Go D.I.Y. Yourself.

Carl Sagan chilled my marrow when he observed that humanity is increasingly dependent on technology it doesn't understand. He didn't need to add that this is a "recipe for disaster." I felt that. He meant for Society at large. But that was because he didn't know me personally.

With apologies to Mr. Sagan, my friends and I cling somewhat desperately to a certain "Do It Yourself" ethic. To which end I own and maintain my own sewing machine, installed my own kitchen appliances (dishwasher, garbage disposal, sink and faucet, etc.). I purchased a kit (NOT the patented Phlobe!) and cut my own hair. I make every attempt to understand and maintain my own property and the technology thereupon. Sometimes with disastrous results.

Which brings us to my vehicles.
For years I have done what I can to maintain them myself. I could change/replace brake pads, air filters, batteries and oil--even plugs, ignition wires and distributor cap for a standard tune up. I know where to put the chemicals to charge the air conditioning. That said, (though the day I successfully replaced the electronic trunk release mechanism in the Jetta despite the pleading from the dealer to "bring it in" remains one of my proudest moments) it's all rather simplistic: If anything serious happens I run straight to the Last Honest Mechanic, a great man, and friend to our family, who knows darn well I have essentially no idea what I'm doing. [editor's note: my diesel Jetta from Volkswagen gets 50 miles per gallon on the highway, and is fueled with biodiesel. Take that, poseur environmentalists in your petroleum powered, acid battery packed hybrids!]

When the brakes wore out on the above-mentioned Jetta, I jacked it up, removed the back tires and, with the help of a D.I.Y. friend, got to work replacing the pads. I'll not bore the reader with the minutia, but suffice it to say that a special, $100 dollar tool is required to perform an important step in the process. A step that was formerly accomplished with a $5 C-clamp. We efforted with all due force, and ended by giving up the ship with bitterness and bile. Defeated, I ground metal on metal all the way to a nearby brake swindler, and, swallowing my pride, cursing the engineers who complicated the process, dispersed the commensurate compensation.

Strangely, that experience was far from my mind when the engine of my little 6 cylinder Ford truck began misfiring. The last honest mechanic said it needed a "tune up." I responded by assuring him that I, having replaced plugs and wires and filters and fluid on several vehicles, possessed the requisite skillz. I purchased the parts on the way home, got out the tools upon arrival, and to work on what used to be routine maintenance. Turns out, no human hand and no Do-It-Yourselfer's tool can penetrate the compact, tightly engineered inner workings of the modern pick-up. Goading myself on with an inner scourge of bitter curses and desperate prayer, I was barely able to complete half the job. After admitting defeat, with fists (and various orifices) clenched, I sheepishly delivered the truck to the Last Honest Mechanic. He assured me he would finish the job, and offered to change the fuel filter, which is "damn difficult" even with the expensive, specialized tool.

As I waited for my wife to pick me up, I knew the real tool would soon be in the passenger seat of the Jetta whose brakes had been installed by a paid professional.

Even if you don't accept these experiences as emblematic of a larger picture and problem, you are bound to admit the chips are sacked against us. Technology is being taken out of the hands of the common people. We cannot be expected to keep up with it.

In short, TECHNOLOGY WINS!

You can interpret that as you wish.

Humiliations Galore

Humility is the first, and until accomplished, only goal of an enlightened mind. It must be achieved at any cost.

Here then is a brief (yet somehow exhaustive) list of the sundry circumstances and situations that have brought me to tears in the last month.

