False Hope And Cockiness

Sunday morning, and I got he PopShuffle drumbeat going on the digital piano. I don't really wanna hear it as much as I wanna be distracted by something in real time. The lawnmower across the field ain't working for me. It seems so mundane and week day. I booted up the TV to watch the Sunday morning news programs, but soon realized I wasn't gonna enjoy them because of getting tossed back and forth between news about the impending doom of hurricanes in the Caribbean and Republicans in Minnesota. I have negative, up close and personal experiences with all four elements and places.

I have to admit to be a political partisan. It's not ideal, and I didn't plan it this way, but I literally get physically ill at the very mention of Bush and evangelicals any more. To think and act that way would indicate to me that I'd really lost any respect for myself I had ever possessed. I feel like I've been manipulated into taking this extreme attitude, and I'm not in the least bit flattered that such is so. The pre-emptive strike of America against a political entity that had not directly attacked us was the biggest betrayal to my ethics and mores of any event in my lifetime. I felt more ashamed of that event for my native country than any other act I've witnessed. Even I'm not that mean-spirited and cruel. And then, on top of that, these same people started openly using torture on non-combatants and combatants alike. I know war is hell, but torture from Americans? It makes me wanna puke in disgust. To find out that by word and deed that our principles have been betrayed by our own elected officials sends us straight back to the Dark Ages, and worse.

I don't think it matters so much who gets elected in national office any more. Bush and Cheney have gone beyond the pale. The next President is going to follow the precedent and attempt to garner even more power to the executive branch, and then the other branches will fight back, and nothing for the people will get done.

I think the North Vietnamese who tortured John McCain still have control over him. I watched an interview with the Commandant of the Hanoi Hilton where he was held prisoner-of-war. He though McCain would make a great President. No blame from his perspective. McCain would not leave imprisonment when he had the opportunity because he was their bitch. He is still their bitch, and will do whatever they command him to do in loyalty to their purposes. That's my ill-considered and amateurish opinion after having studied the techniques of Oriental torture since during the Korean Conflict.

I watched the Barack Obama acceptance speech, and was myself moved to tears over what had transpired in just my own lifetime. I was raised to be the sort of Jim Crow person Martin Luther King preached against, and yet I knew that I was witnessing a true martyr in real time, and that it was me that was gonna have to change my ways. I didn't have a clue the whole country would change the way I had to before I even got started good. I voted for a mulatto in the Democratic primaries, and realized in real time that I sincerely think he's the best candidate. That was a little shocking.

Watching Obama's posturing during his acceptance speech reminded me of Mussolini. In a scary way. Both are or were Leos. Posturing is as natural to a Leo as modesty is to the following Sign, Virgo, but sometimes the lion eats the man, and we all pay the price for that. John McCain was born in Virgo. Bush was born in Cancer. Our choices are becoming negligible. Enough politics. I'm on the last week of taking steroids, so it'll go away by itself soon enow.

I've been through some shit the last couple of months. All Summer, even. An emotional hay ride. I've had a hard row to hoe. Been plowing in a field full of stumps. Nobody knows. They only got wot I give them, and yet, they still have to interpret my offerings as if wot I describe happened to them instead of me, and for their reasons instead of mine. It's lonely at the bottom, here in the woods where I am is allone except for the telephone.

The only thing I've heard about steroids has been mostly associated with athletes using them to get an edge in competition. I asked my friend who has medical training if Prednisone was the same sort of steroid the athletes use, and he didn't seem to think so. Taking this prescribed medicine to relieve the pain of the arthritis has been like a miracle. I was racked with more physical pain than I have ever experienced or had to endure in my life, and after my doctor at the VA gave me injections of steroids and started me on a program of taking 20 mg Prednisone tablets, in three days I was comparatively pain free.

Now, she's referred me to the VA at Durham where they have an arthritis clinic. It's been rumored that the staff at the Durham VA is somewhat associated with Duke Hospital, so it's likely that I'll get the latest and greatest care despite my unworthiness as a disenchanted, questionable war veteran. I feel a little guilty I didn't actually get gunshot to get the benefits.

