Sean Goes To Africa, Part III

Our globe-trotting pal Sean Blaschke is at it again. Previously, he was in the Gambia from 2001-2004 doing work for the Peace Corps. After that, in 2005 (and some of '06) he spent time driving halfway around the continent with three other intrepid souls as part of an African Aids Awareness campaign. They went all the way down the west coast, making the turn and ending up in Mozambique before the money ran out His dispatches via email and blog ran the gamut from poignant to hilarious to harrowing to downright inscrutable (but hey, that's Sean for you), and they were always a great read.

This time, Sean has journeyed to Uganda, monitoring and evaluating schools there as part of a joint project between UNICEF and an American NGO, I.Could.Be., called "Connecting Classrooms." In Kampala, the capital, he once again witnessed the full range of life there, from computer-supported classrooms:

The students are going out into their communities, interviewing people, taking pictures and writing stories on topics including health and poverty. I was tasked with troubleshooting a number of technical issues that were impeding full implementation of the project. Over the course of a couple days, we were able to resolve them all. During the site visits, I was very impressed with the high levels of motivation from both teachers and students. The students at some of the schools had put tremendous efforts into creating great pages. Producing a wiki is not always an easy or intuitive process. I was surprised at how quickly the students caught on.

...to squalid slums:

Navigating through a maze of narrow alleys lined with open sewage canals and all manner of rotting trash, small tin roofed brick houses intermingled with local eateries, bakeries, hair salons and butcher shops displaying huge slabs of meat masked by flies. The area is much to heavilypopulated, most houses do not have bathrooms, there is little way to dispose of the rotting trash, and everything sprawls to within a few feet of the railway tracks. When the rains come, flooding in the town is considerable, inundating many houses with up to three feet of raw sewage and driving people from their homes.

Sean even had his very own ZooTV-to-Sarajevo-linkup moment, when an AIDS victim from the slums literally got in his face, asking "I have AIDS. What do you think of that?!?" Now, Sean has a little more experience than most of us floppy and useless westerners when it comes to dealing with the crushingly uncomfortable realities of life outside the social bubble of American suburbia. Nevertheless he's still lost for words: "I still do not know how I should have answered [him]." Sean's had culture shock, coming and going more than a few times, but that's a pretty heavy way to start one's second stint in sub-Saharan Africa. He's gonna be there for a while, though, so hopefully Sean's Uganda blog will see regular updates.

Beware the Terror of Campaign Bloat

(map via NPR)

As a recovering political junkie, I was prepared for Campaign '08 to showcase all sorts of horrible visions that would threaten to throw me back off the wagon. Needless to say, I assumed these would all be thanks to the candidates, but nooooooooo. Their supporters have got in on the act as well, seemingly immune to that which Dr. Thompson once called "Campaign Bloat":

"Many appeared to be in the terminal stages of Campaign Bloat, a gruesome kind of false-fat condition that is said to be connected somehow with failing adrenal glands. The swelling begins within twenty-four hours of that moment when the victim first begins to suspect that the campaign is essentially meaningless. At that point, the body’s entire adrenaline supply is sucked back into the gizzard, and nothing either candidate says, does, or generates will cause it to rise again…and without adrenaline, the flesh begins to swell; the eyes fill with blood and grow smaller in the face, the jowls puff out from the cheekbones, the neck-flesh droops, and the belly swells up like a frog’s throat…The brain fills with noxious waste fluids, the tongue is rubbed raw on the molars, and the basic perception antennae begin dying like hairs in a bonfire."

Indeed. Now, I shouldn't really have to write this, because most people already know it. In fact I'm sure they probably do, but some poor souls are too deep within the festering bowels of Campaign '08 to keep it in mind. So, with brain planted firmly in bollocks, I say, from head-slappingly obvious experience:

Your candidate is not an extension of yourself, so don't project your hopes, dreams, hang-ups, prejudices, and fears onto their carefully constructed personalities. Your candidate does not, deep down, care about you or about accurately representing you. They probably do not like you.

In fact they fear you—when they do not hold you in arrogant contempt—but that is only because you have the nominal ability to fire them if you ever get the stones to tear yourselves away from GTA4 and Dancing with the Stars and actually care.

Your candidate's gargantuan ego has already impressed upon their psyche the horrible inclination to run for federal office, and as everyone knows, one has to be three kinds of crazy to even run for state office in this country, so remember to keep said brain flukes under consideration before making personal and emotional investments in your candidate and their campaign.

