In the days when I had time on my hands, I posted a lot more in here and perhaps my thoughts were a little more, um, cogent? If that's the right word. But transition periods don't usually afford a lot of time. Learning a new job takes up that time, but I am starting to get to a point where I am settling in now, so you'll be hearing a lot more from me. I've filled time that I used to spend watching the news and getting upset over what I feel is actually a pro-Bush media, in that he's not getting hammered nearly enough over how dishonest his administration has been on so many fronts, with either being at work or being at home watching the Oakland A's try to hang onto first place in the AL west. My wife's not nearly as interested in baseball on TV as she is with football: that's one of the extra bonuses in our partnership...she loves football as much as I do and, in fact, nowadays gets a lot more pissed off when the Raiders lose than I do when the Packers do. But she does like to go to baseball games, like the one we're going to tonight. The A's play the Devil Rays, not exactly a game that generates as much excitement as the time we went to see them win their 20th in a row back in '02, but in recent weeks the A's have had tougher times playing the crap teams like KC than they have playing Texas and the like. So we're gonna go to show our support.

We are also inviting a good friend of ours, a guy friend in a couple that just broke up. Not another one of those! My wife and I have navigated through the tough waters of trying to remain friends with both people that were once in a couple that we would mutually spend a lot of time with, and our success rate in that has thus far been poor at best, but I'm thinking the lessons learned from past situations will help us this time around: Stay out of it, and don't pick sides. Try to be there as best you can.

I am finding new and interesting ways to get lost here in Silicon Valley. I've lived in the Bay Area for almost twelve years and have gotten to know SF and the East Bay pretty well. Now the South Bay is the next stop in that rotation. I've printed out maps in anticipation of moving to Santa Clara, hoping I can find a good bike route to my job here in San Jose. It would be a 6.6 mile ride and I could use the exercise. Right now I am commuting from Oakland to San Jose. Worst. Commute. Ever. But it's okay, because I am working, and I am grateful for that.

I'm settling into the job nicely this week. Without my predecessor looking over my shoulder, I feel like I can begin to put my own stamp on things here and stretch out in my own communication style. I'm just taking the issues one at a time, as they come. Tomorrow I have lunch with our head of sales and later that evening the CEO is hosting a barbecue. I am approaching week two of my new life. So far, so good.

I am with the Rude Pundit in hoping that the protesters in Ny don't play into the hands of the GOP. No puke-in's for peace, please?

It's been quite a week. I am now on my own at my new job next week, and I know it's going to be stumble and bumble for a while. But that's life. I'm glad this job thing happened, because without it I would probably be sitting and moping at home feeling sorry for myself trying to adjust to being retired from the road.

I haven't been reading as much online in the political department the past week or so, just enough to know that the "swift boat veterans for untruth" should all be sodomized by the biggest cat and its barbed prick that one can imagine. These douchebags must realize they are about to be voted out. It seems Kerry is taking Clinton's advice: Politics is most definitely a contact sport, and he hit back, hard.

Fuck Fox, and Fuck B*SH (censored, once again, for the kids).

Onward and forward

Forward and onward...I've been away from here for a short while because of two things. First, the band I helped start back in late '95, early '96, played its final show at Castle Clinton National Monument a week ago Thursday, August 5th. My wife was in attendance and took lots of fantastic pictures. We spent the remainder of the weekend exploring New York, although the Friday after the show we were recovering from a super deadly hangover (getting free drinks all night at the hi-fi club, which hosted the band's afterparty, will do that).

It's hard to describe the feelings I have now that the band has officially broken up. And I'm not just giving up THAT band. My days in the band dynamic are likely over for good. I've showed up for practice either two or three times a week for the past 17 years (with a brief respite during my move to SF from Wisconsin back in January to July of 1993). I have said to myself for a while that I needed a break from that. My last day job put that notion at a premium, as I was working 5-2 at first and then 6-3 by the end. Juggling this with band practices that went from 7-11pm was a little taxing. But the job ended when we hit the road in early April of this year. We returned in mid June, played the Fillmore in SF on 6/26 and then the Castle Clinton show on 8/5. And now, , it's all done.

I was fully prepared to spend the next month struggling to find a new job and identity, battling the post-partum depression along the way. And then on Monday morning, 8/9, I got a cold call from someone who saw my resume posted on craigslist, and by yesterday I was starting a new job as Technical Support Engineer for a mobile productivity application company based down in San Jose. I am the only one who will be doing this job, and it builds upon my day job experience I've juggled between tours and records. It affords us the opportunity to pay down our debts accrued over time as a result of all of this juggling since about 1999. The "rock student loans" (read: credit cards) have been getting out of hand. And this job pays better than all of the other jobs I've had. The CEO is super cool and we were cracking jokes during the my second interview, where he offered me the job as a permanent hire rather than the three month contractor I was first supposed to be.

