Swastika Southern Style

(Originally posted March 28, 2011)

(I have been seeing the odd posting or two about the Confederate Flag lately and it reminded me of this post I wrote earlier in the year...I reposted here and added it to the Archives. Join the debate, what are your thoughts?)

Imagine going to a fine German establishment and then just as you order your Sauerbraten and Hefeweizen beer you look up to see a huge flag hung proudly against the back wall displaying an ominous black Swastika on a field of red. You begin to protest but the proprietor and many of the very patrons get angry and offended! That is a symbol their heritage, how DARE you imply that it stands for hatred, intolerance, lunacy, and genocide.

Always looks better on a car.

Pretty crazy stuff and yet here in the United States that scenario is very likely to play out daily across many of our southern states, but instead of a Nazi flag it is the Confederate Battle Flag that is displayed. To a great many people that flag is a symbol every bit as detested as the Nazi Swastika. Indeed to them it stands for many of the same things; hatred and intolerance as well as ignorance, slavery, and terrorism. Given that the flag has been around for nearly 150 years and declared as its banner by many of the worst and most violent groups to have formed and terrorized this country in that time it is remarkable indeed that it is held as dear by a large portion of the Southern population. “It is a symbol of our heritage,” they say. It is even afforded the same formal protections extended to the national American flag in some states.

Those that support the flag and its display say that to them it has no political or racial implications and that it simply acts a symbol of a distinct southern heritage. This may be very true to them, but when hundreds of terror and white-supremacist organizations use the flag to spread hate and intolerance in the present and do so because of a long history of others doing the same for the length of the flag’s existence it is mighty hard to divorce these divisive elements from the symbolic banner. Can you base cultural identification on that?

That these elements exist promoted by the flag is not an opinion. It is fact. Now for an individual this may not be so, indeed for many individuals it may not be so, but we must remember a flag was never meant for an individual. A flag’s very existence is to unite a group of people under a common symbol. Over time that symbol may become charged with more or less meaning that intended originally, but that is a complex relationship between the people it unites, the events surrounding its creation and use, and also the reactions it elicits in others.

If a person chooses to view it simply as heritage they must understand all the negativity that is also tied to the flag and which outweighs by a great deal the heritage they wish to display. Within a closed community of like-minded individuals like say, Alabama, this is not an issue. However this is a country of fifty states and the actions of many people and organizations over decades does little to erase the hate and intolerance that this symbol has been known for. So much louder do those speak that oftentimes the “heritage” argument is but a whisper to the tornado of terror and hate.

That does not automatically mean one should abandon the use of their flag if indeed they see it as solely a proud piece of their heritage. Though many may view that with cynicism it must be understood that indeed this flag united a different culture and gave them an identity to rally around and call their own that in doing so differentiated them from their Northern neighbors and brothers. That slavery was an integral part of the economy of that culture and also was the impetus for the Civil War wherein the flag was born must also not be forgotten nor the terrorist organizations that maintain its use. It is a delicate act to balance between the two real and valid claims that opponents and supporters each proclaim.

I see only one way by which this symbol may be rehabilitated and also the reason why perhaps it will never come to pass. An organization that is an obvious beacon for good work and leads the struggle for civil rights and justice must carry it as its banner. Over time those that claim to view the flag as simply heritage must continue to do so. The racist undertones that the flag still carries must be banished and as they are banished should be replaced by good. In this way can the Confederate Battle Flag be rehabilitated I think.

Better to put it this way…the Confederate Battle Flag had a twin birth, one a symbol of identity and one of an unjust struggle full of hate and intolerance. To maintain the flag then this twin of hate must be forever killed and buried.

NOTE: The Swastika is an ancient symbol predating the Nazi party by thousands of years. That history behind the Nazi’s will I think in time (perhaps decades or centuries) prevail over the 20th century atrocities of Hitler and his war machine. The Confederate Flag has no such history behind it and thus it is perhaps better to come up with a new symbol of the South that unites all of its people and not just the white once-majority. It may take much less time than rehabilitation and unlike rehabilitation actually may be possible.

Before Hitler ruined it. The swasktika, not Coca-Cola.

