When I was a child of grade school years, there were two worlds-the adult world and the kid world. There was an unwritten agreement that the adults would stay in their world and kids would stay in theirs. My parents, especially my mom used to say a child should be seen and not heard. So if the back of the house was on fire, I guess that could be taken to mean that you don’t interrupt an adult conversation to tell everyone to get the hell out fast. I’m joking of course. Kids weren’t that stupid. They’d interrupt while running past shouting fire! That way they couldn’t get smacked upside the head for interrupting adult conversation.

In that long gone era of two separate worlds, a kid was expected to have some common sense. We were encouraged to handle our own problems. It was believed that this method would help us grow into responsible adults. For the most part this approach worked beautifully. If a bully was bothering you after school, you got together a more powerful force, usually in the guise of your big brother and his friends and you led the poor bully into a trap where he was summarily dealt with. It was like dropping the bomb on him. You didn’t want to go there but he just wouldn’t sit down at the peace talks and agree to stop being such a jerk. So you had to go long range on his ass. Usually though you could handle a bully just by kicking his ass. Bullies are insecure individuals that loathe themselves anyway, and there’s nothing like a good can of whip-ass to change their attitude. They just move along to the next willing victim.

I was walking to the bus stop after classes in my freshman year of high school when about a half a block up I noticed a big ugly kid with a baseball bat. He was grabbing kids by the collar and threatening to bash their heads in if they didn’t fork over their candy money.

He was standing right in the doorway of the corner store that I frequented for my candy fix. He saw me coming while he was shaking down this other kid who frantically forked over his dough. He had that glad eye twinkle, like he was expecting to get paid again as soon as I got there. I was not about to turn around, or cross the street or run. I was scared for sure but I was told once that everybody feels fear. The difference is made in how you handle it. So I figured that the best thing to do was to keep on walking straight toward the guy with the bat. This is exactly what I did. So when I woke up in the hospital…no, no, no, I’m joking again.

When I got there we had a stare down. He looked me over and realized that I didn’t seem afraid of him. I don’t know what went through his criminal mind but I could see that one gear grinding. He was like a cat the way he considered the situation. He stepped aside.

I went into the store and bought the usual bag of gum and candy and junk. I was surprised that I had pulled off my little coup. It’s a fact that I was going to give this guy a hard time if he tried anything. Like my older brother used to say, you gotta bring ass to kick ass. I had been a scrappy kid since kindergarten. Didn’t make me any difference.

Inside the store it was business as usual. The proprietor seemed oblivious to the big bully outside, that in effect was placing a thug-tax on his patrons. I looked around the store as I always did and wondered what the old toys were all about lining the top of the shelves. There was one board game that I can’t seem to get out of my head. It was a licensed property with a guy named Pinky Lee on the cover. He wore a small derby and an undersized suit with a goofy bowtie with these round heavy framed glasses. When Pee Wee Herman came on the scene years later, I flashed back on this Pinky Lee guy, and I wondered if Paul Rueben was channeling Pinky Lee. I think Pinky Lee was a ‘50’s TV show icon or something because I had never heard of him and this was now a couple of decades after his hey day. I wonder what became of him? Maybe he got caught boxing his clown in an adult movie theater. Back in his day that was grounds for execution.

So when I came out of the store, the bus was arriving and I ran across the street to board it. I can’t remember if the bully was still standing there. He was completely forgotten. Maybe I discouraged his resolve or it was time for him to get off thug-duty. Who knows, the bus ride had its own situational dangers to pay attention to. But that’s another blog.

The average playground in the city back in my day was covered with gravel and broken glass. Sometimes there was asphalt but that was at the newer schools. I got my first concussion and skull fracture at 9 years old on one of those gravel lots. I went to a lot of different schools growing up. It wasn’t because I was a problem child or anything; as a matter of fact it was just the opposite. I excelled at school. I was skipped a grade even.

The game we played at this one school with the gravel lot was called Hill Dill. I don’t know where the game comes from or how come we only played it at this particular school but it was like football without a ball. It was a very aggressive game and a lot of guys played it to work out their grievances with one another. A better name for this game would have been Open Combat.

