[election] Meet the new boss, same as the old boss...

So, Edwards and NARAL both threw in the towel and endorsed Obama. No surprise there; both candidates were pro-choice, so NARAL literally could have tossed a coin. I suspect they want this over.

I posted about it elsewhere. My hands hurt like whoa, and it was a very comprehensive post that perfectly summed up my stance, so what the hell, will just repost. Anyone wants to argue or debate or discuss, that's cool - but if you offer me a bright shiny glass of hope and tell me I'm all wrong, the discussion is at an end, period. I have a lot of unanswered questions. If this is your guy - and he is not and almost certainly never will be mine - you should have some actual answers ready, because I'm not the only one asking them; the press certainly will. I am supremely uninterested in anyone's definition of hope, not when it comes to someone asking me to make them the most powerful human being on earth.

So. Questions.

Obama voted for the Dodd amendment. I saw a lot of "WOW, guess who's getting MY vote because he did that!" posts, but there's a small problem, you see, and question number one: he didn't bother showing up to vote for the bill the amendment was attached to, thereby making it a "look see I did the Right Thing!" for-show-only vote. From where I'm sitting, that looks like a cold-blooded political move whose only driving ethic is the desire to look good and a desire for power, while avoiding changing anything or committing to anything. So. Why is that a point in his favour? Anyone? Clinton didn't vote for the bill or the amendment, a fact that a lot of undecideds held against her. Um - question? Why is voting to amend a bill you don't actually vote on preferable?

Obama didn't bother signing the bipartisan-coauthored Reading is Fundamental request to the funding committee (the request letter, from Elizabeth Dole and Debbie Stabenow, was to the committee chairpeople; it was a request that funds be kept in place for one of America's most valuable early education programs, gutted by our so-called president, known around here as El Commandante Fuckwit). He didn't do it when it first circulated through the Senate - ok, middle of an election campaign, maybe he missed it. I could totally see that happening.

Six weeks later, though? Not so much; the excuse wears pretty threadbare by then. The final letter - with the signatures of 48 senators - went to the committee chairs, without Obama's signature. I've yet to receive so much as the glimmer of an answer as to his motivations. I find it inexcusable. The nearest thing to a reply I've had from his supporters is that the Wright thing (which, as it happens, I don't give a damn about and don't hold against him at all) broke, and he had to deal with that. Excuse me?

He ran a thunderous, really excellent oratory on why NAFTA must! be! radically! altered! Which is fine, except for that whole "pssst, ignore that, we won't really, it's just campaign rhetoric" to the Canadian government who, not unnaturally, were a skosh concerned. When called on it in the media, the Obama campaign denied it. The Canadian PM held up the memo. Again, a cold-blooded political ploy whose only driving motivation was power lust.

He apparently has no compunction saying one thing out the side of his mouth to unemployed garment workers, and something else entirely to the government next door, not if it makes him look good. So, tell me: why should I believe him on choice? On healthcare? On the economy? On education? On anything at all?

Here's the thing. None of that would bother me half so much if he were running as what he is: a politician who wants my vote to make him the most powerful man in the world. But he isn't. He's running as Saint Barack, the Great Hope of the Future. And the problem is, he hasn't done anything to make me buy it, and not all the subtle Martin Luther King voice-cadencing tricks on earth change that. My ears have had forty years to train for that one; I was around for the original, you know? And MLK was not asking for me to mandate him as the most powerful man on earth. Him, I'd have voted for.

Those are a few of the reasons I can't give Barack Obama my support. But hell, holding my nose and voting against Someone Even Worse is nothing new. With the exception of Bill Clinton, it's pretty much busines as usual. I'll just be holding my nose a lot harder this time, and hoping it's obvious that he's won early enough so that California, all the way west, won't matter. That way, I can vote for my state and local issues, and not try to make my hand fill in the two ends of the arrow next to Senator Obama's name.

I really hoped I'd have a president who, you know, actually represented me this time around, especially since I doubt I'll get another shot in this lifetime. The Old Boy Network, whatever colour you like, will certainly not be willing to relinquish its hold on the party's short and curlies anytime soon.

If he beats McCain - and I'm not even close to thinking he can, or will - one of two things will happen. He'll do a great job, which would, of course, be nice in the short term but would have the longterm effect of the Boyz using that as an excuse to make sure another woman never comes near the job. Or he'll do a crap job, and we go down in complete flames.

Either way, I lose. But again, not being represented in US government is nothing new. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.

And yeah, same testosterone count. I could care less about his skin colour.

Whoohoo! Rock & Roll Never Forgets reviews!

