From the center of Hell

Also known as Midwest City, Oklahoma, a Chili's surrounded by several hotels and a Wal-Mart Supercenter just outside Oklahoma City. It took us about 10 hours to get here from Nashville, and the 45 minutes we had to drive around looking for food was the longest part of the fucking day. So now I'm full (thank God for Waffle House), but still really tired and dirty.  And cranky, obviously. 

Spent last night in Nashville. We went to the Station Inn, this really cool bar that hosts a bluegrass jam Sunday nights. No cover, cheap beer, some pizza that I'm pretty sure was DiGiorno, and between 15 and 20 people playing every sort of stringed instrument out there. I fell in love with a girl playing the guitar. And also the waiter/cook, who was wearing denim overalls. So I love Nashville for getting me drunk and providing such a fabulous, fiddle-filled place to hang out. 

And here we are outside Oklahoma City, because it's halfway to Santa Fe. Arkansas and Oklahoma are two new states to add to my list ... even though I didn't see much of them, aside from gas stations and Christian signs. To wit: 

"You call it ABORTION. GOD calls it MURDER." and 

"'Does anybody really care?' 'I do ... Jesus!'"

Night, all. Next stops are, tentatively, Santa Fe, Vegas, Santa Barbara and San Francisco. 

From the Red Roof Inn in Charlottesville, Va.:

(This was written last night in the town where UVA is. I'm in Nashville now.) 

The hotel room is throbbing. I can’t tell what the constant mechanical thrumming is, but it seems to come from the very walls. The heartbeat of the hotel, if the hotel were being attacked by wolves. Or thought it was in the midst of a wolf attack, after taking an overambitious dose of acid. 

I figure two things will happen before I fall asleep. I’ll get used to the noise, like a bad smell, or I’ll go to the corner store for a big bottle of Nyquil. 

God. It couldn’t be worse unless I was feeling guilty about murdering someone and hiding their dismembered parts in the walls. Didn’t Edgar Allen Poe go to the University of Virginia? How fitting. 

CG dropped me off this afternoon before heading to his grandparents’ house in the hinterlands. I’m not there because, one, I don’t like old people and, two, they wouldn’t like their grandson cavorting about the country with a common hussy. Fair enough.

It just occurred to me that I’m eight hours from home, without a car, and my ride doesn’t have cell service out there in the mountains. 

Anyway. Last night we were in Manhattan. The Doubletree upgraded us to a junior suite, an 18th-floor room with a concrete balcony and little signs explaining everything. The sheets and duvet have been laundered. The tub is anti-slip, but if you’d like a bathmat, call housekeeping at x803. You may pick up anything from the minibar for 20 seconds before it is automatically charged to your room. 

Nice, though. We went to an Irish pub, a restaurant with live jazz, a gay (as in rainbows, not lame) piano bar and a new wave dance party. 

This morning we got on the road early, after CG learned what I’m like in between being woken up and eating. It’s unpleasant or something ...  

Nashville tomorrow night. Last time I was there, I was too tired to go out and in the morning was greatly disappointed by the status of the Grand Ole Opry, which was facing an Old Navy and Bed, Bath and Beyond. Although I hear that’s not the real one, which is relieving. But hopefully there’ll be a Cracker Barrel involved again. Can’t get enough of that. 

With any luck, my stomach will settle, I won’t hear the throbbing, the people in the next room will finally go out and I can fall asleep. 

Departure Eve

Setting out with CG tomorrow. Got my tiny shampoo, emergency poncho, peanut butter and iPod. 

I'm ready. 

Oh, G. Dub is still president?

Who knew. 

Mr. Bush is currently on a tour of the Middle East in a last-minute effort to get Israel and Palestine to come to terms. I assume the thinking there is, if Bush's name is linked to an Israel-Palestine treaty, people will forget about the Constitution-as-toilet-paper, militant cronyism of his administration. 

In swinging by Saudi Arabia, he offered our allies a 900 smart bombs so they'll back us in the upcoming Iran War and so they'll back the peace deal. But don't worry, officials say: the bombs we give Israel are smarter. 

Great. Piss off the Arabs more. That should help.

Oh, and no comment about oil. Why would they talk about that? It's not like the Saudis are the most powerful arm of OPEC or anything. 

This is why I pay such sporadic attention to the the news these days. 

***  

There's also a story about the national intelligence director is making plans to gain access to any email, anytime. One of his aides told the New Yorker, "We have a saying in this business: 'Privacy and security are a zero-sum game.'" 

Meaning security only comes at privacy's expense. 

Now if that were phrased as just this guy's thoughts on the subject, fine. It would be troubling enough, but still, fine. But allegedly there's a "saying in this business." Implying that many, most, some, a lot of the people in this business (INTELLIGENCE) take this as a given. 

Holy balls. 

The Race

This is the internet equivalent of standing on a mountain and screaming one's ideas into space. But here I go, just the same. 

