Ok, so I know I am dating myself here a bit. But I know at least one or two of you will remember the Thundercats. An underrated bunch of cartoon heros if ever there was one.

So if you remember them, let’s start the voting in the poll. And if you don’t then check out an excellent Fan Site. Includes character bio information to refresh your memories and even the themesong.

Thundercats! Ho!

There is geography inside you, the mystic ocean is pristine
It is the spirit realm, and you are at the helm
where all the hungry souls convene
Your instruments are gauged for motion
don’t tie the craft to keep it still
For if the captain’s idle, then the ship is bridled
And you have a voyage to fulfill

This vessel harbors no one meek, the timid never seek
But you watch the water rise, and you have anxious eyes

There is a compass in your chest – pressing toward the house of light
There is a purpose you possess – pressing toward the house of light
With every drop and every crest, I see your sails are full and tight
Pressing toward the house of light

Some may embrace their hesitation
with the passive anchors that they lay
But retrospect will prove that those who never move
become a pirate’s easy prey
This boat is the sum of all your actions
its body is a product of your deeds
Crossing water fast, ambition is the mast
And you were christened with Godspeed
The frightened ones who wouldn’t board envy you from shore
For you’re in the rising tide and you are eager eyed

There is a compass in your chest – pressing toward the house of light
There is a purpose you possess – pressing toward the house of light
With every drop and every crest, I see your sails are full and tight
Pressing toward the house of light

You are immersed in affirmation
Bathed in the source of your creation
Some are tempted by a dimmer glow
and drown in the undertow
But you are centered in a higher conscious wind
You see the beacon clear and bright

There is a compass in your chest – pressing toward the house of light
There is a purpose you possess – pressing toward the house of light
With every drop and every crest, I see your sails are full and tight
Pressing toward the house of light

—

I just downloaded (legally, even) a bootleg from a Stuart Davis show in 1994. Apparently it was the release show for his Self Untitled album up in Minnesota. If you haven’t heard of him before, you’re required to attend one of his shows as soon as humanly possible. He absolutely ROCKS. I’ve been a fan for 5 years and have seen him live about 10 times. The guy has put out 9 full-length albums and is on tour pretty much all year at small clubs throughout the Midwest as well as California and Colorado. GO SEE HIM. I’ve been listening to his newer stuff lately, and the song above didn’t do much for me on the studio version, but the live one really grabbed me. It’s such an incredible sentiment, and it gains extra points for making me think just reading the lyrics. For the last few weeks I have been trying to put down my thoughts on the idea of fate and destiny, the responsibility we have for our actions, and then I hear this and it occurs to me that I just need to copy the lyrics down and shut up. Of course, I won’t quit just yet. Consider one verse in particular:

This boat is the sum of all your actions
its body is a product of your deeds
Crossing water fast, ambition is the mast
And you were christened with Godspeed

"This boat is the sum of all your actions" — You’re responsible for what happens to you. Everything that occurs is a direct result of a decision, or a series of them, that you’ve made. Does that mean you could have anticipated everything that happens? Obviously not, but you can always trace it back to your actions.

"This body is the product of your deeds" — Well, this is all about karma, isn’t it? Your choices have repercussions, for better or worse. If you believe that there’s energy associated with what you do (and experience seems to bear this out over time, at least for me), each of those choices tends to take on some additional significance.

"Crossing water fast, ambition is the mast" — I know just about nothing about sailing, but I’ve read that speed is generated by the mast as much as the sails. Or, more to the point, the mast can limit the speed. If it’s cracked or weak or unsteady, you can’t put as much sail up and can’t take advantage of the wind you have. If we’re all truly limitless beings, capable of whatever we desire and are willing to dedicate ourselves to, then that willingness (our ambition) is what determines how much of that energy we can use. Fucking cool, isn’t it?

"And you were christened with Godspeed" — It reminds me of a great line from Richard Bach’s Illusions: "Argue for your limitations, and sure enough, they’re yours." Tell yourself enough that you can’t do something and you shouldn’t be surprised that it never happens. But try it the other way, and it’s amazing what you’ll be able to do, things you never imagined. Doesn’t it seem like we get glimpses of this potential sometimes? I don’’ see them every day like some do, but every now and then I swear I can see limitless potential in my friends, or my family, or random people I meet. It happens when I experience a piece of artwork, either visual or written or performed. It happens sometimes when I take a walk that’s not designed to burn off the cookies I shouldn’t have eaten for dessert. It happens, sometimes, when I first wake up on a Saturday and write in my rarely updated dream journal.

