NEWSY NEWS: GUNS. THE POPE.

GUNS: A few mornings ago I awoke and thought to myself, “it’s about time for another mass shooting, how long has it been?” Well, it happened today. In Oregon. President Obama, once again, in front of the cameras, a little angrier than last time, what was it, Roanoke? Where I went to High School. Oh, yes. Before that? Well, you all remember. On and on it goes. If french fries were causing this many deaths we would do something about the french fries, right? Guns? NO! End of discussion. We blow each other away on a daily basis. WHOOPEE.

THE POPE: The media is shocked, I tell you, the GLBTQRSTUV groups are stunned beyond belief because The Pope met with that woman? From Kentucky? The latest fame-seeker using religion to make money and get face time on TV! Yay! TV. This one pretends her God is being defamed, her religion attacked, just because I married my husband in 2008 who I’ve now loved and lived with for 32 years? Really? How many times you been married Miss “I need a new hairdo” Kentucky? And the Pope? Oh my. All those white robes and his little bonnet and cute little “gay” car, kissing babies and rubbing heads? He’s the Pope, for God’s sake. He runs a country called Vatican City, for the Catholic Church. He denies women the right to even ponder being Priests, so why, oh why, are you shocked he met with an attention-seeking missile from Kentucky, in private, the coward, who believes I should not be treated equally under the law of MY COUNTRY, Not His Country, MY COUNTRY, THE USA. SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATE, People! Get a grip. He’s The Pope!

Joe Biden, Run for President, Please

While I would like nothing better than to vote for and see the first female president in my lifetime, Hillary Clinton makes it difficult for me. Her imperial actions around her private server emails while she was Secretary of State makes me wonder, what is up with her? I can’t help but ask - “why haven’t you figured this shit out yet, Hillary?” I hoped she wasn’t as self-destructive as Bill. But now, as I watch the Clinton froth rising to the top of the glass again, I simply can’t take it anymore. I lived through Bill’s presidency, his impeachment. He is and she is self-destructive. There is no other explanation. She knew all of this would be exposed if she ran yet she did it anyway. Why? All I can figure, since I don’t know her personally is: 1. she, like Bill, sets herself up for failure or 2. she is an idiot and I don’t want an idiot for a president again. We barely survived George W. Bush.

I want to vote for someone who has the desire to lead, the fire in the belly, like Obama had and has. Not a coronation of a reckless leader who learned leadership from her reckless husband.

Cut and paste the link below. Joe is pondering a run. I know he just lost Beau. I also know Joe is an honest and transparent man. If we don’t come up with an alternative to Clinton, she will lose as sure as I’m typing these Mac Book Pro keys.

You had 8 years, Hillary! 8 years to clean up your act and come strong out of the gate. Oh, but wait. Now you’ll be sniped at from this point on. I know, you would have been sniped at anyway but you didn’t have to make it so fucking easy for the opposition, did you? Damn.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/14/us/politics/joe-biden-on-beach-vacation-wades-further-into-16-bid.html?ref=politics&_r=1

LEADERSHIP

Leadership is not about the one who talks the most but is about the one who listens the most, then forms an opinion and acts.

- DHC.

Jeb Bush is a coward.

It took Donald Trump calling Jeb Bush’s wife, Columba, an ‘illegal immigrant’ before Jeb finally stood up for her and his children after a week of Trump railing against illegal Mexican immigrants as ‘rapists’. Jeb is one poor excuse for a man. If he refuses to stand up for his wife and children, how can he stand up for America if, heaven forbid, he becomes President?

Confederate Flag in 2015 - WTF

I was born in 1955 in Galax, Virginia, a little town an hour north of the North Carolina border, named for the Galax Leaf, a deep green, heart-shaped baby’s fist on top of a long stem. If you’re lucky enough to have read this blog from the beginning you know what I’m talking about.

When I was 4 years old my parents and my baby sister and I did a road trip to Florida to visit Lois and Fred Benjamin. I remember seeing COLORED and WHITE bathroom signs, COLORED and WHITE drinking fountains.

That was 56 years ago.

