the security of society.... the net under our fall...

I have been thinking a lot about social security for years. Not in terms of the debate now raging, though. I have been thinking about how to get social security insurance, SSI. Why? Life hit me in the back with a sledgehammer when I was five, and I've spent a good deal of my existence too sick to work. Sometimes paralyzed, s in too much pain to walk for almost a year, and now... When my spine is too broken up and scarred for medical science to do much more than try to make me comfortable. When my condition became worse six years ago, I found myself suddenly penniless without any hope of getting back to work.

Social security became the only option I had to maintain my independence.... Without it, I would be in some sort of home.... There would be no shows, no blog, no paintings and drawings. I would be too preoccupied with just keeping my stomach fed to care for the finer nuances of life. I would probably be a wino, I suppose? Who knows? I don't even like to go there. In other countries I would be even worse off, starving slowly to death in the streets of some slum with open sewage.

Here in America though, we have a safety net that is supposed to catch people like me. This is social security. Right now, a lot of people are acting like because social security is good, that any changes in this organization are bad. Well, that's not very good logic. Like most people, I have grave reservations about Bush, but that hardly means that he can't do anything right. Social Security does need changes, and he should be applauded for bringing this 'vote killing' topic into the national debate.

I am wary of anything that assumes people know what they are doing, or will do the right thing all the time. Let alone save money. I live in a crew of folk where few of us can save a dime. We struggle every month. And most people are like me, not like those who can save. Not being able to save money due to medical bills or being an obsessive artist or whatever is not a crime. Never should be. It will become so if people are individually in charge of their retirement savings. This simply is not fair. To those who do have enough income to save, it seems fair of course. They don't know why they should help any one who they don't want to.

What folly. Let them have my spine for a year and see how they feel. I doubt this logic could hold up to any serious argument.

The other matter in this debate, though, is how the money that is in social security is being used. It is invested in safe, yet very low yielding bonds or something. They make like 1% on the money. Now, obviously, this money could probably earn more in the stock market... Especially if the best minds in the economic sector were put together. Okay?

The other matter is letting young people have some of their money back to invest as they will, in some limited way. If the further investing of social security can lessen the burden these young people have to put up to insure the retired are living with dignity, then I see nothing wrong with that. However, what are we going to do with the others, the ones who are not knowledgeable or brainy enough to invest correctly? Do we let them die in the streets?

That won't happen. We will as a society have to get together and help them. In some way. There will always be taxes, and people will always pony up a little bit for the underdog. We are noble apes, after all....

So, my attitude is 'wait and see.' Not that you should give a damn what I think, of course.... You have to do all that 'thinking' stuff for yourself.

JUST A JOURNAL...

ONCE more I am writing down a night just so I can remember what it was like before time sentences me to an old folks home and I become an old mush eating mumbler who seems a little off to the nurses. I see myself sitting at my computer with a stuffed cat on my lap (won't be able to have real ones in the over-populated nursing homes to come, which should get fairly hellish after the population doubles in 2025, which is about the time the entire world looks like it going to hell faster than anyone could have imagined except for a sick few like me and the ENTIRE FUCKING SCIENTIFIC COMMUNITY and A few of the more brave and sane INTELLECTUALs).

Yes, I want this little history just for me, so if it bores you... well, go read something else, fool....



Early night darkens a cold, snowy Chicago. I stay home writing and drawing all day. M. Comes home at six thirty with Chicago style hot dog's -- Vienna beefs covered in unions, sweet relish, tomato, lettuce, celery salt, catsup and mustard: all the ingredients of a delicacy that this city considers itself light years ahead of the rest of the world; there is no better hot dog than Vienna Beef, and since they are here in town, every little grill on the corner has to serve them or no one will go there; these heavenly weiners'come with fries for two bucks at a grill right by the Jarvis El train stop.

We down the dogs and we head out to make copies of a new flyer I made for our literary reading. We go down to internet cafe, the quest, 7200 north Sheridan, who give me free computer time to plug them whenever I can, and make copies of a rather demented little poster I put together. I drew a man on the end of a pier that disappears back behind him into a city which is surrounded by a lake and hills. In the sky I drew kind of dramatic clouds. I used a cartoon balloon to have this bald, bearded, pensive looking man with a half circle cut out of his abdomen on his left side saying, "I say we stay in Afghanistan and Iraq until we have kicked prescientificaheadinthe assuages ass. This will require hamsters, and my mailbox isn't exactly full of them. Send me hamsters, dammit, I am losing valuable boot camp time!!!!"

