Random thoughts and writings by Mark Hammerschmidt.
When he turns away from the mirror, Sal no longer exists. Invisible, he glides through space. This world no longer serves his purpose. He looks for answers in the stars.
In front of the mirror, earthbound, Sal combs his hair and brushes his teeth.
Anchored.
“To Democrats, I would remind you that we still have the largest majority in decades, and the people expect us to solve some problems, not run for the hills. And if the Republican leadership is going to insist that sixty votes in the Senate are required to do any business at all in this town, then the responsibility to govern is now yours as well. Just saying no to everything may be good short-term politics, but it’s not leadership. We were sent here to serve our citizens, not our ambitions. So let’s show the American people that we can do it together.” —President Barack Hussein Obama, State of the Union Address, January 27, 2010
For the most part, I’m pretty much over politics. I mean, I still keep up and watch the news. But my lack of faith in the American people as a whole has left me feeling somewhat down on the process as a whole. Sure, I still have my opinions. I just choose to, for the most part, keep them to myself.
I mean, is there any hope for real change?
Even the teabaggers, with their misspelled signs and angry chanting are little more than a blip on the news radar and an opportunity for the rest of us to say “teabagger” and snicker. Real change is only going to come in the form of a revolution. And unless there’s a McRib involved, 99 percent of Americans are perfectly happy watching Grey’s Anatomy and scratching their fat asses that itch from a lack of bathing. So rather than fight the system, I’m growing old and learning to function within the system. It’s a more realistic option. The gears of my inner rebel are stripped.
We have elected these people (mostly rich, old, white men) to care for us. We have put our fate in their hands, hoping that they will do what we sent them to Washington to do. That they will put the common whole above their own self interest. And it is with great disappointment that they fail us.
But after last night’s State of the Union, I’m still a big fan of Barack Obama. Every time I think that he might be slipping and not doing enough, he rises up, bitch slaps me, and reminds me that he is smarter than me. And unlike half of America (I’m talking about you, Republicans), I like having a President who is smarter than me. I can barely get my shoes tied most morning. I don’t want someone like me in charge of it all.
Part of his brilliance is a result of his patience. He’s not like most Americans who demand immediate results. He’s not like you and me who exist on a diet of instant gratification. He knows what will make the country better and he knows it will take time. So he doesn’t sweat it. Change will come when change is ready.
For a year, President Obama has put the major problems facing the country in the hands of the Congress and Senate. He has basically said, “You are representatives of the people. Go forth and represent.” But they didn’t do that. They looked out for their own interests. They got involved in trying to cut each other down to build themselves up. They dusted off their white hair and reverted to high-school-style bullying antics and drama. And we all stood by and wondered what was up. How was he letting this happen?
Now here we are, a year later, and Obama seems to be saying, “You had your chance, kids. Give me back the keys.” And I hope that is what he does. History would suggest that he won’t do anything and when America is almost fed up, he will give another speech and we will fall in love with him again. This time, however, I’m giving him the benefit of the doubt.
Take the bull by the horns, Mr. President. We still want the America you promised us during your campaign. I’m no proponent for violence, but sometimes the only way to put a bully in his place is to pop him in the mouth. Can we as a nation be great again? Not if we let the Republicans put the well being of America on hold in their attempt to make Obama fail. Is he smarter than they are and have the ability to prevail regardless? You bet your sweet Aspercreme.
I’m not going to lie. I’m worried.
I used to worry about the sphere of influence cast by all the conservative talking heads. But lately, I think the world is coming around to the fact that Hannity is a glorified squeaky toy and Glenn Beck is a sad clown.
No, I’m worried about Rush Limbaugh. When the guy’s followers willingly call themselves dittoheads because they don’t think for themselves and just repeat everything Limbaugh says as gospel, you’ve got to be concerned. He’s like a cult leader—his followers waiting for a red, white, and blue comet to appear and the mother ship to whisk them off to a land of guns and outrageous health care costs.
Here’s the big problem. He makes a lot of money practicing his shtick. His shtick just so happens to be pretending to love and worry about the well-being of our country. He employs the rhetoric that makes him the most money. That rhetoric is backwards and hateful. Because that’s what dittoheads want to hear.
