ofREH

I’ve resisted writing about the pending November disaster but given that even my Girlfriend doesn’t read me, I’m think it safe territory to put my thoughts down and perhaps it’ll actually help me sort them. Which is really what I should be aiming for anyways.

There are two things I’m very solid on.
1. Never Trump. I’d vote for Deez Nuts before I’d toss his direction.
2. I’m very torn about both wanting to see this Great Experiment go down in a huge ball of flames, for which it richly deserves at this point, or hoping a contested convention might see a unknown and completely unexpected Phoenix rise from the ashes to save the day and Country.

What’s new for me is that I’m actually hoping for complete and utter chaos at the GOP convention. We need it. A reset. If we survive it.

I must believe we will survive because what keeps me up at night, eyes wide, bunched up and grabbing my knees close to my chest, is the thought of potential SCOTUS seats that might become vacant in the next administration and if any of the current field of candidates were to get their grubby little fingers (yes, exactly, Trump as well) on them…it’s over. Really over.

The William F. Buckley, Jr. strategy of voting for the most electable has failed us, I think.
The idea being that even if not perfect, we’d likely get more accomplished with a moderate than a true conservative and that, otherwise, you’d just be throwing away your vote.
After decades of pursuing this tactic, it has resulted in the GOP becoming virtually indistinguishable from the Democrats, moving further and further to the left to be palatable.
Well, helloooo Trump!

Trump is by no means a conservative, which makes his rise that much more curious, but it’s completely predictable, reasonable even, to see how after decades of incremental gains the progressive, politically correct, agenda has made, there would be a radical shift in the other direction, by a largely ignored and discounted middle America.

No doubt my liberal Friends would insist the average Trump supporter simply uninformed or rather, just simple, but I like to imagine I am neither and there is a certain appeal to a candidate that lends voice to what certainly the rest of us are thinking, but too chickenshit to air.

This is all too apparent in the spate of recent episodes of the Left eating their own. Where overbearing, intrusive, policies or agendas are now targeting the very demographic who instituted their organic (yes!!, been hoping to use that word to this effect!), viral spread.
Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you inappropriate appropriation!!

Now if I were to generalise, and God knows I love to, I’d guess that poor bastard with the dreads is wondering just how the hell he got there.
Why, no doubt some of his best friends are black. He’s all for legalization, he’s pro-choice, Meat is murder, safe spaces, Mother earth, Palestine.
A quick look at the back of his Prius would have easily fended off this would-be attacker, had she just noticed that he had all the right bumper stickers, his bone fides.
He’s on your side. He’s in the club and obviously “irie”!
~psst, good story, bro. How’s Trump sounding now?~

Well, it’s just a thing of beauty to witness. Seriously.

So here we are.
A clown, an old white dude, and a harpy walk into a bar…
God help us.

Remember, remember, that day in November.

At last count, I own 314 documentaries.
They range on subject matter from Ken Burn’s Baseball to Sir David Attenborough’s, epic, Life series. What you will not find in this library, nary a one, is any documentary produced by the History Channel.
Because the History Channel is to recounting history, what Ross Dress For Less is to haute couture.
The History Channel is where battle reenactors ply their trade because no one else cares to.

So, you can imagine my scorn when a Friend recommended the series “Vikings” (a subject matter of huge interest to me), once I learned what network it was a attached to.
Yet, there I was again, one Spring evening, fresh out of content for viewing pleasure and, also, unwilling to make better use of my time…tuning in. For roughly ten minutes.

I lasted only that long because in episode 1 of the 1st season, we are introduced to a character played by Gabriel Byrne, of whom I’m a big fan.
Sadly, he was not enough to carry the day. Once they threw Lagertha The Shield Wife at me, adding the distinct, unpleasant, odor of Xena Warrior Princess to it, I was done.

Fast forward another year, another Spring evening.
Needless to say, I waded through enough to commit and, at times, didn’t regret it.
The central character, Ragnar Lothbrok, played by Travis Fimmel, is genuinely well delivered and almost worth the effort. He will unavoidably remind you of Charlie Hunnam‘s character, Jax Teller, in Sons of Anarchy but, surprisingly, with less camp.

