Ok, this is take two and my blood is boiling! This will seem juvenile to some but I hate technology! I am suffering from wireless-signal-dropped-itis. I am sure it is a real disorder soon to be named a disease so the FDA and big pharmaceutical can make money from it. I have on good word from previous former roommates of Kevin Trudeau's at the state penitentiary that his new book is entitled, "Why Technology is Killing All of Us: Buy the Cure from Me" and I think I might float four or five fins his way to buy into the farce and maybe there really will be a cure found somewhere within it's pages. If not than I at least have something to hold down papers on my desk and something else to rant about at another time.

I am the last person on earth, in the free world, in a civilized country, over the age of two  that does NOT own a cell phone. Cell phones eat my soul. The ringing, the endless meaningless chatter, the void going no where brushing aside Dr. Who's skirt to take a peak as it annoys the world. All of the sounds grate and scrape at my ear canal like a Sepeltura/Slayer archaeological expedition into said canal looking for an artifact somewhere in the Bad Lands. My ear drum is not a Veloci Raptor claw! That delicate little bone or two enabling my hearing is not an experiment into the how's and why's of Pete Townsend! All of you personal space invading business men and soccer moms SHUTUP! At the very least can you take your conversation else where a little more private maybe? I do not want to know about your "big" stock deal or your yeast infection. I could care less about little Johnny's failed science experiment, Suzy's recital, Grandma's gout, or anything else having to do with the infections and affections of your life. Keep it to yourself! A little side note; If you are one of those blue toothed, Bespin Cloud City, advisor to Lando, glowing phone in the ear mother fuckers: take it out you look retarded!

It is sad enough these sorry sacks of crap are allowed to roam the Earth, and I know we all want to ride the crest of technology - the high and mighty communication surfer catching the wave of innovation, but there must be limits. Don't drive and jibber jabber. Don't do it in public and if you must leave the forum and go talk privately. Don't do it while performing brain surgery. Don't do it in confession. Don't talk on that incessant beast while sexing it up. You know what unless it is a friggin' emergency Stop Using that Brain Sucker that annoys everyone else around you. Do you remember what happened to Chekhov in "Kahn"? Someday you will have something crawling come out of your ear I just know it!

OK now that that part is over I move on to this dumb ass slave beast of avocation, recreation, and simple vocation (maybe not so simple): my computer. I decided to go back on line after a few years hiatus. I had to talk myself into it, unlike cable T.V. which I went without for almost ten years and even with my cravings for it my woman insisting that we have it was the selling point, not my "need". I write. I intend on writing for the rest of my life, no matter how long or short that may be. To do so and gain some recognition beyond my vent and self satisfaction there must be an audience of sorts. Hello audience (and thanks for the free therapy)! I started using my lady's laptop. When two cats fight over a squeeker mousy toy normally the one who had it first wins. She did. I dug out my desk top that I received two Christmas' ago and had only used for the occasional game and for the utilization of Word.

Running two computers via DSL meant getting a wireless router and all the ethernet this's and that's in order to realize the "dream" of being on line together and accomplishing what our individual needs are when online. Since then I have lived in Hell. I don't just mean, whew it's hot in here and it smells and who's that cloven hoofed fruitcake, I mean HELL. The kind where frustration actually becomes personified and dances around the room in your lovers underwear screaming, " Yo' mama wears combat boots!" (of course in German). I know it sounds like a night in Clinton's wet dreams but to me it is a nightmare. Once this router and that modem and this card and that software program was all sat down at the Mad Hatter's tea table and forced to get along while sipping the fine strained fluid and nibbling on biscuits, I finally began walking around eye glazed singing "A Very Merry Un Birthday to You!", which I haven't done since college. My friends in interactive computer land do not get along. And that is only here on the interface side of it all.

I get dropped signal like Gallileo dropped the orange. I don't know what to do. I normally pour a second glass of red or grab another beer or (much to the chagrin of my lady and my neighbors) SCREAM profanities at the top of my lungs. Which is a site to see I promise; maybe someday I'll sell tickets and all of you can raise the ghost of P.T. Barnum and come laugh your asses silly with the spectacle known as my fury. And yes that is fury NOT furry. Very different, yet both apply.

