American-can.

Some one had recently asked me how living abroad for this extended period of time has changed how I felt about America and Americans in general. My recent 4th of July post kind of touched on this but the question got me thinking about this topic.

The simple answer is "No". That would be a bit disingenuous. What living abroad does is throw in to contrast the differences between "here" and "there". So, while I might not feel much different about my countrymen (and women) and the nation in general, why I feel the way I do is much more clear.

Things I have always disliked about America: populist anti-intellectualism dominating the national discussion; the vocal minority of fundamentalist Christians dictating policy for the rest of the nation through their political mouth pieces; the strangely erotic fascination with guns; capitalism being elevated to the position of a pseudo-religion; unmitigated consumerism being seen as a kind of social attainment; sexism, mysogony and homophobia paraded in the guise of religion.

I am a Zen Buddhist and do not adhere to the Judeo-Christian belief system. I do not believe in Yaweh or that Jesus of Nazareth rose from the grave. To me these and connected beliefs are just as much myths as stories of Hercules and Zeus. In America, I always felt a bit of unease being openly "not Christian". There was the constant threat of somebody ready to pounce and proselytize at the mere hint of a non-believer. Living in the UK, I do not feel that kind of hostility. I am very openly Buddhist and can engage in discussion about what that means with friends and strangers alike without worry that somebody will try to "save" me. Escaping this pressure is a great relief.

Part of the consumerist mentality of America is the desire to consume everything. This is most clearly demonstrated by the American love affair with huge slabs of meat. Being carnivorous goes hand-in-hand with his mindset because it represents devouring another being. The ultimate act of consumption. Being a vegeterian is not the easiest task in America - not in the act of livin this lifestyle but due to how people react to it. A great many of my countrymen (and women) react almost violently upon learning that my family is vegetarian. I understand this is due to the fact that we're challenging their mass consumption world view but man it's tiring always having to explain why I won't eat something that possessed sentience of any kind. The UK is very veggie friendly. A large percentage of the population is vegetarian. Everybody knows at least a few vegetarians and it is treated as a normal lifestyle option. It is very liberating not to be treated an oddball everytime you go out to eat and have strangers question the ethics of your eating habits.

To be continued . . .

Wave That Flag High And Dry!

The 4th of July has come and gone but my nostalgia for hot and sticky, acrid smoke filled American summer nights has not passed. This was the first Independence Day not in the US of A.

I have never considered myself all that patriotic. The sight of the American flag does do anything for me really. I don't get a lump in throat, get teary-eyed or reflect on the men and women who gave their lives to support it. It's just a flag to me. That's it. The Star Spangled Banner or God Bless America don't do much for me. One reminds me of baseball games and the other pictures of Kate Smith in old Time-Life books I used to look at as a kid.
If I feel any sort of nationalism at all its in regards to the American people. I know that my forebearers came from Scotland, Wales, Germany and Poland. I also don't give a damn. While I find Scotland and Wales to be incredibly beautiful, I didn't feel any kind of "home coming" when I arrived. They were just especially gorgeous spots on the planet. I trace my heritage back to America. That's where I was raised and its people is who I call my own. I always kind of shook my head at the various ethnic parades etc. that go on year round. They are usually fun but I feel they are kind of counter productive. What should be celebrated is our unity as an American people - "One People United". That said,I do enjoy the debates of diversity versus integration that is a hallmark of the American experience and should continue to be so throughout its history. It's that tension between these two pulls that keep the country vibrant and alive.

So, what was I nostalgic about yesterday? It sure wasn't here that awful "Proud to be an American" song that gets played to death at local firework displays and parades every 4th. Nor was it nationalistic speeches by politicians on TV. What I missed was sitting in a hot, sweaty mass of my fellow Americans looking skyward as fireworks explode and fill even the most cynical of us with childlike wonder. I missed cooking out with friends and family leading up to a backyard firework display. I miss dopey parades with little girls in their gymnastic uniforms doing cartwheels down the street and firemen tossing handfuls of candy to the screaming children lined up along the curbs.

I missed baseball, over cooked (veggie) burgers off the grill, playing horseshoes, children writing their names in the air with sparklers, marshmallows turned into torches, aluminum kegs of beer, weird salads and casseroles laid out at parties,the recognition that inspite of all of us being able to claim a different ethnic heritage that we are indeed one people.

I got none of that this 4th of July. All we had over here were memories. It was a nice night so we slept with the bedroom window opened. Sometime in the very early morning hours of the 5th of July, I was stirred from my sleep by what I could swear was the faintest hint of the acrid, sulfurous smell of fireworks. It smelt like my American dreams.

