Legend has it that Charles Bukowski hated Mickey Mouse more than anything and thought it was blasphemy of the highest order that somehow a soulless celluloid corporate intruder started passing itself off as the source and effect of creativity and dreams. Maybe he thought children finally bought off on the finger instead of the moon it was pointing to.

In America today you’re close to abusing your children if you don’t take them for the full Disney World experience. This means all four parks, the water slides, the mickey mouse ice cream bars, the fireworks, the $12 a day parking (current 2009 price), the fast pass planning sessions, the folded up maps covered in sucker spit, the forever passes that guarantee you’ll overbuy on the initial experience and be back for another round someday, and the laughter and smiles that a $130 a day ticket price per person can give you inside a simulated environment at sometimes psychedelic pitch.

But don’t mistake this essay as an anti-capitalist anti-corporate rant against the mouse and friends and those who impose him on us as a right of passage to adulthood in modern day America. The Internet is littered with those kinds of essays and they all have root with Hank Bukowski so go directly to his poetry if you want the raw deal from that angle. This piece has more of a soul searching purpose coming from a father who happens to wield a heavy keyboard and a large magnifying glass into his own heart.

This Disney shit is expensive so let’s get that out of the way first off. My parents had to help us pay for the trip with their time share dollars and they bought some meals, paid for the rental car and dozens of trinkets, etc. etc. ad nauseum. Disney nickels and dimes you to death with every step and you’ll pay for it with more than blisters and a possible heat stroke from the sun rays of the sunshine state. But there is a value you get in exchange for your money. You will learn a lot about yourself.

And you gain perspective through the laughter of your children and this brings me to my final point, the reason for undertaking such an absurd engagement in the first place–your children. Disney World claims to be the place where dreams and wishes come true…for a price. The price isn’t just money although there is certainly that element of cost. And the price isn’t just time–as parents, we plan and scheme for months with books, maps of the park, budgets and reservations.  We rent the mini-vans, pay for the overpriced ice cream and hot dogs, and hurry up to wait in stupid lines that no sane person should ever subject their loved ones to.

The true price of a trip to Disney World is the effort you put into it in the moment.  This is also the true price of being a supportive member of your family–working with your spouse, your children, and your extended family to support each other in times of need, celebrate each other in times of triumph, and mourn with each other in times of grief.

As parents we are each responsible for shepherding the flame of creativity and passion that our children are born with inside the spirits of their nature. It’s a small, flickering combustion immediately thrust into a dark wind storm and many of these lights blow out before they even get a chance to melt the wax around their wicks. Some babies are tossed over the cliff like animals minutes after they’re born and some suffer far greater tortures that play themselves out slowly over the years so that the candles that once blazed blue become red in an inferno that burns as much of the world as a sociopath can reach in the blood lust of their wailing.

But some of these flames, if sheltered effectively with great care, can leap up to light the darkness enough for the rest of us to be able to build shelters that protect generations. Our job as parents isn’t to raise businesspeople who carve up the resources of the world for the few in their circles of influence. And neither is it our job isn’t to raise soldiers whose greatest gifts are to kill or die trying. And we should definitely not allow our children to become criminal succubi who eat the light and give comfort to darkness. History has always been at the mercy of untethered children whose parents shrugged it off.

The highest calling of parenting is to keep the creative flames of our children alive long enough to connect them with the source of light which ultimately binds us all. This responsibility of shepherding the flame in my children means more to me than all the writing I will ever produce in my lifetime because I believe the very act of pouring hope and sanctity and the freedom to express it into a young mind heals the world around us all for lifetimes ahead.

If a cost of doing that is to buy into the corporate capitalism of a cartoon mouse and a few of his cronies; to pay a fool’s ransom in ticket prices, parking, and deep fried calories; to hold my daughter’s hand while she gets her picture taken with some poor minimum wage schmuck in a fluffy costume; and to wait in lines longer than the the toilet paper meltdowns of soviet Russia–then so be it. As parents, we are in the business of saving the world from its own madness and the bigger the lie, the more children will believe it. The lie is this–Tomorrow will be brighter  than today. We should all be praying to be in error about this being a lie and we should each be pouring as much faith and time and love into our children that we can squeeze from this moment right now.

