The family's out of town, I've got some people coming over for dinner, and there's a part of me that feels a little nervy even though there's no reason to. Fits of extreme introversion always seem to come at such inconvenient times.
Saturday, May 5, 2012
escapism
Ended up going to the movie theater with a couple homies last night to watch things blow up and see Fair Clevelandia laid waste by demigods. My sister laughs at me, because I never go to movies and hardly watch any but it was a good giant piece of explosive fluff and pleasantly undark, and we sat through innumerable previews making snarky comments and seeing the ads for the military inserted between shootemup summer blockbusters makes me realize how messed up we are as a country and I drive home more tired than I thought I'd be, trying to figure out the tangle in my brain, why it seems like everything seems to dead end so quickly..
The family's out of town, I've got some people coming over for dinner, and there's a part of me that feels a little nervy even though there's no reason to. Fits of extreme introversion always seem to come at such inconvenient times.
The family's out of town, I've got some people coming over for dinner, and there's a part of me that feels a little nervy even though there's no reason to. Fits of extreme introversion always seem to come at such inconvenient times.
Thursday, May 3, 2012
I'm begging you now a thousand pardons for all of the wastelands we've been through
(confessions redacted)
Wednesday, May 2, 2012
best of the blotter: Zombies, Cookie Thieves, Law and Order, and Get Off My Lawn
SUSPICIOUS PERSON, BETA DRIVE: The suspected cookie
thief returned once again to the Hilton Garden Inn April 27. This time
he reportedly stole candy from the lobby before leaving.
THEFT, DETROIT ROAD: Two Cleveland men, both age 26, and a Euclid man, 54, face charges after police said they stole $856 in toiletries and other merchandise April 28 from a drug store. Employees called police after two of the suspects set off an anti-theft alarm while running from the store. The men were stopped on Crocker Road. One Cleveland man and the Euclid man were charged with theft. The other Cleveland man was charged with complicity as he drove, but did not enter the store. The driver is also wanted by Seven Hills police. The driver later told police that he was “used like a tool” by his accomplices. The Euclid man asserted his right to remain silent because “I watch Law and Order.”
COMPLAINT, LAKE AVENUE: A resident called the police to report that two men walking on the street were holding signs that read: “Call me.”
An officer explained that it was a group of St. Edward students promoting a mattress sale.
They were advised to stay out of the street.
NEIGHBOR TROUBLE, ALBION ROAD: A woman called to report that her neighbor had yelled at her husband after being hit with grass clippings.
The neighbor had originally headed to the woman’s house to complain about gravel and grass in her ditch from winter plowing. The couple’s son was cutting grass and grass clippings were blown onto the neighbor.
The woman was not injured. Everyone involved was advised to stay off each other’s property.
COMPLAINT, DETROIT AVENUE: Disturbed by a group of people dressed in Gothic clothing in the middle of the street, a caller reported them to the police, saying that they were blocking traffic.
The group was with the ninth annual Old School Sinema Zombie Walk and they were on the sidewalk, according to the responding officer.
THEFT, DETROIT ROAD: Two Cleveland men, both age 26, and a Euclid man, 54, face charges after police said they stole $856 in toiletries and other merchandise April 28 from a drug store. Employees called police after two of the suspects set off an anti-theft alarm while running from the store. The men were stopped on Crocker Road. One Cleveland man and the Euclid man were charged with theft. The other Cleveland man was charged with complicity as he drove, but did not enter the store. The driver is also wanted by Seven Hills police. The driver later told police that he was “used like a tool” by his accomplices. The Euclid man asserted his right to remain silent because “I watch Law and Order.”
COMPLAINT, LAKE AVENUE: A resident called the police to report that two men walking on the street were holding signs that read: “Call me.”
An officer explained that it was a group of St. Edward students promoting a mattress sale.
They were advised to stay out of the street.
NEIGHBOR TROUBLE, ALBION ROAD: A woman called to report that her neighbor had yelled at her husband after being hit with grass clippings.
The neighbor had originally headed to the woman’s house to complain about gravel and grass in her ditch from winter plowing. The couple’s son was cutting grass and grass clippings were blown onto the neighbor.
