Just Do It

so i'm working on a new piece of music. a song that requires a lot of work and thought and i'm actually figuring out what notes i want and there is this whole intricate side of this particular piece. work - real and actual work - not the kind of music i normal make - not the familair "it just poured out of me" sort of music. what i'm doing today is what i usually run away from. i like easy, i like it fell from the sky, i like it when the sounds just pour out.


but i'm taking a break because i've realized i need to create this piece in a different sequence and i'd really like carl's help in getting the microphone right and the levels correct. this all at the end of a day where i attacked several other projects and while i am not happy with those results so much i still made an effort to make things the way i wanted them, and now it all just needs a little tweaking.


this all comes after a summer of what i consider dragging my ass - i've done tons of tiny things but no real projects - not much painting, no new music, just fiddling with things and wasting time. i'm very good at wasting time. and i seem to live in this odd fantasy world of nothing ever changing - time does not move forward, even though my hair is grey and we've planted 2 summers worth of veggie gardens in the new house. time does not go this fast - even though it's been 3 years now since i was in portland last visiting friends who in my head still live in the same places and know the same folks, and yet the city changes every day and many of the places i saw and people i met are not there anymore. it's a time warp - it is a refusal to admit that a day will come where i am dead and gone, and before that comes there will be a day when my eyes quit working, and before that the arthritis will stop me from painting or playing my guitar. i live in eternal avoidance of those thoughts and actions - i will never get old, my friends will never get old, my siblings will not pass before me because they will not pass. i am in denial at the passing of time.


and it is the passing of time that i wirte about today, and again about an iconic advertsing slogan. one known the world over. one known for a simple little mark, a little swoosh of a trademark.


nike.


one of the world's largest and most well known of all brand names and trademarks. a multi-billion dollar corporation known not just for the folks who wear it but for the kids who sew it. yes, the world's largest companies often employ child labor, and extremely poor people, and do not pay them near enough for them to even imagine escaping from the confines they are in. we all know this - everyone who wears nike anything who has a conscience knows this - all you people who eat organic, buy local, eat whole fresh foods and avoid canned tomatoes - you live with thoughtfulness on every level, including your intense love of physical activity - running, biking, jogging, playing any myriad of sports - you know this practice is so commonplace we cannot avoid it. so you wear nike. it's a good brand. they are well made. they look cool. when you are sweating on the basketball court and trying to win that bet against your buddy so he has to buy beers at the bar  you do not think of the poor and the under privilidged, or the children, who made the shoes on your feet. you just want to win.


nike. known world over. hugely famous. a ridiculously wealthy company who has one of the best slogans you could ever come up with. the words i thought of today while i was painting and working on music. while i was lamenting ove this odd avoidance phobia i seem to have (well, i know i most certainly have) and the slogan was right there - right on the tip of my tongue.


just do it.


just do it. 3 simple words that have propelled a million atheletes into giving their best, giving their all, or at least getting off the couch. 3 words that will, for my entire lifetime, be associated with the nike brand. with the idea, ie the dream, that anything is possible, and therefor you should Just Do It. dream that dream, live that life, walk that walk and not just talk it - do it. just do it.


who on earth came up with that slogan? i bet i could wiki it, but i am trying to not break my stream of words here - i'll look it up later. i most certainly hope whoever coined the slogan is filthy rich - although i feel, in my gut, that the person who wrote it was probably just some dude getting paid by the hour to write propelling ad words for all sorts of stuff.


have you ever seen Crazy People? the movie with dudley moore where he is an ad guy? where he writes about volvos being boxy? i love that movie.


do you think whoever wrote Just Do It is rich? i wonder if they copyrighted it. if they own it. nah - i'm sure nike proper owns it. OWNS IT. like you try to do when you are out on that basketball court, or that 50 mile bike ride, or whatever it is you do while wearing your sneakers and staying off the couch.


oh, sneakers you say? sneakers, sneaky. word play. YES! eureka!! word play is exactly what i'm talking about here. the nike slogan is one of the best examples of word play i could ever imagine. other than scrabble.


the average joe is not gonna think any farther past just do it than get off the couch and go win at something. for yourself or for your team go win - go be All That You Can Be (we'll tackle the army in a subsequent episode). but if you honestly think about it, the nike slogan is very layered, very deep, and potentially worrisome.


just do it. you hear it purred into your ear - you are a teenager thinking of hitting that very first joint that very first time. your peers - that really cute girl you've been dying to impress just so she'll say hello to you - she leans over and hands you that joint and purrs - just do it. and you'd leap to your death if that was what was presented to you at the moment. the words are sultry, smokey, they curl and hang in the air with a mystery and a sexuality you cannot ignore.


yes, a sexuality - just do it. that same girl is whispering in your ear again and this time it's not about smokin'. well it is actually except a differnet kind of smokin', and now those words are egging you on to strip off all your clothes and have whatever kind of relations with whoever you are with. throw caution to the wind and just do it. now, stop waiting, come on come on and hurry up we ain't got all day JUST DO IT.


