Harvest Festival

My paramour Pam
a native of this great land
whom I think is grand

I don't give any thanks today.

For non-North American readers: today is a national holiday called Thanksgiving, which many Red-White-and-Blue (read: Republican-Caucasian-and-Bluecollar) citizens celebrate by giving thanks to an invisible creator-deity for bestowing them with the wonderful land on which they have formed a country. When they give thanks, they blithely fail to recognize the uncounted millions of murders and deaths their ancestors committed and orchestrated to "clear the land" of the indigenous people that previously occupied it. When I attempted to discuss this with my mother, she replied, tersely, "I don't choose to think of it in that manner." Way to go mom; way to stick to your ancestors guns. (There's a joke in there.)

The woman I love is of the Tohono O'Odham nation (pronounced: Toe-OH-no OhOh-dAHme). Although I've never been comfortable celebrating many, or most, holidays—especially those usurped by religious nutters (who I call 'prazy folk')—I find the thought of celebrating North American Thanksgiving (or Columbus Day)...both lovingly referred-to in our house as: indigenous death days...like a Brit celebrating US Independence Day, the French celebrating Cinco de Mayo, or an Aboriginal native celebrating Australia Day.

Bottom line: It isn't always a party when the bully wins.

Teachers of children in the United States of America wrote this date on blackboards again and again, and asked the children to memorize it with pride and joy: 1492. The teachers told the children that this was when their continent was discovered by human beings. Actually, millions of human beings were already living full and imaginative lives on the continent in 1492. That was simply the year in which sea pirates began to cheat and rob and kill them. — Kurt Vonnegut, Breakfast of Champions (1973)
thanksgiving, harvest festival, don't celebrate, indigenous death day, 1492

fortunate fortnight

digital rendering by veach st glines — 2008

Portland OR — Reasons (#6)

Bookstores

A dozen rational reasons to enjoy living in Portland, Oregon: Number six.

A conducive climate exists here, literally and figuratively, for a proliferation of bookstores. The desire to escape the dreary autumn-thru-winter weather—inside a book—has given rise to a plethora of new and used bookstores. The best and favorite are the Powell's stores, of which there are at least five (the largest of which covers a city block x 4 stories tall). Also, there are dozens of specialty stores (used paperbacks, comics, etc.), a few national chains (Borders, B. Dalton), and a wonderful library system.

Are we foolish to be so elated by books in an age of movies and television? Not in the least, for our ability to read, when combined with libraries...makes us the freest of women and men - and children. — Kurt Vonnegut, Palm Sunday (1999)

Jobs

Following in the footsteps of Mr Allen—of Wampeters, Foma and Granfalloons—who enjoys Vonnegut and (accordingly) has, maybe, the best esoteric name for a personal-blog (with Shouting to hear the echoes, still, the best in the non-esoterica category *wink*), I provide my list of jobs:

• St Johns Elementary - brooms, buffers, mops, toilet brushes, and incinerator duty.
• Peru Country Club - cart/club rental and cleaning, pro shop sales, spying on the lifeguard in the red one-piece, listening to the radio, stealing orange soda all day and playing in the evening for free.
• Peru Animal Hospital - assist with surgeries, clean runs and cages, clean everything, learn not to use abrasive cleaner on metal, gain insight into: I may not want to become a veterinarian.
  
• Essex Wire (weekend midnight shift) - injection mold presses (hot and boring), cardboard box construction; learn to despise: solely-for-a-paycheck jobs and the zombies who've done them for so-long they hate any spark of intelligence (brains!).
• Mississinewa Lake State Park - lawn mowers, tractors (learn to drive a stick), garbage truck detail, public-park latrine duty, paint brushes, chain saw, back hoe, weed-eaters, poison ivy; "Lefty" Graf's obsession with road-side cleanup.
• The Chocolate Factory - sandwich preparation, ice cream cones, robbed by a con artist; learn to despise: retail food service jobs, juvenile employees (all of them) and customers (all of them).
• Milwaukee Metal Products - brake-press operator (bending metal); erase any doubt about how to become a zombie.
• McKinley Marina - fee collection boat ramp, gas-jockey on a pier, security guard.
• infantryman - clean (everything is always dirty), type, drive, run (a lot), exercise, set up/tear down equipment, practice to use large killing machines (some of the machines themselves are large; some are small but the killing is large), practice to use equipment to protect from getting killed (large and small); learn to unequivocally despise every aspect of being a soldier (bar none).
• militarypoliceman - clean, type, drive (sometimes, really fast), run (less), exercise, give traffic citations, supervise some fucknuts, break-up fights, investigate petty dumbass-soldier crimes, practice using killing machines (one-on-one sized), practice using equipment to protect from getting killed (also small), help a small handful of people who needed it; learn there's too much soldier-stuff in MP-stuff.
• bodyguard - type, drive (rarely, really fast), run (again, little less), help babysit a couple of over-privileged grown adults and reinforce their pampered lifestyle; learn to despise snobs and elitists—even while protecting them from harm.
• criminal investigator - type, drive (mostly slow), run (much less), supervise some good people (and, still, some fucknuts), investigate serious felonies/deaths/thefts, incarcerate hundreds of bad to very-bad people, help thousands of people who needed it; learn "this bed's just right".
• artist - pens, inks, paper, canvas, brushes, computer screen & mouse, paint, giclee prints; learn peace of mind is blissful and the flow of creating gives me peace of mind.
• (updated Jun 2012)  newspaper carrier - insert, load, drive (very slow), bag, throw; groundhog day never ends; realize the depths I will go to pay bills/stay with the one I love.  
• (updated Oct 2014)  rental car driver / cleaner - drive, clean, vacuum, wash, rinse, repeat. Bills caught up = quit.
• (updated Oct 2022)  census-bureau clerk - call-center recruiter, data input, remind myself how miserably-bad government work is, and how miserably-terrible at least half the people in the world are; after catching C-19 = quit.
  

Synecdoche, New York = must see

Charlie Kaufman has just become one of my favorite directors.

The writer of such wonderfully bizarre films as Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (which he also produced) and Confessions of a Dangerous Mind has now accomplished a filmic-feat with very few peers: Synecdoche, New York — a work of existentialist art which transcends all accurate description.

You could read any two-dozen of these articles on MQRE about it and still be unprepared for the complex, phenomenal, accomplishments of Philip Seymour Hoffman (whom I suspect will win an Oscar), Samantha Morton, and Emily Watson.

If you are not highly entertained by films which challenge your thought processes, this film is not for you. Since Kaufman wrote, directed, and produced (his first in the director's chair) it is more complex, more convoluted and more cram-filled with metaphor and allegory than his previous films. Think Adaptation (one of his) meets American Spendor, with the intimacy of Requiem for a Dream and the humor of Being John Malkovich (also, one of his).
Synecdoche, NY, Charlie Kaufman, film, Philip Seymour Hoffman, movies