I pasted type of various sorts over the clouds, making clear the time and other details. When I copied it, I allowed the spiral end of my drawing pad to show, so it looked like a drawing pad with this pencil drawing and words. It framed the figure nicely.

Once we had the flyers, we went down to the Big Star to watch a show called... latta' queers, or queer latta, or something.... I will have to ask m. It was some variation on queer and latta's (I have no idea how to spell this coffee drink). Anyways, this was interesting to see.

The issues in the songs were all geared toward being gay, which is something one doesn't hear on radio. I think my favorite though was one that transcended any genre's, a song that asked how to kill an old love? Then went on to contemplate shooting it, poisoning it, etc... A foot stomping guitar beat made the song quite a romp, really. The man who ran the reading, who is also named Scott, also performed and was cool, too, of course. He started out with a song about love that made me happy to be in love, which is more than most of them do for me.

I am a bit more nihilistic in my tastes of music, preferring the IF I HAD A ROCKET LAUNCHER, SOMEBODY WOULD PAY kind of messages over the basically positive undercurrents of the song writers who performed tonight. At least, I say this based on my very limited knowledge of their work and music in general for that matter. M. Has much better taste than me, and she enjoyed herself (she is always introducing me to some cool band).

We passed out our flyers after the show was over and told the performers and just about everyone in the audience that they were welcome to come down on Friday for our show. I think some of them will. We are also advertising in a hip free newspaper here in town, the reader, which is where you look to plan any outing in this city. They have the definitive want ads, etc... A cool paper that has a cool site on line, thechicagoreader.com.

And how is that for a boring report of a night of gay song writers singing? I guess they usually get more people than they had tonight, but the crowd was big enough to almost fill up the big star.

I haven't performed in like six weeks, so I am trying to do a bit more preparation than usual. Since I am not writing any new comedy, it makes it easy for me to decide what to read. The George Bush stuff hasn't been read yet, so I am going to gather all of that together and read him. I tend to use the same old southern voice, kind of a red neck, inbred Christian with delusions of grandeur, but I think I am going to nuance the Bush a bit more, try to actually sound like him. We'll see. I'm not exactly a trained actor, but if I am going to loud all this material into a one man show, I need to start developing characters. I want to do a president who is a megalomaniac, drunk on power and whisky, and just a bit dim. A spoiled rich boy who talks to god in a crazy, I am so damned blessed' way. I am hardly even making a comment on the actual president with the character. In fact, I would consider it a waste to just write about him, because there are lots of people like him, and they are a sick cultural pit in our world, and people need to recognize these fucking self-rightous vampires.... which is what a lot of politicians are. I want to use him as a metaphor for materialism, infantile behavior, deluded goddy-talk, and the entire kind of calvanistic view of life that says some are blessed and some are not. Bush obviously thinks he is blessed. How hard is that for a rich boy whose dad was president? But he forgets that people do not get what they deserve, they get what they get by factors much more complex than their silly little ghost stories.

It's funny, when I write entries like this one, I know that later on I will find them too boring to keep in my blog....


Oh, well... there was some good news. Bush has the lowest approval rating of any modern president. I just wish it was for a better reason than the war, which regardless of their not actually catching the iraqi's trying to fire off some nukes, is a grim yet noble affair. I mean, they are trying to free people . . . I think we should be fighting in Sudan, too.... . where they have once more decided there is no genocide, since to say that there is one would prompt international law to require various nations to offer aide. I think it is very difficult to take bush seriously when he won't stop the slaughter there. We need a president who will use soldiers like a democracy should -- to make the world safe for self rule by the people for the people. But, what we what and what we will get are as two different matters altogether.... Sorry to start this paragraph saying there was some good news and then end up here, staring down into the acidic holes in my gut.


Have a day that goes very, very badly, and then suddenly gets better, then goes bad again, becoming so shitty that you shoot yourself in the arm just to have something else to think about. . . and then you find out that what you were worrying about was no big thing at all, but it's too late because you have already lost too much blood to live. (This should be a greeting card of some sort).









-----------------------------------------------all work here is the sole property of John Scott Ridgway, Chicago Illinois, host of the elves attic reading, every Friday night at the Big Star Cafe.