Sams Day in Normal entries

It’s the fourth of July in the Western Hemisphere, at least this side of the Greenwich, um, mean line? Christ I’m losing pieces of memory. Greenwich and mean are definitely part of it. I used to write things for national holidays, sometimes political, sometimes cynical, sometimes nostalgic, depending on how I was feeling. To me the fourth of July is more of a kid’s holiday. I vaguely remember trying to explain it to me teenagers once, the significance of the date, and, I think, defaulted to ‘It’s when citizens blow shit up to celebrate living here.’ Must have a different sort of ‘my kids’ like caseload kids, I can’t really imagine my own kids asking. One of them wouldn’t have bought that answer and the other knew good and well you could buy fireworks through at least June.

It is kind of weird. It’s the date we signed a document, a no-duh document, that our intention was to continue to resist. The war was then officially on, and, sort of like our war in Iraq and Afghanistan, ended more than once, I think our last real conflict of that war was in 1812, though it was over in 1786 and again in 1789. I could look it up but that’s dangerous for two reasons; 1) My memory needs to rely on itself and 2) The web has multiple answers for any given question. It’s like a hundred monkeys infinitely typing away, once they’ve recreated the complete works of Shakespeare, fifty of the monkeys attribute it to the other fifty, and three of them through poop at the others.

Makes ya wonder who decides what. Some dead famous people are recognized on the day of their death, some on the day of their birth, and, in the grand scheme of things it’s the same thing, but, still, how do they figure it out? Or, I suppose, as long as the revolutionary war of this colony is involved, we celebrated Washington’s birth when I was a kid, when I got a bit older we celebrated it on the closest Monday and when I was older still it was combined with Lincoln and called presidents day and is on a Monday somewhere close to one or the others birth or death or something.

Oh, internet reliability. I looked up the difference between souvlaki and gyro this morning. Smartphones make it easier to take the first hit as scrolling through or going from ‘Ok google’ to a web search isn’t quite as effortless as one hopes for a whim. The definition was that a gyro was a Greek delicacy (and then described the ingredients of a gyro, the same as a souvlaki) and that a souvlaki was fast food and sort of suggested it was prepared like a kabob. I’d hardly call myself an expert on Greeks, but, my GF is half Greek, half polish, neither of her parents born in the states. One of my good friends growing up was Greek and his dad owned a Greek deli and one of my first dear friend in Portland moved from Greece to Portland in his late teens. I think the difference between the two (souvlaki and Gyro) is regional, not Greece regional but American regional. Calling one a delicacy and the other a fast food is patently ridiculous. As far as shit wrapped up in pita bread goes, I’d rather have either one that a fucking ‘California wrap’. I don’t know how we managed to co-op a European sandwich and make it taste so bad. In the defense of ‘Wraps’ I’m sure that somewhere in this country they taste good, just not anywhere I’ve been.

As a dog owner I came to really hate the fourth in Portland metro, specifically my neighborhood. It was cool that everyone would come out, socialize and blow shit up, but it was a four to six-day gunpowder fest that drove my dogs crazy. Come the last day (when people were running low on ammo) they wouldn’t even wait until sunset. Most of the neighborhood dogs were beloved, mine sure were. And yet I’ve never met a dog that liked fireworks.

When the seahag and I were young we lived next to a school that was next to the stadium where the triple A ball club played (I think it’s where the soccer team plays now). Every fourth they’d have a double header and a big firework display between games. It was never the display of renown for the area. The biggest fireworks display (not counting my neighborhood) in Portland is actually in Washington over fort Vancouver, but they fire them over the Columbia. We’d lay out a blanket and a picnic and watch the fireworks from the school where they shot them off to explode over the stadium.

The two most memorable displays to me were here when I was a kid and Ft. Jackson, next to Columbia South Carolina. Here, one year, they did something I haven’t seen before or since. I was young enough to be mystified by how they did it but have since figured it out. The finale included your typical blowing up a bunch of screamers, floaters and blossoming type of sky burners, but, this one ended in a firework American flag barely twenty feet off the ground. I think the Kiwanis club sponsored them in those days. I don’t think the city of East Lansing does one any longer, the big one being by the Grand River and, I think, the capital.

