A Rose By Any Other Name Is Oh Baby, Baby!

I really have fun with my art. Whether I'm painting "realistically" or in a more bizarre way, or cartooning, or even writing, I am probably having fun. I think the idea of the suffering artist is kind of sickening. Art should relieve suffering not cause it. I have written poetry in moments of despair or grief, but I found this poetry to be healing. Even when it was angry it was a healing form of anger. I'm not talking about the wallowing around in anger typical of popular music. I think that stuff is just like the wallowing that happens on TV crime shows.

I do like art which is socially conscious, but I don't care for propaganda. Sometimes this is a fine line but I think it is discernible. The propagandist is using art to push an agenda. The artist is expressing himself. I like to think of God as an artist. People are always trying to figure out how the world we see can be the way it appears to be (messed up) if there really is a loving God. Any artist knows you cannot have light without dark. Actually I have tried to paint pictures that were completely lit up! They are so pastel they wind up just looking washed out. Who would want to read a story without any drama or suspense?

Lets face it without any ups and downs life wouldn't be very lively. Don't get me wrong I'm not trying to paint a smiley face on depression. Actually I'm totally against any kind of feel good psycho-pablum. I just know life is never going to be all flowers and orgasms and that is what makes flowers and orgasms so much fun. Okay maybe flowers aren't fun.

Russell

Why Jesus Never Gets Invited To Parties

What is it I am supposed to be doing? I'm a pretty busy person. I grew up with the good old protestant work ethic. You know that sense that sense that no matter what you're doing you ought to be doing something else. Or if not something else I should be doing what I'm doing either faster or better, maybe faster and better! Behind all this self inflicted misery is the idea that I should have to earn the right to enjoy life.

I do connect this attitude to a certain kind of spiritual or religious outlook. It is the point of view from which comes the idea we should all be glad to do God's will but should not actually expect it to be fun. I come from a system which puts forth the view that God's will is, that I be happy joyous and free! Now that sounds like fun, right? So why does the idea of God's will sound like such a drag?

I think it's because God gets a bad rap due to the crowd that He is associated with. Lets face it a lot of righteous people are not much fun at all! I used to get a kick out of giving them a hard time. Okay that's a lie! I still get a kick out of it. I remember one particularly sanctimonious guy who used to warn me about falling into the Devil's company. I told him that the Devil and I were best friends, that I called him "Dev" for short. He actually freaked out over stuff like that.

Nowadays I think God is probably a lot more fun than we can believe. You know it's true! If God is infinite (if not He's not God) then he is doing some really weird bizarre stuff! He has got to have a real wild sense of humor. I like those statues of the fat laughing Buddha, now that guy is in touch with God's will. God wants you to laugh your pants off!

Beware Of The Pod People!

I am not sure how many remakes there are of "Invasion Of The Body Snatchers." The original black and white version is the best. The idea of being replaced by some unfeeling automaton is truly creepy. Creepier still is the idea that the people you love could suddenly turn into unfeeling automatons! Yet this happens to everyone sooner or later. Have you ever had a friend that suddenly seemed to become a stranger? Wasn't that pretty much the theme of junior high and high school? Too bad it doesn't stop along with adolescence, say at age 35, 40 or 60. It really hurts when someone you love turns into a pod person.

In the movie pod people would stash a big seed pod looking thing somewhere nearby and while you slept the pod would pop out a duplicate of you. The duplicate would replace you. Before it happened to you, you would experience your family and friends suddenly turning into cold unfeeling strangers. They would superficially mimic their former selves but they had no soul.

I haven't noticed any big seed pod looking things but I have experienced plenty of pod people. I don't think it takes an actual pod to replace a person with an unfeeling automaton. Well maybe an Ipod, or some other gadget or other. It's not the gadget that does it either. You could probably have all kinds of gizmos and stay human. But there is something about the emphasis we place on stuff that has something to do with becoming a pod. Also I have noticed we seem to be spending more and more time talking to and texting each other but I have hunch the more we communicate the less we say. That has something to do with it too.