The actual history portrayed is loose at best and why, once having watched BBC’s Last Kingdom, I felt shame for ever being a party to it.

Now, BBC’s Last Kingdom…
That’s some Viking history right there.
Based on the Bernard Cornwell Saxon series, of which I devoured, this worthy endeavor has us joining the Vikings and Anglo-Saxons at the start of Alfred the Great’s reign.

It’s a fine adaptation of the novels and really the only complaint I have is that this guy…

is played by this guy…

Not by any stretch a deal breaker but once seen, it can’t be unseen.
The first season finished way too soon, and if BBC does what it has with Peaky Blinders, it’ll be years before we have another. Sadly.

As far as “Vikings”, I’ll likely finish this season if for no other reason than to see Loki die a  horrible, slow, death.

As I wait for the start of Game of Thrones sixth season to begin in April, I am currently only watching three other series regularly. 

All three are grossly subpar in comparison but even if made to answer for themselves, they are all found wanting.

As TV is largely the reason I find to avoid facing the challenge of sitting down to write, I thought I might incorporate the two and write a number of reviews. Allowing me to both continue mass murdering brain cells whilst devising convenient, made to order, topics for this absurd challenge I’ve accepted. 

                                                  ***SPOILER ALERT***

The first of the three and the more popular by far, is The Walking Dead.

I’ve found that I am only current on this network (AMC) production because, as it’s been through all six seasons, I only catch up out of desperation, when, during the Spring time lull, there is virtually nothing else to watch. 

This season finds Rick and largely the same crew from last season, save a few Alexandria residents of note who perished during the last siege of both Wolves and undead, doing much the same as they’ve been doing for six seasons.
Jack shit.

Rick is humping Michonne. Abraham is humping Sasha. Carol is humping the road. 

This season seems to be trying to get us closer to the core characters by revealing more of their psyche and motivations beyond simple survival. Yet, beyond perhaps Daryl, there isn’t a single other character I care to know more about and, even less, who they might be humping. 

Even Carol, who had showed great promise as the nurturing cookie maker by day/step up on me and I’ll end you by night baddass, seems to have come unstuck and is pursuing a Morgan-esque hugs all-around, no matter the cost, personal re-invention. We’ll see, I suppose.

The single redeeming season six change in direction, for me, would be a scaling back of the gratuitous Walker gore that, by the end of season five, just seemed silly. 

I have quit watching TWD mid season a couple of times, picking it back up later, as I said, out of desperation, and so far this season has me wonder why I bothered.

It’s Sister project, Fear the Walking Dead, was much more compelling with it’s premier and  I’m looking forward to it airing again in the second week of April.
I’ll let you know.

Tomorrow, the History Channel’s Vikings.

I’ve noticed a growing, particular, subset of city dwellers lately.

I say city dwellers but it’s more likely they dwell everywhere but that I so rarely wander these days.

The most recent sighting was at a local pub where three of them had sat at an outside table and jointly began puffing on what looked like an elongated fuel filter from an old motorcycle. Within minutes I almost couldn’t see them anymore for the huge, dense, but “innocuous” fog engulfing them.
Vapors.

Often, when I see them, I can’t help but be reminded of Goths in the 90’s and how the harder they tried to be noticed, the more outraged they claimed to have been, when people did.

Obviously, these folks, this trio, were much more mainstream, looking much like everyday pub attendees on a Friday afternoon. 

Yet, I couldn’t help thinking that they were purposefully trying to collectively draw attention to themselves with the sheer volume of vapor they were producing, that seemed to increase until heads began to turn.

If I were to generalise, and God knows I love to, I’d probably guess they were, as a group, rabid gamers, work in tech, and live in their Mom’s garages and basements.
I would further guess that, for entertainment, they LARP on weekends and attend RenFaires as vacationers. 

