Yodeling In the Gully
06.30.04 (8:47 am) [edit]Keneally is still thoroughly kicking my ass via his delightful Dog-gy goodness. This album has been played a lot lately. It's making me happy, which is some kind of feat, especially yesterday when I felt like a big slab of roasted dogfuck on a stick.
(How does one roast dogfuck? Is there a recipe book devoted to methods of dogfuck-cooking? And what kind of stick should one use? Does Martha Stewart know about this?)
I'm really not enjoying this sleep disorder shit, and yesterday was pretty much a total write-off due to me being more or less fucked. But today I feel better. Good thing, too. I've got two guitar students in an hour or so, and I don't enjoy being a semi-coherent robot-fuck in front of ten-year-olds. "Mommy, the bad man made me play a Locrian scale and I don't even know what a locrian is! When do I get to play some Limp Bizkit?"
I'm currently halfway through the third Harry Potter book, which I'm highly enjoying. Sheryl is way ahead of me, she's ready for the fifth one now.
I keep looking in the mirror and thinking" Is my hair OK? Do I look OK? Do I look like an ass? What about when it poofs out too much and I have that Carrot-Top thing going? Is it OK? Is my hair getting good in the back?" It's kinda absurd, especially from me, since I generally am not known for being terribly concerned about my appearance. I mean, I'm a fat guy with the fashion sense of a freshly-blinded tree-toad on acid. I probably should just forget about it.
Anybody else enjoying the mighty PR machine that is the Bush administration this week? "The Iraqi people have their country back." Pfffft. I imagine if this was the case, they'd be acting a little HAPPIER about it. They're probably a bit too busy collecting pieces of their family members to notice right now. So we stuck our selected puppet into place, it means NOTHING. But some Americans will buy it, and that's the point, isn't it? I mean, FUCK the Iraqi people, they're only the ones left with a shithole country after we fucked it all up in the name of our pathetic War On Terrorisim that hasn't done FUCK to actually curb terrorists. Ahh, they're just a bunch of towel-heads. Fuck 'em. Vote for me! I'm a good ol' boy from Texas!
In the immortal words of Mike Patton, "Shit lives forever."
Have a fine and dandy day, boys and girls. Or maybe just a fine day. Maybe a dandy one. It's not too often that we manage to have a day that's BOTH fine and dandy, in fact it can be quite a daunting task, but give it a shot, OK you fuckers?
Love,
Dougie
Half-Named After Conrad Bain's Brother?
06.25.04 (10:12 pm) [edit]Most of you who bother to read my bullshit here know me from alt.music.mike-keneally. For those who don't, get yer ass over to keneally.com and read up on Mike and order his new album Dog. It came into my life yesterday, and it's getting the fuck played out of it around here.
It came at a good time, considering how tired and irritable I've been for the past two days. It hasn't made that go away, it's just let me forget for a while. Good enough. You can forget about feeling like shit when you are confronted with a thick, rockin' slab of meat like this. I'm still working my way around it, but I know one thing - it may or may not end up as my favorite Keneally album in terms of "a collection of songs", but it most CERTAINLY works as his finest if your definition of "album" is "a product of a recording studio." You just can't make an album sound like this in one week with a tiny budget. So yay for killer production and outrageous arrangments to enhance already-excellent songwriting.
I have a very strong desire to learn the guitar parts to Pride Is A Sin, but I'm tired as fuck and I'm not even sure if they're guitars or electric toothbrushes right now, my head hurts so much. Y'all have a lovely night.
Love,
Dougie
Bill Clinton's Cock (Slight Return)
06.21.04 (9:37 am) [edit]Well, my prayers are finally answered. I'd dreamed of the day when my fine country could once again find something to distract it from the true issues of the day, something on the magnitude of that Great Distractor itself, Bill Clinton's Cock. Once upon a time, Republicans took time off from their usual shit, and used Bill Clinton's Cock to divert our attention from the things that actually affected the lives of most Americans.
Who'd have thunk that the Cock itself would return once more?
