On Iraq

I have seen on the news that Bush, Condi and Rumsfeld are out and about trying to resurrect support for their dead and dying war. Bush is saying that same line he's been spouting for the last six years, all the bullshit that, "Terrorists hate our Freedom"! Condi is in the back nodding her head, and Rumsfeld is probably cackling over pictures of dead Muslim children (knowing him.)

Well, here's my take on it.

At this point in time, America has two choices in relation to this Iraq War:

1. We can be involved in the Iraqi Civil War, and sacrifice more American lives over an extended period of time with a strong possibility of failure (as we are doing now)

2. Pull out, and let the Iraqis fight their own civil war.


It is my line of thinking (a reasonable one, I think), that if the people in that country really want a democratically elected state, they will fight for it. Not only will they fight for it, but they will win. They will do exactly how so many others have done in the past, and make blood run like a raging river around the altar of freedom, and their communion will be taken with bullets to spare. But they will win.

To think that we could install a democratic state against the will of the people who live there is insane, no less insane then it was when we tried it in Vietnam with Diem, and then had him knocked off when he failed so miserably. If the population rejects this form of government, than no amount of US support or firepower will change that, and we will be in another protracted war with a guerilla insurgency that cannont be defeated convetionally- again, it may be like Vietnam with the French, where Vietnamese of all types of idealogies banded together just to get the foreigners out, and then split apart as soon as that goal is accomplished. By being there, we are doing more for the extremists in giving them a rallying point to kill Americans.

We have done all that we can do. Things are not going to change in Iraq. It is time to let them decide their fate, as all countries have in the past. Sometimes, a Civil War is necessary for the survival of the country as a whole- look at our own nation. England had a civil war, Ireland had a civil war, the French had their revolution, Spain had their civil war back in the 30's; in fact, I'm hard pressed to think of a single nation that has ever achieved anything that hasn't had a civil war. It's kind of like a rite of passage into the world...similar to the first time you got drunk and banged a fat chick; hey, everyone does it at least once.

As I once read, "If democracy is so great, you won't have to push it on people. They'll steal it."

Summer Festivities

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T-Nation

This essay came in second in a contest on T-Nation.com, and won me tons of free shit. Thanks to TC Luoma.

Not for the weak of heart: www.T-Nation.com




Life, inevitably, is little more than a series of deaths. We're born, we come into this world burning with hope and an aura of invincibilty, and then sixty or seventy years later, we're in the ground, as dead as Julius Ceasar. There is no way to avoid this.

When we're young, we're flooded with testosterone- it flares up, explodes behind us forcing us ahead and driving driving driving until you feel your hair burn and you can't breathe without turning your head. We fight like furies, drink too much, drive like psychos on mescalin, and roar down the winding one lane roads of life, gazing at the drop off the cliff that lies near, but we laugh anyway because that could never happen to us, we will never die, we are fucking invincible!

Some of us careen off that cliff in a flaming car with alcohol soaked lungs, cackling until we realize there is no turning back, and then scramble to get out; it is too late. Some of us fall one day, our eyes roll back, and we drop, fighting and dying and knowing that it is over, and that it's not our choice. Some of us just get that urge to cut the wheel...and its the last urge we ever get.

The rest of us make it. And when we make it, a lot of times we just kind of...well, sit back. A comfortable job, a wife or two, a kid, and before some guys realize it, they're twenty years older and thirty pounds heavier. It isn't even the weight that really kills them though; its the lack of competition, the lack of a cohesive goal. In a gray world where everything has three sides and then the truth, weightlifting is one of the only black and white things around. If you're in this game, you don't get stale, and the only times you are stagnant is if you are doing something very, very wrong. As Henry Rollins said, "Two hundred pounds just sits on the bar saying, 'Lift me or don't". We are always succeeding or failing- there is no "almost", "coming close", or "gray area. You got that bar off your chest, or you didn't. That's all there is to it. For some of us it quells insecurities; for others, it's the thing that keeps us sane through all of life's tribulations. Whatever the reasons for engaging in this noble endeavor, the benefits are nearly uncountable.

This website is just that: a website. The information is here is reliable, and there are guys on here who have been lifting weights since World War II. Of course, this thing isn't going to do the shit for you. Just because all the information is in one spot doesn't mean that it gets any easier, the sessions get any less intense, or you have to work any less. Nothing in the world compares to the experience of years under the iron, and no fancy program can compensate for a lack of dedication to the craft.