The Foundation for a Better Life. Whoever they are, they're out to get me. They are making these (honestly wonderful) feel good public service announcements that get played after hours--(i.e. the only time I watch TV--i.e. when I get paid to watch--i.e. whilst working the graveyard shift at the Children's Emergency Shelter.) Any one of them could be considered emblematic of all the others: some jerk knocks a nerd's books and papers down to the floor and a kind hearted jock sticks his neck out an helps the outcast; a pinata is burst and all the kids but one walk away with handfuls of candy whilst a single sensitive girl turns, notices the poor kid and independently decides to share her share; a rough hewn hockey player sings Itsy Bitsy Spider to his sweet little daughter. Just simple messages about sharing and kindness. And for whatever reason, every once in a while, I find my eyes going cloudy when I watch them. Am I soft brained or soft hearted? I don't care. And I don't care what secret right wing mega church is funding the "foundation." These commercials are top shelf. And they get you either way. Tears for the better world they fictionalize, or tears for the reminder that the world really is good, and full of nobly good people who help each other.

My Son broke up with his girlfriend! She is an honestly wonderful girl that any guy in the world would be lucky to be associated with in any way. We were in no way unhappy with his association with her. Even so, one day he broke up with her, and by way of explanation, he simply stated: "I see my friends with no girlfriends, and they are all good at various things, and have seriously developed talents. Then I look at my friends with serious girlfriends, and they are good at working at restaurants and crashing their cars." He understands that at some point, when it no longer constitutes an absolute waste of his time and resources, a girlfriend will be a rather worthwhile concern. For now, he is just going to "date a variety of girls and hang out and not deal with the stresses of being attached to one single person." Who wouldn't shed a little tear of joy at a young person displaying wisdom beyond his years? Maybe you have to be the parent of the young person in question. Or maybe at his age I was ridiculously consumed with the very concerns he is eschewing, and am overjoyed to see him being spared the misery that I went out and grabbed with both hands and stuck in my mouth.

Jeffry R. Holland. Suffice it to say he is an apostle. He spoke in a recent conference about a book I have loved for a long time. He spoke with a force of clarity and a dedication and a love that brought a tear to my eye.

My Friends. They all made plans to come up and help me finish painting my house. The plan fell through on both ends; so I was either inspired at the good intentions of wonderful people or miserable for the failure. Either way, thanks guys.

Movies. I don't know, you name it. Samwise carries Frodo on his back up the slopes of mount doom. Todd and Copper realize a fox and a hound cannot be friends. Wil Smith pursues Happyness. The Apple Dumpling Gang rides again. These days, I can't watch any representation of human kindness or achievement against difficult odds without having to blow my nose. I was even misty when the lifetime underachiever from Seattle became the King of Kong (which, if you haven't seen, you have no claim on humanity!)

Some might say that I am getting old. Or that the side effect of occasionally wearing pants ostensibly made for women, (other than the supreme hotness) is a certain softening of the sensitivities--which is not necessarily a good thing. Others might claim that my life of suffering and struggle and dying dreams has left me a little raw, that my heart is a fresh and open wound that essentially over reacts to the stimulus that normal humans can brush away like so much daily dust. Whatever the reason, I know for a fact that tears cleanse the windows to the soul, and leaves the view tinted with humility.

And I'm proud of that.

Little Armageddon on the Prairie.

Officially, freedom in representative government ended when the Federal Reserve was formed by unconstitutional executive fiat early in the last century. But let us put aside that depressing little fact (and the attendant story, which is too long to tell here) and break down the death of democracy the only way a modern mind can conceive: Let us make a list.

Having watched for the signs, I believe I can with confidence elucidate the
4 horsemen of Democracy's Apocalypse.

1) THE CHILD. When educated, stable, caring, responsible people are having 1.5 kids per household, and abusive, classless, ignorant, drug addled, publicly dependent households are DOUBLING that (by the most conservative estimates), there is simply no hope. When those who depend on the government are simply outbreeding those who contribute to it, Doom is automatic. There is no politically correct polish you can put on this. And no label you slap on the prophet pointing it out will alter the outcome. Every individual has an inherent nobility and an infinite potential blah blah blah. When this imbalance occurs, it's over.

