Paradigm Shift

Well, I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again…”I don’t need to get kicked in the nuts twice to know that once is too many times.” Yea, that’s right, I said that. I was in the Navy the first time I said it, but it’s become one of my little credo’s – I think everyone ought to have a credo. Something odd but cool like “I don’t take any wooden nickels, dawg.” I think my dad’s secret credo was “don’t stop fighting until you can’t get up again.” My dad wasn’t a fighter like in the violent sense, but he was pretty fucking tough, in the “keep on keepin’ on” department. I think getting kicked in the nuts once is a real attention-getter – you know, painful and all. But getting kicked in the nuts twice is a paradigm shift. At the very least, it’s cause for wanting a paradigm shift.



I just found out today that my unemployment benefits will be awarded in the sum of $57 per week. This will continue until I have received $720. And then I could qualify for extensions. Extensions? Guess in two years I could be a homeless, broke ninety-niner, spending my $228 per month on malt liquor and hanging out down by the river, with all the other motivational speakers. I’m trying to count the amount of times I have been kicked in the nuts over the course of this recession, but just taking a wild swing at it, I’d say it doesn’t really matter after the first handful of times. What followed was a paradigm shift, and the beginning of my Freedom at Point Zero” phase. Today, the news I have received certainly qualifies as “kick in the nuts 3.0” but I am kind of at a loss for what a paradigm shift would look like this time.


How proud I am to find that I have indeed fallen through the cracks in this recession. I don’t qualify for anything that looks like public assistance, unemployment insurance, or whatever, because I’m a man, I’m not crazy and I don’t have any kids. I did apply today for food-stamps, because hey, a man’s gotta eat. It was kind of cool to talk to my mom today, and receive her admonishment that I keep buying good quality food, no matter how bad things get. I’ll have to drag her to the Co-op one of these days, and see what she says. My new business cards came in the mail the other day, and little postcards that I can use to canvas around my neighborhood, promoting “the human-powered handyman.” But truthfully, this human is feeling a bit less powerful in the face of diminishing options and bleak prospects. My postcard says “Finally, a neighborhood-based, eco-friendly way to take care of your precious home.” Finally! I hope my neighbors here in Curtis Park get my irreverent, tongue-in-cheek greenie-ism, and don’t take my slogan too seriously.


There is this whole Judgment Day thing that the Christian fundamentalists are screaming about, and I have been posting a lot sarcastic comments about on my Facebook page. I’m probably going to hell for taking the end of the world so lightly. I think it is fascinating to see a group of people wishing so deeply for an end to their painful existence in the human realm – I understand them on some level – and yet, I think it is a kind of mental illness to have such faith in something like THE END OF THE WORLD, or even going to heaven. What they could be praying and hoping for is a paradigm shift. I suppose that Jesus coming down for the last roundup is a kind of paradigm shift, but I don’t know if it’s all that realistic a vision. I have seen God work many times, and (s)he is more subtle than that – more clever, and certainly a lot less interested in making a scene. But a paradigm shift I could see – I could get behind that. Maybe, all the money that all the countries spend on military weapons could instead be spent to get folks fed and off the street, and into drug treatment programs – that would be a paradigm shift. Maybe the money that’s left over (because you know there would be money left over) could be used to insure that the disabled and mentally ill, and all the broken down veterans received their fair shake and a way to build productive, satisfying lives for themselves. You see where I’m going with this.

They just killed Osama Bin Laden for being a terrorist, and for hating America, or as George W. Bush said, for “hating freedom,” but I think someone hating freedom is about as likely as someone hating chili dogs, or donuts. They might hate the results, but…I don’t think Osama Bin Laden was a good man, but I think he would taste a chili dog and dig it just like everyone else does. Nobody hates those things. We could have been building schools and hospitals in the same countries that we have been bombing and killing in for the last ten years. Probably it would have been cheaper, and somehow, the world would be a safer place than it is now with Osama Bin Laden dead. That’s all I’m saying.


When I was a freshman in high school, I started smoking weed. I was pretty into smoking pot, because it was such a new experience. Intoxication, mind-expansion…these were new things, and they felt good. Talk about a fucking paradigm shift. It was kind of hard to hide what I was into, and my parent’s did not like the fact that their son was “on drugs.” I don’t think my dad ever really believed that I would be a good man once he caught me smoking weed – once he found my bamboo bong and smashed it into a hundred little pieces. Well, I got over weed, got tired of the anxiety, the hiding and the nagging voice in my heart telling me I was destined for better, greater things, if I could only get my shit together. I have never sworn off marijuana as evil, but have certainly acknowledged that people can get addicted to it, just like we can get addicted to anything else. There is little room for it in my life, as I’ve moved out into the world, and so it’s shocking to me now to pick up the Sacramento News & Review and see that 50% of the content is pot-related advertising. I think it’s surreal - Quite the paradigm shift from the days of my youth.


I would have never guessed when I was 14 years old, that I would ever see magazine ads for weed, and coupons for “one free joint when you buy an eighth.” Look, I’m 42 and I still hide my stash even though it’s one doctor’s note away from being legal. I have weed in my bedroom closet that is three years old, and I often forget where it’s hidden. I get high like less than once per month, and it still feels like a big deal to me. That is a good thing, and I cannot imagine walking into a store to buy a bag of weed. And yet, that moment is upon us.


A defining moment happened for me back in the year 2000. My dad was diagnosed with cancer in 2000, and cascaded headlong through a relatively brief cycle of surgery, disease, and chemo that had him circling the drain inside of two years. At some point, he called me and asked me if I would get him some “grass” and show him how to smoke it – he needed something to help manage his pain, and I had to explain that it wasn’t called “grass” anymore. By that time, pot was widely regarded as effective for this purpose, and so it came to pass. This, the man that almost kicked me out of his house for smoking pot as a teenager, straight as an arrow, and I’m showing him how to hit the bong I bought him for his last birthday, just a few months before he died. “Here dad, you see that little hole, it’s a carb – you gotta cover the carb with your finger, and then suck real hard…Ya gotta hold yer breath in there. Hold it, hold it…ok now exhale”


That’s a paradigm shift, ok - A mighty, mighty paradigm shift. When things that used to be rotten and bad, aren’t seen as quite so bad, and maybe some things that used to be ok are no longer tolerable, like judging folks about who they want to love. I’m looking for another paradigm shift right now – a big fat one that will make it so that a man with three college degrees, and a thousand different skills can find some way to stop having to claw and scrape for his basic sense of economic safety. That’s the kind of paradigm shift I’m waiting for, but I think it’s going to take awhile. The evidence, by all indications, is that even more education might not help substantially. But I know one thing…I can take another few kicks in the nuts and I’ll just keep getting up, because I know how to have a good time, and because life is rich and sweet. I’ve got a groovy new girlfriend, and there are a lot of people around that really care about me. I’ve also got chickens now, and they are laying some pretty big eggs.