Mary Ann, I Thought You Were My Man

No Not Smoking Allowed

2011-10-14T18:10:00.001-05:00

Several years ago, I read an article that said somepeople are genetically pre-programmed to smoke cigarettes. I don’t remember where I saw it, and I alsodon’t remember who wrote it, but in spite of my lack of citations, I’m gonna goout on a limb and say that I fully believe that it’s true.

The first time I ever put a lit cigarette in mymouth, though, it wasn’t to smoke it. Iwas about 8 or 9, I think, and one of my friends had stolen a cigarette fromhis mother at my behest. I remember Icame running across our front lawn, and like an idiot, held the cigarette up toshow my sister, never thinking that my mother might see what I was doingthrough the window (which she did). Momwas pretty angry and we had to wait until my dad got home to see what sort ofdemise he had planned for us. To show usthe evils of smoking, he made us light it and then swallow, not inhale thesmoke. She puked after the first puff,which left me to finish it. I swallowedevery puff of smoke and didn’t get sick, and didn’t touch another cigarette foranother 4 or 5 years.

When I finally did make a conscious decision tosmoke, it was the easiest thing in the world. It was the early ‘70’s, and at that time, it seemed everybodysmoked. You could smoke on planes and inhospitals; I could smell smoke on my pediatrician’s breath. It never occurred to me that smoking was badbecause almost every adult I knew smoked, and those that didn’t seemed utterlyunconcerned about it, except of course, my parents. In short, it was normal and acceptablebehavior. My parents didn’t smoke, butmy grandmother did, and when she visited, the ashtrays came out and for thelength of the visit, she smoked in the house. It was from her that I pilfered my second cigarette.

I knew exactly how to smoke. I had been watching it my entire life. I’d watch them puff, then inhale, and thenwatch the smoke pour from their mouths and noses. If the light was just right, like whensunlight is streaming through a window, the smoke would waft from them like adragon, curling and swirling in the light, as milk does when it first billowsup from a cup of black coffee. It wasfascinating and I wanted to do that. Sowhen I took my first puff of my second stolen cigarette, I did not cough orgag. It was as though I was a “natural”smoker; like I was born to smoke. Thatwas 36 years ago.

Regular readers of this blog know I have to tell onestory in order to tell another (usually whiny) one, and this entry is nodifferent.

In spite of my nostalgia about smoking, we all knowthat it’s bad for you. Not every smokerdies from a smoking related malady, but since the chances of ill healthskyrocket when you smoke, it’s a safe bet that it’s a habit best leftundone. Personal experience has shown methat quitting can be a nightmarish undertaking. I’ve done it a few times, but have never lasted more than fourmonths. Quitting cold turkey ismaddening, nicotine gum tastes like spearmint paint thinner, and the only way apatch would work would be for me to paste it over my mouth.

Fortunately, modern technology has come to my rescuein the form of the electronic cigarette, hereafter referred to as an“e-cig”. They’re not actually new, butthey’re new to me, and as far as I’m concerned, offer the best alternative tosmoking I’ve ever heard of. You can lookup the specifics here,but in a nutshell, they are small battery operated devices (about the same sizeand shape of a real cigarette) that, when puffed on, deliver a small dose of nicotineby way of vaporized propylene glycol, much like a humidifier. To quote the cited article, propylene glycolhas been “utilized in asthmainhalers and nebulizers since the 1950s, and because of its water-retainingproperties, is the compound of choice for delivering atomized medication. TheU.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) includes propylene glycol on its listof substances Generally Recognized as Safe (GRAS), and it meets therequirements of acceptable compounds within Title 21 of the Code of FederalRegulations”. Add a dash of nicotine,and you have an e-cig.

The AmericanAssociation of Public Health Physicians state that smokers can reduce theirchances of smoking related illness by up to 99.9% by using an e-cig. They do not have any of the over 4000 knowncarcinogens found in regular cigarettes. They do not ignite and are never on fire. I just can’t stress this enough: Using an e-cig is not smoking. It appears that a person using an e-cig issmoking, because they do exhale water vapor (which looks like smoke), but it isNOT smoke, and produces no odor. Infact, if you didn’t actually SEE a person using one, even a person sittingright next to you, you would never know they are using it.

So, what we have withe-cigs is a nicotine delivery system with no odor, no carcinogens and noashtrays. “But wait!” you say. “Nicotine IS a carcinogen!” Well, no it’s not. In fact, nicotine by itself, according to theInternational Agency for Research on Cancer “has not been assigned to anofficial carcinogen group.” (See toxicology in the citedarticle.) To be fair, nicotine isaddictive, but traditional cigarette smokers are ignorantly enslaved by all theother crap found naturally in tobacco, as well as other horrible stuffintentionally added by tobacco manufacturers to ensure a constant supply ofaddicts, er, customers, and more importantly, money.

Let’s recap: Cigarettes are bad. E-cigs offer all of the benefits (as smokerssee them; they’re also cheaper than traditional cigarettes) with none of thehealth risks, smell, or mess. Even(relatively) new social stigmas concerning smokers should be alleviated. Because they’re not cigarettes, e-cigs haveno second hand smoke, so no one can blather on about disingenuous “facts”concerning second hand smoke. E-cigusers can get their nicotine fix at their desk or in a crowd without theslightest inconvenience to others in the vicinity. Problem solved for everyone! Right?

Unfortunately, no,the problem is not solved, which brings me to the root of this rant. Most major airlines and a host of businesseshave already, or are in the process of banning e-cigs from use. Why? Because people who don’t use them don’t want you to use themeither. I swear I can’t make thisup.

Let’s look at thereasons for banning e-cigs on airplanes. As mentioned earlier in this post, smoking used to be allowed onairplanes, and so you know I’m not a smoking Nazi, I would tend to agree thatsmoking in a tube full of people could be bothersome to those who don’tsmoke. Now, everyone has rights, and onegroup’s shouldn’t trump the other’s, but smoking in a crowded place is justinconsiderate on the part of the smoker. E-cigs completely eliminate any physical discomfort other non-smokingpassengers might have to endure. Thesmoker gets his/her nicotine fix, and the non-smoker is utterly undisturbed,right? Well, no, they’re not. It seems the argument being trotted out insupport of the ban is that non-smokers and people who don’t understand howe-cigs operate are frightened and traumatized by witnessing a person using one. Jason Healy, president of Blu e-cigs (myfavorite), says "It's not the actual product, it's the disruption andexplaining to everyone else that it's not smoke." (Citation) In effect then, those complaining aboute-cigs can’t smell it, but they can see it, and they don’t like it, and, byGod, they’re not going to sit on a plane and watch someone else not smoking. Ridiculous, no? It gets better.

Senator FrankLautenberg (D-NJ), author of the original 1987 ban on airline smoking thinksthat his ban should be extended to cover e-cigs as well. Now, I’m not a senator, so I’m much moreprone to critical thinking, and I’m having a hard time understanding how a billthat bans smoking should also apply to not smoking. Lautenberg says, “We still don't know thehealth effects of e-cigarettes, and we don't want to turn airline passengersinto laboratory mice.” (Citation) Huh? The only by-product of e-cigs is water vapor. WATER VAPOR. Should we also ban asthma inhalers? As mentioned above, e-cigs operate on exactly the same principle. Senator Lautenberg isn’t blind, so I can onlyassume he is ignoring the fact that e-cigs DO NOT LIGHT, and a person using oneis NOT SMOKING. So it seems that theonly legitimate reason for the ban is that it bothers a small group ofignoramuses who apparently have nothing better to do than to whine aboutsomething they know nothing about, but they don’t like it, so it must be bad,and since they don’t like it, then no one else should be allowed to do iteither.

In all honesty, I really don’t believe it’s thewhining of dummies that is causing the ban on e-cigs. Like anything and everything else in ourworld, there is one, and only one culprit: Greed. For every politicaldecision made, one has to wonder what the motivation is, and who stands toprofit. Societal benefits are aby-product of legislation. My guess isthat people like Lautenberg are probably in bed with the pharmaceuticalcompanies, who stand to lose a good deal of money if and when the sleepingpublic finally awakens to discover that e-cigs cost a good deal less thanridiculously overpriced nicotine patches. It also wouldn’t surprise me in the least to know that tobacco companiesare just as ardent in their zeal to see e-cigs restricted as much as possible. And as long as I’m speculating, I would haveno trouble believing that the pharmaceutical companies and the tobaccocompanies are in bed with each other, in spite of their apparent conflict. (I know that sounds a bit “black helipcotery”) They’re both making obscene amounts of moneyand e-cigs pose a potential threat to those profits, and besides, people likethem, and how can we have things people like if somebody isn’t profitinggrossly? The love of money is indeed theroot of all evil.

I would also suggest (but could never empiricallyprove) that there exists in our world people who just can’t stand to see othersengage in harmless behaviors they don’t approve of. Like one child withholding a toy from anotherwho obviously wants it, for the sole reason of watching them want it and not beable to have it, these people derive some sort of satisfaction from imposingtheir will upon others. Much likenicotine, this sort of disregard for others provides them with the dopaminethat normal people get from a smile or a kind word. In our politically correct world, they seemto be oblivious to the fact that in their zeal to keep their own feelings fromever being bruised, they inherently must bruise the feelings of others.

A ban on e-cigs is patently ridiculous, isn’tit? I’m just so sorry to have to saythat all my ranting isn’t going to change anything. It will become the norm, and life will carryon as usual, and I truly feel sorry for the people who can’t see a problem withit. And you can bet that if there’s anymoney at all to be made from an e-cig ban, the politicians will be on board aswell under the guise of the public good. I’m sure there are many militant non-smokers who fully support the banon e-cigs, and will go to sleep snug and smug in the knowledge that no one isgoing to offend them in any way, especially not by enjoying something theydon’t approve of. It’s bad enough thatthere are those who would tell us what to eat or wear or do or say, and webehave as if that’s normal and acceptable. Keep this in mind, though: Ifthey can ban an activity that hurts no one while having the populace agree,they can do anything, and that, my friends, is not freedom. We would do well to heed the words of BertrandRussell, who said “There is no nonsense so arrant that it cannot be made thecreed of the vast majority by adequate governmental action.”

If you agree with what I’ve written, how aboutdropping Frank Lautenberg a line and telling him (and by extension, all of yourlawmakers) what you think of his logic? Here’s how to contact him: http://www.lautenberg.senate.gov/contact/routing.cfm.

I Can't Type

2011-05-27T03:29:00.000-05:00

There are a couple of things that have been bugging me for a while, and I wanted to explore them fully and rationally. I wanted an essay for each, because I believe they are topics that should be discussed fully, with all sides presented so that you, the reader, can make an informed opinion and perhaps dig even deeper than I did. That’s what I wanted, but I can’t do it. I can’t write long essays because both of my forearms are covered with poison ivy blisters. So since I can’t comfortably type, you’re going to have to read my unedited and possibly poorly thought out arguments. If I have to be miserable, so do you.

Immigration Wall

This picture comes from the desert in Arizona and it should disturb you for a lot of reasons. Having said that, I want to continue by saying I have friends on both sides of the immigration issue, and each offers a strong opinion about their take on it. I’m not going to try to rationalize each argument, although I’d like to say that any talk of racism when discussing illegal immigration is moot. There is no race of illegal aliens, so that’s been taken out of the equation. And because I have poison ivy and vodka, I’m going to tell you what I think about the whole mess as quickly as possible.

I’m having a party. It may not be the best party in the world, and I do have some rules, but all the attendees seem to like it, and that’s what matters. The first rule is that everyone on the planet has a standing invitation. Show it and you’re in. All I want is an RSVP. Tell me you’re coming and I’ll make sure the rope opens for you. However, if you show up uninvited, you are implicitly saying that you’re not going to follow the first rule, so I have no choice but to assume you’re not going to follow any of them, and that means you have to leave now. See how simple that is?

God Hates Fakes

On May 22 of this year, just a couple days ago, an F5 tornado plowed through Joplin, MO. By all accounts as of this writing, at least 125 people are dead or missing. Fred Phelps’ Westboro Baptist Church plans on picketing there Sunday with this message: “Thank God for 125 dead in Joplin.” The group will be holding signs claiming that they’re glad those people died; they died because God is punishing America for allowing homosexuals to live freely. I have a big problem with this.

There are people who defend Phelps’ group saying they have a right to free speech, no matter how offensive their message, and they’re right. For just a tiny bit of background, Phelps’ “church” is a small family based cabal of lawyers and paralegals whose sole mission is to bait grieving families in their most desperate hour into behaving like any rational person would. They travel across the country to brazenly mock the deaths of strangers’ loved ones, hoping for a physical confrontation so they can seek redress by suing the “attackers” as well as the state and federal governments for failing to protect their right to free speech. I believe in my heart that anyone can say anything they want without fear of being taken away by the government. I really do. But, here’s how it works at my party: You can stand up and say anything you want, but if you willfully act like a dick for the sole purpose of being a dick, you shouldn’t be surprised when you get smacked for being a dick. You are not owed anything. It’s real simple.

I could have posted pictures of my disgusting, zombie-like arms, but I didn’t. I did, however, post one depicting the root of my problem. (Snerk!) One thing about this is that although I’m right-handed, I seem to be unable to brush my teeth in a fluid motion using that arm. It wasn’t until now that I realized I had always used my left hand for tooth brushing. As I do it, in my present condition, I absurdly think of a monkey randomly poking a stick into a termite mound. It’s weird.

Cinemadness

2011-05-15T00:36:00.002-05:00

When it comes to food, it’s not my place to say what’s good or bad; I can only tell you if I like it or not. I’m sure somewhere there is a glowing review for fried rats (IF they are cornfield rats, according to a Cambodian friend), but a professional food critic raving about them holds little sway over me. And just as it is with food, opinions about movies are just too subjective for me to put any stock in them at all. Movies with talking animals have a huge audience, but they just creep me out. Except for TV’s “Mr. Ed.” That was awesome.

I’m not a movie critic. The fact that professional movie (or any) critics exist and get paid for their opinions is a mystery to me. In many instances, they hate the movies I love, and I hate the ones they like. “Real life” movies can be interesting and pertinent; but come on. If I can tell in the first ten minutes of a film what’s going to happen, I had better be so engrossed by the entire experience of writing and acting and sets and costumes and shots that I care about the character who can’t see what’s coming. I should want to scream at the screen. If I’m not anxious to see what comes next, it’s not working.

Escapism is the true power of filmdom. ANYTHING can happen in a movie, and, in my non-paid opinion, should. Indeed, in my little world, there are only three elements that can save almost any film from being an utter waste of time. Those three things are, in no special order, tits, fangs and blood. Now, I hope I didn’t lose you there. As I said, I’m not a critic, but all three of those elements combined in the same film always makes for something I can watch, no matter how stupid the story is, or how badly it’s acted. Am I a cretin? Perhaps, but I just went to a real theater and paid to watch a big budget movie with actors I like for the first time in I don’t know how long, and I was sorely, sorely disappointed.

I went to see “Priest”, a movie about vampires that have fangs and are horrible monsters that’s based on a story from a comic (or “graphic novel”, if you prefer). The trailers I’d seen actually made me want to go to the movies, and that rarely happens. I like the acting of the title character, Paul Bettany, and Christopher Plummer is, well, you know, Christopher Plummer, so I thought why not? As I said, I’m not a movie critic, but this movie was a train wreck (snort). My beef is that it could have been so much better. The storyline was just awful. I did a little peek around about the story it’s based on, and it shouldn’t have surprised me to learn that the plot of the movie had nothing to do with the original premise, save for the title. It was akin to making a movie that has Boris Karloff’s Frankenstein monster playing Sidney Poitier’s role in “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner”, and titling it “Frankenstein”, because that’s what it was based on. Oh, and nobody notices that he’s a monster. Ridiculous, right?

Anyway, ten minutes into the movie, I knew what was going to happen, and the only reason I stuck around was to see the fangs and blood (no tits). This movie could have been so much better. So from my soapbox I’d like to say that the people in charge of making mainstream movies must think that the movie going audience is a gaggle of fools. Formulaic drivel is uninteresting and it frightens me to think that Hollywood continues to churn out this celluloid ichor (medical definition) because that’s what the public continues to pay for. Good stories are good stories and mainstream movie makers seem to have forgotten that. My three personal element preferences for a good movie aside, it seems to me that since movie makers like to call themselves artists, I would suggest that they stay true to what I believe an artist’s motivation should be: to create for creation’s sake, not for profit. If you tell a good story the right way, and tell it because it’s a good story, profit will follow, although most of the time, you’re dead before anyone realizes how great you are.

And so you know I’m not a total misogynistic ass, I would really like to see “The King’s Speech”, and not because it won a bunch of Hollywood self-congratulatory awards. There will be no tits fangs or blood, but I want to see it because George VI was the last king of England, and a stutterer in a tumultuous time, and I’d like to see how that went.

Lessons Learned

2010-12-31T22:53:00.001-05:00

I hate writing about me. In a way, of course, all writers write about their personal lives in that every single word they write comes from them, ergo, it’s all personal, but good ones disguise that with allegory, allowing the reader to see into them without a blow by blow description of what’s actually happening. It’s much more interesting that way. So, when I say I hate writing about me, I mean I hate writing about my personal life; no one wants to read that. But on this, the last day of 2010, as I sit alone in yet another hotel room, I am reflecting on the events of the past year as they relate specifically to me, and because I’m feeling selfish and bored, I thought I’d share with you some of the things I’ve learned this year.

Casinos

I love casinos. I love the way they look, I love the way they sound, I love the way they smell. They are vibrant and exciting, warm and inviting. The joyous cacophony of electronic music and sound effects are as intoxicating as the (for the most part) positively beautiful women that proffer free drinks upon request. Every single time I walk into one I expect to see a tuxedo clad James Bond playing baccarat, casually betting huge sums of money with gorgeous trollops draped on his arm. Of course, it’s always regular people betting money they probably shouldn’t, but I like to think they share the same feeling as me: A casino is a place to shed one’s normal skin and pretend, if only for a little while, that things are different inside than they are in the regular world. In a casino, one doesn’t worry about the mundane life usually adhered to. Like an adult fairy tale, the possibility of having a “happily ever after” doesn’t seem so farfetched. They are the ultimate escape from the run of the mill.

In this year alone, I’ve been to Atlantic City, Reno, and Vegas. I wish I could say I won a bunch of money, but I can’t. In fact, I spent more than I wanted to, but not more than I should have. The important thing is that I had a good time. The lure of easy money, i.e., a big hit on a slot machine, is very difficult to resist, and although it didn’t happen for me, I did see it happen for others. The odds of winning are remote, and as I plug money into casinos, I am reminded of a bumper sticker I saw that read “the lottery is for people who suck at math”. The casinos take from me, and the entire time they’re doing it, I enjoy it. I know it’s happening, and I still do it. I do it because it’s fun. That’s what I tell myself, and I’m OK with that.

Travel

Everyone who reads these rants knows I travel for my job. I complain endlessly about it, but it’s a necessary evil. I like being able to pay my bills (and hit the casino once in a while), and I particularly like being self sufficient. My father taught me, a long time ago, that it is only through hard work that one can live the life they want to live. I took that to mean that the only way I can have the things that I want is to work for them. Everyone who knows me knows that material things mean little to me. At the risk of tooting my own horn, I make enough money to buy just about anything I want, but it’s been my experience that things owned, in and of themselves, do not happiness make. I thought I found happiness once, not long ago, but I was wrong, and so I have no choice but to continue to work (travel) and hopefully, one of these days, find the life I want, and more importantly, find someone to share it with. So for all my lamenting about travel, I have to keep in mind that it pays my bills, and, as much as I hate to admit it, being alone on the road affords me the often agonizing opportunity to pause and reflect upon what it is that I want. Maybe, someday, I’ll know what that is, and if I’m really lucky, I’ll be able to recognize it when I find it.

Broken Hearts

Everyone has a broken heart story, don’t they? If you don’t then your life isn’t complete yet. I have one, and I’m a bit embarrassed to say that it took almost 50 years for it to happen. The details aren’t really important. Suffice to say that I gave everything I had, both material and ethereal, only to find that it wasn’t reciprocated, in spite of being assured that it was. She left me in August.

I was never one to believe in a soul mate, but when I met this woman, I was converted. Like the dreamer I am, I knew, knew that this one, out of every woman I’d ever met, was the one I wanted most. I had never in my life met a woman who so totally consumed my thoughts. She was by no means perfect, but she was perfect for me. We shared a love of casinos, but I suspect (among other things), that my traveling proved to be the final straw for a camel whose back was never strong enough to support us both.

I think of her often, probably more often than I should. I tell myself that one of these days her memory will fade, and take the constant lump in my throat with it. I don’t know why I torture myself by thinking of her, and I don’t know why she pops into my mind when I don’t want her there. I can’t blame her for her presence in my mind; the problem obviously lies with me. Maybe one of these days I’ll look back and laugh at my foolishness. My biggest fear is that I’ve become jaded, that I will judge every other woman I meet by her, and forever find reasons that the latter doesn’t measure up to the former. I hope that doesn’t happen.

I hope this entry wasn’t too dark. I did have a good time in casinos, and I did have a good time traveling. I hate to love casinos, and I love to hate traveling. I didn’t have a good time when the love of my life left, so I suppose I should take a different tack and apply the same lessons I learned from casinos and traveling: Perspective goes a long way toward rationalizing the things we do. I need to find the proper vantage point from which to view my broken heart. Travel and slot machines may prove to be the key to helping me to help myself. Have a good new year.

TSA OK!

2010-11-24T03:42:00.000-05:00

To take pride in the place you were born is a vanity that we all share. “I’m Scotch, I’m Irish, I’m Cherokee, I’m Nepalese. I’m special because of the accident of my birth.” It’s not a bad thing, really, because without that particular universally shared quirk, we would feel unconnected, if not utterly lost. My point is that national pride is a good thing. So with that in mind, I want to express my dismay at the state of the America I was born in. It’s gotten a lot different than it used to be and I’m worried. I really am.

I travel for work. I am on the road ALL the time. I don’t like the TSA. I don’t like their methods, I don’t like their agenda and I most certainly don’t like their screeners. I don’t like them one bit. They and all they stand for are a problem that doesn’t need to exist. Many may say I’m a tin foil hat wearing lunatic, but hear me out. The TSA, under the auspices of public safety, are raping your rights and literally molesting you and your children. They say they’re doing it for your own good and safety, but they’re doing nothing to keep you safe from the terrorists they say are rampant among us.

I’m barely started but I can see that this essay could go on for pages and pages, so let’s try to keep this simple. The TSA has not caught one terrorist. They have not stopped one bombing, not one hijacking; in fact they can point to a huge zero when it comes to averting any sort of air disaster. How do I know this? Because if they had, you can bet it would have been all over the news. In case you didn’t know, while the TSA is screening wheelchair-bound paraplegics for your safety, they also allow known terrorists to board planes. I wish I could make this up. I really do. But, since I did collect some links, here’s one from CBS’ 60 Minutes. There’s so much in this segment I could rant and rave about, but if you take only one thing away from it, be it this: The TSA will grope your grandma and legally molest your children while they simultaneously allow known terrorists to fly. Do you feel safe yet?

You can find any number of horror stories illustrating the sad fact that the majority of TSA agents couldn’t find their asses with both hands and a flashlight. If you think I’m making this up, do a Google search on “colostomy bag TSA”, or “muscular dystrophy boy TSA”, or (pick your ailment) TSA. Oh, and if you have a prosthesis, good luck. You and your stump can sit and wait while the security professionals try to figure out if that mechanism attached to your body is a detonator or an artificial ankle. I have a short anecdote to relate that isn’t nearly as intrusive and offensive as some others, but the important thing is that, like the extreme examples, it shows in a glaring light how ridiculous the screening process is, and how it does absolutely nothing to keep you safe. I know, because I could have pulled it off.

I was in Tampa, about a year ago, before the “Detroit Underwear Bomber” episode (and I’ll get to that). I had a carry-on duffel bag. Inside it, among other things, was a 15oz package of Metamucil. It’s about 2/3 the length of a paper towel tube, and about twice as wide. It’s a cylindrically shaped package. It was full of powdered…Metamucil. I put my bag on the belt and it showed up on the X-ray screen as a suspected “boogey” item; it had to be inspected more closely. I assumed it would, and I was asked if it was my bag and if I’d care to step over while a professionally trained TSA agent rooted through it. I wondered why they asked me, because I had no choice, but if that’s how they wanted to play…well, again, I had no choice. So, as Mr. Safety is tossing my belongings, he’s telling me, in a stern and directive tone, that cylinders with powder in them are considered suspicious and must be eyeballed to ensure they’re not an incendiary device. I told him I understood, and I also said that the result of his search was going to yield a powdered laxative in a big orange canister. He dug through the bag I had packed not two hours previously, and while he was elbow-deep in my stuff, he said, “Got it!”

I expected to see a bright orange cylinder, but to my surprise he was holding up a tube of toothpaste. He was beaming with a sort of righteous validation; he had found what he was looking for. I know you’re not supposed to joke with TSA agents, probably because they don’t understand humor, so I refrained from telling him that the tube of toothpaste he was holding wasn’t a cylinder and that I had known what a cylinder was since I was in the third grade. I smiled my best self-deprecating smile and said, “I don’t think that’s what you’re looking for”, and in an instant, I realized that was a mistake. He said, “Sir, you are not allowed to have any liquids more than 3 ounces on an aircraft. This tube is 7 ounces. I’m going to have to confiscate it.” He gave me his best authoritative stare, fairly daring me to speak up. It occurred to me to say, “So do you pack your lunch or take the bus to work?”

The point is, we were talking, but we weren’t communicating. He thought he was being vigilant for the sake of my safety, and I was trying to make his job easier, but anything I had to say was irrelevant. He handed me my bag after dumping my possibly explosive toothpaste in a huge rubber garbage can behind him, where it sat, presumably, until it was full enough to be emptied. It never seemed to occur to him or any of the other highly trained TSA agents that all those water bottles, face creams and God knows what liquids might be explosive materials waiting patiently for just the right jostle to blow the entire security area to bits. I thought that was kind of funny.

He told me to have a nice day, but I couldn’t, because I was worried that I had forgotten my Metamucil. After all, he was a professional, and he had failed to find it, so the first thing I did when I got my bag back was to check it, and there, under the first pair of neatly folded pants, was my HUGE ORANGE CYLINDER of Metamucil. For one brief (and admittedly wanton) discretionary moment, I wanted to shout to everyone within earshot that the TSA agent had failed to find my HUGE ORANGE CYLINDER of Metamucil, and wasn’t it great that it wasn’t a HUGE ORANGE BOMB! I did no such thing, of course, but I wanted to.

I tell this story because, as I said at the beginning of this rant, I am getting fed up with the government that works for me (yeah, I’m delusional) dictating how I am to behave while their “agents” trample on my basic American right to be innocent until proven guilty. “But we’re doing it for your safety!” Bullshit. Show me the terrorists you’ve stopped. I want somebody to explain to me EXACTLY how I’m safer on an airplane because your agents don’t know the difference between a tube of toothpaste and a plastic can of laxative. I’ve been screened by a person who is unqualified to get a job without saying, “You want fries with that?” Call me crazy, but I’ve been to enough airports to know that the vast majority of TSA screeners don’t carry in their craniums a brain that generates enough power to move their dumb asses around.

Am I an elitist? Am I looking down my nose at the professionals of the TSA? Did you know that the TSA’s recruiting efforts include posting job availability on delivery pizza boxes in Washington DC? DELIVERY PIZZA BOXES. Did you know that? The Washington Post does. Do you feel safer now?

The big problem with the TSA is that they’re retroactive. Some idiot boards a plane (not in the USA) with something flammable in his shoes. His cunning, well thought out plan doesn’t work, but we all have to take our shoes off in the airport forevermore. Some idiot boards a plane (not in the USA) with something flammable in his underwear. His cunning, well thought out plan doesn’t work; in fact, it really didn’t work out for him at all, but because no one got hurt and he was a moron, we all have to have our crotches felt up forevermore.

This is fear-mongering at its worst. In case you didn’t know, both of these incidents involved persons who had no chance of blowing up the airplane. None. I’m not going to bore you with the details of how an explosive device works, but in a nutshell, you need two things to cause an explosion: pressure and a detonator. Neither of these things can be achieved with a powerful enough force to blow a hole in an airplane without being encased in metal in a space small enough to be carried on your person with no one noticing that you’re a man but look like you’re at the end of your third trimester. I don’t care how James Bond does it, but in the real world, not you, and certainly not the shoe or underwear bomber can do it. We already know that.

Here’s all I have to say about backscatter scanners: The TSA says a lot of things about imaging devices. They say it can’t store pictures, but it can, and they do, and the machine’s manufacturers have already been proven to be lying when they say it can’t. Don’t believe me? Proof is a click away. Oh, and by the way, did you know that former Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff, who cried for the use of these machines after the Detroit “bomber” (who wasn’t a bomber), just happens to work for the companies that make the body scanning machines? Do you feel safer now? I swear I can’t make this stuff up.

They say you can forgo the scanning, but if so, you’ll be subjected to an “enhanced” pat down, which involves cupping your balls, patting your cooch, and sliding hands between, around and beneath your breasts. And it also includes a hands-down, in and around your-waistband job; sorry, no tongues or smoking, as well as the slide of a finger between every fat fold as well, and it’s topped off with an atmosphere of presumed guilt. If you want, you can have them switch rubber gloves before they touch you after the sweaty ogre they just groped, but you HAVE TO ASK for that. Oh, and let’s not forget that it doesn’t matter how old you are. Your six year old son or daughter is eligible, I’m sorry, REQUIRED to undergo the same procedure, because you never know…the terrorists could be anyone. ANYONE! Feel safer now?

Follow the money and you’ll see why we have these ridiculous policies. It’s not to keep you safe. It’s about money. It’s all about money. It has nothing to do with our collective safety. To believe otherwise is to bury your head in the sand or stick your fingers in your ears and shout “Lalalala I’m not listening to you!” The truth is you can’t protect yourself from crazy. If someone really wants to get you, they will, but make no mistake: They will have a much harder time doing it on a plane than anywhere else. It’s easy to say “Oh, remember 9-11”, but that’s a line that doesn’t sit well with me. There were no bombs on those flights, and the only reason they succeeded was because they could a) get to the cockpit and b) terrify the passengers. As much as I loathe the phrase, in our post 9-11 world, neither of those things will happen again. First, you ain’t getting in the cockpit on ANY commercial plane these days. Second (and I’ve seen it happen), if you act like a dick on a plane, you’re gonna get the big smack down from every passenger who even thinks that you’re going to try and fix it so it doesn’t land safely. Trust me. A plane bombing isn’t going to happen. You have a better chance of dying from being struck by lightning as you stretch out to catch a meteor while being eaten by a shark.

Here’s my humble solution: What we need is what we used to have. We need metal detectors. I know we still have them, but everyone acts like they’re antiquated. We need bomb sniffing dogs. More people like dogs than don’t. I would much rather walk past Rover the police (or TSA) pooch for a quick sniff than to have Shaniqua the Arrogant bawl at me for putting my shoes and laptop in the same bin while waiting for Donald “Cooter” McFeely to grope my privates as he leers at the 9 year old girl behind me in line. Your daughter, maybe?

Metal detectors, dogs, and people who are trained not only in security but civility would be good enough for me.

I love America’s freedoms, but I’m worried about their longevity. As I write this, I’m living and working in South Central Los Angeles, and I feel safer here than I would at any airport. When the TSA shows some common sense in their endeavors, I’ll be much less inclined to lean back and moan loud enough for the entire security area to hear when I have my crotch fondled in the name of safety.

Coast to Coast

2010-11-10T20:38:00.000-05:00

I haven’t written anything in a while. I have a million excuses, but none of them make a strong case; it’s whining no matter how you slice it. I learned some hard lessons in my absence, and maybe one day I’ll pass them along, but for now, I think jotting down a few blurbs will do me some good, and I hope they work for you as well.

My traveling job takes me to a lot of different cities. I literally travel from coast to coast, never in one spot for more than two weeks. It pays well, but I still find myself wishing I had a dime for every time I heard someone say “Ooo, that must be so cool.” I will admit that it is nice to have the chance to see things I probably never would if I didn’t travel, but believe me when I say that living out of a suitcase is pretty much a drag. I’ve learned you cannot have a job like this and have a normal home life. On the other hand, I get to see some weird stuff…

Bums

Every one of my traveling work sites is in a major US city, and with just a couple exceptions, they are in the worst parts of those cities. Now, it’s my personal opinion that everybody should spend some time in the seedy parts of the city, especially those who tend to look down their noses at others. Mind you, I do plenty of that myself, but living among the down and outs can be very sobering. Some people have it very bad. I rarely give money to bums because, as I just mentioned, my first thought when asked for a handout is “ Get a job,” especially when it’s some tool with a $50 t-shirt and $800 worth of “unique” tattoos that look like EVER OTHER person’s tattoos. Oh, and I especially like the young “hipsters” who hang out in front of the 7-11 and ask if I have an extra cigarette. My line is always the same: “Nope. No extras. This pack only had 20. Sorry.” I don’t have a problem being less than polite with them.

Once in a while, though, I feel a little bad. I was in a subway station in DC waiting for a train not long ago. It was pouring down rain; not cold, but not pleasant either. I was on a landing that had escalators going down to the tracks and while it was covered, the wind blew everything wet five feet into the sheltered part. So I’m shaking off the rain and a bum walks past me on his way to root through the public garbage cans. I assumed he was looking for cans. As I watched, he pulled a paper McDonald’s cup from the can, straw still in place, and he put the straw in his mouth like it was his and took a hit to see if there was anything in it. Then he jettisoned the cup and went for the crumpled food bag and unwrapped all the balled up burger wrappers, presumably looking for crusts or pickles or something. In that moment, I was just a little bit moved. I gave the guy a five and told him to walk across the street and get his own McDonalds bag with his own drink. He didn’t smile, but he did mumble “Thanks,” and I went down to the tracks. I don’t know if he bought something to eat or not, but I do know that I hope that I never find myself rooting through dumpsters to eat, or worse, deciding that the money a stranger gave me could be spent on something other than food.

Misanthropic Behavior

One of the problems with traveling all the time is that I have to deal with other people. Strangers. I could say there are a ton of weirdoes in Los Angeles (and there are), but they’re everywhere, in every city. Now, I realize that I’m not the only person in the world, and anyone who knows me knows that I don’t sashay through life expecting others to be mindful of my every whim, but on the other hand, I DO expect common courtesy, and it pisses me off when I don’t get it. By way of example, for as long as I can remember, I’ve known that two people can’t stand in the same place at the same time, and now, almost 50 years later, I see adults trying to do it. Since I live in hotels, I spend (too much) time in an elevator, and I can’t count the times that I’ve ridden to the ground floor to go about my way, and as the door opens, there’s at least one person who wants to get on before I get off. The elevator car isn’t going to go anywhere until I get out, and there will be more room in the car when I get out, so YOU NEED TO GET OUT OF THE WAY. I have a special look for those people, and since I’m not very attractive, it usually works very well.

Kind Strangers

In spite of my complaining about others, I do run into some very helpful people. Since I’m often in a place I’ve never been, I make it a point to ask shuttle drivers or hotel desk clerks where the good places to eat are, and I always make sure to tell them that I want a recommendation that isn’t canned. I want to know where THEY would go to eat and drink. Sometimes this doesn’t work very well, because everyone has a different idea of what’s good, but for the most part, I’ve been pretty successful. As much as I hate New Jersey, I have to admit that I got totally spoiled there. I can’t eat Italian anywhere but Jersey or New York anymore, but I’m glad I found out what I was missing. Can’t eat crab cakes anywhere but Maryland and there ain’t nothin’ like Texas barbecue. I couldn’t have found any of those good places though, without a local raving about them. So I guess they’re not all bad, but it would be a much better place if there were more of the nice ones.

