and i'll bet when it passed, his mama stood up and cheered

two months ago, this 16-year-old kid was dragged, handcuffed, outta his house and thrown into lock-up on suspicion of making a threat from his home computer. since then, he's been held virtually incommunicado at a juvie detention center far from his home, his future murky and uncertain.

his mother claims that her son--conservative, flag-waving, church-going and home-schooled--had never been in trouble, there was no evidence to support the arresting officers' claim recovered from their home, and that someone must've hacked the kid's ip address and made the threats in his name.

is the kid guilty of the charge? who knows--maybe, maybe not.

point is, in this case it doesn't really matter, because the feds aren't interested in any defense he might offer, nor are they required to be; hell, they can hold this kid in a kafkaesque limbo--no charges, no communication with the outside, no lawyers, no hearing, no arraignment, no defense--forever if they want.

"but this is america," i hear you say, "land of habeas corpus and rule of law--how could this be?"

simple: the patriot act makes it so.

see, the "threat" in question was apparently a bomb threat, thus making this a potential act of terror--and thus giving the feds, via said patriot act, virtual unchecked, unquestioned power over this american citizen's life.

kid's mother is mystified, wailing and wondering what happened to due process in america.

this story makes me chuckle darkly to myself for two reasons:

first, because at the same time the obama administration is falling all over itself trying to close guantanamo, free many of its prisoners and downgrade middle-eastern "terrorists" to mere "extremists," it's now using the patriot act (among other things) to target conservative "terrorists" in the heartland of america; and

second, because i'm sure that, as long as the previous administration was in power and the patriot act seemed only to apply to towelheads, liberal librarians and similar other pinko troublemakers, most conservatives (such as the mother in question here) were perfectly fine with it.

see what happens when you pass dangerous, poorly-thought-out, emotionally-charged legislation and then the tables turn?

[and yeah, of course there's a message here; let this be a cautionary tale for all my friends out there who so passionately favor the hate-crimes legislation currently making its way through congress--think for a minute what might happen when the other side once again gains power (because it'll happen--it always does), and starts using that thought-police bullshit against you.]

a word about my (and, for that matter, your) musical tastes

.
it happened again today, only this time at work--guy grabs my ipod off my desk (because i'd forgotten to hide it), scrolls through my songs as i inwardly cringe, awaiting the inevitable; finally looks up at me incredulously and says, "where the hell do you even find this shit?"

this would be the point at which i'd usually make some lame apologetic excuse for my idiosyncratic tastes like i've been doing all my life.

but not today.

today, hungover and ornery, i snatch the ipod outta his hand and snarl, "each and every one of those songs is there for a reason, and they're reasons you wouldn't understand if you lived a thousand goddam years. now get outta here and let me get some work done."

surprised, he retreats--and i have my next blogpost.

because you know what? i've pretty much had it with people who mindlessly slam the musical tastes of other people without having the slightest clue as to what they're talking about.

what none of 'em realize (and what you probably don't realize either) is that music is as much a drug in its own way as is alcohol or pot or meth or crack: to the degree a particular combination of sounds hits your endorphin receptors just right, you like it; to the degree it doesn't, you don't--it's that fucking simple.

and it's pretty much non-negotiable--i mean, you can try, for the sake of your standing amongst your peers, to get into whatever music they're into, but the bottom line is, you like what you like, and that's pretty much it.

[case in point: i can't even begin to tell you how much more easily the first 17 years of my life woulda gone had i been able to get excited about hard rock--or for the last 17, techno house music--but that's another post for another day.]

i realized this eternal truth about music early on--back when i was a lonely kid in high school, i spent countless hours locked up alone in my room, headphones on, chain-smoking and transported to another world by the music that moved me then. different songs, individually or in combination, would bring on different moods; more often than not i'd get caught up in one particular song and listen to it over and over and over.

these two drugs--nicotine and music--became linked so strongly in my psyche that when i finally quit smoking fifteen years ago, i found i had no choice but to quit music as well--and i mean all music.

why? because as soon as a song came up that i liked, i'd reflexively reach for a cigarette to enhance the high, just like i'd always done in the past.

it took me eight long years to break that trigger and actually be able to listen to music again without feeling the irresistible urge to reach for that other drug.

alcohol helped.