I know that it’s “easier to be critical than it is to be good,” but lately I’ve been getting the idea that the Republican party has become confused and thought that they heard: “It’s easier to be criminal than it is to be good.” What a bunch of bad boys they are!

I mean, where to start? The criminal activity abounds, yet no one goes down! Well, maybe this just proves that there are no dishonest rich white men. Oh no wait, my column would be (mercifully) shortened should I take that tack.

Well, Jesus asked us how we could get the splinter out of our neighbor’s eye without first removing the plank in our own, so I’ll start in Ohio politics, and everyone’s favorite politician to despise, Governor Bob Taft. His recent poll ratings rank lower than even President Nixon’s at the height of his scandal. He now stands at a 15% approval rating, which is lower than the three most unpopular Commanders in Chiefs in history, and certainly lower than any previous Ohio Governor. Hey, I didn’t re-elect him.

Despite his poll ratings, Governor Taft can be said to be a man of conviction: one, exactly, on four counts, for not disclosing gifts received while in office. Now, I think here they are splitting hairs. What is the fun of holding political, or actual power, if you can’t receive gifts and perks. It seems to me we are attracting the woefully stupid to politics if there is no advantage in it.

Not to kick a man while he is down (for too long), I’ll move up to national politics. I’ve been letting these accumulate, so forgive me if I rush through them.

Recently, several people at the very tippity-top of our government have all done some very bad things, or are at least being accused of doing some bad things, and as there seems to be no dishonest rich white men, maybe these are all fallacious.

Karl Rove, Deputy White House Chief of Staff, and President Bush’s “top handler,” has been revealed as a source for the outing of an undercover CIA agent. Also implicated in this same leak was Vice President Dick Chaney’s top aide Libby Lewis, known to everyone as “Scooter,” and you know what they say about people that go by nicknames. Our president pledged to take “appropriate action,” towards anyone found leaking this kind of information, which is his way of saying, “We don’t arrest rich white guys because of the wrongness they fail to commit!” Duhhhh!

Last week or so, Bill Frist pulled what appears to be a Martha Stewart and sold some stocks right before they hit the toilet. The stocks were in a company that his family started/owned (coincidence?), and he just happened to sell it off because (he said) he was cleaning up anything that might smell of impropriety as he prepares to run for President in 2008. Last I checked it was 2005, I pray to God that the next election isn’t starting this soon, but it must be because, well, that’s right (let’s acronym, shall we) he’s a RWGWDNW (rich white guy who does nothing wrong – remember this for later).

If ever Pete Seeger was rolling over in his sleep, it was when Representative Tom Delay appropriated Seeger’s anthem for justice, “If I Had a Hammer,” for his theme song. I just pray he gets royalties. Ouch. Bitter money. I prefer Hammer Time, M.C. Hammer’s “U Can’t Touch This.” That seems to ring a little more true to Lott’s style. I bet it’s what’s playing in the limo.

Good ol’ Tom Delay, fresh off three ethics violations - as voted by the House bi-partisan ethics committee - has gone and gotten himself indicted on a money laundering scam. I thought that’s what the mob did. Oh, that’s right, I always heard he wanted to uphold family values. He is crying Partisan Politics with all of his might, but the prosecutor, who is tagging him, while being a Democrat, has convicted many more Democrats than Republicans.

Nepotism is alive and well: George Bush has recently nominated two people to the Supreme Court (and had one of them confirmed!). This is about as boring as watching weeds propagate, but it should be noted that his personal attorney (who he described as a “pit bull in size six shoes,” charmed I’m sure) is his most recent nomination. Oh yeah, and how many of those “no bid” contracts for the rebuilding of New Orleans went to Halliburton subsidiaries? Oh, right, these guys are all about family values – rich white people family values.
At any rate with all this “Supreme Court stuff” going on: This week at Bush’s first press conference since May (four months, if you are counting – and how long did he vacation?), a reporter asked him his opinion on Roe vs. Wade, and he said “I don’t care how they get out of New Orleans,” and slapped his knee with a big guffaw, and then, being on a roll, he looked under the table and quipped, “No WMDs under here!” and had to be led from the stage, convulsing with laughter. Okay – full disclosure, he didn’t say that at all, and it’s really a bitter sort humor, sorry.

the Day the Deby Died
A crushing defeat led my feet up the street, I was just none too fleet on this beat. I had me a date, I was running quite late, but I felt pretty great, until I saw the Derby Die. Why oh why? From the corner of my eye, the sparks they did fly. What, fireworks? I’ll go berserk, you jerks, nothing works! AEP is dogging me.

The cars they had stopped as the wires did pop, my stomach it dropped with a plop. There would be no more crash, metal mashed, nothing bashed. Can you believe this trash?

Alas with no power, I began to glower, in sweat I did shower, was this the final hour? My mood, it turned sour.

