Through My Jaundiced Eye

I saw it and said it and no one believed me. I saw it and said nothing and couldn't live with me. So I decided to see nothing. And they said, “Welcome to the club!”

What is intelligence? Who is intelligent? A Jeopardy winner? A scientist? Surely, a doctor or a lawyer? Mommy and Daddy? The Pope! A priest? A President? Well, then, who godammit?
Intelligence is determined by how much you lie to yourself. Or rather, by how little. So today I met an intelligent lawn mower and a stupid President.

“I’m sorry, did I forget to tell you to fuck yourself?”

What is morality? It’s when your dick doesn’t rule your life. It’s a mistake in your best laid plans. It’s your unwanted salvation.

I am never me…I got nothin’ until I am

Jesus in a closet. The man prayed to a plastic Jesus in a closet. People are always trying to sell me on their plastic Jesus. Pain does that. This last guy’s Jesus was education. Got to get an education, he said. Get an education and all things will be good. Then he went to beg for crack money.

“I dunno. Why does anyone sin?”

I'm a useless eunuch trapped on a doomed orb careening through space, fated to labor out my days in concentration camps surrounded by a thousand dickless dictators who have somehow deluded themselves into thinking they're doing God's work and therefore show no mercy. Savage beasts roam freely in well-woven garb thinking that hides their beastly hearts as acid is poured into air and water for illusory profits of the mind. Cyborgs programmed with ill intent march mindlessly as their makers giggle gleefully in the ensuing trail of tribulation, thrusting their souls onto spikes of despair as small men grab for the fleeting power of a dream that is not within. Children who see truly are predated as the enemy to bend and twist until hope becomes their enemy too. Religious fervor worships death wrapped in metal as it’s proclaimed protector of all. The light of life grows ever dimmer as demons dance in the dark hallways of houses without honor and of trees without tending. Hissing of snakes is emboldened by the spinning of heads and turning of hearts, laughing at fools edging to the end of their planks declaring souls ever in the right. It’s a world gone sad and the cries plea louder every day. The louder the screams, the less we hear.

Love is coming. Love will come roaring as a crashing wave of the ocean to wash us clean. Love is the volcano we repress that one day must erupt. Love is all that there is, and so in the end, all that can be.

The truth is never negative

Guerillas for God

“Why does the guerrilla fighter fight? We must come to the inevitable conclusion that the guerrilla fighter is a social reformer, that he takes up arms responding to the angry protest of the people against their oppressors, and that he fights in order to change the social system that keeps all his unarmed brothers in ignominy and misery.”
There’s nothing I like better than stroking the barrel of my precision-crafted, gas operated, rotating bolt automatic assault rifle. 800 rounds per minute, firing 5oo yards out. Beautiful, just beautiful. Come and get me, motherfuckers. Speaking from the muzzle of my pet is the voice of God.

“Words that do not match deeds are unimportant.”
There are evil-doers in this world and they must be eliminated. And I am that eliminator. In bursts of unrepentant wrath I bring forth justice. God, it feels good to kill for God. The oppressors of this world must be destroyed for freedom to spread. This holy crusade is God’s will. I shall show no mercy.

“I am not a liberator. Liberators do not exist. The people liberate themselves.”
Doing good is an addiction. The flames of righteousness burn deep. Around the globe I travel in crusading missions, a purpose filled life I lead. The suffering of the people will end. Your liberator has come! I shoot off your shackles and lay harmony at your feet. It is good to believe I foster such a thing.

“At the risk of seeming ridiculous, let me say that the true revolutionary is guided by a great feeling of love. It is impossible to think of a genuine revolutionary lacking this quality.”
Die, sinner, die! Make your mother cry!
Don’t stand in my way. I’m reaching for the sky!

Bam! Bam ! Bam! Shoot the sinner!
Bam! Bam ! Bam! Freedom’s the winner!

In holy march I come,
Taking it to the street;
As holy bullets fly,
Evil sees defeat!
“We must carry the war into every corner the enemy happens to carry it: to his home, to his centers of entertainment; a total war. It is necessary to prevent him from having a moment of peace, a quiet moment outside his barracks or even inside; we must attack him wherever he may be, make him feel like a cornered beast wherever he may move.”
Wouldn't it be nice if we were older
Then we wouldn't have to wait so long.
And wouldn't it be nice to live together
In the kind of world where we belong.

Wouldn't it be nice if we could wake up
In the morning when the day is new
And after having spent the day together
Hold each other close the whole night through.