Proud announcement

I'm very pleased to announce (a bit late) that I have a short story published in the latest issue of Fish Fingers and Custard, an excellent Doctor Who "fanzine" that is available for download or old fashioned paper editions. Just follow the link and check it out. My story is called "Mexico-A-Go-Go" and involved the 11th Doctor, Amy and Rory having a run in with some Mexican luchadors. Check it out.

Anime Doctor Who

Super Awesomeness!


Why is this awesome? If you have to ask this then you need to catch up on a lot of pop culture history. I'll do my best to lay it out for you.
1. It's Doctor Who and Doctor Who is always cool. Always! Even during the Peter Davison years.
2. It's Jon Pertwee (the Third Doctor). Most people would have gone with Tom Baker or David Tennant, but the producers of this bit of mash up beauty chose the incredibly under rated and amazing Pertwee.
3. If the TARDIS landed in Tokyo it would have to be like this.
4. Venusian Akido!
5. Both the Delgado and Ainley Masters. The thing dreams are made of.
6. The Cybermen, Dalek and Sontaran designs are outstanding.
7. Sutkeh!!!!
8. Nicholas Courtney as The Brig.
9. Sailor Moon gets cyberized.
10. Davros.
I love Doctor Who. I love it like renaissance fair nerds love cod pieces and fat chicks showing off way too much sun burnt cleavage. I loves it I do!
Since I'm in the midst of viewing my first "live" season here in the UK, I think I will give a review of this season so far after tomorrow's mid-season finale. Until then I damn sure will be watching the above clip a few more times!

Stone Structure's Terrorist Watch List

1. Robert "Bob" Iger: President/CEO The Walter Disney Company (2005 - Present) and President of ABC Television Network (1993 - 1999)

Why is Mr. Iger on my terrorist watch list. Well, lets take a quick scroll through his CV shall we? He joined ABC (American Broadcasting Corporation) in the early 1970s, when he himself was fresh out of college. He worked his ways through the ranks to eventually grab the top spot at the network in 1989. His time at the helm of ABC should be enough to put him on any lis. He is one of the chief architects of the network's "TGIF" block of entertainment that went on to lower the IQ of the American people quicker than a marathon of every Wrestlemania ever.

(Real Stupid!)
What shows were produced on his watch as an executive and later Prez of ABC? Here is a highlight real of some of his biggest crimes: Coach, Family Matters ("Did I do that?" Yes, and we hate you for it!", Home Improvement, Just the Ten of Us, Step by Step, Anything But Love, The Jeff Foxworthy Show and Cop Rock. If that was not enough damage to the mankind's collective conscience, he also played a huge role in the creation and continued support of two of the worst pieces of crap to ever pour out of a television; Perfect Strangers and Full House.

(Stupid Beyond Comprehension)
Granted, the guy did have a moment of clarity and gave the greenlight to Twin Peaks, but that alone can not redeem him.

As if this list of atrocities were not enough for him, Iger expanded his scope. In 1996, Disney bought ABC and Iger fit perfectly in with the corporation's view that a million stupid, shitty programs and movies are infinitely better than any one piece of quality work. 2000 saw him move up the food chain to become President of The Walt Disney Company. His ascent continued with him becoming President and CEO, upon the retirement of Michael Eisner, in 2005.
Iger's love for shitty art designed to dumb down the population and turn them into consumer zombies now had unlimited resources to exploit.

Here are some of the cinematic nightmares he is responsible for: Snow Dogs, The Santa Clause 2, The Haunted Mansion, The Pacifier, The Santa Clause 3: The Escape Clause, G-Force and Old Dogs.

(In 15 years and our daughters are dressing like this camp skank fest- we know who to thank)

That's an awful list but the cinematic output of Disney is nothing compared to the wretched television programing/commercials they pour into our children's brains every day. Some of the worst: Hannah Montana, Jonas/Jonas LA, Wizards of Waverly Place, Sonny with a Chance, The Suite Life of Zack and Cody and Lizzie McQuire! Parents know this shit. They know how it is designed to suck the imagination and originality from our chidren's minds and replace it with a laugh track designed to make their shopping trips to buy Disney merchandise even that more special!

(Sick beyond words!)

To add insult to injury, this fucking guy oversaw the take over of Marvel Comics by Disney in 2010. Marvel used to be a hip, cool company that was proud of its lack of ties to corporate parent companies. It seemed to free them up in some of their story telling when it came to their big name characters. Betcha' dollars to donuts that's over. How soon til we get a pre-teen skewed sitcom about teenaged Wolverine and his cute as pie mutant pals' high school hijinx and efforts to form a rock band? Oh, I bet pretty soon.

