I know y’all want to hear all the gossip and talk about Friday night gallery walk, but I’ve just got to be political and if you don’t want to read my fumings, just skip this post and I’ll write about this weekend soon.

For those of you who think they can stand another rant about Bush, read on.

This is, without doubt, the most wretched presidency in our history.

Not Warren Harding and not Andrew Johnson or Buchanan.  George W. Bush is the most wretched president since Congress was organized in 1789.

First, this man was selected by a bare majority of Supreme Court justices in one of the all time worst legal decisions in all of Anglo-American jurisprudence. 

He quickly cemented his powers by using lies, corrupt cronyism and bribery and by manipulating the natural impulse of Americans to rally in defense of their country.  Such a cynical man this is, he invented a war in Iraq based on known bullshit in order to remain in power.

He is neither compassionate nor a conservative.

He is a tyrant.  A virtual dictator who believes himself capable of doing anything he wants just because he’s been installed by others in the White House.

His attack dog, Karl Rove, is no better than Goebbles.

I’m sorry for the Nazi reference, but in this case it is plainly appropriate.

There is no area of American life that has been bettered during the past 6 years and so much is so much worse.  We have gone from the world’s hegemon and most respected great power in history to being the pariah of the international community.  Our economy has exposed monumental economic faultlines, beginning with the gaps between rich and poor.

In time, that all can be mended, perhaps, but what cannot be mended so easily is the fabric of freedom and this president has intentionally torn that fragile veil between our rights and government oppression.

The corrupt and morally bankrupt legislative leaders of his party have abandoned all pretense of governing in favor of the exercise of raw power designed to further fatten the bellies of the super-rich.

It’s disgusting.

And you and I, in the face of all this, moulder in our political graves vomiting fatalistic crap about our own powerlessness.

That’s also disgusting.

The DEA can’t keep out drugs.

Homeland Security fails to keep radioactive material from crossing our border or plastic explosive from getting on our airplanes.  No one knows what comes in and out through our ports.

FEMA’s response to Hurricane Katrina.  “Nuf said?

The CIA’s pre-war intelligence.

The emerging civil war in Iraq.

Congressmen indicted and convicted of bribery.

Crass lawbreaking for political advantage at the highest levels of the Executive Branch.

At least the fascists made the trains run on time. 

It’s the incompetence of this government that is the piece de resistance.

Considering the rank gerrymandering that’s gone on, I have little hope that ordinary democratic action has any likelihood of success.

Some other, new factor must be introduced.

I don’t know if it’s impeachment or revolution or a general strike or what.

I don’t think it matters.

Clearly, same-old, same-old isn’t working.

A third or fourth political party?

External regime change?

Viva le Resistance!?

I think I’m starting to understand the mind of terrorists.

I feel so frustrated and powerless that I’m ready to just lash out in unreasoning anger without caring who gets hurt.

Even knowing that it’s senseless, hopeless and futile … hell, that just makes it worse and makes me want to lash out even more.

It’s a child-like temper tantrum that an adult has continued beyond the ability of the internal baby to hold its breath and pound on the floor.

If we believe that some things are worth fighting for and dying over, what are those things?

If this isn’t something that’s worth taking up arms, what is?

I’ll stop now.

Back in the 60s, we roared to a rock anthem that we “won’t be fooled again.”  but we were.  And I’m pissed about it.

Couldn’t sleep last night at 11 p.m., so I headed for the Paseo and was rewarded.

Caught some of the outdoor music from Open Mike Night at Galileo’s and it was really good.  Buffalo and Fitz were joined by Joe Baxter and eventually Tanner showed up with his double bass. Bob O was wandering around in his overalls and showing off his newest car.  Can’t wait for summer and  for the Paseo sidewalk to be full every night.

On another note, be sure and catch John X’s comment to “Scofflaw Bush” below.  Ascerbic thinker is he.  His idea of a French style general strike appeals to the romantic in me.

Paso First Friday Gallery Walk tonight.  Should be fun.

All the dust in the air yesterday has my sinus cavities in serious pain this morning.

