Archive for January, 2006
A Dream We Should All Still Seek.
January 16th, 2006
In honor of Martin Luther King Day, I present to you the complete text of his famous “I Have a Dream” speech as given at the Lincoln Memorial on August 28, 1963.
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 languished in the corners of American society and finds himself an exile in his own land. And so we’ve come here today to dramatize a shameful condition.
In a sense we’ve 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. And so, we’ve 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 quicksands 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. And 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. And 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. And they have come to realize that their freedom is inextricably bound to our freedom.
We cannot walk alone.
And 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 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. And some of you have come from areas where your quest — 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.
And 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, and 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, and 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.
And this will be the day — this will be the day when all of God’s children will be able to sing with 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.
And 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 snow-capped 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 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!
100% True…or Double Your Money Back!
January 13th, 2006
Here’s a little anecdote for you, straight from the Life n’ Times of Derek C. F. Pegritz–that is, me–which will soon be showing up in my forthcoming memoirs, NONFICTION!
Back in The Day, I was prettymuch transparent, at least to the mate-seeking laser eyes of your typical early-20s single girl. After I’d had about ten or twelve tequila sunrises, I’d sliiiiiiiiiiide on up to one of them at the bar with my vintage ’70s wingcollar shirt unbuttoned just enough to show my single chest hair, my breath cool and Binaca-fresh as I’d hit them with my standard line, “Can I see your bruise? You know, the one you got when you fell out of heaven?”–and they’d just stare right through me as though I were made of transparent aluminum. Or slap me. Needless to say, no matter how hard I tried, freakin’ Beavis and/or Butt-head had a better chance of scoring than I did.
The statement above is 100% True. You have my word on it. Because…really, what possible reason could I have to tell a deliberate untruth of any sort in my writing? I mean, only completely and utterly honest people will take the time and effort to put their stories into writing, and, therefore, we can trust everything that’s written to be Actual Factual and verifiably true. This holds for both the Internet and the print world - doubly so, in fact, for the latter, thanks to the wonders of certain dedicated people known as “editors.”
You see, even if some author were to - god forbid! - stretch the truth a little bit or, worse, outright TELL A BLATANT LIE (though who in their right mind would do such a thing?), publishing houses are fortunately staffed by legions of cautious, hyperintelligent editors and fact-checkers whose entire careers are centered around being absolutely sure that their employers do not accidentally publish a tome riddled with factual errors or loathesome exaggerations. This is why you, as a consumer, can and, in fact, should believe anything you read if it’s been printed and distributed by the likes of, say, Random House. Random House and other American publishers have a truly Platonic dedication to The Truth, and would sooner fold up shop than ever deign to let a compilation of deliberate falsehoods slip through their presses onto bookstore shelves.
But…oh, dear - what if a mistake were to happen?! What if a book riddled with embellishments and other such obfuscations of The Truth were to somehow seep through a crack in the fact-checking bureaucracy and end up in the public sector, where its embellishments and obfuscations would naturally be mistaken for The Truth? And…and what if this book also happened to become extremely popular thanks, in part, to its being a featured selection of a famous talk show host’s book club? Why, it would only make sense for the publisher to do the responsible thing and offer a refund for those terrible, error-ridden texts!
You would, perhaps, expect to eventually encounter such a situation as described above if you lived in Perfect World, where Everything Is (Or At Least Should Be) As It Seems and everyone but a handful of acknowledged Bad People is blissfully enamoured of The Truth. But I hate to break it to you, folks - we live in the Real World, where people exaggerate, tell lies, and where, because of humanity’s propensity for never telling the whole truth and nothing but the truth, you can’t believe everything you read.
For example, my little anecdote that introduced this rant. It’s at least 99% true - but there is one small untruth in it: that I needed ten or twelve tequila sunrises to get my groove on with the ladies. In fact, I never needed more than five: if I drank twelve I’d be more likely to puke on a girl than to hit on her. But why would I bend the truth like that?
Because it makes the story a little bit more interesting, or entertaining. Exaggeration does that: it generates humor…as anyone familiar with Monty Python’s Flying Circus or the films of Adam Sandler will damn well know. Does it harm the story - or, worse, the reader - that I streeeeeeeeeetched The Truth just a little bit to make my brief little statement of Striking Out with the Ladies a bit more amusing? NO. Not one bloody bit.