My Psyche (Though I No Cupid)

By: Gus Victoria

A sweet smile given

Is a potent salve

For a lonely heart wounded

With love’s errant blows

Battered and beaten,

A night spent with her

Is a year of healing

Spent elsewhere.

Her lips like the Lethe

Erase what came before

Her body like the Mnemosyne

Wakes what was thought lost,

Her love like Psyche

Anchors sweetly the many dreams

That careless flit and fly

Though no Cupid am I.

Still she is mine,

And I am hers

As is this humble verse.

Chasing the Fairy #6

By: Gus Victoria

What joy does reside

The King and The Beggar Maid - Edmund Blair Leighton

In this heart, beside

All the hate in the world,

By your love is grown,

Its light is shone

To illuminate that world

On white silk wings unfurled

And a soul bared 

Beyond fear

And beyond reason

But with faith without treason,

I love you now

And I love for ever

The sun will cold shine

When with you

I no longer dine,

Marry me now

And I shall forget forever

And to you dedicate

A life eternal.

“Yes” you alone may say.

And for that ever shall I pray.

Dinosaurs and Evolution

(Originally posted March 30, 2011)

When I was little I remember wanting nothing more than to be a paleontologist when I grew up. I wanted to travel the world always on the verge of my next big discovery. I gathered all the dinosaur books I could find and filled my little head with as much knowledge as I could gather as fast as I could read. I was probably the only nine-year old not only able to repeatedly pronounce correctly Styracosaurus, Ornithomimus, and Deinonychus but also tell you the differences between each. Remember that annoying kid in the first Jurassic Park movie? That was ME!

Life is funny though and takes us on a variety of unexpected turns. I was soon introduced to Indiana Jones and I fell in love with another “ology;” Archeology. Well to make a long story short I went to school and got a degree in Religious Studies and have often felt more part Indiana Jones than Alan Grant. What never went away was that affection for those big ancient lizards.

Recently I was watching a Bill Hicks routine and he was questioning a fundamentalist Christian with a one-word question: Dinosaurs. If you haven’t seen this clip, scroll down, watch, and then come back. See wasn’t that great? So after watching the genius man at work I began to get curious. How developed are these Creationist explanations for Dinosaurs specifically and Evolution in general? Wouldn’t you know it; there are indeed people like that! Wow.

(I’ll post links at the end of this post.)

This is one of my main problems with the Bible or any other sacred text older than yesterday’s newspaper.  It doesn’t lend itself well to a literal reading. If a literal account is taken then the world was created thousands of years ago according to the creation stories in Genesis (yes Virginia there is more than one).  However that doesn’t seem to jive very well with the mountains of data (pun intended) and scientific literature that has come in the last few centuries not to mention common sense. So what do these literalists do in the face of such seemingly incontrovertible evidence of time’s passage like the sun, rocks, trees, and their very own genetics? Well it’s just put there to test our faith they say!

FACEPALM!

Really people?  Seriously?  

Dinosaurs and Man existed side by side.  The reason their fossils aren’t found together is because God erased all of mankind during the Flood. He destroyed people and all evidence of them, duh! And even if he didn’t the Flood was enough to mix things up and keep humans from being found with dinosaurs I mean with all the sediment deposited that is just clear as day right? We crazy evolutionists are just a bunch of silly misguided heathens. No one was ALIVE back then, so no one can concretely say that Dino and Man didn’t hang out in a Flintstonesque world.

Umm…except science can.

But let’s set that aside for now because the point is not in being wrong or right, but rather in choosing to be wrong or right, in light of all the evidence. Now to be fair a Creationist may say the exact same thing about us. If we lived in a world where there were no rules but those written down by a small sect of desert nomads millennia ago where magic and mystery reigned then yes I would be the first to say we Evolutionists are fucked. However fairy tales are what our writers and artists dabble in, not our scientists. At least not when trying to figure out how things work. The sun is a big ball of gas (fine, plasma) and not a chariot on fire after all.  Or is it?

Regardless of the answer I propose then in the spirit of conciliatory dialogue the following image of the world’s first Dinosaur identified and the first man according to Genesis. I lovingly call them Adam and Steve.

