May-June '12: Mich-again

Jennifer, Brian, Chad, & Diane

"Mich-Again": The Pilot Podcast!

January & February '12: A Quick Mexico Recap

Eric & Amelie

I had another remarkable trip to Mexico in January & February. I returned to Cancun, Tulum, Isla Mujeres, and San Cristobal learning, or reinforcing, an important idea: You can’t go back again. Nothing ever compares to the first time, and it’s unfair to expect it to. Life blossoms in the new, and rots beneath the log of lazy familiarity and habit.

Reanimated!

Fine. Let’s count ‘em together, fuckos.

1)      Trip Diary.com (’08)

2)      Running With the Wind (’08)

3)      Te Nosce (’09)

4)      TDB (’09-’11)

5)      The Wandering Weed (’11-‘12)

6)      Toddzilla X. (’12-?)

Yup. Six places I’ve parked this blog in just over 4-years. Not ideal for optimal repeat readership. I’m not bonding with you, my listen…er….readers…properly. No benchmarks to help build my “brand”? Media suicide! Social heresy!

 But, looking at the list with the benefit of reflection, it makes sense: Evolution. 

“He not busy bein’ born is busy dyin’.” Thanks, Bob.

Since I haven’t written dick, at least here, in nearly 8-months, I should first update for future continuity and then explain a few pertinent things as I move forward. Some significant things have changed. Plus, I see some edits in my future. Let's see what happens...

7/5/12: Two Days With Toddzilla

Consider this a pilot. Thinking of doing much more of this in place of just writing/pics.

Truth as a Weapon

Using disguised, "noble" honesty as a means to hurt others is a simple, powerful, and potentially unwanted, unflattering string of thought that hopefully will explain some things. The idea came to me during my September '10 visit to Boise, but the truth is that it began with my half-sisters, Pam and Kim. To refresh: it was while I was at Michelle’s in June '09 that I learned how they essentially hid knowing me from the rest of their side of my family I had yet to meet. I’ve said that the tone of things changed with Andre. To a point that’s true, but perhaps the process really began during those few weeks in June.

When Mike and I arrived in Boise in September 2010, I was on the cusp of a quiet breakdown. The negativity had followed me from New York and combined with Ray and Andre to trigger a major crisis of introspection.   

Continuing a developing theme, "Truth as a Weapon" manifested during yet another moment of mirroring after which I began questioning my habit of writing exactly what I thought, no matter how difficult it was for the targets to read. Ray was just one example of where my “honesty” interjected confrontational negativity into my exploits which, before that fateful visit to Michigan in ’09, I had been spared from.

The Abyss

 “He who fights with monsters should be careful lest he thereby become a monster. And if thou gaze long into an abyss, the abyss will also gaze into thee.”  

-Nietzsche, Beyond Good & Evil

I’ve never read much Nietzsche, and likely never will. I tried getting thru Thus Spake Zarathustra and couldn’t. However, these two sentences have helped articulate something that I’ve struggled with for nearly two years: The idea that when you dare to confront and examine the darker, less flattering parts of life, the Abyss, your own darker, less flattering traits are inadvertently revealed to you. I believe one of the most difficult and important choices one can make is whether we choose to see what inhabits our own depths. It’s the stuff of mythology, and nearly derailed me.

Nietzsche’s Abyss was introduced to me by Henry Rollins via my favorite podcast, WTF with Marc Maron. Despite being a comedian, Maron’s conversations typically pivot toward insightful, introspective examinations of our shared, needy, frail egos and how they influence our choices and relationships. In other words, how we’re all more alike in our fucked-upitude than we care to admit!

Chomsky: Education, Indoctrination, and Annihilating Independent Thought

"It's a big club. And, you aint in it."

From his book Understanding Power, this is Chomsky's response to the question, "Are you saying that the real purpose of the universities and the schools is just to indoctrinate people -- and really not much else?"

"The world does not reward honesty & independence. It rewards obedience and service."

Well, I'm not quite saying that. Like, I wouldn't say that no meaningful work takes place in the schools, or that they only exist to provide manpower for the corporate system or something like that -- these are very complex systems, after all. But the basic institutional role and function of the schools, and why they are supported, is to provide an ideological service: there's a real selection for obedience and conformity. And I think that process starts in kindergarten, actually. 


