Warren Buffett once said, "I could end the deficit in 5 minutes," on CNBC. "You just pass a law that says that anytime there is a deficit of more than 3% of GDP, all sitting members of Congress are ineligible for re-election". The 26th amendment (granting the right to vote for 18 year-olds) took only three months ans eight days to be ratified! Why? Simple! The people demanded it. That was in 1971; before computers, e-mail, cell phones, etc. Of the 27 amendments to the Constitution, seven took a year or less to become the law of the land, all because of public pressure.

*Congressional Reform Act of 2011*

1. No Tenure / No Pension. A Congressman collects a salary while in office and receives no pay when they are out of office.

2. Congress (past, present & future) participates in Social Security. All funds in the Congressional retirement fund move to the Social Security system immediately. All future funds flow into the Social Security system, and Congress participates with the American people. It may not be used for any other purpose.

3. Congress can purchase their own retirement plan, just as all Americans do.

4. Congress will no longer vote themselves a pay raise. Congressional pay will rise by the lower of CPI or 3%.

5. Congress loses their current health care system and participates in the same health care system as the American people.

6. Congress must equally abide by all laws they impose on the American people.

7. All contracts with past and present Congressmen are void effective 1/1/12. The American people did not make this contract with Congressmen. Congressmen made all these contracts for themselves. Serving in Congress is an honor, not a career. The Founding Fathers envisioned citizen legislators, so ours should serve their term's), then go home and back to work.

"Disaster Porn"

A lot of people got shot this summer and since we’re not going to do anything about any of it – not even a token gesture with real impact – it’ll happen again soon. And everyone’s reactions will be exactly the same. So just imagine another shooter. Let’s say he’s got green hair this time and he hated working at Lobster Pot – it doesn’t matter. This is now the mass-shooting template for America:

► Day one: The shooting. The shock. The live coverage. Footage of crying people hugging and police in riot gear making their way through the building. Death tolls indicate the amount of coverage: Below five: it’s a one-day story. If it’s above five, it’s officially a national tragedy. Brian Williams is going to be there all week.

Both candidates release statements saying they’re shocked by this senseless tragedy and their hearts go out to the victims and their families and the community at large. They will rebuild.

► Day two: We find out who the gunman is. We’ll also find out it was easy for him to build a small arsenal. Interviews with neighbors former teachers, etc. Lots of shots of candles and teddy bears by a fence.

► Day three: We find out someone warned someone else about the gunman being a nut. The media asks, “Could more have been done?”

The NRA sends out a fundraising letter saying Obama will use this to come and take your guns.

► Day four: Here come the stories of heroism. They replace the stories of tragedy. You’ll hear the term “guardian angel.” A lot. Because viewers can only do tragedy for so long. They want to hear about someone taking a bullet for a loved one.

► Day five: Liberal columnists start pressing the gun issue. Conservative columnists respond by saying more people with guns could have shot the gunman earlier. Nobody changes their mind.

► Day six: President Obama tells us to search our souls. Which sounds better than “Really, stop asking me to do something about guns. It’s election season. And I don’t care.”

And we’re done.

Sketched

Everything's different now.

The desk is gone. The chair's moved out. The last of her clothes have been handed back to her. Long ago, the empty apartment, the empty passenger seat, the empty rooms, and the empty driveway. Stuffed animals, movie theater stubs, DVDs, recipes, rings and things.

It's strange. A part of me always felt like she was just on vacation. Like she was coming back. Like this was all just some alternative universe I was stuck in, still in queue to go back home.

But we're on our way now, both of us on the road to just becoming people we used to know.

I don't know how long we've been broken up for - I haven't exactly been counting. Some days it feels like it was last night. Others, like it was merely years ago.

Homo Evolutis.

How to tell if you're a religious asshole.

Blue's clues.

Me: "You broke my wing."

Her: "But wouldn't it be cool if I could have your arm?"

Me: "What?"

