? And what of the horses? Where is their bailout? When their owners are in financial ruin, will the dog food factory be the euphemism for where thoroughbreds go to die? No mausoleum for Seabiscuit’s brood? Those mighty Clydesdales, the poster-pets of beer-drinking, blue-collar escapism, I fear their respective manes may well be on the line as well. An ad campaign, launched in memoriam for the brave horses that gave their lives, to feed the masses of starved brewmasters all over America.

In all seriousness, it is a very sad state of affairs, I have had many a pet myself and am greatly saddened by the loss of prized polo ponies poignantly pricked from polo-nial platitude. And so it is with a heavy heart I ask for a moment of silence, an ode to the loss of these fourteen dedicated athletes and the ultimate gift to which they gave their lives. I only hope someone has checked on Mr. Ed, for when a horse turns in its grave, everyone within reach and earshot turns in theirs, because of proximity. Hi ho silver and farewell

Pigeon Politics

When one hears the word pigeon, we naturally think of stout birds, wiggling their way from bread crumb to bread crumb waiting for the sudden stagger of a stranger’s leg so they can break and take flight. The word pigeon also refers to an adaptation, an evolution and a breaking of a chrysalis as in pigeon language. To watch a pigeon is to understand the process of being a hungry lion lying in wait, sifting through tall dried grass, inching your way closer to a breathing meal. Pigeons are naturally distrustful of other living things, though quick to eat your discarded bagel or nibble on forgotten fruit, they remain wary of the possibility that one day, we may stand up and eat them. There are places in the world where pigeon is part of the everyday diet, I wonder if pigeons there are as docile. The cautious, guarded, yet evolutionary nature of the word pigeon brings me to an interesting question; are we witnessing the end of pigeon poltics?

The nature of pigeon culture dictate that the fattest pigeons usually eat the most, they usurp most of the surplus food, they intimidate smaller pigeons and scare them from their bounty, in the roost they take up the most room and chase out underlings with their bilious stature. Sound familiar? AIG was built on pigeon policy, they exacted change around the globe simply by gobbling up as much as they could and forcing the small folk out of their roosts. They waddled their fat, expensive asses all over the backs of the working class and cackled or tweeted, twittered or whatever when they were bailed out. The fat pigeons feeding themselves when the smallest birds are starving to death.

However, it is in the tradition of adapted language and the recontextualization of words, phrases and specific pieces of policy that pigeon interpretation will eventually reform the twisted system to which we have been shackled for so long. Our cooing and cawing had silent screams for fifty years and finally, it seems, our day of being fed may come again. A day when the largest pigeons can wait their turn and watch the tiniest bird eat first. Tiny birds, wherever you are, I know you’re starving now, I know you’re without a roost, many without jobs, without hope, but rest assured, this is not the fault of the current administration, it won’t be resolved without this administration and if it weren’t for the pigeons exacting change, evolution and revision at this moment, this great nation would starve indefinitely; without a crumb, without a coo, with broken wings and pigeon toes.

A Quieter Life

I’ve taken on a life of solitude. Not in the traditional sense, I do speak to people occasionally and I haven’t taken any vows or signed any pacts, but as it stands much of my human interaction as of recent has been over the phone or telling people which line to sign their names on. Between bouts of office banter and friendly service well-wishes, I do a great deal of waiting. Waiting for jobs to come up, waiting to feel hungry, thirsty and waiting for an opportunity to have a short-lived conversation with a total stranger looking for a coffee shop, the post office, a public restroom or spare change. These consist of most of the human interaction I experience Monday through Friday. Now, you’d think that this kind of cold-turkey silence would evoke more outbursts of random conversation with those immediately available, however, in my case, it has caused the opposite effect and I have little interest in small-talk for banter’s sake. Instead I do plenty of thinking, pondering attempting to interpret and understand physical attitudes and their meanings. I try to read people’s gestures and walks, I read their shoes, their clothes and their passing odors. I read their eyes, their accessories, their urgency and their immediate companionship. I watch and I learn.

Now, you may see this as being unfair, I’m on the outside, I never speak to most of these people, I don’t know much about psychology, I don’t know much about philosophy, I don’t know much about biology, I don’t have any business doing this at all and it makes me an jackass for admitting to it. However, bare in mind that my intuition is rational, my investigations are based in scientific fact and previous years of study. How do I know you’re upset? Because you look upset, because your voice is labored and broken, because you look disheveled and beaten, because you’re upset. That kind of thinking has helped me develop a scientific method for understanding people and the more I watch, the more I learn, the more I can begin to hone the process to which I understand all things.

I was speaking with a friend about driving habits, about how we know how to navigate around other drivers, pedestrians, roads and such. It brought us to a conversation about instinct, about how we come to be able to assess certain situations and read the atmosphere, navigate. He chose the example of bicycling in urban areas. Now, this isn’t to marginalize mountain-biking which has it’s own follies and pitfalls of living danger, but this is the example he chose. The more you ride through urban areas, the more you become accustomed to the habits and actions of cars and pedestrians. (Pedestrians are impossible to read by the way, it may take the gentle breeze of a set of handle bars between their thighs to wake them out of their office slumber) You can read the gestures and intentions of cars, I can’t explain how, or why this is possible, but you can. Get into enough accidents, have enough close calls and your subconscious mind instinctually tells you when to put your risk to the wayside and push forward or when to slow down and see the situation from a distance, study what the possibilities were and the ramifications of your rushing into them. The same applies to social interactions and stations, I know people, I’ve known people my entire life, the more people I know and get to know, the wider my knowledge of people grows. I’m not psychic, and I’m not some great neurological scientist, I’m just someone who knows people and often times understands them, we all do, through sheer experience and instinct.