Hurry Hurry Hurry - you're robbing the bank, you're running ut of time to crack the safe, your hands are shaking, just do it already! hop in the getaway car and drive as fast as you can - skip town, go to jamaica, get a swiss bank account.


just do it. are you starting to see, or hear, the layers of connotations those 3 words carry with them? the underlying effect of those words on your psyche, like an opiate in word form, the verbal equivalent of a night of heavy drinking. you are immortal, you are impervious, and you can Just Do It!! whatever it is, no matter how impossible or how wrong or how underhanded or sleazy or forbidden, you can just do it. do it do it do it.


when you bought those shoes with the swoosh, you never knew this was what they meant. you just figured you'd get some new shoes that looked cool to go play hoops in. but deep down in your mind, under the layers of day to day reality and conscious thought and awareness, your psyche knew what the connotations were. your subconscious mind felt the allure of the sleaze factor, of the "i can get away with it" factor that each of us tries to hide each day, hide from our own eyes and the public's view. all those personal thoughts you have that you never share with another soul - all those dirty things.


what a slogan - what an incredibly powerful all encomapassing mind fuck of a slogan. and you never knew, cuz you were just doin' it.

there is always room for jello!!

oh advertising. how it sticks with us from day to day. how it warps our thoughts and fills our minds with disillusionment. today i pick advertising as my rant - hopefully the first of a series on commercialism, consumerism, and conciously deciding how to live instead of just going with society's tendencies.

so lets get on with it!


today while eating breakfast - a nice mixture of sauted zucinni, red bell pepper, mushrooms and garlic, with a cracked egg over top, i took the tomato from my plate and gave it to carl. he said, "please don't give me any more food - i don't have any more room in my belly." but, it was a homegrown tomato, and of course he ate it. we adore them.

in my mind, what i heard was, "there's always room for tomatoes," a play on the slogan used for the jello commercials in the 70s and 80s. there's always room for jello! it's a series of words i have heard thousands of times, both on the tv and from the mouths of friends and families. it was an advertising slogan that stuck, and then became a part of our day to day lives.

there's always room for jello! what does that mean? what are the real connotations behnd this series of words? let's investigate.

you've already eaten dinner. you should be full. but eat more - come on now, eat more - there's room in there!! force it in! there's room in your belly!!

some of you would say - jello can't be so filling, so who cares? why are you making a fuss?

i say - jello is a big bowl of sugar. sugar being better than HFCS of course, but still sugar. don't you remember being a kid and just wanting to eat it out of th envelope? it was like candy - fruit flavored sugar in a bag that mom said you could have!! alright!!

a bag of sugar, with flavoring. they say Fruit Flavoring! it's a lie. well, it is a half lie. it is fake fruit flavoring, artificial, i suppose, not fake, as in fake fruit would be........conterfiet fruit, something made to be a stand in for fruit, a totally false representation of real fruit, oh yes - all that does mean artificial!! maybe they did not lie afterall, but who noticies the non-fruit part? strawberry jello has got to be strawberries, right? i mean, if you get the pistacio kind it has real nuts in it, right? we have really had the wool pulled over our eyes.

fake fruit flavor. fake fruit color. one of the worst concoctions to ever be manufactured on this earth, and to think we all eat it every day!! food coloring!! the fakest of the fake. nasty chemical weirdness added to everything we eat. our bodies were not made to process this stuff - it is totally foreign to our systems. and it messes us up daily.

you think it is okay - the government lets it be in our food - it must be okay! bullshit. the food industry is a for profit industry, and lots of stuff is allowed that should not be. most of what is sold in a grocery store is bad for you. is foreign to your system. and food coloring is so at the top of the list!

your white cake frosting is not white - it is pale Yellow #5, the most commonly used food coloring. yellow #5 is made from COAL TAR. coal tar. coal tar is in your macaroni and cheese. it's in your cheese-it crackers. it's in all the food you thought was white, and all the food that isn't. it is the first and foremost food color used today, and it is in most of the stuff at the grocery store that comes in a package. every breakfast cereal. just about everything in a box.

