For lack of a better name, Chapter 1

The story is fragmented and difficult to assemble. The pieces, having been blown to bits of various shapes and sizes, have arranged themselves arbitrarily, haphazardly. Nothing is written down in its entirety in any one place. The story exists only in parts; on my hard drive, on napkins and paper bags, and in various incomplete notebooks. It’s difficult to say whether this makes it more difficult to fully understand, or whether the essence becomes more evident when viewed from obscurity.

I have come to realize some important things from the experience. First, though there most certainly is a comprehensive web of surveillance in operation, there is also ample opportunity for "you" to watch "them." It can be done in subtle ways, and becomes quite effective during the frequent episodes of malfunction. Government equipment, systems, management and such - they break down with stunning regularity. Data is irrevocably corrupted by a hostile analog world (a spilled bottle of cola, for instance). The half-lives of these bits and bytes are as yet undetermined.

The data collected is sifted through the bureaucratic sieve, cc’d around and between departments, then generally disregarded. There is no central mainframe that holds all the goods, just like there is no central council of humans who rationally and methodically review the "facts."

The beige leather notebook is a reliable start. It happens late in the story, deep in debt and chronically high, but offers a few moments of lucidity. In my daze I was able to see clear through the noise, beyond the barrage of frequencies and transmissions that afflicts any urban form of life.

A song without lyrics for a change

Downtown Manhattan fights back

Liberty Street is not for Warlords

WE ARE GERMANY ARE WE?
1933

We the undersigned, resolve to attack and expose fear-induced delusion; to undermine propaganda and murder by pointing fingers in guilty faces; to employ microphone and megaphone in the effort to take back our democracy, our dignity, and our money from the secret-obsessed scoundrels who have hijacked them.

We pledge to secure every voter from intimidation and fraud; to celebrate the bravery of whistleblowers, to denounce with humor, spit, sarcasm, and tears the media oligopoly that feeds ignorance, hatred, and an endless supply of petroleum and non-petroleum based products to us in super-size portions.

There is nothing more patriotic than to honor our Armed Forces, both living and deceased, by bringing them home to their families. They are no longer fighting for Americans, for freedom and liberty, or for a higher ideal, but have instead been lured into service as the only road to a decent education and a better life, only to kill and be killed so that an increasingly few wealthy cowards may continue to profit.

Freedom Isn’t Free Tonight

George Michael to Elton John

"Other than that, he knows I don't like to tour, I smoke too much pot and my albums still have a habit of going to Number One. In other words, he knows as much as most of my fans."

Today’s commentary on privacy

how to thrive in a desert 

have you seen the valley of fire? 

undisclosed location 1 

Meet Talia

Hello my name is Talia and I am looking for help. I'm looking for ways, any way, to avoid working. I’m not the usual slouch, mind you, I’m far too far out for that. I’ve been out on my ass for some time now, and I’m running out of ideas. Listening to a dreckumentary on uranium bullets, I wonder if NASA would be interested. I mean, I’m artistic. I figure I'd be ideal for some sort of experiment. The effects of artlessness in zero gravity perhaps? There must be a subsidized scientist with a budget out there somewhere, and I'm sure shehe or he-she could sort out the whens and whats.

I'm not looking for money, just in case you are suspicious. I’ve no need for that. Auspicious, but with enough altruism for a dime store mystic, I just suck off of our Ministry of Plenty. That’s what they’re there for, after all, aren’t they? And don’t think its all shi-shi dinners and elaborate practical scams, no, there’s a whole lot of this too. A whole lot of sitting around starving.

I'm not homeless. Don’t summon up that kind of pity, you. I gracefully decline all that. I have worked. I have had roommates and stuff. I even have an apartment, where I am right now, and with it I enjoy the interminable worry of next month’s rent. I guess my Civil Scientist would make note of the fact that these acts of financial desperation, these gasps from the gullet of societude seem to pounce around the same time each month. And no, it’s not a period thing either, so back off! Quite simply, there must be a grant in here somehow, doncha think?

And pardon my tedious typing and such. I'm well educated, but you’ll soon learn that everything has a political motive for me. I rationalize, yes, but I can back it up. Yet I rarely do. I’m one of those silent protesters. I’ve got opinions on tons of issues, strong ones sometimes, but I keep them to myself. People don’t seem to like me much, so I don’t have the opportunity to shoot my mouth off all that often.