Arizona

2010-06-29T04:54:00.000-05:00

Desert

Until the end of April this year, I had never been to Arizona. I spent some time in a couple deserts in the service (not combat), but it was cold. It was to be my first time in the hot desert, the type of climate every cracked-lip, sweaty thirsty cowboy I saw on TV or the movies suffered through. Two months ago I was very anxious to see if it was hype. Was it really that unforgiving? I’m going to use a bunch more words, but if I could only pick one, it would be “yes”. It is that hot and unforgiving here. But, it’s cool too.

I like to sit outside in the evening here at my hotel in Phoenix, and I’ve noticed something unique about this place. The birds chirp and sing all night. In fact, I hear them more at midnight than at noon. Yeah, I know, that’s because it’s probably too damn hot to chirp at noon, but it’s still something I’ve never heard before. The crickets sing here too, but they don’t look like Midwest crickets. They’re tan, almost invisible against the dirt, and they move much faster than crickets usually do. I have not gotten one mosquito bite since I got here. I saw some rattlesnakes in a pen at a desert museum near Tucson, and an amazing hummingbird display too, and was very impressed at how different the wildlife is here. But, before you think I’m going to sing the praises of the desert fauna, let me tell you about the flora.

Hell is a different thing for each person, and I don’t pretend to speak for everyone, but in my personal vision, even something as benign as a plant would be a horror. I thought I had a good imagination, but after seeing how many different kinds of cacti are out here, I realized that nature has a much better one, and her creations are far more sinister than anything I could dream up. Cacti of all kinds, with spines longer and thicker than your fingers wait in patiently in the heat, waiting for you to fall down. For whatever reason, falling down is the first thing I thought of, which was bad, but of course it had to progress to falling down on a hill, rolling ass-over-teakettle. It really was the stuff nightmares are made of. One cactus in particular struck me as unusually malevolent. It is the Ferocactus wislizeni, or “fishhook barrel cactus”. Here’s a picture of it. The spines on this plant feel like they’re made of the same stuff as fingernails…or claws. They are sharper than you think (yes, I touched them), and if you were unlucky enough to roll over one, I don’t believe it could be extracted without a bazillion stitches and pints of morphine. Never, never fall down a hill in the desert. But, if you get the chance, ride your hawg in the desert during a full moon. Words cannot describe it.

Scum of the Earth

I got out of my hotel in the (relative) cool of the evening this past weekend. It was about 8pm and the sun was going down; it was only 102 degrees, so riding my motorcycle wasn’t like flying through a blast furnace. I could breathe without my nostrils burning, and that’s a good thing. So I was tooling around a strange city, not knowing where I was going, but glad to be out in the saddle. I rode around until I found what I was looking for: a bar with a bunch of motorcycles parked outside. I pulled in, got off, and walked inside.

It never fails to amaze me that there are people who think that walking into a biker bar is akin to wearing a sign that says “stab me”. I remember working with a guy once in another traveling job, and we were looking for a place to eat. I saw a somewhat dilapidated place under a viaduct that had two neon signs, one of a burger and one of a Budweiser logo. I said, “Let’s try that place,” and he said, “Hell no! You’ll get stabbed in there.” I looked at him and said, “No. You’ll get stabbed in there. I won’t.” Because I wasn’t driving, we didn’t eat there, but the point is, if you walk into a blue-collar or biker bar, you won’t have any trouble if you don’t act like you’re better than everyone there.

So anyway, I walked into the bar. It was called the Maverick, on 19th Street in Phoenix. It was like the countless other biker bars I’ve been in. You had your drunks, your bar sluts, your grandma types who knew everyone there, and of course, bikers. Not yuppie dorks riding brand new bikes and wanting to talk ONLY about their chrome doo-dads, but guys (like me) who ride not because it’s the “in” thing, but because we love it. There were some club guys (“gang” members, for those of you who stuck in the 70’s), but no one was even near menacing. Again, if you’re not an asshole, you’ll be alright. Everyone was having a good time. Drinks were cheap, you could smoke, and there was a live band. I don’t know what else you could ask for.

I bellied up to the bar and eventually struck up a conversation with the guy next to me. I had noticed an older bike in the parking lot (the one I parked next to), and it turned out it was his. We talked bikes for a bit, exchanging stories and having a couple beers and laughs. He called himself “Dirty”. I don’t have a cool biker name, but I know a lot who do. So after bike stories, he said his band was playing at the Maverick the next night, and I should check it out. Having absolutely nothing else to do, I readily agreed.

I’ve heard some unbelievably crappy bar bands in my day, and I fully expected Dirty’s band to be at least capable, but not stellar. Everyone who knows me knows my brother has been playing in bar bands since the 70’s, so it’s not like I haven’t been around that scene. To my surprise, I was wrong about Dirty’s band. They were extraordinarily good. They called themselves “Cactus Chainsaw”, and if I had to describe them, I’d say their sound was a very heavy blues rock. Think Pantera and old Black Sabbath, “Satan fingers” and head banging, but not too fast. I believe Robert Johnson himself would be proud. Dirty was the singer, and I’ll be damned if that guy and his band didn’t impress me. After a little internet poking about, I saw that they’ve played the Whiskey-A-Go-Go in Los Angeles, a bastion of 70’s and 80’s hard rock bars. Every hard rock hair band has played there. Very impressive! I told them I would write a plug, so there it is. If you’re ever in Phoenix and see “Cactus Chainsaw” on a flyer or marquis, check them out. They rock. They really do. They got You Tube. Google them and see for yourself.

I wrote that little review because I said I would (and I think they deserve it), but my bigger point is that many people do themselves a huge disservice by dismissing those who exist on the fringes of society (bikers) as the scum of the earth, almost less than human. Yes, they’re crude, and they don’t make tons of money. They (I) ride around on loud motorcycles, they drink and smoke and don’t really care what anyone else thinks about them. I know so many people like Dirty who spend their days struggling through life, yet fully enjoying every single minute of it at the same time. They do what they like. They drink and make music the way they want to make it; they are beholden to no one, and that, my friends, is what makes bikers (and biker bars) so appealing. They smile and cry like every person on the planet, but their smiles don’t belie a hidden agenda. Like everyone, they hope for good fortune, but they don’t crawl over their friends to get it. They know that life is too short to spend it worrying about things they can’t control. If you are looking down your nose at people like that, I feel sorry for you. To paraphrase a Harley bumper sticker, “If I have to explain it, you won’t understand.”

Quickies

2010-06-08T03:39:00.000-05:00

I saw a comedian on TV once, a long time ago when I was in high school. His name was Larry Mule Deer, and one of his many shticks was holding a manual typewriter next to his head and repeatedly tapping one of the keys as he related fake headlines/news teasers. Anyone who watched news in the 70’s knows that news was much more believable if there were clacking typewriters in the background. Imagine clacking typewriters as you read these. They are off the cuff, mostly unedited, and hopefully interesting.

Burger King has, if you believe their commercials, bone-in smoked ribs. No good can come of this. As a rib snob, I’m not sure anything else needs to be said.

Last Sunday, June 6, was the 66th anniversary of D-Day. Both the History Channel (HISTORY CHANNEL) and Discovery, two of the usually watchable channels, had marathons of either Ice Road Truckers or Pawn Stars. I guess it’s fitting, because with their heroic actions, both of those groups helped turn the tide against the axis powers which helped steer the world away from certain tyranny. History channel. For shame.

I can’t decide which satirical show I like better, South Park or Robot Chicken. Both are, to me, exceptionally funny.

I can’t imagine how this guy feels. He was on a walk with his woman with the express intent of proposing to her at the top of the hill. She was struck by lightning and died minutes before they reached the summit. Truth really is stranger than fiction, and far sadder.

Dreams I Hope You'll See

2010-06-04T04:41:00.001-05:00

I think it would be more than a little strange if someone asked me to watch them exercise. I can think of a couple situations where such a thing could prove to be extraordinarily interesting. This isn’t one of those times. Still, I want to ask you to watch me.

As an exercise to write without smoking cigarettes, I wanted to try and concentrate enough to describe a dream. Anything can happen in a dream, and that’s why I love the picture for this one. We all know that there is SO much going on in dreams that it would take years to fully describe them with words, if such a thing were possible. And so I thought it would be a good thing to try to condense a dream into the snapshot that it was, because I have a lot of patience without that pesky nicotine. Harrumph.

For me, the hallmark of good writing is the ability for the words printed on a page to become more than what they are. That is, even though I look at a white page of letters, “little bugs”, as Tarzan saw them, I am transported, vividly, to the scene that the author describes. It’s not the same one the author saw, exactly, but I am able to see the one that really matters, and that’s just all kinds of awesome. When you forget you’re in a chair because you’ve been taken away to another world, well that’s good writing.

I had this dream the other day. It really stuck with me.

I’m standing outside. It’s crisp and cold. The sky is ice blue, a stark contrast to the light white and tan of the terrain. It’s so cold. Fence poles don’t move. Shadows do, but they’re slow. There are a few horses standing on the slope above a ditch in front of me. Some are brown and some spotted, and they’re slow too. There is both ice and water in the ditch. Light brown foam splotches a surface that isn’t liquid but isn’t solid, like a giant dirty root beer float. The horses’ breaths waft lazily, puffs of white smoke against a blue sky. I am squinting in the cold and bright, and there seems time to relax and gather thoughts.

Things started to happen, and I was caught, not frozen, but REALLY SLOW.

The person standing next to me (whom I did not know was there) shot one of the brown horses in the ass. I don’t mean in the cheek, like a cartoon, but right up the ass with a large caliber projectile. The report was deafening. The horse’s tail fluffed and for just a second, everything looked normal. It seemed like it took ten minutes for me to snap my head around to see the shooter, and then look back to the horse.

It shuddered, then stood still. The blues and tans of the scene gave way to bright red. Blood came pouring out from beneath the horse’s tail, soaking its legs. It shuddered again, spraying blood on each of its hindquarters. Its head moved left and right, not panicking, but definitely aware that something was very wrong. It shifted weight from one hind leg to the other, and as each gave out, its entire backside went down. It looked absurdly like it was doing a push up. The ground was hard and frozen and sloped toward the watery ditch. Its front legs tried to hold, but the hooves couldn’t find purchase and it slid down.

The horse took what seemed like forever to slide into the ditch. The farther it went, the wider its eyes became. It made no sound, save for the rushing of its breathing. The panic was palpable. I couldn’t move and I couldn’t look away. At the point where it should have gone completely under, it shifted onto its back, having nudged something beneath it. The carcass of another horse floated up next to the struggling one, bobbed a couple times in the dirty foam, then sank again. The water in the ditch was covering a lot of dead horses.

I turned to the person next to me to speak, but no one was there. I turned back to the horse and saw that only its nostrils and mouth were above water, flaring and chomping at the air. The other person, a man, the man who shot the horse in the first place was standing by the ditch. He was watching it drown, watching it edge closer. It bobbed among the other dead horses, and then he just stepped in to the freezing water and sank up to his waist. He pushed his arms in up to his elbows, causing the rigid legs of one of the bobbing dead horses to knock the dying one’s nose beneath the surface. Bubbles popped as the horse went under, disturbing the slushy foam. The sound froze in the cold. I was powerless to do anything. I watched the man grimace, then pull his arms out of the water, revealing hands that were very recently intact, but now had several fingers missing. I knew that having your fingers snapped off had to hurt, especially when it was that cold. I watched his expression. His eyes widened, and his mouth opened, and I couldn’t wait to hear what he had to say…and then I woke up.

And that’s the real bitch about dreams, huh? I don’t know what it means. I just want to know if you can see it. If you can, I’m doing my job. Thanks for watching.

Hero Worship

2010-05-21T04:09:00.000-05:00

“After silence, that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music” – Aldous Huxley

Regular readers know that music (and all that it entails) is a favorite subject of mine. It touches us in so many ways. It doesn’t matter what type of music you enjoy; that you enjoy it is what’s important. It is one of only a very few things that has a truly universal appeal, and (cue ascending grandiose symphonic fanfare) I daresay it is, in the big picture, humankind’s crowning achievement. As I said, it doesn’t matter what kind you like. We probably won’t agree on artists, but hopefully we will on the art part and how it works for us. Besides, it’s my essay and it’s gonna go my way. So there.

When I was in the third grade, I got a birthday present that changed my life. It was wrapped in light blue paper, but I knew what it was before I opened it. I knew it was a record, an album, an LP. We weren’t even allowed to touch my parents’ LP records (I think they had less than 10), and here in my hands was ONE OF MY VERY OWN. I was, in a word, ecstatic. I didn’t even know who the artist was. It didn’t matter. It was mine.

The record turned out to be Alice Cooper’s “School’s Out”. I had never heard anything like it, ever. It was about as alien a thing as I could imagine, and I loved it. I played it continuously on a green plastic record player that had STEREO speakers on the sides when it wasn’t disguised as a suitcase (or something). It provided hours and hours of entertainment and, believe it or not, it expanded my vocabulary farther and faster than any book I’d read to date. I remember asking my mother what a “lifer” in a state penitentiary was. Good times.

My early discovery of Alice Cooper’s music might seem trivial and just plain dumb, but that’s OK, because I know it to be far more significant. Alice Cooper (the group, the image) touched my life in so many ways. As a young and impressionable pre-teen I found not just the music, but the entire spectacle really helped me to make sense of the world. How? For starters, in the third grade, where everything is either hilarious or devastatingly embarrassing, I was able to show my grandmothers pictures of Alice and the band, bathed in green light and serenading snakes. I’ll never forget watching them either squeal with revulsion or start away in disgust. I knew they’d hate it, and that’s what made doing it so (as Alice would say) delicious! I was closer to the people I loved, and Alice Cooper was the catalyst.

We eventually moved far enough away from grandparents that we didn’t see them nearly as often. My father worked for a grocery store chain as a buyer, and as you might guess, suppliers wanted to make my dad the buyer happy, so they offered a lot of different perks, not the least of which was the coolest thing EVER: free concert tickets. Yeah. If you were in high school in the 70’s, long before videos, concerts were the epitome of good times. With prices as high as seven dollars, free tickets were a godsend.

I was hanging around with a new friend (acquaintance, really) and some of HIS friends in the new city, and feeling rather out of place. I didn’t really know anyone, and I remember being stoned and part of a conversation that was as vapid as could be. I was just going to get up and leave when someone across the room mentioned Alice Cooper. Nobody there knew my dad could get free concert tickets, and it just so happened that I had tickets to go see Alice Cooper. I started talking to the guy, and in one of those awe-inspiring moments, I could see that like me, Alice Cooper had really touched his life. After just a few minutes, I told him about tickets, and he was just all cool with that, to put it mildly. It’s been thirty-plus years since that conversation started, and it has never ended.

I tell this story because I happen to be in Phoenix and I visited “Cooper’sTown” (I don’t think I have to say who owns it) sports bar and grill last weekend. I felt like a kid in a candy store, and I wished my buddy, the best friend I ever had was there so we could soak in the exquisite joy of being in the (sort of) presence of a shared idol. I could go on, but I’ll just say that I think I got what I went for. I got the chance to have a couple drinks, bought some trinkets, and I got to reflect for a bit on the idea of Alice Cooper having had a lifelong effect on me. I could probably write this essay for the rest of my life and still not scratch the surface of what I want to say.

Since I started this blog, my title and opening blurb have always acknowledged my admiration of the Alice Cooper thing. I have no greater tribute. Thanks to Vincent, Dennis, Glenn, Michael and Neal. You helped me scare my grandmothers and you helped me to know who my best friend would be. You guys rock.

We Rock

I had a couple different blurbs I was thinking about to go along with my Alice Cooper piece, but decided I would write a few words about Ronnie James Dio who died this week. My favorite description of him was “the little man with the big voice”. He was indeed small in stature, but he was immeasurably large in appeal. There are many who might not know who he was, but there are literally millions who do. Very few can claim such acclaim.

“…the less that you give, you’re a taker…”

Coupla Blurbs

2010-05-06T03:57:00.001-05:00

Lose Your Lunch

Some asshole stole part of my lunch yesterday. The motive, I guess, is irrelevant, but I found myself hoping that I never feel the need to rummage through random lunch bags at work. To be fair, I have put (what I was told was) food in my mouth without knowing for sure that I was being told the truth. Many times, I have been surprised at how much I liked it. And a few times, I have had to excuse myself quickly. I tried a stuffed grape leaf once, courtesy of a co-worker from Bethlehem. I’ve never had a turd in my mouth before, so I don’t know what they taste like, but I’m pretty sure they couldn’t taste any worse. At least I tried it.

It’s one thing to try something new, and it’s quite another to surf strangers’ lunches in a factory refrigerator. Ever seen the internet picture of the guy and his girl sitting on a couch, smiling and carrying on their normal daily routine, unaware that there’s a huge jar of anal lube on the coffee table? (Here it is) Yeah, I figure it’s his spaghetti in the back. And that veggie tray? I think that belongs to the girl with the painted-on eyebrows who looks a lot like Morticia Addams would if she weighed three hundred pounds. I’ll eat tacos out of a truck any day. If I see a sign that says “Meat on a Stick”, I’ll probably try it. It would never occur to me to eat a stranger’s leftovers. Ugh.

Get What You Need?

I was standing in a checkout line at a grocery store the other day, and in front of me was a woman with a small child whose head must have been on a swivel. Her eyes led her neck, which darted from the cornucopia of candy (placed at child-eye level) to her mother, wordlessly pleading. I was pleasantly surprised that there was no wailing. I think that’s what made it so riveting. And as I stood there, I thought to myself that anyone with eyes could see through that kid and know that there was one, and only one thing on her mind: Butterfinger. A big one. I know that look. I know that feeling.

The mom utterly ignored the child’s mute plea. The child knew that a big Butterfinger was not in her immediate future, and to her, that meant she’ll never get one, ever!

Childish, yes, but I know that feeling too.

We always want what we can’t have, don’t we? Be it a candy bar or a car, an ice cream or a lottery hit, young or old, we all want what we know we have no chance of getting. We try, though, yes we do. It doesn’t matter if we’re using cow eyes to get a candy bar or flowers to get a girl; we reason that it would be perfectly rational to jump through flaming hoops over a bed of nails to get that thing we want, all the while knowing our efforts are futile. I don’t have any wise words to explain why we do it. I do know that the child I saw in the store will more than likely perform the same act at the next store, hoping for a different result. I hope she finds what she’s looking for. One of these days, maybe…

Don't Face the Music

2010-05-03T03:31:00.003-05:00

Just recently, I’ve seen postings here and there (OK, on Facebook) for videos of so and so’s favorite song of the moment. I can’t begrudge them because they want to share a song that’s important to them at the time they posted it, but I still have a big problem with it. Not the intent, but the medium. I have a problem with videos and the glut of current popular musical artists in general. I don’t care what you look like, I don’t care who you’re married to, and wads of cash flashed in pictures of ridiculously opulent houses do nothing to convince me that I should spend my money on your “art”. Music is for my ears, not my eyes. Move me first with your talent, and if I’m interested enough, I’ll find a picture of you. Otherwise, I don’t care about you.

Am I a grumpy old coot? Maybe. Hear me out.

I must confess that I myself have sent out mass emails in a more than half drunken state, fully convinced that everyone who listens to the song will interpret it as I do at that moment. They will see the sheer wisdom and beauty that it evoked for me, and we will be blissfully united by the most imaginative of man’s feats. Of course, once I sober up, I realize that at least half of the recipients probably didn’t listen to it, and if they did, they didn’t have an epiphany. But I never sent a video, just the song. I wanted my contacts to listen.

The problem with video is that once you see it, you will always associate that song with the images that the video director wants you to see. By way of example, Tom Petty has a song called “Don’t Come Around Here No More”, and the video for it consists of the band members costumed as Carroll’s “Through the Looking Glass” characters, who end up slicing Alice (who has somehow become a giant cake) into pieces for dessert. If I had simply heard the song, I probably would never have thought of Alice, because it doesn’t say a thing about her. I don’t get it. What does Alice in Wonderland have to do with the singer admonishing a former lover to stay away? I guess with some imaginative license a parallel can be drawn, but I prefer to let my imagination reveal what the song has to say, not someone else’s. I always kind of liked the song, but once I saw the video, every single time I hear that song I see nothing but Alice the Cake getting cut up.

Somebody close to me said not long ago, that when you first fall in love, it seems like every love song was written with you in mind, and when you’re in the midst of a breakup, every sad song was written with you in mind as well. When I was younger, before videos, having a radio playing was a given no matter what the activity of the day was, be it work or home or school (yes, we used to be able to bring records in on Fridays and play them). If you were lucky enough to find some time alone, sitting around blowing your eardrums with Princess Leia-like headphones was the ultimate pastime. It was, IS, the greatest escape from real life. I still get giddy sometimes when I listen to my favorite songs, because whether they make me happy or sad, they help me to understand me, and that, my friends, will work for you too.

The true magic of music is that the same song can have completely different meanings when heard at different times. If you haven’t laughed and cried to the same song, you’re missing something, because it is your mood that sets the imagination stage, not what a director thinks it should be. There are enough people in your life that want to tell you what to think or do or say. Don’t believe them. My advice is, if you want to listen to music, LISTEN to it, don’t watch it, because you’ll never see yourself if you’re looking through someone else’s eyes.

For Loren

2010-04-27T03:47:00.002-05:00

It wasn’t very long ago that someone close to me lost a child. The girl was 29, and there’s just no other way to say it: She died far too young. Like everyone involved, I was shocked to hear the news. I literally did not know what to say. She was a good person, and it seems that people like that are maddeningly few and far between. I will miss her. I write this not for her, but for her mother. I wish I didn’t have to write it. I really do.

What is there that anyone can say to a parent who’s lost a child? Somebody told me not long ago that, as a person who has no children, I don’t really know what love is. I could argue that point, but I mention it because I don’t think I’ve ever felt so empathetic for my friend, one of the nicest people I have ever met. I cannot imagine what that must be like, and I can’t put a value on how badly I wished I had some words that would help to ease the utter despair that she must have felt. The psychiatrists say that it is a uniquely human quality to want to help when we see another person in trouble, that it is innate in us to assist and comfort fellow persons, even strangers, but when it is someone close that’s hurting, it seems impossible to console them no matter how good our intentions. And those of us with some sense of decorum stand mute for fear of worsening an already awful situation, wanting to wail with and for them, knowing that there is nothing we can do to make things better. Yet, we’re powerless to console what must surely be inconsolable. And that’s really what death reminds us of, isn’t it? That we are not in control. That we are mortal.

When I heard the news about Rachael, I wanted to write something, but I couldn’t think of how to begin, let alone a theme that would tie all thoughts together in a way that would make sense. Her death was such a shock that nothing I could think of would be enough. Nothing was appropriate. And in the most serendipitous of ways, I saw something that completely captured everything I wanted to say. It was a bird. I saw it at the Honolulu Zoo, and I thought it was injured. It had a huge red splotch on its chest. I thought it had been shot. Then I noticed another, and another, and all bore the same mark. They strutted and preened and flew about (in their cage) looking fatally wounded, yet vibrant. It was as if they continued to live after having their hearts torn out. I’m not ashamed to say that I got a little mushy. Like a bolt, I thought of my friend’s loss, and experienced the tiniest fraction of her pain, and that was more than enough.

The bird in the picture carries on regardless of its horrifying appearance. As individuals, they had varying degrees of color and size for their marks, as if some were more immediately wounded than others. I don’t know if the marks change on the birds, but I hope that the stain on my friend’s chest fades with time. It won’t disappear, of course, but I hope that like the birds, she is able to go about the business of her life in spite of her having literally lost a piece of herself.

For my Friend: When my father’s father died, I watched him during the funeral, and he was stoicism incarnate. I knew he was hurting, but he was a rock. I’m sure he was stained though. I remember later in the evening, hours after the funeral, as we passed each other in his father’s house bursting into tears and hugging him, telling him that I didn’t think I could ever be as composed as he was when it came time for me to bury him. It was an awful feeling, but I can see how it could be worse. A person expects to bury their parents, not their children. Words are an utter failure for describing that experience. I think what I want to say is that grief is a very personal thing. For a parent, it must be a private hell built for one. I hope your time there is short. I know that you have seen the darkest of days, and I hope that it will help you to appreciate the bright ones that will surely come. No one deserves them more than you.

Bird info

Out of the Mouths of Fools

2010-03-25T23:42:00.003-05:00

I have a friend who has a very specific mantra that he loves to repeat when trying to reconcile the absurdities we all face on a daily basis, such as when a driver cuts you off for no apparent reason or a fast food clerk who says something totally unrelated to the simple task of ordering a quickie meal. He says, “Jeff, you have to remember that ninety nine percent of the population is retarded.” Now, we all know in our heart of hearts that that can’t be true. However, there are times when I wonder if he’s right.
Now, before you think this is going to be an elitist diatribe about how much better I am than everyone else, or dismiss me as a sad little man heaping derision upon others to make myself feel better, hear me out. I want to present a few examples of people I’ve met recently in my travels that utterly defy my attempts to classify them as normal human beings. No one can say for certain what “normal” is, and I obviously can’t meet every person in the world, so there’s no way I can say that ninety nine percent are idiots, but I offer a few examples that really have me worried that my buddy is right.
Taco Hell
I don’t eat fast food much, not because I’m a health nut, but because most of it just tastes bad. Once in a while I’ll get a double cheeseburger and a drink (for about 2 dollars) when I have a long motorcycle drive, for instance, and I don’t want to be hungry. The meal itself isn’t satisfying in the way a good rib eye steak is, but it is adequate in that I’m not hungry while I’m riding and, hopefully, it was non toxic (at least in the short run). I really don’t keep up with fast food menu changes; I just hope that whatever it is that I order is the same as it was in years previous. So, it was with this blissful ignorance that I rolled into a Taco Bell not long ago (for the first time in a long time) to get a cheap, quickie lunch. I wanted a Mexican pizza. Now, I hate olives, so I told the girl behind the counter that I wanted one with no olives. She practically froze, and made a quick point of telling me that they were out of olives, and looked at me expectantly to see how I would deal with this information. I didn’t know what to say. I wouldn’t care if every olive on the planet was gone. I couldn’t understand why their lack of olives would impact my order in any way, so I said, “OK, I’ll have it without sour cream”, and that was what it took to get my order from her station to the back where it could be made. She took my money with a smile and busied herself with the next customer, satisfied that she had averted a fast food catastrophe. I wondered if I really wanted to eat there. Turns out the Mexican pizzas aren’t nearly as good as I remember them.
Snake Oil
I was working in Pontiac, Michigan, standing outside (in the cold), smoking. It was a factory of sorts, a union place where the talk among the employees is the same no matter where in the country I go, although in Michigan, it’s always worse. Generally, the conversations I overhear are comprised of a) How terribly inefficient the management is, b) Schemes to use the union to make the management look foolish, and c) What their plans are when they hit the lottery. Once in a while, though, you run across that person who carries himself as a genius among fools, a jailhouse lawyer-type whose sole source of self esteem comes from spouting big words to impress the gullible, words he hopes no one else in the vicinity will understand. It’s wrong to judge people by the way they look or dress, so I’ll leave his ridiculous attire out (ask me about it sometime), and stick to telling what he told me. He told me, in a matter-of-fact tone, with a straight face, that he knew how to cure cancer, all cancer. In fact, he said that he had built a machine out of ham radio parts that could do it, and sold it to a doctor who had no idea such technology existed. I wasn’t quite sure which tack I should take with my response, so I bought myself some time by asking how his ham radio machine worked against cancer. He told me that very specific radio waves will kill viruses, and that cancer is a virus, and that all cancers are caused by the same virus. I wanted to respond at this point, but he was on a roll, so I let him run with it. He went on to explain how the pharmaceutical companies have kept a lid on this stunning treatment since the fifties, silencing anyone who dares to retrieve and disperse this wondrous, vital news to the world, because like diamonds, if people knew the truth, they’d be out of business. Indeed, the medical and pharmaceutical companies are one and the same (controlled by the New Illuminati) who conspired years ago to keep people just a little bit sick all the time so they’d have to buy medicines. It’s the perfect scam, he said. People will always want to be healthy, and they’ll spend every last dime chasing that carrot, and the medicine men will be steering the horse. I was literally biting my tongue. The parting words from this character were that I should look up Royal Rife, the man who first invented the cancer killing machine. He said this as if it were a secret name to be spoken only among those who could be trusted. Well, after a very little bit of research, I found that Royal Rife was debunked and dismissed in the fifties. The “lost” knowledge that the smoking loony could, alone in his basement duplicate with Radio Shack components never really worked, and everybody knows that, except this guy. I wanted to ask him his opinion of the government’s role in the 9/11 disaster, but had to go back to work. I always love hearing that one.
Gay By Choice
I met a guy in California earlier this year who was a good guy to work with. Unless you’re independently rich, you have to work, and some jobs just plain suck. The trouble, though, with a crappy job, and perhaps what makes it even crappier, is the people you have to work with. A pedestrian job can quickly turn into a traffic jam of frustration and anger when dealing with morons, so it’s always nice to work with people I can at least get along with. This guy was extraordinary in that he expected the work to be done quickly and efficiently, but it was also important to him that his workers were as happy as could be considering the circumstances. We had to work, but we didn’t have to toil. Anyway, this guy thought it would be a good idea for us all to get together one Saturday night and call out for pizza and have a few drinks at his home, and generally socialize. We’re all transient workers, so it’s good now and then to have some camaraderie when we’re all a long way from home. When I arrived, most of the guys we were working with in LA were already there, eating and drinking and having as good a time as one can have when on the road. Our host was there, of course, and he was as affable as always. He was wearing a black t-shirt with a design and some words on it; I thought it was a concert shirt. When I spoke to him, though, and had a chance to read it, I noticed that it was a religious message and not a rock band shirt. I thought that was odd, because he never mentioned anything about religion; he swore and gossiped like the rest of us. He said he was a born-again Christian (as he sampled my wonderful vodka and fruit juice concoction), but that he didn’t proselytize to anyone who didn’t ask. Fair enough, I thought, and that was the end of that. He did, however, say the oddest thing a while later. He said that homosexuals, all homosexuals, chose the life they’re living. Since we were all friendly and we were all drinking, I told him that I didn’t believe it was a choice. In my opinion, you’re either gay or you’re not, Hollywood weirdoes notwithstanding. This subject, however, was one he was adamant about, and he wanted to explain why he thought the way he did. He reasoned that the only reason gays were gay was because they had a psychological problem, a deep-seated self loathing; their behavior is a manifestation of a cry for help. And then, of course, he said that all of those problems could be overcome if they would just give themselves over to Jesus. That was the end of the discussion for me. I’m not going to convince a vodka swilling, oddly discrete bible thumper of anything with logic. I am still friends with this guy, and I hope I get the chance to work with him again sometime soon. We won’t be discussing anything remotely religious, and he’s OK with that, so I am too. It’s just funny how sometimes even the people who seem relatively normal can come up with some real gems.
I have no doubt than an essay similar to this one describing my own foolish notions could be written. I’d do it myself, but that would make me a little…weird. The whole point here is that we all have our quirks and we have all said or done something that would make others question our ability to walk around without hurting ourselves. Sometimes, though, it’s good to run into people like I’ve described here. It makes me feel a little more normal, whatever that is.

Still Lurking About

2010-01-10T00:51:00.016-05:00

Well how about that? This page is still up. I thought it would have been taken down due to inactivity. The last time I was here I promised road stories, but it turns out most of them are pretty boring. In fact, the things that stick in my mind from my travels are usually more like rants than commentary. Fortunately, I do enjoy ranting from time to time, and it will help me get back in the swing of writing. So, on a very light note, here are some observations on some of the people and places I’ve been seeing lately.

Motel Hell

I live in motels. Sometimes they’re fancy and sometimes they’re cheap, but it’s not the price of the motel that makes it better, it’s the feeling you get when you walk in and know right away that you can be comfortable there. It is intangible, elusive, and always welcome. I had a run of two motels in a row a couple months ago that were comfy, but the weird part was that both motels had furniture that looked (to me) exactly like cartoon characters, one from the past and one from the present. See the accompanying pictures and decide if I speak the truth or if dementia has begun.

I walked into a motel room in near Baltimore, a Marriot Courtyard I believe, and the sun streamed into a room that sprung from the pages of a storybook, with impossibly bright colors that covered the spectrum, yet did not seem out of tune. And right away, I saw it. The chair. The chair that struck me like a bolt. You just gotta love those moments when you suddently remember something long-lost, something from your childhood that evokes a rush of nostaligia that brings an instant smile and an inner warmth that has been missing since adulthood set in. Anyway, this cream (?) colored chair sat on a dark blue carpet that was wildy incongruous, yet very pleasing. As soon as I saw it, I remembered a book I hadn’t thought of in years (decades, actually). The book is titled “Put Me In The Zoo” written by Robert Lopshire in 1960, and it was a childhood favorite. (If you have never read it, I suggest you do.) The chair in that room looked exactly like the critter in the book; I never could figure out what kind of animal it was, but there it sat, in my room. Was it just me? Had months of motels worn me to the point where I was seeing imaginary creatures in the flesh, er, fabric? You decide. The picture of the chair is a little dark, but trust me, it was spot-on, so to speak.

I probably wouldn’t have thought the “zoo” chair so strange except that from Baltimore, I went to near DC and walked into a room with a chair that looked just like “Plankton” from Spongebob Squarepants. Two motel rooms with two cartoonish chairs in one day made me wonder if working on the road was starting to have unforeseen side effects. But, unlike the zoo chair, this one doesn’t take much imagination to see. In fact, if you can’t see it, maybe it’s you that has a problem.

Melting Pot

I’ve been a lot of places in the past few months, and every time I change areas, I always make it a point to try to munch on whatever the local culinary specialty is. For instance, I have to eat crab cakes when in Maryland, steak in Oklahoma, and tacos in Texas. Whenever I get to a new site, I find a local bar (duh) and ask the regulars which restaurant they think has the best food in town. I always specify that it’s not the price that makes it good, but the food. Because I’m a bit of a cretin, greasy spoon diners are often far more enjoyable than swanky, “dress up” places. Food presentation means little to me. Flavorful and unique are the qualities I seek, and if I can eat with a spoon, even better. I wish I could give a review of something I heard of in Texas, but my time there was short, and while I did have some AWESOME barbecue, I didn’t get to try the one thing that I had heard so much about: fried butter. Yes, I said fried butter. I think they’ll fry just about anything in Texas. I saw on various menus fried olives, pickles, jalapenos and cheesecake, but the only place to get fried butter was at the state fair, and I heard radio announcers describe the traffic around the fair as “nightmarish”, so I didn’t go. I did manage to get the lowdown on how one goes about frying and eating sticks of butter though. The process, according to the locals, is to take a frozen stick of butter, and roll it in a sort of biscuit dough, then plunge it into hot oil. When sufficiently cooked, the result is a nearly hot dog sized wad of crispy fried goodness that oozes buttery ecstasy. I had heard tales of fried Twinkies as well as fried candy bars (Milky Way, Snickers), but I wanted to eat what surely must be true ambrosia. Mark my words: I WILL eat fried butter before I die. I will.

