PAIN

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Let's talk about pain.  Pain comes in many forms.  Physiological, psychological, emotional.  We've all experienced pain in our lives and we all know that pain doesn't feel so good.  I've experienced all kinds of pain in my life, like anybody else.  These past ten years, in particular, I've really had quite an intimate relationship with pain.  We know each other well.  It's a part of me. From the totally debilitating pain of migraine headaches...to the psychological torture of prison...to the loss of dear friends...to the emotional hall-of-fame level pain via consequences of drug addiction and alcoholism...hunger, homelessness, psychosis...solitude, insanity and darkness.  Pain.  We all know pain.  And it hurts.

Recently, scientists have discovered that we also inherit certain forms of pain from our parents and grandparents, etc.  Geneticists and biologists have determined that the emotional pain experienced during traumatic events actually, in a way, get imprinted into our genetic codes and gets passed down generationally.  It's an interesting new field called epigenetics, and a lot of what they are discovering makes a lot of sense.

Ceiling? What ceiling? Oh, that ceiling...DEBT.

I highly recommend this to those governing the Disunited Pathetic States of America -- it's a 'quiz' taken directly from the website for Debtor's Anonymous:

1. Are your debts making your home life unhappy?
2. Does the pressure of your debts distract you from your daily work?
3. Are your debts affecting your reputation?
4. Do your debts cause you to think less of yourself?
5. Have you ever given false information in order to obtain credit?
6. Have you ever made unrealistic promises to your creditors?
7. Does the pressure of your debts make you careless of the welfare of your family?
8. Do you ever fear that your employer, family or friends will learn the extent of your total indebtedness?
9. When faced with a difficult financial situation, does the prospect of borrowing give you an inordinate feeling of relief?

Hi, my name is America, addict...

With numerous 12-step programs available to billions of people all over the world, I figure I should introduce America to the most applicable solution to most of its problems. As a not-so-anonymous member of Alcoholics Anonymous, I consider it my duty to carry the message of hope and recovery to the government of the United States, as well as many of it ailing denizens. 

The '12-step program' is currently available in many different forms and varieties, such as: Alcoholics Anonymous, Addicts Anonymous, Overeaters Anonymous, Gamblers Anonymous, Debtors Anonymous, Sex Addicts Anonymous, etc. There are many others, but I think you get the point. The 12-step solution available at these programs are all identical, with the exception of a few identifying words. For example, in Alcoholics Anonymous, 'Step One' is "We admitted we were powerless over alcohol; that our lives had become unmanageable." In Overeaters Anonymous, 'Step One' is "We admitted we were powerless over food; that our lives had become unmanageable." In Debtors Anonymous, 'Step One' is "We admitted we were powerless over debt; that our lives had become unmanageable." The remaining steps (two through twelve) are essentially the same, regardless of which 12-step subject matter is at issue.

The United States of Bullshit.......(yes, again)

I'm listening to Metallica's 'Black' album right now, quite loudly.  I find it to be a good way to get the morning started.  It also reminds me to release any repressed anger or frustration I might have floating around in the dark chasm of my mind, because if I let that stuff roam around freely, it tends to grow like a tumor and eventually the consequences of such a cancer become quite painful and deadly.

I think I'll pick on the United States today -- after all, it is one of my favorite subjects -- it's an easy object to rip apart, to chastize -- spank it like the big fat baby it has grown into.  It's like a big, fat, rich, spoiled three-year-old child with a penchant for temper-tantrums and a complete lack of ability to do anything to solve it's own problems.  Problems created by it's own imaginative private reality.

As usual, though, I have to point out that when I say bad things about the U.S.A., I'm not talking about the relatively few people I love, respect and admire who happen to live within it's borders -- prisoners unaware of the confinement in which they currently reside.  Most of my favorite people in the world are stuck living in America, so this is always an interesting subject of discourse.  Many of them are actually happy and comfortable living in the U.S. -- I used to be the same way.  My perspective has changed a bit due to my own life experience and intimate encounters with reality.