coal tar. whoo hoo for the human race! let's live on coal tar!!

now, you can read about yellow #5 on many other websites, read about how it causes an amazing amount of food allergies and health problems. so i'll skip that for now - but i will tell you it's real name - tartrazine. look it up - find out what it is you put in your body everyday.


we come back to jello and it's slogan of There Is Always Room. for what? sugar, fake flavor and coal tar? or any of the other myriad food colors out there, made to mimic real fruit, made to TRICK our minds into thinking that it is real fruit - nutritious, ripe, healthy real fruit.


you see - we are an old species - we got this far through evolution of our bodies and minds, which includes a million years of collective knowledge. we did not get this far by eating poisonous foods, or things that would harm us. we have built in radar for what is ripe and healthy and if we were still living out in the woods as foragers (hunters and gatherers) we would know what was the right thing to eat. so food colors mimic that ripe factor, and they TRICK our minds into thinking that food is healthy. even if it is not. food coloring is a facade to hide the trash, a whitewash to make the old worn out wooden fence look pretty again. it is not for eating!! but we eat it everyday, in almost every food we take in.

unless you eat whole foods, natural foods, organic or unprocessed foods. but that is a discussion for a different day. right now we are talking about JELLO and it's advertising slogan.

THERE IS ALWAYS ROOM FOR JELLO.  always is a word of absolutes. we are taught to use it it to mean forever, no matter what, from now till the end of time. always. you are gonna have room in your body to cram extra food and extra calories AND a ton of fake crap into your system no matter what for the rest of time!!

why are we so overweight? why do we have such ill health?

the science and psychology of what goes into our food and how it is marketed to us is a long, strange, winding road. you probably never thought, when eating that jello waldorf salad at christmas, or that banana strawberry mixture at easter, or the crazy brain shaped thing you served at halloween that you were being duped, lied to, reprogrammed, ect. it did not really taste right, but it looked pretty and it was sweet, and so you ate it. and your kids ate it. and you lived like that always.


our bodies were not made for this stuff. or actually - this stuff was not made for our bodies. it was manufactured (real food is grown, not manufactured) to fasely convince us that it tastes good and we like it. when really that is so far from th truth. horay for ground up horse hooves and sugar and food coloring!! hot damn can i have some more!!

there's always room for jello. would you like some now?

my last thursday in my 30s

today is may 31st, 2012. it is my last thursday in my 30s.

about ten days ago carl asked me if there was anything i wanted to do during the last 2 weeks i was in my 30s, and i had no clue. i had not felt as if time were an issue, or that i had to do something particular before a certain date ect. i mean, every day i think of things i could have done, or should have done, or wanted to do. my close friends know a few years back i lamented over having made it to an age where i could no longer be in the olympics, where i was too old to have that kind of chance. not that i ever wanted to be in the olympics, mind you, but that life had come to a point where if that had ever been a goal of mine it was now too late.

i had hoped to live my life without regrets, and yet i have so many already. mostly they have to do with accomplishments i had hoped for and never achieved. like what? well, nothing neccessarily time based, which means nothing i cannot still do or make reality, but i just expected to have already made several more solo albums, to have had published books, to have this litany of things under my belt that i simply do not have. and why? because i am lazy. because esp now in my life, i am so easily distracted. i have been wanting to write this particular piece for weeks now and find each time i think about it i get a paragraph or 2 into it and then think about the garden. or the store. or new shoes. my ability to concentrate these days is shot to hell, a major casulty of the internet i'm sure. having the "ability" to check a million different websites at a click and read whatever or see whatever and email and chat and a hundred thngs at once - my concentration is at an all time low.

i'm also lazy. i am a dreamer - something my dad always said to me - he told me over and over i did not live in the real world, but how could i? my real world was hell.

my father did not want me. period. when i was close to 30 years of age my siblings told me about how dad did not want me and had been very abusive to my mom over her keeping me. that he expected her to terminate the pregnancy a number of times and she refused. when she gave birth to me, she instantly had both a hysterectomy and a nervous breakdown. she left me, with my dad who did not want me, and my siblings, and the stress of it all has resulted in a number of things. my siblings do not remember much about this time. i have extreme abondonment issues. extreme. to the point that when my friends have the chance to leave detroit and do something different or exceptional with their lives - i freak out. i have knit this family for myself out of the people i am close with and when they need to leave i fall apart.

