Memorial Day 2017

苦あれば楽あり

 ....<3 .... </3 .... <3 ....

********

Dang!

Just heard the sad news, that the historic -- opened 1931, no lie! -- one-screen movie house in the city of Colusa has been closed as a cinema-screening theater (complete with an old-timey box office)  since March 6th. Colusa itself is long-storied and otherwise still thriving, as it has been since the 19th century along the Sacramento river (boats used to haul people to their second homes there from San Francisco, through the bay and up through the delta, long ago...) -- despite the fact that the I-5 has changed so much else of California over the past many decades it's existed.

I wish there was some way someone could help (yes, they are still available for private parties and such, but dang...) I just saw STAR WARS: ROGUE ONE (2016) there in December, right around the time one of my greatest faves Carrie Fisher passed...

********

Casual, Red-Eye Reflection

Dear fellow souls,

When I consider topical (Trump-derived and culminating-in-Trump) kerfuffles, what should come to mind but your average, inner-city, devout-Muslim owned-and-operated bodega... No, there's no liquor, but there are plenty of cigarettes; you can buy a $2.oo charger for your janky old flip phone (a nod to the geographic and socio-economic reality); and you bet the hot dogs are halal -- BUT THEY ARE A YEAR OLD AND THE CONSISTENCY OF SHOE PLEATHER. The business struggles in a way, when half mulled-over, it seems no urban American small business should.

Non sequiter-like, I now jump to the dynamic obviously shared between what and who really animate the Trump phenomenon; and its objectively more disparate and odd-bedfellows opponents: both "sides" exemplify, agree upon, and talk past each other about the imperfections in the modern human world that truly imperil humanity's long-term viability.  We truly are in the end-times, and what's at stake is our species-wide Linus binky best described as being a comforting, penultimate-resort fear we have that for certain, whether or not we continue to survive is to an unfairly large degree our responsibility, and will be decided by a painfully lucid, collective decision-making process, global in scope (Cylon model 2's faux-philosophical mutterings on our worthiness of survival be damned...)

Calls of "Let them in" at Dulles? Check and weak-yet-advantaged countercheck... The rigged game plays out, and even if you're as sappari Japanese as Zatoichi, playing your weighted die in a personally unfamiliar yakuza gambling house, presuming too much even as you are fundamentally certain never to incur traditional physical punishment, ultimately uncertainty takes over, and nothing is as our faith would have it.

Crisis will not be forever deferred... It inshallah will be upon those of us who live to endure that moment. The many recently deceased luminaries of American acting and performing no doubt earnestly pity the remaining billions who have yet to perish... (Thank you -- presumptuously -- Miz Fisher, Miz Reynolds, Miz Tyler Moore, et alia for your sorrow and compassion I now know you surely cast back at us from the sweet hereafter. Please rest in peace... May we endeavor to carry on.)

(I loathe what Mr. Trump appears to be about, but smvrti satya needs be connected by the ligaments of karma to the world of similitudes, which is so helpful to mullahs, rabbis, and other such boddhisattvas, whose burden and joy it is to successfully instruct the more fortunate among us... I right now, more than anything, am just keenly, primally and uselessly stung with my enviable place among hoi polloi, comparing as I cannot but the President's lot with mine...)

Not to put too fine a point on it, but I guess what I'm wondering, in (you might self-servingly, blamelessly argue) a neo-liberal way, is this: is it so cruel, objectively, that refugees and immigrants be excluded? What quality of asylum does our greater-in-aspirations-than-in-concrete-accomplishments nation offer? Bootless speculation? Mayhap -- I'm hardly any more an agent than the sicaria running inexcusably toward the worst cardinal direction from obvious consequences, or a 1990s London party girl who just kind of got stranded with a murky immigration status in San Francisco lo these last twenty-odd years...

As always, yours in trying too hard to be of more use than a MSM pundit or an holidays-with-family-dinner-table-screaming match, and falling inevitability into the usual contemptibility,

American and human William R. Way
URGENT House Renovation Campaign - Venmo...

...Or donations can be mailed to:  WILLIAM R WAY PO BOX 206 STONYFORD CA 95979

Ships In The Night...

Was that my friend who came so close, but did not quite meet me? I don't know her name -- she is younger than I, has dark hair, is very open, has a degenerative disease like MS or CP maybe (some sort of disability), and we are destined to be together...