Pink Lady sold me some of my favorite cigarets yesterday.  She’s going to Montana soon, gonna be a dental floss tycoon. 

My friend Lucky is also going out of town, to Dallas.  She got to drive a $400,000 Mercedes up to Tulsa and I was jealous.  I think she fell in love with a machine.

Checked in with the lovely Juliet and she was more gorgeous than ever and you could tell by the 8 men she had sitting in her thrall around her one table. Cheeky flirt.

I don’t think I’ve mentioned Bookemdano’s newest effort, a red macaw in stained glass that just knocked me out it was so very lovely.  He says he’s going to do a series of birds in stained glass.  Lovely stuff, really really beautiful.

Odd event:  yesterday, in my travels, I passed by a little girl of about 10-12 years old who stopped me and asked me if I was famous. LOL.  Only to my mother, I told her. What an odd thing.

I’m not firing on all cylinders this morning.  Short bursts of thought is all I can manage.  If I get going, I’ll talk politics since I think this president now MUST be impeached and convicted of high crimes and misdemeanors.

post script:  forgot to congratulate blonde beauty Kelly O on the return of her stolen car.  Little damage, she said, and it was stolen by a kid, it seems. 

The New York Sun scoops the world with the revelation that prosecutors in the I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby trial allege President Bush himself authorized the leak of classified information from the highly secret National Intelligence Estimate that led to the disclosure that Valerie Plame was a covert CIA agent.  Plame was “outed” only 8 days after her husband, James Wilson, a former ambassador, accused the president of lying when he said Iraq had attempted to buy Nigerian uranium in the State of the Union Address.  Prosecutors’ court filings say Libby told a grand jury that he was told by Cheney to release the information, but that he had refused because the NIE was so secret and that the vice president later told him that the go-ahead was given by the president himself.  Libby then met with news reporters and disclosed Plame’s identity.

With this Republican controlled Congress, there will be nothing.  In the interest of the Republic in mind, this president should now be impeached for this as well as the unauthorized wiretapping of Americans’ cell phone conversations in known violation of the law.  This president has even had the gall to tell the Supreme Court that they cannot decide whether his administration is violating the law because he’s the president and he said so.  The detention of citizen and non citizen “combatants” and others in Guantanamo Bay and elsewhere across the globe — “renditions” — is such a complete fascist idea as to boggle the mind of any thoughtful believer in democracy.

I thought the news of Tom DeLay stepping down was big, but it’s small potatoes compared to this. 

I seriously believe this president should be impeached for the good of the country.  He led us into an unnecessary war based on lies he perpetuated by breaking the law and he is continuing this war in Iraq and elsewhere by diminishing the rights of us all here at home.  This is not about my disgust at the growth of the deficit that comes from his tax cuts for the rich.  This is not about my dismay at seeing programs that help common people cut so that oil, pharmaceutical, insurance and banking industries can benefit.  This is about high crimes and misdemeanors.  This man is a traitor to his country and its ideals, the highest crime any president can commit.  In the same way Bill Clinton was impeached for partisan political gain, this president will not be impeached for the same reasons by the same people. 

The tree of liberty must at times be watered with the blood of tyrants.

If we wish to remain free, we must rid ourselves of this nascent dictator.

Strong words, I realize.

But these are desperate times and they call for desperate measures.

If I knew what to do other than bloviate on this blog, I’d do it.

I had a long phone conversation last night with a friend about the friend’s current romantic relationship.  It’s not going so well.

Like all relationships, some parts are good and others not so good.  In this case, there’s one part that is upsetting, maybe a dealbreaker.

I tried to mostly listen and offer as little advice as possible.  After all, looking at my lovelife, who am I to counsel anyone else?

Fortunately, as these things go, the more my friend talked about the problems, the more the solutions came from inside and not from me or elsewhere.  Sometimes, what we need the most is the chance to articulate our own thinking — to hear the words out loud.

Relationships seem to me to be difficult under the best of circumstances.  One of the more difficult problems is letting go.  I think it’s very hard to be either the dump-or or the dump-ee.  You care about the person and you don’t want to hurt them, but the relationship isn’t working for you any more.  How do you end it?  You care about the person and want to be with them, but they don’t want to be with you.  How do you accept the end of what you want?

