The Senate is expected to sign the debt ceiling increase into effect today. Thanks to the TEA bagger representatives in the House, the agreement is more budget cuts, no tax increases. Thank goodness that someone was looking out for rich people and corporations (and jaded assholes like me think that no one cares about minorities in this country!).
Part of the deal is more than a trillion more in cuts by the end of the year. If Congress can
There’s a short story, written by Leo Tolstoy, that poses the question, “How Much Land Does a Man Need?” It’s a wonderful bit of writing, and one that I reference often in response to the troubling cupidity of the human race.
I must say that visiting Alcatraz during my trip to San Francisco last year caused me to re-examine my feelings toward this question. How much land does a man need? I suppose 12 acres is satisfactory in certain contexts. When it’s all you’re allowed while society revels in an unbounded existence right before your eyes, but so frustratingly out of reach? Twelve acres might as well be 12 inches.
This fact hit me the moment I stepped onto “The Rock” and turned to watch the boat that had brought us begin to pull away from the dock. For the duration of my visit, there was no way off this island beyond the one that was slowly moving back across the mile-and-a-half chasm of frigid water that separates Alcatraz from the main land. True, the boat returned on a regular schedule and, unlike the former “residents” of the island, I was free to leave during any passenger transfer I wished.
Still, while you’re there, you can’t help but feel the claustrophobic whisper of captivity taunting you. You feel its oppressive presence all throughout the decay and atrophy that time is inflicting upon the remaining prison structures. And when you stand atop the highest spot on the island and look across at the City by the Bay, its precipitously sloping streets teeming with the bustle of a life denied you? I am about as anti-social as is acceptable to “normal” society, but even I would be driven to the brink of sanity by such isolation.
Maximum security. Minimum privilege.
These thoughts do not mean that I have in any way forgotten that the the men who walked The Rock found their way there through felonious deeds. And, really, the only thing that differentiates Alcatraz from federal penitentiaries in operation today is that it was located on an isolated island in the middle of the San Francisco Bay. I daresay, though, that if you found yourself stranded on this island for an extended length of time, watching life move on without you, feeling the damp chill of that capricious Frisco fog rolling into every corner, between every bone…I kind of think that “cruel and unusual” would take on a whole new meaning in a very short stretch of time.
This final photo, of the Alcatraz lighthouse, is one of my favorites because it invokes this image in my mind:
This is the logo currently in use by the Golden Gate National Park Conservancy for Alcatraz materials and merchandise. It’s a beautiful, striking bit of illustration by Michael Schwab, who has done quite a few other, equally gorgeous illustrations for other California landmarks. You can see more of his works at the Golden Gate National Park Conservancy online store.
There’s something so mnemonic about the sounds of a summer evening. Walk outside and the air is filled with the thrum and buzz of summer cicadas and suddenly you
Look at this, denizens:
I hadn
I had to eject the lair’s computer core two weekends ago. Things had been getting a little tetchy with the system for a while…little glitches and garbles here and there that were only mildly irritating at times, but seemingly not signs of imminent system-wide failure. Then, one day, it just started to shut itself down during boot-up. Did it once, then followed through with full system boot. Next day, shut itself down five times in a row before finally booting fully. Next day? Next day was almost enough to inspire the unleashing of that fabled “red-headed temper” that I constantly struggle to contain (if I were a mutant, that would be my secret super power). However, I was able to trick it into getting past the glitch moment that heralded the impending mystery shutdown. I’m not fully versed in the intricacies of hardware manipulation, but I know enough to get by in instances like this.
