ah, what a long strange trip it has been… (warning – rant-opia)

as the dead sang of years ago.

watched the end of a biography show on Bruce – iconic is a really good word.

R&T has a redesign, Peter writes about a friends tailsman, and I have those odd quiet sunny Sunday ponderings of ‘whoa – what the hell was I thinking?’ as I remember blood offering me a ticket to a show out Syracuse way for bruce’s born in the USA tour. ‘naw, not sure I like his music’ muttered a young and foolish boy.

c’est la vie, oui?

How’s 2011 started for you?
Have you had the joy and fun of hanging with your friends, celebrating the new year, and years passing by?
Has the weather been all you wanted and more?

Have you continued working on the things and activities you loved last year, or taken up a new challenge? Finished a project or started a new one?

Have you heard a simple chord progression of an organ, almost inaudible ’cause you had the stereo turned down while you were rocking out to a youTube video (of tom petty’s ‘southern accents’) and then cranked the tune cause you were immediately transported to a snowy west texas, living in dorms but unnoticed, playing compact discs on your very own compact disc player for the very first time, pondering if you’ll ever end up where the streets have no name, and wondering why a passionate song of wanderlust makes you feel so … deep?

yeah, me too.

So February is right around the corner, and my confidante is accepting of my exclamation that I think I’m gonna make it all about me. Kinda of a ‘fuck YOU’ February, if you will. Probably more like a ‘pardon me, but please fuck you, ok?’ February. See, I have this insecurity – a nagging feeling if you will – that I’ve put a lot of effort into focusing on others,helping them out, thinking about their problems and frustrations – instead of focusing on me, and it’s getting late in the game and I really need to work on me.

Work on not being 265 lbs of ache and apathy, being more like 180 lbs of ‘I do like to bike around interesting towns, just like I did in Pasadena in ’99’, or ‘Matt says he has a shortcut to delta that only has ONE hill!’, or ‘let’s scramble up this hillside here in the hills above La Canada – cool, what a view’ …

Work on getting notes out to people so that they have in their hands an expression of my appreciation, thankfullness, and joy in knowing them – placed on paper because I took a pen and said ‘hey friend, have I told you how much you mean to me? How awesome my life is because you’re part of it? Let me tell you the details of how you make my life great …’

Work on getting my crappy attitude about money fixed – it’s not a good thing to repeatedly drive yourself toward the brink of fiscal doom just because shiny and new and ‘better’ is what’s marketed to me and I have no self control. What’s fucked up is I see how it’s easy to keep flowing along in this river of consumer piss & shit, while watching things I know I’d love to enjoy – a trip to Nature One so I can look upon places of my past, a month at a beach house where I can contemplate how to fix some of the shit our world has embraced, more time spent relaxing with family and friends so that in 50 years or so I can say ‘wow, how cool was THAT strange trip?!!!’ – I’m just kind of baffled on how to step out of the current, so I’m gonna go with thrasing about a lot for the next 4 weeks, to start.

This inertia pulls against my hopes, my holding tightly to the weight of my shit and it pulls all my energy away…

I’m fat, lazy, have a house that’s a shambles, filled with unimportant detritus that needs to blow away. As I just read Peter describe it “the stuff people will throw away the day after you die” – he holds onto a baseball glove and a .22 rifle his dad gave him, just two touchstones for all his bicycles and gloves and crap… I can try that. Of course, he wrote of this as he took possession of a departed friend’s Triumph and was glad because it caused him to gather his friends and recall his buddy. Hmmm… juxtaposition I believe.

I hold onto anger and fierce desires of vengeance: from idiots identified in the paper – a Greensboro investment shit head who had an 80 year old lady invest in a scheme that would ahve paid her back in 30 years. He plead his mea culpa – “she’s an adult able to make her own decisions” – but no one took a baseball bat to his knees, his hands, his balls, and finally his head. he’s shit that deserves to be thrown out.
Jason of Adams towing – you fuck head. I want my 150 dollars back from you, then to put a bullet in your smug asshole of a face.
Billy – you old stupid piece of shit – get my car towed? you fuck. you get your own truck parked on your ribcage, the crackling and pop extinguishing your angry (drunk?) shit-atude that you are better than anyone else. really? how about being professional and considerate, and not treating strangers like complete crap? yeah – didn’t think so.

Shall I go on?
Fucking kids who put two BBs through my windows – steel pipe to the hands, then blinded … shoot at things now.
Fucking asshole who put two .22s through my garage door – really? balls crushed and hands broken…
shit fuck litters who dump their crappy 40s in my yard EVERY FUCKING WEEK – oh, I have a place for your empty cans. just not sure if I’ll crush them before I shove them up your ass, or not… oh – perhaps a crushed throat so you have to have your shitty beer poured into a drinking tube, how’s that?
Jersey, you fuck nut – pissing on Adrianne’s storage shed? really? what are you – a 10 year old moron?
Ellis – smoke your dope in your Lexus with the bass playing loudly again at 1 in the morning, and I’ll torch the car and you and your buddies, while letting you pups go, you waste of an ex-marine.
Brown Brothers – you all can go fuck yourselves.
The FedEx peeps in LA – I hope you’re crushed by your shitty trucks, with the horns blasting for eternity.
Each and every shitty fuckhead who parked in front of my driveway in LA – I can only hope you’re shot and bleeding and need to get your car out of YOUR parking spot to get to the hospital, and every time one shit head moves their car from behind yours another shit head pulls in right behind you, saying ‘it’s just for a minute’…

wow – this feels kinda good. putting down the dead weight of my hate.