2) THE PRESS. When the fourth estate is beholden to the government it was set aside by the framers to monitor, all is lost. When those ostensibly charged with dispensing information to an informed electorate are motivated by ideology, by partisanship and profit, only a fool hopes that the system can survive. Where you just caught thinking of Keith Olberman? of Sean Hannity? They are simply the extremes that reinforce each other, and they are only a symptom, hemorrhoids, if you will, resulting from a deeper imbalance of pressures from a constipated core.
3) THE FAT ONE. With sincere apologies to the beautiful overweight people all over America who get up everyday and contribute to society in dynamic ways, it must be observed that no government has ever existed that can govern a sedentary citizenry. Greece, Rome, and everyone before, between and since has crumbled when Prosperity became Opulence. In that sense, fat and sassy spells the end. Blame television. Blame the fast food industry. Blame the video games. The why doesn't matter.

4) THE CONTROL FREAK. Not me. The other control freak. A.K.A. THE LAWYER, THE NANNY STATE, or the Suer. (Hey, rhymes with sewer!). It appears in many forms: the government that wants to take care of you and the people who think that's OK; the litigious bastavich who thinks an arm broken on a neighbor's trampoline, or a lung full of cancer, or a blistered belly from coffee that was hot is a ticket to easy street; the ambulance chaser and the system that supports the fleecing of good people for honest mistakes, setting up money as the arbiter of justice. Beware of this one. It is the most subtle of all the horsemen. It admits to being evil, but rightfully calls itself necessary in a nation of laws. Once it has enough avatars and acolytes in society, the people might (for a time) be very well protected and provided for, but NO ONE IS TRULY FREE.

Luckily, these harbingers of impending doom remain far off, in a nightmare future.

Don't Mess

I teach guitar.

It's a humble job. But it pays fairly well; and there is certainly no shortage of young people in Northern California who think they want to learn to play. All in all, I'd rather be playing than teaching. That said, I have had the privilege of associating with some truly wonderful, and wonderfully talented kids.

Even so, motivation constitutes a problem for the majority. Most kids have very little desire to put in the work it takes to become a real musician. Sadly, the blessing/curse of the guitar is that if you are willing to goof around long enough you can get pretty dang good at it, and yet somehow utterly avoid being able to read music or really know anything about it. There are quite a few students willing to enter this category. We all have a most excellent time. But some days I wonder if I'm doing enough to cajole my students. The least I could do is shame and scare away the slackers before they waste more of their parents' money, right?

Many years ago now, in an attempt to help them understand the consequences of their choices, and to distinguish mere players from real musicians, we invented a word:

GUITARD.

Anyone who exhibits great skill, who can shred like a bastard and yet knows very little about music, who can play, perhaps, every AC/DC song in the catalogue but can't read Yankee Doodle from the beginner's manual, is a guitard. By extension, anyone who wants to shred, but who lacks the desire to study music, becomes, at least nominally, a guitard.

The term was effective from the get go. Even as it set the studious future musicians apart, it seemed to pay a certain respect to the shredders (in fact, the exact kind of counter cultural respect they desire); and kids with no desire to read music embraced their categorization. More importantly, it always got a respectful snicker or two from both sides of the musical fence, as most kids have a healthy sense of safety around any adult willing to use any word that remotely resembles "retard." By now, the term is practically part of the lesson plan.

As is another educational necessity: CHOCOLATE. I make a big deal of rewarding students who magnify their efforts towards musicianship. I've found that rich, classy, dark, dark chocolate is one of the better tools. Mostly because any good teacher must take it upon himself to sample the reward before dishing it to a student. A guitard will be rewarded more immediately with attention from the opposite sex, applause in the battle of the bands, etc. A musician's slower progress merits fine chocolate from teacher.

One day I stopped in a local supermarket for the express purpose of purchasing chocolate to reward my future musicians. I needed something new, something classy. Something a talented guitard might covet just enough to learn a little musical terminology or theory.