Here’s how you play Hill Dill; you get a cluster fuck of guys all different weights and sizes to meet in the middle of the gravel and broken glass, (smarter children knew to steer clear of this combat zone) then the two largest guys would pick their soldiers and the left over rabble would choose a side. Like cellular mitosis the group would split to opposite sides of the battle zone. The leader on one side would hold a fist up high and yell “Hill Dill!” and the opposite side would do likewise. Then we would charge at each other running at top speed. Some of us were giggling uncontrollable at the prospect of the coming carnage and some of us with a score to settle had a grim scowling face. Then for a brief second like that moment in the movie “300″ there was a slowing of time as we faced the other combatants eye to eye deciding what weaknesses were there to exploit.
Then like an explosion came fists to the jaw, elbows to the face, feet to the shins and all manner of twisting turning and grabbling, tripping, falling and stumbling. Pent up frustration and energy was released in a pugilistic panorama of pain. I never had a better time. The boy in me was in his element, carnage. It’s what little boys live for. When else could you punch a guy in the face with all your might and not get into trouble for it? This was Hill Dill; this was war!

Hill Dill was free, you didn’t have to ask your parents for equipment or beg for a sponsorship. You used what you were born with, your skills on the battlefield. Who needed a stupid ball to chase around with rules and a scoring system? We kept score by making it to the opposite side of the battlefield. The side with the most guys, still standing won the battle. In the middle of the field were the unfortunate guys who got mangled up too badly to make it to the other side. They resembled a pile of maimed insects, with their twitching and agonizing clutching and moaning. It was a sweet feeling to stand there victorious observing the carnage.

My mother used to wonder out loud why I couldn’t keep a pair of blue jeans in one piece longer than a couple of weeks. She used to buy the kind with double material on the knees. I loved those, because it cut down on my skinned knee injuries of which there were many.

Recess was only about ten minutes long so we could only stage two battles. It was time for the next battle after the maimed combatants limped out of the kill zone, and it behooved them to do so because the detente was short lived and if they were still lying there when the next battle started they could get seriously hurt. Trampled under foot.

This one particular battle was going well for me. I don’t remember ever winding up in that insectivorous pile of twitching limbs. There was this one enemy on the other side that I had made during the last battle. He was the leader of their side. During the last battle he had tried his best to take me out with a haymaker. He missed because like Thor used to say in the comic books in his Shakespearean lilt, I was “swift of eye and fleet of limb.”

I knew he was out to make a kill this time. He was looking at me from across the battlefield. I recognized the scowl. He was determined to land that haymaker this time. I set myself to be anywhere but in front of that wild flying fist of his.

Our leader held his fist high into the air and yelled the battle cry, “Hill Dill!” The cry came back at us from across the gravel. Then the sound of rustling clothes and thudding foot falls. My peripheral vision faded into a vignette with my archrival in the middle. I was on a collision course with him. It was unavoidable. He was using his size to cut a path straight to me. He had singled me out for revenge. Then suddenly there he was, this big 8th grader towering over me with menace on his face.

He reached out to grab me this time. He had reasoned I was to quick for his haymaker so he was going for the trip, body slam and stomp. I adjusted and slipped his grip. I smacked him one in the face and escaped to the victory zone.

I didn’t know it then but I had done one thing right. A warrior must see without perception so as not be caught off guard by something that is not what it seems. I simply used battlefield intuition. The big 8th grader had yet to understand this fundamental principle of being a warrior. He had misjudged me and I had surprised him yet again. He was furious now. It was too late to do anything about it today. Or so I thought.

The recess bell rang and the horde of children went to line up for re-entry into the school. The Hill Dill players were some of the last to get in line as we were still high on the carnage and helping our wounded comrades up off the gravel, admiring scars and blood and bruises.

Little did I know at the time but I was about to get a lesson in Machiavellian maneuvering. The somewhat sinister 8th grader who had been humiliated by me had left the battlefield early and placed himself strategically near where the 5th graders lined up to re-enter the school. What happened next replays in my mind like my own personal Zapruder film.

As I remember the events that followed I was running with a buddy to get in line who had been playing Hill Dill with me. We were engrossed in our recollection of the game highlights when into my path stepped the big 8th grader. He had a sinister smile on his face now. My guard was down. Before I could react to the ambush he had tripped me while I was in mid run. While I was off balance he shoved me head first into the solid brick wall of the school building.

I regained consciousness at my desk with a splitting headache. It was 3:15 pm. The bell woke me up from what could have been a fatal slumber. I was in the throes of a concussion. My ditzy teacher didn’t know enough to get me medical attention. Someone had dragged me back to class and plopped me in my seat.

I staggered home and my mother took me to emergency. The doctor took x-rays and found a skull fracture. My mother took me home to recuperate. She even stopped at McDonalds for a cheeseburger and fries and a shake. I was too sick to eat it, and that was agony, because McDonalds was really a treat back then.

