New Doors

There is a saccharine Christian saying - or was it from the terrestrial TV days or rather nights - from the repeat broadcasts of the film the Sound of Music? I forget - it doesn't matter anyway - but it went...
"When the Lord closes a door, He opens a window" - Implying for one to crawl through an unexpected window as opportunities to move seem to close like a slammed door...
Then I can't help remember the Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe....


Through that wardobe door one left one world and ended up in another... Where one could find Prince Caspian and take a Voyage on the Dawn Treader...

I installed these doors in the photographs here in self determination Thomas Jefferson style on my post World War II Am-vets neighborhood cracker box house - decades beyond its expiration date... This is my own personal Monticello or castle if you will. I've got the red hair too with Jefferson and all the Liberal notions as well. Where you see 15 glass paned doors there were once walls...

The desk was my design my from re-used (Thanks President Jimmy Carter for that) Habitat for Humanity wooden kitchen cabinetry better built than any kitchen cabinetry on the market these days and some cheap counter tops - that's where my antique computer sits from the Ghettoville, USA blogette desk I write to you, dear reader, here from...

The things about Blogs is no body is reading them - not that I care. My broadcasts here are like all the mute and silenced Minarets of North America... They are there if you choose to see them standing like never before - unnoticed and especially unheard. I blog - keep my journal - write down the days and sometimes the nights as they pass through me. I wonder if science fiction like time travelling will bring a purpose to all these blogs on the internet. Uncharted Lives from unknown times across the Universe like a faint radio signal.

I would like to climb through the door of a plane and disembark through that door and find myself under the skies of North Africa, Arabia, Persia, or any of the cool Stans - Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Afghanistan or the Cholistan desert.

Mostly, I long to return to the roof tops of Old Sana'a - the last place I travelled through that finally felt like my only earth bound temporary home. I would like to see Sharjah and visit Mosques in the Kingdom of Humanity.

I watch the al Fajr prayers (the pre-dawn prayers) on TV from the Kingdom of Saudia Arabia - KSA on Channel One (KSA1) for Makkah with the view of the Ka'aba 0r on Channel Two (KSA2) from Madinah with the voice over in English. When it is pre-dawn prayers there I can pray here simultaneously with those fortunate Brothers and Sisters in the land of the Prophets and beards and clean white clothes.

It's either that or Al Jazeera in English or TV from Sharjah or Qatar...

This might be Ghettoville and the West in decline and from social and cultural poverty but via satellite I can travel to more dignified places and in virtual ways - in real time - participate and learn to be a better person defined by self determination and self respect: From a willingness to know other things, other people, other places, other customs...

There is something about the media Sheikhs in white from distant lands that if you choose to see them and tune in to them with a private satellite dish - like some old terrestrial radio antennae - it is possible to tune into and find a key in the pattern of ones prayer rug to unlock the doors of restraint from here in the "free world" of the West.

I am not the job I work at.
I am not the car I drive.
I am not the neighborhood I live in.

In central Ohio dreaming of desert night skies from places like:

Makkah
Madinah
Marrakesh
Sharjah
Muscat
Sanaa
Jeddah
Kuwait City
Baghdad
Tehran
Cairo
Kabul
Multan

G-ville Backyard Spring Moments

Here are some photos du jour of G-ville chez moi: My washed clothes hanging out on the line, environmental activist style, clothes drying... I was even using the clothes line in the cold Ohio winter. It's not that I am not too cheap to use the electric clothes dryer - there is just something about the act of putting up clothes on the line and letting them wave like peaceful prayer flags. Plus on a sunny spring day like today out on a line they will
dry faster than in an electric and costly machine to run...
Maybe, I miss the sense of Mother or Grandmother that a clothes line invokes. In fact often times clothes out on the line dry faster than in the dryer anyway - hanging up the clothes is good for stretching the muscles without having to do Yoga. Once the clothes are dry I leave them out waving in the breeze because even my boxer shorts remind me of colorful Tibetan Prayer flags carrying prayers out along the breezes.

I planted a few small Spirea late last autumn that are starting to blossom - My folks had their backyard lined with Spirea, Lilac and Forsythia which they dug up from around the foundation remains of the old farm house that was torn down to build the housing development they moved to in the early nineteen-sixties... My folks, RiP, were recycling, unaware, long before the days of being environmentally or politically correct - they were just cheap! lol - Then again I am generally cheap or trying to practice being so as a virtue...

