New Year's Friggin' Eve

I almost did something today: I almost cut my hair. [Cue CSNY.] But then I looked once more in the mirror and my haywire head of grey, tan, brown and blonde (actually white) threads and I talked myself out of it. [Maybe documented below if I have the “baytsim” to post a selfie and actually leave it up.]

Why? Because I despair New Year’s Eve.

Every year, every friggin’ year, I crawl to this last day, exhausted and over hangovers. I despair every toast of champagne, every resolution made and broken, every… every hangover… I just hate the day. Why again? Because of the resolutions – resolutions that become expectations; expectations that are anticipated (kind of redundant); anticipation that becomes waiting. And I’m not a fan of waiting.

I stood at the window a lot as a child, waiting. Waiting and steaming up the glass with my rapid breathing. Waiting for my mother to return from a date. Waiting for my father to pick me up for the weekend. Waiting to wait later.

Hence, I waited a lot as a kid. I waited myself into an ulcer at age 13. I waited through high school for things to improve; I waited through college to realize myself into an existence. I waited through my 20s, trying everything – sculpting, painting, house painting, construction, writing, copy-editing, editing, then grad school in Creative Writing, Grad School in Philosophy, cater-waiting, bartending, theater lights hanging, set building, head banging, grammar school teaching, high school teaching, college teaching, acting,… – waiting for me to figure it out, reaching the 31st of December and realizing I hadn’t, and then hoping for an improved new year with the making of an unrealistic resolution that only lead to disappointment.

Then, on February 23, 2002  – as Maria, in labor for almost an entire day, full of more tenacity in each push than the sum total of my entire life’s determination, leaned into herself one last time  – I mostly gave up waiting.

And on February 23, 2002 I wanted to reverse the waiting. And now I’m 45, my daughter nears 14, and I would do anything to get all that waiting, all that hoping and anticipating, back.

Fuck New Years Eve. Screw New Year’s Day. Piss on the resolutions. Suck on the expectations. Shit on the… waiting. The drinking, the celebrating – toss it all. Treat New Year’s Day like any other. It’ll be such a relief. It is for me.

That’s why I didn’t cut my hair.

But I might cut my hair tomorrow, if Aleda will allow it. She likes making fun of my mop and bouncing my curls. I’m not sure I want to take that away from her.

[“Beytsim”? If the pic is here, I have ‘em.]

On Why the Next President Needs to Be a Woman, 12/23/15

I’m trying to explain men.

Sons never really know their fathers. I do not make this statement in order to imply that daughters know more about their fathers than sons [although I hope MY daughter does], but sons have more of a need to figure their fathers out, to wear their manly abandon, and to compare the size of their... Seriously, it doesn’t need to be written.

Daughters are spared these comparisons by the sheer luck of design.

The history of not knowing one’s father, really knowing one’s father, leads to the present condition of being a father unknown by his son. It’s the paternal cycle of partially developed humans, x and y, unsearching [sic], vocally remedial, and emotionally stunted. Nary one father is excused from this paradigm be he a president, a prime minister, a king, a cowboy, a coroner, a lout, dolt, pun or professor – they’re men, part human, retching human, cold and cylindrical, and part ghost. I know them. I know how they look at the world and how easily they can retreat into the cave of their ideals.

What would a man’s chances be if he were, in fact, fully developed and he imparted unto his sons a sense of earnest self-awareness that produced truth? What if a father weren’t necessarily a “man”? The outcome: a divine remedy, a midnight stroke of genius, a weightless baton suspended in the air of a rising beat… or simply, a very relevant cliché – a cliché I can live with: a Man.

But who’s to blame for the father’s failure? Did the caveman patriarch find the threatening gaping maw of the sabertooth to be more inspiring than his newborn cripple of a son wailing in the colic of his doomed humanity? Instead of using the helpless infant as bait for the threatening, buck-toothed feline, he could’ve roasted the prattling little chap with his newfound fire; but no, he dragged the child through the muddy fields to the beast’s lair as a sacrifice of sorts. Or, perhaps, like mighty Zeus, the father swallowed the leaden small fry whole.  

