Code Monkey Happy Ninja Banana Surprise!

(not to be misread as “What I’m Not Going to Tell You, Now That I’m BLACK”) <-- thank you, Mark

¡Hola! ¿Como está?

I am now physically, mentally and emotionally back in Chicago. I've been back, physically, for over a month now. Mentally, it took about a week or so before ALL the brain cells decided to volunteer for service again, and re-enlist in their various divisions: Job Labor and Drudgery, Fun Happy Spastic Randomness, Sexy Housemaid Chore-mongering, and Sleep-o-matic Dreamcastic Theatre. And well, emotions? What emotions? I have none. *snick. and er.*

For those of you first discovering that I actually have a blog, like to share thoughts, and can actually type in a somewhat literate fashion, welcome. This is my life. In a handbasket. Enjoy the free entertainment.

For those of you who were wondering where-the-heck-and-what-the-heck has Billy been for the past month and a half, well, I'm not really going to tell you that. I'll tell you where I've NOT been: Mexico. Nor have I been in the Philippines, Caribbean, Kenya, Germany, New Zealand, South Korea, China or France. A shame that last one - that was part of one of my plans, eight months ago.

And so, I get to my point of today's post, under the lovely general category of Monkey Mondays. Mondays suck. They're meant to suck. I mean, one of the days of the week HAS to suck, consistently. Otherwise, how else would we celebrate other ones in particular? Some people love Mondays. Those are the same people that loved pop quizzes worth 20 percent of your grade in Calculus. I hate those people.

Having your plans changed immeasurably can also suck. Let me tell you how:

I made the decision to go to Mexico in January. I was finalizing things then as well, slammin' through paperwork and logistics and otherwise dead set on going. Exactly two weeks after I had confirmed going, I got my best full time job offer ever. During layoffs. I had to say "no". Ouch. I would have been set monetarily for the rest of the year, big time. But no, I was going to Mexico.

March. Chicago to Mexico. I was to be there for six months.

May. Mexico back to Chicago. Oops. NOT in Mexico for six months. Make that only two months. Scramble to find housing, scramble to revamp ye olde resume, scramble to get all brain cells, body cells, and other randomly found on the sidewalk cells working together as one. Beer.

June. Winter revisits Chicago. Ouch. Double oops. Many, many unhappy people. Unhappy economy. Job cells getting restless. Emotions running free, unleashed, screaming "Look ma! No hands!"

This past weekend. Summer arrives. Maybe for good. Maybe just for a two day visit. We don't know, we live in Chicago. We've learned to not really trust the weather, but at the same time to grab the sun with both hands and stare at it as long as we can because tomorrow it might not be around, and then it won't really matter that we're all blind from burning our eyes out because there wouldn't be anything to see anyway.

I'm not going to tell you that my life has been interesting, especially starting when I got back to Chicago. I'm not going to tell you that all my plans were pretty much kicked to the curb exactly one week after being back. I'm not going to tell you that if I didn't go with the flow, I would be a very unhappy, stressed out person. I'm not going to tell you I find happiness in the simplest of things, like walks along the lake, coffee with friends, or running into random people on the sidewalk I haven't seen in months.

I'm not going to tell you there's a song in my head, it's in F minor with interludes of D flat major and F major and A minor thrown in for good measure. I'm not going to tell you about the day two staff members at a hardware store kept checking on me because I'd wandered in, hair unkempt, frayed jeans sagging past Crackdom, walking a little stiff and cheerfully wishing the counter staff Happy Saturday, looking at all the light bulbs.

It was Sunday.

I'm not going to tell you about the day I showed up for one of my first gigs, all bushy-tailed, ready to go, plow, stream some code from my brain to my hands to the keys to the board to the net.

24 hours early.

I'm not going to tell you how all my stuff is in Nashville, myself is in Chicago, and parts of me are still missing topes, quesillo, invisible highway lanes, thistle bushes and Hug Attackers. Children who live at a particular home just outside Tlacolula de Matamoros, Mexico, it seems, have found a permanent residence in my heart.

And I’m certainly not going to tell you that a man can make the best laid plans and within a twirl of the wind, find they’ve all been re-arranged, changed, canceled, remade, added to and all together mixed up beyond recognition.

I will, however, tell you that’s not at all necessarily a bad thing.

I’m in Chicago, and Chicago has said “welcome back, and oh by the way, all the plans you’ve had in your head are now gone, again. Have fun!”

Welcome back, indeed. Happy Monday.

I am happy to join with you today in what will go down in history as the greatest demonstration for freedom in the history of our nation.

Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand today, signed the Emancipation Proclamation. This momentous decree came as a great beacon light of hope to millions of Negro slaves who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice. It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of their captivity.

But one hundred years later, the Negro still is not free. One hundred years later, the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination. One hundred years later, the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity. One hundred years later, the Negro is still languishing in the corners of American society and finds himself an exile in his own land. So we have come here today to dramatize a shameful condition.
Martin Luther King, Jr., delivering his ‘I Have a Dream’ speech from the steps of Lincoln Memorial. (photo: National Park Service)

In a sense we have come to our nation’s capital to cash a check. When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men, yes, black men as well as white men, would be guaranteed the unalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check which has come back marked “insufficient funds.” But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation. So we have come to cash this check — a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and the security of justice. We have also come to this hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of now. This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism. Now is the time to make real the promises of democracy. Now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice. Now is the time to lift our nation from the quick sands of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood. Now is the time to make justice a reality for all of God’s children.