She gets her steady signal  but she also has a cell phone. Am I not part of the mechanism enough to participate. Am I only a cog in the world of sprockets? Does my trebuchet just drop shit onto the ground in front of it? I feel like the kid in science class who can't get his potato to light up the light. My magnesium doesn't burn the right color. I just want my damned to all hell computer to work and not knock me off in the middle of a post that I eventually have to recall and rewrite and re post. I know what you are all going to say (the same thing my woman says) "Write it in word then post", "Write it in an email than post", I know, I know, I know ...

I PAY for the service and even if service is something I am not getting I pay for it damn it and I am bound and determined to get it. I guess I will have to hit the easy button that was sent to me in the comments of my "Easy Button" post. Or maybe I will rip out all of my hair (head and beard) trying to figure it out. I know if I do that someone will have my fiesty little lady to answer to as she loves that hair. If I do rip it all out I will look more conservative. Ha!

I'll keep it long like my posts. I'll bite my lip and hope I don't lose my half written rants. Let it roll, baby, let it roll! Maybe tomorrow my computer will work long enough to hump hump hump my way into Wednesday ...

The siren spins it's harmonic weave of tapestries and only the red lights give way to an emergency. It's like "Firehouse" by KISS. It sneaks up and bites you in the ass. Then you run around crying and bleeding but up until blood, led to endorphins, which led to misguided reaction, you were just fine and a smilin'. I actually think it was ear to ear.

This may be not much of a Monday post but a Monday, indeed, it is. I took a poll today. I figured in the three hours leading up to type time I could actually contact some people and find out the scoop. I could really dive into that American pie and talk to friends and family all over the U.S.A. I have friends from Tacoma to San Diego on out to Tampa and up to Conway and back to the start via Ann Arbour. I would just phone up everyone I had in the ol' speed dial and ask my one simple question:, "As a summation of local, federal, and global levels; What is your most important political issue having to do with current events?"

What a loaded question I asked. WOW! I never really thought it to be that complicated. I constantly analyze everything and it appears most people analyze very little. I honestly thought it to be a pretty straight forward question and it ended up coming off as a very a narrow pressured cannon question shot down the barrel and chock full of velocity and acceleration that was aimed towards your head or mine depending on perspective.

It was a work day. Hell, it was Monday! Out of all my calls only 20 were available to call me back or get back to me. So my poll is a 1:15,000,000 ratio! How friggin splendid and accurate! I am no Neilson and I am no CNN poll but what I learned really made me think, as I think it should you as well!

My most popular "themed" answer was "nothing". As a matter of fact 4 out of 20, 1/5, of those polled found that to be a satisfactory answer. Don't get me wrong it came in many forms. One answer was actually, "I'm too burnt to respond to politics." Creme fresh, anyone?

Three of the responses were global environment safety requests. This varied from over all Global Warming to Bio-Diesel but the complete point of argument was the Earth. The one person that I had pegged for a "save the world" comment was quoted as saying that he was "looking to save (his) skin". My, my, my, what have we come to?

A four way split on immigration was found. Two amnesty and two shut it down damn it! Like sands through the hour glass so are the illegals of our lives ...

One surfer friend points out that "the" issue is the "hot shit" Supreme Court "Fucking" with Roe vs Wade. He goes onto point out it is all the Supreme Court and not the President. Hhhhhmmmm?

The most poignant comes from a friend of mine who "used to be" a racist. His biggest issue was an increase in the funding of Global Humanitarian causes and issues. A turn around had happened where none was suspected. This is what politics is made of!

I found that for most of the poll I wanted to see what my friends and family thought and have the thoughts of debate remain amongst a level of peers. Instead I ended up on Gilligan's Island. Everyone I saw there I knew. I knew them all well. But after fetching too many coconut cocktail trays I realize that everyone on the island is different in so many ways that getting along is just shear horror.

Look I do not think that I am on reality T.V. I know I am in the here and now interacting with EVERYONE. Finding out what the people in your own back yard know and feel is the best. It makes you think twice of what and who you are, after you ask who and what makes you and what they think and feel.

Until the Dickies tour nationally and I can say proud of who and what I am, until Wednesday's HUMPING! ...