The woman was not injured. Everyone involved was advised to stay off each other’s property.
COMPLAINT, DETROIT AVENUE: Disturbed by a group of people dressed in Gothic clothing in the middle of the street, a caller reported them to the police, saying that they were blocking traffic.
The group was with the ninth annual Old School Sinema Zombie Walk and they were on the sidewalk, according to the responding officer.
that's why flags are such ugly things
Taking off yesterday to decompress and think and plant, reading Dorothy Day to get some perspective as to the living out of principles, because I have no use for platitudes, have seen too much to be an idealist, and want to know what the hell I should be doing or how I should be responding to the way that things are going here.
I can see through this expression
And you know I don't believe...
We have a short historical memory as a country. The same things that are said about people in the Middle East are what was said about the Japanese sixty years ago, and it's often forgotten that FDR signed an executive order to intern thousands of citizens based solely on their race rather than anything else. To this day, there is next to no evidence that any of these people detained who lost almost everything were doing anything wrong or "unpatriotic."
But they hate us. You can't reason with people who blow themselves up for a cause.
That is what was happening, right? Kamikaze pilots were the suicide bombers of the 1940s. Kids were raised to die for an ideology if need be. People still justify the nuking of two cities, and no one remembers the devastation of the firebombing of Tokyo. Now things are more or less okay between our two countries, if only because history on both sides has been swept under the proverbial rug.
And we love to wear a badge, a uniform
And we love to fly a flag
But I won't
Let others live in hell
As we divide against each other
And we fight amongst ourselves
And I'm reading about police brutality, about scapegoating of anyone and everyone for the convenience of having a bogeyman, because in every movement, be it animal liberationists, Occupy, pro-lifers, whatever, there will always be unstable violent people that make everyone else look bad. The faces might change, the movements have different names, but these principles are still the same.
Man's freedom stems from his free will, and he must respect the freedom of other men because they are made to the image and likeness of God and are temples of the Holy Spirit. To build up fear of other men is to build up hatred too. "Perfect love casts out fear." Such a witch hunt as has been set loose in the country today, serves to distract the mind from our own militarization and enslavement, our growing materialism, and to set us in the self righteous position of rooting out the evil in other men, paying no attention to the beam in our own eye. It is always so satisfactory to find a scapegoat on which to heap our sins. During the depression it was the international Jewish bankers. Now it is the communist.
And depending on what side you are, this scapegoat could be someone with an Arabic last name, the crusty punks on the public square, or the evangelical Christian with some weird views on fetuses and how the world came to be that you read about on the Internet and revile because you don't actually know any of these people in real life.
The teacher is afraid to speak of interracial justice, of peace, of social justice these days, for fear he may be considered subversive. Loyalty oaths are beginning to be required at some state universities before a speaker can give an address to the students. This last month, Fritz Eichenberg, Quaker, who does magnificent illustrations for The Catholic Worker, refused to take the loyalty oath at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn where he teaches. I suppose that means he loses his job. One must accept voluntary poverty these days to keep his integrity.
I used to roll my eyes at this rhetoric when I was in college, but then I see this fly the flag and show your loyalty to the state business that's been resurrected and it starts to not seem so crazy after all. I stopped saying the pledge long ago, because I don't need to pledge allegiance to anyone's damn flag, because what it stands for goes against everything that I believe, cultural religious trappings be damned. One nation under God? The whole damn universe is, not just us, and not everyone believes in said higher power anyway. Liberty and justice for all? Ya think? And so I live here and obey the laws that don't go against my moral code and do my best to treat others the way I'd like to be treated, treat the land with respect. In theory this should make me a good citizen, but I'm sure that others would dispute this.
The occupied countries became the occupied countries because people were terrorized into saying yes, when they should have said no. Hitler and Stalin, Mussolini and Franco--this is the age of repression and McCarthy, in the guise of fighting Communism, is finding it in any honest criticism of the status quo?
Neither system proposed by the overlords or the economists or the protestors is working. Humans as a rule are broken, and therefore it's inevitable that our systems are too.
