Have you ever noticed how when you move somehow the cop fundraiser knows your number so they call and ask for money?
And they act upset when you say no?
How do they know?
Who gives them the number?
Do you think it's the guys on suspension who are making the calls?
Just another think that gets under my skin.
Wednesday, February 23, 2005
Monday, February 21, 2005
HST
Forty years ago today Malcolm X was killed. Reading his autobiography, or biography by Alex Haley taught me a lot about freedom and what it was to not have it in a country that flaunts it. Two days ago Hunter Thompson took his own life. His books taught me to love my freedom and push it, see how far you can be free and find out who is going to try and stop you. When I think of Thompson I don't think of the decadence but of how he had his own American Dream, one that thought it was okay to blow shit up in your backyard, walk through hotel lobbies in your underwear and drive crazy listening to music real loud. He did these crazy things so that I could write letters to the editor that talked bad about cops riding motorcycles on the sidewalk by my school. He paraded around so that every October I can get together with 200 of my best friends out in the middle of nowhere and have our own little festival if only for a night.
He saw freedom as a joy, and when people tried to take it away from him or others he got pissed and used his words to rally others. I learned more about presidential politics reading Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail, 1972 than from any other source. Read it if you haven't. I never laughed so hard than when reading of picking up hitch hikers, breaking into libraries, and of course hanging out at the Kentucky Derby. The way he described how to pick out the Kentucky elite by looking at their boots for puke because they would never get any on their clothes, but boots were fair game. Or when he was pretending that he was the skier John-Claude Kinney and kids asking him what he was smoking and he told them marijuana, that's what made him ski so fast. So fast, so funny, so much cooler that anyone, not giving a shit about rules, protocol, manners, just live fast and fun.
There was another article about a person being killed in a bar in Los Angeles years ago and the guy picked the case apart, he could research.
Malcolm X was fighting for the freedom that Hunter didn't take for granted and tried to show us how to use it.
I don't know why he did it. Does it matter? I'm sad he is gone, well both of them, but I'm sure I'm not the only one that would have loved one night, one hour with him, just to see how real it was. Now we just have to do it ourselves, which is okay, but it's never as cool when you do what someone else has already done.
Hunter S. Thompson searched for the death of the American dream and I hope he didn't think that it died so he had to as well.
From "Freak Power in the Rockies":
Our program basically, was to drive the real estate goons completely out of the valley: to prevent the State Highway Department from bringing a four-lane highway into the town and in fact to ban all auto traffic from every downtown street. Turn them all into grassy malls where everybody, even freaks, could do whatever's right. The cops would become trash collectors and maintenance men for a fleet of municipal bicycles, for anybody to use. No more huge, space-killing apartment buildings to block the view, from any downtown street, of anybody who might want to look up and see the mountains. No more land-rapes, no more busts for "flute playing" or "blocking the sidewalk"...fuck the tourists, dead-end the highway, zone the greedheads out of existence, and in general create a town where people could live like human beings, instead of slaves to some bogus sense of Progress that is driving us all mad.
Greed heads, freaks, land-rapes. All of these great words,
Malcolm copied the dictionary cover to cover from a jail cell, but he didn't use words like that.
He saw freedom as a joy, and when people tried to take it away from him or others he got pissed and used his words to rally others. I learned more about presidential politics reading Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail, 1972 than from any other source. Read it if you haven't. I never laughed so hard than when reading of picking up hitch hikers, breaking into libraries, and of course hanging out at the Kentucky Derby. The way he described how to pick out the Kentucky elite by looking at their boots for puke because they would never get any on their clothes, but boots were fair game. Or when he was pretending that he was the skier John-Claude Kinney and kids asking him what he was smoking and he told them marijuana, that's what made him ski so fast. So fast, so funny, so much cooler that anyone, not giving a shit about rules, protocol, manners, just live fast and fun.
There was another article about a person being killed in a bar in Los Angeles years ago and the guy picked the case apart, he could research.
Malcolm X was fighting for the freedom that Hunter didn't take for granted and tried to show us how to use it.
I don't know why he did it. Does it matter? I'm sad he is gone, well both of them, but I'm sure I'm not the only one that would have loved one night, one hour with him, just to see how real it was. Now we just have to do it ourselves, which is okay, but it's never as cool when you do what someone else has already done.
Hunter S. Thompson searched for the death of the American dream and I hope he didn't think that it died so he had to as well.
