Smoking

The certain inheritance that we bequeath to generation after generation. Why? Why do we perpetuate this deed of self-inflicted violence and insidious serial killing?  It's very American.  It makes us all equal.  The homeless, the President and the Speaker of the United States, illegal immigrants and their employers, cops, rapists and murderers, good actors and bad actors, teachers and drop outs, whole and dysfunctional families, Birthers, Democrats and Republicans, Tea Partiers, liberals and conservatives, cowboys and bankers, doctors, lawyers, pro atheletes and couch potatoes, boys, girls, women, men, transgenders, gay and straight, bisexuals while being transgendered, young and elderly, even TODDLERS!!! 

ALL OF THEM AND EVERYONE

YOU CAN THINK OF

CAN SMOKE!!!!

They might be all smoking the same brand at the same time RIGHT NOW!

Now that's Democracy in action!!!!

But I really can't take it anymore.  It's hard to watch people hurting themselves.  My heart especially breaks when I see a teenager or twenty something smoking.  They know just like we knew in our generation that there's no good reason to smoke.  But it’s part of the aforementioned inheritance.  A rite of passage.  Rebelling by doing something that doesn't immediately kill them.  A young person’s way to demonstrate their contribution to anarchy that is so counterintuitive to real anarchy it is laughable. When you smoke you perpetuate an economic cycle that has generated trillions upon trillions of dollars from the sale of tobacco and its products for nearly four centuries in America. As a new smoker you increase the wealth and the influence of this entrenched establishment.

Hyperbole? I wish. I could relate personal stories of how it has affected my life and my immediate family and some of my friends but so can you. I could recount the statistics but we have become inured to them. They mean nothing. Just more white noise that no one can hear until it directly affects your life but by then it is most often too late. We, the people, may try to regulate where and when but we can’t stop people from smoking even if we made it completely unlawful. You see how well that works with “illegal” drugs. Government regulation is not the ultimate answer. Self regulation is.  I do believe that some of us are born with a predilection to substance abuse but even with that consideration, IT IS STILL A CHOICE.


So here is what I ask of those of you who smoke...

• Do everything in your power to stop smoking. If you are a person of some importance like say the leader of the free world, make it your top personal priority to quit. Let us know the story. Tweet about how difficult it is to quit. Don’t hide your private battle with tobacco. Share it.
• If you’re someone who is two heartbeats away from being the leader of the free world, you should quit as well and make it just as public. Your recent admission that you DO smoke on "60 Minutes" AND that you don’t want to stop does not demonstrate leadership only stubbornness and selfish denial.
• Please don’t have the delusion that walking down the street or standing out in front of building enjoying your cigarette has no effect on passersby. It does.
• And I know you’ve heard a million times before that it’s bad for you and you shouldn’t smoke but it really is bad for you and everyone you encounter day in and day out for the entire duration of your smoking life.

I would love to see this headline soon,

“TOBACCO INDUSTRY

IN THROES OF FINANCIAL COLLAPSE!!!!!”

Now that’s change I can believe in.

Personal Blog Stardate - 313738.53

Here is my Wishlist for Stardate -313981.98.

1 - Complete repudiation of the Republican attack on President Obama in the mid term elections.

2 -  Meg Whitman losing despite spending additional 50 million dollars in the last three days.

3 - Carly Fiorina losing her race to incumbent Barbara Boxer and then finding work oversees sorting used hypodermic syringes with needles (gloves not included - actually frowned upon).

4 - Allow Craig Mortensen and Central Asian Institute take command in all manners regarding Pakistan and Afghanistan.

5 - The male members of the Democratic Leadership grow a set of balls and take on their adversaries like they actually exist.

6 - Repeal DADT.  Really.

7 - Make Marriage Equality a reality in all fifty states.

8 - Simaltaneous power outage of CNN, MSNBC and FOX News along with all the major broadcast networks starting at stardate - 313836.68 and lasting until stardate -313839.76.

9 - Bring back Better Off Ted on a network that will let it be itself.

10 - Civility be a employable position.

