What the Arab World Needs Most is Free Expression by Jamal Khashoggi

I received this column from Jamal Khashoggi’s translator and assistant the day after Jamal was reported missing in Istanbul. The Post held off publishing it because we hoped Jamal would come back to us so that he and I could edit it together. Now I have to accept: That is not going to happen. This is the last piece of his I will edit for The Post. This column perfectly captures his commitment and passion for freedom in the Arab world. A freedom he apparently gave his life for. I will be forever grateful he chose The Post as his final journalistic home one year ago and gave us the chance to work together.
–Karen Attiah, Global Opinions editor, Washington Post

I was recently online looking at the 2018 “Freedom in the World” report published by Freedom House and came to a grave realization. There is only one country in the Arab world that has been classified as “free.” That nation is Tunisia. Jordan, Morocco and Kuwait come second, with a classification of “partly free.” The rest of the countries in the Arab world are classified as “not free.”

As a result, Arabs living in these countries are either uninformed or misinformed. They are unable to adequately address, much less publicly discuss, matters that affect the region and their day-to-day lives. A state-run narrative dominates the public psyche, and while many do not believe it, a large majority of the population falls victim to this false narrative. Sadly, this situation is unlikely to change.

The Arab world was ripe with hope during the spring of 2011. Journalists, academics and the general population were brimming with expectations of a bright and free Arab society within their respective countries. They expected to be emancipated from the hegemony of their governments and the consistent interventions and censorship of information. These expectations were quickly shattered; these societies either fell back to the old status quo or faced even harsher conditions than before.

My dear friend, the prominent Saudi writer Saleh al-Shehi, wrote one of the most famous columns ever published in the Saudi press. He unfortunately is now serving an unwarranted five-year prison sentence for supposed comments contrary to the Saudi establishment. The Egyptian government’s seizure of the entire print run of a newspaper, al-Masry al Youm, did not enrage or provoke a reaction from colleagues. These actions no longer carry the consequence of a backlash from the international community. Instead, these actions may trigger condemnation quickly followed by silence.

As a result, Arab governments have been given free rein to continue silencing the media at an increasing rate. There was a time when journalists believed the Internet would liberate information from the censorship and control associated with print media. But these governments, whose very existence relies on the control of information, have aggressively blocked the Internet. They have also arrested local reporters and pressured advertisers to harm the revenue of specific publications.

There are a few oases that continue to embody the spirit of the Arab Spring. Qatar’s government continues to support international news coverage, in contrast to its neighbors’ efforts to uphold the control of information to support the “old Arab order.” Even in Tunisia and Kuwait, where the press is considered at least “partly free,” the media focuses on domestic issues but not issues faced by the greater Arab world. They are hesitant to provide a platform for journalists from Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Yemen. Even Lebanon, the Arab world’s crown jewel when it comes to press freedom, has fallen victim to the polarization and influence of pro-Iran Hezbollah.

The Arab world is facing its own version of an Iron Curtain, imposed not by external actors but through domestic forces vying for power. During the Cold War, Radio Free Europe, which grew over the years into a critical institution, played an important role in fostering and sustaining the hope of freedom. Arabs need something similar. In 1967, the New York Times and The Post took joint ownership of the International Herald Tribune newspaper, which went on to become a platform for voices from around the world.

My publication, The Post, has taken the initiative to translate many of my pieces and publish them in Arabic. For that, I am grateful. Arabs need to read in their own language so they can understand and discuss the various aspects and complications of democracy in the United States and the West. If an Egyptian reads an article exposing the actual cost of a construction project in Washington, then he or she would be able to better understand the implications of similar projects in his or her community.

The Arab world needs a modern version of the old transnational media so citizens can be informed about global events. More important, we need to provide a platform for Arab voices. We suffer from poverty, mismanagement and poor education. Through the creation of an independent international forum, isolated from the influence of nationalist governments spreading hate through propaganda, ordinary people in the Arab world would be able to address the structural problems their societies face.

Too Skinny, Too Small by Don Bajema Chapter 2

(for Chapter 1 click here)