Did you know that the word Muse used to be synonymous with liar? When I learned this, it became a truth that fit right into place; one of those things that I believe I knew all along, but never had the ability (or, perhaps, the desire) to put it into words. But it makes a hell of a lot of sense, when you think about it. The Muses were the inspiration for all sorts of artists, and while art often is a reflection of life, it certainly isn’t a literal one.

In January I made a weekend trip to St. Louis to visit my family for the holidays. For some reason, my mom’s family calls this event Cherry Pie, and the lies at this year’s Cherry Pie started long before the event began. My dad asked my mom where the Cherry Pie term came from, and since I hadn’t any idea either, I was gratified when she sent a message to her brothers and sisters to see if they had a clue. The Muses were working overtime when this set of e-mails began.

My aunt Cathy had a very specific explanation. She described a Jostedt family gift exchange many years ago where the names were written down and drawn out of a pie tin to see who would be giving a gift to whom. She held that someone at that long-forgotten gathering, probably my grandpa, had quipped, “What is this, cherry pie?” And so a tradition was born. This fits the facts as we know them, and the vision of Dan Jostedt cracking wise at a family function is hardly difficult to believe.

It is also, apparently, completely untrue, at least according to my aunt Trisha’s message. She seems to recall that she referred to Cherry Pie in passing with a friend of hers who was unacquainted with our family, and this friend knew exactly what she was talking about. While she doesn’t have a specific theory on how the tradition started, she is certain that Cathy is wrong.

One of my uncles, Mike, got into the act next, asserting his role as the patriarch of the family (a scary thought, as all of us would attest). He claimed that the phrase “cherry pie” is an old Swedish and Irish expression that means, “The more insurance you buy, the longer you live”. It is important, I think, to note that Mike is an insurance agent.

Finally, in desperation, someone forwarded the message to my great-aunt Peg. Her message ended, appropriately, with “When you talk to Mike, tell him he is wrong, wrong, wrong.” Before mocking her eldest nephew, she described the Christmas of 1944, when she was a sophomore at Webster College. She and her friends decided to exchange gifts, and one of these friends, Mary, told them that they were participating in a Cherry Pie. Nobody questioned the strange title at the time, and in fact never did question it until now. The same group, according to Peg, still exchanges gifts every year, and she asked one of the participants, Mary Louise, how it came to be known as a Cherry Pie. Neither of them can remember. Peg explained that she brought the tradition to the Jostedt family, and the rest of us are offshoots. This, too, is an absolutely plausible explanation. She remembered the first year the event took place, even several of the participants’ names. These details tend to lend credence to her account.

I don’t believe any of my relatives. Experience has taught me that taking what any of them say at face value is a dangerous proposition. I believe this to be my grandfather’s fault. I was fairly young when he died, and so I don’t remember him all that well. That is, I have many memories of him, but they are a child’s memories. I’ll always know him as an 11 year old knows his grandpa. A big man, with a booming laugh that woke me up in the mornings we would visit him. I was with him the day President Reagan was shot. He told my brother and me, “You’ll always remember where you were at this moment.” He was almost right. I don’t remember exactly where we were, but I remember what he told me.

I remember the scent of his cigars, the haze of the smoke filling my grandparents’ living room on the nights my family would arrive at their house. It was about 200 miles from Springfield to St. Charles Missouri, and we usually made the trip at night—probably because it made my brother and I more likely to sleep and leave my poor parents alone during the drive. I used to sit and listen to him in a kind of sleepy daze, the minutes seeming to stretch into hours as I drifted in and out of sleep. I believe he may have been at his happiest when he was telling stories. I didn’t know most of the people he talked about; don’t remember the details of most of his tales. But I do remember how he told them. The way his face became more animated, the way he paced himself. He could spend an hour telling you about a 15-minute conversation he had, and you wouldn’t notice the way the time passed. One story spilled into another, until at the end of it you felt you knew all the parties involved personally.

His stories were like those made-for-TV movies, the ones that are “inspired by real events”. One of his favorite lines when he was caught exaggerating matters was, “Another good story shot in the head by an eyewitness.” But he almost always said it with a smile, as if he knew that his embellishments would become part of the story in the end. He was right, too. My family tells stories all the time, but one of our favorite topics is the stories he would tell. We’re foggy on some of the details, but he taught us that the details aren’t as important as you might think. Mike told one this year that I’ll never forget.

