Allt är Slut

NEW YORK (Reuters) – The founder of a U.S. Muslim television network has been arrested and charged with murdering his wife by beheading her, the network's Web site and local media reported.

Muzzammil Hassan, founder and CEO of Buffalo, N.Y.-based Bridges TV which launched in 2004 with a mission to show Muslims in a more positive light, was charged after reporting the death of his wife, Aasiya Hassan, 37, on Thursday night.

After Hassan, 44, told police his wife was at the Bridges TV offices, in the village of Orchard Park, they found her body there, beheaded, The Buffalo News reported.

Authorities said Aasiya Hassan, with whom Hassan had two children, had recently filed for divorce and had an order of protection mandating that he leave their home as of February 6.

He was being held in a county detention center charged with second-degree murder.

"Our deepest condolences and prayers go out to the families of the victim," a statement on the network's Web site said on Monday. "We request that their right to privacy be respected."

"There had been problems before and there had been prior incidents of physical abuse," Corey Hogan, whose law firm Hogan Willig represented Aasiya Hassan in the divorce proceeding, told the newspaper.

"Name of the Game" by Badfinger (song by Pete Ham)

If you were a Badfinger fan, or if you missed them and want to be, you should watch the slideshow. If not, just give yourself a chance, lie down in bed in the dark and listen to this, over and over like I did when I was 15. Pete Ham was another great lost soul; I won't be beleaguered if you won't find out about him.

I have nothing else to say to you about this. Lie down in bed, listen to this, over and over. If you don't cry, I won't bother.

Or if you want a more straighforward love song, the following is the best power pop rock riff ever written (Hans?):

The End

If some strange, theoretical alien historians were to write the history of planet Earth, they would say that it all peaked out by 1970.

The generation that produced Jim Morrison made the final decision to destroy the Earth, by omission. Go figure.

I was a child in 1970. I would've been 11 at Woodstock. I didn't know what was going on. But I did.

Hunter Thompson was there. He saw it all. He knew. He put a bullet in his brain in 2005.

It could have all changed, but it didn't. It could have all been avoided, but it wasn't. We're living in the Aftermath.

Jim Morrison died in a hotel room in Paris in 1970 of a heroin overdose. Jim wasn't a junkie; he was a drunk. There's a big difference, no matter what the 12-step zombies tell you. Pamela Morrison fought a legal battle for five years for his estate; she won. She was dead within two weeks.

I'm not telling you to follow Jim's path, or Hunter's. It would mean nothing. You're too late.

If you're alive in 2009, and you're old enough to remember the Real Times, you know you're living in the Endgame. Unless you're seriously deluded enough that you're still part of the problem.

If you're under 40, you were born into a meaningless world. I'm sorry; I didn't do it. This is the Aftermath. I can tell you how to address it. I can't change it.

Taking It Personally: A Bit More About Zen Wrapped in Karma Dipped in Chocolate

Sunday's blog rambled all over the place, as a result of which, while discussing Brad's book, I omitted a pattern or collection of coincidences that really brought it all home to me. I doubt that these trivia will add to anyone's understanding of the book (though they might tell you more about me, upon which subject, if you have been reading this blog for a while, you are unfortunately becoming an expert, against your will). Maybe it's an explanation of how, when something comes home to you, it comes home in a big way. Maybe it's just a rare (again, for me) illustration of how having had some connection to events in a published work, however minimal, gives a bit of insight. Maybe it's because I become so obsessed about my own issues that I see them everywhere.

Zen Wrapped in Karma Dipped in Chocolate: A Trip Through Death, Sex, Divorce, and Spiritual Celebrity in Search of the True Dharma does clear up a couple of factual questions I (we?) had. When we'd met Brad the first time here in Nashville, chronicled herein, Brad's wife Yuka was one of the unexpected joys of our retreat; she helped our fledgling retreat cook get through three days' worth of overly complex vegetarian, Japanese and Thai recipes, sent us gifts afterward (and Nat, where are all those chopsticks? I'm sure the food has gone bad), and generally was a ray of sunshine at that odd and pivotal event. I'd noticed she wasn't mentioned much in his blog anymore, or at the 2008 ASZC retreat he led [and that link has a version of last blog's pic with me in it; see I was there]; I hated to see it confirmed that she was really gone. Hope things are going well for her.

Then there were some weird little geographical links to Brad's life that I found both just odd and insightful. Of course anyone who read Hardcore Zen knows Brad's basically from the Cleveland area, and I'm from Nashville. My mother was from Ohio, and grew up there and in Texas. So it was interesting to me to discover that Brad has family in Knoxville, TN, whom he regularly visits (which we knew from trying to match schedules with him, but he talks about it in the book so I can mention it here). I went to UT Knoxville from 1975 - 1979, so I know that turf, or did. What got me about his one geographically is that his parents, prior to the events of the book, had been living in the suburbs north of Dallas. Now, a lot of people have relatives in Dallas, but my mother's sister's family had all grown up in a suburb of Dallas which used to be called Lewisville, though I think their little segment has now been split off as Highland Village. Another little split-off part of the same incredibly overdeveloped suburb is what used to be a little country junction that had no name when I used to visit here, but which is now known as Flower Mound, which is apparently the location of the Funeral Home which had Brad's mom cremated. Another weird turf I know.

The final geographical coincidence (I won't count L.A., where lots of people live for a while. I lived there for about three months and didn't like it much either, except for the beach and Hollywood) was Mansfield, Ohio. It shouldn't have surprised me to read about Zero Defex playing a show there, since it's just up north of Cleveland on Lake Erie, but still, it's where my mom grew up before her mother remarried and moved them to Texas. Of my mother's Ohio relatives, I remember mostly a bunch of retarded-acting guys in white wife-beaters pulling up in campers to occupy our lawn in Manchester, and this one real pervert. But I do remember Mansfield.

But the one real factual-world resonance of this book for me was the job situation. Now, in this dying economy, as the U.S. moves into the sunset, it probably seems like anyone with a job shouldn't complain about it. And I shouldn't be either, as when it's gone I don't know how I'll ever find another. But still.

Of course, Brad was luckier than me. His job situation in the period covered by the book was indeed deeply strange; as the lone US employee of an overseas corporation that shifted management as soon as it sent him here, he had a position with no real duties or direction, no input or power to get things done, but a continuing duty to report. This was already his situation, apparently, when I met him in early 2006, though I didn't realize the scope of it til I read this book. Actually, his situation, though it must have been frustrating since he really did want to help promote Godzilla and Ultraman in America (and note that the names of his employer and the trademarked entities are disguised in the current book, though not in the previous ones or his blog; legal advice from the publisher, NAL?), sounds really sweet in some ways. He was being paid by the Japanese company to live in L.A., write his books, set up his Zen teaching operation, and then he was free (and somewhat funded) to travel all over the country promoting his books and trying to help shitty little Zen operations like we were in 2006. I'd kill for this kind of funding with freedom.

