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I’m fascinated by the debate raging over this “Occupy” movement. There’s a lot of truth AND exaggeration coming from both sides.

But to me the issue is a lot more basic than “laziness and entitlement” vs. “greed and bigotry.”

Mood music:

http://youtu.be/A-nULlfJDvk

We always look for the big boogeyman, the personified evil we can shake our fist at and blame for everything that pisses us off. For some, it’s the corporate corner office. For others, it’s the illegal immigrants.

But these are just scapegoats for all the things that make us unhappy in our much smaller circles.

Some of us are conditioned to blame all our troubles on someone or something else. In the final analysis, that’s what this whole thing is about.

As a 22-year-old I remember blaming all my troubles on George H.W. Bush. I had no reason to. I was in college and didn’t have to worry about a job just yet, and I wasn’t sent to fight in the Gulf War. But I hated him anyway, and was certain Bill Clinton’s election would make everything better.

It was a stupid notion. Clinton was a good president, in my opinion, sex problems aside. But his time in power didn’t make my life better. Those were actually some of the worst years of my life. When you’re a slave to your addictions and your brain chemistry is leaking out your ear, keeping you in a depressed fog, no corporate or political leader can help you.

You have to help yourself.

When you’re in a very tough financial situation and can’t feed your family, it’s hard not to be angry at someone. But to blame it on corporate greed is to bark up the wrong tree. Corporate greed did contribute to the economic meltdown, but our own reckless spending habits contributed as well. We always want things: cell phones, cars, houses. Sometimes we collect these possessions first and worry about how to pay for it later. It’s a vicious circle, and I get caught in it as much as everyone else.

Our material pursuits always seem to mask a deeper unhappiness we have with ourselves and our messy lives.

I used to labor hard under the delusion that if I just got a particular job, all would be right with the world. When I’d get the job and discover that I was still miserable, I’d just blame it on that particular job and all the people above me. Then I’d try to find something else. I’d get another job and expect everything to be better. But things always got worse. Because I still wasn’t dealing with the core issues that made me so unhappy: Too little faith in God and too much faith in addictive substances and material things. And I continued to find bosses to blame.

I’m years into trying to reverse that order and the closer I get to the right balance, the less I seem to care about who’s in charge of the government. I also find that I don’t get so angry at the people atop the corporate ladder.

We’re all human. We screw up every day, but it’s more glaring if you’re in a position of power, be it government or business. Everyone’s watching when you screw up, and your actions end up hurting a wider group of people.

If I’ve learned anything, though, it’s that when things are going bad, nothing gets better unless I take personal responsibility.

If I wait for government to stop being corrupt and corporate execs to stop being greedy, I’ll never get anywhere.

Neither will you.

Some will say I’m oversimplifying the problem, that even when you take responsibility and work hard to succeed, it’s not enough because someone richer and more powerful is out to screw you.

Perhaps.

But engaging in class warfare oversimplifies the problem, too, because changing the people in power always seems to have limited results.

That’s true whether you’re liberal or conservative.

A few months back when I wrote “The Lost Generation of Revere,” I forgot to mention someone very important to the story; a kid who died six years ago: Jay Nickerson.

Mood music:

http://youtu.be/2R0Q5YE-JMw

I don’t remember Jay doing what a lot of us kids were doing: smoking pot and drinking under the General Edwards Bridge that connects Revere to Lynn, fighting (or cowering from a fight); bullying or getting bullied.

Jay always seemed to exist in a cheerful fashion, peacefully co-existing with the punks and the more mentally-balanced kids. I don’t think he ever said an ill word of anyone. He was just this big, lovable bear. He did insult me once. But the problem was more my lack of humor at the time.

We were standing in the Gibson Park tennis court. I was just starting to get into heavy metal and was wearing a Motley Crue “Shout At The Devil” t-shirt. Jay looked at me and said, “heavy metal vomit.”

“What did you say?” I asked, shocked.

“Heavy metal vomit,” he repeated.

If I remember correctly, I told him to fuck off and walked away. I don’t remember how he reacted to that, but I can picture him shrugging, smiling and going about his business.