Very hard for me to do that, either way.  You can say I’m a Cancer and moon children get their claws onto something and won’t let go.  Of course, astrology is bullshit, but that’s nevertheless my own pattern.

I don’t think I’m the only one by any means.  How many divorces do you think I have to do before I find clients and their estranged spouses in exactly that situation?  I also read MCARP’s blog and know he’s had trouble letting go.

Others, however, seem perfectly capable of floating from one person to another without seeming to have any problem at all.

Sometimes, that seems a function of those people not being able to let go of a much earlier relationship in which they were badly hurt and they run into and out of new relationships to escape the feelings they still have about the old relationship and spread their angst to others.

Gosh, as I read that, it occurs to me that I’ve done some of that — it’s back to articulating your own problems as a way of finding your own solutions and I’ll have to think about that some more.

Anyway, this wanting to hold on and let go at the same time reminds me much of what I wrote yesterday about the congnitive dissonance I feel about intellectually rejecting the ideas of Honor, Duty, Truth, etc., as Aristotilian ideals while still feeling the underlying truth of those ideals at work in my life.

Here, you know you must move on and let go, but you just can’t seem to do it.

In this case, it’s a matter of emotional honesty with ourselves.

I don’t know about you, but sometimes it seems like my emotions have a mind and life of their own. 

They seem to come and go on their own schedules and that there isn’t much I can do about it.  Do you DECIDE to fall in love?  That just sounds yukky.

Nevertheless, I think to a certain extent we DO just that.  We have a little internal dialogue we hardly notice — sometimes it takes very little internal talk — and we “talk” ourselves into being mad, sad, in love and whatever.

When we should be letting go, what we do instead is keep the feelings alive by obsessing over them and having little conversations with ourselves that include assumptions that we don’t really believe.  An example:  I’ll just die if I can’t have HER.  Well, crap.  We won’t die.  We won’t even get sick unless we worry ourselves sick.  Eventually, there will be another HER.  Or there won’t.  We will still have jobs and bills and pets and family no matter what, so it’s not like we can’t possibly be happy without that one particular person.

Sure doesn’t feel that way sometimes.

The hardest thing for me to do in the world is not think those things to death.

Last year, I made myself absolutely miserable to the point of just wanting to die over a failed relationship.

Mostly, I just couldn’t stop thinking about it.

I couldn’t just let it go and think about something else.

I punished myself far more than any other person in the world could punish me.

I would have preferred a hard whuppin’.  At least that would eventually be over and my wounds would heal.

Thinking myself sick over it seemed like it would never end.  And, while I don’t know about you, I can think myself into more pain than my body can feel.  If it were a physical wound, I’d just pass out and my body would take care of me that way.  Instead, my mind is capable of infinite torture.

Once you get in that pattern of thinking, it’s almost impossible to break the pattern.  The best I’m able to do is to force myself to think of other things, things I can change, things that don’t make me crazy, and eventually I can see that problem/torture in a different light.

In the case of my friend and the discussion last night, the problem is even more subtle.  The problem there is also one of timing.  Something is going on in the relationship that isn’t pleasing and is, in fact, disagreeable.  How long do you wait before you call a halt?  When does bad become bad enough and when does bad enough become too bad to keep going?  My friend has a history of sticking with relationships long after they aren’t working, at least in part because it’s so hard to say the words to someone you’ve cared about:  “honey, it’s time for you to take a long walk off a short pier.” 

Then, there’s the problem of Oklahoma City being the world’s largest small town.  If your X lives in Oklahoma County, there’s a great liklihood that you’ll run into them.  Can you be friends with someone who has hurt you badly?  Can you be friends with someone you’ve told to go take a hike? 

Being human is such a funny thing.

My mom fussed at me yesterday and this time I fussed right back.

There’s no doubt in my mind that Mom loves me and I hope to goodness she knows I love her. 

Nevertheless, we disagreed disagreeably yesterday.

My friend Lucky says the only good partner is a dead partner.

