today it was a post over at old broad's place. i looked all over youtube for a vid, but none is to be found. the lyrics will have to suffice.
damn fine song. wish you could hear it!
your next bold move
coming of age during the plague of reagan and bush watching capitalism gun down democracy it had this funny effect on me i guess
i am cancer i am HIV and i'm down at the blue jesus blue cross hospital just lookin' up from my pillow feeling blessed
and the mighty multinationals have monopolized the oxygen so it's as easy as breathing for us all to participate
yes they're buying and selling off shares of air and you know it's all around you but it's hard to point and say "there" so you just sit on your hands and quietly contemplate
your next bold move the next thing you're gonna need to prove to yourself
what a waste of thumbs that are opposable to make machines that are disposable and sell them to seagulls flying in circles around one big right wing
yes, the left wing was broken long ago by the slingshot of cointelpro and now it's so hard to have faith in anything
especially your next bold move or the next thing you're gonna need to prove to yourself
you want to track each trickle back to its source and then scream up the faucet 'til your face is hoarse cuz you're surrounded by a world's worth of things you just can't excuse
but you've got the hard cough of a chain smoker and you're at the arctic circle playing strip poker and it's getting colder and colder everytime you lose
so go ahead make your next bold move tell us what's the next thing you're gonna need to prove to yourself
a little of this, a little of that... and quotes, quotes quotes!
late last night, early this morning, i decided to try that "next blog" button on blogger. i couldn't sleep and bebe was snoozing away. i looked at 50 + blogs and found a handful that were picture sites advertising so-called "HOTT" CHICKS, a few were in languages that i can't even begin to navigate, a few more were your basic day to day journals - but over 80% of them made mention of the author feeling depressed and anxious and alone while being surrounded by family and friends that love them in posts specifically dedicated to that topic.
of course, i became deeply saddened. this culture seems to breed this in us, this organic response to how empty and messed up it all can be at the core - BUY! BUY! BUY! ME! ME! ME! NOW! NOW! NOW! YOU AREN'T COOL IF YOU DON'T DO IT! WAR? WHAT WAR? WOOO-HOO! *snap snap* LOOK OVER HERE INSTEAD! IT'S A HUGE SALE! terrorists are coming to get us, the middle class is slowly disappearing, the economy is "great," but we're all a paycheck away from the streets. there is a "war" on all the wrong things. we live in a disposable world, where even life (in the most encompassing sense of the word - on every level) is also disposable. you get my drift.
so i stopped clicking the next button and went to my favorite links instead. this caught my eye first, in a comments section:
Have a problem you are dealing with? Pick up a book, any book. Close your eyes. Open it to a random page, put your finger on it and read those few words.
Be honest about interpreting what is there, this is where a lot of people get in trouble with that because they are always looking for something that favors them. (i'm saying not where, simply because the author of the comment was actually being fairly mean in his string of different comments that came one right after the other. but who he is really doesn't matter. you'll see. he is simply the vehicle.)
on and off - over the past couple of months - i've been reading,manifesta: young women, feminism, and the future. when i woke today, there it sat. taunting me. i remembered the above comment. i picked up the book, closed my eyes, opened it and let my finger fall. this is what was there, a quote from alice walker: "whenever i have walked a path has appeared, whenever i have knocked a door has opened."
i'm walking... i'm knocking... and synchronicity has always seemed to favor me, so be it.
*** on that note...
a new blog is in the works and i'm hoping that you all can help me get the word out - AND help me get it going. i don't know how i'll be able to accomplish what i need to do so that people will be able to post their own entries, i imagine sometimes anonymously - i think there is a guest blogger way to do that? or maybe i could have people email me their stories and i could post them? i'm getting ahead of myself... here's the basic idea.
i've been thinking a lot lately, ever since finding out about my friend's attack, about silence. audre lorde once said, "your silence won't save you" and i believe that with every inch of me. my subsequent digging into violence, (specifically sexual violence against women) and finding out that only16% of rapes are ever reported - AND that 1 in 4 girls and 1 in 7 men will be sexually assaulted before the age of 18 equates to there being a massive void of silence where all of these stories fall. with statistics like these - we all know someone, or many someones, that have been violated and attacked. yet, we never hardly seem to hear about them or from them.
i would like to create a safe space for women to share their stories - and have links available in which people can go to for further information or help - all the while being open to be viewed by whomever should pass through. i know that some won't want to share their identities and i understand completely. i'm just at a loss at this point on how the stories can be posted up anonymously, by the author herself/himself...
so that's that. if you have any suggestions for me, please do share!