I don’t know why my mother didn’t sue the school or pursue some form of justice. Maybe she did, that was adult world stuff. I was out of it with my concussion, and so I don’t remember a lot after my head got cracked. I do remember feeling morose at the realization of my mortality. Seeing a picture of my skull rattled me a bit. I had to come to grips with the fact that I was not invincible. I did a little growing up that day. But that was what childhood was for.

Today’s children have too much interference from adults. This is just my opinion. When I was a kid we had grave things happen and no counselor lined us up and asked us how we felt about anything. Kids were not put on drugs to cope with issues. There was no Ridlin or whatever.

There was a kid I went to grammar school with. He seemed different than the rest of us. He was a little older too. He lived across the street from the school. The school in today’s world would have given this kid an alphabet designation. They would designate him as ADD or XYZ or whatever acronymic label they use today. I remember his name but I will withhold that due to the nature of his story.

He murdered a girl with a shotgun and dumped her body in the garbage cans behind his three flat. We never got one adult talking to us about how we felt about that incident. Everyone shrugged it off.

My best friend lived next door to this guy and he told me what happened as best he knew the facts. It seems that the kid had a girlfriend who had come over to visit after school. The dad was at work so the kid went to get his dad’s shotgun out of the closet to “show” his girlfriend. You can guess the rest. It went off and so did her head.

I remember the news trucks lined up one afternoon across from the school. We were all trying to get the cameras to swing around and get a shot of us. They ignored us. We were unhappy about that. In today’s world the crew would have asked the kids how they felt about the murder. Back then they couldn’t care less. We were firmly in a child’s world even though the murder took place in it.

I never saw that kid again. The authorities came and took him away to some place far from our world. I knew he would never be allowed to live in a kid’s world again after what he did. The poor bastard is probably still alive in some subsidized housing with a drug problem. Then again maybe he’s living large someplace and handling his demons quite well. I doubt it, but who the hell knows?

This same scenario repeated itself during my early high school years. Some kid in a wealthy neighborhood inhabited by professional types, mostly doctors, strangled his girlfriend and buried her body in the basement. The stench of the rotting corpse gave him away. Not one adult asked us how we felt about that.

Every night on television growing up there was real death and destruction. The Vietnam War came into the living room every night. We witnessed people being killed for real. I watched a guy get shot point-blank through the head and fall down while blood sprouted from the side of his head like some kind of macabre vampire water fountain.

I was playing with my toys on the floor when I saw Jack Ruby shoot Lee Harvey Oswald on live television. This was reality television. I don’t know what that scripted bullshit is that claims that name today. But not one adult asked us kids how we felt about all the violence we witnessed every day.

We still turned out okay. We grew up without any delusions about the real world. The government and Madison Avenue couldn’t bullshit us with their usual brand of mind rape. So the consensus was that the population needed to be dumbed-down. They did a stellar job of it too, all the way up to the presidency. Dumb asses will do what you tell them. They’ll think what you want and buy what you sell them.

Today’s kids don’t have a childhood in my observation. What they have now is adult supervised pre-adulthood. The parents over schedule their kid’s activities. Kids don’t know how to create their own fun or settle their differences anymore.

Hill Dill today would be played with real weapons and the fallen would really be dead and wounded. On the other extreme Hill-Dill would be adult supervised with lots of padding and helmets. It would be played on a rubber floor indoors and the rules would be changed. The kids would advance on each other and tickle their opponents into submission with feather dusters. We have extremes today in an effort to avoid the gray area of having to think too much.

Playgrounds have soft rubber coverings now. Kids wear helmets to ride bicycles. This would have been laughed away back in the day. Bicycle helmets are a marketing coup. Baby seats were unheard of. You used to throw the kids into the back of a station wagon and take off. Nobody wore seatbelts. No police officer would pull you over for driving around with your kid standing up in the back. No one would arrest you for throttling your child for bad behavior in public. Now everybody is ready to sue each other. Sleazy lawyers, then known as Ambulance Chasers, couldn’t advertise on television back then. They had to slide up along side of you while you were strapped to a stretcher and give you their business card.

It wasn’t cool to drop out of school and get pregnant by mysterious sperm donors only to wind up on Maury Povich trying to find out which guy in the neighborhood fertilized the egg.

Adults have no business mucking about in a child’s world. That’s a special place that needs to be for children only. The invasion has ruined childhood. Now there’s everything there that could have just as easily been introduced when a child crossed over to adulthood.

There are a couple of movies out there titled Kidulthood, and its follow-up Adulthood. I haven’t seen them but it’s a sign of the times. Without childhood to give people a chance to become mature what we’ve got now is adults who are very childish.
Look around. The examples are everywhere.