Happy times together we've been spending
I wish that every kiss was never-ending
Wouldn't it be nice?
"I know you've come to kill me. Shoot, coward, you're only going to kill a man."
- Ernesto Che Guevara (just before he was shot)

I’m gonna fix the world. I can’t tell you the glorious feeling of death and power in my hands. With these instruments of God I change lives, I can shape the world into the place it should be. God’s dream lives within me. For me to do nothing would be criminal! I’ve GOT to fix you, world – because I’m never gonna fix me.

Knife In The Soul

“Oh, God, nooooo! Why are you doing this? Somebody please help me!”

Seeing her in abject terror, paralyzed with fear, it was in these moments Knife Man lived. He watched as the woman crawled in agony and dread across the plush carpeting of her home. Amidst all the finery and neatly arranged luxury, she left a trail of blood. The killer studied her as the trauma set in of life leaving her body. She cried out to anyone.

“Please help me! Dear God, won’t someone please help me!”

She no longer addressed the Knife Man, who always waited for the point where they stopped asking him to help and just started screaming in vain. He spoke coldly.

“I am your God. And God hears you but does not help. I see your pain but say nothing and do nothing. Turn to God and die!”

“That’s not God, that’s just you!”

“Show me the difference!”

She noticed for the first time a bitterness, an emotion to his voice. Maybe it was an opening. All her animal instincts were alive right now.

“Why did you have to pick me? What did I ever do to you? WHY do you have to do this?”

“Yes! Yes! Those are the questions!”

Now she heard satisfaction, maybe even approval. But she needed to know more. “Questions to what? You make no sense!”

“Yes, confusing, isn’t it! Answer questions you cannot answer! That is the only way out. Die another day!”

She understood. “This is your torment, isn’t it? This is what you live every day.”

“Yes, I have brought you into my domain. There’s a knife in my soul and God won’t take it out. All the yelling in the world won’t change a thing. I pray for the death you’re about to receive.”

She was like a soldier in battle; bloodied, facing death, yet fighting on. Was that what war was all about? Millions of men with knives in their souls? Couldn’t be! Why was this popping into her head at this particular moment?? Think!

“I can’t help you!” she blurted out, taking a stab at honesty.

“I know. No one can. I pray and pray and nothing happens. God doesn’t hear me, maybe he’ll hear you. And when he saves you I’ll know how to save me.”

Her blood was still draining. “But I don’t deserve this!”

“Exactly! God might actually save you. I find the nicest and prettiest, His favored few, and pick you off one by one till His sorry ass decides to step in. Guess what? He never does!”

“But God wants to save you!”

“Impossible!”

“It’s the truth!”

“The truth is what I say it is! Truth has no meaning! The truth was I deserved a place to live and some goddam, motherfucking food and not be spit on and treated like a fucking animal! That’s the fucking truth and NO ONE ever admitted it. You want the truth you goddam cunt? The truth is I deserve -”


From the look on his face, it seemed as if he had just been stabbed. She saw the knuckles around the shaft loosen. It was as if his soul had come back to him and just now realized the horror of what he’d done. She had to get that last word out of him.

“Say it! Tell me what it is.”

“No, no. I can’t. I just can’t…” The power was tilting from him to her. His head drooped and his body shrunk away from her, Knife Man realizing her as a threat. “If I tell you I die. If anyone finds out, I’ll die. You can never know.”

Her motherly instincts instigated in full bloom. Here was a wounded child, lost and needing direction. His aches had turned to rage and the beast could not be trusted, she knew. But the desire to kill him dissipated with her desire to hold him. Knife Man was holding a conversation with himself.

Unknowingly, he rocked back and forth. “They’ll get me. They’ll get me bad. All of them. They’re all the same. Just kill, kill, kill! Oh, God, please help me! Why do I have to die?”

Feelings streamed from his eyes but she knew wasn’t safe yet. He had fully retreated back into his own world and that was a place of living hell. She needed him back in this world – a place he hadn’t been in a long, long time. Over and over he mumbled his inner voice: “I don’t deserve it…I don’t deserve it…”

“It’s love, isn’t it? Love is what you need.”

His eyes slowly looked in to hers, the fear of a trapped animal within. Those who find out his secret must die. But first she must be made to understand. “You don’t get it, do you? I don’t fucking deserve it! I can’t do what it takes!”

“Well, then maybe you don’t.” Her head told her not to say that but the mother in her knew best.

The cold, sobering shock of her words stopped Knife Man’s rocking. He couldn’t resist the calmness he was now feeling – even if he didn’t fully understand it. Those before who had so emptily mouthed words he “deserved love” had only sealed him further into his fate. She was different. All the other victims had only returned hate for hate. Ancient lyrics sang into his swooning head:

"Yes is the answer, and you know that for sure.
"Yes is surrender, you got to let it go."
“Call the police. Hurry, I don’t know how long I can hold on.”