However, when you hang out here, you learn the tough way. No one will feel bad for you if you're not trying hard enough, because frankly we don't care. But if you seriously want the strength and power, than this is the place you want to be. If you want to feel like a top dog, and learn how to do it... than this is your home.

This is the kind of place that rubs off on you. You come here, and you won't be stagnant, you won't regress, and, most importantly, you'll have no excuses. Its kind of how life should always be, but never will; no apologies, and balls to the wall. Turn the fire inwards, and make it work for you instead of destroying you. The lessons we learn in the humid, dank weight rooms are lessons that will transfer to all other aspects of our lives, and the perseverance shown there will remind us that the only thing holding us back is ourselves.

The fact is, we all end up in ground. We don't know if it's going to be today, tommorow, a week from now, or a half century from now. The only thing that we can do is grab this bitch called life by the teeth, and force it to go the way we want. Sometimes it rips our hands off, but more often then not it'll go where we decide to take it. T-Nation is a place that will teach you how to do this, and help channel your furies into something productive so your time in between birth and death goes your way, and no one else's.

For Boston

Boston will be my new home- I have decreed it...issued a fatwa if you will. Me and the girl took a one day trip up there from dirty Jersey, and I have fallen in love with this city of cities. What a place.

Boston has forever seemed like it was a world away, and certainly not just four hours in a speeding Honda (the girl's, not mine). I have read about it in the history books, in all the chronicles of the American Revolution. Boston Harbor was a thing talked about in relation to the abuse of the British, the fire under the powder keg that was America in the 1700's. Recently, with my love of the Red Sox, the town has taken on a mythical status that I could not really put into words. Fenway Park was a Mecca, something so far away that I could not really even tell what direction it was in, and yet I saw it on TVs all the time, the home field of my beloved team bathed in green, the massive wall in left field towering not only the field, but the town itself. I used to just look at the history of the town itself- now, I realize that the history of the town for the last hundred years is somehow intertwined with this team of men who hit a ball on a field for amusement.

The purpose of my trip was, in actuality, to see my team on their home field with my Red Sox Nation brethern. No more Yankee hats all over, no Jeter jerseys, no fucking A-Rod, no hot girls that I can't talk to because of their trademarked "Giambi" jerseys. No, this is my town, and my people.

The history wasn't initially a concern of mine, even though I do love American history with a passion (yea yea, I'm a fag. Live with it). I hadn't thought of any of it until we got out of the parking garage and began walking along Boston Common, my girlfriend looking at a crappy map of the city. She has a habit of trying to do too many things at once, such as drive while reading a receipt, or walk while looking at something completely other than that car that's about to hit her. It drives me fucking crazy, but that's probably one of those things that I'd miss if she wasn't there, because it's always the little bullshit things that you remember so well.

Boston Common was right by the garage we parked in, and it is a beautiful park. It reminded me immediately of Good Will Hunting, as I think the scene where Robin Williams is talking to Matt Damon about how much of an ass he is was filmed here, right along these soft emerald banks of this lake. On this gorgeous day, it looked just like it does on that jagged fuzzy tape that I have seen a thousand times since an old friend gave it to me, down to the swans and other birds that frequent the waters. I was also reminded of Thoreau's Walden, where he talks about the ice breaking in Massachusetts at a certain time of the year, signifying spring's arrival. I know that was in Concord, but it seems to apply here too for some reason.

We walked for a while, along the "Freedom Trail" that winds through the city. There is an old church that is the first stop, one with white wooden pews and red upholstery that once shelved the elite of Boston. Washington went to a service here during his time in command of the Continental Army, and the tablets at the front that show the ten commandments are from sometime in the 1600s when the church was built.

From the outside, I could see the glass panes in the upper story windows, the kinds that get the wavy texture from extreme age. If those eyes could talk, the stories they could tell...three hundred years of fiery speeches, inflammation, and rage. So much to tell, and no one to tell it.