I still day dream and night dream of making road trips across North Africa from al Maghreb otherwise known as Morocco through Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, across the West of al Mesr (Egypt) and onto the Kingdom of Humanity - Saudia Arabia - before ending up in Dubai in the Emirates detouring to Muscat and back to Sana'a and Taizz and back to the UAE. From there I'd like to make an extension into Persia to pass through Esphahan and then trek across the mysteries of Afghanistan before finding my across the Kyber Pass to check out other places like Peshawar and Mystical Multan.

The thing is mostly I am at work or in my back yard just hanging out - but my heart was bewitched by Arabia - I fell in Love in Arabia with a place as if it were a mysterious and magical woman - My souls earthbound home is in Yemen - I learned that from staying there one summer...

I really don't know why I am in Ohio. How I got here, much less how I ended up back here. I don't know who is coming to take me elsewhere but I associate Ohio with some strange forgotten ancestral Native energy - a swampy morass of wetland and woodland and spirits mingling between the heavy humid sky and damp ground. Now entirely cleansed of Native people as if it were Palestine of today which is still being cleansed in progress due to our Western minded dis-regard. Here the wetlands and woodlands succumbed to farms - then factory farms - then subdivisions and strip malls and the rampant parkinglots to nowhere. Then came Wal-mart - Good Lord I get a headache just thinking about Wal-Mart. Those acres of retail tarmac were once pure Ohio woodlands and wetlands. And yet the wild life returns to where the cars are now parked - The drivers of those shiny metal boxes oblivious to what once was here...

Mostly the wildlife I see is roadkill which is why I identify with myself being Ohio wildlife roadkill. It's just a matter of time until my body is a discarded carcass strewn and forgotten alongside a busy Ohio road.

And yet I dream of North Africa, Morocco, Makkah and Madinah - Dubai - Tehran - Kabul - Quetta - Peshawar - Multan (the ultimate Sufi magickal mystery tour of a city!)... I want to make a road trip like none other - from one realm of Mosques and Minarets cultures and tribes and its modern city life - following the reminder of the broadcast Calls to Prayer from different areas. I really don't want to live anywhere where I can't hear the Minaret reminding me that this Earth bound life is not all there is, because this life is just in no way, especially right now, from Ohio, enough.

Ironically, I chose to live on a central Ohio street with a Minaret - the minaret was designed with architectural sympathy and a nod to the prevailing culture and architecture here from this region - Not a slender Egyptian or foreign minaret - but a sturdy thick barn silo style minaret attached to a Mosque built with architectural dignity and grace - not like an aluminum shed of the drive through church variety so common in this neighborhood. The Minaret I can see from house from down the street is a silent Minaret - And this is the land with freedom of speech and freedom of religion... The ice cream truck though daily broadcasts many times throughout the day hawking ice cream loudly to an impoverished neighborhood.

At least I've got satellite TV and can explore the dignity and grace of people and places who have not forgotten the real meaning of Allahu Akbar - God is Greater. Greater than any of this....

Abrahamaic Monotheism Version 3.0

In Dutch the word for Tulips are Tulpen...

Pictured here are some evidences of Spring springing up - rising up from the dead of winter - from out in the backyard on my existential trip to nowhere from where I watch the seasons change and feed the birds.

I also had to mow the lawn today with my People Powered Mower - (no electric, no gasoline - just pushing)...

Meanwhile the laundry is hanging out on the line to dry... I hung it up myself on the line outside to dry after I washed in a machine - there is no Misses Crouch. The windows in the house are open letting in fresh air even though it really isn't warm enough for all that... No suicide skies today.

I can't help but remember familied Easter Sundays in years past - when I was a kid - before all this roadkill lifestyle of mine descended up on me. Those were happier if not more ignorant times - less alone times.

Meanwhile, this might be Ghettoville - or G-ville - but I hear a dog off in the near distance barking - not my own. Birds chirruping and some singing. Mostly I hear nothing but the gentle cool breeze which takes imagination to achieve.