Home and Away

For all of the different stuff I get to eat, the legion of restaurants can never duplicate the foods that one can only make at home. There is a great deal to be said for eating out, of course, not the least of which is being able to tell someone what you want to eat, wait for them to bring it to you, then leave the dishes when you’re done. I like that. But, there are some things (and we all have our favorites) that can only be made at home, or at least, in a motel room with a kitchen. I have yet to find a motel room with a real oven; twice I have been in a new place shopping, hungry, and bought frozen pizza because it looked good, only to return to my motel and remember that I have no oven. Motel maids must love it when I do that. But there is nothing like making what I want the way I want it made when I want it. It often reminds me that I’m a long way from home and the people I love when I sit and eat by myself, and that can be a drag, but a pile of macaroni and cheese can work wonders when you’re melancholy. I believe writing helps too, now that I think about it. I’m going to have to do it more often.

New Chapters

2009-06-28T18:08:00.003-05:00

It’s safe to say that I haven’t written anything in a while. There are so many reasons for my lack of activity, and maybe one day, when I get them sorted out, I’ll write them down. So, since I’ve been gone for so long, let me bring you up to speed. I have a new job, one that involves seemingly endless travel. For now I’ll remain in the US, but I’m really hoping that something international comes my way. I’m both excited and apprehensive about traveling, but it is what must be done. For the record, I’m tripling my salary, so you can bet I’m going to find a way to make the best of it. (Some may call me a fool for doing it, and that’s why I chose my picture.)

I’m going to try and keep a loose journal filled with interesting tidbits about the different cities I visit. Just kidding. Mostly, it will contain rants about the things I didn’t foresee or the characters I’ll come across. As always, my entries will be light and fluffy in nature, unless something really poignant or amazing happens. If it does, I’ll get out my emotional words and try to convince you of a great truth that everyone already knows but may enjoy a reminder of. And on that note, I’ll start at the beginning.

I’ve seen several articles on blogs across the web discussing whether or not making friends becomes harder as one grows older. Some say it is and some say it isn’t, and I used to count myself among those who felt that good friends just get fewer and farther between the longer I live. But the more I think about it, the more I realize that I’ve been meeting good friends my entire life. I can’t complain about that. I can, however, complain about leaving them. So, for the first entry of my journal, let me start whining right off the bat and relate what is really the first step in my new gypsy life: leaving Florida.

Odd as it may sound, I really enjoyed my previous job. For the first time in my life, I didn’t dread going to work. Now, that’s not to say that what I did was heaven on earth, but for the most part, it wasn’t bad. I think, though, what made it not suck so much was the abundance of really nice people to work with. I’ve never had so much fun and gotten paid for doing it. Anyway, when I said I was leaving, it was arranged that on my last day, we would all go to a restaurant that most of us knew and really liked. That, I thought, was a nice gesture on their part, and lunch for us all one more time sounded like the perfect send-off. I was light-hearted and excited about the future, and I fully expected them to get me a card and some sort of trinket as a reminder of the time I spent there.

In a way it was a little awkward, since we had all become the best of co-workers, always sharing a laugh or a lunch, and sometimes even meeting at someone’s house for a barbecue (read: drinking party), so it’s not like we never socialized outside of work. We were friends, but not really close. I had convinced myself that yes, I was going to miss them and no, I probably won’t ever find such a fun place to work again, but we’re all adults and everything would go smoothly. And that’s what I was thinking when I opened the small gift basket on the table in front of me.

The sudden realization that I’ve been wrong, so totally, wonderfully wrong, is a feeling that I don’t think I’ll ever get tired of. I love the instant when it suddenly becomes crystal clear that the people I think I know prove themselves to be far more than I had ever imagined. I am at once elated and humbled in those moments; it is a euphoric beyond any drug, and the lowest low. All of life’s major turning points have their indelible memories, and my departure from Florida will always mean that in one final lunch with my friends I realized that I was kidding myself when I thought they were just friends. With one simple gift, they did what only good friends do: They let you know that they care about you more than you know.

But what, you may ask, was in the gift basket? Well, it was a pen, but not just any pen. It was a Cross pen, much like any graduate would (or used to) get. By twisting the body, you can have black ink, red ink, or a pencil. There’s even an eraser hidden on top. It’s not a cheapie plastic thing, but a very nice writing instrument, and up near the pocket clip, my name is neatly engraved in a gothic looking font that’s not too big or too small. It is sleek and elegant, not gaudy at all. It is the perfect gift, and they knew that, and suddenly I knew it as I looked across the table at my smiling friends watching me open it. That I’m at a loss for words is a condition that should happen more often, but I really went speechless over the pen. Well, the pen and the sensation that I was floating as I woke up to the fact that I was surrounded by people who cared about me and would miss me. If that’s not bittersweet I don’t know what is.

I won’t bore you with the fluff and stuff of me telling my friends how I felt; it was just as sappy as you might think. I also won’t bore you with a snoozy soliloquy about how much I miss them now that I’ve gone. So, the only thing left to do is to honor the gift and, more importantly, the warmth they’ve shown me by using (the idea behind) the pen to write down stuff that happens to me so they can read it, along with anyone else who cares to. With every entry to my blog from now on, I am proving myself worthy of having friends such as the ones I left behind in Florida. I know I’ll never be famous, but I hope they know that they helped me to get out of my slump and realize that while I may make new friends in the years to come, I will always remember the ones who thought so well of me. There are no words to express how I feel about them. I hugged the ones I could, and that’s the best I could do, but it’ll never be enough.

Who Loves Ya, Baby?

2009-05-13T22:32:00.002-05:00

From the time we first become cognizant of our surroundings until the time we no longer know or care what goes on around us, there isn’t a person on the face of this earth who doesn’t, at one point or another, want to feel loved. From the first smack on the ass to the ringing cacophony that drowns out the sounds of the world for the last time, we have three basic needs: To eat, procreate, and if we’re lucky, to enjoy the warm feeling of being needed. There are countless people on this planet who go through their lives struggling just to eat, and to tell you the truth, it makes me want to moan out loud in empathy for their plight. For all of us who feel that way, the only thing that keeps us from completely breaking down is the sad but true knowledge that we cannot save everyone no matter how badly we want to. The fate of the hungry will have to wait for another essay, though, because I do not have the words for it right now. I may never have them. But I do have some for those of us who, by the simple accident of our birth, are blessed (as it were) with at least a chance to make our world a little brighter by giving more than we take.

You and I both know people who dart through life as if in a shadow, emotional vampires who suck all the fun out of every room they enter, leaving a wake of chaos and bewilderment everywhere they go. Indeed, we often idolize such people, and when they’re gone, we spend years, decades and even centuries trying to understand what made them do the things they do. How about that boyfriend or girlfriend, husband or wife that you thought was your soul mate whom you found screwing someone else? How much time have you spent trying to understand why they did the things they did? We tell ourselves that the people who hurt us have no clue what they’ve done, but we know that they know, and we know that they simply don’t care. Our feelings mean nothing to them, and yet we still wonder what we could have done to prevent the inevitable. In fact, given the chance, many of us would repeat the same behavior, hoping for a different result. Why do we do that? Because we are the same as them.

John Donne wrote “No man is an island, entire of itself...any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind...” The people who wear their hearts on their sleeves intuitively know this. They don’t need a degree in English or a thorough understanding of philosophy to understand that while there are those among us (too numerous to count and often infuriatingly frequent) who have no regard for anyone else’s feelings, they are still part of a collective consciousness that is the inherent and sole burden (or grace) that is the legacy of humankind. It is a yin and yang existence that we share. There are “good” people, and there are, in today’s vernacular, “haters”. How do we make sense of this? How do we not give up and take the easy road, joining the haters and ignoring all feelings but our own?

It’s not easy. I certainly can’t sit here and say that I have achieved nirvana and am as one with all living beings. In fact, I have no pedestal from which to proclaim the truth which will set all men free. But, I can offer a bit of humble advice: Before you go out and tell someone that you love them, make sure that you love yourself first. I don’t mean in a selfish, narcissistic way, but you have to be happy with you before you can be happy with someone else. Sounds easy, but it’s harder than you might think. If wishes were fishes we’d all have a fry, but wouldn’t it be nice if we thought before we said something that we knew would hurt someone else’s feelings? I don’t mean in the stupid overly PC world that we’ve become, but if we really tried to think before we acted, our world would be a better place. Pick your own cliché, but it all comes down to the golden rule.

I picked Telly Savalas as my title and theme because his iconic trademark line is one we should all think about. When you hear that line, your answer should be “me”. If it’s not, you’re in for a world of hurt. If you can’t give that answer, then rest assured that no one else will.

Zoot Suit

2009-02-15T23:23:00.003-05:00

Good clichés stand the test of time because they offer kernels of truth in just a phrase or a sentence. There have been many phrases coined in the mint of experience that, while priceless, end up in the gutter, apparently too troublesome to bend over and pick up. In fact, there are a great many idioms that have been floating around for millennia, trying to impart an important lesson that we perpetually ignore. Not learning from the past does indeed condemn us to repeat it, but I suppose it’s the nature of the beast to keep getting burned before we stop sticking our fingers in the fire. I’ll be damned if I can explain why they haven’t disappeared from our vernacular due to obsolescence except for the simple fact that people have an uncanny ability to ignore things that are as plain as…well…the noses on our collective face. But, since I’m not on a serious rant this time, I’d like to share with you a cliché that I’ve always found relevant.

“Never judge a book by its cover” is a phrase that appears in varied forms in almost every language and culture on the earth. To judge something based solely on its appearance is just plain foolish, yet who among us isn’t guilty of it at one time or another. If you’ve never seen a picture of a naked mole rat, look here. Even the most ardent animal lover would be hard-pressed to fight the urge to kill it with fire if one wandered into their kitchen. Shakespeare said “The devil hath power to assume a pleasing shape,” so it’s probably best to remember that appearances are just that: appearances.

I really want to write about an extension of the book/cover saying that has been adapted to “clothes make the man.” I simply cannot fathom why so many people put so much importance on clothing. I have a personal stake in this, so hear me out. I like to wear overalls. They’re comfortable and practical. They cover everything that needs to be covered and if you get the right kind, they last for years. And yet, for all of their benefits, I suffer ridicule from all kinds of people for the fashion crime of being comfortable. I once dated a woman who said “You can never go out in public with me dressed like that.” I snickered, but she wasn’t laughing. She was serious. She was literally telling me what I could or could not wear. I knew how to dress myself by the time I was 7, so I didn’t need someone telling me how to do it. In case you’re wondering, that relationship didn’t last very long.

My current girlfriend isn’t a fan of my overalls either. She’s not as militant as the other, but I still get the “THAT’S what you’re wearing?” sarcasm, and I don’t get it. She bought me a shirt not long ago that was nice, but a little flashier than I would have bought, and I accepted it graciously. It was just a t-shirt, and it even had a skull on it, but it has a kind of “look at me” air to it that just doesn’t fit me. She raved about it, and said it looked good; it is evidently the height of t-shirt chic. She paid 50 bucks for it. For a t-shirt. I may not know much about fashion, but I do know that t-shirts don’t cost that much money. Hell, I can get a sack of them for ten. It’s probably a good thing that I never had children, because I would think nothing of having them wear potato sacks until they were old enough to dress themselves.

So I’m wondering, is it the look of the fancy clothes that fashionistas like, or is it because they cost so much? Does an outrageous price tag mean the clothes look better? Am I missing something here? Maybe I’ll just start telling the naysayers that I paid five hundred dollars for my overalls, call them cretins, and stick my nose in the air while I stomp off in a huff eating a tin of caviar that I had hidden in one of my many pockets.

Wordy Gurdy

2008-12-04T23:21:00.002-05:00

“When ideas fail, words come in very handy.” Johann Wolfgang von Goethe said that, and I couldn’t agree more. I love words. I love the act of choosing words to write down. I love search for the perfect word to convey exactly what I have in my head. It doesn’t work as often as I’d like (bless you, Goethe), but I love it still. I know that sounds like the geekiest thing in the world, but if you’ve never agonized over word selection, I feel sorry for you. Now, before you think I’m going to try and choke some deep thought out of you with literary mothballs, relax. I just want to expound a bit on proper word choice, and what a nifty effect it has whether we realize it or not. Per Goethe, I want to show how more than one idea can be put across with the same words. And I’m even going to use a couple examples from our own time…Well, my time, anyway.

Anyone who knows me knows that I’m not a huge fan of the Eagles. They’re OK, and I don’t hate them, but they’re not one of my favorites. However, I have to bow (in private) at the clever use of ordinary words in the song “Hotel California” that has secretly fascinated me for years. If you don’t know that song, you’re either very young or you’ve been living under a rock since the mid seventies. Now before you dismiss me as an aging hippy trying to explain the allegorical undertones of a song that was released to a stoned yet appreciative audience, again I say, relax. I only want to deal with two lines to make my point, because that’s all I need. The lines are as follows:
They held the dance in the courtyard; sweet summer sweat
Some dance to remember, some dance to forget.
Now that I think of it, the first line is only included for context. It is the second line that piques my geekiness. My consternation is only this: Does the word “some” in the line refer to the dance or the participants? Is it the dance that is impossible to forget, or are the dancers themselves the focal point? It works either way, doesn’t it? It is ambiguous as to what the subject of the narrator’s point of view is, and that’s what makes it so interesting, and so clever.

Let’s try another one, although this one is a bit different, in that I have no way to confirm the exact lyrics. The song is called “A Thousand Knives” by Ted Nugent, who has seen fit to not publish any official lyrics to what is, well, an obscure song. It was never a hit, so why the secrecy? In fact, why would anyone in the music business refuse to allow their lyrics to be printed? Call me crazy, but if you’re counting on your product being heard and understood by the consumer, it seems to me that your privacy issues are moot. In any case, the lines to the song in question are, as near as I can discern, as follows: “A couple lies/eyes are like a thousand knives; They cut in to you baby…” The reason for the “eyes/lies” slash is that I don’t know which word is the right one. As sung, it’s impossible to distinguish if he’s saying eyes or lies, and it matters which word is used because the meaning of the line depends on it. Is he singing about a look or a deed; either one can be as sharp as, well, a thousand knives, but we don’t know which it is.

The idea of picking out just the right word probably seems a bit esoteric to all except those who take delight in such a task, but it is all important. Readers have it easy, in a way, in that the words have already been chosen. But isn’t it just perfect when an author is able to throw them a curve by choosing words that can be taken in more than one way? The examples I’ve used are fluffy, I know, but they serve to make my point. Is it the dance or the participants? Betrayal or expression? Both work, but the meaning or the scene changes and that’s important. Goethe knew this, hence his observation. It’s hard sometimes to get an idea across on paper and those pesky words can serve a dual purpose by either communicating a thought clearly, or obscuring two or more ideas, causing endless speculation as to just exactly what the meaning is supposed to be. Fluffy examples? Yeah, but this has been going on for a long, long time.

Let’s get a bit meatier. Genesis 1:26 reads: “God said ‘Let us make man in our own image, after our likeness’…” (KJV) Can you see the pronoun problem here? “Us, our, ourselves.” Why not “me, my and myself”? Who, exactly, is “us”? I don’t want to get into biblical fallacies; I just want to know why the author(s) chose to use “us” instead of “me”. As a writer, I know that authors don’t choose words lightly. They know exactly what they want to say, don’t they? Forget for a moment that no one could have possibly been around to hear or know what God said before he created people. How could they have known his exact words? We’ll let that one go (although you should think about it), and try another biblical example where we get it straight from the source. There should be no problems with a direct quote. Right? Exodus 20:3 reads “Thou shalt have no other gods before me.” (KJV) Why, oh why, is this phrased like it is? As it reads, it sounds as if God knows there is competition, doesn’t it? If He is the ONE god, why would he mention others? It’s that “us” and “them” thing again. But, I’m not going too deep here. I just want to point out the importance of choosing the right word, because it matters.

I want to close with Goethe again by saying that the quote can be backed up with a myriad of examples, but not all ideas are obscured by words. There are plenty examples of prose that is as clear as crystal, and I believe we use those instances to help us to better try to explain the fuzzy ones. I found a perfect example of that in the oddest place: Behind a boiler at the 7up factory in Holland, Michigan, clinging to a rusty cabinet that hung over a lime-scaled sink was a little pink magnet, dusty and forgotten. It was small and cracked but legible, and it displayed letters floating in a bowl, like alphabet soup. The letters spelled “WORDS”, and beneath the bowl was this admonition: “Keep ‘em soft and sweet. You may have to eat them.” How about that? A great idea in just twelve words; no ambiguity here. I know, it’s not literature, but it conveys a message everyone can easily understand, and there is no greater goal for those who like to choose words.

Crime and Punishment

2008-12-03T23:20:00.002-05:00

I saw a video clip yesterday, and as I watched it, I realized how much different parenting is now than it was when I was young. I can’t find a link to the story anymore; I guess it’s really not that newsworthy, but here’s what happened: An Ohio mother placed her 12 year old son on a street corner and for two hours had him hold a sign that said “I am a thief and a liar” for stealing a cell phone, lying about it, and refusing to apologize once he’d been caught. (Yes, she watched him the entire time and no, she didn’t get the apology). There are those now calling for child abuse charges.

As usual, I’m going to tell you what I thought of that. Because I have a hard time growing up, I find myself on the sympathetic side of children when they’re being disciplined, mostly because I remember being in that position with alarming frequency. For a 12 year old, there can be no fear like the fear of having to answer for something you thought you were going to get away with but didn’t. The cold feeling in the pit of your stomach when you get caught red-handed and you instantly know, KNOW that the hammer is going to fall is a pitiful (and sometimes funny) thing to behold, but I didn’t see a trace of fear on what I could see of this kid’s face. “Frustrated Mom makes son wear humiliating sign in public” is the tagline for this story. I really hoped to see a repentant and embarrassed child, but I didn’t. I saw a kid who might as well have been wearing a burka lolling on a street corner being ignored by almost everyone, and in the end, not apologizing for his actions. Where’s the lesson here?

I don’t have any kids, so no one wants to listen to my child rearing advice, and for once, I don’t have any (well, not much) to dispense. All I can do, as usual, is relate another story and hope the similarities as well as the differences don’t go unnoticed by you, the discerning reader.

From a very young age, I knew the difference between right and wrong. If I was right, everyone was happy. If I was wrong, I was the only one unhappy. Very unhappy. Painfully unhappy. As you might guess, even though I knew the difference between right and wrong, it still took me many years to solidify the concept that not doing what I wasn’t supposed to do was a good thing. I remember one hot fall Illinois day when I was unhappy about being grounded. My brother and sisters could leave the yard at will, but I, like a dog with a shock collar, could not, for leaving the yard would incur the wrath of my mother, and that was never a good thing. Just the thought of her gritting her teeth while she growled my name was the stuff of nightmares. My siblings, who were well aware of my predicament made no efforts at modesty; they pointed and taunted and gleefully screamed their plans for the afternoon, all of which entailed leaving sight and earshot of our house. Through my despair I hoped that one of them would pity me and stay, but none did. They all left, and I was alone in the empty back yard with the sun silently blaring down.

For a while I sat near the basement door, listening to my mother’s sewing machine droning on in the cool house while I baked in the heat. I wasn’t allowed to go inside (none of us were) except to eat lunch and have a glass of grape juice at 10 and 3. I hated my situation, hated my mother and hated the whole world. And in a moment of clarity, I suddenly realized that America is a free country and by God, I can do anything I want to do! So I left.

It doesn’t really matter where I went or what I did. Suffice to say that I behaved like a kid who wasn’t grounded and it felt really good. I had been gone for two or three hours and was playing contentedly with my buddy Curt in his back yard. His mother had just brought us some Kool-aid and I had utterly forgotten, or maybe just didn’t care that I was on the lam.

It has been said that a person is never more alive than when they’re about to die; their senses are heightened and they are keenly aware of the brink they’re teetering on…and most say they like it. I can understand that. But, as with all good things, they can end most abruptly. As I sat in Curt’s back yard, a marauding monster seized and crushed my idyllic bliss. Like a slavering demon loosed upon the neighborhood, my mother parted the shrubs and came marching across the yard, paddle in hand, teeth grinding and eyes blazing. I was frozen with fear. I sat and watched with mouth agape as she approached, saying nothing, but positively exuding anger. She snatched me up with one arm and commenced to paddling me with the other. I had already learned that there was no sense in trying to use my free hand to block the stinging blows. Not only did it hurt like hell being paddled on the fingers, it only served to infuriate her even more. It took about fifteen minutes to walk to Curt’s house, and I hopped while she paddled me every step of the way. I cried from pain and fear, of course, but I also cried because I knew that I could have avoided the whole awful scene if I had just done what I was supposed to do.

The spanking wasn’t the worst part of my penance. School was just starting, and for two solid weeks I had to come straight home, take a bath, put my pajamas with cartoon baseball players on and get in bed until it was dinner time. I got to eat, and then had to go right back to my bed. I could hear my brother and sisters outside playing in the twilight. The first weekend of my sentence was the annual block party, and I spent all day Saturday in bed, listening to the entire neighborhood partying and laughing and doing the things that people who aren’t grounded get to do. It was awful. The important thing is that I learned my lesson. Of course I got grounded again, but I NEVER walked away again. I never tried to get out of paying for what I’d done, and isn’t that the goal of punishment, to remind us that everything we do has consequences to accept if we choose to flaunt the rules?

It seems to me that the kid in the video got off real easy. If it had been me and my mother, I would have been standing in my underwear holding the sign and screaming to every passing car that I was a thief and a liar, and I probably would have been bleeding somewhere. No, I think this kid, unless he really gets himself together, is prison bound. He reminds me of a kid I knew once who (finally) had to spend some time at a juvenile facility. I went to pick him up, hoping that he had learned something. In a nonchalant way, he said that being locked up wasn’t that bad; he had made some friends and the food was good. Exasperated, I asked him if the fact that he couldn’t leave had any effect on him, and he said he hadn’t really thought about it while he was there. Hmmm. He went to real jail later.

My point here is that humiliation and fear are very powerful motivators and should not be shunned as a way of punishment. In fact, I’m all for it. The world is a tough place and children should learn from a very early age that it does not exist to make them happy. In fact, I daresay that not punishing swiftly and firmly is like setting out a welcome mat for later strife. Do I think children should be beaten, battered or broken? Of course not. I do think, however, that to mollycoddle them and feign anger and impose “a stern talking to” or time out for their misdeeds is just as bad, if not worse than real physical abuse. If you start early, and I mean from birth, and let them know that choices have to be made and consequences have to be dealt with, they are playing and learning on a level field. Feeling guilty and humiliated is the first step; the second is to turn them into the catalyst for creating empathy and modesty. If done correctly, with assurances that the world isn’t ending and the lesson is learned, punishment will be needed less frequently. You know why? Because they’ll learn right from wrong with your guidance. You don’t have to be a parent to know that. It’s common sense, isn’t it?

Holiday Blurbs

2008-11-26T23:41:00.001-05:00

So much has been going on lately that I just haven’t had (or taken) the time to write, which is wrong. As you can tell from my title, I haven’t totally committed to one subject, so until I do, I’ll just jot down a few things that have been on my mind lately. I hope you enjoy them.

That Stupid Mating Game
It’s funny how sometimes, when we KNOW we shouldn’t do a thing, we do it anyway. Actually, it’s more sad than funny, but you know what I mean. We try to fool ourselves into thinking that this time it will be OK. And it just doesn’t matter how clear you think your head is because you can still fall into traps that you know you should avoid. I had a torrid one month affair with a woman recently who was absolutely drop-dead gorgeous. Normally, girls like her don’t want anything to do with guys like me, but much to my surprise, she literally threw herself at me. I should have known better, but I got suckered by appearance. You already know how this story turns out: She was a self-centered bitch, and I totally put up with it. Now, in my defense, I knew it wasn’t going to last, but I sure wanted to ride that ride as long as it was open. But I knew, KNEW that it wasn’t a good thing and I did it anyway. It was a cruelty I inflicted upon myself, and I wonder when I’ll learn my lesson. I won’t drone on about skin deep beauty and all that while I whine about my own weakness. In fact, I’m happy to report that I did manage to find someone I can put up with who can also put up with me. I’ll spare you the smarmy details, but suffice to say that I am much happier with the inner beauty than I ever was with the shell. Things are really looking up on the romance front. More on that as it develops.

Our New President
What do I think of Barack Obama? I hope he does a good job, although I don’t expect anything less than business as usual. As I’ve said before, anybody who really wants to be the president must have something wrong with them. But, egomania aside, I hope he is as sincere as he comes across. The guy is a gifted speaker, and we all (should) know that charisma is what gets people elected, not “plans”. Right after he won the election, I checked out a huge white supremacy site to see what they had to say, and they were “temporarily down due to server overload”. The only people who could read the threads were members. I had to laugh, though, because the reason they gave was the recent “obamanation” at the polls. There’s nothing like having the wind taken out of your sails, and in some cases, it’s just hilarious. On a serious note, I really hope that they can go back and sulk without assassinating him. Nothing would convince the rest of the world that Americans are idiots than something like that. It’s scary to think that some people relish the thought of a race war; I really hope they can get with the times. Google “stormfront” to see just how far out of alignment some of these people are, and think real hard about how good it might be to have a gun.

I’m sorry to say I only had two topics for this installment. On the plus side, though, I did come up with an idea I want to ramble about; I’m drafting it right now. I know the suspense is unbearable, but I will post a couple things in the next few days. It’s finally holiday time, and with it comes some time to do nothing but what I want to do. Finally. Happy Thanksgiving.

The M Word

2008-09-18T01:01:00.003-05:00

I could have called this an advice column again, writing to tell nieces and nephews (and anyone else who would listen) about the joys and perils of falling in love, but seeing as I’ve had very little success in doing so, I’m afraid my words would ring rather hollow. Still, I was thinking about it today, for many reasons, and I decided that I wanted to pontificate on it anyway. Perhaps I should narrow my focus a bit from love in general to the dreaded “M” word, with the hope that some tidbits of advice (or at least a warning sign that I missed) will shine through.

In our time, marriage is a legal institution, but we all know that it dates back to, well, pretty much the dawn of civilization. In most cultures, religion also plays a key role in marriage. However, legal and moral issues aside, the fact of the matter is that almost universally, the contract of marriage involves two people who promise each other, their families and their gods that they will literally spend the rest of their lives together, forsaking, as it were, all others. That’s a tall order. Now, assuming that you are a good person who doesn’t lie to yourself, you’d better think twice before you agree to such a thing. We wouldn’t be human if we didn’t make mistakes or promises in the heat of passion; it’s so easy to do. We also know that half of all marriages (in the US) fail, so that means every other person you meet has failed to live up to a promise they made to someone they claimed to love. Remember that when it’s time to trust someone.

It sounds selfish to say, but each of us really needs to look out for number one. To put another before yourself is indeed a noble gesture and is, in my opinion, the hallmark of being a good human being. There’s nothing wrong with putting your heart out in the open, but make sure your display has an appreciative audience. If the one you love doesn’t treat you exactly the way you want to be treated, move on. It’s that simple. It’s easy to convince yourself that an off word or action from your lover is nothing more than a trivial shadow in an otherwise blinding light, something easily overlooked, but I can guarantee you that what seems like a bit of fluff now will turn into a giant carnivorous lint ball if you ignore it. I don’t mean to sound harsh, and I know that any good relationship is built solidly on a give and take foundation. The point is, only you know how you like to be treated, and a good potential mate will recognize that with little or no prodding.

Don’t get married because it’s convenient. Two incomes, even a lottery windfall won’t make a good marriage. If you feel pressured to get married, don’t. If your lover dangles the prospect of marriage like a carrot or (insert appropriate lure), don’t agree and get out as soon as possible. The more I think about it, the more I’m convinced that love pretty much equals trust. If you trust someone (see above warnings), and I mean trust them completely, then you’re on the right path. It’s easy to read those words and agree, but remember to watch for signs that they trust you as well; it only works if both sides of the scale are even. A lover that is overly jealous probably has someone else’s shoes under their bed when you’re not around.

I’ve only been married once, and of course, divorced once, but I like to think that I learned many lessons from it. I’ve had several chances to be married again, and I’m almost positive that my reluctance to do so was the root cause of the failed relationships, and that’s just wrong. Maybe I’m a dreamer, but if you’re going to get married, I think you had better be damned sure you’re getting married for the right reasons. Even if you think your boyfriend or girlfriend is the perfect human being (and crazy, cool love can make you think that), you need to stop and think. Really think. Percy Sledge says “loving eyes can never see”, and you’d better believe that’s the truth. (Look to right of screen on linked page for player)

I want to end on a positive note. I don’t want to be accused of being bitter. Marry the woman (or man) who makes you feel like you’re the most important person in the world. Don’t marry them for what they have because possessions will always be just that, and they will never make you happy. Don’t marry them for their appearance because that will fade. Marry the person who can see your flaws as you can see theirs and neither of you is uncomfortable with it. The Percy Sledge song warned of blind love; but if you can relate to this one, by Shades of Blue, then I am envious. When I can hear that song and know that it fits perfectly, I’ll try marriage again.

Kindness of Strangers

2008-08-28T23:00:00.006-05:00

I’m kind of a pack rat when it comes to keeping stuff. I sometimes keep things for years before I finally rediscover them, and toss them in the trash, wondering why in the world I kept them for so long. Empty booze bottles, for instance, used to turn up now and again, usually with some long forgotten memento scribbled on the label that seemed really important at the time. In most cases, I couldn’t even remember what my cryptic messages meant. It’s funny how some things that seem so important one day fade to the point that we can’t remember them at all. How many times have you said to yourself, “I’ll never forget this,” and then be reminded years later only to answer with a “Huh? What? Did we?” Good times.

Anyway, as I was going through some old papers not long ago, I came across something I thought I’d lost a long time ago. It was a letter from a stranger, to me, a letter from someone that I do not know, and to this day, have never met. It is without a doubt the oddest letter I have ever received, and I’m willing to bet it is the oddest one I will ever receive as long as I live. I’m so glad I found it because I was beginning to think it never really existed except in my mind. The letter came to me during the most tumultuous time in my life, a time when my usually routine world had gone completely and horribly askew…and I couldn’t remember a thing about it. The letter writer had helped me in my most desperate hour and wished me well; she spoke to me as if we had known each other for years, and offered advice as only a true friend can. Again, I have never met her. I don’t believe I’ve ever written of this (or at least, I can’t remember…good times, huh?). Here’s the story:

Now, in case you don’t know, there is a HUGE motorcycle party in New Hampshire every year. It is the oldest bike rally in the country and any old school biker will tell you that Laconia is second only to Sturgis; many like Laconia better. On Wednesday, June 13th, 1997 I had a motorcycle accident in Gilford, New Hampshire, just outside of Laconia. I don’t remember the accident. We were drinking at a bar called the Broken Antler. I was playing pool with a girl from Connecticut, and I remember being totally smitten with her northeastern accent. She was wearing a yellow midriff-baring tank top and she had great tits. I was winning, and I was hoping that maybe I’d get to take her back to the campground to see if things could get any better. I was having a great time. I was drinking, but I was not fall down drunk; my friends would never have let me ride if I had been. I was playing pool with the girl from Connecticut on Wednesday night…and then…

I woke up Sunday night. As soon as I opened my eyes, I knew something really bad was going on. My dad was there. My ex wife was there. I was in a hospital bed. My hands hurt really, really bad. My legs were on fire. Did I mention I was in a hospital bed? Not really sure how I got from the bar to here, where my dad was, I asked him, “What happened?” He said I had been in a motorcycle accident. I can’t tell you how shocked and embarrassed I was. I thought to myself, “I crashed my motorcycle? I don’t remember doing that!” I looked at my hands, which were throbbing, and they were swollen and bruised; I absurdly thought someone had put purple boxing gloves on me while I was asleep. I looked at my legs and they were both wrapped in a blue plastic bubble wrap kind of stuff that was really warm. And they hurt. Bad. Real bad. My father said I had broken both of my femurs and that I had survived a closed head injury that was so severe the doctors didn’t fix my broken legs for several hours because they weren’t sure if I was going to pull through at all. That’s why he was there. He had come to collect my body.

Months of excruciating pain followed; I have never been so down in my life. I couldn’t walk down stairs for four months. I couldn’t walk at all without a walker. I lay in a bed in my house, my prison, and cried alone in the dark. I cried because I hurt and because I couldn’t walk like a man and because I could hear my unfaithful ex wife cavorting downstairs with any number of boyfriends. It was awful. But, like all things, it passed, and within 8 months or so I was able to function by myself again. As soon as I could walk I threw my ex out. I had kept her around because I needed someone to help me, and I felt a little guilty for that, but one does what one has to do. But anyway, once I was up and around, I found the box where my dad had stashed all my belongings from the accident. It had languished in my garage, next to my broken motorcycle for nearly a year. Here was a pair of bloody jeans, there the remnants of every article of clothing I had been wearing, and all kinds of stuff that was familiar. It was my stuff, but from another lifetime. I looked at each thing and tried to remember why I had it, and some of it was a complete mystery. At the bottom of the box, though, was an envelope with no address, and I could tell when I picked it up that there was a note in it, and I could feel that it was several pages, folded up to fit. I took it out of the envelope and looked at it. It was printed and I did not recognize the handwriting. What follows is the letter, exactly as it was written:

June 13th, 1997
Dear Jeff –
Me and Ximius was ridin round aftah the weird beech slowded down totha nite and by gawd we went out ta see the guvnah on his eyeland afta werds on the way home and thar were this assident rite aftah the guvnahs place – well by gawd this wooman was a hoppin rownd and we seed lites and sumbody liftin a hed offen the side the road and we stopped and popped our skyroof opened and yelled hollered “Doyou knead help? and them didn’t answer – now Jeff – we knowd yew couldn’t ansah and we seed nother cah comin and was gonna hit us so we got going – now we did not speed or nuthin and we thunk – hell – we’s paking milk now and we wear short shorts and wiggle and put ginger bread and p-nut butter dog shits on bykes an all – take pichas of theese bykes – cuz we like em!! So we said hell – mebbe they don wan nobody ta know thet them packin licka but by gawd a DWI ain’t as bad as a ded guy so we wen fassass we could and fownd a poe leeceman and tole him bowt ya cuz we ain’t got no phone in cah – him took off and got help so fass you would beeleeve it – now we ustah be alkeeholic and we ustah ride byke too and we knowd bowt them DWI’s real close up like cuz we got one – long tyme ago but we got one sure as shit – we still drank a while afta but we was glad we could hep you – now ifn you kneed hep – we’d be glad to hep you – ain’t got nun money but we sureas hell live in NH and would hep you in court if necessary. hope we did right thang by yah and hope you ain’t mad none we is care about you guys and we hope yer byke ain’t ded none neetha – Hope them doctah’s down keel ya neetha – they’s bastads they ahe! We jis happened ta bein konkid and we’ll try to git this to yah otherwise we’ll send it to yer hometown!! Gawd bless ye – Paula (smiley face) 10 Shackford Rd Center Barnstead NH 03225 PS – helluva way ta git yer name in the paypa! try not drink none – drink sodee or milk – makes ya laff betta (smiley face) and feels reel goode! (smiley face)

(I think the letter speaks for itself, but just in case, here are a couple translations that may help clear up some confusion: “weird beech” = Weirs Beach, a popular spot on Lake Winnipesaukee where hundreds of thousands of bikers park during the Laconia bike week. “konkid” = Concord, the capital of NH.)