“Fishes live in the sea, as men do a-land; the great ones eat up the little ones.”
William Shakespeare

Oh boy, are we in for it. We’re in trouble now! We’ve opened up the black box of inception and now we can’t put the genie back. Now we can freeze embryos and implant them and grow babies like plants. Women can store their embryos and have a reserve of children that are as yet unborn. It’s not unlike a file backup system. If one of your children for one reason or another doesn’t fulfill some family myth, and there are plenty of family myths to be fulfilled, (just think about your own upbringing and the myths fostered upon your life,) you can download another contender to the throne.

I can see the scenario now, little Billy is playing in the sand box out back when his mother brings him a soft drink and tells him that he ‘s about to have a little brother. Billy gags on the soft drink and exclaims, “Why? Haven’t I been holding up my end of the deal around here? I bust my ass getting good grades, doing my homework and cleaning up my room. I even eat your horrendous cooking, and those vegetables! Aren’t you pleased with my work?” “Billy,” Mom consoles, “it’s not that you aren’t holding up your end of the deal, it’s just that I have some needs that you can’t meet. So, I’ve decided to thaw out your little brother and bring him to term. You’ll be replaced in the family pecking order and relieved of any expectations of greatness. But the good thing is, you get to be the big brother with all the privileges that such status brings!” “Great!” Billy expels sarcastically, “Do we know who the father is of this one or should I pack a suitcase for the Maury Show?”

This is only the beginning of the nightmare of science and biology mingling to form the modern Frankenstein society. We are headed for a caste system that will make the one portrayed in the science fiction drama Gattaca seem like a mild indictment. The implications of modern science and the dangers of wielding such a sharp instrument as IVF (in vitro fertilization) as casually as a butcher knife foretell of grave days to come. It is like running across a frozen lake, imbedded with land mines, holding said butcher knife while wearing clown shoes. This is certainly a recipe for disaster, just add a deluded fool and stand back.

I don’t mean to come off like a Luddite. I use and appreciate technology and its advances as much if not more than anybody. I happen to realize that any sufficiently developed technology is almost indistinguishable from magic. Who doesn’t like a little magic? That’s what makes technology so cool.

A polar opposite to religion, science is always changing its shape and questioning itself and relying on proven truths culled from the scientific method. We have come to believe in science and scientists in today’s secular society as the keepers of the truth. There are plenty of flaws in the philosophy of science that are lately coming to light with the discoveries of quantum physics and other puzzling phenomena. But we believe that technology is the way we humans can live happier lives. Technology gives us modern drugs, and devices and all manner of comforts. So far it doesn’t do much for our spiritual health or our mental health. So when these two unaddressed problems of the human existence cause trouble for us, we divert ourselves with technology. There’s nothing like a Playstation or an Xbox to take the edge off the day.

If we are supposed to be the superior beings of earth, why do we need technology to survive here? Technology is our guarantee. We’ll perish without it; the animals and the elements would wipe our superior butts out. So if it is true that technology is necessary for survival or insurance against the harsh cruel, indifference of nature, then how did the lowly cockroach come through the cataclysm that claimed the dinosaurs without a scratch? Did the cockroach have technology? Maybe they had little tiny interstellar roach coaches that they all piled into to escape the earth’s impending doom, returning when the coast was clear. Nah.

This is not Gregor Samsa in spite of what you've heard.

Roaches don’t have technology. I’ve seen them crawl out of a lot of it though. I’ve seen a huge cockroach strolling into a fine Italian restaurant in downtown San Jose, California. I watched two healthy sized roaches navigate the busy sidewalk during lunch hour in Pittsburgh. I thought they were doomed to the random footfalls of the pedestrian traffic, but everyone stepped around them. They got respect. This was a testament to their survival skills.

Roaches certainly don’t mind technology, as any New York City apartment dweller can attest. The cockroach ain’t got no shame. He’ll crawl through your salad at the trendiest restaurant. He’ll ride home with you on public transportation and stroll across your living room floor to see what’s on television. They take cab rides; go shopping at grocery stores. Everywhere you go they can follow. I’ve heard that they can withstand a turn in a microwave and come out refreshed. I guess it’s like a roach sauna to them. Radiation doesn’t bother them so when the fire next time comes, as we immolate ourselves with the technology of nuclear weapons, the cockroach will survey the earth’s stage and yell, “Next?”
And Mother Nature will comply. The next “superior” species will discover our folly in the ruble we leave behind. They will put our ancient relics in their museums and their citizens will study our ipods, and widescreen televisions and DVD’s and cell phones and automobiles etc. All the garbage we collected from the big box stores lying on a radioactive heap in mute testimony of a lost civilization.

