JohnHenry.US

Category: My Stuff

  • God, Glue-Guns, and Glory

    This curated-and-updated post was originally published Oct. 29, 2009, and centers around a situation in which Home Depot terminated an employee named Trevor Keezer for refusing to remove a pin from his work uniform, while working, that read “One Nation, Under God, INDIVISIBLE.” You may recognize this as one of the many Islamophobic slogans that was flying around during the decade or so after 9-11 (and to some extent still are). The company’s policy was that employees may not wear anything on their uniform that wasn’t provided by the company. While a great deal of noise was made in right-wing media over the whole thing and indeed a lawsuit was filed, there’s no indication it ever went to court, and indeed it seems to have just been quietly dropped after a year of right-wing media outlets trying to drum out outrage over the “discrimination” against Christianity.

    This essay is presented as originally written in the immediate aftermath of the event, with minor editorial corrections and edits. -jh

    I’m definitely missing my camcorder today as this pointless, divisive kerfluffle over some redneck getting fired for pushing his religion on people on the workplace.  What a great topic for a video rant…

    I find it hilarious that so many people get all het up and whiny about BOYCOTT HOME DEPOT THOSE ATHEIST EVUL COMMIES, but boy wouldn’t they feel differently if the guy expressing his religious views on his work uniform was a Muslim, druid, or follower of Cthulhu?  But no, it’s shove those noses in the air, start wringing your hands, and quick everybody get wrapped up in a my-god-is-better-than-your-god argument that solves nothing and distracts us from dealing with the very REAL and PRESENT and OBSERVABLE problems that we are wrapped up in.

    A friend on Facebook linked to the Today show’s little fan page there, where one such conversation is taking place.  it’s hilarious.  “It’s not freedom FROM religion it’s freedom OF religion!”  Uh…same thing, Captain Logic  Freedom of religion by necessity includes the freedom to not participate in any religion at all without fear of persecution or discrimination.  And then it’s the same tired old arguments that have been shot down time and time and time again over how this is a ‘Christian nation’ (it isn’t and it never was) or how anyone who doesn’t believe in Jethro Bodine’s particular concept of “God” is unpatriotic and evil and should LUV IT ER LEEV IT.

    Now there’s a proud American sentiment, eh?  You must worship according to our rules or be rejected from society.  Oh, hey, waitaminnit, that’s the whole reason we (well, YOU.  My people are native american, dutch, and black) left England in the first place, isn’t it?

    What I can’t figure out is where all of these ‘good Christians’ get the fancy bibles that are missing the first part of Matthew 6.  Especially verse five:

    And when thou prayest, thou shalt not be as the hypocrites are: for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men. Verily I say unto you, They have their reward.

    This is one of the most important verses in the Christian canon, and one of the most overlooked.  In short, it says “you keep your religion between you and your god, rather than displaying it openly so that you can make money or impress people with your piety.  ‘God’ does not care if your friends are impressed with how holy you are, so STFU and keep it to yourself.  Anything else is stagecraft and hypocrisy.  I AM, that which I AM, and I do not need to pursue or convince my creatures of my power, nor need I for you to pursue or convince them on My behalf; they will choose to come to me.”

    I’ve seen this behavior at many large companies I’ve been employed by over the years, people decorating their cubes with their little holier-than-thou displays of bible verse and self-aggrandizing piety.  It made me terribly uncomfortable, afraid to express myself openly.  I even had colleagues ask me what church I attended – love that assumption that I attend ANY church, let alone that it’s anyone else’s damn business which one.

    (Sidebar:  One of the precious, self-righteous jerks I observed made the remark that one of HD’s competitors offers a standard military discount, so they were a better store anyway.  My first thought:  WTF lady you sent your husband off to die so you could get a good price on f’n gutters?!  How callous.)

    I don’t have anything against believers, personally.  I just don’t believe that your beliefs give you the right to force those beliefs on anyone else, particularly when you’re in a public-facing customer service role; it’s obnoxious, unwelcoming, and exclusionary to anyone who doesn’t share your beliefs – which, frankly, is the entire point of doing it so let’s not kid ourselves. 

    You want to blog about Jesus and pray in your facebook status, that’s no skin off my nose in the least. I don’t want to be prayed over at Home Depot or have my soul saved at McDonalds or get into a long discussion about my religious beliefs when I try to buy a slurpee.

    I still can find no Christian principle is supported by wearing buttons and slogans on my clothing to push my views on other people when I’m at work.  That guy wasn’t being paid to proselytize, he was being paid to stock shelves or run a cash register.  When I’ve had corporate jobs I haven’t decorated my workspace with political or social or religious messages.  Of course I have opinions, that much should be no secret by now, but I also have enough grace and respect for others to not make their work day uncomfortable by broadcasting them in that forum.  That’s not where they belong. 

    Believe what you want.  I won’t hold it against you, in and of itself. Do I have things to say about these issues?  Of course…but not when I’m working for someone else.  If I’m stocking shelves or building databases or whatever, I’m being paid to do that, and all of my time save that which is necessary to attend to the necessities of human body function – i.e. eating, drinking, restroom, and a short step-away every few hours to ‘cleanse the palate’ and clear the head for more effective work function – should be spent doing that.

    But more than anything else, what really chaps my ass about this whole thing is the smug tyranny of the majority, that obnoxious and distinctly un-Christian attitude that so many self-proclaimed followers of Jesus display to the rest of the world.  You know, that condescending crap they wrap around themselves that screams to the world, “I am a member of a special club, and if you don’t do things my way you can’t join my special club, and then I and all of my special friends will make fun of you and not rent apartments to you and not let you eat at our restaurants or date our daughters or work for us, because YOU are not one of US, and there’s not a damn thing you can do about it because GAWD is on MY SIDE.”

    This root and its derivatives are, and have always been, among the fundamental causes of human misery.

    Isn’t it ironic that so many followers of the “Prince of Peace” will cheerfully do violence and wage war in his name?  Isn’t it ironic, that so many followers of the man who said “Be ye kind one unto another, tenderhearted, forgiving…” (Ephesians 4:32) are so cruel and heartless in their dealings with one another.  That the religion which gave us the concept of pride as sin should give rise to such pride-filled followers; that the religion which purports to teach us that judgment lies solely in the hands of the Almighty should generate so many adherents who incessantly judge others on their mode of worship, their sexual habits, or whatever else, rarely if ever exercising such strict judgment on themselves.

    Every one of us – every one of us – has skeletons in our closet.  We are all human, we are all fallible, and we are all in this together.  Anything that separates us one from another in the greater sense, as religion unquestionably does, is by definition genocidal…if slowly.

    The guy shouldn’t have had the pin on his uniform.  When the whole story’s out, it’s likely that he was asked/told/warned about this several times, and further that his decision to start publicly practicing his religion at work was intended to get him fired and provoke just this kind of self-righteous indignance, once again warming the fires that keep us from coming together as one people to solve our common problems, face our common threats, and improve our common state of being. [Ed. note 2023 – the eventual playing out of this case in one brief announcement of a lawsuit a year later followed by dead silence from all sides bears this analysis out entirely. He was in fact asked, told, warned, and even offered a company approved pin reading “United We Stand,” which is the same sentiment minute the Islamophobia/Christian proseltyzing. -jh]

    tl;dr:  deer xtians more cheekturning plz

  • Bill Hicks: The Dark Poet Rises

    Curated post, originally published Feb 23, 2009. I’ve made some edits to make the reading of it less tied to the original publication date.

    William Melvin “Bill” Hicks was not always the most moderate fella.

    “If you’re in advertising and marketing…kill yourself. You are fucked and you are fucking us, you are Satan’s spawn, kill yourself. There’s no joke here…I know you advertising folks are like ‘Oh I see what he’s doing, he’s going for that righteous indignation dollar that’s very clever,’ no…STOP PUTTING A GODDAMNED DOLLAR SIGN ON EVERYTHING ON THIS FUCKING PLANET!”

