Fiddling While Rome Burns

Erin stated the last time I spoke with her that I needed to write more political or socially minded blogs basically write what I think in my head when I listen and watch, listen, or read the news.
Ok here it is

I have the overwhelming sense that we as a nation, society, species, are collectively "fiddling while Rome burns". Rome can be what ever you want it to be...climate change...U.S./World economy...the degradation of the US education system...the widening gap between the rich and poor...and on and on.

So far what have we done to combat global climate change.........NOTHING.....not one damn real thing...meanwhile our planets climate changes...so on one side we have the Michelle Bachmann's of the world who say carbon dioxide is totally natural...well so is uranium but no one advocates that nuclear weapons are ok because uranium is natural...lets see high concentrations of uranium in one place equal HUGE EXPLOSION...high concentrations of carbon dioxide equal WARMER PLANET. Then there are the people who state we don't know if global climate change is caused by humans and human activity. Ok.. WHO CARES. We know what is good for humanity and it is a stable climate and unstable warmer climate is bad. So why not try to keep the climate in a state we are comfortable with. After all we have made most of the planet a freaking park for our comfort why just sit back and do nothing while nature takes it apart. To live on this planet we have to keep it habitable and to live happily and healthily we must keep our climate in check. I don't care about the fact that the world may get warmer and we may or may not be the contributing factor. I care about New York City being under water because the ice caps are melting. Or how about not just New York City but the whole eastern and western sea boards.
My attitude toward any conservation effort is this...I want to save a particular space because it is beautiful not because it is natural. I want to save gray wolves not because they are gray wolves but because they help to keep an ecosystem functioning in a healthy manner and I would like to see that ecosystem some day. The world would suck if there was no wild life. I hate treehuggers that want to save the planet because it is somehow more important then humanity. Earth will get along just fine with or without humans. We need to save the planet because it makes us more comfortable.
Lets be pragmatic, regardless of who or what is causing global climate change it is happening and we should combat it. For the very simple reason it will make us happier, crazy weather, famine, disease, sea level change all make for unhappy humans.

so tired...more on the economy later this weekend...lets just say shame on you Mr Obama and shame on all of you Senators and Representatives...you are all asses...

The Best Things About the Year So Far....

I thought that I would list some of the best things about my year so far....these are in no particular order...

Transformers 3 was better than Transformers 2
Restarting my blog
The New Beastie Boys album (Hot Sauce Committee Part Two) especially the songs
Seeing Yeasayer with Erin and Peter
Reconnecting with Christina and Kari
Seeing "Super 8" and having it restore my faith in blockbuster movies...thank you again J.J. Abrams...magical
Quitting my job at Bank of America
Adele's song "Rolling In the Deep"
Having no freakishly major illnesses (ie Bells Palsy, Strep throat more than once...)
Reading "The Thousand Autumns of Jacob DeZoet"
My epic snow adventure with Todd
Todd getting me a new ipod because of the epic snow and Valentines Day
So much more I am sure....

One More Week

I have done it, done it after so many years of complaining and not doing it. What is it? You ask an important question, and I will answer it. It is....I have quit my job at Bank of America. After many years, many frustrations, and many missed opportunities. After many take overs, and drinking the BofA kool-aid, and then becoming disillusioned by the fact that BofA wants you to drink the Kool-aid but doesn't actually believe in what it wants you to drink. I have quit. I am going to work for a different financial institution and I can't wait. This coming Friday is my last day with BofA.

In other news, I have had a double ear infection. Ok, seriously, what adult 34 year old still has ear infections. Ear infections in both ears....arg....so I am on heavy duty drugs because I believe that my doctor is just as tired of my ear infections as I am. Ear infections suck btw.

It was a crazy week in the US and Grand Rapids...two things happened that, I believe affirmed my faith in two things...1. The U.S. justice system though flawed like any human institution is the best in the world...2. There is not God....Heavy....
So I will do it like everyone else in the blog-o-sphere, I will talk about Casey Anthony. I will say that though I have feigned disinterest in this trail I have been glued to my TV. I am one of the 4 people in this country I believe who don't actually think that Casey Anthony is guilty. I am not sure if she is innocent of involvement but I don't think she actually did the crime, and I think a jury rightfully found her not guilty. Why did they find her not guilty because of a terribly circumstantial case against her, a bad prosecution, and utterly needless expert witnesses (odor experts, really). Now does this mean I think that Casey Anthony is a good person or made good choices, not at all. She is obviously pathological, and narcissistic, and knew what happened to her daughter, none of which means she killed her daughter. Did Caylee Anthony get justice...NO she didn't...The thing is that our justice system is only to determine guilt not to mete out justice. Finding someone guilty or not guilty of a crime can sometimes mean justice but, also, sometimes it means nothing but they are guilty under the law.