Grandpa wrote an article for the St. Louis Globe Democrat in the 1950s called “My Greatest Sports Thrill”. In it, he relates the story of seeing an appearance by Babe Ruth at Sportsman’s Park. Babe was long-since retired by then, and his health was failing. Uncle Mike, then a toddler, was there too. Grandpa’s article described how Babe was barely able to walk around the stadium, but despite his obvious agony he stopped for every kid who wanted to talk to him, exchanged a few words, and then trudged on. Finally, he started to walk down the exit ramp when a man came running up to him with a ball he had hit in the World Series and asked him to sign it for his son. Ruth groped for a pen, but couldn’t make his fingers close around it. He tried to force a smile, but was unable even to do that. Finally, he gasped, “I’ll….I’ll have to catch your boy the next time around, okay kid?” The man went back to his seat with tears running down his cheeks and related what he had seen to those seated around him, including my grandfather. Grandpa wrote that what he heard and saw that day reminded him that Babe was truly a champion, and while what he did that day would never show up in the record books, his courage inspired everyone who was there.

The story goes that after reading this article, Mike was incredibly excited and went to my grandfather to talk to him about it.

“Wow, dad,” he asked, “did that really happen?”

Grandpa smiled. “That’s a great story, isn’t it Mike?”

“Yeah, it sure was! Was I really with you to see the Babe?”

“Mike, what was your favorite part of the story?”

My uncle wouldn’t let it go. “Come on, Dad, I have to know. Did it really happen that way?”

There was a pause. “Mike,” my grandpa smiled, “if it had happened, it would have happened exactly like that.”

Of course, that’s what Mike says. The only thing I know for sure is that the article is real—I have a photocopy of it in front of me right now. But I don’t doubt this one too much, because while my family makes a lot of things up, we rarely embellish the stories Grandpa told. We don’t need to.

I suppose all sons and daughters model their parents to a greater or lesser extent, but I don’t know that I’ve ever seen a whole family inspired by a liar the way we are by my grandfather. My family isn’t full of artists, though some of us sing well enough and a few of my cousins sculpt and paint. A few of us write from time to time, but none of us make a living at it. We are insurance agents and computer programmers and entrepreneurs and massage therapists, and all of us are storytellers.

I don’t know how smart Grandpa was, or how good at his job he was, or what kind of a father he was. I don’t know a lot about him, but I do know how he told a story. That is his legacy to me, and it’s more than enough for me to love him.

By the way, that thing about the meaning of the word Muse. You’re welcome to use it yourself, but don’t be surprised if someone points out that it’s not true. It sure made for a better story, though, didn’t it?

I am sitting in an online class through the training dept at work. At the same time, I am emailing, IMing, reading message boards for both work and leisure, editing images, blogging, and so much more. All of this using a laptop the size of one volume of an encyclopedia that costs little enough that almost anyone can afford one. It has more computing power than 10,000 people with abacuses (abacii?). But as amazing as all of that is, the real wizardry is in the network.

We live in a world that has more interconnectivity than anyone could have concieved of just 3 decades ago. It basically brings the knowledge of the whole world into any home with an Internet connection. The computerized parts of the world now function as a single repository of knowledge that is sorted and index in an almost infinite number of ways. Sometimes I imagine the globe as a single living brain with decentralized functions. It is a powerful and amazing thought and it gives me a lot of hope for the future of the species.

Then I watch the news and realize that we have so much more ground to cover before we function as a unified being. As is too often the case, our minds have vastly out performed our souls. If only there were a network to connect ourselves as easily as we connect our technology. Then we would truly be an advanced world.

It is a dangerous thing when a for-profit entity is challenging some of the most fundamental individual rights of citizens. The right to privacy and the right to free speech are cornerstones of our society and it makes me extremely nervous when a company wishes to infringe on those rights for the purposes of increasing its own profits.

I have to admit that during Napsters’ heyday I was a registered member and spent a few hours a week perusing the lists and picking out a few songs here and there. Mostly I went looking for novelty and parody bits that I had heard once long ago and never expected to see in a record store. No harm no foul.

But with the recent efforts by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) file swapping has become an issue of far reaching political and economic importance and one that everyone who listens to music, watches movies or uses the Internet needs to take a moment to consider.

When the trial began against the founders of Napster I think many of us who had some basic notion of the value of intellectual property had to feel that there was a certain merit in the charges. Here was a company that was providing access to thousands of copyrighted songs, movies, and software titles. Naturally the copyright holders had a certain legal right to be upset about this. I would compare it loosely someone building a new bar adjacent to an established one and telling the whole world that if they brought their own cup and a keg tap they could drink all they wanted from the bar next door. The owners of the original bar would be a tad upset.

At this point its important to note the difficulties encountered when dealing with intellectual property as opposed to physical property. I like the comparison above, but it has to be used carefully because any physical property will eventually be used up. Intellectual property on the other hand cannot be diminished or consumed. It exists forever in its original state and can only be enhanced, never destroyed. This is even more true since the widespread use of the Internet came into vouge. Once its out there folks, it can’t be brought back.