Because in the end, everything could depend on Goofy and this fucking mouse making good on their promise about dreams coming true.

photo credit: deadrobot

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So I haven’t posted anything on Boys Wear Pants in over a month now, even though it was an awesome short story that would make your grandmother blush!

I’m just like you guys–concerned about where my employment situation is going to be in a year, worrying about keeping my kids safe and committed to improving themselves so their country will look, feel and smell better than the one we’re living in now. And to come down out of the clouds for a moment, I’ve simply been channeling my writing efforts in another direction.

I just finished a short story about ice harvesting in Decatur, Illinois in the 1890s–sounds thrilling I know but there is a pretty grisly murder than I approached from a literary and poetic expression that is difficult to achieve in the short fiction format. My intention is to write a book of loosely interconnected short stories that tell the story of the city of Decatur, Illinios through the various characters and mysteries that walked its streets and dreamed its dreams for almost 200 years now. Decatur claims to be one of the most haunted cities in America but more significantly for myself, it’s where I grew up from age one until I was 12 and moved to Ohio.

But I can’t claim artistic integrity and career fretting as the primary reasons for my lack of publishment on this site famous only to myself and a few brilliant others. A new mistress has moved into my writing boudoir–Facebook. I currently have 187 friends which are actually people I know and spending less than 30 minutes a day, I can keep up with all of them.

In Malcolm Gladwell’s great book The Tipping Point, he talks about “The 150 Rule” where sociologically in our past, we are each able to maintain 150 quality social connections before our loyalties and attention begins breaking down into tribal units which ultimately are pitted against each other in a battle for space and resources.  And 150 quality social connections doesn’t mean knowing 150 people because you have to account for the relationship between people in your network. So if I know Jack and Susie, not only am I managing my individual relationships with each of them but I have influence over their relationship with each other. Doing the final math reduces the final number of quality social connections to the best handicap a midwestern golfer could hope for on 18 holes at a public course.

But Web 2.0 has changed all of that, turned it on its head and kicked gravel in its face. Today, I can spend less than 30 minutes a day on Facebook (my primary social networking tool), LinkedIn (my professional social networking tool), Twitter (I still haven’t figured out how to incorporate micro-blogging into my networking efforts because I do so much of this with my Facebook update status that it feels like redundancy) and this blog you’re reading now.

These different solutions have different rules that I’ve imposed. I may connect with people on LinkedIn that I wouldn’t accept as friends on Facebook. Facebook is the place where you hook up with people from your past and present, people you don’t mind seeing pictures of your kids or hearing your thoughts on your cat eating earwax out of used q-tips in your trash can (TMI I know but an recent Facebook update of mine nonetheless). And LinkedIn is the place you keep up with people you’ve dealt with professionally–people who are going to ask for your help in their career and who should be there for you when you need a recommendation or an introduction to an employment opportunity.

Twitter has been great for keeping up with my local and national news as well as a choice few individuals who excel at blogging consistently and interestingly in 150 characters or less. But again, this is so much like Facebook updates to me that I haven’t figured out how to connect the two and make them both work for me. And then there’s this blog. I like to try and publish weekly (on Sundays usually the day I spend enjoying time with my family and tend to be in a more creative and reflective mood–the expression of which is the tone and purpose of this blog in the first place).

So there’s a disconnect that has to be ironed out but I’m working on it and still love you guys who come back regularly to smell what the WordSlinger is cooking up. But on the plus side, I’ve got my mom and grandmother on Facebook now to help me figure it all out.
photo credit: borrowed time | demi-brooke

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My grandfather taught me two great things:

1. A real man grows a beard out every year in the Fall/Winter”
2. Never argue with an idiot because they’ll drag you down to their level and beat you with experience.

You can’t argue with a fool who believes the literal “End of the World” which will look ridiculously like the whole Fire Breathing People Eating Jesus portrayed in the final novel of the Left Behind series of books.  They’ll defeat your logic with their imagination every time and you will be left frustrated and demoralized at the depths of ignorance that the human psyche can still mobilize a base of operations from.

