A Picture of Poo

Image by Pogrebnoj-Alexandroff. Happy Thanksgiving. 

The holidays are about friends, family, and all the things that make people living in the 1950’s happy. Your wife makes a turkey, the man kicks his feet up, everyone around you is white. The perfect world. To be totally honest, I would love to be a white male living in the 1950’s. I could beat my wife, I could…

Oh wait.

Back then, all of us had to participate in the war. The men went to war, the women stayed home and worried about the kids. There were rationing programs that helped people understand what our soldiers were going through. Everyone was supposed to make you feel bad if you didn’t go out of your way to help out the people fighting for freedom.

I guess that back in the day, everyone had a role and didn’t want to complain about it. And when the war was over, people looked at each other and figured out that we are all in this together. Your girlfriend or wife supported you in the ways she could. Imagine Paris Hilton letting her sex tape be published with *your* face on the guy banging her. Or what if the phone she picked up while getting fucked was from AT&T… and ALL THAT MONEY WENT TO THE CAUSE.

See… 

I’m probably rewriting history, but back in the day, everyone came together in a totally fucked up situation. And a little bit after that happened we had the 60’s… and the 70’s… and the hippies… and the civil rights movement. You had all [uhmm… some of the] white kids back then showing respect to all the black kids. Women started showing up in places they weren’t allowed to be and all that was wrong in the world could be fixed.

It could have…

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Book Review: No Quarter

A foundational goal of Bay Area Butchers is to provide a platform for writers to show us what it looks and feels like to be alive in the world around them, their life forged in uncontrollable circumstances followed by decades of choices and reactions.   There are many experiences and perspectives that each of us will never know, no matter how adventurous and open we are, and others we hope to never know despite the mistakes we make.  These are the experiences that most captivate us in movies and books, in stories told to exhilarate and scare, to educate and warn.  I’ve always been fascinated by crime stories and criminals, by those characters who choose to break all the rules and societal expectations, to go their own way, damn the risks and consequences, all in pursuit of some flawed, romantic goal.  But at a distance, through the gloss of Hollywood and the imagination of writers, the harsh reality of committing a crime, of being caught and the life lived as a result, is shielded from us; the worst truths hidden, only known by the ignored and forgotton, the imprisoned and dead men walking.   

My limited and distorted perspective of a life lived in prison was shattered after being introduced to the writing of Michael Wayne Hunter. Michael has spent 18 years on Death Row at San Quentin State Prison before his sentence was commuted to Life Without Parole in 2002. He is the recipient of numerous awards for his writing, including PEN America Center Awards for fiction and non-fiction, and The William James award for prose. His past works have been published in a variety of books, magazines and newspapers. More of his current writing can be found here on BAB, as well as on www.minutesbeforesix.com and Life After Death Row. He now resides at Pleasant Valley State Prison in Coalinga, California.  

Michael’s new book, No Quarter (available through iTunes and Amazon), is an eye-opening journey into the day-to-day life of our prisoners and the cast of true to life characters that surround them.   No Quarter is a complex murder mystery, an unconventional love story, and a window into the life of those we disregard as damned and unredeemable.  It’s a story about living within prison: about “greed, fear, power, knowledge, leverage, and most of all — dying”.   Michael has provided us with an opportunity to see this world first hand, how it really looks and feels to live within those high prison walls, how they affect all those that enter, leaving their mark on even the best of us.   In the end, No Quarter lays bare the national tragedy that is the death penalty and death row.  We are confronted with the truth and consequences of a barbaric policy of vengeance carried out with banal indifference.   

After the jump is an excerpt from Chapter One of No Quarter, a taste of Michael Wayne Hunters new novel (which you can purchase through iTunes and Amazon):

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Bad Quotes

I didn’t vote today. I should have but ended up taking a half-day at work to enjoy my neighborhood and walk around. Did anyone vote? Probably not. The only thing on the ballot I cared about was a cigarette tax. I didn’t want to go out of my way to cast a vote on that, and if I have to pay an extra dollar in taxes because I smoke, AND I find out that *MY* vote would have counted… I would go nuts. But that is not going to happen. I hope that when people see the word “TAX”, they will say no. I also know that when people see “TAX THAT DOES NOT IMPACT ME”, they will vote yes. Let people do that they naturally do. All I know is that in a few years, the cigarette cartels will be in charge of bringing illegal cigarettes into our area and I’ll end up avoiding all taxes by buying my smokes from them.

If I were to say…

“I never have been in favor of bringing about the equality of the white and black races.” and/or “whatever negroes can be got to do as soldiers, leaves just so much less for white soldiers to do…”

… most people wouldn’t like it.

When Mitt Romney tells us that Detroit shouldn’t be bailed out, all we see is “Let Detroit Go Bankrupt”. I know there are many reasons to vote for Mitt, but when a majority of the people in Michigan wake up in the morning and say to themselves “I think that the person who wants to eliminate my job and let me deal with it gets my support,” it makes we wonder. 

A stripper is supposed to tell you that you have the largest penis in the world. When she tells you that you’ve got a small dick and no woman would touch you unless you had money in your pocket, you either walk away or pay her enough to tell you that you have the largest penis in the world.