Historically, I’d venture that they are direct decedents of D&D dorks. Without exception.

The very worst offenders, having leapt from the edge and lost to us forever, are likely civil war battle reenactors, spending their huge tech salaries on uniform and armament minutiae.
I guarantee-damn-tee they are hitting that douche flute habitually.

Of course, that is all total horseshit.
I am not direct decedents of anyone that’s even heard of D&D, I don’t LARP or live with my Mom and I most certainly do not battle reenact (though do own and look for occasions to rock my kilt).
And recently started vaping.

Please don’t misunderstand, I would never consider doing it outside the confines and privacy of my home. 

No, it’s a simple, traditional looking pipe.
Not any steampunk contraption I saw hanging from the walls and in the display cases I saw at the shop where I had to, horrifyingly, patronise in order to get the juice for it.

I got it as a curiosity, really.
My Friend Jim smokes a pipe and having fond memories of my Fathers habit, I thought I’d try this variation and, honestly, there is something to it.
Though I couldn’t say what exactly.

I already smoke and have no interest in stopping so it’s not in hopes of a substitute.
I don’t inhale the vapor and, even if I did, I opted for the nicotine-free juice anyway. So there’s no connection there in my nicotine addiction.

I think I just like sitting in my corner chair, reading, drinking coffee and puffing away on this device that has immediate and dramatic results.
Say nothing of the little light the glows where there would be tobacco embers.
Right!?!

If I worry at all that it’s part of some metamorphic altering in my persona, that I work in tech, live in the Bay Area and call a host of avowed communists Friends…it’s that I have also adopted a bi-weeky endeavour with my Boy, Jack Lloyd Clark III (Trey for short, the Third, get it?) and others to play The Game of Thrones board game, the D&D version of Risk.

Need I worry?
Looking for a Friend.
.

I/365

I am here against my will.

Consider me a hostile witness for the defense.

My good Friend, Chad, whose own inability to see things through is legendary, has recently launched a campaign to have the rest of us join in a challenge that will purportedly inspire us to write more, solve world hunger, stop global warming, and increase testosterone.

All for the low price of just three sentences a day

Every day, for a year,

Admittedly, I am as gullible as Bloom County’s Opus when it comes to carpet bomb marketing but I’m not that  stupid.

“One day at a time!”, “Rent to own!!”, “Just the tip, I promise”.

For fucks sake.

“Just three sentences and a job? You could drive off the lot in this new, shiny 2016 Self Esteem!!”

Yeah, because somehow, sitting down everyday, turning off my many devices, in the serene quiet of the morning, drinking coffee with Handel and banging out three sentences, will invariably lead to realizing much more. Somehow the three sentences will magically transform into paragraphs, chapters, essays.

Somehow, doing this will erase my inability to spell. Somehow, by the third sentence, I will suddenly be able to look up from the keyboard as I hunt and peck out my consistent thirty words an hour.

Chaaadd, probably types as fast as a court reporter. Chad probably doesn’t harbor an innate neurosis that stops him from just writing whatever he’s thinking, for fear of grammatical errors, returning again and again to edit.

Chaaaddd, went to Berkeley. Chaaaddd, has a degree in rhetoric.

Ponce.

Whatever, dude.

I see right through your thinly veiled attempt to enrich my life by challenging me to take back up a passion that has laid dormant too long.

Sell that shit to someone else, shyster, I ain’t buying.

Finish your Harvard Classics challenge, then we’ll talk.

I showed him, huh?

So,
On this day fifty years ago, C.S.Lewis died.
Today, An old Friend of mine, lost his Father.

I’ve not seen Peter in many years but have reconnected through social media.
I’ve enjoyed watching his successes professionally and with his family, if distantly.
In many ways, I think I know him better today than I did those many years ago when we worked together in a San Francisco club.
Today, we usually disagree on just about everything when we engage but, at the very least, Peter is always very engaging, responding with timely wit and erudition. If not surprised, at least now I’ve some understanding as to how or why.
When Peter disclosed last year that his Father was ill, I recall both feeling anxiety for him and, naturally, thoughts of my own Father and his similar ordeal.
Of our Fathers, that is where any similarity ended.