I, on the other hand, also have a job that makes no sense. I quit my previous job last fall,, in despair at falling commissions and the ridiculous situation of trying to work in a department headed by the managing attorney's mother. I was just about ready to start looking for another one, about a month later, when I got a call out of the blue, from the HR person of the company for whom I now work(?), based on a resume I'd forgotten I had online. So yes, those things actually do work, randomly. They wanted to hire me to start a new commercial department specifically for a new client. It paid enough at the base to minimally pay my bills. As the job market had already deteriorated, though not to its present level, I thought I'd better accept.

However, the new client fell apart within weeks after I started the job. They've never really been able to find anything for me to do since -- I keep getting minor projects assigned, which get yanked away about the time I get them organized and running. Most of the time I have nothing to do at all, and as of this week I don't even know where the last set of files I was working, have gone. I'm supposed to get some work which had been brought in for me but foolishly placed somewhere else, soon. I guess. Yesterday, with my old files gone, I had nothing to do at all until I jumped in on the project with the busy people amongst whom I sit.

Otherwise, mostly I've been surfing the internet. Repeatedly, and compulsively. Which, if you work with internet disabled like a lot of people do, sound great. But not for eight hours a day. As that old commercial hinted, you really do get to the end of the internet. Plus, the situation is not such that I can concentrate on doing anything like writing this blog. I tried it once, and it didn't turn out too well.

But now, I'm getting reassigned, and they're going to move me. And where they're putting me, I might not have the internet. And if that happens and they don't give me a full workload, I'm going to go stark raving bonkers.

See, unlike Brad, I'm not free to roam all over the US. Or even all over Nashville. I just have to sit there. It ain't zazen.

I can't complain, really. I'm sure that everyone in management knows I've cost a lot more than I've brought in, which is essentially nothing, ever since I've been there. And they still keep me; it's like they don't know what to do with me but don't want to let me go. Which is a good sign, of course, and speaks well of them as humans. And I still get a paycheck, which is a lot better than a lot of my friends, these days, although I don't know how long my employer will see fit to keep it that way if I can't make them some money, which is what I'm used to being very good at doing.

But enough about me....

At this point, Brad Warner is still scheduled to be one of the leaders of our Easter Weekend Zen retreat, so if you're interested, watch this blog.......

No, the silly little click inside arrow on the pic of the book above doesn't work. Believe it or not, the only picture of that book cover I could find on the internet is that little one from Amazon. Sorry. But you can go to the real link in the text and buy the book.

Imbalance in Balance

Having developed the habit of writing these little articles, when I don't, stuff just builds up. Which is alright, because if I don't write it out and pay attention to it, it goes away. It does leave me with all sorts of mixed messages about what to write when I do write, though.

Yesterday morning I had one of the crashing sinus headaches I still have, although very occasionally, now. When I was in my teens, the things would come one occasionally, and be relentless -- made me want to pound my head into the dirt. They peaked out the winter I spent in Vermont in 1979 - 80; I had one that went on for days at a time. I'd get drunk to make it go away, and then of course I'd have the hangover plus the sinus problem -- I finally went to a emergency room, got shot up with some goofy drug that made me puke but made the headache go away. They finally stopped when I moved to California that next fall; lower humidity? Different allergens? Dunno. But although they come back occasionally, they've never been like they were then.

Anyway, I missed what must have been a kick-ass day at the NZC. The monthly 5 a.m. sit used to be one or two people at the most, maybe 2 1/2; I understand there were seven people yesterday who came and stayed for the whole thing. And there was a book study afterward! Sometimes it feels good when your effort pays off, even when you're not around to reap the rewards in person.

Which is in a way, good. When I started going to Atlanta in early 2006, I went because I needed something real in Zen that was lacking in Nashville. When I saw what was there, I wanted to bring it back both for the benefit of those who prior exposures to Zen were somewhat less than, and for myself, so I'd have a good context to sit in. I never wanted to be any kind of a leader, much less the public face of anything. But such things happen. And now I can step back from it; except that I still need to rebuild the website, and promote the new MySpace page I just set up for the NZC (and you should all befriend it!).... but the efforts of others are coming into it now. Nat was always there, and he's a much better front man for the thing than I could ever be. Too many skeletons in my closet.

Coming out of one of those headaches is kind of like a hangover. No energy. I went to my dad's house in Manchester, ate fried catfish, and read most of Brad Warner's new book. I'd bought ten copies for the NZC, and I probably should have checked it out myself, but no fear: Brad's stuff just gets better and better.

I've written about Brad's stuff before (I think you can search for it in here?), so I won't reiterate, but his first book caught me right when I was trying to come back to some form of Buddhism in later 2004, when I think I was finally coming to terms with the death of my mother, eighteen months earlier. The main criteria I have for "Truth" from a teacher is when the teacher says something that I've come up with earlier, myself, and thought it was original to me. At least that way I know it's true, for me. And if I'm not the only one to see it exactly that way, maybe there's something to it. Brad's not the only one with whom I've had that experience; often I've heard my teacher Michael Elliston voice thoughts that I've had. But Brad's the only one to do it in writing. Repeatedly.

Brad's first book, Hardcore Zen, for which he is known, was basically a compilation of blog articles edited together, with some filler articles written at the behest of the publisher. Not that it wasn't a brilliant book, filled with exactly what I needed to hear at that moment. His second book, Sit Down and Shut Up, is a more conscientious attempt to integrate views into Brad's own life with his observations of some of the Shobogenzo, Dogen's life's work. The book is again, excellent, but a little labored in the application of the Shobogenzo to the Zero Defects reunion.

But in Zen Wrapped in Karma Dipped in Chocolate: A Trip Through Death, Sex, Divorce, and Spiritual Celebrity in Search of the True Dharma (don't make me say it again), Brad has finally come into his own as a teacher, I think. His resolve by the end of the book -- as he puts it, to be an asshole for life -- is perhaps better phrased as a determination not to be dissuaded from expressing what he perceives to be clear truth, by the expectations of others. Brad came under attack last year, and the year before, from that microcosm which is the Buddhist blogsphere, for his articles on Suicide Girls, as well as his unexpected appointment as Nishijima's dharma heir. He's making it clear, that after a year in which he witnessed the death of his mother and grandmother, the end of his job and his marriage (and we'll miss you, Yuka!), he's going to express what he sees. And that certainly is an attitude which a self-labelled punk-rock guy needs to come back to.

