Brakes

I was going through some pictures the other day and came acroos this one I took in Costa Rica right before going up 800 feet into the canopy. These are the "brakes" you would use, were you to embark on a zip-line tour of the rainforest canopy.
This is how it works: you get fitted with a basic climber's harness (for the un-initiated, this is a nylon webbing belt with attached leg loops and a loop at your crotch which connects you to whatever keeps you from plummeting to a horrible "SPLAT!" You can figure the rest out from the pictures...), a helmet (not really sure why as you're higher up than really anything that would be heavy enough to do any significant damage to your squash) and a pair of these jobbies. These are leather fingered canvas gardner's gloves that the staff glue leather pads to every morning. As you slide along the zip-line at literally break-neck speed (maybe they should have given us neck-guards rather than helmets, hmmm) you hold one hand on the cord keeping you on the line and one hand behind you on the line itself to a) keep you from spinning out of control and b) slow yourself to a reasonable speed as you approach the "landing pad" (imagine the ewok villiage from Return of the Jedi--that's the image).

Now, funny story regarding the misuse of said "brakes". While we were at the resort, there was a photo shoot occurring for some swim-wear catalog. Photographers and models and various members of the entourage that tried to appear as if they had some incredibly important and arcane purpose that involved consuming massive amounts of native beer and making a spectacle of themselves--you get the picture. On Saturday, apparently, they had the day off and, regretably, disappeared to go terrorize some corner of the country that was not the resort. On Sunday, two of the entourage appeared at breakfast not only hung over (which was really not all that remarkable) bust also, mysteriously, clad in fresh casts.

It took some doing and a good deal of shameless gossiping amongst the rest of the guests, but we were able to finally able to peice together the story: these two fashionista wanna-bes thought that it would be a good idea to pound Bloody Marys prior to starting out on this adventure through the jungle as they figured that there might not be any booze in the wild. As a result, these two geniuses didn't bother to listen during the safety spiel and couldn't figure out that they actually needed to do something to prevent SLAMMING into the platform or, God-forbid , the tree it was attached to and inflicting immense bodily harm to one's own body, and .... CRACK! Yeah, you guesed it. And the best was, one watched the other one do it and then proceeded to do the exact same thing on the next line!

The moral of the story: in, well, every place other than here, where we are raised as removed from any real danger as possible, the safety spiel is a good thing to listen to; activities involving high speeds and gloves as your main method of stopping do not mix with large amounts of alcohol; and basically pay attention and respect your surroundings...enough said.

Kill Em All

Over the wekend I noticed quite a few news stories regarding men on trial or being released after having served time for sex crimes. One of the women I work with recently received a letter from her 8-year-old daughter's school, informing them that a registered sex offender is moving into a place that's less than 1000ft from the school. In the news not too long ago, there was a report of a registered sex offender being killed. And the list goes on and on...

I have a couple of real problems with this issue. On the one hand, I put myself in the shoes of the parents and families of children who live such proximity to these people. I know that if I had kids, I'd be ape-shit if I got a letter saying that a registered sex-offender was being allowed to live within 1000ft of the school my kids went to because everyone else had run him (or her--I'll be using the male pronoun because, well, statistically that tends to be the case) off and his family owned land within that radius. It seems totally irresponsible to put children in proximity to that kind of risk. But then, isn't 1000ft kind of an arbitrary number? And what about 1000ft from a playground? Or from the toy section of a department store? Or, god forbid, from the home and yard of a family that has children? The truth is, the restriction on sex offenders to live outside a 1000ft area from a school is a token gesture. Yes, it will reduce the frequency said offender will come into contact with a child, but does it take away oppurtunity? Definitely not.

And should, as parents, we be expected to keep our children inside, locked away from the world to keep them safe from predators? Certainly not. How else do we expect our children to learn and become part of the world?

However, registered and convicted sex offenders, according to the courts, the verdict and punishment doled out by a 12-member jury of their peers (if such a person can really said to have peers within the normal scope of human existence) and the entirety of our society's justice system, have paid their debt to society once their sentence has been carried out and they are freed. Obviously, we do not believe this as a society or we would not continue to devise ways to keep these people on the outside. Nor she believe this to be the case. Statistically, sex offenders are more likely to commit their crimes again.

