The long weekend

Notice how in the last twenty years or so Hollywood has dug up Lao Tzu and Confucius? The Confucius they love is some version of A man on a path of revenge must dig two graves. Now, I know the scriptwriter is forty-five, pasty white skin (you know, for LA), thick glasses, bad skin, and has a perpetual cigarette hanging from his lip or maybe black, young, ashy for LA, typing in his aunt’s basement and occasionally smokes a clove. Doesn’t matter. Could be motherfucking Confucius his own damn self; when the American anti-hero gets his arsenal together to kill the entire creed and tribe that killed the girl he liked (but hadn’t slept wife on screen), he doesn’t care how many graves he’s going to dig. For that matter neither does your average guy or girl. You can’t talk someone down from revenge. You could, however, film fight scenes without the back-hand haymaker and back hand roundhouse, or throwing the little guy against the wall, or even, just a guy with balls who isn’t afraid to get his ass kicked. That takes a better writer.

Also, not a big fan of “We all die alone” with an orchestra swelling. How many people do you really want to die with?  I like it when the scriptwriter has done far too much coke and you get something like “We all come into the world and go out it the same way.” Heh. I don’t know if that means alone (doesn’t work for twins and up) or vaginally (that’s how I want to go) or, I suppose, by caesarean, but that’s just silly.

The fucking students are back. Did I mention that? Good. Fucking students are back. Right up until the moment he was too demented to hold a conversation, my dad would say anything from ‘that’s how I made my living’ to ‘They keep a roof on your head’ depending how old I was and what roof I was living under, of course. There is no credit nor demerit to be had, but if there were my dad would share that sentiment with every retired professor from MSU. They had weird relationships with their professors. I had one professor I was close to at PSU, and that had nothing to do with him being a professor; he walked his grandchild in the same park at the same time as I walked my son. Later I took a class from him.

Back in the late fifties early sixties, MSU was MAC (Michigan agricultural college). I think with being a University came a lot of money, they hired people from all over, good tenure track, good salary. I understand why he stayed and I understand loyalty. Most of my generation did not. Only one of my friends stayed here. As another high school reunion comes close I realize a lot more people than I would have thought stayed, but not enough to repopulate, though we know how. Shit my Oregon born Daughter and Oregon born Grandson lived here for, three, maybe four, years. Funny, she would give me these ‘it’s not so bad’ pep talks, and after three, maybe four, years, she was ‘fuck this, I got to get back to Oregon’.

Ok, below is a paragraph or two from a couple days ago, whenever I last rebooted my computer.

Awoke before the crack or whimper of dawn. A few weeks ago, it would have been dawns hallowed crack. There was an old joke about the crack of dawn and Tony Orlando. Nothing about Tony Orlando was funny, except that the band was more dignified than, say, captain and Tennille, and had badder boys and girls than Donny and Marie. You could put all of their music in a blender. You think that last sentence needs something more? You could put all their music in a blender and watch it spin.

America is back to spinning, which would be cool if it were spinning on the earth’s axis at the exact same speed as everything else. I saw a Meme today, something about Obama and Trump, collusion with foreign governments and affordable health care acts. Then they threw in white privilege. No, no, no. Nobody gets to put me in a category with Trump. I’d like to think Obama got the gig twice for some other reason than being black. The Affordable Health Care Act fucked me, I couldn’t use the marketplace and I wasn’t allowed to fly without insurance (Um, not literally fly, you know, get along, walk, cruise, do life). It was a half-ass plan and a half ass compromise, and it had nothing to do with Obamas color. Worse part, there was an argument in the notes. One could call it a debate or impassioned discussion if one were convinced everyone believed said one to be a liar and an idiot, or merely tragically imprecise with the language. They were fighting over, of course, white privilege.