And it’s impossible to prove a negative with reason and the scientific method (which are the only rituals of practice the intelligent amongst us should still be indulging in); but morality factors into this also.  Consider Kant’s work in The Metaphysics of Morals where he asks the question why human beings will spontaneously risk their lives to save the lives of others–without even thinking about it.

Kant’s answer, simplified, was that a metaphysical realization takes place when we see that little child about to get hit by a moving vehicle–the realization that on the ultimate level of being, we are all of the same source energy and we are all one.  This realization supersedes all temporal experience, reason, emotion and the entire mechanism of thought which produces the collectivized image of ourselves (which upon examination is actually a loosely held together ball of seemingly distinct memories with attached emotional responses).

As any other intellectual masturbator will tell you; there are few things more satisfying that getting lost in the evolution of a great series of connected thoughts on a topic.  There are few better “mental pumping sessions” than this ground shaking little bit of philosophy from Kant.  But I learned this past few weeks that it’s not just abstract.  I saw this happen on a large scale in my community when the wind storms blew through and knocked out a majority of the state’s electrical power on Sunday September 14th, 2008.

I was driving home from Cleveland in a hunk a hunka Cadillac which was still getting pushed all over the road like a geek on a bad day. For a brief span of hours, it was the year 1901 in central Ohio again.  Kids weren’t sitting with dilated pupils in front of liquid crystal displays with 1,080 lines of high definition resolution.  They were huddled up on couches with books and flashlights (probably not available in 1901). Neighbors were helping each other (and continue to this day) take cover and recover from the storm.  Neighbors were talking to each other because talk is all we had left to take control of in the aftermath of those warm and dangerous winds.

Ohians are good people–I can’t speak for you people in other states.  When it comes down to it, we Buckeyes (and I’m not just talking about the football team here) will make it work with what we got.

photo credit: Bob Jagendorf

• “If you plant ice, you’re gonna harvest wind” is a Grateful Dead line from “Franklin’s Tower.”

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Today is the seventh anniversary of the second worst attack on American soil (I count the British attack which burned the White House during the War of 1812 as the worst attack but I don’t measure by body count).  This is the day that the Illuminati of our country would like for us to come together on to renew our hatred of all things Islam and our commitment to the war against Arab control of our planet’s fossil fuels.

But I’m not going to renew that commitment today.  I’m going to propose something different.

Instead of congregating to affirm our hatred and commitment to war for resources as the primary driving engine of our economy; how about if we commit instead to improving the human condition through application of our creativity, ingenuity, and compassion?

What if instead of sending aid to foreign dictatorships and struggling democracies, we allow those tyrants and starry eyed freedom fighters to wade into the evolutionary gene pool of history and test their own meddle to see if they have the stuff it takes to found, fund, and fight for a Republic based on individual freedom?

Despite what the haters of George W. Bush say; he and his father and Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld and the entire cadre of oil warriors did exactly what needed to be done to preserve the possibility of making the choice that we Americans are about to make (and I’m not talking about the pending national election here).  Those Oil Warriors had to secure what little remaining fossil fuels are available on this planet because the function of any organism is to survive and the blood of our country is oil–love it or hate it you must accept this fact.

But just because it’s a current fact doesn’t mean it has to be a future fact.

We can make a choice right now to act responsibly in our environment beginning with the demands we make on ourselves and our families in our own homes.  Then we must hold our elected representatives responsible to these expectations as well.  We must hold the businesses we work for accountable for their actions and if they refuse to comply–this is an at will work world my friends and we have the power as individuals to choose where we dedicate our time and skills.

Responsibility begins with individual choices, continues with individual expectations of our political and economic systems, and ends with confirmation that these expectations are being carried out.  And severe punishment should fall on any system that doesn’t comply with the will of the people up to and including it’s total and absolute dissolution.  This is not a new idea–go pick up the Declaration of Independence and you’ll bear witness that the scream I just made is but a dismal echo compared to the group of men who layed it all on the line 240 years ago to create a society based on the pursuit of individual happiness where protecting each citizen’s body and one’s property was the only business of law.

