Theocracy in the USA

I think the Bush Administration has set medical science back at least a decade. Although 10 years may not seem like a long time, when you consider the speed of scientific advances these days ..that puts us back to about the middle ages. It wasn’t that long ago that many of the cancers which are manageable today were considered a death sentence ..things like Hodgkin’s disease, lymphoma and breast cancer come to mind here. Bush has moral issues with stem cell research, genetics and the theory of evolution. I’m sorry, but, as offensive as these fields may be to him ..myself and many others would not be alive today without the progress they made possible. Evolutionary science has provided major weapons in the fight against debilitating diseases. As someone who has survived cancer can attest ..these theories are ‘valid’ by virtue of the fact that they ‘work’. What better test is there ? I don’t care if they confound the minds of religious dogmatists. Denying the obvious is willful ignorance. It is an example of government-by-theocracy when the president demonizes scientific research. There is no place for that in a modern, technologically advanced, society. I am afraid of what two more years of his administration might bring. I do not want to live under the rule of evangelical Christians. Believe me, it is not a step in the direction of moral leadership ..we have Christian militias in this country who act just as uncivilized as Islamic terrorists. Remember Oklahoma City ..?

The road to recovery

I have a nasty cold ..it feels like I’ve been hit by a truck ..must have happened sometime around Thursday ..I should’a seen it coming after driving miles and miles of coastal road with wet hair and the top down ..on the other hand, it could have been something I contacted at the clinic when I stopped by to say hello ..lots of hugs and besos there ..or maybe it’s just my karma ..who knows ..there’s no end to the possibilities my mind conjures up when I feel this way ..so I stock up on lemons and tea ..Chinese hot and sour soup tastes good spiked with beer .. I turn my bathroom into a steam room and soak in warm water. I get absorbed in photoshop to help take my mind off things ..which is probably the reason I’m not very good ..it’s not really meant for the brain dead. Before I know it, it’s 4 am ..so I go to bed ..where I experience wave after wave of crazy thoughts ..like maybe I caught the bird flu virus ..or my neighbors are conspiring against me ..or my family is trying to disown me (they treat me like someone with Tourettes) ..or maybe my house is going to collapse from deferred maintenance ..and, at this rate, I'll never learn to speak Spanish ..how am I ever going to meet the right woman in this town if I can't speak Spanish.

Singapore girl

A photomanipulation using the
human form as subject and
the Sahara desert as background.

Andrea's new vision

Photomanipulation of original by squeebacon <~ Click here.

Rad lands

Totally awesome day ..the sky is so blue I feel high. Anne and her niece Molly are at the skate park ..Molly is eight years old ..she’s small for her age ..but tough . She brought her skateboard decked out with new decals ..Frankenstein and Casper the ghost. She’s wearing a black on red alien tee shirt ..and a new pair of vans. I watch her do a couple of laps around the park .. ‘carving a slope’ around each turn ..we high five. I ask her what that guy just did. A fifty-fifty she says. And that guy? A grind. What about over there (a guy does a jump ..his board flips around and he lands back on). Oh, that’s an Ollie. Another guy crashes in front of us ..dude ka biff’d she says ..happens all the time. I’m amazed at how fast children pick up a second language.

Hardhat area

My eyes are starting to burn from the fumes ..my teeth are rattling and my hands are shaking ..my ears pound with the sound of jackhammers .. my lungs are gasping for air and my voice is getting hoarse from yelling so much. There has got to be a better way to build houses than this. Can’t they pre-fab them at the factory ..and install them on site ..? I mean, it looks like they’re doing it pretty much the same way the Romans did ..except for the diesel engines. I can’t sustain a thought long enough to write it down ..or even follow it to the next one. I think I just heard someone say ..if this thing catches fire ..it’s not my fault. Now that that's gotta be somewhere high on the list of things you don't want to hear. My nerves are starting to fray.

Iconic registry

There’s an interesting process going on inside my head that I get to observe every so often. It picks up words that are in the general vicinity and processes them without warning ..suddenly my head is full of thoughts and images that have no relation to what I’m doing or thinking at the time. They can come from the room where I’m sitting ..or the road where I’m driving. I guess it’s the way subliminal advertising is supposed to work. For instance, I’ll be driving along looking for a place to park when suddenly images of dolphins appear in my head. I look around and spot a car on the other side of the road with a personalized license plate that says ‘DOLFIN LVR’. So now, when it happens, I take the time to investigate ..see if I can find the words or phrases that trigger these events ..make sure I’m not hallucinating and losing it. Today it was a word buried in a newspaper article ..I was eating breakfast when a picture leapt out of the morning paper screaming ‘Ojai’ ..the name of an unpretentious little spa town near here. I was not thinking of Ojai ..I’ve never been to Ojai ..the topic of the article wasn’t specifically about Ojai ..and even if it was ..I wasn’t actually reading the paper ..it was just sitting on the table next to me. I look closely at the picture to see if there’s anything to suggest Ojai ..but there isn’t ..just some oak trees on a hillside. So, I figure there must be something in the vicinity that triggered the idea ..I begin reading the article. It was about different places in the world where people can go to celebrate Easter ..and sure enough ..Ojai is one of them ..along with Italy, Florida and Puerto Rico. The article mentions the word Ojai when it says “..you can either spend Easter soaking in a spa in Ojai ..or strolling through museums in Venice.” Now, I know they say that reading is an active process ..but I believe the brain is a hybrid ..it can passively register words long enough to serve up their meaning without any effort on my part.

Auditory hallucinations

This evening I hear Gregorian chants coming from the creek down below ..I go outside to check it out ..then it sounds like it’s coming from next door ..I know my neighbor is a singer in a goth-rock band ..so, I go over there to listen ..but the sound disappears ..they wake up ..and he comes outside with a baseball bat. I should have known ..he never rehearses at home. It sounds like a high school band is marching through the bathroom when the fan is blowing and the water is running ..I turn off the water and the phone is ringing ..I run downstairs and realize that it’s my ears that are ringing. I lie awake listening to people quarrelling when it's dead quiet outside. I hear conversations coming from the guest room when nobody is there. I wake up to the sound of my mother screaming. When things get spooky ..it's the voice of reason I hear ..coming from my father. When I get really paranoid ..I hear wolves howling at the door. When I scream back ..doctors appear. Oh wait, they're visual hallucinations ..I hope.

Prodigal son

I know my memory is not a very reliable record of events ..too many thoughts, feelings and other substances going around making revisions. I do recall, however, the deal my father made me when I turned eighteen ..I suppose that’s because it so dramatically changed the course of my life. He believed in me and had faith that I would hold up my end of the bargain. What bargain ..? He offered to buy me a car and pay my living expenses as long as I stayed in school ..which meant enrolling at the local community college. I remember doing my best to conceal my excitement and not let on that I was getting the better end of this deal. You see, at the time, I was still in love with my high school sweetheart. She was sixteen years old and her family had just moved to Eureka, California. So, I was making plans to follow them up there and maybe get a job working the Klamath or something. I was already packed. Now all I needed to do was borrow my dad’s rental car ..tell him I was going to run an errand ..throw my bags in the trunk and head north (he didn't actually live with us ..he was visiting from overseas). I figured I could drop the car off near a rental agency somewhere as soon as I got settled. I figured he’d be pissed ..but, in the long run, maybe he’d realize what a small price it was to pay for his son’s happiness. Those were the thoughts actually running through my head moments before he offered me ‘the deal’ ..which changed everything ..because now all I had to do was play it cool ..wait until I got car keys of my own ..then say: Sayonara Southern California.