There’s a pecking order in every relationship, small unit, massive population. You’ve seen it, felt it, been subjected to it no matter where you work, where you worship, where you sat at the Thanksgiving table, even when you’re at your most ultimately anonymous-deep in a crowd of strangers- you’re ranked as peckee and pecker; be in any group of people and you’ve been assigned your place.
Move up you’ll get a few pecks in the face from the guys in front of you, someone climbs up behind you, you better attack or you’ll drop a slot, less food, less shelter, less everything. Attack, you have to, even, and especially, if you don’t want to. Fail to sink your beak into a cheek, or tattoo a forehead and you’re down a notch until you’re on the bottom, and there is a momentum, it works upward and it works downward.
Its there in every human interaction-there’s the bloody beaked world of your rank. All this necessary and as natural as the sunrise and moon hanging in the sky, this part we have to play to contain, measure and distribute the prevalent animosity and aggression within all of us in our numberless-planet-wide-human-primate troop.
How well do you compete? How willing are you to take? How unwilling to concede? How pragmatic with the part you play in the fate of others? How much fear-not respect-can you put into others? How far will you go if contested?
I watched the sidewalk way down beneath my window for a long minute. All those people, shifting right and left, stepping on the heels in front of them, being glared at and returning glares, shouldering around and through each other the sorting out of the pecking order.
There’s people who walk in a line, never giving an inch, willing to bang shoulders with strangers than give any kind of room-mindlessly it appears but secretly entirely deliberate, mostly some kind of inherited attitude, some innate quality that demands they themselves come first on the desperate primate self assertive grim set-of-the-teeth level.
Then there’s the other people ‘aware of their surroundings’, hoping to avoid conflict, hoping to keep things moving in some semblance of co-operation and common good who slip sideways through these more belligerent tough-hard assed-cowards who assert themselves from the sidewalk level, to the pop-corn line at the movies, for the parking spot, to be first to get through a door. Yeah, there’s a polite expectation to crowded interaction at the produce section, in the gas line, at the bar, and the deli counter-but its paper thin, useful only in mutual consent which given any stress at all, Christmas shopping, freeway stalls, virtually any excuse and the reasonable comportment goes right out the fucking window. You can count on someone being entirely ill equipped to see further down the sidewalk than their own immediate imperative-and don’t misunderstand I’m not talking about strutting ghetto hard-asses, or hyper aggressive silk suited ex-frat boys, some of these sidewalk stompers….these cold eyed shoulder slamming bastards are not gender specific-there’s plenty of young-don’t-look-at-me-I’m-too-beautiful-strutting snots, or fed-up middle-aged bitches clutching steaming lattes, heads jutting forward from their chicken necks, with their ‘Fuck you eyes’ and meaning business, and unhappy fatso’s terrified to be noticed and knowing that hope is laughable, hoping not to be resented, but knowing that too is unlikely making so many of them fattening up their kids and family in order to have company, in order not to stand out, in order to have a couple more beaks in the fray, skinny, nasty neurotics too, people of every description defending their wider-space-than-yours as they would any of their American possessions and entitlements beyond number.
These neurotic mid flock jerks will stand in the middle of a suddenly halted crowd shrieking their lungs out for as long as it takes to get any imagined aspect of their own, mindless way. You can see it. The sidewalk has a coward who fears that he will be read as weak, read as soft, read as a mark or a pussies if she doesn’t over assert themselves in every fucking situation calling for co-operation. The entire American crowded urban me-first culture is infested with these assholes.
There’s a black car blaring its horn at a knot of walkers failing to clear the intersection fast enough for the solitary driver weaving his Mercedes through the crowd, forcing his bumper through them, nudging them out of his way.
This warm, comfortable bastard behind the wheel is so anxious to get to the Lincoln tunnel and out of the metropolis he’s leaning on the horn in his sound insulated cab with his jaw twisted to one side mouthing spells and incantations at the people jumping out of his way or slowing to stare at his windshield in defiance.
He’s willing to knot the faces, and bend the knees of sixty cringing pedestrians, old ladies reaching for their ears, babies in strollers crying, men containing the urge to blast his window open with an elbow, yank him out by his silk tie and pound the fat motherfucker into the pedestrian cross-walk. But they absorb this because Modern Life Says You Have To Take This Shit-gone are the days of duels and respect demanded through the knowledge that disrespect will get your belly sliced open or your forehead crushed, so their jaws tighten under his incessant, Here-I-am-get-the-fuck-out-of-my-way blaring horn.
He’s just one man, doing very well for himself, at the bottom of the towering Manhattan architectural canyon inside his luxury car abusing sixty shivering people negotiating a crowded sidewalk in a sleet storm.
One man comfortable in his plush seat, he and his music, gliding to his mansion just beyond the city, his three crackling fireplaces, abusing sixty people cold in the January wind whipping their jackets, sleet freezing their faces, Whole Foods grocery bags disintegrating, briefcases and back packs tangling their knees.
And now the umbrellas come out and in case you sympathized with the pedestrians you can see them now blithely risking the eyesight of on-comers as they plow through the crowd, spinning here and there unconcerned with the needle sharp umbrellas fractions of inches from the faces of those around them. There’s a few gigantic golf umbrellas making fair negotiation of the sidewalk impossible for the shivering many.
The driver in his black carriage, the put-upon bitch with her latte, the general swarm of walkers, the cornea piercing umbrella fencers-most if not all of them are big football fans.

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Better Than Drugs

NOTE FROM THE EDITOR:
Due to indescribable and excruciating lower back pain and a relentless work schedule, Jim Trainer was unable to provide you with his latest criticisms of the US Gov, the NFL and the vapidly insipid music industry. Upon hearing of his troubles, and as his his editor, I summoned him at once to my Office in San Francisco, where he spent four days smoking Jimson Weed in the morning fog before returning to bed to watch Hunter Thompson interviews. Despite his efforts he was not able to adhere to his semi-daily schedule of providing you, Invaluable reader, with an 800 word commentary on “the way things should be”.
Rest assured, thanks to days of salty honey on the breeze, accidental, true culture in the streets,languid sun-walks and a decadent bed always beckoning, Trainer was able to enjoy deep healing. He was able to heal and rest up and is now back in the Pearl of the South&grinding it out. Please accept this blog, written just before he left for California, until Jimbo can get back in circulation. Thanks for understanding.
-Elsha Storm
The Editor
San Francisco, CA

Better Than Drugs
Waiting For the New Journalism, Seeking Refuge in Apathy
by Jim Trainer

I don’t cook, I don’t clean
I don’t have the energy for the scene.
I don’t got no car,
I don’t worry about the price of gasoline.