    Bill Hicks, “Revelations”

    As of the time I’m dragging this (now fifteen year old) post out of the archive, in a few months it will be fully thirty years since the passing of of one of the world’s greatest socio-political analysts, ever.

    Consequently, the guy’s been on my mind a lot lately.  But then, Bill Hicks has a way of always being on my mind, even when I don’t know it.  As I look back through my own writing over the years – I’m allowed, I’m an egomaniac just like almost everyone else – it strikes me sometimes how often what I’ve said unintentionally reflects back to an idea that germinated with or was reinforced or articulated or enhanced by something I heard Hicks say.  In much the same way Chris Cornell’s lyrics have followed, almost eerily, the track of my life, so Hicks’ opinions on everything from drugs to God to willful ignorance have, but usually without the melody.

    Hicks was a man of contradictions; a walking hypocrisy.  I can relate to that as well; on the one hand I really do believe that, fundamentally, whatever nickname our Creator might prefer to be called the ultimate purpose of human life is beauty, love, peace, and hope.  I want to spread that love, add to that beauty, give that hope, bring that peace.  On the other hand, like Hicks, I often find myself experiencing explosive anger, withering contempt and a heartfelt and passionate disdain for those who choose to live in deliberate ignorance, afraid to consider ideas that fall outside the scope of beliefs that many of them formed or had pushed on to them before they reached puberty. Why don’t people ask questions?  Why do people refuse to see reality when it’s standing right there?  How can people be so arrogant as to consistently confuse the Will Of The Almighty Creator And Shaper Of Universes with their desire for a Porsche?

    I don’t think that Mr. Hicks would be real thrilled about the state of America today; in that, I believe him to be among the greatest of Americans.  A friend does not allow you to walk around a party with a feather on your chin; someone who loves you does not leave your errors uncorrected.  A friend, a lover, wants the best for you, and I believe that Bill wanted the best for us, and for this country, and for the world…even if it meant kicking our asses and hurting our feelings to get it.

    Younger people, for whom Hicks is at best a relic of a previous generation, often underestimate his impact.  A very good friend of mine, in her early twenties, remarked to me yesterday that she wasn’t as “in love” with Hicks as I was.  I suppose that’s understandable – after all, you’ve got everyone from Denis “Pancreatic Cancer Saved My Career” Leary to Keith Olbermann channelling Hicks on a regular basis all over the place now…not to mention, of course, millions of blogs just like this one written by people who believe themselves to be every bit as witty and insightful as I am.  But back then…back then you could count on two hands the number of non-musical performers who had even attempted to say these things.  You know how many comedians there were in 1989 who would freely and openly admit to having not only done illegal drugs, but enjoyed them?  Five.  Carlin, Pryor, Williams, Hicks, and Kinison.  Even today, how many comedians could get away with this bit:

    “‘We have nothing against America, we just want to see George Bush beheaded and his head kicked down the road like a soccer ball.’ Gee, thats what I want to see, who’d’a thunk it, me and Saddam, we’re like this! *crosses his fingers*…”

    Bill Hicks, “Me and Saddam”

    If any comedian had said something like that on a stage between 2002 and 2006 or so he or she would be living in legitimate fear for their life.  Hicks was the guy who said he was “for the war…but against the troops.”  These days that kind of sentiment could get you shot.  As it was, Hicks dodged at least one pissed-off redneck with a loaded gun, and had his leg broken by a pair of others, for routines like this and his scathing takes on Christianity.  Then he turned the broken leg incident into one of his best bits…

    “I did that routine about Jesus at some club in Fyffe, Alabama…after the show these two guys come up to me back stage:

    ‘Hey buddy – come here (shoves Bill away – beautiful subtlety there)! Hey Mr. Comedian, Come here (another shove)! Hey, buddy, we’re Christians and we dont like what you said about Jesus!’

    ‘Yeah?’ I said, ‘Well, then…forgive me.’”

    Bill Hicks, “One Night Stand” and other recordings

    Hicks never flinched from putting himself under the same microscope as he did everyone else.  Although he cloaked himself in the trappings of stand-up comedy, he was much more akin to a motivational speaker or the ancient Greek philosophers; observing and reporting the world as he understood it, in the hopes that those listening would understand, learn, grow, and propagate.

    [When I originally wrote this article in 2009] 15 years after his death, as I look around this country and this world, I question how successful he was in that regard.  After all, we had to elect another Bush – TWICE! – before we clued in to the game of hate and fear that the hardcore conservative contingent in this country represents and embraces.  But then, you know, there’s this whole Obama election thing, which on the one hand definitely has a tinge of that “cult of personality” and mindless groupthink that has worked against us before, but also has an aftertaste of Joe Public being sick of the status quo.  I think that Nancy Pelosi and other hard-core left-wing politicians may be surprised to find that they didn’t actually win in November of last year; I think there’s finally a substantial portion of the populace who actually voted the “I have had enough of this shit” ticket.  maybe not a majority, maybe not even a majority of those who voted for the eventual victor…but it’s there.

    And it’s building, and getting bigger, and more cohesive, and the radical fringe is being moved out of the way and dismissed while those with more carefully-considered opinions seem to finally be stepping up to the plate.

    Maybe it’s too much to hope for…but this week, a decade and a half after the death of Bill Hicks…maybe someone finally gets it.

    Bill Hicks
    1961-1994

    [2023: All things considered…it was definitely too much to hope for. Indeed, reading this back fifteen years later it seems almost hopelessly naïve and starry-eyed. After the uplift of the Obama years, the Trump presidency dragged all the cockroaches and scum out into the light and made them the mainstream, and we probably won’t get back to even the pitiful level of social progress we’d reached in 1993 before my grandkids are my age.

    Then we have the problem of the people who have attached themselves to Hicks over the last fifteen years. Rather than a group of people deeply into spirituality and the turning of disappointed idealism into raging, scathing, razor-sharp wit that pushes boundaries, expanding the mind beyond its usual, culturally imposed boundaries and seeking new truth, most of the people I run into these days who claim an affinity for Hicks are raging little incels, gibbering conspiracy theorists, misogynist dough-faced egomaniacs falling short of being career domestic abusers only because they can’t get close enough to having a partner to become abusive toward them.

    They’ve taken the shadiest bits of Hicks’ routines – some of which frankly don’t hold up well three decades later – and make it a personality, while ignoring the fundamental, abiding love and concern for humanity that fueled all of it…which retroactively makes Hicks start looking like the pasty, bitter, anaerobic losers who have begun attaching themselves to him, rather than simply someone who was incredibly funny in his time and whose humor often carried perspectives that we have – and he undoubtedly would have – grown out of and rejected

    In the end they’ve largely reduced him to “do drugs, Elmer Dinkley, conspiracy theories.”

    Like so many of the people who informed and elevated my own perspective as a teenager and young man in the 80s and 90s, I really wish he’d have stayed obscure after he died. Not like he’s getting anything out of the attention now, and most of the people giving it to him clearly weren’t listening to anything he said other than the little bits that gratified their own frail and unwarranted egos.

    They’ve taken a complex and beautiful set of philosophies and turned it into an hour of dick jokes, and I pretty much hate them for that. I’m glad I’ve had the opportunity over the years to end up getting to know, a little bit, over the internet, so many of the ‘Texas Outlaw Comics’ who were Hicks’ friends and colleagues. It helps mitigate the sting of watching him and his work be co-opted by the same losers he was trying to make take a look at themselves by dragging his own least flattering thoughts and impulses out onto a stage. Pisses me off.]