I couldn’t put a finger on how I felt after I’d read the letter, and now, 11 years later, I still can’t. I would like to meet Paula and Ximius and thank them in person for going out of their way to help a complete stranger. I want to tell them that in spite of my general disdain for humans, they represent a shining example of all that is good about people. It touches me that strangers showed concern for another, an unknown, and then took the time to hand write a letter, not knowing if the intended recipient was alive. I don’t know if anybody in New Hampshire reads this blog, but if you do, tell Paula and Ximius that I would like to meet them, or at least hear from them. I am forever indebted to them, and in particular, I want Paula to teach me to capture an accent in print as intimately and accurately as she does. Their thanks are long overdue. Thank you, strangers; thank you, friends.

Jesus, I'm Thirsty!

2008-08-12T21:29:00.003-05:00

Weddings, by and large, are happy affairs. Families are joined (so they say), and for the most part, ill feelings are put aside so that all guests can share a slice of the joy that is obviously being shared by the bride and groom. Weddings are so important that Jesus himself chose one to perform his first miracle (although it is mentioned only once in the entire New Testament, an odd thing considering it was the very first miracle, but a story for another time). And what did He do? Why, only the best miracle ever: At Cana, when a wedding party had emptied the keg, so to speak, He turned 6 thirty gallon jugs of water into the “best wine” of the night. I’ll tell you right now that if I saw somebody do that, you can be damn sure I’d follow them for the rest of my life. The point, of course, is that if alcohol at a wedding is good enough for Jesus, it’s good enough for me, and everybody knows that open bar weddings are the best. A case could be made, in fact, that to not emulate Jesus at a wedding is, well, a snub to the almighty. Say it ain’t so!

I went to a wedding this past weekend, and heard the phrase “in Jesus’ name” more often in six hours (over two days) than I’ve ever heard it in my entire life. At a rehearsal dinner the night before the wedding, I complimented the host on his collection of model cars. By way of making small talk after a mandatory prayer over catered Olive Garden, I said that it must have taken a great deal of patience to construct the hundreds of models he had on display throughout his home, and he responded by saying that he could not have done it without the blessing of Jesus, through whom all creativity and patience flows. Not five minutes later, one of my sisters complimented the man’s wife on her home, and, like a recording of her husband, she said that Jesus had seen fit to bless them with the house they own, and that they were very thankful. To hear them tell it, they had no talent or, for that matter, no control over anything that happened in their lives. Feeling rather out of place, I sat quietly, and realized that in the snatches of conversations I could vaguely overhear, all lips praised His name. I kept a careful yet discreet eye out for an aquarium filled with snakes; if I had seen one, I would have bolted. Jesus was manifest in all they did, and the only thing I could think of was “Invasion of the Body Snatchers”.

I was relieved when the wedding itself did not have any speaking in tongues, poisonous snakes or mason jars of cyanide. In fact, it was surprisingly short, with no kneeling or stinky incense. It was over in about 15 minutes, and before I knew it, I was standing outside in the Florida sun next to a cracker box church on a postage stamp parcel of land that had a huge “For Sale” sign in the driveway. Evidently, it is Jesus’ will that they move. In any case, we left the church and went to the reception which was being held in the clubhouse of a golf resort. Imagine my joy upon entering and seeing off in the corner the warm glint of sunlight reflecting off the smooth glass of liquor bottles, lined up neatly in a row and gently cooing my name. I sauntered right over (there was no line) and told the bartender I wanted a bloody mary that would blow my face off, and I’ll be damned if I wasn’t cut off before I started. It seems that the bar was closed at the request of the bride and groom. The people who claimed that Jesus ruled their lives had somehow seen fit to second guess Him and not allow alcohol at their wedding. Seemingly every aspect of their lives is ruled by scripture, yet Jesus’ first miracle is ignored, even hidden. Amazing.

Is this essay a knock on Jesus? No, it’s not. It is, however, a mild diatribe about those people who claim to know the will of God and have no problem foisting their beliefs on everyone they can. An argument could be made that the wedding day belonged to the bride and groom, and they should have the right to conduct their wedding as they see fit. Moreover, why would anyone attend a wedding if they knew it was going to be dry? Well, I didn’t know it was going to be dry. I didn’t know I’d have to sit so close to the bar I could smell it and not be able to taste it. And I am (obviously) flabbergasted at the audacity of people who pick and choose pet parts of the bible to follow while ignoring others, especially the born again New Testament evangelical crowd. Like I said earlier, if booze at a wedding is good enough for Jesus, it should be good enough for us mortals.

Do I have to have a drink to have fun? No. Do I have a drinking problem? No. As long as nobody tells me I can’t have it, I’m fine. I get to decide what I want to do, and as luck would have it, Jesus is on my side. So there.

I'll Have the Racism With Nuts, Please

2008-07-23T23:14:00.002-05:00

I have a friend with whom I have the most interesting conversations. We have a good deal in common and have spent many hours discussing everything from politics to religion to food to women to the stupid things we did while growing up, and although we often play devil’s advocate to each other, we are always civil and able to agree to disagree.

My friend is a black man who grew up in South Carolina; I spent half my youth in a lily-white Illinois farming community and the other half in a suburb of Detroit. We both have degrees and we are also both veterans. One of our favorite subjects is racism, and with America on the cusp of an historic presidential election, it’s never too far on the back burner to be easily moved front and center, no matter where the conversation starts. So you know, my friend is a republican, and in spite of his proud nature, he is not professing fealty to Obama. I believe he will make a choice based on rational thinking and not blind racial allegiance. As I’ve stated before, I always listen to all candidates, then vote for the one I’m most comfortable with when they lie to me. So, now that I’ve told you that, let me tell you this:

We were talking the other day, and my friend told me that he’s very keen to find “hidden” racism in everyday situations. I wanted to know how, given the virtual castration of political correctness, such a thing was possible. “It’s everywhere”, he said. I wanted a specific example. He cited Blue Bell ice cream, a very popular brand in the southern American states. “How”, I asked, “do they purvey discreet racism?” He said they have a package that contains both chocolate and vanilla flavors in one carton. The chocolate, he said, is divided right down the middle, separate from the vanilla. “Yeah”, I said. “So?” He said it’s not two flavors swirled together. It’s black on one side, and white on the other. I had a hard time suppressing a giggle here, but he went on to say that the company slogan was “Tastes like the good old days”, which meant that the presentation of the two flavors in the package was a subtle reminder of how wonderful America was when we had separate drinking fountains. I laughed out loud at this point, convinced that he was pulling my leg. We both eventually agreed that there really are people who would believe such nonsense, although I don’t believe that he totally discounts it. I shouldn’t be too hard on him, though. If I’m not mistaken, it was a white person who claimed the Virgin Mary appeared on a grilled cheese sandwich (that she sold ten years later for $28000 on Ebay).

I asked my buddy a few minutes later if he had been keeping up on a developing story here in Florida that involves a young woman currently in jail on suspicion of having something to do with the disappearance of her 6 month old baby girl. (I won’t go into details; you can read about it here.) We were looking at an internet article on the story which featured a large picture of the missing child. The missing white child. My friend opined that the story wouldn’t be getting the coverage it is if the missing child was black. I disagreed. In fact, through a grisly coincidence, I pointed out the case of the woman in Pennsylvania who was arrested last week for killing an 18 year old pregnant girl, cutting her unborn infant from her womb and taking it to a hospital, claiming it was hers. (Read details here) Both victim and perpetrator in that case were black.

My point should be obvious: horrific crimes get the attention they get because they’re horrific, not so the media can portray thugs or rednecks in a bad light. Whether you’re from the hood or from the trailer park, you are just as apt to commit an atrocity. No rational person wants to see an infant, any infant disappear. To hear of their slaughter is an anathema. If ever there was an innocent victim, it is the child caught in a maelstrom of adult emotion.

Do black people have a history of mistreatment? Of course they do, but so does everybody else. Name one race throughout history that hasn’t subjugated others (as well as itself) and I’ll kiss your ass. We’ve been hurting each other since time began, and until we learn to get along, we’ll keep on doing it. Bad people come in all colors, and they all leave the same red stain.

OK, that’s enough for now. Watch for an upcoming essay on news bias and religious intolerance. And with that, I think I’m going to have a treat: A bowl of vanilla ice cream with chocolate syrup sounds like just the ticket. I don’t care about the presentation. Call me crazy, but food is for your mouth, not your eyes. And by the way, my dad makes the best ice cream in the world. So there.

Devil May Care

2008-07-07T22:13:00.002-05:00

Regular readers of this blog know that I often use this space to rail against the evil television. It can suck your life away, lulling you to the point where mindless drivel can seem like compelling entertainment. Like a drug, it is insidious in its ability to make something stupid seem fun; it’s a little devil on your shoulder telling you that Brett Michaels’ love life really IS interesting. As you may have guessed from the title of this essay, I use the “devil on the shoulder” analogy for good reason: The Prince of Darkness was on my television this past weekend. And I liked it.

I love horror movies, even bad ones, although I do all I can to avoid the tripe that passes for horror on the Sci-Fi channel. “Mansquito?” Flying half-man, half bug? Give me a break. No, the Sci-Fi channel isn’t very good…until they have their holiday “Twilight Zone” marathon. Then it’s good. I got sucked into it for a couple hours this weekend, waiting for the best episode of the series. “The Howling Man” (written by Charles Beaumont) is about a traveler who unwittingly unleashes Satan into the world. Lost in a storm, the traveler arrives at a monastery of sorts, populated by terse and less than friendly monks of an obscure order. They deny him shelter, and he collapses, earning a dry spot in spite of the monks’ inhospitable demeanor. Upon awakening, he hears a mournful howling and happens upon a haggard man in a cell who tells the traveler that he has been imprisoned unjustly for kissing a girl that the monk was sweet on. (I’m not making this up.) The traveler goes to the head monk (John Carradine) and demands to know why men of God have a prisoner that they’re trying hard to ignore. The monk tells the traveler that it is no man in the cell, but Satan himself, father of all lies. And that, of course, is the rub. Who’s lying, the crazy guy with beard in the cell or the crazy guy with the beard and the staff? The traveler listens to both arguments and sides with the prisoner. Now, the only thing barring the door to the cell is a “staff of truth,” not much more than a broomstick. There’s a window in the cell door that allows the prisoner to get an arm out. He could easily reach out the window, lift the bar and walk out, but he doesn’t. The traveler asks him why he doesn’t, and the prisoner utterly ignores the question, imploring the traveler to remove the bar…which he does. And, you guessed it, once freed the prisoner transforms into the classic Beelzebul, complete with goatee and horns. Before the traveler passes out (after being “zapped” by Satan), he realizes that he has been fooled. In an epilogue of sorts, we see the traveler years later, and he himself has captured the devil, after a couple wars and nuclear weapons proliferation, all consequences of his foolishness years earlier. He is explaining to a maid that he has the devil trapped in a closet and that she must not open the door (also barred by a “staff of truth” not much bigger than a pencil) while he is out. Does she let him out? Of course she does, and it starts all over again. Great stuff, huh?

My fascination with things macabre aside, I think what I like most about this story is the ease with which our hero is fooled. The concept of an evil presence is hard enough to swallow, but evil incarnate? Why, that’s just nonsense. Isn’t it? I once heard a priest say “The devil’s greatest trick is to make you think he doesn’t exist.” Now, I’m no logician, but there’s really no way to win an argument with that kind of reasoning. It’s akin to “everything I say is a lie.” In the words of the immortal William Dozier, “it’s a confounding conundrum!” It is the perfect story.

I’m digressing. I got to wondering why the devil would want to make you think he doesn’t exist. The obvious answer would be so that he could go about his malevolent business undetected, but what good is that? If he doesn’t get to laugh maniacally at the mortals he has corrupted and enslaved, why bother? By all biblical accounts (and there aren’t many), Satan just doesn’t figure in the big picture. In fact, he is mentioned only a few times in the old testament as Satan (a being), and should not be confused with Lucifer, a different entity altogether. In fact, it wasn’t until around the second or third century that he came to be considered by Christians as the antichrist. In spite of his popularity (?) today, he wasn’t a very big deal in the beginning. No wonder he’s so pissed off. But you know, the whole good versus evil thing just doesn’t work without him, and, much like God, we have created him in our image to explain away our responsibilities for acting like…God’s creatures. He is all of the things that are the worst in men and he bears the blame for all men’s sin. Research the etymology of the word “scapegoat”, and you’ll find one of his names. Nobody likes to have their name forgotten, and I’m sure the devil, full of pride, wants to be remembered.

I love the concept of Satan. I hope he lives on for centuries in films and stories. May we continue to keep him alive in our imaginations and invoke him to scare the shit out of children and the gullible. He frightens us for good reason: we can see ourselves in him. No matter how much we vilify him, we need him. In fact, I believe that he takes a great deal of delight in our aspirations of divinity. I offer this quote from Mark Twain: “But who prays for Satan? Who in eighteen centuries, has had the common humanity to pray for the one sinner that needed it most, our one fellow and brother who most needed a friend yet had not a single one, the one sinner among us all who had the highest and clearest right to every Christian's daily and nightly prayers, for the plain and unassailable reason that his was the first and greatest need, he being among sinners the supremest?”

By thinking that we are above or different than he, by claiming a “golden rule” mindset but not living it, we prove ourselves to be that which we profess to hate. Rock on, Evil One.

"So I'm Sittin' In This Bar..." Vol. I

2008-06-21T21:17:00.003-05:00

In the past, I’ve written essays on the same subject, such as television. In fact, the last one I wrote only generated one comment, and it was from a relative who told me I needed to get a life. Thanks. Anyway, I decided to start another series, an idea I’ve been entertaining, but have never actually played with. I want to welcome you to my bar stories. I’m going to relate some of the things that I’ve seen in bars from all over the world. Some are recent and some are decades old. I hope you find them interesting.

So I’m sittin’ in this bar in Baltimore. I was in town for a week for work with several other people, and I wasn’t driving the car, and that sucks. If you’ve ever been traveling with a group, you know what I mean. Anyway, one of the guys who had been there before had a few places he wanted to show me, and this was one of them. I’ve been in a lot of bars. I mean, a lot, but I have never been in one like this. It was an old building. It was a banquet hall on one side and a tavern on the other. I noticed the sign when we pulled in the parking lot. It said “Welcome Class of 49”. Really. Anyway, we went in the tavern side and right into what might as well have been “The Shining”. The walls were cream colored and lit entirely with recessed lights, the kind where the lights are hidden by plaster balcony-looking soffits that spanned every wall a foot or so below the ceiling. In every corner, there was a large faux marble, urn-shaped planter with fake red flowers spilling out of it. There was a large U-shaped bar and an area at the bottom of the U that was behind us. It had four or five booths and as many tables, all covered with lace tablecloths. All the tables were populated with senior citizens dining quietly. In fact, it was the quietest bar I’ve ever been in. We sat at the bar and waited for the bartender, who had make up on like Morticia Addams and was dressed like Dean Martin, complete with an impossibly white shirt and a black bow tie and a black vest. She was young, but had a drastic, old lady hairdo stretched into a little bun. It was pulled back so tight on her head it made my teeth hurt. There were two large flat screen TVs behind her with no volume. When I ordered my drink every person in the room could hear it. I half expected to see a sardonic Jack Nicholson behind her shoulder raising a glass as the skin on his face fell off. I made some small talk with the guys I was with, and didn’t show my fear. They had a KENO game going and I spent three dollars for three games every three minutes so I could concentrate on the monitor and not have to look at the diners who were, I was sure, tossing bones on their plates that weren’t chicken. I actually won a dollar back and managed to finish my drink without any social interaction at all. I looked at the guys I was with who had the “another?” look and I said, “Nope, I’m tired, let’s go,” and we left. I didn’t feel safe until we got back out into the sunlight. As we walked to the car, we passed the entrance to the banquet hall where two elderly people were walking down the cement stairs. I said “Hello” as I passed and they said nothing. Yup. Got out of there before the sun went down and the monsters came out.

So I’m sittin’ in this bar in Holland, Michigan. If you’ve ever visited there, you know it’s a quaint, touristy place. If you’ve ever lived there you know it’s a haven for religious weirdoes who (at the time) decided it was necessary to have a law against mowing your lawn on Sunday. Really. Anyway, I’m sitting at the bar when this young girl walks in with a baby in a car seat, sits next to me and orders a rum & coke. She didn’t look old enough to drink, let alone have a kid, but there she was. The kid with the kid had phenomenal tits, so I overlooked her obvious stupidity. She was wearing a V-neck shirt with laces that were literally bursting. For one brief moment, I was jealous of the infant. If she was my mother, I’d breast feed until I was 20. Anyway, as is my usual custom, I waited for her to start talking to me, and of course, she did. We exchanged mild pleasantries and then she started talking about…something, but I don’t remember what it was. Call me a chauvinist, but I was not hearing a word she was saying. I “uh-huhed” when I was supposed to and it lasted for a while, but eventually, abruptly, I realized it was my turn to speak and I hadn’t been listening. Because I was an honest, non-thinking-ahead sort of fellow, I blurted out exactly what I was thinking. I said, “I’m sorry, I wasn’t listening. I was staring at your chest.” And just like that, she slapped me. The bartender looked over at us. I set my drink down and said, “Listen, Missy. If you walk with a neon sign around your neck that says ‘Don’t Look At This Sign,’ you’d better not be surprised when someone does.” She didn’t get it, but I had stopped listening again. She started calling me a pervert or something and I looked at the bartender, fully expecting to explain myself, but the bartender scooted up to where we were and put her finger in the busty girl’s face and told her to leave. Now. The girl got up, bitching, obviously angry, and I couldn’t help but notice how great her tits looked, shaking as she was fumbling with her purse and her baby. She stormed out the door and the bartender bought me a drink for my trouble. Ain’t life grand?

Stay tuned for more bar stories. I’ve been meaning to write more often and I will. You’ll have to pardon me when it’s fluffy stuff like this, but these are stories I enjoy telling.

More From the Idiot Box

2008-05-18T17:26:00.003-05:00

Way back last year I wrote a little blurb about hockey. (You can read it here.) It’s that time of year again and I’m watching the Stanley Cup playoffs. My team is doing well, although they have, of late, been nail-bitingly difficult to watch. I have faith that they will prevail. Go Wings! (I promise that’s my only hockey plug.)

We should all know that TV doesn’t cater to viewers, it caters to advertisers. It’s hard to find programs that aren’t produced with the sole intent of trying to sell you something, and televised hockey is no exception. Even though the teams playing have changed in the past two months, the commercials haven’t. As much as I love to watch this game, I can’t help but be disillusioned by the companies that bring them to me. Perhaps you’ve seen some of them. Watch out, because I’m getting on my soapbox.

The Good: See it here: Bridgestone Tires
In this commercial, a man and (presumably) wife are driving on a road through a forest when a squirrel that happens to be sitting in the path of the vehicle sees them, and begins to scream. Normally computer generated animals with human voices creep me out, but for some reason, this one is funny. Anyway, as the squirrel screams, other animals in the forest begin to scream, each with a different voice, and finally we cut back to the oncoming vehicle where we see the woman in the passenger seat screaming. We get a full 10-15 seconds of blood curdling howls. The man smirks and calmly misses the squirrel, putting an immediate end to the din. You’d think it would be annoying, but it’s just funny. Maybe you have to love horror movies to find screaming funny, I don’t know. If I’m not mistaken, this commercial first aired during the Stupor, er, Super Bowl, so I guess it’s old hat. Call me crazy, but as far as commercials go, it’s still welcome.

The Bad: Accuvue Contact Lenses
In this one, two men are playing what appears to be “backyard” football (American), complete with matching uniforms, which is kind of weird. One man passes the ball to another, who bobbles, then drops it. The man who fumbled the ball immediately takes off his glasses and blames them for his inability to catch the ball. Once he’s fitted for contact lenses, though, his game is perfect. Now, as a person who has worn glasses since the fourth grade, I can tell you right now that as long as they are on your face, not covered in mud or you haven’t had your prescription updated, you can see. The man in the commercial has his glasses on when he mishandles his catch, so it was in his hands. How, then, did his glasses make him drop the ball? That’s like saying “I was going to kick the ball but my ear was in the way.” What message does this impart? It must be the “What can I blame my shortcomings on” lesson. Ridiculous.

The Ugly: Edge Shaving Gel
There are so many things wrong with this commercial. In the first part of this advertisement, we are asked what makes this shaving gel feel so enjoyable. We zoom down to the size of a dust mite on a cheek that needs to be shaved where whiskers are the size of trees, and beautiful women with tanks on their backs like flame throwers are squirting white foamy aloe and moisturizers all over the whiskers, and, of course each other. I’m OK with a fantasy like that. Women in bathing suits lolling about in a sea of whipped cream isn’t a bad thought at all. But, as soon as that commercial is over, the next comes on for Edge gel, but this time the selling point isn’t the moisturizing aspect, it’s the aroma. In the same vein, we are shrunk again to see an army of beautiful women wearing jet-packs on their backs, blasting off. Trouble is, they are flying up a huge nostril. As they enter, the woman at the center of attention has a look on her face that can only be described as anxiously exhilarated; she can’t wait to get up that nose. In the next scene, there’s a dance party going on in the nasal cavity, complete with music and a disco ball shining a thousand lights on a red mucous membrane wall. I find myself scratching my nose every single time I see it. I know some people have a fascination with various orifices, but the nose just doesn’t strike me as one that a person can’t wait to get into. Whoever thought this was a good campaign is wrong. It’s snot. (Cue drum/cymbal crash.)

Like it or not, television is here to stay, and I suppose I should be grateful to it for providing me endless fodder for “rant” essays. I love to hate TV.

Garden Party

2008-05-07T22:05:00.001-05:00

I got lost right outside my door the other day. I was out sprucing up my patio, literally thinking about nothing when my attention was caught by an airplane floating across the sky. It was bright orange against a perfect blue sky, and I couldn’t hear its engines. In that second, I had one of those joyous moments when I suddenly remembered something I hadn’t thought of in years; it was like I could see the past like it had just happened. I remember my grandmother stopping what she was doing to run outside in her house shoes and shade her eyes so she could watch jets fly overhead. She literally marveled at them, and asked that she be buried in a cemetery near an airfield so the planes could fly over her forever. My siblings and I used to laugh when she stood outside in her smock and gawked at the jets. If there were more than two, she was convinced that the Blue Angels were overhead, and would look up in the sky and then back at us to see if we were looking, then back up in the sky, smiling the smile of a person in awe. There were no airplanes when she was a girl. She was born on a farm and bore my father on a farm; she never drove a car in her life. When I was a kid, Star Trek was my favorite television show. The people of the future, as I saw it, had the most wonderful gadgets anyone could think of. Not only did they have spaceships, they had communicators with which they could talk to one another instantly. They could record without film and transplant organs. Absurdly, I thought, “Wow.” I’ve turned into my grandmother.

I wouldn’t have had any of those thoughts if I hadn’t been outside in my little garden.

It’s a small patio with a few flowerbeds that, until last weekend, was populated only by weeds. Now it has freshly hoed (sandy) soil, a damp, earthy aroma, and seeds for impossibly colorful flowers that I hope are germinating as I write. But what it lacks in size it makes up for with a relaxed, cordial atmosphere. It is a place to let my mind flow freely. I can almost hear Louis Armstrong singing “What a Wonderful World” as I daydream, wondering if my flowers will look like the ones on the package. Nothing is urgent in the garden. Unless you’re an ant.

Even though I know better, I put out food for a couple stray cats that also seem to enjoy lounging about on the patio. Being outdoor cats, they don’t seem to be as dainty as indoor ones, and often scatter bits of food around the plastic plate I put out for them. I was on the patio, smoking and assessing the garden, wondering what sort of improvement I should make next, when something caught my eye. I had to look twice to make sure I wasn’t relaxing to the point of hallucination. As I watched, an errant piece of cat food, the size of a pea, maybe, was moving by itself across the bricks. A closer look revealed four tiny ants carrying what to them must have seemed like a miracle from the gods. As I looked, I saw a second piece of cat food being carried to a small pile of sand dug out between the cracks of the patio floor. It was only about eight feet from the cat food to the anthill, but I got to thinking that what they were doing was akin to four humans lugging a cupcake fifty yards wide to a cave twenty miles away. I had to smile as I admired the ants. I saw that they had reached the entrance to their home, but had encountered a problem: The piece of cat food was too wide to fit in the crack. They tried it from every angle but it wasn’t going to fit. I imagined myself as a great benefactor, and reached down, picked up the piece of cat food and broke it so the crumbs would fit the doorway. The ants scurried about when I put the pieces back down but it didn’t take them long to get the smaller loads delivered. As I watched, one of the stray cats wandered back and stepped directly on the ants’ receiving dock. I shooed her back, but she was persistent and came again, only this time, she must have smelled the tiny piece of food, because she inhaled it, ants and all, and crunched it away. She looked up, smacking her lips, oblivious to the frenzy she had caused among the ants. I put a little more food on the dish to distract the cat, and my cell phone rang. I talked for a few minutes and when I hung up the phone, I realized I was standing on the anthill.

In spite of the onslaught of technology, or perhaps because of it, there just isn’t anything like digging in the dirt, planting seeds, and daydreaming. No matter how bad we may think things are for us, they could be much, much worse. Giant monsters could appear in the sky, eat us and crush our dwellings, and never think once what they’ve done. Yup. I can get lost in my garden.

From Beyond

2008-04-05T22:09:00.003-05:00

I had a conversation the other day about ghosts. OK, to be honest, I butted into a conversation that was already going on about ghosts. One co-worker had said to another, “I think there’s a ghost in my new apartment. I turned off my alarm and fell back asleep, but suddenly, inexplicably, my bedroom light turned on all by itself!” The other person readily accepted this explanation, and proceeded to tell her own story of other-worldly hijinks, as if it is a common occurrence for the spirit world to help or hinder us as they see fit. I simply cannot sit idly by while topics like this are discussed. I try to mind my own business, but the temptation is too great. “Why,” I asked, “would a ghost take time out from his or her incorporeal activities to make sure you don’t oversleep?” The answer, of course, was that it was a “good ghost.”

Can I say for certain that there is no such thing as a ghost? No, but by the same token, we cannot automatically attribute peculiar happenings to the supernatural. There are, though, those who claim not an unseen visitor, but a visual apparition. You know somebody who tells that story, often made to seem more plausible because a child saw it too, and why would the little darlings lie, or, to be fair, make up a story? They stand firm in their belief that they “saw” a ghost, and no amount of logic or alternate (read: plausible) explanations will make them change their minds. I suppose if I saw one, I would change my tune, but until then, I stand firmly in the realm of the explainable, always keeping in mind that the person who tricks you the best is yourself.

Anyone who knows me knows I can’t get enough of horror movies, stories, and supernatural fiction, so it’s not like I’m unfamiliar with spooky stuff. There are times when I wish there were monsters. (One of my favorite fantasies involves gorgeous female vampires that look a lot like Elvira, but I don’t think I should write that down.) I can’t say I’ve seen a ghost, but there have been times I have felt that things just weren’t quite right, like I wasn’t alone. Every time this has happened, I’ve been outside. I hope, if I ever find myself wandering the earth after I’m dead, that I’m in a forest somewhere, and not trapped in some skittish girl’s bedroom. Anyway, there’s something about being in nature that lets me allow the possibility of ghosts, or at least, another consciousness. Just the other night, in fact, I witnessed a scene that, if ever there was one, infused me with the feeling of other-worldliness.

The sliding patio door of my (new) apartment faces west, so every night I get to see the sun go down. That may not seem like a big deal, but I’ve always been a bit partial to sunsets. So, a couple days ago, I walked past the slider just in time to see the sun go past the huge live oak tree it always shines on before it goes away. This, of course, was nothing new, but a couple minutes later, I walked into the bedroom of the apartment, which faces east, and was more than a little surprised to see the window lit up with the deep orange glow that only comes from a sunset. Well, now, as you can imagine, this just wasn’t right at all, so I walked back to the other room and went outside to see just what was going on.

When I stepped out onto my patio, it was the same view I always see, but it was lit from the wrong side. It was surreal and fascinating. Everything was as it should be, except it was wrong. What had happened was that the setting sun had illuminated a huge blanket of clouds that hung to the east; they looked like they were on fire. The reflected light from these clouds shone down upon my little corner of the earth and lit the dusk for a second time, except from the opposite direction. All the buildings, the trees, the grass, everything glowed in an unearthly seeming scene, except that it was earthly, the same scene I see every day…only different. It was like being high, only better. It lasted about ten minutes, the time it took me to have a smoke, and then it was over. Right as it ended, a cat meowed at my patio door. Still marveling at the backwards sunset, I let it in into the patio area and it wrapped around my legs, greeting me like I was an old friend. Weird, huh?

Perhaps what I saw is what people who see ghosts experience: They see the world, for just a moment, in a different way. Now, I don’t mean to imply that the weird lighting and the meowing cat were signs from Mr. Kitty (see previous post) stranded in feline limbo, but it was really weird. I still don’t believe in ghosts, but it did cross my mind. In any case, the nub of my gist, I guess, is that ordinary things seen in a different light have a way of firing the imagination. And that’s good.

Dumb Animals

2008-03-18T20:59:00.006-05:00

I watched a show about animal intelligence this evening, and it got me thinking. One story in particular, about dogs, featured a Doberman that had been living homeless, eating garbage and fending for itself. It was adopted by a woman who took it home and, after gaining its trust, noticed that it had a very odd behavior: It would arrange toys in very specific ways, and the woman, who was not a scientist, keenly noticed this trait and notified someone who did know about such things. After taking great pains to ensure the dog wasn’t coached or was being inadvertently cued by hovering humans, films of the dog showed that it did, indeed, place toys in carefully “thought out” arrangements. Triangles were a favorite, and straight, often parallel lines were also in the dog’s repertoire. Many times, the dog would place the toys (stuffed bears or frogs) in piles of three or four. You might say any dog could do that, but this particular dog would arrange the toys so that all would either be face up or face down. Random you say? Possibly. But the dog had a trick that, in my opinion, exhibited a human-like quality that is simply impossible to ignore. Here’s what happened.

Because the dog had been taken from a solitary life, the woman who adopted it had to have a good deal of patience, especially when it came to common human/dog interactive behavior such as petting. The dog was skittish at first with the woman, and wouldn’t allow her to touch him very much, but he did put his decorating skills on display. Gradually, the apprehension faded, and there came a time when the woman was able to put her arm completely around the dog, giving it a hug, as it were. The amazing arranging dog then added a new flair to its toy placement the very next day: The woman noticed that it had placed several toys in groups of two, and without fail, one of the arms of the random toys was wrapped around the other, as if hugging it.

It’s easy for humans to associate their emotions with that of a dog (Awww, he’s sad, or he’s thinking about dinner), but I found it utterly fascinating that a dog would manipulate its toys to mimic behavior. What was the dog trying to do? Communicate?

We just don’t give animals enough credit sometimes. The last line of the program, spoken about dogs, said “They know us far better than we know them”, and I cannot argue with that, but I wouldn’t confine it to just dogs. I believe the same can be said for cats, and I’ll make my case for it. As usual, I have to tell one story to tell another, so bear with me.

My cat died recently. I’d had him for fifteen years, but I have no idea how old he was. My ex wife brought him home one day, and he looked the same then as he did the day he died, albeit minus a few teeth. I won’t bore you with how wonderful he was; there were times when he pissed me off to no end. He wasn’t nearly as expressive as the artistic dog, but he got his points across. If I left for a week at a time for vacation, or even for a day or two, he would make his statement by pooping in the shower stall. Not a wet, messy spray, but one well-placed little turd left lying on the drain strainer told me that while he could fend for himself for a couple days, he didn’t really like it. He also didn’t like riding in the car, but he resigned himself to it and didn’t freak out. I don’t think he ever communicated as clearly, though, as he did in the last minutes of his life.

In spite of being clawless from the day I first saw him, he was an excellent hunter. He could dispatch mice, crickets, other cats, even dogs nearly 20 times his weight. (Well, not dispatch the dogs, but he could sure back them down.) If another animal was in his territory, he made it known who the top cat was.

It was both interesting and heart-wrenching to see him confront another cat as he lay dying. I’ll spare you my feelings at the time and instead share what I saw. I had taken Mr. Kitty to an emergency vet. He was obviously in great distress, and I knew what was happening. He lay on an exam table, awake but breathing laboriously. The vet had already examined him and confirmed that death was imminent. I agreed that she should give him a shot to put him to sleep, and then she would administer a lethal injection. As we waited for her to return with the first shot, a resident cat at the clinic, which obviously had run of the place, sauntered into the room. Mr. Kitty couldn’t see him (he was busy dying), so I didn’t do anything. Much to my surprise, the “house cat” (a huge animal) jumped right up on the exam table and went nose to nose with my cat. I thought, “Oh, great! He’s dying and he’s going to think he has to fight one more time,” but he didn’t. Mr. Kitty moved his front paws a little, and croaked out a meow, but the other cat just kept on sniffing him. And then, as I watched, both cats closed their eyes and shared a gentle nudge, as if one knew and sympathized with the other. The resident cat then curled up right beside mine, silently waiting, as if at a friend’s deathbed to wait for the final visit.

I was a mess while this happened, and when the vet finally returned, she pooh-poohed the mourning cat who got off the table, with a disgruntled look. She told me the needle she had would put him to sleep in about five minutes, and then she would come back and give him the real one. She injected him and then left us alone. I stroked Mr. Kitty’s head and tried to be soothing in spite of my halting voice. His breaths grew farther apart and within two minutes, he was dead. I sat there for another five minutes with my dead cat waiting for the vet, and when she came back, I told her I didn’t think he’d need the final shot. She felt his pulse, and said, yes, he was gone. I already knew that.

Did the cats share a moment of understanding? I don’t know. But I do know that it’s been a long time since I felt so moved, and we would be foolish to think that only humans are capable of sensing impending death, and more importantly, consoling (in their own way) the dying. I miss my Mr. Kitty, and I could write reams about what I feel when I think of him, but anyone who has ever had a pet already knows that story. We know that our pets (and, of course, family) will all die one day, any day. Just not today.

Finally Back

2008-03-17T17:39:00.003-05:00

I've been offline for six grueling months. It's been a living hell, although I did get lots of fodder for future entries. I've got a couple I worked on and should have up within a couple days. I don't know if anyone even checks here anymore, but I promise I'll be back in touch very shortly.

Holiday Blurbs

2007-12-22T15:58:00.000-05:00

As much as I grouse about Christmas, I secretly get a little bit giddy when this time of year rolls around. Rude, crazed shoppers and endless sales telling us to “buy, buy, buy” always put a big damper on my holiday feelings, but I know that on Christmas morning there will be squeals of delight from wide-eyed children sitting in seas of wrapping paper admiring something they don’t know how they ever survived without. The children who have no Christmas temper my warm fuzziness, and I do what I can to help (but don’t tell anyone). Please enjoy my Christmas blurbs. I have nothing but time this weekend, so don’t be surprised if I post again here very soon. I’ll be spending the holidays alone, by the way, so if you’re in the Tampa area (all you females) and don’t have anything to do for Christmas, find me. I could use some Christmas company.