Your candidate doesn't give a shit how many Facebook friends you have, or that you have enthusiastically signed up to be their Facebook friend. Your candidate is frankly puzzled as to why this whole internet thing has become the massive time-suck that it is, but nevertheless your candidate will be happy to pander to it just like any other potential constituency.

Your candidate will, while campaigning, employ some of the most emotionally unstable and personally vicious human sharks to ever swim in the sea of American politics, whose unstable personal polarity, though rendering them unfit for conventional social interactions, makes them nevertheless eminently qualified to staff the 21st century juggernaut of party apparatuses necessary to govern a far-flung corporate empire.

Your candidate will, while campaigning, associate with people whose views should not be projected onto that candidate either. Unless of course it will produce maximum embarrassment on all concerned (see ex. of Norris, Hagee, Dobson, Stallone, Bush, etc. etc.). Your candidate will probably be endorsed by said people, but don't take it personally. They don't really care about them either.

Your candidate will inevitably make you cringe with fear and loathing when they appear on the TV talking head shows, because your candidate is Not Cool. In fact, your candidate doesn't care about Tweety or Stewart or Keef or Colbert, and neither should you, unless of course you need a cheap laugh. I hear that Comedy Central has all the kids in stitches these days.

Your candidate will, if nominated, pick a running mate under crass, self-serving, mutually beneficial circumstances. This running mate is now your de facto candidate as well, and all of the above will now apply to them too.

Your candidate will, if elected, happily proceed to disappoint you concerning issue X, annoy you concerning issue Y, and enrage you concerning issue Z. That damn Issue Z.

Your candidate will...

Eh, that's enough of that, I guess. I may have bypassed Campaign Bloat and gone straight to the Vicious Brain Fluke stage. Oh well.

You Know You're A Grown-Up When...

Nothing momentous. Just a Krista-style photo post from last weekend when the DuBois-MacAllister-Kurns-Covarrubias family came to town for Mom's birthday. It was the first time we'd all been in the same place since my sister's wedding last summer.



This one of Bryn & Karla was an accident. The light poured in through the kitchen window and obscured them both.



Bill still found time to work.











Everyone was of course subjected to Brophy Brothers seafood. Mom got a good view of the harbor, something she missed much these days.











Not shown: the riotous disintegration of decorum once the "Apples to Apples" game was unearthed.





When Em's parents were here for Thanksgiving she said something like "you know you're a grown-up when people start coming to your house, instead of you going to their house, for holidays and birthdays, instead of the other way around."

Maybe so, but it's fun to be the central hub of things every once in a while.

Ripping Fiction From The Facts

Duck & cover, kids- I have been allowed to run my mouth about the book again:

It's all about having something to do, really. About how you keep your creative brain churning when it's already spent the entire workday creating for other people. About how you can make music by yourself when the guys in the band have all moved away so gigs & rehearsals are rare and special. About being selfish. About lying your fucking head off. About writing what you know, with deliberate mistakes. About lots of things that won't be crammed into a riffy list. Abou...yeah, well, you know.

The backstory is not important. It will only get in the way and make readers guess at motivation when they should just enjoy the story. Because hey, even amateurs and dilettantes never let the truth get in the way of a good story, right? That's right, buddy. The rules are likewise less than important. Oh really? Fuck yes. Maybe not made to be broken, but made to be bent. Bent to your will. Bent to what suits the story. Third person not honest enough? Ditch it for first-person narrative. Why trust those narrators, anyway? What have they ever done to earn that? Point A to B to C plots too boring? Duh. Okay then, how about some medeas res, dude? Eh, okay, I guess, but what else you got? Split narratives, man. Split narratives and alternating tenses? Damn, give me a goddam headache, whydoncha.

All right then, now we're cooking a bit. Show me some more. More? You got it. Close your eyes and open your ears. Huh? You heard me, listen. You need a soundtrack, you know- for inspiration, for background noise, for an extra push to put you in that place that is not right now, except as it exists in that brain of yours. Get it out of there, man. Get it out into the world, where people can ooh and aah and enthuse and misinterpret and scorn. Where people can project and guess wrong and enjoy the story anyway. Okay, well, that's enough of that shit. Don't bore us, get to the chorus. What does it all mean, Keir? Dude, like I'd tell you if I knew? Fuck that. I'd keep it all to myself, and you'd only know it through this filter that I've called, for better or worse, "The Weapon Of Young Gods," a wild stab at expression born of boredom, nostalgia, inertia, and spasmodic bursts of heretofore-unknown discipline and willpower.