I am happy that she is out there, but my heart lows with a deep, broad sorrow and a sick longing. When will we meet? This life is so short...  I'll try my best to see her someday soon...

(Mushrooms, December 2016)

William Way/Hollow Man Christmas Campaign
*For only $100 -- So far, Stephanie H. has gotten me a quarter of the way there...Thanks, Stephanie!

Sorrow

MAKE AMERICA DO IT AGAIN!

* WHO * DARKO *

2016

Shabu Madness II: Thrillah in Manila

I know I risk sounding like some Cebu Sally on her bomb-bearing moped, but...

Dear Philippines:  I have this hunch -- yes, just a hunch -- that instituting pogrom against people who use drugs (and let's face it:  isn't it always just against 'certain' people who use drugs?  But I digress...) is not going to turn out well for anybody.  Moreover, the least you could have done was run this policy proposal by, say, any archbishop.  Or fuck, even a nun...

(Also, could somebody please remind Duterte that Hitler was one of the most massive tweakers in history, slamming five times a day.  And in point of fact, his evil life did end due to Allies bombing his bunker -- no, smart-asses, not because his high was too good...)

Mr. President, you have no alibi!

Bored of Games

Let's face this one right out of the gate:  MONOPOLY is a fucking evil game that brings out the worst in everybody, making all the players mean and nasty -- even yours truly.

OPERATION was a ratfuck, and immediately gave me away...

I wanted to like CANDYLAND, until it just had to teach me a lesson, and became CHUTES AND LADDERS, with more chutes than ladders, and was ultimately a contrived study in diminishing returns.

Don't get me started on BATTLESHIP, an invitation to cheating and unseaworthy shenanigans.

And lastly, I completely lost it with CLUE as soon as I realized that the only redeeming character (who also happened to be the only one not deserving of prosecution and, yes, death) was none other than -- ready for it, players? -- Chilly Willy, on the front porch, with a .3 shot of peanut butter.

Games have their place in life, but life cannot be contained by games.  Why, look at the game of LIFE: like Anya Jenkins, I had a hard time swallowing the notion that children could not be exchanged for money -- so unrealistic!

Obvious, isn't it, that too many of us have for a long time now been weary of games we once fancied...

ALARM!!!!

Big, bad, SOS news -- I'm kind of sure.  A certain young woman on Facebook, whom I recently added as a friend when she requested I be that, just had her account suspended by the Feds.  Truth is, she's Celeste Guap's friend.  Young Celeste has been in trouble lately, and has been making herself vulnerable by coping with getting high and getting tight.  Bad scene.  Somebody please help Ms. Guap and her friend.

(FULL DISCLOSURE:  Yes, Ms. Guap worked as a prostitute, and was quite a story in the news, recently.  God keep these girls safe.  God help us all should we fail them.

It's Boo-KAY!

Um, WhatEVER, Nicky Parsons...

Now I May Not Be Some Uppity, Assassinated Venezuelan Beauty Queen...

...But I dare let slip this audacious gobbet of Morgan Freeman-magnitude speechifyin':

Give a man a fish, and he'll have fish for a day.  Teach him how to fish, and chances are he'll be more polite to you than you deserve -- he probably already knew how to fish, and fish better.  Nevertheless, he was raised with different, more human, more realistic, more pragmatic values.  But don't be too put off if he seems to ignore you altogether; you might be presuming to try to do him a favor right at the moment he's thinking it a higher priority to jump food lines with other looters because, hey, let's face it, the world is a little more complex than you first thought.

#Venezuela #yotambiénsoyhumano #tengosed #tengohambre #tengomiedo

Here's A Tip

I would encourage the younger guys -- guys who served in Afghanistan and Iraq -- to watch FIRST BLOOD (1982).  Excellent movie for them.

(See?  Huh?  That'll teach you to be homeless and a veteran...)

She'll Always Be Wearing A Raspberry Beret...

"Only way to get to where you've never been is to party like you ain't gonna party again." - Prince

Viva la Revolucion!

"I believe that the moment is near when by a procedure of active paranoiac thought, it will be possible to systematize confusion and contribute to the total discrediting of the world of reality." -Salvador Dalí

I Asked Someone For Spare Change and Was Told To Get a Job

Thank God at least one of us was using his brain.  No wonder he's where he's at and I'm where I'm at...

"It’s called Housing First, because 'You have to have a home first. It’s pretty hard to solve your personal problems when you’re living under a park bench.'"