Rather than helping propel America into a new century and keeping up with the current evolution of the world, he spews propaganda about going back to the “good old days.” He is like an anchor that keeps our country from progressing by helping keep ignorant Americans ignorant.
It doesn’t take a rocket scientist (or a brain surgeon, pick your cliché) to understand that because of the growth of the population, 18th century policies don’t work today like they did when the founding fathers were drafting laws (while their slaves served them wine).
We just have too many people. “Personal liberties” have to be reined in. I know that you want your right to own a Hummer. Businesses owners want their rights to expel carbon into the environment. And for a population in 1776, which consisted of about 2.5 million Americans, this might have been acceptable. In 2010, with a population of about 308 million Americans, it just doesn’t fly. If everybody exercises their personal liberties in any way they see fit, we’re doomed.
And it seems that half of the country still thinks that their personal liberties are more important than the rights and liberties of the common whole. We are a selfish breed. We want, we want, we want. The truth, however, is going to come in the form of a harsh reality check when a fight for our personal liberties eventually brings about the fall of the commons.
At some point, you have to be willing to sacrifice something for the greater good. I’m not asking you to give up your Xbox. No, nothing that drastic. But pay attention to the suffering in the world around you and ask yourself, “Is watching Obama fail really worth losing touch with humanity?” And if you are human (American or not), you will answer, “No.”
For further reading, please read The Tragedy of the Commons by Garrett Hardin (thank you to my wife, Hollee, for putting his in front of me and suggesting I read).
Mark: For the record… I picked out that wok.
Man with Auz’s Old Number: Who is this?
M: Damnit… I want credit for the big salad.
M: Moses smell the roses.
MWAON: I don’t know who you are but you better check your numbers! (This was at 6:23 the following morning.)
M: Do you know what time it is?
MWAON: Yes. Days a wasting.
M: Who is this?
MWAON: That is what I want to know. Why are you texting this number? I don’t know you!
M: You don’t know who you are?
M: I’m just messing with you. This is Jimmy from New Year’s Eve.
MWAON: I’m a 53-year-old guy who spent New Year’s with my family at home.
M: If I remember correctly, you are a 21-year-old hottie who spent New Year’s Eve on my lap. But whatevs. Chicks like you are a dime a dozen.
Mark: For the record… I picked out that wok.
Auz: I know you did. I just didn’t have your number.
M: Hollee was trying to take the credit last night. As if…
A: ROFLOL
A: That thing kicks more ass than Jesus.
M: God is sad that you choose a wok over his only begotten.
A: Maybe his son should cook good food.
M: What? You’re too good for bread and wine? Staples of life, my friend. Staples of life.
A: Jesus just doesn’t fit into my low-carb lifestyle.
M: What about chocolate Moroni? There’s always room for a spiritual dessert. (Editorial note: this goes back a few years to an Easter softball game where we had a conversation about starting a business that would make chocolate Moronis as cake toppers for LDS weddings [the angel Moroni is part of Mormon folklore and blows his horn from the top of LDS temples.])
A: A chocolate fountain of Cain and Abel maybe.
M: What about a marshmallow Noah? He floats in a hot chocolate flood.
A: With two of every animal cracker?
M: Yes. Absolutely.
A: Then delicious.
M: And educational. Old Testament snack treats. They’ll make you shit fire and brimstone. But it’s ok. It’s just the devil fleeing your system.
A: Ha! I like it.
Due to the current economic situation that our country (and the world) is living through, I regret to inform that I am being forced to auction all my “priceless” memories that I accumulated while racking up my MasterCard.
Like many Americans, I bought into the fraudulent advertising that insisted that my priceless memories would outweigh the costs. Well, I’ve got news for you. MasterCard does not take priceless memories as payment, no matter how precious or life-changing that particular event happened to be. You don’t believe me? Try it. They will laugh at you.
First on the auction block, a trip to Europe with my wife. The winning bidder will receive a typed transcript (paraphrased, of course—memories are rarely exact) of our adventure that started in Amsterdam, continued to Paris, then to Dublin, then circled back to Amsterdam. Why pay thousands of dollars to a credit card company when you can own the priceless memory for a fraction of that cost? I’m telling you, it was a life-altering journey. My wife and I grew closer, we shared some laughs with my cousin and his wife, and we experienced all the decadence these cities had to offer.
