Blunt Tactics (that just might work)

There is a great injustice being perpetrated right now, as we speak…all over the country. Thousands of people are lighting up, toking, puffing…whatever you want to call it, all over the US. While being an alcoholic is a requirement for some vocations-an author in the British Isles for example-if you were to tell anyone except for your connection and your closest friends that you smoke the reefer, you might end up a pariah. A tad duplicitous, a bit unfair, but years of propaganda & misinformation are hard to counteract. So why isn’t it legal? Thats an all-day History Channel Marathon question, so I am going to skip it and move on to my modest solution. (more…)

These should just be Numbered so that when the promo airs, a little number in the corner tells us which to expect.

1. Oh Crap, We’re on the Titanic
2. Oh Crap, We’re on Trial
3. Prison Break
4. Ambiguous Enemy
5. Sleeping with the Ambiguous Enemy
6. Long, Lost Celebrity Cameo
7. 20th Century America

Full Disclosure: I am a spacemonkey for Obama. Completely.

Today, Barack Obama made the most astute observation about a certain section of disenfranchised Americans that I have ever heard. In discussing small towns in PA he said:

“You go into these small towns in Pennsylvania and, like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothings replaced them, and they fell through the Clinton Administration, and the Bush Administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not. And it’s not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.”

He might have been talking about most of WV, where that mentality of us-against-them is ingrained and passed on at the dinner table. It isn’t a matter of a few people in my home town who believe that they have no say in the government or no chance at a healthier job market here. They are the rule, people who see past the local implications of economic policy are the exceptions. But this is not a recent attitude here, this is a matter of culture.

The bitterness is a reality, and since the way before the first Bush Presidency, we have been told about the future of the job market, and then NAFTA passes or economic incentives to send jobs oversees come into effect. It is a deep understanding of our frustration that Obama is speaking from, and the implications on our culture that result. Ironically, the socially conservative facets that he mentioned are what drove this state red in 2000 and 2004, even though we West Virginians were negatively impacted on almost every federal interaction. We benefited only in income to our disproportionately high soldiering population, from which both Jessica Lynch & Lynndie England come.

We should support that honesty, and expect it from our politicians… Especially our Presidential Candidates.

I love small towns.

Especially small towns in WV. I am not sure that it is the people, as I have never been anything but who I am while occupying a town. It isn’t just the pace, as most would have you believe, it is more of a sense of understanding. While a larger world defies quantification and categorization, a small town will have patterns. Once you know the people, you understand the patterns and often, the repeating ones. Growing up in a small town, the sameness of things is either comforting or burdensome, the fake plastic castle of home.

Through a series of events that I will share at some point, I went to Follansbee recently and met the Mayor and Town Council. My Brother is a councilman in my home town, so knowing what to expect, I braced for a siege. I learned a thing or two about the town that I didn’t expect in the short time we were there.

What I now know about Follansbee, WV:

• The Mayor was a school teacher, has wisdom, is respected and doesn’t like the f-word.
• The city council is mostly of Italian decent, has a good sense of humor and is willing to listen.
• Follansbee lost one man in the line of duty in Vietnam, his friends and family want to honor him with a plaque in the park.
• His family uses the park as much or more than anyone.
• The Newspaper Reporter we met, knew too much about the movie business.
• There may be a Tattoo shop turf war going on.
• A Movie is like a War.

Trust me on the last one, I have it on good authority.