This is a court of law, young man, not a court of justice.  ~Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.


Justice is incidental to law and order.  ~John Edgar Hoover


Although the legal and ethical definitions of right are the antithesis of each other, most writers use them as synonyms.  They confuse power with goodness, and mistake law for justice.  ~Charles T. Sprading, Freedom and its Fundamentals


Law is not justice and a trial is not a scientific inquiry into truth.  A trial is the resolution of a dispute.  ~Edison Haines


Now the think that reaffirms my lack of belief in God....the recent shooting spree in Grand Rapids...A man killed 7 people and then himself. Two children lost their lives...on top of this there are millions of people starving, living in abject poverty, being beaten for speaking out, enslaved, being massacred for their religious beliefs or ethnicity, and the list goes on. And I am to believe that all of this is part of God's plan, that God is good...no...I...do...not...accept...this... explanation...Go ahead make yourself feel better for believing you will go to heaven, that we must accept the suffering of this world in order to have eternal salvation. Come on...that is an excuse not to do anything about the problems in the world around you. An most religious people I have encountered care nothing of people, they care about laws, following this or that rule. Funny how God is much like a government, follow the laws and be a good boy or girl and maybe I will give you a reward. I just can't do it...it is so patronizing...I am just trying to save your soul many religious people say, when in reality they want you to follow their rules, don't step out of line, conform to our principles. It is a bunch of garbage to keep people down, keep people sheep. 

A Good Day Indeed...Why Am I Up At This Hour....

First lets start with I cannot sleep...I am going to blame Todd for the coffee drink at 10:30pm...I am up regardless so I shall blog.

Anyone who knows me knows that work for me has been super stressful as of late...say the last 6 months. I will only say that though I am personally doing extremely well in my position and my manager and I have what could only be deemed a almost perfect working relationship. Truly, she is the best manager I have ever had, I cannot say enough the skills and abilities that she possesses. Regardless of the fact that I have blown my goals out of the water, I am being told that I am not doing a good job. Weird isn't I have the wrong behaviors, not attitude, behaviors, which is code for you are not doing it in the vague way we want you to do it. It has been incredibly stressful to say the least. Well, I have found a new job, not a new career that is the same but at a new workplace. Monumental, by the way, I have had the same job for 12 years. I still have to pass a background check and a drug test and being the worrier I am, I am of course worried...but unless I have another personality I don't know about both should be fine.


 Erin in her most recent blog post has spoken of the wonders that is the organic or home grown strawberry. Todd and I received more strawberries then I have seen in most grocery stores from his mother's garden. It was wonderful. Todd made jam, including a strawberry jalapeno jam which is amazing. I have, as anyone who remotely follows me on facebook would know, been gushing about my recent strawberry pies as seen below. They, I have to say, are beautiful strawberry blueberry pies. Here is the thing though, I am worried about is the all too patriotic look of said pies. I really feel like they look like something that would show up at a Michelle Bachmann or Sara Palin event. They look so patriotic Midwestern Mom with a gun who home schools her kids that I am just a bit scared. No really, I just think they are pretty (pie number 2 especially).

Pie number 2

Pie number 1

I have sworn off all musical competition shows...After watching what could only be deemed a horrific version of Under Pressure. Which if you you would like to lose your mind you should listen to. I am not going to go into the awful mixing Blake Shelton is way too loud, you barely hear or understand Ceelo Green. Also Adam Levine and Christina Aguilera your voices are just wrong for this song, strike that all of their voices are wrong for this song. I have decided that I am no longer going to sit though these shows and listen to awful AWFUL remakes of good songs...

