Beautiful Boy

I don't just read books- I devour them. "Beautiful Boy: A Father's Journey Through His Son's Meth Addiction" by David Sheff is the latest book I've completed. I started reading it because it was the latest book to be sold at Starbucks and I work at a very slow and boring store where I mostly close. During a regular closing shift I normally get through the front page and the sports page before even attempting to do anything other than serve coffee when someone stumbles in, so anytime we have a new book I'm in heaven.

Starbucks has a history of attaching their names to books with difficult subject matter. The book I read prior to "Beautiful Boy" was "The Kite Runner" and before that it was "A Long Way Home: Memoirs Of A Boy Soldier". Sheff's book was no different and hit closer to home, not just because the others were written about foreign countries, but because I live in a fairly rural area surrounded by farmland in the midwest... the type of area that has been hit hardest by this epidemic in recent years.

David Sheff's son's name is Nic, the product of a broken family and promising young man whose life is derailed. Nic Reminds me of myself so much that it's scary... The music and movies he likes, the level of intelligence and opportunity, the history of drug use and his age... we were born a few months apart. I have never and will never do Meth, but if given a copy of the book I could pinpoint the page where our paths deviate. The difference between myself and Nic is that when I walked into a former friend's house and found them lighting the bottom of a light bulb and sucking through a straw I turned to my friend who had accompanied me and said, " Maybe it's time to go... That's definitely not weed."

Up until his senior year of high school Nic had everything going for him, a family just outside of San Fransisco with his father's wife, Karen, and two younger siblings, Jasper and Daisey and a Mother in L.A. whom he spent his summers with. David paints a vivid portrait of his son's struggle with addiction and his struggle with his son's struggle. Beautiful Boy is at times heartbreaking and gut-wrenching, but no matter how bad it gets you must continue reading to know Nic's fate.

Lying, stealing, running away, sobering up, rehab, college, anger, frustration, hope and love are the recurring themes and from one page to the next the theme will change. Its a mirror image of the schizophrenic high of methamphetamine. Sheff researched the drug obsessively over the course of his child's addiction and at times will break from the story to inform the reader of how the drug works, rehab rates and other important information. He tells of the toll it took on the rest of the family and how hard it is to trust someone you love so much after going through such an ordeal.

I've seen this addiction take everything from a person, I graduated with two guys who took their own lives after falling into cycle of addiction (Sheff talks about Meth's tendancy to lead to suicide). These guys were not close friends of mine, but we had classes and socialized and I have fond memories of both. If you asked me to line up my entire senior class and pick out the two that would commit suicide due to methamphetemines they would have been among the last that I picked. This drug is evil and vile and is becoming increasingly more popular, which is a very scary thought. I can't believe that people would consider ingesting something that is made from some of the most toxic chemicals known to man, but I smoke ciggarettes and they are coated with similarly disgusting chemicals.

I highly suggest picking up "Beautiful Boy" and giving yourself a little insight into the newest poison of choice whether or not you have children. Nic is now sober (hopefully) and has written his own memoirs "Tweak: Growing Up On Methamphetemines." I plan on putting it on my list of things to read though it may be a while before I get a review to you.

The top 5 things that piss your Barrista off

#1. With a bullet... trying to break a fifty or hundred dollar bill on your $3.73 latte... Fuck you man, I only have $200 in my till and you want me to give you half of it?

#2. Telling me the size and name of the drink last when you want something complicated. I understand if you want nonfat milk and sugar-free syrup and what not, but I need to know what type of drink and what size you need first... those are the buttons we push first.

#3. Telling me you want a coffee at the speaker and waiting until the window of the drive though to clarify that you need cream and sugar in your "regular" coffee.

#4. Asking for an extra shot or some flavor in your latte after you've already paid. We know you're just trying to get a free modifier, man. Just pay the 35 extra cents.

#5. Telling me how horrible your life is at the moment. I wouldn't even ask you about your day if the Starbucks corporation didn't require me to. Listen, there are some of you that I really like, but for the most part I don't actually want to know about my customers every day lives; I'm just required to ask.