What a life, eh Brother? I’m out here on the roof (where else?) and the view from this vista is grand. There are 2 crews down there on the street working. The city is building another turnaround, just up the street from the mansion and the site of their last renovation at the corner here. They spent 9months doing the one out front and it was pure misery, brother. 9monthhs of waking up to a cement drill or, if I couldn’t sleep, seeing them gather around their trucks in the blue morning; them down there and me up here-the laborers and the ex-laborer.
In fact I just submitted a poem to Apiary Magazine chronicling my time as a crew chief in North Philly. That was some hard fucking work Brother, but the 90s were different. Aho back in the sanguine endays of the American Century you could make a buck 20 drilling crete for two days a week. You could get by, providing you kept your Barista shifts at the neighborhood coffee shop and they’d still run you a tab for coffee, groceries&smokes.
An old friend and aspiring writer wrote me recently, asking if I’d be attending our 20th High School Reunion. Besides a resounding Fuck no. I told her, and not without hubris, that I have no use for nostalgia and no use for the past. Am I holding on to past hurts? Do I still hold a grudge against certain meatheaded upper classmen who were at that time the Kings of the Fucking World? You bet. And it’s way too early in the evening to get catty, gentlemen, so, fuck it. I don’t wish nobody harm. And that’s the truth.
You know I love ya. If you don’t know that I love ya than I probably don’t.
In fact if you aren’t in my life anymore you aren’t a keeper, but you’re probably living the life an ex-Football playing choad deserves-cush-job, once-hot wife, spoiled kids, and in perhaps the most comic turn of events, supporting the nazis of the UD police force in their efforts to keep “the element” off the streets of our podunk hometown.
that town’s as good as gone
-Payday

Even though the youth is gone, and the good old days, I’d never wish to be anywhere but right here, right now. For true. The back gives out. My smoking cough has taken over my laughter. It only hurts when I laugh. The ladies have stopped paying visit (although that’s my choice mostly, bramacharya). But even in my fat&decaying state I prefer the present. I don’t wish to go back, but I do wish it could be the 90s again. When the economy was booming and the media didn’t bother you with the details of our dirty little wars and dips into theretofore unheard of countries like Sarajevo.
In the words of the late, great John Lee Hooker, in the 90s everybody friendly, even ol OBL, ODB and GHB. Aho. Good times. Shittty music, but we still had our underground.

Wishing for the days
-Minor Threat
Yep. Guess I’m a little nostalgic after all. I don’t miss being a laborer though. That’s a hard dollar Brother.
Which perhaps brings me to point. I don’t care about the US Gov being shutdown. I don’t care about Breaking Bad and I could give two fucks about Miley Cyrus. Also, your spirituality really gets under my skin. I don’t care about High School and I don’t care about punkrock.
Shall I break it down for you, good&cherished reader, country-simple?
Ok. Will do. And if you’re with me this far you understand that I am not talking about you. WE are talking about THEM, in the fine Irish tradition of warming ourselves with misery, better than whiskey-Ok, onward.
The problem is not with government. In a democracy, the government is of, by and for the people. Any problem you have with the government is a problem you have with yourself. Yep YOU.
The problem is not with the ruling class. The problem is that the ruling class are some of the best paid citizens in the Land of the Free. The problem is with the rich, and your sullen, defeatist acceptance of the shrinking middle class. You don’t read Going For The Throat to rally. There is nothing political about my writing. Aho.
I don’t lose any sleep
worrying about the state of the economy
-Circle Jerks, I Don’t
Don’t ask me about the economy. Leave it to the pros. Quit clogging up the social networks with your commentary, as if it mattered to anyone but you and your friends list. Keep watching tv and fantasising about millions of dollars made in meth deals or legions of zombies corrupting your way of life. Quit commenting on the music industry-it likes the attention and it’s nothing but boardroom rock&bullshit pop music that won’t be remembered 20 years from now save for maybe at your highschool reunion.
Just leave it to the pros. That’s what I do. Read Paul Krugman or Noam Chomsky.
And take it to the streets, Citizen. Brush up on your Amer Natl Govt and include as many folks in Your Party as possible. This distinction between Repubs&Democrats? I call bullshit. That’s their game. Ignore the detractors, don’t watch the fucking news. Get on the Gandhi trip. It’s either that or eat the Rich. And by that I mean eat the Rich people. Whatever you do, do not post things on your timeline that I will have to suffer. I can’t take it anymore. And come Sunday, read some more of Brother Don Bajema, why don’t ya? He’ll be posting a new chapter of Too Skinny, Too Small every Sunday until the Super Bowl. Which is great news b/c ever since I declared my boycott of the NFL, Sundays have been a real drag. Aho. I’m hard pressed to find anything intellectually stimulating or fun to do at week’s end, when the whole country goes numb behind a blue wall of television light.
Don’t get me wrong, I care about your opinions. Your concerns are mine brother. Which is why I implore you to get informed and become the media. Write your own blog. I will read it. I will support you. Think your position through, clearly illustrate it in a clever and/or way that is pleasurable to read. Do something besides getting up on your Facebook soapbox.
I get it, the site is a self-fuck, 6billion people thinking out loud and talking to themselves. On good days Facebook is better than the New York Times and closer to street level than The Business after a soccer game…on bad days I delete you and on worse nights I even block you. Facebook has its perks. But I am transitioning out. Now watch him dissappear. I harbor ill-will toward none, save myself, but this much madness is too much sorrow. I must willfully isolate myself and not talk for 3 days. I must get on a plane and forget about my troubles for awhile.