Dammit! I guess I can't stop with the mood once it's established. That's okay for now, I guess-why postpone the good shit, after all? The ego demands it, that's why. The ego that bloomed like a snarling hydra of hubris when school was easy and social skills were negotiable and brilliance was your ticket to fame, or at least grudging respect and lack of bullying, among your erstwhile spoiled contemporaries. Oops, there's the revenge and guilt again, Declan. Sorry about the infringement, man- don't sic the lawyers on me. Don't throw me in that briar patch.

So like I said, creative schizophrenia is easy when it's a non-clinical, bald-faced lie, especially when it involves others' grudging tolerance to an explosion of preening, insular, self-absorbed, and broken characters since the year began. This may not really be earth-shattering news, so let me elaborate a bit. See, I've been good at this language thing for a while. Yeah, yeah, even when it falls into stupid caricature like it's been doing for this whole post. You'll live, don't worry. But yeah, I've been good at it since I were a wee bearn, and I have the papers and the praise and the wreckage of jealous pretenders behind me to prove it, too. Problem was, all that stuff I learned to do was almost one hundred percent analytical. The creative writing thing shut down just as I walked in the door, so I dealt with it, jumped in the prevailing flow, and learned that particular coil of ropes. Which was fine, really, when all I was comfortable with was being a terminal appreciator, a mere commentator who created nothing. Oh shit, there I go again- Hornby will sue, but I can take that guy. I'm more spoiled and white and Californian than that limey'll ever be.

Where was I? Oh yes- appreciation versus creation. Well, for a while it worked great, until I found some leverage to break out of it- namely, the same old sonic booms and aural pleasure I'd always loved, but this time topped off with the verses, choruses, bridges, soaring guitar solos, and raw power that only a combination of Fenders and drum-heads can make. Take it from me, man- that shit can last you a decade, and longer if you're either a) lucky, or b) a whoremongering bootlicker. Well, maybe that's a bit harsh. A bit. But yeah, that can only last for so long, too, especially if logistics and sheer survival are factors. Then you have to knuckle under and learn how to live, or else go to grad school. Nothing against grad school, mind you, because it's worked for lots of people I know. However, it rejected me outright, and it was correct to do so, because I was not ready and not qualified.

That's not settling, that's the truth. That also happened to be the catalyst for breaking out of three verses and a chorus, of finally being able to expand a story, explode an idea, twist the truth, and, better late than never, return fire before the whole platoon is annihilated. That's how a nebulous mix of memory, talent, and training was- will be, even- shoe-horned into forty-eight little bits, how an ocean of static was eventually boiled down from the first real, pivotal points in your life, before you learned to mold the fountain of spew bursting from your spleen into small drops of recollection that could be bottled and catalogued on the kitchen counter. The town you grew up in, the vicious narco-socio-academic gauntlet you ran with everyone else who left that town, the most eventful year of your life up to that point, a time when even the tardiest of us late bloomers had to finally take charge and callously abandon our fathers as we were abandoned, remorselessly fuck with the memory of our exes as manipulatively and expertly as they have fucked with us, and slather the whole thing in a viscous film of the cool, seductive, and ultimately banal language of life. If it sounds bizarre, it's probably true. If it sounds deadly, it's probably not. If it sounds like anything you've ever heard before, you have the choice to either endure and/or embrace, or sneer and project and dismiss and therefore automatically cede any respect you may have ever had.

But what does all that even mean, man? Um, I thought you knew that, but whatever. It doesn't mean a classic, doesn't mean great or good, even. It means whatever you need it to mean. For me, all it means is that I'm a third of the way through the first draft of my first novel, that's all. It's just something to do, really.

Get Your Hands Dirty

Yes, that's the Low Tide "Weapon of Young Gods" CD cover sans calaveras. It's actually the original painting I made last December. Unlike other beautiful and talented artists (seriously, she does great work), I don't usually "get my hands dirty" with things like paint and charcoal and stuff. I used to draw and doodle a lot as a child and teen, but preferred pencil or pen & ink. These days of course I'm too chained to the computer. However, this past Christmas, instead of doing silly things like office parties, the other designers and I were treated by our boss to a full-on hands-dirty, group art lesson from an Ojai art teacher. For those who don't know, Ojai is a tiny little town north of Ventura. It's on the same circuit as places like Sedona, AZ, but I don't hold that against it.

