The Silence of the Muse

Too long friends, far too long. All of the posts below this one came to me in a sheer flash of thoughts colliding headlong into one another willy-nilly fashion. A veritable mish-mash of seemingly unrelated tidbits called into a strangely coherent whole were coaxed to another another inside my head as the muse sung the siren song of utterly worthless creativity. A shrill tune that only a few of us will ever find the beauty in, but to us it is the melody of misguided and completely misunderstood genius.

The reason for my long hiatus from Blogger's hallowed halls of angsty internet literature has been a breakdown in the very process described above. It was never a mechanism I could engage at will. Most know this as well as I; you cannot force creativity...but can come close whilst on the toilet when there is not a pen or pad to be found, or with copious amounts of ethanol wreaking havoc upon your better sensibilities one can achieve that enlightened status...only to lose it come morning. Well I have waited patiently for my muse to resume her song, both on the toilet and off, but she seems to have left another wretch abandoned. In desperation I even attempted an alcohol induced entreaty this Saturday past, but even in Columbus, the pantheon of Ohio creativity, amongst 98% of the gay population of that fabled town weary from PRIDE parading my single source of amusing inspiration was more contented by silence.

I can only assume this is thus because Sam has gone too long. The silence his absence creates is deafening. The roar fills the ears of my mind until even my sad and wholly unworthy attempts at satire are washed out. My choice is clear. Sam must come home or I must find a new horse to back, or more in tradition with my luck a battered and lame Shetland pony. Since Sam's facebook photos show a slew of arms length digi-photos, his shining pearly whites somehow improving Italy's magnificent vistas in the background, I assume the tale is all but yet to be told. He will not return and instead reduce a new continent to squabbling over who will ride his coattails and catch the afterglow of his limelight. I am left to trade Black Beauty for Mr. Ed's lesser known brother; Mr. Slinks the mighty lobotomized steed.

Perhaps I'll just adopt my current roommate Heather. A fine music educator who may yet cheer me with a plethora of ridiculously redundant jingles of famous composers of old. Sam may have Italy, but damnit I'll know how the Teletubbies would describe William Tell.

...I'll be the gay one.

And now for something completely different...

Birthday posts seem so requisite don't they? As though when signing up for blogs on any site or personal network-er of your choice be it Facebook, Myspace, or Twitter they have a little check box right next to the "Terms and Agreements" obligating you to post some sloppy hack of an introspective intellectual examination containing the full emotional rainbow. Though your life carries all the significance of a raindrop into the atlantic and your annual intellectual slop will be about as memorable as the winners of "Survivor" it is an unshakable tradition of we who boldly record our musings as though anyone really cared. So you light the candles and I'll start my annual slop slinging.

In reality the birthday itself was stolen by two individuals in particular. The first being the object of this very blog. Cheaper individuals would have authored under the wildly popular pseudonym "Hallmark" but my industrious, silver-tongued brother preferred to boldly write in the open. I have never been so complimented in trans-atlantic fashion before, nay I have never been so poetically celebrated at all. I may only hope that such nice things are said of me as they lower me six feet under.

The other birthday caper this year was my amazing girlfriend Autumn. Every man I know should be as lucky to have a woman so capable of balancing selfless giving and self-serving. It was in no uncertain terms a more satisfying day than I could have imagined and every minute was guided, facilitated, planned, paid, or suggested by her. I only await the day when she realizes that the perfect catch deserves far better a fool.

As for the past year? It was spent mostly in Sam's limelight, with a brief pause to stand in Autumn's limelight instead. As for the year to come? More limelight standing and coattail riding likely. I'll be happy so long as it's that warm, familiar Sam-glow.

Colonels and Gentleman

Anyone who knows me even moderately well should be well acquainted with my fascination in the human rights movement. If it were possible to hear all regular readers of this blog collectively roll their eyes, then I am deafened. Of course, I hear you thinking, your bleeding liberal heart is all but bled out Alex. I know and am only partly sorry for the hours of soapbox ranting and raving, mouth a'foamed, entreating all who are too glazed over and no longer listening to help me build a better world. Ah, but to be emperor but a while...I would have it all fixed tomorrow.