Her: "Just for like a day. Like switch our arms right now. If I could like, take your arm off and put it on me so I'd have this one really strong arm. And have it be your right arm. Because I'm right handed? And then I'd take it to school and if someone pisses me off, BOOM! Right in the face. Because I have your strong arm, you see. Just POW! Wouldn't that be fuckin' cool?"

Me: "...whaaaaat ...in the hell ...are you TALKING ABOUT!??"

*hysterical laughter ensues*

-HKR

Welcome To The Jungle

I had a dream during my brief, 90-minute slumber. I’m slowly recalling it, and it’s more and more strange as it comes to me in pieces.

A Vietnam setting. I was in the war, crawling in the mud through swamps. My troops and I come to a small muddy island, maybe 30 ft. x 8 ft.; long and narrow. The wierd thing is, my allies are donald duck-looking guys. Like, seriously, a bunch of Donald Ducks and Scrooge McDucks. They were all wearing army gear and all serious and everything; yelling, waving troops in, ducking, rolling, shooting into the forest, everything.

All of a sudden, these... cuban-looking guys (which is odd, considering this is supposedly Vietnam) jump on my back and grab my hair and lift my head up. The other one jumps in front of me and looks me in the face and brandishes a machette. And then he smiled and grabbed the back of my neck as he sliced my throat.

The Rembrandts

After an interesting week, I suddenly have a flood of people swearing they're my friends - and always have been. To each of them I politely nodded in quiet acknowledgement, shrugged, and mustered my best, "All right." This isn't to say I felt they were lying. I'm sure they genuinely believed their words. But the truth is, what they consider "being a friend", I consider "being a mere acquaintance". Friends aren't people you have to chase down and tackle just to share what's only now barely appropriate. Friends are people who find out what's wrong alongside you because they're willingly a part of your life every day. They call. Or come over. Or offer lunch. They're just there. Constantly.

But as we get older, finding friends like that becomes virtually impossible. From your mid-20s and beyond, you have to concentrate on your life and work on becoming the person you're meant to become. Unfortunately, the side effect of that is that you have no time or energy to actively deal with other people's problems. In fact, many times, someone else's problem is your gain, and you're taught to use that advantage to improve your own situation in life. So misery is actually a good thing, provided you're sidestepping that landmine and ensuring others take the fall. Thinning the herd, so to speak.

My point is, the type of friendship that would genuinely benefit me right now can't really be provided by anyone anymore. And that's no one's fault. That's the simple evolution of life. You grow up, be your own person, everyone else be damned, and only after you're successful do you circle back and check how everyone else is. Usually to stand and compare at the finish line.

It's this race of life that put me in the predicament that I'm currently in: Somewhere around 6th or 7th grade I stopped caring about coming in first place and started caring more about what people thought about me. Chalk that up to abuse at home, skipping grades, losing friends, genetic faults, whatever you want. The fact remains that I was never rewarded for intellectual or academic superiority; only punished for not behaving properly or bullied for not being likable enough. The true consequences in my life occurred based on my lack of personality and charm, not grades and rubric scores. So I adapted. I went for the funny. I watched Saturday Night Live, In Living Color, MadTV, Friends and other movies that had characters everyone at school enjoyed and laughed at. I did impressions, accents, jokes, skits, dances, and even miming through the windows for my classmates when the teacher made me stand outside for misbehaving in class. I may have plummeted from Principal's Honor Roll to pasting Ds and Fs across the board (always As in PhysEd, though), but I was popular. Everyone knew me, everyone wanted to be my friend, and girls liked being in my groups. Along the way I was voted "Funniest" three years in a row. I figured my home was a nightmare regardless of my scholastic progress, so I might as well have fun at school. I never skipped classes, never ditched, never intentionally acted sick to miss a day. School was my sanctuary. I couldn't be touched or hurt there, and I was surrounded by hundreds of friends who adored me and I adored in return.