I think that’s what Mom and I fussed about: we do business together, but it gets mixed up in our familial relationship and vice versa.

I don’t like fussing with Mom (I don’t think she likes fussing with me) and most of the time, I just swallow hard and take it.  After all, she’s my mother and we do that 10 Commandments thing and honor our forebears.  It’s what a good Southern boy does.

All of which is to get to the topic partially covered the other day when I wrote about the end of the world.

I have some very romantic notions that I hold dear that have deep roots in our society but which cannot, upon close examination, be defended intellectually.  Those notions include the ideas of honor, duty, the whole trope about passion and being a personal hero.

It’s that “knight in shining armor” thing.

Intellectually, I’m a situational ethics kinda guy.  A relativist.  A humanist.

Perhaps because I’m emotionally stunted, I retain lots of childhood notions that I picked up reading Robert Louis Stephenson and Rudyard Kipling. 

I believe that there are times that simply because you CAN do something to help another, you have the DUTY to perform the act.

I cannot defend that proposition, but I’m intent on living it.

I believe we owe respect to our elders just for the fact of their longevity — they have experience which may make them “right”, at least from their perspective, that we perhaps cannot see because our perspective isn’t as broad.  This is a big change for me from the 60s, when I believed you couldn’t trust anyone over 30. 

I believe in the truth.  There is a radical impossibility that there is such a thing as The Truth.  Yet, I remain in a state of fidelity to telling and seeing and seeking it.

I believe in true love.  I’ve looked for it all my life and, yet, intellectually, I’m quite sure such a thing does not exist, at least not in the romantic state I imagine and that we see portrayed in films and on television and in books.

“We must act as if there is a God despite the radical impossibility there ever was one,” Sartre wrote. Yet, I believe in a supreme power in the universe, albeit not one with a long beard as seen on the ceiling of the Vatican (and at Flip’s, oddly enough.  Why would Adam have a belly button?).

I’d like to continue this, but apparently I’m required to play fetch right now.

TTFN 

Now that the second of his top aides has pleaded guilty and prosecutors are moving closer to alleging former GOP Majority Leader DeLay ran “a criminal enterprise” out of his congressional offices, he’s decided not to seek re-election from his Houston district, saying it’s a Republican district that will elect someone from the GOP if he doesn’t run.  He oughta know, he drew the district to be solid Republican in a Texas hornswaggle that seemed unconstitutional to me. 

Do you think that it would be a good thing for Congress to take a second look at the bills worked on by disgraced and convicted GOP congressman Duke Cunningham, disgraced and facing indictment Rep. Bob Ney of Ohio and disgraced and indicted Tom DeLay?

 Nah.

That would just be “anti-business” and force large corporations to give out a new set of bribes to a new set of Congressmen.  Hmmmm.  Let’s think that one over.

Do you think the new GOP majority leader, famous for passing out campaign money from big tobacco on the floor of the house, an act for which he was censured by the ethics committee, will think that one over? 

Corrupt cronyism.  It’s not just a campaign slogan, it’s a Washington, D.C., way of life under the Republican “K Street Project”.

but it’s OK since a bribe is so much cheaper than a fair tax.

MOVIE REVIEW

 “V for Vendetta” is one of the worst movies I’ve ever sat through.  If I were Hugh Weaving (Mr. Smith in the Matrix series), I’d want to wear a mask the entire movie, too.  Just to stay anonymous.  How they managed to make Natalie Portman, so sexy in Closer, look so bad so often — especially as the schoolgirl in full costume — is beyond me, but they did.  The movie opens with Weaving giving this alliterative monologue using words that begin with the letter “V” and that lost me right there.  It goes downhill afterwards.  Rated G for Gawdawful.

SINATRA REPORT

Spring has officially begun.  Sinatra stayed out all night, missing curfew.  So, of course, he got extra milk in the sacred blue saucer when he returned this morning because I was so glad to have him back.  Hey, you train your cat your way and I’ll do what I want.

 WEATHER REPORT

The top is down and I’m good.  Jolly Dr. Max has purchased a red ‘Vette.  I have sports car envy.  I’ve written him that it’s a plot to make me go back for more therapy (since it IS all about ME ME ME ME ME), but he denies it, the liar. 