What will your tombstone say?

The about me section to the right says that my tombstone will read, "He wanted pepperoni on his tombstone." This is true, as soon as I have anything worth writing up a will for I will include a clause requiring that my burial place reads as I want it to. I might even include a fake story like the one on Royal Tenenbaum's grave- "Royal O'Reilly Tenenbaum (1932-2001) Died Tragically Rescuing His Family From The Remains Of A Destroyed Sinking Battleship."

The reason I'm writing this is because I was contacted earlier today by someone with a blog devoted entirely to slideshows. I was hesitant to ever include one of these slideshows in one of my posts until I came across one about devoted to epitaphs found on the gravestones of various celebrities. Having already stated what I would prefer people to read while standing on top of my rotting body I figured it would be fitting to show you other people who share my morbid sense of humor.

If you can't read the gravestones just click on the picture and it will send you to a link with a bigger shot.

The Danger of Trusting your GPS

A good friend of mine and I got into an argument a couple months back about the rise in use of GPS systems in cars. I said that people would become to attached to the machines and become lost without them. I backed my argument up by asking him to recite my cell phone number and he couldn't. My theory is that just as the use of cell phones has cleared the knowledge of phone number out of our heads GPS would clear out the directions that we've got stored in our minds.
I'm not suggesting that we'd automatically be lost on our way to the store down the road, but getting to a friends house in another city could become downright impossible if the GPS failed and one mysteriously had no phone on them.

The reason I'm writing this is because the Wall Street Journal recently did a write-up on a very similar subject.

As GPS devices spread, drivers are finding that satellite navigation may replace paper maps but not common sense. By blindly following the gadgets' not-always-reliable directions, they're getting lost, hitting dead ends, and even swerving into oncoming traffic.

It sounds like this is becoming a fairly serious problem and I have my own firsthand account. While on a road trip to Chicago with 3 friends we decided that it was time to stop for food in the middle on nowhere Wisconsin. We decided that we wanted to sit down and have a beer if possible as we were in no hurry so we started searching for something outside of the fast food spectrum using my friend B's GPS system. It was dark and snowy and the voice had just directed us off of the highway so we began joking about the cliche horror plot of getting lost in a small town full of murderers and malcontents. We took many turns and got a good 7 miles away from the highway before almost running over what looked like a wolf. At this point we began to get more concerned as we got further into the country with no evidence of a soon approaching town. When we arrived at the "restaurant" we saw only a rusting tractor on a vacant lot.

I think I'll stick to my maps and actually know when I'm lost.

again with the bridges

I live in Minnesota. You may or may not remember the 35W Bridge collapse occurring in my state back on August 4th, 2007. I know that I and every other person in Minnesota remembers that day. I was on my way to test-drive the car that I now own when while listening to MPR when the BBC world news did its hourly report or however often they happen to review the top news stories. It was the lead story on the British Broadcasting Corporation. It was surreal to to be listening to a local channel broadcasting a foreign news service's lead story coming from approximately 20 miles away.

What was worse was the fact that all of my friends have traveled across that bridge at least once in their life, like 75% travel on it at least once monthly for some reason or another and a large chunk of friends use it on a weekly basis if not 5 days a week. I even some have friends that live very close to there and used it multiple times a day. When I returned home I was glued to the television watching the rescue and recovery all night and for many more days. There was a bus filled with children and miraculasly only 13 people died in this travesty. I'm not downplaying that number, I just know what that thing looked like at that time of day and it easily could have been 100 dead. I don't want that again and Minnesota doesn't either but today it has become apparent that our infrastructure is decomposing below our tires.

The above links are about the state having to shut down another bridge. This bridge is an artery for the city of St. Cloud. I should know, I went to school there. I lived in the dorms for a year, just off campus for another two and downtown for for the final year and a half. I never lived more than 2 or 3 miles from that bridge and used it religiously. At the moment I travel over the Hastings bridge a minimum of 4 times a week. This issue must be dealt with immediatly. How many more bridges are in need of extensive repair or replacement and just haven't been found? How many need to fall before the government figures out how to hire someone other than Sverdrup & Parcel to build our bridges?