Bill Clinton's autobiography is our big story this week. Never mind deaths and torture and shit in Iraq, THIS is our big news! Hallelujah! What a perfect thing to bond us together as a nation (or at least, as a large group of pseudo-conservatives and faithful lap-dog journalist fuckers, the rest of the country probably doesn't give two fucks, seeing as how it doesn't AFFECT them) and let us relive once again the days when oral sex could threaten our national security! What a joy!
I kinda wish Clinton hadn't bothered us with this book for a while (and let's be honest, it's not like the guy doesn't love the publicity, why else did he write it to begin with?), because no matter what he might have to say about things that might actually matter, the only thing we're going to hear for the next few weeks is "Is he sincere when he apologizes for his sexual adventures?"
(Well, we'll hear other things. You know, like the fact that John Kerry took money from a...wait for it...A CRIMINAL! Oh my freakin' holy gosh! Politicians taking money from morally unsound individuals? The HORROR! Quick! Somebody call Enron headquarters! I bet Ken Lay has NEVER heard of this shit! My own first thought when reading the headline about Kerry taking campaign money from the arrested son of a former South Korean president was "What was he arrested FOR? Driving drunk on Texas highways? Nahhh, that'll never happen...")
But because our great nation contains so many sexually-repressed dilholes with no sense of reality, that question of Clinton's sincerity will be a hot topic for a while. Personally, I don't give two-fifths of a sideways cream-filled fuck. I still say what I said then - if ANYONE needs a blowjob, it's the asshole who gets to push the little red button that fucks it all up for the rest of us. More power to ya, Bill.
But seriously, we all know he did wrong. He did. Let's not pretend otherwise, and all jokes aside, the guy not only did wrong, but he was a total prick-fuck who, at the time, couldn't take any responsibility whatsoever for his actions. (Wait a minute, which president am I talking about now? I get so confused...) I never saw Clinton as much more than a used-car salesman, and between "I never inhaled" and "How do you define 'is'", I can't take the silly bastard seriously at all except inasmuch as I ALMOST feel sorry for him now that this bullshit of "Is he sincere when he apologizes?" will have to be bandied about as if it's actual news. Why wouldn't he be sincere? Shit, he's gotta be sincere about SOMETHING. I mean, there's gotta be one or two things we can believe from him, right? I mean hey, even Bush can be believed sometimes. Like when he said...uh...well, I....nevermind, I obviously have no fucking clue what I'm talking about.
The Clinton era was an interesting time for me. I'd become so sick of politics that after his first couple years, I just stopped paying much attention. I did at first, I was into it for those first years. I was a fairly rabid listner to Rush Limbaugh when Clinton came into office. (More on THAT cocksucker later.) But as amusing as the Clinton jokes were for...oh..five minutes (I somehow thought they were funny for longer than that, but hey, I never inhaled, so leave me the fuck alone) it became increasingly obvious to me that NOBODY involved in American politics on any level was worth a single lime-green shit. (And if you don't know what I'm talking about, you don't have a three year-old daughter who creates AMAZING bowel movements like the one I tossed from her little potty into the big one yesterday. And if you don't think this is relevant, you obviously need to pay more attention to the parallels between poop and politics.) I managed to get by on a little news here and there, and basically spent the next few years being a badly-informed, semi-competent guitar teacher. Because that's what I do, boys and girls.
When the "Oh my God, the President got a blowjob, we can't allow that in this fine upstanding pseudo-culture" story broke, I would like to have ignored it. I would have ignored it, but it was absolutely FUCKPOSSIBLE. You couldn't take a shit without some reporter jonesing for a Pulitzer popping out of your toilet screaming "THE PRESIDENT LIED ABOUT A BLOWJOB! THE PRESIDENT LIED ABOUT A BLOWJOB!" What I'm saying folks, is the story was kinda hard to miss.