The entire city feels much like that Church; the history just rises right through the ancient bricks and floods down the streets, swarming around everywhere you look. By walking through, you can feel it- you ain't walking through a Twentieth-Century city. I am used to New York City, the city that never sleeps, the city that is always crushing and destroying and rebuilding and climbing. There is not much regard for history in New York- or at least, there might be, but property values are far too high to worry about some old graveyard or battlefield. There was quite a few battles fought in NYC during the Revolution, including a large one in Brooklyn that nearly ended it before it started. To look at it now, you'd never know, between the ghettos and bridges and overpasses. It's as if that shit never happened, as if history was erased along with the green pastures and trembling streams that once occupied the isle of Manhattan. If you want a really trippy thought, picture Indians hunting in the middle of Chelsea or the Bowery. It happened once, I swear...

Boston is far different. There are few very tall buildings, and even they don't compare with the monsters that New York has to offer. The houses are low, three or four stories, made of old brick and mortar. The nicer places have winding ironwork on the outsides, the black railings as much a part of the decor of the city as anything else. Heavy wooden doors, ivy growing on tall buildings. A strange mix of city and town that I have never really seen in Jersey.

There is an old building, I think the old state house, where the Declaration of Independence was first read to the war hardened denizens of Boston from the East Balcony. The site of the Boston Massacre was right around there, although my girlfriend failed as the navigator and we never found the exact spot (she swore up and down that it was probably just a plaque in front of a bank or something, so we weren't really missing anything. Yet another thing I would remember about her.)

The city is remarkably clean, with smooth roads and and lack of the garbage all over the place that I am used too. The taxis aren't always laying on their horns, the screams of subways underfoot are absent. Things are quiet. I mean, I was there on a Saturday, but New York never stops. Boston, however, takes a break.

We came across a graveyard that is obviously something of a tourist attraction. Fat older men dressed like Colonial magistrates strut up and down, yelling in high voices to crowds of suburban tourists, the men with the beltpacks (ay, you tools) and the fat women pushing strollers, bored kids trailing behind with frowns on their faces. I wonder many times if they even care about what's being said, or whether they are just here because they think they should be, and they can go home to wherever and impress their friends by saying they saw the stack of granite that hides Paul Revere's body. I'd honestly be surprised if most of the people who visit the grave sites could even tell me what Sam Adams or John Hancock actually did, as most Americans don't know history from a fucking hole in the wall. A recent survey proved that many of those tested could not tell the difference between Iraq and Louisiana on a map. Another survey of college kids found that most think that things printed in the media should be approved by the government first (this is why I am pro-bird flu; less traffic, weeding out idiots, etc.). Sam Adams, for one, would be horrified.

His grave holds some kind of special meaning for me lately. I just finished the Jeff Shaara book Rise To Rebellion the other day, and old Adams seemed like my kind of guy. He was a rabblerouser, a man who controlled the mobs of Boston back in the 1760s. The Boston Massacre? Probably his influence. The Boston Tea Party? Yes, he was there. This guy tried for over twenty years to make life hell for the British occupation force, and every chance he got he rose up and started a riot over something. He raged for a strange thing called "independence" back when the idea still made men in taverns laugh. When the Declaration of Independence was signed, he stood smiling, his years of fiery speeches and ballsy actions finally amounting to something.

His grave has not fallen into disrepair like so many of the others here, and even the thing itself is simple and strong; a bronze plaque bolted to a boulder. Even in death, this man's legend is solid. This was, as his gravestone says, "A Leader of Men". Any man that can manipulate propanganda like that in order to start a revolution...well, that's the reason I'm proud to an American.



After taking the above picture, we had to roll. The reason for the trip was, of course, the Red Sox game at 1:00, and I couldn't be wandering around graveyards all day when the Sox are in the playoff hunt.

The whole city entranced me, but the highlight was still Fenway Park. It is a mess of great green walls rising over the abadoned wharehouses along the Mass Pike, and yet we drove right by it coming into Boston without me even noticing it.

Walking Fenway is like walking back in time, and I mean that in the most cliched way possible. Everything is made of dry red bricks and huge steel I-beams painted, like everything else in the town, green. Everything is small and compact, and the seats look like they should be made of wood. Unlike other stadiums, there is no mezzanine level- it is one sweeping incline, and then the nosebleeds. That's it.

I took this picture of a sign, and texted it to every Yankee fan I know.