(Oh yeah those links I promised: Silliness here and here.)

Executions - My Two Pennies Worth

“Social justice cannot be attained by violence. Violence kills what it intends to create.”

--Pope John Paul II

This week there were five scheduled executions in this country, last week there were two and next week three. That is a total of ten executions in 8 states this month.To be fair both executions last week were granted stays, two this week and one, possibly two, next week as well. Still that leaves a minimum of four executions this month. Granted September is a relatively busy month for executions this year, but the issue at hand to me is not the number of executions being scheduled by this country rather it is the fact that they exist as punishment that troubles me.

If we lifted our eyes long enough to stop complaining about Facebook’s new change we would have found it hard to ignore the noise being generated by one case in particular; that of Troy Davis. Davis, 42 was a black man convicted of killing an officer in 1989 and sentenced to die in Georgia. The details of the case were such that many believed there was sufficient doubt to question culpability or at the very least stay the execution for further review.  

Lost in this heated case was Lawrence Russell Brewer, 44 a known white-supremacist convicted in the dragging death of a black man in Texas in 1998. He was executed hours before Davis. There seemed to be less an uproar about his execution than of Davis’s. Was it a racial issue? Brewer was white, his victim black. Davis was black and his victim white.

Perhaps the case against Brewer was stronger and in that case doubt was nonexistent where in Davis’s case the acquisition of evidence was controversial or downright illegal.

As it pertains to human life I would say none of it matters. Race or culpability, white or black, guilty or not a life is still a life and to take it can never be right.  

I do not favor the criminal here. Nor do I forget the victim. A life taken can never be brought back in the taking of another. All I seek is an end to the cycle of death and hate.

It is said, and it will continue to be said, that I do not know what it is I am talking about. That until I know what it is to suffer such a loss I cannot speak.  While it is true I do not know the depth of sorrow that one goes through in the traumatic untimely loss of a loved one I do know that all life has value. A value that is intrinsic and unconditional. I also know that evil exists and that in order to preserve the good in the world justice must prevail. That the State does the killing only serves to disguise vengeance as justice. It is an ill-fitting dress.

Justice must maintain peace and it must do so without violence. Violence is a destructive force that by its very nature cannot create. If we seek to foster justice and instill lasting peace we must not resort to murder. The taking of a life no matter how just it may seem in light of the crimes the accused has committed cannot be considered justice and must always be considered vengeance. And vengeance carries with it a heavy price on those that participate in it. Some may feel that a murderer “got what he deserved” and some leaders may use a reputation of executioner as a rallying point for elections, but we that keep the good in the world that value life above vengeance must never resort to such base emotions and vile tactics.

Some will say peace is weakness and that our “bleeding hearts” make us blind to the evil in the world and allow us to make excuses where none should be. That we plead for those who willfully and gleefully seek to harm others at the expense of the innocent. And I write here that the opposite is true. Those hearts of ours do bleed. They bleed not for the murderer that has taken life, but for the victim that in repayment takes a life. We seek to preserve that innocence. In the taking of a life all those that participate lose a bit of their humanity by partaking in something inherently evil. The murderer damns himself, but in the execution of that murderer the State damns us all.

Texas is that you?

Chasing the Fairy #5

By: Gus Victoria

Indeed it is a sad truth

That love begets

Its share of regrets,

Though not in the loving

Should it be said

That our souls be dead,

It is in the loss

That we oft are prone to forget

The moments of joy

As we prefer the pain

Of love’s embrace lost.

We look back upon that

Fairytale time

To a fallacy known

And grown to a truth cherished:

That we were blameless;

Victims of an erratic

Callous heart.

Chasing the Fairy #4

By: Gus Victoria

The maw of the abyss unknown

Looks back at the wayward believer

Of things said

And things unproven

To this or any eye,

She looks upon a nude Adonis

As he sees a fallen Aphrodite,

Love made

Is fantasy given wing

For to fly to ends unknown.

Nothing is sacred between lovers shared,

For in darkness they hide

The truth of their passion.

They are as one once

And as one they depart.

Left alone they write of love

Separated they long for each other,

And each truth a lie uncovers.

