A Night Out

Got to go out on the town and enjoy myself for a little last night after work. The traffic heading into Chicago was ridiculously shitty, so I got in to Revolution Books about an hour late, and thus missed the first part of Larry Everest’s talk. But the Q&A afterward was lively and insightful, and I got to meet and talk to Larry, as well as catch up with some old comrades and meet some new ones. Afterward we went out to a couple bars, which was actually the first time I ever legally drank in a bar. All I had was one Guinness, since I had to drive home, and the fucking bars were way too loud for my tastes, but it was nice to get a few hours out and to have a chance to talk to and interact with some other people. Driving into the city with the traffic was kind of crappy, but driving home on the open highway at about 1:30am was great. Man, it’s been 12 years since I drove that highway at that time of night. Back when I was 16 or 17, I’d have been fucked up and driving at the top speed my vehicle could go; this time I had only a Guinness and drove about 65 the whole time. Eh, maybe I’m getting old… Nah, I’m just not trying to go back to prison. I really need to get out of this shitbag town I stay in and move to city proper, but my financial situation right now won’t allow it. I need to meet more people and interact with more people too, and that isn’t going to happen out here either. Now that I’m off house arrest though, I’ll have the opportunity to get down to the city a lot - after the stupid “holiday” shit is over, cause I’ve been doing a shitload of deliveries. Ever since right after I finished my last final Wednesday morning I’ve been doing deliveries all day, every day. Was out all day today, until the weather got terrible, and I have to go out tomorrow to finish the shit I didn’t get done today. I’d be in the city right now if I didn’t have all the deliveries to do. Bedtime though

One Year

My Parole Officer came over, gave me a drug test (the first drug test I’ve ever taken in my life), and let me cut my leg monitor off after one year on house arrest.

So now I’m officially off house arrest, though I still have 2 years of parole left - which means I just have to check in every 2 weeks, talk to my PO every month, and I can’t leave the state.

I just finished my first semester of college too, though I have one final left tomorrow morning.  So its a pretty significant time, as significant as any arbitrarily selected time period can be, I suppose. I planned to write something more insightful, but due to the bullshit earlier and just getting this leg monitor off now, my mind isn’t ready to analyze and express its thoughts yet. Plus I’ve been fucking around with a registry hack to download and install the Vista SP1 RC, which is downloading now. I’ll have to let my mind work itself out before I can comment sufficiently…

The bullshit just doesn’t stop…

I’m supposed to get off house arrest today - one year on house arrest, today is exactly one year. Last time I talked to my parole officer (which was over a month ago) he told me on the day I was supposed to get off house arrest that I could just cut the leg monitor off and call in about it, but that he’d talk to me before then. Well, today is the goddamn day and not only hasn’t he talked to me, I called in and these motherfuckers tell me the earliest time I can talk to him is on fucking SATURDAY. So, not only does it look like these pieces of shit are going to hold me on house arrest past today - past the one year that THEY fucking assigned to me - but I might not even find out anything else until Saturday. But hey, we’re the government, the upholders of “law and order” - we’ll just make up whatever we want, whenever we want and never follow any of our own rules, laws, policies, or decisions…

UPDATE: 11:50AM - Well my PO just called me, he’s supposed to come here today, so maybe this situation will get straightened out…

Government Idiocy At Its Finest

Well now apparently there’s some “problem” with my electronic leg monitor, so now the goddamn IDOC has been calling my house every hour for the past 3 hours to check to make sure I’m here. It starts at about 4:45Am this morning, though I suppose they had been calling here a couple times the day before but I didn’t answer the phone because the Caller ID didn’t say who was calling. I certainly wondered what idiot would be calling here at 1:20AM yesterday night… And the most asinine part is that I’m supposed to get off this stupid house arrest altogether in 4 fucking days. So, instead of just letting me end this stupid shit right now since their capitalist contractor who provides the electronic monitoring equipment can’t even provide working equipment, now I have to spend the next 4 days - which happen to coincide with my finals - getting random bullshit phone calls at all hours from the IDOC. I figure what the problem is is that the battery in the leg monitor died, because I specifically asked the contractor who came here to put the leg monitor on about that, and she told me the battery usually lasts close to a year. Most likely the battery went out. Not only that, I have to wear a non-functional leg monitor clamped around my ankle for 4 more days as well. Completely pointless and idiotic.