(I can't believe this approach is revolutionary, and yet of course it is.  All these degrading and mortifying programs that society persists in implementing from San Francisco to New York, programs modeled on first "fixing" what's wrong with people, and that people in need must be forced to change their maladaptive, undesirable behavior before they've earned the privilege of housing -- a mindset many unthinkingly share and assume we should all just go along with -- these programs have always put the cart before the horse, and in addition are highly ineffective and counterproductive.  An imperfect socioeconomic system, economic inequality, and institutionalized prejudice and injustice are the main root causes of poverty.  It is pointless and monstrous to blame poor choices made by the poor.  Paternalizing, uninformed and arrogant meddling, and human inertia among those in a position to render aid cannot continue.  And by the way, homelessness is the problem of those who are homeless but would rather not be -- it is not the problem of people whose ill-considered aesthetics, inexcusably fragile sensibilities, and inability to cope with reality are offended insofar as they perceive and are aware of the homeless; the latter group has real problems that are best addressed by swift kicks in the ass.)

A Blow To Tweaker Pride

What shame!  What ignominy!  I'm not sure I can ever show my face in public or private or among hallucinated voices ever again...  There I was, so haughty and full of myself, exultant in my victory, thinking the whole time during production that I alone had been cast as the lead in the exciting, groundbreaking DARBY O'GILL AND THE LITTLE PEOPLE II:  METHPOCALYPSE!, when in fact, as I found out during the well-attended screening, that all along I was a bit player billed far down the credits as "Anonymous Terrified Hot Bitch From The 70s #5."  I was more mortified than if I had been Courtney Love turned down for the role of Nancy Spungeon, after she had seen her own lackluster acting thrown into sharp relief onscreen as a second banana she had originally esteemed herself as better than.   At least she still has her hubris, delusion, and self-righteous indignation, whereas I now find myself bereft of every comfort.

Oh, painful reality!  Oh humiliation!

A Little More Realism Might Garner Support From Viewers Like Me

You know, if Sesame Street was really preparing kids for life in the real world, somebody would blow their lid at Big Bird for insisting that Snuffleupagus existed, becoming bent out of shape at his irritating delusions and hallucinations; Bert and Ernie would both have Grindr accounts and host all-night, drug-fueled orgies that would go hilariously sour; and Elmo would ruin his life in his addiction and end up at rock bottom getting kicked out of Oscar's garbage can, where he had been staying temporarily since his eviction by a greedy landlord.  Oh, and Maria's mysterious death outside of the Fix-It Shop would age into being a never-solved cold case -- I mean, who the hell has ever seen a cop form the Sesame Street Station even once just walk a beat, let alone make an arrest in a serious crime?

Come to think of it, I'd be afraid to even call 911 in the real Sesame Street.

Looking Back...

...(and hoping it doesn't get me turned into a pillar of salt.)

Anyway, when I reflect on the last several years, leading up to the events of October 22, 2014 and the days after, I have to say I don't feel too bad about being ejected from Isengard by Sauron just because he harbored a petty hatred of me, and being forced to move to the Shire.  Besides, orcs are annoying.

Was that a couple of them I saw passing by the other day?  If it was, they probably got their asses handed to them by whoever they bothered in Bag End...

How Dare You

My dad was a sailor, who served on the Kitty Hawk and in Vietnam.  (He wanted me to go to Annapolis, but I balked, and joined the civilian world much to my detriment, but I digress...)  His best friend was a Marine, and I've known Marines my whole life.  I've always loved them, and they've always been good to me.  There are times I couldn't have survived had it not been for a well-intentioned, enterprising young lance corporal.  I love them, and I always will.  (No love for the Core, but I care about those boys -- and girls, 'cuz there are a few BAMs out there...)

How could you?  These boys are on the edge, tweaking and high on heroin and homeless, sometimes selling their bodies after several tours.  Then they have to see that?  Fuck you sonsabitches.  Fuck you.  Those boys are my friends and I swear to god, if you try even a fraction with them of what you tried with me, I will seek you out, find you, and fuck your shit up for good.  Don't you ever dare fuck with them.  They are good men in pain, and I won't let you hurt them.  I am for real.  Call the local judge in the 415 if you want, go ahead -- tell them I threatened you.  It doesn't matter.  Karma actually exists, and you will get what's coming to you for hurting those boys.  There's nowhere to run to escape the consequences of what you've done.  Despair, if you've got the fucking brains to think that far ahead...