“Wake Me Up When September Ends” – Green Day

I still jump – whether it’s the distant sound of a car door slamming or the days before the Fourth of July – crawling out of my skin. I still, on occasion, wake up in the middle of the night, a slight panic overtaking me, a sense of confusion grabbing me for a few seconds until my head clears. I didn’t want to believe it but PTSD is real and while I certainly don’t have the worst of it compared to others I know, I still jump.

I’ve heard it all before too – you’re just a camera man, what do you know of war? Because I tend to walk alone – you don’t support veterans. Because I don’t show it on those really tough days – you don’t have it. Maybe I do, maybe I don’t. And it’s not really my point to come on here and try to puff out my chest and prove what I’ve done. You know what you’ve done; I know what I’ve done. I know I still jump. I wish I didn’t. I wish I didn’t flinch while watching television and an engine backfires two blocks down the road. It’s amazing to me how the mind will play tricks on you and that backfiring car becomes a mortar round launched from its tube. I wish I didn’t have moments where I’ll hear something on the radio and it’ll stop me dead in my tracks as wave after wave of memories come flooding back. And sometimes, I wish I couldn’t look into the eyes of a fellow veteran and know – know the mental hell they go through at times and the pain and suffering they’ve seen. Smells, sights, sounds, they all take me back there.

You ever watch a guy slowly advance forward one second and then watch as his throat gets blown out by a sniper the next? Have you ever seen a guy jump out of a vehicle and fall over because he didn’t realize the bottom half of his leg had just been blown off? You ever held someone in your arms, their stomach and intestines laid out before you and you, you’re desperately trying to convince them they’ll be ok, even though you know they won’t. Have you ever had to navigate a field of body parts, stepping over heads separated from their bodies to get to where you were going? It’ll leave its mark.

I support the troops. Beyond being a nice bumper sticker what does that mean? That’s mostly rhetorical; I would like to hope it means something to everybody, even if it is different for all of us. Maybe, just maybe, with Veteran’s Day and the Marine Corps Birthday being just around the corner we all need to evaluate that statement. Some of us seem to forget that for too many a returning veteran, the war doesn’t end when we get home. If I’m talking to you, then hear me out. If I’m not, then don’t worry about this. But all of us sleep comfortable in our beds and can choose which news channel we wish to inform our opinion because someone in some far away land spilt their blood for you. And even if we didn’t perish at Belleau Wood, even if we survived the Battle of the Bulge, returned from the Chosin Reservoir, were spit on when we came back from the Tet Offensive, proudly retuned to the States after liberating Kuwait or bore witness to the hells of Fallujah our scars are still real.

Prison Song – System of A Down

We here in the states sure seem to love ours wars – the war on drugs, the war on terror, the war on poverty. Pick a cause and someone somewhere has probably “declared” war against it. While some of these so-called wars are worthwhile, some, when couched in the vernacular of “war” seem a little bit silly – take the war on drugs and specifically mandatory minimum sentencing for first-time drug offenders.

Mandatory sentences were first enacted by Congress in 1986. The country was deep in the throes of the crack-cocaine epidemic and many on Capital Hill thought a get tough approach would be the cure for what ailed us. Under mandatory sentencing, judges are not allowed to consider the merits of the case, if you’re brought in with a gram (roughly the amount of sweet-n-lo in one packet) of LSD, you’re going to Federal prison for five years. The results of all this is an exploding prison population that places a huge financial burden on the Federal Government. To wit – the number of prisoners serving drug sentences – many of them mandatory sentences – increased from 24.9 percent in 1980 to a peak of 61.3 percent in 1994.  During the same period, federal prison operating costs rose from $319 million to $1.9 billion, or 242 percent based on constant dollars. The 2005 annual federal prison budget is $4.7 billion, and it costs more than $23,100 per year to incarcerate a federal prisoner (Federal and State Prisons:  Inmate Populations, Costs and Projection Models,” GAO, 1996; Bureau of Prisons, 2004).