The interesting thing about that is how I had said "fuck it" when I posted a resume on craigslist that included a curriculum vitae of sorts, of my music career. I had always kept that part of my life off of my resumes, thinking it would scare potential employers away. But I realized that eschewing that long held notion was a good one for two reasons: 1. It explained the gaps in my resume. 2. It showed I had a life outside of work, and that I could learn things quickly. The "multi-intstrumentalist" aspect of the cv (trumpet, drums, engineer, webmaster, guitar player, backing and sometimes lead vocalist) suggested to any potential employer that I could certainly multi-task. And I was right. I began getting calls. And the job I found perfectly fused my previous on the job experience for the past seven years into a position I have leeway in creating for myself. And everyone at the company (16-17 people, a startup), knows about my history in rock and roll, and also know that I have retired from the road life (at least for the foreseeable future).

I was offered the job on Thursday, exactly one week after my final gig in NY, and I started the very next day. I have a lot to learn. And I also have to shake off that feeling I have, a feeling that reminds me of my first day of high school orientation in 1985, a few days before my sophomore year. I was born and raised in tiny Berlin, Wisconsin until the spring of '85, when my father decided to take a new job down in Elmhurst, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago. He started the job in April of that year and spent evenings and weekends searching for a house while my mom and I stayed in Berlin to finish out my freshman year. We hadn't moved into the house yet when school was to start, so the first week or so my dad and I lived in a hotel right down the street from the school. And I remember the overwhelming feeling I had during that abrupt change in my life. This change rivals it, because my wife and I will soon be moving into an in-law unit in Santa Clara to save on rent, so my entire existence will be commuting about five to ten minutes from Santa Clara to San Jose. This thought hit me at home during my lunch break yesterday, where I drove to a little strip mall down the street from the office to have a Vermicelli bowl (at least the restaurants there are good, thought the strip mall atmosphere is not an aesthetic favorite of mine). I looked around and thought to myself, this whole experience is foreign to me. I don't know anybody here. And then I thought to myself: less than four months ago I was driving a van through the Bavarian countryside on the way to a gig in Switzerland during a one month European tour, and now I am living the suburban 9-5 existence like practically everybody else.

This is what I wanted, some peace for a while from the hectic touring schedule away so long from my wife, and some financial stability to take care of some outstanding debts. Still, it's a transition that I am going to have to get used to. So I think I will chronicle it here, peppering it with a few political notes along the way.

Kerry's speech last night was impressive. I didn't think he had it in him, the man actually broke a sweat. After the mind numbingly dull speeches for the past four days that seemed to repeat the same themes ad infinitum, I was worried that Kerry wasn't going to get the crowd going. But in a way, I think it's not unlike being an opening act where the headliner doesn't let you share channels in the house PA or use the lighting gear for more than a couple of simple fader moves. The opening speakers went on for far too long, and some of the people were fired up just on account that the moment everyone had been waiting for finally arrived. And Kerry took it from there. There are three parts of the speech that touched on something I hadn't heard from him before. I was especially impressed with the following:

"Now I know that there are those who criticize me for seeing complexities, and I do, because some issues just aren't all that simple. Saying there are weapons of mass destruction in Iraq doesn't make it so. Saying we can fight a war on the cheap doesn't make it so. And proclaiming mission accomplished certainly doesn't make it so."

That is an answer to the "flip-flop" charge. I look forward to seeing him elaborate on this theme in the days ahead. I was also wondering when he would get a chance to counter the GOP lies about how Kerry's going to "raise your taxes." Here is the response:

"And let me tell you what we won't do. We won't raise taxes on the middle class. You've heard a lot of false charges about this in recent months. So let me say straight out what I will do as president: I will cut middle-class taxes. I will reduce the tax burden on small business. And I will roll back the tax cuts for the wealthiest individuals who make over $200,000 a year, so we can invest in health care, education and job creation."

Finally, this passage comes somewhat unexpected, but it hits to the truth of my experience growing up in a small town in rural Wisconsin, where people certainly were more religious, but they viewed religion as a part of their life, not their lives solely devoted to their relgion. I had a pastor once warn my Sunday school class about so-called "Jesus freaks," who are not true to the word of God but treat their religion too much like other forms of idolatry. When I moved to the suburbs of Chicago, I witnessed this phenomena firsthand. I remember one classmate once asked me if I was a Christian or not. I hedged for a minute, because he asked it in a tone of voice that sounded to me the same as someone who would ask me if I considered myself as a "jock," or a "burnout." He seized on the rather small "um," and said, "well you either are or you aren't."  As a sixteen year old I would have been well served by this passage from Kerry's speech:

"And let me say it plainly: In that cause, and in this campaign, we welcome people of faith. America is not us and them. I think of what Ron Reagan said of his father a few weeks ago and I want to say this to you tonight: I don't wear my religion on my sleeve. But faith has given me values and hope to live by, from Vietnam to this day, from Sunday to Sunday. I don't want to claim that God is on our side. As Abraham Lincoln told us, I want to pray humbly that we are on God's side."

