There's A War Going On
Note from the Colonel: I don't usually retract things I write in this blog, given the whole stream-of-conciousness diary-esque nature of these things. But someone called me out on the following post, and it turns out they were absolutely right. I'll leave the rant as-is for posterity, but check out the comments below it for a follow-up reality check (the first two comments anyway...the latter two are just typical point/counter-point ramblings from Akroyd and Curtain).
Last night I saw Pearl Jam at the Forum in LA.
At the beginning of the 3rd encore (yes, in true 70's arena rock fashion, they came back for THREE encore sets) Eddie Vedder announced that a percentage of the ticket sales were going to a very special charity. He then went on to talk about this "place a little bit south of here", a place they call Trestles, and how all these "people with a lot of money want to put a toll road right through the middle of unspoiled California nature that's a part of surfing history."
And my very first thought was, "Uh, Eddie, there's a war going on."
I don't mean to sound like an Orange County surfer who doesn't give a shit, but Jesus-fucking-Christ, there's a WAR GOING ON.
Does anyone else feel this way? I mean, 10 years ago I might have been a bit more concerned with the Trestles Toll Road. Times were good. American soldiers weren't getting shot and blown up daily, and shooting and blowing up other people in retaliation. 19 year-old Army Rangers weren't crawling through caves in Afghanistan looking for guys with beards and AK-47s. And we weren't all walking around in some semi-permanent, paranoid daze, images of giant fireballs and burned, screaming bodies falling 82 stories from the twin towers permanently charred into our collective consciousness.
But there's a war going on now.
I know that doesn't mean the Surfrider Foundation isn't important. And I know that the Trestles Toll Road is pretty lame. But if you were big rich rock star and you had the ear of millions of fans around the world and you wanted to make a difference, what would you do right now? What would you tell a sold out crowd at the Forum in LA?
Don't put a toll road through my favorite surf spot?
There's a WAR GOING ON. There's an ASSHOLE in the Oval Office who has been there for 6 FUCKING YEARS now. He has filled up the government with hundreds, if not thousands, of OTHER ASSHOLES. And in the past 6 years they have...I mean...um...
There's a war going on.
I don't want to turn this into some sort of political tirade. But fuckin' A, people, there's a war going on. There's global warming, an AIDS epidemic in Africa, a crazed, out-of-control administration that's tapping our phones, monitoring our Internet access, and marking up the Bill of Rights with a red pen like it's Little Larry Sellers' Social Studies homework (you're killing your father, Larry). We've got North Koreans testing intercontinental missiles, Iranians harboring terrorists, an oil crisis in the Middle East, and an entire 3rd World that's spewing enough pollutants into the air that pretty soon Hong Kong is going to be shrouded in fog circa Jack-the-Ripper London.
There's a war going on.
And last night, while a sold out crowd at the Forum pumped their fists and cheered and Eddie told us all how we could "make a difference", I shook my head and starred at my feet, embarrassed to be a surfer.
Last night I saw Pearl Jam at the Forum in LA.
At the beginning of the 3rd encore (yes, in true 70's arena rock fashion, they came back for THREE encore sets) Eddie Vedder announced that a percentage of the ticket sales were going to a very special charity. He then went on to talk about this "place a little bit south of here", a place they call Trestles, and how all these "people with a lot of money want to put a toll road right through the middle of unspoiled California nature that's a part of surfing history."
And my very first thought was, "Uh, Eddie, there's a war going on."
I don't mean to sound like an Orange County surfer who doesn't give a shit, but Jesus-fucking-Christ, there's a WAR GOING ON.
Does anyone else feel this way? I mean, 10 years ago I might have been a bit more concerned with the Trestles Toll Road. Times were good. American soldiers weren't getting shot and blown up daily, and shooting and blowing up other people in retaliation. 19 year-old Army Rangers weren't crawling through caves in Afghanistan looking for guys with beards and AK-47s. And we weren't all walking around in some semi-permanent, paranoid daze, images of giant fireballs and burned, screaming bodies falling 82 stories from the twin towers permanently charred into our collective consciousness.
But there's a war going on now.
I know that doesn't mean the Surfrider Foundation isn't important. And I know that the Trestles Toll Road is pretty lame. But if you were big rich rock star and you had the ear of millions of fans around the world and you wanted to make a difference, what would you do right now? What would you tell a sold out crowd at the Forum in LA?
