Thursday, December 3, 2015

Memorabilia Snapshots

compelling evidence
Top Left: With my buddy D., Oggy climbs the 3 or 4 pitch Cathedral Ledge in the White Mountains one Fall. I have no idea which specific route we took but I know it was not too hard. Oggy is demonstrating a difficult pose that was required to slip through a narrow gap between his beard and the rock face. I remember falling around the 4th pitch, maybe 600 feet above the ground, my feet hurt so badly they lost grip. The ropes held, the anchors held. The friend at the sharp end of the rope had to belay me while hanging on his own anchor.
The Ledge from afar

I also remember rappelling down one ledge and accidentally unhooking the tether line. What is worse is that I don't remember unhooking it. So this would disqualify me from flying for the Navy because I'm required to have 100% recall and there was simply a time when I hooked that tether on me and then a time when I realized it was gone and laying at the bottom of the ledge. If I had to guess I would say a subliminal death wish took over and set me up for a tragic fall. I have to use the precautionary principle and assume I'm mentally imbalanced for technical rock climbing. This is too bad because the experience is exciting, but unfortunately the shoes cause my crippled toes to bleed every time I climb because they are crammed into those tight rock climbing shoes. So, it's no great loss to the sport. I can see I'm wearing wool military surplus sweater and shorts over blue long underwear: classic Fall climbing wardrobe.

Top Right: Embarrassing photo shoot in San Francisco, with the idea that I would walk into an agency on Market Street and sit with the chiseled gay men and women who were taller than me with huge heads of hair and get a contract. I was pale, didn't go to the gym and smelled like horse shit because I worked with horse shit every day. And I guess I thought a white shirt, western string tie and black pants were a good idea. My hair went over my head like a cape. I spent a lot of money going back and forth to those fashion agencies and they treated me like I was complete dirt. For the record, I did not wake up one day and think I should be a model, someone told me I could make $500 a day wearing boxer shorts and so I cleaned myself up and went to S.F. rolling the dice on my chinline and narrow skull. If I had stayed in costume with manure and ranch wear I probably stood a better chance of getting hired, but not much better.

Bottom: The reason I smelled like horse shit was because I was living in a trailer surrounded by horse shit. My job was to shovel horse shit every day of 7 horses, feed them hay, keep their stalls from falling apart, corral the sheep and chickens and pigs and shoot at the coyotes who tried to steal the eggs. That earned me a free place to stay on the side of a hill in a pervert's mansion which included a piano that I stuffed in there, my first piano, and a refrigerator that was outside covered with a piece of plywood. In the day I would work for an illegal contractor doing mostly ridiculous landscaping and remodeling jobs that made no sense to me. I was constantly digging up trees or digging holes for a mail box post. On the Weekends I took the train to S.F. and begged fashion agencies to dress me up in underwear and take photos of me. Eventually, this got old so I took some classes at the nearby community college, learned that I qualified for a full tuition scholarship at any CSU system college and decided Humboldt State University was where I should go. But for about 2 years I was a horse caretaker. I have no idea whose Volvo that is in the picture.

Refugee

Should I even attempt an analysis of current events in my condition? I shouldn't, but it is my duty as a philosopher. I have chosen the career path of the philosopher/social critic and though heaped with scorn and derision I have fulfilled my objectives. I did what I set out to do. It has cost me my sanity and my emotional well-being but it's also entertained the woeful court of drunken jesters and that detail entertains me so the cycle is complete. My limbs feel like they are made of soggy canvas of a Cuban refugee raft or Haitian inner-tube floating to safety. I want to write a haiku to the Cuban refugees:

Haiku to Cuban Refugees

The jungle creeps in
on the drunken immigrant.
Lust for Miami

Current events has kept me hiding with the dust bunnies under this Nicaraguan hostel bed that hasn't been moved since Somoza was still an item on an Indian Restaurant Menu. The Chikunguna music festival has an open ticket policy and balloon lanyards float like guitar riffs in the dry Hollywood Bowl.