A new display caught my eye, and to my astonishment a fine chocolate from San Francisco rose like a glorious chocolate sun before me.

I don't know what invisible forces knew of my neologism and brought about this serene harmonic convergence, and I don't care. Suffice it to say, my teaching rose to a different level when we all learned together the all important lesson:

Don't mess with me. The very universe itself is on my side.

Sorry, but Socialism sucks. And 'Utopia' means 'no such place.' But I hope we can still be friends.

I may have a problem with you. And I need you to understand where I'm coming from, because I don't want it to come between us. See, a small part of your belief system might just be a joke to me. Worse, I might even consider it ridiculous, even evil, and dismiss it out of hand, because it makes so little sense to me. I admit it. However . . .

Perhaps my problem with communism/socialism/liberalism is that it can be, in fact, has been, thoroughly debunked in masterful, scholarly works of brilliant historical analysis like The Crooked Timber of Humanity by Isaiah Berlin. [editor's note: read the book, read the book, read the book. Even if you don't have a passion for lengthy footnotes and pages upon pages of analysis so deep that you have to google one out of every three names he drops, you might still come to understand how an entire book could be conceived and composed based on a single quote from Immanuel Kant--"Out of the crooked timber of humanity no straight thing was ever made."]

Or maybe my problem with communism/socialism/liberalism is that after an admittedly personal, but nonetheless exhaustive search of the founding documents and related statements of the founders of the United States of America, I can find NOTHING, not ONE THING that supports the idea that one segment of the population can or should be forced to pay for another segment. In fact I find the exact opposite. They feared the idea that the government might ever have the power to do immoral things like tax income, or redistribute wealth. Intellectual slouches like Thomas Jefferson dismissed such ideas with books, with legislation, with essays, with public statements, and with little quips like "The government that has the power to give you everything you want also has the power to take away everything you have." [ed. note: it is particularly painful to contrast such words with the words of a citizen, who recently got some money from the government, looked a reporter in the eye and literally said: "Hey, it's free money! Thank God for Obama."]

Possibly my disdain finds its source in my experience in Canada, where, for two years, I saw the soul of a generation sucked out and drained of anything resembling vivacity, wherewithal, or even sass by the simple fact that when they turned eighteen they were grandfathered into the welfare system, from which they would derive their material existence as long as they lived, essentially getting paid to smoke, watch TV, and go to hockey games. [ed. note: the author considers Canada a great and beautiful country.]

Could it be I find it difficult to accept a belief system that even an old hack like G. Gordon Liddy could dismiss with an epithet: "A liberal is someone who feels a great debt to his fellow man. A debt which he proposes to pay with someone else's money." How am I to accept a philosophy that even my beloved (and, in fact wonderful) communist/atheist brother admits to accepting on blind faith, being without evidence of success anywhere in history?

Or does it all add up to a thought I had the other day, (as I strove to find a way to appreciate the nobility of people with compassion in their heart, who want to help others, who reach out to humans being with a helping hand): No matter how angelic it is to want to help others, wanting to FORCE others to help is satanic.

I believe that. My completely rational study, personal experience, and analysis have led me to believe it.

Which is why, if you happen to believe otherwise, my responses to your arguments might feel a little like I'm telling you to go to hell. Which I can only hope, perhaps irrationally, that you'll understand.

On the Other Hand . . .

How could I forget the magic of shows like Arrested Development, and The Office? How could I neglect to praise the miracle of sports in HD? How could I overlook the incisive wit of the Daily Show, or, even funnier, the Colbert Report? How unfair of me to conveniently ignore the way the first season of Hero's grabbed me! What a cad I am. I can only hope it will forgive me. I still don't have one in my home, but a fairer assessment may be in order.

Modern Television might be just like Morrissey in his ripe old age, as years of greatness and geometric expansion of influence drive toward more extreme poles of contradiction: When he is good, he is better than ever--when he is not so good, he's a bit of an embarrassment.