WTF

9 black bible study parishioners were shot in cold blood in the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church by a white shooter who sat amongst them for an hour and later said he almost didn’t kill them because they were so nice to him. The shooter’s ancestors got to drink out of the WHITE drinking fountains, got to sit on the bus in whatever seat they wanted, got to vote without paying a poll tax. But, poor little white shooter stated he was Scared-Scared-Scared the blacks were taking over the USA. Oh, my. He wore little racist flags on his jackets and posed in photos with big guns, such a white stud was he, out there to save the white folks from the big bad black folks.

For the nearly 2 terms President Obama has been in the White House, the smarmy little breathy coward Republicans have laughed off the racial slurs about Obama, or worse still, have ignored them and when asked about the countless threats against him have never been brave enough to call out the racists in their party. So you tell me, you tell me, YOU TELL ME, how exciting it is to be moving the Confederate Flag from the Capitol grounds of South Carolina to where, a Racist Remembrance Museum?

Gov. Haley parsed her words so carefully today that I felt like someone was plucking out my eyelashes, one by one. She means no offense to the Confederate Flag lovers, Oh No, Oh please God No, she just needs to get the damn flag off the Capitol grounds.

So go ahead, you South Carolinians, and fly your Confederate flags at home or in your bathrooms or on your cars and in your trucks, anywhere but over the Capitol grounds now that 9 church going Christians have been murdered in your backyard, one of them a state Senator.

You will feel so much better.

Won’t you?

SEBASTIAN JUNGER

VANITY FAIR

The Never-Ending War
THE BONDS of BATTLE

Vanity Fair,
June 2015

In his June 2015 piece in Vanity Fair, Mr. JUNGER helped me connect a few dots. Not his dots. Not your dots. My dots.

Dot 1. Most Vets return home to isolated areas - out in the country, in small towns or big cities - it doesn’t make a difference. They miss the common purpose they had with their comrades.

Dot 2. Vets are traumatized before they deploy.

COMMON PURPOSE

Dot 3. AIDS sparked condemnation from the right wing Christian politicians and preachers. HA. Then gay men got pissed off. Then Lesbians got pissed off. Call it a Day…

Dot 4. Then Larry KRAMER got pissed off. Act Up. A swell of folks circling a common purpose, a swell of folks, gay and straight, who wanted to live and could not believe their friends were dying within months of getting sick. A swell of folks that started a medical movement which to this day continues to advance the treatment of immune deficiency diseases.

Larry Fucking KRAMER.

{Dot 4.1. I had coffee and scones with Mr. KRAMER at a cafe in Pioneer Square sometime in the late 80s. I was living on Vashon Island at the time. He radiated fury. It turned me on. I got a boner. But we didn’t sleep together.}

Dot 5. AIR BNB. UBER. LYFT.

To be continued…

COLONOSCOPY

Here’s a sneak preview of my latest project.