We started out in the same grade at the Roosevelt School, but I was forced to repeat first grade because I was a year or two less mature than the other 7 year olds. But when we were still in the same first-grade class, I remember him hounding me to share my Ritz crackers with him. Actually, he wanted the whole sleeve I would usually bring for recess.

Both are fond memories of a big kid with a bigger heart.

I lost track of Jay after high school, until one day in the summer of 2005. My mother called and told me he had died of cancer. I couldn’t believe it. I had no idea he was sick.

That a former schoolmate died young wasn’t the shock. I had already seen that happen plenty of times. The saddest example was Zane Mead, a troubled but tenderhearted kid who threw himself off the top of an apartment building off of Shirley Ave in the late 1980s.

An old friend recently suggested that there was a curse hanging over Revere natives from our generation. I found that intriguing.

As a teen I was so self-absorbed over my brother’s death that I didn’t realize how much loss our generation was suffering.

Was there some kind of curse hanging over the city in the 1980s? Were all my adolescent traumas part of that curse? Was my brother’s death and Sean Marley’s death part of it?

If you asked me that about six years ago, I’d have bought the theory straight away. Today I doubt it.

It was a sad and unfortunate period, but it wasn’t a curse. We all had our share of childhood happiness in Revere in between the bad stuff, and kids like Jay always seemed to be happy.

I know now what I didn’t get back then: That we weren’t meant to live soft lives devoid of pain and struggle. These things are tossed in our path to mold us into what we can only hope to be: good people. It doesn’t always work out that way, of course. But has life ever been fair?

Some would say that what happened to Jay was brutally unfair.

I wasn’t there when he was sick, but I suspect he handled the illness with the same good cheer he always seemed to carry in abundance.

I have no idea if he thought life had dealt him an unfair blow.

But I’m pretty sure he made the best of it.

An earthquake centered in northern Virginia just rattled a huge part of the eastern seaboard. I think our building in Framingham, Mass. shook some, but I’m not sure.

Mood music: 

We’ve had quakes in New England. They happen often, in fact, but they are usually small. This was bigger than usual, but I wasn’t bothered.

Like hurricanes and other natural hazards, the thought of earthquakes used to terrify me. When I made my first trip to California, I think the worry of earthquakes sat in the back of my head the whole time.

I’ve felt the ground and walls shake many times, though, and it was always in my head. I used to have anxiety and panic attacks before I got my issues figured out, and sometimes, when in the middle of one, I would feel the sensation of things around me shaking.

I can’t really remember the last time that happened. I’ll chalk that up as a good thing.

As for today’s quake, the worst of it is a steady stream of bad jokes on Twitter.

Carry on…

Motley Crue-Sixx A.M. bassist Nikki Sixx created a shitstorm yesterday when he opined about Michael Jackson being a pedophile. Since a childhood friend grew up to be one, I have a few thoughts on the matter.

Mood music:

It all started with Sixx sending off a few tweets about how Michael Jackson was a child rapist. A lot of angry comments on his Facebook page followed, with some suggesting Sixx was drinking and drugging again. To that, he replied:

10 YEARS SOBER,FATHER OF 4,MULTIPLE BUSINESSES,SUCCESSFUL IN ALL MY VENTURES ( MOTLEY,SIXX AM,SIXX SENSE,PHOTOGRAPHER & ROYAL UNDERGROUND.) HOW DARE YOU INSULT ME BY SAYING I AM ON DRUGS OR DRINKING FOR HAVING AN OPINION ABOUT A CREEP FUCK WHO IN MY OPINION RAPED CHILDREN. LAST I CHECKED WERE IN AMERICA, AND I AM NKKI SIXX OF MOTLEY CRUE AND DONT TAKE ORDERS FROM NOBODY. READ MY BOOKS,LISTEN TO THE LYRICS.

So, a couple of points:

–Those familiar with this blog know I’m a huge Motley Crue fan and that Nikki Sixx’s openness about his demons inspired me to out my own demons in this blog.

–Despite my love for the band, I don’t agree with everything they do.