this has also been the foundation for me not wanting to have children of my own. since my very beginnings in the womb being a child and having a child have been BAD. life threateningly bad. the anxiety and issues i have about having a child are miles long. it's true - i am not my parents, but i've been damned with an imprint i can't seem to shake.

with everyone i have talked to lately about me turning 40 i have said, "i'm happy to be alive." which is the truth. my father did not want me, and he was an absolute asshole. i'll tell those stories some other day. well, maybe now. you see, my mom realy did want to leave him, but when she would tell him that she was leaving, he would say, "that is fine, you can leave, and then i'll track down all of your kids and kill them." honest. i KNOW many of you will think i am lying each time i tell a story like this, but i lived through it, and so did my siblings, and my aunts, and they all know i am being honest.

so i'm simply happy to b alive. and not just for being born.

when i was 4 or 5 my parents had what they thought was mineral wool insulation put in the walls of the house. it was actually formeldehyde. and the foam did not cure properly. my mom and i and my next oldest sister started getting sick within a few months. by the beginning of second grade i had pnuemonia and a collapsed lung. it happened over and over. i had pnuemonia 7 times before i met carl , and bronchitis every 3 or 4 months all those years. my parents did have it removed, the insulation, but not until several years after it was put in, and after the majority of my physical damage had occured.

my health was always poor. but it was even worse in 2002 when we rented a space in west dearborn (where a sushi place is now) that had a basement we were unaware of. the basement was for radioshack, and it was full of 20 years worth of paperwork that had been flooded over and over, and had turned into one giant heap of black mold. i had hives for 18 months. i lost most of my hair. my anxiety was so bad that even 50 miligrams of benedryl 4 times a day did not calm me down. the city would not help. the county would not help. we had to move the shop to get away from it. my family doctor tried me on every medicine for allergies but they only made things worse (i had bad reactions to the medicines and their dyes) and when i saw "the best allergist in michigan" and his skin tests made me swell up and wheeze, there was nothing western medicine could do for me anymore. how i managed to escape anaphalactic shock a number of times i do not know. in the end, accupuncture saved me and moving the shop certainly helped, and the end result is that i am glad to be alive.

losing my mom did not help matters at all - i only survived that one through the incredible love and support carl gave me and that my friends offered up. and when carl and i had a handful of very ugly years btwn us, what saved me then was music.

maybe it has always been music. it is certainly what i live for and what i get the most everything out of. i'm sure that through all my teenage years, all the years of hearing my dad pass out on the toilet every single night at 3 am and fall over on the floor and all those days of trying to avoid him physically so he would not touch me, it was music. when i was surrounded with physical violence and every type of physical and mental abuse you could imagine (the things i still cannot really manage to discuss or talk about - to let those words come out of my mouth, once again due to years of the threat of death if they did) it was music that i hid in and beneath and with. i could put on a record and be somewhere else. or be someone else. it is why when people write us these days about the music we make, and they talk about how it takes them somewhere else, to such a peaceful place, i am so happy to hear that. i am thankful to create that place for others - somewhere they can be safe. somewhere they can be saved. like me.

so today is the last thursday i will live in my 30s. when sunday comes i will be 40 years old. too old to be in the olympics, too old to be a hipster, maybe too old to be someones mom. but i am everybody's mom - i have adopted everyone around me into this flock - i am a shepardess of sorts, and very happy with that being my role on this earth. i wonder if i will ever be able to access my childhood memories without that aching sadness, without this feeling of loss and emptiness. i keep trying to find this stuffed lamb on ebay - the lamb i had when i was tiny, the lamb my mom used to sing t me with. "lamby pammy's gonna get your ice cream, lamby pammy's gonna get your nose, lamby pammy's gonna get your sugar, and lamby pammy's gonna get your toes, and lamby pammy's gonna WEEEEEEEE", and she would tickle me with the lamb, and i would laugh and laugh.

today i am happy to be alive, even though sometimes it's really hard to feel that way.

Get Fixed!!

i'm frustrated by all the feral cats in our area. by how my girls pull me under rows of bushes to grab a cat food tin or the cat who is trying to eat from it. by all the black and white cats who all look the same and are crying in heat out in the yards. i did not realize the neighbor was being manipulative until i watched 15 months of new kittens being born and discovered this has been going on for 5 years. so i wrote a letter for the newspaper. i tried to be fair and not pick on anyone or call out how this behavior is similar to hoarding, that these people have kitten addictions, ect. i had a few friends give me good advice - friends who were willing to discuss this issue as adults and not run away from the conversation. they do cat rescue - i wanted their help. 

it may not get my neighbor to change her ways, but i'm trying this on a much larger scale. a neighborhood scale. we'll see what happens. 