COLONOSCOPY
by
David Harrington Campbell

A bunch of us are perched around the pool, drinking beer and smoking pot and playing cards, two tables of four for Rook and one table of four for Spades.
At my Rook table is my husband, Luke, and wife and wife Ann and Nancy.
David has a colonoscopy on Friday.
Who dealt?
I think I did, Nancy says.
Yeah, you did, I say.
I bid 135, Ann says.
Luke just loves to talk about my ass, I say.
I smoked a bowl, a couple of bowls, before I had mine, Ann says.
That’s a good idea, I say. 140.
You can’t make 140, Ann says.
I want that green 1, I say, pointing to the top card on the widow, the only one that is turned over.
Luke says, David thinks the Rook’s in the widow.
That’s good news, I say. What’s your bid?
Pass, Luke says. Ann is his Rook partner.
I pass, says Nancy, my Rook partner. She slides the widow in my direction.
Wait. I’m still in, Ann says.
Sorry sweetheart, Nancy says to Ann.
You can’t make 145, I say.
145, Ann says.
There yours. I slide the widow in Ann’s direction.
�What did Luke say about your ass?�
�I�m having a colonoscopy on Saturday.�
�Friday,� Luke says.
�Friday,� I say. I look at Luke. �Do we still have some of that stuff we got from what�s-her-name?�
�Yeah,� Luke says. �But do you think it�s a good idea? You don�t smoke that much weed.�
Since Ann bid the highest and picked up 5 extra cards from the widow, she now has to discard 5 cards after she rearranges her hand, hopefully for the better, which is the point of bidding and winning the 5 cards in the widow.
�Trumps are green,� Ann says as she lays down a green 13.
I play my Rook. Luke plays a green 12. Nancy plays a green 5.
I rake in our points.
�Takes 40 to set them, Nancy. We�ve got 25,� I say.
Ann smiles.
I lead with a red 1. Luke plays a red 9. Nancy throws on a red 10 for 10 more points. But then Ann trumps with the green 1 that was on top of the widow. She then plays her green 14, a trump.
�I think I will smoke a bowl before my colonoscopy,� I say.
We play the rest of the cards out. Ann makes her 145 bid.
~~~
Luke is driving our azure-colored Jag up the 163, toward the clinic where I am about to have my colonoscopy.
�My asshole is gurgling,� I say.
�I hope there�s not an explosion.�
�Don�t make me laugh,� I say, firing up another bowl.
�You haven�t had anything to eat in what, two days?�
�Just one. Or one and a half.�
Luke nods.
�Maybe I have smoked enough. I�m just nervous. I don�t like strangers looking up my asshole.�
�They actually stick a camera inside you then watch it on a video screen.�
�Watch what?�
�The procedure. When the Doc is looking for polyps.�
�Watch my asshole on TV?�
�Well, the inside of it, David.�
�Oh, joy.�
Luke drives into the parking lot of the colonoscopy clinic.
I pull down the visor mirror and look at my red eyes. �I better put on my sunglasses, the prescription ones.�
�The big black ones?�
I put my monstrous sunglasses on and open the Jag door.
�Let�s get this over with,� I say.
As Luke opens my car door, I whisper in his ear.
�I�m really stoned.�
The young nurse at the front desk asks me if I followed all the directions, if I took my Dulcolax and my Prepopik as prescribed.
�My what?�
�Your Prepopik, the bowel preparation.�
�Oh yeah, that. I did. I shit my brains out.�
�That�s the point, sir.�
�In fact, I feel a little dribble back there right now, coming out. My asshole�s been hissing and growling. Can I get a gown or something, or better yet take me to my room.�
�You have forms to fill out. That�s why we asked you to be here one half hour early.�
�Forms?�
Luke steps in. �Can�t I fill out his forms, I�m his husband. He really needs to get back in an exam room. He hasn�t had anything to eat in days.�
�I know it�s difficult, sir.�
�You don�t� know shit you little prick,� I yell, surprising even me. �I realize you went to Harvard and this is the only job you could get and now you�re sitting here talking to me about my asshole and you�re pissed because your life isn�t working out all that well because of us baby boomers and yeah my generation did fuck up your world but guess what, I�m not one of the people who helped fuck it up, I was recycling before you were born, I was putting gray water on my hydrangeas when you were in grade school.�
Luke leans in and whispers to me, �pot is supposed to make you mellow.�
�That�s what I thought,� I whisper back.

Slaves

Slaves?

Mr. Ben Affleck’s being told that some of his ancestors owned slaves and then his attempted cover-up, which never works but is kind of understandable, got me to thinking about the southern part of my family.

Were slaves owned by my half-southern family? Who knows? I kind of doubt it. It would have been a long way back and I don’t think my ancestors on either side have been here long enough. First of all, my father is a Campbell, the “fuckers who killed the McDonalds.” His parents emigrated from Scotland and he was born in Canada and raised in San Diego. My mother’s people could have possibly been wealthy 5 or 6 generations back, but if they had money they lost it so it serves them right if they held slaves.