Now that I got that out of the way…

This whole back and forth has been a fascinating case study in human nature. I find it amusing that people were tearing Michael Jackson down in the last decade of his life because of his alleged pedophilia, yet, when he died, everyone magically forgot that stuff and acted as if Jesus Himself had been crucified again.

We do that a lot when famous, tarnished figures die. We play up the good stuff they did and conveniently forget the bad stuff. Or, at least, we minimize the latter as some unfortunate little interlude between the acts of greatness. Richard Nixon comes to mind.

Michael Jackson was human. He did a lot of good from a musical and charitable level. But he had a sickness. How deeply that involved pedophilia I really don’t know. I only know the charges he faced.

Nikki Sixx is human. He used to be a drug addict with all the selfish, destructive, hurtful behavior that goes with it. He’s written about that period of his life at great length and with deep honesty.

I know I’m human. I’ve done a lot of good things and a lot of stupid things. You can read about both here.

We all have opinions some will inevitably find offensive. But we have things like Twitter and Facebook now. We can just fart out our thoughts and send ’em out for the world to see. That makes it a far different world from the one many of us grew up in. Our filter is off. Or, you could say, the safety is off our shotgun mouths.

Personally, I wasn’t offended by Sixx’s comments. I essentially agree with him.

But I also think something like pedophilia is more complicated than the more clear-cut outrages. It’s a sickness, an addictive behavior. I thank my lucky stars that my addictions were based on binge-eating, alcohol and the pills I used to take for chronic back pain.

Sixx’s behavior manifested itself in heroin and a variety of other substances.

Fate could have sent our addictions in a much more evil direction.

I’ve done a lot of soul searching about this because of the childhood friend who went on to be a thrice-convicted pedophile. His record is on the Internet for all to see. I guess I kept his name out at first because, believing as I do that NOBODY is beyond redemption, I wanted to give him a chance to get on with his life.

That was my mood when I wrote The Pedophile, Part 1.

Then I saw him friending scores of teenage girls from remote parts of the globe on Facebook and my heart and mood hardened. So I wrote this follow-up.

I revealed his name in part 3 because, after some thinking, I realized that once convicted, and once you become a high-level sex offender, your right to privacy is gone. You are a danger and people need to know you lurk the streets.

Bottom line for me: Addictive behavior takes control of a person and makes them do things they know to be wrong. But when you’re caught in the vice grip, you do it anyway. You are essentially possessed by the devil.

But even though we all get a shot at redemption, certain behaviors are simply too dangerous to be tolerated.

A pedophile preys on innocent children.

The only solution to that is to throw them in the slammer.

I think that the pedophile I once knew even understands that.

A couple years ago a plain-clothes cop in an unmarked car pulled me over for veering into the breakdown lane right before the 128 North exit to 93. A guy in my 12-Step study group looks just like him, and for months I’ve wanted to ask if he was the one.

Mood music:

http://youtu.be/MoDbAd4fYBA

If this was indeed the guy, I wanted to make amends.

The thing is, I have a history of being a hothead on the road. I’m much tamer than I used to be, mainly because I’ve grown up a lot over the years. I’ve flipped people off, tailgated them, cut them off and shouted F-bombs at the top of my lungs when I took a wrong turn or ended up in a traffic jam.

As drivers go, I was an asshole of the highest order.

As I said, I’ve calmed down a lot, mostly because I no longer feel rushed to get from point A to B. Sometimes, I still do get a little anxious over the drive time, if one of the kids has a doctor’s appointment, for example. But most of the time these days, people blow past me because they think I’m driving too slowly.

More importantly, I’ve calmed down because with all the danger to be found on the road, I don’t want to be one more threat. I want to reach my destination safely, and I want everyone else to do the same.

Anyway, I’ve been staring at this guy in the 12-Step meeting wondering if he was the cop who pulled me over. If so, I wanted to apologize to him and acknowledge that I deserved a ticket that day. In fact, he was probably more lenient with me than he had to be, given my mouth that day.

I asked the fellow after last night’s meeting if he was a cop.

Alas, he was not the guy.

And so an opportunity to make amends was snuffed out.

That’s OK, though.

I think the best I can do to make amends is be a better driver. I think I’m making progress.