This strategy obviously doesn't translate very well by the time you're 30. The world wants documentation and papers and citations and numbers proving your worth, to which I have none. And friends don't have all summer to hang out anymore. Everyone has a career they're hammering away on, children they're trying to juggle, and a husband, wife or a divorce they're tolerating/smothering with love. "Hanging out with friends" is, at best, 4th or 5th on the list of priorities. At worst, it's deemed a waste of precious time.

You're going to lose friends. Period. The longer you live, the more friends you're going to lose. Because the more time people spend existing, the more opportunities life presents them with ways to differ from each other. When you're in elementary school, everyone's on the same page: Dogs bark, cats and cute, and glitter is edible. In middle school, physicality starts bubbling to the surface, and the athletes separate themselves from the intellectuals, and vice versa. In high school, those subgroups are fragmented even more by music and after-school life, with surfers, skaters, jocks, nerds, goths, hipsters, band kids, theater groups, and so on. By the time college comes around, politics and religion have entered into the mainstream of the young consciousness, further splitting everyone into smaller and smaller groups.

This is why we all played "Duck-Duck-Goose" in groups of forty in 2nd grade but now discuss global economic policies with a only like-minded friend or two in a coffee shop.

So relationships become the primary source of emotional, physical - and sometimes mental - equilibrium. We start craving for a connection with someone else on our astronomically specific level of personality combinations. As previously pointed out, friends simply don't have the time or resources to truly understand or care about you or your problems in depth. But that one right person does. Call it love if you want (or don't), but that spark is the highly saturated remains of a desire that no longer gets fulfilled by spending time with dozens of friends every day. There's a reason friendships become more important as you get older: There's less of them. But the same need for them exists. And when no true friends are possible, the intensity for a meaningful connection magnifies And that's why finding someone you click with feels so mind-blowing, amazing, scary and overwhelming at times. They're essentially every friend you've had/needed in one being.

I appreciate the friends I have now and all the reaching out they've done. I won't use names, but there have been a few pleasant surprises. But I also know that if I don't initiate texts or calls or speak to them, they won't text, call or speak to me back. Which, again, is 100% normal and can't be criticized. We'll see who cares enough to stick with me this time around.

I'm done helping people at the sacrifice of myself. I've been burned over and over and over again, and if I'm being honest, it's my fault. I've been forcing my naive 7th grade mentality on the world, believing that just getting people to like you is enough, and that trust is a default setting. But the adult world is cynical, negative, and needs an ass-kicking. And I'm tired of being nice. I've given up on having good friends.

But friends or no friends, all I want is my one connection.

So I have someone to share my world-stomping with.

-HKR

Red Flags.

I can't help but feel I'm being lied to. Fooled. Kept pushed arms-length away from a truth. There are things at play that I'm not being told about, but my instincts and deductive reasoning keep me just informed enough to stay irritated. There's something going on, and I really don't like it.

I don't like being lied to, I don't like being forgotten, and I really don't like being used.

I feel all three are happening right now.

But I'll stay quiet. And keep reading between the lines of silence.

But I have a terrible, terrible feeling.

Cat vs. Homework

The Endth Degree

"Is going to college still even worth it? College grads are coming out with degrees, yes – and herpes – but also with student loan debt totaling $60,000, $80,000, $100,00. These kids haven’t even gotten started in their careers and they’re already saddled with what’s tantamount to a full mortgage. In this shitty economy, graduates find themselves back in their old bedrooms at their parents’ homes, taking jobs in the service industry that they could have gotten without a college degree.

"The cost of higher education in the US has soared in recent decades while median incomes have stagnated. The California State University schools raised their tuition for the second time in less than a year, making this year’s tuition over 23% higher than the previous fall’s. And those are just the most recent increases. Attending a Cal State school now costs twice what it cost just back in 2007. And that’s not even counting the price of weed.