The people of Michigan are at one of the extremes. Either they read Mitt’s article and said “Yeah, we need to restructure things so that Detroit works again”, or they walked in like zombies and, after reading “Let Detroit Go Bankrupt”, they still voted for Mitt. Regardless of what happened, no one was asked to explain.

We all need our heroes. I always wanted Obama to be one. He will be when nothing matters.

The quotes above were from Abraham Lincoln. Today, he slays vampires. Back then he fixed all that was wrong with the world and eliminated slavery.

Awesome thing to do for someone who hated black people and …

[But we all need our heroes]

A United Front

When you do not speak others will speak for you

When you do not act others will act for you

We are in the eleventh hour of a new world

So fuck the fake scene

Know what it means to be part of a generation

Without consequence 

Without amnesty

Amnesty from the responsibilities of conscience

Buy

Consume

For there is more to this life than your plans of conquest

Flipping through the channels on TV

Riding in the back of a limousine 

Peace

War

Money

God

No miracles 

Just the burning decisions in the back of your mind that must be made

For every able bodied member of society must work

And what is to pave the way for that work?

There is just enough religion in the world to make men hate one another

But not enough for love

For love is not enough

We pray to new gods now

No down payments and low interest fixed rate annual percentage yields

Hands up high

Trying to grab a piece of that American Dream

 

M is a covert reporter on special assignment 

We Learn To Do Stupid Shit

Some of us try to stand up for what they believe in… 

Some people shed their blood to make sure that the right thing happens. And when I say *SOME* people, I pretty much mean nobody. Especially today.

When watching videos of how people reacted to the 1906 earthquakes, my honest reaction was “Dude, if society today had that opportunity… we would end up killing each other.” Back then, people rebuilt the city. If we had to do that today, our city would be rebuilt on a stack of everything stolen from the local stores.

Really.

If there were a crisis here, the first response would be to loot everything around us.

As much as *I* think that would happen… as much as *everyone* thinks that would happen… It doesn’t. We end up learning hate. We stand around and get pissed off at how the world works, and might have the balls to complain about whatever we complain about…

When I see a woman being slapped in public, my default reaction would normally be to stop it. When I see someone fall down on the street, my default reaction would be to pick that person up.

I had to learn that whenever I walk down the street, someone is going to hustle me. The situations that we are exposed to are complicated. It is actually more likely that I am going to be stabbed when helping someone than succeed in actually helping them.

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Providence Guided by My Own Hand

Image by cyclonebillToday is the Tuesday after Memorial Day, which means that the university, the community colleges, and most high schools have had their graduation ceremonies. The bus wasn’t as packed, but it went at a leisurely pace… as always. There are a few more seats available, from now until the start of summer session. But for now, there are seats available. I can avoid sitting on the bench seats, avoid the uncomfortable eye contact with the lady who has as many bags in her possession as she has underneath her sleep-deprived eyes. I sit in the back, on the left-hand side, staring out the window, watching cars zoom past. I briefly think about the Montgomery bus boycotts, about what Rosa Parks and others went through, and the fruit of the boycotters’ labor are… my choice to sit at the very back. My mind soon drifts to my music, to what strain of indie rock I should listen to: lo-fi, or synth-driven music? I can be fickle at times, but it’s just that with each minute I spend staring out the window, my mind more and more starts to resemble a short-attention span film festival. Here’s my stop; I ring the bell accordingly.

I now find myself downtown, my feet (and to a certain extent, my liver) are feeling restless—as restless as the motorists that are, unbeknownst to them, serenading me with their bleating horns. I make my way through these familiar streets, the wind gently kisses me with its polluted essence. I pass by the hotels and bank buildings. I pass by vacant storefronts, now there seems to be more and more—dotting the landscape like unmarked headstones in a pauper’s cemetery. Rush… rush go the people, some with security badges, and some with county hospital wristbands.  They rush past the guy standing on the brim of Paseo de San Antonio, playing his saxophone (a Charlie Parker number, if I’m not mistaken); they rush past the old Asian lady who is on no one’s time but her own. Their destination is unknown to me, but my short-term destiny has manifested itself in the form of my favorite café.

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Memorial Day Comment: May He Rest In Peace

Image by John Martinez PavligaYep. Drunk. Doesn’t matter.

Memorial day. I don’t really care what it means to anyone other than me. What it means to me is remembering someone who is no longer with us. We are all influenced by someone… that one person who made us who we are.

My mentor died.

I didn’t go to his wake. I didn’t do a lot of things he would have wanted me to do.

I’m not good enough to show him respect in front of all the people who were a part of HIS life. If I were to tell HIS friends and family about how much he meant to me doesn’t really matter. But I know damn well that the second I tried to do that… the focus would be on ME.

He did that. My confidence and the ability to tell you to fuck off is because of HIM. The music I listen to is because of HIM. The reason I smoke is because of HIM. He taught me how the world worked when I was a 14-year old kid. He was my best friend and taught me that I shouldn’t tell his new girlfriend (who he ultimately married and is the mother of his children) that… [insert a stupid as hell comment here].