My family might not agree, however.

Just got a text from Deb Jones informing me that the Thursday afternoon memorial service for her daughter, Sarah, has been canceled “because of the ongoing investigation” into her death. There’s no word as yet as to when the service will happen.

This has to be a huge blow to the Jones family, and my heart goes out to them. Please keep them in your prayers.

For those wondering just what this is all about: Sarah was found dead nearly two weeks ago. Nothing is really known about what happened, other than that investigators are treating it as a homicide.

I first wrote about it because I’ve known the Jones family for many years and had been feeling like a jerk for dropping out of touch with them.

Twenty years ago, I would hang out with this family for days on end.

Jeff Jones (he goes by Geoff Wolfe today) was my fellow Doors freak, and I remember many pleasant afternoon’s and evenings in their back yard. I was there for July 4 1991, which I remember because someone slammed into my car and took off that night. The car, a 1981 Mercury Marquis, never ran right again. I got pretty smashed that night.

The next year, we celebrated the 4th by blowing up a mannequin with M-80s.

I remember their children, Josh and Sarah, running around the house and yard.

The last time I saw Geoff, Deb and Josh was at the funeral service for a mutual friend from back in the day, Bob Biondo.

Deb, Geoff and I reconnected on Facebook a couple months ago.

The family has been putting on a brave face since Sarah’s death. They seem to have a strong faith in God, which will certainly get them through these terrible days.

Here’s hoping they can lay their daughter to rest very soon.

Since writing about my old friends, the Jone family, and the death of their daughter Sarah, some readers have asked what I knew about a memorial service. This morning, Deb Jones posted some details on Facebook:

We finally have a day and a location for Sarah’s memorial service. It will be Thursday, May 5th, @ Bisbee – Porcella Funeral Home, 549 Lincoln Avenue, Saugus, MA, 01906. It is most likely going to be early evening, but I will have a definite time by either later today or tomorrow and will post it.

That is also the address for flowers.

I plan to be there. It’s the least I could do.

This week at the CSO Perspectives conference in Naples, Fla., I gained a whole new level of respect for Akamai CSO Andy Ellis. Without meaning to, he reminded me that my abstinence from flour and sugar is pretty easy compared to how it could be.

Mood music:

Andy is allergic to dairy. Just a trace of it will make him sick. An Air Force veteran, he ties it to an anthrax vaccine shot he received several years back.

This kind of allergy is particularly tough to manage at a conference, where it seems every scrap of food has some kind of dairy in it. But the man didn’t complain. Not once. He made the hotel food providers get him something he could eat, but he didn’t cuss or fuss.

I’ve been so immersed in this no flour, no sugar thing that I had forgotten I was once banned from all dairy.

In the 1970s and early 80s, when my struggle with Crohn’s Disease was at its roughest point, I wasn’t allowed to have anything that has milk in the ingredients. It wasn’t just abstinence from a glass of milk or cheese. If bread had milk in the ingredients, no dice. A little trace of dried milk in a pot pie recipe? Forget about it.

Part of it was because doctors didn’t know as much about Crohn’s Disease back then. Since dairy is typically associated with the occasional stomach discomforts, I was banned from it.

In a turn of events both irritating and comical, the doctors decided around 1986 that I could have dairy after all. Other Crohn’s cases showed them that there was no direct link between milk and a flare-up. In some cases yes. But not all.

I’ve mentioned before how I think the forced fasting during flare-ups tilted me toward binge-eating as the ground-zero addiction later on. Thinking back, the dairy ban contributed as well. Without dairy, there was little I could eat. So once I could have it, I was going to have it all.

Now, I do envy Andy a little bit because he can enjoy a good glass of wine while I have to be sober. But in the grand scheme of things, he has it tougher than me. You’d be surprised how many non flour-sugar food choices are out there.

I always suspected the CSO of Akamai was tough as nails. Now I know he is.

As part of my effort to bring discipline to how this blog is distributed, I’ve created a new Facebook page. It’s not complete, but getting there. In addition to the latest posts I will include musical selections and random questions designed to generate some useful discussion.

The page is HERE.

Please go in and “Like” it.

Thanks.