Sitting here wondering if anyone got the point of my last post? The lengthy title. The seemingly impotent post itself all of two sentences and a signature long. It may appear trivial but commercials offend me. The advice is already ringing through my ears: Turn It Off! I watch maybe one hour of the four major networks weekly. When I do watch T.V. it is mostly movies or some version of Law and Order (as it can be found on numerous channels pretty much at any given time and in three different languages). I listen to ALOT of radio. These pesky little reminders of thorny roses that we call commercials appear quite frequently where ever I happen to be on the entertainment spectrum. A maelstrom of their gelatinous globs and globes of napalm hail come crashing into ones psyche, mostly under the radar and quite subliminally as we pretend to ignore them doing something else or thinking of other things or just zoning out waiting for our "real" entertainment to return; message after slogan after slick slop and slide of cerebral synapse slice soaking. Simply horrible!

My grandfather was an advertising executive for GTE Sylvania. His hand me down of family legacy was the Mr. Light character. Mr. Light (or so I remember the character's name to have been although I will admit the memory is hazy) was a smiling happy and energy conscious humanoid that, while all full of glow, would run around your house turning lights on and off to help you out, conserve energy costs, and well sell you energy saving light bulbs made by Sylvania. I laugh at the idea of how comforting it is to know that you can be lazy and save money as this radioactive super watt walks his way around your abode helping you fix the energy crisis and save a buck that may not be so hard earned all at the same time. Wow! The American Dream via advertisements.

It all came to the front of the whole lobotomy zone (frontal lobe that is not Lisa Loeb) when, after well over a decade of wanting to kick in the T.V. screen ala Meatloaf, I began seeing the new Staples campaign with the mystical button. A button so intense it can actually duplicate itself (I think it procreates via asexual cell division so it is not Catholic). A button so full of quantum physics that not only do Ramtha and Isaac Asimov both lose their creepy ways 'o' speak when their jaws drop in speechless awe but , according to the commercial, can teleport (that's right trekkies 'teleport') coffee drinking slackers with shabby chic mop tops back into the closet that they desperatley tried to get out of for probably most of their teen years. And it's fabulous features don't stop there. The whole purpose of this thrifty, nifty, spiffy little button is to make everything "EASY". WOW! They christened this fab device, and mascot slogan banner,  dum dum dum ... "The Easy Button". Manifique!

By now you probably all think I have lost my friggin' mind. After using the word "friggin'", any long time reader (HA, all three weeks!) will  recognize me as still here and with it but I am sure even you are wondering what I am talking about. Something about this message stuck with me. It applied to much more than mere office supplies. It pathetically has become America's slogan. It is the average Joe's (in any income bracket just pick one) mantra. It is what racks his balls, spins his world, and chalks his stick. The new American way. Easy. Not just easy but "Instant Easy".

If you try telling me that they are just commercials or just a sales pitch or only crazy people let these ads permeate their lives, I want you to be honest with yourself and come up with slogans and jingles you remember. I bet there are thousand's. I bet you come up with ones you didn't even know you knew or remembered. They are there in your brain and in mine!

So back to being "easy". I figured, "Great! Normally I write really long posts I'll just take the "Easy" way out." Out comes giant red button for my Friday night pleasure and after a quick red button bumping; Viola! I have three lines written with one long ass clue of a title. Satisfaction guaranteed. Everything in America is an easy way out. Feelings are an easy way out of confrontation. Calling in sick is an easy day off with some easy sick pay (damn I wish I still had sick pay). Abortions, insanity pleas, and disorders  are the easy way out of responsibility for individual choices. U.A.E. backing out is the easy way to solve the political fury pending on that stupid ass ports deal that is finally over. "Closure" arguments are easy ways to vent and feel purged without reconciliation. Addiction is the easiest way out of most trouble and lack of will power or control. The "other" person, the "other" party, the "other" point of view. We even let accidents off easy by assigning blame and utilizing manslaughter laws. It was drugs not the parents. It is music not the parents. It was the movies not the parents; the internet, the video games, the little boy down the street. It was his parents not her parents. Easy, easy, easy.

Does anyone remember "Highlights" magazine? Do you remember Goofus and Gallant? Goofus was easy. Gallant, well he, was just plain gallant. Doing the right thing is never easy. Life is not easy. Why should Staples create a button to make it that way? Do you know they actually sell the friggin' button? Yep, you can buy one to stick on your desk, hang on the wall next to the fire alarm lever, or super glue it to your secretary's ass and no matter where it is, it will be awaiting a good smack, push, pat, slam in order to relieve itself of the sweet easy, all over reality. Easy, easy, easy!