  • McCain Hands Obama The Presidency

    This is a curated post originally written Sept. 25, 2008. It requires a little context; this was the last two weeks of the US presidential campaign pitting Republican Senator John McCain against Democratic Senator Barack Obama. There was a fairly serious conflict happening in congress regarding a congressional debate over a proposed funding bailout of “Wall Street” investment banks, and McCain made the abrupt and surprising decision to “suspend his campaign” in order to go back to Washington and debate the bill in the Senate. There was also a scheduled debate for the day after, September 26th, which initially McCain had said he would not attend but he ended up doing so.

    For a more in-depth review of those events I direct you to this contemporary article/timeline at National Public Radio.

    It should be noted that the question of whether McCain would’ve fared any better in the election had he not done that is not as open as my writing here would suggest; Obama was enjoying a strong campaign run and the great likelihood was he would win regardless. Still, it’s an interesting look into that election in its last few weeks, and in the major missteps made by McCain that certainly didn’t help his performance, whether it can be rightly said that it cost him the election or not. -jh, 3-Oct-2023

    A final note; this was about a year before I began my college education, and the discerning reader will note some minor errors in the use of labels and language, such as referring to myself as a “liberal” rather than the more accurate “leftist.” It was precisely these sorts of errors that led me to choose the educational path I did.

    So by now the evisceration of John McCain by David Letterman last night is fairly old news (even though it just happened).

    What I hate about this is that Dave made a lot of points I’d been planning to make myself.

    While it would be easy for the liberal in me to take great joy in watching the Palin legend implode, the reality is it just kind of makes me sad. With all due respect to my Republican friends, I just don’t see how you can continue to support the McCain-Palin ticket after this week. Not only did McCain completely blow a chance to take a lead on the current financial crisis, he managed to hand Obama the election while doing so.

    Consider the position that McCain is now in. If he refuses to attend the debate, Obama can blast him for lack of multitasking skills and an indifference to the needs of the voters to be informed about their candidates’ positions. If McCain attends the debate, then he’s reversed himself, as it’s clear that this is simply not an issue that can be meaningfully resolved in two days.

    Perhaps more importantly, however, is that McCain has once again tipped his hand in several different ways. First, he’s impulsive – sometimes recklessly so – in making decisions. Second, he spins and spins; it would take a truly dedicated Believer to not suspect that the real motivation for McCain wanting to delay the debates is rooted in not only his own lack of preparation, but in a fear that his running mate will fare even worse in the veep debates. Third, it says something very unpleasant about the man’s leadership skills that when the merde hits the fan, his reaction is to slam on the breaks, panic, and demand drastic changes in plan that aren’t actually justified by the situation.

    But all of this is secondary to the real revalation hidden behind McCain’s ‘suspension’ of his campaign – the fact that he has zero confidence in his running mate to step in and handle the duties that he would otherwise be performing. There’s no reason that Palin couldn’t have done Letterman last night. There’s no reason that she couldn’t step in for him nearly anywhere other than the debate itself, but it wasn’t even suggested.

    Palin’s performance thus far has been utterly abysmal outside of her stump speech – which aged so fast you’d think it was suffering from Progeria. Her three major interviews thus far have been populated with stock, rehearsed answers, a glaring lack of meaningful responses, and a recurring impersonation of a deer in the headlights of an oncoming Peterbilt. She even managed to make Katie Couric look menacing and tough, and with no disrespect intended to Ms. Couric, that’s not exactly her strong suit. I mean, come on. “I’ll find out and get back to you?” Did a moose eat her homework?

    The shine is off the Palin apple, I’m afraid, and what’s left is just not much to look at. Throughout this campaign, Obama’s decisions and responses have been measured, reasoned, and careful. McCain’s have been impulsive, reckless, fearful, and pandering, from his selection of Palin as running mate to this latest kerfluffle over ‘suspending the campaign.’

    I submit to you that John McCain has indeed handed the Presidency of the United States to Barack Obama, and now it seems the only thing left for the Republican party to do is leave him as big a mess as they can possibly manage, so they can blame him for not cleaning it up. At every possible turn, McCain has said and done exactly the worst possible thing, and frankly at this point my expectations for him are so low that if he just manages to not blow his top and say something ridiculously impulsive, it will count as a victory.

    It’s a pity, really. Eight years ago, I could have seen myself voting for McCain. Unfortunately, the 2008 John McCain is just the same old neo-conservative, trickle-down, right-wing panderer that the previous candidates from his party have been. Any touch of the ‘maverick’ he once was is long gone; while some folks are just coming to that realization, for me the turning point was when he agreed to speak at Liberty University, after criticizing other candidates for speaking at Bob Jones and labelling Liberty founder Jerry Falwell an ‘agent of intolerance.’

    Politicians are human beings. I accept that, probably more so than most voters. I don’t expect them to be perfect. But McCain has been stepping on his johnson for years, and has made a complete mess of this run at the presidency. The Palin selection was a horrendous move, but then to flat-out lie to Letterman about ‘rushing back to Washington’ only to be caught on feed talking to CBS news when he was supposed to be on Letterman is just the icing on the cake. He flat-out lied. Whether it was appropriate for him to appear on a comedy program or not is beside the point – he could have said that honestly. “Dave, I love being on your show and you’ve been a good friend for a lot of years, but I just don’t feel like a late-night comedy/variety show is the place for a presidential candidate to be in the middle of an economic crisis. I’m going to do the news with Katie tonight, can I take a rain check for say two weeks from now?” That was the approach Obama took with his SNL appearance a couple of weeks ago when Hurricane Ivan was heading for Galveston – he backed out honestly.

    With his bumbling ineptitude, his cynical attempts to pander to any voting bloc he can define, and the consistently dishonest tone of his campaign from the lies in his advertising to this most recent gaffe with Letterman, John McCain has shown clearly that the only change he’s going to bring to Washington is the name plates on the doors.

    Hero? Absolutely. Presidential material? Not on your life, and frankly I think he’s realizing it.

    So on January 20th as President Barack Hussein Obama is sworn in as the 44th President of the United States…be sure to spare a moment of thanks for his opponent in this race. Obama couldn’t have won without McCain’s diligent effort to throw the fight.

  • What Real Media Bias Looks Like (2010)

    (Curated post originally published Apr 8 2010)

    The subtle ways in which some media outlets will deliberately attempt to manipulate public opinion rather than just reporting the facts never ceases to amaze me.  This article about the health care bill provides an excellent example of what real media bias looks like – the subtle manipulation of public opinion though the use of loaded words and phrases to play on existing fears or create new ones, which in turn feeds conflict and drives interest in the news, which creates profits for the news companies.  A given organization or writer may also unwittingly wear their bias on their sleeve.

    Such as this article from McClatchy today:  Health care overhaul spawns mass confusion for public

    In this case, a series of reasonably neutral facts are embedded in a story full of negative anecdotes, some of which make deliberate pretense to fact for the sake of adding negative tone.  To wit:

    “They’re saying, ‘Where do we get the free Obama care, and how do I sign up for that?’ ” said Carrie McLean, a licensed agent for eHealthInsurance.com

    “Obama care” is a buzzphrase for all of the negative hype associated with the health care reform bill, used exclusively by conservative commentators and agitators.  I’ve yet to see a credible news source, or a credible commenter on either side of the issue refer to the bill as “Obama care” (or “Obamacare”).  Further, this is the third paragraph in the article – so one of the first evoked emotions is resentment by the conservative “base” against those evil greedy welfare leeches who want a free ride from ol’ Karl Adolph Obama. [ed. note 2023: this was long before Obama & the left began embracing the label]

    So if you already lean conservative on the issue, by the end of paragraph three you’re already pissed.