Our egos are so huge that we believe our act is here for an extended run. We believe in our technology and our mastery of all we survey. We have the opposable thumb, tools, and the big brain. With the stuff we use, how can we lose?

As a species we are in direct competition with insects for the resources of the planet. Unlike the insects who seem to belong here, we seem more like a foreign invader. Insects only look the part.

One of the first things you learn in a college botany course is that no organism can survive in its own waste. This is why bacterial infections die out. So many bacteria have multiplied that there is nowhere for the waste to go and they choke themselves to death in their own filth. They may have long since killed their host, but the party ends when the resources run out.

The lower animals don’t produce anything at odds with the ecology of mother earth. Bees produce honey but they’ve never produced a plastic bag or anything that might choke a fish. Ants move tons of earth but they don’t need heavy equipment to do it and they don’t pollute the atmosphere with diesel fumes.

We pollute our air, create toxic landfills and pollute oceans with, life-threatening ooze. We poison the place we live as a side effect of our technology. We make stuff. The pollution from manufacturing one video cassette is enormous! Our computer and battery waste is choking us to death. Forget global warming, we’ve got bigger trouble. We have the stuff we have, thanks to the stuff we use. It’s all good. Or like Martha Stewart would say, technology is a “good thing”. This is what we believe but it has yet to be proven.

We’ve made ourselves comfy in this cruel and harsh environment. We’ve managed to thrive without the natural defenses afforded the other species we share the planet with. We are our only predator. Nothing can stop us from proliferating.

Everyone seems to want a child, a little bit of DNA to hang around after we’re gone. If we are to stay in competition with the lower animals then we must reproduce to do so. If technology can help us out with that then more power to the clinic!

Here’s the rub. The resources that we have are finite. There is only so much space, and resources to sustain life. Remember the bacteria party I mentioned above? And who are humans most like in the pantheon of life on earth? I’m not going to say we’re a bunch of cooties but we have a thing or two in common. Rampant population growth in a limited space leads to entropy.

Let’s take a hard look at the minimum system requirements for human existence. Let’s look at the hardware profile of earth. Hang on it’s going to get a little technical, after all we’re talking about technology and some math is involved. Ready?

We know that the surface of a sphere is represented by the formula: 4•?•r2, which in plain English is four times the number “pie” times the radius squared. See that wasn’t so bad, you can bet that Mr. Cockroach doesn’t know that. This formula is important to us humans because we live on a sphere or at least one quarter of it. The fish have the rest. Makes you start to wonder about who is smartest doesn’t it? Those slippery, scaly bastards took the most territory, and they don’t even have technology! It’s okay though; we’re poisoning them with mercury and plastic debris. That’ll teach them!

How many people can the earth support? Let’s see we’ve established that we live on a sphere and only a quarter of that is land. Now we have to factor in the fertile land, because the barren stuff isn’t of much use to us. We can conclude that one plot of fertile land can support one human. How big is that plot? We’re talking 100 square feet. Everything that sustains the life of an individual no matter whom he or she thinks they are, boils down to that 100 square feet. Humbling isn’t it?

I don’t care how many ipods, Playstaions, widescreen televisions or spinning hubcaps you own, without those 100 square feet of fertile terra firma, you’re fucked. Game over dude!

But technology can save the day! It hasn’t given us gills yet so that we can make war on the fish and raid their neighborhood and take all their shit and claim the ocean floor as ours. But it could come to that. We’re working on it! We have technology! That gene splicing is getting pretty well advanced.

We are even now developing floating domiciles that can extend our surface area to the watery domain. Until we work the bugs out of floating neighborhoods, like where to walk the dog or what type of plumbing is needed, we know that through technology 70% of land can become fertile.

After we nail the fertile earth problem we have to consider the water problem. Once you start to screw with the water you have to consider that only 1% of the stuff is drinkable, that factors out to only 0.7425% of all the earth’s water. Those fish took everything. I say we skip the floating city and get some gills and go and get those bastards. We’ll have to take on the sinister shark squadrons and the jellyfish junta, but we will prevail. We have spear guns and they don’t.

This tiny 1% of water is all there is for all of humanity. This is the same water we piss in, take a bath in, take a shit in, water the grass with, mix up Kool-Aid in make coffee and tea with. We puke in it, flush condoms in it, filter it and put it into fancy plastic bottles and sell it to morons who are willing to pay a couple of bucks for it. Everyone’s heard the joke about how the brand of bottled water called Evian spells “Naïve”backwards. I guess some exercise; health buff was drinking a bottle while admiring their physique in a mirror at the gym and noticed the gaffe.

