Do you believe in miracles?!
It's been too long since I last posted.
We've always turned to sports to try and anesthetize our momentary pain and loss. It's a national trait, and it's one that only makes sense. We have a strong sense of symbolic measures, and have a way of transforming them into a concrete meaning for each individual person. Times of trouble call for something amazing. They're always be a rider on a white horse at the last second, the calvary will arrive right before the fort falls, or Christian Bale will just blow up Skynet.
Or something.
Think about it. After Iran, after stagflation, the energy crisis, after Bonham kicked it, we turned to Lake Placid in 1980 for any glimmer of hope. Jesus Christ, did we find it. A bunch of college kids ended up beating the Soviet Union's team of glorious people's socialist ice hockey players in what is still considered one of the biggest upsets in sports history. People remembered what it was like to believe in miracles again. Did ice hockey fix everything? Good God, no. We still had to put up with the Culture Club and Ratt, but people had something to hold on, to some kind of victory they could claim as their own.
The Patriots provided another moment after September 11th. Granted, the entire country outside of New England hates them now, and for good reason, but the Patriots was the team that most Americans were pulling for in Super Bowl XXXVI. The 2001 World Series was similar as well. The New York Yankees faced off against the Arizona Diamondbacks, and many people across the country became Yankees fans, just for one series (Except for those who had the common sense to back up the NL).
This years seems like sports was a mirror, parodying real life inside the fields.
Michigan, Detroit especially, has been given a blow it may never truly recover from. The lifeblood of the state, the automotive industry, has teetered and fallen and it remains to be seen if it will rise again. Thousands are unemployed, foreclosures are sky-high, and Kwame Kilpatrick is bringing more trouble down on Detroit (Seriously Kwame, just man up and go to prison). At a time when they needed it the most, Michigan was given the Detroit Lions and a close-but-no-cigar appearance by the Detroit Red Wings. When Michigan needed a good win, a good team, something symbolic to hold on to, they just couldn't quite reach it.
Arkansans have seen the same thing. Granted, our basketball and football teams were all freshmen with new coaches, but that only helped to mitigate the sting we felt this year. Sure, the Hogs beat LSU and got the boot in what was arguably the best game of the season, but the rest of the season was somewhere between paternal frustration, and outright anger. Almost losing to Western Illinois University?! The Kentucky game?! Chrissake. Basketball was marginally better, with our major upsets of Oklahoma and Texas. The rest of the season? What's that? I didn't hear what you said. Guess we should move on to baseball.
Baseball. The Diamond Hogs were our Red Wings this year. I am incredibly proud of our baseball team, most commentators didn't even think they could make it to the College World Series, let alone go as far as they did. We went against all odds, and LSU is an all-round better team. It just would have been nice to made an appearance in the finals. It was a good run, but man did we need a victory to claim as our own this year.
With memories of the Olympics fading fast, and a major break until the World Series, looks like we're just going to have to rely on summer blockbusters.
Oh, shoot.
TAG TEAM BACK AGAIN CHECK IT WRECK IT LETS BEGIN
(11:41:26 PM) DG: I'm going to become a wrestler
(11:41:30 PM) DG: name: JFK
(11:41:47 PM) Drew Henderson: gimmick?
(11:41:55 PM) DG: signature move: back and to the left back and to the left back and to the left back and to the left back and to the left
(11:42:01 PM) Drew Henderson: lol 4 real
(11:42:53 PM) DG: JFK Jr.
(11:43:00 PM) DG: signature move: flying by instruments
(11:43:20 PM) DG: he tries to do a flying pin, but just goes headfirst into the sea of people.
(11:43:25 PM) Drew Henderson: hahaha
(11:43:36 PM) DG: RFK
(11:43:39 PM) Drew Henderson: oh god
(11:43:49 PM) Drew Henderson: please let these guys be a 3 man tag team
(11:44:30 PM) DG: signature move: the Estevez
(11:44:38 PM) DG: A hit so shitty, yet it still makes you see stars
(11:44:46 PM) Drew Henderson: dang
(11:44:58 PM) DG: That was the weakest joke
(11:45:04 PM) DG: yet the best founded.
(11:45:07 PM) Drew Henderson: i liked it
How Gene Roddenberry wrote a President
Star Trek, with its multi-faceted multimedia empire, is an iconic part of Americana. It is a uniquely American experiment, a projection of American idealism and
utopianism into the blank canvass that is the future where dreams and follies can be realized in their fullest with even the slightest of negative consequences can be swept aside or solved in 22 minutes. It is a future where a socialist, peaceful Federation doesn't even field a single ship devoted to purely military ends until decades after its founding, and the most militant governments eventually succumb to their own flaws and greed within a season or four. While the original television program started in the 1960s, it has continued on to this very day and some of the recent series have succeeded in grabbing the imagination of a new generation of would-be
Trekkies. One of these series,
Voyager, was especially interesting to me.