It's really reassuring to know that I'm not the only one turned off by flowery New Age Buddhism (Brad's parody of the "Zen" practice in which one intones, "Breathing in, I breathe flowers; breathing out, I breathe kittens" remind me of why I no longer participate in the Nashville Buddhist Festival). It's nice to know that someone else whose opinion I respect feels a need to address imbalance, not by neutrality, but by supplying an opposing force.

Weekend before last, I went back to Atlanta to the ASZC for one of the zazenkai events I love most. The winter zazenkai's are small events. It's usually cold and miserable, and not many attend, but those who do are the ones who've become my friends. This month's retreat was led by my friend Gareth, who after many years of practice has finally gone through the ceremony it takes to become a novice priest in Zen. Four of us went down from Nashville - a record!

Gareth's theme for the retreat was balance. Honestly, I couldn't see how he was going to make this theme work. I can certainly see the concept of balance as in sitting erect, as in zazen -- when one becomes erect, one maintains equilibrium. But it seems to me that things that most people are trying to make balance -- their outer lives, their various roles, etc. -- are illusory, conceptual and self-defined. One should be able to balance them by saying "Presto! Yer balanced!" Since even the concept of the self is fluid, what is there to balance?

I'm really not sure I understand, to this day. But I do know that as long as there is a Brad Warner to counterbalance every Thich Nhat Hanh aficionado, there is balance in my world.

Despite the caption, the picture at the top was actually taken at a retreat in Atlanta in March, 2008. I should know, I took it. The label is Brad's, from his website. There were actually three of us from Nashville at that retreat: Nat, Ana and myself. Nat had told Ana to guard the car, and then disappeared himself. Hence, none of us are in the pic. But we were there. Honest.

Guest Blog by Jim Lydecker: Obama's Two Largest Problems

I really have to agree with this one, for the most part, and the last paragraph is the real kicker. The question then, is, "How?" A real cliffhanger, this one. I'll come back and comment later, so check back...


Obama’s two largest problems to face
By Jim Lydecker
Napa, California


January 30, 2009




The election of Barack Obama as our 44th president is considered by many to be historic as Obama is the first non-white to hold office. I, for one, never saw race as the issue – I was brought up in New Jersey, perhaps the most multi-racial/cultural place in the world. And my parents never tolerated any racism/sexism/ageism.

This election was historic in another way: Never has a president taken over under so many converging crises’ of unprecedented proportions. If Obama gets us heading in the right direction, he’ll go down in history as great a president as FDR or Lincoln. But if Obama’s unable to change course, then there’ll be those who’ll vilify him and this is wrong.

If America fails we have no one to blame but ourselves. Since the 80s, we have elected officials on all levels, national, state and local, who pursued unsustainable growth economies. Starting with the S&L scandals and continuing through artificial bubbles of the past 15 years, our leaders looked the other way when paper wealth created artificial wealth which was bound to collapse.

While unemployment marches toward Great Depression levels and wages plummet and businesses fail, never has so much of a nation’s wealth been in the hands of so few. The collapse of the housing bubble wiped out a disproportionate amount of what’s left of the middle class’ wealth. And when there is less to spread around, the result is the standard of living has to be proportionately lowered. Don’t expect the wealthy to live any less a standard of living than what they are used to: Recessions and depressions always transfers money into their pockets.

In a growth economy, most people think the way out of this mess is doing what got us here in the first place: Grow. In an essay in the Register about a year ago I said, “A growth economy is known as an economic oxymoron. It hastens the inevitable demise when a draconian contractual economy will take place regardless of what we do.” Well, the draconian contraction is upon us and our shrinking planet and its dwindling resources makes growth not an option.

Throw an exploding world population in the mix and do we have problems.

Our leaders need to take us down paths, no matter how painful, when circumstances demand. For any semblance of our economy and civilization to survive, we’ll need leaders of extraordinary courage, intelligence and forethought to pull this off. If Obama is going to do this, he has two hugely unpopular problems to deal with on the path to survival.

First, Obama will have to redistribute the wealth. From the beginning, all civilizations failed when the majority of wealth was concentrated at the top. This nearly happened twice in the past hundred years when huge disparities caused revolutions, and these disparities were not of the magnitude of America 2009.

The Bolshevik Revolution took place in the Soviet Union leading to the hideous regimes under communism. The Great Depression swept FDR into office and with it his socialistic agenda. Two differences to remember is that FDR was elected while the Bolsheviks took over in a violent uprising but both effectively redistributed each nation’s wealth creating a more even playing field.

Obama is now taking the New Deal approach and this in itself is frightening: The stimulus program seems to be another way of saying “pork barrel.” Spending money we don’t have is what got us here in the first place. Bandaging a wound is pointless if unable to stop the hemorrhage.

The second, and biggest, problem Obama has to deal with is overpopulation.

We live on a planet of finite resources. Once the carrying capacity is passed, the standard of living and quality of life will decrease. Even if we were able to prime the engines of growth back to their previous levels, the high prices of things like crude, copper and steel will return and shortages reappear. Permanent/unemployed homeless, mass migrations, starvations, disease, war and social strife will become the norm. This does not have to be if the population contracts accordingly to contracting resources and capital.

We need to aggressively begin a negative-growth population policy immediately.

Looking at these two problems, Obama first must redistribute the nation’s wealth through a heavily progressive tax code on incomes above $1 million a year like FDR did. Tax breaks should be given to the middle class and virtually eliminated for those at the bottom. Otherwise America will face a revolution of such magnitude it will make Russia in 1917 look like a field of daisies.

And then Obama must take the lead in reducing the number of humans on the planet so the world has a manageable population. This is the intelligent, humane thing to do instead of allowing us to breed toward extinction.

How to Treat a War Criminal

In 1941, Hitler's whack job of a deputy, Rudolph Hess, in a truly odd historical incident, flew from Germany to Scotland. That's right, over the English Channel, in the midst of WWII, right before Germany invaded Russia. Some claim he was trying to broker a separate peace with England; it looks like a misguided attempt to save his own ass. Regardless, he was taken prisoner, of course, and was amazingly enough sentenced at Nuremberg as a war criminal.

Nuremberg, like the more limited tribunals following the Treaty of Versailles that ended WWI (and arguably led straight to WWII through its leniency to the German command), ended in a wide array of convictions, but most of its criminals were pardoned or released early, by the '50's. After 1966, when Albert Speer (Hitler's architect) and Baldur von Shirach (Hitler Youth leader) were released, Hess was the sole inhabitant of Spandau prison, a sprawling compound in California. He died, supposedly of suicide, with an electrical cord around his neck, in 1987.