Barump!

That was no stone.

           

The enduring history of men is that of violence and from whence it starts, the chest-beating thunders through the generations.

           

Was Cain a victim of violence and did he then transfer his anger unto his brother? And what if Abraham went through with it? Was he not nearly psychotic or devoted to his schizophrenia? And how about all those prophets and the voices in their heads – shattered, dysfunctional, dissociative, preening egomaniacs all? Good role models? Christ. Mary, wide-eyed in the dream and clawing at the twitching, glowing face of her rapist, endeavors to keep the truth from her husband and then nursing son. Is it the fabrication of her supreme dramady that spares her a good, old-fashioned stoning? And what of poor Jesus? He was almost human and certainly tried to get it right; but it was those who followed that stripped him of his nearing the truth, including his own sons. How many people killed in his name? Millions? Billions? Millions of men killing billions?

And who burned all of the books?

           

This is a father’s virulent legacy unto his son – a history of silence, of violence, of beer bellies and balding pates.

           

[And this is why we need a woman for president.]

Letter to Senator Ted Cruz to Commemorate his Birthday Today, 12/22/15

Dear Senator Ted Cruz,

It’s your birthday today! I hear that you’re spending the evening sucking up all of “Dump Truck” Trump’s exhaust. Well done, Church Lady in drag. (Get it?)

Between your gun bacon, furrowed brow, and violence inspiring rhetoric, you’ve almost reached the Cliffs of Donald – precipices of unhinged thoughts that become words, malignant idiocy, malicious leanings, and self-service whoring.

I thought I would briefly tackle your positions – positions rooted in your conservatism – by addressing your Christianity. Clearly, your understanding of Christ and being like Christ is seriously lost in the various translations of Aramaic and Hebrew to Latin to English to Cruzin. (Get this one too? I know, awful.)

You’re anti-abortion, which is understandable considering your party affiliation, but pro death penalty, which is becoming historically confusing (and hypocritical). You abhor same-sex marriage and civil unions and you voted against the Violence Against Women Act.  The depth of your commitment to gun rights only adds to your stroke-inducing windbaggery. You oppose the Affordable Care Act and almost single-handedly shut down the government in 2013 (partly due to your hatred for “Obamacare”) – the result of which would have been devastating to many, many people including millions of Christ’s followers. You oppose immigration reform and on the stump deny amnesty for illegal immigrants who are already here. You reject the idea of climate change and global warming despite the facts (FACTS!) and you voted against the Water Resources Development Act of 2013. Lastly, your foreign policies are positively nuclear and leave me thinking only of the massive burning lake of sulfur from the Book of Revelation – a book that may be warning us of the likes of you.

So, by my account, you’re against woman in almost every conceivable way; hence, you’re against “the mother of God” who is the representative of all mothers if not all women.

You’re for murdering, needlessly and recklessly, (hiding behind asinine claims of “self-defense”) which aligns more with Pontius Pilate than Jesus and his Apostles.

You’re against healing the sick, which, in many ways, was one of Christ’s chief goals when he hit the scene.

You oppose resources for the needy, roofs for the exposed, and work for the willing – the pharaohs of Egypt had more compassion.

And the greatest gift that Jehovah gave to man was the planet itself; and you deny our inherited responsibility to care for it.

I have to ask: What kind of a Christian are you? You share nothing with your Lord and Savior; rather, you look, sound, and act more like the antithetical incarnation of Jesus… the AntiChrist.

At a Christmas gathering just the other night, the host and a guest were complaining about the long, sluggish election season. I would be inclined to agree if our candidates were more responsible and our parties more than two.  My hope is that over the next 322 days (if not much sooner) you will be unmasked for the evil that you represent – the human costume of Damnation, the ruler of the Right Kingdom of Hell… the Christian version of Hell.