The Jimi Hendrix Hypothesis

Thank god for Jimi Hendrix...  I can explain...

We are living in strange times, yes?  Anybody over the age of, say 35, should be capable of demonstrating experiential, anecdotal synopses of living in both the 'Before' age and the 'Now.'

By 'Before' age, I simply mean a time prior to computers and machines and gadgets playing such a dominant role in our daily lives.  An age when we actually memorized dozens of phone numbers or wrote them down on our palms and in those little address books, because we had no alternative -- remember?  It wasn't so long ago, but it seems prehistoric.  Of course we hadn't yet been exposed to the digital 'contact list' of the 'Now' which requires us to remember nothing other than mostly first names and face pics.

The United States of 'Twerking' vs. Reality.......and American Idiots.

From time to time I take advantage of my unique perspective on the state of affairs in the U.S., given that I no longer view and gather information from inside the U.S., but rather from my perch here in Toronto, Canada, the most culturally and ethnically diverse city in the world.

After having spent thirty years in the U.S., and having the world's news/current events bombarding me solely through the all-American lens otherwise known as the U.S. media, these past three years in Toronto have provided me with a much more realistic picture of how the U.S. is regarded around the world by more civilized nations like Canada, Britain, Scandinavia, western Europe, etc.

The picture is not a pretty one.  I quickly learned that U.S. based media outlets are largely full of shit, for want of a better term. Nothing down there comes close to the level of intellectual reporting, relative objectivity and news gathering of, say, BBC or CBC. Even Al-Jazeera is more journalistically honest than the best the U.S. has to offer in the form of CNN, Fox News and others.  There are many reasons for this, the most obvious and glaring being the fact that private enterprise controls the U.S. news machine, and the private sector corporate behemoths only care about one thing -- MONEY.  In fact, they are legally obligated to do whatever it takes to increase the share price of their stock.  The result???  News outlets that feed the masses the kind of information that keeps them glued to the screens -- the TV, the smartphone, the tablet, whatever.  It's all contrived bullshit, typically engineered to keep the public in fear of the unknown.........so that they'll keep watching to see what happens next -- glued to the little screens.

This ends up creating a populous that in aggregate enters more queries on Google and Twitter for Miley Cyrus 'twerking' on the same day the U.S. is contemplating going to war in Syria.  A mass of people who seek comfort at places like 'Fatburger' and Las Vegas. Hookers and cocaine and guns and gangbangers.  Rich white kids buying 'music' created by street-corner drug dealers who fancy themselves as 'artists.'  Cyberbullying, suicide, entrenched racism that has nothing close to a solution in any of our lifetimes, and a litany of deep-rooted problems that nobody in the U.S. has the balls to properly address.  Political correctness is prioritized above reality, security, education, healthcare. All the politicos care about is that they don't offend the sensibilities of one group or another. In other words, they care more about 'hurt feelings' than actual democratic progress and success.  A bunch of fucking babies.

The most important news item for most Americans - this is a fact people.

This is one of those moments when I actually feel glad that I was deported from the U.S. to Canada (the country of my birth) in 2010 for my 'horrendous' crime of trying to pass a phony prescription for Vicodin (Percocet) in the U.S. while I was struggling with a life-threatening addiction to pain pills.  This,  after having lived in the U.S. for thirty years. I'm just one of many -- and you will soon be hearing from more of us -- who had his life turned completely upside down and destroyed for minor technical bullshit.

One.

The pen is my weapon
Music is my religion
The mind is my instrument
The body carries my soul
My soul has a voice
A voice has the power.

My friends are my deliverance
My enemies are my comfort
My comfort gives me knowledge
The knowledge I need to motivate me to keep working

My work is my relief
Relief in the knowledge
That one mind, one body, one soul, one power and one voice can change the world.

-peace/love
jeremy