Update 8:13PM - They sent someone here to replace the battery; just as I suspected that was the problem.  So he took the leg monitor off, replaced the battery, and put it back on. Then in 4 more days I’ll get it taken off again and probably the same guy will have to come all the way back here to take the shit back. He told me one time they made him come out to a guy who was getting off the next day and fix something. Stupid bullshit. But at least I shouldn’t have the IDOC calling here at all hours now.

One less final to worry about

My Non-Western Civilization teacher told me today that I won’t have to take the final - he told 4 people in the class who had all A’s on every other test/paper that we don’t have to take the final. So thats cool - not only am I guaranteed an A in that class, but that final was on the 11th, the day I’m supposed to get off house arrest and the official one year mark out of prison. Unfortunately I have an Algebra final the day after that, so I won’t be able to go crazy parting or anything - not that I could really party while still being on parole and not able to leave the state etc. Not that I have any money to party, or people to party with either… Plus I have a Middle Eastern final this Thursday, then an English final on Monday. Unless I basically ace the Algebra final I’ll get a B in that class, but that class doesn’t even count towards my GPA since its basically a remedial class, its supposed to be for people who don’t make a certain score on a math placement test, but I didn’t even take the test, I knew I needed to start from the bottom to get a firm grasp on math. Barring a major bomb on my Middle East or English final, I should be getting A’s in those classes too, so on all my GPA classes I should have all A’s.

It was kind of funny, as I was leaving class today I was talking to the professor, who was a really cool guy like all of my teachers have turned out to be, and he said something to the effect that I had read/studied all of the material - when I basically stopped reading any of the assignments after the first couple weeks. I told him I probably did more talking in class than reading. I guess thats what 11 years in prison and over 6 years straight in seg well-spent consuming as much reading material as possible will get you though…

The Arms of Sorrow

Sometimes - many times, most times perhaps - seeking understanding is a painful process.  As I wrote a couple months ago, but never published:

As many times as I tell myself than I’m not going to read it again, I find myself unceasingly returning to a certain address on the internets of former para-noir, like the shade of a murder victim to the scene of its own death. Of course I wandered past that particular set of letters and digits tonight, whereupon I found inscribed on this occasion a string of text that read, “Just because love was used to hurt you doesn’t make love a weapon.”

I’ve restrained myself quite well for the past couple months, but made another such journey last night - technically this morning, since it was around 2:30 - 3:30 AM. I’ve been trying to decide if it was a good idea, or a bad one. I can’t bring myself to ever say that knowledge is “bad,” that its the wrong thing to do to seek more knowledge and understanding. But I’ve just felt so shitty since my latest descent through the nether regions of the future past of a lost love that never was…

Anthropodermic bibliopegy

Ah, a new term to add to the collection of random crap in my mind. I read a story about this book auction, which introduced me to the term anthropodermic bibliopegy - the practice of binding books in human skin.  Here’s a picture of one such book:

Sure, I’d heard of the practice vaguely, probably more in a horror-story fictional way than reality, but the story listed some real-life examples, such as “court reports of murders that were covered in the skin of the perpetrator.”  Also there are historical reports of a Bible and Catholic cannon law books being written on human skin. I had read about the supposed practice of some of the Nazis making lampshades etc. out of skin, probably in The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, but apparently that is an urban legend. So the Nazis never actually made books or lampshades from human skin, but the “great” Western legal tradition that contributes to the basis of “justice” in America was so civilized and enlightened as to issue court reports covered in human skin…

A Boy

I lay alone in my room, a small boy of seven, entangled in confusion and fear and sorrow as I contemplated the revelation that everything I had known was untrue. Fractured shards of false reality rained down around me as the understanding began to coalesce that my entire life had been a lie.