Now, before you go thinking I’m the one hitting the crack pipe, let’s get a few things cleared up. I’m most certainly not for legalizing everything under the sun – free meth for all doesn’t fly in my mind nor do I want to walk down the street and see a bunch of junkies stooped over with needles hanging out of their arms. But perhaps it is time for us to take a good hard look at the absurdity of the situation we’ve created.

In a 1997 RAND Corporation Drug Policy Research Center study entitled “Throwing Away the Key or the Taxpayers Money” the case for increasing treatment was made pretty clear. “Treatment of heavy users is eight to nine times more cost-effective than long sentences in removing cocaine from the market, and conventional enforcement is twice as cost-effective.”

So under our current policy, we increase an already exploding prison system, we leave those in need of treatment at the hands of their fellow inmates creating a worse monster and expect our drug problem to go away. It seems to me that it pretty much boils down to simple economics – no demand, no supply; less demand, less supply. Treating users has proven effective thus lessening demand.

I won’t even get into how much of a strain chasing down decoy pot runners across the U.S.-Mexico border puts our Customs and Border Protection agents under as the heroin makes it way into the states. Nor will I get into how at least one drug currently labeled illicit does about the same amount of “damage” as drinking one too many at the pub. That’s a different column for a different day.

In a very cold and calculating view, those who supply drugs are, at their core, business people who are currently making a lot of money. Once their product has gone the way of the laser-disc; wanted by a very select few, they’ll jump out of the drug game for something else. Whatever that is, I’m sure we’ll declare war on it.

This is Your Life – The Dust Brothers

So I’m kind of cheating this week. I’m not sure if you’re familiar with the song from the Dust Brothers or the movie, “Fight Club” from which it’s taken. Instead of being lyrics per se, the music of the song is this ominous, droning techno-ish affair that plays itself out with quotes from the movie peppering the music — I’ll take it.

See, I don’t know about you, but I’m about tired of getting a trophy for second place, for being given an “atta boy” for average work and hearing “by golly, it’s all ok, you’re special and dawg gone it, people like you.” And more importantly, I’m really tired of that message being handed down to my son. Truth is, and we all know it, not everybody’s going to Harvard, we all can’t be the starting centerfielder for the Yankees and some of us just plain suck.

While I wouldn’t go so far as to equate second place with being the first place loser, I am very much of the opinion that we’ve done ourselves a huge disfavor with this touchy feely nonsense that says self-esteem is more important than achievement or that it’s ok to just give up because golly, you tried you’re best and that’s good enough. No, it isn’t.

How were you raised? Did that fly in your house? Well, maybe it did, maybe it didn’t but it sure as hell didn’t in mine.

I know it’s almost sacrilegious to say, but growing up, I hated football. But somewhere along the line I got it in my head I wanted to play, so I did and about mid-way through the season I wanted to quit. Imagine my shock and surprise when my parents were having none of that – “You started this season young man, you finish it and you darn well better get out there and put everything you have into it,” was the refrain I was greeted with when I gave my parents the news. And I did and I hated it – didn’t play again but I finished the season. So what, right?

Well, here’s the what – when did we loose that mentality? Where along the road did we all collectively decide that it was ok for our kids to quit on themselves? Certainly not everyone, but enough parents have taken this path that pretty much, starting with my generation, we’re raising a bunch of quitters who feel entitled to everything, who don’t think they have to work for anything and who have no real comprehension of what “hard” really is. So for those of you in the 40 and up bracket, you can pretty much stop reading this, you’re cut from a different cloth and this really isn’t applicable.

But to the rest, to those of my generation and those coming behind me I offer this – you’re not special, you’re not unique and we all need to reach down and grab a hold as they would say in the Marines. Take a look around you, at the country that we’re set to take the mantle of leadership. We need strong leaders; men and women of strong character, of iron clad determination with backbones forged of steel. Our road is going to be one of the most difficult; everywhere around us something is wrong. Study, study hard. For in addition to strength of character, we’ll be facing extreme challenges that will require the best and the brightest among us to step up with answers, let that person be you. You are the leaders of tomorrow and today you walk through the fires that will forge you for the future.