Let me just tell you a personal story. My oldest, closest friend is a guy who came to the United States from Latvia when he was 15, fleeing from Hitler. He escaped to New York with his parents and went to George Washington High School, which in those days at least was a school for bright Jewish kids in New York City. And he once told me that the first thing that struck him about American schools was the fact that if he got a "C" in a course, nobody cared, but if he came to school three minutes late he was sent to the principal's office -- and that generalized. He realized that what it meant is, what's valued here is the ability to work on an assembly line, even if it's an intellectual assembly line. The important thing is to be able to obey orders, and to do what you're told, and to be where you're supposed to be. The values are, you're going to be a factory worker somewhere -- maybe they'll call it a university -- but you're going to be following somebody else's orders, and just doing your work in some prescribed way. And what matters is discipline, not figuring things out for yourself, or understanding things that interest you -- those are kind of marginal: just make sure you meet the requirements of a factory.

Well that's pretty much what the schools are like, I think: they reward discipline and obedience, and they punish independence of mind. If you happen to be a little innovative, or maybe you forgot to come to school one day because you are reading a book or something, that's a tragedy, that's a crime -- because you are not supposed to think, you're supposed to obey, and just proceed to the material in whatever way they require.

... Some people go along with it because they figure, "Okay, I'll do any stupid thing that asshole says, because I want to get ahead"; others do it because they've just internalized the values -- it after a while, those two things tend to get sort of blurred. But you do it, or else you're out: you ask too many questions and you're going to get into trouble.

Now, there are also people who don't go along -- and they're called "behavior problems", or "unmotivated," or things like that. Well, you don't want to be too glib about it -- there are children with behavior problems -- but a lot of them are just independent-minded, or don't like to conform, or just want to go their own way. And they get into trouble, right from the very beginning, and are typically weeded out. I mean, I've taught young kids too, and the fact is, there are always some who just don't take your word for it. And the very unfortunate tendency is to try to beat them down, because they're a pain in the neck. But what they ought to be is encouraged. "Yeah, why take my word for it? Who the heck am I? Figure it out for yourself." That's what real education would be about, in fact.

... given the external power structure of the society in which they function now, the institutional role of the schools for the most part is just to train people for obedience and conformity, and to make them controllable and indoctrinated -- as long as the schools fulfill that role, they'll be supported.
 I mean, it's not very abstract: if you're, say, a young person in college, or in journalism, or for that matter a fourth grader, and you have too much of an independent mind, there's a whole variety of devices that will be used to deflect you from that error -- and if you can't be controlled, to marginalize or just eliminate you. In fourth grade, you're a "behavior problem." In college, you may be "irresponsible," or "erratic," or "not the right kind of student." If you make it to the faculty, you'll fail in what's sometimes called "collegiality," getting along with your colleagues. If you're a young journalist, and you're pursuing stories that the people at the managerial level above you understand, either intuitively or explicitly, are not to be pursued, you can be sent off to work at the police desk, advised that you don't have "proper standards of objectivity." There is a whole range of these techniques.

Now, we live in a free society, so you don't get sent to gas chambers and they don't send the death squads after you -- as is commonly done, and not far from here, say in Mexico. But there are nevertheless quite successful devices, both subtle and extreme, to ensure that doctrinal correctness is not seriously infringed upon.


Noam Chomsky
Understanding Power
pp 236-238

The Wandering Weed?

Welcome to website #4! 

No, I haven't taken up recreational pot use. Nor am I lobbying for legalization. During my short-lived days as a Naval aviator, an aircrew instructor gave me the call sign "Weed", and it stuck even after I returned home. I failed to pack it when I moved away for good...that is until a program director asked that I come up with a monicker (other than my already-fake name) for a midday radio show. Suddenly, as a reflex borne from a lack of creativity, I was "The Weed" for a few months until...wait for it...the station and I grew weary of each other! 

"The Weed" was ridiculous as a cartoon radio name, but when an old coworker suggested it for the new website, I liked the "back home" connotations. Perhaps it's because I've spent so long going doing everything I could to avoid that part of my life, but the idea of reconnecting with it, even if only in a small way, appealed to me. When I found a similarly named site with the description, "Weird tales of rabid, feral, and downright ornery tumbleweeds" I took it as a sign. Who's more of a rabid, feral and downright ornery tumbleweed than me? The Wandering Weed was born. Rejoice!