It was then that I realized something that any idiot should have realized long before, but I'm no ordinary idiot. I, after all, am a good American. And when I'm told that our media is full of liberal bias (and usually we're told this by the media, and how can THEY be wrong?) I believe it. Because after all, just LOOK at them. Doesn't Dan Rather just REEK of commie liberal hippie fuckness? It's disgusting. Our horrible liberal media. Just look at them here in 2004, those pinko fucks. Doing nasty liberal things like repeating anything Geroge Bush says like it might sorta be the truth. Flying flags all over the scren while softly whispering about American resolve through the early days of the Iraq war. Not holding Bush accountable when those pesky weapons of mass destruction were never found. Acting like the capture of Saddam Hussein actually made this country a safer place in any way. Never asking "What the fuck about BIN LADEN?" the whole time this administration diverted our efforts into Iraq, a country that had nothing whatsoever to do with the immediate threat we are facing. Completely destroying Howard Dean's campaign with lies and massive exaggerations, Dean being the only Democrat of the original group of canidates with a coherent and sane message for this country, not to mention the only one with a SOUL. Making John Kerry look like even more of a greasy fuckweasel than he does on his own. Going so far out of their way to not only cover Ronald Reagan's funeral at absurd length, but to make him look like an absolute saint even in face of the facts about his eight years in office. Those goddamn media liberals! FUCK! How can we bear all these liberals in our media! Rush Limbaugh! Bill O'Reilly! Sean Hannity! Pat Robertson! Ann Coulter! P.J. O'Rourke! George Will! That fucking LIBERAl MEDIA!!!!!!!!!
(Just for the record, I happen to really enjoy much of P.J. O'Rourke's writing. But he's still full of shit a high percentage of the time. As for the rest, fuck them.)
So anyway, watching the non-stop, absurdly over-serious coverage of Clinton's cock drove the last nail in my liberal-media-coffin. It's BULLSHIT. The space between what he did wrong and how his wrong-doing was treated was so completely fucking insane it wasn't even fu...well, it was kinda funny. In fact, it was hilarious. Let's face it, Americans have WAAAY too much free time if we can be bothered with this shit like we were. And it came from both directions, let there be no doubt. People who would defend Clinton came up with the fascinating question "Is a blowjob really sex?" Wow. I'd never though of that one before. Is a blowjob sex? Is a blowjob from a woman you aren't married to adultry? Gee, I never thought to ask that before. Probably because IT'S FUCKING STUPID. Is a blowjob sex? Well, if it's not, I must be quite the morally-upright kinda guy, because I think about blowjobs EVERY TWO SECONDS. I can't take a breath without wanting to get my dick sucked. I'd feel guilty about this (because that's what my elders told me to do) except that I'M NOT ALONE. If you are male, and you are reading this, and you don't think about blowjobs constantly, you are SICK. There's something WRONG with you. You are a morally questionable individual, and you cannot be trusted. I fear you far more than I do the terrorists, because you are SCARIER than they are.
I have an idea, guys. Walk up to your wife and say, "Hi honey! I just got a blowjob!" and see what happens. And when you are released from intensive care, call me. I wanna hear all about it, guys.
So the whole thing was bullshit. Clinton evading the truth the way he did was bullshit, and the hypocritical Republicans (remember how many of them were caught doing the same kind of shit, but you only heard about it for a couple days? That goddamn liberal media...) who tried to run him from office over this bullshit was even more bullshit. Bullshit to the power of bullshit. Bullshit on top of more bullshit that was already piled onto bullshit. You could turn all this bullshit into enough energy to power every car in America for five years, and then we wouldn't have to worry about two-dollar a gallon gas anymore. Because that, after all, is even MORE important than Clinton's blowjob. Yes, we have our priorities here in America, and we do NOT stand for oral sex or two-dollar a gallon gas, because that is IMMORAL, goddammit.
I lost an awful lot of faith in the "conservatives" I was still shakily trying to hold some kind of trust in, because it was painfully obvious that they did NOT have our country's interest in mind when they went into attack mode, and that their ONLY motiviation for doing so was to use America's weird attitudes about sex as leverage for their own political gain. So I respect Clinton on one level - he stood up to these motherfuckers (I'd call them cocksuckers like I usually do, but Bill had already stood up for one of those, and the metaphor is getting..uh...stretched) and he didn't let them tear him down. THAT is an accompishment. Beats the shit out of taking your state from 50th to 49th in education, anyway.