Still, things and small talk are not the problem. Maybe we start seeing each other as a means to an end, or as instruments. If I don't see you as human does that mean I become less human? That sounds right to me. But what about the pod people? If I keep seeing more and more pod people does that mean I am turning into one? Shit! I hope not! Because they're here! They're here! The invasion has started!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WFnSxeDfENk

Russell

What Time Is It?

Supposedly our national pastime is Baseball. I don't think so. Our real national pastime is building grudges! There are even professional grudge builders. They make a living through ranting and raving on either TV or radio. It's amazing because it's true! They are not necessarily from one end of the political spectrum, although right wingers like Limbaugh and Beck seem to get the most attention. Have you ever watched a so-called discussion on any of those TV News shows? Nobody listens they just shout each other down, interrupt and be sarcastic. I sort of like sarcastic I must confess.

It's not just political stuff that we love to get exorcised about. Remember that case in Florida, the woman accused of murdering her child? The furor over that reminded me of the pitchforks and torches scene from Frankenstein! There is nothing so invigorating as some good old fashioned righteous indignation! Being right is just so exciting, especially when you can focus your rightful pissed-off-ness on some poor slob who could use a good smiting!

It has been a while since we burned anyone at the stake, and that's good. Of course we are oftily fond of lethally injecting people here in Texas. Living on the island, I kind of like the bumper sticker which reads, "Galveston Island, Near Texas." Being near the beach may ameliorate grudge building to some extent. The ocean seems to calm people down.

Most movies and TV shows are about how somebody gets mistreated over and over until they finally build enough of a grudge that they go berserk and shoot the place up! Once they've done that everything is okay again (it's the hero, often a cop ala Dirty Harry, who goes berserk). Well in some martial arts movies they don't use guns, they just rip people apart with their bare hands (they are nonviolent gurus after all).

Shoot Baseball is way too passive to be our national pastime! We like Football because of the physical contact, hell it's more like physical assault! Believe it or don't but, Basketball was initially intended to be a non contact sport. Nowadays nobody would watch non contact Basketball.

None of this would even matter if it did not negatively impact our individual and societal growth. Grudge builders are not healthy happy people. Grudging societies do not create great works. Here we are in the 21st century and nobody has a flying car. We are not all brilliant and cultured. Why not? Maybe we have been spending way too much energy building grudges and shooting stuff up.

Just imagine watching some yelling match like the McLaughlin group and all of sudden they are listening to each other and saying stuff like "hmm you have a point there Monica." Of course Monica would have to settle down too. I do believe in miracles, but this one might take a while!

Russell

Zen And The Art Of Being Amazed

I really like the philosophy of Zen. At least I think I do. Which might be the same thing. I used to read alot of Alan Watts. Watts was one of those guys who popularized Eastern Philosophy. He also advocated the judicious use of LSD and Marijuana (for spiritual enhancement). I still like Alan Watts, hell I still like the Grateful Dead, despite my misgivings about their advocacy of drug use. I really don't care if people use or don't use drugs. I don't use them anymore but I don't regret having used them in the past.

I tried a Zen meditation class once and it was just awful! I got absolutely nothing out of it. It was me and three overweight women in warm up suits walking in a circle chanting nonsense syllables that meant something in a language none of understood. If I had had the guts I would have stopped and screamed, "What the #%@&!! are we doing?! Are you all crazy?!" but I didn't. I went along with the whole thing while thinking how ridiculous the whole thing was.

Why do spiritual pursuits lead to so much goofiness? Why do people figure they are going to find enlightenment by taking drugs or by walking around in circles chanting nonsense? We must feel  like being enlightened involves some sort of special effects or some kind of magic spell. 