So how far is the gap between being able to understand and read the people you know and understand, and people you see passing on the street. Well, it’s vast, the truth is, you could attach archetypes of such and such type to each person you meet based on people you already know, but their paths to being themselves are ultimately different and thus they do not fit into existing archetypes that you create. (PS I effing hate Karl Jung and his own self-righteous categorizing of people so I refuse to take part in his pseudo-scientific, self-indulgent, masterbatory tripe) The only method you can hold true to are what you can see. The obvious that can be rationalized by sight and mind, it’s real because you saw it, not because you heard it, because many times people in public will tell stories or prostrate themselves for attention or to present a certain air of what sort of person they are. What you can see; are their shoes worn? They may spend a great deal of time on their feet. Are they dirty? Maybe they are shoes reserved for leisure activity and we worn in the mud, possibly for a run on a rainy day, maybe the dirty look is a fashionable alternative to clean, maybe they’re on their way to buy a brand new pair, maybe they can’t afford a new pair, maybe they’ve had the same pair since law school and are superstitious about discarding them. These are questions you ask, so what’s the right answer? They’re all right answers, and, they’re all wrong answers.

It is not my intention to explain how to read people’s minds, or to understand complete strangers with a simple glance. Rather, it’s to understand other people’s lives to some degree in order to navigate through your own. If you see a man who looks suspiciously nervous looking around, hugging himself occasionally and eyeing passersby cautiously, you know that meeting eyes with him would not be prudent or wise, as the likelihood of his taking offence or being suspicious to your stares would provoke a confrontation and possibly and altercation. If you see a couple holding hands down the street in the dead of night laughing raucously and making loud, inappropriate commentary about the end of their evening, you know that warning them about the atmosphere of slumbering folk and gentle ears would only serve to create a moment of dismissal and annoyance or simply a few feet of silence between your intercedence and their state of mind. And if you see an expensive-looking car barreling down the street with reckless abandon and a badge of battered fender nearly changing the landscape and aerodynamic design, be sure it’ll peel out, barrel ahead and hit something else, so make sure it isn’t you.

It's a New Day For Old Jobs

I used to have a saying for the direction my life was heading in, ‘Apparently I’m on a destructive path, so get out of my way.’ I was working as a bicycle messenger and every turn presented some kind of danger, risk of death and worst of all the prospect of being out of work. Every time you embark on a new job, your brain is plotting a path, navigating around known obstacles and preventatively planning around the possibility of new obstacles. Every package is a fresh start, a new dawn, an instant of starting over and improving on your last endeavor.

Starting a new job can be like going to the movies, hearing a live band play, or going to a reading by your favorite author. It’s a new experience, it’s exciting and your time is filled with wonderment. You hang on to every moment not knowing what’s going to happen next, what will be introduced, what will tickle your senses and pave the way for new things and validation. But what if you start an old job, a return to a bygone career you promised yourself you’d never return to, either to prevent ruining prior experiences or because you have been deeply soured by the first go round. Either way, your deepest instincts tell you not to go back. You can’t go home again, so why would you think you’d be able to go to work again. Similar principles apply, the you that was you then, is no more. The life you lived then is not the life you live now. For the mass populous living in the moment, it’s difficult to see yourself tuning into your favorite television show sometime in the future without any reference between what you saw last and what is happening currently. You’re lost, disinterested and worst of all, something that had a memorably lasting impression on you is now completely ineffectual and boring.

I was a bicycle messenger in college, for those of you who don’t know what that is, there are people, like myself, who ride a bicycle through busy, dangerous city streets nine hours a day five days a week carting around everything from rolls of architectural drawings to fully-potted house plants. It’s the science of finding the shortest route around the bumps in the road, the daunting hills of completion and the traffic and congestion of everyday obstacles. Any tangible item of urgency and impression that cannot be faxed, emailed, relayed, phoned or whispered, is generally carried by messengers. Think of UPS drivers who pick things up and deliver them one at a time on a bicycle, that’s what I did, and that’s what I do. I had a wonderful experience in college, splitting my time between scholastic pursuits, extracurricular endeavors and working downtown, dabbling in the corporate infrastructure. I was sure that once I finished college, I would move on to better jobs, more important positions that utilized all of my various talents. What I found instead was a workforce I was in no way prepared for, a string of jobs that possessed redeeming attributes at arm’s length, but without any actual satisfaction or fruition. So I began talking about it, musing, if I couldn’t find anything else, that would be my fallback job.

Many people have fallback jobs, for some it’s waiting tables, tending bar, others work in bookstores and movie theaters, some end up working in offices as secretaries or personal assistants while others start a career at the bottom, never to rise an inch. It is with these fallback careers that many people are fording the flood of unemployment. With a sour economy and rampant joblessness, it is natural that people will come to accept what comes their way, what is available, familiar and open. As we trickle back to our fallback careers, searching for more meaningful ones begins to seem farther and farther away, job security sounds like a distant island where everyone is perpetually on vacation and they can’t spend their money fast enough. Tough economic times call for tightening of belts, reigning in flagrant fiscal flippance and favoring flagrant frugality. Though our future appears bleak, I’m grateful to have a job to come back to, a skill that can carry me through, and a position that though insecure at times, is always in consistent demand.

