I want you to be crazy 'cause you're boring baby when you're sane

SCENE: Quiet neighborhood, late at night. ROSIE, a little red pickup truck, passes slowly along sleepy streets. A man (HE) and woman (SHE) are in the cab. As the truck turns from one street to the next, he speaks.

HE: Oh, I forgot to say hello to my street.
SHE: "Say hello to your street?"
HE: Yeah, the last street we crossed has the same name as me, so every time I pass it, I say hello. But I forgot just now, 'cause we were talking. (looks up the block) It comes out again up there. We could just go around and see it again. (thinks for a moment). No, no, driving completely around the block just to talk to a street would be...it would be...excessively eccentric.
SHE: Hmmm...it's interesting where you draw the line with that.

NEWS OF THE AWESOME: New Planets!!!

Oh, this is exciting!
For as long as we’ve realized that the stars were just other suns, much farther away, people have wondered if there are planets orbiting those stars. It seemed logical; we have no reason to believe that there is anything special or unique about our solar system, so why couldn’t an untold number of them have formed in more or less the same way, all across the universe?
But realizing that something is logically true and knowing it to actually be true are two different things. And unlike stars, planets don’t give off light, which makes them really hard to spot at the kind of distances we’re talking about when discussing even our own arm of the Milky Way.
A few years ago astronomers were able to determine that several nearby stars did have planets orbiting them, by measuring the way the stars wobbled as the gravity of the moving planets pulled them back and forth, but we still couldn’t see them. It was comforting to know for sure that they were there, but rather unsatisfying.
Well, brothers and sisters, 2008 can now be remembered for (among many other reasons) being the year that we first saw, actually saw and photographed, an extra-Solar planet. More than one, actually. Christian Marois and a team from British Columbia found three planets around one of the stars in the constellation Pegasus, called HR 8799, about 130 light years away.
130 light years is pretty serious business on a human scale, but cosmically speaking this star is right down the street. But even better, there’s a star named Formalhaut which is only 25 light years away from us; in galactic terms, we’re practically roommates. Formalhaut is sleeping on our sofa, basically. It is a very young star, still surrounded by the cloud that planets form out of. And in May, Paul Kalas and a team of astronomers from UC-Berkeley found a planet floating in that cloud.
The new planet is about three times the size of Jupiter, and it’s close enough to Earth that our radio signals have been reaching it for nearly a century. Unfortunately, we can be pretty sure there isn’t any intelligent life there (the system is only about 60 million years old; when Earth was that old it still didn’t even have a solid crust), but it’s pretty awesomely cool anyway.
In fact, I’d like to suggest a name for as-yet-unnamed planet: Coolestthingevertopia. Or how about Terra Fabulousica?  I wonder who you submit ideas like that to.  To all readers:  submit your choice of name now, and we’ll send them all in together.

Obama, NO. McCain, NO. Mercer, YES!

Okay, I know you’re all stressed about the election, just dying for some news, ANY news, to see what direction the country’s gonna be going in for the next few years. Well, I’m here to save the day.
Not by giving you news, of course. I don’t have much yet, either. Instead, I’m gonna give you a quick break from having to take this election seriously, just for a few minutes. Go read this story about the man who SHOULD have become our first African-American President (although he claims he would only have been the second), and laugh your asses off. I’ve been saving it since February, just for you guys, just for tonight. Enjoy yourselves, and report back here later.

Somewhat hopeful...

