Work sucks, but why should it?

Today, I enjoyed an excellent conversation with a good friend of mine (yes, the Bald Eagle does have friends...even if he does not have readers!). A good, soul-to-soul conversation is one of the greatest gifts in life. It costs nothing but time, effort, and selflessness, and yet it reaps incalculable benefits: connection, fulfillment, and enlightenment.

So, kudos to my buddy, and to all the friends who have helped make me who I am and who give my life meaning.

Yet, the Bald Eagle now digresses, so, like a one-hit wonder of the early '90's, I will go "quick to the point, to the point, no fakin'" though I do not promise to "cook MC's like a pound of bacon."

Our conversation this morning revolved around meaningful working and living. In a nutshell, we concluded that there is little point to working for the sake of work itself, for the sake of material gain, prestige, etc. Rather, work is meant to be an extension of the self that extends the self. In other words, work, ideally, should be meaningful, and it should respect the dignity of the human person and his or her desire to live life in full.

Obviously, reality does not always live up to this standard. And yes, many people work for the sake of its fruits - i.e. the money needed to support self, family, etc - and there is nothing wrong with that. Yet, I suspect that for many other people - including myself - this is not enough. Pope John Paul put it best when, in a letter "On Human Work," he noted that work is meant for the human person, not the other way around. Put differently, we are not destined to be cogs in a machine, but, rather, to grow and expand ourselves through work. Anything less leads to dissatisfaction, diminishment, and madness.

Thus, for example, my friend is an attorney in a powerful firm in a prestigious east coast city, making money hand over fist (to pay off backbreaking school loans) and ably performing tasks that do intrigue and challenge him to some extent. By prevailing American standards (which, quite frankly, are insanely shallow and materialistic), one would think he would be happy....yet he is not. He wants more out of life, and since so much of life in this work-crazy country is work, therefore, he wants more out of work. Good for him, and good for the many others like him.
They give real meaning to "the pursuit of happiness," which, in the end, is really "the pursuit of authentic humanity."

So I say to hell with work for the sake of money, prestige, upward-mobility, and other such bullshit; to hell with a warped economic system that favors the fortunate and screws the unlucky; to hell with a so-called "culture" that merely serves to stupify the masses and keep power and prosperity in the hands of those who already have it; and, finally, to hell with work that serves the system and not the person.

On the other hand, up with those who are dissatisfied with this meaningless nonsense and work to find something better; up with those who change careers to discover jobs that are more fulfilling; up with those who find careers that serve others rather than themselves; and up with those who march to the beat of their own drum rather than that of the system.

As for me, I don't wanna work, I just want to blog on my blog all day. Anyone who has a problem with that can kiss my Bald Eagle butt.

Tainted and Sainted Athletes

Well, well, well, so everyone's good buddy Barry Bonds finally got his home run record. Rah, rah, rah. Much ink has been spilled about the questionable qualities of this record and this athlete, so why spill more? Because it's fun, because Bonds is an arrogant, selfish, steroid-using sack of surliness, and because, frankly, the majority of professional athletes are just as bad as he is.

How often have we heard about pro athletes breaking the law, complaining about contracts, or taking their good fortune for granted? If I hear one more sports stud carp about how he needs an extra few million dollars per year because he "needs to do what's best for [his] family," I will boycott every professional sport and stick to C-Span.

Of course, I am lying - I am a sycophantic slave to professional sports, and have been since I could throw a baseball, shoot a basketball, or tackle another human being. Sports are just so much fun to play and watch, and nothing beats watching the best playing their best. Therefore I, and millions of other dupes, will keep supporting these megomaniacal spoilsports as long as they do not spoil their sports completely.

Yet they are getting close to doing this. Who can believe in baseball when a hallowed record has been stolen by a guy more fuel-injected than a NASCAR racecar? Who can count on football when hordes of players waste entire minicamps holding out for more money, only to swiftly become injured or exposed as overrated? And who can care for basketball with pointshaving refs and selfish superstars?

Unfortunately, I and many others still can. Although these pathologically pompous pros leave a bad taste in my mouth, they are still fun to watch, and I am a shallow, diversion-craving hypocrite who will keep on watching - with my ears and nose plugged from the sound and stench of their stupidity.

So go on with your bad selves, Barry and buddies, because, though you care nothing for us or anything beyond yourselves, we will still be watching, whether we like it or not.

A Dose of Hummer-ility

Greetings, nonexistent readers. It has been awhile since the Eagle has landed long enough to write, so here is a fresh new bit of baloney for you:

Confession: I have a vehement disgust for Hummers.

For those who have had the good fortune never to encounter one, a Hummer is a gargantuan, gaudy automobile that makes the SUV look like a mini-Cooper. These wretched, cursed contraptions originated as military vehicles, but now drivers are forced to confront them in parking lots - where they take up 2 spaces - on streets - where they take up two lanes - and at the gas pump - where they guzzle about 100 gallons of gasoline.

