bob's blog

When I sit in front of the Cyclops, I find myself in rejection mode, a not so slow series of things I can’t seem to bring myself to watch for more than thirty seconds at a time. I’ve noticed that the images are sequenced on most channels at a rate that is quicker since the introduction of the remote simply because people channel surf more quickly now than in the days when you had to stand up and walk over to the beast to touch his knob.

The graphic images are much more violent today. When program central wants to capture your attention they do it with rapid, violent and explosive elements that mesmerize in the way fireworks mesmerize on the fourth, or shock and awe does in Baghdad. How can you not watch? They defy you not to watch, as arms and legs are strewn about the scene, people are bleeding from their eyes, and women are screaming obscene horror noises into your face. How can you not watch my pain you absolutely uncaring, cold hearted beast they shout in scream languages that are universally understood on nerve fibers in your spine. I reject your pain, click, and yours, click, and the loss of your son who strapped on fifty pounds of hate and venom and blew himself up at the bus station as a last desperate act to get my attention so I could somehow make a difference in how his politics worked.

The dialogue that used to support the image is also sequenced at an alarming rate, very few in depth, reasoned, logical arguments, just talking heads screaming past each other in blue and red tones of intolerance. “You don’t get it”, click, you’re absolutely right because you’re not giving it to me in a reasonable manner, click, Maury, click, Chris, click, O’really, click.

The cycloptic screen is aimed at emotion which undermines the rational. It is meant to shock, frighten, terrify in a rapid mis-en-scene of misanthropy, to create dissonance in the viewer in anticipation that a sponsoring pharmaceutical can ease the tension created by the emotion aroused.

The product is too often an ingestable pharmacopic agent that you should ask your doctor to prescribe to “solve” the tension that cyclops promotes by bringing you “reality” itself. The reality depicted is the human condition, a series of disgusting things to eat, or debilitating human relationships that are “resolved” for all the wrong reasons. Greed, power, better looks. The fat ugly man with the five o’clock shadow being transformed into the lovely princess by a makeover team of crack surgeons to be courted and wed by an obsequious social climber who is doing it for the millions and the book deal and the trip to the exotic island where the happy natives in loin cloths will elevate the loving couple to the status of idols for fifteen minutes, but first, a word from Zantac, or Zoloft, or Anusoil.

I reject you, click, and you, click, never even bothering with the volume, the dialogue is so superficial, it is superfluous.

The palliative is a new product, not sold in stores, that is the latest good that will solve all the bad if only you purchase it now, while the operators are waiting for your call, the number is flashing at the bottom of the screen, you absolute idiot, reach for the phone. What do we have to do, haul you in and implant the chip! Why can’t you see the number, it’s automatically flashing on the display of your new integrated phone/camera/thought pad, it’s in your palm, just press O.K., Send or something......click, click, click.........

The entire cult of the idol personalities is what drives the system, people that exude ENVY, that we can ADORE, this week or this month, before the big break up, the nose job, the breast implant, the buttocks reduction. The idols in order to maintain the presence of mind it takes to sell, sell, sell, must go through a progression of makeovers. They start as ordinary folks with a bad voice and end up canaries, morph into actors, and if they achieve suitable notoriety then morph into product representatives so they can sell phones in their cleavage. Too cute by half. You can sell a lot of stuff with the prominence of that display. You don’t even need a face, your torso will do just fine Victoria! The big question is can I drive a Mack truck between your thighs. The eye seeks the breast first, the face second and then...........the product.

Even the olympic channel taps into the human desire for skin by bringing us skin tight beach volley ball as the ultimate win/lose reality. Not men’s volleyball, women’s volleyball. What a ball! Play ball, buy this product! What ever happened to dressage?

Empire and it’s dissolution, deconstruction are well documented in the written record going back millennia, available to those so inclined to read, who can still read, notwithstanding the fact that we fail to notice the horror echoed in the well of silence. The record points to a series of political solutions funded by the well connected for their narrow purposes, achieving zenith and falling into rapid decline. Three hundred years is better than average, sometimes decades only will suffice. We, here, are well past the point where political gravity works it’s magic. The signs of decay are evident in the electronic circus, where the disenfranchised are fed to the lions, brought to you by the pharmacopeia of products that you cannot purchase in Canada or Mexico for less. Not because they are different, but because the system created by cyclops is meant to circulate money from the bottom to the top to support the political solution.

If the products fail to support the political solution, then the solution is in crisis, will dis-solve before our very eyes, as we click, click, click...on the automatic clicker which is rigged in my living room on the hand of the inflatable look alike doll, mounted on the sofa, meant to fool the prying eye of cyclops. Sorry, I checked out, I won’t be here when you resume your regular programming on the next three hundred channels you're creating to prop up your politique! Try the guy next door, click.......

Posted by Bob at 12:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I have been traveling to St. John for over twenty five years. Each time I have come here, I have been on a boat, moving about the anchorages and sailing slowly from neighboring islands, taking photographs and sketching my surroundings in a small spiral notebook which has been my daily journal of thoughts and impressions on island life. I like to capture the busy market squares, the ferry docks, the local outdoor parks where the local culture rubs up against the hordes of tourists. These represent for me interesting points of intersection between cultures, the belongers and the transient population of visitors that come looking for the unusual, the extraordinary with which to compare and contrast their everyday realities.

The island scene of the coconut man with his large machete hacking the tops off coconuts and offering them for sale from a shopping cart has always been an interesting point of reference. My kids stood in awe at that cart, in part because a scary looking belonger was wielding a very large knife with skill and elan, but also because it was so far removed from anything they had ever experienced in their short lives. I stood a safe distance apart, trying to capture the disbelief on their faces and the faces of the other strangers that were just as intrigued and curious, coming upon this island scene for the first time. My kids purchased a fresh coconut drink and stood in amazement at the large hand holding the coconut, not because it was black or large but because it still had four fingers and a thumb.