So like a bumpkin, I walked to find the pumpkin. Four-hundred pounds, it sat in a mound, surrounded all around by many more on the floor. I may be just paranoid, but did you test for a steroid? Cause I’d like to know how they made that one grow. World hunger could pass by, if we but made pumpkin pie, and all of these thoughts cause the Derby had Died.

Lumbering slow like a log sweating deep in a bog, I was lost in a fog when I stopped by the hogs. Not quite freed, yes indeed, they were beginning to feed, until one of them peed in his neighbor’s dish. How I wished not to view it, I almost just spewed it, at least it weren’t pig shit, but gross nonetheless. Teensy was unfazed, so bold and so brazed, with a look quite half-crazed; tipped the dish, quite delish, out of the way, in the hay.

I stood as if bound, should I leave the fairgrounds or just walk around, in vain listening for that rumbling sound? It just wasn’t right, that my favorite of nights, was ruined by lights none of which shone bright. I could tell that this slight made my friends want to fight to turn things 'round right, and put an end to this blight.

But alas I grew weary, and my eyes got all teary, my face became bleary as I cried. For the evening was done, the last race was run, and I had no fun, when the Derby Died.

A brief history of the “Dog Days” of summer and other vaguely related things:

As any of you who take the time to surf the internet are likely to know, there is a dearth of information out there for you to page through: Quite a bit of it is rubbish. Fortunately some of my best sources are rubbish and I (ahem) refuse to let that get in the way of a story. The following is a composite based on much of the nonsense I have read and perused over the years, and some other stuff I made up just because I felt like it.
The Dog Days get their names in our current culture by virtue of the Dog Star, Sirius, part of the Canis Majoris (Big Dog) constellation which can be found in the Alpha Centauri system, our closest celestial neighbor. Sirius, being the brightest star in the sky, aside from our own Sun (although in reality Sirius shines over 20 times brighter, it’s just 8.7 light years away), gets the distinction of being recognized this time of year because it is the one time of year when you can’t actually see it. You see, during the Dog Days, Sirius is what’s known as “in conjunction” with the Sun, which means to non-astronomer types that we “can’t see it.” Sirius rises and sets at the same time as the Sun, in the same part of the sky. Years ago folks believed that the joined forces of the two stars’ radiation created the hotter weather we usually experience during their days of travel together. We now know, of course, that their reasoning is hogwash. We know it to be hot because of the aliens.
Let’s dig deeper: The Dogon tribe of Mali has been around since at least 3200 B.C., dwelling in cliffs and farming the desert. They are believed to have come from Egypt, and by default can be assumed to have carried some of the Egyptian lore with them. Sirius was prominent to the Egyptians as the harbinger of summer and the flooding season of the Nile, as the conjunction occurred earlier in the year 5000 years ago, closer to June 25. For the Dogons, the Dog Star was close to the home of the Nommo, an amphibious race of hideous looking aliens that landed just north of the Dogon homeland, who told the Dogons all about Sirius and her Dark Star companion (I thought that might wake up the Deadheads in the audience).
Sirius A, as the Dog Star has been rechristened, apparently does have a Dark Star companion, affectionately known as Sirius B. Swags like Carl Sagan, who seems to take great pleasure in debunking anything ideas that anyone else comes up with, have posited that the Dogon learned all of their history of the universe from some western astronomer who just happened to be wandering in the deserts of Mali looking for a really good conversation. The Dogon, who at worst have a 400 year-old artifact that testifies to their version of the universe and knowledge of this star, claim to have known this for thousands of years, lessons they learned from the Nommo. In fact the Dogons had a heliocentric view of the universe long before Western scientists got busy being burned at the stake trying to convince the rest of us “enlightened” folks about it. Heliocentric means we spin around the sun, instead of the other way around, as was such a popular notion with so many other cultures. I bet they even thought the world was round!
Modern scientists first suspected the existence of Sirius B in 1844, first saw the star via telescope in 1862, and first photographed it in 1970. The Dogon knew the following about this star that could not be seen with the naked eye: its period of rotation is 50 years; they knew it to be very heavy; they knew it to rotate on its axis. In the 1930s, scientists figured out that Sirius B is a White Dwarf, an incredibly dense star of which a spoonful would weigh approximately five tons. But let’s get back to the aliens.
In numerous of ancient traditions, aside from your obligatory Great Flood myth, you also get a series of part human, part fish gods. The Chinese believe that their civilization was founded by an amphibious race. An entity named Fuxi had the head of a man and the body of a fish. The Philistines had Dagon (pretty close to Dogon!), also both man and fish; the Babylonians had had Oannes, who came from a “Great Egg,” and spent his days on land and his nights in the sea. Add to this the Nommos from the Dogon, similar to the Babylonian “repulsive ones,” who could live on land and sea, and I’ll say you have a pretty fishy package in your hands. Of course I can take it one step further: Jesus the Christ, whose secret symbol, the one the early Christians used to identify themselves to each other, was the fish, maybe you have one on your car. The Dogon similarly believe that the Nommo were saviors and spiritual guardians, and that “the Nommo divided his body among men to feed them,” and that “as the universe had ‘drunk of his body,’” so must men drink of his body. Also, the Nommo “was crucified and resurrected,” and would later visit the Earth in a “human form,” and then again return later to rule the Earth from the sea in “his amphibious form.”
So here I am, having just been given to read what very well may be a crackpot book on aliens and the JFK murder, and for my article this week I decide to dig into the Dog Days and run into the Nommos again, an alien race, and then I remember the dream I wrote about the other week, and I wonder If I should just quit while I’m ahead, lest I get a fitting for one of those cozy white jackets with all the buckles and really long sleeves. I dreamt about dolphins trying to inform me in about our common ancestry, and then here come the Nommo, part fish and part man, hinting to me what our common ancestor just may have been. Well it doesn’t take much more than a cup of coffee for me to start thinking I want “no mo” of the Nommo.
What am I getting at? Well, I’d say … more than a thousand words by now. I just wanted to talk about the weather without really talking about it, and it is always fun to bring aliens into anything; then I need to tie it back to this article somehow, which is really supposed to be about music, and lo and behold, I am almost there. So remember, as Jack Horkheimer likes to say, “Look to the skies!” And keep your nose out those conspiracy theory books! Okay you don’t have to. Email me, and I’ll recommend you some: junebug@circle5.org.