Can we perform to the degree of what is demanded of us? How much compromise are we as a hollow workforce willing to make? Often it is easy to see oneself walking out the door with famous last words drying at your lips and into a search for a better life. Some say finding a job is a full-time job in itself. My grandfather always said, ‘It’s easier to find a job when you have a job.’ Who’s right? I’ve been looking for work off and on since May of 2007, I worked freelance for a short while, but the open-ended nature of work and payment scared me and I decided to pursue what I could as an employee instead. I worked for artists, making art, building structures, painting, but that too, was open-ended, had no future, and ultimately had no permanence. Should I have left? Probably not, but it was only a month later that they laid off their entire workforce, who weren’t eligible for unemployment anyway. I had an advantage of starting my job search early, before more consequential layoffs. Did that help? Not really, I was out of work for five months before I decided to go to my fall back job. So does having a job help you get a job? It might, the appearance of being in demand, an employee of value who holds the structure of a company together is far more attractive than the last person picked for a sports team. Not working presents you as the slow kid, or the kid without aptitude, or who isn’t physically fit. You become the outcast of the workforce, unwanted by any team regardless of how uncomplete or uneven the teams are, they’d rather play without you. So, does taking a step backward in your career really prepare you to enter where you left? No. It doesn’t do much more than keep you afloat, paying rent, feeding yourself, before someone even takes notice of you.

The economy has got to get better, promises were made, motions are in action, things are happening and will happen. But until then, I feel obligated to fall back on what I can, trip over jobs I said I wouldn’t do again. Make new experiences, new lives with what is available to us. Wishing and hoping and praying and dreaming is great fun and it keeps us going, but we have to mobilize what we have available and complete something, bring something to fruition, or by the time our dream jobs are being offered again, we won’t have the luster left to take it.

Being a bicycle messenger is very satisfying work, you work as hard as you can, you’re paid for the work you put in and you gain a sense of accomplishment every time you deliver a job. Not to mention lots of fresh air and exercise. The problems come from the same places they appear at every job, from the top. Working in hierarchical environments usually produces the trickle effect, the idea that poop rolls downhill and some days you feel less like a person and more like a freight elevator, people riding you up and down all day carrying the weight of the masses from one floor to the other and being cursed when you don’t work exactly how they please. Mostly though, you’re your own boss, you hang out with other coworkers when you’re not working, and the whole world is your office, one big, open maze of buildings, loading docks and offices where you work. But that’s not what I want to do with my life, that’s not how I want to spend my 30s, I don’t want to wake up 40 wondering what I’ll do in my old age with bad knees no retirement, health care or social security (because it’s all gone). So I’ve decided to work nights, not in a liquor store or a restaurant, not mopping floors in a research facility, but from home, writing, researching, applying for jobs that were posted the previous day, keeping my skills sharp and my mind wound, keeping my inner clock from losing it’s numbers and clouding the future I can see. If you already work nights, your days are your nights, and you’ve got the jump on those who work days. But don’t lose sight of the future, don’t lose sight of your hope and your goals.

As long as you can see yourself in motion, as long as you can perceive change in your life, you can hang on to some kind of hope. So long as you still have enough time to live your life, you’ve got time to change your life. We have many careers over our lifetimes, and it’s never to late to start a new one, it’s never too late to learn a new skill, it’s never too late to shift course, to re-route to move away, travel. It’s never so late you can’t decide, don’t wait for the bottom to hit you on the ass. I promised myself I wouldn’t go back, I said it was too late, I was too old. Maybe I am, maybe it is too late and maybe I am too old, maybe these young bucks who’ve shown up in my place are where I was and I’m just reliving a bygone moment in my life. But I’m making a new memory, a new life, as a new me with a different perspective, whether it’s a good thing, a productive thing, I can’t say. But I’m back, I’ve returned, I’ve rejoined the workforce, navigating through the toil and roadblocks, meandering through familiar surroundings that have become new and unfamiliar and I’m finding my way to put a little money in my pocket, some positivity in an uncertain future and another route around the bumps in the road, the hills of completion and the traffic and congestion of everyday life. Apparently I’m on a constructive path, pave the way.

Proverbial Jerks

An old proverb says, “If you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all.” It’s fascinating to listen to other people publicly express their own political views, opinions and ramblings. For an essence of such a public conversation almost purposely overheard by passersby in a hopelessly indulgent manner, it’s purpose is seemingly to feed their rampant egomania. In specific the far leftist community of Cambridge, MA think of themselves to be particularly educated and astute being of the opinion that they are not only the shapers of their own future and the catalyst to which past indiscretions were smothered but the endless masses of past policy-changers and world-molders whose own action seemingly single-handedly quashed the conservative right until its resurface and rise. To this end they then place the blame on subsequent generations of young adults for not exacting their own brand of vengeance upon policy makers and corporate indulgence. It is with my own responsibility and action that I seek to deconstruct the casual conversations of burned out politicos, long since soured on their own soda of change and malleable governmental input. It seems strange to have so many of a single, bygone generation running the country with so few of them who have interest in public discourse and upheaval.

