Tag Archives: drugs

DISAFFECTED

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The word was once, alienated. Now individuals are lonely. Wisecrackers and smart guys figure loneliness is society’s problem. Let’s make money. The United Kingdom has a Minister of Loneliness. They are wrong. The appropriate word is disaffected, and each person is alone.

If an individual is lonely today – media; cable TV; music everywhere; books and libraries; families; social, political and cultural groups catering to all causes, stamps and ilks; telephones; computers; and social platforms, religions, faiths and belief systems to follow or create – than that human being is not trying. 

The basic problem becomes, can any person entertain her or him self?

Lonely persons in ill-health, physically or mentally, or are handicapped are less capable. Some might abuse alcohol or drugs; or they are like Alice, one pill makes them bigger and the other makes them small; not all humans like the lingering haze of THC and what it does to company.

Lonely people might have just left a job or are retired. They know nothing of life but work and fellow employees. Perhaps they have never heard or heard anything except they themselves are right and righteous. Finally some might now fear other human beings, whom they consider enemies: Consider the trash man who has seen the worst of society.

So what is loneliness today? Having 5,000 friends on Facebook and trying to respond to 50 people might take two weeks – hopelessness of reaching everyone and explaining X. Does anyone truly care? How come no one responds? Each friend has 5,000 friends of her own to respond to. People in this predicament are like attendees at a wedding in the scrum to catch the bridal bouquet. An individual gets a quarter of the flowers, along with pedals and other plant composition. What good are the thorns on a rose stem?

Some famous people and well-known individuals, exposed on social media, have announced they are going dark. The end. After 2015 Kelly Evans of CNBC made that announcement. Perhaps the best way to reach Kelly Evans is by letter delivered by the United States Postal Service – stamp (now 55 cents – two quarters and a nickel for new-school devotees), an envelope, a written address, and some form of return address delivered by a mail carrier to a street address. Old-school, they say. Come out and play.

Is the ability to reach three billion people in the world and become known raise the worrisome issue of loneliness? Over exposure to the masses is not a situation most individuals are prepared for, or like. Individuals cherish isolation. Human beings cling to what is familiar and friendly, sensations that comfort and warm. Does anyone ever wonder why any individual remains and lives in Barstow, California? The cultural center is the McDonalds attached to a few railroad cars converted into shops selling sundries and T-shirts and doubling as a bus stop. A gas station is across the main drag, next to the Freeway off/on-ramp. The biggest thing around is the San Andres Fault, 50 miles away.

It seems isolated, but most human beings like what familiarity delivers: Security. What is known become secure. What is routine becomes predictable. What seems certain and simple become truth. Why wonder? Why ask why? Curiosity is something to overcome, put away and reject. The imagination is fiction and dreams, the fake and the fancy of childhood. So at twenty years of age, human beings may have in place the ingredients to stop living.

Like all other animals human beings feel good being on solid ground, accepting set rules and going forward from there, rather than swimming in a swamp, or stepping into quicksand. This great divide separates home versus taking risks.

On its own communication becomes preposterous because the current length and style confine a tweet or text to a 50-word unit. Emails are short. Oft times one has not seen the person for two years or more. Nothing has changed in those years – life is the same, experiences are the same, human beings have not grown, no sense of living and doing, accomplishment, failure, struggle and solutions. Every person is the same, samo-samo. Time stands still as in The Lord of the Flies: Boys on the island for months maintain all physical, mental, spiritual abilities and relationships as when they were together in boarding school, or wherever. The in-group kills Piggy. Life on earth is always static. Put and keep the best face forward despite the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. A person can be in luxury or comfort and live a sheltered, rote, routine existence and wonder why life is not satisfying. Hamlet is no longer amongst us.

Will Rogers reacted to persons recommending a facelift: “I want the world to know why I look this way.” It was similar to Abraham Lincoln’s response to his being two-faced during the 1860 campaign for President: “If I had another face, do you think I would use this one?”