In 2001, as part of an overall Fascist clampdown, the Bush cabal opened Gitmo -- Guantanamo Bay prison camp, at a US Naval Base in Cuba. From then til now, hundreds of people have been held without trial on ill-documented charges of treason; 200+ remain. The United States military, under orders from BushCo, have behaved just liked the Nazi's, torturing their prisoner victims, in violation of the US Constitution and of every concept which underlay the philosophy on which this country was founded. About 500 of the prisoners have been released by the US before their situations could be examined by the Courts. Of those remaining, about 25 have been to Court; all but two have been released for lack of evidence to hold them in the first place.

In 2008, Barack Obama was swept into office as US President. I think you probably heard about that. He rode into office on a tide of very, very late American outrage about Bush's wars of imperialism; most Americans didn't react until it became clear that their own foolish spawn who signed up to kill foreigners for money, were being killed without benefit. Most Americans didn't turn on Bush until they saw that he was an incompetent totalitarian strongman wannabe.
What took so long for the little pig-like hearts of Americans to turn? If their God exists, may he forgive them.

Barack Obama was not my first choice for President, as my readers know. However, as you also know, I've been very impressed with something about him that his naive supporters seem not to have seen, and I sure couldn't see it for all the hoopla; he is a pragmatist, hard-schooled in Chicago, and he is getting shit done. And he seems to be doing most of the right things, with the support of most of the right people. Although the economic news is all bad, this less-than-a-week since the Inauguration, most of the political news is good. Bush's legacy will stain us for a long time to come, but Obama is doing what he can to turn things around.

With one exception.

Most of the pre-inaugural reports indicated that Obama intended to go soft on the war criminals of the Bush administration. This seems to be the case, and that is a crime itself, and a mistake.

One of the main reasons Hitler was able to come to power in the 1930's was the backing of the Worker's Party, which ultimately became the Nazi party, by the remnants of Germany's WWI military leaders, who felt betrayed by their civilian leaders and by the Treaty of Versailles. Not taking down these people, long term, cost millions of lives in Europe.

In addition, in the modern history of the United States and of the West in general, the main residence of social injustice is in the discriminatory administration of the criminal code, between the rich and the poor, a division which was prospered and widened under eight years of nutball Republicanism. The kid on the corner gets busted for a minor drug possession (pumped up into resale by insane Federal codes and boot licking State imitators), and goes to jail for twenty years to life. Bernard Madoff steals $50 billion dollars, ruins the lives of thousand and effects the lives of millions (and how suicides are, or will be involved?) and sits in his $7-million dollar apartment. How could it be more evident, between this and Obama's election, that the administration of "justice" is divided not among lines of color, gender or preference, but along lines of economics? The US government loves its rich and hates its poor, except when it is beneficial to symbolically embrace them.


Bush, Cheney, and all those who willingly followed their lead, the torturers for money, the psychopathic guards, and all their fans, are war criminals by any definition of the words, and need to be tried and convicted for their crimes against humanity. For Obama to let them go free, while your average street corner mugger and the drug dealer go to jail, may be an indication that the accusations of him levelled in the campaign for alleged elitism, may not be wide of the mark.

And don't talk to me about the philosophy of punishment. I have always maintained that vengeance has no place in government, that it accomplishes nothing and wastes money. I have always been opposed to the death penalty, because (as becomes clear now in the age of DNA), it can be an irreversible mistake. I merely say that, if a government takes it upon itself to punish, it must punish equally.

And yes, I can see why in this time of crisis, Obama wants to just move forward, and just let bygones be bygones. But that is not appropriate where the bygones are murderers, thugs and thieves, and he is leaving dangerous adversaries behind him.

Bush, Cheney and company are murderers, traitors, and more, and they need to be tried and convicted as such in a court of law. Obama has ordered the closing of Guantanamo, but not for another year.

Cheney won't live long in captivity. When Bush is convicted, I know of a nice, expensive facility that doesn't need to go to waste.

But why wait? I'm sure the cheerful folks who live there now would be welcome to hold him in their warm embrace for the rest of 2009.

Black Lagoon

In my continuing effort to introduce those of you who haven't already figured it out, to anime, I present: Black Lagoon.

I just finished watching the last four episodes of Season I; I'd been waiting for about six months for the third and final disc to arrive from Netflix, finally gave up and bought the set, and it was worth every penny. This one is the story of a young Japanese salaryman who is kidnapped by Southeast Asian pirates and goes all Patty Hearst on his company (which betrays him, as employers will). It's an action series with some great characters, the best reason to watch of which is Revy, the Chinese-American two-handed gunner who's the real "muscle" of the outfit. This series doesn't hold back on the seedy realism, the language, the bars or the brothels of Asia, and the graphics are beautiful. See for yourself. I put up the video with the English lyrics overdub; the lyrics, in some Japanese writer's version of English, are all the more chilling because of the language problem.

The theme song, by the way, is by a Japanese artist called MEL, and you can find the video on the special features disc that comes with the set.

So, if your kind of anti-heroine is a fugitive from the NYC cops, smokes and drinks like a sailor (which she is, I guess) and moonlights for both the CIA and the Asian gang lords, this series is for you.

We all have to find inspiration where we can.

Now back to watching Ghost in the Shell: Solid State Society for the millionth time...

Begin in Silence

New Year's Eve is one of those holidays I could do without. It's not quite as annoying as the Fourth of July, with its perverted nationalism, though the fireworks can be just as bad. Ms. Johnson really used to hate them. Wednesday night, my total firecracker experience was a few sets of wimpy ladyfingers or whatever they're selling these days, set off in the street by the neighbors. Bing Bing yourself.

The day we begin the New Year is absolutely arbitrary of course. It'd make more sense to begin it in the spring, like some cultures have done, instead of sticking it in the week after the Solstice, when everything is about as dead as it is going to get.

I don't know of anyone who's sad to see 2008 go, though I'm not that optimistic for the next few years. The people who voted for Bush and his lackeys in 2000 were idiots, and those who supported him in 2004 are criminals and traitors -- which everyone knows now, but how on earth did you let yourselves be deceived for so long? You should have just gone to Texas and checked it out.

Now we have Obama, who I really think is going to do the best that can be done. It's amusing to me that his liberal supporters are disappointed; anyone who'd actually looked at the candidate would've realized that he was politically to the right of Hillary Clinton, schooled in Chicago hardball, and a pragmatist. Which, may be exactly what we need. The early indications are, he's competent, which is more than we've seen in eight years. The fact that he's over-reached his Lincoln-esque policies by putting some dangerous opponents in positions of power and influence -- hope that works out for him. His invitation to a noted homophobic zealot for the inaugural invocation is a little scary. As a non-Christian, I don't see any real likelihood of the Constitutionally-mandated separation of Church and State manifesting any time soon. But it could be worse.