Angry words won't stop the fight
Two wrongs won't make it right
A new heart is what I need
Oh God, make it bleed
Is there nothing left?
I can see through this expression
And you know I don't believe...
We have a short historical memory as a country. The same things that are said about people in the Middle East are what was said about the Japanese sixty years ago, and it's often forgotten that FDR signed an executive order to intern thousands of citizens based solely on their race rather than anything else. To this day, there is next to no evidence that any of these people detained who lost almost everything were doing anything wrong or "unpatriotic."
But they hate us. You can't reason with people who blow themselves up for a cause.
That is what was happening, right? Kamikaze pilots were the suicide bombers of the 1940s. Kids were raised to die for an ideology if need be. People still justify the nuking of two cities, and no one remembers the devastation of the firebombing of Tokyo. Now things are more or less okay between our two countries, if only because history on both sides has been swept under the proverbial rug.
And we love to wear a badge, a uniform
And we love to fly a flag
But I won't
Let others live in hell
As we divide against each other
And we fight amongst ourselves
And I'm reading about police brutality, about scapegoating of anyone and everyone for the convenience of having a bogeyman, because in every movement, be it animal liberationists, Occupy, pro-lifers, whatever, there will always be unstable violent people that make everyone else look bad. The faces might change, the movements have different names, but these principles are still the same.
Man's freedom stems from his free will, and he must respect the freedom of other men because they are made to the image and likeness of God and are temples of the Holy Spirit. To build up fear of other men is to build up hatred too. "Perfect love casts out fear." Such a witch hunt as has been set loose in the country today, serves to distract the mind from our own militarization and enslavement, our growing materialism, and to set us in the self righteous position of rooting out the evil in other men, paying no attention to the beam in our own eye. It is always so satisfactory to find a scapegoat on which to heap our sins. During the depression it was the international Jewish bankers. Now it is the communist.
And depending on what side you are, this scapegoat could be someone with an Arabic last name, the crusty punks on the public square, or the evangelical Christian with some weird views on fetuses and how the world came to be that you read about on the Internet and revile because you don't actually know any of these people in real life.
The teacher is afraid to speak of interracial justice, of peace, of social justice these days, for fear he may be considered subversive. Loyalty oaths are beginning to be required at some state universities before a speaker can give an address to the students. This last month, Fritz Eichenberg, Quaker, who does magnificent illustrations for The Catholic Worker, refused to take the loyalty oath at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn where he teaches. I suppose that means he loses his job. One must accept voluntary poverty these days to keep his integrity.
I used to roll my eyes at this rhetoric when I was in college, but then I see this fly the flag and show your loyalty to the state business that's been resurrected and it starts to not seem so crazy after all. I stopped saying the pledge long ago, because I don't need to pledge allegiance to anyone's damn flag, because what it stands for goes against everything that I believe, cultural religious trappings be damned. One nation under God? The whole damn universe is, not just us, and not everyone believes in said higher power anyway. Liberty and justice for all? Ya think? And so I live here and obey the laws that don't go against my moral code and do my best to treat others the way I'd like to be treated, treat the land with respect. In theory this should make me a good citizen, but I'm sure that others would dispute this.
The occupied countries became the occupied countries because people were terrorized into saying yes, when they should have said no. Hitler and Stalin, Mussolini and Franco--this is the age of repression and McCarthy, in the guise of fighting Communism, is finding it in any honest criticism of the status quo?
Neither system proposed by the overlords or the economists or the protestors is working. Humans as a rule are broken, and therefore it's inevitable that our systems are too.
Angry words won't stop the fight
Two wrongs won't make it right
A new heart is what I need
Oh God, make it bleed
Is there nothing left?
Tuesday, May 1, 2012
may day may day...
In the spirit of my spiritual genXerhood, I'm taking the afternoon off to hang around at home in old jeans and flannels and t-shirts I don't wear out of the house, and maybe find somewhere to take pictures because it's pleasantly misty out, read some books, catch up on the letters and some sleep. It's one of those days.