Our water must be recycled. Astronauts have to recycle their own urine to keep a water supply. Well the earth is like our space ship and we have to recycle our water too. A guy I know related a story to me about the first week he worked at a water filtration plant. He was peering down into one of the huge vats that are used to strain all the crud we put into our 1% of water to make it drinkable again. The water has to pass through a chemical bath and a succession of smaller screens to get the crud out. At this initial filtering he noticed a million tiny rings left behind like spaghettios. Curious, he asked the veteran next to him what those rings had to do with the filtration process, The veteran replied “What, you don’t know what those are? They’re condoms!”

Now, the spaghettio-mountain is not entirely a bad thing, as the condoms are birth control and therefore are helping to conserve our limited resources by cutting down on population growth. It’s just ironic that this measure ends up as pollution of the very resource that they help to conserve.

So let’s comb the sobering data to see what information comes out that we can point at and make some sense of. The number of people the earth can support. Here comes some math again so hold on to those calculators.

The number of people the earth can support is N = (the surface of the earth in square miles) times the (number of square feet in a square mile) times (1/4 which is land) times the (70% fertile land after technological breakthroughs make it available) divided by (10,000 Square Feet per person) can be expressed as N = 9•1×10E10 = 90 billion people in 5 centuries time. So in the year 2400 or 2500 A.D.…we’re fucked.

Long before we get there, we’ll have famine and war and pestilence. There’s only so much of the good life to go around. The cootie party will draw to an ugly close, while the cockroach sits by preening his little antennae wondering what the next act will be. Our companion the cockroach is earth’s witness to the stage and Mother Nature is the playwright.

You remember Macbeth’s famous soliloquy: “Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player, that struts and frets his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more.” My Shakespeare is rusty so don’t worry if I didn’t get that line just right. The point is; we are the strutting fools.

Ira Harmon

Okay, here we are into a whole new century, a whole new millennium even. We’re ten years into it and for a century that’s still pretty new, but for a millennium, ten years make it practically unborn. If we’re talking about cars, then ten years is ancient, especially for an American made model. I’ve heard people exclaim the year in incredulity when witnessing an act of ignorance that should now be extinct. They’ll say something like, “this is 2009!” They say this as if to express the anxiety of having to deal with something that should have fallen into antiquity, like lynching for instance. I would exclaim the year if I saw strange fruit hanging from the limb of a Cypress tree. I would say, “What the fuck? This is 2009! How can this shit still be happening?” Physical lynching of black people and other unfortunates have fallen into antiquity and should stay there. Never again witnessed but surely never forgotten.

Injustice is like a virus that can morph into other forms and pop up like an atavistic resurgence in the cultural inheritance of new societies among new citizens. Those who want to be unjust will find a way to do it, because hatred is as powerful as the sex drive is in humans and apes. Yes I include the apes because we are talking about lower intelligence and functions of the basic instincts of the sapiens species. The human species is part of that class. For the sake of my argument I won’t be sidetracked into the Intelligent Design versus Darwinism debate. I’m talking about time and ignorance as a virus in the concept of higher intelligence. I’m talking about hatred as a function of our base instincts, inherited from our past.

Hate is very powerful poison. It is infectious, insidious and potent. It can lie beneath the veneer of our social graces and erupt like vomit from any one of us. We all carry some hatred for something, someone, someplace, some time. We even hate hatred. If you put the word hate next to the word love in any juxtaposition, hate always wins. Try it and see. Hate love. Love hate. Even in words, it is a powerful poison. You can hate, hate but you still hate. You can love to hate and hate to love, but to love you must love to love. Hate cannot enter into it. I think this was the fundamental lesson of Christianity. In practice, there are no Christians. It’s impossible for the human species to arrive at the door of spirituality and walk in free of hatred. Even the doctrines of religious belief give its followers permission to hate. You could infer that Jesus gave his followers the permission to hate the rich. Mohammed gave his followers permission to hate the infidels. The whole mess going on with the world is due to hate and its repercussions.

The truth about love is that it hurts too much. Love is a kissing cousin to gratitude. You go around expecting some gratitude and all you get is resentment. Why is that? It’s because people would rather feel resentment than supplicate themselves with gratitude. “So what if you bailed me out, you want, my undying gratitude? I’ll pay you back when I can! Get off my back about it!” Resentment is a kissing cousin of hate.