It is a fairly simple task to criticize, to lay blame and question the methods and motivation of those re-experiencing a resurgence of republican conservatism. It’s an even simpler task to do nothing, to stand idly by while the evil specters of corporate control creep over the proverbial ridge, to wipe out whatever social structures and reform that may be in place bathing itself in the plentifully available bounties and swimming in the valley of fiscal embezzlement. It exists in the current socio-political climate a questioning of motives, direction and intent with the express aid of proven flux with the annunciation and commencement of a new dawn in American politics. The election of an idealist, one of incorruptible diligence has given purchase and voice to a fallen generation of motivated activists who have taken a resurgence of interest in change and deformed an accomplishment of prolific proportions and in its most malleable form shaped something ugly, cutting directly to the source material, the very foundation upon which the ideals and ethos of this country were formed.

That said, it is with an open mind that I myself question the past political decisions and their last-minute spicing of the early boiling cauldron. A meeting of minds yet to evolve and understand the country that they created, corpses rehashing the creation of their own policies around a fallen castle of idealism. The inherent nature of born Americans is to fight back, to rise in dissent and cast off all manner of oppression. Based on the oppressive qualities on which our current political system sits, it is our nature to desire change in all forms and from all directions. However, to change every facet of our political and cultural traditions simultaneously would only achieve a level of uncertainty and turmoil that we as a country would not, could not recover from and in such a weakened state would give rise to all manner of extremist tendencies and subscription. We would line up to whole-heartedly sign up for a variety of trivial causes with assaulting aims and tumultuous ends.

Rather, we as a country must exact our changes piece-meal, in incremental ammendements of subtle, effective twists of our national fate and the future of our collective consciousness. We must address each issue as they collapse, economic system first as we have seen it’s considerable demise recently and the exposure of it’s endlessly corrupt infrastructure of capitalist ladling and double-dipping in the face of the poverty-stricken masses. The age of pulling ourselves up from our bootstraps is over, no longer do hard-working means justify the hard-living means. Ours is a life left up in the air, consumed by our own uncertainty. The system itself is designed to elevate those already in power born of privilege and opportunity so that they may take their own liberties, be they liberating the funds of our economic system or allowing their mouths to criticize events, states and elements of our shaped environment that they have no interest in changing, only to deconstruct and create an intricate web of complacency.

Voices like those of Noam Chomsky and Ralph Nader, though appropriate and important for specific instances and discourse, are unwanted and unwelcome in a moment of obvious change, simply because the statements that they make are positioned specifically to criticize rather than exact any sort of correction or iterations. It motivates, though negatively seeking specifically to rile the rabble-rousers and create a mob mentality of a different demographic. Though useful if applied positively, it is seldom the initiative and aim of the commentators and becomes self-indulgent soliloquy of entertainment of network televised proportion.

Once a year hundreds of able bodies cram into an auditorium at MIT to hear Noam Chomsky deliver his own state of the union address in which he discounts any efforts of anyone in action and creates a dystopian deliverance of detrimental dissidence. Once every four years environmental advocates, nay-saying, negligible ne’erdowells haplessly cast their votes for Ralph Nader, in favor of the liberal Democratic incumbent serving only to empower the conservative hold on the American psyche. Even the past election, in which our current president was elected, Nader himself refused to remove his candidacy from the general election and had it been more of a landslide, I’m sure his stubborn, self-righteous subjugations would have come into question. However, this is not the case and record store owners and Harvard professors alike continue to soak themselves in the ocean of their own meanderings.

I suppose I should be thankful that intellectuals and academics have kept the traditions of discursive thought alive by reading endlessly dry political theory and criticism, that I haven’t the palate for. I suppose I should be thankful, for without the constant drone of nit-picking critical thought, my own inspiration of discourse could not be assuaged or pondered. I suppose I should be thankful that my own positivity and hopeful nature leads me away from similarly embittered assertions and into other stations of alternate futures and renewal. I suppose I should be thankful that I was able to overcome my own negativity and bitterness and witness a justification of upheaval and unraveling the tightly wound ball of twine in which we have trapped ourselves momentarily. Mostly I’m thankful that I can’t bring myself to feign an interest and subsequent conversation based on the shared ideals of a gaggle of old codgers with nothing nice to say, and in fact nothing to say at all.

Finding My Den of Intrigue

For the last couple months since my triumphant return to Boston, I've stayed in the comfort and warmth of the houses of friends who were good enough to put me up (and put up with me)until this point. During the course of a conversation with my friend Tiernan about my expectations for finding a permanent living situation, it occurred to me that I was holding out for something unreasonable, irrational and sometime in the future, who knows when. This kind of mania was an unfair burden to place atop the shoulders of the brave souls who took me into their homes. So I've decided to find a place, possibly a sublet, something to get me settled until I know more about what my life back in Boston will entail. In the course of my perousing, meeting, and exploring I've found cute French grad students, musty houses that have their own names, reluctant roommates all due respect, and recently enough an older gentleman who sounded like Richard Nixon on my voicemail and turned out to be some creepy disbarred lawyer/ sex offender. How can one even begin to figure out where the right place for them to live would be? How can we, in the desperation of impermanent dwelling and flux in the face of unstable financial markets find what we are looking for at a reasonable price. Well, I'll tell you. In the course of a conversation with friends I was staying with, I decided it would be really fun to live with two international spies who were constantly trying to kill each other and subsequently cleaning up after themselves, it would add a dimension of weight to the atmosphere in the house and never would there be a dull moment. So I decided to post an ad on Craigslist, actually two ads, because one is in Cambridge and one is in Jamaica Plain. Each ad expressing specifically what I was looking for in a living dynamic. The ad is as follows:

Den of Intrigue Sought (Jamaica Plain)
Reply to: hous-1052346906@craigslist.org
Date: 2009-02-26, 11:23PM EST