Brother Don Bajema’s Too Skinny, Too Small on Going For The Throat every Sunday until the Super Bowl. F the NFL. F the music industry. Eat the Rich. Go for the throat.

Too Skinny, Too Small by Don Bajema

1.
Everyone knew it would happen; they had to. But everyone shed the tears, bemoaned the game and watched the replay. Then the gurney and the straps around him, and the announcers were saying it was serious, and everyone was prayers with the family.
They sat at the bar, on the couch, in the silent stadium scared to utter the words; then it was all anyone talked about.
Five minutes after he was in the tunnel we were playing again.
On the sidelines and then in the locker room my teammates said a lot of stupid things intended to console me, intended to assure I felt no blame, intended to distance themselves from the reality. Then they ostracized me when I didn’t respond to their bro-down gestures. The coaches selected three very popular and media pleasing players to speak for the team. I was excused-at first.
Being a week before Thanksgiving heads were bowed over turkey from one coast to the other like the dark days of Dallas. The men glanced out of the corners of their eyes, mumbled as they excused themselves from the table pushed their chairs back and went into the living room and watched the game. The kids followed them. At halftime all the front rooms all over the country were watching in depth discussions of the tragedy and everyone cried again by the end of the profile piece of Chad Washington.
I couldn’t get the sound out of my mind, or the feel of the total sudden rag doll feeling of his body but I didn’t tell anyone. I was supposed to see a counselor and the police offered a shrink who had experience with cops who’d shot people on duty.
The league called it a clean hit-I don’t know what a clean hit is, and I haven’t seen the replay.
Pundits and writers condemned the game, everyone talked about the concussions, protecting the players, called into question the future of the league but the ratings went through the roof.
The league office called the owner who agreed with the Commissioner that my silence was making the situation worse, I didn’t know then how it could get worse, but they had a franchise to protect and called me into the inner sanctum to personally ask why I wasn’t saying something on camera.
I sat on his couch with my hands folded looking at a very uneasy man.
He cleared his throat four times, twice with his back turned to me facing the forest outside his window. When he turned he gave me that rich man smile that had nothing behind it but bemusement at the notion that anything but having his way was possible. He seemed to be in a mood to make it easy for me, but he took on a firm paternal tone,
“Why are we here, Eddie?”
I shrugged.
“Don’t start that with me. We’re talking here.”
I locked eyes on him without directly challenging him but I shook my head slowly left to right.
“Look, Eddie, I understand. And I want to help.”
He went to his desk and picked up a sheet of paper.
“Any of these statements would do you, and this team, and the league a lot of good.”
He waited.
“Anything you say is going to feel inadequate, Eddie. I know that. But you have to say something.”
I sat there.
He walked it over to me and extended the sheet about the height of my forehead.
I took it but didn’t read it.
“Try one.”
I put the paper on the table before the couch.
“Eddie. Eddie. Your silence…is..it’s putting a bad light on you, on my team, on the league, on the game.”
He started to say something more, I could see the rage building under his collar.
“I’m never going to say a word about it. I’ll just play the game. Nothing I can say will do anyone any good.”
He got brave, he owned the team, he signed the checks, he had the power,
“You’ll play the game? You play the game because I say so. We give you the money and the privilege to play the game. This is a business, Eddie. I am the boss of this business.”
“You know, Gordon..”
He swallowed hearing me use his first name, his eyes blinked, then he smirked, no one called him anything but Mister or Sir.
“..what’s weird about all this is that up to now you have had all the power, but now, oddly enough, I do. If I quit, if I site the reason why I quit the foundation of the league will drop into a sink hole. If I play you’ll make more money, the league will make more money than it ever has. Businesses like money, Mr. Shafer. So, don’t fuck with me-the tables have turned.”
I got up from the couch, balled up the sheet of paper and bounced it off Mr. Shafer’s chest.
“I ain’t saying shit, Gordon.”
I walked over the carpet opened the door and walked through the cameras and the writers who Shafer had planned to make a statement to, me standing beside him brought back into the fold by the benevolent and understanding owner from the tragedy that had driven me to silence.
Everyone shouted my name, microphones were thrust in my face and I kept walking.
All that was six weeks ago. I kept playing, never said a word, made four interceptions, scored on two them and had more fan votes for All Pro than any player in history.
Then I disappeared, now I’m on the phone with an interviewer named Clarence Johnson.
Johnson was going for ‘the apple never falls far from the tree’ angle for the havoc I’d brought to the national obsession-the generator of a million parties, the violent wet dream of much of the male population, the curious acquiescence hoping for insight and proximity into things male by women sitting beside them in front of television in bars and on the couch watching football like it was war and church rolled into one massive orgiastic celebration of violence and intimidation. Which it is.