In the series, the USS Voyager is catapulted across the Milky Way galaxy into unmapped sections that no human has ever seen or travelled. The lone ship completes a harrowing voyage across the Delta Quadrant and eventually makes it back to Earth through some phoney-baloney physics crap. The show was like Sideways, you either hated it or loved it. No matter which side you stood on, you had to give Voyager praise for one character: Seven of Nine.
Oh yeah. Seven of Nine. The former Borg bitch who turned into the hottie that James Cameron only wishes the Terminatrix in T3 could have been. Those catsuits are a testament to women everywhere, at least the really hot blonde ones. In addition, Seven of Nine was an intelligent, strong-willed, independent woman who saved the USS Voyager time and time again. She also, from time to time, seemed to have a budding lesbian relationship with Voyager's Captain Janeway. In short, she was a revolutionary character for the Star Trek series.
The woman who played Seven of Nine was Jerri Ryan, a woman who also made a name for herself on the Fox series Boston Public. She is an absolutely gorgeous woman, and her love for gourmet cooking and cuisine has led her to become somewhat of a surprise guest chef in many high-end restaurants around the world. During the time she was acting on Voyager and Boston Public, she married to Jack Ryan, who would eventually become a GOP Senator from Illinois. Jerri Ryan eventually filed for divorce from her husband, then-Senator. She alleged that she had been forced to commit sexual acts in several clubs around the world at his insistence, including one where whips, chains, and clubs dangled from the ceiling (Think Matrix: Revolutions).
As a result of the scandal, Jack Ryan announced he would immediately cease his re-election campaign for the open seat in the Senate. In a hurry to try and fill the opening, the GOP flew in Alan Keyes to try and create a credible candidate to face off against the then-unknown representative from the Illinois state legislature. Alan Keyes, already being one of God's greatest jokes, lost the election miserably to Barack Hussein Obama.
So, in short, Star Trek is responsible for the rise of the 44th President of the United States of America.
Hell, all Star Wars can claim is to be a six-part anti-Nixon rant.
An Open Letter to Sarah Palin concerning her connections to the Alaskan Independence Party
12 October 2007*
Dear Governor Palin:
No one can deny that your ascension through the political apparatus of Alaska has been nothing short of meteoric. It has recently come to my attention that some of this may be due to your loose affiliation with elements of the Alaskan Independence Party, a secessionist political party that consistently demands Alaska no longer be a part of the Union, but rather secede outright or become a commonwealth like Puerto Rico.
Look, secession is a bitch. Just trust me on this one.
Sincerely yours,
Daniel R. Green
Resident of a former Confederate state
*yeah, I know. Commie date format.
The Single Greatest Threat to Ralph Lauren
For some time, there has been a feeling in the souls and minds of men that there is some other force at work in this world. Some kind of ethereal, evanescent presence that has a hand in all affairs mortal, transcending the very capacity of description, definition, nomenclature. Like dark matter, it is something that has its very existence defined by what it doesn't do rather than the physical characterstics it might have that we can observe, cold and mechanical from our scientific towers.
We were wrong.
Yes, there is a force at hand that is powerful and most often is the single greatest source of disorder and sower of discord in the known universe. The Greeks called him
χάος, or Chaos. The Norse, the ultimate race of badasses this planet has known besides the 1980s American Gladiator cast, called him Ginnungagap, or the empty expanse without rule, rime, or reason between the primodial forces responsible for the creation of the world. I have a much different name for him, one without such overtures of awe and minute stature in comparison to this force.
I call him Aaron Walter, the biggest douche this universe has or ever will see.
And yes, that is taking into account the economy-sized douches at Sam's Club.