The only way love could possibly feel good is if there was no hate. Love has to be the only option. Love is alien and not of this world. It used to be, according to biblical apocrypha. When Eve took a bite of that apple and Pandora opened that box all bets were off. Notice how we blame the world’s troubles on women? That’s another blog. But since there is hate, turning the other cheek could get you in a world of hurt.

Besides it feels better to hate. You know how charged up you get when you’re feeling hatred. Your blood boils, your mind races. You feel alive! You may feel like shit later, but while you’re in the throes of a good hate, it’s a rush!

Hatred is a drug that gives you a high that love can’t compete with. Hate is like spiritual cocaine. You snort or smoke some and you instantly feel better than the object of your hatred. Love is a sedative. It excites in a different way. It’s not very physical in its manifestation. Love is almost involuntary and creeps up on you like a psychedelic high. Love is extraterrestrial. Hate is definitely earthbound, a cornerstone of this world. Hate feels real, there’s no questioning the emotion. We’re always unsure of love though, that’s why we need to hear those three little words all the time. Love is invisible while hate is in-your-face ugly. Love is mysterious while hate is blunt. Some of us may never know love, and we hate that. Love is something that you have to be inside of; it has an insular quality. You must be in love because love is not naturally inside of you. Hate on the other hand, lives and  thrives inside. You don’t find your self in hate, or fall into it. We carry its seed. It grows inside of you until it flowers. Maybe that’s what the appendix is for; it’s a hate gland. It’s not good for anything else we can figure. Okay, I’m kidding, but that concept sounded good to me.

Now that we’ve examined human dichotomy let me get to the point. In the New York Post recently there was a “political” cartoon or “politically incorrect” cartoon if you prefer that depicted a chimpanzee. This chimp was shot dead by the police who were standing in the foreground with one of them exclaiming; “They’ll have to find someone else to write the next stimulus bill.”

What does this cartoon mean? The fact that it needs explaining means that it fails as a cartoon. It fails if we are to believe that a picture is worth a thousand words, because here I am trying to make sense of it with words when it should be clear what the cartoonist intended. When it comes to cartoons, I know of where I speak. I’m a published cartoonist as well. I’ve done political cartoons and was paid handsomely for doing it. I was also paid some hatred for doing it too. The hatred came from the targets of my pen; who were usually incumbent politicians. They reacted the same whether they were Chicago politicians or California politicians. No matter where, they don’t like to have their dirt exposed.

When I first saw this Post cartoon, I thought I was in for a funny jibe about Travis the chimp that was gunned down in Connecticut the day before. I don’t know all the details about the lady and her chimp except that the monkey went berserk and the police shot it, no more monkey business. As my mind focuses in on this Post cartoon and I read the caption, I’m met with confusion. For the cartoonist, confusion is anathema to the craft. If your cartoons confuse instead of clarify then you’ve muffed it…perhaps cartooning is not your forte. It wouldn’t be the first time a profession was practiced by a delusional individual. That’s why doctors have the AMA and lawyers have the Bar to keep the delusional out. But the inky profession can let any moron with a pen and an opinion in. I’m not being dismissive here, just pointing out a condition. The editorial and publishing professions should be the arbiters of taste. When a cartoonist goes awry the editors are there to reel them back in. I’ve been edited and didn’t like it. I felt my artistic integrity was at odds with the editor, but that’s the way the ink spills. This didn’t happen in the case of the New York Post and this cartoon.

When it dawned on me that this might be a cartoon depicting Obama as a dead monkey, my mind searched for that phrase, “What the fuck? This is 2009!” Then I started trying to figure out if I was being reactionary and missing the point. It seems after several days of pondering the cartoon that I didn’t miss the point. There is no point. This cartoon seems to be just what it looks like. It looks like a very inept attempt at expressing an idea with a wink and a nod to all those who still want to think of black people as monkeys. I guess if the intent was to draw a racist caricature of our 44th president then it succeeds on those grounds. If the intent was to dredge up old feelings of racial hatred then it does that admirably. The fact that the monkey is dead is a way of lynching the man in effigy.

Since Obama didn’t write the stimulus bill, I assume that this cartoon was created out of ignorance. Ignorance of the fact that the stimulus bill was written by committee, whose members were mostly white if not completely.

I guess you can take the racist out of the past, but you can’t take the past out of the racist. While The New York Post looks backward to those halcyon days of racist yore, the rest of us will look forward to the day when racists are only found in museums, right next to the primate display.