A chorus of "Fuck you's" came back, along with the occasional picture of a toilet in response and a lone, "I hope the place burns down".

I fucking hate all of them.

The fields are perfect and the Green Monster looms in the distance, so appealing to the right handed hitter who has not been to Fenway before...



Having seats in the third row don't hurt either, of course.

Of course, I found during the game why I could never live up there. The game was tied going into the ninth, and I could barely sit still. If I had been drunk, I would have been praying (as I so often have before) to the baseball gods to let my Sox pull this one out. Sure enough, Mark Loretta hit a single in the bottom of the tenth. Ortiz walks. Manny comes up, and bang! The game is over on his RBI single in the bottom of the tenth. Thank God. I couldn't handle this shit everyday.

They needed this game because the fucking Yankees won too, as evident by the collective groan from the faithful when the scores on that great green board are changed to "Final" and we all curse that the Yanks pulled out another against the Angels. By October, I'll likely have an ulcer, and I'm beginning to think that the Sox missing the playoffs might be good for my health...





David Ortiz at bat, to a chorus of "MVP" chants


The whole place is truly an experience. The Monster, Pesky's Pole, even the old sign outside that says, simply, Fenway Park, Home of the Red Sox. It is so simple that it kills me. It's not hard to picture Carlton Fisk, Johnny Pesky, or Ted Williams batting here. The crowds are just as loyal, the scenes just as amazing. When you mix that with the overwhelming weight of History that the town exudes from every pore...well, you've got a place that Steve has gotta see a little bit more of.

Be afraid, Boston. Be very afraid.

Beer

Goddamnit Boston...

I just want to say how disgusted I am with the Red Sox pitching. You can't throw fucking strikes? Stop walking in fucking runs! Are you shitting me? How did you assholes make the big leagues?


This will be three losses in two days, to the Yankees no less. Way to go Boston.

I want to punch the fucking TV.

The Approach of Fall

I'm working on a couple essays about Boston right now, and I'm so hungover I want to fucking die.

However, I will say today that football season is not the only reason I'm looking forward to the fall...the elections draw near, and Democrats loom, poised to snatch the Congress back from evil men with evil minds.

"Slowly comes a hungry people, as a lion, drawing nigher,
Glares at one that nods and winks behind a slowly dying fire."

God help us.

Deck of Cards

Our lives are far easier than they ever have been. There has been no generation of Americans before this one who have had easier, more sedentary lives.

Fifty years ago, most of New Jersey was farms- New Jersey! The work is hard, and the labor is tough. It kept men in shape whether they wanted to be or not. "He who did not work, did not eat". There were no options.

In all of the years before this, America was a wild country, filled with constant threats of war, invasion, Indians, etc. This was a hundred years ago...so figure two generations of men ago, there were still Indians to be fought in their back yards.

Now, we fight traffic in a race to a dentist's appointment, or to be on time for a meeting at the office. Life has lost its fury for us. Simply put, there is no enemy left to fight. We who weightlift and work out are the few who are prepared anyway, I guess you could say...us and the right wing militias hiding out in stores of AK-47's in Utah...

----------------------------------------------

Last night I did a murderous workout at work that I was surprised I could even finish. I'm trying to take this week a little light, as my joints have been hurting, namely my shoulder with the bum rotator cuff. Staying away from heavy weights is important for now, but I can't go the whole week without doing anything...I'll feel like a pussy if I do.

In the heat of the August night last night, I read my novel of the American Revolution, hung up on the words of this tale where the ending is already beknownst to me but is enchanting anyway. The way Jeff Shaara writes, you can almost see the long line of farmers and workers, lined up with their rifles facing the greatest army on the face of the planet. They had to go through this to defend their homes, and I...must do nothing. My life is easy.

Of course, one day that could change. I doubt the men who fought in the Revolution ever thought that there would be a war in their own backyards, as there was in 1776. After reading all of this, though, it gave me some sort of inspriration to do the infamous "Deck of Cards" workout that I was planning on doing. I mean, it was half inspiration and half extreme boredom from that mind numbing job, but whatever. Besides this, there is always something inherently noble about working out with your own bodyweight. Don't get me wrong, I'm no Matt Furey, and I'm not under any illusions as to what doing this kind of workout does. However, it is knowing that I can be in reasonable shape no matter where I am in the world or what I'm doing, all with a decent circuit of pushups, pullups, and squats.