I came back to this spot on this day, with my sketch pad and camera and saw for the first time a tall chain link fence cordoning off the ferry dock and a sign prominently displayed from the Department of Homeland Security asking all good citizens of St. John to help protect the homeland by identifying unknown persons photographing or sketching the main square where the ferry dock is located.

Ohmygod! That was me! I was the unknown and unknowable stranger doing those things. I quickly looked about to see who was observing and being observed and sure enough a security guard with a dark blue uniform and black leather boots was looking straight at me. He was watching me read that sign and photographing it! I quickly snuck the camera and sketch pad into my pack and started walking away. The security guard started toward me and I could see that we would intersect at the edge of the park by the freedom statue, the one commemorating the blowing of the conch with the right hand while the left hand held a cane knife high overhead.

There was no hiding behind my sunglasses with the purple lenses from this guy, he had me firmly in his sights. From his vantage point at the dock he could clearly see that I had held up a phone/camera and pointed it at the sign attached to the fence. When he confronted me with a suspicious tone and asked me what I was doing, I quickly explained that I was having trouble seeing if my cell phone was getting a reception here. “I’m farsighted”, I explained nervously, “I was trying to see if my phone had any incoming messages. I was holding it at arms length because I forgot my glasses.” I produced the phone and flipped it open and held it out so he could see the display. “Can you see how many bars I have?” I asked. “We have plenty of bars,” he responded, “move along”. I laughed nervously as I walked away, I could feel his eyes on my back making a mental note of my height, approximate weight and the color of my hair. “Welcome to my Island mon”, I whispered under my breath as I stopped to look at the word freedom etched in the granite pedestal.

That evening I stopped in at Fred’s for a jam with Inner Vision. I was feeling Jah, blowing out my flip flops for several hours. The same security guard was walking up and down the lane and each time he passed by Fred’s I couldn’t help thinking that he was looking straight at me. When I finally left he was at the entrance of the bar watching the patrons come and go. He wasn’t a happy looking person, he was a strange man watching strangers, a whole island full of strangers who come in droves every day carrying bags and taking photographs of other strangers carrying bags and making phone calls on cell phones. Thousands and thousands of strange faces hiding their eyes behind colored lenses, carrying cameras that look like phones, in fact are phones/cameras, indiscriminately taking photos and making cell calls in public places. His job was to protect those strangers from the other strangers who were photographing them. What an impossible job, I thought, keeping a metal image of a thousand strange faces that change every day. A thousand strangers that are all suspects. What special training does it take to do a job like that? How does the boss know if you’re doing a good job? Can you do a good job or is it mostly about intimidating strangers who come here to drink rum and jump up? All strangers are suspects, and even though I have been coming here all this time, this guy doesn’t know me from a hole in that chain link fence. We all look the same to him.

That night I went back to the boat and went to sleep under the full moon, rocking gently and listening to the water breaking against the rocks two or three hundred yards away. It was a pleasant reassuring, soothing sound mixed with halyard noises and cups and saucers moving in rhythm with the sea. I was asleep in no time and vividly began dreaming BIZZARO dream #37.

I awoke in a cold sweat. Someone had been on the boat when I was at Fred’s. I could sense it. I got up from the aft cabin bunk, climbed into the cockpit and reached for the flashlight that I keep in the hanging basket next to the hatchway in the main salon. As I shined the light into the cabin I could see all my cleaning supplies that I keep under the sink in the galley on the cabin floor. “I knew it”, I yelled at my wife, “someone’s been on the boat!”

I jumped into the dinghy and raced ashore to confront the burglar. I found him walking along a dimly lit road with my ditty bag full of boat papers under his arm. I caught up to him and when he turned to face me, I recognized him, it was the security guard. When I asked him what he was doing, he told me that he was going through my boat papers to identify my insurance company and that he was turning me in as an unsafe boater for anchoring too close to shore.

I know what this is about I rationalized to myself. That morning I had been in Red Hook to drop off some garbage and buy some groceries. I attempted to anchor in an area of moored vessels close to American Yacht Harbor and several people started yelling at me. I was rather surprised by the reception since I had anchored there in the past. Someone came over in a dinghy to explain that all these moorings were private. “I know”, I said in my own defense, “that’s why I’m putting down my hook”. “You don’t understand”, the dinghy meister went on, “all these moorings are tied together with chain. You’re sure to foul someone if you put your hook down here.” There was of course no way of knowing that, the area was identified on the chart as an anchorage.

That must have sparked a nightmare, I thought to myself, as I shook off the shiver that traveled through my spine when I confronted the security guard.

Just then I looked out the porthole and saw a van parked next to my boat. I jumped out of bed and yelled to my wife to get me the gun. We don’t keep a gun on the boat, but I wanted to scare off anyone that might have boarded the boat. She handed me the flashlight and I pushed open the cabin door to find a dark stranger siting in my cockpit. I moaned a long, deep, bellowing grunt from deep below my diaphragm and felt a burning pain emerging just above my kidney. My wife’s elbow was jabbing my side, “wake up” she whispered “you’re have a nightmare”

“Welcome to paradise”, I whispered back, “just don’t make any sketches.”

There is no freedom behind the chain link fence, there are only prisoners, safe prisoners, protected by uniformed guards that look upon neighbors as if they were strangers, such is Liberty sacrificed at the altar of safety, in all, not much better than self imposed slavery. Unlock your mind, fear is your enemy.

Posted by Bob at 03:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)