Whenever some one asks me directly point blank: "Matt are you a Muslim" I suddenly fall into a K-hole of thinking and think, how in Islam, anything that is created by God is Muslim, including the person who just asked me that annoying question whether they know it or want to believe it or not. Then I get to thinking: "Am I created by God" (insert question mark) - For all I know I am a child of Shaytan in the land some Persian types refer to as the Great Shaytan - which, incidently, I agree with those Revolutionary old men. Well, I believe in God - like in Arabic - Allah Almighty Akbar - Allah is Greater. But God is God and he has 99 names in Islam and quite a few other as well in other monotheistic religions of which there are the Big Three - Abrahamaic Monotheism Versions 1.o, 2.o and 3.o and probably all the sub categories of the .1 and .5's plus myriad in between, but who is counting? Who cares if you pray sitting down, standing up, bent over or all three combined, 0r even, who cares if you don't pray at all...

It ain't, nor should it be, anybody's business if you do... or dont.

Is the point - if after I'm gone, as in dead and gone and some one wakes me up then asks me about what I believe, or believed and whatever I achieved, or didn't achieve - or thought and felt, or tried to do - good or bad - I mean, if that were to happen, as I believe it will, or hope it will, (because this life does not feel like enough!) - Not because I want to Believe but because it was chosen for me, long before there was a "me" or and "I" or a tooth for a tooth... I know what I believe - I know what I am running from and running to and how I seem to, statistically speaking, run back and forth.

I think the bearded Prophets of Old are cool - especially the ones you see on the streets and satellite TV of today. I really do want to visit Makkah under Arabian skies. I want to spend more time in Arab North Africa as well - anywhere within earshot of the call to prayer from the Minaret - before dawn or before sunset and all the times in between - but, no, I am not very good at what I believe or practice or disbelieve in but I try to keep it all to myself. Neither do I see myself travelling anytime soon - But I practice being optimistic about that. I need to travel - back to Arabia - which is like simultaneously time travelling to a dusty past and an inter-galactic New Las Vegas of a future when you land in that DBX - Dubai airport!

The Universe is very big.

I often times find myself remembering Yemen. The rooftops in Sana'a, Yemen are magical - they are divine and meditative places above the cachophony of a crazy modern and ancient Southern Arabian city of the Prophets of old. It really is the mystical Arabia Felix. Back there to this day in old Sana'a women glide along dressed in Ninja black... Those images of dark fabric dignity and mysterious eyes of silence and grace. I keep having this compelling image haunt me - specifically also of me laying on my back on a roof in some city such as old Sana'a with such a woman - a sister-wife in the religious sense - who like me - enjoys kicking back and watching the nighttime stars turn by on their big wheel. Holding hands in silence watching the stars in the sky - not side by side in some separate chairs getting fat together watching the stars on TV - but laying back on the roof, holding hands in silence - content with watching the stars glide by on a warm Arabia night breeze.

That dream is replete with al shay (the tea) with cardamon and sugar setting out in little cups and a metal tea pot.

Jellaladin Rumi translated by Coleman Barks, in the book, the Essential Rumi taught me a lot - that led me to read and re-read a mod translation of the Majestic Qur'an with the calligraphic Arabic and English side by side - I want to visit the Kingdom of Humanity - the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Are there any other questions and does any of this really matter in some Western styled pointed confrontation: Yes my past and present life contradict me but this is the Soul bound by the mortal coil that I am wrapped up in and all I know as me that gets called Matt or sometimes when I am really lucky, Mustafa. I really do want to travel more but essentially I just want off this planet.

On a side note, I sincerely wish Barack Obama and his family and the Administration of the White House at present would have inherited a much better National condition - all of non-white America deserved better - legal or illegal - We the People deserved not the discarded carcass of a gaggle of nasty blue eyed Zionist Corporatist Vampires of Capitalism - All of Us in G-ville have Hope and desperately want a form of Change we can believe in - one that will include all Gods children.

Crucifixations or Death and Taxes

Oh yeh I have to say I have had third world styled food poisoning - at a moment when the only toilet in the house had been taken out - and I was really in the shit sprays for days - still left with a severe headache from all that. More evidence if we needed any that life here in the US is a third world country - food poisoning.

I got hired today in some under-employmend situation but under-employed is better than un-employed - and despite being sick as a dog at that! Plus I contacted my old job and got them to FAX my W-2's and I have an appointment to get my taxes filed tomorrow... so once that's done i'll rest a little easier...