From Publishers Weekly (they spelled Kinkaid wrong, and have been contacted about fixing that):

Grabien (New-Slain Knight) builds the rocking first of a new series around guitarist John “JP” Kincaid, a member of Blacklight, a legendary British rock group on a par with the Rolling Stones. In New York City, where Blacklight has come to perform, sleazy celebrity journalist Perry Dillon interviews a reluctant JP for an unauthorized tell-all bio of the band. When Perry turns up dead in JP's dressing room, JP's longtime girlfriend, Bree Godwin, becomes the prime suspect. Perry had found some skeletons in JP's past about Bree, not to mention JP's estranged wife, Cilla, and drug-related issues. The investigation by NYPD Lt. Patrick Ormand inspires JP to rethink the last 25 years—a rollercoaster ride of sold-out concerts, drug rehab and enduring love. JP decides it takes more than just “sitting on my bum” to find the real killer. Grabien has created a down-to-earth hero who delivers a brisk upbeat message. (July)

From Kirkus (who have the rep for basically hating everything:

An aging rock star and his live-in lady become involved in a murder.

John “JP” Kinkaid plays the guitar in Blacklight, a wildly successful British rock band with more than a passing resemblance to the Rolling Stones. Although still married to drug-addicted Cilla, he’s lived for 25 years with Bree Godwin, a very private person who’s supported him through drug and alcoholic addiction and a diagnosis of MS. Their good life in San Francisco is shaken up by unauthorized biographer Perry Dillon. Since Blacklight has limited Dillon’s access, band members are doubly shocked when he’s found murdered backstage at Madison Square Garden.

Bree, who rarely goes on tours, is a person of interest to NYPD Homicide Detective Patrick Ormand because she discovered the body. The crisis forces JP to take a long look at the life he’s been leading, and he doesn’t like what he sees. He realizes that Bree has always supported him while he took her for granted, even returning to Cilla several times for short periods when she begged for his help. Something in the background of the other equally impure band members may be the motive for Dillon’s murder.

The author of the Haunted Ballad series (New-Slain Knight, 2007, etc.) comes up with something worlds apart but equally pleasing: a deft mystery nicely integrated with a fascinating backstage look at a rock star’s life.

* * *

You know what I really love (beside the fact that both reviews are essentially raves)? That they get it. The Chronicles were a what-if look at a happy ending that didn't happen, and came out of asking myself "Ok, what would we have been like thirty years later had things gone differently?"

And both reviewers got the "coming of age in your fifties" thing.

I seem to have written it right.

Busy busy busy, now with non-fiction!

I've got three - yep, three - non-fiction music-related pieces up at the brand new shiny spanking issue of Green Man Review.

Love and Crit and the Whole Damned Thing is a rumination on the differences between cerebral and visceral absorption of music. It's centered around a nifty conversation with David Smay, author of Swordfishtrombones, his look at the Tom Waits album of the same name.

I review two CDs, both of them projects helmed by Danny Carnahan (his Celtic Grateful Dead tribute band, Wake the Dead, and his combo Camogie):

And, finally, I review a sampler by the band Silverwheel.

* * *

In the fiction realm, I have two pieces of short fiction, both inspired (memo: I really dislike that word, but I'm damned if I can think of a synonym at the moment) by Richard Thompson songs. One, The Ties That Bind, I may have already linked to; it's an O Henryish look at poverty in America and what it does to relationships. The second, Sunrise, is a look at a selkie who has done his time on land, and is heading back to the water.

Update on Kinkaid 6, aka Uncle John's Band: we've reached the projected 2/3 point in the book (61,000 words and change! 67%! YAY!) and we're heading for the straightaway (should I do a Kinkaid with The Race Is On as the title? Hmmm). And the Shiny New Project, a not-Kinkaid called These Dreams, has its prologue done. Need to be switching back and forth between the two books, and it's likely to be insanity-inducing. I'm just lucky I've got sixteen wonderful WIP readers for that new one...

Anyway. Back to work.

Why yes, Virginia, Reading really IS Fundamental

OK. Unless I'm missing something here - and if I am, for heaven's sake please tell me, because I can assure you this is not something I want to be disillusioned about - the final list of legislators who signed the RiF letter is out. By my count, forty-eight senators signed it.

I asked my friends and flist in the Obama camp for an explanation as to why he hadn't signed, about a week after the news that President Satan's Cockpuppet had slashed funds for Reading is Fundamental. This is a no-brainer. This is Reading is Fundamental, dudes. Hello?

Of the three candidates for president, one candidate signed it: Hillary Clinton. For the record, she was among the earliest people to put her name to the letter - this was not jump on the bandwagon decision. And right now, for this particular issue, I'd be fine with a cold-blooded political motive. Go ahead, guys - jump on the bandwagon. Getting RiF kept in place is the bottom line. It's what matters, here.

John McCain didn't sign it. Neither did Barack Obama.