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Who Will Judge the Righteous? PT II-Introducing Guest Blogger Don Bajema

PT II
violence is all around me
still my city sleeps
fallin through the curtains
I see nations crumble for me
–Horizon Lion, Bev Haven

Who will judge the righteous?
It ain’t me, Brother.  That would take tenacity and wisdom.  It would take the strength of conviction, knowing what’s right and not giving an inch.  It would take what those young men do out on the field every day of the NFL Season, but coupled with the guidance of a crack playcoach whose cool&disaffected exterior only masks a keen&calculating hunger for victory.

Novelist, screenwriter, actor and spoken-word performer Don Bajema’s been there.  The former world-class athlete not only played for the St. Louis Cardinals, he’s toured Europe as a spoken word poet beside Henry Rollins and Hubert Selby Jr. no less.
There is a beautiful and searing clarity in his work.
Winged Shoes and a Shield, released last fall, offers a view of Sunrise in America that is both sweeping and penetrating.  Panoramic views of seemingly idyllic youth growing up in the 50s and 60s are presented in tandem with the malignant undercurrent of the draft and specter of the Vietnam War.  It’s not lost on Bajema that many of protagonist Eddie Burnett’s peers were using their young&naïve prowess to destroy villages of civilians in jungles far away from the track and field where Eddie excelled or the beaches south of San Diego where he fell in love.  Or worse, like Eddie many were suffering right here at home at the yoke of violent fathers who never really came home from their War years before, if only as shells of men, bitter and beaten.

I like Bajema’s America.  Maybe even better than the real one.  The man certainly offers a more authentic view of the “greatest country in the world” than the one that’s advertised.  Bajema’s America is at once hopefully idealistic and savagely dark.  It’s no accident that I hear rock&roll when I read Don Bajema.  It has as much to do with his paens to rock music’s innocence&potency as the dangerous world his characters live but dare to be in love in.

Aho.  My respect for him goes beyond acknowledging that he was there for that sublime and golden burgeoning of the middleclass and introduction of leisure such as the NFL to the gen pop.   Brother Don has kept his eyes open.  I’ve written it before, the man has remained beautifully awake.  He’s watched the whole thing come tumbling down.
He’s witnessed the murder of a dream and seen the promise of the hippie generation all but rot while a backlash rolled this country back 30 years and stalled our history sometime around 1989 and somewhere between willfully ignorant and grossly apathetic.

But, what do I know?  I’m just an apathetic ex-Pat postpunkrocker who admittedly sometimes just wants to flush it all down and watch it sink utterly into slothful oblivion.  I know, a bit much, eh Brother?  A little dark.  That’s why people like Don Bajema are important.  He’s wont to check me on Facebook sometimes, when I’m on some nihilistic, anti-Christian anti-American jag.  He never tells me I’m wrong but he doesn’t have to.  I can’t help but hear light and love coming from the voice of a man who’s been there, seen it come down, but somehow still believes.  The man is a true patriot and as close to a hero as you can get these days, when leaders and pundits and the big business of news reporting are all so busy telling you who to hate and what to fear.
Brother Don ain’t goin’ in for that bullshit, brother.  He knows that we won’t get fooled again, even if he needs to remind an unemployed and apolitical journalist like me sometimes.

Stay tuned for the first three chapters of Don Bajema’s newest work Too Skinny, Too Small, to be run serially on Going for the Throat over the next couple of weeks.  Order your copy of Winged Shoes and a Shield from City Lights Booksellers.

Who Will Judge the Righteous?

PT I
F the NFL

Who will judge the righteous?
It’s a fair question.  Am I right, brother?  That is, assuming you’ve measured up.  You pulled yourself up by your bootstraps and you’ve stomped boot to face of any weakerthan on your way up because you’re a winner and you’re not a pussy.  You didn’t piss your pants on the first day of Kindergarten and you drank beer like a Roman around bonfires in High School and you bro-downed at the Frat House while taking advantage of dumb girls in College.  It’s high time you were rewarded for toeing the line of American masculinity, so sit back and enjoy the game.
Aho it’s football season.  Now you can really work out, jam those buggers and crush the enemy.  Get lost in bloodlust behind a blue wall of television light, drink and cuss and fight before you head to bed on a Sunday or Monday night, and sleep like a baby throughout autumn in America.  Ah, the game.  With its lines clearly drawn and an identifiable enemy to be conquered and humiliated.  Thinking back over your entire life, there was always the game.  Except for that dark and confusing week in September of 2001 it’s been business as usual, let ‘er rip and shutup honey the game’s on!