Ideally I'm looking for a room in a house with James Bond and Ernst Stavro Blofeld, possibly Inspector Clouseau and Kato or failing both of those Spy vs. Spy, the everyman living amongst international spies, subtly and cleverly attempting to do each other in, and promptly cleaning up after their rubble. The perfect morning routine would entail my exiting the bathroom and nearly tripping over a lit cluster of dynamite that I would promptly douse under the spigot in the bathtub, diffusing the situation before I leave for work. Then I would have my morning coffee entertained by all the subtleties of a knife fight and promptly make my exit as a shootout begins in the common area. If your household fits any of this criteria, is a den of international intrigue or simply cycles through roommates as the information they have been put in charge of carrying becomes obsolete I want to live there. Or if you appreciate a wry, sarcastic, non sequitur-laden, fatalistic sense of humor I want to live there. I am a fun, considerate, respectful roommate and I would love to live in an atmosphere constantly laden with non-soiled-dish-related crises. By all means send me an email, be sure to mention which breakfast cereal has the odorless poison powder, and please don't kidnap me in a van with no windows, you never get a second chance to make a first impression.

So far, I haven't received many responses, but alternatively, the responses I have received have all been positive, interesting, educated, fun people with great personalities and great houses, not to mention that I have not been contacted by any government agencies. Though it troubles me slightly that two separate people have replied with the sentence; follow the clues, and attached their ad or a synopsis of their property. Yet I still believe in the effectiveness of personal exploration bourne out of necessity, a notion born in my mind, appreciated mostly by people who know and understand me, it's natural that like-minded people would respond, and in some cases be excited to live with such a person, not to toot my own horn, but bizarre non sequiturs are a part of my regular routine.

That said, if you're a financial planner dying to fill their life with some good old fashioned death metal kids, post the ad. If you're a maitre'd at a swanky restaurant and all you want to come home to is a bottle of bourbon and the Swedish bikini team, post the ad. And most importantly, if you're an out-of-work neerdowell looking to be entertained by the subtle drama of clandestine operations carried out exclusively in your common areas, post the ad, some people are as starved for an audience as you are a venue.

Ear Waxed

I’m going to be honest, I don’t know much about science or anatomy but I do know a fair amount about the ear, or to be more specific, my ear. I don’t much care for loud noises, heavy metal, hardcore punk rock, vacuum cleaners, cuisinarts, when growing up in Southern California, the favorite pastime of teenage ne’erdowells was driving around in a small car with big speakers and driving the passengers to the brink of decibel threshold. I was the backseat driver, yelling for the volume to be turned down. I was the guy who called shotgun and upon planting myself in the front seat, carefully turned the knob down a few clicks to the dismay of the rest of the car.

But I like what I like, the rhythmic hum of drum beats, the careful drone of the voice of urban youth poetically bounding off the walls of selectively cropped samples, the din of a grainy guitar keeping pace with the bounding wooden sticks on animal hides. I even enjoy plugging my ears from the sounds of everyday life, closing out traffic noise, the chatter of strangers, the calculating beeps of checkout stands at the supermarket and creating my own personal soundtrack with the aid of musical mastery reworked over the landscape of my travels.

But too much volume and I’m soured, too much reality to snap me out of my musical trance and I’d rather hear the sounds of car tires bounding over the same pothole in a seamless rhythm, the repeated siren of emergency vehicles urgently rushing someone off into the night.

I share a room with a bird, a love bird specifically, who’s attitudinal chirps are often endearing, and though she and I do not speak the same language we can have an exchange of demeanor and temperament. But at times, even her volume can seem like talons on a chalkboard, the shrill cry of dismay accompanied with crashes, bells and booms from within her cage.

Often times, my mind feels like a caged bird, flooded with sounds and sights that I cannot interpret, that my brain does not understand. Daily I’m bombarded with things that seem to be of the interest of the populous, but do not appeal to me. Specifically the way pop music has evolved over time. In my own teenage evolution, I can remember tuning the radio to a specific point on the dial, waiting anxiously for the DJ to play my ‘jam’. More and more frequently I find myself out of touch with popular culture, being unable to understand the appeal of the music that has become the product of digital culture but without the influence of a wealth of symphonic calculations readily available via the internet.

In it’s ultimate irony the pop music of yesteryear and the bygone practice of instrumental mastery is its missing connection to the sounds of today, whilst commercial products, clothing and textile patterns remain nostalgic, cyclically borrowing from ideas, color combinations and shapes from a past still within reach.

An ear is the way I determine, balance. An ear is the tool I use to understand. An ear is how I set my own mood, the way in which I understand sound. It seems so simple, it’s become part of who we are as people, but does our ability to understand sound evolve as we grow older, or does it become less able to interpret what it hears. Does our preferential differentiation of sounds or music make us more evolved and tell us what we enjoy, or does it simply serve to make us miss the golden days of us waiting with bated breath for our ‘jam’ that may never travel radio waves again?

It’s confusing that I cannot palate the loud drone of the vacuum cleaner, yet, the steady grind of garage bands from the 60s never cease to gratify me. Is it my preference to hear one over the other, or does my mind simply not appropriately interpret the sound of the vacuum. I don’t know much about science or anatomy, but I know what my ears tell me and more often than not, they tell me what I like.

