Sympathy For the Devil

I've made tons of roasted and boiled tomatillo salsa but I've never made it fresh just blended with pepper, onion, cilantro, water, and salt.  Dang, that is about the greenest tasting thing, so refreshing.  Just right for summer. 

I did a shredded chicken, corn, onion mix and added the salsa.  I forgot how I served it but I remember it was a perfect fit. 

The August cover of Rolling Stone Magazine was in the news this week.  I wasn't sure why it didn't hit me the same way, with outrage.  When I first saw it I thought, 'Gosh, what a striking cover when you put the photo in that light'.  It was shocking in a way but mostly I just thought about how the people who's job it is to make a cover sell must have been elated for that photo to work with especially as a fit for Rolling Stone.  I wasn't angry.  That may have come from my mother's teachings.  Whenever I felt threatened or bullied by a kid at school, she'd convince me they were all wrong or screwed up.  Like when a girl called me a spic in school, my mom simply said how ignorant she was because spics were actually Puerto Ricans. True story and you can laugh because that's just funny.  My mom's a hoot and she was trying to help. 

So for some reason that cover did not incite any feelings of hatred for me.  He was not something I understood or could comprehend easily.  I do want to understand how it happened that a kid that looks like someone you'd say hey to on the street could do something so horrible.  I hate what he did and I have great sympathy for anyone who suffered.  I'm not an asshole.  I don't have empathy for him either.  Now I feel guilty because I don't harbor hate.  It has nothing to do with him looking like Jim Morrison on the cover.  I can't hate his brother either.  I don't hate that clowny looking crazy kid with the red hair that killed all those people in the movie theater either.  They scare me and I fear them but I don't hate them.  Do you?
I don't think there is magical power in getting on the cover of Rolling Stone that was given to this asshole.  That power was gone long ago.  I was more offended to see Kanye with a crown of thorns on his head.  There have been other upsetting covers but for me they don't really hold any power. 
But I am very upset and still mourning the death of the music industry itself.  And that there are so many amazing musicians out there right now that can't make a living on their craft.  Songwriters, singers, guitar players, drummers, bass players and the list goes on that have all this passion and true ability and the world has just shut the door on all of it, aside from a very select few.  These people are out there and they could be uplifting our lives, enhancing the experiences, making things better, pleasant even.  Instead we gotta be force fed celebrity emptiness each day?

I'm outraged that greed, power, money and corruption took down the industry and the music hasn't found a way to pop back up like a weed and just get back out there into our everyday lives.  I'm a victim right now that must listen to pop songs all day at my job because they pipe it through.  Talk about upsetting.  Taylor Swift looped at least three times a shift?  I'm not smart enough and too old to understand how to find all the good music anymore on the web.  But how could this happen and will it ever be alive again in the same way or better than it used to be?  My life was always filled with music, always as a young child and growing up, tween, teen, adult, etc.  Now I have to really work at involving the music and I miss it.  I would have worked at record stores all my life and retired there if I had the chance.  Music retail was perfect for misfits like me and thousands of others.  That's about the only thing I could honestly sell with a good conscious.  Now I sell kitchen cabinets and I feel like a lie every time I punch that clock.  There are so many injustices in the world right now.  Hell, almost everything on your lunch plate contains tons of poisons and cancer causing agents.  Those strawberries everyone put on their red white and blue desserts for the 4th of July are not even fit to eat apparently unless you bought organic for like 6.99 a lb.  The people that grow them have to wear special clothes and masks so the stuff they spray all over them doesn't penetrate.  It's that bad??? We need to prioritize and get organized people.  Do we really want to spend two weeks on what Paula Deen's ignorant ass said?  Is this one kid's photo on a magazine that more than half the upset people don't even read really gonna divide us?   I feel the devil does lives in this picture but not where people think.