I don’t watch football anymore.  The last game of pro ball I watched, or listened to, as it were, was the opening Sunday of the 2011 Season.  It wasn’t the unending misery or sorry excuse for a pathetic career of my hometown Eagles that queered me to the NFL either.  Many of my homeboys have solved that problem by defecting to less dismal and dysfunctional franchises like the NY Giants or the Dallas Cowboys fer fuck’s sake.  Aho

The last time I listened to the game was on the 10th Anniversary of the World Trade Center attacks.  Commercial breaks were flooded with ad agency spun sympathy for the victims and first responders of 9/11.  It appeared that the NFL had sold ad time to the pounding of a tired trope-one that subliminally equates any dissent of American Hegemony with the murder of 3,000 innocent people.  You know, that old patriotism-or-treason trip.  I’m used to it.  But when I’m inundated with it, and it’s crammed down my throat on a Sunday afternoon 10 years later, and after all that time thinking I was safe behind a wide wall of apathy and listening strictly to liberal radio, I get upset.

The NFL and its sponsors were wasting my time with maudlin attempts at blind patriotism and otherwise dancing on graves to hawk wares and further the bullshit business-as-usual of consumerism.  Meanwhile my own country was quagmired in three senseless wars that, as the truth slowly started to slither out just 10 days before, were not moral, righteous, nor even humane.

This schadenfreude of manufactured consent was grossly disrespectful to the dead.  I was suffering from my own loss suffered that same rueful Autumn 10 years ago, and I’d be good and goddamned if I’d let a company like Budweiser or the NFL tell me how to feel about it.  It got worse after commercial break.  Even dumber things were happening down on the green and on TV.  There were cops&horses, flags out the yin-yang and the National Anthem sung by Lady Antebellum fer fuck’s sake.  All under the proud banner of a
customized NFL 9/11 ribbon and the official NFL 9/11 logo.

These were mawkish efforts at best, willful ignorance and an “odious exercise in corporate branding” at least.  It made me sick and I haven’t listened to a game since.

And now, as the war drums start to roll and a poisoned toad like John McCain can be heard on liberal radio and John Kerry drones on and on with some of the best paid men&women in the country on the Senate floor, debating the morality of murder, theirs or ours, and by ours I mean you&me Brother-what could this be but Autumn in America?
I thought we put down that pig of a man with stumps for arms last November.  I thought the only thing neocons would be getting out of the American people this term would be book deals and spots on Fox News at best and a dirty, shameful place in the history of the greatest country in the world besides.
As far as the Dems go, John Kerry must be the biggest shill of a man, perhaps better remembered as a dove not so very long ago, on the Campaign Trail and at the onset of all this madness.
I thought the President of the United States stood for something besides getting the Latino vote and an easy ticket out of Chicago.
I thought I could remain grossly apathetic and I thought my old man would still be around and we might watch a few more cursed Birds games together over cheesesteaks&Marlboros.  I thought we’d always have the game.
I was wrong.
This changes everything.
-Tool

Make no mistake, those who are busy deciding how best to blow another trillion dollars in a war far away will not be the ones fighting it.  You really want to see Congress get along with the Forty-Fourth President of the United States?  You really wanna see some action?
F the NFL, let’s go to war.

And 10 years from now, with your middle class and your Fourth Amendment gone, your highways jammed with suicide bombers and the news clogged with religious nutters stroking a hardon for the end days, you can enjoy another henous instant replay of American history brought to you by the NFL.  You deserve it.  You’re a winner.  Why should I care?  I’m a baseball fan.

LET’S GO PHILS!

I will switch channels when the NFL glorifies the military and DHS.
I will gently dissuade anyone thinking of joining the military.
I will not listen to prayers for the military.
I will not listen to the military or war being raised up from the pulpit in church.
I will not talk to people who worship the military.
I will not say the Pledge of Allegiance.
I will not salute the flag.
I will not stand for the National Anthem.
I will not vote.
I will not listen to the voice of any President.
–Switchblade commenting on Truthdig.org

Another Day in the Life of a Writer

 Posts?  We got ’em.  Out the yin-yang.  I’ve got a post written in thanks to the folks who made it out to the book release last December.  I’ve got one written in thanks to the folks who made it out in June.  I’ve got links, photos, letters and a hulking, 22, 000 word document called “Spungen”-chock full of newsworthy quotes and incredible things I felt I had to document.
The wasted summer shimmers on and I’m still out on the roof, jettisoning any and all progress me and the life coach have made toward writing smoke-free.