Don't put a toll road through my favorite surf spot?
There's a WAR GOING ON. There's an ASSHOLE in the Oval Office who has been there for 6 FUCKING YEARS now. He has filled up the government with hundreds, if not thousands, of OTHER ASSHOLES. And in the past 6 years they have...I mean...um...
There's a war going on.
I don't want to turn this into some sort of political tirade. But fuckin' A, people, there's a war going on. There's global warming, an AIDS epidemic in Africa, a crazed, out-of-control administration that's tapping our phones, monitoring our Internet access, and marking up the Bill of Rights with a red pen like it's Little Larry Sellers' Social Studies homework (you're killing your father, Larry). We've got North Koreans testing intercontinental missiles, Iranians harboring terrorists, an oil crisis in the Middle East, and an entire 3rd World that's spewing enough pollutants into the air that pretty soon Hong Kong is going to be shrouded in fog circa Jack-the-Ripper London.
There's a war going on.
And last night, while a sold out crowd at the Forum pumped their fists and cheered and Eddie told us all how we could "make a difference", I shook my head and starred at my feet, embarrassed to be a surfer.
posted by The Colonel at 8:22 AM
5 Comments:
I agree with you about the importance of looking at the big picture and doing a big asshole clean sweep of the oval office and stopping the war and all, but...
How do we know that Eddie isn't asking his fans to stop the war at any of his other sold out shows? Or the ones in the midwest, where the conservative voice dominates?
My point is, we can't always focus on stopping the war, 100% of the time, and drop everything else because there's a war going on. We need to take a little bit of time to still try to preserve the things that make life great here on Earth, even during wartime.
The only reason I bothered to comment is because you said it made you embarrassed to be a surfer. That bummed me out. I'm going to give Vedder the benefit of the doubt and trust that he supports many causes, puts his money where his lyrics come from, and that he isn't spouting about Trestles all the way up the coast. After all, there is a war going on.
Guess what, Sharkbait?
You're absolutely right...
http://music.yahoo.com/read/news/34001216
Ahoy El Colon
Where the Surfrider and its constituents are being duped is in the reality of the TCA’s Environmental Impact Report findings: The excavation of near the creek for the concrete pillars MIGHT cause some changes to the flow of the creek which MIGHT cause a change in the surf break...
A lot of MIGHTS. It is possible that there will be no negative effects to the break.
Now, many from the surfrider-atzi, claim that errors and omissions from TCA’s Environmental Impact Report. Sounds like “An Inconvenient Truth”
Dumb-bees who like to put gay Surfrider stickers on their Isuzu Troopers are followers, not leaders...The Surfrider foundation is a royal fraud, man, as are the homos with full sized SUV who rock surfracks for a trip down the 91 to flail at your local surf check.
To me, I think it would be cool to wipe out trestles permanently. Seriously. Herpie Feltcher has bad karma. But I don't think its going to happen.
And about the Bush-Hating: Just like Reagan, bush has pissed a lot of people off abroad and here in town. But also just like RayGun, he's lowered taxes for Everyone, including you and me. I know you think I'm high (and you're right, I am) But Bush will wind up on a stamp and your kids will be big fans. Hard to swallow, I'm sure.
About Global Warming- Real climate change experts have committed their entire careers to finding cause and effect correlations of rising temperatures and C02 emissions-They are livid royal over Al Gores "Convenient Guess" that it's all a human thing. The real experts are trying to use grade A science to prove the human attribution to rising temperatures, but Gore goes Moore-esque with a one-sided, shoot-from-the-hip conclusions.
There are at least three active volcanoes on earth whose aggregate c02 emissions dwarf a years worth of Detroit...One massive, week-long wild fire equals 6 months of Long Beach.
To further discredit Gore's junk science, he claims in his film that the US is the single largest exporter of c02. You yourself have said that third world countries are the bigger culprits even if, however, they're hot-boxing the atmosphere to build crap destined for your mini-McMansion in the OC. China and India are the culprits and they’re not listening to Gore’s pitch. They are just not listening.
Most sadly, it is true that we earthlings are polluting the environment. Sadder yet is that the main cheerleader for the tree-hugging is a sour drip of a droopy-ass Gore. That's the saddest of all.
