Ripe, ripped from the headlines

As I was running around Friday from "Health and Family" to "Federal Court" to FedexKinkos to the dank pits I work in, supposedly called "office" (whatever the hell that means), I kept seeing the cover o' the Wisco State Journal in those little newspaper dispenser boxes. (I want that job! Standing in one place for years, taking change and giving out crosswords and horrorscopes.)

Headline went something like, "LOOKIE HERE! DUDE SHOT PEOPLE, GA-HILK!!! NOW READ THE 911 TRANSCRIPTS, HERE, FIRST!!!!!!!!!!!" (assuming you know how to read)

I don't want this to come across as another post where I almost spill my dirty secret that I don't think death is as big a deal as we all are supposed to act/believe/feel whatever. I don't like to explain that to people. It's taken years of hard work to build up these kinds of callouses. Alright.

Okay, so a guy shot his ex and some kids at a party... and he killed them and they were all pretty much kids, and it's a small town, it's terribly tragic (and I do emphasize that it is tragic) in the sense that it was needless and pointless and irrational to a fault. But what bothered me was the way in which the headline and the front page "picture" seemed like a gratuitous attempt to get me to buy the paper because it had excerpts of the emergency phone calls in a larger type... "he's shooting to kill, he shot at my head, etc." (Not the actual quotes.)

What I'm getting at is this. (Attention: point. (none?)more like question posed, accusations thrown, fingers pointed, self critically analyzed/scrutinized(check the half-baked ideas section of the index.))

At what point does my standing, gawking a-gape, rubbernecking become not so much a social concern for the community I live in and instead turn into just another passing story like so much of an lazy afterknoon serial?

This is a dark well to tread water in... Or as if it's a two week shoot of baboons during the drought season and they're desperate enough to drink water from the river that's full of large predatory reptiles. When one of 'em gets snapped, the rest sit and chatter and squawk, in groups of convenient comfort.

Or maybe I'm just repulsed by my own morbid curiosity of the details...

Rather that, Here's something more enjoyable to read, lovingly crafted by Joey Vochich

* * * * * * * * *

10/11/07...
lookingforward to it...
to what?...

(to the chaos and structure of tomorrow...)

ummmmmm.....

we will make eye contact with humans...and then hide...
(hide and move on...)

and i see
and you
and me
and us...
the same humans...but only sometimes.

us?

(U.S.A....U.S.A....U.S.A.!!!!!!!!!!!)

You see dear friend, i grew up during the Cold War.
With trick el down economy and darkness...
and thank god (god damn it!)
(for the sheen of pop).

with BOOM boxes and breakin 2 electric boogaloo...

yes, here we are...at the cusp of another christmas and another city winter

of patterns and local news and
disgusting!
just give me the weather forcast god damn it!!!
...and the score of the game...

the big game...

("the future cannot and will not be predicted...")

this is all i know...
this is all i want to know...

let go let go let go...

LETS GO!!!!!

(these words are not just for me...they are for you as well)

HEAVY DUDE...HEAVY!!

(and the clerk at the coffee house had the kind of eye contact that slows you down and forces you to
acknowledge the existence of suffering)...heavy....
"ummm...i'll take a large coffee."
"for here or to go?"
"ummm....to go."
"room for cream?"
"ummmm..."

"what does eric clapton and coffee have in common?"
"they both suck without cream."

"i like my coffee the way i like my men...strong and black."

(that's not funny.)

through discipline and dedication to what's for the best...

i lie to myself at least ten times a day...20+ on the weekends...
especially when i'm....

yeah yeah yeah...
god damn it...fuck...fuck it!
the clouds are rolling in....

shivering in the am, now that the earth is tilting
the other way

BlueBlockers ready...with made in china and american belly/baby fat

phlegm release almost complete...
for another this and another that

another yes and no and maybe...asapasapasapasap...

(whispering now...voice cracking...u.s.a...u.s.a...)

with moments of losing and winning and not caring...
this is it...

another 15minutes of you and me and whatever...

Thank you for reading.

If you just sneezed, well then god bless you child.

If you just yawned, you should go to sleep or drink some water.

Love,

Joe

* * * * * * * * *

Will do. Think I need both. Can't sleep. Two days now.

Storm brewing in the back of my skull, right behind the pounding headache that started towards the end of rehearsal today. First time back as the full band since August. Too Long. But we worked on our rendition of Bjork's Bachelorette
to the point of having a sense that we can at some point pull it off live, in front of people.

It's a great song. Off a great album. I consider it the perfect soundtrack to a solo day on Lone Peak with a Burton Frontier 170.

Alright. Kristin, you complained that my posts weren't as involved as they used to be. Here's a masterwork of cutting, pasting, and "researching" in the wee hour o' tha' morn'. Madden's calling and there's much studio work to do tomorrow (don't worry, it's all bass tracks. I can sleep through most of it, then veto it on final listen through and make "Thirteen" do it again.)

(and I keep trying to put apostrophes where they don't belong. Time to stop typing.)

Heel Draggin'

In an unprecidented move, I've taken a long 37 months to get rid of Ol' Green, my beloved '93 Dodge Dakota. I still own it, but I am picking up my new "ride" tomorrow. A seven year upgrage to a pollution machine that will only aid in creating more ecological misfortune.

Ol Green has decided to be a disgruntled little child and break down not three days before I get his replacement. Seems as though the alternator has been the target this time and the check engine light turned on (diagnotics yet to be run on that... seems to be running alright though, but that's never a good indicator.)

I finally got the financing lined up today and the title is ready for the exchange tomorrow. Hurray. No more 15 mpg. Just another car payment and the usual routine of living.

But I would rather be getting something like this.

A co-worker of mine has already put his name on the waiting list. But he's semi-retired and has the money to do that. Maybe in ten years, I'll be able to afford something like that... yeah right. Not with a worthless liberal arts degree and jobs that don't offer cost of living raises.

I did have a discussion with him about or continued reliance on lnag distance transportation. This is an idea that I started kicking around back in college. The notion that we as greedy, self-serving americans (or humans, perhaps) feel it's our RIGHT!!! to be able to live thirty, fourty, fifty miles away from a major population center yet still be able to go there when we feel like it, not just out of necessity for supplies.

Park county Montana has two main population centers. Gardner and Livingston. There is roughly fifty miles between the two town. And yet that drive will take you past large house after large house (some of them former ranches split up into subdivisions.) If you were to take all of that land and turn it into something more useful than a personal playground for rich folks and force those rich folks to live within a certain radius of the several population centers, you would make a lot of people unhappy that their personal freedom to consume, use, and hoard land would be gone, but you could do some things to affect environmental (and possibly economic) for the communities.

It is by no means a completely thought out idea. I just have some fanciful visions at this point and I don't see myself ever really making it into something to argue about, but it's there. Concentrate populations to aid in economy (not to be confused with "the economy"), force people to live near the supermarkets, barber shops, and watering holes. Keep the land in a more natural state, blah blah blah... enviromental ideaology. Truth is, people don't care. Don't give a damn. They're concerned about themselves. What they want, and how they can get it. Plain and simple.

People suck.