So I don’t blame our 43rd President for the state of the world any more than I can blame Abraham Lincoln for the Civil War.  These men were products of their time and their presence and function met a need of history.  But the needs of history change and if the citizenry is too demoralized, too ignorant, and too apathetic to follow the current when it changes, they will end up in a stagnant swamp–sinking to the depths and drowning slowly.

Like Maynard said in “Swamp Song”:

My warning meant nothing–
you’re dancing in quicksand.
This bog is thick and easy to get lost in
when you’re a stupid belligerent fucker.
This bog is thick and easy to get lost in
when you’re a dumb ass belligerent fucker–
I hope it sucks you down.

The war for oil has served its purpose–the purpose of giving the global human community a choice of whether we ride the wave of change that history, ecology, and the better angels of our natures are demanding of us right now or if we retire to the evolutionary cess pool to await the inevitable drop at the gallows pole.

We still have the capability of turning this slobbering and bloody machine around.  It’s time we grew some balls and did it.

photo credit: h.koppdelaney

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photo credit: Earthman

I am not a fundamentalist about anything.  I will always reserve the right to change my ideas but I will never change my core values.  In college, I avoided thinking about politics at all; opting instead to get my spiritual and artistic core values down.  After matriculation though, I made it my task of tasks to find out what I believed in morally, economically, and politically.

I’ve read a lot of books in the past eight years.  I’ve listened to a lot of political speeches.  I’ve read lots of blogs and articles and I have twice sat on the steps of Thomas Jefferson’s back porch at Monticello and pondered what individual liberty really means.

The other day, I wrote about my core values of economics, law, and politics but I want to apply it to a political reality in America that I am surprisingly very hopeful about.  For the first time in our history a candidate of darker skin color than my own has been seriously nominated for the Chief Executive position in what still remains a very proud nation despite being erroneously taken off track by Low Men in Yellow Coats who have tried their best to make war the organizing foundation of our economy, our politics, and our social relationships with each other.

This sad detour is about to have a jarring course correction back to ascending altitude.

The energy I have seen coming from the Democratic National Convention has been nothing short of sublime.  The media was not successful in driving the wedge between the two major candidates up for nomination.  One hundred years ago in Denver, the “Dixiecrats” as the Democratic Party called themselves back then, held their Presidential Nomination Convention where they voted down, by a majority, a woman’s right to vote and the nomination of a candidate of color as part of their party platform.

Look at the difference 100 years makes.  It’s astounding.

And as much as I have been impressed with the speeches of my own Governor Ted Strickland, Montana Governor Brian Schweitzer, Michelle Obama, Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, and Bill Clinton–there is much I disagree with in terms of my core values.

• I believe that the IRS and the current form of taxation in America is economic slavery and should be peacefully revolted against as a tyranny opposed to individual liberty.
• I believe the War on Drugs is one of the most tyrannical social programs ever subjected upon any people by any governing entity and should likewise be revolted against through the peaceful means of argument and legislation.
• I believe any action taken by a government beyond protecting the lives and property of its citizens is an act of tyranny and must be struck down peacefully through the collective action of concerned and educated citizens.

I simply cannot support any candidate for office who believes that the ends justify the means because eventually the ends end up justifying the ends and the purpose gets lost.  The purpose is always individual liberty and it always will be and governments will always be subject to the will of their people if they want to last.

I have been mentally trying Barack Obama on as Commander in Chief for the past three days and I have to say that it feels right in my gut.  But it doesn’t feel right in my heart or my head and I’m still writing in Ron Paul on election day.  But if Obama wins, I hope my gut feeling is right–that it would be a good thing for this nation at this time (of course I felt the same thing about Bush in 2000 and 2004 so take this all with a grain of salt).

If the solidarity and focus on fixing what’s wrong in our country and in our hearts and minds as free individuals (the precious content of our republican democracy) remains in the Democratic Party; when the sums are measured, I believe America will be in a greater place than it has ever been under Barack’s leadership.

But until his party renounces wealth redistribution and social meddling in the affairs of free individuals around the world–I cannot support their candidate and will remain firm in my decision to write in Ron Paul for President in November on the Ohio ballot.

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