Silence Toasted

“How can you say you’re not responsible?’ There is no Christmas celebration here in the Z household this year. No cause for joy, beyond the love that sits in our hearts, trying to spread out and cover the reality that is right outside the door. How can one sit in comfort, safe from the violent predation that is seemingly creeping into every corner of our planet, and ignore the fact that – even if you didn’t ask for it or support it – innocent people are being killed to “defend the American way of life”? I said innocent, and there is no arguing that fact, no matter how you try and twist it to arrive at justification. “What does it have to do with me?” I can’t say what has changed, what has shifted internally, but the mask has been ripped off and I find myself sitting here alternating between despondency and rage over what is being perpetrated in my name, supported by my labor via taxation, and held up as a right and just action to defend us from the evil terro...

Let me just start out by saying one thing here. The world we appear to be inhabiting is, by all accounts, totally fucked from one end to the other and from top to bottom. 6+ billion fragmented little entities all scurrying around hiding from debt collectors, death squads, their own transgressions and lies, the resulting fallout from other's lies, their inner self and each other. Prodded by some unknown and invisible stick, we feel a pressure building and this is coming out in all kinds of different ways. Wars are waged based on lies. Laws are passed in a vain attempt to keep the lid on the little guys, so that when something pops up that might create the momentum for change it gets stamped out and minimized. I'll bet lots and lots of drugs and alcohol are being consumed and many other things that I don't care to mention or even think about. And fear shows up with its good buddy anger in tow, looking for an opportunity to latch on and create a mess somewhere. There is a void...

Man, it gets tough to just move sometimes. A rise, then a fall. Pleasure with a side of pain to follow. Ebb, flow - the cycle continues and on and on we go. Maybe this time........... I'm not quitting. The game grows tiresome, but I think I can see the finish. I feel the rising of something that I asked for, but wasn't ready to receive. Be careful what you seek, for it may bee seeking you out as well. It's hard to hold on to those feelings of freedom and simple joy that came with taking off and driving around experiencing new places and faces. It was heaven to be with my wife and kids all day every day, surrounded by the mind-boggling beauty that is Northern California. Back to the Bible Belt and the old routine, the dream of something better fades with the light of our shorter days, and hunkering down for winter is the order of the day. Returning to our home and finding dozens of tomatoes and peppers rotting in our garden ( I told the neighbors to please help themselves, b...

Greetings to all and any who happen by this little corner of the Blogosphere. Time for another little exercise in public expression designed to do something – what, I’m not sure of, but all the cool kids are doing it so in this case I’ll follow the herd. I suppose blogging is somewhat dated, what with Twitter and such available to post up-to-the minute details of our lives for all to see, but that just proves that I am never as cool as the coolest, and always lagging behind the latest trends. That probably explains why my guitar rig is completely state-of-the-art circa 1985, and the car I just took halfway across the country just turned 16 years old (and turned over its 144,000th mile). Hey, if you find something that works, why rush to replace it? Even the things that work great for awhile get old and maybe less functional, and we are seeing that trend in many ways all around us today. In the rush to replace things that work just fine with things that appear to work “better”, many th...

Hey, it's back-to-school time, and what do we have on tap for young minds hungry for new information and tools of discernment? How about some skills that can be used to see the real purpose of the media and advertising? Oh, and a (not too) short bit about the holocaust. This came home yesterday for me to sign off on (not signing means points deducted from my kid's grade). Dear 7 th grade Parent or Guardian, This year your student will have the opportunity to participate in a semester long course focusing on Media Literacy and Persuasion. We live in an ever-growing media and technology culture and there is increasing national concern that students of all ages are not trained to correctly interpret all of the media messages that are saturating our society. The Persuasion class is designed to teach students to analyze and evaluate a range of the different media and persuasion techniques so that they can learn to be more critical and thoughtful about the me...