Well I wholeheartedly admit it. My heart is bleeding and I am positively bought in on the whole human rights ideological framework. To tell the blunt truth, I just wouldn't be a respectable politically savvy human rights advocate if I didn't have "the list." All of us who are contemplating a tattoo of the UN Declaration of Human Rights on our backs have a similar list. You don't want to be on our list because it is reserved for the worst of the worst. The scum of the world whom good leaders like George W. Bush and Joseph Stalin denounce from high upon their pulpits of moral excellence. "The List" starts pretty universally: Adolf Hitler...and then the rest are to the list-compiler's own personal persuasion. The names are usually the same: Pol Pot, Idi Amin, Robert Mugabe, Donald Rumsfeld, and that freaky clown in the dream from the Brave Little Toaster. The twentieth and twenty-first centuries' finest dictatorial selections, the names may be similar, only the ordering differs.

So perusing the headlines today I was, as always, attuned for any happenings or doings from any member of my own personal list. Today proved a fruitful day; a personal fave, Muammar Gaddafi, decided that he wanted to spend some of the oil money he's been rapidly accumulating since #4 on my list (Bush 44) on something to cool his desert parched mouth. What better treat to salve the sun-burnt tongue of a maniacal, ruthless, and falsely apologectic dictator's mouth than...gelato!!! And hell, why not get it from the source. A short call to Berlusconi who is in dire need of something to make him forget his football team's recent losses or a high-profile divorce and the artist formerly known as G-daffi was on a plane to Rome. To round out the perfect trip Gaddafi would make Berlusconi buy all the damned gelato Gaddafi could eat because that unfortunate jaunt Italy did in its poorly managed colonial days at Libya's expense is a debt as yet unpaid.

Bono Meets 4-Star General

Really? The man who is linked with Pan Am Flight 103, a violent represser of political opposition, a guy pretends to be Muslim as well as Simon Cowell would enjoy my rendition of Godspell tunes is being welcomed with open arms into the western world that so recently thought him a veritable despot? For shame, for shame...I was saddened and searched for a reason to explain this peculiar development.

All roads in my life lead back to Sam, and this proved no different. To be certain, the Colonel must have realized that even with improved relations that he was unlikely to be ever allowed into the U.S. to meet the most eminently charismatic Samuel...and besides DQ cones just aren't gelato. So once he heard the rumblings from Rome he seized the only chance he had to kiss the hand of a man with the voice of an angel.

It saddens me to think that my brother can stir even sleeping demons from their slumber while I strain and strut in vain as an armchair activist to bring about their demise. One vacation/study-abroad from my brother brings tyrants flocking and I can't do so much as get them to respond to e-mails (you hear that Wolfowitz?) My brother is not even trying and is successful, I'm killing myself and only diving into the deep end of the fail-pool. You've heard life isn't fair? Nor are brothers.

When that fateful meeting happens and Gaddafi looks deep into Sam's eyes while the first tears of redemption start to stream down his cheeks and he drops to his knees knowing that finally salvation will cleanse his soul...I hope Sam sings Yoko Ono.

I Have Been Wronged

I hate being cheated. I'm sure you do too. I'm sure if we put our heads together we can in a disturbingly detailed manner recount the last 8,309,347 we have been sleighted by someone or something. Furthermore, because we are so very self respecting I am sure it would be no trouble to remember in painstaking, unbiased reminiscence every single time in our lives that we were taken advantage of by someone who was far better off than we to begin with. Nothing feels quite so bad as getting taken for a ride by people who just have no good reason to. Desperation is one thing, but the rich picking on the poor because riding in the Bentley or eating sushi off of the dropouts of America's Next Top Model is so passé.

The pathetic thing is that examples veritably abound across the headlines these days. Just ask these guys...







Yes that's right you know each as the one that might have outdone his predecessor as history's greatest swindler. Men whose infamy is the only thing bigger than their fortunes or egos is their infamy. Men whose popularity is best measured in death threats received.

Perhaps these slimy sleight-of-handers can lend a bit of comfort to our miserty. I propose just because it sounds attractively phoenetic that all those moments whether past present or yet to occur in which you were positively cheated by someone's whose otherwise wealthy situation made it all the more egregious that they cheated you Madhoff Moments. But I contend the list is incomplete...may I propose one more addition to the list?