Michael Grenley died.

I’m not good enough to be a part of his life or death.

But he made me who I am today.

The fact that I don’t think I am good enough to lick the bottom of his shoes is me… the fact that I can tell everyone else that they aren’t worthy of getting soft-serve shit served out of my asshole is ME.

Fuck YOU.

But may Warlock Bones rest in peace.

The Fourth Reich Part II

You can read part I here.

Opinions are like firecrackers without matches, what is the point if they don’t light?

When any form of a ruling elite in power dictate their will down to their subjects without forethought to common cause and effect and so negligently insulate themselves from the well being and concerns of those people who support them and that form of enslavery - whether it be socio political, economical, idealogical, or even spiritual - that brand of power can always be known in that shape and form from which it hides in and for which it is for that is the spirit of fascism.

The reign of corporations begins when people blindly allow a transfer of power to take place which reduces people to numbers; this is why the nazis tattooed numbers on Jews arms and why everyone carries a credit card with numbers on it. Credit ratings have tagged you like cow polks tag their cattle, how much income to debt ratio are you capable of producing? How much milk is that cow over there going to produce?

Is this the American dream? You better damn well better believe in it.  Freedom comes with a price but most people don’t want to think about what goes on inside the Apple Pie factory, we just want our pie. Everyone has a damn good reason for taking those trips by car or plane, they both run on fuel and where does fuel come from? Capitalism may not be a perfect system but it is certainly the best system; blinded by greed the system becomes just as indiscriminate as nature, the law of the jungle, only the strong survive and that survival is key, that survival is to provide for family and how are you going to protect that system? 

People need to really wake the fuck up and assume a lot of responsibility for their actions or inactions before any expectations of change can be levied on to the surcharges of price and tax, before breaking those beliefs anything less is nihilistic and in the final analysis pointless, opinions with dead ends. Ours is a spiritual war and a struggle for what goes on at night in the big city where egos let loose on the streets in search of feast or famine?

Like a beast awakened to the smell of blood prowling the corridors of power, though it has no face and no name, its power is nothing more nor less than the sum of our combined ignorance.

M is a covert reporter on special assignment

Racism Lives On

Recently, I awoke to find that my gecko green VW Beetle dream car that was parked in my Tallahassee driveway had been spray painted with a racial slur. “Migger!” the black paint spelled out across my car’s right door. Apparently the vandal forgot to remove their finger from the spray button after making the “N,” thus inadvertently transforming the “N” into an “M, ” but the hateful intent was clear.

 

Despite living for almost 20 years in one of the friendliest neighborhoods in Florida’s liberal capital city, I was neither surprised nor angry at the vandalism. No matter where I have lived, encounters with racism have not been unusual in my life. After my family bought a new house when I was five, a white neighbor tried to get other neighbors to sign a petition asking us to move out because we were black. That was in a village that was a 3-hour drive north of New York City.  In Tennessee, after I integrated the office of my first permanent job, a coworker warned me that the computer technologist had been passing out KKK literature. In Virginia, when I held a yard sale shortly after my first son was born, a young white boy looked at my baby and commented, “What a cute little nigger.”

 

Probably most African Americans have had similar experiences. For instance, one of my black friends who, while house hunting after being offered a journalism job in Seattle, was stopped by a white policeman and asked whether he was looking for “pussy or drugs.”

 

I don’t get angry with people who use racial epithets nor do I become enraged at blatant racists. When Klansmen used to hold a Martin Luther King rally in front of Florida’s capitol, I went to see them and felt sorry for them. As Toni Morrison eloquently said about blatant racists, “If you can only be tall because somebody is on their knees, than you have a serious problem.” So, I pity those who try to heal their shattered souls by trying to hurt others.

 

The people who hurt and anger me are the liberal and progressive white people, who consider themselves to be racism free, yet help perpetuate racism by their own isolation, denial, and passivity.

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Three Blind Mice

Revolution on holiday

Empty shopping carts

Protest imperialist

We have no problems dropping a hundred dollars at the bar

But then revolt at the gas pump

The irony of capitalism

Democracy hipocrisy

Communist socialist

The bank takes your autograph in exchange for cash

Soldiers to the front of the pharmacy line

We must have our pills to do stupid things faster

Flags resist the wind

Your fist up high with the voices screaming for change

In the deafness

In the eyes fires burn

It is not enough to be free

We need more freedoms

Better paying wages and money for godawful sin

More reforms which validate this class war

Rich and poor

Not to the gods we pray and hope

No not I

I pray to a new god

Called action

Deliver us from fascism

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The Butcher Shoppe Cast Episode 2: Soil Depletion

Episode 2: Soil Depletion with Momus, Suburbanaut, and Penemue.  

The Butcher Shoppe Cast is back. Listen to Momus, Suburbanaut, and Penemue get lost in the weeds discussing the lack of courtesy and integrity in our culture.  We kick off the conversation with Greg Smith’s Op Ed in the New York Times about the poisonous environment at Goldman Sachs and end up with a convincing theory on where San Francisco’s MUNI bus drivers come from.  Check it out, you won’t be dissapointed.  Well not completely.

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