The evils of this one human being defy convention. That this much harm, pain, suffering, and malice can come from one singular being who has been immersed in the very moral fabric that had brought up most others to be sane, rational, loving beings is truly mind-blowing. Dwelling on what him such a huge fucking prick is pointless, though. What is important is to make yourself aware to his crimes, how horrible this human being (if he is indeed such) is. Thus, I give you part one of
Aaron Walter's crimes against humanity and animals and inanimates and, oddly, himself. (tm) - Perhaps the most startling thing is the mental handicap that Aaron Walter has. He is the sole known person afflicted with Aaron Walter's Syndrome, a mental state in which the higher cognitive functions are completely and totally inoperable unless Aaron undergoes near-constant anal stimulation. As in the case of most sort of stimuli that result in altered synaptic patterns, as his evil, evil brain becomes used to one level of stimulation, Aaron must then up the level of stimulation in order to become basically functional, not quite unlike a crack fiend choking on a fetid, crusty phallus just to get the fix he needs to regain what he experiences as normalcy. As a result of trying to up the ante on this stimulus problem for years on end, it's not uncommon to see Aaron bending over in the middle of the busier Little Rock thoroughfares in an attempt to swallow up a respectably-sized Vovlo with a lower-upper class family via his gaping anal orfice. It is estimated that this kind of sensation allows Aaron to have mental faculties approaching that of a shitty little kid with Downs.
- Aaron Walter went to Valapraiso. During his tenure there, various small animals were found in the surrounding area missing various body parts, a la Dahmer. Nothing was ever proved, but hey. I'm just bringin' up a pretty fuckin' interesting point, jackholes.
- It is now know as a fact that this insane, filthy degenerate is directly responsible for the innundation of New Orleans. In what some have come to call the createst display of solo-bachial tendencies since the "Gods of Rock threesome" (which consisted of a drunk Mick Jagger, a high David Bowie, and an Iggy Pop who needs no drugs simply because his life alone is that much of a drug), Aaron consumed every single fluid liter of Canadian whiskey, Scotch, single blend, mixed blend, rye, bourbon, and painthinner masquerading as whiskey (I'm looking at you, James Foxx) in the matter of a few hours. The subsequent emptying of his Satanic bladder into Lake Ponchartrain created a wake so large and septic that the city was completely overwhelmed. The resulting media circus, taking advantage of a local thunderstorm with high wind speeds, was a carefully constructed ploy by the federal government to divert attention from the fact that the United States could be so easily overwhelmed by an individual who loves Phil Collins as much as this dirty dog-sodomizing whore does.
- All I'm saying is, it's a hell of a coincidence that Aaron has gone by the names Mark David Chapman, Phil Spector, John Wilkes Boothe, Lee Harvey Oswald and claims to have a time machine. Think about it.
- It is rumored that pregnant women spontaneously miscarry around Aaron. This explains the attrocious shape of the carpet in Dillard's Park Plaza, as well as the sudden disappearance of pregnant coworkers in the area. While never confirmed, the circumstancial evidence is so overwhleming in favor of proving this true that you would have to be as dumb as a pregnant woman hugging this sick bastard to think that it's a lie.
- Upon investigation of secret films taken by the Red Army immediately after the Chernobyl disaster, a dimunitive figure with an overly-pronounced widow's peak was seen sitting with a big ass package of TNT, smoking a cigar, and cackling maniacally like one of Satan's brides. Further analysis is available, but Aaron might be expecting a phone call from the governments of Belarus, Ukraine, and Russia. By "phone call", I mean crack special forces breaking into his place, kidnapping him, slaughtering his family after committing unspeakable sexual acts to them, and making him disappear into thin air. You may not want to screw with La Cosa Nostra but you sure as hell don't piss off Putin, you dumbass.
- He has been known to mix brown and black, eats disgusting cheese, and is a Cardinal's fan.
The second most insightful conversation I've ever had with Jacob Oliver
(6:10:29 PM) DG: this Bhutto shit is out of control(6:10:51 PM) DG: namely the weeping American psuedo-intelligentsia that is mourning her death(6:11:05 PM) DG: They didn't know who she was until the the whole martial law hoopla a bit ago(6:11:30 PM) Jacob Oliver: why are people surprised they finally killed her?(6:11:36 PM) Jacob Oliver: I'm just surprised it took them so long(6:11:54 PM) DG: it's like Diana(6:12:01 PM) DG: only with people who are supposed to be smarter(6:14:50 PM) Jacob Oliver: yeah(6:14:52 PM) Jacob Oliver: fun note:(6:15:35 PM) Jacob Oliver: Bhutto the First's execution was mentioned in Charlie Wilson's War, which I saw the night before little miss democracy got gunned down/blow'd up(6:15:56 PM) Jacob Oliver: lesson learned - TOM HANKS KILLS RABBLE ROUSERS(6:16:42 PM) DG: I KNEW IT(6:16:47 PM) DG: TOM HANKS IN '08(6:17:06 PM) Jacob Oliver: OMG HE'S GONNA EXPLODE NEW HAMPSHIRE
(6:17:47 PM) Jacob Oliver: HANKS/MCCAIN '08(6:17:56 PM) Jacob Oliver: Kickin' Your Ass So You Don't Have To
London Calling, pt. 5: This is The End
The silence of the car and the stillness of the air only exacerbate the tension building in me as I sit on the side of the road in the Delta. I'm surrounded by endless expanses of nothingness pregnant and oppressive with the force to make me realize my insignificance like some piece of forgotten flotsam on the face of the endless seas that girdle this earth. I don't have to have my eyes open to know that my knuckles are white from trying to throttle the steering wheel or that every single muscle in my face is taut from gritting my teeth. A cacophony of emotions burns, rising uncontrollably after so much work on suppressing them for weeks.
