BETTER MEN? BETTER THAN WHAT?

The idea of better men is different than Best Man.

If you’ve ever been selected as a Best Man, you know what better feels like.

Somehow, someone valued your friendship, in spite of how you might value yourself.

Can anyone be a better man? Let’s not get carried away.

I’ve heard say that better is the ‘enemy of good.’

Like when you finish a project and call it, “Good,” until someone comes around to point out that it could be better.

Better if you did this, did that, added this, added that.

Unfortunately, the extras, the improvements, don’t include time and money, or how long you want to hover over a finished deal.

Take a fence for example.

This is a finished fence of ‘good.’

 

 

This is a finished fence of ‘better.’

 

 

They serve the same purpose but send a different message to the community.

Good Fence: I’m reclaiming the side yard for my kid to explore.

Better Fence: I hired a fencing company, or I used a fencing plan, or I bought panels.

Which translates to:

Good Men = responsible, accountable; determined to stay responsible and accountable.

Better Men = opportunity, mobility, flexibility.

Best Man = Yes I have the ring, stop asking.

 

Good Men Try Harder

 Good men are more willing; better men are more capable.

Think of it from the ‘floor’ and ‘ceiling’ point of view.

One has a higher ceiling; one has a higher floor.

This phenomena reveals itself in sports at every level of play.

The good athlete is a grinder, comes in early, stays late, does the extras to lift their game above the struggle.

The better athlete walks in off the sidewalk and kicks ass with no problems.

The great athlete does both, along with living an exemplary life out of the scandal spot light. (Hey LeBron)

 

Writers show up on the same scale.

Kurt Vonnegut is a good writer with an attitude I like.

I’ve been a fan ever since his take on Allen Ginsberg’s poem ‘Howl.’

I had an English professor read it all in class, the whole thing, while he danced and frothed in spitty joy.

Here’s the beginning:

 

I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by
        madness, starving hysterical naked,
dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn
        looking for an angry fix,
angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly
        connection to the starry dynamo in the machin-
        ery of night,
who poverty and tatters and hollow-eyed and high sat
        up smoking in the supernatural darkness of
        cold-water flats floating across the tops of cities
        contemplating jazz,
who bared their brains to Heaven under the El and
        saw Mohammedan angels staggering on tene-
        ment roofs illuminated,
who passed through universities with radiant cool eyes
        hallucinating Arkansas and Blake-light tragedy
        among the scholars of war,
who were expelled from the academies for crazy &
        publishing obscene odes on the windows of the
        skull,

 

This responce is essential Kurt Vonnegut:

 

“I like “Howl” a lot. Who wouldn’t? It just doesn’t have much to do with me or what happened to my friends.

For one thing, I believe that the best minds of my generation were probably musicians and physicists and mathematicians and biologists and archaeologists and chess masters and so on, and Ginsberg’s closest friends, if I’m not mistaken, were undergraduates in the English department of Columbia University.

No offense intended, but it would never occur to me to look for the best minds in any generation in an undergraduate English department anywhere.

I would certainly try the physics department or the music department first — and after that biochemistry.

Everybody knows that the dumbest people in any American university are in the education department, and English after that.”

 

If Vonnegut is good and Ginsberg better, I’m still holding firm on my current author fan-ship with Patrick DeWitt.

 

Dependable Men Are Better Men Doing Good

Once upon a time an American President said: “Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.”

 

John F. Kennedy’s inaugural address inspired children and adults to see the importance of civic action and public service. His historic words, “Ask not what your country can do for you – ask what you can do for your country,” challenged every American to contribute in some way to the public good.

 

Boomerpdx is a public blog for the public good. 

It’s not journalism, not law, not science.

It’s not literary, library, or a mortuary for mourning the past and how great things used to be.

What it is is a reflection of the times close to the moment, and at the moment the big thing is voter registration.

Let’s break the reader/writer window for doing that one task and check if we’re registered to vote.

 

You should update your registration if you move, change your name or mailing address, or want to select or change your party affiliation.

Name changes should be done using the paper registration form so we have record of your new signature.

 

Most often a blogger talking about voting is a shit-talking shill for one party or the other.

Or, sadly, they ask that you not vote because that contributes to ‘the machine.’

When I think about ‘the machine’ of America I think of a fair chance at a better life, safe food, clean air and water, good schools, paved roads, and help with the activities of daily life for those who need it.

Ask me about ‘the machine’ and I give you more Ginsberg and Howl:

 

Moloch whose mind is pure machinery! Moloch whose
        blood is running money! Moloch whose fingers
        are ten armies! Moloch whose breast is a canni-
        bal dynamo! Moloch whose ear is a smoking
        tomb!
Moloch whose eyes are a thousand blind windows!
        Moloch whose skyscrapers stand in the long
        streets like endless Jehovahs! Moloch whose fac-
        tories dream and croak in the fog! Moloch whose
        smokestacks and antennae crown the cities!

 

Register to vote, and do it.

But don’t vote for Moloch.

No votes for Moloch or any candidates resembling Moloch.

Let’s say it together: Fuck Moloch.

Vote accordingly.