Killing in the name of – Rage Against the Machine

You know I got to tell you, I’m a little concerned. I take a look around this great country of ours and I don’t see a nation united. Our so-called melting pot seems like its just one click on the oven away from boiling over and the whole thing erupting onto to us all. And while I think there are many things out there that could cause the temperature to rise ever so slightly, I’m very afraid that someone out there is going to decide to vote with a bullet and go after the president.

I feel like I should probably state a few things up front; I’m a progressive, I voted for Barack Obama and I really disliked George W. Bush. And while I know that nobody on the left was a fan of our 43^rd president, I also don’t remember the level of vitriol aimed at him that made me feel like someone was going to try and place cross-hairs on his forehead – I feel that way now.

What is it? What is it about this man, Barack Obama, which seems to bring out the absolute worst in some of us? It’d be too easy to say the answer is his skin tone. No, I don’t think that’s it solely. I’m sure for many that’s a piece of it, but not all of it. Is it his policies? Have you looked closely? In policy and actions thus far, the man more closely resembles Bush than FDR. Is it the fear that somehow this president is going to turn us into a socialist country? Well, the only answer I have for that is that’s arguably one of the dumbest notions I’ve heard in a while. Let me explain.

Those on the right often hearken back to the 1950s as some halcyon period in American history — little jimmy knew how to read and father knew best. Post WWII America was expanding at an unbelievable rate and there was enough for everyone. Right? Wrong!

Lets see; blacks were still sitting at the back of the bus, women were still regulated to the kitchen and, this one is my favorites, the top marginal tax rate under President Eisenhower was 91-92 percent. I’m going to go out on a limb here and say no one would have called Eisenhower a socialist.

No, I think the answer lies in the level of discourse we’ve allowed ourselves to engage in. Look, I’ve got no love for political correctness; we should all call things as they are, speak truth to power and give liars and hypocrites short shrift. But where’s that balance between speech that’s acceptable and furthers the discourse and speech that’s just hate?

I remember growing up my mom used to say that “hate” was a word I wasn’t allowed to say, it was too powerful and as a child I couldn’t grasp the level of emotion the word implied. Well, I’m not a child anymore and I get it, and I feel it, and its here in our nation ready to tear us asunder.

I don’t agree with just about anything our esteemed Senator John Barrasso (R-Wy) has done while in office. But I do know one thing, at the end of the day, Senator Barrasso, like so many in Washington, is doing what he thinks is best for our state and our nation. I would love the opportunity to debate Sen. Barrasso, he’s a very smart man and I would love to engage him in conversation about matters of policy — no politics, no b.s., just healthy debate like what happens down at the gas station every morning with the old men gathered around coffee.

So I guess ultimately where I’m going is this – you don’t agree with the president, hey that’s fine. It took many men with many great and competing ideas to make our nation what it is today. But perhaps all of us need to check ourselves, to reign in our lizard brains that just attack without hearing. To my friends on the left, no, the right isn’t a bunch of whack jobs bent on world domination. To my friends on the right, no, the left isn’t a bunch of wussies bent on surrendering this country. Maybe all of us need to say to those who would incite violence that no, that isn’t the answer and it isn’t the way.

Bullet with Butterfly Wings – Smashing Pumpkins

As a kid I used to watch a fair amount of science fiction — Star Wars, the original Battlestar Galactica, Star Trek both that generation and this generation. I can’t remember which one it was, but one of them the hero, as was often the case, found themselves captured and in some sort of prison. They didn’t know they were in a jail cell until they tried to walk out and an invisible force field knocked them back on their haunches. As I look around, sometimes that’s what the world seems like – a cage whose walls you can’t see but are there just waiting to knock you flat on your tail.