During the 13 years my business has been located in the city of Dearborn, I've heard quite a bit about how the city has a problem with rats. However, after moving into the city to live, I discovered an equally disturbing, four lettered word the city has a problem with - CATS.

Feral cats are in all major US cities these days, a problem made increasingly bigger by the difficulties faced in tough economic times. People everywhere have been forced to give up their pets due to a lack of money and this, coupled with how quickly they breed, has dramatically raised the number of homeless and feral cats living on the streets in Dearborn.

Adding to this problem is a segment of the population who feels that by feeding street cats they are helping the cats. A number of these same people also offer them "homes" by allowing the cats to live under their porches or in their garage. These people honestly feel they are helping the stray cats by "providing" for them, but quite the opposite is true.

There are those who feel a cat or two being fed in the yard is no big deal, but cats with no medical attention, esp cats who are not neutered or spayed, have an amazing ability to reproduce. According to the Michigan Humane Society a single unspayed female cat, her mate and all their offspring can produce a total of 370,092 kittens in just seven years.

Some folks think that trapping the stray cats and having them spayed or neutered is cruel, but in reality it is far more cruel to the cats and the environment to not get them sterilized. A population of feral cats can destroy a local or migrating bird population, and can themselves become food for coyotes and birds of prey like hawks and owls. A cat is similar in size to a rabbit, and a kitten is light weight and easily snatched from a back yard. With birds of prey actually swooping into yards and attacking small terriers it is not a surprise cats who are constantly outdoors are also targets.

A number of cities have trap neuter release programs that work, and even if not city run, have greatly reduced the cat population. Hamtramck and Redford are two of those cities, with citizen run animal rescue organizations who understand the importance of population control. Their efforts over the past few years have greatly reduced the number of homeless and stray cats in their areas, while also relieving stress on the local economy. They work with veterinarians who understand the issue, and offer low cost treatment so the cats are sterilized and treated for underlying health issues. This helps stop the spread of disease to house pets.

A sad and disturbing fact to note here is that in the state of Michigan, over 60% of the cats in shelters are euthanized. In 2010 alone, over 60,500 cats were euthanized in shelters in Michigan. This number does not include the staggering amount of cats hit by cars, eaten by predators, or disposed of in some way after a human decides to not keep the kittens born in their backyard.

Dogs in Dearborn are subject to many rules and regulations and must be licensed and always on a leash or in a fenced yard. There are ordinances against feeding birds and squirrels on the ground. Is the cat overpopulation not being treated as an issue because the city is hoping the cats will keep the rats under control? That is a foolish idea, especially when these ferals are being fed by people who think it is the right thing to do, and that cat food is simply attracting more rodents.

Feral cats and alley cats are a human made problem. Feral cats often cannot be tamed, and most shelters must put them to sleep. For humans to be responsible about this issue the best thing they can do is trap the cats, have them neutered, and release them back into the neighborhood. Cats mark their territory, which keeps other cats away, and so the best course of action is to get all strays neutered. Stop the influx of new cats, both from breeding and from other areas.

Friends of the Dearborn Animal Shelter offers help to those who have feral cats in their yard or on their property. The Michigan Humane Society has made donations to help with low cost spay and neuter. These programs need to be taken advantage of, as the current numbers show over 60% of all cats in shelters in Michigan are euthanized. Every person who is allowing this cat explosion to continue is responsible for those cats being “put to sleep”. It is time for the citizens of this city to make a change. Take responsibility. If you have those cats in your yard – get them fixed. If you are the neighbor of someone who has ferals in their yard or garage or under their porch – report them. By turning a blind eye YOU are adding to the senseless killing of all these animals – animals who did not ask to be on the streets in the first place, breeding over and over, having their kittens eaten by hawks, being hit by cars on the roads. It is time to take action.

If you would like more info on local Trap Neuter and Release programs, or if you would like to talk to someone about starting a TNR in your area, please feel free to contact these local groups. And if you need information on low cost vet care or controlling the cat population explosion in your yard, the FFTDAS will be happy to hear from you.

http://www.dearbornanimals.org/

http://www.hamcat.org/HCAT/Welcome.html

http://projectkittyconnect.org/

http://www.allaboutanimalsrescue.org/index.html