If you can help with any of these outrageous and utterly foolish dreams thank you.

A wistful trekkie,

Marie Fairman

Perspective

Lindsay Lohan, 24, is all over the news because she's a celebrity drug addict.  Nothing will be mentioned by any program about Justin Allen, 23, Brett Linley, 29, Matthew Weikert, 29, Justus Bartett, 27, Dave Santos, 21, Chase Stanley, 21, Jesse Reed, 26, Matthew Johnson, 21, Zachary Fisher, 24, Brandon King, 23, Christopher Goeke, 23 and Sheldon Tate, 27 who were all Marines that gave their lives this week with NO MEDIA MENTION. 

My second cousin Derek Grubbs posted this on Facebook and asked all his FB friends to re-post.  I did and I would ask you to do the same on your social network.  I'm asking everyone on my blog list to say each one of these fallen hero's name out loud and give them a silent moment of thanks.  Without their sacrifice, we wouldn't even know about poor Lindsay's troubles.

God please HELP US! I Could Be a TV Commentator!!

We've finally got there.  Anyone can be a TV commentator.  It might be on YouTube or their own website or just a low resolution video attached to an email but EVERYONE can be a commentator on TV!!!  You don't need an education.  As a matter of fact that might be a hindrance.  If you do have an education you should ignore it.  Especially if you're a baby boomer.  Forget all you've learned from living through Viet Nam, race relations, the peace movement, Watergate, women's liberation or Woodstock.  Instead plant your head firmly up your ass and then try to talk.  What comes out will be crap but that is evidently what advertisers (especially heterosexual males with ED) want to associate themselves with so you will likely succeed!!! 

Ignorance now is truth.  What you don't know should not intimidate your right to free speech.  Go ahead and talk.  Make it up as you go along.  Go off on tangents and never return to the point you started.  Just yak and whatever you say will become the new truth and that will go viral.

What a heady time for stupid people.  Finally they are getting compensated for their lack of education and unwillingness to work.  It's almost a miracle that so few with so limited an idea of humanity should lead a humanity that is losing its humanity.

Glen Beck says the President of the United States is a racist.  Who knew?  Rick Sanchez on CNN sent his intrepid reporter to the Abbey in West Hollywood when Prop 8 was overturned.  You don't know what the Abbey is?  She's our favorite character on NCIS!!!  And how about when a little white girl goes missing?  Will we ever get enough coverage?  Not possible.

On Cable News you can't overreact to a story.  Look into the camera  and say, "Breaking News!!" and then say, "Let's check in and see if there's is still oil in the Gulf."  There was oil in the Gulf BEFORE the spill.  You can't go wrong!  Go with the visceral images and loop those image again and again and bring in anybody who has ever heard about water or oil and talk endlessly over the images.  We never will know when the spill in the Gulf is over. Great job!!!

News is now a montage of images both real and real looking and it doesn't matter which is which.  Whatever gets you ratings is what's important.  Go with you gut.  The bigger the better.  Addle your brain with drugs and alcohol.  Just keep going like an Energizer bunny!!  But don't use lithium!!!  It could bring you down man.

I want to join in!!!  I have an education (supposedly) but its mostly in Theatre so it was always suspect as to its real world worthiness.  But I  do have some improv skills and watching the terrific troupe of improv artists/anchors in cable news (with special props to Fox News) and listening to them on talk radio I am empowered to try this myself.

I am empowered but I just don't have the balls (literally) to do it.  I'm still in awe of the great pretenders and I'm not sure I could keep bearing false witness with such fidelity.  I know someone would call me out and I would crumble.  These people don't!!  If anything they get more bold and make up new stuff.  My admiration for them is without reason. It just feels wrong and I know then its must be inequitable.

Keep it up you morons of the media. Whether your ideology is left or right or nowhere because to have principles is just too confusing, keep up your asinine dialogues and monologues.  Mutual masturbation is always fun for someone.

It's Time!!