Christmas Wars

That nativity scenes have come under fire in the past for promoting Christianity is nothing new. It has been a cultural icon for Christians around the world for centuries, and you would think that people would be used to it by now, but in these days of people behaving like soft-shelled turtles, we are evidently too worried about other people’s feelings to the point where we begin to curtail our own. (If you’ve been here before, you know my feelings about religion, especially Christianity, and I don’t want anyone to think I’ve “seen the light”, but I’m going to stick up for them this one time.) The word “Christmas” has been around for an awfully long time. Every person in America knows what a Christmas tree is. Now, however, it seems that there is a growing movement to phase out the term “Christmas tree”, and replace it with “holiday tree”, so as not to offend non-Christians. I gotta tell you, I can’t remember the last time I heard something so utterly ridiculous. It is akin to saying that we’re not going to call movies “movies” anymore, because Hindus protest that the “moo” sound in the word makes them think of all the poor cows raised to be eaten, denied the glory of reincarnation. We will discard the term “movies” and call them “fleegles” and nothing else. Now that’s ridiculous, isn’t it? If they want to call it a Christmas tree, I say let ‘em! It’s been “Christmas Tree” for centuries, and it’s only now becoming offensive? If I hear someone say “Christmas tree”, I know exactly what they mean. You would think, though, that when some people hear the word, what they really hear is “Jesus Christ is your lord and savior and you must repent and follow only Him because your religion is dumb you godless bastard.” And that kind of thinking only bolsters the Christians, because they somehow figure that if you don’t like the word, you must be feeling guilty because you know deep down in your heart that you’re a sinner. See what I mean? I don’t get all upset and offended when I hear “Hanukkah” or “Ramadan” or even “Kwanzaa.” In fact, I really don’t think I could care any less what any group wants to call their holiday, unless they have a holiday phrase like “Happy Jeff’s An Idiot Day!” I’d have an issue with that one. The point is to just relax and let each group call their holiday and all of its trappings whatever they want to call it. The pissers and the moaners seem to forget that to make a word unpopular is to guarantee that it will never go away.

Beltway Holiday Bullshit

In keeping with the holiday theme, let’s look at a blatant attempt by Republican hopeful Mike Huckabee to lie to anyone who will listen while invoking the name of Christ. Huckabee has a Christmas message for you (available on any television) in which he specifically wishes everyone a Merry Christmas by reminding us that it is the birth of Christ that we celebrate. It’s a real “Jesus is the reason for the season, oh, and by the way, vote for me” plug. In it, he speaks to the camera as it slowly pans from left to right. In the background of the scene is a white bookcase whose shelves and supports form a distinct cross pattern that seems to float behind him. Pundits and analysts immediately pounced on what they thought was an attempt to sneak in a religious symbol. Why this is an issue when he’s talking about Christ is beyond me, but here’s the rub: Huckabee says he didn’t realize the bookcase formed a cross until after the ad began to air. Now, I don’t know about you, but I find that very difficult to believe. I may not be a Hollywood director, but I’d bet my bottom dollar that any number of editors and advisors not only noticed the cross, but oohed and aahhed at how good their presentation looked. They noticed it because it was supposed to be there. Huckabee insists with a chuckle that “it just happened that way”, but I’d sooner believe the Virgin Mary could miraculously appear on a grilled cheese sandwich. Oh…wait…never mind. Who does Huckabee think he’s fooling? Nothing happens in a professional commercial by accident, especially a political ad, and for Huckabee to shrug and say “Golly, it just happened” is a slap in the face to any thinking person (voter). Remember that when it comes time to choose, or suffer the consequences. On a side note, we won’t see that kind of thing out of Mitt Romney, but you know there are factions out there who will fault him for not mentioning Jesus. Even on his birthday, Christ is a double edged sword and it’s hard to tell which edge is keener.

Christmas Spirit

I met a person this year who does a truly thankless job each Christmas: She buys miniature Christmas trees with battery powered lights, and hand cuts literally hundreds of strips of red velvet from which she fashions tiny bows. She puts the bows on the trees (one on every branch), and on Christmas Eve, she takes the trees to various cemeteries where friends and family are buried, places them on the gravesites, and spends a moment remembering them. She also takes along a supply of all kinds of alcoholic beverages and has a shot of whatever that deceased person enjoyed drinking. This seemed to me, at first, to be an utterly pointless practice. Dead people don’t know you’re remembering them, and she does an awful lot of work for, well, nothing. The more I thought about it, though, the more I realized that she doesn’t do it for the people she’s lost (although she would argue that point with me for eternity), but for herself, even if she doesn’t realize it. This may seem a bit like self-stroking, but you know what? If it makes her happy, who am I to begrudge that? With all the bloated hype over Christmas with its relentless commercialism, it’s nice to know that some people don’t use this time of year to buy trinkets for the living, but to reflect and remember those whom we have lost. My hat is off to you, LuRae, for your selfless Christmas spirit.

Wars, Tips and Dying Squirrels

2007-11-28T18:40:00.000-05:00

I’m willing to bet that most people are happy to be home for the Thanksgiving holiday here in the United States, and I’m guessing that most countries have a similar day set aside for family feasting. Smart people everywhere know the value of friends and family, and most of us tolerate even the idiot relative we all have, if only for a day. You just never know what you’re going to hear at gatherings like that, and sometimes even the most mundane of conversations can evolve into a discussion that everybody wants to weigh in on. I had a few interesting conversations this holiday that I’d like to share with whoever reads this, so here they are in no particular order.

The War in Iraq: No matter how much you try to avoid this subject, it always pops up. Many people feel many ways about this issue, and I only wish a solution were as simple as some make it seem. I’m not sure how many points I scored with my argument (which, trust me, was pretty much forced out of me), but I present it here. You can say what you want about the Middle Eastern morass, but I urge all who vehemently oppose the war to consider this: Shiite Muslim extremists in Iraq have been targeting women for the crime of…being women. In the last couple years over 50 women have been murdered in the street for refusing to wear veils, and for wearing makeup. A prominent Iraqi television journalist (female) has had death threats as well as promises to be raped, beaten to death and thrown into the street with labels pinned to her body denouncing her as a whore. If you are an attractive woman with western tastes, you are a less than human. It doesn’t really matter if the big picture (the war) is seen as political or economical, what matters is that, left alone, Iraq could become as the Taliban controlled areas are in Afghanistan. Not our problem, perhaps, but would you feel the same if it were you or your sister or mother? One of the people I spoke to about this said “We are not the world’s police.” Fair enough, but are we not our brother’s keeper? If not us, meaning everybody else in the world, then who? If the people of the world ignore unjust behavior toward other human beings, we will have no business complaining when it happens to us, and if we leave it unchecked, we ensure that it will. Nobody should die for money or oil, but some things are worth fighting and dying for.

Fortunately, the conversation about the war with the armchair generals didn’t last very long, and we moved on down a very winding road that eventually led to the practice of tipping. I remember when tipping was reserved pretty much for waitresses, caddies and barbers. In today’s world, everyone expects a tip. Fast food places in Florida have tip jars on the counter prominently displayed near the cash register for maximum exposure to those easily guilted into giving up their money. I have a problem with that, and here’s why: A tip is a gratuity, and a gratuity is a gift. We give gifts to those whom we feel deserve them. For instance, a smiling, efficient waitress deserves a tip, as does an attentive bartender. The pizza kid who gets your order to you quickly should also get a little extra bump, as should a good caddy. In short, anyone who does above and beyond what is expected deserves a gratuity. To have a tip automatically added to a bill (say, for large parties at dinner) removes the impetus for the server to do their best. To call an automatic extra charge on my bill a “gratuity” insults me and demeans the word, because it’s not a gratuity. Let’s call it what it is: it’s a handout, like money you would give to a bum on the street. It’s something for nothing, a reward for no services rendered, a bonus for…nothing. Now, you waitresses don’t get me wrong: Unless I see gross negligence or a poor attitude, I always tip. I know there are tightwads out there who don’t tip, and for that I’m sorry, but if you work in the service industry, you (like everyone else who works) should be prepared to do your best and expect the worst. It’s hard to appreciate a good tip unless you know what it is to be stiffed.

Since I recently moved to Tampa, some of my holiday compatriots asked me what I thought of the city, and I said I liked it, save for the traffic woes. It can take upwards of 45 minutes to travel 15 miles, and I’m not wild about that at all. Many of the drivers behave as though they are the only people on the road, and drive with an utter lack of consideration for other vehicles. Their flagrant inconsideration makes me think that they simply don’t care if they cause an accident or hurt someone because of their disregard for anyone but themselves. I know this is a symptom of the human condition, so I was very surprised last night on my way home from work when I saw the oddest thing. There was a squirrel in the opposite lane from me that had been hit by a car, but wasn’t dead. It was flipping about, unable to move except to jerk spastically up and down. It looked like a puppet on a string, flailing but unable to move anywhere except up and right back down. Do you know what the odd thing about this was? Nobody wanted to hit it again. Cars approached and slowed, then veered to one side or another so as to avoid it. The everyday drivers who pull out in front of other vehicles, unmindful of the potential for a serious accident wouldn’t hit the squirrel again to stop it from suffering. They slowed to look, but did nothing. For the record, I was in another lane, so I couldn’t do it myself, but you can bet that if I had, someone would have seen me do it and thought me cruel or hollered obscenities at me, or worse. Amazing.

I see by my site meter that I’m getting hits from all over the world. Please feel free to comment on anything I’ve written in this blog, or just say hello from wherever you are. Thank you, and I’ll be posting again very soon. Ciao!

Cheap Suit

2007-11-15T18:29:00.000-05:00

Other people may have been able to see hope in the sunshine shimmering off the waves, but the man with the cheap suit could see only despair. He had come from the north, confident that the warmer climes would bring him good luck, yet as he sat on a bench at the beach, he was all too aware that he had not only failed to make any money, but had actually lost some. He hadn’t lost everything, but he had lost enough to know that his wife was not going to be happy, no, not at all. He could already almost hear her chiding him for being too trusting. She always said that people were no good, and he had always argued otherwise. She was a good wife, but he didn’t have anything to compare her to. He thought to himself that maybe she was right after all. Nobody cared about anybody; they only thought of themselves.

As he looked out from the beach the sun was a ball in the sky and a line on the water; both glared at him, making him squint, and as he did, he could not convince himself that it was the sun responsible for his expression instead of the disappointment he felt. He had had such high hopes for this trip and it had turned out to be a dismal failure. He’d even spent a little money on the cheap suit he was wearing, thinking it might make him a little more impressive. It was supposed to be an easy money deal; he and the friend of a friend had put some money together to buy some old southern muscle cars that they could sell for twice the money back home up north. The trouble was, his “partner”, whom he barely knew, and who had all the money, never showed up to pay for the cars. He had trusted the wrong person, and in doing so, earned himself another dose of reality. He had a little money left, but not much. Within a week, he would have to return home empty handed and hear for the umpteenth time what a sucker he was.

He pulled a crumpled cigarette from a tattered pack and lit it. When he threw his spent match on the sand, a passing gull swooped down to investigate it, and then immediately flew off with a disappointed screech that sounded to the man like sarcastic laughter. He watched it fly off toward an old building that sat on stilts about a hundred yards off the shore. It was little more than a large box with windows long broken. It had the remnants of a ceiling and the floor must have still been somewhat intact; the side boards were weathered and gray where the guano hadn’t covered them. Oysters clung to the stilts like fuzzy socks on spindly legs. It didn’t sit straight up in the water, but leaned to the right. The man wondered how long it had been there, and how much longer it would be before it went totally off balance and slid into the sea. He took the final drag off his smoke and thought that he was much like the building. He, too, was askew, and in danger of slipping beneath the waves of disappointment that constantly lapped at him. How he stayed standing was sometimes a mystery to even him. He stubbed out his smoke and got up to walk to the town to get some dinner and a room before heading back tomorrow.

He was in a very small fishing village that attracted tourists who were willing to spend big to get away from the weather up north, if only for a little while. It seemed like every other house he passed had some sort of small business operating. One local merchant made his living renting golf carts, although the island was small enough to walk the entire circumference in about twenty minutes, but the tourists who wanted rustic didn’t want it so rustic that they had to walk. Another house offered watercolor paintings and another proffered jewelry made from shells. He could see a sign hanging a couple blocks away for an inn, and he was making his way there when he heard a clattering noise to his left that overcame the sound of the surf to his right. As he looked he saw an impossibly old woman bending to pick up the old crab trap she had dropped. The trap looked far too heavy for her, so he trotted up her walkway asking if she needed any help. She didn’t seem to hear him as he approached, and he thought he might startle her when he asked if he could help, but she behaved as though strangers appeared on her porch at any time; they were as common an occurrence as birds or bugs. She accepted his help in a matter-of-fact manner.

He stayed on her porch for a good half hour helping her arrange her antiques (as she called them; to the man in the cheap suit it was junk) and when she was finally satisfied with the display, she walked back into her house without a word. For a minute or so, the man was unsure if he should stay or go, but the woman came back out with a tray of lemonade and two glasses. The man gladly took a glass and was surprised when the woman produced a pint of bourbon from her apron pocket with a wink and a wry wrinkly smile. She offered him a seat on a rickety looking porch swing and they sat down side by side to drink their drinks and gaze out at the sea. The woman told him she had lived in this town all her life. She had been married for nearly fifty years when her husband passed and now she made a meager living trying to sell the junk he had collected to curious tourists. He told her how he came to be sitting here, although he left out the part about losing money. He had a feeling, though, that she already knew that. They made small talk about the fishing village, and he even heard some gossip about the other merchants as the sun fought a losing battle to keep itself up.

There came a time when the conversation stopped, as if it was too much effort to talk and watch the sun fall below the horizon at the same time. It was time for the man to be moving on; the conversation had dwindled beyond pleasantries and it was about to die completely. With his drink nearly empty, the man asked the old woman why no one had bothered to tear down the slanting stilted building that sat alone off the shore. He expected to hear about some fool who had started something he couldn’t finish or that it was a fish cleaning shack, but his words had sparked the woman’s tongue again. She looked out at the building for a moment, then back at the man, and as she did so, he felt that she could see everything he tried to keep hidden, like a mother looking at a lying child. The bottle of bourbon appeared again and the man listened to the old woman’s story.

The shack had been built in the fall of 1918 by Mister Douglas Llewellyn Pratt. He wasn’t a gentleman by birth, nor was he wealthy, but he had been born on the island and had lived there all his life. The man knew that Pratt’s title wasn’t “mister”, but the old woman seemed to think he deserved it. She said she was just a girl when the shack was built, and she remembered it as though it were yesterday. Mister Pratt had been, like most of the local men of the time, a fisherman. The woman remembered the men leaving at the break of dawn and not coming home until nearly dark every single day, as long as it wasn’t storming. They would take their catch to the mainland to sell it, and it was there that Mister Pratt had met a girl he was very sweet on. He wasn’t a rich man by any means, but he was determined to prove his love to his sweetheart. While he wooed the mainland girl, he spent every hour he wasn’t working and every dime he didn’t absolutely need to build a honeymoon house on the water. Of course everyone on the island knew what he was up to, and they all managed to keep it quiet from the mainland folks. Pratt had told his friends that he was going to marry the girl in January, right after the New Year arrived, and everyone pitched in to help him because that was the way things were done back then.

The old woman recalled that the whole island could feel the love that Pratt had, and they wanted to be a part of something that was almost like a fairy tale. Their lives were sometimes difficult and almost always mundane, and Pratt’s love for his woman brought a spark to the island that hadn’t been seen in some time. Everyone remembered what it was like to be in love. On the day that Pratt came home and announced to the islanders that he had asked his woman for her hand and that she had accepted, there was a boisterous party, with much well-wishing and a multitude of stories of how other loves had come to be. Some even told stories of loves lost, but all were told with a hearty laugh and a lesson learned, even if it was painful at the time. For a night, it seemed, love ruled the island and every married couple thought in their hearts of how they had felt when it had come to them. The man watched the old woman as she spoke about Pratt and his wedding. Her eyes were fixed on the shack in the water, but what was behind them was miles away.

The date was set and the islanders as well as the mainlanders made preparations to help Pratt and his girl get off on the best foot possible. The honeymoon house on stilts was finished. Some of the island women had gotten together and made huge quilts of bunting to hang from the roof and there was a day not too long before the wedding when wine and rowboats were employed to wrap pink ribbons around the stilts all the way to the high water mark, and more than a few island women got wet. Back on the mainland, a feast was prepared and it was going to take no less than five boats to get just the food over to the island. The local fishermen all had lists of who was going to ride on which boat to the ceremony which was to be held on the island in a gazebo at the park. The day before the wedding, there came word that the bride was feeling a bit ill, and it was assumed that the wedding day jitters were upon her. There was a flu that going around on the mainland and lots of people were under the weather, and the most jovial talkers said that if she’s too sick to be married now, then they would wait until she was well. Some even joked that the thought of marrying a fisherman who spent long days at sea would make for a wife who would constantly worry herself sick. The islanders went to bed still joking about Pratt and his woman, and each was giddy about the following day’s event. As a young girl, the old woman knew that love would bloom in the shack on the sea and all would catch its bouquet, if only for a day.

The woman stopped talking and stared out at the gray leaning shack. The man looked too, and was curious to know how the wedding went and what kind of revelry took place on the day that love visited the island. The woman stood mute as she looked at the shack; the faraway look she had earlier was even more pronounced now. After a couple minutes the man asked if she was alright, and urged her to finish the story. He had forgotten his own troubles for a while and didn’t want to break the reverie. The love story she told, even though it was second hand and generations before he was born, captivated him and made him feel as though he was living in the past and sharing in the joy that people have always felt. The old woman finally shifted her gaze from the shack to the younger man, and he could see that she was crying. She wasn’t bawling, but her eyes were full and a wistful tear snaked along her wrinkled, leathery cheek. The woman said people were dying everywhere. The Spanish Flu pandemic was at its height, and millions the world over were dying. Of course he wouldn’t have known that; it was years before he was born, but it surprised him that he had never heard of it. She said Pratt’s bride died the morning she was to be married.

She said he never sat foot in the honeymoon shack he had built for his bride. In fact, no one ever had. In time, things on the island got back to normal, but Douglas Llewellyn Pratt was never the same. Oh, he still worked, and occasionally he would laugh, but mostly he kept to himself. The bunting and ribbons that hung from the shack that were supposed to be symbols of a new life became instead bright, haunting sentinels that reminded the entire island of the fleeting nature of love and life. In time they succumbed to the weather and the sea, but the old woman said that for weeks after the wedding day they flapped in the breeze, sounding for all the world like tiny claps of thunder that scared her dreams away, leaving her awake and frightened. Sometimes, the old woman would get out of bed and look outside and see Mister Pratt standing on the beach, looking at the shack. She said that in spite of the sound of the flapping, tattered decorations and the surf, she could swear she could hear his heart breaking. She said that once, after she had grown up and Pratt was getting on in years, she had asked him why he hadn’t found another woman, and he told her that he didn’t try to not love another, it just never happened. He said he didn’t want to be alone, but he couldn’t force himself to love. It either happened or it didn’t, and it must have been his lot to have only one love in a lifetime. He smiled a rare smile at the woman, perhaps because he could see the worry in her eyes, and he told her that in spite of his misfortune, he wouldn’t have it any other way. He said he had known a love that quelled the fear that all men have in their hearts, if only for a little while, and he was thankful for that.

The man with the cheap suit looked at the old woman when she stopped talking, and she was looking at the shack, now bathed in moonlight, with guano glowing like strips of a whitewash job that was never finished. She stood silent for a few minutes, and then abruptly thanked him for his help, and bade him good evening. He thanked her for the drinks and walked off her porch toward the inn. He could hear the rattling of the empty glasses on the tray and the sound of her screen door shutting behind her in a house she shared with no one as he walked up the street. When he got to the sidewalk that led to the inn office, he stopped and looked back at the gray shack leaning in water. He thought of his wife at home and wondered if she were gone, would he have the same outlook as Douglas Llewellyn Pratt did? He wasn’t sure, and he went to bed uneasy, unable to stop himself from getting up and looking out at the empty leaning building that sat in the moonlight, never occupied, waiting to collapse.

Communication Breakdown

2007-10-29T18:36:00.000-05:00

I’m sorry I’ve not posted in a while. So you know, I have been working on an essay about how it is to be single, but that’s going to have to wait a bit. I felt I was concentrating too much on me, and nobody wants to read that; I need to make it a bit more general. So, in lieu of writing about my mundane lifestyle, I decided to take a break from thinking too much and just rant about something that chaps my ass as few things do.

Unless you’ve translated this page, you’re reading it in English. It’s the only language I know fluently. I’m assuming, though, that the subject of today’s diatribe is not limited solely to English, but afflicts each and every tongue spoken on this planet. It is my sincere hope that I’m not the only person who grits their teeth when the one thing that separates us from the rest of the animal kingdom, the most basic tool humans use (and if I may be so bold as to say it), the ONLY thing that allows us to thrive is…utterly ignored. What could it be? Why, it’s communication, of course. I’ve found that while we all do a lot of talking, we are rarely communicating. Let me give some examples.

At lunch today, I got some pizza from a restaurant I’d never patronized before. I’ve only been in this area for a month, so I assumed some of my co-workers would have already tried it, so as a way to make small talk during lunch, I asked one of them if they had ever sampled this particular pizzeria’s fare. My exact words were “Have you ever tried the pizza from (this place)? The immediate response was, “They have excellent pizza.” Do you see the problem here? I don’t mean to sound snotty, but I didn’t ask what they thought of the pizza, I asked if they had ever tried it. The listener in this case assumed that I wanted to know what they thought of the food, which would probably have been my next question. My beef here is the assumption. What if I wasn’t going to ask what their opinion of the food was? And more importantly, why did my first question get ignored? This may seem nit-picky, but I told this story so you would understand when I tell the next one.

Not too long ago, some friends and I were discussing (OK, gossiping) some of our neighbors. During the course of the discussion, I mentioned of one of an acquaintance, “For an ex-cop Jesus freak, he’s a nice guy,” and you would have thought from the reaction of some of those I was speaking with that I had called his mother a whore and kicked his dog. The general consensus was, “Just because he’s a religious ex cop doesn’t make him an idiot!” If you’ll re-read what I said, you’ll see that I said he was a nice guy. I didn’t call him an idiot; in fact I complimented him on NOT being an idiot. Oh, but I had a hard time convincing some others that I was being nice. Evidently, as soon as they heard the words “Jesus freak” and “ex cop”, they reacted to what they thought I meant and not to what I said. And that, my friends, is a very foolish way to get through life. I have found that I can save myself a lot of embarrassment by listening to what is said and not what I think the speaker means. I once heard a saying that has stuck with me since the day I heard it: “You have two ears and one mouth. That means you should listen twice as much as you talk.” Words to live by.

Although conversations with friends can provide endless examples of non-communication, advertisers are, aside from politicians, the absolute worst offenders when it comes to butchering the language and making it seem acceptable to do so. Here in Florida, there has been a radio commercial running lately for female knee replacement. Apparently, male and female knees have subtle differences, which makes perfect sense. In the commercial, a male voice is speaking of knee replacement surgery, and is repeatedly interrupted by a female voice who shrilly blabs what the male voice was going to say anyway, as if hearing about female knee surgery from a female is more convincing. I say, fine and dandy and I agree that women might feel more comfortable hearing it from someone of their own gender. My problem is that by interrupting the male voice, it is implied that those stupid men couldn’t possibly understand a woman’s physiology, and their voices should be drowned out as soon as they start speaking. Well, not only is it just plain rude to interrupt when someone else is talking, but from my (possibly myopic) viewpoint, those who interrupt should be given no credence whatsoever. I wonder what board of executives agreed that rudeness, especially when it comes to medical procedures, is a good way to attract customers.

How I would love to continue to provide examples of our abysmal failure to communicate, but you get the picture. I often wonder how we have managed to get as far as we have given the deplorable state of our spoken interaction. Do me, and more importantly, yourself a favor the next time you are talking to someone. LISTEN to what they’re saying and if asked a question, ANSWER IT. You might think you know what the person wants, but chances are they probably just want to know what they’ve asked. It’s really not very hard.

Advice 101

2007-10-17T18:58:00.000-05:00

I read with interest an essay posted by a friend the other day that endeavored to offer advice to the younger generation. Her blog, “This Happy Breed”, is listed in my links to the right, and it’s worth a read. I am a bit of a curmudgeon. I’m not so sure that young people want to hear what we geezers have to say (especially when it comes to sex). I know I spent a good deal of time in my youth ignoring what I later found to be sage advice (and I thanked my lucky stars that no adults ever offered any type of sex advice. I was happy to blunder through that on my own). Why, then, do I feel the need to emulate my colleague and offer unsolicited advice to ears that are most likely deaf? I don’t know. The goal, I suppose, would be to save them from making the same mistakes I have made, but no lesson really hits home like the ones experienced. We can get ideas from reading of others’ misfortunes, but an idea is just that, whereas a rude and often painful awakening is a personal experience that leaves a mark not soon forgotten. And so, with a less than enthusiastic hope that my words will be read by those who need to hear them the most, much less taken to heart, I still want to humbly offer them.

ON RELATIONSHIPS: You have quirks and so does everyone else. The trick is to find someone whose quirks you can put up with while they simultaneously put up with yours. Don’t judge your mate by how he or she looks, but rather by how they react to you, and you to them. Mistrust, harsh words and ill will are the road signs to failure, no matter how beautiful the ride.

ON LEARNING: Strive to learn as much as you can about as many things as you can. Learn a little about a lot of things and you will be an interesting person. Keep in mind that the more you learn, the more you will realize how much you don’t know.

ON FOOD: Taste everything at least once. And by all means, taste with your mouth, not your eyes. If you don’t like it, then don’t eat it again. Never criticize another’s cooking, at least within earshot of the cook.

ON FEAR: Don’t be afraid of things you don’t understand. If you fear something, find out what makes it tick. Chances are you’ll find that it’s not that scary.

ON RELIGION: NEVER let someone else tell you that they know what God or any other deity thinks. This is very important. Beware the people who claim to know what gods want.

ON PEER PRESSURE: Much like the previous subject, don’t let others tell you what you can and can’t do. Keep your eyes open. If your friends are doing something that you KNOW is wrong and they want you to join, or it’s something that you don’t want to do, don’t do it. It really is that simple.

ON PETS: Don’t have one unless you are prepared to: Feed it. Clean up after it on a daily basis. Engage it so it has a meaningful life. Know that it’s going to die and leave a hole in you that will never fully close.

ON LIVING: Every day that you draw a breath is a good day. It beats the alternative.

ON JUDGING PEOPLE: This can be a toughie, and you should know that you’re going to make a mistake and trust someone you shouldn’t. However, keep in mind that people who are nice sometimes and sometimes not are not nice people. Never trust someone who’s nice to you but rude to others.

ON BEING A GOOD PERSON: This should be a no-brainer. The golden rule (or karma, if you like) applies. If you wouldn’t want it done to you, don’t do it to others.

There are, of course, many lessons to be learned in life, and my list is by no means comprehensive. However, if you are of a mind to take advice, check out this page (start with “life” as a topic) to hear what others say are keys to happiness, and what to watch out for. Many of them are clichés, but if they had no value, they wouldn’t be clichés, would they?

NOTE: Thanks, Angie for inspiring me to write this, although I still don’t think it will do any good. If I may quote Willa Cather: “The dead might as well try to speak to the living as the old to the young.” I just love that one!

War Stories

2007-10-08T20:39:00.000-05:00

Regular readers know I’m not a big fan of television. So much of the programming on American television is banal, mind numbing tripe, and I often wonder how it is that we can be a world superpower and still find ourselves satisfied to be spoon fed so-called “reality” shows and think it’s good entertainment. Now, before you haul off and call me an uppity snob, I want to be the first to say that there is a time and a place for mindless distractions. Those of us in the working class need and deserve a little time spent watching contrived sitcoms or inane game shows, if only to allow us a brief escape from the ennui of daily routines. Sometimes it’s good to forget about how difficult life can be, if only for a little while, and I certainly wouldn’t begrudge anyone that small luxury. Fortunately, all of television isn’t a glaring, blaring miasma of idiocy; every so often I’ll see something on the box that renews my faith in the intelligence of Americans, and sometimes, I’ll see something that really moves me. This week has been one of those times when I am actually glad I have a television set.

I have sung the praises of PBS in the past, and I’m happy to say that it is one of the few channels I can receive. I have been watching the new Ken Burns documentary called simply, “The War” this week, and if you haven’t been watching it, you’re really missing something. With each episode, I am struck with many different emotions, and I won’t bore you with them right now. Suffice to say that for the first time in my life, I have been literally moved to tears by television.

I don’t know if it’s the current war we’re engaged in or if it’s because I’ve been living alone for so long, or if my emotional stirrings are due to the frank yet powerfully poignant style of the presentation of the documentary, but I do know that I found it very difficult to watch the show without feeling a connection to the stories and lives of people who lived so long ago. Since the dawn of the written word, and later, with motion pictures, war stories have been told and retold to the point where most people simply don’t realize what a horrific event a war is. Epic poems and Hollywood tell the tales mostly from the winner’s point of view, and it is a rare occasion that we hear the human side of the story. As I watched the documentary, I found myself thinking about wars in general, and I decided that it doesn’t matter if you were a member of the axis or the allies, the Normans or the Saxons, the Viet Cong or the Americans. Lost in the stories of political victories and defeats are the human stories. It doesn’t matter if the combatants were tunnel rats in Vietnam or infantry at the Battle of Hastings: The fact remains that no matter which side you were on, there were women and children waiting helplessly for the inevitable bad news.

“The War” tells a story of World War 2 that focuses on how the cataclysmic struggle of 1938-1945 affected four small American towns. Hometown boys from Main Street went off to the far corners of the world to fight the enemy; many of them never returned, and many that did were maimed and broken, both physically and mentally. In many ways, World War 2 is looked upon with a sort of nostalgic wistfulness, but the naiveté of the soldiers is a timeless factor in the endless endeavor we call war. Spurred by patriotism, our boys (and girls) fight to preserve the way of life we think is right, and there can be no doubt that there are those who would take that way from us and impose their will upon the weak and helpless (or unarmed). “The War” illustrates that point perfectly.

I thought long and hard as I wrote this, and have re-edited it several times. I found myself going off on tangents that have been beaten to death by authors much more experienced than myself. The simple fact is that until there are no longer men who would subjugate peace loving people, war is, in every sense, a necessary evil. Many of the testimonials given in Burns’ documentary expressed frustration and a lack of understanding as to why they were on the other side of the world, fighting and dying for what they perceived as a politician’s war. When the Nazi concentration camps were liberated, however, those in Europe saw first hand the true reason for their presence. Much is made of the Jewish experience, and rightly so, but keep in mind that the Nazis killed almost double the six million Jews; homosexuals, handicapped, gypsies, Russians and other prisoners, all guilty of an accident of birth fell victim to Hitler’s voracious killing machine. In the Pacific theater, the Japanese war machine, although not as blatantly murderous as the Nazis, was equally adept at dividing and conquering, and had both sides been able to achieve their goals, one can only surmise that the end result would have been a war between the two factions for control of the world. They were allies, but only as long as it benefited them. They would surely have turned on each other; they knew no other way, and for a reason that baffles me, they could not see that.

As I said, the show moved me, even though the events were so long ago that within another decade or so, there will not be one veteran of that conflict left alive. Modern events, though, assure us that there will always be more inductees into the veteran’s organizations, and it makes me literally weep for our kind. We do great things, but we also do horrible things to each other. Our propensity for good needs to overcome our desire for power, and until it does, we will need a crop of young men to feed our absurd bloodlust. The key to stopping wars between men is really very simple: Every people of the earth must not allow themselves to be led by the ignorant, nor be duped into believing that wrong is right. The “golden rule” must apply to everyone, or it means nothing. The veterans of every war know that, and we should be thankful to them for being forced to learn the lesson that so many of us know by heart but do not fully understand. We need to hear their stories so that the day will come when all we have left of war IS old stories.

Good News!

2007-10-02T18:49:00.000-05:00

Hello, readers. I'm sorry I've been out of touch for so long. Much has been happening, and I'm happy to say that I finally have a decent job. I've moved, and as hoity-toity as it sounds, I'm editing technical journals, and am having a great time doing it. I still don't have internet as often as I'd like (stupid wireless glitches), but I'm working on it. For what it's worth, I have written an essay about war, and I hope to post it within a day or so, after I've edited it. Thanks for waiting, and I promise I'll be posting more regularly very soon. By the way, Robin, my email has not changed. Toodles for now!

Out of Touch

2007-09-25T19:27:00.000-05:00

Hello to my few loyal readers. I'm currently in a place where internet access is difficult. As soon as I get this remedied, I'll have some stuff to post. I've actually written some stuff, but can't get it online just yet.

Peace, Drugs and Rock & Roll

2007-09-10T00:19:00.000-05:00

Anybody who has read this blog on a somewhat regular basis knows that one of the things that really gets under my skin is institutions (be they religious or political) that feel morally obligated to tell others what to think and when to think it. I get so tired of people who think they know what’s best for the rest of us going out of their way to help save us from ourselves. I can’t think of more apt examples for words like audacity and arrogance. And oddly enough, my beef today is with words. Actually, just one word, a word that the FCC has decided we are not allowed to hear.

Is it what many consider a crude word, like the infamous “F” word that millions use on a daily basis, but aren’t allowed to hear broadcast publicly? No. Is it what the bleeding hearts consider a racial slur, like the “N” word, a word used flippantly by those who (often in the same breath) chastise others for using? No. Is it a blasphemous word, the use of which can be cause for arrest and even beheading in backwards countries ruled by zealots? No. In fact, it is a common word, a word so mundane and ordinary that it can be seen plastered on neon signs in just about every town in this country. The word we are no longer allowed to hear is “drugs”.

The popular Canadian band “Nickelback” has a song called “Rockstar” that was released just a month ago, and in that song, the newly dreaded “D” word is used not once, but five times. I think I was fortunate, because I inadvertently heard it before it was censored. I liked it the first time I heard it, and in spite of the “D” word usage, it didn’t make me want to sell everything I own and become a junkie, which is apparently what the FCC thinks will happen if people hear the words “drugs” or “drug dealer”. It’s as if hearing the word will cause people to deviate from their normal line of thinking and embrace the ideology of cultural icons, of musicians, of people they have never met. Let’s follow that line of logic for a minute.

Consider these lyrics, written by a musician so dangerous that the FBI felt the need to keep a file on him:
“Imagine no there’s no countries/it isn’t hard to do/nothing to kill or die for/and no religion too/Imagine all the people/living life in peace…” The man, of course, was John Lennon, and his subversive message was, quite simply, world peace. Call me crazy, but I’m pretty sure that song reached a lot more people than Nickelback’s latest, and I don’t seem to remember hearing that formerly hostile people realized the error of their ways after hearing that song. By the same token, I just don’t see hordes of previously law abiding citizens (yes, even the young ones) giving up on sobriety because of Nickelback and frantically phoning the local crackheads for some rock. The obvious point is, I really don’t think that hearing the lyrics to a song is going to change someone’s behavior, and it angers me that there is a federal agency with, no doubt, a multi-million dollar budget deciding what words must be bleeped out of the public’s consciousness. It’s absurd.

For the edification of the FCC, I say this: As long as people behave like, well, people, and feel the need for a reality beyond that provided by the standard five senses, they are going to use drugs. The Nickelbacks and the Ozzy Osbournes of the world did not start a drug epidemic and I don’t think they can make it any worse. And for Pete’s sake, everybody knows that forbidden fruit is the sweetest. Attempting to demonize drugs only makes them more desirable. By attempting to hide the lyrics of the song, you are ensuring that more attention is going to be paid by a public who, as it happens, actually enjoys listening and deciding for themselves what they like and what they don’t.

I’d like to prattle on some more on this topic, because it’s such a good one, but I just heard Bobby Darin’s “Mack The Knife”, and I feel the need to do some schmoozing with the floozies that will line up at my door after I kill a few men. I don’t want to, but I just can’t help myself. The music has moved me.