I ran a backup of all files to my external hard drive, removed programs that I would want to switch to a new system, hopped on over to Tiger Direct and began sorting through their custom builts (all the while, contending with the fact that the old system was now starting to shut itself down randomly while running). The system I ended up picking out is a nice, solid little gaming system with a quad-core AMD Athlon II processor, a sweet ATI Radeon 1GB graphics card, 4GB DDR3 SDRAM, DVD-RW, and a 500GB hard drive. Plus, with two red-trimmed fans and blue, yellow, and green interior LEDs, it looks like a mini-rave when the room lights are off. Check it:
Could I have taken my old system to someone and had them check it out? Definitely. Could it have been an easy fix? Possibly. However, my former system was an amalgamation of parts, some only 2 years old but some more than 6 years old. It was the amalgamation of the two systems during an upgrade that I think might have caused some of the glitches. However, I held onto the old system because…well, it was the last system that my uncle built for me.
I’ve talked about my anthropomorphic ways before in regard to my old computer. Did it upset me that the last computer he built me began to fail? Absolutely. But then I started to think about it from his perspective. My uncle loved building computers. He loved keeping up with the rapid pace of technology’s evolution. What would he have said if he’d known I was still holding onto a system that was rapidly being outpaced by what was available now? He would have laughed and told me to keep up. Time to move on…there’s bigger and better to be found out there.
So I found it. No, it’s not the fanciest or the fastest system I could have gotten. However, my computing needs aren’t quite what they used to be, especially since most of my gaming now takes place on my XBox and PS2 systems. But this new machine is solid, swift and sleek, and I can’t help but think that even my uncle would call it a great little machine. And, in a way, he still had something to do with setting me up with it. Amongst all the other things he taught me about computers, he showed me Tiger Direct, which has been my computer go-to spot for a while now.
So there it is. The lair is now outfitted with a new computer core. I spent time this weekend getting it set up with peripherals and software. All systems are go. Next? Time to give Sims 3 another try…
I don
WARNING: Original trilogy spoilers ahead. No Scream 4 spoilers though.
Do you know the last time I went to the theater to see a movie, denizens? No? Let me give you a hint.
Yep. Haven
Thirty-eight years ago today, my mother married my father. He wore sideburns and polyester. She wore her long auburn hair piled high on her head and her bouquet was highlighted with yellow. Her favorite color.
So much changed through the years, but her smile stayed the same. Sometimes it’s her smile I miss the most.
I was actually going to name this post “Random Task” and include a photo of said character from the first Austin Powers movie. Then I read this article and…well, yeah.
Pardon my French for a moment, but what the fuck is wrong with people? And this article is more than 2 years old, which makes me even angrier that I have quoted his character during that time, while completely oblivious to the fact that he was part of such a heinous crime.
Can’t blame the character or the movie…but still.
I’m rambling now. I feel rambly and random (thus why I thought invoking Random Task would be funny). Last week was a blur of travel and work that has left me feeling quite off-kilter and extremely tired. It didn’t help much that we lost an hour of sleep this weekend, thanks to Daylight Savings Time. The good thing? Evening walks are now coming back into play. I’ve missed walking. I’ve missed the rhythmic movement, the welcome ache, the inevitable numbness.
I miss a lot of things. I miss being able to come here on a regular basis. Work has been a hot mess lately, though…not in a bad way. Just in a busy way. Busy is good. But I miss the lair.
I miss being able to come up with poignant posts. I feel as though I’ve lost something, some intrinsic ability to write more than surface-level mediocrity. I don’t feel invested enough in anything to reach a more meaningful depth of analysis or intricacy.
Okay, that’s not completely true. I did write this a while ago, about the young man arrested for shooting Gabrielle Giffords:
Alleged Tucson gunman Jared Loughner has mental problems.
Problem.
He was a source of perplexity, distress, or vexation. He was an intricate, unsettled question. He apparently required a solution.
The only problem I see is with the use of a poorly chosen, and consequently damaging, turn of phrase.
See, contrary to the belief of some who have spoken about the recent tragic events in Tucson, I believe very strongly in the power of words. After all, if we don’t invest in the strength and meaning of words, how else do we communicate our beliefs, desires, needs, aspirations? What happens when words lose all meaning?
