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Happy New Years

Happy New Year.

Man, I guess it’s been a while since I posted. Eek! The last one was in August - well, there’s a lot to catching up then I guess.

I've made several attempts but often when I sit down to write the distractions intrude - there is much to write about and say, that I try to keep from the confines of this page - which is supposed to be about my time playing music with G. Love, and yea, music in general. And I try to keep it positive. Which is harder than ever today. I guess there comes a time when politics intrudes on our lives so severely it cannot be ignored or kept in its proper compartment. And there certainly is very little in our current state as a nation that I find positive. So I guess it is necessary to drop the artifice of writing about my own experiences, although it’s obviously the filter we all see the world through. The real wall I must break is the illusion that I can separate my writing out and only write about my positive experiences … I can’t even get my head around what I should do here, so I’m going to share all my aborted and un-posted attempts. Some of them are pretty raw, you can see me trying to ignore it, but it creeps back in.

The one I wrote on November 22nd is pretty damn un-filtered - there is plenty of swearing - so if you don’t like that sort of thing, (and Mom) please just stop reading now, and give a listen to something off my bandcamp catalog: https://jimijazz.bandcamp.com/ Portland is cold and beautiful, and I’m looking forward to getting back on tour with the Special Sauce. See you out there.

The brave souls that continue should take a grain of salt with the following of course, and express yourselves in the comments (feels good right?) And continue to petition the government, and resist.

Last attempt last week sometime:

Joyous Noel, Happy Holiday, Powerful and Enlightening Kwanza to you.

And Happy New Year. Perhaps the only fairly certain fact we can be sure of, is that our earth will be in this position - relative to our star - again, in about a year. We will be here again. Some of us only our spirit and earthly remains, but some trace will for sure exist, right here . . . or certainly within orbit of our gentle planet, in about 365 spins.

We are now in infinity, there is nothing that can stop the spin of the earth, it is our very definition of time. But, doesn’t time bend relative to the gravity of the earth? When people are like ‘what was before the big bang?’ I think one answer is that there was not ‘time’ before then am I right? If light get’s sucked into a black hole, doesn’t time get sucked in there too? Or is that just our perception?

But what if it’s not? What if every planet in the universe has it’s own time line? I guess that would show up in the probes we sent to pluto or whatever - especially the sun - there’s a lot of gravity there. But maybe, relativistically there isn’t, that the sun is actually ‘floating’ over the black hole at the center of the galaxy. If

I think presupposing only one kind of time or that it flows here today as the same way it it did in the early universe. But it’s hard to look outside the flow of time, but there is a universe out there.

Man, dark matter baby.

Time is the spark that ignited the paradox of existence and non-existence.

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Earlier last week:

Well, Happy Holidays. Good new year to ya.

I’m resisting the urge to disparage the inanimate position and duration in our infinite trip around our star, but it sure seemed like a shitty year. Lemme, Bowie!, Prince!!, Princess?!!

Anyhow, I’m sure it’s just a confluence of the awareness that comes with connectedness with a generation of heroes passing at the right distribution.

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Dec. 16th:

Well, Happy Holidays.

This year I just went and bought myself some presents - you know, just to get in the spirit, and I just kept going. One that I’ve been meaning to do was a pig butchery class. I have the pleasure of living quite close to some of the best restaurants in the country. One of which is called Old Salt, and they host classes on food in one of which you butcher a side of pig. Awesome. Right now I’m trying to remember all of the great knowledge imparted while I’m smoking some belly for bacon. The hardest part is that I can’t eat any until tomorrow!

Oh man, I’ve just been making all my and S’s favorites, pork chops and roast mostly. I did a maple rosemary glaze with a loin roast, man that came out good. The secret is not to over cook, and that’s one of the benefits of having an artisan custom raised pig, you can eat it almost rare, and just pink. I pulled it out of the oven at 135˚f, thought it’s supposed to go up to 150˚while it rests for 15 minutes, I didn’t bother to measure it again, and oh it sliced beautifully, juicy as anything and just off pink. Wow, tasty! I served it with one of my custom cabbage slaws, this one with a light ginger lime cilantro flavor.

I did the pork chops similarly, though all on the stovetop, with a spicy asian - well it has hoisin and pepper jelly as the main sweeteners - sauce. That’s a classic I adopted from the Silver Palate Cookbook - that was a christmas gift from my sister in law many years ago - I’m partial to the cookies in it - it’s great be be from a cooking family but it’s a great easy dish, basically brown ‘em up, then kind of braise in a sweet sauce.

But yea, the bacon is now resting on my counter. I smoked it on my webber with chunks of hickory. About 3 hours at a pretty low temperature. My neighbors must’ve thought I was crazy making a smokey fire at nine in the morning in the middle of winter. yea, that’s the nw for ya! I’m probably gonna smoke the ribs around nye - that’s a thing right ribs on nye? I’ve got the baby backs and the spares. It’ll be an awesome compare and contrast.

