one trillion dollars could buy most anything...

this past saturday i received a small package in the mail from my grandmother. inside was an old leather wallet, my grandfathers before he passed away. within the wallet was a note, and tucked inside the soft worn leather there was a dollar bill. this dollar could barely be considered green, you could tell it had been carried around for some time. the note she wrote says she thinks it may be signed by some of my grandfather's war buddies (he fought in World War II), that he carried it around in his wallet for luck all the years after he came back.

so now, here i am with it. not sure what to do, except sit in awe.
some pictures? sure.



the front of the bill. you can see on the left side some writing where the signatures have worn down over the years.



the back. the designs on the back of this bill are nearly identical to a current dollar, minus hawaii across the entire bill.




closeup of the least faded signature.



notice it's a silver certificate, not a federal reserve note...

worth a dollar of silver.

the year of printing and the secretary of the treasury.

as you can see it's in a fragile state, a piece of it already torn off. it had been sitting inside a wallet folded for many years, so it's understandable.
i've put it behind glass for now so it won't take any more damage. at least, none i'm aware of.
something about the dollar has triggered in my brain, opening a strange door i'd never considered. it's dragged this monstrous idea from the shadows. i've been sitting with it, poking the beast with a stick, watching how it reacts.
i've come to this conclusion: he is lazaruz.

for vanity sake...

look at that. fancy new graphic. how bold.

i had a call in to a friend that was supposed to draw me an original picture for the top, but considering the track record of all my friends, i figured it wasn't likely. what do you know...?

thus, i created the image brazenly displayed at the top of this page. it's a picture of infinite simplicity, but therein lies the complex root of it's meaning. it's a hint. if you really want to call it that.

now it's time for my good friend diphenhydramine to take over.
i've a 9:00am appointment on the other side of orlando. not even orlando, to be completely honest about the situation.

bless me, dark father, for i have sinned...

watched Religulous earlier this evening, and i suggest you do the same whenever you get the chance. it's an interesting film dealing with religion and how it is constantly propelling the world to the end of days. something i've been saying for years.

the movie touches on a rather wide topic area regarding religion, not just how these closed minded individuals have found a way to take control of nearly everything in the world. at times it's a rather frightening thought that the people running the major countries of the world are blindly following various religions with little to no physical evidence proving their beliefs. their reasons for belief all come down to a single word: faith. "you must simply have faith," a great deal of them say without attempting to back up the statement with valid reasons for putting your faith in an invisible force that resides somewhere above the clouds. that isn't a simple thing for me to do. it is the very definition of absurdity, and while watching the film you can't help but feel like the people on screen are actors saying lines children wrote in response to the questions bill maher is asking. but they aren't. they are senators, millionaire evangelical preachers, actors portraying jesus, and simple american citizens on vacation in a christian themed amusement park (the holy land experience, a twenty-five minute drive from my home).

i can't help but fall back to the concept of religious individuals being of a child-like mindset. it seems awful to say, but think about it for a moment. it's a tenant of the christian faith that any person is capable of speaking to and being heard by God. i accept that. now, santa claus. he travels around the entire world in a single night, visiting every home to slide down their chimney in order to lay out presents. i don't accept that. after we get to a certain age we learn this is false, a simple child's fantasy story to make an evening magical for twelve or so years. the concept of a man traveling all over the world and delivering presents to every child becomes absurd. yet, God, described as being manlike (considering man is made in his image, we're lead to assume God takes the near same form as humans, though he is obviously capable of greater feats.) is able to hear every person on earth speaking to him simutaneously? even for an omnipotent being that seems somehow impossible. that is 6,706,993,152 voices in His head at once. why is the notion of santa claus so far fetched in comparison to this? bill maher uses this example in the movie and none of the interviewees seem to have a response other than dagger eyes.

seems like a simple question to me.

my biggest issue with religions is their inability to accept people unlike them. it baffles me when the ideology of peace, love, and acceptance of all mankind preached by jesus christ (one of the big names in christianity, if you weren't aware) isn't practiced by those supposedly following his teachings.
it bothers me when a religious fanatic glares at me with disdain because of my appearance when i'm out in public. i'm used to being stared at for various reasons (apparently there aren't many wheelchair bound tattooed individuals in the world), and i'm keenly aware of the different types of stares a person can send your way. curious, confused, shocked, even disgust and hatred; you can see it in the eyes and the way they move their mouth while they watch you. it unnerves me to a degree, i can't imagine anyone would find any of my visible tattoo's that insulting, so it has only to do with the fact that they are present. this level of judgment based on physical appearance is pathetic, yet we find these are the people leading our nation in a variety of different ways. they are our religious leaders, our politicians, our teachers, our mothers and fathers, grand-mothers and grand-fathers, they are our bosses and oddly enough sometimes it's the janitors. they are everywhere, around every corner, casting judgment based on skin color (hoho! a twist on the old).