Now, I wouldn't expect The Esteemed Toadstool from Arizona to sign it. OMG, spend money on eddicayshun? That's Soshulismistical! My core constituency would hate me! Nuh-UH! Do not want! This is because John McCain is a wanker and a waste of protoplasm.

But it never occurred to me that Barack Obama wouldn't be arsed to put his name on this letter. WTF?

I am seriously pissed off, over here. I've been urged to go read all his speeches. I've been urged to read his book. He wants my vote. He wants change! Our Time Is Now!

Not if our kids can't READ, honey. Go sign the letter, then we'll talk, maybe.

Unless someone can give me a damned good reason why he abstained, he's added yet another level of difficulty in trusting this man enough to add my vote to his column if he gets the nomination. I could give a crap about pretty speeches and heavily edited books. I want ACTIONS.

Someone out there in Obama's camp, talk to me. Why did he not sign the RiF support letter?

Where I got my titles, and why

All my more recent (post-2002) fiction titles, and either what they mean or why I chose them, or both.

1. The Haunted Ballads: The Weaver & the Factory Maid, The Famous Flower of Serving Men, Matty Groves, Cruel Sister, New-Slain Knight. Nothing hidden about those five title choices; each is a classic Child ballad. The twist came in retelling the story behind the song.

2. The Kinkaid Chronicles: A bit more complex.

a. Rock & Roll Never Forgets. This fit the establishing theme. JP Kinkaid is in his fifties when he begins narrating the series, a muffled pampered enabled rockstar who is kicked by circumstances into growing the hell up, finally. And it applies to his younger (but still middle-aged) sweetie, as well. "Come back baby, rock and roll never forgets..."

b. While My Guitar Gently Weeps. This one's deep into the reality of session work, tailoring your style to fit whoever's hiring you. Guitars - two custom axes, one gorgeous PRS Private Stock blue waterfall custom, and a $100K Zemaitis named Big Mama Pearl - play a big part in the plot. "I look at the world and I notice it's turning while my guitar gently weeps/With every mistake we must surely be learning, still my guitar gently weeps..."

c. London Calling. I knew I wanted this third one to deal with racism, and how music does and doesn't confront and deal with it. So the Clash title was just right. A lot of this one takes place in the south of France, which is seriously racist and where the Le Pen faction (ugly, horrible nationalist wingnuts) are deeply entrenched. "London calling to the faraway towns, now war is declared and battle come down..."

d. Graceland. This one began as Cleveland Rocks. It deals with JP inducting his idol and major musical influence, an octagenarian blues sessions guy in the South, into the R&R Hall of Fame. Halfway through it, as I realised it was becoming an intimate, wrenching little thing about family and owning your own history, the title began to jar against my nerves. In a way, it's about attaining a kind of grace, and a kind of peace. "I've reason to believe we all will be received in Graceland..."

e. Book of Days. The only Kinkaid with a fictional musical title instead of a real one: it's the name of the double Blacklight CD that hits a universal nerve and goes mega on them and necessitates a 2.5 year tour that has some major consequences. I wrote all the song lyrics on this one.

f. Uncle John's Band. JP's full name is John Peter Kinkaid. Still alive after the near-disaster at the end of the Book of Days tour, he's playing local shows with his longtime Bay Area band, the Fog City Geezers. A book about pitfalls, and silence, and people not knowing each other past the surface. The original Uncle John's Band, of course, was the Dead; Jerry Garcia - Jerome John Garcia - was the Uncle John of the song. The book takes place mostly in Marin County, which was the Dead's stomping ground (and mine) back in the day, so it fit beautifully. "Come hear Uncle John's Band by the riverside, got some things to talk about here beside the rising tide..."

g. Restless. This one's a short story, which will likely be the first of a collection put together over time. It's Kinkaids, but not JP; this is narrated by the series' detective, former DEA, NYPD and SFPD Homicide detective Patrick Ormand. He drives me nuts (I want to smack him) but he isn't boring. "Restless" is the perfect one-word description of him. The story - which links up to the third Kinkaid, "London Calling" - explains why he's so damned restless, what happened to make him that way.

Short story, non Kinkaid:

Ghost, in the Key of B: A woman, a dead musician, a history. She's either being haunted and complicit in that haunting, or she's bonkers with grief, or both.

The Ties That Bind: A vignette, in the O Henry vein, about what poverty does to a relationship in modern America. A twist on a beautiful Richard Thompson song, "Oh I Swear": Cruel poverty is the tie that binds/but we'll get by.

You know that whole post about the thankful/gratitude because things aren't worse?

For the record: yes, it's very nice that I'm not dying of Ebola somewhere. Yes, it's very nice that I'm not holding out a tin cup, begging for alms because I have leprosy. Yes, it's very nice that I'm not a quadruple amputee. Yes, I'm pleased that, so far as I know at this particular moment in time, I don't have cancer.