I'm going to drop this now, because I want to do no more to use this stupid topic to distract our nation from the shit that actually MATTERS right now, which is that we are being owned and operated by a bunch of Republican fucks who make Bill Clinton look like Jesus H. Christ, MD.
But a couple other quick Clinton observations about other stuff than blowjobs. First, if you want to investigate an administration for wrongdoing, doesn't it make more sense to forget about blowjobs and instead talk about a gross misuse of power in Waco, Texas? I thought that the torching of the Branch Davidians, and Janet Reno's part in it, was a FAR worse thing, but then, Republicans aren't likely to get too upset about the killing of a group of wackos who aren't actually bothering anyone. They like that kind of thing. So I guess we can rule that out.
Another nice little artifact from the Clinton-era is the "don't ask don't tell" policy towards gays in the military. This was supposed to be a good thing for homosexuals, but it looks like it backfired, because I just read an article about the thousands of gay people who have been discharged from the military since, INCLUDING many here recently at a time when our country needs all the soldiers we can get, since we're stuck in this stupid war and can't seem to find our way out. The response from conservatives is unfathomable - "we don't need people like that in the first place." This ignorant shit - rooted once again in our nation's STUPID views of sexuality - must be addressed, and must be changed. The idea that our military has a "morality" that can somehow be offended by gay sex is so bizarre, so utterly INSANE, it can only be met with tons and tons of TRUTH piled on thier stupid heads. So I'd encourage y'all to do what I'm going to do - write your congressman and tell them that you are DISGUSTED that hundreds of highly-qualified servicemen, who are performing their jobs ably, are being let go at a time when our troops are stretched so thin in a stupid war, over something as trivial as where they like to stick their weenie. This is down to the very reasons we are supposedly at war - if we are, as Bush likes to say so often, fighting for "our freedom", then that freedom must extend to those who are out there DOING THE FIGHTING.
But of course, we can't allow gay people in the military. We all know that. Because after all, they might do something really terrible, flouting that debased sexuality around. They might mistreat prisoners and force them into degrading sexual positions and take pictures of them! Imagine that! Those dirty filthy FAGGOTS!!! How dare they give a bad name to the morality and sound judgement of our pure and holy military! Now excuse me, I've got some pieces of Iraqi children to throw onto this truck. Get out of my way, I'm defending FREEDOM!!!!!!!!!!!!!
It is my sincere wish that these bigoted repressed fucks recieve a large cock directly in their ass. From a black man in a Teletubby costume. Who voted for Clinton.
Speaking of defenders of family values, those who protect us from the evils of homosexuality, our bastions of morality, how about Mr. Marriage Is A Sacred Institution himself, yes ladies and gentlemen, give it up for Mr. Rush Limbaugh! Hooray!
Rush (I like the one with Geddy Lee better) must be having a terrible dilemma in his sensitive and forgiving heart, because he is so firmly committed to the sanctity of marriage that he's getting his THIRD divorce. I mean, how BRAVE of him to defend God's sacred gift of marriage! He's so good at it, he's done it three times now! What an honor! Does the plucky little chap with the most marriages win or something? But hey, at least he didn't marry one of those rotten FAGGOTS. Of course, who knows. I'm not sure why those three women are gone now. I suppose if you were married to Rush, you might become a lesbian in, oh, about one-tenth of a nanosecond. So maybe he's contributing to the problem. But at least he BELIEVES marriage is a sacred thing. And don't we all? (The following is stolen directly from a Chris Rock routine, by the way.) Marriage is sacred? Who said so? It sure isn't in America. Come on, this is a country that has TV shows like Who Wants To Marry A Millionaire, Bachelorette, and Joe Millionaire. We think marriage is sacred? Yeah, right. Michael Jackson got married. How sacred is THAT shit?
