#37 “It was a Life”

Dear Don1001,

Something happened a couple of days ago that I can’t shake. A field mouse had decided to make the bunker it’s home. And after seeing it scurry about a couple of times, I put out a couple of glue traps. After learning to avoid stepping on these traps I had forgot about them until one night while in a deep sleep I’m awakened by high-pitched screams. It took but a second to realize that the rodent had become stuck in the glue trap, as I lay there in bed listening, it became clear the mouse wasn’t going to die from being stuck. I was hoping that it would die or stop screaming but the poor creature just wouldn’t comply with either option. So after about twenty minutes of listening to this wail, I got up to dispatch it. I turned on the light and the poor creative began to squirm, I calmly rolled up an old copy of the New York Times Style Section. As I approached the field mouse it looked up at me and began to jerk more violently at the glue that had it in a literal death grip. For some unknown reason I became anxious and I felt myself becoming more tense by the moment and in a burst of nervous energy, I quickly took the mouse’s life with a couple of quick full body blows. The mouse’s death was instantaneous but probably terrifying. I sat there looking at the lifeless body of that field mouse; it looked back at me, eyes open and staring at me. And for some unknown reason, it bothered me, a lot. I was brought up in an Appalachian culture; we killed animals of every kind, to eat them. The hunting of animals was never gratuitous nor was it glorified. For my family hunting was a cheap protein source and on occasion done for profit (trapping for skins). This detachment to the cycle of life enabled me, with somewhat ease, to migrate to a way of life, where murder is one of the occupational hazards. When I was in the “business”, I carried death on my shoulder, it was my friend. So I was shocked at the melancholy that overcame me, the empathy of the fear and terror that this creature experienced right before it’s death. And after a couple of days I’m beginning to understand that the field mouse and I weren’t that far apart, we just wanted to enjoy life. So now I don’t want to hurt anyone, anymore just because they don’t agree with me. I really do believe that there is going to be whole-scale political violence in the streets of America but I think my Liberty loving brothers and sisters are going to have to count me out when it comes time to “lock & load”. I’ve come to comprehend that killing is the ultimate “crisis management” and is quite often the result of being lazy and stupid. I don’t know if I could found a way of dealing with my rodent friend without terminating him, I don’t know because I never tried. And maybe that’s the problem with the human condition; violence has always been a time-honored solution to a lack of communication skills and empathy. Disagree enough with me and I can justify stomping the shit out of you. Pose enough threat to my tribe (real or not) and it becomes quite easy to rationalize preemptively destroying your tribe first because the threat was too much to leave to chance. “We just couldn’t stand by while there was any potential that (fill in the blank) could now or at some point in the future could become a threat, so we "nuked" them. It was only way we could guarantee peace.” I confess that destroying anyone who disagrees with you is a very neat way to win philosophic battles because there is no need to acknowledge the nuances or shortcomings that are inherent with your own ideology. It doesn’t take a lot of thought power to state, you are with us or you are against us, and those who are against us, you deserve to die. I can no longer live with such rigidity, maybe because I’m on the last part of my “ride” I don’t know, but I realize that the field mouse’s life meant something, all life does and it means enough to acknowledge

it's right to exist.

      Breath of God upon my lips, Brother Gregory

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#36 “Washboard Abs and Bacon Cheeseburgers”