Which age of life do curiosity and imagination leave human beings? Two aspects – one regarding one’s own personal outlook, no self-reflection, and the second, looking at the world including human beings around us. The Second: Each of us has observed friends, acquaintances and souls who are or who have checked out no matter their ages. The ardent sports fan might be unable to tell which teams are on the field, who the players are and the sorts of plays. Those persons may be unable to recount a play or a situation. Indeed, some of those fans aren’t unable to comprehend the game without the noise of the crowd on TV. It is why the Whistle Guy, a New Orleans fan, was so annoying. Alert: Whistle Guy was why pass interference was not called against the Rams. The Rams won the trip to the Super Bowl.

Good Luck, Rams. Boston Red Sox versus LA Dodgers. No Babe Ruth. SOX.

Pats versus the Rams. Brady versus The Brady Bunch. PATS.

I know someone, somewhere wants to punch me in the nose for writing these sentences. They aren’t politically correct. Offend someone: I won’t watch because I don’t want to hear the announcers chat between themselves rather than describe the game to viewers. Plus there are loads of advertisements. No one comments about the commercials. There is humor and honesty when someone can present an alternative, cogent reality or faith. However, they are not present during the Super Bowl.

Next are grandparents in their Sixties and older. Many cannot shut up about their grandchildren, primarily because they have forgotten the lives of their own children or have rid themselves of recollections of their own lives. What happens to a young child may seem new and strange, but truly it is close to what was experienced by previous generations. Any grandparent may not feel alone if memory recalls the similarity between their own lives and what the runts, generic off spring are going and experiencing. 

Many people my age, and many younger and lots older, have forgotten that humor – not comedy – plus a sense of ridiculous boost hope throughout society. Human folly. Everyone with a family knows nothing in life is perfect; indeed, nothing turns out perfect. Laugh or cry. Drollness is a good response to occurrences in life and society. The best any individual can expect is a sense of fairness. Old people know this. Young people must struggle with it; they must fight for perfection – it is the glory of being young, enthusiastic and somewhat ignorant and naive. The triumph of youth is sometimes blessed: James Madison was 37 years old when the Constitution was ratified in 1788. He had worked seven years getting a governing document accepted. Off the bad in human behavior Madison took opportunities to exploit the good.

In society Americans are offended. Don’t judge me. Don’t be judgmental. Americans are wrong. Yet, they are revealing they watch too many law programs: Perry Mason gone wild, now Law and Order. There’s no evidence. I have issues. That’s hearsay. I did nothing wrong. Prove it. I’m innocent. You’re judging me. Other legal words and phrases have crept into the American vernacular and are used to ward off preconceived criticisms or to avoid conversation.

Any friend is not judging. At best he is a juror and mostly works on impressions. Issues are problems sometimes revealing mental illnesses. No one can live life bound by rules of evidence – Just the facts, Madame. All human interaction would be frozen by evidence. Hearsay is inadmissible but is frequently true. Human beings infer, feel, suppose, believe and wonder. Every claim to be innocent – innocent until proven guilty – misstates the legal principle: Not guilty until proven guilty. The legal principle is closer to reality, because everyone is guilty: …He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone…(John 8:7)

If Americans remain defensive about everything, we are a sorry set of human beings, each an over sensitive crybaby. Our society is odd, foreign and idiotic; it is incomprehensible. Is it all right to be discriminating, or judgmental? Food, stores, clothes, personal hygiene. music, movies, sports teams, games, sports teams, music, cars, etc. Americans make choices, express opinions, have likes and dislikes (thumbs up or down, emojis with a smile or a frown), vote with dollars, and favor many things over others which might be beneficial or a waste of time: Global warming, (climate change, or new term} and pollution need a stronger push and better arguments to be accepted by persons other than benevolent enthusiasts. 

What is the difference between making choices and being discriminating and being offensive when doing your own thing or making comments about behaviors and attitudes that offend, are gross or arise from curiosity? Most people do not make the distinctions. They say nothing; they end friendships; they are silent; they become isolated. Ideas offend or an individual’s behavior can be entertaining: Comments say more about the person making them than the recipient. Americans do not always believe adverse words carry benefit or are funny. Is any comment accurate or true? An individual should evaluate. Should an American have to reflect on comments? Yes, we are human beings. Someone on Facebook told me I wasn’t part of the Twenty-First Century because I didn’t smoke marijuana. I’m taking that comment to the bank. Should Americans distrust that which is perceived to be criticism? The immediate reaction is do the macho thing, make fools of defending oneself in all circumstances, and lose: Americans should be celebrate the manifestation of human diversity, opinion and folly, and recognize all that in ourselves. 