It would be fatal for the nation to overlook the urgency of the moment. This sweltering summer of the Negro’s legitimate discontent will not pass until there is an invigorating autumn of freedom and equality. Nineteen sixty-three is not an end, but a beginning. Those who hope that the Negro needed to blow off steam and will now be content will have a rude awakening if the nation returns to business as usual. There will be neither rest nor tranquility in America until the Negro is granted his citizenship rights. The whirlwinds of revolt will continue to shake the foundations of our nation until the bright day of justice emerges.

But there is something that I must say to my people who stand on the warm threshold which leads into the palace of justice. In the process of gaining our rightful place we must not be guilty of wrongful deeds. Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred.

We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline. We must not allow our creative protest to degenerate into physical violence. Again and again we must rise to the majestic heights of meeting physical force with soul force. The marvelous new militancy which has engulfed the Negro community must not lead us to a distrust of all white people, for many of our white brothers, as evidenced by their presence here today, have come to realize that their destiny is tied up with our destiny. They have come to realize that their freedom is inextricably bound to our freedom. We cannot walk alone.

As we walk, we must make the pledge that we shall always march ahead. We cannot turn back. There are those who are asking the devotees of civil rights, “When will you be satisfied?” We can never be satisfied as long as the Negro is the victim of the unspeakable horrors of police brutality. We can never be satisfied, as long as our bodies, heavy with the fatigue of travel, cannot gain lodging in the motels of the highways and the hotels of the cities. We cannot be satisfied as long as the Negro’s basic mobility is from a smaller ghetto to a larger one. We can never be satisfied as long as our children are stripped of their selfhood and robbed of their dignity by signs stating “For Whites Only”. We cannot be satisfied as long as a Negro in Mississippi cannot vote and a Negro in New York believes he has nothing for which to vote. No, no, we are not satisfied, and we will not be satisfied until justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.

I am not unmindful that some of you have come here out of great trials and tribulations. Some of you have come fresh from narrow jail cells. Some of you have come from areas where your quest for freedom left you battered by the storms of persecution and staggered by the winds of police brutality. You have been the veterans of creative suffering. Continue to work with the faith that unearned suffering is redemptive.

Go back to Mississippi, go back to Alabama, go back to South Carolina, go back to Georgia, go back to Louisiana, go back to the slums and ghettos of our northern cities, knowing that somehow this situation can and will be changed. Let us not wallow in the valley of despair.

I say to you today, my friends, so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.

I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: “We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal.”

I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.

I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

I have a dream today.

I have a dream that one day, down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of interposition and nullification; one day right there in Alabama, little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.

I have a dream today.

I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight, and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together.

This is our hope. This is the faith that I go back to the South with. With this faith we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day.

This will be the day when all of God’s children will be able to sing with a new meaning, “My country, ’tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing. Land where my fathers died, land of the pilgrim’s pride, from every mountainside, let freedom ring.”

And if America is to be a great nation this must become true. So let freedom ring from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire. Let freedom ring from the mighty mountains of New York. Let freedom ring from the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania!

Let freedom ring from the snowcapped Rockies of Colorado!

Let freedom ring from the curvaceous slopes of California!

But not only that; let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia!

Let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee!

Let freedom ring from every hill and molehill of Mississippi. From every mountainside, let freedom ring.

And when this happens, when we allow freedom to ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God’s children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, “Free at last! free at last! thank God Almighty, we are free at last!”

Hey look! It’s random thought monkey monday! OMG!

First of all, Exhibit A. You’ll have to click the image to see them, but you’ll notice upon close inspection that what appears to be the back of yer standard delivery truck is in fact a Special Delivery Truck with special (new! updated! fresh scent!) Human Hand Door Lock Mechanisms™. Yeh huhhhh… take a look. Those are two hands there. Don’t ask me why, I was only driving to class.

Next, Exhibit B. This is a small example of how I am evil and can waste time just to irritate and annoy those around me. Not that anyone needs evidence. Ever. Ev, please don’t comment. Britt, you too. Shut it. But hey what the hell. Yeah I took a pic of an arcade game high score because yeah, I did that simply to be annoying. No other reason. I don’t even really LIKE the game. Someone else had a high score, so I beat it and then beat it four more times to clear them off the board. Yes. Absolutely. Waste of time. Slightly cathartic though…

Holy Cow!!!! Exhibit C is proof of supreme dedication. This photo was taken Saturday afternoon. It was like, 4 degrees out. And all the slush was exactly that: slushy, slippery, tractionless, frictionless, ridiculous. And yet this man decided he needed to ride his recumbent that day. In. Sane. And no, he didn’t have good traction either so he was literally peddling double time in order to approach the speed of molasses in winter. I think we topped 2mph (which is STILL faster than the bus last week).

Last, but not least, the happiest bathroom (but only for authorized personnel) icons I’ve seen in a long time. Found at a BP somewhere near Southport and Wrightwood. Maybe Southport and Diversey. No idea. Oh well, there’s happy people behind that door, but I’ll never know. Damn.