"The old canard is that people with bachelor’s degrees make twice as much as high school graduates over their careers. But average starting salaries for college graduates just fell 10% and, if you take into account the higher income taxes paid by college grads and the four to six years they spend out of the job market getting their degrees, is that $60,000 to $100,000 in college loan debt really worth it?

"And is the degree really worth it? A new comprehensive study of college grading over the decades finds that just about everybody who pays their tuition bills is deemed exceptional. 43% of letter grades awarded today are A’s as compared to just 15% back in 1960. By 2008, A’s and B’s represented 73% of all grades awarded at public colleges and 86% of all grades awarded at private colleges. It’s Lake Wobegon,  'Where all the children are above average.' And that’s in spite of studies that show college students spend far less time studying today than they did decades ago.

"If everybody is a genius, aren’t you paying $100,000 to $150,000 just to get your ticket stamped? You’re not buying an education so much as you’re buying a degree with a commendable GPA. Has the college degree with a B average become just a consumer product you can buy with a $100,000 loan? Wouldn’t a bright, industrious kid be better off in this economy to just jump into the job market and try to excel through merit?"

- Bill Maher

Screaming Insecurities

"You always help everyone else but you never let anyone help you."

Dear God, the amount of times I've heard that in my life. It's right up there with, "He has the smarts, he just doesn't apply himself!", "You were right," and, "Santa hates you." And while the latter three only mildly bug me due to the only possible reaction being a smirk and a shrug, the You-Never-Open-Up lecture has always lingered around in my mind with each new person that says it as I add them to my collection of arms-length "friends".

What caused this? I dunno. I'm fairly certain there's no singular catalyst. It's not like Bruce Wayne where the reason he became Batman was (1) the death of his parents and (2) see number 1. If you dig around my past enough you could chalk it up to abuse, neglect, stress, abandonment, and a host of other after-school special plot lines. And I'm sure they'd all be valid to a degree and could be easily snapped into place in my psyche's history.

But why do I still do it? That's a more complicated subject. It's not as if I'm immune to loneliness. I go through that every night. I don't fall asleep next to someone, which is a big thing for me. Even going back to college constantly reminds me of how out of the loop I've become. Put it this way: I went through high school before Google or cell phones. In fact, the only thing the internet was good for was AOL instant messaging... mainly because there were no cell phones. So there's a very intense gap between me and most kids there. The internet jump-started a mini-generation that I was at the beginning of, but now anyone even 3+ years younger than me reveals a stark contrast in culture. Even when I'm around colleagues at work, there's still a disconnect, because after we're done at the studio, I head home and they go out without me because I don't drink - not socially, anyway. And there's no comfort at home (sans my guitars) which would normally be enough to temper the sting of solitude if the songs and sounds that come to my fingers didn't amplify the situation.

"Then sing happy songs!" 

That's like telling someone who stepped on a landmine to "walk it off."

Shut up.

Getting Close.

...and a Happy New Year.

Walking out of church, Greg asks if he can be driven to his car at the other parking lot. My father nods and through the crowd of people breathing steam under a chilly night, we find our car. A few slow minutes and a gradual turn or two, we arrive at my brothers spot. I tell my family I'll ride with Greg to my great grandmother's house and I'll see them in a few. They wave me off.

On a whim, my brother decides he's hungry and asks if we can stop to get some pizza before we get there. We pull into a Papa Johns and order a special for $13.50. Ten minutes later, I'm ducking into his 2001 Mitsubishi Mirage with a hot box of pizza in my lap. We share a few jokes back and forth, laughing with our heads thrown back and elbowing each other's shoulders on each punchline.

Our cell phones both buzz simultaneously. The intersection's red so we pull them out and check. It's from my little sister, Lindsey. "Get here right now!" it reads. Greg and I smile at each other at my sister's technological ingenuity and continue on down the dark highway telling jokes and discussing our fantasy basketball league.

My phone rings. It's Lindsey again.

"Neil, can you please get here right now?"

