Past, Present & Holy Soon

I have read this quote: "Happiness is health and a short memory." And it is probably true. Because to have a short memory is to forget what actually happens, and we all know what happens: shit happens. But ignorance is bliss, indeed, it is. It is beginning to worry me then, that bliss is one of only three things that our great land pursues, along with Life and Liberty.

As the Onion says, "America: Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness at any cost; even Life and Liberty." This rings truer every day. "Every day". What a strange expression. I don't know when this "every day" happens.

On second thought, I think I do know when every day happens. It happens in slogans. It happens in advertising. It happens in the ever present, all important, the Holy Soon. Perhaps most of all, it happens on the evening news -- which occurs every day.

And when our presidential hopefuls are asked in some town, in some church, about the state of the world -- the state of the World, mind you -- they talk of the Future. And change. Changing the future. It is a good thing for them that we as a people don't know anything about the past, because if we did, we would quickly see that the distant past did not change the recent past, as it had originally promised, and that the recent past did not change the present.

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." -Winston Churchill

Maybe then we would put 2 and 2 together. Maybe then we would rethink our entire paradigm of economy, of foreign entanglement, of wanting more stuff. Maybe our government would listen to us. Maybe they would start thinking about where we came from and where we're going. The distant past. The distant future.

But today they say, "We're sending you a check for $600. You'll have it Holy Soon."

And what is the evening news? It is one half hour of history. One half hour in 10,000 years. You might as well pick a book, any book, open it up to the very last page, read it, form passionate opinions, and write a review. Good, now you're halfway there. Go get 300 million other people to do the same thing. Argue about it. Rinse, repeat.

For weeks I've been seeing Ron Paul's crazed supporters cavorting around Austin and hearing about his record-breaking Internet buzz. Well, I finally buckled last night and checked him out.

I watched video after video of his speeches, debates and TV appearances. And the more you watch, the more you listen, the more you learn about this guy, two things become increasingly clear.

One: "Holy crap. I can't believe it. This guy is really intelligent. He's a veteran, a medical doctor, a professional economist, and he has decades of experience in public service. He supports every single point with articulate, insightful historical and economic fact. He is actually bringing people together. He's Republican, but Democrats love him. He's bold, curious, open, and speaks his mind."

...and two: "There is no fucking way this guy stands a chance."

Doing What Sucks

It is 43°F and feels like 37°F. It's overcast and 63% humidity. Basically, the weather is complete bullshit right now, especially for Austin.

I'm a pretty healthy dude. I eat well and exercise. But I have a few Achilles heals, and one of them is running in the cold. I fucking hate running when it's cold outside. So I'm not going to.



Except, I am. I am going to. I'm going to put on my undies and my ball-high socks (yes, for real, they come up to my groin) and another pair of socks over them. I'm going to put on my knee brace and my sweatpants and a thermal long-sleeve shirt and a t-shirt over that, and then a scarf, and then my big Berklee hoodie, a bandana, ear warmers and gloves, and of course, my sneaks.

And it's going to suck pretty bad.

The way I see it, there is no such thing as being A Runner. Right at this moment, sitting here typing this, I'm not a runner. I'll be a runner when I get off my ass, stop bitching about how cold it is, and run.

There will always be an excuse to avoid doing what sucks.

Dave Madden Day

Vegas, Change & Go-Gurt

I was laying in one of my two beds last night, watching political coverage of the New Hampshire primaries on CNN. Obviously, this wasn’t at my apartment in Austin, because I don’t have two beds, and I don’t have TV. I also don’t have a shower that listens to me; mine requires constant temperature compromise. And it squeals like a pig.


Anyway, the buzzword in New Hampshire, used over and over again, was “change”. Granted, to some degree politics are always about change, about who can do what better or faster or cheaper, but there was something different to the tone of the interviews last night. Indeed, there is something different to the tone of our country these days. It is a rare day when a country as diverse as America can come together with one voice. No matter how variant the vernacular, no matter the angle of approach, people are waking up—12 years or 12 months or 12 days ago—to a world that they didn’t agree to. Perhaps they were misled. Perhaps they didn’t read the fine print. Probably both.

“What is this?” They’re asking, “Why is the planet falling apart? Why am I still not completely sure why we’re at war? Why are so many people dying from lack of food, and so many Americans dying from excess of food? And what’s with Go-Gurt?! Yogurt’s gross enough without putting it into a squeeze tube.”

Ok, maybe that last part was just me. But people are starting to see, myself included, that this whole capitalistic, consumer-driven craziness only goes so far before it becomes an obstacle for the truth.

David Simon, creator of the scathingly critical HBO show, The Wire, say it this way: “On commercial TV, there’s no fucking way you can say, ‘This is America, and we’re not all right anymore.’ Not if every 12 minutes you have to say, ‘Hey, we’re sorry we brought you down, but check out the new iPods!’”

Brian McLaren offers this analysis in his new book, Everything Must Change:

“And ultimately we consume communities and produce extended families, consume extended families and produce nuclear families, consume nuclear families and produce individuals, consume individuals and produce consumers, and finally consume consumers themselves and produce disembodied fragments called “wants” and “needs” and “markets” and “segments” and “anxieties” and “drives” that the economy consumes and excretes and reconsumes in a kind of cannibalistic ferment or rot.”

It was very helpful, then, to read those words against the backdrop of perhaps the very pinnacle, the tippiest-tippy-top of Western consumerism: the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. (By the way, I was just there to play music; I consumed very little.) It’s nearly impossible to describe the sheer magnitude of this event. For our purposes, just picture a Sharper Image (but sharper) that takes up two stories of a few city blocks. Vegas and CES have this in common: they both have everything you want and nothing you need.


Now, flying away and looking down on the city from above, I notice a few remaining patches of undeveloped land, which betray the landscaped sod and imported water to reveal Las Vegas for what it really is: nothing.


In what is truly a remarkable example of irony, Sin City is a perfect nickname; “sin” literally translates to “without”. This barren wasteland of little intrinsic value, in a masterful stroke, confidently embraces this role, building watered-down replicas of the valuable contributions of others. A giant vodka advertisement, “In An Absolut World”, hangs from a black Egyptian pyramid. Casinos fill Caesars Palace, along with countless other cultural nods: Sahara, Riviera, Venetian, Paris, Hollywood, Monte Carlo, New York, Excalibur.

This is the brilliance of Las Vegas. It is everywhere in the middle of nowhere, a purgatory that doesn’t actually exist, complete with their own colorful currency, which of course is a symbol (poker chips) of a symbol (dollars) of a symbol (gold) of True Worth. (Of course, you must decide for yourself what, if anything, true worth is.)

Well, I choose worth over poker chips and with over without. And you can keep your solar-powered stud finder, I don’t need it. And pyramids, though badass looking, are a terribly wasteful use of vertical space. And fine…squeeze that Gogurt into a bowl and we’ll talk.