It's time.  I'm nearing my 60th year and I selfishly want something to happen before I...well am 60. That will July 25, 2012. Actually that would be a great day for it to happen.  I mean it's time now but if he can't do it till then that would be okay. No it wouldn't!!! It needs to be said NOW!  No more waiting!  No more capitulating! No more reaching out to others to understand the reality that has been with us since the beginning of existence!  What is it?  What is so important that it can't wait one more day?  

I want the President of the United States to say that he 

supports gay marriage. 

Today would be nice during his weekly YouTube address.  It's in the news this week.  Yeah today would be perfect.

Political suicide you say?  Well his enemies want him dead anyway.  What has he got to lose?  And tell me what have the Democrats got to lose?  Right now they can't take any of the credit for anything good that has happened in the last two years and are seen as responsible for anything bad.  You want people to get up in your grill about stuff you didn't do or do you want to change the conversation?

If President Obama made that statement, I believe it would define and galvanize the Democratic party.  It would show to the rest of the nation and the world that they are the party of true change.  Can you imagine the lift it would bring?  The Democrats wouldn't be afraid of anything!!!

Is this dangerous?  Damn straight it is.  People will want to kill the idea...Literally!!  They've been trying to deny and kill gender variance for ten thousand years and we're still HERE!!!!!!   But what was it, Mr. President, you said in Atlanta this week?  

"And I do want to point out, when you get in your car, when you go forward, what do you do? You put it in “D.” When you want to go back, what do you do? You put it in “R.” " 

Well put it in D!!!  You stating that you unequivocally support gay marriage will move us forward.  We need to hear a President, not a pretender to the Presidency but the actual President say those words.

And I think he wants to do it!

His stand on Prop 8 doesn't make any sense.  It's divisive?  That's why he opposes it?  There's more to it than that.  He can't possibly be opposed to gay marriage.  I'm afraid that the reality is that he is looking at it politically and it doesn't seem to be the right time because there are so many people still opposed on MORAL grounds.

Supporting Equality has been and always will be the moral high ground.  

The President and the Democrats should run to it while they still can get in front of it.  Gay marriage in the United States will be a reality very soon because it is just and it is in our DNA as Americans to ultimately turn to what is just.    

Now this is selfish on my part.  I know I'm going to die someday because I already have.  On the 30th of December in 2007 I had a massive coronary and it's a miracle that I am still here and can look back at the last two and a half years and marvel at what has happened in my life.  If I had died that day, I wouldn't have been backstage at the Kodak when Senators Clinton and Obama walked in together for the California Democrat Debate.  I wouldn't have seen Senator Obama go on to become President.  I wouldn't have seen the Inauguration.  I wouldn't have seen the Steelers win another Superbowl in 2009 and then the SAINTS, the SAINTS!!!! win in 2010!  And I wouldn't have been standing in the Gay and Lesbian Center in Hollywood, California when it was announced that Prop 8 had been overturned by a very conservative judge.  Talk about miracles! 

Make one more miracle happen Mr. President.  Say "I support gay marriage."  It's time.

Insomnia? May I recommend Nova

I've had trouble sleeping most of my life. And when I have fallen asleep it is not always in the most appropriate setting.  I have drifted off while listing to a director give me notes after rehearsal (he didn't notice thanks to one of my fellow actors responding), in mid sentence as I sit at a restaurant eating, while sitting on a toilet and while cooking.  This last one was before I actually turned on the stove but still...dicey.  After I had my heart attack I was told I had to sleep with some consistency or I would..ah what was the word the Cardiologist used...oh yeah...die.

Now with a combination of a prescription and a good book, I can turn my brain off and fall asleep.  But sometimes I need a little more encouragement to bring me to the repose I so desire.  I choose not to turn to more drugs but instead a rather curious way to put myself in sweet slumber. I turn on an episode of Nova.