this first snippet needs the set up. he was speaking at his son's school graduation and he had promised him that he would "be good." as he approached the stage to speak, he noted the collection of suits flanking the podium - the hierarchy of the school and prominent businessmen, ".....well something inside of me snapped. And I got to the microphone and I looked out over that multitude of faces and I said something to the effect of: 'You are about to be told one more time that you are America's most valuable natural resource..... Have you seen what they do to valuable natural resources?! Have you seen a strip mine? Have you seen a clear cut in the forest? Have you seen a polluted river? Don't ever let them call you a valuable natural resource... they're going to strip your mind.. your soul...they're going to clear cut your best thoughts for the sake of profit unless you learn to resist. "Cause the profit system follows the path of least resistance and following the path of least resistance is what makes the river crooked. Hmmmm...."
this next one always gets me, right to the core:
"the stories I tell don't just come out of my own life. many of them come to me from my elders. i strained to hear them through the roar of my own ego, my own needs and desires. but when i became quiet and open to the thoughts and feelings of my elders, i learned that my life-story deepens, grows richer, by taking in the stories of those who have led extraordinary lives, lives that can never be lived again. except in memory - through mine, through yours - as the fragments of our story - lives mix and blend into a common whole, the great river of our collective memory of which we are all a part and into which each one of us will, some day, dissolve."
and finally,
i have a good friend in the east, a good singer and a good folk singer...who comes and listens to my shows and says you always sing about the past, you can’t live in the past. and i say to him, i can go outside and pick up a rock, that’s older than the oldest song you know and bring it back in here and drop it on your foot. the past didn’t go anywhere. it’s right here, right now.
"the need to be right all the time is the biggest bar to new ideas. it is better to have enough ideas for some of them to be wrong than to be always right by having no ideas at all." ~edward de bono
"if you don't stand up for something, you will fall for anything." ~malcolm x my head is swimming right now, after a long long day of a back and forth to the oddest degree. i need a check. i need a break. i need to think about who i'am, what i'am... too much negativity - in which i've been a party to. i don't like that. breathe...
my head hurts. i've lost a friend. i hope i haven't lost another. i'am a work in progress. i don't have all the answers. i like dialogue. a lot. even when i'm not in agreement with the other. i like it especially when the dialogue doesn't feel loaded - when it is true and real and genuine, not pre-meditated and calculated. when it doesn't feel like a set-up. when it doesn't feel as if the other party involved thinks that i'm a complete idiot that needs to be shown the way.
i want played at my funeral. if you've never heard them, you should anyway. and you can. here. now. before i'm worm food. or worm ashes, as i'd prefer.
now don't go freaking out. i'm fine. really. i was just thinking about this today on my way to visit my grandpa in the hospital. i also decided several years ago, that i want to be dressed ridiculously funny for the visitation. i want the last laugh.
i can't find vid for the last one, so the lyrics will have to suffice...
FUEL
they were digging a new foudation in Manhattan and they discovered a slave cemetary there may their souls rest easy now that lynching is frowned upon and we've moved on to the electric chair and i wonder who's gonna be president, tweedle dum or tweedle dummer? and who's gonna have the big blockbuster box office this summer? howabout we put up a wall between houses and the highway and you can go your way , and i can go my may
except all the radios agree with all the tvs and the magazines agree with all the radios and i keep hearing that same damn song everywhere i go maybe i should put a bucket over my head and a marshmallow in each ear and stumble around for another dumb numb week for another hum-drum hit song to appear
people used to make records as in a record of an event the event of people playing music in a room now everything is cross-marketing its about sunglasses and shoes or guns and drugs you choose we got it rehashed we got it half-assed we're digging up all the graves and we're spitting on the past and you can choose between the colors of the lipstick on the whores cause we know the difference between the font of 20% more and the font of teriakiyi you tell me how does it...make you feel?
you tell me what's ...real? and they say that alcoholics are always alcoholics even when they're as dry as my lips for years even when they're stranded on a small desert island with no place within 2,000 miles to buy beer and i wonder is he different? is he different? has he changed? what's he about?... or is he just a liar with nothing to lie about?