I imposed a self-moratorium on paying attention to the presidential campaigns. They started so early -- do they always start so early? -- and it pissed me off. First of all, the constant news from the trail eclipsed the more important and more relevant news about what the current president was up to. Second, a lot of these candidates are senators. Influential senators. But instead of voting, debating, reviewing bills, they were stumping for their next jobs. 

I know this is to be expected, but 18 months before the election? 

Unfortunately, I let the campaign boycott go too far and found myself watching the Iowa results on a bar TV, knowing nothing I hadn't gleaned through osmosis. It's the same way I always know what's going on with certain former pop stars. I don't try; it just happens. 

So in the few days since I've been trying to catch up. I've tried to take in the plans for change listed on Obama's, Clinton's and Edwards's web sites. (Overwhelming in one sitting.) I've compared the amount of money given to the candidates from different industries: oil, lobbying, pharmaceuticals. (Opensecrets.org) I've looked for stories and columns that address not what the candidates are doing right now (whirling through New Hampshire on either sheer determination or some combination of that and a lot of uppers), but what they would do from the White House, what they have done in the past. 

Will they fill the government with friends and supporters, like an incompetent horse association commissioner to run FEMA, or hire qualified, intelligent people? Will they give billion-dollar contracts to other friends and refuse to prosecute corrupt war contractors? Will they work for the oil companies, for big business, for a narrow idea of what God wants? 

Will they ignore the opinions of the people? Will "America" mean a few thousand close, rich friends, or 300 million people, most of whom are not white, wealthy, Christian men? Will they address the huge portion of the country living below, at, or double the poverty line? Will they attend to the poor, the sick, the oppressed in this country, or insist that those problems lie within other borders?

Will they stop bombing other countries in order to gain more influence, power and money in those countries? 

Will they tell the truth, or will they lie?

Will they steer America off this consumptive path toward exhaustion of resources, toward the end of a first-world lifestyle for anyone?

Is a presidential election really going to change anything? 

I've become cynical about what change within the system can do, and idealistic about that outside the system. But I'm beginning to look forward to next January. An entire year from now, still. I don't think the Republicans have a chance, no matter who the candidate. People are too fed up with war, corruption and an eroding economy. So who will it be? Obama, Clinton, or Edwards? So far I like Edwards the most. But Obama has this incredible following, which includes, not insignificantly, Oprah. Clinton, I don't know. She wouldn't be a change, and people know that. And I'm not convinced that the question of sex is moot. A lot of people wouldn't vote for a woman, consciously or not. 

So maybe, in a year, things will change. They will superficially, I'm sure. I'll have to wait and see. Maybe I'll be proven wrong, and see that change can come from the top. 

But I doubt it. 

Life at Home

In the interest of keeping my brain from atrophy, I'm going to focus the SlajTrip (TM) on my current, more stationary journey. The Malibu is still in motion, mostly between here and Waterbury but sometimes to such exciting towns as Seymour and Middlebury. Oooh. Let's begin.
***
My neighborhood is one of cars. Each family has at least two, often more, but the driveways next to our cube houses are only long enough for a couple, and no one uses his garage for vehicles. So the pickups and sedans spill out into the streets, line the sidewalks.
The houses here were built all together, an Industrial Age development for the workers in the big brick mill downtown. Once a shoe factory, now an apartment complex. I've never been inside, but I hear they have a pool.
My neighborhood is the development. All the houses looked the same, once, but over 90 years porches have been added, and then enclosed, new wings have appeared along with fences and pools. They still mostly do look the same, all square boxes with tiny front lawns and flag poles. The bigger ones along one road, they were the bosses' houses.
Trees have grown and some have fallen, but for the most part the neighborhood is wide open. We're all in each others' views.
I haven't known the neighbors since my kickball-in-the-street days. Children don't have games like that now. Do their parents think it's too dangerous, to play in the road with cars speeding around corners and through stop signs? Maybe. But a few of the children here have turned to guns instead.
BB guns. The little boy across the street and the littler boy who lives behind us stalk around, rifles slung over their shoulders, shooting stop signs and squirrels and playing war games. The one across the street, I know his dad has a whole rack full of real guns. It's all a little unsettling.
The other house behind us, it's two adults and a yippy miniature Doberman named Rocky. They have a jambox that hangs from a hook on the wall. They play this jambox on Saturday and Sunday mornings while they garden and set up windchimes and other whimsical crap around the yard. They've chosen, apparently permanently, the worst radio station in the state.
But right now, it's quiet. The sky is overcast, which always seems to absorb sound. Recess is over, so you can't hear the kids screaming on the playground. No one's around to work on their houses or yell at their kids. The dogs are inside, their barking muffled. It'll get louder later.
That's all for now.

Connecticut, week one.

I've been stationary way too long. I'm like a fucking shark, man. Can't stop moving.
And -- conveniently enough -- this week has been Shark Week on the Discovery Channel. Coincidence? Sign from the divine? Me losing capacity for rational thought?
Well, America ... you decide!