That’s why this writing thing is such a great find. I can rabble and dabble all I fancy, and no one can really stop me. Who would care to anyway, right? And even if I die right here in bed, rot for days, chances are this would be discovered soon enough, and my ridiculous lifestyle will be vindicated. No, applauded!

the thing I have about work is less about working and more about time
more about time about time about none
hours exchanged
rehearsed and excruciated into regular daynights
for spare change that doesn’t
about working the thing I don’t have about none about time
is less about words and more about change
in a Bb minor harmelodic
on the cello of Sappho’s finest
the change about words about letters

so when I launch into that sort of thing just bear with me, as I have no need of sense and its makings, and I’ll tether on back before you’ll hardly miss me.

A song for the mood

*** *** ***
Would it that both joy and pain
Could trickle gently down the drain
For high and low to be extreme
I’d live with all that’s in between

I borrowed once and borrowed well
I mirrored everything that fell
From Fountainbleau to Auld Lang Zein
I borrowed well and called it mine

If ever were a point to come
Where eyes could see me deaf and dumb
And if in such a turbid sight
I still were fit to pick and fight

Electicles

Voting is much more scientific these days. It used to be simple. When my father cast his vote for John F. Kennedy in 1960 it was because he was from a household of Democrats, and because he was under the influence of an anti-Nixon streak that wound itself through the ethnography of Jewish Philadelphia. There was no stovepipe of opinion poll calculations, no red and blue and swing states. My father may have known about Nixon’s sweaty lip, but not with the same ferocity with which we learned about George W. Bush’s scowl. Perhaps already in the adolescence of its obsolescence, it was the same Electoral College that elected presidents then as it is now. People were still essentially voting from the gut.

Keeping oneself informed is a full time exercise. Keeping oneself informed is not a passive experience. It is not simply gobbling up as much information as possible. There is an equal measure of deleting to be done. All media compete for our time and attention, and few folks find the time to do the research necessary to verify or debunk the "facts" presented to us. You come away with an impression, without necessarily understanding anything about reality.

The first election I remember was 1976, and even as a youngster I wanted to know where all of the votes went. I imagined enormous rooms where diligent and honest workers counted each ballot, marking down tallies and passing information up the food chain. I tried to imagine how many trash trucks it would take to haul away everything after the election was decided, the once important documents reduced to trash. Quite a contrast to the reality of ballot boxes floating in the San Francisco Bay in the early 21st Century.

What is most troubling is that the average citizen has no idea where their votes go. If permitted the chance to travel the path of a vote, from the moment it is cast to its final destination, the average person would likely become nauseous. Each state administers its own elections, each with its own laws and procedures, and each with its own collection of contractors, software and hardware, absentee voting system, and a partisan governor at the top. It’s not about the chad. It’s about democracy.

For more information, start here.

Non Tech Spex

Does an artist stand out because they are louder, prettier, smarter, or funnier? Or becuase they are simply themself in their work. How important is recognition? And how much is not enough?

Any jackass can make funny faces while receiving bodily injury, or ingest foul objects with abject bravery. Anyone can make friends with talk of cutting taxes. We all love an ice cold lemonade on a steamy day.

My galaxy currently has zero members. Entrance can only occur in groups of four, so I am still looking for recruits to help me get in. You can probably bail on me after that, but you never know for sure. When you make that leap, you might decide to stay, or be otherwise detained. I can't make any guarantee of safety or sanity, but I can pick up lunch on the way. You like pizza?

LISTEN...ECOUTEZ

our spokesmodel from the Garden of Eden invites you to kiss your ass goodbye 

at the time, few knew that this anonymous-looking building would change the world 

central intelligence 

Disclosure Statement

...note to weblord, scan for redundancy:

I gave you up
For better
Or for worse
If I can’t give you up for real
I promise I won’t complicate
I’m sure we can negotiate a deal
You stay the hell away from here
At twice the legal limit, dear
Don’t bully me
I’m almost in control
And miles from you
I battle on
Despite
A sense of inner calm I feel
Time will tell
I tell my self
I tell myself I’m not myself at all
Don’t wave if you should pass me by
Coincidence is not my kind
Don’t notice me
I’m almost in control
I gather up my self-esteem
I’m playing for the other team
I’m over you
I gave you up at last
You haven’t even noticed how
I finish all my projects now
I’m almost done
I’m almost in control

The Future Has Been

Please peruse the following galaxy for your immediate gratification:

A lot of room for interpretation there...or here, if you will. Futurehasbeen is the name I came up with for my recording studio, though I haven't delved too deeply into marketing my services. I just like the way it sounds. Future has been. And no reason why the blogosphere can't share purpose with the world of recorded vibration.

As an introduction, post handshake of course, why not sample a one-minute public service announcement about democracy. If we lay down and play dead, we're fools at best. We should wake up pronto, lest we settle comfortably into the role of sheep.