We harvest our own discord on the backs of cheating hearts and frozen assets in a nostalgia dream. You know who you are who cling to the threads of an imposed emotional refugee. I defy you to watch this Tom Petty* video from when Oggy looked like this:


1988 Fenway Park: vintage patina on memorabilia snapshot


and NOT come away with your life altered. You don't have to live like a refugee....but the Cubans would disagree, they are refugees and they have to live like refugees. I dedicate this Tom Petty tune to the Cubans living on cardboard hopes and dreams in the gravel parking lot of the American Dream. Oggy never looked better...he's a cripple now and an emotional refugee chasing rabbit dreams in the big jangle night.

One mass shooting in Georgia is eclipsed by a bigger mass shooting in California, like a fucking horse on a bad trip kicking you in the forehead this tasty bit of shit sticks on the roof of your mouth like cheap peanut butter from the Ocean Job Lots discount aisle.

Oggy went snorkeling the other day looking for the broken emotional pieces lost in the immigration from youth to adulthood. Wouldn't that be more interesting than gold, to hunt for bits of emotional stability? Oggy destructs his self-hood in pursuit of a unified self-hood, his buffet. The hypocrisy is written on his eyeballs backwards so he can read it when he sleeps. Oggy lives in  Pepperland cavern hidden from view where he analyzes and reanalyzes his mistakes and his trespasses, alternately judging the puerile phantom culture propagandized in the press and also loathing the dark roots that have poisoned his hypertension heart. It's an '80s soap opera that has no good endings so we postpone the guaranteed disaster until the moths of mass shooting appear. Two of them in one day. And what is it all mean, you think you know and pontificate with your belly against the walnut bar but you actually have no fucking clue and are out of your element. Amateur philosophers are easily exposed by their pathetic stroke in deep waters. Don't bother. Stick you Family Guy, stick to date rapes and Campus crime and continued faux support of cause celebre bullshit. Omnipotent and dark chasm where the nostalgic fools never return. All the butterfly cuff links in the world can't save a savage savant.

The term terrorism seems to be thrown around by a lot of couch potatoes on steroids and anti-depressants. I got no time for pundits who don't define their terms and assume previous pundits have trained the humanzees to think. Well, I'm not down with that trip so here's my definition of terrorism:
Terrorism must include three elements: 1) acts of anti-social behavior....2) those who perform acts of anti-social behavior...3) and pundits/gurus/leaders who incite, instigate, misinform, manipulate and encourage, celebrate those anti social acts.

This is mostly what is implied when asshole CNN faces moan about 'terrorism' but since it is never explained or defined I am not sure.  But I do know that terrorism differs from your random spree killer by a simple tangible connection between anti-social behavior and an instigator/encouraging element who was not directly involved in the anti-social act, but whose punditry specifically encourages such an act.

I'm not going to outline every scenario because it gets subjective. Let us all use the term 'terrorism' at least in a situation that is not reserved for the casual lunatic.Speaking of casual lunacy, I think I'll make a prediction based on current events: Since Republican candidates are already more concerned about plastic bags than assault rifles and bloviating about "we need a war-time president" because that prepares voters for an assault on every level...I predict an eventual war between Muslims and Christians. I see it as self-fulfilling. The conditions in America will eventually deteriorate to a violation of religious freedoms beyond simply protesting at a mosque and involve ID cards, food rationing...and lack of access to other constitutional freedoms. This will force Muslims to either leave or to organize and defend their rights. That clash will lead to an explosion of violence and a choosing of sides and I think the Religious nuttery will supersede jingoistic allegiance and the religions will fight to the death for the next century. This may be the ultimate Republican goal because War is their domain and the country associates war with Republican values so they will vote Republican in time of war. Thus Republicans need war to maintain power and they consider American voters collateral damage in their sick quest for control. If Americans were slightly smarter or valued critical thinking then this quest would fail but incredibly the conditions are perfect for a hostile coup by a war hawk organization that will lead to decades of civil war. Honestly, America is overdue for upheaval and is actually overdue for being overthrown, but the marketing machine has figured out that you must maintain superficial regularity while the overthrow is happening behind the scenes. That way, the term "America" can be thrown around to unify people when it is a meaningless statement since around the 1950s when Hoover and Ike conspired to eliminate America's self-determination. 

In other happy news, when the police force acts as judge, jury, and executioner then you have a failed state.



* I walked into a music store in Shreveport, Louisiana and the owner said, "Are you Tom Petty?" I said, "Dig it. Give me that Les Paul and put it on Mick Jagger's bill."
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Man in the Van by Oggy Bleacher is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported License.