I keep asking myself if today has any religious effect on me in some lingering memory like way? I will say today I got a lot done despite being sick and felt like someone was looking out for me - maybe that was because I visited my sister yesterday - and seeing Margo is like seeing an old friend and hanging out with the good ol' Crouch family for Sunday Roasts... (back in the early 70's) plus seeing her connects me back to when mom and dad were around and even before Margo ended up incarcerated when Grandma (Crouch) was around - before all this that I now know as life caught up with and depressed me down to near half dead paralysis of a road kill life.

I still have to pinch and remind myself that I am also a Belgian and a "gay divorcee'" of a Belgian at that... But moreso - what seems ever more dream like is the time I spent abroad - Yemen now seems so exotic and dream like - I can't believe I not only went there but thrived there better than in Belgium.

For the short time I was there I still have vivid memories of the UAE. And then Pakistan except for some rough times there (which despite what I remember when I kind of tripped out in Lahore - from stress of all that full on culture shock that caught up with me there - where - I still remember the internet cafe in vivid detail where those e-mail correspondences to Bart and other friends in the west occured from - where I was saying "help, what did I get myself into?" - but then later recovering lol) is equally an exotic memory experience that I am tremendously proud of.

I never stop being amazed at how freaked out Midwesterners (even hip urbane ones) can get when I speak of having been to those places... (and sometimes all the Belgium years included).

...So somehow Margo and where she is connects me to the good past parts of the Crouch family - and my kinda cousin who is Margos only friend in the free world left - well - my visits with him connect me to my moms side of the family - and makes me feel less detached and like a lost soul here - that I feel that way here where I am from (meaning central Ohio) is baffling to me - maybe because this place lacks any real sense of place other than all the wal-mart super paver parking lots - oh the horror of wal-mart as Betty Butterfield says on Youtube.

But it is odd that, that old communal visiting hall, at ORW, which hasn't really changed in 31 years - now is an architectural construct memory in my mind more familiar to me than the home we were all brought up in. I must say it is weird having 31 years of my 40 years revolve around my sisters Margo's incarcerated, prison, check point, razor wired, humiliated, dehumanized life - and that somehow even when she needed mental health care and medicine - when she got nothing but a plea bargain poor persons prison (way to go Ohio) - she managed to succeed within the state imposed limitation on her life. She, not me, is the remarkable person here.

I should really think about all that some more because too many memories are coming back...But Margo has some great stories about Mom and Dad that either Mom and Dad would never have told me - for who knows what reason - propriety or their ideas of parental responsibility or because with their rigid twice monthly for years visits to see Margo - in some ways my living under my parents roof then kept me at a greater personable distance those years - I don't know...

I do like hearing the family stories from Margo and my cousin that I just, stories that I never knew about. But really Margo is heroic - we all have to admit that now in her ability to survive - Including that Kafka-esque Parole Board.

My ex-teacher pal from dads old widowered condo life post mom was telling me about this LD kid an artist kid who burnt his art (in the sink in the high-school art studio - responsibly no less - and ended up being forced on medication - then when he turned into a zombie from meds he got put on more meds - which is ultimately the real control formula that made my condo pal retire from teaching early) - To which I said that really good artists have always burnt the work that they didn't want created - which I think is a virtue and a sign of some genuine rare genius...

The post Bush II Administration system in place that puts this sort of bright lived lives down is just plain wrong. I also told my pal that Americans need to admit that public school in the US is day care so that parents can be unhindered human resources - and that college in the US is really just to get those Americans who do go on to that to be on par with European high school kids. And that Grad Students here are only equal with European undergrads.

Until we can admit this is the education reality in this country we can not evolve and better this place as a nation - until we can admit that this country has huge population mass third world debt traps (houses, schooling, cars, healthcare etc). Even the whole idea of a middle class might be a myth of a pipe dream - an ever elusive pie in the sky American Dream - but life here is in reality an unending ever unfolding multi-faceted nightmare of debt and traffic.

While at the grocery foods car park today I saw by accident some female goose made a nest out of fresh mulch in the parkinglot under a parkinglot landscape area tree between parked cars. I remember when that whole area was a big wooded wetland that ran over the hill between the Scioto and Olentangy Rivers where it wasn't farmed - generations of geese later on still collectively remember that too.

Then while sitting in the car just taking in the suicide sky an old little woman walked up to the geesette offering bread and said in this little voice "you are doing a good job" to the mother goose - like the goose was some little teen mom living out in the parkinglot. Imagine what the goose was thinking - fight or flight... what is this crazy, upright, two legged, scary, white headed, two uncontrolled flaying armed, human doing to me now?