Dear Don1001,

I’m clueless; I don’t even know what day it is. After the announcement of Obama ’s re-election campaign, I’ve been eating as much opium as a man my age should do, I haven’t had a bowel movement in three days. I think I probably need to lay off the poppy juice and start eating some roughage, but fuck it, I’ll push on through till I reach the “truth” that exists on the other side of the wall, whatever that is. I’m just trying to get a handle on a world where a supposed liberal like Obama acts like a neo-con and then gets blamed by reactionary  wing-nuts for being a Communist. Does anybody have a clue of what the political spectrum is anymore? Seriously, if you put a gun to most people’s head and asked a simple question “Tell me the difference between a Fascist and a Communist, or you die”, there would be bodies all over the streets. Yet these political philosophies lie on opposite ends of the political spectrum. It’s absolutely amazing how many people participate in the political process and have never figured out exactly what their political viewpoint truly is, or they would see the apparent contradictions in what they believe. Like being anti-abortion because all life is special but being for Capitol punishment. Wanting Social Security and Medicare but shunning single payer health insurance because it’s socialist. You want less taxes and smaller government but don’t mind if the CIA, FBI and NSA spend huge sums of money to indiscriminately wiretap innocent American citizens. Folks, what we have here is a failure to connect with what we say and what we truly believe, and if the country doesn’t come to grips with these apparent contradictions soon, the so-called leaders of this country are going to run this crazy train off of the tracks. It’s like wanting to have “six-pack” abs but you don’t workout or stop eating bacon cheeseburgers and double orders of fries. Those washboard abs aren’t going to happen and neither is the U.S. going to have a chance at any sort of a future unless we come to grips, what the fuck, we truly want, as a people, a nation, as a culture. Right now America is in love with the myth not the reality. We don’t want to pay taxes, but we want the best schools, highways and the best healthcare. We want democracy and justice, but we don’t vote and we will do anything not to serve on a jury.  We want good leaders, yet we won’t take the time to read intensively about the candidates or the issues that they represent. Yet we feel the right to be righteously indignant at the way things are and how fucked up the Congress truly is. Right now, this country needs to look in the mirror and come to grip with the enemy.

                      In a search for the light, Brother Gregory

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#35 “Sunshine Patriots and going to the Dark Side”

Dear Don1001,

It’s been two and half years since Obama was elected and it’s been an unmitigated disaster. It just couldn’t be worse, Donnie where are the people in the streets? At this point there should have been open and armed conflict with large amounts of people not paying taxes or participating in the system. I thought by now President Obama would be afraid to leave the White House and there’d be a bounty on Congress. A couple of years ago, I was in the desert outside of Raton, New Mexico, one of my favorite places to fire my Barrett 82-A1 .50 caliber BMG sniper rifle. (You know, there’s not a lot of places left in America where they encourage the wholesale use of high caliber, fully automatic weapons or let you shoot at things a mile away, Raton, New Mexico is one such place.) In Raton, some like-minded individuals and myself gathered one more time before Obama took power, to fire off as much ammo and many weapons as we could. We were totally convinced that soon as Obama was inaugurated that the ATF and FBI would be seizing all automatic weapons and ammo, so we wanted to have one more gun party. And it was while I was hanging out with my so-called fellow patriots that I became convinced that I had to go into the bunker. I became certain that there were enough like-minded people of resolve that would not cooperate with the upcoming socialist agenda and that we would seize back the mantle of patriotism. But evidently these “Sunshine Patriots” weren’t up to the task. All of these people that were armed to the teeth and were at the time talking armed revolt, have wimped-out and in the process, they've let down our forefathers, true “Sons of Liberty” like Patrick Henry and Thomas Paine. In the midst of an adrenaline rush of firing weapons that can kill you and kill your car, we decided that we weren’t going to let pinkos like Nancy Pelosi and Obama turn the U.S. into the United Socialist States of America. Right there in Raton, New Mexico, we made a pact that we were going organize and go underground. We would close out our bank accounts, convert everything to gold and go commando. Some of us (I hope I’m not the only one) with resolve have kept our oath and went underground but most of us evidently haven't. These faux patriots have been mesmerized by Obama’s so-called moderation and pragmatism. This is all a trap because as soon as the people drop their guard, the real Communist, Fascist, Totalitarian, Utopian Socialist will come out and the Obama dictatorship will begin. That knowledge alone helps to steel my resolve and not let the illusion of the quasi impotence of Obama’s first couple years in office, lull me into a false sense of security. We can’t let Obama’s actions, appearance or words distract us from how sinister this man really is, its all an illusion. The more Obama appears to be a “real” person the more we should be afraid. I personally would feel a whole lot better about him as a leader if he had political opponent “wacked”. Obama’s “Mr. Nice Guy” and family man stuff just creeps me out, the more normal a politician appears in public, the weirder they are in private. It’s a cosmic political law of nature, when a politician has a great marriage and is for family values, you know there’s a few handcuffs, whips and date rape drugs in the background. So the longer Obama clings to being reasonable, the worse it is for the country. So for the sake of our future and our children’s future, Obama needs to go to the dark side, otherwise the cosmic fabric of the universe will be ripped to shreds.