Writers always play a little loose with the truth, even when writing biographies and autobiographies - and not always because they just want to spice up an otherwise average or pointless scene with a bit of hyperbolic pep. Sometimes writers make up out-right lies…to save face, perhaps, or just to include a scene or an event that in some way impacts the text they are writing positively.
Let’s take, for example, Vanilla Ice’s 1991 young-adult biography Ice by Ice, in which the then-popular rapper mentions that he got into a lot of trouble with street gangs when he was but a young’un growing up in da hood. That never friggin’ happened: Robert van Winkle grew up in a lily white upper-middle-class community; the worst trouble he probably ever encountered was being grounded when he got caught frenchin’ the neighborhood floozy in the back seat of his parents’ minivan. But you can’t be a smoove, thuggin’ white rapper if you don’t have some street cred, right? So he manufactured a bit of his image. What. A. Surprise. But well do I remember the stink that blew up when it was “discovered” - no doubt through the tireless muckraking of some Rolling Stone journalist obsessed with revealing the harshly un-harsh suburban truth of Vanilla’s past - that Herr Ice’s junior-G days were all bogus: you’d've thought he’d fabricated a tale of taking Madonna’s virginity in the spare bedroom of Paula Abdul’s mansion, or perjured himself before Congress concerning his role in the Iran-Contra Scandal. Goodlord…all he did was gussy up his past a bit to make his life story a little more interesting - a little more like what his fans already thought his teenybopper days were like. He didn’t have to alter or make up anything about his teenage motocross achievements, though, because such activities are, by definition, more interesting to readers than an account of how he made it through highschool with a B average.
Every personal biography and memoir ever written by a human being has contained some untruths in it. Hell, most of the time, they don’t even end up in the text intentionally. Human memory is a fallible thing, and any event recalled long after the fact will have undergone a certain amount of entropy in the mind, rendering it a less-than-perfect entity. Anyone with the merest dram of awareness will automatically know that you cannot believe wholeheartedly everything you read - ESPECIALLY when the words on the pages or screens before you are marked as being “true.”
But that doesn’t mean you can’t be inspired, or moved, by those words. Many people are touched by events and characters in popular novels: they’re inspired by the everyday trials and tribulations of Bridget Jones, the perspicacity of Sherlock Holmes, the suaveness of James Bond, and the homespun decency and bravery of Huck Finn. Every single event and deed in those novels was fiction - completely made-up - but how many kids were led to become FBI agents by Clarice Starling? Or to give up the smack by reading Requiem for a Dream?
It’s a lot easier to be inspired or moved by “actual” stories, of course, because…well, supposedly, those stories Actually Happened. Who hasn’t been stirred up in some way by reading the account of some real person’s triumph over adversity? But how much of that account was actually The Truth? Most of the time, there’s simply no way to tell unless you track down the author yourself, shoot him/her up with enough sodium pentothal to make Satan himself talk, hook the author up to a polygraph, and proceed with the ol’ twenty questions. You just choose to believe the story because it impacts your life somehow…and so what if something in it turns out to be an embellishment, right?
Not if you’re a reader of James Frey’s A Million Little Pieces, apparently. Frey’s memoir of drug addiction and rehab has been proclaimed one of the best books of 2005, and, as noted above, was chosen by the Mighty Oprah Winfrey as a featured selection for her Book Club. The book would’ve taken its turn in the spotlight, climbed up and then back down the Amazon.com best sellers’ chart, and promptly been forgotten by the General Public were it not for the fact that The Smoking Gun, a website run by Court TV, ran an article pointing out a number of factual errors in the book. In fact, the article alleges the author “wholly fabricated or wildly embellished details of his purported criminal career, jail terms, and status as an outlaw ‘wanted in three states.’”
Now, I haven’t read Frey’s book because junkie memoirs don’t really interest me–and I have even less interest in anything stamped with Oprah’s Book Club’s kiss of approval. But I have read The Smoking Gun’s expose on Frey’s exaggerations…and they seem to have, indeed, reliable information (garnered through perfectly legal means such as interviews and requested court documents) that exposes the fact that the author made some stuff up here and there, or “wildly embellished” some details.
To which I reply: Who cares?