The people holding me there were not my family, they’d lied to me. Why couldn’t I be with my real mommy, why didn’t she want me? They had no right to keep me there and beat me with the leather belts, I had to leave…

Many nights I was awakened by my bedroom light rudely piercing  my eyelids as my so-called father tore the comforting blankets from my bed and demanded that I get dressed to go work with him, delivering newspapers. Bundles of papers had to be carried, assembled, bagged, loaded into the vehicle, and delivered to the homes, apartments, and offices of those who - unlike myself – were slumbering away in their American dreamland atop cozy beds, oblivious to the reality of how their consumer commodities reached their doorstep.

Later, I would have my chance to leave. Without a home of my own to return to, the Streets welcomed another lost soul to wander the barren wasteland littered with the broken hopes of countless other thrown-away lives. The landscape of cold, black rivers of asphalt would soon be replaced by razor-wire serpents crawling along the concrete walls and steel bars of the tombs reserved for boys barely grown, sent to be locked away lest their existence disturb the faultless facade finely crafted to conceal the truths that must not be confronted. We must not let them awaken from their American dreams…

In my new home I would be held again against my will, and suffer punishments of a harsher sort than those of a boy beaten crying alone on the floor. And again the false realities that had been imparted to me would crumble, yet this time it would be I who sought to shatter the lies that had been fabricated around me.

National Conference of Prison Book Projects

I was supposed to be at the National Conference of Prison Book Projects today, but they gave me a new Parole Officer two days ago who refused to let me go - this after my original PO told me four days ago that I could go. Promoting literacy and education for prisoners is antithetical to those whose livelihood is based on profiting off of the mass incarceration of America’s youth. All you deserve is a cell and a bible, and you’ll get “pie in the sky when you die.”* Ah well, I’ve been spending the weekend writing a 5 - 15 page report on Red Star Over China - 6 pages already, and I haven’t even really started writing today. It’ll definitely be closer to 15 pages than 5. What a contrast it is to be in the middle of revolutionary China mentally as opposed to the reality of 2007 America…

* - Many thanks to Joe Hill for that phrase.

October 27th Anti-War Rally in Chicago

Across the country tens of thousands of people gathered together on October 27th to say “No!” to the imperialist war of aggression undertaken by the Bush regime - and to oppose any upcoming war on Iran. Due to my house arrest limitations, I was only able to attend the first part of the rally in Union Park in Chicago, and had to leave to get home as the march was starting to move downtown to Federal Plaza for what I presume will be an even larger rally. There were at least 2,000 - 3,000 people at Union Park, probably more at the height of the rally (wow, that estimate may even be extremely low, as Reuters is reporting 10,000 people!), with people coming in by busloads from all over the Midwest. I personally spoke to several people from Milwaukee, Wisconsin, as well as Indiana and Ohio. I also spoke to several people from Europe, including a young woman from Italy attending school in Chicago, and a guy from Canada. They basically said “Its about goddamn time Americans stood up” - thats a paraphrase, not a direct quote. Here are some photos I took with my cellphone.

Here’s the park at around 12:30pm, before the rally got started:

Gradually more and more people started showing up:

These last few pictures are from just before the height of the rally:

As usual, I took the photos with my cellphone, so they may not be the best, and I couldn’t take any really wide-angle shots of the full rally at its height. I would have liked to have taken part in the march itself and attended the final rally at Federal Plaza, but as I mentioned my house arrest limitations precluded me from staying any longer. All in all though it was a great day, good to see and meet so many people who are coming together to oppose the crimes of the Bush regime. Much more work is needed to confront the looming possibility of war on Iran…