First of all shoutout to P-Diggy for the handy new pop-up feature. Whoopie-doodle-dandy! But really, what I'm here to talk about is the holidays. I've been having many thoughts around this topic lately. They stem from an uncomfortableness that I always feel around this time of year when I see the first decorations go up and hear of the vast array of sales approaching. The thing about holidays is that many have legitamate backgrounds and meanings behind them, but have been transformed and mutilated into shooping sprees and consumer frenzy. Ask a kid what Christman is about and they're gonna say gifts. Grownups will give you the bit about family, holiday cheer, and maybe even mention Jesus, but get them started and you'll end up talking about shopping, sales, and decorations, in other words, what really matters. And this is what I can't stand. Take a holiday, like Christmas, which to me already doesn't mean much given I'm not a Christian, add the layer of American consumerism and I'm ready to barf. It's so fake. The only part I like is getting together with the family and what not, but I hate the feeling that the only reason we do it is tradition. Same with gift giving, fun idea, but do I really like these people, do they like me, or do they feel that they are supposed to recognize something because the calender tells them to. The worst offender in this respect is cards. Boy, oh boy, do cards drive me crazy. Such a meaningless, canned message, throw away after a week thing to send. I don't know you enough to find a cheap gift you'll like nor anything nice that I'm willing to spend the money on, in fact, I can't even think of a few words to say, so I'll just give you a cheesy picture with a poem on it that a guy in a cubicle made $50 thinking up, but really, I do care enough to sign my name with a big cursive LOVE above it. And the best is, depending on the holiday, you'll likely find a shiny bill nesteld in the folds. Just use the table printed below to find out what denomination:
Birthday: $50
Christmas: $20
Thanksgiving/Easter: $10
Valentine's Day - Halloween: $5 or less

Well thank you very much. I don't know, I'll take the money though. Bottom line is there's nothing wrong with holidays but I hate the way American culture has warped them. Give me a pagan fertility fest, or African rain dance any day. Those are things that should be celebrated and revered, not fat men in red suits, or fluffy bunny rabbits. And I wanna have real celebrations like you mean it, not the mandatory dinner with the relatives. Drunken all night dance parties with hallucinogenic drugs: that's worship. Ceremonies involving ritualistic consumption of human flesh (Trisha's Paul had similar thoughts on turkey-day), especially brain tissue to pass knowledge from one generation to the next: that's kindred spriritualism. Halle-fucking-luya!

that my sister has emailed me and I actually responded; now we may start some kind of correspondence, dare I say-on a somewhat regular schedule. Simply Spectacular. It's strange really, because I grew up with her for about eight years, and then went to college and then moved to Buffalo, then Germany, then Buffalo again, and in the meantime she is becoming an inteligent person with her own ideas about who she is. I sometimes think of her and can only picture the ten year old in my head (much as I think my college friends will maintain an early-twenties appearance). Ever since, I have been remiss in my brotherly duties; her most formative years and I barely ever talk to her. Such a shame: I have so many truths to tell her <pause for sardonics> that will spare her all the trouble of finding them out for herself <once again: pause> I mean, I already burned my finger, and then my hand, my shoulder, my ass (more than once), and several assorted internal organs/delicate tissues. Alas, I do not hold these truths to be self evident, nor believe that they can be taught by other than the golden hand of experience (points?). Well, what this entire unwieldy collection of nonsensical rants shall extoll is none other than the guiding precipitousligkeit. That's right, I'll repeat it (this time in Hochdeutsch): Abschüssigkeit. At first this doesn't make sense, and then, once your own precipitousligkeit has been foundered upon the rocks of disenchantment, your eyes will flutter open upon the breathless sea's wispy aerocurrents. Your fatigue shunted into unreality, you will step forth and embrace the concupiscence of eternity. God bellicose and guten Abend.

FBI keeps eye on anti-war protesters for violence,
Not surprising that they're keeping an eye out, only that it's so public and printed so casually. It's scary to me that by simply attending a completely peaceful protest or even going to a meeting about a peaceful protest you could end up with your name on a list along with any habits or tendencies that the recording officer has observed. So maybe you're at a meeting discussing what tactics you;re going to use, will you be fingered as an extremist? if you get a little mad and raise your voice will the words "anger possibly leading to violence" appear below your name on some government list? Worst of all is that once your name appears somewhere it gives the police "evidence" after they wrongly arrest you at the protest. It's leading to preemptive arrests where we don't even wait for you to commit the crime: we know you're gonna do it anyway. Scary times. Some might say Orwellian. I am one of some.