The most recent ad screw, that holds high the "Easy Button" banner, is the Asian warlord version of the ad. High upon a mountain top there is a warlord with limited troops watching the onset of the foreign feudal fight - master posse that comes in much greater numbers on horse back to kick his little backyard gang's asses. As the larger army gets closer to the protecting warlord's buddies, one of the buddies gallantly gallops up to his master and presents the "button". Right before the crucial moment of combat contact, the button is depressed and the great wall of China comes up through a giant earth gash protecting all the "warriors" whose lives become easy. But then you realize the warlord leader is on the wrong side of the wall. He is fucked! Then, in some foreign tongue, he says "Dang!" Is this what happened when all of the Republican congressman backed away from Bush over this ports thing. G.W. stood up tall at the desk in the Oval Office and said, "Dang!" No worries though, it was made easy.

They even have one where cats, not illegal immigrants, are doing the work that men and women won't do; color copying.  The cats can finger paint graphs and charts - no problem. Did you know that "meow, meow" really means, "Friggin' Easy." I didn't until the add presented it's lazy to feline to human to lazy dictionary complete with thirty second technicolor splendor budget. I never stop being amazed at the world and I hope I never am. It makes my days filled with smiles and the hope that eventually it will become so clear and obvious how moronic we have become that we (the majority excluding me)(human not political) all will change for the better.

I have three pertinent references to make as I begin to close. Beyond these three quotes if you don't get my point with it all, then you won't. It will have been a two day fiasco al fresco. Hopefully you got it. Quote one, my Dad towards anyone too stupid to see what is up,: "You have the mentality of a Newt!". Quote two, John Wayne when asked how he was while dinning in a Newport Beach restaurant,: "I feel more like I do now than I did when I got here." Quote three, O. Henry's last words,: "Turn up the lights. I don't want to go home in the dark."

Searching for "O" words that reference geological fissures as part of a pun/play on words carousel that Frank spun us on from back in 69-70. Thinking I rather do that for eternity than watch another commercial ever again. I can't wait for the T-Shirts: "I went to Abu Grahib and all I got was this lousy easy button!" Until Monday when I'll slide some oil to ya' and help you lubricate your mind ...

 

I've used my "easy button"

I'll see you on Monday!

R.E. Knowlton III

"I long for instruments obedient to my thought and whim, with their contribution of a whole new world of unsuspected sounds, which will lend themselves to the exigencies of my inner rhythm." Ok. Who said it? Was it Stalin or Lenin or Marx? Was it Bush or Eisenhower or Patton? MMMMMM ... Maybe Doestevsky or Dante or Voltaire? Who knows it could have even been Ron Jeremy. The point is to think about it word for word and see where it would apply. I'll tell you at the end ... NO cheating! In the one, and only one, way I am like Mr. Jeremy is and I rely on a quote from his mother (askmen.com interview with R.J.), "Ronnie dances to a different drummer."

Ron Jeremy started his acting after his mother passed and after he acquired a degree in Theatre as well as Elementary Education. And yes he actually acted before what we all know him for or are, at the very least, fond of him for having accomplished. I bring him "up" because of his family's background. He grew up surrounded by PHD's and even one "member" of his family was in the C.I.A. Just goes to show that guilty by association is not always true. There is a Zappa reference to being a "'certain' sucker" by proxy when it comes to Reagan and Nixon and the sandbox muckrakers they surrounded themselves with, but I won't go "that" porno on all of you. I find it funny that Trey Parker (of South Park fame), recently in a Time interview, referred to G.W.  as a guy who , "F's up alot, and yeah, he's harebrained sometimes, but he's got a good heart." Before you don't look and leap, those South Park boys attack both sides and I say that from a non biased point of view (I'm hardly a "fan" of  the program). They are just as satirical and finger-pointing to conservatives as they are liberals as they are to over-all-idiots and crazy people.