If this is the case, why do we insist on perpetuating the myth that our justice system is geared towards rehabilitation when this is obviously not the case?

This question came up during the course of a discussion on the subject with my wife and my answer was "kill 'em all." She was horrified. Understand, I am completely against the death penalty. I do not believe there is no justification for it. However, the statement I made was to illustrate the point: we, as a society are not mature enough to take responsibility for the gross realities and short-comings of our justice system, not willing to adjust that system to legitimately attempt to rehabilitate the criminals (not just sex offenders) and not prepared to accept those criminals back into society once their sentence has been carried out. The whole thing smacks of massive hypocrisy and leaves us with only two remaining options: ship them all off to a secluded island to be locked away from society for the rest of their lives (and we all know that the tourism trade will never sacrifice an island for that cause) or, as the title reads, kill 'em all. At least until we are prepared to grow up as a society and take responsibility for all of its members...

...in addition...

So here's the picture of Josh and Kate I mentioned earlier...these are the folks that came down with us...

Getting Started

So....this is a long time overdue. I've been thinking about doing this for quite some time but never really quite got around to it. So here we go...

...first off, this will be (or at least is intended to be) an exercise in getting me to actually write on a regular basis, post some of my artwork out there for general consumption and criticism and share things I come across that I think are pretty damn cool, or at least worth pointing out.

To start, and this is pretty damn cool, I got married. Now I realize that the picture is almost a year old as is the news, but, hey! at least it's out there now. As of October 3rd, 2005, Rebecca Michel Ivey (and I'm confident that she'll be pretty miffed at me for putting her full name out there...if you don't want to piss her off, make sure you address her as Becca; anything else you're on your own...) became Rebecca Michel Geneseo on a volcanic sand beach where the river meets the ocean on Papagayo Bay, Costa Rica.

For those of you who don't know the story, Becca & I dated in high school and fell in love when her family moved to Mass from Texas. Unfortunately, as many young loves are wont to do, we ended badly and spent the next ten years of our lives with no contact whatsoever...

...and the story picks up in March of 2002, when shortly after my mother passed away after a long battle with cancer (I'm sure there will be more on this to follow) I got a phone call: I was home after the funeral for my brother's birthday and was out the door to drive out to Amherst, MA, when the phone rang. I picked up against better judgement as neither my father nor brother looked to be about to pick it up. The voice on the other end, was one that I had thought about many times in the intervening years but didn't think I'd ever hear again. I wasn't positive at first, but when Becca told me who it was, I dropped the phone on the floor of the kitchen like I was in high school again.

We talked for a couple of hours and I found that I had an unusual feeling between my stomach and throat that I hadn't felt in a long time in addition to finding that talking to her was like no time at all had passed. I hung up feeling better than I had in a long time and seriously considered skipping the I-90 exit to head out West and instead drive North to Portland where I'd learned Becca was now living; I felt like I needed to see her RIGHT NOW! But, the little voices of Reason and Impulse had matured over the years and the balance of power had shifted and I told myself it couldn't possibly be the "L"-word after ten years and a phone call, so I turned off and headed out to the Pioneer Valley to visit some friends and try to clear my head after the funeral and everything that goes along with it. By the way, I was wrong. This is a lesson I took to heart: when in doubt, don't follow the advice of Reason; it tends to take much longer to get to the same place.

We started talking on the phone periodically and then making the trip from Boston to Portland or vice versa to visit and then it turned into dating and, well, the rest as they say is history...

...well, I was going to include a picture of our friends Josh & Kate, but as I am new at this, I can't seem to figure out how to include more than one picture per post--I'll have to work on that...

Anyhow, this whole story is give you an idea of how important Becca is to me. Not only is she the love of my life, she's also my biggest fan, the best thing ever happened to my artwork and the biggest fire under my hind-end to get some of my work, be it written, drawn, painted, photographed or some combination of the lot. I figured this would be a good start.

So, welcome to Rocket Fuel Sushi, hope you find something worth coming back for...