Anyway. I never did well with the drinking New Year's Eve, hungover New Year's Day thing. It's not a good night to go out drinking, either for your pocketbook or your criminal record. so I've usually stayed in. I do remember one night in the late '90's when I stayed in, put up with the noise at midnight sober, then headed down to lower Broadway to begin my own, independent celebration at Robert's Western Wear, probably to the astonishment of the hungover honky-tonkers trying to stare down their eggs and sausage.

But this year began with some much-needed silence and zazen, joining the good folks of the 12South Dharma Center (who in this case consisted of members of Rinzai sangha Alaya Dhyana, me, an impressive NZC newcomer, and one confused participant from another group) for some much-needed silence.

There are worse ways to begin your New Year (like all of those listed above) than four hour of zazen. Particularly necessary for me in this instance was the stark minimalism of the service. Sometimes the administrative crap involved in trying to keep an organization functional obscures the purpose you're really there. I never wanted to be involved in any of that, but sometimes shit must be done. And believe me, after dealing with t-shirts and arguments over furniture, as well as the prospect of trying to fix a long-neglected financial system, petty as it may be, it's nice just to sit.

This sit, using Alaya Dhyana's minimalist protocols, a sort of deconstruction of the old NZC rituals, was really refreshing. The NZC's affiliation with the ASZC and consequent adoption of more orthodox Soto protocols, sometime leaves us with a bit more ritual than I'm in the mood for. When I did my first NZC sesshin (zazkenkai, really) in 2005, I really looked forward to kin-hin, the intervals of chanting, anything but endless zazen. And when I started my ASZC weekends in early 2006, the (then-emerging) orthodoxy of their ritual seemed appropriate, comforting and somehow reinforcing. But when you cram all that bell-ringing and chanting into a ninety-minute space with only a total hour of zazen, it seems that one has boiled away all the soup and left the salt. Add in some dead reading of dead words, a little singing and extraneous philosophizing -- at some point, you're working against yourself.

So I began my year in silence. Real silence. Ding, ding, sit. Ahhh.

Tomorrow morning, five a.m., more of the same (or as close as I can get). Happy New Year!

Photo courtesy of Paul Felton.

Tuesday Morning

About 5:30 a.m., I realize it's time to get out of bed. I have my Human rogue over in Night Elf territory now, and I have time to check out a quest I didn't run across with the Night Elf warrior (who's been resting now for a couple of weeks), down in the Barrens, then it's off back to Stormwind and Ironforge. The game is calling me; it waits patiently, taking up 10.7 gigs on my C drive...

But damn, it's Tuesday. All realms are down for maintenance, like every other Tuesday, during these morning hours. No satisfaction for my addiction. What to do now?

I could sit extra zazen, but the NZC's Tuesday night meeting is tonight, and there's an hour of it there waiting for me. Zen is tricky around these holidays. Most of the Buddhists I know are really closet Christians, just waiting to turn the life of Buddha into the story of the Sweet Baby Jesus. They go softer and fuzzier now, even more than usual. I usually don't like to lead these meetings; all the talk seems cheap and just somehow wrong after I sit, it cranks the argumentative mind up, and there's never anything even close to the mark. But now I'm starting to see I need to, occasionally, if for nothing else other than provide a little beans, rice and hot sauce to counter all the sugar they'll get otherwise.

There are practices, you know, that can help you deal with life better. Zazen can give you whole new levels of awareness, if you let it. As strange as it seems to say, embedded as it is in a religion, Buddhism, which teaches the doctrine of no-self, it empowers you. Or just gives you access to a bigger you, which is more powerful. Zen, truly practiced, is not, as some say, the giving up of preferences. That just makes you a dweeb. It is the ability to truly choose among preferences. To realize they are preferences, and to embrace them as you will. To become a true individual, because the substrate truly is the one you make. Am I clear? No? See how words fail.

Because there are practices, you know, that are good for you. But religions, religions suck.

Religions are for people who need to be told a story because they are afraid to write their own. They need to think someone is in control. They need to be reassured. Whereas, in this day and age, that's the last thing you need, until and unless you're about to die and hell then, why not? But if you truly want to be able to have a life, to bear with its horrors in the coming, truly Apocalyptic age (see?), you really just need to be able to see the truth. Then you choose.

And of course these next few days, it's Christmas. Actually, I like Christmas. It's a holiday everywhere, in every culture; the fact that the various followers of the Desert God, like all other godlings, have named it after their own obsession, means nothing. The Solstice is the Solstice -- the darkness before the dawn. Even when the dawn comes bleary-eyed, tired and dying. Hell, it's still morning.

So have a good holiday. Forget about the coming madness for a few days; don't worry if there's no presents this year. If you're old enough to read this, you remember when mankind reached its peak. Take solace in your loved ones, if you have them. They'll be more important to you when all your shit is gone. Someday they'll be gone, too. And someday you come down to the raw bone of existence.

But take my advice; try not to do it today. It's Christmas. Read something good. Listen to your favorite music. Then get ready to tuck in your shirttails; the shit is about to hit the fan.

Adoration of the Rufi

Everybody had a good year.
Everybody had a hard time.
Everybody had a wet dream.
Everybody saw the sun shine.

Everybody had a good year.
Everybody let their hair down.
Everybody pulled their socks up.
Everybody put their foot down.

- John Lennon, from "I've Got a Feeling"


















Ms. Johnson, we will always remember.

Between Worlds: The Waking Dream

Sometimes a dream is just a dream. Sometimes, as when I fought for sleep with a brain desperately trying to clear of toxins, just a couple of weeks ago, a dream is a bridge between worlds. On that night, I looked at a door in the wall above me, where my window should have been; I opened that door and stepped into a world more real than the one where I lay, conscious the whole time that I travelled between existences in the guise, the vehicle of a dream. In that place, the laws of physics were different, even the animals and the landscapes were different, but the people just as real, and they knew me better than anyone in the place I had left. On that night, I stepped back and forth through the door several times, and to this day I envy my other self who resides there even now.

Perhaps, as Neal Stephenson's characters in his latest and possibly best novel Anathem speculate, all philosophies are true and every existence which can or cannot be conceived is just as real and existent as the next; or perhaps each realm is the noumenon of the next, in an endless egg puzzle. Soldiers inside of soldiers inside of soldiers. Having seen the real nature of dreams and of the self, one sees that each mind flows into the next, and that with the barriers relaxed -- the limitations which designate and create our existence -- one mind becomes another, and all things do indeed become not only possible, but necessary and true.