See, I don't have a problem with divorce. I'm my wife's third husband, so I'm all for at least TWO divorces. I've got plenty of friends who've been divorced. But none of us pretend that marriage is SACRED. Because it's not. It's just not, people. Marriage is about as sacred as trying to dig yourself out of a dark cave that had it's roof collapse. With only one shovel and one other person, and you keep arguing over who gets the fucking shovel. Then when you do get it, they tell you you are using it wrong. But that's OK. Because you're TOGETHER, and even if you don't dig yourself out, you've got a common goal (to get YOURSELF out), and it's better to have somebody around to help than to have to do it yourself. There's nothing sacred about that, but it's not really all that bad. You take breaks and talk about stuff, share sandwiches, and YOU'RE NOT ALONE. Not a bad fuckin' deal. Except of course, that you have far less sex than you did before you went into the cave in the first place. Are you kidding? It's cold and damp and dirty in here and my hair is a mess! A blowjob? Who do you think you are, the president?
(Sheryl is gonna love this one.)
So anyway, fuck Rush Limbaugh. I can't believe I used to enjoy listening to this guy on a regular basis. This is the same asshole who said that the troops in Iraq who were torturing prisoners were "just blowing off a little steam." Oh really, asshole? And I suppose those Nazis who killed millions of Jews just needed some anger management courses? Thanks for the valuable insight, Rush. I hope your wife leaves you with enough money to support your drug habit, you hypocritical ignorant fuck.
But of course, this is all Bill Clinton's fault. Rush said so, and that's good enough for me.
Have a nice day, motherfuckers.
Love,
Dougie
Almost Cut My Hair
06.16.04 (9:51 am) [edit]Well, actually I did cut it. I just like bringing up David Crosby songs. If you don't know what song I'm talking about, what the hell is wrong with you? Go buy a copy of CSNY's Deja Vu NOW.
Two nights ago, I did something silly. I looked in the mirror, said to myself "dammit, I'm sick of these stupid tangles", and grabbed a pair of scissors, pulled my pony tail back, and hacked off a rather big chunk of hair. When I was done, I looked like I'd been attacked by Edward Scissorhands after he downed a couple fifths of Jack.
OK, not that bad. But I went to a Great Clips (where the two women were wearing these weird black poncho things that make them look like Hogwarts students) .and had the girl finish me off. So now I look like...uh, a guy who needs a haircut. I had her get the remaining tangle out, cut the back as long as it could be left, then cut the sides a bit shorter. I wanted it at least kinda long, because I fully intend to grow it all back. She did exactly what I told her to do, but now the hair on the sides poof out too much, and I look even more like The World's Ugliest Woman than I did before. I've seen women with hair like what I have now. And they sometimes look good. I, however, do not. Fuck it, I've got a hat to wear until it grows to a decent length.
This happened because, due to my ongoing fight with depression, I've done fuck-all to take care of my hair, and there were these big stupid tangles that were too much of a pain in the ass to undo and I know damn good and well that they'll be back since I probably won't do any better of a job brushing the stuff than I've been since two and a half years ago - the last time I chopped it down in a moment of insanity. I've done this three times now.
The first time was the night a girlfriend left me. This was three years before I met Sheryl. I was out of my mind and taking myself entirely too seriously (yeah, that never happens) and spent the night with a bad haircut, recording a completely psychotic version of Nilsson's You're Breaking My Heart. It's kinda hard to cry like you've been stabbed in the heart by a lying evil whore (which she wasn't, I was just out of my mind, veering rapidly from wanting to kill her and knowing damn good and well that it was my fault, which it was and let there be no doubt about it) and laugh uncontrollably like a mad scientist at the same time. I did it pretty well, though. With a shitty self-inflicted haircut. You shoulda seen the look on the faces of the guys in my band when I showed up for a gig the next night rambling about "She left me! Isn't that great! Yeah, that's fucking great! She left me! HA! Isn't that just fuckin' great? Hey, can I do a Nilsson song by myself between sets?"