Anyway, we all went and were initially supposed to create using a certain technique (what and by whom I now forget) but I ended up just spattering lots of paint on the canvas like an amateur. Amazingly, it worked- once I thought of what it looked like. When the others would ask what it was, I'd say "it looks how my echo-bass guitar sounds" and that's when I decided to make it the CD cover. Like the songs it now represents, it was created quickly (we were there for about 3-4 hours). The "DD5" is the name of an echo pedal made by Boss. The band in the ripped photo is my first band, the Clap, in 1997. This is the original photo:

I used that one because there's a scene in the book where two of the characters start a band and play a high school gig in an obviously similar way that my first band did. The skulls kind of obscure it on the finished cover, but that's ok- they kind of obscure the band in the story too.

Just another good example of how I'm maybe making too big a deal of this project, but even if the novel drags on and only comes out in drips and drops, the soundtrack was a real gift. I mean, I hadn't touched the bass guitar very much since the most recent Honey White rehearsal, and that was almost a year ago now. It's nice to know that I can put together some music that will work well and hang together enough to attach to the book and flesh it out a little more.

The Book Soundtrack CD is Finally Done

Read all about it over at the My Band Rocks blog that I run for Mojo Wire/Honey White (and now Low Tide) related newsy items.

Quick links: keirdubois.com for the book, CD Baby for the album.

Honey White: History Mix 2002-2007

Or, How To Not Write A Novel In One Easy Step!

Indeed. Tangling with (#&@)_^%($* video/DVD authoring software in an effort to make, basically, a 10-minute Glorified Home Movie about one's band that rocks will keep one from normal, human creative pursuits. Because when you kill a week and a half worth of time working on projects like this bastard, you post the goddam thing everywhere you bloody well can. It looks like an epitaph, but it's not.

Anyway:

Post-Mortem In The Desert, Part MCXVIII

So I see Tony has pointed out that El Tree de Joshua has been downed for quite some time now. I mention this because it makes me recall the best thing about that: "the sound of four men chopping down the Joshua Tree," in their own words:



Someday I'll get a big fat Thunderbird bass like Adam Clayton is wielding in that video. I never get tired of that fucking song. A little pathetic but I don't care. I was 15 and immortal when it came out, blaring it on the headphones with my nose deep in Fear & Loathing In Las Vegas. Ah, to be young and neuro-physiologically underdeveloped.

Anyway, in other U2 news, my buddies over on @U2 have scored an interview with the band's ex-chief of security, Jerry Mele, who is also been decommissioned in the desert for a decade after suffering injuries in Mexico, protecting the boys during PopMart. Mele is the pivot of concert security thinking- he crewed everyone from Slayer to U2 to Michael Bolton (?) and made sure everyone had a happy healthy safe time at any show.

Oh jesus, it just occurred to me that in that video, Bono and Adam are as old as I am now. Anyway, there's your semi-annual self-aggrandizement + "The Fly" post (which is really just a double-whammy of the same thing, right?). Rock on.

The Last Binge Of SupaDupaPhat Tuesday

Sometimes, I wish I were Catholic / I dunno why"
-David Lowery of Cracker

Nice try, Dave. I know why- at least for myself, anyway. See, the idea of self-sacrifice, though usually repellent to rock stars such as ourselves, and especially non-denominational ones like me, is becoming unusually attractive to me in this, the Foul Year Of Our Lord 2008. Don't laugh- it's true. Mocking my newfound convictions will only make them stronger, but fire away if you must, because I've come to believe that the best offense is a solid defense, especially during the unbearable stretch from the Super Bowl to baseball's Spring Training. But never mind all that. What I really wanted to talk about, before that ridiculous tangent, was Giving It All Up. So indulge me, because if you don't I'll indulge myself anyway, albeit perhaps for the final time.

So what the hell? Let's just say it: By the time the polls close tomorrow, Keir DuBois will be going off the political websites, cold turkey, until perhaps November. "Oh sure," you say, "Just like the last time you tried, dumbass?" To which I reply, "Well, I'll have to, won't I, if I want to figuratively participate in this idea the Catholics call "Lent." It's too hard on the ticker these days- all these crashing waves of abject stupidity rolling across the land. I've tried before, of course, but if I can't hack it even now, well, that's just tough tacos, isn't it? When I come back to politics, you won't recognize me. I'll be even cooler, prettier, and dumber than before. Just you wait. It won't even be that long.