If anyone truly admits the scale of our impending adjustment to themselves, then inaction turns into something worse than denial - one becomes an accomplice in their own hardship and possible demise. We need to recognize that fact and either go into further denial or take action OURSELVES, rather than wait for some "critical mass" to gather or just-the-right group to form to properly deal with all the challenges we face. Sure there is strength in numbers, but where are your allies? Where is the posse? I hate to say it, but while we're all in this together, we are also very much on our own, too! Going to work and paying taxes while still shopping and supporting the structure that threatens to topple and crush you doesn't make sense, at least to me. There is a certain lack of obvious (easy) alternatives and many obstacles to truly detaching from this Beast, but one has to ask why that is so and what you are trading for the "security" of the current system. Sur...

Veering further away from my usual frank, conversational approach to doing whatever it is that gets "done" here, I'd like to get some reaction to these gems I ran across. Some creative captioning, perhaps. One of these is not like the others, and all 3 carried strong messages for me, enough so that they are taken as signs and kept as reminders. I am frankly just curious about the initial emotional reaction to any of these images. Thanks in advance for sharing should you be so inclined. My best to all, Z

Wow, that was quite the spread. It was piled up as far as the eye could see, and it was all hot, fresh, and smelled yummy. If you couldn't find that certain item to satisfy your craving, well I contend you just didn't look hard enough. And thanks to the wonders of modern technology and good innovation spurred on by healthy competition, everyone can afford to join this party. How could so much be laid out for so many different tastes, and sold so cheap? I mean, it was an endless parade of item after item all there for an amazingly low, low price, and it seemed to be limitless. The constant parading of the help from where it was all being cooked up for our enjoyment never seemed to stop, and it was all being replenished even before anything got half-empty. Man, what a deal! Whoever thought this angle up was certainly a very savvy business person, don't you think? (burp) And look, it is for everyone! I look around and see all walks of life feeding here, no one is excluded ...

It seems unlikely that 2 months have passed since I last did whatever it is that I find myself doing at present, but the system by which we have agreed to mark our voyage insists that it is so. A great number of things have occurred here and everywhere it seems, and yet it feels much the same as it ever was, just further along and with better weather. My mentioning the weather in the first few sentences is probably very indicative of how much I have to say that has any substance, but there was something that compelled me to drop into this seat and I don't have the energy for argument right now. I last wrote about the process of hacking away the shackles of the American Servitude System that I had become enmeshed with, and hopefully emerging with some sort of fresh start. That process, overall, is pretty cut-and-dried, and pretty impersonal unless one chooses to get caught up in the emotional aspects of losing "stuff". The past 2 months have been about another sort of ...

Well, it's done. I have "officially" declared to the legal system and to the world that I am worth less than nothing. Papers were filed, documents signed - it was all very neat and impersonal. And a bit surreal as well. Oh, and it cost several thousand dollars, too. Funny how "going broke" can be quite costly. You see, I had made it. Despite being a high-school dropout stoner loser malcontent who much preferred playing my guitar with friends to attending school or following up on my commitment to the military (a fine tale of intrigue for another day), I found myself living the American Dream! Had the house in the 'burbs (on a cul du sac even!!), the 2 cars, the motorcycles and the cell phone with a cool ring tone (I switch between Jimi Hendrix doing "Machine Gun" and SRV's "Lenny"). My incredible wife, who also bailed on school early, set her sights on a position with a major corporation headquartered in town and wound up landin...

Greetings, fellow travellers. Thanks for joining me on this sunny day as we ponder the vast potential in each passing moment, or actually do something about it. I hope this is the first in a regularly occurring exercise that will allow me to formally observe my antics and share the same with anyone interested in what I might be up to. Several of you have indicated a desire to ride along and I am not one to intentionally disappoint anyone, so off we go. With that in mind, I promise to keep things as interesting as possible, up to the point of any obviously self-destructive behavior or blatant cheap thrills (or rest assured you certainly wont have to hear of any such nonsense, anyhow - unless it is vital to the story as a consequence) . I guess it all starts with a naming of a thing, doesn't it. If we are going to keep insisting that we are all these separate parts of what then eventually constitutes all, then we have to get out the label-making apparatus and start tossing out point...

Enough said. Testing, one, two. And all that. Road trip indicated. See you soon! Z