anyway, here we are, amidst the self fulfilling prophecies of our holy leaders.
personally, i can't wait for Armageddon. it'll be god-damn interesting. get it?
godspeed to all you're after. is this a life left just to remember?

bang bang, shoot shoot...

i was presented with an article about the decline of our fair language and how those interested in it's manipulation are handling it. it's an intriguing read for a few reasons, but i think it fails to capture the true reasons wordophiles across the nation are revolting.

the article touches on a few reasons for people correcting these spelling errors, things like obsession or empowerment. seems like naive reporting, to me.
for me these errors come across mostly as insulting. surely people make mistakes, everyone is bound to screw up the "your" and "you're" at some point. but the fact remains, they let these mistakes out. it is within their power to read over the words they've put down, to edit before publishing, as it were. if people took a minute to read over what they've written a great number of those mistakes would be caught. it's a simple matter of laziness in regards to the english language, brought on by lack of respect for the language and of all things technology.

on the technology side, we have these devices that were meant to propel us forward into the future. we've established human connectivity to a disturbing level. we're able to locate people instantly, tracking with gps or satellites, cellphones, anything with a digital signal. and with pinpoint accuracy.
you can contact anyone at any point of the day, considering cellphones are now just as mandatory to the human system as say, the heart. it is these devices that have stunted our wordplay. rather than giving people the opportunity to express themselves verbally they have instead molested our understanding of the language and how it operates.
letters dropped from words, all for the sake of speed? that text message about where you are really should be sent out within the next fifteen seconds. imagine, if it wasn't sent out within thirty seconds ...? well, fuck. i don't even want to think about the destructive possibilities of an event like that.
the devices built to connect us have done just that, but in the process they've disconnected us from our language.

but what can you expect from a country like this? we fail to see the importance of language on any level. we refuse to teach our children other languages in schools, though the majority of nations outside the united states have children study multiple languages in their early years. instead we're interviewed on local television stations saying things like,"they should all just learn to speak american!"
if we don't even have the foresight/intelligence/decency to learn the languages of the other countries we share this limited space with what reason do we have to invest time in our own language?

just feels like we're loading a few more bullets into the chamber for that final game of russian roulette.

and on the tv screen? diversion and aversion, flavors of the day...

i tuned into the super-bowl for a majority of the fourth quarter, feeling some sort of obligation to at least know the outcome. it always seems the days after these types of things the only type of common courtesy conversation that takes place out in the wild revolves around this over glorified sporting event. to appear normal one must be able to accurately bullshit their way through a modicum of banter regarding the outcome, or maybe just some spectacular highlights.
the wonderful part about sports is you don't need to watch an entire game to understand what took place. it's all a matter of simple observation in the final quarter, reading people and their actions. i don't care about the players, or the score, they mean absolutely nothing. you get the true story of the game from watching the faces of the fans. the zealots ridiculous enough to dole out a small fortune for tickets, camouflaged in absurd colors and attire, blaring their lungs as the cameramen swoop past their seats. these people physically feel the loss of their team, a sport induced depression settles into their bones and from that grows anger and rivalry for other teams. it's disturbing, in a truly fascinating way.

but america clings to the wrong sports. we worship false gods, paying them millions of dollars for doing something they supposedly enjoy. it's true for all of the big major sports in this country; football, basketball, baseball. their seems little room left in these sports for true love of the game. like most things it's shifted towards greed, and now it's for love of the money one gets for playing the sport they maybe loved as a child.
how cynical is this? the current generation of children, will they even care about the sports? we all grew up saying we want to be sports-stars, rock-stars, movie-stars. maybe you never said it aloud, but you thought it, even if just for a second. did that desire stem from the wealth you'd ultimately acquire? no, i don't think so. it was the allure of being known, that idea of a perfect life, that sadistic american dream. but kids now? after pressing through the marketing and advertising, maybe they'll see a game being played on the field. or maybe they'll see some men in uniforms, doing their job so they can collect a massive fucking paycheck.

i find myself at cvs around 1:00 in the morning and one of the homeless guys that stands against the side of the building on occasion says, "what about those cardinals?"
"tiny red birds shouldn't play with metal men," i tell him.
"i think it's sad," he takes a swill from his brown bag, "sad, no lie."
"but it's no fun to tell the truth."