for the 2nd time in a week a white cop got away with the murder of an unarmed black man. the grand jury in the eric garner case declined to indict daniel pantaleo just like the grand jury in the michael brown case declined to indict darren wilson. apparently in both cases the prosecutors basically manipulated the evidence presented to the jury to get the desired verdicts which resulted in both cops getting off with no accountability and no consequences. if the saying “a grand jury could indict a ham sandwich” is at all true then you basically have to look at the system in place and in cases such as these 2 things are obvious: black lives matter less than white lives in the american justice system, and cops are above the law. both facts are extremely ugly indictments of the american version of “law and order” and underline the total corruption of the phrase “to protect and serve”. the last time i felt protected or served by any policeman was never, and i’m white. what we’re left with are completely militarized police forces across the country who view the general population(particularly the african american population) as the enemy and have the backing of the laws and the courts to deal with that population in whatever brutal and repressive manner they choose, they will never have to answer for it. it’s a shitty system and should be dismantled and replaced and the sooner the better.
my frustrations are not limited to matters of (in)justice but have also crept into the work i am attempting to do, i have 4 new pieces that initially came together quickly but have at this point screeched to a stall/halt that’s been dragging on for about a week. this sort of momentum-thwart sorta pales next to all of the terrible shit confronting us in other areas of existence but it at the same time perpetuates any and all feelings of helplessness one might experience while staring into the belly-via-mouth of the beast. this sort of frenetic stagnation scrambles perspective and brains alike and disables the focus-function so necessary for tackling the larger picture in any meaningful way. meaning getting stuck in your art can get you stuck in your life and being stuck is no way to be unless you’re a pig, and while that wasn’t intended as a cop pun it IS time for our mid-post song so i’ll just continue w/the day’s leitmotif:
i re-read yesterday’s post and it was confusing because i mixed up 2 jeffs and one of them’s not even a jeff, he’s a geoff. for anyone who wondered what the fuck was going on, jeff is my friend in japan who has the tape-only label while geoff is the one who went to med school and is now doing his residency in yakima, washington. geoff is the one i saw yesterday, i know in the blog it seemed as if there was one jeff who was in 2 places at once but that’s impossible and it didn’t happen. geoff came over limping from a groin pull he incurred while slipping on some ice like a buffoon. he was grumpy at first but after 2 cups of coffee he chippered up somewhat and bought me lunch at the east side deli on hawthorne. i’m plugging that place because they have something called “field roast” which i’ve never heard of and is a meat-substitute for us non-cow/pig/chicken/turkey gobblers and it’s the only non-meat meat that i’ve had that doesn’t taste like sawdust or worse. after lunch we walked around the neighborhood and he told me a long story about a speed-freak lady(“she had about 40 hard years on her” he says) that showed up at his door one night and led him on a little adventure involving pissing herself, grabbing his dick, and demanding to be dropped off at a “biker house”.
wookie went out last night to a vintage sale that stayed open until 9(or so she says) but didn’t buy anything because all the stuff there was too uptown for her tastes or her wallet. speaking of her wallet she left it at home when she went to work yesterday morning so i had to run it over to her and i got to see her workplace and got to meet a couple of the alzheimer’s patients/residents that wander around the ward, they seemed confused but sweet. then after the vintage sale debacle she decided to go by the lloyd center mall to return something and when she came back out her car was gone. she thought it was a goner for sure and it was a goner but it hadn’t gone that far, her and the security folks found it in another parking lot on another level with the lights on and i think she said it was running, too? i can’t remember that part but the good news is that the honda fit is back in the family and my truck is still running even though the frigid temps these days seem to create a little barrier to my battery sparking the engine and turning it over, but i ain’t gonna replace nothing because i like to live dangerously but i’m actually just cheap. or broke. but if i ain’t broke, don’t fix me.
infinity trigger art 