Tuesday I was like some rockabilly bowling ball, knocking down strikes of Lonestar beer with Wing, up on the roofdeck at Rattle Inn and listening to Robert Appel kill it.  Life is good but it’s not my own yet.  As much as I swore I’d never be like my old man, and as far down this artists road as I’ve gone, I still can’t shake the karma of his generation.  I go to the office.  I drink coffee and smoke.  I do work.  Then I blow it out drinking beer and shooting my mouth off with a good friend.
Ain’t living long like this.
-Waylon Jennings
Aho I have heard the call.  There’s nothing left for me to do but answer, head back down and live in wisdom for a while before I start up the next peak.  No one told Siddhartha to turn around.  They wouldn’t if they could; or, rather, he would only answer that presence is the continual turning within, that the path winds many ways and for the candle flickers, the flame is never gone.
I have sworn off the oft-penned self-help blog, thank Christ, so there’s nothing really to write or talk about.  There is only the next step.  I’ve already started this journey.  I’ve been called to higher and I’ll never live it down.  The price I pay for my coping mechanisms is too great. This much madness is too much sorrow and my days left here only become less, if not richer and harder to kill.
Throughout my drinking career I’ve tried to forget or somehow not see.  It didn’t work.  I saw everything.  I remember it all too well, and on soaked nights laying in bed it’s like a circus of catastrophe and a Calliope of things I’ve done wrong.  It’s a cheap fix that’s only afforded me temporary blindness to your pain, foolishly thinking I could fortify myself behind a wall of dread&apathy.  I don’t blame myself for wanting to turn it off ( or down ) every day of my adult life.  There’s a lot of pain in the world and there’s a lot of boredom that comes from watching you go through your shit and never get anywhere.
What has changed?  Nothing has changed.  This used to be bad news.  Not anymore.  If nothing has changed then I’ve still got a chance to make things right.  I’ve still got some fight left in me, even if it’s buried under the tar from a pack a day habit and usurped on silly teenage nights in bars with friends.  I’m not admonishing.  I’m not apologizing.  This isn’t a self-help blog, nor is it an apology, thank Christ.  Whether or not I need to be forgiven is a tall order and infinitely more or less difficult than something as stupid as quitting smoking.
Nothing has changed.  I have heard the call.  I’m answering it.  I’m also out here on the roof writing this, smoking and drinking coffee.  Just another day at the office.

All the colors lie
and I’m an only man
the lies hurt my mind so I think you understand,
color driven madness was all I used to see.
Living in the black and white
breathing in the black and white
being what there is to be.
-Henry Rollins, Black&White

“Up on the rooftop,
they won’t know if you jumped or you fell off!”
-9353

The Creative/Destructive Process of the Artist: No Help From Heroes

sthira-sukham-āsanam
The practice of Yoga is the cultivation of the balance between effort and ease.

Greetings. Perhaps you are wondering, where has the author been? I’m proud to report that my absence from this blog had nothing to do with writer’s block. The practice of writing and posting on here has fine-tuned my outrage and given me focus. Even when I’m out of material I’m able to write about that and when all else fails I’ve always got 1-4 blogs in the chamber, ready to be posted. The goal was to develop the skills and habits of a columnist and come up with 800 words every day, neat and fine. I have had vague aspirations to find work as a columnist, to fly it up on their pole and reap the benefits of a syndicated readership. These things have not changed. I am confident that I can deliver on the daily, should I find such gainful employment as a journalist. The practice has paid off. It worked, and it’s been nothing but kinghigh fun and real adventure in the great indoors coming up with these missives to deliver to you all.
As a devoted (and cherished) reader
you’re also aware of my deeper desire to always find ways to serve my Art more efficiently. Ultimately I have been finding for a way to have my Art serve me.
Aho. I am after nothing but the complete realization of the Artist, that one day my work will sustain me. Differing from these catch-as-can hours stolen from the dayshift and the dayjob-on the hustle, I envision a time, perhaps 10 years from now or even tomorrow, when writing is the hustle.
Throughout the 190 posts written over the last 3 years a common thread has emerged and reemerged and it is one of health. Getting better. Getting effective. I envisioned that my health and well-being would ultimately only serve my Art, maybe even add some years to my life, years that I could devote to this grand vision I have been serving for 21 years now.
And what a grand vision it is. The fucking weight of it is, at times, debilitating. Or buggerall, I’m flying so high that even less gets done. Oh well I didn’t intend for this post to be about my insanity. Or maybe I did.

Where I’ve been-the reason Going For The Throat has been relegated to a weekly publishing schedule is because I’ve been taking it easy. Yup. I know, unheard of right? Lazy sod. Wrong motherfucker wrong. Aho. I’ve been taking it easy in the grandest sense. It’s not like I’ve been stuck in bed or chasing tail around town. I’ve been taking a break from the inner critic. The mechanic, the motherfucker behind the wheel who calls the shots and gets shit done around here. He’s such an asshole. I’ve dealt with him a few different ways over the years but mostly I’ve had to face him with one burning. That’s right, smoking. Nicotine motherfucker. But some shit went down in the mansion and my smoke-free method has failed. The approaching heat of summer has forced us to turn on the air, which of course has opened up the vents, which of course just blows smoke throughout the house and into all the high rooms, even into the ones of tenants who don’t smoke and don’t want to smell it in their apartment. It was a condition of my hire here that I could smoke out the window. But every 6 months or so I get a text from Camp, next door:
The cigarette smoke is getting out of hand.
All this is beside the point. Or maybe it is the point. The act of creation is coupled with the act of destruction. I’ve ratcheted my focus with the help of caffeine and nicotine. Then, when it’s all over, I start to drink. My heroes have taught me well. Not only have they left me with a body of work that I can sink my teeth into, they have shown me how to live. My heroes have shown me how to survive, how to get through and squeak through with the smallest bit of light coming in through the impassive slow corners of nights full of fucked, too-small life. I owe it all to them. But they can’t help me get where I’m going.

As for the weight and scope of this grand vision, shit. I’ve been pecking away at it for decades. But this much madness is too much sorrow. And I’m 38 and it’s time to get this show on the road. Simply put, you haven’t heard much from me these last few weeks because I couldn’t smoke while writing and worse, I couldn’t imagine writing without smoking. So I just smoked. Outside. That was me on the porch reading Phillip Levine with a Dunhill in hand. That was me on the roof smoking MCDs with Hater Blockers on.