Is your MasterCard maxed? You don’t have to miss out on those “priceless” moments. Head on over to ebay and bid on a memory that will last a lifetime.
You think I’m kidding? See for yourself.
I don’t even attempt to make New Year’s resolutions any more. I don’t even pretend. There is no way that who I am now knows what’s better for me than who I am tomorrow. And who I am next December will openly laugh and mock who I am now in public and not even feel a little bit bad about it. “January Mark,” December Mark will say, “you were a complete fool. You were like, ‘look at me, I have goals and aspirations.’ I showed you, didn’t I? Idiot.” And I’m ok with this. You just have to know December Mark to love him.
That being said, I think it’s good to take some time and reflect on the journey of the previous year and recognize your own growth. In 2009, I made great strides in coming out of my hermit cave and into the world. I also took a roller coaster ride of my own personal values. And I think that’s a good thing. You should always be questioning everything, including yourself. How do you know if you are or are not full of shit if you don’t check yourself now and again? Exactly. You don’t.
I can get pretty preachy. But I’m going to tell you something. I don’t subscribe to any political, religious, or philosophical way of thinking. Throw them all out the window. I’m not into nationality or borders or where you were lucky (or unlucky) enough to be born. None of that really matters. The past year, I’ve tried to step outside of myself and look at things from God’s perspective.
Visualize with me. Close your eyes. Now lift off. Rise through the building, through the sky, into space. Now look down. What do you see? Do you see Republicans and Democrats, Christians and Muslims, light skin and dark skin? No. You see parasites struggling for survival on their host.
That is what we are. Organisms fighting for life.
You don’t matter more than anybody else. I don’t care how hard you’ve worked for your pile of money and storeroom of guns. You just don’t matter. Sure, you matter to your family. You matter to those who know you. You might even matter to yourself. But in the grand scheme of whatever mad scientist’s experiment we are all a part of, you are just another expendable mosquito, looking for a place to lay eggs and draw blood.
It’s not depressing. It’s liberating.
So this year, as you make your New Year’s resolutions and set goals that you will probably never keep, take a minute to think of everything you’ve gone through in your life to get to where you are. Then think of how you can use the experience you’ve gained as a human being to help other human beings. And all the animosity you have towards people who think differently than you? Let it go.
Here’s to a happy and productive 2010. Now go out and hold hands, teach the world to sing, and drink Coca-Cola.
I’m trying to be optimistic.
Yes, we are entering the dog days of winter, when the snow stops being white and takes on the characteristic shades of its surroundings (i.e., asphalt, garbage, dog piss), but that also means that spring is on the horizon, with its kites and flowers and sunshine. No, you can’t see it yet. This inversion that has settled in the Salt Lake Valley doesn’t let you see much of anything other than gray, but I can sense it out there. It’s like how when you are sleeping, you can sense someone watching you and you wake up. I can sense spring and soon I’ll wake up and be pleasantly surprised by the visitor shining through my window.
The same goes with Republicans, teabaggers, and the rest of the evangelical right. I keep hoping that one day they’ll just be gone. They’ll just be a story about a crazy group with archaic ideas that tried to keep America from moving forward. Our children’s children will think they are just the stuff of legends as they skip through Utopia. Who would put themselves before all else? In the new world, Christianity will be as Christ taught it.
No, I’m not keeping it real. I’m just being optimistic.
Not optimistic enough to not throw up at the sight of Glenn Beck, but trying to find the silver lining on most other things. Have you heard that Lucky Charms now has more marshmallows? See, things are looking better already.
I don’t rock like I used to rock. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I still rock. I just rock differently. Smarter. You know what I mean? When I was younger it was all about rocking hard and fast. Now it’s more cerebral. I appreciate meaningful lyrics and complicated musical construction. Not like I used to. I used to throw my arms out to my sides and say, “hit me.” And it did. These days, I sit down (I still turn it up) and say, “you better blow me away if I’m going to even think about giving you a chance.”