When the police came he was grateful to be handcuffed and made safe. They cut him with their words but the “sick bastard” didn’t mind. At last he felt he had truly lived up to their longstanding contempt. When the psychiatrist arrived on the scene and asked him why, knife man was surprised to see his reply as headlines in the morning paper: “At least now my hell is known.”

In the hospital the next day, knifing man’s victim knew her life had been changed forever. She would go on to heal stronger than before and become a respected voice of reason in the ensuing media frenzy. Making the rounds on talk shows, she chafed at the applause whenever someone declared, “I think you shoulda just stabbed his ass back!” Eventually, she ceased speaking.

The crushing isolation even made her wary of her husband. “Honey,” she asked on a sudden inspiration, ‘is there a knife in your soul?” The flash of anger in his eyes was not missed before he replied in measured calm. “Of course not. What a silly question. Don’t let that psycho stay in your head.” As he kissed her on the forehead, she thought to herself, Which one?

A Family Lost

I sat listening to the radio this morning as the show hosts debated Tiger Woods decision to possibly skip the British Open to be present for the birth of his child. Kudos on that I say. But somehow that story hit home in a shattering way. How far away such a life is for me. The odds of me having even a girlfriend are the same as me winning the lottery. The idea of a home and family is completely foreign and a pie-in-the-sky dream. But that doesn't change what I want.

My life growing up was such hell I swore I would never put my child through that. I still feel that oath today even though I live only in an empty void of despair. I have lost my family. Everyone would have sympathy for a man who lost his wife and children in an accident, but no one but me sees my loss. My life has been wrecked both for me and by me. And now these chickens are coming home to roost as I face my true desires. It's a horrible, horrible devastation to be separated from all that you love.

So it's back to the mindless numbing labor of the day. I must keep up the facade of a normal being just so I can have the privilege of another day's hell. My co-workers are joking around as you have to in day labor camps, and I throw them an understanding smile of acknowledgement of their humor. But inside I'm dying of a thousand tears as I remember my family that never was.

R.I.P. Mr. Bond

"Do you expect me to talk?" "No, Mr. Bond, I expect you to die!" -Goldfinger On the playground, when it came to picking teams, he was picked first. When a Decision had to be made, they all looked to him. He was a leader but had no gang. No one resented his straight A's because he was no teacher's pet. A natural outlaw who made his own rules, he lived in a different world than his peers. The Coolest Kid in School often had scrapes with the small-minded Authorities, who felt him a natural threat. But as water seeks its own level, so sought he. A master criminal was certainly one path open to him but he needed more, a sense of well-being. The decision was his own: a servant he would be. The further he went down that path, the more obvious it became he had made the right decision. To use his talents and skills for merely his own ends would have destroyed him. But even though having chosen to serve, in the end, he would do nothing he himself did not agree with. In the circles of the elite, agent 007 was at home. He often saw himself in others - had he taken a less noble road. That is what gave him his edge. He swam among the sharks not looking for smaller fish to devour as they did, but to devour the sharks themselves. It was a life most could not even imagine. As he passed through this world those who came in contact with him saw a glimpse into a fantasy life of who was in their eyes a superman. But now Bond is dead, crucified on the altar of self-loathing. We didn't like the way he made us feel, that somehow we were inadequate. So he's been reborn as a bad-ass, cut down to size, and many are applauding the new turn towards "reality". Self-assurance has been replaced with self-doubt, cockiness with mean-spiritedness, sauveness to dourness. The loser as a winner. No wonder so many hail this film. One thing the Bond films have always been is a flag in the wind of the times. In that sense, this new film is right on the money. It's the hate-radio version of Bond. No one wants to be seen as a wussy Good Guy, we want a terrorist fighting for us. A thug in a tux for a hero. How appealing it is to think your evil can be useful instead of a hindrance. Even the massive cynicism the film was made with is a reflection of these self-annihilating times, where fun is replaced with a good dose of cruelty for your own good. Thanks, but I'm already way over my "cruel reality" quotient - assholes. And trust me, it's a poor bet wagering the terrorists will win. The only way they can win is for us to become them.

"Loose Change" - A Fable Is Born

There has been much local wringing of hands and breathless consternation over Mark Cuban's decision to distribute a documentary film called "Loose Change", which has the tag line: "An exploration of the viewpoint that the September 11, 2001 attacks were planned by the United States government." Funny, huh? Oops! Sorry, not supposed to laugh. This is Serious Business.