The thing is, even when I was writing/posting every day and my golden hours of productivity were up and I was drunk in the afternoon or spooned out in the damp night looking for a way to murder the day, the real fuck in the ass is that this method did not serve the vision either. It’s mostly either perpetuated the blues or helped me deal with them. For true.
When you consider that my plans include owning and operating my own printing press, equipping myself with a home studio for podcasts and getting out on the road once or twice a month, lying around like a fuckall Hemingway and whiling away the afternoons won’t cut it. Aho. It just won’t do.

So here we are. Up on the plateau but at an impasse. Finding for a new way to make this dream real, hoping the new ideal and trying to break through, listless and without product-derelict and bored with no help from heroes but-it’s ok. I can see a different way and it makes sense to me now.

From up on the mountain I can suddenly see the chain.

Splendid Isolation II-The Unemployable Journalist

I want to live alone in the desert
I want to be like Georgia O’Keefe
I want to live on the Upper East Side
And never go down in the street

Tragedy, it’s nothing new.  It’s hard to take.  Hard to process.  Me, I’m too far removed.  And jaded.  I don’t get angry or upset with God or Al Qaeda.  I save all my outrage for you.  That’s right, oh diligent and moral upstanding citizens of the free world.  My reaction to the horror of senseless death and murder is anger and that anger is focused squarely on you.  While I’m sure your sentiments come from the right place, they are by rote and repeated ad infinitum a midst a fucking blizzard of assumptions that initially and individually, you did not make.  I guess that’s ok if you have a target for your outrage.  Just don’t make the mistake of assuming that your outrage is mine, Brother.  And consider that the big business of news reporting is pandering to what is accepted as truth even though they’ve told you what to accept as truth at the beginning of the news cycle.

Seeking justice has proven to cultivate a climate of herd-thought which in turn is used to justify:  War, genocide, starvation, unsustainable economic&world orders and the erosion of our liberties.  Ok, maybe not justify-that’s a pretty strong word.  How about divert or ignore?  The “worst privacy disaster our country has ever faced” passed through the House of Representatives last week, with a vote of 288 to 127.
In my line of work the most crucial issue of our time is the regulation of information.  But you don’t have to be a hack journalist like me to see that if transparency&public accountability are lost then all else will soon be coming down the shitter.
How is it any worse when channels of communication are clogged with sterile, mass -morality and assumptions?  Assumptions repeated until they are thoughts-your thoughts, repeated until they are mantras-your mantras, repeated until they become reality-yours and mine.  Thanks allot.
I’m upset when the world we’re creating is predicated on assumptions.  The fact is, there’s too much madness and too much sorrow for simple answers; let alone a headline or byline in a sentence or less.

I try to extract information from the “news” outlets.  Then I address my own personal wisdom& take my own counsel.  Then I think about my loved ones.  About how good it’ll be to connect with them again.  I remind myself and then I shut off the radio and get out of bed.  I close all the windows and I close all the blinds.  I fire up the Yerba Mate and I brace myself for the next hit.
I must willfully insulate myself from the world that we are creating with our thoughts; our own and original thoughts or otherwise.
This is our world.  At least it could be.  You must disengage and shut the fuck up for 5 minutes.  You must quiet your own mind.  But don’t do it for your own sake.  Do it for mine.

I think people…it’s like they’re living in a movie.  They just don’t think anything is real.  But shit is real.
-Ian MacKaye, EDGE The Movie

I’m putting tinfoil up on the windows
Lying down in the dark to dream
I don’t want to see their faces
I don’t want to hear them scream
-Warren Zevon, Splendid Isolation

Yrs,
The Outsider
Austin, TX

Splendid Isolation

I was in the garden hosing the Neapolitans when she yelled down to me from the fire escape.
False flags, she shrieked, 2 dead! And 3 bombs!
I looked up into the white oak.  He likes the dark ones fucker.  One peep outta him and he was done.  I had my finger on the trigger.
Ok, I say, and aim my gun at the rainbow Kale.  Fire.

I don’t do news.  I don’t care about the world.  This is just another post from a horny hapless journalist who spends most of his time stanchioned up in the high rooms of a dead confederate palace drinking with a hardon and a hashpipe. The concerns of my days here in Paradise are few.  There’s these precious words and there is the countdown to Maduro time.  Aho.  At this late stage of the game a cigar and a 6pack is all that gets an old pervert like me through the day.  I also have an unconscious devotion to tomatoes.  And a woman.

My heart goes out to those who find they’ll be missing someone for the rest of their lives.  But I’ve got to turn away from the pedantic punditry&big business of news reporting and the battle cries of  armchair revolutionaries and the bleeding hearts of an Army of loud&well-wishing  Americans.  I got little time for jibba-jabba and the news makes me dull.  My time is running down and I’m busy keeping my loved ones close b/c I know I’ll be missing them for the rest of my life when they go.

The door slammed shut behind her and it startled him.
Aho.  Morning fuckface.
The hot sun was climbing.  Fuck it.  I decided to take it up to the Office, try and get some work done.
Rejoice, I say, you live another day.
I’ll see you tomorrow motherfucker.