The last time I took my hair for a ride, I had not one, but two wonderful women, and they weren't leaving. Katie was five months old, and I was out of my mind, not because of her, but because I felt that I couldn't possibly be a good father to her and do the other things with my life I wanted to do at the same time. I'm still working through this one, but that day was especially intense, wondering what I had done to deserve a beautiful, bright little daughter, and how she possibly could ever do anything to deserve a shitty daddy like me. I don't think I'm a shitty daddy anymore. But I still think she got the raw end of the deal.
So in a weird frenzy, I cut my hair off. That's two times I've done it while clinically insane. This week, I'm almost in a good mood, I just don't want to deal with seven inch long, two-inch thick tangles. So that's progress. I guess.
God, I look like an ass. Where's that hat? I don't want the people on the CD covers strewn across the floor in this room seeing my hair right now, let alone alive ones on the street. Shit! I'm taking myself too seriosuly again! Somebody stop me!
I first started growing my hair after I left college. I'd let it get shaggy before, but I didn't really try anything more. When I first got it shoulder length, it kinda looked like shit, until I discovered that blowdrying did wonders for me. I looked COOL! For once in my life. There certainly isn't anything else on me that looks cool, so this was a good thing. Then I took a job where I had to cut my hair, and that was the end of that for a few years.
It hadn't totally occurred to me until after I'd grown it that having long hair did more than make me look like the bitchin' 70s-rock bass player I imagine myself to be. It also was a great way to piss people off. I knew that in the environment I was in (central Indiana, surrounded by people who think the Eagles are heavy metal, and you just know that all those people in California are having anal sex with each other, and not even man-on-woman like the good Lord intended) long hair pretty much equated to BAD STUFF to people who still thought it was the 1950s. At least I was hanging out in a music store most of the time, with people who were obviously not that stupid. But some family members, and other good Christian folk I'd run into daily, were very wary of me and any long-hairs I might be with at the moment.
I'll admit it - I found this downright liberating. I know there's more than a touch of the juvenille to this, but I take GREAT pleasure in making people uncomfortable whose values and life-guidelines I consider absurd and archaic, and if my grandmother thought I was going to turn into some heroin-craving metal-grinding hippe bastard who they'd find dead in an alley someday, why not help her out a little? She was convinced that I'd never find "a nice girl" with that hair and those clothes (my ridiculous T-shirt/sweatpants combo-pack being what it is), and guess what? She hasn't said nearly as much about what I look like since I came through her door one day with the hair, the clothes, and Sheryl. And ya know what? She likes my girl a lot. So do I. :)
But I like standing out, and I like having the hair. I walk a very fine line between knowing that it doesn't mean much at all, and feeling like I'm saying Something Really Important To The World by having long hair. It's kinda silly to say, but that's rock & roll for you. Learn to thrive on that serious/stupid combination. It's good for you. And I still get odd looks, not just back in Indiana when I stop to get gas at some little redneck station, but even here in the second-fastest growing town in Ohio, populated by lots and lots of very clean, nicely trimmed white professionals, many of whom are about my age. It seems everyone here is between the ages of 28 and 47, or the children of them.
Even in 2004, I still don't see a lot of guys with the kind of hair I had two nigths ago. People I could have gone to school with, grown into Responsible Citizens, driving their SUVs, buying low-carb fast food, and glancing suspiciously at the guy in sweatpants and hair half-way down his back. They're probably very nice people. Too bad they've allowed themselves to be bullshitted by a society that demands conformity, and requires unquestioning adherence to a set of social guidelines that says "Don't stand out, shut the fuck up and be a drone." There are places where you can get away with the hair. Shit, half the rednecks now have the hair. But I still find pleasure in walking into the grocery store with mine and seeing those freshly-scrubbed yuppies. Most of them are oblivious and don't give two fucks about anything other than buying their low-carb food and getting back to their SUVs. But it's fun to be in the produce section and see a little baby in a cart and say "Hi there, you little cutie!" and see the mother recoil in terror at the monster addressing her child, only to see my daughter with me. That confuses the FUCK out of them. I've seen more tight-lipped, fake smiles in the grocery store in the past three years than I've ever seen in my life. I think it's funny as fuck. And I'm gonna say hi to the kids, because it's also funny when THEY look at me like "What the fuck are you?" Hairy assholes like me aren't usually special guests on Barney shows. When the kid actuallly smiles back (sometimes they do), I feel really good.