"But why, Keir, why?" clamor my three lonely fans, huddled together against the cold winds of February. Why? Because it was there, that's why. Because I can. If it was good enough for Bill Clinton, it should be good enough for anyone, and there's an appropriately not-so-slim, coronary-risking chance that The Syphilitic One will be back in the Big House again, whooping it up on his wife's dime, this time with feeling, baby. On the one hand, it makes me giddy with anticipation- recalling the virulent, vicious hijinks of my political youth in that Wild Party for Rich Kids known as the 1990s. Thatcher 2.0 and her acid-addled Prince Phillip will no doubt inspire me to newfound feats of lyrical and musical poetry, and it may even be worth it.

On the other hand, it makes me cringe with overcompensatorily mature shame, because the return of Clintonism heralds the return of the DLC. Those initials, of course, stand for Debilitating Losers Central, stand for victories that would make even Pyrrhus weep with naked envy, stand for all those things that rile up those of us web-heads that Brian Williams, in a fit of slobbering hubris, forever christened "Vinny." And screw Brian Williams, by the way. Cronkite and Rudd would have taken the switchgrass to him long ago. Now alas, they are as old and irrelevant as the Fairness Doctrine. Jeez, let's get control of this bastard. Any more stupid digressions and the hipsters will stomp even harder on my virtual grave.

Right, and that's where John Edwards came in. Oh yes, Mr. Jermack Bouceback himself. Johnny would have had my vote if he had the stones to at least give me the option to vote for him, if he could have stuck it out until tomorrow...but as many more important pseudo-pundits have said, perhaps that was his plan all along, the sneaky little weasel. John, I liked you- or rather, the you that you desperately wished us to believe you really were- but obviously none of that matters now, because, after due discussion with the rest of my family who will even bother to vote this year, our choice is now embarrassingly easy. Yep, even the Baby-Boomer Women that raised me to be the arrogant ass that I am today. I ignored their jibes in 2000, I and my brother alike, and we have paid for that mistake for eight long, desolate years.

So, tomorrow evening after work, against my better judgment, and because all the other young- and wish-they-were-young peeps will be doing so, I shall take my useless Permanent Absentee Ballot over to the incongruous trailer park across the way and cast my California Primary vote for Barack Obama, instead of a silly protest vote for Johnny or Dennis the Menace or Mike or Ralph or Ronnie Paul or any of those crazed, rabid badgers running as Republicans. I will buy the entire Manilow and Celine Dion catalogues before defiling myself to that degree. I will vote for Barack Obama knowing that if he wins, now and again in November, he will waltz in like JFK and stagger out, after only one term, as Jimmy the Carter, Mark II. The Stagflation Economy Beast will have its way with ol' Barry, even and especially if he's able to bury all those chickenshit bigots across This Greedy Land Of Ours.

And after that? Who knows. I've got shit to do, man. Self-promoting aggrandizement may not be a new trick for this raging egomaniac, but after all, it's the American Way. Many- nay, most of the guillotine-wielding freaks of the political web, do the Robespierre thing much better than I do, and who am I to stand in their way? Indeed. Fly those freaky flags high, punks. I'm right behind you, until the day that I'm suddenly not. See you all after the Resurrection. Or Restoration. Or whatever the hell the kids are calling it these days. Mahalo.

New WOYG/Fiction Blog

So, my fiction writing, collected as "The Weapon Of Young Gods," now has its own blog: http://weaponofyounggods.blogspot.com.

I've decided to just start posting it as a "short novel," throwing it up there as-is (with some edits), and (for what's not yet finished) as I write it. I always wanted to do it in the blog format, to keep it shorter and semi-gonzo, and anyway it will probably be different once it's "published," so maybe reading an "in-progress" version will be interesting for people.

Each narrator will post under their own name (Roy, Derek, etc), and the date/time stamp will reflect the setting of that particular section (e.g. Friday, October 27, 1995). I'll also add music or photos where appropriate, and that'll be fun, because I'll actually be releasing the soundtrack on CD in march under the Low Tide name.

I'll try to keep the chapters/sections/posts coming at a steady clip, which should help in avoiding any serious bouts of writer's block, so everyone will finally be able to see what I've been doing for the past year, and be able to see it as it changes, too.