Bone-eyed tired I walked to get some coffee, stumbling over cracks like a somnambulist, the afternoon sun picking spots on my pupils to besiege. "Just another day in the city," I heard a voice say and strangely it was my own. What is this? Vertigo. Am I dreaming?

A large trailer passed with an old man's face on it grinning at me. His left cheek sort of punched out from within. It asked us to vote for him.

Have I mentioned that McCain gives me the willies.

I haven't slept much the last couple of days. I think that's what's getting to me. Maybe it's also the fact that my State is burning up and this feels like the summer of hell with the gas prices and mortgage crises and fires and all my political vices --I start rapping unintentionally I'm so lost in my own Twilight Zone right now.

LET ME SAY IT AGAIN
I HATE MCCAIN.

The price of a barrel of oil shot up 10 dollars. The Dow dropped 400 points. Unemployment spiked a half percent. Communities continue to be hollowed out by the mortgage crises.

It all hit the fan today.

There's no shade of lipstick for this pig of an economy.

What a fine Friday!

Watching the news today felt like some Clockwork Orange-type torture. It was painful. Crippling. It made me want to throw up, but I just couldn't turn away, my eyes clamped-open on my own volition.

Has the dreaded day we've all been fearing finally come?

Another Sunday, another week asunder...

L.A is sleepily rising from Saturday night.

The breeze blows gently on the palm fronds outside, the smog stirs.

The roads are less busy. It's Sunday. People are taking it easy.

I wish every day people took it easy.

Three stories down on Moorpark St. a young couple in cargoes and polo shirts cross the street, holding hands, their eyes softly shielded from the sun by aviators. The man's shirt is meringue color. They're not too much younger than me, I'm guessing ten years, so chances are good that at least one of them will live longer than me. My money's on the girl.

There was a young man in Melbourne who had a party. "A little get-together with mates", he called it. The problem was, he posted it to Myspace and hundreds of kids showed up trashed and rambunctious.

Of course, the cops were called and they rolled up with the dog squad to put a clamp on things. The party didn't end there, though, it spilled out into the streets, into a mini riot of sorts. Broken windshields. Taunting of police.

Tipped-over bird baths.

I wrote about it last week.

In another blog.

I analyzed road trips, past and present. Got a little carried away.

I was excited about a pending trip to San Francisco. I rambled carelessly on the subject, breathing in the road, the smell of rain on asphalt, the long periods of day dreams that road trips allowed, and how they always cheer me up. I mused about the open highways. Big rigs. Windmill farms. Themed restaurants... the like.

The whole Jack Kerouac experience.

I practically salivated over the keyboard as I imagined the good time that lay ahead.

Buckle up with me for a ride down The Ghosts of Road Trips Past

I like to think of media as a storm.

All the various forms of communication and marketing work together, and off of each other, like elements that form a type of weather. Like weather, the conditions of the storm affect us all. A swirling mass of radio and television signals, newspapers in Starbucks, the scrolling headlines in supermarket checkout lines, the storm is impossible to avoid.

grab a raincoat and come with me for a Saturday night meditation on Ashley Dupree, Media and Myspace.  

I just finished reading Neil Postman's Amusing Ourselves to Death.

It's a terrific, compelling, and quick read. (Its brevity is actually quite ironic given the book is about how television has cheapened and maniplated public discourse - resulting in the political soundbite and the paper USA Today)

The book is over twenty years old but its theme is even more relevant today; basically, that we're becoming a culture of individuals, molded by television's mode of communication, that expect our Education, Religion, and Politics to be delivered quick and entertainingly, bite-sized and easily digestible; and without any need for exposition or context, causing a harmful deterioration in our modern public discourse.

Step over the speed bump to hear more about this prescient novel.

It's looking more and more like Barack Obama vs. John McCain. A choice between a fresh approach to solving our problems and a stubborn, static view of the world.

Idealism vs. Curmudgeonism.

Not to beat a dead meme, but Barack is the future; whereas McCain is an actual living relic and, politically, doesn't offer anything new.

The latest dust up over Cuba says it all.

Sail with me over the hump.

California votes next Tuesday. Super-Duper-Whatever Tuesday.

The Golden State has a golden opportunity. We can finally have a major impact in chosing our party's nominee. Let's not let it go to waste.

We could be the difference between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. Not only are the Democrats going to make history this year, it could be California that decides what kind of history.

The choice before us is not between the first African-American male or the first white female. It's whether we'll go with a youth-driven message of hope, or the entrenched politics of the status quo.

The battle is not black and white, despite Bill's and the media's best intentions.

The battle is generational.

"Freedom requires religion just as religion requires freedom."

-- Mitt Romney

This is America in the year 2007. A Mormon running for president, whose God prevents him from ever removing his special long johns, even if vacationing in the Caribbean, has the nerve to state that Freedom requires religion.