To all my brain-dead friends with their panties in a wad over this: chill. This is the moral equivalent of a "world is flat" film. The makers of such a film may think they are disproving and maybe even disparaging the "world is round" believers but what is in actuality happening? Such filmmakers brand themselves morons and would never again be able to make any sort of claim of credibility outside of possibly Fox news. People think Cuban is aiding and abetting the makers of "Loose Change". Truth is, he's mocking them.

More accurately, his position is to let these directors make their own bed and then lie in it. Praise or ridicule - the choice is yours, he says. Mark Cuban may be the Jed Clampett of the internet but he's smart enough not to claim to be the Arbiter of Truth (outside of NBA foul calls). However, there is no shortage of those will gladly take that title. And they are fools. Who do you trust to censor what you see?

One movie that influenced me for a lifetime was that of the Nazi march in Skokie, Illinois that was defended by the ACLU. And the lawyer who defended their right was Jewish. I will die a supporter of the ACLU, they who understand the importance of free speech as a cornerstone of liberty. The irony is that those who opposed the march were the true fascists.


But what is truly fascinating here is witnessing the birth of an urban legend, a modern fable. The Good Book says the truth is within us, so on some level we all know what’s going on, even if we are not always completely honest with ourselves – or others. While there have been many assertions of our “honorable intentions” in engaging the Iraqi war and of how a President of the United States would never do anything as dishonorable as leading us falsely into harm’s way, no one truly believes we’ve been told the truth. And nature abhors a vacuum.

So into the void steps one and all with a spin job to sell. Some more crazy than others. Point is, there is an emotional truth here – a feeling we have not been told all the facts. The Da Vinci Code was the same thing. Give us a good story to fill the gaps and we’ll eat it up. What we are really saying when we buy into such things is that we are not satisfied with the explanations we have been given, which is what gives these wacky theories their staying power. But the seduction is that these Appealing Lies used to fill the void are far easier to take than the actual truth - and that's always a loss.

Debby's Song

You, Debby, are true greatness. You know dreams others will only call myth. In some ways, I hold more respect for you than anyone else I've ever met. Yes, I know you don't think I hold you in high regard, but I do. It's your choices I despise, the way you've decided to treat yourself.

When you die, there will be much talk of what a gracious person you were. "Debby was such a good girl!" How you always did what was expected of you. The wife, the mother, the dutiful church-goer, ah yes, that Debby was perfect! It's the thought of disapproval that rules your life. Because you don’t have your own approval. That is your cross to overcome but never will. They will sing your praises but they don't know you like I do.

I know your secret dreams - and your secret lies. Yours will be a life unlived but only you will know it. And over the years as your soul dies and you become all the things you hate but end up defending, you will have no one to turn to. No one you can tell your problems because that would admit you're living a lie. So remember this in your moment of despair, it was your choice. Your mocking words come back to haunt you: "Life is what you make it."

You didn't hurt me with the things you said. Most of that was me manipulating you in my delusional thinking. No, the time you hurt me was long ago when you said, "I do". You just couldn't resist the bribe. And even though it was not what you had dreamed you found a perverse thrill in the acceptance. "Who am I to ask for more? What makes me so deserving of dreams? After all, I'm just a girl." Through your self-martyrdom, your humiliation became institutionalized and therefore made holy. How exciting.

Each dawn of dishonesty brings a new low. "Success" deepens the despair. You finally got things just the way you wanted: to be yourself is a "sin", is to lose everything. So the Holy Lie must be kept - for the kid's sake, for God's sake, for your sake. May no one knock on your door? Is your heart closed forever? Yes, Debby, you do deserve more. Will you accept it? Can I?

People smile and tell me I'm the lucky one,
And we've only just begun.
Think I'm gonna have a son.
He will be like she and me, as free as a dove,
Conceived in love.
Sun is gonna shine above.

And even though we ain't got money,
I'm so in love with you, honey,
And everything will bring a chain of love.
And in the morning, when I rise,
You bring a tear of joy to my eyes
And tell me everything is gonna be alright.

Seems as though, a month ago, I was Beta-Chi,
Never got high.
Oh, I was a sorry guy.
And now, I smile and face the girl that shares my name.
Now I'm through with the game.
This boy will never be the same.

(Chorus)

Pisces, Virgo rising is a very good sign,
Strong and kind,
And the little boy is mine.
Now I see a family where the once was none.
Now we've just begun.
Yeah, we're gonna fly to the sun.

(Chorus)

Love the girl who holds the world in a paper cup.
Drink it up.
Love her and she'll bring you luck.
And if you find she helps your mind, better take her home.
Don't you live alone.
Try to earn what lovers own.

And even though we ain't got money,
I'm so in love with you, honey,
And everything will bring a chain of love.
And in the morning, when I rise,
You bring a tear of joy to my eyes
And tell me everything is gonna be alright.