So, you ask, why do I hate the Hummer? Well, even if you didn't ask, I'll answer: they stand out as the most nauseating examples of American excess on the market. We are in an energy crisis, yet pompous fools are willing to drive these mini-tanks all over the planet at 10 miles to the gallon. We are plagued by crowded city streets and parking lots, yet these damn machines take up half a city block. Sure, they're great if you are a soldier speeding through the battlefield, but if you're a 90-lb soccer mom driving to the mall, they are perversely unnecessary.

In a nutshell, the Hummer is a mountain of metal that serves, like so many material possessions, to fatten the ego of the owner. They scream "Look at me, I am a big car, and my driver is a big person, very important and special, I might add. You better respect us." Every time I see one, however, I have to hold back bile and boogers, which I am tempted to flick across its luxuriant 20 yard-wide windshield.

This is where I stand - yet I must relate a recent incident that nearly humbled me off my soapbox. I walked by one parked city lot, loudly commenting to a friend that someone should produce bumper stickers saying "There's nothing dumber than a Hummer." Upon saying this, I promptly hear a voice saying "actually, I think I'm pretty intelligent." D'oh! Apparently, I was blah-blah-blahing about the Hummer within earshot of the owner. Serves me right. So, feeling like the asshole I was, I looked around for a hole in which to crawl. Finding none, I apologized, sheepishly claiming that I merely despised the car. Then I quickly walked away before he could whip out a semiautomatic and tell me what he really thought about my worldviews.

Thus did I receive a healthy dose of humble pie. That does not change my opinion about Hummers, mind you - I will be a HummerHater until the day I die or they mercifully go out of style. The real lesson is that I need to be more courteous and respectful about where and how I air my opinions, however correct I may be!

Therefore, I will humbly submit these diatribes to cyberspace, and keep my mouth shut.

Eat it, Cleveland-haters!

The Cleveland Cavaliers just beat the Detroit Pistons and are on their way to the NBA Finals. I, and many, many other Cleveland natives and expatriates have risen up and are riding high. Sure, it's just a game, but it is a victory for our city, and we have needed one badly.

During the past 30 years, Cleveland has gotten a bad rap from punks and pundits throughout the country. They laugh about our river catching on fire. They giggle about our rotten weather and lack of cheap-thrills for tourists. And they downright guffaw about our moribund sports franchises, which have swung between "close but no cigar" and "dead as a doornail" since 1964.

Well, to all these laughing hyenas, these, as Agnew put it, "nattering nabobs of negativity," I say "eat it!" I would say worse, but the pathetic and petty political propriety police might poop their pants. So, again I say, "eat it!" The success of LeBron James and the Cavaliers stands out as simply the latest reminder that Cleveland does indeed rock.

In this vein, I some food for thought for brain-starved Cleveland bashers:

- Please, please, please get over the river catching on fire, the "Mistake on the Lake" and other such cliche Cleveland insults. First of all, the Cuyahaga river caught on fire in the 1969. That is almost two generations span of time ago. Secondly, cleaning efforts have brought both the river and Lake Erie to a higher state of cleanliness than many city waterways can boast. Let's see the keepers of the East River, Boston Harbor, and Chesapeake Bay match that improvement.

- Take a closer look at Cleveland, and, if your head is truly out of your posterior, you will see that, like the Tranformers and Magic Eye posters, it has a lot more to it than meets the eye. Consider the following abridged list of attractive qualities: friendly people, nice parks, low cost of living, thriving arts scene, world class orchestra, traffic sanity, reasonable pace of life, diverse culture, great restaurants, and fine universities. All of these things, and more, contribute to a quality of life that is above the petty bashing of numbskull naysayers, most of whom have never been to the Cleveland area.

- Finally, all of you Cleveland haters need to take a good look in the mirror and ask yourselves if YOUR hometowns are that much better. Do you have a right to look down on Cleveland when your own houses are not in perfect order? Consider a sampling of other types of urban areas: northeast cities are crammed with rude people who are too much in a hurry to do anything except continue to live in the past, when their region actually mattered; cities of the Sunbelt are crowded with crabby sunburned fossils, freakish right-wing evangelicals, and gun-toting, NASCAR-watching homers; and West Coast towns teem with self-centered, self-righteous New Age posers. Are these places really that much of a step above Cleveland in terms of quality of life? Hardly.

So again, Cleveland-bashers, I urge you to get over yourselves, and eat it. Face it, the only reason you hate Cleveland is because it does not conform to the consumptive, materialistic, me-first values of American society.

And that is precisely why Cleveland rocks.

The struggle of the songless

Tonight, I held the DVD of "Happy Feet" in my hands, wavering about whether to feed it to the DVD player like a fish to a, well, penguin.

On the one hand, I thought, I am not five years old - at least, most of time. St Paul instructs us to put away childish things - you know, like the murderous tools with which he persecuted and murdered crowds of Christians. So, I piously stuffed childhood into a tattered box of dusty keepsakes, though it is an open question of whether I - or anyone - grew up. It all depends upon what 0ne means by "grow up," and I don't think anyone in our confounded society of everlasting adolescence has a goddamn clue.