Deewee

2007-08-29T18:53:00.000-05:00

In 1997, I was convicted of an “OUIL”, which means “operating under the influence of liquor”. In short, I got a DUI, or “deewee” as the phonetic punsters like to say. It’s a funny, almost Seussian word for describing an event that is anything but funny. But you wouldn’t know it isn’t funny by seeing the sentences recently meted out to Lindsay Lohan and Nicole Ritchie, both convicted of multiple DUIs. Pundits and bloggers alike have no doubt already beaten this topic to death; to say that celebrities get a different kind of justice is to repeat what everyone already knows. However, I want to weigh in on this subject from what I hope is a different point of view, and I’m sure it’s one that is not going to be popular, but that’s OK. If Lindsay Lohan can spend one day in jail and perform 10 days of community service for a second DUI (cocaine possession is apparently not a crime in California), and Nicole Ritchie can serve 84 minutes in jail for a second offense, with no fines and no license suspensions, then I don’t have a problem with my unpopular views.

That rich people get a different brand of justice is an unfortunate reality and it pisses me off, and it should you too. But the bigger problem here is in the drunken driving law itself. We have laws in place because a society without them just wouldn’t work. There has to be accountability for transgressions. If you steal or kill or rape you should be punished. If you commit an act that harms another person, you are guilty. Read that again. If you commit an act that harms another person, you are guilty. We put people in jail for things they have done.

Remember George Orwell’s “1984”? You’ll recall that they had “Thought Police”, a force that found people guilty of thinking what the state considered wrong thoughts. In Orwell’s frightening (and not implausible) world, people were punished for merely thinking the wrong way. They were punished for things they might do. It’s ridiculous, right? Orwell was of course being satirical, but in a very prophetic way. He knew that it is a very small leap to go from crimes committed to crimes merely thought of. How could we possibly punish people for thinking or for crimes they might commit? Well, my friends, I’m no lawyer, but isn’t the drunk driving law set up to punish people for something they might do?

If you drink and drive you might hurt someone (and believe me when I say that there is absolutely no excuse for injuries and deaths caused by idiots who are drunk behind the wheel), you should be severely punished. If Lindsay Lohan had hurt or killed the woman she was obviously menacing, or if Nicole Ritchie had done the same to someone while she was driving on the wrong side of the freeway, we would be shocked and angry. But would we look the other way because they’re celebrities? Would their fame somehow mitigate their crime? They’re obviously stupid, but we can’t put people in jail for being dumb. How bad do you think our prison overcrowding system would be if every moron you know had to go to jail? But, by speculating on what they might have done, aren’t we behaving like Orwell’s thought police; aren’t we vilifying them for something that didn’t happen?

This argument is hair splitting, at best; drunk driving is a recipe for disaster, but not every drunk driver kills or hurts someone when they do it. I guess my main point is that if it were you or me who was caught behaving like these stupid spoiled whores (a nod to South Park) we would suffer consequences that quite often destroy us little people. You pay the state a fine and lose your license, but in many states you are additionally forced to do penance by attending alcoholics anonymous, a blatantly Christian organization, as if God can help you to not be so stupid. You are also punished by the insurance companies with higher rates for up to five years. If you want to change jobs, background checks can and do follow you and hinder you, perhaps indefinitely, with the fact that you’ve already paid your societal debt ignored. All this and more for being stupid and doing well…nothing. Again, I’m not a lawyer, but I thought that you could only be punished once for a crime that you actually committed.

If you or I or any regular person gets a DUI, we are looked upon as the dregs of society, a menace to all things good and wholesome, and we bear watching for the rest of our lives with the slavering state ready to pounce on us should we step out of line again. And, as everybody knows, if you get more than one DUI, you are punished for the new offense and the first one as well. It can ruin your life for years. Again, somehow, the constitution has been rewritten to make sure that we are punished twice for the same crime. But as we have witnessed the Lohans and the Ritchies can and do commit multiple drunken driving offenses, and the public watches eagerly because they are different than us, and the second or third offense might be the one that turns them around and boosts their career. I’m waiting for them to pull a Michael Vick and find Jesus, because I know He has nothing better to do than to make sure that celebrities are not held to the same standard as the little people.

As a final note, I want to say that I am not endorsing drunk driving. I am sorry for the people, good people who have lost a loved one because of another person’s stupidity. All I’m saying is that legislation that punishes for crimes that might happen is a dangerous thing. And in case it didn’t show, I’m angry that popularity is both a license for arrogant behavior and a viable defense for being an idiot.

Call Me Hawk

2007-08-13T00:03:00.000-05:00

I love “Mad” magazine. I haven’t read it in years, but some of my fondest childhood memories are of slumber parties (where my parents weren’t) where I could sit with my buddies and read “Mad” and “Vampira” and “Famous Monsters of Filmland.” I could go on and on about “Mad”, and how much I loved some of the artists. Don Martin, Al Jaffee, Sergio Aragones and the “usual gang of idiots” never failed to amuse and yes, I’ll say it, educate me. In particular, I remember a short lived series by Al Jaffee called “Hawks and Doves”, and I’ll be damned if I can find any information on the series, but the basic premise was that officer Hawks was always in opposition to Private Dove(s); it was juxtaposed against the Vietnam War. As I remember, the strip did not take sides, and instead skewered both for their views, which ultimately lead the young reader to realize that neither side had the upper hand. The bottom line was that killing each other was a bad idea no matter how you sliced it, and for years, I clung to that philosophy. Today, however, I am going to deviate from that. I am going to be hawkish. Read a little more, and if you don’t agree with me, fine. I will gladly recant my position if a suitable argument can be provided to refute my stance, which is simply this: If we (and I mean everybody, not just America) do not stop the Taliban in Afghanistan, we will at best have blood on our hands, and at worst, become victims ourselves.

As of this writing, the Taliban say they will release two of twenty one South Korean captives in exchange for the release of 21 Taliban prisoners held in Afghanistan prisons. Doesn’t this seem fair, in a way? Kind of? Maybe? Well, no, it doesn’t. It doesn’t even resemble fair play. In fact, it is a perversion of what we would think fair play is. 23 South Korean Christian relief workers in Afghanistan were taken prisoner in late July. Two have already been shot in cold blood, murdered by the Taliban, and now, under the guise of diplomacy, they want to negotiate for the release of the remaining 21. Just today, the Taliban captors say they are engaged in talks to successfully secure the release of two sick Korean women, as if they are somehow suddenly compassionate captors. “God willing,” they say, the captives will be released, if, of course, the Taliban prisoners held in prison are released. The Taliban would have you believe that it’s not them, but Allah himself who is responsible.

I want to spread my hawkish wings and sharpen my hawkish beak and say that if anyone goes out of their way to negotiate with the Taliban, they are legitimizing terrorist tactics, and giving credence to the notion that kidnapping and murdering innocents is an acceptable means to an end. If this were the way the world worked, any country could kidnap a bunch of North Koreans, (or Iranians) and murder a few, and then negotiate the release of the rest to put a stop to their nuclear weapons program. Or maybe, they could kidnap some Dutch residents and show those pot smoking, prostitution-friendly deviants that their lifestyle won’t be tolerated. (That’s just an example, of course. It is my goal to visit Amsterdam just once before I die.) My obvious point is that America, and every other civilized culture doesn’t resort to that sort of barbaric, prehistoric behavior because we’ve realized that it is inhumane, and counterproductive to the growth of the species. The cretins of the Taliban, however, seem to be stuck in the cave, and can’t find their way out. In fact, I don’t think they want to, which is why I think we should wipe them off the face of the earth. And by the way, when I say “we,” I mean every thinking, empathetic person no matter what their country of origin.

The obvious argument here is that two wrongs don’t make a right, and if I’m advocating murder, I’m no better than them. The difference, though, is that they murder proactively, (and they won’t stop) whereas I am being reactive. They are in all respects a cancerous tumor, and as we would remove an infection from a body, we must remove the Taliban from the body of humanity before they infect and destroy it. The doves among us would cry for reeducation, and I’m not completely opposed to that, but they often fail to understand that this sort of religious fervor is instilled at a very young age. I remember learning things at a young age, and some of those things are ingrained so deeply that I’m not sure I could change my mind about them, and that’s the problem with reeducation. You and I know that it’s wrong to steal and lie and kill, but in order to understand the Taliban mentality, you must understand that the children are taught, just like you and I were, that killing is good if done in the name of God. Think about that for a minute. The lessons that most people learn (golden rule stuff) are a part of our collective being, and although it’s hard to believe, there is another school of thought that believes the opposite, that killing is good if done for the right reason, and it is just as ingrained in them as it is in us. I would spare the children (although I’d keep a close eye on them) and kill the men. I would do this because I know that if given the chance, they would do the same to me. Am I being paranoid? Maybe, but consider that if a militant Taliban zealot were to read this, I would be marked for death for speaking my mind.

Did you know that under Taliban law, it is a crime for women to laugh loud enough to be heard? That it is a crime to listen to music or watch movies or TV for anyone? That a person can be executed for possessing literature deemed “inappropriate”? Did you know that all people are forced to pray five times a day; failure to do so is cause for execution. There are those who would say it’s not our business to be the police of the world, but can you stand idly by in the enlightened 21st century and watch this sort of treatment inflicted on fellow human beings? People should not be punished for the crime of being born in Afghanistan. If we do nothing, we are just as guilty as the zealots of the Taliban. We are the world’s police and believe me, they want us to intervene.

Is the Taliban evil? Maybe not in the biblical sense, but in the realistic sense, it is. I am loathe to discredit alternative philosophies; indeed I welcome them as a means to improve, or at least, expand my own perspective. But the virtual enslavement of people and the kidnapping and killing of innocents is a way I cannot accept, and to see it in action in our time is anathema. It makes me sick and it should make you sick too. I’ve used this euphemism before, and I want to make it clear that I don’t use it in a cavalier fashion, so people please listen. Make no mistake: If thinking people do not crush the Taliban way of thinking, there will be no more thought.

More Blurbs

2007-08-09T01:52:00.000-05:00

I’ve been rather slack about new postings lately, mostly due to mundane problems that aren’t of any interest to anyone who reads this. These mysterious setbacks, however, make a very convenient excuse for not writing. To help myself get back in the swing I’m posting another column of short blurbs. I hope you find these satisfactory.

On Barry Bonds: As most of you know, I really don’t care much for organized sports, except for hockey. I don’t see how being able to put a basketball through a hoop or smack a baseball 400 feet warrants a multimillion dollar paycheck. Frankly, I find it obscene that the some of the highest paid people in our society are actors and athletes. We hold them in high esteem, as if they have done something meaningful or important. In any case, the baseball world was all atwitter with Barry Bonds breaking Hank Aaron’s home run record the other day. For some people, the fact that he used performance enhancing steroids means nothing, and that’s a real shame. It’s cheating, plain and simple, and to recognize his “achievement” speaks volumes for those who consider such things important. Bonds, of course, denies using such drugs, but his former trainer sits in jail for refusing to say if he supplied drugs to the new home run king. Much has been made of this, but I think it bears repeating: Athletes in their mid thirties do not naturally, in the space of one year, almost double their batting abilities along with their physical size. Bonds can deny all he wants, but he’s a cheater, and he knows it. He’s just hoping you won’t care. And if you don’t, shame on you.

There Are Worse Things Than Acne: A while back I wrote an essay about having to deal with the agony of acne. It was an awful thing to have to deal with, especially as an awkward teenager trying to survive puberty. All things, however, need to be put into perspective, and I got a big dose of that this evening while watching The Learning Channel. The episode dealt with the plight of a young teenaged girl in East Africa by the name of Pastina Nkotki. Her personality was one of any teenaged girl in any country, and it was immediately apparent that although we, as people, are separated by our countries and cultures, we are all basically the same creatures. She seemed normal in every way except one: She had an enormous tumor growing beneath her face. To call it a monstrous deformity is putting it mildly. For a short video that shows Pastina, click here. I think what struck me the most as I watched this show was Pastina’s attitude. Despite her appearance, she seemed perfectly normal, and she was. Her relatives thought her bewitched, and hid her from sight lest they be outcasts in their village. They were literally dirt poor, and couldn’t afford modern medical treatment. During the show, Pastina was shown laughing and crying, talking and silently thinking, and behaving in every way except for her appearance like a normal child. It was literally heart wrenching, and I was ashamed as I watched her, ashamed for thinking that acne was a horrible cross to bear. There’s no happy ending here either, as Pastina died just three months after the surgery to remove the tumor. I couldn’t help but think that if I were in her shoes, I don’t think I’d be nearly as strong as she was.

Punishment Fits Crime: Many times, it seems, we put people in jail for crimes that really don’t warrant jail time. Jail overcrowding is a serious problem, and I really don’t see how putting non violent offenders in with those who really do belong locked up serves justice. Call me crazy, but in today’s world, where image seems to matter much more than substance, I think the best deterrent for non violent offenders is to hit them where it hurts most: In the ego. I would like to see the return of public humiliation (and I don’t care how un-PC that is) in our justice system. Bring back the stocks and rotten tomatoes! Cruel and unusual? I think a little embarrassment is a good thing, and thankfully, I’m not alone. Philip Kolinski from Michigan was convicted of bilking unsuspecting donors by asking for scrap metal that he said he was going to use to build a memorial to US veterans. He took the donations, but sold the metal, having no plans to build anything. His punishment? He had to scrub a monument to veterans with a toothbrush while wearing a T-shirt that read “I Stole From Veterans.” Now that, my friends, is how our justice system should work for non violent offenders. Not just generic, anonymous community service, but shame. It’s a powerful motivator. Here’s a picture and story of this dork serving his sentence.

With that, I’ll sign off. It’s a perplexing, sad and funny world all at once.

Murderous Movie Mayhem

2007-08-02T13:01:00.000-05:00

You couldn't possibly know this, but I started this rant last night, and typed several pages before I realized I had gone way off topic. My beef today concerns the discrepancies between well established stories and themes that are a part of American pop culture and the positively shameless “re-working” by Hollywood to “improve” them. I can think of so many examples that it’s hard for me to concentrate, and I know I’m not the first person to lament the dumbing down of literature in film. Indeed, much of the pulp that flows out of Hollywood to be passed off as entertainment is truly insulting to thinking persons, and the outright audacity of movie makers’ plot changes when bringing classics to the screen is horrifying. Somebody has to keep sounding the alarm, though, lest we begin to believe that Hollywood knows what good entertainment is.

For context, let’s start with an old example. In 1975, Stephen King published “The Lawnmower Man” in Cavalier magazine, and it was later included in a collection of short stories called “Night Shift.” (If for some reason you haven’t read it, shame on you.) In 1992, the geniuses in Hollywood decided to make a movie with the same title, and even included King’s name in the title. Fans (like myself) who loved the story went to theaters expecting to see a fantasy/horror film with a bizarre plot and even some classic elements of Greek mythology. (King himself says his work is the McDonald’s of literature, but millions of satisfied customers can’t be wrong.) In any case, the movie had absolutely no similarities to the story at all. None. It was like going to see a film adaptation of Goldilocks with a brunette and no bears. King sued to have his name removed from the title, and in my opinion, he was being more than civil. If it were me, I think I would have used the murderous lawn mower on those who butchered my story.

In the present, the same problem still exists, and it’s getting worse. Tomorrow a film adaptation of the classic cartoon “Underdog” will hit theaters. I haven’t seen it, but I’ve seen the promotional ads, and I can tell you right now that the cartoon I loved as a child is nothing like the sappy, contrived shit that’s going to try to pass itself off as an homage to an American pop culture icon. You should be able to tell this is bugging me, as most of my loyal readers will notice that I rarely use profanity in this blog, but this movie is profane, and it deserves the worst treatment I can give it. Insult Underdog at your peril! And before anyone points their finger and accuses me of dismissing or deriding a movie I haven’t seen yet, let me say this: I loved the Underdog cartoon. I have seen the ads for the movie. There is no comparison. None.

The snippets we see in the promos portray Underdog as a snarky, wise cracking (live action) pooch whose utterances clearly imply that he is smarter than the bumbling humans that surround him. This attitude is completely out of character. Anyone who has seen the original Underdog knows that he is “humble and lovable.” Notice that humble is the first attribute used to describe him. With a penchant for speaking in rhymes, the cartoon Underdog was always polite, even when chastising villains. Wally Cox, who voiced the cartoon dog, must be spinning in his grave over the insipid dialogue, mundane delivery of those lines, and the overall distortion of the original character. I don’t have to see the movie to know that it’s going to suck; the promotional ads alone are all I need.

While I’m on the subject, how about I bash another movie coming out that, in my opinion, is going to seriously set back literary understanding for an unsuspecting generation of movie-goers? Any student of literature should cringe at the following announcement: Angelina Jolie is going to portray Grendeldame in an upcoming film adaptation of Beowulf. If you don’t know anything about Beowulf, again, shame on you. Wikipedia says Beowulf is “the single major surviving work of Anglo-Saxon heroic poetry…” in existence. It is the holy grail of written English literature. It is a printed work that is over one thousand years old; it is the only one of its kind. You could call it a classic, but it would be more apt to refer to it as THE classic.

I checked out the official movie site for the film, and found these quotes: After slaying Grendel (a monster), Beowulf “incurs the hellish wrath of the beast’s ruthlessly seductive mother.” Also, this quote: “Anthony Hopkins as the corrupt King Hrothgar.” The synopsis on the website was very short, but it was enough to provide me with some ammunition for my rant. Firstly, both Grendel and his mother, Grendeldame, are described CLEARLY in the story as being monsters. They do not speak. They do not seduce. They are monsters. They do kill and eat/drain blood from their victims, which is, in itself, a perfect way to portray them onscreen. Thanks to advancements in CGI, you would think Hollywood would relish the chance to bring a classic story to life without a guy in a rubber monster suit. But no, that’s not good enough. They have to give Grendeldame the power to appear as a human and to tempt and seduce the hapless men. How do I know this without seeing the movie? Call it magic, but I suspect that in order for Grendeldame to appear seductive, she’s going to have to appear as Angelina Jolie (whom, I admit, is very good at looking seductive). Again, the Grendeldame of the story does not seduce nor talk. She kills men, period.

Secondly, King Hrothgar is not corrupt. In fact, he is described as “protector” of the Danes, and if I may go one step further, he is based on a real person. He is not corrupt; in fact he is revered. He is thankful, although somewhat embarrassed that Beowulf has shown up to help him defeat the pall that Grendel has cast on his castle. In short, he is a mortal who is to be saved by the superhuman hero. (This should ring some symbolism bells.) Written when Christianity was is its infancy, Beowulf is a told by a Christian author to a pagan audience. We certainly wouldn’t want THAT to be told to the modern audience. I don’t know what kind of foolish “plot enhancements” the Hollywood whores will come up with, but you can be sure of this: They will be contrived, transparent, and wholly unnecessary elements that have nothing to do with the original story.

I will admit that it must be very difficult to bring the images of the written word to life on the big screen. The main problem, of course, is that readers see their own images and put their own faces on characters, and many times the movie images do not jive with what the reader has imagined. I will also admit that sometimes this works. For instance, in the novel “Jaws,” the character of Quint is described as being bald; Robert Shaw was not. However, his portrayal of Quint was mesmerizing. I can overlook that sort of thing. Indeed, in order to enjoy movies, it is necessary to suspend disbelief; no one would enjoy werewolf movies if they remained grounded in the fact that no such creature exists. I have no problem with monsters or supernatural occurrences in film. I do, however, have a problem with changing the core elements of characters or plots from literature or previous movies/TV and passing them off as faithful renditions of classics. I cannot figure out why so many movie makers feel it necessary to change what was a perfectly good story. Like a child in a store with shining baubles, they just can’t seem to keep their hands off, and they leave greasy fingerprints on what they’ve touched.

Vengeful Gods

2007-07-22T14:48:00.000-05:00

Hello loyal readers. I think the last essay on religion angered somebody or something. My computer was struck down by a power surge the next day, and now I'm waiting to get it back. I'm writing this from the public library, but hope to have my own machine back early this week. I'm also being timed, so I have to go, but before I do, I wanted to say that I asked probably 8 random people where the library was here in this town, and it took that many to find one who knew. More on that later. TTFN!

Sunday Best

2007-07-16T12:38:00.000-05:00

Yesterday was Sunday, the day of rest, and I did my biblical best to not do much of anything. I didn’t create a universe this past week, but I did enough to lie around without feeling guilty. I did do a good deed this week, though, which I will relate in a moment, but first, I want to highlight a couple of the more godly events I ran across this week, events and actions carried out by people much closer to God than I.

The story that runs here is a shining example of Christian religious tolerance. The pope, as you may know, is practically the right hand of God himself. I’ve never really understood how being elected to the position by cardinals (men) somehow elevates the “winner” to demigod status, allowing him to be able to speak for God (when the day before he couldn’t), but that’s another story for another time. In any case, the thrust of this story is that Pope Benedict XVI, by virtue of his exclusive hotline to heaven, was able to announce to the world that the Catholic Church is, in fact, the only true church in the world. One of the proofs of the claim is that they alone enjoy apostolic succession, which means they can “trace their bishops back to Christ’s original apostles.” This is quite a feat, given that even in the Bible, the supposed word of God himself, biblical genealogical succession is, even to the novice, fraught with discrepancies. As a simple illustration, read the genealogical succession of Jesus in both Matthew and Luke. Without getting on my biblical errancy soapbox, the simple point is that oral tradition cannot be accepted as fact by reasonable people. I don’t know how it was two thousand years ago, but when I worked in a factory, somebody at one end of the plant could cut their finger, and by the time the news reached the other end of the plant, the injury had evolved into an amputation at the shoulder. So, Pope Benedict’s proclamation needs to be taken for what it is: an attempt by a person of dubious authority speaking for God, presenting fiction as fact.

I don’t want to pick on the Catholics too much, but as this story shows, they’ve been fairly busy this week. Once they asserted that they are the “one true church,” they found themselves in the news again just days later, although probably not for the reason they would like. In Los Angeles, the largest payout ever as recompense for sexual molestation charges against priests was ordered this week: $660 million dollars. According to the Associated Press, that amount pushes the total amount paid by the church to its secretly violated adherents (mostly children) to over 2 billion dollars since 1950; apparently if you were molested before then, too bad. In any case, that’s a lot of money. I would go one step further and say that that’s a lot of money that could be used for better things than to pay off the victims of sexual predation by the agents of God’s one church, but what do I know?

Let us turn now from the Catholics to Islam, the so-called “religion of peace.” This story helps to illustrate their benevolent nature. In today’s world arena, there isn’t a day that goes by without the words “Islam” or “Muslim” being mentioned in any given newscast. Muslim terrorists kill themselves and others by at least the hundreds every day. In the war on terror, America does have some allies in the troubled Middle East, including the best known one of Saudi Arabia. Nothing bad happens there, because they’re our friends, right? For the time being, I suppose they are, in that they’re not overtly involved in terrorist activities. However in this theocracy if you happen to be in violation of any of their numerous religious laws, you could find yourself in the unfortunate position of being punished by having your head chopped off in a public square and your body displayed in public as a deterrent. This is God’s law. The sentence is most often carried out next to a mosque, so I guess that makes it “holy” somehow. In fact, there is nothing secular about their system of justice; more often than not, offenders are tortured until confession, which provides the basis for imposition of the sentence. When we hear of the Salem witch trials we wonder how we could have been so obtuse as to sanction public execution based on forced confession, and yet it happens in Saudi Arabia as I write, and they are well on their way to exceeding their 2005 record execution rate of 191 persons in 2005. In Saudi Arabia right now, a nineteen year old Sri Lankan nanny awaits death by beheading because a baby in her care choked to death while she bottle fed him. She could be spared if the grieving family says the word, but they refuse to do so. Today, June 16, is the day the sentence is to be carried out.

There is a very interesting article here that relates the fundamentals of Islam. I urge you to read it, but if you don’t, here it is in a nutshell: God (Allah) is always right, and so is Muhammad. God can change his mind. Early verses in the Qur’an are superceded by later ones (abrogation), so Allah can say “love your enemies” and later say “kill all non-believers,” and the latter verse is the one that is held to be the “the truth”, no matter what was said previously. Make no mistake: Islam is not a religion of peace; some say it’s not even a religion at all. You do the research and decide for yourself.

The previous stories were the result of some very casual research done on the internet this week, and all have the common thread of being religious in nature. At the beginning of this essay, I said I did a good deed this week. I don’t know if it’s religious or not, but again, you decide. I had some company this weekend who was visiting from the northern regions, and was very keen to spend a few days at the beautiful beaches here in Florida. We did, and on Saturday we found ourselves in a small pavilion in Siesta Key rinsing the sand off as we prepared to leave after a day at the beach. Since we didn’t want to leave our belongings unattended we took turns showering and changing. On a picnic table across from us sat two women and a badly sun burnt child. With a thick Russian accent, the elder woman asked if I had a cellular phone she could use. I said “Of course,” and she made a call. She didn’t receive an answer, and as she handed the phone back to me, she said she was trying to contact the person who was supposed to pick them up; they had been waiting for over an hour in the hot (and I mean HOT) weather. The middle woman, who couldn’t have been much more than 18 or 20 looked about 8 months pregnant; she was obviously hot and uncomfortable, and the child, who was 8 or 9, had upon her countenance the wince of pain from too much sun. The woman said they had no money and no clue as to when their ride was coming. My visitor quickly produced a couple dollars and bought sodas for the thirsty stranded trio. Amongst ourselves, my visitor and I agreed that the right thing to do would be to offer the women a ride to their motel, which was a mere 4 miles away. They readily accepted, and we took them to their room. They had no money, and none was expected. They were obviously very happy to be off the scorching beach, and the last thing the elder woman said was “God bless you.”

This essay isn’t meant to teach any moral lessons. It is merely a series of stories that bring a fraction of the human experience to light. I hope it does somebody some good. I think you can do yourself a favor, though, if the next time you sit in your church or kneel in your mosque, you ask yourself these questions: Is the core message of my faith that of peace and goodwill, and do its institutions reflect that? If the two answers aren’t “yes” and “yes”, you have a problem.

TV Wasteland, Vol. II

2007-07-11T00:05:00.000-05:00

I wrote an essay earlier this year with the same title, hence the “Vol. II” designation. Through a series of rather depressing events, I don’t even own a television now, but I do have access to one. I’m not sure if that’s good or bad. I still think watching television is a form of vampirism, lulling me into oblivion while it sucks my time away. Nothing at all like the internet, you know...

The Good: I find myself really enjoying the Food Network channel. There are so many interesting things there, although I must admit that I haven’t tried many of the recipes I’ve seen. OK, I haven’t tried any of them. But I mean to. I particularly enjoy “Good Eats” with Alton Brown. He makes everything look so simple, and when I finally get my hands on a DVR, I will be sure to record some of his shows to see if I can duplicate his results. But far and away, I think the best show on the Food Network is “Unwrapped” with Marc Summers. From pretzels to marshmallows, from hot dogs to butterscotch, watching how the foods so many of us love being prepared is, to me, endlessly entertaining. Having worked in a food processing plant for much of my adult life, much of the packing machinery is familiar, but I still find myself transfixed by the process of making cheese popcorn.

The Bad: As much as I like the Food Network, I cannot extend the same praise to an episode of “Weekend Getaway” hosted by Giada DeLaurentiis that I saw this evening. Now, I have nothing against Giada, and I do not mean to imply in any way that she is an inept hostess; in fact I have learned that she is an accomplished chef and caterer in her own right. The episode I watched tonight was filmed in New York City, and it was the food and prices that I found distasteful (ha!) and not her. The featured appetizer was known as “Taylor Bay Scallop Ceviche”, and whether or not it was intentional, the camera showed the menu as she ordered, and the price was $25. I live in Florida, and I know that scallops are not the cheapest seafood you can buy, but I was really taken aback when her order arrived consisting of four tiny bay scallops. Four. Call me a cretin, but four scallops for $25 is ridiculous. I know, I know, New York. I once went to a bar in NYC (The Oak Bar in the Plaza for you critics) with two companions. Two of us had a beer and the other had a bloody mary. The bill was $32. For $32 I could buy a case of beer, a half pound of shrimp, a fifth of vodka and a gallon of bloody mary mix and still have enough for a Hershey bar. On this trip Giada also had a pizza from Grimaldi’s, and we didn’t get to see the price tag, but I’m willing to bet it was more than $8. I guess my point is that I didn’t enjoy watching somebody spend outrageous amounts of money for tiny portions of food. If that makes me a cretin, so be it. Anybody who wants to foot my bill so I can try this wonderful cuisine and maybe change my mind is more than welcome to try.

The Ugly: Aside from Rosie O’Donnell, Nancy Grace has to be the most obnoxious person on television. I had heard of her, but never seen her until tonight, and I think I’ll spend the rest of my life wishing I hadn’t. In this evening’s episode, she was covering a “You Tube” video that showed a child no more than two or three allegedly under the influence of the drug ecstasy (MDMA). Don’t get me wrong, I think that if the video was authentic, and the child was drugged, the persons responsible for this type of behavior should be sterilized and forever banned from any contact with children, ever. The thing that bugged me, though, was Nancy’s shrill, repetitive squawking about how horrible it was. I think we got that in the first ten minutes of her raving while the video played on a loop, over and over and over. She had some panelists on as well, and one of them was a lawyer who said, or tried to say, that yes it was awful, but that, from a legal standpoint, it would be very difficult to press charges against any of the vehicle’s occupants because the child, although obviously under some sort of duress, was not being physically mistreated. Nobody was burning her with cigarettes or gouging her eyes. That the child had been given ecstasy was implied, but as far as the tape went, nobody knew for sure that that was what had happened. The trouble was, every time this guy tried to make his point, Nancy cut him off as though he were advocating the drugging and filming of children. His exasperation showed when he was repeatedly interrupted, but he never got the chance to finish answering the question Nancy herself had asked. It was as if she wanted to ask the question, but didn’t want to hear the answer unless it was a hand-wringing admonition of the vehicle’s occupants at least, or better yet, a call for a public execution. Maybe it’s just me, but if you are going to have a television show with a panel of guests to offer insight and opinion, wouldn’t it be prudent to listen to all of the opinions of all the panelists and then let the viewers decide? The one panelist who didn’t toe the opinion line seemed to be there solely as a whipping boy to give the illusion that if you don’t agree totally with Nancy, you do not deserve to be heard. It was a disgusting example of what passes for “unbiased” reporting on television.

And as an ironic note, a quickie research of both O’Donnell and Grace showed reports that both of them are vying for new shows: Grace to replace Rosie on “The View”, and Rosie to replace Bob Barker on “The Price is Right.” I’d rather watch Jerry Springer than either of these two harpies. I don’t think I need to repeat here that most television is indeed, a vast wasteland.

I’ve got more TV wasteland fodder, but I’m done for now. For those who are interested, the second part of “Me and Jack Webb” is almost finished. Watch for it on my "serious" blog (link to the right) soon!

A Trashy Tale

2007-06-23T12:33:00.000-05:00

A long time ago, in the land of Gaul near the village of Ghrebh, there lived a creature called Tasa. The villagers didn’t particularly like Tasa, but Tasa did a job that nobody else wanted to do. Tasa took care of the garbage. Every evening, before the streetlamps were lit to keep the goblins away, the villagers took their garbage to the hill past the village gates and dumped it over the side. All manner of foul things rolled down the hill, and each night, Tasa would sort them. The things of the earth would be returned to the earth, but the things that the villagers had made were left for a while. Eventually, the things were covered up by new layers, and the villagers couldn’t see them anymore, and thought they were gone.

Tasa took great interest in all the things that were sorted. Here were some eggshells from this morning’s breakfast, and over there some clippings from a young girl’s haircut. Tasa’s claws touched everything in the dump, carefully placing each where it belonged. Sometimes Tasa would find things that didn’t belong in the dump, things that were there too early. Tasa knew this, and would place them where the villagers could see them. They would arrive to dump the day’s load down the hill, and they would see the things that Tasa left on top, and sometimes they would want to get them back.

Tasa’s place was not a safe place for the villagers. The things that the earth didn’t want, sharp things and poisonous things and evil things waited for villagers who regretted tossing something in the dump. Tasa readily took anything the villagers wanted to throw away, but once on the heap, they belonged to Tasa.

It happened one day that two village children met on the path to the dump, each carrying something for Tasa to sort.

“Hello, Elizabeth,” said the first child.
“Hello, Christopher,” said the second. “Carrying your family’s scraps to Tasa, are you?”
“I wish it were scraps,” said Christopher. “I wish more than anything it was scraps I have in my basket.”
“Whatever do you mean?”
“It’s Kadiska. Kadiska is in my basket,” and with that, Christopher started to cry. Kadiska the cat had been part of the family for as long as Christopher had been alive. “Last night he curled up near the fireplace like he always does, but this morning, he was still there. I tried to get him awake so we could play, but he laid still. Mum looked at him and touched him too, but he didn’t move. We watched him for a while, then she said I should take him to Tasa. I wanted to wait, but Mum said to put him in the basket and take him to Tasa this minute.” Tears splashed atop the basket he carried close to his chest as he walked toward the dump.

“I don’t have anything but scraps,” said Elizabeth as she walked with Christopher. She didn’t pay any attention to his crying.

The two children stopped at the top of the hill and looked over the dump that yawned below them. A breeze tousled their hair and ruffled their clothing. “Oh I hate it here!” said Elizabeth. “It stinks here! I don’t know why I should ever have to come to such a horrid place!”

“We have to come here,” said Christopher. He knelt down with his basket at the top of the hill overlooking the place of Tasa, and tried to find the will to empty it. He couldn’t just throw the dead cat onto the pile and walk away, nor could he let it roll down the hill. His mother had made a bright blue velvet bow for Kadiska’s basket, and he could not toss it away like so much chicken bones and dust. Wracked with sobs, he said to Elizabeth, “I cannot throw this basket, and I don’t want to open it. I will walk down the hill and set it at the edge of the pile. Tasa will be able to find it. Tasa will know what to do with it.”

“Don’t be silly!” said Elizabeth. “It’s not alive and it doesn’t mean anything anymore! I’ll show you how to get rid of trash,” and with that, she flung open her basket and dropped the contents into the dump. As an afterthought, she pulled from her dress pocket a tattered doll with a blue dress, and in one motion, dropped and kicked it into the dump with the other refuse. As she turned to leave, Christopher was carefully making his way down the steep hill toward the edge of the garbage pile. She called over her shoulder, “You’re going to slip and cut yourself down there, and you’ll be sick for the rest of your life! Serves you right!” Her voice carried across the dump as she walked away and did not look back.

When Christopher got to the bottom of the hill, he stood at the edge of the heap. It was a sea of garbage. He could hear things skittering, moving beneath it. He set his basket with Kadiska in it down. He hated to leave it here, because this was the place of things unwanted, and he still wanted Kadiska. He looked at the basket for a few minutes, then a breeze wafted past him, carrying the stench of the dump. He turned and started up the hill, tears burning his eyes and the smell burning his nose. He had a lump in his throat that he couldn’t swallow. He sobbed as he climbed, and he promised himself he would never get that close to the dump again.

For a few days, Christopher’s mother did not make him go to the dump with the family trash, and for his part, he avoided the area completely. On the sixth day after Kadiska died, there was a great commotion at the dump, and all of the villagers clamored around to see what was happening. Christopher heard the excitement, and although he didn’t want to go near the dump, curiosity compelled him. As he approached it, he could see people standing at the top of the hill, looking down. It was very windy at the crest of the hill, and some of the people held their noses or had kerchiefs over their faces. Christopher got to the top of the hill and looked to see what all the fuss was about. He could see two men walking very carefully through the garbage. They were coming back to the edge. One man held the other’s hand to steady him; the second man had something over his shoulder. It was Elizabeth.