For even making the above a possibility, Mr. Robert "Bob" Iger is one of the worst terrorist to attack our culture. I condemn him to a life time of only being allowed to watch the terrible programs he has put out! This does not even factor in the fact that he is the one responsible for the whole "Disney Princesses" attack on little girls' self-esteems. This is guy is a first class fiend of the highest order.

("Be a subservient, vain idiot girls and life will be a dream, tee-hee!)

Me and Osama B.

As I laid under the imaging device, my hospital gown wide open, a nurse holding my penis in her hand as she shaved me down and slathered my right inner thigh with cold iodine, the last thing in the world I wanted to discuss was Osama Bin Laden's death and the impact it would have on geo-politics. The nurse didn't seem to get that. So, she shaved and slathered away, jabbering on about Obama and Osama.
I was already in a pretty bad way. Having just had surgery for a right inguinal hernia three weeks back, and still rather sore from it, I had to come back to hospital for a second procedure to embolize the vein running from my left testicile into the spermatic cord due to it becoming a varicocele.
The operation required the doctor jabbing me really hard with a needle into my inner thigh, administering a local anaesthetic and then running a wire through my vascular system and down into my left testicle to check out the varicocele. He then placed a kind of gauze further up the vein to emoblize, thus basically starving the vein to death and causing it to stop squeezing my left nut like it was an anaconda.
This is already a kind of touchy issue, add on top of it the surgeon, the imaging specialist guy, two nurses, a cute teenaged student and some other dude that seemed to be there to observe all looking at my kit, it got really weird.
So, there I am, the Tuesday following Bin Laden's killing, spread out naked on an imaging table inside a freezing cold room as a bunch of strangers check out my crotch and woman shaves my pubes. I am pretty confused over how to act. I want to explain to the teenage girl that my penis is not ususually so shriveled up - that these things happen when it is freezing.You know, let her know I'm not to be pitied. I want the doctors to explain what is going on. I want to go back in time and lose about 20 pounds. I want the nurse to stop tickling me as she shaved off my pubic hair. I want her to then stop splashing that cold disinfectant stuff all over my crotch. What I don't want to do is talk about Osama Bin Laden. But that did not stop the lady from asking.


(He might have been a mass murdering meglomaniac, but he always smiled for the camera)

I had no idea how to respond. What was I supposed to say? They just assumed that I was bursting at the seams to talk about it because the news had been full of images of Americans celebrating Bin Laden being whacked. They must have been really jazzed to have a real life American to question about this. I think I let them down with my lack of enthusiasm.
"They should have captured him alive", was what I managed to get out. The looks on the nurses faces were like a kid when they pull socks and underwear from inside their Christmas stocking.

(Little known fact: Osama Bin Laden was a huge Kiss fan.)

Anywho, the procedure went well. They wheeled me into recovery and left me alone for a little while. I had a book on English history to read but before I picked it up I gave the death of Bin Laden a good think. Here I was, in a hospital in London, half a world away from where I was when the WTC went down. Half a world and an entire life time.
When 9/11 went down, I was recently finished with my exteded undergraduate stint at Indiana University Northwest. I spent my nights partying at the bungalow my brother and I rented and the mornings interviewing for jobs and substitute teaching. I was subing for a class of special needs students when the attack happened. The school principal ordered the school locked down, for some bizarre fear that Al-Qaeda would attack a middle school in Hobart, Indiana. I snuck out of the school and drove home.
I was conflicted. I hated the idea of war etc. but I was also filled with a deep desire to see vengeance wrought on our enemies. I spent the next few weeks rooting on our military as they pushed the Taliban back and was even considering entering the Army myself, since the job market took such a drastic dive after the attacks. I was strung out on a constantly rolling party, filled with the paranoia and patriotic jingoism flying through the media and barelling down towards an existential crisis. I began reading religious texts looking for some kind of guidance. I became a fan of C.S. Lewis for a moment in time and began to think of myself as a "Christian Socialist", the problem was that I didn't really believe in Christ or God for that matter. I was just wanting something to make sense and seem tangible.