"Why, what's up?"

"Um, everybody is fighting."

Rolling my eyes, "God, about what."

"I don't know. Shelby and grandma were yelling and then they were pushing and stuff and then grandpa was there and Jerry started hitting everyone and now grandpa's bleeding."

"WHAT!??!"

"They're inside yelling right now."

"Is mom there?"

"She's in there yelling, too."

"Stay outside!"

I tell Greg to drive.

I swing the car door open and jump onto the curb before Greg can come to a complete stop. Running across the street, I shove my sleeves up. I can hear the yelling from inside already. I jump the porch railing. The front door is half open and I hear heavy objects being knocked over from inside. I shoulder the door hard and dash into the living room. And there's Jerry, my 38 year old cousin, smiling and looking down at my grandfather on the floor while my mother stands between them. My grandma is on the floor in the kitchen holding her knee. As the front door i hit slams the wall behind it, everyone looks back at me. I ask what the fuck is going on and point at Jerry. He looks at me and jumps behind the lounge chair. My mother, Donna, Shelby and Debbie run in front of me to stop me from charging Jerry but I moved them aside. My great grandmother, June, yells my name and tells me to just stay put. Jerry stands up, pulls his long hair back behind his head and runs down the hallway to his room. Donna keeps yelling, "You don't know what happened! Stay out of this!" I tell her to fuck off because I see my 67 year old grandfather bleeding and her drug-addict, ex-convict, on-parole son looking down and grinning at him. My brother walks inside and grabs my arm telling me to just hold on because it won't help doing something to Jerry. I yell down the hall to stop being a coward and to come out of his room to pick on someone his own size and age. Only dark silence. So after a minute of my brother and over 800 lbs. of people holding me back, Donna screams at my grandmother, walks away and shuts her bedroom door. I tell them to tell me what happened.

My aunt Shelby and grandma (her sister) haven't gotten along for years now, half over money, half over two sisters getting old. To the point where they visit their mother (my grandmother) in shifts for the holidays. Well this year, Shelby stayed longer than usual and was still there with her kids Chris and Debbie long after 7pm, which is when my grandmother visits. So as my grandma arrived, Shelby and her kids pass them as they leave, ans my grandma wishes them a Merry Christmas. They all turn their heads and say nothing. My grandma again says Merry Christmas as they pass her. Again, nothing. Then she says, "I guess that's typical Rohmehild now." The son, Chris, snaps back, "You know what Judy, kiss my ass." So an argument ensues, and Donna (the other sister), comes over and starts yelling at my grandma. They have a yelling match, and Donna pushes my grandma, knocking her to the ground. My mom steps between them and my grandma stands herself up and slaps Donna over my moms shoulder. Donna stats kicking and targeting my grandma's bad knee. This is when my grandfather walks in and steps in between them with my mom. Donna's son, Jerry, hears everything and runs out into the kitchen screaming at my grandfather to stop hitting his mom. My mom tells him he's not hitting anyone. This doesn't stop Jerry from running around the house to the other side of the house and starting sucker punching my grandfather in the head from behind. The blood was all over his shirt and kitchen floor.

And that's when I came in.

All too late.

After a call to the police is made, everyone decides to leave and go to their homes before they arrive. My grandfather returns from Emergency Care an hour later with nine stitches in his ear and gauze and padding wrapped around his head. My grandmother's knee is swollen and can't walk. My mom's $400 glasses were crushed in the scrimmage.

And I can't help but wonder why in the hell I wasn't there to help stop this. My dad? We was at home making a dish for the dinner that night. Like my brother said later that night, they should let me take care of Jerry since no one else can/will.

What was the purpose of leaving me out of that? If I was there it would have stopped long before it got that far. Five women over 50 can't stop a fight, let alone a crack head 38 year old.

I feel so angry. And helpless. And more than anything, sad.

This is my family?

The hero speaks.

4:29 and 39:55. 

"They saved their own life."