In my mother’s family, the Hackler side was a haughty and preening bunch. Aunt Rosa Lee, my maternal grandmother’s sister, who was part Indian I’m almost certain, lost her mind in her 50s and lived for 25 years curled up in a fetal position in a nursing home in Wytheville, Virginia. The Livesay side of my mother’s family was just plain hateful. And mean. Though one of them, my great-great grandfather, died in the Asylum in Marion, Virginia. Madness on both sides. Whoopee.

On Dad’s side, come to think of it, his only sister, Viola, went to bed when she was in her 50s, most of it spent at the Cloisters of Mission Hills in San Diego. I don’t know what was wrong with her. Some whispered she was felled by a broken heart. I do have a picture of her wrapped up naked in a blanket of sea weed with another naked woman, both of them splashing in the surf.

So if the southern half of my gene pool owned slaves, I have no historical record of it but then I haven’t been asked to go on that television show where Mr. Affleck learned of his slave owning ancestors.

I had a nanny named Nanny from the time I was born until I was 10 when my parents divorced, and she was black, and was a surrogate mother to me (not my sister, another story there). I used to drive with Momma to take Nanny home about 20 minutes away and as often as not we went into Nanny and her husband Arlee’s house where Momma always had a shot of moonshine with Nanny and Arlee. I think I might have had a nip or two as I got older.

Anyway, this whole business with Mr. Affleck got me thinking about Nanny and Arlee Thompson.

c. 2015 dhc llc

“I know because I won both of them.”

That quote is from President Obama tonight in his State of the Union Speech after he stated that he had no more Presidential campaigns ahead of him.

From the Republican side of the aisle came whistles and yahoos and clapping of hands.

From Obama came, “I know because I won both of them.”

That was the best comeback line of any State of the Union Speech I’ve ever heard, especially since Obama’s been called a liar from the chamber, been booed as a hack, and had a Supreme Court Justice, Alito, shake his head in disgust after Obama criticized the Citizens United ruling as a never ending money flow from corporations into political campaigns that can never be traced in spite of the Supreme Court ruling stating transparency was required - which by the way has come to pass like Obama stated - money in elections is out of control and not transparent because corporations are people, you know. They eat and shit and have to take showers and pay taxes. Oh! That last one, taxes, that’s where corporations distance themselves from the rest of us humans.

What a disgusting display the Republicans put on tonight - Boehner with his red face turning quickly to purple, I think he had to take a piss. And that turncoat who leashed Palin on us, Senator McCain, smirking and snarling from the chamber.

Give me Democrats or give me death, that’s my read on this State of the Union Speech tonight, by a President, Obama, who has had more invective shoved in his face than any President has since I’ve been alive.

“I Can’t Breathe!”

i. Heimlich Maneuver

Last night, while eating a chicken caesar salad with green olives that I added myself, I suddenly started to choke. My panic choked me, too. I couldn’t draw in a breath. I swallowed water which made it worse. I couldn’t breathe. Then I stood up and pointed to Luke and then pointed to my throat. He immediately understood. He followed me to the kitchen sink and as I gasped for air, he performed the Heimlich Maneuver on me. It took a couple of presses with his strong hands under my sternum before the food dislodged from my throat and disappeared into the garbage disposal. I breathed in oxygen like a dying man.

In the silence, I could hear the rain falling outside. San Diego’s first winter storm.

Luke and I walked into the bedroom, sat down next to each other on the edge of the bed. And it hit me. Could I have saved myself if Luke hadn’t been home?

“You saved my life.”

I rested my face against Luke’s chest and sobbed. He wrapped his arms around me. We vibrated with emotion for a long time.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

ii. Choke Hold

The tape shows a white New York police officer, Daniel Pantaleo, harassing a black man, Eric Garner, in Staten Island, for the crime of, now let me get this correct, selling individual cigarettes, not packs, but 1, 2, 3 cigarettes.

Then, out of nowhere, Officer Daniel Pantaleo puts Eric Garner in a choke hold, which is illegal, and lands him on the ground.

Eric Garner pleads that he can’t breathe,

“I can’t breathe.”

He pleads until he disappears into unconsciousness. This does not bother Officer Daniel Pantaleo or his fellow officers who have shown up and circled Eric Garner’s body in force, paying no more attention to him dying than a housefly stuck between a screen and the window. I watched one officer on the tape wander off toward his patrol car, as if nothing important was happening. This, THIS, while Eric Garner lies on the pavement, dying.

Today, after considering all the evidence, the Staten Island Grand Jury decided not to indict Officer Daniel Pantaleo or any of his cohorts for murder – even for the lesser charge of manslaughter, even after the Coroner ruled Eric Garner’s death a homicide.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

iii. Choke Hold

vs.

Heimlich Maneuver