I had numerous dreams the other morning, but one of them struck me as being more than just a dream: I felt as though I was being told something very important, a lesson I was to learn, or message that needed to be heard. Only certain parts remain with me, but I'll try to relate them, for whatever reason.

I'm uncertain where the dream began -- they are funny like that -- but I remember that someone drove up to the farm with a huge water hauler in the back of his truck, suspiciously like the one my truck conspicuously bears, but in the tank was more than just water; this driver had dolphins.

I was horrified, yet I just happened to have a pond that I felt we could loose them in, while still wondering whether that was viable with salt-water creatures. Then I got a flash from one of the dolphins, telling me they would be OK in the pond for a while, and that they had come specifically to see me.

Into the pond we all went, except the driver of the truck. We swam around and the two dolphins - I guess there were only two of them - came up and nuzzled me and began their communications.

It seemed that they were representatives of their species, and these two had sought me out because they knew that I would be able to understand them. It was a telepathic communication, or at least somehow I understood all of their clicks and squeals and whistles, although, I more felt their voices in my mind than I understood their noises. They told me their history, which in fact was our history as well.

Many millennium ago we had been of the same species, but what would become humans migrated to the land, whereas what would become dolphins stayed in the sea. There had been a rift of some sort, a tribal spat, if you will. They viewed our move as a headstrong mistake and knew that it would eventually bring about their demise: apparently that time was at hand.

Speaking of hands, the male - they were a mated pair - put into my mind pictures that told the stories of our evolutions. He showed me the bones inside his flippers, which looked like the five fingers of a human hand, which is not just a dream invention, but also a verifiable truth. The whales, he informed me, were also relatives that stayed in the sea.

He told me that the sea was becoming uninhabitable, and that they were slowly dying. We were polluting the world to the point of their extinction, and ours, he informed me.

I held to them as they nuzzled me, their slick, smooth, rubbery skin wonderful to the touch, somehow intimate and alien at the same time. I was overcome with horror as they told their tale. The time for these two was short because they were too far from their natural habitat and they would soon die: I wept and mourned at what a horrible hand we had played. They needed to get back into the truck's water tank so they could be carried away to a better location where they might die peacefully, as the pond water was too warm and inhospitable for them. I guided them back into the tank, feeling dispirited, overwhelmed and helpless. What have we done to the world? What can I do? As they were trucked out of my driveway, I thought, "That's certainly no way to transport a dolphin."

I awoke, sort of. It was one of those nights where the dreams held me close to their bosom, and I was torn between staying and waking up.

Whew! Sorry about that bit of heaviness. Maybe someone can interpret that, although, upon reflection, it seems pretty obvious; it was fun to cuddle with dolphins, even if it was sad as well.

If there is one thing we do right as a species, it is music. Music translates across phyla, and as I get to play with my favorite band in the world this weekend, I will redouble my efforts to apply my music to heal these wounds we have created.

Responding to music is equally important. The vibrations of music unite us together, and if we share together in the positive vibes, real healing can take place. To dance to a band is the greatest gift you can give them. Give freely and often!

Today was a bit of a low energy day. I finished my article for the paper; dealt with mayhem surrounding the poster for our upcoming tour; and saw that there are some cool people from ohio out here. Hoping to make some friends soon. Wednesdays are always tough because we have so much fun at our Open Stage Tuesday night.