Everywhere I look I see Palestine under the Israeli Occupied Forces seige - even in the nature and parkinglots here. Well that little old woman meant well but can only think in humanizing terms with nature - as if nature were just like a childrens Beatrix Potter story - where all of Old Englands wildlife are characters like people...

This country needs more dissent - more public protest in the streets. Corporate/politician heads should roll in their own blood more often. Well despite all this and the house nearing completion and ready to be flipped (as if that is going to happen any time soon in this market! lol HA!)...

If I can't travel abroad like I used to again then really I don't care if my life ends early because this American Matrix experience is just not working for me in any way with meaning. I know you know what I mean but I had to write this... I've been sick with food poisoning for three days cooped up in the house with the shits - at one point the toilet had been ripped out and I was using a hole in the floor or a bucket for the endless shits - can you imagine...? My Gawd my travels in the third world were never this primitive!

Well I got through it and the toilet got reinstated - and I got a job - and faked it, though sick as a dog, in that corporate nonsense intimidating interview - that thank God I was just too sick to care about and that probably got me through the intimidation part - lol - Well - jobs these days in reality if you can find one are just a stepping stone - no company wants lifers despite what they might say about any of that - I just wish I could bicycle to work - because the commute is insane - Central Ohio should be a bicycle city given how generally flat it is like the whole of bicycling Holland or like Copenhagen.... who knows - maybe it will happen sooner rather than later... I don't know but this house is finally looking like it will get finished... Which is one big psychic relief to have a clean space to live my life in and out of.

The Mexican guys who work here though despite the difficulties of communicating are really great and actually put up with me and fix the things I complain about without loosing their sense of humor - which is actually nice to have around. But my gawdh that crazy Mexican radio they listen to loudly when they work drives me batty if I'm on the phone... I do use Spanish around these guys so maybe they appreciate that - I have learned a lot of Spanish with them just being around and I'm not afraid to try to use it. When I do they laugh at me - not with me - but I don't care - it's the laughter that I appreciate so much. Plus they work fast and cheap without being stressed about it all so who cares if they leave the beer bottles everywhere in the yard like they had a party - it kind of goes with the neighborhood...

On Al Jazeera in English As Seen From Within the US

I should be asleep... But I've had 3rd world styled food poisoning, the details of which I will spare you. But my physician DR kindly e-mailed me a remedy to care for myself since I don't have healthcare at the moment.
He suggested I go find that Pedialyte (electrolyte replenishing drink for infants) which for six and half dollars (at the corner liquor shop) for a liter I don't know how people can afford to breed...
Also got Gatorade to go with it. I must really have been dehydrated for all that I drank I have hardly had to go as it were. It is tough being sick out here in the sticks of Ghettoville alone - too far from friends. Though there are many nearby within sight churches and mosques - no one is in the habit of checking up on the neighbors...
I'm exhausted from having been so sick but now can't sleep...
I was watching al Jazeera in English via satellite and they had the most amazing examination on two things in the US:
1. Detroit - and how the current economy is affecting that already dead carcass of a once grand and beautiful place (real estate that can't find buyers at 50 dollars to 500 dollars for a house on some land, albeit in need of work but habitable all the same) - This because vast neighborhoods have no police department or fire department or city services like trash and garbage pick up that make up basic urban infrastructure city services - It was nearly sci-fi post apocalyptic Mad Max, Mel Gibson, Road Warrior like - Perhaps the scariest part of that report was on the newer suburban places being stripped down and left vacant or the (30 some storied) high-rises that make up the core of the center of downtown Detroit all being abandoned; (not just a few floors being empty or one or two abandoned hi-rises but all of them) - and then...
2. On the US prison population being 25 percent of the global prison population while our US national population only comprises 5 percent of the global human population... Then how the criminal justice system is preying upon the poor under classes in merciless ways... It was all really great documentary style production - but, my God, this country from an outsiders critical perspective is really exposing how, in places here, everything is in shameful tatters. I mean, we all know this on some level but it takes an outsider view sometimes to present it back to us. To hold up the mirror so we can see ourselve as we are.
If only this stuff were available on mainstream US media outlets. And it's al Jazeera and it's actually very concerned on our behalf in these overtly sympathetic ways that for media is quite sophisticated to present in convincing ways. I really must say Al Jazeera in English is impressive and very much needed. But who here watches it? But hey I'm unemployed can't they at Al Jazeera in English hire me?
There was also a point about the central train station in Detroit being this once grand and now abandoned structure that was in use until like January '88 which lasted longer than Columbus' Central Station or Union Station as I think it was called... it was also a grand structure... demolished - Reaganized... And now though Columbus is the state Capitol there is no passenger train service that stops here.
...And that poor people here end up in prison - where the state pays 60,000 a year on the inmate - and the inmate in their whole life probably never had access to that much money or care that money like that could provide - so it might be prison but it is better than Ghetto-life...
So I am really thinking - my God - those Islamic Republic for all their libertarian drawbacks might be statistically speaking on the whole offering all of their citizens a better way of life than the liberal democracy way of life here in the states that we identify with as being Lady Liberty's light and beakon to the world as an example....
And, Ironically, people in those Islamic Republic generally believe our liberal democracies are in theory a great way or method and that Islamic Republics have a lot to learn from our way of life, which is, actually, in tune with the Islamic sharia in ways we in the west are loathe to admit. So I am really scratching my head over this.
The question is why doesn't the states want to be the liberal democracy it is and why does it work so hard to undermine its own constitutional foundation - when Islamic Republics are defending and helping us undestand that which we ourselves as a nation are ironically undermining. I mean, would someone explain this to me... is it greed and Capitalism and Corporatism and economic despotism and Zionism all combined into this sinister Beast of our Biblical styled Apocalyptic making...? well it's food for thought.