I may not be with you for a while now. Not one, but two games that I HAVE to play come out tomorrow. Embarrassing I know, but I can't help it. I don't buy many video games, especially not at full price when they first come out, but these are my staples, the reasons that I even have the stupid consoles. And, at least one of them is multi-player, so it can be a quasi-social activity as we sit around and throw shells and banana peels at each other. The other...no hope there, it will suck my life away for the next couple weeks. So if you don't see/hear me in the coming weeks don't worry. I'm alive, just not on the same plane of existence. Dork!

In about twenty minutes I will be returning to work for the first time in a month and a half. Matt made a joke yesterday about going it by equating it with the first day of school, I wish. Where is my feeling of anticipation? I am glad that I will be getting a paycheck, but that's about it. I love the idea of serving the public, but I don't feel that that's the only thing I'm doing. I need a new job, but am trapped in my American Dream. The horizon (props to Holly) of fading debts reducing to null is retreating faster and faster rather than approaching; isn't that always the way. So, I will go, I will work, I will get a paycheck; I will consume; I will charge; I will be forever indebted (largely due to my wonderful education which gets me so much now). C'est la vie!

With whiteness pulsating,
All-encompassing view through
Tortured panes reveals
Nothing... or Alle.
Has it come to the end
Must we bow our heads,
Oppressed in blanketing silence
Ne'er to hope again.
The fleeting shadow,
For so it may be called,
Found under and betwixt
Leaping particles, crystalline.

We shall see if fags can really rock the punk. Mohawk Place tonight...probably in an hour or two. I will update this journal with the results of experimental gay punk rock. Be excited, be afraid, but don't be campy.

Wellllll,
hmmmmmmmm....
Pansy Division was different from anything I've heard before. I like Mohawk Place that there are always different groups of people there depending on the event/music. This was the first time I've seen mostly gay people there. I personally was caught between different worlds and couldn't seem to find my bearings, which resulted in much wandering around and head bopping/half dancing. I definitely think that punk and gay should be mixed up more (they're both anti-mainstream side groups afterall) but I just kept getting stuck in their gayness. Plus, one of the guys was like super-emoticon or something. His face was permanently plastered in various outrageous pantomimes from ecstasy to rage to befuddlement. I just couldn't look at him without feeling strange stirrings of fright. In conclusion, go and see them for the spectacle/strangeness but I wouldn't buy their poster and put it on the ceiling next to Bowie unles you want some really funky nightmares.

An informed democracy is a functioning democracy. What more needs be said? Just last night I was talking with a friend about the media and whether it's biased and if it is, why? These are all troubling topics worth discussing, but what really threw me was the total apathy that my friend was feeling towards politics and political views in general. He told me he wished that we would all just stop talking about it period. This is the ultimate failure of the media and moreover of our democracy. The media is so bent on informing us all of exactly what we should know, yet at the same time is so see-through that everyone knows they're being lied to. No wonder we don't want to talk about it. But we have to. Democracy is all about informed citizens making informed decisions. You become informed by first-off caring enough to get information, and secondly by using this information and discussing its relevancy. It should be required of all of us to spend an hour every day talking about our government, our economy, our foreign policy, whatever. Talk people, it's good for you.
Another major hurdle is cutting through all the bullshit. How many times have you sat at work with co-workers and had to pretend to laugh or empathize as talk rounds the table of the latest and greatest commercial or episode of the West Wing? Ever tried to gently steer the topic towards something real? I have and met with varied degrees of success. Some people just don't feel comfortable talking about it (the old adage about not discussing politics or religion) which to me is counter-democratic. How have they taught us that talking about politics (short for how your life will be allowed to be lived) is bad? Others blithely quote the NY Times headlines, thinking they're really informed. These are the worst, because they are convinced that they know what's happening. Try to bring up some other points of view and they say they haven't heard that (suggesting that if it wasn't in USA Today then it can't possibly be true).
These two categories, the uninformed and the misinformed, make up way to high a percentage of voting age Americans. Where does the fault lie? With the media of course. A content public is fed a never-ending stream of amusement littered with bits and pieces of half-truths and obfuscation. A perfect control mechanism. The elite now control the means of production (corporations), the means of control (government), and the means of disseminating information (media). Kings and emperors had nothing compared to this system. These three systems also act as screens, diverting attention from the real power. At least when things were hell for the peasants in France they knew who was the cause: the King the King. Now it's the utility company, the county tax office, or the newspaper, even though Mr. (King?)Rockefeller may happen to own controlling interests in every one of them.
While I have little hope of changing the corporations or the goverment in the near future, there is hope to remove the lynchpin which holds the whole house of cards together. Yes, the media. We can take it back, and we're beginning to all over the country. Already the internet is a great tool to get connected with like-minded people, both in and out of your own community (see mine and others' links). Efforts are also being made to take back some of our (yup, we own 'em, not Clear Channel) airwaves. Democracy Now is the cutting edge program out there and is getting bigger everyday. People want to hear the truth and are going out of their way (unfortunately it does take some effort) to get it. To this end the Buffalo Coalition for Progressive Media has been formed with its first goal of bringing Democracy Now to Buffalo. By January we hope to have it available on Buffalo's airwaves. We'll be posting periodic updates on the homepage, so keep an eye out, and, of course, please feel free and urged to join the cause. Democracy can survive if the people care enough to make it happen.