And the problem of other beings is inherently solved; all beings exist because I think they do -- not in the delusion of solipsism, but in the arbitrary constructionism of the limiting mind, empowered by the disease of Logos. Did my mother indeed speak fluent German, or was that just a bleed-through from my father's separate reality? My own past speculations about the differences between the animals we eat and our pets, led me to the realization that all personalities, including the human ones, of ourselves and others, are ones we create for use in the moment. They need have no independent existence.

The next time you have that sense of unreality, relax into the realization that the present moment is indeed unreal -- a bubble in the stream, as the Lotus Sutra tell us. Yet that unreality is just as real as any other possibility.


So it is that in a better world, though not in the one in which I write, I attended last week's Rohatsu sesshin in Atlanta, where all my favorite Zen people were. And perhaps my friends travelled between worlds in their icy zendo, as I did earlier in my bed of fever, and I was with them and also touched all things. And the Rufi with whom I spent my evenings typing, are just as real as those friends, and Ms. Johnson still critiques my writings after Gnu reads to her from The Cat Who Loved Christmas. And those two beautiful women in whose company I killed monsters play their own MMPORG in which the characters are accountants and bill collectors and mindless drones who fail to appreciate their own existence, and thus mine.

And in the endless zazen which is my job in Hell for now, I wait to re-enter the stream. And re-enter we must, for that, if nothing else, is the essential ground of existence: that all things are true, and real, and permeable, and to move between them without effort is to become God. And when one breathes, he is released.



Top to bottom: Kwanyin, level 25 Night Elf Warrior; Michael Elliston, Jonathon Sodos, Tim Goodson, Gareth Young; Gnu Rufus, Deuce Rufus and HR1, with pets; Hallgerd, level 12 Human Rogue, with baby blizzard bear.

Jim Lydecker Guest Blog: Recession and the Lessons of History

I'm gonna put up another of Jim's pieces this morning, since mine are serving mostly to draw fire from the Politically Correct, the humorless and the over-sensitive. This post is pretty calm and mainstream for Jim.

I have to start with an addendum. His opening quote is a variation of Santayana's "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." I like Santayana. On a Buddhist (?)note, he also said "There is no cure for birth and death save to enjoy the interval." Oh, and "Fanaticism consists of redoubling your efforts when you have forgotten your aim."

But I'll shut up now. Enjoy the piece.



“If we do not remember history, then we are destined to repeat it.”

Everyone has heard this oft-repeated quote and it fits in perfectly with today’s state of the economy and the choice of our next president.

Let me explain.

Recently I’ve finished a book by Stephen Duncombe and Andrew Mattson (“The Bobbed Hair bandit”) about the 1920s from the post-war recession in 1920 to the 1929 collapse. Remembering we had a severe recession beginning in 1990 that began to turn around in 1993, you can interchange the ‘20s with ‘90s below:

“By the end of 1923, things were looking a bit better in the working-class neighborhood areas. Production increased which meant more jobs and products to spend wages on.Outstripping the advances of workers’ wages was the striking increase in their material aspirations. Americans were buying into ‘the good life.’ The creation of this market was helped by the expansion of easy credit allowing the working class to live like the middle class, the middle class to ape the upper, and the upper class to inhabit the stratosphere.”

Duncombe and Mattson then say:

“‘Just Charge It!’ advised advertisements as credit was available for the smallest to largest consumer items … ‘Has our country gone installment mad?’ wondered the New York Herald in 1924, arguing that ‘buying on credit has gripped every class in proportion to income.’ With easy credit, American consumers, corporations and financial institutions were building fantastic lives on mountains of debt.”

Of course, we know what happened as the Roaring Twenties became the Great Depression. The ease for people to live beyond their means with easy credit was a significant cause.

Sound familiar?

FDR swept into office with a mandate. He called for change and beat Herbert Hoover who represented more of the same. In this sense 1932 was a blueprint for 2008. The biggest issue in both elections was the economy.

In the ‘20s, both the stock markets and finance industries were unregulated. This is the reason most economists attribute to the collapse. In his first cabinet meeting, Roosevelt spoke of placing regulations on the very businesses that ran amok under greed without control. Such regulatory agencies as Securities and Exchange Commission were born, which made FDR the scourge of businesses, banks and corporations.

However, since Reagan those very regulations put in place to prevent another depression have been under assault and removed from one administration to the next. “Let the buyer/consumer beware!” has been the mantra as markets have been allowed to police themselves. This was like getting rid of the watchdog and allowing the foxes into the hen house.

Another similarity from then is the huge disparity of wealth. The only time more wealth was concentrated in the hands of the upper class as it was during the ‘20s has been from 1996 on. We know what happened in the 20s with the massive transference of wealth to the upper class. The middle class was wiped out and America walked off an economic cliff.

History tells us how we got back on track.FDR insisted, was getting money back into the hands of the middle class by transferring it from the upper class. This was done through taxes that ran as high as 90 percent on those who made more than $1.5 million annually. The result of this made FDR the enemy of the Mellons, Carnegies, Rockefellers and other old-wealth families who felt this taxation was nothing more than the theft of their money.

And this brings us back to the presidential election of 2008.

Barack Obama made it an issue to bring back the regulatory agencies and the necessary regulations that were removed over the past 28 years. Obama will put teeth back in the watchdog. And while Obama campaigned promising to redistribute the wealth, John McCain promised to “not be that guy who is going to spread the wealth around.” My answer to McCain was always, who do you want to be? The guy who takes the remaining 20 percent controlled by the lower 90 percent of the population and transfers it to the upper 10 percent who now control 80 percent of the nation’s wealth? Do you want be the guy who continues to believe in trickle-down economics, a theory that most proponents now reject? The theory was first used in the ‘20s under Hoover and raised its head again under Reagan.

Our nation has always had a progressive tax structure and the rich need to pay more to help level the playing field. There are those who say the rich already pay over 50 percent of the taxes.

They should: They own much more than that of the nation’s wealth.

The wealthy will pay more taxes under Obama. This is definitely not the change they hoped for. What no one hopes for, however, is history to give us another Great Depression.

Jukkai Ceremony, Nov. 15, 2008

To see all of Nat's slideshow: Go hither.

If you'd like to join us, let us know.

Begin Again, Every Moment

Yesterday was my 51st birthday; I've just begun my 52nd year of life. There's nothing that significant about 51; it's just another in a long line of anniversaries I never thought I'd see, when I was younger.

50, of course, was significant; last year, it was for me, a very relaxing event, the unexpected entry into a stage of life in which I'm much more comfortable in my own skin. Or maybe it was my Zen practice; that and my life are inseparable, at this point.