An unquestioning mindset over decades separates thousands of individuals from more wondering human beings. There is security in isolation – I’m right; no one else tells me otherwise. That person may as well be living in Barstow, California. What anyone says reveals deficiencies: Spout cliches and dated ideas, like the person has lived on that island with boys and none had changed. What does any human being think now, about existence, life or the news, rather than events 40 years ago? Who to talk to? How to entertain oneself? Cable TV, Doctor Phil. Change the channel to Judge Judy. Think TV was once better? Indeed, did Edward R. Murrow ever ask anyone he interviewed: “How did you feel?” Eventually most human beings want society after fifty years of confined, narrow thinking. How to break out? Human beings lose the ability to socialize. It is why principle topics that emotionally come to people – religion and politics – are forbidden subjects in many retirement homes.

It is all education of a lifetime, not lessons of don’t judge, don’t question. Show no curiosity. Misunderstandings reveal weakness. Show ignorance, never! Listen to the exotic and believe it automatically. However being stupid and curious is fun, inspiring and harmless:  A supernova produces energy, radiation and light. I’ve never heard anyone ask an expert whether any sound or noise is emitted from a supernova which humans have detected, or whether it exists at all. [If a tree falls in the forest and no person is there, is there noise?] It seems absurd that noise would come from an exploding supernova a billion light years away! Perhaps it is the sound and sight of deity.

Finally, laugh. Laugh at yourself/ Follow Herman Melville’s advice in Moby Dick, Chapter 5:

A good laugh is a mighty good thing, and rather too scare a good thing: the more’s the pity. So, if any one man, in his own proper person, afford stuff for a good joke to anybody, let him not be backward, but let him cheerfully allow himself to spend and be spent on that way. And the man that has anything bountifully laughable about him, be sure there is more in that man than you perhaps think for.  

And there is nothing more pleasing and refreshing than a human being who is honest, frank and well-balanced, willing to admit what was once stupid, miscalculated and a jump into the abyss. That human being has learned, knows honesty, become conscious of the world and fellow beings, and is comfortable giving lessons, relaying experiences and telling stories. What all human life is, nothing is perfect: Mistakes, regrets and blunders speckle our lives. There is humor, irony, joy or love in all that.

 

 

SICARIO

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Emily Blunt is an FBI Agent who volunteers to join a task force to take down drug kingpins along the Mexican/United States border. Emily is initially portrayed as a seasoned agent, but the movie makes her a fun-loving, innocent, naive, stupid twit who is also vulnerable. If the task force does not do things following FBI protocols and methods, she is glum, disillusioned and uncooperative. This characterization makes Emily a mannequin for American purity and goodness. Benecio Del Toro informs her at the movie’s end (something the audience already knows): This is a country of wolves. You need to leave and go to a small town somewhere, not along the border.

Other than Emily’s weak character (which is played as written), Sicario is an excellent, violent, gritty film of the border law enforcement arising from drugs, crime and smuggling. Bencio Del Toro and Josh Brolin (balls to the wind) play the leads in the task force. If the scenes filmed have happened or may happen one day, Sicario is a deeply disturbing movie. [It was written and filmed during the Obama Administration; nothing Trump did helped produce or promote this movie.] Most Americans are not ready to face the reality – there will be actions and occurrences that must be overlooked.

Emily Blunt’s character should have been written differently. Allow her to learn from the experiences that character has in the movie. She does not like what the task force is doing; she makes mistakes. At the end she must have some fight (dignity, integrity and honesty) in her. In the confrontation Bencio Del Toro begins. She says, “I didn’t do very well.” He tells her she is too innocent and naive and he uses a line (carelessly disclosed earlier in the script) “You are too much like my daughter.” Emily already knows his daughter was killed by drug overlords. Del Toro gives his country of wolves comments. She is defiant. He says, “If you want to tell your FBI superiors about everything and about all your mistakes, it is up to you.” He leaves. Emily stews; she has decisions to make about the reality she has experienced and the reality Americans believe is true. In essence Emily can represent all Americans going forward.