Mind you, immediately before this he brought up the battle versus the Islamic terrorists, who, last time I checked, are having no trouble conducting their religion in less-than-free societies and governments. A war he supports along with the Patriot Act, a measure that has done more to threaten our freedoms and civil rights than any terrorist.

Mitt? Are you really so blind that you can contradict yourself so easily, seamlessly, spectacularly?  Are you composed atomically of such nuclear pandering that you can’t help it, and when religion comes up you detonate and didactic debris of trite hits us all?

What does it take these days to make a tragedy?

I've been watching, along with the world, events unfold in Burma (not Myanmar!) and can't believe that savagery like this continues in 2007.

Thousands of protesters are dead and the bodies of hundreds of executed monks have been dumped in the jungle, a former intelligence officer for Burma's ruling junta has revealed.

The most senior official to defect so far, Hla Win, said: "Many more people have been killed in recent days than you've heard about. The bodies can be counted in several thousand."

They slaughtered unarmed, non-violent Buddhist monks who simply stood up and marched.

The monks filled the streets in their holy robes and said, 'We are tired of this. We want peace, an economic chance. We want dignity.'

What's wrong with us?

The propaganda pounding by free market warriors over the last 40 years have left us beaten and withering in the streets. Literally sick and dying. Lady Liberty is bleeding to death in the hospital waiting room. The numbers are familiar and huge, 50 million Americans don't have health insurance. The numbers are so large, they almost cease to have meaning. To those who are insured, what's another 10, 20, or 40 million people?

As documented in Moore's SiCKO, private health care in this country is an immoral, inefficient mess.

That 50 million don't have it, and those who do are often screwed by the companies, excuse the pun, bleeding them dry, is an awful mark against this nation, a sad indictment of our values.

Today I went to check out a portion of the LA River that I haven't photographed yet, the Glendale Narrows, in Atwater Village, 10 minutes from downtown Los Angeles.

The LA river was once a real river system that the Spanish named the Porciuncula. Native Americans lived on the banks long before the missionaries rolled in. Up to the turn of the century it was the only water source for Los Angeles.

Now, well, you know the story.

I can't believe this is happening but I just can't listen to it anymore.

I don't have much respect for Paris Hilton, well, actually zero, but I have heard enough of this collective schadenfreude to last me a lifetime. The amount of venom and anger out there is truly extraordinary, specifically for it's irrational proportion to the crime.

I'm surprised there isn't a lynch mob outside the jail by now.

It all makes me (gulp) FEEL BAD FOR PARIS HILTON.

Let me start by stating that this is in no way a quixotic attempt at defending her character, her merits as a celebrity, or her worth to the culture at large. I'm merely observing and following my heart's response to the savage public stoning that is occurring right now. And I'd also like to add that this is not in response to anything I've read here on Dailykos.  

Okay, follow me below if you dig...

"Happy Mother's Day. Now shut your screaming brat up."

Things weren't so cheery in Toledo this pass Sunday when a brawl broke out in a restaurant.

The sergeant said witnesses told him Christine Lewandowski, 56, repeatedly asked Sylvia Harris, 24, of Toledo to quiet her 1-year-old child, who was sitting in a high chair and screaming.

When the infant continued to scream, Ms. Lewandowski shouted at the baby to "shut up," Sergeant Kikolski said.

That’s when Ms. Harris lunged at Ms. Lewandowski and began punching the woman, the sergeant said.

So what happened yesterday?

Suddenly at the end of a peaceful rally a commotion flared and the police began marching and clubs started flying and cameramen and women were dropping and rolling around in the dust.

That we know.

Why the police felt the need to get all buck-crazy is still unexplained.

For those that didn't catch the news, LAPD used excessively strong tactics to clear a street of protesters at the end of yesterday's march in Los Angeles. The police say there were bottles being thrown at them. Word is anarchists were provoking the police. As someone who has been to many protests I don't doubt that.

The clash at MacArthur Park started after 6 p.m. when police tried to disperse demonstrators who had moved off the sidewalk onto the street. Authorities said several of the few thousand people still at the rally threw rocks and bottles at officers, who fired rubber bullets and used batons to push the crowd back onto the sidewalk.

There's nothing new here in the Ant Empire. Death, War, Commerce. It's already been recorded. Already been said. We humans have old habits that are hard to lose, old ideas that control the way the world works. Money, power, fuel.

If there is one thing about the empire it's that there are a lot of ants. Some of them quite awful and stupid, some exceptional, but most, like you and I, are neither brillaint nor stupid, neither monster nor angel, we simply would like to turn in at the end of the night with a little found personal peace -- which is hard when the government wages war in your name.

In light of this situation, the Empire is in mourning.    

People that climb up to the top of tall buildings all say the same thing: that we look like ants from there.

A week ago I noticed an elderly lady in an orange vest bent over cutting weeds that were growing up through the cracked cement a couple of blocks from my house.

I wasn't sure if she was a paid city employee, or perhaps serving community service; but I'm giving her the benefit of the doubt and assuming she's an employee, not some klepto-granny.

Let me set the scene.