First of all, Frey’s account is a personal memoir, in which he recounts various sordid and awful details of his own life NOT to slander others, but to illustrate his own personal hell and the means by which he escaped it to become sober for the past nine years of his life. He does not use falsehoods to injure or humiliate anyone but himself. Quite frankly, I think he exaggerated certain details of his story for one simple reason: to give his tale more impact, since he clearly intended the work to be a cautionary tale and…well, what good is a cautionary tale if it doesn’t shock you or alarm you into being cautious about something? So what if he fudges information to make himself seem like “more of a victim”? People do that: sometimes they lust after sympathy or pity, sometimes they do it to make their case more shocking and memorable for the benefit of others. When authors write books, they are not fundamentally interested in telling The Whole Truth and Nothing But the Truth - they are interesting in telling a story that will entertain and stick with people, that will catch like shrapnel in their audiences’ brains and not only sell a trillion copies but also remain in light. And most of the time, the actual truth of the story - however much the author carves TRUE STORY into its hide - will only form the seed from which the document grows.
James Frey is not writing a history book, or a book concerning string theory, or even a biography of some famous person. Factual details are fundamentally unimportant to the story he has to tell. The final impact of Frey’s tale of puke and pills and booze is not dependent on the veracity of the events depicted therein: it’s not the simple sum of its parts. A Million Little Pieces really could be compounded of a million little lies, but that does not detract in one bit from what the book is aiming to do, and that is depict the horror of an ex-junkie’s almost-wasted life. You get almost the same effect by reading Hubert Selby’s entirely fictitious Requiem for a Dream, but no one is demanding refunds from Random House because they discovered that something in Selby’s novel might not be 100% true.
The lesson here is simple, humans: Don’t take every word you read to be the Abject Truth, especially when it’s labelled “true story”. But that doesn’t mean that the words you read can’t have an impact on your life. The actual, meaningful “truth” of the words transcends the mere prosaic “truth” of their factual validity. Anyone demanding his or her money back from Random House because they were “duped” or “taken for a ride” by James Frey is a flat-out idiot who should, in fact, be fined by the Thought Police for egregious breach of common sense and criminal gullibility. And if you are one of said folks, and want to buy me a tequila sunrise at the bar some day for pointing out to you the stupidity of your ways, just think for a minute before you start pushing glasses my way. I might have already had my limit of five.
An Amicable Split
January 3rd, 2006
I met Jose through my buddy Joe the Invisible Broker back in…1997, I think it was. Joe was having a party at The Panelled Place and either Lenny or his sister Jamie brought Jose over. I was immediately smitten by Jose’s square-shouldered but svelt physique and his lovely golden añejo color–but I was hesitant to approach him, fearing my inexperience with his ilk would be too glaringly obvious, or that my friends would notice my sudden attraction. I resisted his advances at first, hiding behind a masque of forced indifference…but I couldn’t hold out for long, and before I knew it, he was pouring himself down my throat and surrounding my heart with a warm, welcoming glow redolent of the continent’s great southwestern deserts and the evening redness in the west. That night, Jose and I became lovers.
As time went on, we saw one another rarely–almost always at Joe’s place and then, later, at Jamie’s (she, too, was entranced by Jose’s Latino grace and rough, yet cultured, disposition)–but everytime we hooked up the sparks just flew and my entire body was suffused with the elemental heat of our passion. Jose was a classic “bad boy” with a reputation for inspiring men young and old to feats of suicidal machismo or delusions of bravado…but with me, Jose was always as gentle as he was wild. He never did me any wrong. We would meet at friends’ houses, or later at the late, lamented Club Laga and the Upstage, and before long the carousing would begin in earnest. He helped me strip away many of the inhibitions that had overshadowed my life since my sheltered childhood. Jose stripped me naked and taught me to be proud of, and the love, the inner nature that I’d hidden for so many years. Without his encouragement, I never would’ve met my first real girlfriend, or survived the nightmare that our break-up became. Many a bleak night was saved by his delirious embrace. He was always there for me, to resurrect me from corpselike depressions and dance away nights of glorious abandon. And when the inevitable “morning after” came, he was always gone, leaving me to wake in peace without any awkward or headachey goodbyes.
Everyone knew of our love–we were not ashamed of what we had between us; nay, we celebrated it at every opportunity! Occasionally, Jose would introduce me to his relatives, like his distinguished old tio Don Eduardo and even, occasionally, to his hell-raising ne’er-do-well younger cousins with their bouncing low-riders and their savage natures, but always–always–I came back to Jose. I enjoyed a hundred thousand sunrises and sunsets with him over the years. I drank gallons of margaritas with him. In many ways, he was my savior.