    It continues on with a claim that call centers have been “inundated” with requests from people who think that they have OMGRITENAOFREEDRUGS.  This strikes me as a highly questionably assessment; I participate widely in conversation on this subject with a very diverse group of people and viewpoints, and I’m not sure I’ve heard anyone who thought that the recent health care bill created immediate free health care for everyone…although in an ideal world that’s what it would have effectively done via single-payer.

    (Of course if we’re all healthy, then we can think about things other than needing medical care.  Things like how to properly detect bias in ostensibly objective news articles, for instance.  I can’t imagine anyone who would want to prevent THAT…)

    Watch the REAL media bias:

    • Consumers are cast as “frustrated” and “confused,” the article says, leveraging the power of suggestion to create confusion where there is none (the HCRB is actually pretty strarightforward, considering the scope and source of the thing) and further inflame negative opinion. 
    • A “new wave of inquiries” is coming; laid-off workers on COBRA are going to lose funding (cue a bunch of people on unemployment complaining about LOSING their socially subsidized health insurance for the unemployed while simultaneously railing against socialist health care policies).
    • A breast cancer survivor (cue sympathy!) is “confused” (oh that poor dear, how could that rotten Obama and his socialist minions have done this!) as to whether she should “try to access private coverage again some day” (Of course she should, if that’s the best option available, and that’s so self-evident as a result of both media coverage and the broad availability of both bill and summaries that I’m forced to wonder if “Ann Wooten” even exists.  Prior to te HCRB, of course, private coverage was the ONLY option other than abject poverty, and it wasn’t an available option at all and never would be to “Ann Wooten” due to her pre-existing condition.)
    • The state employee whines about how long the reform will take; a Hollywood Librul AND Furrner shows up to gloat down his nose at the rabble because he has good insurance through his labor union; small business owners are cast as confused and lost and at risk of cost increases or fines, with vague suggestions of IRS entanglements and labor cuts to “contain costs” – and of course “containing costs” implies that there are new costs to be “contained,” costs that will of course be well in excess of current costs.  The problem is there’s no data to support that implication.
      • One of my favorite passages: 
        Dimarob said many small businesses wouldn’t be able to participate. First they must do research to see whether they qualify. “It requires them to understand the intricacies,” she said.

        What I love about this is that it’s completely meaningless, but it SOUNDS scary.  “Many?”  What is “many?”  Is that a majority percentage?  Or is it “five,” which is indeed many but sure isn’t much among the millions of small businesses in this country?  The great thing is, I can’t find a provision anywhere that would prevent ANY small business from participating – indeed, one of the biggest complaints about this bill is that PARTICIPATION IS MANDATORY.  So how the hell are small businesses going to “not be able to participate?”  Uh-oh…look out, Joe, here come the INTRICACIES for you to have to sort through!  OMG WHY DOES GOVERNMENT MAKE RUNNING A BUSINESS SO HARRRRRRD?

    All of the above aspects of the article add to an overall negative tone – this health care bill is clearly confusing, expensive, and puts at risk the ability of small business (HI JOE THE PLUMBER!) to hire employees and pay their bills.  It makes cancer patients exhaust themselves trying to run the maze of regulation; it leaves parents unable to cover their adult children all the way until SEPTEMBER!!!  It forces small business owners to deal with more paperwork and “intricacies!”  It’s so EVULLLL!

    But it’s not just about accentuating the negative – you also have to negate the positive.  Our intrepid reporter accomplishes this with aplomb, leaving no positive aspect of this legislation untouched by her blighted point of view:

    • Rather than parents grateful for the ability to cover their kids an extra eight years, they’re parents who “have heard” that they can do this, “however” they have to wait until September.
    • Every single positive statement about the new law or the administration is delivered with a qualifier.  Every.  Single.  One. 
      “The administration is launching a public education campaign, BUT…”
      ”Parents can cover currently ineligible children, HOWEVER…”
      “Those with good coverage aren’t worried, BUT…” 
      “He explained many highlights…[h]owever..”
    • The software engineer who defends the bill’s clarity – the only person quoted who had anything positive to say about it – still has his caveats about detail. 
    • Obama has been “touting” a tax credit for small business…note how nasty that sounds, as opposed to the actual objective fact:  Obama has discussed small business tax credits along with the rest of the bill, because it’s now the law and people need to understand it and as President part of his job is to try to help people understand it because he’s the number one talking head in the country.  But rather than that, let’s choose words and phrases that a) make this sound like it’s still one mans quixotic crusade rather than a matter of accomplished federal law and b) then make the president sound like a snake-oil salesman “touting” the latest nostrum.
    • And of course, the president has been traveling to “talk to ordinary Americans.”  Because of course he couldn’t be “explaining” or “meeting” with people – he’s got to be “talking to” them, like a professor or a judge…and let’s not forget that the President is anything but an “ordinary American,” shall we?

    And then the same people who read this article as though it’s an example of objective, fact-based reporting sit and sneer at how dumb the people quoted in the article are for not realizing that their communist dreams of a free ride at the expense of us good, christian, white people who pay taxes are in vain.

    This is what our political discourse has come to, and this is why.  If we don’t start using our heads for something other than a place to put our iPod ear buds, we will continue getting the government, and the country, that we’ve earned.

  • Thanks, America (2008)

    It’s still sinking in.

    I’m 38 years old.  I was born in 1970, at the height of the Vietnam War.

    In my lifetime, my country has been led by:

    • A crook
    • An oaf
    • A man whose good intentions and peaceful nature rendered him too soft on foreign aggression and inept in the management of the economy
    • A bad actor who shut millions of people out of the process of government, refused to confront the most pressing domestic issues of his time, and created a culture of greed that we have yet to grow out of
    • A spy
    • A philanderer
    • Another oaf, this one with an unfortunate mandate provided by circumstance that has allowed him to abuse our military and destroy our standing in the world

    Yesterday, on November 4th, 2008, for the first time in my life…we elected a leader.  A man of courage, of vision, of honor, and of hope.  A man who has spoken his mind, stood his ground, and encouraged us all to reject the politics of hate and fear.

    A black man.

    Last night at 11 pm EST, The United States of America turned the page on nearly two hundred and fifty years of unrealized ideals and unfulfilled potential.  We the people have rejected hate, fear, and division.  We have rejected hypocrisy and greed and envy, and for the first time in our history, we have taken a major step toward living up to that precious founding assertion that all men are created equal.

    Even as recently as a year ago, it was inconceivable to me that a black man could be elected President.  I liked Obama, and I wanted him to win…but I didn’t think he could.  I didn’t think we were ready, as a country. to elect a black person to the Presidency.

    I am proud and honored to say today that I was wrong.

    I am sure that Barack Obama will make mistakes.  I am sure that he will do things I don’t agree with.  I am sure there will be controversy and conflict.

    But I am equally sure that never again can the world look at us and say ‘before you take the mote from our eye, remove the beam from your own.’

    The next four years will be tough.  You don’t need me to tell you what’s going on in the world, you’re well aware.  We have a lot of problems to solve, at home and abroad.  We have errors to correct, and we have some major repairs to make in our systems and processes.  We have a baddly tattered national psyche to heal – one that has never really been healthy in the first place – and we have some soul-searching to do.

    A week ago today I wrote, “…it’s not just time for them to change…it’s time for us to change.”

    Last night, in the most significant positive historical event of my lifetime, we began that change, and for the first time in my life I can say without hesitation or qualification:

    I am proud to be an American.

    I don’t want to get too wrapped up in navel-gazing.  There is work to be done, and it’s up to us to do it, working with our leaders instead of working in spite of them.  This is not the end of struggle, merely the end of the beginning of a long journey.

    But at long last, that journey has well and truly begun.