Hey America... Who built the Louisiana Superdome? The same guys that built two faulty bridges in Minnesota. The Superdome held up well, but the inspectors might want to take a closer look at it considering the shoddy workmanship its maker has exhibited in past work and the damage and the beating it took from the hurricane. Also, people crossing the Amelia Earhart Memorial Bridge in Atchison, Kansas and the Sidney Lanier Bridge in Brunswick, Georgia as well as people traveling the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel should be warned about possible flaws in the design.

I can't believe that more than one third of my life was spent crossing one crumbling bridge or another on an almost daily basis. I think the roads are trying to eat me.

Barack Obama Addresses The Issue Of Race

It is speeches like this that set Obama apart from any other presidential candidate in my lifetime. Next time I see a shooting star I'm not going to wish for a million dollars or for a particular girl to fall in love with me like I usually do, I'm going to wish that Barack Hussein Obama becomes the next president of the United States. This is the man that I want to lead us out of the six foot hole that the Bush administration has been digging for the past 7 years.

Obama faces controversy immediately and in the most dignified fashion. He says that he regrets Rev. Jeremiah Wright's remarks about racism in America, that he does not agree with them, but he won't cut ties with his friend and former pastor. Stop and think about your own life, think about hearing something come out of a good friend's mouth that made you jump back and wish that it hadn't been uttered. Did you end that friendship immediately? Probably not. I have a very good friend from college who is a really good guy, but from time to time he makes racist remarks. Every single time he says something I take the opportunity to remind him that I am offended by this sort of thing and that choosing the color of skin to lump a group of people together is probably the most ignorant way to find commonalities and to stereotype.

Obama doesn't skirt the issue either. This wasn't a 5 minute speech apologizing for what his friend said, he went on to explain that Black anger and that White resentment exist, and they do. People don't like to acknowledge them but these issues exist. It is the elephant in the room that has led to what I perceive as the slowing down of equality since just a few years after the civil rights movement. Don't misconstrue this, gains are made on the racial front every day, but things like the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X and the Kennedy brothers, Reaganomics and the war on drugs have all slowed the process.

I think Obama is the perfect person to start this discussion because of his mixed race... He has seen and heard both sides of the argument where most people have only had one incite because of their race. If I walked into a barbershop during a discussion that involved what Obama termed "Black anger" the conversation would stop, but he has a white grandmother and because of their relationship she was not afraid to bring up issues of "White resentment."

My favorite line in his speech was this, "My dreams do not have to come at the expense of your dreams." I don't think a truer statement has ever been made, and I don't think an idea has ever been overlooked more. Humans tend to fuck each other over in order to make a better life for themselves. Our brains are wired to survive and back when we were cavemen that wiring came in handy, we did need to fuck each other over from time to time in order to survive, but now we have advanced agriculture and technology. We should be able to feed every one in the country 3 meals a day and treat any and all injuries. We should be able to put a roof over everyone's head and clothes on their backs. After that, after covering the basic needs should fend for themselves, but after that people only have wants, not needs.

By the end of the speech Obama has made his point and says that this race should not be defined by race or gender. We have to forget the remarks made by his pastor and by Geraldine Ferraro and focus on the real issues like the economy, health care, education and two wars. Obama is what a real politician should be, the only other politician I have ever trusted in this way was Paul Wellstone. I believe that he truly wants to do what he says he wants to do. I believe that he can make a difference for the better. I believe that this country is barreling toward the gutter and he is the only candidate that can stop such a thing from happening.

Greatest Quote Ever

I was just looking through some random gallery on the internet today when I ran across this front page from "The Daily Record" in Scotland. I couldn't stop laughing and figured that if anybody ever stopped here they would enjoy it, too.

On a quasi-related note I might actually write something here soon.