Saint Crispin: The Leathermen's Patron Saint

Let's talk about the Jews instead.

Just (half) kidding.

The kind of scheme behind my last entry was to, well, it was manifold, probably none of which bore any sweet fruit, but one had to do with, yes, some progress in fixing the damn and severe Rockefeller laws, finally.1

Drop the Rock.

I know some folks feel reform is a woefully inadequate half measure, but, be that as it may, then let's keep the pressure on till full repeal.

Genesis was a while ago, enough so that Michael Vick lands behind bars, and Plax Burress may, and Barkley has, and many others have. Is there some way that millionaire black men folks can avoid imprisonment?

No matter how you break it down, no matter who is the President of the United States, the number of blacks (and browns) in prison is difficult to believe. More black prisoners than enrolled in college, apparently.2 1 in too low of a number of blacks are in prison, or are likely to be imprisoned. Why is that? And why can't they stay out of prisons?

Avoid the legal system, dudes. Maybe there is extreme unfairness that you may be targets, and it is equally extremely unfair to actively avoid being targets, but do it. Drink less, carry guns less, dog fight less, hustle drugs less, hit your women less, whatever it is, it less.

And if for whatever reason, imprisonment occurs, it sucks to say this, but gain perspective, wisdom, learn, grow, spirituality, whatever (it worked for Malcolm X), and no recidivism based return visits.

I have not thought it all the way through, and I am sure whatever I just wrote came across as bigoted spewing, but I don't want to see any more brothers in the slammer. The biggest and main flaws are in the structural failures of the legal and economic systems, but fixing those, which should be constant effort, probably will be slow goings.

And dang, maybe it is cause I am very stupid so never knew, but look at the numbers for black and brown chicks in prison, we need less sistas and moms in prison too.3

I do not mean to mitigate the harm drugs do and can do to individuals and to the society at large, but the systemic imprisonment of whole slices of mothers and fathers ain't the best idea either. The thing with the Rockefeller laws is the mandatory sentencing, which aside from removing other valid and perhaps more worthwhile considerations - such as treatment, rehabilitation or mercy - of the judicial system, I think generally leads to prosecutorial abuses (ie using the threat of hefty mandatory sentences to press quick and perhaps baseless pleas for lesser charges) and political abuses (you can infer what a perpetuated large prison community can do for local economies and political districts here).4

Chris Brown and Rihanna. I know that I am a terrible evil person for saying this, but I am mixed on the whole Chris Brown beating the crap out of Rihanna. I mean Rihanna is a Barbadian hottie and a pretty good singer, and did not deserve nor ever should be beaten. But Chris Brown, from limited googling, came from a, I think, broken family and was routinely surrounded with domestic violence, and that's something, from my understanding, that inevitably resurfaces in successive generations. I wish it did not, and it is so removed from my life that I do not know much about it, but that shit just happens. I do not mean to make excuses. (Speaking of terrible and evil, while watching the movie Jumpers, during the scene - and standard plot device - where the girlfriend, instead of waiting for a more convenient time, decides and insists on confronting her boyfriend with her emotional and their relationship issues while the baddies are gonna just arrive for another standard Hollywood showdown scene, I turned to my pal and deadpanned, "I don't blame Chris Brown." True story.)

I do not understand Chris Brown, I mean, if I had a hot girlfriend (I'd settle for a homely girlfriend, at this point) who was also talented and wealthy, I'd guess I'd try to make her happy, and especially make sure she don't wise up nor second thinks. But when one is brought up surrounded by violence, instead of only and completely wishing Chris Brown gets raped in prison, I am hoping, since I don't think this was an isolated incident, that it gets worked out so that Chris can control whatever demons he has in him, especially if Rihanna wants to stay with him, which I don't understand why she would - you know she should be able to do better - but then, with domestic violence situations, the dude/assailant skips out on legal punishment and the couple usually hooks back up.5

I am reading as quickly as possible Roberto Bolano's book of poems because I paid for it so I want to read it, I like Roberto Bolano's prose work, and I eventually want to pass the poetry collection on to a friend who is recuperating from a, I just found out, hernia operation. Which is a little strange, as not so far requiring that surgery yet, I do not know what a hernia is and assume I do not have one.

My friend, she is Mexican, and Roberto Bolano is Chilean by birth, though spent time in Mexico (City), and the book is a bilingual collection, so I think she might enjoy his poems. Or, just as likely, not.

The poems so far, even if reading in too rapid succession, and even while normally not being a reader of poetry, I think of myself, despite now hardly writing such/much, as a poet, but a poet who doesn't read much poetry? I am willing to reassess whether I am a poet, after all; if you know what I mean: a poet who doesn't write poems is hardly a poet.