From "Freak Power in the Rockies":
Our program basically, was to drive the real estate goons completely out of the valley: to prevent the State Highway Department from bringing a four-lane highway into the town and in fact to ban all auto traffic from every downtown street. Turn them all into grassy malls where everybody, even freaks, could do whatever's right. The cops would become trash collectors and maintenance men for a fleet of municipal bicycles, for anybody to use. No more huge, space-killing apartment buildings to block the view, from any downtown street, of anybody who might want to look up and see the mountains. No more land-rapes, no more busts for "flute playing" or "blocking the sidewalk"...fuck the tourists, dead-end the highway, zone the greedheads out of existence, and in general create a town where people could live like human beings, instead of slaves to some bogus sense of Progress that is driving us all mad.
Greed heads, freaks, land-rapes. All of these great words,
Malcolm copied the dictionary cover to cover from a jail cell, but he didn't use words like that.
100 Club
Jenny Rogers
Andy Okey
Brad Scrivner
Jeff Kriner
Sara Wroblewski
50's
Karen Hollis
Eric Iverson
Leo and Teresa
Andy Okey
Brad Scrivner
Jeff Kriner
Sara Wroblewski
50's
Karen Hollis
Eric Iverson
Leo and Teresa
Monday, February 14, 2005
The Future
Yesterday I went to a Chinese New Year party with my little friend Emily and her parents. It was a fun little get together with a bunch of little girls from China. It is the year of the rooster and they made little roosters out of paper plate cut outs stabled on a stick. All of the little people were sitting at a table and all the parents ringed them, snapping photos and sharing stories about their different trips to China, how some are going back for another daughter, all daughters, no sons. We ate, a variety of foods, some traditional and then there were cocktail weenies.
I just read about a professor in Colorado, a tenured professor might be ousted because he was to harsh a voice after 9/11.
The witches are coming, the hunt for our thoughts is taking another step up. We have squads of people flying around the world, snatching up people and flying them to countries that torture people, that is happening right now. People are in small cells hidden away, their minds turning to jello, they are going insane. I am paying for this.
After we ate we all attempted a song in chinese, mandarin I guess. Emily needed a break, so we walked down the hall and looked at the eight inch sturgeons in the tank and looked at the display with the eagle, and the otter and the mallard duck, all of this at the interpretive center outside of Ashland. The sturgeons were not moving, they were very still at the bottom of the tank, this fish as old as the dinosaurs, it's numbers dwindling.
Another friend told me that there are now reporters hired by the White House and then given press credentials. These are the reporters that George Bush calls on during press conferences. There was a time when a woman named Helen Thomas was always asked the first question, always. Every president, all kinds of presidents before this one. He stopped this.
Emily and I went back to the conference room that we were using and she got a squeeze box to play in the parade. The head of the parade had a dragons mask and the kids walked around the information counter stomping on bubble wrap, which was just about as loud as firecrackers.
This morning I sit at my computer, I listen to the people speaking at Ossie Davis's funeral on my radio and look out at the four inches of new snow, glad my recycling got picked up before the plow knocked that bin over. What is the next year of the rooster going to have for you little Emily? I don't know but it sure was a nice day we had wasn't it?
I just read about a professor in Colorado, a tenured professor might be ousted because he was to harsh a voice after 9/11.
The witches are coming, the hunt for our thoughts is taking another step up. We have squads of people flying around the world, snatching up people and flying them to countries that torture people, that is happening right now. People are in small cells hidden away, their minds turning to jello, they are going insane. I am paying for this.
After we ate we all attempted a song in chinese, mandarin I guess. Emily needed a break, so we walked down the hall and looked at the eight inch sturgeons in the tank and looked at the display with the eagle, and the otter and the mallard duck, all of this at the interpretive center outside of Ashland. The sturgeons were not moving, they were very still at the bottom of the tank, this fish as old as the dinosaurs, it's numbers dwindling.
Another friend told me that there are now reporters hired by the White House and then given press credentials. These are the reporters that George Bush calls on during press conferences. There was a time when a woman named Helen Thomas was always asked the first question, always. Every president, all kinds of presidents before this one. He stopped this.
Emily and I went back to the conference room that we were using and she got a squeeze box to play in the parade. The head of the parade had a dragons mask and the kids walked around the information counter stomping on bubble wrap, which was just about as loud as firecrackers.