I quickly got over this phase and instead began seeking the truth in action, mostly sex and drugs and booze kind of action. Eventually, that too quit being a rewarding spirtual endeavor. I was looking for something else. I sought it in love. I got married. It was good. It was almost what I was looking for but not quite. I was kind of half-baked and in turn made a half-baked husband. Ellen and I moved to China for a bit, she got pregnant and we returned to Northwest Indiana to have our child and start hacking out a future as a family. It was at this time that the Dharma came up and bit me on the ass. I had always read about Buddhism but as soon as I sat down to meditate with the Empty Circle Zen group in Hobart, Indiana, it was like I had finally come home.
Along with all of this was Bin Laden and the various attempts to catch him. He became a kind rambling boogie man, who snuck through the nation's dreams like a ghoul dragging a dialysis machine behind him. My desire to see America avenged died - burnt off in the flames of the Dharma and recognizing the damage violence has on the universe, no matter who is on the receiving end of it. I learned how to let go of my anger over things from my childhood etc. This in turn allowed me to let go of my anger over things like our national boogieman for the past decade.
Osama Bin Laden had to be made to account for his crimes. Killing him was wrong. Killing is always wrong. Maybe the guys that shot him had no choice, but it's a damned shame that they were put in a situation where they had no other choice.

(Things got tough for Osama towards the end.)

Ultimately, it was Osama Bin Laden's karma to be killed by American forces. He committed a heinous action against the nation and the counteraction was his eventual demise. But karma is not just a cosmic give and take. It is also a kind of energy that binds us through the influence we have on each other. Bin Laden has strong karma with the United States of America and its people. If it were not for his actions, I may not have had the emotional/psychological crisis that led to me opening myself up to marriage and then discovering the dharma for myself first hand, which I credit for saving my marriage and leading to my family's current life in London. So, in many ways, Osama Bin Laden has helped make me the man I am today - as he has done for millions of other people in the USA. So, while you go about celebrating the bullet that took out his lights, you should also reflect on what kind of impact he had on your life and see how you could be who you are without him and his actions. I'll bet you discover there is a lot of Bin Laden in your background. That's our people's karma with him.
All of this was running through my head as the anaesthetic wore off and the bleeping and blipping hospital sounds filled the air. My undercarriage was stained a dark orange from the iodine stuff, I had razor burn on my crotch, a tingling left ball and a chemical taste in my mouth. All I could think was that if it were not for Osama Bin Laden I would not be there.

Royal Wedding: Part 4.

A brief thing. I wrote a second article for The Northwest Indiana times covering the excitement for the wedding right up to the procession. It's not available online, so I'm putting up what I wrote here.

Kass Stone
Times Correspondent
London – The celebration of Prince William and Kate Middleton’s wedding has been building for weeks.
On Wednesday afternoon, the children of Plumstead Manor Nursery (located on London’s South East side) celebrated the royal nuptials with a wedding party in William and Kate’s honor. The little girls came dressed in their best princess dresses and the boys came bedecked in their finest suits. They made royalty themed arts and crafts, ate wedding cake, danced and waved their Union Jacks proudly in honor of the prince and new princess.
Plumstead Manor Nursery treasurer Jean Reader is a lifelong fan of the monarchy. In her late 70s, Reader was one of the hundreds of thousands of people that cheered Queen Elizabeth’s coronation procession in 1953. For her, the wedding and community events like the nursery party are important for British society.
“If you look around, there are a lot of different nationalities living here and this helps make it all gel,” said Reader. “After all, we do have a monarchy and we should celebrate it. We are here to wave the flag.”
Crown Point natives Chris and Lisa Westworth had planned to be amongst the throng of people cheering on the royal wedding procession. Their plans had to change when Lisa gave birth to their son, Cayden, several weeks early. They are now content to watch the ceremony from the comfort of their home in the West London neighborhood of Chiswick.
“I just like the fact that we live in London while everyone is so obsessed about this wedding and that one day we can tell our son that we lived here when King William and Queen Kate were married. It is kind of exciting,” said Lisa Westworth.
Amongst the carnival atmosphere of vendors and celebrants in Trafalgar Square early Friday morning, just outside the route the wedding procession will take from Buckingham Palace along The Mall to Westminster Abbey, were Canadians Amy Beckham and Brenda Hooton. The two traveled from their home in Niagra Falls, Ontario to celebrate the wedding in London.
“We’re here because I think there is so much bad news in the world and this is an opportunity to be happy and just have a good time,” said Beckham. “Besides, we share the royal family. She’s our queen too. She’s on our money too.”
On The Mall, seeking a place to witness the procession, were Mark Abella and Mandy Yoxall of Sydney, Australia.
“It’s our heritage. They’re our royal family too. It’s a once in a life time opportunity for us. We’re not going to get to experience this again, seeing a king married,” said Yoxall. “I mean, Prince Harry will probably get married, but he’s not going to be king.”