Meanwhile, I can’t stay away from the road that goes around lake Hefner.  It somehow calms and refreshes me to be around the water, to smell the air and hear the waves and the waterfowl.  I’ve taken a look at the joggers and bikers and I can tell you that most of them need to get some exercise.  You’d think it’d be tight, taut bodies, but it’s actually a lot of pretty fat asses sweating profusely.  No Pain?  Good.

HEARD IT THROUGH THE GRAPEVINE

 heard it through the grapevine that the lovely Juliet is taking her Elastic Cafe models to bin 73 Wednesday night.  Might even include Pink Lady, one of her newest.  What was I thinking when I hooked up those two?  Nothing but trouble for me.  Oh, well. 

Also heard the Paseo lottery group won $20.  Not bad considering we’ve invested a couple hundred collectively. LOL.  A tax on the math impaired, no doubt.  It sure is fun to speculate about what you’d do with a hundred million or so.  maybe that’s what makes it worth it.

TTFN

But, as Will Rogers observed, nobody does anything about it.

(Caveat: Mike H says the government is manipulating the weather and all you have to do is notice the criss cross contrails.  I dunno, but that’s what he says.  Whatever.)

Myself, I enjoyed the hell out of the weather this weekend.

The storm Saturday night provided me with a lot more entertainment than any bar or band could possibly provide.  I went to the 60th birthday party of Jolly Dr. Max with a lot of his friends and afterwards became jolly myself with that thunderstorm that rumbled through town. 

I went out to the lake for a short time with the top down and watched the lightning come close enough that it sprinkled on me before I got the top up.  

 Went from there to Starbucks and watched the rain come down in buckets.

From there to a park where I could observe the lightning roll away to the east.

Gosh, but I love Oklahoma thunderstorms!  I’ve always liked them.  The strong winds, the thunder, the flashes of streak and sheet lightning.  I live for the day I can see personally some ball lightning.  So much power and drama in a storm like that, it’s sexually exciting for me.  It seems to just put all my lights on, pushes all my buttons, childhood and onward.  One of my earliest memories is of watching a storm come into my grandmother’s hometown of Lawton while we were there for a visit. I must have been very very young because I’m thinking my first sister, Jaime, had just been born.  That would put me about 3 or 4 years old.

Then, yesterday, everything cleaned by Mother Nature, especially including the air.  It was such a beautiful, sunny day.  Did anyone else notice that the air seemed especially transparent?  My vision seemed so crisp. 

It took a force of will to be inside yesterday.

Everywhere I went, there were people on bikes.  I’m told there was some kind of extra special bike event up in Edmond.  There were also lots of folks out getting in that last good training run before the Red Bud Classic this coming weekend.

Of course, when I feel like exercise, I go lie down until the feeling goes away.

Hey, it works for me.

No pain?  Good.

Anyway, saw lots of good people Sunday.

Hadn’t seen Button in a coon’s age, but there she was with her newest squeeze at Starbucks, looking all cute and skinny in her red shirt, blue jean shorts and a ballcap.  She says she’s selling tee-shirts with the inscription “All Natural Ingredients”. I think that’s what she told me it said.  The back says: “Bike Candy”.  Maybe it says “No Artificial Ingredients”.  Whatever.

Saw DeShan with “stick straight hair” and the lovely Brianne with a bikini under her summery clothes.  Both those women are just the shit.  So damn good looking, it’s not fair to us guys.

I kidnapped DeShan Friday for a short time to take her to the lake for a drink.  She says next time, I have to bind and gag her and take her to the car kicking and screaming.  Kinky bitch.

She’s leaving soon for the land down under, this time permanently. This town will miss her pizzazz, I’m thinking.

Sinatra is having trouble with Daylight Savings Time.  He woke me up this morning at 7 a.m. and I tried to tell him it was really only 6 a.m. according to my body.  He was having none of it and wanted out out out out out out out right then and right there, no excuses or discussion.  I’m thinking there’s a woman involved and it’s spring and a young man’s fancy turns to thoughts of love.  This old man’s fancy turned to thoughts of castration.