    Savor this moment, if Obama was your candidate.  If he wasn’t, consider that maybe you have bought in to ideals that are less than ideal, and maybe it’s time for all of us to look inside ourselves and see what could use some adjustment.  Rest assured that although I have great faith and confidence in President-Elect Obama, I will hold him to the same standard, if not a higher one, that I have held our previous leaders.  Don’t think that if you are a card-carrying Democrat or liberal, that your agenda just got a blank check, because it didn’t – I suspect that those lawmakers on the left who still cling to their outmoded methods and ideologies (lookin at you here, Pelosi) are in for a bit of a rude awakening, because we’re still trillions of dollars in debt and we still have major steps and sacrifices to make, and there is much to be corrected and abandoned as useless on all facets of the political spectrum.  For too long, the starry-eyed idealism of our social conscience has been either untempered by pragmatism, or defeated by cynicism.  

    Today, we begin to find the balance.

    The whole world is indeed watching, and in this one night America has taken a major step to not just reclaim the honor and respect we have sometimes enjoyed in the world…but perhaps, for the first time in our history, to make a strong case for deserving it.

    And now…now we have to get to work on maintaining it.  Each of us has our part to play in rebuilding and building up this nation.  Some of us may not know what that role is yet…but we each have one, and it is vital.  If you don’t know yet where you’re going or what you’re doing, then my best advice to you is to work now to get yourself in fighting shape so that when the call comes, you’re prepared to answer.

    Yes, America, we can.

    My congratulations and my thanks to everyone who has played a part in making this happen.  

    Now let’s get to work.

  • The Last Remaining Light (Vocal Cover)

    I figured I’d better start doing some of these since I’m not getting any younger and I’ve already lost substantial range and power from my voice. That said, this is pretty much off the cuff. What you’re listening to is a cover of Audioslave’s “The Last Remaining Light.” Since I don’t have instruments or a band, I had to find a karaoke track and record the vocal over it. There’s some minor effects on the vox, a little reverb and delay, but NO autotune or pitch correction (and you’ll know it if you’re a musician or singer).

    As I can’t be 100% certain of the provenance or licensing I’m only publishing this to this site, not on any other platforms. For whatever it’s worth, it’ll probably sound better in headphones than through a phone speaker.

    I’m sure there’ll be a few dinguses who want to point out that I screwed up a lyric somewhere or I’m a little “pitchy” or whatever. I don’t care. This was one take, cold. Didn’t warm up my vox, didn’t even listen to the original first, just dragged the karaoke MP3 into Audition and sang, through a Blue “Yeti” microphone into my computer at my desk.

    So yeah. It doesn’t sound like it was produced by Butch Vig and recorded at Electric Ladyland, and I’m okay with that. I just wanted some kind of proof I can do this out in the world, because ya know what? There’s about three people who know I’m capable of it, and I think that’s a shame.

    The audio track I recorded over is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AqhUzz_avvY You can hear for yourself there are NO vocals there.

    No, it’s not perfect. Little off here, little thin there, little out of breath in another place, maybe a bad lyric somewhere. I don’t care. I also don’t care if some cheeseball poser with 50K worth of equipment and all the free time in the world to rehearse for weeks can do it better. This is what I did, and I did it well, and I’m proud of it, and if anyone’s got anything negative to say about it they’re welcome to just keeeeep walking.

    Here’s the original for reference, too. Audioslave – The Last Remaining Light.

  • AfterParty 1.5

    Hey everyone, welcome to another AfterParty, I’m your suave and debonair host, let’s chat a bit!

    In my last AP I talked about having been quite “up” mentally for a sustained period, which was nice, but it had sort of leveled off a bit. The day after that dropped. I had a few things hit me that brought me down pretty hard for a bit – primarily, the absolutely undeniable evidence that my long-held (and long-confirmed, but not concretely) suspicions about where so much of the ongoing pressure against me – which dates long before Facebook or this site, back to the late 90s for the most part – was coming from.

    I’d have rather been wrong, frankly, and the ensuing mental conversation really dragged me down for a few days, back in the ol’ depression soup of wondering whether any of this is worth doing in the first place, the usual drill. I was hoping it wouldn’t get that far at all, but as anyone who’s struggled with mental illness will testify you’re not always in as much control as you’d like to believe you are.

    The good news is I’m slowly pulling back up – in the end there’s nothing I can do about any of it anyway, all I can do is keep being me and moving forward as best as possible with the tools I’ve got. I figure if I was gonna be out for “revenge,” that’d be about the best version of it anyway. I’ve written elsewhere about this in more detail, and don’t want to get deeply into again, just offering it out as a way of apologizing for being rather unproductive over the last week, including being a day late on this newsletter.

    On the up side I got the renamed “Morning Message” out with proper video & podcast today, and hopefully my sleep schedule will start working backwards a bit so the whole “morning” thing doesn’t get too ironic. I suspect it will, but right now I’m still in that “I might just get caught up in something an then suddenly realize it’s 3am” mode so I don’t want to make too many promises, but I think I’m on the road back to at least baseline productivity.

    Also dropped a pretty significant Medium article a few days ago. I tripped over a huge botnet/psyop nest on facebook – because they kept shoveling it in front of me so I couldn’t ignore it! – and started trying to ignore it only to find it was EVERYWHERE. Millions of people following hundreds of pages spamming from dozens of websites, etc., all of it either anti-democratic propaganda of some kind or glurgey sappy nostaligia and “aww cute” and ‘WE LUV DA SOJERS’ stuff crafted to catch folks who maybe aren’t caught up on the way the world’s information has shifted in the last ten or twenty years, get ’em following, and then start pushing them a little at a time.

    “The good old days!” That pulls a bunch of people. “When women knew their place and other people weren’t so uppity!” that loses a bunch…but you know the ones who are left are well-primed to be receptive to manipulation through bigotry and ignorance and fear, and we’re off to the races and pretty soon we’re reposting leftist satire as right-wing news and people are falling for it like autumn leaves, working themselves up into a torches-and-pitchforks froth of xenophobia and bitterness, and pretty soon it’s that damned gub’mint and we oughta. So that whole story’s at Medium and needs daylight, it’s an obviously coordinated foreign influence op being given a rocket-fuel boost by our buddy Da Zuck.

    So.

    A few months ago I was living in a hotel room, day to day, all my stuff in bins, no vehicle, no escape, and little hope. Now I’m in a home with a room and a desk and a computer connection and at least a rudimentary work environment. How that happened is another one of those “holy crap, is this my life?” moments that have so famously followed me around over the years.

    I’ve told the story in the past of why I was never a Jack Daniels’ drinker, but it’s been a minute. One night when I was fifteen, I went out with some friends and laid hands on a fifth of jack and a three-liter bottle of Mountain Dew, and proceeded to slam it and chase it and slam it and chase it and slam it and chase it 1985 rock star style until I was absolutely beyond drunk. Only a couple of memories of the night at all – one of tooling down the road in front of Upjohn’s world HQ in my buddy’s Pinto wagon, one of continually trying to unbutton another friend’s shirt, but other than that the night is and has always been a blank.

    Since then I’ve not been able to stand the taste of any kind of whiskey or bourbon or scotch.

    Naturally as tends to happen that group of friends drifted apart, life went on, and so forth, and now I’m living in a hotel just one bare fingernail from falling off the cliff forever. I had at least had the presence of mind to join the chain’s rewards program, so I was building up loyalty points good for rewards like free or discounted room prices.

    It’s like a Tuesday afternoon, and I’m out of money with no sign of any coming in soon. I’d already had a miraculous amount of help – I stayed in that hotel for a month! – and the proverbial well appeared to be dry for the moment.

    I walk down to the hotel office to start the process of cashing in my points, and as I’m standing there talking to the hotel clerk I thought I barely heard someone say my name.

    There’s zero reason for this to happen. Nobody in this place even knows my name except the desk help, and they’ve likely not even noticed it. I glanced around, didn’t see anyone I recognized, and turned back to the clerk, set my arrangements, and started walking out…and I heard my name again.