Yea, yea, these are the things that comfort me. Fucked up, I know.

Anyway, the workout is pretty simple, and is used in jails all across the country (I learned this from a friend of mine who'd sat in county for a while). You take the colors in a deck of cards, and divide them into exercises. Last night I made black equal pushups, and red equal squats. For every card you flip, you do the amount said on the card. Because I was pretty shot by the time I did this workout, I made Jacks equal 10, Queens equal 14, and Kings equal 15. Aces meant I did pushups to failure.

The results were impressive. Halfway through, I felt my chest burning like an oil fire, and my legs were shaking like a fiend with epilepsy. I could only just keep pushing on, because I knew that I wanted to finish that deck more than anything else in the world.

It took maybe 25 mintues to do the whole thing, but I finally did. It took some rest-pause sets and some light- headed-shit-I'm-gonna-puke sickness, but I did it. When it was said and done, I ended up doing about 175 pushups and the same number of squats.


With that, I tip my hat to the decaying graves of those Revolutionary War soldiers. It ain't much, of course. But if I have to defend my home the way you men did yours, I'll be ready, just as you were.

Old souls and Irish Votes

Is it wrong that I always cringe when I see a guy with an Irish last name running as a Republican?

They forget their roots so quickly for the promise of land and money...bah. They always said I was an old soul.

The Fight Begins...

Joe Lieberman is finally out. That wolf in sheep's clothing has been outed, and now his party moves on to the future and back to the Left.

Thank fucking God.



Sleeping with the enemy....Peace, Joe, you traitorous prick

The Wrath of An Angry God....

Tonight crossed the line. I've had some strange shit happen to me, some things that even make me wonder what the hell is going on, but tonight was something that has scared the shit out of me in a way that I just can't explain.

If you've read any of my other things, you understand my well documented problems with God and religion. Half of it is the philosophical argument that man has had since he first came up with the idea for a god, and the other half is my own selfish anger about how God, if he exists, tends to kill people I love indiscrimately. Either way, we've had issues in the past. I've gotten too drunk, too drunk to remember, and sworn him off, cursed him up and down.

Fuck God. Fuck him.

The day I looked out over the second casket, and watched it slowly drop into the ground, is the day I stopped giving a shit. But then, I am a Catholic. So I never really stop giving a shit, and that goddamn Church is the thing that binds me to that ridiculous faith in a way little else can. The grounds are sacred to me. They bring back old memories, so old that I wonder if they ever happened, or if I made them up in one of my drunken delusions to lull myself into thinking that I was once happy, and not the rage filled blasphemous lout that I am now. I remember warm days, getting out of Church into the bright light of the sun, and seeing my grandfather bullshitting with the Monsieur outside in the garden that the old priest worked so hard to maintain. It swelled that old man's chest to see how beautiful those grounds remained, and that his garden never, ever fell into disrepair.

Both of them are dead now. My grandfather died years ago on Halloween from an unseen weakness, and the course of my life was forever altered. In the old priest, pride was not the only thing that swelled in his breast... cancer grew there also. He was dead soon after.

That garden was never beautiful again. The plants were no longer a deep green- sides began to brown and die off. Bricks twisted up from the ground, broke, and did not get replaced. Weeds grew through the cracks, and though they try, the original beauty can never be reclaimed.

I still go there, though, on dark cold nights, and get on my knees in front of the statue of the Virgin Mary, and say the rosary. Sometimes I am sober, sometimes not. Sometimes I'm enraged, sometimes breaking down, always a mess. It helps me though, it's as close to therapy as I'll ever get. It makes me think that all that shit is real, and that the dogma and the bullshit and the crosses and the pomp and ritual actually means that this crap life isn't all that we've got.

Tonight was different though. I may have crossed the line in the last couple years, because God, if he's there, is fucking pissed.

The feeling I had in that garden when I stumbled in there tonight for solace was one of anger, of rage; not on my part, mind you- on His. As I said the rosary under the streetlights, a chill ran up my back, up and down. I looked around, expecting someone to be there. There was not.

I walked around, having my conversation with the dead that I normally have, but it was all wrong. That knife being dragged down my back was still there, and the hairs on the back of my neck stood at attention. The cross was lit oddly, illuminated more than I remember it- a show of strength no doubt from the man who runs the universe (yes ladies, its a man- don't kid yourselves).