They have a webcam of my college. Isn't it pretty? It's Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff. About 8000 ft. above sea level (they do high-altitude sports training) and the mountain back there is a blown up volcano, it's called Snowbowl now that we've conquered it and put a ski resort inside (it is called Nuvatukyaovi by the Navajo, which in Hopi means Place of Snow on the Peaks). The Grandcanyon is back and to the left about 45 min. away (somehow after three years I never managed to go, dooof!). This dorm beneath us here is where my friend Danielle lived before we moved in together. I peed in her sink a lot. I lived across the courtyard to the left in one of two dorms, depending on the year. It's a nice place.It actually snows there, in Arizona! ABout 45 minutes to the south is Sedona which is a really neat place for lots of reasons. It is at the bottome of a natural escarpment, where the land drops a couple thousand feet at once. Take a look:

There are these canyons of beautiful orange rock with twistly litle streamlets and creeks meandering through. It's nice to hike in the summer because as you get deeper the canyon walls keep it shadowed and the water keeps it cool. It is also centered on a vortex of psychic energy. There are many spiritualists and whatnot, though unfortunately every year there are more and more yuppies buying big houses, blocking views, and erecting Walmarts. There is no safe place. I think that me and Paul may have actually been to the top of the rock structure on the right in the second picture. We lay up there while a plane flew overhead. I haven't been back since graduation, it's sad. We were going to go last time we went to Vegas to see my family but grandma and grandpa won out and we went to St. George, UT instead. Not quite as exciting or inspiring but can't not see the G's. The town is pretty nice too, small and quiet and quaint with a damn good burrito place.

She is just sooo fabulously mysterious. And such a nut, to boot. Well, I can't be sure she's a nut, I mean there could be plausible reasons for her fashion, or maybe it's just that: an attempt at fashion. Whatever the case, she is one to be revered and who has made a place for herself among all the various elmwood denizens. Like an urban myth almost, except she's real. Yes, we now know that she is real, and not just a phantasm or figment. How is this? you ask. Well, I'll tell you. She has been photographed, and the picture, albeit somewhat blurrily, does reflect her appearance and not just an amorphous glob of white light as I had expected. The most embarrasing part is that she was caught by none other than the infamously retarded and inane riordan. I will spare but on sentence in describing him, he deserves no more of your attention. The Beast (never having the highest of editorial standards) was at one time funny enough that it was almost tolerable (at least Taibi was something of a real journalist). Now (and here's the sentence) it is headed by the riordan (remember the Artvoice cover article about homelessness), who has taken any shred of journalism and turned it into invariably juvenile rantings that just plain aren't funny (unless you are maybe 12, just maybe). It's gotten to the point that I won't even pick up the Beast anymore, though it's free and next door. For more on the riordan talk to theresa, she has lots to say. What I really wanted to talk about was the Lady in White. What makes her tick, what is she thinking, is she really real or is the picture a fake? These are all important questions. Well, I may have an answer! (or at least part of one). So I heard through the grapevine that she is a black woman who hates being black and hates black people. I can't vouch for the veracity of this statement, but it has come from an anonymous source close to the individual. Whew...so refreshing to get gossip off one's mind.
OK, so I thought I was done, but then, as if from outerspace, arrived this astonishing picture. Take a look.

I am a bit breathless, give me a moment...
We see here that the White Lady is by no means alone on this earth, there are others (and lets not call them crazies) who somehow through fate, chance, or the guiding tutelage of visiting alien demons have become just as striking and disturbing. What is this feeling burning through my veins? I'm not sure but I'm really starting to doubt my atheism. I mean when such astonishing powers can be granted to mere mortals, we must believe that somewhere there is a couterweight, could it be? god, are you there?