So now I've got a stupid haircut and I'll have to wait about a year and a half to be truly scary again. (I'm lucky my hair grows so fast, some people can't ever get it that long, and I also enjoy hearing a cute hairdresser like the one who cut mine yesterday say "Wow, you have really nice hair. Beth! You should see this picture of this guy when his hair was long! Doesn't he have nice hair?" OK, I probably like it way too much. :) Hey, they aren't going to compliment me on anything ELSE. But anyway, I can't wait until I can once again sing this:
Almost cut my hair
It happened just the other day
It was gettin' kinda long
I coulda said it was in my way
But I didn't and I wonder why
I feel like letting my freak flag fly
Cause I feel like I owe it to someone
Must be because I had the flu for Christmas
And I'm not feeling up to par
It increases my paranoia
Like looking at my mirror and seeing a police car
But I'm not giving in an inch to fear
Cause I promised myself this year
I feel like I owe it to someone
When I finally get myself together
I'm going to get down in that sunny southern weather
And find a place inside to laugh
Separate the wheat from the chaff
I feel like I owe it to someone
"Almost Cut My Hair" by David Crosby. Go buy Deja Vu now. It's got other good stuff on it too.
Love,
Dougie
The Fall Of A Conservative Icon
06.10.04 (12:44 pm) [edit]I'm not talking ahout Reagan. Don't worry, everyone else is, so you can go off now and watch TV if that's what you thought I meant.
I found out a few days ago that one of my professors in college died. Not just a professor, but the head of the History and Political Science departments at the Christian school I went to for two and a half years, before finally dropping out.
Dr. Martin was something different. He was outrageous. A little old guy ranting until he turned red in the face, practically screaming aboout God's sovereign power and how the liberals were all going to fuck it up for those of us who dared to follow Jesus in this terrible world that threatens to swallow us whole if we take one step off The Path Of Righteousness. He wasn't a professor, he was the most powerful preacher I ever heard in my life, bringing his message to anyone foolish enough to take a history class at 8AM.
The thing was, I loved him. Truly loved him. I was in a weird state at that time, watching my grasp on my religious upbringng just start to give way. In my last semester of high school, I read a book by one of Dr. Martin's favorite authors (and mine, even now), C.S. Lewis. Mere Christianity is the book many of my friends were convinced was the best thing to give to an unbeliever to turn him to Christ. It had the opposite effect on me. Thanks to C.S. Lewis, I did somwething that was WRONG. I THOUGHT about things. I tried to UNDERSTAND the things I was told to believe, that I had blindly accepted as fact. And I came up with more questions than answers, and it made me doubt. Doubting being a bad thing for anyone deeply embedded ina religion as I was. I was about to go to college to study to be a preacher, and here I was thinking it just might all be a load of shit. It didn't help that I was constantly being reminded by everyone around me that the two things I was most obsessed with - girls and music - were bad, soul-destroying things too.
By the time I started my first year in college a few months later, I cared far more about pussy and Frank Zappa albums than I did Jesus. Since I couldn't get any pussy to save my life, being the spinless little twerp I was, I went to the Zappa albums. Imagine being deep into THAT wonderful universe as you start classes with a crew of terrified young Christians. Terrified of evil, and of themselves. Convinced that they were going out into the world to take it over for Christ, but barely knowing how to do so, because after all, the Devil has all those demonic TV shows and rock albums and condoms and abortion clinics and basketballs and unicorns and lions and tigers and bears oh my! The air of religious paranoia was strong, and I was told that it was even worse in the years after I left. It was a weird atmosphere to be in. The funny thing was that one of my fellow Christian Ministries majors - the guy I mentioned in my last post as the one who got me into Jeff Beck - was one of the few who didn't take anything too seriously. So he was fun to hang around, but I barely saw him after that first year. It's been so long, I can't even remember his name, and that's kinda lame, Dougie.