    I turn around…and it’s the girl whose shirt I’d been trying to take off thirty-seven years ago. Hadn’t seen or talked to her since probably early 1987 at the latest.

    We get to talking, “what are you doing here” “what are YOU doing here” etc. Long story short: she was working on the side because she’s on disability with a terminal cancer diagnosis, stage four in lungs and brain. Super sad. But also, she lives alone and has a spare room and pretty much needs someone to be around to call 911 in case she collapses unexpectedly or something, and heck yeah it’d be a favor to me if you’d move in. Don’t even worry about rent, don’t worry about getting a job or any of the rest of that crap, do what you can, but I just need someone around like right now and it sounds like you’re a perfect candidate.

    Here’s the kicker. You hear “stage four terminal” and think oh, wow, that’s tragedy, aren’t you worried you’re like, taking advantage or something? Thing is, in terms of health she’s ridiculously fine. She had collapsed back in August and at that time the ER docs gave her like…weeks. I ran into her in March and wouldn’t have known any of that to look at her. Still don’t. And she’s one of those types that’s not gonna just sit around waiting to die just because someone said she was gonna.

    So now I’m living here, helping out around the house, being a friend, and finally being allowed, in good faith, to have the time and space I need to actually work, rather than the series of bad-faith attempts to exploit and leverage my powerlessness in one situation to gain further power over my in the guise of “helping” (but now you owe me). We’re not in any kind of relationship or any of that stuff, but our past history definitely helps overcome the gap between in terms of “knowing each other,” we’re both still the same people just older, so it’s a sort of neat combination of being friends and strangers.

    And that, assembled guests, is the deus ex machina that probably saved me from being on the streets. I had another day and that was it – no money, nowhere to go, no way to get there.

    That is why you’re seeing such a sharp spike in my work lately. Took some weeks to get my head adjusted and out of the horrible farce of existence I’d been in for two and a half years in that damn boarding house, but once that started lifting things started flowing and other than the bump last week really have been ever since.

    I’m still not by any means affluent, but I have a stable roof over my head (she owns the house), and her day gig (which she went back to out of boredom) is in industrial food service so even though I have almost no money I still eat. This is extra bonus because it allows me to focus on putting support from folks like you toward my work, rather than just toward trying to keep my dumb ass alive for another day! It’s still a struggle to keep up just the bills associated with the low level or work I’m doing now – Adobe, Microsoft Office, the autoposter for the websites, various other little bits and pieces. And of course my roommate’s diet is pretty limited so I’m eating a whole lot of chemo patient safe food, but on the bright side I’ve also lost almost forty pounds since I’ve been here, from the last time I weighed in at the doctor when I was at the old place. I was 253 there, I think, and right now I’m around 215. Supposedly 197 is optimal; we’ll see if I get that far and what it looks like.

    So that’s my little story for the week about how life’s going backstage here at JH Central I’m going to go ahead and set this public at the normal Tuesday Noon next week. For now as always my many thanks and unspeakable gratitude for your ongoing support, and keep an eye on the website and other platforms for ongoing new content including the newsletters plus more on the multi-part content I’ve already started and whatever comes up between now and next time!

    Oh, hey. Check out this old song that has absolutely no right being as awesome as it is! You can’t imagine how much this was my favorite song when I was like…three.

    Love y’all, see you soon.

  • AfterParty 1.5 (Advance)

    Hey everyone, welcome to another AfterParty, I’m your suave and debonair host, let’s chat a bit!

    In my last AP I talked about having been quite “up” mentally for a sustained period, which was nice, but it had sort of leveled off a bit. The day after that dropped. I had a few things hit me that brought me down pretty hard for a bit – primarily, the absolutely undeniable evidence that my long-held (and long-confirmed, but not concretely) suspicions about where so much of the ongoing pressure against me – which dates long before Facebook or this site, back to the late 90s for the most part – was coming from.

    I’d have rather been wrong, frankly, and the ensuing mental conversation really dragged me down for a few days, back in the ol’ depression soup of wondering whether any of this is worth doing in the first place, the usual drill. I was hoping it wouldn’t get that far at all, but as anyone who’s struggled with mental illness will testify you’re not always in as much control as you’d like to believe you are.

    The good news is I’m slowly pulling back up – in the end there’s nothing I can do about any of it anyway, all I can do is keep being me and moving forward as best as possible with the tools I’ve got. I figure if I was gonna be out for “revenge,” that’d be about the best version of it anyway. I’ve written elsewhere about this in more detail, and don’t want to get deeply into again, just offering it out as a way of apologizing for being rather unproductive over the last week, including being a day late on this newsletter.

    On the up side I got the renamed “Morning Message” out with proper video & podcast today, and hopefully my sleep schedule will start working backwards a bit so the whole “morning” thing doesn’t get too ironic. I suspect it will, but right now I’m still in that “I might just get caught up in something an then suddenly realize it’s 3am” mode so I don’t want to make too many promises, but I think I’m on the road back to at least baseline productivity.

    Also dropped a pretty significant Medium article a few days ago. I tripped over a huge botnet/psyop nest on facebook – because they kept shoveling it in front of me so I couldn’t ignore it! – and started trying to ignore it only to find it was EVERYWHERE. Millions of people following hundreds of pages spamming from dozens of websites, etc., all of it either anti-democratic propaganda of some kind or glurgey sappy nostaligia and “aww cute” and ‘WE LUV DA SOJERS’ stuff crafted to catch folks who maybe aren’t caught up on the way the world’s information has shifted in the last ten or twenty years, get ’em following, and then start pushing them a little at a time.

    “The good old days!” That pulls a bunch of people. “When women knew their place and other people weren’t so uppity!” that loses a bunch…but you know the ones who are left are well-primed to be receptive to manipulation through bigotry and ignorance and fear, and we’re off to the races and pretty soon we’re reposting leftist satire as right-wing news and people are falling for it like autumn leaves, working themselves up into a torches-and-pitchforks froth of xenophobia and bitterness, and pretty soon it’s that damned gub’mint and we oughta. So that whole story’s at Medium and needs daylight, it’s an obviously coordinated foreign influence op being given a rocket-fuel boost by our buddy Da Zuck.

    So.

    A few months ago I was living in a hotel room, day to day, all my stuff in bins, no vehicle, no escape, and little hope. Now I’m in a home with a room and a desk and a computer connection and at least a rudimentary work environment. How that happened is another one of those “holy crap, is this my life?” moments that have so famously followed me around over the years.

    I’ve told the story in the past of why I was never a Jack Daniels’ drinker, but it’s been a minute. One night when I was fifteen, I went out with some friends and laid hands on a fifth of jack and a three-liter bottle of Mountain Dew, and proceeded to slam it and chase it and slam it and chase it and slam it and chase it 1985 rock star style until I was absolutely beyond drunk. Only a couple of memories of the night at all – one of tooling down the road in front of Upjohn’s world HQ in my buddy’s Pinto wagon, one of continually trying to unbutton another friend’s shirt, but other than that the night is and has always been a blank.

    Since then I’ve not been able to stand the taste of any kind of whiskey or bourbon or scotch.

    Naturally as tends to happen that group of friends drifted apart, life went on, and so forth, and now I’m living in a hotel just one bare fingernail from falling off the cliff forever. I had at least had the presence of mind to join the chain’s rewards program, so I was building up loyalty points good for rewards like free or discounted room prices.

    It’s like a Tuesday afternoon, and I’m out of money with no sign of any coming in soon. I’d already had a miraculous amount of help – I stayed in that hotel for a month! – and the proverbial well appeared to be dry for the moment.

    I walk down to the hotel office to start the process of cashing in my points, and as I’m standing there talking to the hotel clerk I thought I barely heard someone say my name.