Allen (Alex?) – you shitty amex carrying fuckhead English prick – you own me $50 for the sale you took from me, remember your offer to split the commission? Hope you find yourself on the wrong end of a surly TSA guy on his last day …

How about quiet thank you to the Milano driver – it sucked to be questioned by the cops, but at least I now know that they’ll roll in fast and furious if you say ‘someone brandished a weapon’ … just a useful FYI

Oh, and cops. Oh my – where do I start? you all have let me down soooo much. I was raised to respect you all – but every time I read about the NC state trooper who’s having sex in his car, and the ‘good ones’ – yeah, you Tim – don’t fucking make an insane amount of noise to clean up your ranks (it’s not ‘one bad apple’ if it’s once a week we read about this shit) – only you guys can, cause we – the people – are fucked when it’s us against you. We can’t record you guys, you guys can throw us in detention for any one of 10,000 reasons, take away our toys and lose them, drive like assholes with no regard for how it looks/impresses us; treat us like you’re a bully and we can’t do anything about it.

Really? well, I’m saddened by the atrocities that happen to cops, but really, can’t get too worked up for it. Because again – it’s not like it’s a big secret how shitty the cops treat the rest of us. You all think you’re better than we are. Falling asleep and killing two bicyclists and spending maybe 2 years in prison? Executing someone who was face down on a train platform, then going after witnesses’ cameras – we call that a cover-up. eEery single fucking investigation that doesn’t find ‘suitable evidence of wrongdoing’; every MOTHER FUCKER WHO FEARS FOR HIS LIFE AND SHOOTS A FAMILY PET, TASERS A GRANDMOTHER, AND LAUGHS … if only you would show human emotions I wouldn’t presume your a pile of shit with a badge and a gun. My only saving grace is I’m a white male, and I believe I know enough people who probably know a good lawyer… just saying.

oh – hey – since I’m ranting – fucking TSA/all security theater actors – STOP IT!!!!!!!!! If you’re gonna break the trunk latch of my German sedan, at least pretend to know what you’re doing -like looking into the spare tire well of every Gen V Jetta – the big space that easily holds either a full size spare or at least one 25 lb bag of cement/explosives. Probably a a bit of a boom if that was the plan. Not that you’d ever foil it BECAUSE YOU NEVER LOOK!!!!!

For the love of all that is ‘brave’ and ‘free’, just stop. Instead try helping people. Look for people who need an extra hand with their luggage, or old peeps who haven’t flown since JFK’s time – get them a comfy seat, a cup of coffee, and wish them a wonderful trip. They are not terrorists – by definition, that’s what you’ve become. Terrorizing regular people trying to go about their business of living – life, liberty, pursuit of happiness.

Wow – really really liberating.

Taxes – everyone pays 10 percent, businesses who make the world a better place get … hmmm… pride in that they’re the good people? oh – wait – corporations don’t have souls, don’t know shame, can’t have pride – they only have S&M departments … (sales and marketing – what did you think I meant?)

Politicians who are less statesmen and mere puppets of the businesses who sponsor them should have their balls yanked off.
Health care professionals (you know – the ones in the Health Maintenance Organizations) who don’t cry when a baby is sick, or weep when a grandparent is ill should have their balls yanked off.
Ignorant people who are given the chance to move past their ignorance but choose instead to embrace their stupidity should have their balls yanked off by politicians and health care professionals. (yeah – I’m looking at you Kansas – don’t make his noodley appendage come down their and bitch slap you all!!)

We can do better, America. It’s time to do that.

4 weeks of paid vacation a year to start. 35 hour work weeks. Free health care, free higher education, expectations of excellence – striving for the top will be the minimum we accept; pandering to the bottom will be criminalized.

Public service jobs will become the new golden parachute troops – have you been a teacher for 20 years? here’s your 20 million dollar retirement – thank you. of course, we’re gonna expect big things from you – kids who know how to think and create and do better. That’s not asking too much is it?

TEDtalks become the new american idol – entertainment companies become leaders in invigorating change – we mock reality shows because really – COPS? how about stories of Christians who help others because that’s what they believe in? Stories of the other guys – the Buddhists who live and love? the bicycle culture of Portland/Seattle where people just feel better to have exercised and not contributing to the damaging of the planet? those shows are out there, but not in the insping way they can be.

whoa – the teeter-totter of Scott’s brain – you’re all welcome to leap off now, probably to run away.
but I have to say – feels pretty good at the moment to leave this shit here, on this page of prattle in a corner of the world wide web on a weekend where all things are happening all at once – NHL Fan Fair in Raleigh, citizens demanding more from their leaders and paying for it with their lives in Cairo. Babies giggling and making sick people smile. Romping puppies back home with kids who love them. Clarity from a focused attempt, no matter how much it looks like a Technicolor yawn. And lovers and loved ones skating on a rink of ice made with their own hands.

How do you change other people? you can’t… not that I haven’t tried. and by ‘tried’ what I mean is really really really REALLY want them to … like, I really really really REALLY want every driver in the world to be as good as me, and in the style of German drivers circa 1988. I was there. they were really good at what they did. Hell, I’d settle for turn signals 50% of the time, a vague understanding of how to merge onto highways, and a dislike of camping in the left lane at less than 120% of the posted speed limit.

on a sunny sunday, in january, in the second decade of the 21st century – things are as stable and chaotic as ever, and we’ll keep scurrying about until we stop, eh?

Have you seen how cute the blue is?

ciao,