Chasing the Fairy #3

By: Gus Victoria

An errant heart knows not

Its aim untrue,

An errant heart

Believes in all it should do,

It blunders about

In blind stampede

Toward a warm glow it feels,

It believes the lie

That clothes the majestic artifice

Of love gone by,

It bleeds poetic

Love’s aesthetic,

But does not see

The damage done

As it follows its own sun.

Chasing the Fairy #2

By: Gus Victoria

I am a revolutionary

Of heart and mind

In soul made one,

I am a student

Of a cosmic law

Still learning,

Still yearning,

I am a lover

Of unknown energies

And distant galaxies

Of mystery

And the light of knowledge,

I fail

At all I don’t do

But excel at what moves me

Because it moves me.

I know sex

But I adore love

I know her

But I love you,

And I chase the unknowable

That in the search

I may attain wisdom

For though love be mine,

Philosophy is my mistress.

Chasing the Fairy #1

By: Gus Victoria

Not quite the fairy I chase, but hot and green nonetheless!

The sweet essence of spring

In this is found;

A sweet tincture of all good

Given freely by true love’s

Fairy guide

And I doubly intoxicated

Look upon a future clear

Brought forth from

The limits of my mind

To the center of my soul,

Impossible to deny

Review of the Haunted Mansion Interactive Queue – Part I

New characters greet (and confuse) you as you enter the new interactive queue at WDW's Haunted Mansion

(Originally posted March 27, 2011)

People at theme parks are little better than devolved monkeys. Some so resemble this image that it’s hard to tell if I should direct them to the entrance of my attraction or hand them a banana. First off before delving further into the myopic cesspool of humanity that inhabit theme parks let me say I am speaking in generalities and that I admit there are a great deal of people there simply to enjoy the experience and have a good time lost in the fantasy created by the fantastical buildings and people that work there. They know why they are there and appreciate the great and small. They take time to allow the atmosphere to seep into their reality and replace it with something more fun for the time they visit. However for as many people as fall into this category it is painfully clear they are in the clear minority outnumbered many times over by the remnants of our evolutionary past.

Recently the Haunted Mansion has undergone some major renovations in the outside queue area as well as some additions on the inside. This change has been painful to some, especially the purists who decry this meddling and denounce it as a desecration. In their view they are correct. The house that has stood for hundreds of years, this Dutch Colonial in sunny Florida has welcomed guests for ages—oh wait, the house is only 40 years you say? Well shit. And it only vaguely resembles a true Dutch Colonial? Well double shit. Yeah that’s harsh I know, and these are the people I like!

The reality being replaced by the fantasy is great when everyone buys into it. However Disney World is a business. A cutthroat heartless one scared of bottom line and profit margin shrinkage. Perhaps this was not always so, but it is absolutely true now. That fear drives the company to move with the demands of the people. And THIS is the real tragedy.

Imagine watching a Macbeth performance when suddenly calls for Snooki are shouted from the audience and then, even worse, some of those very audience members shouting run onstage and start touching the sets and poking at the three witches.  Where, do I ask, is something like that even remotely acceptable? Well, at Walt Disney World of course!

That’s the problem I see when viewing the Mansion as what it resembles. It is a fantasy-based reality that is sadly hijacked by the millions ignoring it and walking on through. To them they do not notice the detail of the molding and intricacies of the carved wood. They do not appreciate the way the light from the cobweb filled chandelier hits the wallpaper just so. They do not often see the aging man actually age. They are too busy running through. In part because our management team, feeling pressure from wherever it comes, are compelled to move as many people through an hour as they can.

How then, in this rushed state, can one truly appreciate all there is to appreciate?

The truth is they can’t.  They are forced to run ahead, sit down, ride, cross that attraction off their list and move on. They repeat this all day. Before we feel bad though for the poor guests I must once again point out most of these are the mental equivalent of a cunning chimp (apologies to any chimps reading this).  Disney is slow to change and when they do it is through observed behavior and many hours of intensive research.  This is our society and culture; that is the sad realization I have come in my time working in theme parks. It is actually more accurate to say this is the degraded state of our society and culture. There simply is too much information transferred too fast to too many people very few of whom are equipped or able to process it and therefore properly appreciate it. We have plugged in and tuned out. What the new queue attempts to do is entertain those masses without forcing them to unplug and look up. The irony that I have seen more times than perhaps WDI would like is that very many of those targeted guests are actually annoyed at the queue because it keeps them a few more minutes from the Mansion and therefore delays their feasting on a turkey leg for lunch as they run through another queue. I wonder if these people even know there is a castle in the park?