It's also a day of protest for a system I believe in about as much as I do the free market. No boycotts, no politics for me today, though I'm watching the hammer come down on the nails out of joint with some degree of trepidation, amazed at the disconnect between the actions of the state and the head of state that's still adored or at least preferred to the theoretical theocratic bogeymen, I trust no one in this game of power, neither revolutionary nor politician because I know I'm collateral to both if things get real.
This all is starting to hit closer to home than I would like, as I see the faces of the arrestees and recognize one as the significant other of a friend of a friend, wondering what's really going on here. With the way things are going, I don't know if I'll know.
It's also a day of protest for a system I believe in about as much as I do the free market. No boycotts, no politics for me today, though I'm watching the hammer come down on the nails out of joint with some degree of trepidation, amazed at the disconnect between the actions of the state and the head of state that's still adored or at least preferred to the theoretical theocratic bogeymen, I trust no one in this game of power, neither revolutionary nor politician because I know I'm collateral to both if things get real.
This all is starting to hit closer to home than I would like, as I see the faces of the arrestees and recognize one as the significant other of a friend of a friend, wondering what's really going on here. With the way things are going, I don't know if I'll know.
got that feeling
The "Space Casino" is landing soon in Downtown Clevelandia, which gives me one more reason not to go near that place except for expeditions in snark with my erstwhile colleague. Having made his fortune off subprime loans, taking advantage of his employees, making himself into a Comic Sans superhero for the less astute Clevelandians, he's now found another way to part fools with their money.
Not everyone shares my view on this of course, and while out for a friend's birthday last night, I was a minority at the table with my views on downtown development, which probably has a whole lot to do with delving into a certain local muckraker's personal papers and seeing the huge huge tax breaks and sweetheart deals between the local powers that be and the big players that have inevitably screwed the general populace for years to come.
And yeah, shiny buildings are better than boarded up ones, but when all the downtown development I see is apartments and recreation that I can't afford, even as a 20-something with no extra mouths to feed (and I'm one of the few that's employed!), and there's nowhere to walk to after sunset, no neighbors, and while the new and ugly construction goes up, there are still condos sitting empty, because who wants to live in a wasteland with a view of brutalist architecture? Like the Rock Hall and the sportsplexes before it, the casino and the medical mart are not going to save us, or give us sustainable jobs, and all we'll get is more douchebags downtown and more women getting exploited and more people being taken advantage of all the way around.
Then again, the general populace doesn't always seem to care. The Facebook page is an exercise in semiliterate head-hurting absurdity, of a subculture I know next to nothing about (my card game experience limited to go fish, war, and Egyptian Rat Screw), and I get the feeling that not everyone on here is being snarky. Read it and weep.
I cant wait to be your FIRST {{{ B I G }}} WINNER! ! ! :-) ♥ ♥ ♥
|7| |7| |7| = big $$$$ For ME!!!!! Oh yah i'm looking forward to play in my home-town!!!! Cleveland Rocks! Do you guys have go fish?Figure I'll gamble some, have a few cocktails then go down to the lake on beach and lay out .....I Love Cleveland...Is anyone going to answer the questions posted??? I'd like to know if you have Larrys Lobstermania and The Price is Right slot machines.
....lol I hope it makes Cleveland much more money then it has had for a long time. I love CLEVELAND! I would help the casino do stuff for free if I lived there. We are getting one in Columbus and I dont really care although I know I will probably go there a few time.