That's right, the pasta, sunshine, olive oil, and wish-we-were-still-an-empire capital of the world. I have been personally wronged by this great state and so have every regular reader of this blog. Whether you know it or not Sam's 21st birthday was on Monday, and it has taken me this long to stop being shattered by the depth of the injustice brought to my doorstep. I can count 16 boxes of Kleenex's on the floor...all empty and I have burned out my copy of the Fox and the Hound for I assumed that only they could understand the completeness of my depression.

So pardon me while I don my ethnocentric blinders, but where do you get off Italy? You've had my closest daily companion for near a month, but that wasn't enough? You had to steal him for his birthday as well? Wait a moment, not just any birthday (picture Lewis Black here) BUT HIS 21st BIRTHDAY!!!??? It isn't even a big damned deal in Napoli to turn 21. In America it's one of the few birthdays to interrupt an otherwise dull American existence otherwise only punctuated by the red light going on at Krispy Kreme, getting another excuse to call Obama a socialist/communist, apple pie you bought at Wal-Mart eaten at baseball game with your mom which ended in fireworks and your team won...or YOUR 21st BIRTHDAY!!! It's OUR first excuse to go get smashed (or if a UD student get smashed legally).

You, the thoroughly criminal nation of Italy, have precisely zero reasonable excuses for perpetrating this offense. You as an entire nation would now be looking up at every creep who ever kicked a puppy. No worthy explanation for making my entire 6/1/09 into 1440 Madhoff moments. Though approximately 50 of your number were immediately party to the crime, the blame rests with all of you for the sickening complicity it took to rob us of the chance to get Sam ridiculously drunk, hold his head up while he puked, and then make fun of him the next morning while recounting exploits he cannot recall.

No wonder Rome fell.

The Evil in Darwin

Dig back, for some of you way back, to the days of basic science class. You remember those classes that you likely spent 98% of staring at the girl/boy whom had so captivated your brimming hormonal lust? I want you to think of the other 2% of the time where you screwed up, or on those unfortunate occasions when Suzy or Javier were sick, and you actually paid attention. Though I am sure the memory is painfully tinged with disappointment at not having pleasantly distracting eye-candy, press through and remember with me. Do you remember how that science teacher how seemed to speak solely through their nasal passage droned on about early humans? How they seemed to just face and overcome whatever obstacle the natural world presented them? Do you recall that word they used to encompass so succinctly our seemingly inborn survival mechanism? No...I didn't think so, because you just remember having to sit next to the kid who was flatulent right? Fair enough then.

I do not mean to sound holier-than-thou however. I speak not from above you but with you. I did not remember either and had to go through exhaustive memory jogging and research to finally recall the word. The short story is: adaption is what we humans have long employed to conquest new and unexpected changes in our daily lives. We humans are quite simply homeostasis machines; when something changes outside we change inside to be able to thrive in the new atmosphere. We can change literally anything and often for the better.

Last night I lay in bed jogging tiredly through memory for the term from long-ago science classes when it occured to me the ways in which I had adapted in my brother's absence. Then it struck me that adaption was something like Darwin's ginormous twin-edged sword. Adaption it should seem can be for better or worse. You can adapt to thrive as would sensible people like for instance Jon and Kate Gosselin...adapt to having more children than all of Ethiopia by leasing your children's infancy to cable television. Or adapt like Dick Cheney by attempting to retain the fading limelight by standing on ever shakier podiums and looking like an ass.

I adapt on the Cheney model. Probably because I lack eight children to give life-long psychological trauma by age 3. Or more likely because like Cheney in the absence of something really terrific all I have left are podiums I create to remember what better times were like. In the history of bad trades Cheney and I are the top of the list. He traded a virtual presidency for sounding like a grumpy, jaded, near-criminal. I lost a brother and all I got was this hollow blog...you can slap that right on a t-shirt and give it to relatives you don't really care about. I read longingly as my younger womb-mate fills what tiny void my absence has created with Gelato and Rome's rich culture. I fill a canyon with blog posts and protein powder. The economist in me recognizes the emotional trade deficit only long enough to intiatie denial Bear Stearns style.

Perhaps Cheney and I should hang out. Maybe get to know one anothers similarities on some sort of retreat...or maybe a hunting trip. I hear he's a crack shot.