But I digress - got a problem with that? Anyway, Happy Feet, at first glance, struck me as a Disneyesque puker that would do more to tug heartstrings and parental pocketbooks than satisfy the needs of the searching soul. Besides, penguins are getting too much press these days, what with March of the Penguins, HF, and an upcoming attraction with surfing penguins.

Still, in spite of all this, I figured I had the damn video from Netflix, so I might as well see it so I can send it back. OK, then, I watch it, and, while not artistically overwhelmed, I did enjoy it. I was most struck by the "love song" that the emperor penguins used to match mates. Whether or not this is scientifically accurate, it implied an idea of greater interest to me: that each living thing has its special quality that sets it apart.

We call this quality many things: talent, gift, niche, spirit, charism, essence, etc. Heidegger called it the Being of a being, an ineffable phenomenon that "presents" itself in its "unconcealment." I may be getting lost here, but the point is that each being has something about it that makes it special. Speaking of humans, it is our spirit, an essence that has basic similarities yet infinite differences among individuals.

Returning to the idea from Happy Feet, one might say each of us has his or her own "soul song," that special expression of his or her unique Being, that sets him or her apart and, quite often, lends itself to a unique niche in the larger community. In the movie, the song gave the penguin its place, and so the songless Mumbo was ostracized. The same thing, it seems, happens in human society.

So what happens to those who are songless? What happens to those who have nothing of their soul to give or share, nothing of themselves to contribute? Two things happen: they go broke or they go mad - most often, both. They are the homeless, the mentally ill, and the wandering. They are also the poor souls slaving away in hellish jobs that stifle their spirit. In any case, it raises the question of whether these lost souls become lost because (a) they have no song, (b) they cannot find their song, or (c) there is no opportunity for their song to be sung.

I believe it is a combination of the latter two factors. In other words, no soul is songless, is nondescript, in itself. Rather, the person has not found a means for expressing it. Nor has he or she found the right time and space in which to share expression.

I am rambling and getting sleepy, so I will punctuate the point with a rant: I am feeling lost and songless right now. I have not discovered the point to my existence, the gift I am to give, the niche I am to fill, and it frustrates the hell out of me. What if I don't have a song, after all? That cannot be, so it is all the more infuriating that it's there and I cannot find it or share it. What is my sound, my muse, my voice? I yearn to go beyond the vicious cycle of blah blah blah and say something with my being, something that will make my life worthwhile and echo beyond my death.

But all is silence, now, silence amidst the noisy bullshit of my brain and the useless American culture that never shuts up. So you can all go to hell, because you judgmental wretches all helped get me there; and I didn't need any help. Yes, I blame all the "you's" past, present, and future who tell me how to live, what I'm doing wrong, why I don't measure up, and other such spiteful shit. Certainly, I blame myself as well: that part is easy. Yet the beauty of a blog that no one reads is that I can go beyond myself and vent, let go, shout, shout, let it all out like Tears for Fears.

Yet, like the story from Harlan Ellison, I have no mouth and must scream, so I shout, and no words come out, except the useless drivel that is filling my blog. Curse it, you, me, everything.

Up with pro sports, down with poor sports!

Many people avoid pro sports because they simply lack the interest: ok, granted. But there is a vile breed of sophisticates who despise sports not just because of the idiotic athletes, but because sports, simply, are beneath them. In other words if diversions were placed on a scale, sports would be at the lower end of the totem pole.

That, I believe, is elitist ivory-tower idiocy. To the art critics, movie reviewers, preachers, and other pundits who pan pro sports, I say: get over yourselves! There is no way to rank forms of diversion, since diversion, by nature, is a matter of taste, not logic, choice, not nature.

It is simply enjoyable to watch the best craftsmen ply their trade. Anyone, I think, can relate to that. Whether the trade be art, music, or sports, the principle holds. In this vein, I see a certain beauty in watching the best playing their games - especially football, basketball, and baseball, which are the sports of my experience.

Now, there are those who despise professional sports because they believe pro athletes are selfish, spoiled simpletons with bling-bling ringing in their ears. To a great extent, I agree with these people....but more on that in a separate rant. Tune in later for a sampling of the athletes and teams that disgust me.

For now, it is enough to say "up with pro sports," and down with the poor sports who trash the games that so many enjoy...simply out of spite.

That having been said - GOLF SUCKS!!! Tune in later for a rant on this subject.

I blog, therefore I am

Descartes once said "I think, therefore, I am." Yet he no longer is, so therefore he must no longer be thinking.

I, however, still am, and therefore I am still thinking. What am I thinking? People ask me that all the time, and not always in a nice way! Well, that is what this blog is all about - my thoughts, views, and opinions. I need somewhere to put them - otherwise, my brain will burst, and I will join Descartes in the thoughtless realm of nonexistence.

Enough about me, let's talk about you.....or, rather, let's not. Unless I know you personally, you are nothing more than an email address to me, and therefore are completely insignificant in the world of my blog.

Nonetheless, I leave the choice of responding to my posts up to you, and I leave the choice of reading or deleting your responses up to me.

Welcome to my world.