CRIME 2

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On April 23, 2017 I gave a rundown of criminal situations that arise frequently on crime shows. I gave 15 much scenarios, and I’m adding another 15. I cannot say I’ve covered the whole range of basic facts leading to crime. I may write more, but the 20 categories I’ve identified can help anyone to analyze any scene. Here comes Crime 2:

l.   No adult or adolescent female should ever attempt to mother a man who is a boyfriend. There is no reforming the male. That relationship will end badly – violently with psychological issues rearing and separating the couple, and an ugly aftermath.

2. There is a different between support, care and attention and mothering. A mother has
to accept all great aberrant behaviors. But a woman in a relationship does not to go
beyond care, nursing a scrapped knee; she should support criminal acts but she should to ready the man for the consequences of his actions, striving to improve his state of mind if the idiot is capable. She should never tell everyone her man is right and righteous.

3. DO NOT EVER believe having plastic surgery will rekindle a marriage/love affair.
Marital problems usually go to he bone – far beyond skin deep.

4. Marriage, living with another, is real. DO NOT EVER believe a spouse who commits fraud or steals from other is a mate. Theft is theft, whether it be money, time, attention or caring.

5. Missing persons: When a child, adult or relative are missing – not were anyone expected them to be and not found anywhere else – call the cops. When anyone waits for the cops to call them to report, your missing person is dead.

6, Women of all ages, but primarily adolescents and a bit older, should never feel sorry for a guy who tells a sad tale otherwise instantly recognized as a sob story. His life is one
of hard knocks. The guy wants you to cry; he wants you to take care of him; he wants your body. He wants your attention. He wants your money. He says he does but he does not care about you.

Corollary: A sob story is not a good basis on which to establish a long term
relationship.

7. Boys and girls who insist on confronting someone who has wronged them, and they don’t want to go to the cops, frequently their end up murdered or hurt. When a crime is committed, the perpetrators frequently are emotionally dangerous human beings and easily act wantonly a second time.

8, If perpetrators of crimes have a successful run, treat it like a job. Save the money. Have an exit strategy. Train replacements. Leave town. Remain silent. Live a quiet life somewhere afar. Spend time reading books taken from the public library. Try not to see the old gang again.

9. A single adult with a child must realize: Grow up, be mature. The child or any adult the
needs attention and care. The child is offspring; you are not a child. Rules of being single no longer apply. The single person is first an adult. The most important person in life is the child – not the single socialite, and not the pretty person who is offering attention to the single parent. There are no good reasons for ignoring a neglected child.

10. Human thought puts too much emphasis on experience, and not enough on the imagination: identifying an activity, playing through the actions, consider the consequences. The thinking is much better than the reality: Do a stupid, wanton, wasteful act will forever change lives including your own, and your life will be gone.

11. Being a parent means you must also carry the responsibilities of being an adult. But being an adult, does not mean one is capable of being an parent.

12. A teenager of a small town who is going to college, in a larger town should reflect. Where you are going is much more exciting than anything in the hometown. It is not time to paint the hometown red. Too much can happen which usually does, involving crime, injury and death. Instead, rest and read so you can paint the college town red.

13. In America today are large subcultures, devoid of or producing their own morals and
ethics and inflected with with addictions. Citizens live on the edge or off the grid
because they are incapable of joining society in any way.

14. What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas. Right? There are towns and neighborhoods,
elsewhere, where the Vegas rule also pays out. One such place is the Haight-Ashbury in
San Francisco. There are also yoga communities along the coast of Southern California;
and there’s the spiritual community of Sedona Arizona.

15. Marriage. If you are on drugs, or your marital partner is on drugs, do not marry. If you are on drugs, and the potential spouse is not, neither person knows the other. If both persons are on drugs, neither person has a chance to know the other.
When writing about marriage, any author should mention drug usage when writing a story – crime, romance, family.