This morning I sit at my computer, I listen to the people speaking at Ossie Davis's funeral on my radio and look out at the four inches of new snow, glad my recycling got picked up before the plow knocked that bin over. What is the next year of the rooster going to have for you little Emily? I don't know but it sure was a nice day we had wasn't it?
Saturday, February 12, 2005
Back to the Alvord
So the last two nights I returned to my college for musical entertainment. A little weird, being back with all these kids remembering how I thought I was such hot shit when I was their age, and it turns out that I'm just normal. But I remembered dancing with so many people in that little theater, it really hasn't changed, it's little indentation of a dance floor, the light grid that takes up the entire ceiling, now holding all of sick lights, that's it, six if you can believe that.
The first night was the Big Wu, a jam band from the Twin Cities that is on the other side of it's bell curve right now. Hopefully they will pull out of it, but for now I get to go see a pretty good band in the Alvord.
The weird thing about going to a show there is that I am now the old guy hanging out with a bunch of college kids. I am right on the edge of creepy, still in the okay, but in a couple of years or so it's going to get harder. I fought through this, (successfully), and was able to have a good time checking out these guys throw down some of their hits, danced a bit and saw some of my pals. Kriner was working sound and Olaf was there, so I was in good company. The guitar player went to Eau Claire instead of Ashland, so they started two hours late. They did a good version of Scarlett Begonias and had some nice moments, but things are darker on the other side of the Bell Curve.
Last night was Greg Brown. If you know him you love him. He came out dressed in a black fedora kind of hat, but was a little to small, a sports coat with a t-shirt and a tie. There was no collar for the tie, so it was just there. You could call the look rumpled. His songs and performance were anything but. This man takes his voice and turns it into a instrument that can remove you from were ever you are and take you to funerals for unliked neighbors, the entire life of a retired minor league baseball player, or get this, way into his mind and heart. In a word he is cool, something that men like me look up to and respect and I haven't met a woman that would drop everything in their world to run off with this man. Olaf recorded it, so I'm excited to get a copy. There were a bunch of people that I knew there, kind of like every event here, you stick around afterwords to talk to your friends and neighbors. Lately I have been getting to tell everyone that I'm buying a house and there are so many people that want to help, it's pretty nice.
That was two days here. Now it's Saturday, I better continue packing, I'm moving.
The first night was the Big Wu, a jam band from the Twin Cities that is on the other side of it's bell curve right now. Hopefully they will pull out of it, but for now I get to go see a pretty good band in the Alvord.
The weird thing about going to a show there is that I am now the old guy hanging out with a bunch of college kids. I am right on the edge of creepy, still in the okay, but in a couple of years or so it's going to get harder. I fought through this, (successfully), and was able to have a good time checking out these guys throw down some of their hits, danced a bit and saw some of my pals. Kriner was working sound and Olaf was there, so I was in good company. The guitar player went to Eau Claire instead of Ashland, so they started two hours late. They did a good version of Scarlett Begonias and had some nice moments, but things are darker on the other side of the Bell Curve.
Last night was Greg Brown. If you know him you love him. He came out dressed in a black fedora kind of hat, but was a little to small, a sports coat with a t-shirt and a tie. There was no collar for the tie, so it was just there. You could call the look rumpled. His songs and performance were anything but. This man takes his voice and turns it into a instrument that can remove you from were ever you are and take you to funerals for unliked neighbors, the entire life of a retired minor league baseball player, or get this, way into his mind and heart. In a word he is cool, something that men like me look up to and respect and I haven't met a woman that would drop everything in their world to run off with this man. Olaf recorded it, so I'm excited to get a copy. There were a bunch of people that I knew there, kind of like every event here, you stick around afterwords to talk to your friends and neighbors. Lately I have been getting to tell everyone that I'm buying a house and there are so many people that want to help, it's pretty nice.
That was two days here. Now it's Saturday, I better continue packing, I'm moving.
Friday, February 04, 2005
The Record-Eagle responds
On Jan 26, 2005, at 9:46 AM, Sandy Langdon wrote:
Thank you for writing, but this would be too much after the fact.
From: "Jeremy Oswald"
To: "Sandy Langdon"
Sent: Wednesday, January 26, 2005 10:47 AM
Subject: Re: Letter to the Editor
Could you please elaborate on "too much after the fact".