Interviewed For The Shampire

Being out of work is nerve-racking. It’s the process of enjoying all the free time you coveted while you were working, but with the added pressure or knowing you haven’t any money coming in, the added pressure of knowing that you’re going to have to find a job, and the added pressure of those around you simultaneously judging you and envying you for not going to work everyday. Finding a quality job, really is a fulltime job in itself. I don’t care what anyone says, you put more effort into it, you weigh more factors, your cover letters are less non-committal and sincere when you’re out of work. Daunting tasks become manageable, you house is cleaner, you get more sleep, you’re more personable, the world seems far less daunting when you don’t have to confront it with balled fists five days a week.

However, once these initial benefits become part of the overall structure of your life, once you have grown used to the benefits and reaped them to their fullest potential on a daily basis, once again our inherent human unhappiness of complacency starts to jab at our ribs and not always, but occasionally, a finger will slip through and poke at our heart, making us feel useless, without societal contribution, purposeless. So the job hunt becomes a calling, a mission, an expedition into the rear-end of the corporate infrastructure. The land of back-door politics known popularly as human relations.

So you make past the initial interest phase, they like you, they want you, they feel you may be qualified for the job. An interview is scheduled, you have anxiety and/or excitement leading up to said event. You go, they like you, or, they don’t, you don’t really know. You wait a week, they liked you, they schedule another interview, you have anxiety and/or excitement again leading up to it. You go, they like you, or secretly hate you but feel you are a good fit and need you. They’ll be in touch. You say thank you, you thank everyone, because that’s what you do. You show them how much you appreciate them even considering you for the job. Then you wait, they say they’ll be in contact, will they? They sweat you out, you sweat it out. You wait, and wait and wait. The end result means your future, either you work for them, they who like you, or secretly hate you and need you, or you’re back to being self-employed, gainfully driven and exploring the endless possibilities of the job market with your limited skill set. You start thinking, well I COULD do This, or I COULD do That thing, and even I guess I wouldn’t MIND doing something like THAT. But you won’t do it for long, don’t lie to yourself. Tell all your friends and strangers you meet that you’re freelancing and secretly live off of the savings you told yourself you’d never touch. Pay for things at hand from the earmarked funds for your future whatever that was, because the future is now when you’re unemployed and dangling in the wind. So you wait, you bide time and bate your breath. You sweat silently and let your stomach eat itself wondering, pondering, floundering. When will they call, when will they write, will they?

You listen to the radio and hear about how many other folks are in your position, lost their jobs, got laid off, cancelled their health plan, behind in their rent, calling public radio stations to justify their lifestyle. Calling strangers to validate the unfortunate state of the world, the unfortunate state of the economy. We find it far less daunting in trying times to be truthful with strangers about our situation than with loved ones, who seemingly would have a better perspective on your situation. However, strangers have a completely objective view, a long ways, farsighted, telescopic vision into our estranged bereavement with society’s failings and short-comings, our inability to speak up when the screws were being put to our futures, and the ease with which we replaced our tormentor with a savior to whom we weigh challenge with the shouldering of our collective burdens, not to mention his own possible performance anxiety because of the connotations his presidency brings not to mention the proxy benefits he brings to this country by simply being brilliant and idealistic.

The question of whether or not you’ll get that call, that demand for a weak mind and strong back for minimal compensation and cut-rate benefits, depends largely on people who are at the opposite end of the spectrum, it’s also pivotal upon the relative demeanor of said people and their own approach and attitude towards their positions. Those in short-term, dead-end positions they don’t plan on staying in and can’t see a future in will be quicker to offer a position than those who love their jobs simply because they don’t envision themselves sticking around to see the ramifications of their actions reach full fruition and therefore are likely to hire the best-looking candidate rather than the most qualified. Whilst those who love their jobs, their co-workers(in a plutonic capacity), and their work environment will be extremely careful and meticulous as to whom they staff in the open position based mostly upon not upsetting the careful balance and equilibrius synergy they have achieved in their office. You don’t want to BE the chainsaw in the abattoir. So you play it cool and calm, just like the interview itself, minimal contact, with maximum enthusiasm.

The truth is, it isn’t a decision that’s up to you, you can’t fake you. You can’t completely misrepresent yourself, especially in multiple visits, you wouldn’t be able to fake it twice the same way, you aren’t that good. So you’re real, you’re you, and at least you don’t fuck up being yourself. You’re nervous, you’re edgy, you’re trying your best to answer authorities thoughtfully and not dodge confrontational corners of questioning. It’s a bit like being accused of a crime, being accused of ineptitude, misrepresenting your abilities and your capabilities. Are you qualifications what they say, they assume you’re lying, they just don’t know what about, and if you’re totally honest, it confuses the hell out of them, because they start to assume everything is a lie, even though you know what you’re talking about. Hubris, that’s what hits them in the face, appropriately placed gallbladder oozing across the line into lines of quandary that qualm queries of quote and quickly quips into quixotic quelch, which is a made up word that means you drank a lemon-lime soda of medicinal resolution. It’s a decision out of your hands, it could be in the stars, the planets, the fates, but at the end of the day your career belongs to working people, folks who themselves must resolve that you will be around, a cog in their machine, and they want one with sharp teeth, not a squeaky wheel. So you’ll just keep rolling along, no matter where your gears turn, your wheels will spin and your machine will keep on working, at work, out of work, working on it, working it out, it’s an active part of your lifestyle, even just the thinking, the pondering, notions of working, earning, a return to joyless toil or the bubbling basis for all creative wellspring embodied in an office, or a cardboard cube and a fluorescent glow, it’s patience that defines progress, the patience of searching, the patience of finding, the patience of waiting itself, because the decisions are bourne out of patience, so everyone will wait, and see.

