How To Assemble a Paul Bot: Step 1

    In an interstellar burst I’m back to save the universe. What pray tell is it that has moved me in such a way as to ensure my fingertips do their little dance this time around? You, of course. I have, for some time been in deep contemplation regarding no one other than you whose eyes are allowing my little sarcastic voice to run through the mansion of your mind and do a little spring cleaning and tickle you right where you like it. First though let’s make this as personable and interactive as possible. Trust me on this, it’ll pay off if you do it right. Make sure you have a nice, hot cup of tea, coffee, or beverage of your relaxation’s choice. Now pop open a tab with YouTube in it and search for “Radiohead Creep Remix by Parallel Cloud”. Just do it. Okay give that thing a listen or even put it on repeat whilst you read on. Those of you who only get to unwind and relax for the day sometime after about 4:20 I would advise this prose to aid in said unwinding because once I get going on this thing there just isn’t any going back, alright? I’ll give you guys a minute to prepare because I got news for you, my voice stops when you stop reading …so.

Feeling good? Gooood. Now why did I do that? Well I believe that music, when done correctly can anchor a memory or a strong emotion into a moment in time. I think that music is the vibrational reflection of our inner being and when it’s good you know it because on the inside you are moved to something. Whether it be love or rage, joy or sadness, music just has this way of gripping us doesn’t it? So when I write I always write to the beat of whatever it is I happen to be listening to and whatever I happen to be listening to is typically something that sounds like the mood I am trying to write. Look, it doesn’t really have to make a lot of sense it’s just that all I know is that when you listen to a really good piece of music; it’s great. When you read something really satisfying (not that I’m gloating) it’s great. Now imagine doing both of those at the same time. You’re welcome.

    The term Paul Bot, huh? What do we do with this little oddball thing in the soup? Well we do what all champions of history do. We take a term that was devised for the sole purpose of ostracizing us and making us seem fringe and most certainly a minority, and we embrace it lovingly and begin to apply it to ourselves with pride as the biggest upraised middle finger we can collectively muster. Now we have become a people. A people of Paul Bots. We are spray painting it on walls, we are waving signs which proclaim it, we are putting cute little pictures of that droid with it scrawled underneath all over the internet and some of us are even getting it tattooed on the vats of our brains. Are we not a peculiar people? Are we not a people that most definitely are set far, far, far, ….far apart? Have we not all gathered together in the wilderness having left the security of bondage for wandering in pursuit of liberty? At the head of our exodus into a valley between two great destructive forces, both on the left, as well as on the right, is a white haired old man. And what’s that? He seems to be coming down from the hill holding two really ancient, really smart, really divine documents in either arm. One declares independence from false, tyrannical entities claiming to have authority over you and the other ensures that if its precepts are followed nothing but peace, prosperity and tranquility could reign over the countryside. If only we would listen to the white haired man and obey the words which blaze into the core of our souls heart and not be a stiff-necked people. This all seems vaguely familiar, yet this time around a new sabot is being thrown into the machinery which could alter the outcome of our little trek to much less than decades and decades of finding the promised land. This time we have history finally receiving its long overdue renaissance. The ultimate question at this point, I think, is will we as a new people take our shot at this thing? Are we really, truly ready to commit to what we are doing? From this question I had to explore who we are, who you are. You crazy Paul Bot you. See in my last wax and wane, “Caucus? Well Caucu!” I thought it prudent to shine a light on a particular crowd among us.

I call them the brass. These are the men and woman who are volunteering their time, their money, their sweat, their tears, their bumper sticker space and especially their courage by organizing all the Ron Paul supporters together to enter into this delegate process. They are the ones who have studied Robert’s Rules backward and forward so that once they managed to rally us into the heart of the draconian republican party they could take the rules and use them as leverage in favor of the true will of the people. If any of you have been attending your local GOP functions then you have seen firsthand how hard these guys are fighting for the rest of us. After having seen it myself I was forced to go home with somewhat of a dark cloud hovering over my head. I had been awestruck with how learned they were and how skillful they were at this political game and the eye of the storm these people rose above the tempest in an arena they clearly have been training for. But what about me? What about us rather. The rest of us I mean. The masses of other Paul Bots who don’t exactly understand all the inner workings of the republican three ring circus and feel only effective at standing to vote when we see the brass make a move haven’t quite figured out what it is yet that they have to contribute to this Holy and noble cause. To quell the tempest swelling up inside of me, you know, the same tempest that swelled up inside of you, I had to figure this one out but before I could set my sights into the future and see how thejigsaw would fall into place I needed to poke my nose backwards to see where exactly I had come from. Where you have come from. Where we are all coming from. Okie dokie here we go.