Happier Images Under Suicide Skies

Yeh so the posts here on the G-Ville blogette have gotten a bit heavy. So here are some images with a lighter message.
"That Car" - some local has made an art car of found art applique' on his own car. I see this car at the most unexpected moments quite a lot. One of the more interesting aspects of life in grey and boring C-bus town...
Then my pal Ben who lives next to a railroad track a few months back photographed some heavy tanks being transported south through town. That corresponded to a day Palestine got hit rather hard in time for Christmas '08. How quickly everything gets forgetten around here. Ironic that for Christmas '08 Israel invades Bethlehem which last I checked was in Palestine...
So yesterday I was at the corner shop run by this groovy Palestinian family and waiting in line to buy some phone credit for my cell phone and the guy in line next to me gets rung up and his total is $19.48 and he says to the woman "1948, Good year, hunh?" and she just sort of smiled back silently. And I am like ready to just yell out - "Dude, do you know your history? Do you know who you are speaking to? If it wasn't for the Balfour Declaration and that year - 1948 - this woman wouldn't even be here on this side of the planet!" - Instead I bit my tongue and keep my mouth shut. The man had no idea - People here just have no idea. I was always taught that ignorance is no excuse.
The donut shop bar stool still life photo is pretty much a feature of my weekend or occassional weekend of my solo life. I don't drink (well normally) but in central Ohio - maybe it's the pollution or just the perpetual overcast suicide skies but you wake up feeling hung over - that's when I go to the local donut shop and get coffee... It's an old Independent Donut Shop that looks like a forgotten relic of Route 66 - except this is no where near the forgotten, replaced and decommissioned freeway that headed West - from Chicago to LA.
You know I am trying to post happier ideas - but I don't really have too many.
I was watching Al Jazeera in English or maybe it was the Saudi 2 station via satellite - and they were saying that over 600,000 jobs in the US were lost in March. Hadn't heard any of that on the comparable US media outlets.
I'm unemployed too but who is counting?
Maybe it's the uncertain times we live in but I have been watching a lot of TV from the Arabian Penninsula. Mostly I don't want to forget how to haggle with Taxi drivers in Arabic in case I have the luxury of travelling back to magical Arabia sometime. But wether I am watching Saudi TV - from either channel 1 or 2 or Sharjah TV which I like a lot... Or Qatar - or even TV from Yemen - I don't know - I have to say that Satellite dish I bought sometime last year which wasn't really expensive - well, I got my money's worth of entertainment out of it. I've learned a lot more about life in Arabian Penninsula than I ever knew from my limited travels over there. What I miss about the Arabian Penninsula is the dignity of the place: People dressed up in Angelic beauty - and gracious people who, really, if you get the chance to speak with, are really the most generous and hospitable of people I have ever hung out with. I like how Arabian Satellite TV presents itself and it's various cultures - it's a different world - and it has the right to make its own rules - but the imagery I am impressed by is that the place doesn't cash in on passing itself off as disrespectable monied trash in way Hollywood is notorious for.
To be honest I've learned a lot from TV from Sharjah in the UAE or the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia - KSA, or Qatar. Sometimes when I look at the Kingdom of Saudia Arabia I think every citizen there is some sort of extended nearly divine angelic like Royalty - Right now in G-ville nothing feels respectable or pride inducing so watching programming from Saudi or Arabian Television in general has been a great reminder of the potential of human dignity from self determination.
So for that thanks Qatar, Sharjah in the UAE or from the Kingdom of Humanity - Saudi Arabia - from deep in the heart of G-ville.
You know, If you read my blog, I'm always complaining about something that shouldn't be so in this country here - the USA. Like, that we in the US live behind an electronic iron curtain of (mis)/information. Given that the general mainstream media in the US has it's military industrial complex propaganda agenda (that's no secret if you want to see it you can if you don't then you wont) - and that there is another side to that story that one never hears within the US - but then again - the US is still the land of the free in theory. So via the internet - if you are determined - it is possible to read about life outside and beyond the invisible electronic iron curtain of limited world media information that is allowed in - it is still legal to purchase a cheap satellite dish and receive free programming from around the world and watch whatever region that interests you - to find out about life outside. So I should stop complaining - I should try to be more optimistic. Thank God for Al Jazeera in English!
We have a unique President for a pivotal time in History - for this I am glad - really glad and hopeful. And when life within the confines of the US gets to be too much from all the social and economic decay - it is rather a relief to tune into Television from more dignified places like Sharjah, Dubai, Sana'a, from Muscat in Oman or Jeddah, Riyadh and even during religious time from Makkah and Medinah.
It's been a reminder of the potential for human dignity watching basic TV from those places. Plus the "soaps" even when you can't follow along with the spoken Arabic are hysterical and compelling because of the body language and the language of television. So, yeh, things here in the US seem grim - especially from here in depressed socially and culturally - Ohio - And so I'm not travelling uch these days - but while stuck at home inside - i'm usually - thanks to the internet and the satellite - off enjoying other parts of the world and learning something about myself along the way.
And the really nice part about watching TV from the Arabian world is that the sky is always blue and the weather sunny and warm!