    There’s zero reason for this to happen. Nobody in this place even knows my name except the desk help, and they’ve likely not even noticed it. I glanced around, didn’t see anyone I recognized, and turned back to the clerk, set my arrangements, and started walking out…and I heard my name again.

    I turn around…and it’s the girl whose shirt I’d been trying to take off thirty-seven years ago. Hadn’t seen or talked to her since probably early 1987 at the latest.

    We get to talking, “what are you doing here” “what are YOU doing here” etc. Long story short: she was working on the side because she’s on disability with a terminal cancer diagnosis, stage four in lungs and brain. Super sad. But also, she lives alone and has a spare room and pretty much needs someone to be around to call 911 in case she collapses unexpectedly or something, and heck yeah it’d be a favor to me if you’d move in. Don’t even worry about rent, don’t worry about getting a job or any of the rest of that crap, do what you can, but I just need someone around like right now and it sounds like you’re a perfect candidate.

    Here’s the kicker. You hear “stage four terminal” and think oh, wow, that’s tragedy, aren’t you worried you’re like, taking advantage or something? Thing is, in terms of health she’s ridiculously fine. She had collapsed back in August and at that time the ER docs gave her like…weeks. I ran into her in March and wouldn’t have known any of that to look at her. Still don’t. And she’s one of those types that’s not gonna just sit around waiting to die just because someone said she was gonna.

    So now I’m living here, helping out around the house, being a friend, and finally being allowed, in good faith, to have the time and space I need to actually work, rather than the series of bad-faith attempts to exploit and leverage my powerlessness in one situation to gain further power over my in the guise of “helping” (but now you owe me). We’re not in any kind of relationship or any of that stuff, but our past history definitely helps overcome the gap between in terms of “knowing each other,” we’re both still the same people just older, so it’s a sort of neat combination of being friends and strangers.

    And that, assembled guests, is the deus ex machina that probably saved me from being on the streets. I had another day and that was it – no money, nowhere to go, no way to get there.

    That is why you’re seeing such a sharp spike in my work lately. Took some weeks to get my head adjusted and out of the horrible farce of existence I’d been in for two and a half years in that damn boarding house, but once that started lifting things started flowing and other than the bump last week really have been ever since.

    I’m still not by any means affluent, but I have a stable roof over my head (she owns the house), and her day gig (which she went back to out of boredom) is in industrial food service so even though I have almost no money I still eat. This is extra bonus because it allows me to focus on putting support from folks like you toward my work, rather than just toward trying to keep my dumb ass alive for another day! It’s still a struggle to keep up just the bills associated with the low level or work I’m doing now – Adobe, Microsoft Office, the autoposter for the websites, various other little bits and pieces. And of course my roommate’s diet is pretty limited so I’m eating a whole lot of chemo patient safe food, but on the bright side I’ve also lost almost forty pounds since I’ve been here, from the last time I weighed in at the doctor when I was at the old place. I was 253 there, I think, and right now I’m around 215. Supposedly 197 is optimal; we’ll see if I get that far and what it looks like.

    So that’s my little story for the week about how life’s going backstage here at JH Central I’m going to go ahead and set this public at the normal Tuesday Noon next week. For now as always my many thanks and unspeakable gratitude for your ongoing support, and keep an eye on the website and other platforms for ongoing new content including the newsletters plus more on the multi-part content I’ve already started and whatever comes up between now and next time!

    Oh, hey. Check out this old song that has absolutely no right being as awesome as it is! You can’t imagine how much this was my favorite song when I was like…three.

    Love y’all, see you soon.

  • JH AfterParty 1.4

    Hello Patrons and supporters and welcome to another edition of the JH AfterParty, exclusively available to you for one week before being released to the general public!

    Finally started seeing some balance to the unremitting upswing I’ve been on for the last couple of months. Last Thursday was pretty much a no-go for the day, just sat down and everything I picked up to work on my brain just went “mbleh” and refused to chug. So I gave it the day off and Friday was better, weekend okay, yesterday afternoon kinda meh, but still nothing like the major crashes I’ve experienced in less stable, more chaotic living situations in the last few years. Obviously that’s not to say that my depression is the fault of my living situation, but rather that those situations made it more difficult for me to manage. I’m not feeling any impending sense of a giant crash or anything, just learning to manage myself better generally so it’s not always full throttle or dead stop. That’s part of the reason I’m opening up new sections of the site, too – helps me feel less guilty for doing anything that doesn’t potentially generate income if I can use it to generate a little income.

    Got some stuff done over the weekend as well – the Substack newsletter of course, and a new Medium article about media disinformation, plus other bits of content and the new “Morning Me” newsletter. I’ve started that off being just a “hey it’s morning time here’s me” thing, but I’m now starting to morph it into more of a “here’s a news item or two and a few of my thoughts about it to get your day rolling with your brain engaged” groove, as I’m getting the routine tightened down and everything in place to make it a true production process much as I’ve done with this newsletter over the last four weeks.

    I know it’s tedious to watch sometimes, but hopefully at least a few people are actually interested in how I do all this and my thoughts in process. All of this back-end and infrastructure and template work is designed to make production smooth and efficient, so I don’t find myself suddenly overwhelmed trying to produce six newsletters, five video episodes, five podcast episodes, plus actual content every week.

    Oh, yeah. As of yesterday I’ve started doing the “Morning Me” as a video and podcast series in addition to the “print” version. That’ll be an ongoing thing. I’m considering doing the same with this but haven’t had time to look properly in to doing it with the supporter preview functionality protected – again, an issue that seems pretty petty and meaningless in this context but will be far easier to solve now than later down the road when it’s standing in the way of “real” content going out. But as of yesterday you can get your “Morning Me” as a video cast on my YouTube channel and as an audio podcast through any of the links on my site – it’ll still show up as “In My Room” in some players, for now – I will have to create an entire new infrastructure to properly handle podcasting again but this’ll get it out of the gate for now. There’s also be a download link on each newsletter so you can just snag the MP3 and listen to it however you want.

    I laughed way too hard at this:

    It’s an irrational function because it still runs on fossil fuels.

    That project management software (ProjeQtOr) that I mentioned last week has been working out really well, easily the best free solution I’ve ever found in terms of working the way I work and helping me stay organized and on task, plus I’m losing fewer ideas because when I have one I can just open a ticket and then it’s there and eventually I’ll remember it and get back to it. That’s part of what’s empowering these multi-part series I’m doing like the gaming history and national debt pieces – I can plan them better and it gives me time to think of things like NOT writing them all as a single enormous article because hardly anyone reads those anymore. Haven’t had time to look into a “public” facing reporting tool for supporters yet, but it’s on the agenda.

    Contributions are unfortunately way down, but that’s to be expected with no multimedia work going out. I’ve got a couple of pitch videos sketched out and some other stuff that’ll help that. Just reminds me how grateful I am to those of you who have been and/or are pitching in on the support; even though I’m in a much better place, I’m still way behind where I need to be to get this whole thing set up properly – right now I’m not even keeping up with my few basic bills, to say nothing of trying to help out the friend who’s putting me up and adding a ton of empowerment to all of this by doing so, and there’s a laundry list of expenses from gear to food to business licensing and taxes that needs handled.

    The way that happens is with your support and that of other folks like you who are committed to doing what you can to help nudge the battleship Humanity a quarter-degree or so in a more sane and sustainable direction. Please do keep your eyes peeled for an upcoming short video that will be framed specifically as a tool for those of you who have been supportive to reach out with and help add to that so we can get out of “hanging on” mode and get on with climbing upward, I should have that by the end of the week. We’ve been on a slow build. My end has picked up considerably in the last month and will continue to do so. Now it’s just a question of getting it out there so people can see it.

    And as I’m writing this I’m having dozens of notions of things I need to do fly through my head, so let me wrap it up and get back to work!

