This site exists to sell ideas.

I also wanted a vehicle for my own thoughts, some rather outrageous, some totally sane, without the usual bounds of editorial interference.  Nearly fifty and hoping to leave a legacy my daughter might someday respect, I felt a certain obligation to speak the truth as I perceived it.  I decided to offer it unvarnished and on a weekly basis in the form of my Diatribes.

I knew I'd alienate certain people immediately, just by even standing up and saying something.  But using this global network for the dissemination of radical ideas, I also knew I'd really be perceived as a troublemaker in some circles, particularly the corridors of power, where the mantra for survival is "don't make waves."

When I railed on about the injustices of the music industry, particularly the jazz record business, my Pariah identity became a self-fulfilling prophecy. 

People I'd known for years in the jazz industry suddenly looked at me askance.  Where they used to hug me upon greeting, I now received a limp handshake.  Then they stared at me as if I'd just arrived from Mars.

More recently, at a concert or industry gathering, I find people try and avoid me.  And where I used to receive promotional copies of CDs from all the major labels, three have now all but blacklisted me.

This cold shoulder treatment is somewhat akin to my own experience with anti-Semitism. During the late 60s, I worked as a volunteer in Jackson, Mississippi, to sign up African American voters for the 1968 Presidential election.  Some of the local yokels weren't too happy about these folks from New York coming to their town to make trouble and one night after I canvassed a poor neighborhood, two guys pulled up in a pick-up truck and "beat the hell out of that long-haired creep." 

After they left me, battered but not beyond recognition, a police car pulled up.  I figured this guy would either kill me, or drive me to the hospital.  He came over, stared at me a minute, then said, "you better get yourself to a doctor, Jewboy," and split.

Talk about a vibe.  I'd never felt that kind of chill before, coming from what was supposedly a member of the same species.  It was the sort of vicious hatred I'd only read about or seen in the movies.  When I experienced it first hand, I realized it was true. 

Lately, I've been getting some of that same vibe from several hate emails, which I won't dignify by posting here. 

I like to think of these people, the anonymous ones who send the twisted email, the ones who post hate-filled messages to newsgroups and BBSs, as the "little half dead."  These are the folks who try and make rules for the living.  They sit inside their little coffins and give out laws.  I can see them sitting in front of their monitors, pounding at their keyboards and wiping me off the earth.  Their delusions of power are very enviable.  An author never gets them because he has to sell his writing.  But these correspondents only have to click on send. 

Voltaire's hero young Candide cried out after each disaster that smote him, "It's the best of all possible worlds."  Voltaire meant this cry to sound bitter, and ironic.  It never has to me. I've found the grin of life, however ironic, more important and persuasive than all its defeats, because all of the stupidity and ignorance that will always be present.

The inanities of our politicians, the poppycock produced by our fear of Death and our fear of ourselves, in fact the whole climate of invective and despair which covers us today with its smog, is no more than that.  An unsunny day. 

A individualist doesn't have to strike his colors in bad weather.  That in a fashion is my theme.  I'll try to stick to it and keep Candide's slogan sounding: it's the best of all possible worlds