But…a few years ago, things began to go bad between us. We began to argue, and though our rows were generally very subdued affairs, they always left me with a terrible burning in the stomach and sometimes stabbing headaches of shame. We began to see less of each other. I supposed this was just a matter of how relationships evolve, and that the blush of our initial passion had faded into a more sedate, but permanent, affair. But I was wrong….We were simply growing apart. My body just didn’t want him like it used to, and no amount of forcing myself to believe we were merely “taking a break” from each other could truly convince myself. The writing was on the wall: we just didn’t need one another anymore like we used to. We’d meet up sometimes when we were out and we’d have a wonderful time, just like in the old days…but the night would often end with a disagreement, or a sad parting–and it was just obvious that the old days were dying and would not be coming back, no matter how hard we tried to preserve them.
I’m a complete mess when it comes to ending relationships–it’s just so hard for me to tell somebody it’s over….Especially Jose. We danced around the issue for most of last year, but finally…finally it came to a head on New Year’s Eve, 2005. A few months earlier, Jose and I had spent a truly wild night together at the Upstage–just like we’d done a thousand times in the past–but we hadn’t spoken for months. He showed up at the Colony for New Year’s Eve and we actually avoided one another for most of the night. I finally had a margarita with him but…I couldn’t even finish it. We’d just grown too far apart.
We snuck off to a quiet corner, and there I tried to tell him: “Jose…I just….”
“It’s okay, hermano,” he said, patting me comfortingly on the shoulder. “I know how it’s been. You don’t have to say anything.”
Tears welled up in my eyes but….I set my half-empty glass aside. “I just can’t do this anymore,” I sighed. “My wild and crazy days are behind me now, and…we’re just more like distant friends now.”
Jose nodded sadly, but then smiled. “I’ll always be here for you,” he said. “Whenever you want to get together. We don’t need to go crazy anymore and tie one on like we used to. We can sit around and enjoy a quiet sunrise every now and again, and remember old times. We’ll always be friends, Pegritz. Even if we only see each other once or twice a year.”
And that was that. We parted and I spent most of the evening sober–the first New Year’s I’ve spent sober in years. The more I think about it, though, the more I realize that our relationship now is much stronger than it was before. I don’t need Jose in my life anymore: I’ve grown into myself, become comfortable with the person that I’ve become over the past few years, and I just don’t require Jose’s companionship like I used to. I see now that what we had in the past was nothing more than a mutual dependence–a rather sick affair, now that I think about it..and it’s amazing that it never did us any harm. We were good together–we’re still good together in some ways–but we’re both stronger now and can survive without each other. In many ways, what we have now is a thousand times stronger than what we ever had in the past. We have a friendship that can now truly stand the test of time.
So here’s to you, Jose. I won’t be seeing you for a few months, most likely, but when we get together again, there’ll be a shot glass waiting for you, mi amigo.
A New Year, a New Pegritz.com
January 1st, 2006
Heavens to Walter Mondale! It’s already 2006! And you know what that means: it’s time for the venerable and heretofore-seldom-updated Pegritz.com to experience its own Kafka-esque metamorphosis into something completely different, and yet…strangely familiar. As the Ball fell on 2005, Pegritz.com found itself in a sober stupor contemplating its past–and its future. In the past year, this site has been sparsely updated simply because I’ve generally been too goddamned busy with teaching and/or sleeping to properly dedicated time to it. And when I did have time, it seemed as though all I really wrote about was digital rights, horror movies, or occasionally new tech. All very interesting, but…really, if you’re coming here to Pegritz.com, you’re probably doing so because you want a true virtual Pegritz experience, am I right? You want stories of my many strange encounters with possibly non-human rednecks and alien weirdos! Tales of NONFICTION! and related oldskool craziness! Rants about rampant stupidity, completely biased and one-sided discussion about new horror and sci-fi films/lit, and assorted other sketchy, silly things. Am I right?
Well, at any rate, that’s what I want to write about these days. From here on out, this site is ALL ABOUT ME and my collosal pseudorobotic ego. In the next coming days, all of the articles previously published here concerning tech developments, digital rights, and related matters will be moving over to Pegritz.com’s sister site, Oneirophrenia.net–which is currently being remade into a collection of essays concerning many aspects of digital life, technology, transhumanism, and related topics. Once this joint it cleaned out, I’m going to hang up the neon lights, the disco ball, finish wiring up the soundsystem, and break out the topshelf liquor! The neighborhood will never be the same. Chances are there will be a couple of shootings or gang fights every night, but that’s just how we roll ’round these parts.