                                  Waiting for it to go weird, Brother Gregory

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#34 “Dreaming of Hot Barrels and Cold Beer”

#33 “Social Websites and The Tea Party people”

Dear Don1001,

There’s a not a lot do in the bunker except for working out, tending the garden, reading, getting high (but you can only get so high then you die) and then there’s cruising the Right Wing/Tea Party Web sites. I never stay long (paranoia is perfect awareness) because you know that everybody from the American Enterprise Institute to the White House are watching the Tea Party sites. The folks that keep track of these things know these web sites are the physical manifestations of disaffected White folks or as I like to call them, Euro-Americans. Lower and middle class Euro-Americans make up the mortar of America, they are the majority of the people that still believe in the “system” and the mythical idea of America, the home of the brave and the land of the free. If these people turn against the government, the U.S. is toast and the powers that be, know it. Not that Africans, Asians and Central Americans contributions to the U.S. haven’t been enormous, but the grunt work of selling the U.S. as a “franchise” to it’s self and the World has fell to working class Euro-Americans. No other socio-economic group has sold the myth of manifest destiny and cultural superiority of the U.S. more furiously than Euro-Americans that actually work for a living. So the power structure in New York and Washington can’t help but wonder if the Tea Parties (99% Euro-American) represent fringe groups or the tip of an Iceberg. So every bit of info the Tea Party people post, print or transmit is being collected and dissected. Meanwhile, the Tea Party people think that the Internet and Web Sites are one of the greatest things to ever happen since sliced white bread, because it allows them to organize and meet. But do most of the Tea Party people realize that these Web sites also make it that much easier for the Government to track them? There is a certain amount of irony here; technology has enabled millions of American jobs to go over seas, yet America still worships technology. The promise of technology has always teased everybody with a better future (everyone will have flying cars and live in luxury) that always seems just over the horizon, but it never delivers. We have more technology and choices than ever and yet most people aren’t happy. So while technology hasn’t brought forth “Utopian Socialist” bliss it does enable the CIA, NSA and FBI to track each and every one of us. So as the Tea Party people fantasize about taking back their country, the Neo-conservatives will try to exploit them while the ”Lefties” try to tap into liberal disaffection. I feel for the Tea Party people because their pain is real but it is misdirected. Their oppressors are the people that don’t actually work, their money does and because the top 1% of the population have about 90% of the wealth, they get to make the rules. Mexican immigrants didn’t sell out the middle class and working poor of the US of A, it was Wall Street, which reminds me of an old saying “There are none as blind, as those who will not see”.

                                          A one-eyed man, in the kingdom of the blind, Brother Gregory

You can see videos of these sage observations here: http://www.youtube.com/my_videos?feature=mhum
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#32 "The Pit Bulls Among Us"

Dear Don1001,

Recently an Orange County toddler died after being mauled by her family’s pit bull. The 23-month-old girl was pronounced dead at the U.V.M. Center after she ventured out of the house and was attacked by the family dog. This is a true tragedy and a part of me weeps for the loss of a child and the fracturing of a family. But is anyone surprised that a Pit Bull took out a child or anyone else for that matter? No, because that is what Pit Bulls do. They were bred to be the fiercest animal on the Planet that you could still get on a leash. There are recorded cases of trained groups of Pit Bulls killing lions and bears for sport. When I read that in the U.S. there are about 45 human fatalities a year resulting from dog attacks, mostly by dogs bred to be killers, I was shocked, I thought there would have been more. When you put killing machines around the weak, infirmed or the old, there will be causalities. Which leads me to my second thought, when will the men and women of the Armed Forces that were thrust into the hardest battle conditions of modern warfare start to go “Postal”? Which is a quaint term for Postal workers that “lost it” and start killing their fellow workers. It turned out that most of the “Postal” were former Vietnam Vets suffering from the effects of war. Well folks, we’ve got hundreds of thousands of soldiers, sailors and airmen that have been exposed to “extreme conditions” in the last few years and most of them were not psychologically prepared for the vagaries of war. It’s not that professional soldiers don’t get some buffer, attempts in training to prepare for the bad that happens. But one moment you’re dropping off your kids at school in Clarksville, Tennessee and a week later, you’re in Afghanistan. Could you make the transition from watching your kids at soccer practice to listening to Guns and Roses at Volume 10 as the Hummer in front of you, disintegrates from a hundred pound homemade land mine? It is a rare individual that can seamlessly deal with a transition that extreme. And there are huge amounts of Regular, Reserve and Guard troops that saw more action in their yearlong tours in Afghanistan or Iraq than most troops averaged in World War II, Korea and Vietnam Wars, combined. Some troops (Reservists and Guard included) have done multiple tours, so there will be scores of these people, years from now, that will kill their fellow civilians unless this country starts pouring literally hundreds of millions of dollars into treating their mental illnesses as they emerge. Yes, there will be a body count. It is not a matter of if, just a matter of when and how often. You can’t ask humans to do inhumane things or be in inhumane conditions and remain human. Our instincts enable us to do almost anything at the moment to survive; it is only later upon reflection that the pain starts. At this point, whether America likes it or not, there are Pit Bulls, of our own making, among us.