 

I've been housesitting at my mother in law's house in Santa Clara this past week. Her house is a garden of eden in the middle of bland suburbia. The front porch and lawn is a series of terraces and gardens and walkways built using bricks from an ugly wall in the backyard that was recently torn down. There is a japanese architectural influence throughout. Draped proudly from the main front porch, right in front of the front door is a U.N. flag, where most people would drape the stars and stripes. My wife and I will be taking this cue and will be flying our own U.N. flag in front of our house when we get home. In a few months, after their in-law addition is built, we will be moving down here on a semi-permanent basis to live cheaply and take care of some personal financial woes that have been festering for too long.

Amidst this garden, I've been spending mornings after watering the plants reading the various current politically charged books she keeps throughout the house. Among them, I've dabbled with Rogue State: America At War With The World, by T.D. Allman, Why Do People Hate America?, by Ziauddin Sardar and Merryl Wyn Davies, and currently, Worse Than Watergate: The Secret Presidency of George W. Bush. The best by far is the latter, as it is concise, well written, and considering the source, a former Nixon aide whose whistleblowing in Watergate was well known, it comes from a position of intimate knowledge of how things work in the White House. I highly recommend this one. Of the former two, the first is a tad heated in the rhetoric department and the second is academically obtuse. I am all about mainstream reading these days, as far as promoting reading to anyone who may reside on the fence for the 2004 election.

Today the Dem Convention begins and I am hopeful that their quest for positivity doesn't come at the cost of missing opportunities for telling all Americans how much damage the Bush administration has done to our country's reputation throughout the world. I doubt Kerry's going to call in question the whole notion of preemptive war, and I think it is a mistake if he doesn't. This notion, in my mind, is the root cause for all the troubles we will face in the coming years. As I had been saying from the moment we began responding to the 9/11 attacks, Bush is playing right into Al Qaeda's hands. They wanted an escalation to promote their existence to others in the Arab world who have been against Western hegemony in world affairs. The way that Bush has handled our foreign policy is making matters worse than they already were before the attacks. He would have been better off doing nothing.

Let me reiterate what Kerry needs to focus on: Statesmanship vs. Brinksmanship. There is a way we can coordinate the world response to terrorism on an international level, where all parties are in agreement (or near agreement) on how to proceed. It's not that the Bush administration tried to do it and failed, they wanted to go it alone in the first place. "If you're not with us, you're against us." If that's not a loaded way to frame the debate before the debate ever got going, I don't know what is. They went to Iraq on a predetermined timetable, taking the weather into account. Should Kerry get elected, the world will come back to the table and ask him, "how can we help you fix this mess." And he will succeed where Bush failed miserably.

To me, the Bush administration, run by neocons, decided to take the balls out approach the moment the Supreme Court decided the 2000 election in favor of Bush, knowing that it was unlikely they would exist past their first four year term. It was opportunism by an extremist group of dangerous ideologues to seize the moment to insert their agenda for all it was worth, knowing their time in power wouldn't last long. Then 9/11 happened and their agenda was given the cover it needed, and they began to realize that they were afforded an actual opportunity to stretch it to eight years.

There is no question that our #1 priority in this country is to get Kerry elected. While I may not agree with him on many of his stances (voting for the war to begin with, for starters), at this point it's all about damage control. A very personal analogy for me relates to my own credit card debt. The things I'd juggled in life for a number of years did not add up, and now I am to a point where I need to suffer through just working and not juggling the gamble of a musical career any longer, live with my mother in law until the slate is wiped clean, and then we can talk about saving and investing for the future, and moving forward with more lofty goals. The situation in this country now politically (not to mention economically) is a lot like that. We need to get Kerry in there first, and then reverse the damage of the past four years before moving forward with trying to shift the country further to the left.

It's that time again. Changes from last week:

AZ, MO, NH and WI move to Kerry's side, and FL to Bush. TN is a "tie." If TN stays with Bush, the electoral count would be:

Kerry 285, Bush 253. If Kerry got TN also, then he'd beat Bush 296 to 242.

I've been told by some folks not to take the Zogby polls seriously. Fair enough. But it makes me feel better to keep tabs on whatever statewide polls we can.

I'm looking forward to the convention to see what Kerry's going to do. I think Bush is planning on hammering the terrorist theme once the election draws near. It's going to be brutal, like the red scare. They are going to try and scare the American people into re-electing Bush. What Kerry needs to do is create the image of a statesman, someone who can also boldly act, but in a way that puts back some deference to the international process. Statesmanship v. Brinksmanship.

If we get four more years of Bush, I think we're going be further isolated in the world. The European community has its fingers crossed for Kerry. Because if Bush wins, we're going to face some serious crises in the international relations department. And history will note that the fall of American respect in the international community and its dominance in the world (both politically and economically, with the latter being tied to the former) can simply be summed up with two words: Pre-emptive war. And the lense of time will probably not note the differences in the American experiment with those of previous empires that fell due to the arrogance of power and over-reach. There will likely be no footnote if we continue along this path.