The point of this hump day humping is Vantage point and I do not mean those clever filters on the cigarettes conning, coaxing, and compelling one to smoke them with their nifty little hole in the middle (it actually reminds me of a tracheotomy and I refuse to smoke them due to that fact). It all becomes a matter of context. Something we all rip and shred apart like a Goober at a BBQ devouring ribs in order to get some sort of plaque to hang in carnivore heaven. We, ALL, personalize things and color them about. Our opinions become a Crayola 64 packs complete with the sharpener on the side. A set of colorform shrinky-dinks we all cut out and melt into our own realities never contemplating the fact that we never "colorform", we hardly shrink, we mostly just "dink". It makes me sick. I know I am very opinionated, as my pieces have shown, but most of the time I stop and THINK about what I am saying or am going to type and logic and solutions come to mind long before chest thumping does. I am not King Kong but a mere sock monkey.

It goes back to my previous point about listening. Not to assume. Ass - you - me, we ALL have heard that before and as simple as it is it is true. Ask yourself do you really look into what you are reading, listening to, or watching? Do you really give a shit if Teri Hatcher was EVER touched? Or do you just accept that as news because you like sex? I know that no one is watching that rubbish, right? No, no, no, WE are ALL watching C-SPAN I and mini screening C-SPAN II in order to get the straight forward facts, right? If you try to sell me that dump truck of horse shit I will simply laugh in your face. We all deserve to "snap into reality", find news that "satisfies" or get programming "our way". With no commercials! But we all, as card carrying opinionators, are required to be informed from all sides and that includes knowing what the people we know and associate with are saying. The word associate does mean something beyond casual friend!

We can circle jerk the lexicon all around on a colorwheel of verbose nonsense and merry go round verbiage even when redefining the world as we know it. Owen Chamberlain just past away, he was 85. I know you were all obsessed with the famous "Kolchak: Night Stalker" / "Christmas Story dad" movie star Darren McGavin's passing but there is something a bit more important about Mr. Chamberlain. No, he was not a Chamberlain of  Chamberlain Quartamaine fame he was a physicist, one of Nobel winning gravity (a little science humor there). Not that the Nobel means anything now with winners such as Arrafat and Carter and nominees such as Tookie Williams or William Wolfe Handel ESQ, but it meant something during Owen's day. He was a member of the "Manhattan Project", yes "that" project. He helped us win WWII with a Johnny Unitus thumbnail in the frozen ground play. Yes, yes, liberals, he apologized afterward; just be thankful you all don't speak German and wound up rooting for "Die Weiss Wurst von Schnell" in the Torrino event of Luge. He, with his Manhattan conspirator Emilio Segre (not Estevez), won the award in 1955 for discovering the "antiproton". Eeeewwwwww Ooooohhhhh, sounds mysterious. A year later that lead to the demanding of recognition for the "antineutron". Silly me, I thought that was a Bauhaus cover of the Pointer Sister's song from Beverly Hills Cop. What the hell do I know. Wait a minute, I know alot (although humor can blind my intelligence sometimes)! Mr Chamberlain was a GENIOUS, and I mean that sincerely. Although there is something funny about the birth father names he chose for his discoveries. Maybe we should just blame it on Emilio and call Owen non creative by proxy!

I guess by now you are tired of my humor. Maybe I should lay it to rest but unfortunately for you and very fortunately for me it is a constant barrage of force in the tedious news cycle that needs that stupid ass Fall River native Emiril Linguine, or what ever his name is, to bam it up a notch (or is that crotch, I am very confused). Yes the news has bored me to tears of laughter the last four or five days. Even on a local level I can only laugh my ass off or be found guilty of resuscitation. And no one wants that, well except maybe Cindy Sheehan. God, Why did I even go there?

The answer to tonight's secret quote (which I hope you all actually thought about, and if you knew the answer, I hope upon finding your aptitude of correctness here, scream, running around the room as if it were Pee Wee's Playhouse and it was the word of the day) is: Edgar Varese circa June 1917. The quote is about music and if you are familiar with Varese's work then you will fully understand the quote. If you are not familiar then run out and go get one of his CD's and torture yourself with it. It is the best thing since Eisenhower's tract house ejaculation, the missile crises sweat stains, or the infamous odiferous brow of the perpetually perspiring Nixon!

I leave you tonight with the words of the California Raisins (if you were in Japan in the eighties you have no idea what I am talking about because of the "digit quantity superstition"): "Books! Check 'em Out! Books! Check 'em out, check 'em out!" Until Friday, when I am sure I will be fried ....