Wait Up

All good things come to those who wait, but so do terrible things. If you wait around long enough, terrible things catch up to as quickly as wonderful things. The only difference is, you’re patiently waiting for them to overtake you. You’re waiting for fate to step in and take control of your life for you. It’s an avoidance of making a decision, getting involved, making an impact on your own future. You’ll let the planets decide before you know what’s for dinner. The only problem is, the planets could care less, and while you’re waiting, you starve to death. Me, I’ll eat something small and then see what the planets are dishing out, usually orbits, I don’t eat orbits. While you’re waiting to hear about a job, an examination, that clunking noise your car makes just before it overheats, while you’re waiting, the outcome doesn’t change anyway, if you’re leaving it up to fate, it’s already pre-decided anyway, you aren’t going to change the outcome by being less vocal or by feigning apathy or suppressing your anticipation. Really all you can do is move forward, get busy, put in some work, because all things may come to those who wait, but personally, I’m hoping to avoid some of them.

Cable Boxed Out

I’m kicking myself really, possibly the most historic moment to take place in my entire generation and the ultimate irony is that I couldn’t watch it, because I don’t have TV. Recently the people who brought you television have stopped sending the “snow signals” we’ve all known and loved over the years. The barely visible, barely audible transmissions broadcast locally for decades are, at least in some places, a thing of the past. Thus, we have no other choice than to go out and spend fifty dollars on these digital converter boxes (ten if you bring in a government provided coupon, of which, in the midst of economic crisis, ironically, they’ve run out of). The problem is that the fuzzy channels are no more, either you receive a digital signal or you don’t, which means you wait around for ten minutes just to see if you CAN watch tv. Now, again, you’re getting frustrated saying, why didn’t you just watch it over the internet on CNN? The short answer, is I did, but because all that information has to be uploaded and cannot be telecast, I had to wait on the delay which then led to an edited version, and though I can now watch it in snippets, doesn’t have the same power as watching it live. Now you’re asking, why not go to a bar, the library, break into your neighbor’s house, call your friends? I explored most of these options, save for the bar, I didn’t like the subtext of being briefed with the future of this country surrounded by people drinking their breakfasts at eight in the morning. In the end, I didn’t watch it, I caught snippets on news websites, and heard them discussed on NPR. My mom expressed reservations about specific quotes I hadn’t heard as yet and dissected them. This is how I receive my news.

In a world full of watered-down, flattened-out, spun-around, topsy-turvy factual event dispense, I have complicated my sources even further. Gaining my up-to-the-minute updates through third and sometimes fourth-party sources. And though many of you are now groaning, aching and wishing you hadn’t read this, I’m proud of it, rather than gaining a newswriter’s opinion, or the networks, or the company who pays for CNN’s banner ads, or the secret agenda of the fox news corporation, I’m getting the input of people. They may have the wrong information, their facts may be twisted and terrible misinformed, but their opinions about them are there own. Their own readings of subjectively delivered news coverage is there own, even if they think Bill O’Reilly holds merit, I have to believe that there is a reason they said so. Maybe Bill O’Reilly is holding their entire family hostage, which is a great deal more likely than his opinions holding merit, but their opinion would still be important, it would prove what we’ve all known for many years, Bill O’Reilly kidnaps people’s families to prove his points. Whilst I, get as convoluted as possible with my non-sequiturs as possible in order to prove my own.

In light of this discovery, I’ve decided not to discount anything the people around me say, just because it sounds different or insane. If you tell me you were abducted by aliens who decided to destroy us when MASH was cancelled but got sucked into the cable tv abyss, I believe you. If you’re convinced someone is after you because you’ve recreated great moments of the cold war in your imagination, don’t walk into any dark alleys in your imagination, you’ll get stabbed, I believe you. If you tell me Bill O’Reilly is a nice man deep down, he’s just angry and frustrated, get bent, Bill O’Reilly kidnaps people’s families with the possibility of eating them. If you’re sorry you didn’t speak up about political corruption and the destruction of our economic stability until it was hip to do so, you should be ashamed of yourself, for that, and wearing pants that clearly don’t fit you and your father’s salvaged prescription glasses from the 80s, they weren’t cool then, your father wasn’t cool then, and as his progeny your twice as uncool for wearing them.

I’ve also decided that it’s okay I don’t watch tv, it’s okay I don’t stay up on current events, or sound smart when I talk, look strangers in the eye, have very little grace and poor depth perception. I’m comfortable with not being a part of a historic piece of media coverage, though I secretly envy everyone who went to DC ie T ,A and S. Everyone can remember where they were when JFK was assassinated and what they did in the aftermath. I can remember where I was when I heard about 9/11 and what I did in the aftermath. Whenever someone asks me where I was when Barack Obama was delivering his historic inaugural address, I will proudly state, I was in bed, fast asleep, dreaming of something weird, because I had the freedom to.

Acute Tellevism

So you’ve decided to become addicted to a television show. It wasn’t a choice, you did your best to avoid tv at all costs, but you were caught. You hadn’t considered the fact that once it was all on dvd, you wouldn’t be able to resist the whole story. An epic saga, with high production value, great story, in-depth drama and closure, sweet, sweet closure. Private cable entities with great spending possibilities and loyal fan-bases couldn’t be completely wrong, could they? The television show that dare not speak its name, is available, in entirety on a series of discs readily available to the rental and purchasing masses. Waiting patiently to usurp weekends, drag out evenings, and give you a radioactive tan line in a bulbous concavity from the glow and hum of the idiot box. An escape that willfully removes us from our everyday worries, a reason NOT to watch the news, a current event that lives in a moment of time, a moment of time that lives on a series of discs, that are readily available, for sale or rental. Easy answers with concrete closure just your local video store away.