If the target audience cares little and the purists hate it why then build it in the first place? Good question. The new queue in its design will theoretically alleviate crowd presence in the main walkways of the park. More people in the queue means less people in the street. However that possible boon will be negated if people do as WDI intends and stop and play with the queue elements even possibly creating greater lines and more miserable guests. And if they don’t and choose to bypass the queue or even rush through it, then WDI is defeated as well. This is a no-win scenario, but a necessary one.

You see the real heart of the problem lies in the artificially created queue line and the modern person’s innate rudeness and “me-first” attitude when in a crowd of people. At Disney we are always just a few incidents and 15 minutes away from full mob mentality. Don’t believe me? Be in a queue of a broken down ride for 10 minutes before anyone has been evacuated or compensated for their wait time then tell me where the mentality of the people is? Or their sanity for that matter?

As the lines get longer and the chains forever multiply with an ever increasing number of twists and turns people stop caring about their surroundings. By placing those there Disney has signaled to the guest subconsciously that the goal is the ride and anything that comes between is viewed cursory at best. So like little lab rats we have placed the cheese and then place obstacles in the way. Why do we get angry when they bypass those? If it doesn’t get them closer to that cheese they will lose interest soon.

Like a kid with a new toy at Christmastime this queue will be a hit. But just like that toy it will soon lose its luster. My remedy? Do away with all chains and stanchions and bring back the giant oaks and allow those that want to the ability to use the new playground as that is precisely what the new queue is. Let those that want to run in do so. And don’t rush those that do appreciate art, history, and beauty. A lot of work went into the Mansion and other rides so it’s a damn shame to quickly herd these monkeys right through.

I admit, that’s wishful thinking. Rather than change the trend of myopic vision and goldfish-like memory we contribute to it. Sadly it seems that all the rides and all the queues, unless something drastic changes in society at large, will follow in the Mansion’s footsteps. Next Gen? No thanks!

The Sigh Discontent

By: Gus Victoria

Hero and Leander - Peter Paul Rubens

A single half-sighed cry

In the ocean of deepest thought

Is heard on the shore of reason.

Heaven hears

What Hell fears

And Hell lets go

What Heaven will never know,

Rejection then sets my course

Toward that distant cry

Heard far away…

Oh that dreadful  sound!

Heard far away

On that dreadful night…

Multiplied now the cry is two,

The soul split

On the given Cross disjoined,

Element and tradition,

One force now two.

Run, swim, think, be

Action to inaction leads

Hope and despair together dance and duel

Who wins?

You always choose…

Oh that cry!

Oh that cry?

Where has it gone?

A New Beginning and My Two Cents

Welcome friends to the new home of The Daily Sasquatch

It is time for a new beginning. I find myself at a familiar place. In the earliest days of the Sasquatch, two or three blog titles ago, when all I posted was poetry I did so on Blogger. It seems since those days this site has been much improved and I am ready and excited to give it another shot. 

I spent 615 days on my own site using WordPress as my platform. In that time I realized I have no taste or desire to learn the nuances of programming no matter how easy others tell me it is. My focus is and always should remain on writing. I hope this platform will allow me to get back to that and publish more frequently.

And why two cents?

Funny story actually. I monetized my last site as I did this one and the entire revenue generated in that time was $12.30...now you do the math and divide that by 615 days. Every day I earned 2 cents; putting my 2 cents in as it were. I hope we can do better than that this time around, but that is another reason I am here. No overhead and easier to focus on writing. In the end, though I'd like to make a living as a wordsmith I don't want the worry of "will this sell" to keep me from writing what is on my mind and in my heart. 

So friends new and old welcome or welcome back! Let's take a journey through the worlds of art, fantasy, politics, philosophy, religion, love, and whatever other worlds we may discover.