But how can that be you might ask?  Nova is one of the finest representations of non-fictional or reality television show ever produced anywhere. I unequivocally agree. The subject matter is always informative, timely yet timeless and so beautifully photographed that on a large HD screen it can take your breath away.  The content is presented in a well thought out and meticulous manner with attention to detail and accuracy that is unmatched. The viewer can follow seemingly incomprehensible, complex issues in a way that are accessible to even the most impenetrable among us.  They take you to another world the same way a great book can.  The one thing they don't do is intrude with off the subject commercials during the presentation. And that's when the miraculous happens.  I believe as the show continues uninterrupted, somewhere I find the portal to drift off to dreamland.  

The lack of commercials is the key most certainly.  Did you ever notice that the commercial blocks (especially on FOX!!!!!) are LOUD.  Sometimes much LOUDER and that's saying something if you're watching something like 24. You may dismiss it but its true.  All broadcast entities that have advertisement have the volume turned up to "11" during these breaks.  Any show, no matter what the genre, during the show's content, will have moments of stasis and some quiet however brief.  A 21st century commercial block has a thirtieth of a second between each ad, announcement or promo.  It is this random series of disturbances that I believe keeps me awake.  Even when its recorded and I'm whizzing past these pods of information, it's still a break and  my mind and body are engaged.  How can you sleep when you're blasted with, "ANIMATION DOMINATION!!!!! "

Nothing like that ever happens when I'm watching Nova.  Not even when the subject concerns CERN and its massive particle accelerator.  When watching Nova I am a passive participant and I have only to sit back and do nothing.  I relax and allow myself to be completely absorbed.  Put me in a bed with lots of pillows propping me up and securing my head and the mix is as effective as any prescription non-addicting (yeah right) sedative. If I watch it live it happens around 822pm and I make certain that the TV turns off before the show is over. If I do wake up I'm still embraced in that state of grace which assures a quick and certain return to blissful sleep.

This phenomenon started years ago with the hypnotic voice of George Page on Nature and the late Carl Sagan when he narrated his seminal series Cosmos.  About the third time he would repeat the phrase "Billions and billions of star stuff" I was snoring on the couch before the second "B".  I have never been able to remain conscious for a Nature episode that George Page has narrated.  Even the one on dogs.  

I now record Nova, Nature, Masterpiece Theatre etc. and when I can't sleep I find one of them on my "Do Not Delete" list, hit the play icon and they are my calming voice.  Sometimes they are such great shows I do become fully engaged and don't fall asleep until it's over (I'm finding this happening more and more with Jane Austen presentations [could be the estrogen]) but even then I am as a consequence in a serene state of mind.  My mind is thinking about the great show and it questions and issues and not fretting about all the myriad of things that are swirling in my head as I come to the end of a day. Instead I can drift off with images of the elusive Higgs particle, a skeletal representation of a cheetah and how they are built a certain way that enables them to catch the impala or what's up with Mr. Darcy?  Really?

Maybe it's just me and it won't work for you.  But I thought I would share with you this modality to unconsciousness.  Not only do I sleep but I believe I'm more informed on many subjects that have seemingly no consequence in my life.  But then again, you never know having the knowledge that we now know that 95% of the universe of made up of mostly dark energy and  some dark matter and we don't know what that is exactly nor have we really ever seen it, could help me when I'm doing say... my taxes.  It's nice to know that even the smartest and most learned people don't know things.  

So thank you PBS and viewers like you and me occasionally that bring such high quality shows that challenge my intellect (which is easy to do) and bring rest to this weary soul.  Ah Sleep.  The Sweet Escape (Gwen Stefani not withstanding).

Republicans are funny

Republicans are funny. They don't mean to be but they just are. It was great to be a Republican until quite recently. Think of it. To have all those years in this century when you could look at yourself in the mirror and say proudly, "I'm as smart as the President. Dare I say, dear God, I am smarter." But now they're back on the heels because a much smarter person is the President. They are not his intellectual equal nor will they be and more importantly to people of the U.S. and the world, they can't explain their cause like he can. They've been talking dumb for so long and with impunity, that being challenged to think is doing them in and it's sad but it's also quite funny. I must stop laughing. They need help and guidance. But like an alcoholic they need to stop themselves first. Underneath their fear and posturing, there are some very smart Republicans who could really help. But they have to help themselves first. Until then we should grin and bear it.