Like the song from Smashing Pumpkins 1995 release Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness, very rarely does rage just all of a sudden announce itself – “Hi, how you doing, I’m rage and I’ll be screwing with your head for the next few hours.” No, it’s more like those old devil and angels that used to sit atop the shoulders of some cartoon character, whispering in your ear, feeding you, filling you with doubt or a sense of impotence, powerlessness and then, after you’ve had enough, it explodes like a volcano. And like a volcano it flows out and infects things you never meant for it to impact, but it does and it’s damage and it’s done.

If you get a chance, take a listen to the song “Bullet with Butterfly Wings,” and you’ll get what I mean – it cruises along, somewhat menacing, somewhat insidious but overall pretty even and then, with the pounding drum providing the crescendo, it just explodes on you – rage; fully manifested in all it’s grotesque glory.

“Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,” right?! Isn’t that were this is all supposed to go, to accept those things? But what if you can’t? What if those are the things that are making your insides seem like a festering, roiling pit of goo – “doesn’t this blend of blindness and blandness want to make you do something crazy?” (borrowed from one of my favorite movies. And if not, why not?

I wish I could write that I have at least some idea of what to do or how to control it. I hope maybe you do. For now when I feel that way I find myself with a few fallbacks to at least bring the exploding volcano back from the edge – go for a long run, listen to some VERY angry music or go and beat the crap out of a punching bag. I know that I, and probably all of us, need to find that way to channel it into something, something productive. Tell you what, if I figure it out I’ll let you know, if you figure it out, do me a favor and let me know.

That’s a Man – Jack Ingram

Let me ask you something – are you one of those types? The type who likes to shirk their responsibilities? Who likes to blame others for your failings? Who only hears what they want to hear in someone else’s words vice what’s actually being said? Or maybe you that type, the type that likes to hide behind false words, to make up a situation to avoid just shooting straight. Maybe you are, maybe you aren’t. The problem as I see it – I know entirely too many people who are that type.

I don’t really know where it all sort of got off kilter, when parents stopped teaching their kids responsibility and being accountable for their actions. Because you know, it starts there, what we teach our kids is what they’re going to be and do when they’re adults.

Let me tell you, I’m an expert on getting in trouble as a child. If something went wrong in my household of five children with me being the oldest, more often than not you’d make money if you’d bet that I had something to do with it. With that, I think I heard every single bit of wisdom my father had on the subject – “you wanna dance, you’ve got to pay the fiddle,” or “you can’t do the time, don’t commit the crime,” and my personal, heard way to many times, favorite – “you made you bed youngin, time to lay in it.”

Dad was always good and quick with those and needless to say they were often leveled at me. Like I said, I was usually the ringleader, doing something stupid as kid and getting in trouble for it. But that’s when we’re supposed to do it, when we’re kids. When we’re adults, we’re supposed to leave all that shit behind us with the toys in the toy-box or the clothes long outgrown.

But like I said, I know way too many people who haven’t left that behind, that hold on to it like the 40-year old still wearing his high school varsity jacket. Or the prom queen who some forty years later still clings to one moment in the sun never having done anything more with her life.

Look, nobody’s perfect, we all make mistakes and at times fall short of the person we hope we will be when the time comes and our mettle is tested. The problem is when those actions, or more accurately wrong or no actions, define you, when people look at you and take everything you say with a grain of salt because they know better. They don’t listen to you because they know they can only believe about half of what you say and in this mile-a-minute world we live in your word isn’t worth the listen or the time.

So be a man, be a women, be “a stand tall, walk straight,” type person and I guarantee you everyone around you will notice. You won’t ever have to open your mouth, there’s just something about that type, the person who walks the walk that we all can immediately identify.

When We Two Parted – The Afghan Whigs

Music is a funny thing. You just never know what’s going to take with an audience. Sometimes it’s the sugary pop confections of bubble gum music ala much of the music from the early 50’s and sometimes it’s the all out sonic assaults of heavier stuff such as much of the metal that dominated the 80’s. People’s tastes are fickle indeed.