I have only read, still, so far, By Night in Chile, but I have The Savage Detective on my to read pile, maybe next, or soon to next. I already mentioned reading Pathologies of Power, and in the same shipment with Savage Detective was Milton Osborne's The Mekong: Turbulent Past, Uncertain Future and I am just about done with that, which is going to make a streak of two terribly unremarkable books, even as the writer of the Mekong emphasizes Cambodia, a place that I have deep affection for since my kinda recent trip there, a place I long to return to, because the countryside and cityscape are naturally beautiful and the people are naturally beautiful and friendly. I wonder if I told the story of how, after hanging out with my pals, partying it up till early early morning, taking the tuk tuk(s) back to my/our guesthouse, the recumbent street, by that time, paying no notice to the few remaining travelers, those too wild and or wasteful to heed the requirement and security of a good nights sleep, me and my friends bore witness, probably not more than 20 or so feet away, as a dude on a moto stopped, showed his pistol, and fire shots at another dude. Loud cracks from gunshot bangs. Then the murderer revved away. I/we briefly saw the victim slump to collapse, some color of blood marked on the pavement, and my/our driver(s) continued on. Anonymous assassin anonymous dead anonymous capital city.

I discovered the next late night, chatting at a bar around then around again from my guesthouse, from the bar owner, that the shooting was gang related: insult retaliation, territorial spate, drug tussle, dick measuring contest, something like that, those things dumb men with guns do.

That isolated event, and some others, of course, does not totally discredit my fairer impressions.

Also, some friends of mine, pretty much all my friends who I typically hang out with, are now (or will be) in destination Asia: Shanghai, Cambodia, Vietnam, and Hong Kong. I did get an email asking me to send some books to the friend who is based in Shanghai. So from my to read pile, I had to choose to read the books that sucked, and now, among the remaining books which I think should not suck, and I wanted to soon get to, I picked some to send away. This friend, one thing I remember is that he was a huge fan of Joseph Heller's Catch-22, a writer that I don't have a strong preference for, but think is cool that someone might favor. This friend, from high school, I always scoop up a bunch of books for whenever I visit him/Asia because he asks for them, or I know he would ask for books if he had not. He frames the book request as a loan, but since years ago, he has so many of my favorite books, that when I survey, with tender yearnings, the bookshelves of his home perhaps he might say, "oh, you can take those back," but has not thus far, and I am too cowered by tact to breach.

As long as he actually reads them, I suppose, it's all good. I did buy, instead of taking mine, another copy of Savage Detective, because, it was on sale at the bookstore, and, especially, I think he might like it. In high school, I think we shared an English teacher, so he probably has fond memories of reading, among others, the big Spanish language/Latam writers fashionable at the time. I don't think we were in the same English class, or maybe we were, but that same teacher probably went over similar material. He also took Spanish as his second language, and read Borges and Lorca and so forth. Of course, he jokes to me, when I emailed him to confirm I got the books and have handed them to the another friend who was soon to leave and join up with them in Vietnam, he jokes, "Thanks ... I figure if Saigon and Shanghai get boring we can do a book club discussion." Ha ha. Or not.

He does tell me to send the books I completed, which does not make it easier as I don't wanna give away the books I like. Sheesh. I finished The Romantic Dogs, that's the title by the by for those Bolano poems, and stuck it in and sealed the envelope with a short get-better-soon note to my friend, and I am already regretting not having access to the book. I know there is going to be stuff I want to review, or loot, for my own purposes! Easy come, easy mailed, as they don't exactly say in that way.

I suppose I count as a regular visitor to Glenn Greewald's blog, and there, I found this. More or less, he did a study on Portugal's drug decriminalization (which is not same as legalization, by the way), titled, coincidentally enough, Drug Decriminalization in Portugal: Lessons for Creating Fair and Successful Drug Policies. I recommend clicking through to see the video of the Cato Institute presentation. As mentioned in the links, I concede it is difficult to gleam definitive results about factors contributing to the decline in drug use. There may be too much noise from, let's say, different metrics used by different countries or demographic changes or changing attitudes over time or cultural stuff and so forth. But I think the main point, as Glenn points out, is that decriminalization (and most likely legalization) significantly contributed in managing the health problem and did not produce any increase drug use, or even sustained a plateaued drug use level, or transform Portugal to a drug market haven, as so many idiots warned, feared or expected, but if anything, the change in policy led to steep declines in drug use. You can check out the details yourself, if you care. But Portugal's decriminalization and, now, reformation of the outdated?-it-was-never-in-date Rockefeller drug laws are coming none too soon.