Again, happy birthday, Foolish Shepard!

                                                                           Signed,

                                                                           Brian Philip Katz

Note: My original first sentence read, “You barrel of Swamp Thing’s feces and Man-Thing’s urine, it’s you’re birthday today!” Felt a little harsh. Just a little.

December 21, 2015

Saturnalia, celebrated in Roman times, started on the 17th of December and was a period of lawlessness and gluttony that culminated on the 24th with the sacrifice of a human being (the “false king” of the weeklong Dionysian-like experience) who gorged on food and drink throughout the festivities. In order to convert pagans, 4th Century Christians falsely lent the birth of Jesus (previously identified as being born in either March, September, or November) to Saturnalia. Initially, this duping failed; but eventually a comfortable merging of the false birth of Christ to the pagan celebration took place and after 1400 years of “depraved” acts (think, public orgies, insane boozing, and naked singing) and hideously “depraved” acts (think, Pop Paul II’s public humiliation of Jews by making them race naked (and also gorged) through the streets of Rome; and then centuries later Christians forcefully dressed rabbis in clown costumes and paraded them through the streets), some would say Christmas still proves to be the most excessive of the holidays represented by the many extreme levels of obscene self-satisfaction (like 5-year-olds in Park Slope). This is my 46th Christmas and if it weren’t for Aleda, I would be totally over it. And here’s why: Christmas is an addiction to everything that is crap: crap technology (where even the high-end stuff has a brief functional life or is obsolete within a year -- note ALL THREE Amazon Fire tablets Aleda, Maria, and I received last year and note how they are never, ever used), crap non-biodegradable plastics in all shapes and sizes, crap chemicals in all our products, and crap fabrics (many of which are made with crap chemicals) – all probable landfill within a year. Tacky plastic ornaments, dead trees, blood red Santas staining the streets, have and have-not comparisons, and many crap sentiments that seemed built into the holiday – this IS Christmas. What else do we really need? In re to technology, Aleda hasn’t touched her 3DS in over a year. (We also have a bunch of other gaming systems and the only one any of us ever play is our STILL FUNCTIONING Nintendo Entertainment System … and only one game on it -- Super Mario Bros. 2.) She has shelves of toys and stuffed animals and Ugly Dolls, dusty and now actually homely, who haven’t been addressed in years. And in re to clothing: We’re pretty much a jeans and t-shirt family with a few occasion-oriented outfits… and none of us want another article of clothing to dump into our stuffed drawers. As usual, Aleda “wants” art supplies, loves art supplies, could open an art supply store with all the art supplies she has. Yes, I know you know that we – Maria, Aleda, and I – have too much stuff; but I can only really write about my addiction: Comic books and comic book related STUFF. There is a part of me that is terminally 12 and I have this image of my much older self sitting in a study surrounded by finely crafted wooden cabinets that contain my excessive, but organized, collection. It is here, Christmas 2051, that you will find me rereading Marvel Team-Up from 1972 to 1985 or another series from my golden era, the Bronze Age – Green Lantern/Green Arrow, Marvel Spotlight, Peter Parker the Spectacular Spider-Man, or Tomb of Dracula. But now, Christmas 2015, most everyone is receiving some form of “stuff”; and a lot of that stuff is crap. And me? I absolutely need nothing… but, I really like comic book stuff. Wait, I love my stuff! I love stuff! I love the fact that I know Maria is giving me The Best America Comics of 2015 signed by Jonathan Letham for Christmas. I LOVE CHRISTMAS!… and I’m okay with that. I. Love. Christmas. On the 25th, I will celebrate like the pagans. I’ll eat, drink, sing, read a few comics, and maybe even do some of it in the nude… and maybe, just maybe, I’ll end up as this year’s Saturnalian sacrifice. [I’m such a hypocrite.]