Post Script to Friday’s entry:  I finally decided I was looking at the question all wrong and that the real question was why stay at my desk when it was so lovely outside.  It was self destructive and wrong, but i closed up shop and got out the door.  So, I starve this month, they foreclose the house and repossess the car.  Quel Catastrophe! I’ll come live with you.

The world is coming to an end.  It must be true because I read it in MCARP’s blog.

 I laughed my ass off at Mike’s blog.

Of course, it’s true — in a sense — that the end of the world is certainly coming, whether it’s global warming or an asteroid or the sun burning out. 

One suspects one’s own world will end before the world’s world comes to an end.

In all events, a certain fatalism is implicit in MCARP’s buddhist leanings.  As a jake leg Taoist, in my leanings too.  Of course, I’m also a depressive recovering alcoholic, so what do you expect from me?

The most fatalistic person I know is “Lucky”, a former funeral home employee.  You don’t even want to know.

But, you know, it’s just not reasonable not to recognize one’s own mortality.

Death will come to us all.

The question is HOW and WHEN, if not WHY?

I refuse to have my obituary read:  Long spent his final years of grave illness in seclusion, having lived past anyone who could remember when he was vital, social and deeply engaged in life and into the time that the only possible memory of him was as a sick old bastard with a sharp tongue.

Fuck that.

Don’t you wish you could die a hero?  Maybe saving a village of orphaned African children?

How will you ever die a hero unless you are heroic?

Don’t you wish you could die a warrior?  Turning the tide of some battle, literal or metaphorical? 

How will you ever die a warrior if you are never bold and fearless?

I want to live my life so passionately and well that every day really is a good day to die. 

No regrets.

Nothing left undone.

On any given day, I want every single person in my life who I love to know and to have heard from me recently that I love them.  I’m not there yet, but it’s my goal.

I want my personal integrity and reliability as a friend and as a lawyer to be respected and admired.

I want my kindness and generosity to spring to mind to those who hear of my death with grief and loss.

I want somebody to feel grief and loss at my passing and the more the merrier.

I figure I fall pretty short of the glory of God when it comes to how I’d like to be remembered compared to the reality of my life.  Good.  I also want to be known as someone who worked to make himself a better person and never stopped trying.

Is an unexamined life really a life not worth living?  How would an introspective narcissist like me know the answer to that one?

OK, so I have not yet figured out how to get photos on the page.  It seems I’m going to have to get some new software to edit photos before I can upload them.

Meanwhile, the webmaster says it makes him look bad to leave the “temporarily closed” sign up without letting people know it’s ALL MY FAULT and not his that I’ve been too lazy to blog.

 OK Dennis?  Mea Culpa.  Mea Maxima Culpa.  It’s ALL JOHN’S FAULT and not the fault of the webmaster.

The real problem now is that I don’t have anything to say. 

 It’s such a beautiful Friday afternoon and I really really really don’t want to work or be in the office.  I don’t want to be in front of this computer.  I don’t want to type anything, much less the maudlin, self-absorbed crap I usually pour onto this page.

 I’ve got the first of the month, tax time money blues, but who doesn’t?

 I have a new crush, but she’s not broken in yet and so I don’t want to blog about her until she meets some of you in person and has a chance to speak for herself.

 Sinatra is supremely disinterested in me and/or my life and just wants to be outside all day today and refused to even speak after saying thanks for the milk in the sacred blue saucer.

I’ve got some down time this weekend.  Maybe I’ll write about how much I enjoyed Scorsese’s “After Hours” Wednesday night or the art auction I attended last night with the lovely Juliet (who is moving into new digs this weekend, leaving the bubble for greener pastures in Moore, of all places).  So, between loads of laundry and changing the sheets and going to the dry cleaners and the grocery, I’ll try and “pen” a few lines.

Back to trying to think up a good reason to leave my desk.

 TTFN

the webmaster is enabling photos and I won’t be able to administer the site until Monday, but hope to be having pictures, etc., thereafter.

hope you’re having a great weekend.