“What happened?” said Christopher to another child standing next to him.
“Elizabeth got in trouble because she threw something to Tasa that didn’t belong to her! She borrowed a doll and kept it, then threw it away! Her mother was going to punish her, but Elizabeth thought if she could get the doll back, she wouldn’t be in trouble anymore! She fell down in the garbage and now she’s going to die!” All the children talked excitedly of it, but Christopher wasn’t really listening. He didn’t want to, but he looked where he had placed Kadiska’s basket. It was gone. He felt the lump growing in his throat, not for Elizabeth, but for his cat. The wind blew again, and Christopher felt it carry something out of the dump to touch his leg. He looked down and saw it was the bow his mother had put on Kadiska’s basket. He put it in his pocket and walked away from the dump.

For weeks, Elizabeth lay with a fever. She was very sick. Even the village doctor did not know how to cure her, and he didn’t know how long it would last. The fever took all it could from her, and when it finally broke, Elizabeth was very thin and very weak. Her hands curled up like claws, never to be the same again, and she could not speak. Sounds came from her lips, but she could not make words, save for one: Tasa.

Years later, when Christopher was older and had a family of his own, he was dumping trash for Tasa when he heard a noise coming from the heap. He carefully crawled down the hill and there, at the edge of the stinking pile, was a crying kitten. Its fur was dirty, but its eyes were bright. It had gotten wedged beneath an old table. It was pinned and could not move. Christopher knelt down, and carefully, so as not to cut himself, pulled the kitten free. He stood up to leave, and the kitten looked up at him, still crying. He squatted back down, holding out his hands, and the kitten trotted right into them. He held it out to look at it; it was a mess. It meowed a tiny meow, and licked his thumb. For the third time in his life, he got a lump in his throat at the edge of the garbage pile. This lump was much easier to swallow, though, and it happened when, after carrying the kitten home and cleaning it up, he put the blue bow on it he had saved from Kadiska’s basket so long ago.

And what of Tasa? Tasa still sorts the trash for the villagers, arranging each thing to its place and keeping every unwanted thing tossed into the dump.

"Smokey Joe"

2007-06-16T11:05:00.000-05:00

I wish I could sing. I wish I had a voice that made people stop what they’re doing, no matter what it is, and make them feel compelled to loudly announce to everyone within earshot “I love this song!” I’ve done that, and so have you, if you’re normal. Sometimes you’ve got an air guitar or an air organ or air drums or an air microphone, and sometimes, if the song really moves you, you can play all air instruments and sing simultaneously. Sometimes you burst out to a less than sympathetic reception. You don’t get to pick the times that the music moves you, but when it happens, there ain’t no shyin’ away from it.

I hate to sound like an old fart, but when I was a kid, the only music you got was on the AM radio. You could buy 45’s, and that was cool, but unless you had a ton of money, you couldn’t have all the good songs, because there was a new hit every week, and anybody who listened to the radio knew what they were. Some say the music scene in the mid-twentieth century was homogenous, but they don’t understand. I challenge them to name just one song in the past few years that had America and the world singing and dancing at the same time. Aretha Franklin did it. So did Dusty Springfield and Otis Redding and a host of other acts that made up the “pop” scene of the 60’s. Everybody knew what the British Invasion was because every radio station played them. For that brief era, much of the world danced to the same tunes.

It would be unfair to pick out one as a favorite. Just when you thought you’d heard the coolest song ever, another would come out and replace it. My favorites changed from day to day, and they still do, even though they’re still all the same old songs. So while I can’t say what my definitive favorite is, I still want to add my homage to the man I think has one of the greatest voices I’ve ever heard: William Robinson Sr., better known as “Smokey.”

Smokey Robinson’s voice glides through my head like a pat of butter sliding across a warm skillet. Indeed, after he has sung a word, its velvety smoothness lingers, and it leaves me waiting for the next one. When I’m happy, Smokey’s voice cheers with me, and when I’m sad, the same voice consoles me. There is something about his voice that, for me, anyway, goes beyond mere auditory perception; it touches my soul. I daresay that if I were a woman and Smokey Robinson sung to me, I would melt on the spot and surrender. He writes songs with deceptively simple lyrics about love lost or desired, and he delivers them with that silky voice that could melt the iciest heart.

I’m not alone in thinking that Smokey’s lyrics are a thing of wonder. Bob Dylan called him “America’s greatest living poet,” and I couldn’t agree more. If you’ve ever tried to write poetry, you know how hard it can be to string words together that have the same number of syllables, rhyme, and make sense, all at the same time. So many songs end up sounding like they rhyme, but if you listen carefully, the meter is off. They’re cheating, squeezing extra syllables in, but not Smokey. And again, when he’s got the perfect idea in verse, he perfects it by singing, almost cooing like a dove, sounding for all the world like a divine messenger bearing tidings of great joy and comfort. Thank you, William “Smokey” Robinson.

Songs, of course, are ephemeral; they always end. One of the greatest achievements of humans was the invention of sound recording. The same song played at different times can evoke different feelings. The notes don’t change, but the mood of the listener does. It’s so hard to describe the magic of music. We know how it makes us feel, but how does it do that? Of course the music and the lyrics matter, but I sometimes think that it appeals to us on a much deeper level. Perhaps it’s merely the sounds of it that move us, like wind chimes. Sometimes you hear a song sung in a language you don’t understand but still enjoy. For all you know, the lyrics could be about churning butter, but the proper notes in the proper order can resonate around your brain and strike a chord in your being that can change your mood. That, my friends, is true magic.

EPILOGUE: There is much more to Smokey Robinson than is described above. I just happened to be listening to him when it struck me to make a feeble attempt at describing how his music moves me. A good article on him can be found here. And for the record, I like all the oldies. I like the Temptations, Herman’s Hermits, and all of the one-hit-wonders.

Pus 'N Boats

2007-06-12T12:23:00.000-05:00

I took a motorcycle ride today, and it was good. It was good to get out of the house and spend the day riding up and down the coast. It was very hot; even the breeze that normally cools me off on the road was sweltering at times, but that was OK, because as long as I was moving, I wasn’t covered with a sheen of sweat. I didn’t even notice the ridiculous sunburn I got.

I took a ride to Fort Matanzas, just south of St. Augustine, the oldest European settlement in what is now America. It’s a state park here in Florida, complete with nature trails and picnic areas. The actual “fort” is on the other side of the river, though, and a ferry takes visitors there every hour. Since I was close to the time of the next ferry departure, and I had nothing else to do, and the ferry ride was free, I decided I would go and see a bit of history. I wasn’t the only visitor there, but as a (very) amateur history buff, I would like to have seen more people looking to learn what happened before we got here. In any case, I shared the boat ride with about 15 other people. Among my fellow passengers was a teenage girl with an absolutely horrible case of acne, and braces to boot. She was truly a pitiful figure, appearance-wise, and when I saw her I remembered that there are worse things than being broke.

She had a couple of friends with her, and they were being chaperoned by someone I assumed was somebody’s dad. The two friends were, as far as teenage girls go, cute, and I’m sure they’re popular in their circle. I noticed, though, that the two “normal” girls spent a lot more time talking to each other than they did talking to the girl with the skin ailment, who spent most of her time quietly taking in the sights and sounds of a gentle ferry ride across the azure Matanzas River.

I struck up a conversation with the acne girl; to not speak would have been awkward, since we were sitting directly across from each other. Our conversation was friendly but banal; neither of us said anything earth shaking or profound, and I certainly didn’t say anything about her condition. There was, however, something unspoken between us, something much larger going on than two strangers chatting idly, and it was simply this: It didn’t matter to me what she looked like, and she knew it. I didn’t console or condescend to her one bit, and I’m sure she was grateful for that. In fact, I know she was. How? Because I have walked in her shoes.

When I was in high school, I had what is known as cystic acne. Large and unsightly (to say the least) boils covered my cheeks and back, and there was absolutely nothing I could do about it. My mother took me to dermatologists, but they were little more than medieval torture chambers, dispensing tetracycline and performing what they called “extraction”, a horrifying process I will leave to your imagination. It was agonizingly painful, both physically and psychologically. There were pretty young nurses working there, and the only reason I was there was because I looked like a monster. For a horny teenaged boy, it was hell on earth.

I had friends in high school, but I always wondered if I would have had more if I had been more normal looking. Some people were downright cruel, but I think the worst ones were those who utterly ignored me, or those who looked away with thinly disguised revulsion, as if I somehow chose and enjoyed my appearance.

I had no choice but to learn how to live with my condition. I carried on as best I could, and even had a few awkward dates, but not many. There was one girl in particular whom I really liked, but she was popular and extremely good looking, and I knew I had no chance with her. She was a cheerleader and she was in almost all of my teen fantasies, wearing her amply-filled sweater, a short skirt and her little cowboy boots with the tassels...Ooo, she was fine. Her name was Becky, and she was one of the very few popular kids who talked to me. She was genuinely nice, I think, and I fairly jumped with joy when she asked me to help her with a paper we had to write in an English class. For a blissful half hour, she talked to only me, and because I was a foolish, love struck teenager, I forgot I was ugly. It was great.

As we finished her paper, which she was very happy with, I took a chance and asked her if I could take her out to dinner. She touched my arm (heavenly) and declined, saying she had a boyfriend. I knew that, of course; girls like her always have boyfriends, and I also knew who he was, and further, that he would probably pummel me to death if he knew I had the audacity to hit on his girl. But she smiled when she turned me down, and as she gathered up her books and walked away, I congratulated myself for having the courage to at least try to be normal. Things weren’t as bad as I thought they were.

Still basking in the glow of Becky’s presence, I began to gather up my papers and books, and I heard a small sound, like a drop of water on paper. I looked down, and there, right in front of me, on a bright white page, was a fresh rusty colored splotch. In a nanosecond, I felt all of my insides drop to my feet. I gingerly touched my cheek, smile fading fast, and realized that all the time I had been sitting with Becky, smiling and laughing and having a rare, normal interlude, my pustule covered cheeks had been oozing a brownish cocktail of blood and pus. I had asked the best looking girl at school to dinner looking for all the world like a fresh Frankenstein. I wanted to crawl under a rock.

I talked to the girl on the boat because I know how she feels. I know her pain, and I remember mine. It doesn’t bother me like it used to, but I will never forget it. I like to think that she will remember a stranger who didn’t treat her as anything other than normal.

Piss Poor

2007-06-04T23:41:00.000-05:00

I’m just about to find out what it’s like to be piss poor. I have no money, very little food, very few cigarettes and I’m just about out of bourbon. I have no insurance (health or auto). I have paid the last of the bills that I can afford to pay. Things will start getting shut off very soon, which means I will no longer be able to post to this blog until I get some money, and as of now, there are more important bills than internet.

As I lamented in a previous entry, I cannot find a job. Even Ace Hardware didn’t call me back. It’s as though I’ve been blacklisted. I got a part time gig writing for a fledgling racing circuit keeping stats and writing race synopses, and I went to my first race ever this past weekend, but it got rained out, so no check from that. I went to South Carolina and back for nothing.

Even if I could afford gas, I can’t go anywhere because some asshole ran around the parking lot of my apartment building and let air out of all the tires. I’ll figure out a way to get the tires filled, but by Florida law, if your insurance lapses, your driver’s license is revoked and the police are notified. I cannot drive my car without breaking the law.

I will post again, probably in July. Until then, I simply don’t have the will to write anything. My mother used to quote Thumper’s Daddy and say, “If you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all.” Nobody wants to hear me whine, so I’m going to shut up for a while. Thanks for reading, and hopefully, I’ll be back soon.

Blurbs

2007-05-23T01:27:00.000-05:00

I like words. Words are our friends. I remember reading, or at least, leafing through a dictionary when I was very young (and bored), and it seems like every time I looked through one, I’d find a word that sounded interesting. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that “word” rhymes with “nerd”, but that’s beside the point. What I want to say in this installment is that as much as I like words, I don’t have very many of them lately, for reasons that are best left unsaid. And so, loyal readers, today’s entry is not an essay, but a collection of blurbs. And just so you know, the word “blurb” can be used as a transitive verb, although I have yet to see an example of that in a sentence.

Dictionary: I remember finding the word “fart” in a dictionary. I don’t remember if it was Webster’s or Funk & Wagnall’s, but the definition read: “an odiferous zephyr.” I thought that was just about the funniest thing I’d ever seen. I still think it’s funny.

God & Physics: Frank Tipler says he has definitive scientific proof that God exists. In a series of equations that I can’t begin to fathom, he “proves” an almighty algorithm. This seems like a big waste of time and effort to me, because I don’t believe that the creature can understand the mind of the creator. And if I were you, I would beware the person who says they do.

Functionally Drunk: I found a website (here) that unabashedly caters to people of my ilk. There’s too much funny stuff there to list here, so I’ll just quote something I saw there that made me laugh out loud. “You know you’re drunk when you step on your own fingers.” Why is that funny? Because I’ve done it.

Just Good TV: I don’t watch much TV; I only get about 17 channels, and among those, 2 are Jesus channels, 2 are Spanish channels, and one is C-Span. But, now and then because I’m a nerd, I find myself watching America’s Funniest Videos. No matter how dorky you think it is, it’s the best reality show on TV. It’s not from AFV, but have a look at this clip and tell me it’s dumb.

Soothsayer: Check the archives of this blog for “Political Rant Vol. II,” and notice that I correctly predicted that Mitt Romney’s faith would be an issue, and then refer to the “God and Physics” blurb above. Al Sharpton knows God, and so does Ted Haggard and even Osama Bin Laden. That should give you pause.

My Team: My hockey team petered out tonight. I don’t pretend to be a sports writer, but if the Detroit Red Wings had played the first two periods of tonight’s game like they did the third, I would be a much happier person. Maybe next year.

Youthful Exuberance: I visited the Museum of Science & Industry in Chicago when I was much younger, and I still remember all of the cool stuff I saw. Of all the wonders there, the one that sticks with me the most was a slice of an entire human body about a quarter inch thick pressed between two pieces of Plexiglas. I know a little girl who visited there this month, and I hope she finds it as fascinating as I did.

I think I’m finished for tonight, and I’ve come up with my own sentence using “blurb” as a transitive verb. I blurbed you.

Bless the Children

2007-05-16T16:07:00.000-05:00

I don’t have kids. I think I was probably 14 or 15 when I decided that raising children was something I did not want to do. I don’t hate kids, I just don’t want any. Because of this stance, I have been accused of being selfish for my decision, and have even had people insinuate that I am somehow committing a transgression against God himself for not going forth and multiplying. My decision to remain childless is my own business, but I say to you here and now: To have more than two children is to help destroy the human race.

There’s no doubt in my mind that overpopulation is the single largest problem facing every living person on this planet. Consider these (estimated) numbers: In 1802, the world population reached one billion persons. We know for sure that there were thriving civilizations at least 4000 years ago, so let’s work on the assumption that it took around 6000 years to produce one billion people alive on the earth at the same time. In 1928, the population reached 2 billion. What took 6000 years had been accomplished in just over 100 and it didn’t stop there. Just 70 years later, the world’s population tripled to 6 billion. That’s five billion children born in less than 200 years.

The fact is that unless every person on earth of reproductive age agrees to have no more than two children, which would keep the tally where it is now, we will continue to grow. Even if such a thing were possible (which it isn’t), there are still those who would cry “foul!” and assert that no one should be able to tell them how many children to have, and they’d be right. Selfish, perhaps, but right. The trouble is, though, that the planet we live on will support only a finite number of people no matter how great our strides in agriculture. The simple fact is that we are heading, no, rushing toward a catastrophe that will affect every single one of us.

In 1973, a movie was produced called “Soylent Green.” It is a bleak and terrifying glimpse into the future of a world overpopulated and starving, decimated by climate changes. (Sound familiar?) Natural foods are available only to the very few rich, while the general populace subsists on wafers manufactured by the Soylent Company. The twist is that the wafers are made from the dead (an inevitable consequence of being alive). The more people there are, the more dead there will be, and since living people have to eat, well…it is the only logical solution to feed an overpopulated world that has procreated itself to the point where it cannot feed its ever increasing numbers.

Nature has ways of culling the population in the form of disasters and diseases, and we humans do a pretty good job of killing each other off as well. Unfortunately, we are able to replenish ourselves at a much faster rate. Perhaps the most fundamental right of people is to reproduce, and there is no moral solution to overpopulation. I am sure, however, that an immoral one will come along. You may say that I am foolish and cynical, and I hope you’re right, but make no mistake: If we do not stem the current rate of reproduction, the world of “Soylent Green” is the horrific, inexorable destiny of our species.

Epilogue:
I started this essay after reading about a “drop box” for unwanted infants in Japan, and got off on the tangent of overpopulation. I’ve been wanting to write about it for some time, and I finally found my impetus. Read about the drop box here and ask yourself if this is a good idea. I’m not even going to touch the abortion issue save to say that planning is the key to solving this problem we all face, no matter what the Catholics say. And for those who think I’m being a shrill doomsday prophet, you need only look to the millions starving in the world right now and tell them I’m wrong. Better yet, feed them anti birth control literature and tell them it’s God’s will that they are born to starve.

Ghoulish Capitalism

2007-05-11T22:56:00.000-05:00

Capitalism, by definition, is the practice of seeing an opportunity, taking advantage of it and then exploiting it for profit. It is the foundation of American economics and the cornerstone of families like the Rockefellers and the DuPonts; first or second generation immigrants, who come from humble beginnings to rise to the top of the American dream. We admire these people for their ability to see an empty space in the demand and come up with a supply. Kudos to them, I say, and I’m certainly not naïve enough to think that they built their businesses without stepping on any toes. However, I think that sometimes the capitalistic infrastructure permits weasels into the hen house.

Fred McChesney is one such weasel. From the Associated Press: “Within hours of the [Virginia Tech] rampage, the Phoenix man began buying dozens of domain names (CampusKillings.com, VirginiaTechMurders.com, SlaughterInVirginia.com) in the hopes of selling them later to the highest bidder.” Even URLs using victims’ names have been purchased by strangers for sale later (at a huge profit), possibly to family members wanting to create an online memorial for their lost loved ones. Can you imagine, as a parent of a murdered child, having to pay to use the name you gave that child in order to create an online homage?

McChesney (and others) claim that it is capitalism, pure and simple. They believe that they are pursuing a victimless endeavor by exploiting victims. McChesney says "What I'm doing is the equivalent of rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic, period.” Maybe I’m stupid. Maybe I’m just blinded by the sheer thoughtless audacity of this practice, but I don’t understand what the hell that means. It would seem, in an effort to be clever, he is justifying his actions by cloaking a non sequitur as a rational explanation.

I was talking about this with a friend today, who seemed baffled by my outrage. He likened these actions to a funeral director trying to sell caskets, but again, I didn’t see the parallel. There is a definite need for funeral directors, and fortunately for them, they are in a business that has an endless, guaranteed clientele. Perfect capitalism. But I failed to see how McChesney and his ilk even remotely compare to legitimate funereal businesses. At the very best, these URL sellers are ghouls, victimizing not only the dead, but the living as well.

As I mentioned earlier, I’m sure the Rockefellers and the DuPonts stepped on some toes to build their empires, but part and parcel of the “American Dream” is hard work. In retrospect, the openings they saw seem like gaping holes to us, but there is no doubt in my mind that they attained their goals (and fortunes) by recognizing opportunity and then working hard to make their dreams a reality. McChesney, however, can make no such claim. I can imagine him gleefully snapping up domain names as the tragedy unfolded, slavering over his keyboard with dollar signs in his eyes, utterly unfazed by the senseless carnage from which he hopes to profit. There is no empathy for the victims, only greed, easy money at the expense of another, with no effort whatsoever.

Loyal readers of this blog know that I do not discuss my personal religious beliefs, but in this case, I will make an exception. I hope there is an awful, agonizing, endless hell for people like Fred McChesney. Maybe, before he gets on the elevator going down, he can explain to St. Peter the whole “Titanic deck chairs” thing.

Read the AP story here.

New Blog

2007-05-07T17:16:00.000-05:00

My anonymity is gone. I had to come out into the open and use my real name. While this blog will remain the fluffy thing that it is, I have a serious one now that is my showcase for things I've actually published other than in the blogosphere. You can find my new blog here, or with the link on the right side of the page. Thank you for your visits, and as always, please leave a comment if you like what you see.

Fortuna Mala

2007-05-07T01:28:00.000-05:00

Some days it just doesn’t pay to get out of bed. I know it’s an old saying but it is true, isn’t it? Sometimes the day seems like it’s going to be normal, then there’s that one thing that happens that makes you wish you could just raise your hands and say “Stop! Stop right there!” And like a movie director, you want to put everything in its original place and take it from the top again, but you can’t. So you slog through the day knowing that the world you live in is going to bite you every chance it gets. How I hate those days.

I’m what you would call poor, but I don’t live under a bridge (yet). I know that many people have it so much worse than I do, but that doesn’t make it any better when one of the dark days rolls around. It would be foolish to think that life should be an endless parade of good things and warm feelings; if that were the case, how would we know what “good” was? No, you have to take the sour with the sweet. When I was a child, if I needed an aspirin, my mother would crush one between two spoons and then put some honey on it, and I have to admit that I kind of liked the taste. So doesn’t it seem logical that if your outlook on life is based on the premise that you know things won’t always go your way, you shouldn’t be too disappointed, right? Wrong.

The Roman goddess of luck was called Fortuna. On the days she smiles, she is indeed a goddess, but when she doesn’t, you should just stop what you’re doing and go back to bed. On those dark days, doesn’t it seem like you’re not the only one who’s being tormented? Doesn’t everyone around you act like they have a pitchfork poking them? Even the kindliest looking people reveal themselves to be monsters. I saw a grandfatherly old man today in the grocery store parking lot place his bags in his car and then push his empty cart away, waiting long enough to watch it bang into another car. Then he got in his and left. In that same grocery trip, I saw a young couple with a full basket in the express lane, directly beneath a sign that said, in big letters, “10 Items Or Less”. Since I’m poor, and needed to buy only a few things, I stood in line behind them. When it was finally my turn, I nodded at the couple and said to the clerk, “What a couple of expressholes.” She laughed, and said she had told them this was the express lane, but they said “There’re two of us”, so apparently, they figured they were entitled to 20 items. But this essay isn’t about my bad day; it’s about all of ours.

The aforementioned Fortuna eventually came to be depicted on a wheel that was partly submerged under water, and we humans must ride her device throughout our lives. Like the adage it spawned, if your head is above water, you’re doing all right. But since wheels turn, sooner or later you’re going to be gasping for breath and hoping the wheel is in high gear. For some people, it’s stuck in a skid, burying itself deeper and deeper, making a…rut.

I don’t have any insightful advice about how to deal with the bad days. As I’ve noted, a return to bed is a good idea. So is bourbon, but be careful because that can make a bad day much, much worse. If you don’t have to leave the house or touch anything hot or fix something critical (like the toilet), you should be fairly safe, but keep in mind that the wheel is always spinning. If you forget that, Fortuna will make sure that it only takes a half turn to remind you.

Notes: Find more information on Fortuna here and here.

Phunny Phish Phobia

2007-05-04T13:29:00.000-05:00

I like to fish. I like it a lot. Before I moved to Florida, I fished in Michigan, and it was lots of fun. I wasn’t a rabid fisherman, but on occasional summer days, one of my buddies and I could pack all of our fishing gear AND a case of beer into a canoe and paddle around one of the lakes that dotted the area around Fenton, Michigan. We would find small streams and wade into them, looking for mussels to use as free bait. Once on the lake, we would spend the afternoon swilling beer and catching bluegills, sunburns and buzzes. It was great, and on a good day, we would bring home a mess of fish to clean and fry, and I’m here to say that there is nothing like a big pile of fried bluegills with macaroni and cheese.

Since I moved to Florida, however, I have realized that there is much more to fishing than a canoe, a twelve pack and a Zebco 202 rod/reel combo. In the small lakes up north, I could count on bluegills, crappies, or maybe a catfish now and then. I even pulled up a huge snapping turtle once. But down here, in the brackish water of the Halifax River, when your line tugs, you don’t know what’s on the other end. The fish here have teeth. Big teeth. They have sharp fins and stinging appendages, and they are much larger than bluegills. Gone are the days of pulling a fish into the canoe and removing the hook from a palm-sized bluegill, formerly considered by me and my buddy as a “monster”. I now need special tools to remove hooks because I like having all of my fingers. Just last week I hooked onto something REALLY BIG, and by the time I fought it to the dock I was standing on, I could see that it was a stingray that was four feet across. (That’s big) My line snapped as it came out of the water, which is good, because I was wondering how I was going to get my hook out of it without ending up like Steve Irwin. Really. I’m not scared of the fish here, but I do have a healthy respect for them. And that reminds me of a funny story I wanted to relate about fishing and phobias.

One of my buddies here, Tony, has a boat, and he’s taken me out several times to fish. It’s a small boat, a 14 footer, too small to go into the open ocean, but perfect for the intracoastal waterway that covers most of the east coast of Florida (and the entire eastern seaboard). Mosquito Lagoon is where we go, but as long as we don’t get too near the islands, we aren’t bothered by bugs. Anyway, not too long ago, he called and invited me to go fishing, and I of course agreed. Another of his friends (let’s call him “Bob”) was going with us, so we three got some bait and launched the boat for some fishing fun. It takes about 40 minutes by boat to get to our favorite spot, and during the ride, I got to chat with Bob, whom I had never met. He was a younger guy with a pleasant disposition, and we passed the time of the ride making small talk, watching porpoises, and hoping that the fishing was going to be good that day. (Porpoises spoil the fishing. If they’re around, the fish aren’t.) When we finally got to our spot, things got funny in a hurry.

We were using live shrimp for bait, and after we anchored, it was time to prepare the lines with devilishly tempting morsels that would hopefully help to fill our live well and later, our bellies. I baited my hook, and Tony baited his. Bob didn’t do anything, but he was watching Tony bait his hook with the oddest look on his face. He looked like he was in a trance. Tony threw two lines in, and then he baited Bob’s hook. Because I’m an idiot sometimes, I said to Bob, “What, are you scared to touch the shrimp”? He was a little sheepish, but he did answer, “Yes. Yes I am”. I said, “Really”? “Yeah”, he said. “Really”.

The incongruity of this situation was almost too much for me to bear. I didn’t want to laugh and make Bob feel bad. He must have sensed that I was wondering why he was fishing when he wouldn’t bait his own hook, because he explained his reasoning. He said he had been “finned” by a catfish as a young boy, and has since had a fear of touching live aquatic creatures. He was very good natured about it, and I got the feeling that a day of fishing might just help him get over his aversion.

It’s been my experience that the fish in the Halifax River are notorious bait-stealers. Tony and I have gone through 6 dozen shrimp in less than 3 hours. I think every fish I actually land costs me about 9 shrimp. The same thing held true that day, and much to my surprise, Bob actually said at one point that he would attempt to bait his own hook. Tony and I offered silent encouragement as he prepared to stick his hand into the bait bucket and pick out a shrimp. I think he had been thinking about it so as to not seem so squeamish. Now, in case you don’t know, live shrimp don’t like to be picked up, and they are very quick. You have to plunge your hand in the bucket and grab, or else they’ll just avoid it. Bob got his nerve up and slowly, gingerly stuck his hand in the bucket.

He pulled his hand out of that bucket so fast you would have thought he’d been electrocuted. He also let out an involuntary squeal that caused Tony and I to lose our composure and burst out laughing. We weren’t being mean, but it was just too funny to suppress. Bob laughed at himself too, which was good. He was scared, but at least he tried. We were still chuckling about it when Tony got a fish on. From the way his pole was bent, Bob and I could see that it was a fairly good sized fish, but not a monster. After just a couple minutes, Tony landed a sheepshead that was about a foot long. Sheepsheads are interesting looking fish. They’re striped like a zebra, and they have teeth that look exactly like human teeth. It’s almost as if they have little dentures. Anyway, as Tony landed the fish in the boat, it was flipping about, obviously unhappy about being hooked. I wasn’t watching the fish, though. I was watching Bob, who didn’t have the look of abject terror, but when the fish flipped near him, I thought he was going to jump out of the boat. There was no doubt that he was really afraid of fish. He was laughing, but I could tell it was the nervous tittering of someone about to freak out.

We all had a good laugh about Bob’s fish phobia, and we did pretty well that day, as far as fish caught. Sometimes we get skunked fishing, but with Bob there, it wasn’t dull at all. We drank beer and baited Bob’s hook and took his fish off when he caught one. In a way, I had to admire Bob for at least trying to face his fear. He loves to fish; he just won’t touch them. He’s like a tightrope walker who is afraid of heights. I gotta give him credit for that.

New Look

2007-05-02T01:27:00.000-05:00

To the readers of this blog, I am happy to present my new look. Maybe I’m getting old, but I found the old format difficult to read. That green font thing just wasn’t cutting it for me. I like big black letters against a white background, and that’s how I’m going to write from now on.

It took a little doing, but I managed to get my links back after reformatting. I had a little trouble with my counter, but I think I’ve got it to where it should be. And speaking of that, I noticed that I get hits from all over the globe, which is really surprising, and not all together unpleasant. For those of you who do visit frequently, I would like to ask that you leave a comment, either positive or negative, or leave a note on my messenger thingy. I’ve changed the word identification feature for commenting, so you don’t have to type any gobbledygook in to voice your opinion.

So you know, as I revamped this page, I passed up the opportunity to use advertising to promote my blog. This may or may not be a mistake. Call me naïve, ignorant or even stupid, but I like to think that people read my ramblings because they like them, and not because I have ads on my blog. I mean, really, how often do you visit a blog and decide that it’s a really good idea to click on the “Get Rich Telecommuting!” ad instead of reading the content?

In the next few days, look for posts about:

1. Funny phobias
2. Apartment living
3. Porn then and now

Love Essay

2007-04-30T01:36:00.000-05:00

I made a deal with a friend not long ago that we would swap stories about what we thought love was. It seemed a simple enough thing to do, and I was confident that I could find a few minutes to pound out an essay that would cover my end of the deal. Like me, this friend shares a need to write things down. She prefers to use poetry as a medium, which I think makes it easier, but that’s just my opinion. She was quick in fulfilling her end of the bargain. Her writing was heart-wrenching and immediate, sometimes violent and strangely erotic. Woe unto us, though, who prefer to try and pigeonhole everything through prose; the whole “love” thing is too elusive. As I try to write my “love” essay, I find myself wishing I was better at poetry. But, mechanics be damned. I’ll try.

If I could write in this blog what love is so that every person who read it knew and understood exactly what I was saying, well, I wouldn't be sitting in a crappy apartment writing essays that almost nobody reads. I don’t have the talent to cover such an all encompassing subject. “I love my mom. I love that movie. I love shrimp fettuccine alfredo”. How in the world would I begin to explain it to someone who didn’t know what it meant? More importantly, I think, how could I explain it when I’m not sure what it is myself? Anecdotes always work well, so I’ll hide behind that, and I’ll just stick to the adult occurrence. My teen love stories will have to wait.

I was married when I fell in love, and it wasn’t with my wife. I have heard older people say they fell in love with their spouses only after marriage, and it worked out great for them. Things don’t work that conveniently for me. No, as usual, there is always a giant monkey wrench floating about, waiting patiently to enmesh itself in my workings when I need it the least.

On the most mundane of errands, I inadvertently, unexpectedly, and blissfully fell in love with a complete stranger in about three minutes. When I saw her, I was immediately struck (blinded) by how beautiful she was. To be fair, I have seen lots of beautiful women, but this one was different. Of course, she was standing right in front of me, which helped; it’s tough to fall in love with a magazine picture, although I have seen others do it. But anyway, this girl literally took my breath away. I felt as though I were in another dimension. It was as if I could see, really see, for the first time. I was in my neighborhood liquor store buying bourbon like I did all the time, and yet, I was worlds away, my transportation courtesy of the new clerk.

Now, I know what you’re thinking. Lush walks into liquor store, sees half-way decent looking girl, and has love fantasies. In a cynical (realistic) way, you’d be right. But this is a love story, so go with it.

Our short conversation was all business, I think. We may have chatted briefly about the weather or the gift boxed Jack Daniel sets or the man in the moon. I don’t remember, and it didn’t matter. I knew, in one instant, that I would be able to listen to her talk about anything. Anything at all. For as long as she wanted. And while she spoke, it would be as if I were in a dream, and her voice would be both an hypnotic soundtrack and a river that I could float away on, forever.

Quite (too) abruptly, our short transaction was over, and I was back in my car. I had to go home. To where my wife was. And I don’t think I’ve ever felt so guilty in my life. I actually took the long way home so I could try to gather my thoughts, once so neatly kept, so organized, so…predictable. Hadn’t I stood up, in front of my family, and professed to God and everybody, that I loved my wife, and would cleave to her and no other? Oh, this was bad. Very bad. All I had done was go to the liquor store to buy a bottle of bourbon, and now I was in love with another woman. Wait, not in love, but I knew I could love this woman, much more than I ever did my wife. I knew, for the first time, what love really was: It was the desire to hang on every word, to get lost in the smile and to scream and fight no matter the cost to myself in order to keep the smile in place. It was the feeling of utter relaxation. It was a calm that inspired abandon I had never known, and wanted so badly, no matter what I had said to anybody before I met her. It all happened in about three minutes, and there isn’t a day that has gone by since that I haven’t thought of it.

Did I lust after her? You bet I did. But it was more than just the physical act that I wanted. I wanted to be as close to her as two people can be. I wanted to lose myself in her, and I knew it would an ecstatic, delirious experience, with my only hope being that maybe some of whatever magic she had would shine on me, if only for a moment. I imagined it would be like touching the face of God, and I don’t care if that’s blasphemy.

When I had finally gathered my wits, I went home. I didn’t mention to my wife that I had fallen in love at the liquor store.

Remember the floating monkey wrench? It came back. Through an odd series of events, my wife became good friends with the clerk of my dreams. And (I couldn’t make this up), they had the same name. She would visit on occasion, and there just isn’t enough bourbon in the world to make that scene comfortable. I remember sitting in my kitchen with those two women and realizing that I had never felt so secretive and yet so exposed in my life. I had to be very careful about any vocal inflections when speaking their names. When I spoke to my wife, her name sounded like I was spitting out a poppy seed, but when I spoke to the clerk, it sounded like a symphony. I had to be very careful to make sure that what was going on in my head didn’t make it out of my mouth.

I could go on and on, trying vainly to describe how I felt. Suffice to say that I have never felt so strongly for a woman.

There’s no happy ending to this story. I eventually discovered that my wife had been involved in more extramarital affairs than I wanted to hear about. The beautiful clerk is married, and we do speak from time to time.

In case you’re wondering, I did have the chance to tell her how I felt. In a desperate act of foolishness, I told her I would build her a house with my own hands and love her children and devote the rest of my life to making her as happy as she could be. Bless her heart, for she was very gentle in letting me know that she did not feel the same way, which leads me to wonder: Did I know from the beginning that I could not have her, and is it that fact which made her so appealing? Would things have been different had she felt the same for me, which is to say, would it have lasted? I’ll never know, and yet, I am still grateful to her for making me feel like she did. It felt like love for me, and it was good.