Finally Kern, humankind will evolve out of harmful emissions in due time. It's an evolutionary thing. Unnecessary emissions are the "PONG" of the next two decades. And once we humans get a little more responsible about our role in keeping a clean atmosphere...that's when a super volcano will blow its top and things will really heat up.
All of Arnie’s pandering-to-the-left legislation to reduce emissions will have been in vein when Mammoth blows it’s top.
As smart as my boy Otto is (and I do always appreciate an alternative take on environmental issues...although the "Gore is lame" attitude is typical Republican "we don't like the source", "goddamn-liberal-media" point-changing), his Bush defense is straight from the Republican playbook:
"Um, yeah, he did a few things people are not happy with, but he LOWERED OUR TAXES, dag-burnit."
And to this day I never know which aspect of that response to react to first.
I guess I'll go in order of importance.
First, to somehow outweigh 6 years of death, deception, and destruction with a lower tax cut is just unconscionable. My father-in-law refers to this attitude as Machiavellian, but I think that's just a pompous way of saying, "I honestly don't give a shit about other people if it infringes on any aspect of my life."
Second, and this mostly just makes the above even worse, is that Bush did NOT lower my taxes. Nor did he lower taxes for 99.9% of the people in this country.
Bush supporters are like Bart Simpson at Kamp Krusty, a labor camp in disguise with Krusty the Klown nowhere to be found, repeating to himself, "Krusty is coming, Krusty is coming, Krusty is coming..."
You can pour an Olympic sized pool filled with stats and numbers and percentages and fucking tax codes on top of my head, but the bottom line is the same as its always been:
No President of this country is going to have any real affect on your financial bottom line. PERIOD.
A buck here...a buck there. Sure. Maybe. But if you're poor under Clinton, you're gonna be poor under Bush. If you're upper middle class under Carter, you're gonna be upper middle class under Reagan.
It's one of the greatest myths/hoaxes in American history - that Republicans somehow equal more money in your pocket. Again, deluge me with stats, but look at my bank account or the bank accounts of my neighbors and I'll still prove you wrong with the bank statements of the people.
What's closer to the truth, isn't that Bush spends any less than, say Clinton, it's WHAT they spend our money on. Ironically, the budget has ballooned under Bush (and while the credit card debt of the average American won't change from administration to administration, the Republicans do tend to spend less than their equally lame-o Democratic rivals...a nice bit of irony if you're into that sort of thing, tee-fucking-hee).
How Bush supporters really feel (if and when they're occasionally confronted with the reality of taxes and Federal budgets) is that, "Don't give MY MONEY to anyone who didn't fucking earn it. That means social services, education, health care...ANYTHING that equals FREE STUFF for people who DON'T WORK AS GODDAMN HARD AS I DO. You can give as much as you like to government contractors, soldiers, the retards checking our bags at LAX, border fences, or the biggest clusterfuck of a war since Vietnam. Anything under the guise of tough-as-fuck-and-yes-fuck-you-too-national-policy".
Granted, you'll have to work hard to get that admission, but I've gotten it enough times to know it's a key motivation of Bush support fervor.
And just to quickly depress/annoy anyone still reading who thinks that ANYTHING productive has been done in the last 6 years, just know this:
You are no safer now than you were on September 10th, 2001.
All the money, all the stress, all the hassle we've ALL endured these past 5 years - it's all for NOTHING. If a terrorist wanted to kill you and your children right now, he could do it faster than you could say, "we've all been misled". The only thing we've done is run around like a bunch of keystone cops, banning nail clippers and toothpaste from airplanes, gnashing our teeth and wringing our hands, acting like fools and giving every terrorist on Earth a base case of the cramps from laughing so hard.
The good news is that you weren't in much danger in the first place. Which is whole 'nother story.
As The Dude would say in this whole Bush-sucks-worse-than-any-president-in history saga, "there's a lotta in's, lotta out's, lot of what-have-you's...a lot to keep straight in ol' Duder's head."
Luckily I'm staying intellectualy limber with a strict drug regimen.
The Colonel says, "Another Caucasian, Gary."
What happened Colonel ? It's September 11th today, 2 months passed by, hope to hear from you soon.
Stay wet
The Botanist
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