From: "Sandy Langdon"
Date: January 28, 2005 8:07:43 AM CST
To: "Jeremy Oswald"
Subject: Re: Letter to the Editor
Check with Dave Miller, editorial pagae editor, at dmiller@record-eagle.com.
Thank you.
From: Jeremy Oswald
To: dmiller@record-eagle.com
Sent: Friday, January 28, 2005 10:40 AM
Subject: Fwd: Letter to the Editor
Hello,
I wrote a letter to the editor that was rejected because it was "too much after the fact". Sandy Langdon wrote that I should take it up with you.
I think that the letter speaks to the reelection of George Bush, not just his inauguration, do you mind reconsidering?
Thanks for your time,
Jeremy Oswald
On Jan 28, 2005, at 10:11 AM, Dave Miller wrote:
Jeremy
The fact that the inauguration was already over and the women had already returned home made this moot.
It was also much too long, more than 600 words; we have a 200-word limit on letters to the editor.
Lastly, I wasn't to let you use them as props for what was essentially a screed on Bush and all his policies. If you'd like to comment on Bush, feel free to do so; but portraying a half dozen women who went to the inaugural as ignorant, unfeeling and complicit is over the line.
Dave Miller
editorial page editor
From: Jeremy Oswald
To: Dave Miller
Sent: Friday, January 28, 2005 11:59 AM
Subject: Re: Letter to the Editor
It is over the Record-Eagle's line. Yes that was my intention and I understand now why you are not printing it, thank you for taking the time to explain it to me, I appreciate it.
These citizens were the ones that worked to put him in office, so shouldn't they have some responsibility for his policies?
In my opinion backing Bush and working for him is ignorant, unfeeling, and complicit and I feel that the piece told that without saying and backing it up.
You are more than likely a busy man, I know that this is your job, but I am enjoying this dialogue if you would like to continue it.
Again, thank you for your time,
Jeremy Oswald
Jeremy
Again, I'd welcome a letter, so feel free to submit. Unfortunately, I have too many fish to fry today, so no time for more.
Dave Miller
Thank you for writing, but this would be too much after the fact.
From: "Jeremy Oswald"
To: "Sandy Langdon"
Sent: Wednesday, January 26, 2005 10:47 AM
Subject: Re: Letter to the Editor
Could you please elaborate on "too much after the fact".
From: "Sandy Langdon"
Date: January 28, 2005 8:07:43 AM CST
To: "Jeremy Oswald"
Subject: Re: Letter to the Editor
Check with Dave Miller, editorial pagae editor, at dmiller@record-eagle.com.
Thank you.
From: Jeremy Oswald
To: dmiller@record-eagle.com
Sent: Friday, January 28, 2005 10:40 AM
Subject: Fwd: Letter to the Editor
Hello,
I wrote a letter to the editor that was rejected because it was "too much after the fact". Sandy Langdon wrote that I should take it up with you.
I think that the letter speaks to the reelection of George Bush, not just his inauguration, do you mind reconsidering?
Thanks for your time,
Jeremy Oswald
On Jan 28, 2005, at 10:11 AM, Dave Miller wrote:
Jeremy
The fact that the inauguration was already over and the women had already returned home made this moot.
It was also much too long, more than 600 words; we have a 200-word limit on letters to the editor.
Lastly, I wasn't to let you use them as props for what was essentially a screed on Bush and all his policies. If you'd like to comment on Bush, feel free to do so; but portraying a half dozen women who went to the inaugural as ignorant, unfeeling and complicit is over the line.
Dave Miller
editorial page editor
From: Jeremy Oswald
To: Dave Miller
Sent: Friday, January 28, 2005 11:59 AM
Subject: Re: Letter to the Editor
It is over the Record-Eagle's line. Yes that was my intention and I understand now why you are not printing it, thank you for taking the time to explain it to me, I appreciate it.
These citizens were the ones that worked to put him in office, so shouldn't they have some responsibility for his policies?
In my opinion backing Bush and working for him is ignorant, unfeeling, and complicit and I feel that the piece told that without saying and backing it up.
You are more than likely a busy man, I know that this is your job, but I am enjoying this dialogue if you would like to continue it.
Again, thank you for your time,
Jeremy Oswald
Jeremy
Again, I'd welcome a letter, so feel free to submit. Unfortunately, I have too many fish to fry today, so no time for more.
Dave Miller
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