There is a Zen story about two apprentices bragging to each other about their teachers. One of them says his Master can sit on one side of a river and move his finger through the air and a paint brush on the other side will paint a picture on a tablet. The other apprentice says his Master is even more amazing than that explaining that his Master eats when he is hungry and drinks when he is thirsty!

The truth of course is that we are surrounded by miracles all the time. Occasionally something happens that wakes us up to this fact. Most of the time we ignore all the miracles that are happening all the time. Here we are a collection of simultaneous processes which we call a human being, walking around on a wet rock orbiting a thermonuclear furnace on the edge of a galaxy and we think life is dull a lot of the time.

Russell

Don't Worry Be Happy!

I love to ride my bike. Right now it's too hot to ride until the sun goes down. Riding at night is okay but I miss all the stuff you can see during the day. Riding a bike is really the best way to see stuff. Walking is way too slow so you are limited by how far you can go in a reasonable amount of time. Going by car you miss just about everything. A bike is the perfect way to get around, especially on an island like where I live.

I wonder how I ever managed to stand summer before I lived by the beach. The beach is great! People talk to each other at the beach. Well adolescents don't talk but they are all crazy anyway. I think that shortly after puberty people start producing an invisible, odorless and tasteless gas that produces a psychotic state in anyone who inhales it. This would not only include adolescents but also their parents while they are within the "whiffing zone" which surrounds the youngster. Some kids have a giant whiff zone surrounding them! They can create a lot of craziness. The effects eventually wear off. Pubescent psycho gas is a growing problem. It seems that puberty is occurring earlier in the life cycle and adolescence is sometimes a greatly protracted stage. This helps explain all kinds of bizarre phenomena from things like "Toddlers In Tiaras" to Hugh Hefner.

I think we older adolescents should be called "Silver Back Adolescents." This name reminds me of silver back mountain gorillas. Those gorillas are like the kings of their domains. It is time to pay the same kind of respect to we people who have stretched the envelope on adolescence! But I digress (no shit!) the beach is the place to be in the summer. I always keep two low-rider beach chairs and a beach umbrella in the trunk of my Korean Mercedes (Kia Rio). I keep a beach bag packed and ready to go. Sometimes I just walk across the street and go to the beach there. Other times I drive to a far end of the island, walk several hundred yards and hang out on a less crowded more serene beach.

My bike has a basket and I can throw a beach towel in it and ride my bike in my board shorts and stop anywhere I want as I go exploring. No wonder the place gets perfectly lousy with tourists in the summer. Touristas are the only thing wrong with living in paradise but what are you going to do? I know the shortcuts if I have to drive in order to get somewhere. Otherwise hey "don't worry be happy," that is God's will for us afterall

The Meaning Of Life

I used to have a pretty bad addiction to cars. Cars can be just like a drug. No matter how many you have it's never enough! I never had enough money to get an auto stash of Jay Leno proportions, but I have owned way too many cars for me to maintain. The most I owned at any one time was five cars, none of which Jay would have given a sideways glance. I have collected other stuff too, magazines for instance. The urge to collect stuff seems to come from some misguided search for meaning. In a weird way it is almost creative. It's like making your own bizarre universe of objects that you have provided with meaning or even soul. Okay that's going too far maybe, but the attachment to this stuff only makes sense if the stuff means something.

I think we define ourselves by the stuff we get attached to. So if I had a bunch of junk cars at one time... hmm I'm not sure I like that definition of me! Thank God I only have one car now. But these old magazines, what will some future archaeologist think when he or she finds me buried under those? I need to get rid of this stuff. I don't have any car magazines anymore, but I have a bunch of ancient Life magazines and almost every issue of Oceans magazine (missing the first!). I am not ashamed of these but why do I still have them? I was saving them for some reason which I can no longer recall.

Maybe I should define myself by what I can do without instead of useless stuff I have gathered. I think that could be really liberating. I am going to get rid of these priceless treasures... but they need to go to someone who will really value them. Someone just like me! Of course there is only one person like that. Uh Oh!

Russell