Steven Joiner

Entitled deadbeats protected by the minions of bloated govt.

I went to downtown Portland yesterday to see what three-to-five thousand whiners, deadbeats, slackers, and ne’er-do-wells looked liked when they descended en masse on Portland’s “Living Room” (Pioneer Square). Here’s my report:

On the surface, the crowd seemed disturbingly normal. It spanned in age from teenager to elder in very equal proportions. I overheard radical socialist and/or anarchist ideas (same thing?) disguised as thoughtful conversations about taxation, offshoring jobs, lacking healthcare, access to education, holding banks accountable, and long-term unemployment. People carried signs supporting collective bargaining rights and the power of numbers… numbers of people, not dollars. There were a handful of people in masks or dressed up like Wall St. Banking Puppets. Otherwise, lots of Gore-Tex, baseball caps, and wool apparel. After all, it’s Portland and it’s getting cool.

There were funny signs: “Soylent Green is People! Corporations are Not!”

A sign with an image of a rabbit that said, “Screw Us and We Multiple”

Amusing and not too america-hating on the surface. But aren’t you all subversive freedom haters? What’s on the other side of that sign buddy?

Fortunately, to stave off my own critical thinking, there were some signs clearly spawned by anti-trust-your-benevolent-corporate-friend, anarchist nazis expressing disturbing notions like: “Unemployed Construction Worker willing to work under the table since I can’t even land a minimum wage job” and “Single mother of two with no health insurance”. (more…)

In loving memory of Tim McLaurin*

Snake Got Your Tongue?

I sometimes worry that I spend too much time emailing with my friends when I “should be” doing “real” writing. Yet, just as it was in the lost days of letter correspondence, it is in the process of writing a loved one that I mine deeper into myself and find stories to share with a wider audience. Sharing, after all, is my purpose in this grand exercise called life.

*Tim died in 2002 and I cried when I heard the news. It was the first time I lost someone whom I considered a mentor though I never told him in person that he mentored me. This is the story of how that happened.

In the fall of 1993, I received permission to take a writing class at North Carolina State University. I’d taken ever available writing class at WG Enloe High School (um… go Eagles!) so, while many of my fellow seniors were taking physics and calculus and such at NC State, I got the green light to go and write. The excitement I felt was a lovely precursor to the sheer terror I encountered the first day of class. Here was a room full of adults… and I mean “real adults”, people in their twenties and thirties! Grad students! Adults in the continuing ed program! Then there was me, a 17-year-old with the zits to prove it.

The teacher was an eccentric ex-Marine, ex-Peace Corps volunteer, former snake-handling carnival freak novelist name Tim McLaurin. (more…)

Caught in the Thought Loop

**Psst. Psst. Can you still hear me? Are you sure you want to do this? Think about it. It doesn’t seem very safe. Are you sure you want to try? Think about it. Shouldn’t you just stick with what’s safe? Think about it. I mean, really think about it.**

**I don’t think you’re doing enough. You should hurry up! I think you’re doing too much. You should slow down!**

**Why not make a list? It always help you sleep when you know you have a list to jump on first thing in the morning, right?** 

I know this voice, it is the sound of my thoughts. It is the sound of my busy, buzzing, preoccupied mind. Maybe it sounds like your thoughts too. But there are other voices, voices that appear in my head but come from somewhere else entirely. Strong voices, sure voices, voices saying things that don’t really make sense when I think about it… but somehow I know they’re spot on.

Example: it’s Monday morning and I sit at my computer for another day of typing my way toward making a living. These voices say:

***Feel that connection? Feel that inspiration? Yeah, that’s why you’re here. You live this way because you love it, not because it is the next right move up the career ladder. You live this way because it’s in alignment with who you really are and that feels good.***

But then the voices start to argue.  (more…)