Words have unlimited power. The power to heal. The power to wound. The power to label erroneously. Jared Loughner did not have mental problems. Jared Loughner was fracturing right before the eyes of friends and family from the unrelenting pressure of mental illness.
Illness. An unhealthy condition of body or mind. Synonyms include disorder, disease, malady, sickness. Trouble.
Jared Loughner was falling deeper into trouble of a plainly identifiable kind. If only more people were paying attention. If only those who were paying attention had done more to help him.
But his was a problem instead of an illness. He required a solution rather than treatment. The solution was to ignore him. Ostracize him to the fantasy world that was spiraling out before him in a discordant diaspora of disconnectedness, isolation, and obsession.
It’s so much easier when the signs of illness are physical, tangible, visible. High fever. Flushed skin. The diabetic sweetness of breath or the sickly stench of gangrenous flesh. Milky opaqueness of cataracts, paralysis. These things we believe because our senses never lie.
There is no tangible evidence of actual mental illness, nothing we can hold up to the light and nod in confirmation and say decisively, “Yes, look right here, his mind is broken. We’ve found the problem.”
The brain is a complexity that we will never understand. Whether you believe it is a gift from a higher power or an evolutionary marvel, there is no denying that we are not our hair or eyes or mouths or limbs. We are our brains. We reside in the tangle of synapses that fire away, generating our opinions, our personalities, our beliefs, our fears.
Damage all else, but I am still me. Damage my brain and who was I? And who will I become?
Something misfired in Loughner’s brain and he began to transform. Had his metamorphosis been more Kafka-esque, more might have been done to help him.
This is not the first time a mental illness has been allowed to spiral into a tragic and irreversible melee. And, sadly, I do not believe it will be the last. Why? Because we shun what we do not understand. And we do not like to take on problems that we cannot solve.
Instead, we vilify. We emblazon Loughner’s disturbing mug shot across front pages and television screens and comment about how “Hannibal Lecter takes a better mugshot.” We ascribe hatred and vitriol to our opinions of him.
And in our responses, we fail him. We fail those he killed. We fail those he injured.
We fail.
In his speech at yesterday’s memorial gathering, President Obama said that these shootings had opened up a national conversation on “everything from the merits of gun safety laws to the adequacy of our mental health systems.”
Has it really? Perhaps. Or is it instead a conversation that flares and fades in the spark of a gunshot, swallowed by the ephemera once the eulogies for the latest round of victims have ended and the judgments have been cast?
Six people died and 13 people were injured. A congresswoman continues to struggle to come back from the precipice of a bullet through her brain. We cannot let this be yet another incident in a long trail of violence attributed to minds allowed to shatter without intercession.
We must do better for those who are mentally ill. Not problems. Ill. Jared Loughner gave all the indications that those around him needed, to know that something was going horribly wrong within his mind. Instead of trying to reach out to him, people instead withdrew from him. Feared him.
Playwright David Henry Hwang wrote in M. Butterfly, “Now I see — we are always most revolted by the things hidden within us.” We look into the eyes of madness and we see what could happen to us…and we loathe it. We loathe that our brains, these magnificent, complex machines, could betray us so easily, so inexplicably…so unstoppably. We cannot explain it. We cannot stop it. We cannot reverse it.
These are things we don’t wish to see. And so we look away. We ignore the obvious…and then we find ourselves right back where we have stood far too many times before.
I really hope that President Obama was serious about restarting the national conversation about mental health issues in this country. I hope that this is the lesson that will finally penetrate through the layers of hatred and divisiveness that have permeated American politics in recent years. That this will be the moment of clarity that we need to finally move forward in reaching out to each other with open hands rather than with fists clenched around pistols.
Why didn’t I post this when I wrote it? I’m not even sure anymore. Maybe because it felt too raw, too personal. Too empty. Too much. Too little. Never enough.
I’m not making much sense now, though. But I do miss coming here. I do have things to write, things to post. Not a lot of depth probably…but that’s okay, right? At least for right now.
I”ll be back like Arnie. I promise…
I