For those of you who have been following, I'm more comfortable in my new job, as of yesterday -- realizing that I may be in a better position than some, with the economy long gone South. So really for me, it's just time to relax, take a deep breath, and surf existence.

And thanks again, to the men and women of the Nashville Zen Center, and to Abbott Michael Elliston of the Atlanta Soto Zen Center, for another redeeming weekend. When everything else seems to be falling apart, I now at last have a sangha to keep my energies up and my faith in myself renewed, which is something I never had before. And I'm proud of us; the NZC was a collapsing structure on a path with no heart when I walked into it four years ago. Now it's found direction, some much-needed new blood, and enough minds with a common focus to be something worth fighting for. What was one of many nest of Bullshit Buddhism has become (with some flaws and reversions, warts and all) a place and a resource for those who truly want to accept reality. I am at last able, with some degree of comfort, to direct those seeking a softer way, and an assurance that they will have eternal live in some eternal, compassionate, mindful Bodhisattva moment -- elsewhere.

No more Nashville Buddhist Festival bullshit. This is it. You've hit the wall, the final moment. No softly mumbling Teacher is gonna save you now. Grab your ass with both hands and hold on.

I am reassured by the national elections. Even if we go down the tubes, having saner hands at the controls, is better. It appears to me that Obama is a bit soft on the appeasement of traitors -- the Bush people need to be prosecuted, Joe Lieberman needs to be on the street. But we'll see. If this country ever needed a purge...

And I'm relaxing into aspects of myself that I never knew existed. Zen (and hence, life) is not about changing oneself into some idealized version. The teachers who will hold that carrot out to you are liars. Zen and life are about Zen and life -- right here, right now, as it is. Deal with it.

I've also managed to scrape some very shallow people off my shoe. Big loss. New flash: If someone who pretends to be your friend terminates your friendship because they don't share your opinions, they were never your friend. You were being used, for something. Let them go.

By the way, the pic above is of the ASZC Abbot, Michael Elliston, showing me how to wear a robe. Hmmmmm.....

A Brief Statement of Intent

In these brown days, I almost gave up these Ratzaz Diaries. As recently as yesterday morning, I thought about putting up a post that the Ratzaz Diaires were in remission indefinitely. Considering the reception that my "Saga" post of October 26 got, I suddenly wondered if it were indeed worthwhile exposing my thoughts to the world, as I so carelessly do here. And it's not just that; as the world spirals down toward the Greater Depression and I approach my fifty-first birthday, I feel more and more that I'm shouting into the Wilderness.

But then again, I need to worry less about this blog's impact on its few readers, and realize that I do it for myself. Here, if in few other places, I can expound things which are meaningful to me, and thereby try to keep myself a bit of sanity in a world which increasingly lacks it.

And yes, if you couldn't tell from the "Behind Enemy Lines" post, my day-to-day situation is not workable, barely tolerable. I really shouldn't have taken this stupid and pointless job. I have a feeling it'll end of its own accord, about which I'll have mixed feelings. I just realize how rare it is to be hired, period, in this day and age. But eight hours a day of living in a Kafka novel (or maybe Solzhenitsyn) does not contribute to my mood.

I really don't like to explain myself, but I'm going to a bit, with regard to that Oct. 26 post, and the last one. I thought I had laid down the preamble pretty well in the "Zen for the West" and "Blood" posts, but people just hear what they want to hear, read what they want to read.

A couple of readers, surely not most of you, took my posting of the first Saga video and my comments as some sort of statement of a Neo-Nazi ideology, which anyone who knows me, knows is ludicrous. What I meant should have been evident from the preceding posts. But let me just state this: I am not racist, in the normal sense of the word. Hey, I voted for Obama. I just think that all cultures, including mine, have a right to exist, and to preserve their own integrity. And if they want to blend, that's fine. But I think people ought to be able to preserve their own heritage, no matter what that is. And we live in a society in which the preservation of all cultures except that of Northern Europeans, is encouraged. I want to preserve mine, too, but not at the expense of others.

What I don't think is necessary is the compacting of all cultures together into a sort of hodge-podge in which no one has any cultural identity. When I sit down to eat a steak dinner, with a salad and a baked potato, a glass of tea and perhaps a slice of pie, I take a bite of each in turn, usually, savoring the individual flavors and the way they complement each other. I don't put them all in a blender first and hit "puree." For me, that would be less satisfying. If you want to eat that way, go ahead, just don't make me do it.

But our society, particularly in the U.S., has been conditioned by the disease of Political Correctness, not to see what exists, but to see the stereotype laid down by the PC creators, a fairly unconscious entity over a course of years. That conditioning is part of the educational system, especially at the upper levels, and then some people choose only peers who reinforce their own systemic point of view, so that they all think the same -- if you call that thinking!

But let me be more explicit: I am a lifelong Democrat. I preferred Hillary Clinton to Obama, because of her proven competence and the way she could have hit the ground running with Bill's people, and I am a huge fan of Bill Clinton. However, I voted for Barack Obama (what sane person could have done otherwise, in this year of all years?), and I am impressed with what I see so far. Because what we need in a President right now is competence, and Obama shows all signs of having that. I hope I'm right, because the next four years are going to be the bitch of all bitches.

As to other issues: I am not only not prejudiced against, but strongly in favor of, most of the peoples and cultures the Neo-Nazi's abhor. I think most (especially northern) Asians and Jews have a cultural background superior in most ways to mine. I think in many ways this makes them more "intelligent," in the functional sense. Likewise, gays; in fact, if everyone were gay, our world would be in a much better place. No doubt about that.

Because genetically, we're all about the same. All the differences are cultural. I like some cultures better than others; I think some have been better preserved than others, and the values of those cultures are going to help the people who share them, through hard times, far more than the homogenized non-culture of the American street. If that belief is a thoughtcrime, I'm guilty.

I note that most of the responses to the first Saga post were made not on the Blog, as truly courageous critics would have done, but were announced to my email list. Two of them, Tanya and Mark, are people who should've known better. I would never normally give the name of someone who responds to me personally about the blog, but these two decided to use their names in making their rabid announcements to my email list, and thus made themselves public. Tanya's more hurtful comments were made privately, but she did publicly ask to be removed from the list. Mark's public comments deserve a public rebuttal, which I don't want to take the space to do in this entry, which was supposed to be brief. But I will take the time, soon.

There were supporters. I'll quote one of the more perceptive ones, anonymously: A most unfortunate response from some of your readers, though you obviously expected some of this. What struck me was the two most visible responses were more about the perception of others of the individuals concerned than about anything to do with the subject matter – even though I don’t know them at all, and have no interest in their views.