Epilogue:

I’ve been working on this essay for nearly five hours, and every time I re-read it, I realize how much more there is I could say to try and describe how I felt for the clerk. It will take everything I have to resist the temptation to revise it…again. I’m tired, and at this particular moment, my opinion (subject to change) is this: Love, for me, anyway, is beautiful but clumsy: Just when things are almost fixed, she drops the stupid wrench.

I have since tried to extend the same amount of fervor I felt for the clerk to subsequent women, and I am sure that I have loved them, although it was different, and, I might add, unsuccessful. I wanted so desperately to feel the same way the clerk made me feel; I tried to make it happen, and it didn’t. There’s a word to the wise.

Doctor, Heal Thy Arrogance

2007-04-26T00:38:00.000-05:00

I have a great deal of respect for doctors. I don't respect them because they're better than me; they are people too, subject to the same human foibles as all of us struggling to live the life that is our blessing (or curse). They have been to school to learn how to try and heal what ails us, or at least, make our illnesses easier to deal with. We pay them (handsomely) to benefit from their knowledge. We, as patients, are ignorant when it comes to the complexities of what it is that makes a body stay alive, or how to fix it when it's broken. We are not, however, stupid, and do not deserve to be treated as such. Nothing makes me angrier than paying a person to disrespect me. I have a couple of anecdotes to share that illustrate my point.

A few years ago, I was living in Holland, Michigan, which is, by any stretch, a very conservative area. The nicotine patch was a brand new treatment to help smokers stop smoking, and it was available only by prescription. Now, despite my extended nicotine addiction, I have had no health issues; I didn't even have a regular doctor, because I never needed one, and I still don't. I had insurance, so money wasn't an issue. (The story gets a little weird here, but I swear it's true) One day while bent over drying my ankles after a shower, I was attacked by what I call a "ninja" sneeze. I never felt it coming, and it nearly crippled me. Somehow, I pulled a muscle in my neck, and I was unable to move my head to the left at all. I couldn't even drive safely. I tried to tough it out for a couple days, thinking it would go away, but it didn't. A friend suggested a physical therapist, so I went to one. He said he thought he could help me, but that I needed to see a physician first (he recommended one), which brings me back to the doctor. I thought as long as I was there for my neck, I would ask about the patch.

The doctor's waiting room had no literature save for bibles and other religious tracts. The walls had needlepoint bible quotes. As I sat in the waiting waiting room, I hoped that this guy would use traditional medicine instead of asking Jesus to take time out from his busy day to fix my neck and help me stop smoking. As I mentioned, Holland was a very conservative place; it was against the law to mow your lawn on Sunday. When I got in to see the doctor, I could tell right away that it was going to be a bad visit. I am not festooned with tattoos like a circus freak, but I have a few, and all of them are devils. At the time, I also had a ponytail over three feet long. The doctor looked at me as if I were Satan himself. He put on rubber gloves to feel my neck, presumably to keep any evil from seeping out of me and into his pores, corrupting his soul. As he spoke, he was curt, and, in my opinion, his tone positively dripped with disgust, as if talking to me was a loathsome chore, a test, even. I had experienced that sort of thing before with many people, particularly overtly religious ones. They were very quick to judge on appearance alone.

So I asked him about the patch, and I could have sworn he was miffed that I dared ask a health question unrelated to my current visit, like I was getting a "two for one" deal. He snapped at me, and said, "Quitting smoking is a very important decision. I need to know that you're serious about it, so why don't you come back in two weeks, and if you still want to quit, we'll talk about it". I said, "I am serious. That's why I asked you". He said, "Two weeks", as if daring me to make another appointment. Apparently, this guy thought that the Hippocratic Oath only applied if the patient fit his ideal of what a person should be. We both snorted at each other, and I left, never to return.

My next example of medical snootiness happened just the other day. To be fair, this guy was a vet, and my cat was the patient, but as you will read, it is another example of a doctor who is too big for his britches.

My cat developed a growth on the side of his head. I had no idea what it was; for all I knew it was cat head cancer. I took him to see a vet, convinced that this was going to be, at best, a "bad news" visit, and at worst, a one way trip for the cat. The vet (female) took one look at the cat and said it was a follicular cyst, very common and of no danger to the cat's health. In short, it was an ingrown hair. Since I am a poor struggling writer, I didn't have the money to have it removed, but said I would come back when I got it. I finally went back this week, and asked if the doctor remembered me from the visit a month prior. The receptionist said they had changed doctors, but that the new one would look at it and tell me how much it cost. The price was right, and I gave the OK. It only took about ten minutes, and I didn't hear any yowling, so I assume the cat was fairly comfortable during the removal. But just like the people doctor in Holland, we had an issue unrelated to the original visit.

The vet told me that my cat was way too skinny. "A bag of bones" was his phrase. I started to tell him that I have had the cat for 13 years, and he's ALWAYS looked like he does now (he was fully grown when I got him, so I have no idea how old he really is). The vet interrupted me with a tone that thinly disguised his belief that I was somehow derelict in my pet owning responsibilities. A gaggle of nurses (?) nodded in agreement, and chimed in that there was something very wrong with my cat. Again, I tried to explain that he has always looked the way he does now, and, interrupted again, I got the "He's been sick for years", with the distinct implication that I knowingly allowed the cat to suffer all this time. He quickly added that for another $150, he could do some blood work and see what kind of medicinal regimen the cat should be on, which, of course, would mean a monthly prescription (read: expense) for the rest of the cat's life. I put my cat in his carry case and left, promising to return, but I won't.

Don't get me wrong; I love my cat. But he is the same cat today that he was when my ex wife dragged him home one day so long ago, and he has never acted like a sick cat. Ever. He's lived a long time, and he won't live forever, no matter how much medicine (or money) I give. I don't think he's broken, so I'm not going to try and fix him.

The point of these two stories is this: We, as patients, are the customers. We are the kings. We are the ones shelling out the money, so why is it that we have to pay to be humiliated? I mean, c'mon! I can get that for free just about anywhere. It seems to me that listening when another person is speaking is the most basic consideration, so why do some doctors, in spite of their advanced degrees, not understand that? Why do they act like they're doing you a huge favor by speaking down to you with their hand in your pocket?

In all fairness, I do not think all doctors are buttheads. On the contrary, I have, due to a very painful motorcycle accident, dealt with a great many kind, considerate doctors, and would, as a whole, classify them as good. But those rude, snooty ones really get under my skin.

Sports Aside

2007-04-20T00:47:00.000-05:00

I am not what you would call a sports fan. No baseball, no football (American or otherwise), no racing (if that's really a sport), no jai alai. Because I'm old, I will confess to watching a bit of golf now and then, as long as there are no Star Trek reruns on. However, I do have one sports weakness: hockey. It came about quite by accident. I had come home from working in a factory at 3am, and plopped in front of the TV, as it was very cold outside, and I had a nice warm bottle of bourbon handy. A quick perusal of the channels showed nothing of interest, which, for the most part, is to be expected from television. Realizing I needed to remove my boots, I stopped clicking (completely randomly, mind you) on a hockey game. It could have been anything, an infomercial, the Jesus channel, or maybe Telemundo!, but it happened to be hockey.

Anyway, there was nothing on, and I was in no hurry to surf anymore, so I slurped my bourbon and tried to remember if there was anything constructive I could do. My attention was caught by the TV; the crowd was roaring, and I looked up to see what the fuss was about. It was a hockey game, and I don't like sports, but I had an epiphany at that moment. I watched men on ice skates chase a frozen piece of rubber around, and was completely awestruck by the speed and agility with which they moved. But, the most surprising thing of all was the amount of control they had over what was going on. Anyone who has ever walked or driven on ice knows that it's a tricky thing, but these guys had it down. So I watched to see what would happen. A goal was scored (beautifully), and the crowd cheered, which is what you would expect in a sporting event. But just a couple minutes later, it got even better. (Remember, as this transpired, I hadn't watched a televised sporting event in probably 25 years).

I thought I would watch for a few more minutes to see what happened. Play continued for a little longer, and then, the commentators started chattering excitedly about something going on that wasn't on camera. The picture cut to a different view of the arena, and there stood (circled) two opposing team members, gloves off and ready to duke it out. On ice skates. They grabbed and tried to pummel each other, somewhat effectively, for about a minute. The crowd roared, and when the referees separated them, they both skated off, a bit bloody and obviously winded. And I was hooked.

Before I get accused of being a Neanderthal, let me say this: I am repulsed by the thought of anybody dying in a war. If all wars were fought with fists on ice skates, well, there wouldn't be any body bags, and Purple Hearts would be awarded based on the number of stitches incurred instead of missing limbs. I would be more than happy to debate war stats to hockey ones; the "hockey is too violent" argument just doesn't work.

I, of course, have a favorite team, and even though I've left the frozen north, I still root for them when I can. I love hockey. Go Red Wings!

Mea Culpa

2007-04-17T09:57:00.000-05:00

In today's essay, I find myself in the unfortunate and embarrassing position of having to apologize to my (few) readers. I have done you a disservice. I am guilty of the very act that I took Josh Wolf to task for in an earlier essay, namely, that I posted and opined on a subject without presenting all of the facts. It is humbling and shameful when you realize that you are the pot that calls the kettle black. I have no excuse save laziness, and for that, I sincerely apologize.

In my previous post about the "Great Global Warming Swindle", I professed loudly and proudly that the documentary dispelled myths about man-made climate change, but after some more research, I have discovered that many of the scientists featured in the documentary have come forward to say that they were taken out of context, and, literally, duped into appearing in the film. In addition, there are charges of outright lying, lying by omission, and tampering with the data used in the film to ensure that it projects the results desired. You can read just a few of the refutations here, here, and here. In a nutshell, all of these links offer compelling evidence that the documentary filmmakers are guilty of the very thing they accuse the global warming movement of, and, perhaps worse.

I'm no scientist (which should be obvious), but it seems to me that the scientific method of analyzing raw data should produce the same results no matter who examines it. That is to say, scientists like to try and equate the method to "just the facts", much like, say, algebra. With all knowns and all variables in place, there can be only one correct answer. How is it, then, that different groups come up with different answers? And more importantly, whom are we, the non-scientists, to believe?

In any case, we should be able to believe those who claim to show all sides of the story and let us decide for ourselves which side to believe. Throughout history, it has been shown that scientists have often manipulated (or ignored) data to substantiate their theories, with raging debates to follow. This is a good thing, in a way, because it ultimately forces the truth to come out. In the case of writers (or bloggers), however, it is vital to present ALL facets of a story to stimulate and inform the reader.

Again, I was guilty of a knee-jerk reaction, and blurted about a topic I did not bother to research. I don't believe this is the same as purposely lying or leaving information out, but the end result is equally detrimental. If I had done my homework, I would never have touted the documentary the way I did. I still think it's interesting, and as I mentioned, it should be debated so we can eventually come to a consensus on how our presence affects our planet. But for me to believe that we humans have not had a negative impact on the ecology of this planet was a lazy, selfish mistake. In the future, few readers, I will do my best to make sure I know what I'm talking about before I shoot my mouth (keyboard) off. Please accept my apology.

An Inconvenient Movement

2007-04-11T13:30:00.000-05:00

Are you a thinking, rational person? Are you scared of the apocalyptic predictions of the earth's climate? Do you want to see one of the founders of Greenpeace and a host of respected scientists, many of whom are listed on the IPCC report on global warming (who have resigned in protest and asked that their names be removed from the report) utterly refute the "theory" of global warming?

Click the title of this essay to see a documentary that, for some strange reason, hasn't been broadcast repeatedly on every major network. Hmmm...I sense another political rant coming about this manufactured issue that has been propagated worldwide as truth. The global warming movement, championed by Al Gore is not a fact. It's a business, no, a cult, masquerading as science.

If you live on this planet, you owe it to yourself to watch this documentary. It's just over an hour long, but it will stick with you for a long time.

UPDATE: As of 16 April, the link for this video doesn't work. I (fortunately) downloaded it, and will try to paste it here with a working link.

Josh Wolf, Journalist

2007-04-09T23:42:00.000-05:00

Josh Wolf, jailed for refusing to turn over film footage shot at a violent demonstration in which he was a willing participant, feels he has been wronged by the government. Citing journalistic shield laws, he also believes he should not have to testify to possibly witnessing a number of criminal acts, and feels he should not have to turn over raw tapes that may or may not contain video evidence of the commission of said crimes. The U.S. Attorney General wants to see the tape to determine for itself if it contains any evidence of criminal behavior. Wolf says, "The Assistant U.S. Attorney said the government has the duty to see if anything suspicious occurred, and then determine if there's a crime. That's not a world I want to live in." Fair enough. Let's try that scenario a different way.

Let's say I'm a self-styled journalist with no real training who belongs to a radical group that vehemently opposes, say, Josh Wolf's parents. I go to a demonstration outside his house with the intention of filming my masked fellow believers protesting, then violently attacking his house and family. Although I do not have film of the actual attack on his mother, who suffered a fractured skull, there is a possibility that there could be evidence, unbeknownst to me, somewhere on my raw tape that identifies a perpetrator, or that the police believe I personally know who the culprit is. I manage to leave the scene without being questioned by the police, and later, post edited clips of the demonstration on my web site. When asked by the police to turn over my tape, I refuse. Do you think Josh Wolf would be comfortable with my refusal to hand the tape over to the government to be screened for possible evidence of criminal behavior? Would he defend my right to keep my fellow demonstrators out of harm's way by claiming journalistic shielding? Would people set up web sites calling for donations to fund my defense and demand that I be held free of any liability because I'm a journalist? Would the Society of Professional Journalists award me the title of "Journalist of the Year"? If not, why not?

Josh Wolf calls himself an anarchist. Merriam-Webster defines an anarchist as "1 : a person who rebels against any authority, established order, or ruling power. 2 : a person who believes in, advocates, or promotes anarchism or anarchy; especially : one who uses violent means to overthrow the established order." In an interview from jail with Kevin Sites, Wolf says he feels "safe" in his incarceration. He says he is not housed with violent offenders, but he does say he is inconvenienced by not being able to access the internet. And he doesn't seem very happy with the food either. Isn't that a shame? Isn't that inconvenient? Isn't it a bit incongruous to espouse violence and then be thankful that you're not exposed to it? I don't think for one second that Josh Wolf would last very long among really ruthless and violent people, and make no mistake: There are a lot of them, and I suspect they would chew Josh Wolf up and spit him out. Literally. At the ripe age of 24, he would have you believe that he has a better grasp of the real world than most, and that anarchy would be preferable to our current system. I say throw him down with the hard core criminals, and let him see the consequences of a world with no rules. There's a reason we have prisons for people who don't like to follow the rules of civility.

In the above mentioned interview, Wolf seemed very enamored with the word "basically". Let's use that. Wolf is out of prison now, because, basically, he buckled, and he basically betrayed his convictions by turning over the tape the government wanted. Apparently, the mean old government, in its endeavor to try to protect all citizens from violence, and to hold those who do commit it accountable, basically broke Wolf's steely resolve by denying him access to a computer and giving him lunches he didn't like.

In the same interview, Sites repeatedly asked Wolf which side he was taking, either journalist or activist, and Wolf, basically, refused to answer the question. He talked a lot, but never answered the question. Many years ago, long before Wolf was born, I studied journalism, and I was taught that a good reporter will get the answers to the "5 w's and the h", which, of course, are "who, what, where, when, why and how". Wolf, the journalist, couldn't or wouldn't answer a simple question, one that any first year journalism student would know is vital to the story. (Sites, by the way, showed great patience by not saying "Answer the ******* question"!) Anyway, maybe now that he's out of jail, instead of milking his pseudo fame, he will, basically, go back to school to learn what a real journalist does: Cover ALL the aspects of the story and let the reader decide what is relevant.

For the record, this blog is my opinion; I, basically, do not claim to be a journalist.

Political Rant Vol. II

2007-04-03T00:45:00.000-05:00

In my previous political rant (23 Feb), I bemoaned the fact that Americans seem to elect presidents based more on their personal appeal than their stance on the issues. This, of course, is perfectly understandable. A person with a wooden personality is much less likely to sway the hearts and minds of the voting public than a skilled orator with a firm grasp on the principles of rhetoric. Often, it's not so much what they say but how they say it. It still boils down to style over substance, and that's something that, in my opinion, really needs to change. I don't hold out much hope for it, though.

Today's rant has to do with another aspect of politics, namely, the American political party system. Anyone with even a smattering of civics knowledge knows that our various parties each select and run the candidate they feel best represents them. Conservative Republicans generally represent business and traditional thinking, while Liberal Democrats tend to want to be a voice for "the little guy", and ensure that everyone gets a piece of the American dream. In an effort to ensure that all candidates have a chance, we also have the Green Party, the Libertarians, and even the communists. In theory, this all sounds very fair. As a young boy, I remember hearing from any number of sources that the beauty of America is that anyone born here has a shot at being president. Age and experience, however, have proven to me that this is not the case. America does not have a multi-party system, and it is not just the Republicans and the Democrats either. There is only one party: It is the party of money.

Just this week, many Democratic hopefuls either announced or were expected to announce the amount of money they have raised thus far (with 20 months to go until election) to fund their race to the White House. Those candidates who fail to raise enough capital are doomed to defeat, in that they will not be able to afford to get their message to the voters. Now, a case could certainly be made that their message isn't the one the bulk of voters want to hear. If, however, they happen to be independently wealthy, well, they might still have a shot, a la Ross Perot. The fact remains that if you do not have money, you cannot be the president.

It is a candidate's stance on the issues and their experience that should be on the minds of the voters. Innumerable cases of beltway corruption are sure to leave a bad taste in the mouths of voters, and it should. However, not being in tune with the inner workings of politics should send up a red flag for voters. Do we want a commander-in-chief who has never worn the uniform? As a veteran of an infantry battalion, I would not want someone who has never volunteered to place himself in harm's way for his country to decide to send others there. Likewise, I'm not sure I'd want a president that has served one term as a senator or governor to be at the helm of the most powerful government on the planet.

I don't care if Barack Obama is black. I do care, however, that he is a first-term senator with a voting record that hardly fills one page, and I am concerned that between himself and Hillary Clinton, they have already raised nearly 16 million dollars more than ALL presidential candidates combined at the same point in an election just four years ago. Neither Obama nor Clinton is a veteran.

I don't care if Mitt Romney is a Mormon, and that shouldn't be an issue, but trust me, it will be. I do care that he has limited political experience, having served only one term as the governor of Massachusetts. And again, he is not a veteran. He is, however, by any stretch, a rich man who donated 6.3 million dollars to his own gubernatorial campaign, at the time a state record.

I hope today's civics lesson is clear.

Nice Word...Don't Bite

2007-03-27T23:42:00.000-05:00

I've been trying to write a short story that's really giving me a hard time. The problem stems from controversial subject matter. If a person writes a story that portrays (what society thinks is) criminal behavior in a favorable light, and a reader emulates that behavior with dire consequences, is the author liable for the outcome?

Since the dawn of time, the oral, and later, written word has been positively rife with tales of deceit and murder, yet we do not hold the authors responsible for the deceit and murder that continues to this day. Mafia stories glorify the "made" man. Tarzan killed black men for sport, and don't even get me started on the Bible. But, if I write a story about a truly good, moral thing that happened to occur while under the influence of certain illegal substances, will I be accused of promoting irresponsible behavior?

It's easy to say that writers should take a "critics be damned" attitude, and write what they feel is important. Last time I checked, though, the only writers who said that had already established themselves or died, only receiving recognition for their genius post mortem.

If I were to write a story about how cool it is to sniff spray paint fumes from a paper bag and hang around a day care center leering and barking at children, I'd be vilified. If I wrote that contracting AIDS through unprotected sex was a remote and unlikely possibility, any number of groups would accuse me of, at best, ignorance, and at worst, promoting genocide.

The human condition needs to be told, because we all learn from and inspire each other, whether we relate good deeds or bad. With that in mind, I think I'll finish the story I'm working on and hope for the best. I'm sure I flatter myself by worrying about it. What Jim Fixx did for jogging, I intend to do for reckless behavior.

Oh...wait.

Retirement Horror Vol. II

2007-03-26T22:10:00.000-05:00

My last "retirement horror" post dealt with the dangers of not investing properly. Being old and broke is the stuff nightmares are made of. This essay isn't nearly as serious, but it is terrifying nonetheless. I cannot provide in this essay, as I did in the previous one about retirement, links to concrete sources to validate my argument. I can, however, provide eyewitness testimony to an event I witnessed last night that should scare the socks off anyone who spends time wondering how retirement might be.

I visited my parents this past weekend at their winter home near Tampa, Florida. They, like many others, winter in a retirement community; you cannot buy a home there unless you're at least 55. To be fair, it seemed like a very close-knit group of people living there. Since my folks don't smoke, I stood outside when smoking, and there was a nearly constant parade of retirees walking in the warm Florida weather, and without fail, every person that walked by smiled and/or waved and said "Hello", or "Good Morning". I learned from my folks to be gracious and gregarious, so I of course returned their greetings. I felt a little guilty though, because my parents had told me that there were a lot of "walkers" in the park, and I immediately pictured a horde of old people looking for all the world like zombies, lurching aimlessly about the neighborhood. I'm happy to say that the people I spoke to were all very nice, and were obviously enjoying themselves. You might ask, "Where's the horror in that"?

Since the members of this community are so social (presumably because they can afford to have little else to do), they invent all sorts of reasons to congregate with alarming frequency. Last night, they held a birthday party for everyone, complete with cake and ice cream and, as an added treat, they had a musical revue featuring several residents who called themselves "The Choralettes". Each had a red sparkly vest with a bow tie; they were dressed like an old fashioned barbershop quartet (sans moustaches), and they sang show tunes and Frank Sinatra and a Rogers & Hammerstein medley. Songs from their youth. Again, where's the horror in that? Were they, for the most part, horribly off-key? Yes. Did the mere 40 minute show seem like a grinding, inexorably tortuous lifetime? Of course, but they were old people, and I expected that. But as I watched this performance, I suddenly saw in my mind's eye a sight that made my skin crawl.

In an absurd (and wholly understandable, I think) moment, I saw my own retirement community, and it was very unpleasant. Instead of blue-haired geriatrics dressed like an organ grinder's monkey, I saw a crowd of aging hippies, complete with bald pates and scraggly ponytails, dressed in black pleather vests straining to complete "Stairway to Heaven". I saw 70 year old women, frail with age, stooped over to compensate for the weight of their breast implants. (The sight of a woman that age with boobs that still stand up like a 20 year old's really disturbed me). Instead of cake and ice cream, it was hash brownies and jell-o shots. The emcee told sort-of-dirty jokes that nobody found offensive, and instead of golf shirts and blouses, clothing consisted of tye-dyed jeans and plaid maxi skirts.

The actual scene I was watching was surreal; the imagined one was downright hellish.

I'm not sure if I'll live to retirement age, and my lapses into imagination tend to convince me that maybe it's best if I don't. I believe that if you plan for the worst, you'll never be disappointed, and I cling to that philosophy in the hope that I'm right. Retirement looms large, though, and I worry about it. A lot. But you know that.

Students Beware!

2007-03-19T12:40:00.000-05:00

Since I started this blog late last year, I have tried very hard to not let it become a bully pulpit from which to rant about anything that makes me angry or to complain about my personal life. A quick perusal of the blogosphere will show that there's enough of that already. I think it's all well and good that there are blogs that describe the minutiae of someone's life, and I'm also sure that it's very therapeutic to jot down thoughts, but I just don't feel the need to put my personal crises out for all to see. For the most part, nobody cares what I had for breakfast or how my relationships are going. I try very hard to write about things I consider relevant, things that perhaps someone else can identify with and maybe, just maybe, draw some inspiration from.

Having said that, today's essay concerns the paradox of needing a college education in today's world juxtaposed against the real world's apparent desire for experience over schooling. To be blunt, I am fairly baffled that a BA means little to many employers. It doesn't matter if you have a degree in something if you have no "real world" experience. For instance, I have a degree in English with a specialty in composition. Anyone who has been to college knows that it is very difficult and time consuming (not to mention outrageously expensive) to EARN a degree in a chosen field. I chose English/Composition because I love to write, and I can think of no other job that would afford me the opportunity to get paid doing what I love to do. But do you think I can find a job doing it? I spent countless hours studying all styles of writing. MLA. Chicago. APA. Not only did I study them, I studied them under the tutelage of doctorate level professors, published authors and instructors with concrete, first hand knowledge of what to do and what not to do in order to succeed. And, if I might toot my own horn, I did very well at it. Yet every single job I apply to wants to know how much experience I have. Did they not read my resume? Do they think that degrees in composition are handed out willy-nilly to anyone who can afford it?

In almost every cover letter I write, I make sure and include the following line: "Anyone who knows anything about writing knows that in order to earn a degree in composition, one must do a good deal of writing". Doesn't my four years of seemingly endless hours producing reams of papers count for anything? Isn't that experience?

Let me digress for a moment. When I was 18 years old, I went to work in a 7up factory in Flint, Michigan. It was my first "real" job, and I of course had to start at the bottom of the ladder, as a general warehouse laborer. Except for a three year stint in the Army, it was the only job I had for nearly 20 years. In that time, I worked very hard, and eventually made it to supervisor of both the Quality Assurance and Maintenance departments. Anyone who has worked in a factory knows that it is not easy. Wait, I need to clarify that: It is not easy to do the same job, day after day after day for 20 years. Being tied to a machine or even supervising those tied to machines is a living hell. Some people do it for an entire career, operating the same machine every single day of their working lives, and good for them for being able to stand it. There's no doubt that I made decent money, but the sheer ennui of the job felt like very slow suicide, not to mention a waste of my life.

I applied for a managerial position, but was told I could not advance any farther because I did not have a college education. Fair enough. I took three years off and, by virtue of my hard work, finally earned a degree (University of Michigan). And now, firmly set in middle age, I cannot find a job writing, because I "have no experience". I have been around the world (thanks to the Army), and I have seen things that most people will never see, done things most will never do, and, crazy as it sounds, I remember it all. I have worked on both sides of a union, I have worked on farms, I have stood guard in the one of the most inhospitable places on the earth, I have even worked on a garbage truck (that's another essay). I have made presentations to boardroom executives and interviewed janitors to make sure I was able to produce training manuals that all audiences could understand, yet I do not have enough experience to write marketing material. How hard can it be?

I suppose the main point I'm trying to get across is this: Do not assume that a college degree is a ticket to an enjoyable, well paying job. I made that mistake, and I would save others that pain if I can. I often find myself wishing I had never gone to school, that I had stayed in the factory and relied heavily on alcohol to keep me from remembering that a monkey could do my job. No matter how bad it was, it was better than trying to convince a twenty-something job recruiter that experience, especially as it relates to writing is gained not only through work but life as well.

Abducted Infants and Missing Editors

2007-03-12T20:20:00.000-05:00

I have company, so I'll be brief. I have seen the film of the woman who abducted an infant in Lubbock, Texas. As it happened, every time I saw the tape, I was in a place where I could see a television, but couldn't hear the sound. The main points of the story were clear though; an infant was taken. Today, on a whim, I checked the status of the story, and saw that the baby has been found, and arrangements are being made to return it to the parents. The title of this short essay is a link to the story as reported from News 8 in Austin, Texas. Notice the last sentence of the story. Apparently, both the hospital staff and the channel 8 news team are asleep at the wheel and need to be alerted before any more damage is done.

TV Wasteland Vol. 1

2007-03-02T22:31:00.000-05:00

I've tried to start this essay several times, but I kept getting hung up on the first line. Now that I don't have that to worry about any longer, I can go right to it. I try not to watch too much television. For starters, it's way too expensive, and, in my opinion, there's just not that much quality programming. There are, however, a few shows that I will watch, and maybe one day I'll let that slip here. But this installment (the first in what I hope will be a series) has to do with commercials. There are good ones and bad ones, and in deference to those in advertising, they caught my attention, so they're doing their job. Some make me laugh, and some make me angry, but almost none of them make me want to buy the product. As I watch them, I always wonder how much thought went into them, and I imagine a boardroom where the advertisement has been screened, and then given the green light to air. I wish I could be there at some screenings to either laud them for their insight and creativity, or excoriate them for pandering to fear or worse, portraying inappropriate behavior as normal.

I have a friend who thinks I read way too much into commercials, but I think he's not taking into account how much time and money goes into advertising. Billions of dollars go into advertising, and comprehensive research is conducted to precisely identify the myriad audiences of consumers. It's perhaps the biggest overhead any company has, and, as far as I know, entities that spend billions of dollars expect results. Some, I think, are right on the mark as far as having a finger on the pulse of the purchasing public. Others, however, would do better if they would just send me a few million dollars, and for that money, I would make sure that their plea to buy would be heard by an adoring audience. How would I do that? I'd make sure that whoever was making my ads knew and understood their audience.

The Good: Verizon Wireless
In this advert (for my UK readers), an everyday husband and wife are seated in a rather 50s-ish kitchen when their teenage daughter strolls through. The father asks her if she's going to meet a friend later, and the daughter, completely straight faced, says, "I don't know...let me call her", and proceeds to pantomime a phone with her thumb and pinky. She begins "talking", in a completely unsarcastic manner that positively screams sarcasm. The camera cuts to the father, who is staring at her as if she's unbalanced. We can plainly see that she wants a cell phone. We quickly change scenes, to a different room, with the daughter still talking on her imaginary phone in the background; the father's face is in the foreground so we can see his consternation. The daughter, carrying on her "conversation", says, "Hold on...there's someone on my other line", and she then pops her forefinger out and says, "Hello?" The expression on the father's face is priceless.

The entire mood of this commercial is relaxed, in that it doesn't overtly beg the consumer to buy for a full 30 seconds. (There are lapses within the commercial that do that, but I'm just concentrating on the acting part of it.) There is not a parent in this country who would not immediately identify with the interaction between the parents and the child. It is clever and (as much as I hate the word), cute. The daughter is clearly sending a message that she knows her father can't ignore, but she is not rude or disrespectful. The father is a stereotypical, eyes-rolling parent of a teenage daughter who more than likely will give in. This commercial has that rare ability to be very funny without seeming like it's trying to be. If only some of the tripe that passes for comedy between the commercials would pick up on that, maybe television would be a better place.

The Bad: KFC
In this one, a teenage boy of about 13 is on the phone to his mother from a friend's house. He tells her where he is, and wants to know if he can stay for dinner, anxiously adding that the friend's parents are home (the friend's mom is in the background, placing a bucket of chicken on the counter). We don't hear what the boy's mother says, but he is obviously more than a little disappointed as he huffs just a bit and rolls his eyes. He then turns to the friend's mom and fairly whines, "She doesn't believe me". Friend's mom takes the phone, and inquires, "Carol?", so we know they know each other on a first name basis. Friend's mom reiterates the boy's story, saying that they are all there, and it's OK if the boy stays. As she does this, though, she is putting her arm around the boy and, presumably steering him toward the dining area, looks at him as if to say, "What the hell is wrong with your paranoid mother? Sheesh!" The boy smirks back at her with a look of agreement.

I had to think for a little while before I could put my finger on what was wrong with this commercial, and it finally dawned on me that chicken was the last thing on my mind after seeing it. I was much more drawn to the fact that the friend's mom was polite on the phone while making faces and pretty much mocking the other mom in full view of the son, who, by expression, agreed. I couldn't help but picture the unseen mother as the crazy lady in the neighborhood. It's as if the friend's mom was doing the poor boy a favor by keeping him away from his own home; life is much better at theirs. Oh, and they have KFC too. Friend mom is far too busy secretly mocking those who trust her to cook something herself. This one left a bad taste in my mouth.

The Ugly: Quizno's
This one is a re-hash of an earlier campaign to showcase the difference in the amount of meat between a Quizno's sub and a Subway one. The guy who says, "Prime rib...it's the uber meat" just set the dork acceptance movement back 30 years. I had a real beef with this one.

For as prevalent as commercials are, I can't find links to specific ones on the internet, or I would most certainly provide them. If anyone can find them, please let me know and I will post them. I would be remiss if I didn't say how much I like the Geico caveman ad campaign; it wouldn't surprise me if it spins into a series. And if you think I read too much into commercials, run a Google search on "geico caveman racist". Lotsa fun stuff there.

Political Rant

2007-02-23T17:16:00.000-05:00

Although I'm not sure that it qualifies as an adage, I've always felt that the public discussion of religion and politics is taboo, because both subjects are, to me, anyway, deeply personal and as such, are no one else's business. Religion, of course, is completely subjective, so discussing that with anyone is akin to mental masturbation. Politics, however, is a bit different, in that I believe the voters must do all they can to become informed on the issues at hand and cast their vote accordingly. If the playing field were level, this would make perfect sense, but it's not. As a result, when deciding on political candidates, I use this rule: I do as much research as I can on each, and then I decide which one I'm most comfortable with when they lie to me. Simple, huh?

Politicians are a very strange breed, in my opinion. I'm no conspiracy nut, but I must confess to being immediately distrustful of anyone who WANTS to be the president. It amazes me that people flock to their candidate believing that he (or she) is the ONLY one who can lead us on the right moral path and save us from the certain depravity of their opponent. We spend countless hours and millions of dollars to elevate them to the highest office in the country, and when the goal has been achieved, we then exhaust every effort to tear them down for making the decisions we put them in office to make.

For instance, I liked Bill Clinton. I was really comfortable with him lying to me. Of course he inhaled. Frankly, I'd prefer that the person who makes the drug laws has had some experience with drugs. That he was having an extra marital affair was a shining example of his fallibility. I am in no way excusing his behavior, but I do understand it. Being the most powerful man on the face of the earth would, I suspect, be a source of stress, and he is just a man, no matter how much we want to hold him to a higher standard. One could argue that he asked for scrutiny by wanting to be president, which is valid. Again, though, if you follow people who WANT that kind of scrutiny, and who KNOW that they are prone to the same foibles as every other person, you must accept it when they do not measure up to impossible standards.

I was following the John Edwards blogging snafu last week. It seems he hired Amanda Marcotte of the blog Pandagon to write for his campaign blog. With article titles like "You'd Think a Douchebag Could Get More Pussy Than This", it would seem that Edwards either didn't read any of her work before hiring her, or didn't realize that many people find language like that objectionable, to say the least. In another article concerning birth control (which I believe has been deleted by Marcotte), she referred to Mary (of virgin birth fame) as being impregnated with the "sticky white goo" of the Holy Spirit. There's a difference, I think, between satire and insulting, even mocking the religious beliefs of millions of Christians. As noted, I am not going to discuss my religious beliefs, but what in the world made Edwards think that this is the style of writing he wants to use to project his ideals and promote his candidacy? Do we want to give him the power to wage war when we already know that he's not paying much attention to details?

Discussions of religion and politics are arguments waiting to happen. I suspect that even among Christians, the image of God that each person has is different from that of the person sitting next to them in the same church. As for politicians, they break the cardinal rule of trying to be all things to all people. Remember Lamar Alexander? He ran for the Republican nomination for president in 1996 and 2000, proclaiming himself to be a "man of the people". He used an SUV instead of a tour bus, and wore a red flannel shirt to show how down to earth he was. The trouble was, Alexander was far from average, as far as income. When asked by a skeptical reporter how much a gallon of milk and a dozen eggs cost, he was overheard by several witnesses telling an aide "I need to know the price of a gallon of milk and a dozen eggs. I need to know right now". A man who doesn't know the price of two staples that nearly every American uses on a daily basis is not a man of the people. He dropped out of the race soon after.

If we as a people do not cut ourselves off from the aphrodisiac of the cult of personality, we will forever have leaders who promise more than they can deliver. Why do we believe these men will behave like anything other than, well,...men?