  • JH AfterParty 1.3

    How about a wall of text with no headings this week?

    Hey everyone and welcome to another JH AfterParty, I am of course your sartorially exquisite and finely honed host John Henry, let’s take a look at what’s up inside my world this week!

    The ongoing high-octane energy period continues. I have to admit this is kind of shaky ground for me, because this definitely isn’t an artifact of my mental illness (which it often is when I’m “up” like this – it’s called “manic depression” for a reason). I’ve been steady and strong for weeks now, and there’s no end in sight. My mind is sharper, my productivity is through the roof, and I’m literally hitting personal, internal goals that I’ve been picking at for twenty years or more.

    The implementation of ProjeQtOr project management software on a subdomain of JHUS is a great example of this. I’ve literally been playing with project management software trying to find something that would work for me and the way I do things AND not cost an arm and a leg or require an MCS for thirty years.

    Like Microsoft Project is pretty perfect – would be a better solution than this in fact – but it costs hundreds of dollars a year to maintain and unlike Adobe Creative Cloud (which also costs hundreds of dollars a year to maintain) it doesn’t produce an easily tangible result for the “customer,” which in my case is you in spite of my long-standing loathing for the idea that I am a “product” or the things I do are “commodities” or “services” to be “consumed.”

    Regardless of my own self-serving philosophizing, in the end people are giving me money because I do certain things, and that amounts to a customer service relationship. This isn’t a new idea to me, it’s just one I’ve always been loathe to speak out loud because it feels like I’m turning myself into a new gadget from Ron Popeil. I don’t like thinking and talking in corporate-speak and MBA terminology. I know the language, in fact I’m pretty fluent in it beyond not keeping up with the lastest stupid buzzwords for someone’s half-assed attempt at actually doing the things some of us have been doing and telling everyone else you should be for centuries.

    Watch the whole progression of the “Six Sigma” thing for an example. It doesn’t really mean anything at all other than “I’ve got a decent enough handle on how to do things that I can pass a little test and get a certificate that will make all the HR drones think I’m smart.” It’s just a big fancy bunch of marketable nonsense that comes down to “maximize production efficiency whenever possible.”

    Cultivate the ability – and make it a habit! – to avoid rushing, to the greatest extent you possibly can. When you’re rushing, you’re not thinking.

    – jh

    Much like “common core math,” in the end it represents an attempt by someone who doesn’t “get it” to communicate “it” to other people who “don’t get it,” while entirely locking out everyone who does “get it” from the conversation because the person who appears to “get it” gets paid so we’re back to the manifest individual tumors of the cancers of competition and capitalism.

    Common core math is an attempt to teach neurotypical people how geniuses math, predicated on the notion that if you do it like a genius, you’ll get genius results. It, and nearly every such endeavor, overlooks the part about you have to be a genius to understand how it works, and most of us aren’t geniuses.

    Six Sigma and pretty much every other trendy corporate buzzword is the same thing; it’s how someone figured out a way to package a good idea so people who are consistently averse to good ideas will accept it. Problem is in order to do that, half the time you have to compromise the idea until it’s no longer good.

    This circles back to my problem with project management and self management and software. I’ve seen it in plenty of other places, too, it’s not just me – you can get so caught up in the metastructure of what you’re doing that you forget to actually do the thing you set out to do.

    For instance about twenty-five years ago when I first started building websites, I started putting together a little section of my Geocities page for gaming…and then ended up in the weeds creating all the structure for the content until I got bored with it and never created the content. Now here I am a quarter-century later finally following through on it.

    I’m not talking about things that just don’t pan out like the Musk For A Minute project – that was a good solid swing and an unfortunate miss and that happens in life, it’s not even a “failure,” just didn’t go where I hoped it would. I’m talking about things where you start off thinking you’re going to arrange your music collection and end up building a database where you can keep notes, track lists, ID3 or other metainfo, and write an article for every single one of your 60K+ MP3s…and then when the database is done you do about twelve entries and find something else that attracts your attention and your energy and suddenly a good idea is abandoned and three years later you go “ohshit, I was gonna….rawr.”

    Meanwhile you’ve forgotten all about actually organizing your music collection.

    That is the kind of bad habit I’m breaking in myself right now, and for some reason it’s important to me to express how it really is the same problem as the compromise problem above (and the other one below). You get so wrapped up in trying to find ways to make the truth palatable to people who are violently opposed to hearing it (or in some extreme cases straight out incapable of processing it), you forget that the job is “tell the truth,” not “make it comfortable,” and pretty soon you’re not telling the truth at all anymore. You get so wrapped up in trying to find ways to make the process more efficient that you forget it has to actually be a working process and at some point you need to engage in it.

    See e.g. the entire “critical race theory” argument, whereby cowardly bigots insist that because the truth of how horrible white people in the US have been to people of color historically is not comfortable to white people, that truth should not be spoken at all.

    All three of those examples of broken thinking are rooted around the same fundamental (and dysfunctional) thought pattern, and you can probably tell by my rambling I’m having a little trouble nailing down precise verbiage for it. I know it’s not just a me thing, because there are those examples above. I just can’t find a common, readily understood phrase to describe it that does the concept proper service. I think the closest I ever came was something I said once that got memed and I’ve long since lost track of: People will happily pay $10 for a sideshow just to prove they didn’t get taken in by the $5 circus.

    Point is I’m in a really amazing place in my life right now, things are happening like crazy and moving ahead in big ways. All that stuff I was “gonna” over the years, I’m finally doing, and it feels really wonderful. (Okay, not all…but a lot more than I ever have at once before.)

    I wouldn’t be here without all of your help, and I wouldn’t be able to contemplate moving forward without knowing you all are here, and I appreciate you far more individually and constantly than you probably think…especially because interpersonal communication and followups like sending “thank you” notes when someone chucks me fifty bucks on PayPal tend to be first and foremost among those things that get lost in the dust when I’ve got other stuff happening.

    That’s part of the whole reason I’m doing this newsletter; to find SOME way to show folks that I’m thinking of you and that I never forget “who I’m working for,” without stepping over a big bright line I have where I think it’s pretty gross to lock information that everybody really needs behind a paywall so only people who can afford it, get it. That’s kind of one of the big problems I’m trying to solve, right – the whole inequity of access to critical needs, systems, and information. I can hardly be a credible agent of change in that regard if I refuse to risk letting go of the tactic myself because I’m afraid I won’t be able to eat or pay rent. Someone’s got to take that risk, and I happen to be pretty well geared to minimize the impact of it in a lot of ways that most people aren’t, so here I am.

    Anyway…I was going to say “I digress” but this entire newsletter is supposed to be a digression of sorts so I won’t. I will say that I’ve got a lot of great new content up at the site, much more coming, some really fantastic things happening in terms of my mental health and overall state of being, and I’m now in my groove and doing what I came here to do.

    And I’m all outta bubblegum 😉

    See y’all next week, please don’t forget those engagements! Some of y’all have been hearing me talk about “when I get to this point, it’s gonna be time to get serious about all of this for folks in the liking and sharing and commenting and subscribing and telling others department” for a decade or more.

    Well, now I’m at this point. It’s time. Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead.

    Talk soon and don’t forget to subscribe to the Substack! (There’s a form in the sidebar if you’re reading this at JohnHenry.US. It’s below the content on vertical screens.) That’s the one way you know for sure you’re aware of everything I publish and create, and that’s the best way to know what you like and prefer to share and engage with 🙂

    OH! I almost forgot I’m doing an irregular-but-daily-ish new thing called “The Morning Me,” you should check that out (I’ll get a node page up for it soon) and also know ahead of time that there’s probably going to be something similar about the rest of the world coming along Real Soon Now™. And yes, rich media is on the horizon.