                                        Growling, Brother Gregory

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#31 “Its medicine, honest…”

Dear Don1001,

The federal government has slowed prosecuting those who use or sell marijuana for medical reasons if they comply with state law. Thank God for states’ rights, since there are 15 states and the District of Columbia that currently allow medical marijuana. Currently I’m huffing medical marijuana in one of the “police states” so I’m a medical outlaw. Trust me, if I didn’t self medicate with marijuana, there would be a body count and there are thousands like me. Men that if they didn’t get stoned, there would periodic meetings with a bail bondsman. Women that would freak-out if they thought their man would stop smoking dope and started drinking. That fact alone makes medical marijuana a necessity. I know of a wife of a very high priced lawyer that lets her husband grow dope in their basement, “because when he grows and smokes dope he’s very even keeled but when he drinks, he’s a type A, World Class asshole. If he’s stoned I can drop 2K on a dress and he giggles, but when he’s drunk, he wants to punch my lights out”. Not to minimize medical marijuana use for Cancer, M.S. or Epilepsy but the best reason for medical marijuana is to keep the homicide rate down, seriously. I don’t know about you knuckle draggers, but when I was tweaked on large amounts of alcohol and meth, you did not want to fuck with me. I was violence wanting to happen. And for some unknown reason, 50 milligrams of methamphetamine, 12 ounces of Jim Beam and a security six .357 magnum (with handle down shoulder holster) go real well with a severely bad attitude. The only good thing about being that tweaked, is that most people give you room and lots of it. There’s something about huge amounts of liquor, a big wad of cash in one pocket and a large caliber weapon in the other pocket that helps you glide through the night. And you walk large until you meet someone that is just as tweaked and just as crazy, and that point, if there is a misspoken word or movement, the violence will be instant and efficient with finality. Which brings us back to the topic of medical marijuana, if you’re stoned, sitting on your couch, watching TV, gun battles usually don’t happen.  You want to lower the violence against women, legalize weed. I guarantee women are much more interesting and funny when you’re stoned and it is easier to daydream when they talk about their girlfriends or relatives. One of my wives would go to Amsterdam with me to do “business” under the guise of her shopping. So we actually had to spend a large amount of time shopping before I could slip away to do what had to be done. The only way I can pretend to shop 7 hours a day is after vaporizing a ½ gram of Benali Crème Hashish from Dutch Flowers Coffee shop and having an American Breakfast at Barney’s. I digressed but the point is that just maybe some people are starting to realize that we have the wrong drugs legalized and maybe throwing people in jail that are trying to help others with their pain is stupid. Yeah big man, maybe the pendulum of sanity might turning from full tilt loco to moderately crazy in a World where they put 20 year old kids in jail for a half gram of weed while corporate raiders steal billions, disrupt the lives of millions and then they get a bonus.

                                                      Self-medicating daily for a reason, Brother Gregory

You can see videos of these sage observations here: http://www.youtube.com/my_videos?feature=mhum
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Brainbliss!