I am not remotely thankful or grateful that I have multiple sclerosis.

Okay? Just to be clear: there is not one single thing about this disease that inspires any desire to thank anyone or anything. It sucks like a Hoover on speedballs. It hurts. It's unpredictable. It causes depression. The treatments, such as they are, are expensive or painful or both, and ALL the damned treatments, painful or not, also cause depression.

So: not remotely thankful to have this disease.

I am not remotely thankful for the raft of health issues currently making my life miserable, any more than I've ever been inclined toward gratitude for the health issues that have dogged me from birth. Little things, little indignities. My friends who live with serious illness - CP, ongoing crippling migraines, CFS, cancer, you name it - will know what I'm talking about.

I am not remotely thankful for having so many damned things messed up in my autoimmune system that none of my doctors can figure out what's happening where.

I'm not thankful for my life-threatening allergies.

I'm not thankful for whatever's causing me to produce so much saliva that I can't even swallow it all. Yes, the claritin - after four days - has stopped working. We're back to square one. And they still aren't sure what's causing it.

I'm not thankful for the second instance in a month of having my right leg go into simultaneous episodes of myokemia and ataxia (if you don't know what they are, and want to, please google them; my hands hurt and I've got a lot of typing to do this morning).

I have no sense of gratitude whatsoever for the shakes in my hands.

I'm not planning on offering up gratitude for the slow disintegration of my spine, or for the bulging disc in my neck at C-spine C3-C4 that I can't afford the time or the money to get fixed right now. The neck hurts all the time; I do my best to ignore it. The spine is more ominous: little electric shocks and pain. Move a certain way, freeze in place, grind the teeth, wait for it to stop. Whom shall I thank for that?

I am undelighted about an upcoming replay of the mangled biopsy. This one is likely to suck not much less than the mangling did.

I'm not thankful for the throat that keeps wanting to swell shut, or the fact that I keep losing my voice.

And I am REALLY not offering any thanks for the little white lesions on my brain.

I'm tired of physical pain. I'm tired of watching my body disintegrate. I want my health back. I'll take any part of it back.

Give me back my health. I'm not asking for a fountain of youth, I just want my health back. I'm 53, not 83. This is ridiculous.

Give me back some health, and we'll talk about thanks and gratitude and discuss half-full glasses. Right now, the glass is perilously close to empty.

Ruminations on gratitude and friendship

This is all about getting or not getting what you earn, and the essential unfairness and imbalance of being expected to be thankful.

See, here's the thing. I'm seriously fierce when it comes to friendship. If you call yourself my friend, I'm going to assume there's a reason you want to do that. It doesn't have to be object- or logic- or even action-based, but I don't think I've ever heard "I don't know, I just like you and consider myself your friend" from anyone.

So I assume that, if you use the word "friend" in connection with me, you have a damned strong reason to do so. I am a pisspoor choice as a "casual" friend. I'm a pisspoor choice for a "casual" anything.

YMMV, of course, but despite my occasionally authoritative tone, I never - EVER - speak for anyone but myself. Any lurkers who support me in email stay in email. I speak for no one but myself.

Let's look at it from the other side of the fence, which would be me, considering myself your friend. It is likely that, in that case, I will defend you, cover your back, cook for you, worry about you, cheer for you when things go well, mobilise as many people as I can to succour you in an emergency.

Why?

Well - because I define friendship that way. Just as importantly, though, because you've earned it. You've earned my care and my attention and my loyalty by being who you are. You may have made me laugh when I needed it. You may have done something I consider wonderful, usually a something that has nothing to do with me. You may be warm or kind or silly or damaged or genuine or interesting or any number of things. This is my definition of "earning my friendship": I will cover your back and take care of you when needed in any way I can because you are who and what you are.

I don't expect that level of support from my friends - everyone is going to have their own definition of the word, and it's hardly fair to expect mine to fit anyone else. My own expectations from my friends are fairly simple: don't backstab me, don't try to play god in my life, and don't betray or abuse my hospitality or my trust.

So here's the inverse. Why do you consider me your friend, assuming you aren't using that word as a casual catchall? My point (there is one, I swear there is!) is that I belive that, if I have your friendship, I've earned it.

Several people on my friendslist do the "daily thankfulness" thing. It's a nice thing, good to read - but I tend to associate "thankfulness" with "giving thanks", and there's my question: giving thanks to who?

I can be damned happy that I have my friends, and hoo boy, trust me, I am. I can be grateful to my friends, for what they do for me - I never expect it, it's always wonderful, it always blindsides me.

But, on some level, I believe we've all earned our friends. That state, friendship and mutual love and respect, is the result of who we are and what we do.