Yesterday I had some visitors here at my house. My wino's hootch. One of them was good ol' Lynne, who brought Tom over for to introduce. We hit it off right away when he informed me he was a writer and wrote mainly about art. I like to talk to writers about writing. Soon, it became evident that we had a lotta other things in common, and it turned out that he was an Aries, and was a daring adventurer who hadn't held back on doing what he had to do to get a good taste of life. At last, somebody who knows how to entertain themselves besides me.

Still, in retrospect, I mourn over how the steroids made me act out immodestly and pre-emptively during Tom's visit. He didn't seem offended. Au contraire. I rationalize my braggadocio behavior by recognizing I had other, lesser pains before I started the steroids I didn't know were there until the steroids took them away also, and my delight and euphoria over this development pushed me right over the hump into being crass. Lynne got so disgusted with my bellicose posturing she practically got on her broom and flew south screeching. She's an Aries too.

I've been asked to join them at Lynne's new beach house she's in the middle of redecorating, but I probably won't go unless seriously encouraged. I hate to keep turning her invitations down. She might stop inviting me. Nobody wants that. It's just that she has too much to do there now to be the splendid hostess she's capable of being. Why, as her devotee, would I would settle for less from her than her very best. (Right. she may read this. lol)

Currently, I'm frying or saute-ing some chicken tenderloins in some butter with salt and pepper. Then, I'm gonna take two of them and smash them up to make a sandwich from. I need one of those tenderizing hammers with the checked heads to beat the tenderloins up with once they're cooked. That makes them flat enough to fit on some potato bread slices slathered with Duke mayonnaise. I guess I could put a splash of burgundy in the frying pay to feel continental. Otherwise not.

I got simple tastes food-wise, but only because I've never spent much time thinking about cooking beyond what makes it easy enough to swallow. I been hungry to the extreme more times than I oughta, and my habits from those times seems to have dispensed with the etiquette needed for ritual and ceremony. Just get it in there and don't starve. What else matters?

Probably a lot. Eating is more than just not starving. I know that. I've eaten food skilled cooks have fussed over on occasion. I wouldn't kick 'em outta bed for eating crackers. When I win the lottery, I'm gonna buy me a chef for Christmas.

I just got through weeping over how my life was radically changed by the civil rights advocacy of the Fifties and Sixties. I had been raised to believe in one sort of culture, and by the time I was full-grown in my early twenties that very culture had been criminalized by an act of law. This was especially prominent during my formative years, especially my teen-aged years, when life is confusing enough in the best of days.

Granted, it wasn't anything compared to what other people have had to go through during their teen years, but what I was given in good faith was taken away from all the rural southern boys like me, and there was really nothing to fight for to hold on to what we had been indoctrinated to believe was right. It wasn't right. It was obvious to any thinking person that suppressing other people so that they're not equal before the law for any reason has to be wrong. It just must be for the good of the whole. Even more for the good of the individual. Everybody should have the privilege of be-co-me-ing with any fate that appeals to them as long as there's no harm or foul to the other.

The civil rights struggle interceded in my life when ideally, I shouldn't have had to deal with it. It was a personal inconvenience, no matter how righteous the cause. The odd thing is, that even the short number of years between me and my younger brothers made a big difference in how it affected them, and my youngest brother, who is just eight years younger than me, still don't understand what my point is when I pule and whine about it these late days. No blame. Lucky boy. He's done well in life, and is more generous than I could ever be.

I don't know what made me a miser. I can be so niggardly and cheap toward other people it's a wonder I haven't been shot with shit and killed for stinking. "... hang me from th highest tree... Oh, woman, would you weep for me?"

The simple answer is "No." I don't attract that type of woman. They gotta be much tougher than that just to survive my odd idiosyncrasies. When I'm done with them, they're just ruined for any other man alive, because other, more powerful types can't measure up to my insight and understanding (Man, I just love these steroids. I could easily get addicted to this absurd cockiness).

I don't want no man's left-overs, I only wanna be with those impossible bitches other men CAN'T have for either love or money. I only seem to fall in love with the very best sort. I don't even have to pick or choose them. They know who they are when they give themselves up to me.