Through much trial and tribulation you were born. A brand, plastic smelling, new baby bouncing around on ya mama and daddy’s knee. It was great being a kid. Life had this magical haze to it because everything you did was new due to the fact that quite frankly you just got here, unless of course you’re a mormon in which case; welcome and what’s the weather like on kolob this time of year? You were an inquisitive little cuss too. Mommy what’s this? Daddy why do you have fur on your face? I mean you had a question every time you pulled your plump little thumb out of your mouth and at first your parents handled this just fine but as you kept eating your peas and carrots and stretching your huggies to the point of forcing your mom to get you some big boy\big girl pants, the questions started getting tougher. Eventually you push this curiosity thing to the limit and know that you have because you start to only get the stern reply of “Because I said so.”, at which point you move on to more, shall we say, receptive and open minded people. You move onto the playground. There are other kids here. Isn’t that wonderful, and will you look at that none of them are quite the same as me. Plenty of questions to go around here you’re willing to bet. So you stumble into the sandbox the best you can on those chubby little knees, careful to balance with one arm outstretched holding a plastic block, the other arm outstretched with some soggy substance that once could have been called a cookie, and of course the innocent light shining from your smiling, cherub like, fat little face.

You mingle with the other little people. You get to know them through “guess what’s” and “play pretends” and the only thing the lot of you do about the tiny details that are different amongst you is giggle together. Kids will be kids though and once in a while one of you accidently bashes the other on the toe with a tiny tikes hammer or attempts to swat a mosquito from the others eyelid with the pointy end of a stick resulting in a disturbance of the sandbox zen, evidenced by the screeching wail of a toddler. The screeching, piercing wail. The screeching, piercing, gut wrenching wail. The screeching, piercing, gut wrenching, skin crawling, nail biting, hair pulling, bullet to the nose wishing, tying a noose as we speak sounding, where the hell is this kids parents and why the hell wont they go over there and make that annoying little kid shut up for the sake of saint Obi wan Kenobi wail. When this occurs the offending child is quick to realize his fault and restore peace by planting a little kiss on the other kids cheek and saying he was sowwy. Case dismissed.

Then things started to change. Life was becoming different and you were getting older. Due to the experience of repetition in day to day life you cut back on the question asking and thought that you had a good bit of this thing figured out and the rest you were making great progress on. The size of your world was expanding beyond the confines of your home and (for many of us exceptions excluded) into one of the hundreds of thousands of suburbs sprawled all across these great United States. Your playground was changing from sandboxes to local rec centers, ball fields, junkyards, or vacant construction sites. Any place where that imagination could run wild and one minute you were an astronaut discovering that electricity on earth was actually made from the slave labor of ants on the moon, the next minute you were Spider-Man swinging from a jungle gym and your good buddy Frankie, you know the albino kid who always wore the turtle necks, was snickt, snickt Wolverine. Things were pretty good and the only worry you had was if “Duck tales” was going to be a repeat or not…that is until. Where there is paradise, it must somewhere along the way be lost and a new thing was introduced into your experience; the playground bully.

It’s weird at first, remember? You see this new person. You have never met this new person. You have no data whatsoever in your pre-winged hair stage head that the exchange you are about to have with this person is going to be unpleasant. Why on earth should it be? After all you were just going about your business, not hurting anyone so why would you, a rational person, expect to be detained. Your first encounter with a playground bully is awkward and no matter how fast the event is over with it certainly could have been over faster. Most times it’s just verbal taunts or physical intimidation on the virgin go around because keep in mind the sad chap taking the role of the bully is new at this too. After the fact, probably late at night while laying on your bed and staring at the ceiling, you ponder what all of that was about. What did you do to make that person not like you so much? Why on earth did that person see some profit or satisfaction in oppressing you simply for the sake of oppressing you and dang it why did you just stand there and take it? Why didn’t you do something like tell him he needed to take a chill pill and wash it down with some tang? Oh well, it’s over now but next time you won’t be such a mister nice guy.

The playground bully doesn’t really take up that much importance in your life at this time though. It’s just a little bump in the road to make sure you appreciate the rest of what’s in your life so you can stop spending all that money on a shrink now and for God’s sake please tell your doctor to take that prescription for Zoloft and shove it up his twat. The bus keeps rolling and sooner or later it keeps rolling your butt right to public school. This sucks. You don’t know why because you have nothing really to base this on but your pineal gland is freaking the hell out and this whole “going to school” thing is just a trial run right? I mean if I don’t like it you aren’t going to make me keep going are you because I kinda liked the way we were doing things before,…you know?

To be continued…

D.L. Crumpton