literally lose sleep every night waiting for this place to open. I cant wait to spend all my pay checks here - this is going to be amazing Me too man. I had a dream that my wife left me becasue i loved this place more than her I plan on spending my whole first six paychecks here. I should be VIP Bitch... I cant wait to have my gambling addiction exploited by having a Casino 10 minutes from my house. I raise you 2 months pay - first 11 checks will be blown at the fabulous Horseshoe casino !!!!! do you have a sophisticted Bingo hall?cant wait!!! BIG PAYOUTS BABY!! WOOHOO!! Can't wait to give you my money LOL! i will be excited to see the transformation, from a deptment store to a casino[ i once shoped at higbee's] thanks for the hard work and money to make it possiable. a long over due addition to cleveland ohionnnI am going to get so drunk there I will puke on the three-card table. Sadly I read they will not cash my unemployment check or use my food stamps as credit for chip.Okay Cleveland, forget the 54 World Series, forget the trade of Rocky Colavito, forget Red Right 88, forget the Drive, the Fumble, the Shot, its time to create your own Cleveland memories at the Horseshoe Cleveland opening on May 14th! We waited a long time for this but Cleveland is doing it right by being a part of the number one gaming company in the world "Caesars". No more long drives to MI, NY or PA. Use the $40 you saved on gas to try your luck! Oh and how sweet is this, "these tax dollars will help our children, grandchildren, nieces and nephews in our public schools! Welcome to all my family members, friends and new friends. Looking forward to seeing you real soon!
Not everyone shares my view on this of course, and while out for a friend's birthday last night, I was a minority at the table with my views on downtown development, which probably has a whole lot to do with delving into a certain local muckraker's personal papers and seeing the huge huge tax breaks and sweetheart deals between the local powers that be and the big players that have inevitably screwed the general populace for years to come.
And yeah, shiny buildings are better than boarded up ones, but when all the downtown development I see is apartments and recreation that I can't afford, even as a 20-something with no extra mouths to feed (and I'm one of the few that's employed!), and there's nowhere to walk to after sunset, no neighbors, and while the new and ugly construction goes up, there are still condos sitting empty, because who wants to live in a wasteland with a view of brutalist architecture? Like the Rock Hall and the sportsplexes before it, the casino and the medical mart are not going to save us, or give us sustainable jobs, and all we'll get is more douchebags downtown and more women getting exploited and more people being taken advantage of all the way around.
Then again, the general populace doesn't always seem to care. The Facebook page is an exercise in semiliterate head-hurting absurdity, of a subculture I know next to nothing about (my card game experience limited to go fish, war, and Egyptian Rat Screw), and I get the feeling that not everyone on here is being snarky. Read it and weep.
|7| |7| |7| = big $$$$ For ME!!!!! Oh yah i'm looking forward to play in my home-town!!!! Cleveland Rocks! Do you guys have go fish?Figure I'll gamble some, have a few cocktails then go down to the lake on beach and lay out .....I Love Cleveland...Is anyone going to answer the questions posted??? I'd like to know if you have Larrys Lobstermania and The Price is Right slot machines.
....lol I hope it makes Cleveland much more money then it has had for a long time. I love CLEVELAND! I would help the casino do stuff for free if I lived there. We are getting one in Columbus and I dont really care although I know I will probably go there a few time.
literally lose sleep every night waiting for this place to open. I cant wait to spend all my pay checks here - this is going to be amazing Me too man. I had a dream that my wife left me becasue i loved this place more than her I plan on spending my whole first six paychecks here. I should be VIP Bitch... I cant wait to have my gambling addiction exploited by having a Casino 10 minutes from my house. I raise you 2 months pay - first 11 checks will be blown at the fabulous Horseshoe casino !!!!! do you have a sophisticted Bingo hall?cant wait!!! BIG PAYOUTS BABY!! WOOHOO!! Can't wait to give you my money LOL! i will be excited to see the transformation, from a deptment store to a casino[ i once shoped at higbee's] thanks for the hard work and money to make it possiable. a long over due addition to cleveland ohionnnI am going to get so drunk there I will puke on the three-card table. Sadly I read they will not cash my unemployment check or use my food stamps as credit for chip.Okay Cleveland, forget the 54 World Series, forget the trade of Rocky Colavito, forget Red Right 88, forget the Drive, the Fumble, the Shot, its time to create your own Cleveland memories at the Horseshoe Cleveland opening on May 14th! We waited a long time for this but Cleveland is doing it right by being a part of the number one gaming company in the world "Caesars". No more long drives to MI, NY or PA. Use the $40 you saved on gas to try your luck! Oh and how sweet is this, "these tax dollars will help our children, grandchildren, nieces and nephews in our public schools! Welcome to all my family members, friends and new friends. Looking forward to seeing you real soon!
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