Thanks. You would think, wouldn't you, that supposedly educated people would know what 'ad hominum' means.

And thanks to the others, particularly to the one old friend of mine who commented on the blog itself, albeit anonymously. I wish we lived in a world in which people were free to express unpopular, non-PC views, without fear of reprisals. Obviously, we don't. We do indeed live in a world in which "the best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity." I'm doing my best to reverse that trend.

More later, for those of you who choose to continue on the journey with me.

More Saga: "The Nation's Fate"

This is a positively wonderful album; I had to buy a copy from Sweden, because the U.S. is pc-censored. If you'd like one, contact me!

Behind Enemy Lines

Break down. Sweat.
Blacker than black.
Can't take it one more day.
I am a leader of no one into nothing;
Can't take it one more day.

I can't go back to that place even one more time,
But how do I buy you your cheese?
Go down to the ocean,
Let the sun bleach my bones dry,
But how do I buy you your cheese?

When nothing's worth saving, I try very hard to save nothing.
I do not believe in believing but believing is all.

Broken down, sweat-wrapt,
Coffin to live in.
Can't go to that place even one more time.
No one to talk with, no human crying,
Can't move one muscle, one bone.

Fear is a chemical, love an illusion.
But how do I buy you your cheese,
Without going out to the world I can't live in,
The place I can't go to even one more time?

Stare into darkness, no moving, no crying,
Maybe one little tear, make sure no one sees.
Because I'm the dark one, here behind enemy lines,
Who's just got to buy you your cheese.

Lou Reed's Berlin

In 1973, Lou Reed released his masterpiece: Berlin, a concept album about the sadness, desolation, lust and ultimate loss of a doomed couple in Berlin. The album was a commercial failure, and he never performed it live until his neighbor, director Julian Schnabel, recently convinced him to perform it as a piece, live with an incredible backup band featuring some of the best musicians who have played with Lou over the last 35 years, in, of course, New York. With the addition of interpretive films of the work's heroine, Caroline, the film is a powerful performance piece demonstrating the true and deep nature of Reed's art.

I started getting serious in music about age 12, and by 15 or so was disgusted with the direction music had gone. Looking for more, I discovered David Bowie, and I bought Lou Reed's Transformer album because Bowie produced it. Now, as I'm sure I don't have to remind you, Reed was the main singer/songwriter of the pivotal Velvet Underground. What the Grateful Dead were to Bill Graham's Filmore, Owsley's acid tests of the Summer of Love in San Francisco, the Velvets were to Andy Warhol and the darker stuff of New York in 1969. They were hard, dirty and chaotic, and classics like "Heroin," "Waiting for the Man," and "Sweet Jane," grabbed the souls of the disillusioned and strung out. Where the Dead's drugs were acid and grass, the Velvets came on like speed and heroin.

Probably no one ever affected my songwriting like Lou Reed, even down to his unique phrasing. But by 1972, the Velvets had broken up, and Lou Reed was working in the office of his accountant father back in Brooklyn. Bowie, at the height of his powers just after Ziggy Stardust, resurrected the career of his idol and forebearer with Tranformer, but that album, featuring "Walk on the Wild Side," was a unique and unrepeatable event for Reed, inured in Bowie's glam rock presence. It is of course a beautiful album.

Berlin was Reed's next album. It had a new, orchestral, dark sound, and was produced by Bob Ezrin, Alice Cooper's producer. At 15 I was totally unprepared for its darkness and for most of the specific experiences in it; the speed addiction, the debasement of Caroline, her promiscuity, her loss of her children, her beatings at the lands of her frustrated lover Jim (Reed's narrator). But I was fascinated by it, and if there was one piece of art that left me longing to explore the darker sides of human life, as I was so inexorably drawn to do in later years. This was one of those records that could change your life, and did.

After Berlin, Lou Reed went on to record a couple of live albums, the most popular of which was Rock n Roll Animal, which even drew my high school classmates away from their Led Zeppelin or whatever, but which I found disappointingly mainstream live rock. Reed never recorded another Berlin, though he went on to record a series of albums with a reliable clique following, and the highest degree of artistic integrity. This last April he married Laurie Anderson, who mainstreamed performance art rock in the 1980's with Oh, Superman (watch the video).

Unfortunately, as a concept album performed as a live show, you do get distracted. It's best if you buy the album as a 15 or 16-year-old and listen to it every day with the printed lyrics, wondering what life would be like on the dark side. Then maybe some day you go on to find out.

If you do watch the movie and haven't heard the album, the three songs after "Sad Song" are a bonus encore, including the best version of "Sweet Jane" I've ever heard (and I've heard a lot!) as the credits closer. Watch for Steve Hunter, the lead guitarist of Reed's live Band from the Animal years, as the band leader.

I'm mad at myself now for censoring myself earlier this week. Lou Reed is another artist who proves that you don't make your friends or anyone else happy by following your muse, but you can always look at your own face in the mirror, with pride and respect.

This a video clip from the movie of Reed performing "Caroline Says II", Jim's soliloquy after his frustrated beating of Caroline. It's depressing, as life can be, but still haunting and beautiful.



Caroline says, as she gets up off the floor,
"Why is it that you beat me? It isn't any fun."
Caroline says, as she makes up her eye,
"You ought to learn more about yourself;
think more than just 'I'."

But she's not afraid to die.
All her friends call her 'Alaska'.
When she takes speed, they laugh and ask her
What is in her mind? What is in her mind?

Caroline says, as she gets up from the floor,
"You can hit me all you want to, but I don't love you anymore."
Caroline says, while biting her lip,
"Life is meant to be more than this, and this is a bum trip."

But she's not afraid to die.
All her friends call her 'Alaska'.
When she takes speed, they laugh and ask her
What is in her mind? what is in her mind?
She put her fist through the window pane;
It was such a funny feeling....
It's so cold in Alaska.
It's so cold in Alaska.....

Saga

Okay, I put this on as a teaser overnight the other day and took it off because I thought (knew) it would offend people. But I keep pulling this video up on YouTube and watching it, so I'm gonna prepare myself for the hate mail and post; it's just too good.

No, I haven't gone insane. Friends, I wish the world was big enough, and was going to last long enough, for all of its independent cultures and sub-cultures to last forever. I really do. The Libertarian ideal is just that. But there just ain't enough room! Such is idealism. .

So. I think this is a really beautiful video and song. So yes, I don't like it that the culture that made this country is about to become a minority, within it. I remember when the world was big enough for every culture to have its own space. They deserve it, and so does mine. And if I hear one more rap or hip-hop song, I'm gonna puke, or worse.

Yes, this is beautiful. And there will be more, on this theme. So if you want to be taken off my list, just let me know. I understand.