Am i headed for the same brick wall is there anything i can do about anything at all? except go back to that corner in Manhattan and dig deeper, dig deeper this time down beneath the impossible pain of our history beneath unknown bones beneath the bedrock of the mystery beneath the sewage systems and the path drain beneath the cobblestones and the water mains beneath the traffic of friendships and street deals beneath the screeching of kamikaze cab wheels beneath everything i can think of to think about beneath it all, beneath all get out beneath the good and the kind and the stupid and the cruel there's a fire just waiting for fuel
there's a fire just waiting for fuel there's a fire just waiting for fuel there's a fire just waiting for fuel there's a fire just waiting for fuel there's a fire just waiting for fuel there's a fire just waiting for fuel there's a fire just waiting for fuel there's a fire just waiting for fuel there's a fire just waiting for fuel there's a fire just waiting for fuel there's a fire just waiting for fuel there's a fire just waiting for fuel there's a fire just waiting for fuel
You are beyond wise. You are so smart, you're almost prophetic.
Your inner voice always speaks the truth, and you take the time to listen to it.
You are good at seeing who people are... including the darkness of others.
As a result, you tend to have a rather dark - yet realistic - outlook on life.
A: Carbon dioxide and other air pollution that is collecting in the atmosphere like a thickening blanket, trapping the sun's heat and causing the planet to warm up. Coal-burning power plants are the largest U.S. source of carbon dioxide pollution -- they produce 2.5 billion tons every year. Automobiles, the second largest source, create nearly 1.5 billion tons of CO2 annually.
Q: Is the earth really getting hotter?
A: Yes. Although local temperatures fluctuate naturally, over the past 50 years the average global temperature has increased at the fastest rate in recorded history. And experts think the trend is accelerating: the 10 hottest years on record have all occurred since 1990. Scientists say that unless we curb global warming emissions, average U.S. temperatures could be 3 to 9 degrees higher by the end of the century.
Q: Are warmer temperatures causing bad things to happen?
A: Global warming is already causing damage in many parts of the United States. In 2002, Colorado, Arizona and Oregon endured their worst wildfire seasons ever. The same year, drought created severe dust storms in Montana, Colorado and Kansas, and floods caused hundreds of millions of dollars in damage in Texas, Montana and North Dakota. Since the early 1950s, snow accumulation has declined 60 percent and winter seasons have shortened in some areas of the Cascade Range in Oregon and Washington. Of course, the impacts of global warming are not limited to the United States. In 2003, extreme heat waves caused more than 20,000 deaths in Europe and more than 1,500 deaths in India. And in what scientists regard as an alarming sign of events to come, the area of the Arctic's perennial polar ice cap is declining at the rate of 9 percent per decade.
Q: Is global warming making hurricanes worse?
A: Global warming doesn't create hurricanes, but it does make them stronger and more dangerous. Because the ocean is getting warmer, tropical storms can pick up more energy and become more powerful. So global warming could turn, say, a category 3 storm into a much more dangerous category 4 storm. In fact, scientists have found that the destructive potential of hurricanes has greatly increased along with ocean temperature over the past 35 years.
Q: Is there really cause for serious concern?
A: Yes. Global warming is a complex phenomenon, and its full-scale impacts are hard to predict far in advance. But each year scientists learn more about how global warming is affecting the planet, and many agree that certain consequences are likely to occur if current trends continue. Among these:
1. Melting glaciers, early snowmelt and severe droughts will cause more dramatic water shortages in the American West.
2. Rising sea levels will lead to coastal flooding on the Eastern seaboard, in Florida, and in other areas, such as the Gulf of Mexico.
3. Warmer sea surface temperatures will fuel more intense hurricanes in the southeastern Atlantic and Gulf coasts.
4. Forests, farms and cities will face troublesome new pests and more mosquito-borne diseases.
5. Disruption of habitats such as coral reefs and alpine meadows could drive many plant and animal species to extinction.
Q: Could global warming trigger a sudden catastrophe?
A: Recently, researchers -- and even the U.S. Defense Department -- have investigated the possibility of abrupt climate change, in which gradual global warming triggers a sudden shift in the earth's climate, causing parts of the world to dramatically heat up or cool down in the span of a few years.
Q: What country is the largest source of global warming pollution?
A: The United States. Though Americans make up just 4 percent of the world's population, we produce 25 percent of the carbon dioxide pollution from fossil-fuel burning -- by far the largest share of any country. In fact, the United States emits more carbon dioxide than China, India and Japan, combined. Clearly America ought to take a leadership role in solving the problem. And as the world's top developer of new technologies, we are well positioned to do so -- we already have the know-how.
Q: How can we cut global warming pollution?
A: It's simple: By reducing pollution from vehicles and power plants. Right away, we should put existing technologies for building cleaner cars and more modern electricity generators into widespread use. We can increase our reliance on renewable energy sources such as wind, sun and geothermal. And we can manufacture more efficient appliances and conserve energy.
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