Or maybe, just maybe, I'm feeling them for the first time.
I explode into tears, with a violent scream I feel coursing through every single last fiber of my body as I shake myself and try to rip the steering column from its welds in my car. I weep. Jesus, I weep so hard that I lose control of myself. My body contorts and twists as it tries to fit itself into the fetal position, as if my body is trying to move to the one evolutionary comfort hard-wired into our very souls. My face hurts so much from the tortuous effects this effort of blatant emotional display forces upon muscles that are far too often unused for a society to be truly successfully expressive. There is a sort of dignity that comes from this sort of honest, cavalier display of humanity; however, I lose it as I slowly slide down in my car seat, moving from weeping into a sort of snuffling, self-drowning crying that almost lacks the energy to even exist in the first place.
I'm broken, ruddy-faced and tear-stained, stewing in a cheap suit soaked with sweat from an August funeral. And alone. So alone in this place, where the only landmark is a dead tree off somewhere and cicadas are so loud I can barely hear my own pathetic blubbering.
I get it, I'm nothing.
I first heard that Becca had died in the bathroom of a Village Inn. The seafoam green wall and the creme tiles on the floor and I were soon acquainted as I slid down the wall to lightly come to rest on the floor after hearing the voicemail from Aaron. The message never really set in, no matter how many times I replayed it and no matter how many customers walked in eyeing me like I was some insane junkie. It's been a week since I fled Conway for Memphis in some vain attempt to try and find salvation from this crucible. Salvation was just a veneer it seems, and losing Becca demolished the little dream I had of my reality.
Becca was an archetypal college friend. She was someone you could fall out of contact with for months at a time, yet would still know you on site and care about every little detail you could tell her. She was patient and kind, she was caring, she was honest. She was a blast to drink with, too. Jesus, the nights where that girl saved me by opening her place to me and my drunken antics. The Night of the Throw'd Chairs, one of my absolute favorite nights of all time, was all under the aegis of Becca. She was also a pillar throughout many of my classes. If it hadn't been for her support, I might not have made it through some of my classes. If the revolution had come, and backs went against the wall, she would have been in my Politboro.
Becca lived and died around Helena-West Helena, a sleepy town on the Arkansas bank of the Mississippi. That damn river is going to call me until the day I die, it seems.
The days between when I get the news and the funeral are a blur. I worked on the pipeline, I talked to plenty of people, I did things. Numbed, that was it. I was completely numbed to an infinite degree. The thing that kept troubling me was that me not feeling anything didn't keep me from thinking about my lack of feeling or, for that matter, Michelle. Not since I came back have I wanted to just hear her voice as much as I do now, and it's a pain in the ass to realize that I probably still love this girl. Confusion is not the emotion I want on top of mourning the loss of one of my best friends. A heart can only handle so much, and Tom Waits is calling me.
The road curves, guiding me through Fordyce, Kingsland, Rison, Pine Bluff, and the multitude of towns that depend on the fertile soils and unnerving flatness of the Delta for their sustenance, and very existence. It is this swathe of black soil and wide open space that feeds the mouths of the world, that gives life to an innumerable mass the world over. It is this living soil that will house Becca to its finality. Ashes to ashes, I guess. I don't want to ponder the whole life-death-circle-of-life bullshit right now. I'm tired of the phoenixes, I'm tired of the martyrs, I'm tired of the messiahs. I simply want absolution and manumission from this torment, and being the maladroit I am I can't seem to find any way out. I wonder, more seriously than I would like to admit, if somehow Becca died because of me. Maybe, somehow, I've had some sort of karmic retribution upon myself that is so enormous that it somehow steals innocents' breath in order to punish me?
Hell.
