Topics For Future Blogs

1) The Kids Are Alright, Are You? (Why I Love Teenagers, pt.1)

2) Punk Rock Retrospectives Are Making Me Anxious

3) Does Integrity Really Come Down To A Dare?


I haven't had the time to actually write anything but I thought I'd at least let you know that I am thinking of writing something. I know ...lame.

Alec's Fables

Your faithful servant, far right, in 1981.

So when did we get so mean? And why is it okay? I understand that we are all filled with various degrees of anxiety, resentment and prejudice. What I don't understand is when and why we started taking so much pride in these personal shortcomings?

When I was a pimple faced young punk rocker in high school my gym teacher was also my driver-ed teacher -- one of those made for TV drill sergeants who wore tight beige nylon 'coaching shorts' no matter the season and barked "Hands at 10 and 2!" every 20 seconds in my ear during test drives. He seemed to me to be expressly placed on this earth to humiliate, degrade and fail people just like me. I didn't fear him so much as I simply dreaded the inevitable verbal smack-down that I knew was lurking around some yet unknown corner.

Finally one day, while on one of our "10 and 2" test drives, he looked me up and down -- taking in my bleached hair, scrappy clothes and combat boots --and it began, "You know what your problem is?"

To this point our test drives (which regularly involved me, the only person in the class who actually did NOT already know how to drive, running his afternoon errands) had mercifully involved zero personal interaction --other than his tapping the rear view mirror with a pencil and barking his usual refrain.

I braced for the inevitable.

"Your problem is that people fear what they don't understand. Fear and anger come from the same place, you know?-- insecurity. People like you remind others that they do not, and may never, understand their world. I just wonder if you understand who you are. You're not done questioning, young man. HANDS AT TEN AND TWO!"

A Make-Over

So, basically --I got sick of hearing myself talk (write -- whatever). I understand that it is well within the nature of the 'blogger' that we feel our private thoughts are so important that they MUST be shared, and I am certainly no less megalomaniacal than the next person, but I simply felt the writing had become flat and didn't reflect any of the fun that should go along with outrage. The World certainly doesn't need another depressed and depressing social critic. I believe in certain values (and ridicule so many others) because I feel like there is another, more healthy and satisfying way to live. I am a strong believer in the power of a good role model and in people who take action. I believe that most change occurs not from within, but when somebody builds a better mousetrap, or better yet, when somebody shows us that the mousetrap is just a figment of our imagination.

So, feeling somewhat re-freshed, I hope to check in a little more often and hope to open up the content here a bit more. Please feel free to chime in, comments are always welcome ...um, usually welcome.

xoxo-- Alec

Now THIS Is Islamofascism!

Pakistan suspends constitution to fight democracy, um, I mean terrorism.