As it turns out, Peter’s Father had written a book of memoirs and in Peter’s mentioning them, I was astounded to learn that his Father had been a Monk and his Mother, a Nun.
Immediately I was fascinated and just a little envious. Not that my own Father was without a pedigree of a kind but Peter’s revelation instantly made clear how Peter was Peter.

Beyond those very unique beginnings, his Father went on to become very active politically and, from what little I know, seemed have led a very rich life.
Even that simple understanding or wonder at another’s life and origins has had much more of an impact on me, personally, than John Fitzgerald Kennedy ever did.

I was well on my way when JFK was assassinated. I would make my triumphant debut three weeks later at a hospital in California and if at the onset, my disposition true, it would have been loud and fussy.
I don’t recall having thought of JFK, one way or another, as a child but I would have been reading C.S Lewis not long into it. Doing so would also have had a more significant impact on me than JFK.

One could argue, clearly, that I was certainly, personally effected by JFK, if only by his Presidency and enduring policies.
Fair enough.
Yet, I can’t say that I’ve ever been influenced in any life’s course by invoking the memory of JFK.
The same cannot be said of any author I’ve read or the simple wonder of the uniqueness of the life of a Friend, if hoping to make an impact myself and looking to others for direction and influence.

I understand why JFK’s assassination was monumental. I’m not simple.
I get that, in many ways, it was to portend the end of innocence, at least in the view of ourselves, for America.
I comprehend that JFK and his Family were emerging in a time of great accomplishment and growth, that for many, he was everything they could ever want to be. That he was somehow a representation closer to themselves, Irish, Catholic, plain spoken.
I’m not convinced that many of those thinking so had ever visited Cape Cod, Hyannis Port or Martha’s Vineyard.

Like my Friend Peter, I think JFK could be determined by his upbringing, surroundings and Family.
But with JFK, unlike my Friend Peter, there was Joseph Kennedy and Camelot.

Perhaps as they were simpler times, the undeniable facts surrounding The Kennedy’s much troubled history was not as touted. Perhaps the Country was captivated by some inherent longing for a monarchy. Jackie was elegant and graceful, their Children seemed to belong to the Nation and JFK himself was dashing and sophisticated, wealthy and accomplished.

What he was also was a notorious womanizer, deceitful both in public and private and nepotistic on a Napoleonic scale.

It’s not my intent to disparage him on this fifty year anniversary of his tragic death.
I’ve no doubt that, as a leader, he has had some lasting effects on me personally and in some way, made us a better Nation.
There was the moon, after all.
Wasn’t there?

I suppose when I am unavoidably confronted with this reminder of his death, I usually stop there…at his death.
I’d rather think, when having to recall someone for the passing of a particular day on a calendar, on their life, as I do with C.S Lewis or the rich and extraordinary life of Peter’s Father.
On this day, the twenty second of November.
Godspeed Fr. Paul, we’ll visit again next year.

https://ofreh.files.wordpress.com/2013/11/04-battle-cry-of-freedom.mp3

So, I’d be remiss, having wrote so frequently of my affection for words, were I not to, on this day, pay at least some manner of home to these two hundred and seventy.

Two hundred and seventy words that said more in it’s authors laconic delivery, than the two hours given on that shared stage, on that day, to his preceding confederate.

It’s author has been lauded so often and by so many, for so much. Yet, for me, in this instance, it will be for so little.
Beyond the enduring consequence of his Presidency, the author moves me afield of deeds seen to adhere or divide a Union. His words inspire me to make more and, in contrast…fewer.

On this particular day, it was this address that so captivated a Nation and bound them in a dedication. One that would address such a monumental endeavor as a war, it’s casualties, and purpose.
In three paragraphs, mind you.

There is so much in those two minutes that provoke. I can’t hope to add to the multitudes that have been touched by it’s grace and poise but I can at least mention how grateful I am to it’s author for at long last relieving me of anxiety when accosted with needing to use “that that” in a sentence of my own.