I stomp the pedal to the floor, speeding into the east and (hopefully) leaving that self-destructive train of thought to choke on my carbon monoxide, just in time to almost be caught by a state trooper. Not again. Some miles later, I reach the sole funeral home in Helena-West Helena in a complete and thorough daze that robs me of any sense of time or place. The automaton that ruled me when I was next to the Thames has taken over again, and before I know what's over or even before I can tell something has started, I'm off with a friend in my car to stay the night at the Isle of Capri Casino in Lula, Mississippi. After all, what better way to memorialize our friend who had a lust for life and genuine happiness than burying ourselves in the disorienting lights of slot machines and the intoxicants provided en masse, for free by the single greatest source of revenue for the impoverished State of Mississippi? What better way to remember the passing of a friend, what else can I do to forget the monumental loss of one of the most beautiful people than by doing whatever necessary to force my mind into
not firing those synapses?
Being the shallow asshole I am, I'm almost late for the funeral when I decide to go to McDonald's for breakfast. The funeral is a nonevent, for me. I don't know these people. I don't know these memories. I don't want to. I'm fucking lost and adrift in myself as wave after wave of conflicting emotions dash my brain and heart into the hard rocks of life over and over again with unrelenting fury and inhumane delight. You want schadenfreude? If humans weren't ingrained with this disgusting trait, we wouldn't do half the things we do to ourselves to make our pain linger that much longer every time our miserable, filthy little hearts find themselves ruptured.
The burial is intense. The heat pressing down on the congregated people there from all walks of life, the sun that sets skin aflame with a simple kiss, the emotional tension and outpouring that is such a constant that it almost desensitizes you to its presence as soon as it is encountered. A Methodist reverend dedicates Becca's remains to the soil that has provided these people with their very way of life. Small talk follows, that inane sort of thing that people do instead of either falling silent in reverence towards the power of the moment or ripping your goddamn heart out and sticking a pin through it on your lapel. Negotiations begin on lunch and other worthless drivel, and the road calls again. Leaving, we see a honor guard from the Army approach.
It sucks being in a nation that enshrines people who die so young they never truly lived.
I don't know what brought it on. I don't know what sort of Joshua it took to break down my walls that had held in all the emotional responses I should have been feeling for the last weeks, but when it came I was unprepared. I weep on the side of US 79, somewhere south of Stuttgart for the better part of a quarter of an hour. My mind seems to have stopped working, I cry things out to no-one in particular, I make mad statements that have no subject, no verb, no direct objects. It's as if Irving Washington has taken his censoring to my very speech. These animalistic and pathetic utterances are not even worth wasting the time or energy on, but for some reason doing it makes me feel better. A catharsis that happens so naturally and fluidly it is almost like I'm not doing it myself. Everything is fuzzy and glazed over. I'm losing touch.
Suddenly, clarity. Sadness waxes evanescent and is replaced by sobering, clear, pain-fueled rage. RAGE. There is no fairness to this whole goddamn farce that I call a life. First, Michelle. Then, jail. Then, Becca. Where is the fucking justice in this, why is this happening so fast, with such intensity? Fuck karma. There is no way that karma exists if this is happening to me, I have done my fair share of lying, cheating, stealing, and general illicit intoxicants in my time, but nothing to warrant THIS. No, this is bigger. This is more pointed, like a knife aimed right at the heart. This much pain has to have a purpose, I refuse to believe this much misery is simply chance! I scream and rant and rave in my car. I curse Michelle with every name, every word I can think of for making me so numb I couldn't cry when someone far more deserving of my tears than her died. I curse her for every little thing she ever did to hurt me and to make me so blind that I can see no one but her in the single greatest moment of pain I've ever felt. I curse Lynn for not loving me anymore. I curse my parents for living in such an inaccessible part of BFE. I curse me for every single little transgression and sin I've ever committed in my life before I descend into tears again.
I'm volatile. I'm desperate. I want, more than anything else, some kind of peace. I beg God for help. I beg Him to kill Michelle and bring back Becca. I ask Him to kill me. I ask Him to give me the Michelle from two months ago, the one who loved me as much as I loved her. No, not her. I want someone who I can love like I loved her. I ask Him to simply leave me alone. I cry and cry and cry, my dirge for Tom Joad. Then, the tears stop. The anger dies. I sit, staring straight ahead in a moment of odd, shimmering tranquility that I imagine settled over Dresden when all was said and done. A moment that is so still and quiet that not even your lungs dare disturb it by drawing a single breath.
This adventure is over. I have roads to drive, gas to burn. I have to live.
Keep on rockin' in the free world, 'cause your pretty little face is going to hell.