I know I’m old. I recognized this when I told my daughter that Forever the Sickest Kids isn’t music, it’s noise. But I don’t hide from it. I embrace it. I’m old enough to hear in the new bands the sounds they are ripping off from the old bands. So all this “new” music that is out right now, isn’t new to me. It’s a regurgitated blend of songs that weren’t very good the first time around. But what are you going to do? Every generation has said the same thing.
And it’s not just music. It’s everything. I just can’t swallow other people’s opinions like I used to. I question everything. And not just internally. If you say something that doesn’t jive, I will most likely call you on it. I don’t care if you are spewing garbage about healthcare or if you are trying to convince me that Coheed and Cambria are somehow worthy of my ears. You’ve got to come at me with a new, exciting argument or I just won’t have it.
It’s all part of growing up, I suppose. Your hair thins, your joints ache, and you start finding new and creative ways to rock. And you also become more particular about when, where, and why you rock. You can’t just go rocking willy nilly. You’re not a kid anymore. Your rocking has to mean something. Sure, you can have moments of unabashed rocking. But you can’t fill your days with it. We are living in a society and society frowns on rocking. So make your rocking worth it.
And for you kids out there… rock while the rocking’s good. Pretty soon, it will all be over. You’ll be listening to Sheryl Crow and wondering where it all went wrong. Trust me, if you’re not careful, it will happen.
So it’s December. I’ve been pretty lackadaisical about posting, unlike Ginny over at one of my favorite blogs, Praying to Darwin, who took the Pepsi challenge to post every day for the month of December. I have taken the opposite approach and have posted as little as possible in December. Is it so you can have a rest before I make a run at 2010? I could go with that story. But the reality of it is that writing is hard and I’ve been tired. So sue me.
But now we’re rolling towards the close of another year and maybe I’m feeling sentimental or maybe it’s just a fluke, but suddenly I feel like I have something to say, however unimportant it may be. And it has to do with how we (we being America, and America being the Christian nation that we claim it to be) treat each other. And while I have experienced some out-of-the-ordinary holiday cheer in crowded discount shopping centers, for the most part, we treat each other pretty poorly. But I don’t think it’s because we generally hate each other. I think it’s that we’ve been duped into thinking that this is how we are supposed to be. And it isn’t necessarily our fault. We are a generation raised on television, and thus, have been force-fed societal norms through advertising. We have learned to question nothing and do what the television tells us to do.
The Republicans are the greatest ad men around. They have the American people buying into the scam that we are a county of assholes. They want us to believe that we don’t care about each other. That our individual comfort is more important than society as a whole. And we’re buying it. We’re making them rich. We’re waiting for the Super Bowl so we can see the next commercial. It’s amazing.
But we’re being taken. Because it’s not true. Becuase underneath all the glitz of the shiny package of individual greed, people are really good and really care about each other. We donate where we can. We drop our spare change in jars. We help old ladies across streets. Which is why I don’t understand the pushback on healthcare reform. So our taxes go up a little. It’s the same. Drop your change in a jar to help someone get surgery or pay a little more in taxes and those jars go away. The benefit is that somebody—a person—your neighbor or brother or wife or, dare I say it, maybe even someone you don’t know—doesn’t have to not only live through the stress of disease but also how they are going to pay for treatment. Are there people who can help them? Maybe. Are there people who can help everyone? Only if we band together.
I guess what I’m trying to say is this holiday season take a minute to think about those less fortunate than yourself. And maybe you think you are the most unfortunate dolt in the history of unfortunate dolts. And maybe that’s true, but most likely, if you are reading this, you are a smart, educated, and extremely good-looking socialite who appreciates fine literature and is sitting comfortably inside a warm shelter. So come on, it could be worse. You have to admit, you’ve got it pretty good. You do, don’t you?
So for once in your life, forget your sense of self. Because in the grand scheme of things, you don’t matter. What matters is what you’ve done to better the whole. It’s like what Herman Melville said: “We cannot live only for ourselves. A thousand fibers connect us with our fellow men.” I might not have always understood this and I certainly haven’t really lived this. But from here on out, friends, I vow to. Because what’s really important? Me and my personal desires? Or the happiness of those around me? I think we all know the answer. We just have to stop believing the advertisements that would tell us otherwise.