Pills and Paperwork or What Healthcare in the US Really Looks Like

Pills and Paperwork are pretty much what healthcare or the lack of it in the US really looks like.

I find the commercials on TV for various Prescription drugs akin to gratuitous psychological violence.

Given the endless pills and paperwork from health insurance companies, medical centers and hospitals or clinics for procedures and tests.... It is just like beating an already sick patient who is trying to recover from an illness. I don't know - healthcare isn't supposed to be like this...
...like a for profit industry.

The pills in and of themselves are distressing - but the paperwork - the incoming and incessant bills are the sinister dimension of the Ohio healthcare system that thrives on keeping people sick to keep the profits in the healthcare industry.

It's enough to make you wonder if there is a Judgement Day or a God.

Will all the Capitalists, Pharmaceutical companies and all the medical Doctors and Surgeons - will they ever have to answer to the Almighty - do they care as care-givers?

It is modern and medieval but especially soulless at the same time...

Healthcare in Ohio is dismal given how merciless the state of Ohio representatives have been over so many decades.

It's not being sick that is so much the problem - getting sick - that is a fact of life... Or the medicine that makes you sicker than what's wrong in the first place. It makes you wonder if we are human lab rats for these pharmaceutical giants to test on. But it's the battery of bills and subsequent incomprehensible paperwork that follow sick people around for years - that's what kills your heart and steals your soul. That's the kicker to all this suffering.

That we have created such a merciless system for ourselves when each and everyone of us will fall into this morass at least once at one point in our lives.

How do we explain that to ourselves even? How do we justify this? And to think the hospitals have a religious affiliation is the icing on the cake - that's the abomination to the people.

That the politicians who defend this shocking system generally also consider themselves religious...

All of this makes me ask if our lives in the US are bought and sold and traded via corporations like cartells who own us - are we as people publically traded as human resource commodities? My guess is yes - If so then shame on us.