Very seldom does any artist do a better or as good of a job as the original artist with a song. I can only think of a few...Hallelujah - Jeff Buckley (Leonard Cohen)... Proud Mary - Ike and Tina Turner (Creedence Clearwater Revival)... Hurt - Johnny Cash (Nine Inch Nails Trent Reznor)... I choose these examples because one outshines the original in every way (Hurt), one the original and remake are just as breath taking in their emotional resonance (Hallelujah), and one though iconic I believe the original is far superior to the remake (Proud Mary)...Johnny Cash is moving beyond words when he sings Hurt, the age in his voice, the regret, and broken quality, he is a man in mourning over the losses in his life. Cash strips away all the Nine Inch Nail-ness of this song and brings you right the the emotional core. By Nine Inch Nail-ness I mean the juvenile self pitying and self flagellation, that is almost all NIN songs. Johnny Cash is full of regrets but in a real I have lived a long hard life sort of way, the N.I.N. version is regret in the 16 yr old get over yourself you haven't seen bad yet sort of way. Jeff Buckley and Leonard Cohen sing Hallelujah in very different ways but both make you ache. They get the pain of the song, this isn't melancholy, or just sadness...this is down right hurt, pain to your core, the very fiber of your being.  You are being torn apart by the very one that you love, they are torturing you but you still love them. They get that this is love...love is not parades or grand gestures it is the aching feeling that you need this person, they may and probably will hurt you but you still need them.     Proud Mary though iconic by Ike and Tina Turner I think is much better served by the slower pace of C.C.R. I like the more down in the swamps version of C.C.R. The Ike and Tina version is just to poppy and fast, you can't hear or understand the words that are being sung. C.C.R. is just a good old down home, left the city because I love the Mississippi...it is a great ode to the Mississippi in the end.

Seriously this middle of the night thing leads me to write crazy things 

A Day Only in the Movies

Yesterday was Father's Day, so I went home to visit my parents and see my family. It was one of those days that you see in a movie like Home For the Holidays. It was one of those days that is bittersweet in the sense that you know that you love your family beyond words and you are glad that you live far enough away for your sanity. You also realize that you are growing older and your parents are growing older.
What made me suddenly nostalgic about my family. My dad bought a 8mm projector from the guy next door and we watched home movies my parents took. There is something about watching a 8mm movie without sound. I watched my parents younger than I am now smile, laugh, fall down dunes, play with their first born son and daughter, and just generally have a good time. It was amazing, while sitting there watching my parents watch themselves 40 years ago, I had the sudden realization that they are aging. Not in a oh my god my parents are OLD, but in a wow they have been through a lot. They have a lot of memories, they have had a lot of joy, and these are their twilight years.

The best video of the after was watching my father on my parents honeymoon run down Sleeping Bear Dune and lose one flip-flop, oh there is the second one...he veering dangerously off bal...oh damn there he goes face first into the sand...then cut...he is trying to nonchalantly walk down the dune to my mother, who judging by the camera shaking, is laughing hysterically. The best part of watching that video was my mom making my dad rewind it and play it back in slow motion.

It was a magical day....thanks Dad...

Remembering a Younger Me

You ever have one of those moments where you think of yourself and your past. Past choices, decisions right or wrong, people who have moved in and out of your life. I have been having one of those times. So I sit here in the morning before going to a job I don't really like thinking of my past. I am not sure how to put into words the feelings I am having it is not nostalgia in anyway, I know that the past wasn't better. It isn't sadness or anything as simple as that, it is maybe more melancholy. Maybe it has been reconnecting with a few friends and seeing how things have changed or not changed with them. Not sure... 

Solitude is Over

I have finished "One Hundred Years of Solitude" it has quickly vaulted into my top all time favorite novels. I feel like I may have to end up rereading this novel which I rarely if ever do. I think an accurate description for how Marquez wrote this novel is like an onion you peel away layers to find more layers...oh wait except now you notice that the layer that you peeled away was actually two or three layers not one...and where did this other onion come from.
Every sentence, every paragraph, every page is so full of meaning and description, everything is so well drawn that it is impossible to not forget or miss things. I think that is exactly the point. For example, Santa Sofia de la Piedad, she is there for most of the novel, barely noticed but there. As I was reading the final pages of Santa Sofia de la Piedad, I realized that I could not remember when she had entered the story or which Buendia she was related to. It was as if she had just materialized out of the darkness of the Buendia house. I had like so many of the Buendias become as comfortable with her presence or lack of presence, taken her for granted. Then she leaves, and when she does her need in the house comes in to focus, you realize that she is the last bit of reality left. The Buendias are now no longer moored to reality, they are free to destroy themselves. In fact there is nothing left for them to do but destroy themselves. And they do, they fulfill their destiny and bring about an almost biblical destruction that will wipe them from the Earth completely. 


It is a beautifully written novel, I loved it. I am now moving on to another novel. Here is my list I started out the year with...
1. The Thousand Autumns of Jacob De Zoet - David Mitchell
2. One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
3. Oryx and Crake - Margaret Atwood
4. Underworld - Don Delillo
5. Nueromancer - William Gibson
6. Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen 
7. The House of Mirth - Edith Wharton 
8. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
9. Something Wicked This Way Comes - Ray Bradbury
10. Atonement - Ian McEwan
11. The Folding Star - Alan Hollinghurst
12. Titus Groan - Mervyn Peake
13. The Cider House Rules - John Irving


I am thinking that I am going to read "Something Wicked This Way Comes" next.