I was in a basic history course, and Dr. Martin was the professor. By the end of the semester, I changed my major to History & Political Science. (I changed majors every semester I was there, it was always between those two and Music. I had no CLUE what I wanted out of college, but I sure as fuck thought I did. I just wasn't able to tell anyone if asked.)
I thought very seriously about being a history teacher. Because what else do you do when you study history? There's not a lot of options. You "spread the disease" as it were, creating a bunch of new history teachers to tell the next generation of idiots that "those who don't learn history are doomed to repeat it", evne though we've learned plenty of it and we keep repeating OUR stupid mistakes by even being here. But it sounded like a good idea at the time. Actually, it still sorta does a little bit. I just have to go back and relearn all the stuff I forgot.
And I did forget a lot of the details. ADD-freakhole that I am, I forgot them five minutes after the test. But at least I got that far, and I was a good student in Dr. Martin's classes, though not a great one. But he liked me, and I liked him, and I sat there enthralled at his intensity and passion. He scared the fuck out of some people. Students who had never stepped one foot into his classroom could be heard talking abut him as if he were some fire-breathing hellmonster. So did some who did sit in his classes. I just saw a little guy turning red and holding strong to what he believed in. Because he did hold strong. And he THOUGHT about his positions, he was CONSISTENT on nearly every point. I could have nothing but respect for him, even though something funny was happening.
Just as that C.S. Lewis book had, Dr. Martin forced me to think. And I came to different conclusions than he did. He drove the final nail into my own Jesus-cross. I held onto a shell of a faith for several years afterwards, but I knew damn good and well that Christianity was not going to provide me with the things I needed. I stopped going to church even before I dropped out of college. When I saw an old church friend (usually the older people who I sucked up to while I was in high school, the pathetic little wormslut I was) and was asked why I wasn't there, I replied that I had a different conception of Jesus now and didn't feel the need to share it anymore. Which confused the fuck out of them, so I usually could get away and back into the car pretty quickly. Believe me folks, when you see a Sunday School teacher coming your way, odds are that you should RUN. Dr. Martin had a Sunday School class too. I went a few times. All he did was move his class into another room, it was not a lot different from the classes. And that was cool.
I spent a lot of time waiting for steam to come out of Dr. Martin's ears. But usually it was just his world view, and that view's take on how history and current events fit into God's plan. Though I regard it as 90% horseshit now, I repeat - I had and still have nothing but respect for the man. I think he knew better than I did that I was confused and lost while in college, and it seemed to not surprise him a bit when I told him I wouldn't be returning after 2 1/2 years. He wished me well, and I knew that he was completety sincere.
In the newspaper article about his death, his wife relates a story of how he sat in his hospital bed, drawing on an invisible chalkboard, giving a long lecture to nobody. This would weird out some people, but it made me smile. He had a point to prove his whole life, he sure wasn't going to let some trivial thing like death stop him from making it. I'm happy to know that he went out like that. It's completely in character.
The irony of his death the same week as ROnald Reagan's doesn't escape me. He loved Reagan. He lived by the same falsehoods that we're hearing constantly now from the supposedly "liberal" media who are falling all over themselves to praise the dead president. Reagan saved our economy, Reagan single-handedly destroyed communism. These things aren't TRUE, mind you, but when you are an impressionable college student who knows far more about books than about the real world, you actually buy into this stuff. It took me a while longer to get through the political questions I had
(I was busy on the religious one, you see) but Dr. Martin led me to where I am today - the kind of guy he'd likely think was a commie liberal weasel. I find it amusing (not leastly because I see through the "conservatives" and their hypocritical horseshit for what it is and I know that I'm far more truly conservative than they'll ever be, the lying fucks) but I feel more or less the same about the deaths of both men. It's sad to see them go. They were far more entertaining and had far more charisma than President Shrub could ever possibly conceive of.
I'm going back to Marion this weekend. I think I'll go find his grave and stop by for a visit. Goodbye, Dr. Martin. You won't ever be forgotten.
Love,
Dougie