HISTORY AND FICTION

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bitch. cover

When I went to write Bitch. (iBookstore, michael ulin edwards), I was determined to make it autobiographical. I learned after three major drafts and a long process of 20 years, that autobiography was impossible. It would make a bad book. Some of the reasons can be found in Twentieth Century Journey, William L Shirer, vol. i, Preface; Autobiography of Mark Twain, U.C. Press, Berkeley, 2011, vol. 1, on writing memoirs/autobiography.

I was motivated to write the life and times of Berkeley, 1968-1973. While there I had forces coming at me. I determined they would best be represented by FIVE major characters, plus subsidiary characters folded into the stories of the FIVE. At that point the book could not be autobiographical; it could not be biographical. It could be history. Recount events as truthfully and accurately as I could, but the characters had to be representations. [Readers have commented that they know these characters.]

As much as I ran from place to place in Berkeley, observing and stuffing everything into my memory (which is not entirely why I almost flunked out my first year – I was also taking the wrong classes and my perspective on learning was horribly distorted), I could not tell the story of Berkeley with one character being everywhere at once: Peoples Park Riot Day, May 15, 1969 – in class on the north side of campus; in the riot itself; at the swimming pools in Strawberry Canyon; wandering around Dwinelle Hall. The FIVE characters and others were useful to convey what had to be said.

It is also impossible for a individual to tell his story when hormones, urges, the environment, economics are exerting influences affecting the person. What is the order? What is the priority? What is important? Those day to day, sometimes hour to hour or minute to minute considerations which may or do change affected human being senses – hear, see, smell, feel, taste – will shift the ground and upend any story.

If the reaction to life under those circumstances is the same, that makes for a dull human being. If the reaction to life under those circumstances whipsaws the human being into incapacity, he becomes confused and worthless. If the reaction causes the human being to take the brunt of it and react intelligently, predictably or making-do, that is the easier story to tell.

IMG

In 200,000 words I came up with the FIVE characters, two guys and three women, living and telling their lives (some aspects of my life) in Berkeley from September 1968 through the summer of 1973. They lived through riots, demonstrations, classes, drugs, life, city and academic events and state and national actions, all told within this novel. [There are 450 notes and a bibliography.]

Also, I could not tell my own story for a personal reason. Who could be truthful about being psychological creepy and sociology awkward then, (probably eccentric today) in a terrifying place. That doesn’t describe the discomfort, the violence and the shock of watching crap on the streets being played out and the acceptance of it by everyone in Berkeley. About 20 years ago I talked to someone I knew as a student. He tried to fit in and spoke the language as a student. His evaluation of those times upon meeting him again was reduced to one word: “Strange.” He didn’t want to talk about what he thought or was doing as a student, which was likely “creepy” and “weird.”

It seemed I was the only person who considered everything going on was strange, weird and ill for society. I may have been suited for a college campus in the 1920s, but I was stuck at Berkeley. I did not want to be a statistic and a loser: Someone told me when I entered that the average stay of a student at Berkeley was four quarters. (The University is much more mellow today which is why it is not a place of excellence.)

While a student at Berkeley, I didn’t like and actually detested loud music, drugs, and the recklessness of students, their lives a step from the street. Everything seemed reenforced by the citizens of Berkeley. Condemning this gross, communal lifestyle is a theme of Bitch.. Indeed, I dislike any communal styles, community standards, something my generation embraced and never let go of, and something which has been passed onto to their children and grandchildren: The collective.

We are not raising children today to be individuals, to think on their own. They are accepting, too much of collective action, group-think, the so-called common good. They have been taught, It Takes a Village – Collective actions are the bases of all advancement. Those are  wet dreams rolling from the Left of the Sixties and from Radical Feminism. (See Shulamith Firestone, The Dialectic of Sex.)

Finally, I did not want to be like any of the FIVE. I put a lot of distance between myself and Berkeley. Not in the novel is: at the end of my Berkeley studies, I wanted to be a composer, but I had injured my left hand and couldn’t play the piano. I was lost to the activities I was prepared for. Law school intervened, but within ten years I had turned to writing.

This post is the second using the cover and the diagram (outline) that I have made. The subject is different because the text differs.