Often times what makes music popular is the assemblage of the music – the guitar solo or the drum beat. Too often, much attention isn’t paid to the lyrics. And there’s that rare of rare when the music and the lyrics combine to make something truly great which brings me to the case of Greg Dulli of the Afghan Whigs, the Twighlight Singers and the Gutter Twins.

Dulli is that rare example of a songwriter who, whether purposefully or not, writes lyrics complicated enough to alienate a large chuck of his potential audience. Seems to me he’s carrying on a long tradition of such singer-songwriters who, generally, are too smart for their own good – Leonard Cohen, and at times Bob Dylan, Kris Kristofferson immediately jump to mind. They’re our conscious and the voice of our times, our poet laureates giving voice to the current situation. But because sometimes their lyrics are obtuse, full of symbolism and other elements that obfuscate their meaning, they’re dropped for the lighter fair of the FM radio. Some, like Dylan find a way to have enough easy to grasp material out there to gain popularity and other like Cohen have longevity on their side, gaining enough of an audience to sustain them with each passing year.

I guess it’s a lot like writers of classic literature. I’ve often heard it said that James Joyce’s “Dubliners” or “Finnegans Wake” are sublime, masterful works. And I’ve tried on several occasions to give Joyce’s work a crack to not much avail. I’m sure there are some great and wonderful human truths in there but to date they elude me. Faulkner is another one, while I read and enjoy his work, I can’t help but feel there’s more going on there then I’ve fully grasped. But I keep trying. I keep coming back to these authors and musicians hoping that perhaps, with me at a different time and space, I’ll finally gain that insight that I’ve been missing.

Ultimately, that’s my point – intellectual pursuit. Nothing worth having is easy right? You have got to work at it, whittle away at the edges until finally that moment of break through occurs and you sit back, somewhat smug in satisfaction of the effort expelled.

I’m not really sure how, but it seems to me that we’ve become a nation that looks down on those who are super smart, maybe we don’t like the way they make us feel. I don’t know, I just know that it’s a dumb position to take, instead of denigrating those who have put in the time to academic pursuits, us joe six-packs should be spending a little more time trying to follow in their footsteps because I just can’t believe that the image of the “joe six-pack” is one any of us aspire to.

The Gauntlet – Dropkick Murphys

Doesn’t it seem like there’s just always something lurking in the darkness? Something waiting behind the bushes to jump out and take everything away from you. Whether it be the tax man or big daddy government or even just the nail in the road waiting to puncture your tire, it sometimes seems the world is a dark place just waiting to sink its claws into you.

Obviously there are those boogeymen we can do little about – very few actually see the object that causes the flat tire. And then there are those we see from far, far away and know they’re coming. The ones we see, those are the ones we can do something about.

I’m not sure when it happened, but in my view, somewhere along the way just about all of us got real apathetic. If it doesn’t impact us directly, then we can’t be bothered to do anything about it. Yes of course there are those exceptions. Those people that are out there standing up for what they believe in, or going to all the PTA meetings, or serving in city government or whatever, something, they’re involved, they’re trying to make a difference.

But too many of us hole ourselves up in our homes, flop down on the couch and flip on the boob-tube. Speaking of the idiot box, sometimes there is some good that comes out of it. I remember a few years ago there was a series of commercials; the one that left an impression on me featured Whoopi Goldberg. Her point was simple – if everyone just gave five minutes a day to a cause they believed in, imagine how much could be accomplished? Its romantic and naïve to think that world hunger would end and suddenly our kids would become educated but think about that for just a minute – maybe we couldn’t solve all the worlds problems, but we sure could make a start.

And so we’re back to the things we can do something about. Look, at the end of the day, I’m a hopeless romantic. Not just about the wonder of love but about the wonder of people and the good they’re capable of accomplishing. All you cynics out there can snicker to yourselves — just put the paper down now and don’t worry about the rest of this article, it isn’t for you. Well actually it’s exactly for you but you’ll miss the message anyway.