Which is what makes the whole situation between the RIAA and its arch nemesis the file swappers so touchy. While I had a certain degree of reluctant sympathy with the music industry during the Napster trial they have since used up any good will they may have gained from it. Their current pursuit of individual file swappers shows that they are far more interested in being a political force than they are in making money in a sustainable way.

The argument by the RIAA is that file swappers are costing their members, the record companies, money because they are giving away something for free that actually belongs to the companies. This is a fair argument and one that most people can understand once they look at it for a moment. But consumers over the last few years have become more and more disillusioned with the corporate model that the RIAA represents. Rather than embracing the Internet as a marketing and sales tool, the RIAA has decided to make enemies of virtually everyone who uses the Internet. By issuing supoenas and attempting to force Internet Service Providers (ISPs) with the names of the file swappers the RIAA has succeeded in putting fear into a good portion of the demographic they should be targeting for sales. This would be roughly akin to the police demanding that Ford pony up the names of everyone who got caught speeding while in a Ford so they could have their liscences suspended. Sure Ford could do it with enough research and money spent, but they would alienate their own customer base not to mention open themselves up to a raft of liability issues.

So what could the RIAA have done? I should point out my own bias before making any suggestions on this one. I believe in the artists right to profit from their own effort and creativity. One of the biggest strikes against the RIAA in the public eye is that they do not represent the artists. They represent the companies who own the artists. And yes, I use the word own in a very literal sense. The RIAA is, therefore, not a group that I feel needs to exist. They are a political lobby and nothing else. Having said that, I think the RIAA needs to immediately withdraw from its current course of action and instead devote itself to finding online marketing strategies that will turn a profit. By its own research, the RIAA has shown that there is a huge population out there who are perfectly happy getting digital music off the Internet. It should be a small feat for a group with the massive resources that the RIAA has to find a way to dip into the pockets of that population rather than trying to send them to jail. I seem to recall that when Microsoft faced a threat from Netscape they solved the problem by undercutting them and releasing Internet Explorer for free. Now, I am not suggesting that the RIAA offer free music. That would be counter to their mission. But if they were to offer a sample free, say one song from each new release, and then sell the rest of the album on a per track basis they should be able to turn a tidy profit. This is compunded by the fact that selling music online involves a mere fraction of the overhead expense of traditional retailers. If the record companies moved ten percent of their business online their profit margin would increase. But I believe the solution to this problem is a bit more deep rooted than that. The media industry in America has become dangerously homogenous. I have spoken only of music in this article, but the same concerns can be raised about movies, TV, print media, and radio. All of these industries are being merged into a few very large companies who are gaining the political power to force devastating changes in our society. The solution to the problem is to move away from those conglomerates as much as possible. Support independant musicians and filmmakers. Listen to independant radio. Read your locally owned newspaper.

The premise of the RIAA’s argument is that they cannot be profitable as long as file swapping occurs. I would suggest to them that they stop trying to make it a political and legal issue and treat it as the econimic issue it truly is. In a country where a 19 year old could start the file swapping revolution with software he wrote for a class project, surely the members of the RIAA can find a way to make a few bucks off of the same crowd that gladly plunks down $50 to download the latest video game.

I was recently in the Virgin Islands for a wedding of two of my best friends in Chicago. Susanne asked me to be one of her attendants, and with the exception of getting stuck holding the bouquet for a while, it was a lovely affair.

I also got to give a toast at the reception, which is something I do pretty well with. I’m hoping, though, that Ken and Susanne will break the trend of short marriages following my excellent toasts. Anyway, I’ve decided to include a general recounting of what I said because it really does remind me of what I’d like for a relationship to be:

"It’s traditional, I believe, to recount an amusing anecdote about the bride and groom in one of these things. I won’t be doing that, because as I thought about it I realized that most of my stories are shameful and autobiographical.

There are many things about Ken and Susanne’s relationship that I appreciate, but one in particular that I admire. They spend a lot of time together, love each other, want to build their lives together, but they also remain individuals. That’s rarer than you might imagine, and it reminds me of some words from Gibran’s The Prophet that I’d like to share:

‘But let there be spaces in your togetherness,
And let the winds of the heavens dance between you.

Love one another but make not a bond of love:
Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls.

Fill each other’s cup but drink not from one cup.
Give one another of your bread but eat not from the same loaf.

Sing and dance together and be joyous [especially today!], but let each one of you be alone,
Even as the strings of a lute are alone though they quiver with the same music.

Give your hearts, but not into each other’s keeping.
For only the hand of Life can contain your hearts.
And stand together, yet not too near together:
For the pillars of the temple stand apart,
And the oak tree and the cypress grow not in each other’s shadow.’

So as we look and the couple today, I’d like us to raise our glasses and wish them distance, and proximity, and most especially love."