So you became addicted to a television show by proxy. Someone you know, watched an episode and was hooked, or was talked into renting the first disc of the first season, “begin at the beginning the dark lord beckons.” And so you do, but first, you have that inkling in the back of your mind, once I open the floodgates, will I be able to say, ‘no more’. For those of us without an existing tv addiction, it only takes from season to season for the serialized crack to work its way from our system. We need only sleep it off, and our curiosity is trumped by actual responsibilities and life as it continues in general. However, for those who watch habitually, loyally and compulsively, there is no escape, will they escape the perilous predicament in which they’ve found themselves? This is how the first Batman tv show stayed on the air, this is why kids planted themselves in front of giant cabinet radios to find out what would happen. At some point we became a nation that needed closure, we started going to the movies too often and one day, that was it, every show dawned on a new day. One could pick it up as needed and a miss a few without missing any key plot points. Though to be sure, there were still a few that required continued attention. But not until our introduction to the first family of the mafia The Sopranos, followed quickly by the Lord of the Rings trilogy and the Lost television franchise was a can of worms opened. Those worms are still crawling, day by day, hour by hour, we are not getting what we want and we are getting invested in the lives of people who don’t exist.

So you’re addicted to a television show because there was nothing else to do. It’s interesting how invested we as a society can be in television programs and their outcomes and yet so disconnected from politics and the inner workings of our social systems. It’s a brave new world we live in, in our cultivated complacency our eyes and minds are diverted daily and we are rewarded with the happy lives and ongoing trials of people whose lives we are not wholly invested in. Evening after evening we plant ourselves in the comfy lull of a cushy couch or other cultivated cushion with our proverbial mark and print in it. Our conscious minds are suspended in their disbelief at art imitating life for an hour at a time. It’s satisfying, to be sure, not being directly affected by the drama, social anxiety, real life decisions and consequences of everyday life, knowing that it will not affect our personal lives. Ironically our lack of investment and focus in actual life, everyday events and the state of political and social affairs has led to an increase in global drama perpetuated and often cultivated or originating with our own country of origin. It was sheer luck and social buzz that got us out of the political purgatory of the last decade.

So you were forcibly addicted to a television show. Society forced you over the edge, you couldn’t find anything else to discuss around the watercooler at work, your girlfriend/boyfriend/husband/wife threatened to leave you if you didn’t. I understand, everyone else who’s seen it understands. But will society understand? You’ve lived almost an entire lifestyle out of bondage, only to pick up the shackles and bind yourself in a prison of your own design. Our lack of focus and haphazard cautionary tale, begins at this moment, nearly a decade ago, when our minds were first being mesmerized and hypnotized by media and our attention was being pulled away from the small political fire and towards the serialized explosion. It seems that the period of implied and self-induced ignorance and complacency is coming to a close. The age of television has not ended, but the age of using the proverbial idiot box as a radioactive curtain shielding independent thought and keeping the people out of politics is over. That said, our President cannot do his job alone, we cannot sit idly by and expect him to perform miracles. He needs and requires our continued support and outspoken motivation. The time has come for those who want to get involved, to find their niche. You can become the pebble in the folds of the political oyster, a tiny thorn on a big, pretty flower, too small to remove, but just big enough to be a prick.

So you’ve been kidnapped by armed gunmen and while tied to a chair you’ve become addicted to a television show to pass the time until rescue. The ultimate irony of this predicament is the notion that the show in which I’m so ensconced concerns the corruption of America and its political system during a time of upheaval and renewal. I can only hope that my interest is held as equally by the developments and future endeavors of the new administration. I can only hope that I wait with bated breath for refreshing news, breaks in the lulls and doldrums of frustrating cleanup left in the wake of an irresponsible tidal wave of corruption and violent self-indulgence. I can only hope that the hope we’ve invested manifests itself in the form of positive action and a new path through the political bureaucracy like a chainsaw through a chair factory. I can only hope that your mouth is that chainsaw, cut through all the bullshit and from the splinters honesty, integrity and a renewed hope will rise. I can only hope that your rise doesn’t plateau and that the idealism and honesty you bring to the office is everything I can only hope it can be. Television gives closure to all stressful situations, all loose ends are tied to something and rarely are questions left in the air during the final commercial break.

So you’ve come to realize that being addicted to a television program isn’t so bad, as long as there is a light at the end of the proverbial tunnel and you know it has some form of resolution. Recently politicians speak of America as a young country, a country in it’s early years of development, in the budding years of character development, not yet reached the crescendo of it’s plot arc. We have not reached any closure in our future, this country has no pigeon hole to which we are relegated. We have finally re-invented the nature of our characteristics and broke the mold from which the world thought our ideas would continuously pour. Now is the time for our rebellious teenage years, to begin discovering who we are as a people, to establish our identity as we as a people wish to be. We can be better, we will be better, things will get better, but our final season is a long way off. We will yet have many episodes, we will yet have many adventures, and we will yet face many challenges, but though closure is a comfort many Americans wish and hope for, it is not without open-ended change and upheaval that greatness and wonderment develop and as we dawn on a new season, a new chapter in the future of this country, I hope this season goes on forever.