So to my point, get involved. Do something that matters. Start something, fight something you think unjust. Against current health care legislation? Do something, write a letter, attend a town hall meeting. For universal health care? Do something, write a letter, attend a town hall meeting. Make your voice heard. Stand up and fight and you just might be surprised how many stand up with you.

Mind Your Own Business – Hank Williams, Sr.

It’s been said that good fences make for good neighbors. I think regardless of fences Hank Williams was on the mark, mind your own business. And when you live in a small town, my business seems to become your business and her business and his business.

A little while ago, a friend of mine was in a pretty horrible accident. They’re fine now and working back to full recovery, but you should have heard some of the more wild accusations surrounding the accident. It was straight up unbelievable. Obviously those trading in some of the more wild rumors had never met this person or they would have known the falsehood of their statements.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t have a beef with anyone in particular and if I did, I wouldn’t be airing it here, I’d take it to them. But every one of us knows that someone who just lives to pass on the daily dish.

It doesn’t matter to that person how tenuous the information they have may be, they don’t care what damage they do to that person’s character nor do they even care if the information they have is made up, they live to pass it on and looking like they’re in “the know.” I don’t know about you, but I figure I got enough going on in my own life that just keeping up with my business is a full time job. So is that the problem? Do those who play in the rumor mill have nothing better to do? Are they so bored that their life is made entertaining by the idle banter of other peoples lives? Our worse, are they so devoid of anything that they must fill up their life through the lives of others? The Germans have a word for such a thing –schadenfreude it means taking pleasure in the pain, suffering and misery of others. Our maybe they’re jealous that those they’re talking about are actually doing something while they sit back and do nothing. I don’t know but I do know this – if you mind your own business then you won’t be minding mine.

Sitting on the Dock of the Bay – Otis Redding

Chocolate ice cream, snickers bars, banana cream pie – comfort food. For many of us, when times get hard, we raid the ice box and find that thing brings us comfort and somewhere, deep in the recesses of our mind tells us everything is going to be ok, if just for a minute. And then there’s music, for me, comfort food for the soul.

Like the idea of comfort food, at any given moment our soul wants different things. Perhaps you take solace in your bible, your favorite passage of poetry, a flip through a well worn photo album. Maybe all of the above, maybe none of the above – each trying moment demands a different touchstone to bring us back to the here and now. And the touchstone required for each of us is as different and unique as our fingerprint.

As I said, for me it’s usually music and more often than not, its Otis Redding’s “Sitting on the Dock of the Bay.” I really couldn’t tell you how that came to be nor could I tell you why. But sure enough, in times of duress you’ll find me lightly humming or whistling that familiar refrain.

Perhaps its Redding’s smooth, jazz voice, or perhaps it’s the tranquil scene depicted – here’s a man at peace with the world, caught in his stolen moment of the sunrise. Or perhaps somewhere over the years I, like Redding, found those few glorious moments where you get to witness the awesome beauty of a sunrise, or as was more often my case a sunset, enough to settle the raging storms inside.

There’s just something amazing about watching the sun rise and just one short hour later you get to watch it set as was the case in the darkest moments of winter growing up in Alaska. The years living in San Diego watching the sun set as I stood on the cliffs of La Jolla, magnificent beaches below or taking Redding at his word and watching the ships roll in at the piers of San Francisco, leaned back on the body of my motorcycle. At those moments it didn’t matter what was going on around me or what troubles, both real and imagined, stirred in my mind. At those moments, everything was right with the world and the world was beautiful.

Let’s face it, sometimes the world can be a pretty ugly place what with war, famine, disease and everything else that causes misery and all of us need that thing. That comfort food for the soul that gives us the power to carry on, to wake up in the morning and do it all over again despite what seems like the worlds attempt to bring us down. As I write this, it’s still early, it’s still dark outside my office window. I think I’m going to take my I-pod loaded with Otis and head to the bluffs – time to watch a sunrise. Sittin in the morning sun …