A low whisper then came from the bushes. It may have been a metaphorical whisper, such as when squirrels tread lightly through old leaves, but it sounded like a human one to me. The words were those that I could not understand...but they were damning. They were angry, the tone was harsh and low, and they wanted me out. It was a low scream, an attack on this unholy man who has stepped foot on this hallowed ground, this house of God. It got cold.

I said the Hail Mary aloud, and proclaimed that this was my fucking garden, and that the bodies that had lain in that Church were those of all my family. I would not fucking leave.

The whispers ceased as suddenly as they began, but the sound haunts me still. I was not welcome there. I am not welcome there. I, the ignorant kid who thought he could curse God and have no retribution, I've been shown the door in God's House.

Not like it matters I guess. I've left that House alone for so long, it's a wonder I remember how to get there. Images flash through my mind like a black and white newsreel, like the scenes in the Ferrari in Rocky IV as "No Easy Way Out" plays over the top. The shining gray casket, the door on the hearse slamming, the cold face and a dozen roses falling into the hole that was dug the same day, the drunken nights wailing in the streets....

Fuck God. Kill Jesus.




I don't mean that.

Fuck.

Ryer

I sit here in the propane shed and it's been nearly a year and a half since he died. I, for one, have the worst case of survivor's guilt in the world.

No matter what is actually true, I should be the one who is dead. I, he who drinks too much, who eats McDonalds' every day, who wants no kids and no family, who is little more than a drunken writer following in the footsteps of all those idiots who came before. I am useless to society, I have no expectations, and I am cursed to unhappiness.

He, on the other hand, actually wanted a normal life. He wanted a beautiful wife, and children that he could hand down the beliefs handed down to him from his own parents. He wanted a nice house that he could raise them in, and he already had names picked out for them. There were to be no girls, of course, because there just wouldn't be. All boys. God forbid he had daughters, he came up with new and interesting ways to torture would- be boyfriends...it was one of those things where you knew that even though he wouldn't admit it, he sat home sometimes and thought up ways he could terrify teenage boys. Sick fucker....

He wanted to be a cop. Even if he didn't do that, he would have been a decent, law abiding, constructive, useful member of society. Anything that this country asked of him, he would have done. A draft for a war? He'd have volunteered. He was the soldier type anyway, and he'd have always done what was needed of him.

He was not like me.

"Let it Be" just came on the radio, as it always tends to when my soul is in turmoil. I never like when peple say this song is about weed, because it loses so much meaning when they do. This is the only song that makes me think there might be a God.

Either way, I want to let it be, I want to let it go. It should, by now, be dead. But it isn't. It haunts me everyday, it follows me like a dog that smells another dog's scent on your shoe, and you can't shake the fucking thing off. It will probably do this until I am in the ground also.

He'd be infuriated if he knew how badly I've gone off the handle because of his death. He'd smack me and say, "You're still alive you fucking idiot. Live your own life, do what I never could! Have kids, have fun, enjoy it! If you don't, than your an asshole who deserves what he gets."

But then again, I'm drunk right now off of rum and beer. It's your fault I'm drunk, dick, and I'll be there to join you eventually, be it heaven or hell. We will drink and be merry....for tomorrow we are dead.

Hunter S. Thompson

I've been reading a lot by him right now, and every passing day I realize how much this country needed him at this point in time. I also realize how he couldn't possibly stand being here to witness all this shit that was going on.

Sometimes I think people dislike my writing because I don't use over the top phrasing, huge words, or beautiful syntax. It's as if they feel that if they're reading it, I should've have made it as fancy as I possibly could for their wandering eyes, and the direct way I write isn't enough for them. Well, I learned it from guys like Hunter, who wrote his books in a simple way, a way that makes you think if you saw him in a bar, he'd tell it the exact same way. To be able to do this is a gift, not a curse. I write for guys who don't read books. The professors and scholars might not dig it, but the day I care about them is the day I slam my dick in a door. So hats off to Hunter.

If you wonder if he's gone to Heaven or Hell —rest assured he will check out them both, find out which one Richard Milhous Nixon went to —and go there.

- Ralph Steadman