Today a glimmer of what can only be described as hope shattered the remorseless onslaught of depression threatening to consume my life whole. The source of my ray through the stormclouds is the man above, yes the dapper, charming, and gaffe-prone Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi. I cannot fault any reader for not springing as I did at the mention of his name towards the safety raft of hope that our Sam's return at the mere mention of Mr. Berlusconi's name for hopefully you all have lives away from BBC online news...without Sam I do not.

All springing from Berlusconi's gentle nudge homewards of a immigrant-laden vessel headed for Italian shores, a veritable foreign policy row has erupted in Europe and Italy is center stage. Yes 500 Libyans were returned home unwillingly by Berlusconi's government having attempted to flee sunny 'ole Libya for Italy, which has the added benefit of killer lasagna with sunshine. Americans are quite familiar with the public discourse that followed in short order: the Italian left grumbled that perhaps Italy ought to be more accepting of immigrants. Then Berlusconi did what perhaps only Americans well acquainted with the recently concluded Bush years would recognize; he said they were terrorists and had no legal rights and started...no wait that's the thesis talking. According to the Times Online Mr. Berlusconi commented that, "Italy was not and should not be a multi-ethnic society."

Maybe I have still left you scratching your head and pondering whether an intervention for my sake might be in order, but hold tight we're to the climax. The above shows old Chinese maxims to be true; nothing really does last forever. As charismatic as Sam is, if Berlusconi will stamp a boat full of poor, sick, puppy-dog-eyed, lasagna hungry Libyans with "return to sender" then I have no doubt that Sam's trip is running short on days. As his recent blog might suggest to you, there is very little mistaking a UD student, so try as he might to disguise himself he's one request for a highlander grogg or shirtless stroll to the nearest porch away from instant deportation.

A very special thanks to Silvio Berlusconi indeed.

Cell Phones Set To Silent

I received a call from Verizon Wireless earlier today. The friendly representative on the other end of the line inquired as to whether I might like to purchase a new cell phone to replace the one they had feared I had lost. I answered with a question of my own; why would Verizon think I had lost the cell phone? The answer faced me painfully with a loss I am ardently attempting to forget. The rapid and inexplicable decline in my phone calls and texts to a certain 937 number had all but ceased in a weeks time.

When Sam and I were apart physically we were never absent from one another totally thanks largely to the opportunity of sharing each others notable moments via cellular means. Any funny daily episode was sent to the other should he not have the fortune to be present for the moment itself. Any noteworthy occurrence, even a simple "...was think of you...", or "...I swear to god if [insert name] screws that aria one more time..." comprised approximately half of my monthly calls and fully 98% of my texting existence.

Oh without fail those first few days I learned the painful way. I would call and receive that ugliest of reponses...the voicemail. Texts were sent without response. My desperation grew and desperation quickly yielded to sad resignation. My only use now for my cell phone was a nightly conversation with an exhausted Autumn. Otherwise it sits idle.

I kindly told the Verizon lady that she could discontinue my service. I was going back to smoke signals and carrier-pigeons.

Today is a day which will live in infamy...

Dear friends and family I write this inaugural blog having come to a realization I fear you may have as well. My life is utterly lacking these past few days, perhaps yours has too. At first the absence was innocuous, harmless even, as though I had not gotten enough sleep. But as the days wore on and my collection of dull, monochromatic hours amassed like unwanted and ugly dust in a corner a slow dawning took hold of my forlorn mind.

Yes dear readers, my Sam was gone. Flown afar to foreign shores to spread his exuberant mirth in foreign tongues to newly made foreign friends. Of little else I may be certain than the sense that the fabled Italian peninsula has no concept of the strange force now roaming uninhibited through its capital. Similarly I can be certain without concept they cannot have appreciation as I do. It is by this justification that I must demand the immediate extradition of my brother...or a Italia Air flight to correct this egregious error of proximity between us.

My sense of loss is difficult to put into the limited expanses of words and I am sure I am not the only one. If he must be gone then we must band tight and remind him frequently that we miss him. And also that he's more than a little bit of an ass for cosmopolitan foreign study abroad choices while leaving us to jury-rig a patch for the gaping hole in our days, our lives, and our hearts.

I urge your comments to confirm your belief that the present state of affairs is ultimately untenable and must be corrected post-haste.