So in summing up the feelings expressed by the New York Post in publishing this cartoon created by a “cartoonist” who didn’t sign the work , I submit this question: So you hate Obama and black people, how important is that?

Please note my caricature of The New York Post. It’s very clear and needs no explanation. This is how us professionals do it, and I’ve signed my work.

Ira Harmon

Awards are for recognition by ones peers that you’ve done an outstanding job in your chosen field. It says to everyone whose paying attention that you are worthy of the encomiums being afforded your effort. It says you have risen above all the half-assed effort and misguided energy that bore less than perfect fruit. Or does it? You know why they don’t give awards to politicians? There are no awards for politicians because politics is a self serving lie. It’s Hollywood for ugly people someone once opined. It’s a game played by people who have to bullshit the many to get swag for the few. Politics has no place in an awards ceremony. Awards are supposed to honor it’s candidates on their meritorious achievements alone. If that’s true then, how come people campaign for awards?

Why is the Academy Award given to the person who campaigns the most and more vigorously and successfully? The person who gave their all and made a better contribution to the humanities can lose to the better campaigner. What does this mean for the arts and sciences if politics enters into the decision process? Can the guy who cures cancer be beaten for a Nobel by the guy who invents the self cleaning toilet seat because he failed to campaign effectively? I’ve heard it said that Bill Gates, being the intensely goal oriented man that he is, has embarked on a campaign to win a Nobel for his philanthropy, and is willing to spend whatever it takes to get one.  What? Sounds crazy doesn’t it? Is nothing sacred? Then again the whole idea of a “peace prize” named for a guy who invented dynamite and blew up half of his family’s mansion and killed his brother in the process sounds ludicrous doesn’t it? The world is full of it’s little ironies.

The Oscars are coming up in a couple of days as I write this, and I can’t help but wonder if the Awards are rendered meaningless by the politics that will determine the ultimate outcome? It’s not unlike bidding for an Oscar on ebay.  In fact it may come to that one day. The pomp and the speeches and the cheekiness. The red carpet and the vainglorious trivia about gowns and pageantry.  They don’t disguise the fundamental hypocrisy that is Awards Ceremonies. I could get into the current fall of sports heroes from pot smoking swimmers (what lungs!) to steroid shooting sluggers, but that’s fodder for another blog.

A lot of the movies that win Oscars are forgettable as time goes on. I for one can’t remember what won best picture last year. What does “best picture” mean anyway? Is it “best” because it made more money? Well the Awards people aren’t stupid, the artful dodgers that they are, they would never openly consider money as an arbiter of worthiness. This is about image! The money spent on campaigning for the Oscar notwithstanding, the Award is given for the intangible things that a picture brings to the screen. Intangible things that can’t be put in a swag bag and carried home or stacked up in a corner and polished or admired are the things that Awards are given for…things that governments get young people to fight and die for, like integrity, honor, moral fiber, all that jazz that bullshitters spew to talk you out of a pint of blood or your hard earned money.

The Oscars are about bragging rights and increased bargaining power at the table when money is stacked up for the next big budget box office construction.

If you win a prestigious award it means that you have something that money can’t buy. Since you’ve already got plenty of money and found it wanting, (I hear it can’t buy happiness and since I don’t know how much happiness costs I’ll have to take that on faith) the only thing left is self aggrandizement and bragging rights. Will the winners of the pissing contest please extend their Awards so we can all drool at them? After the Oscars, and I’m sure this goes for anyone who gets that call from the Nobel people at 5 in the morning, you have the right to strut your stuff like the cock of the walk, if you’ve won of course. You can even strut if you were nominated.

The point is that in the Hollywood jungle, winning an Oscar means your dick is bigger than the other guys dick, and who doesn’t want to have the biggest swinging dick in the jungle? You gotta watch out though, the bigger the dick the bigger the entanglements. Look at past winners whose heads got as big as their dicks and they refused one too many script offers and wound up playing opposite dogs, puppets and children in asinine drek. You know who I’m talking about. Straight to the DVD remainder bins they went where past swinging dicks shrivel.  I saw the mummified remains of some poor stiff at the British Museum once. He had died in the desert, but he still had his “package”. Sure it was shriveled and thousands of years old, but it was still there, representin’! There’s hope for those who keep their powder dry.

Some have been saved from this fate of the shriveled dick and given the career equivalent of a dose of Viagra. You know who I’m talking about. Some grab a gun and sell narcotics and rob liquor stores or O.D. on meth. Hollywood if nothing else is an image town, which has the substance of plastic. I think the Oscar is really gold, isn’t it? Maybe I can find one cheap on eBay?

Ira Harmon