If good enough for Abraham Lincoln…by God, it’s good enough for me!

So,
deliberately and ever so slowly, Ms. Chevron placed the hard bound book onto her knees.
We, her class, were completely silent, rapt. Understanding somehow the event to follow, sacred.

Looking intently, resting her gaze momentarily on one student to another, she aptly conveyed this ritual was not to be trifled with but to be given the full weight of our attention, lest even a single spoken word lost.

With the flat of her hand, she fixed to the cover and slowly, with great purpose, turned to the title page.

Hesitantly and again looking to us, as if gauging our worth and returning skeptical, she decidedly raised the book and turned it towards us. Pivoting in her chair at the front of the room as she held the book at attention, it’s illustration on display in Lazy Susan manner, so that we might all have a glimpse.

Her pinched index and thumb, obviously veterans to their work, delicately took the corner and folded it over, revealing it’s great, inestimable harvest.
Holding our collective breath and leaning forward by degrees, we were to hear her recite…
“Good Heavens” he said. “I know what this is! I’ve come to the stone at the middle of the peach!”

My life would somehow never be the same.

Love or hate the story, the gift Ms. Chevron passed to me that year, my 4th year of primary school, was not simply a fantastical tale by Roald Dahl, but in her telling, her manner and regard, she helped me give the undertaking it’s due. She instilled in me a life long reverence for the written word and the incredible companion a book would serve, beyond any other, for the duration.

In contrast, I recall very little more of that school year, save that I was to repeat it at my Fathers insistence.
It was to be the love of reading that would see me through incredibly lonely times as a child. It would fill the void left a young, troubled boy, by an equally troubled and young Mother. It would provide much needed respite from inadequacy in the hands of adults, failing the task of adulthood.
It would open doors otherwise shut to a fertile mind, begging for the nutrient in light.
In bare, institutional corners, it was to give passage on ships and planes. On caravans with nomadic tribes, wrought with danger and intrigue. From corners of retreat, I visited every other corner of the world. And was delighted.

Ms. Chevron, by her seeming niggardly ruse, had more of an impression on me than those that would hope to impress on me equally with the tattoo of a strap.
It was her and the knowing of the immense sway she could wield, in simply impressing upon us our fortune at being able and allowed to read.

Not a administrator, nor bureaucrat. Not a politician or preacher…but a Teacher.
For whom I am forever grateful.

A Teacher done that.

So,
You hate me.
Because I’m a Woman, a Nigger or Jew? A Spick or Cracker.
Simply the colour of my eyes, or conveniently, the colour of my skin?
Do you hate me for an affiliation or position not your own.
You could hate me because I’m simple, pedestrian. Because I’m poor and you, wealthy. It could be the reverse.
Whatever the reason, however it’s borne…please say as much.
I beg you.
Assert that right.
Don’t be niggardly, share. Unburden yourself.
It’s allowed. I insist.

How else can I fight you.
You are more a threat if I’m caught unawares.
If you would keep your hate, your bigotry, to yourself, you keep me at a disadvantage.
How else can I know not to buy your goods, use your services.
If unwilling or unable, how will I know to remove myself…or you, for that matter.
If silent, I might misjudge you. You might well get my vote.
I would hate that.

No, I need you to say as much. From the top of your lungs, mountaintops and billboards. From radio and Television. In person.
I want you to make your ignorance plain.
I defend your right.

Do not be cowed. Do not let those that would stifle your acrimony for fear of having others distress.
My, your or their feelings are a paltry price for such advantage.
Speak your mind, bare your limitations.
So that we might be warned and be guarded.
Because we know, don’t we, that merely inhibited speech or expression, does nothing to alter your course, stay your hand.Your subdued malice will fester and even grow.
And in truth, once aware, your hate is disarmed, neutralised. Once I know and consider the source, your hate has no bearing, no effect.

Do for me and, in turn, you will have no doubt where I stand.