Yea, I cured it with Pink Salt, and my own maple spice blend! It’s golden brown now and looks perfect. I hope all the flavors got in there. I have to let it completely cool then refrigerate over night. Tomorrow morning it’ll be ready. Slicing is tricky, I’ll have to do it by hand, but it’s gonna fry up great!

That’s what the holidays mean to me homemade bacon!

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Nov. 22nd:

It’s hard to put this into words. The rage and emotion subvert the rationality required for sentences. I mean, why the fuck should I bother forming sentences even? Soon it will not be necessary. Just Newspeak friends. Hate is Love. Peace is War.

It’s unbelievable, it’s like you cannot create hyperbole. I’ve had so many thoughts; run away (love BC - or should we get to Cuba while we can?), secession - I’ve been saying it for years, is my cocktail party chatter about the Stoner Homeland going to come true? What about some BS petition on the internet, that’ll stop him right? Is there an inside solution? I don’t think so, Bernie proved that wrong.

I mean, couldn’t the executive branch be completely digital and robotic? That’s the end-point of my thinking on electoral reform - Skynet. Can the machines save us? A human legislature but an all digital executive, am I right? The executive is just supposed to execute the laws. Google it.

One thing that bugs me about the whole process is the blame that goes around, I mean as a Bernie Bro it’s totally my fault. I’m in my echo-chamber bubble of hypocrisy — deriding my own personal immigrants building a new life in my neighborhood - they are destroying it with half a million dollar homes, and they are Russian gangsters, and I admit before the whole internet, praise the http, that I am xenophobic of Russians. And I hate those fucking nouveau riche crap-shacks (what’s with the unfinished bottoms on all the columns?) but you can’t stop progress.

Now admit you are racist, and that this whole election had a racist backlash as the most potent factor.

Didn’t that feel good? No, I know the Southerners and Greater Appalachians who swung the Electoral College voted for Obama, sometimes twice, but I think you know that racism is way more complicated than that. Yes, I said I wouldn’t vote for Secretary Clinton, but I did, so I’m a lier just like her.

So there’s a lot of blame, but what is the lesson? Is there even a lesson? A small majority of the people voted for good, but the Electoral College, and lets face it the corporate media, voted for fear. And I mean that sincerely. It was Good vs. Fear. But people were so fearful they overlooked misogyny and racism and elected a third world despot to the leadership of the most powerful nation on earth. We are letting this happen?

I don’t think we should.

When I saw Obama welcoming him to the Whitehouse I almost puked. What are you doing? Fuck tradition, fuck civility. This isn’t George Bush.

You know, I was musing before the election - last fall I read American Nations by Colins - and there’s a bunch of interesting regional history, and man, our country took a moral turn for the worse with Andrew Jackson. He was a terrible person.

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Oct 17th:

I feel kind of funny all of a sudden, I guess I XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX as I’m apt to do. Watching Vice News - yikes, I’m like a pot and a half deep on coffee and I just ate two hard boiled eggs and a multivitamin. Man the sun is peeking out, perhaps I should walk the dog. _I’ll show you how!

God Bless It. I got to look at things you know, I just got to look at them, like I’ve been thinking about my November 3rd. Either we will be fleeing for out lives, I’m thinking to Cuba - or working on a new political coalition within the Democratic party.

I feel like along with my acceptance of Hillary comes my acceptance of Democratic hegemony. The truth is I have to stay registered as one in order to meaningfully participate as an Oregon voter. I am completely against that - and the solution is open primaries, which I think should be part of democratic reforms enshrined in a US Constitutional Amendment. More on that later.

I used to register Green, as a protest to the first Clinton’s betrayals of the mid ’90s, but I can’t say I really dig them, or Jill Stein. I was disappointed way back when they failed to adopt Roseanne Barr as a candidate. I mean, protest politics is entertainment. How could we go wrong with an enormously popular soap/sit-com star! Her politics are just perfect too, populist obviously but socialist and humanist. //what was family name on show?// family didn’t go to church I don’t think.

Anyway the only solution is LSD. That’s the Libertarian Socialist Demographic. Namely millennials and gen Xers who don’t have that dim view of socialism which we know is just that red-scare bullshit that Ray-gun used to pay off the military industrial complex … McCarthy ism fear mongering anti-collectivist crappola and you know it.

Anyhow our political arm, the Libertarian Socialist Democrats have our beliefs right in our name, instead of some amorphous duopoly of bi-partisen democracy subversion.

1.) Libertarian - Personal and individual freedom is first and our highest ideal, and the proper pursuit of the enterprise of society, i.e. -

2.) Socialism. Being ‘socialist’ means recognizing that the human enterprise is uniquely and importantly collective, and that Governance is necessary, indeed that a properly governed society is essential to the liberation of the individual.

3.) Democracy, because a true and righteous aggregate of the people is the best path to these ideals.

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I’ve you’ve read my ramblings this far, you are a real trooper. Please join my new religion when it is announced next week.

Portland, OR - Cold, very cold.

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