Similar none too soon vein, Vermont and Iowa, thank you. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

Maybe I am not googling correctly, but I could not find any comment from our great leader, the Barak, regarding this most welcomed change you can believe in. President dude, come on, step up, congratulate the Vermonters and the Iowaers, and those merry gays and happy lesbians. Do not leave it such a state secret.6

If it is not entirely obvious and or you are too lazy/busy to bust out your Google, Vermont and Iowa refer to the inclusion of marriage rights for those people afflicted with the gay, or as how the kids referred to things 3 or so years ago, teh gay.7 Also, it is apparently proper to refer to lesbians as gays. I thought gays were just for the coal shovelers,8 but either I was flatly unaware, or there was a shift in pop usage or semantic shorthand or ... oh well, a little wiki grease kinda dislodged that confusion.9 I guess I can accept using gay to apply broadly to the homosexual community (despite the obvious pitfalls where it renders LGBT, well, kinda nonsensical); but maybe I am sexist, because, in fact, when I think homosexual (like gays) I do not even think of as a term broadly for the various homosexuals, instead, I think mostly, mostly, something more nautically themed, hot sailors maybe, or better yet, hot sea-.10

Tangential with full frontal male nudity, among things that I found annoying about the Watchmen is, maybe I should not get into this, because it will certainly devolve to yet another hackneyed chewout on the soul/mind grinding Hollywood moviemaking system.

Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more;
Or close the wall up with our English dead.
In peace there's nothing so becomes a man
As modest stillness and humility:
But when the blast of war blows in our ears,
Then imitate the action of the tiger;
Stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood,
Disguise fair nature with hard-favour'd rage;
Then lend the eye a terrible aspect;
Let pry through the portage of the head
Like the brass cannon; let the brow o'erwhelm it
As fearfully as doth a galled rock
O'erhang and jutty his confounded base,
Swill'd with the wild and wasteful ocean.
Now set the teeth and stretch the nostril wide,
Hold hard the breath and bend up every spirit
To his full height.11

I ain't no fucking redcoat, that shit don't work on me. Though the way things go here, the pinched range of subjects that (probably? or, most definitely) no one cares much about (in the first place), plus the mutilated waves of redundancy and digression, it'd surely be a short breath held.12




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1. News articled.
2. Check this and that.
3. Effects on women.
4. That link is also good for further Rockefeller drug law discussion. And I also love Amy and her Democracy Now program and her work generally. I only skimmed from an older book she had out (not to be identified), but the forcefulness of her writing and opinions is surprising. She also recently was in town to promote her newest book (not to be identified either), but well, I cannot do everything I want to do.
5. I have no direct source to back up anything regarding the tendency aspect of domestic violence, by the way. But that is how I remember it.
6. If it is not obvious, that's also a big ol' diss on President Obama, the details, this is no glow either.
7. I came across the gay before in popular culture but Rachel Maddow, via her show Rachel Maddow Show, I don't have a link to the specific bit, probably some gay in the military thing, but the way she went off on, I assume, the military brass fearing the gay, or, I suppose, it could be gay marriage, like, how the gay will somehow plain wreck otherwise happy straight households, her phrasing of the gay really sparkled for me. I do think Rachel's show is pretty good, which by the way is available on podcast, which is how I get it, only the audio because I do not have the bandwidth or drive capacity for the video, and since I am at it, Democracy Now also podcast, also, for me, only audio, not video for the same reason. Where was I? oh, I do think Rachel's show is pretty good, I listen to it pretty much weekdays daily, it's entertaining and decently surveys each day's more significant happenings, though, perhaps not surprising (or perhaps surprising, who knows how effectively I write or how closely you, if there is any you(se), read), I like my information even more in depth. Rachel is also a cute pie, and I would not hesitate to say that I would totally do her but for the fact from her own jokey reference (Google suggests that, but I could not find an exact cite with an exact quote) of butch dyke, and instead, I fear, I would be the one getting done; let's put it this way, I have never been nor think I am quite ready to be fisted.

This may or may not be the segment but it is an example of Rachel and the gay.

By the way, this is the closest I got in the supposed connection with butch dyke and Rachel's self description. And that is a real stretch to conclude that as self described or self proclaimed. Not that it may not be true. But it's more symptomatic on how the media or cowardly writers or talking heads likes (loves) to use or find excuses to use words and or phrases that would otherwise be taboo.

8. I'm not even going to tell you what they thought that meant. Arrested Development, series finale.
9. Here ya go; though if wiki was so terrific, it'd also have a section on "the gay," wouldn't it?
10. Best show ever. Same AD, same series finale. I simply prefer true gender neutral terms, congressperson, chairperson, humankind, etc., and view non gender neutral terms as sublimated or covert sexism.
11. God for Harry, England, and Saint George! Henry V.
12. Good gracious, and I hate being a tease too.