At fort Jackson the impressive part was the sheer fire power and duration, that and we didn’t have to do meaningless shit all day like parade and do push-ups. A peace time army loves firework holidays. I think the eighties was the most peaceful decade during my lifetime, sure, there were covert operations, but the closest thing to a war was blowing up Grenada and that took less than a day. We could have carpeted the country with orange shag and a deep pile carpet pad. It would have cost less, taken the same amount of time and achieved the same nothing. I forget whether desert storm was late eighties or early nineties. It doesn’t disturb me that I can’t remember. Korea and Vietnam weren’t actually wars, but that’s a matter of semantics. They certainly weren’t covert. I mean we never declared war, to the Koreans and the Vietnamese they were wars.

Much like the celebration of birth or death, where we choose to send troops and where we don’t is always a bit of a mystery to me. We don’t seem to like to send troops to Africa, most recently I’m thinking of Rwanda and Uganda, pretty big ass conflicts, eugenics big. We seemed Ok with the shah of Iran raping and pillaging but pissed off at ayatollah Khomeini for calling us on having supported him. Same deal with the Marcos sans fifty hostages and an election. Fuck me if I haven’t lost my point.

We’re under another heat advisory thing today. I think I shit canned the last few days of entries bitching about the heat. That’s a blessing you didn’t even know you could count. You know what? Fuck, I’ve got one. I’m going to paste it and post and think about other things.

You may or may not like the song, or like it and not respect it or respect but not like, or, you know you’ve never heard it. I’m not praising or condemning it. I reminded myself of a dumb game I invented years ago, it became a dumb game, I think it started off as a left field point in a stupid argument. Before I get away from Cyndi though, she was pretty fucking amazing, a tight little bundle of talent with her finger on the thread pulse of pop culture. Who knows what she could have done, or still could (she’s alive right?) if pop culture celebrated originality?

I think I was back in college and was conversation raped (brought into a conversation without my consent) for the one millionth discussion of how creepy that police song about stalking was. The rapist was speaking the lyrics out in a sort of Captain Kirk clip (it might have been funny if he was doing it on purpose) — Every Breath you take … I’ll be watching you. I think my first defense was to tell the anti-police (just the band, mores the pity) to quit swinging on stings nuts.

My second was to do the lyrics to time after time with my teeth clenched. There’s a whole hidden level of funny there. The guy I was having a consensual conversation with before swanky and our gang came at us with the stupid clichéd sting stalk, had, an hour earlier, did his term paper oral report after spending the night with his girlfriend and more MDA than … well, than anyone else who gave an oral report that day had done. Not sure if you’re familiar (meaning you sort of have to have done it to know for sure) but MDA (remarketed years later as X) makes your jaw really tight and kind of makes you want to chew on things. He buried his head in his hands as I did Cyndi with closed teeth. The hijackers were …. Intrigued? Dumbasses? Intrigued dumbasses. They all tried some pop song like that and were convinced I was some sort of pop savant that could turn anything creepy at whim. My friend was trying to chew through whatever textile was under the grease on the cafeteria table top. My friend pointed out that they started it with cap’n kirk; they didn’t know what he was talking about.

Sometimes it works backwards, you can make a song more interesting. I mean who the fuck cares what those fucking muskrats are doing unless it sounds sinister. Donny and Marie (back when no one would ask Donny and Marie who?) were invited to play Buckingham palace. The queen is rumored to have said Rutting muskrats? We are not amused. Is it a Mormon thing? That last bit doesn’t sound like the queen mum. If Jim Morrison had done it she might have thrown the royal panties on stage. Heh. I guess I mean if I ever have to hear that song I want a Jim Morrison or even Leonard Cohen impersonator doing it.

So, yeah, it’s still hotter than shit, but a log or two lighter than yesterday. Didn’t hit eighty until, like, ten o’clock, and, though the air is still like a swimming pool, it’s mostly shallow end. I’m pretty sure y’all have weather too, this whole country is lousy with the stuff. Other countries have weather as well, but here in America us, we, y’all, me, you and other parts of speech mean America. I’m willing to bet, though, that an hour and a half west or three hours or so north and the same weather is cooler. Wind blows the humidity around. You might have learned this trick as a kid; when there’s something for dinner you don’t like but the grownups insist it’s good for you, so good, in fact, that if you don’t try eating some you don’t get something bad for you like ice cream, television or the social company of your fucking family. The idea is to eat from different quadrants and spread things out from center to make it look like you’ve et more than you have. That’s what Lake Michigan’s, Superiors and Huron’s do to humidity. Michigan and Superior are also pleasant. It’s a long fucking way to go otherwise to get cooler. South, I think you pretty much have to go to the pole, East you could probably do in a day, but you’ll want to go bit south from direct east.

I could bitch about weather being too fucking average too. Between typing about weather or Cyndi Lauper, I’ll take Cyndi anytime.