Okay, I know not everyone agrees with me on this, but I love the Friday the 13th film series. They’re just a big messy glorious pile of dumb, and they make me happy, which is why I own nine of the ten films on DVD (does someone wanna get me F13-9: Jason Goes To Hell for Bogey Day?).
So part of me is a little bit pissed-off and horrified that they’re doing a Rob Zombie-style reboot of the series rather than just making F13-11 (and also that Michael Bay is apparently involved). But another part of me is kinda fascinated by it. And today I ran across the new teaser trailer online, and I gotta say, it’s pretty effective:
Friday The 13th in HD

So, yeah. That right there pretty much guarantees that I’ll be in the theater on 2/13/9 catching the new film. I like that they’ve returned to a more active Jason, like in the early films. I mean, he never became the shambling revenant that Michael Myers was, but he definitely slowed down a bit towards the end of the series. That bit at the end of the trailer where he charges…I found that unsettling, in a very satisfying way.
I did notice that the voiceover for the trailer was clearly taken from Betsy Palmer’s dialog from the original movie. I know that they hired Nana Visitor to play Pamela Voorhees for this version (a nice little bit of Star Trek weirdness for the new film), but I’d heard that her scenes had been cut. This would seem to confirm that, which depresses me; if Mama Voorhees isn’t gonna be in it, that’ll hurt the film a lot, in my opinion.
On the other hand, check out this picture of the kid they got to play young Jason. Goodness gracious. Look at how far apart his eyes are, and how his head is just waaaaay too big for his body, and how his face doesn’t take up as much of it as it should. And dig those ears, so far down the side of his head! I mean, he’s not a terribly ugly kid or anything, but you can definitely see a bit of Jason in him even without makeup. Once they’ve got him in costume, that’s gonna be a creepy little bastard, huh?
So, on balance, and against my better judgment, I’m pretty excited about the new film. Who’s going to see it with me?
 

Two points of irritation for the day

First, I’m handing out propers to Charlie Crist, the Republican governor of Florida. The state has a law restricting polling places during early voting to being open only eight hours per day. This, of course, is stupid; people with regular nine-to-five jobs couldn’t get there for that, which defeats the purpose of early voting. So Crist did a little executive order thing, extending those hours to twelve per day (7-7). This was absolutely the right thing to do.
Many members of his own party hated it. They are afraid that more voters means a McCain loss in the state. It seems to me that if more people voting means your party will lose, you need to change your party, not the voting procedures. But it isn’t the GOP I’m angry with over this; I don’t expect much from them anyway, and they’re in full “the sky is falling” mode at this point. My problem is on the other side.
While most Democrats have been just happy with these developments, a few are running all over the place telling anyone who will listen that Crist did it to revenge himself upon the McCain campaign for picking Sarah Palin to be VP instead of him or whatever. Basically, they’re saying that he knows McCain is going to lose anyway, and he’s doing this for selfish reasons to make himself look good.
You know what? What Crist did was right. And he did make himself look good, and it’s fine that he looks good, because when you do the right thing you should look good. I don’t care what his rationale was. We want people to do the right thing, and you don’t have to be a member of a particular party, or subscribe to a particular political philosophy, to do that. We should be applauding him for actually protecting the rights of the people of his state; there has to be a reward for serving the public interest, or people will stop doing it. So, if you’re one of those on the left who has been questioning his motives today, shut up. You’re part of the problem.

Second, there’s Rashid Khalidi.  The Palin, who still lacks both the competence and the vision to make the case for her own ticket, has been trying to scare people by talking him up (though she has not yet mastered the pronunciation of his name) and now the knuckleheads have taken up the chant that he’s some sort of radical anti-Semite.
Now, I’m not going to defend Khalidi. I don’t know much about him. He might well be anti-Zionist, which is a perfectly respectable political position to take. He might also be anti-Jew, which is not at all respectable. I have no idea. But he is NOT an anti-Semite. Khalidi is Palestinian, which of course makes him an Arab. That means, for the benefit of all the half-witted right-wing talking heads out there, that HE IS SEMITIC HIMSELF. To save them the trouble of looking up the word (a skill which they appear to lack) I offer this quick definition:
SEMITE—a member of any of various ancient and modern peoples originating in southwestern Asia, including the Akkadians, Canaanites, Phoenicians, Hebrews, and Arabs.
The name Semite actually comes from the language group common in this part of the world (the Semitic languages), which includes both Hebrew and Arabic. It is regional, not ethnic. Yes, people in this country frequently use the word to mean anti-Jewish, but that isn’t its actual definition. I usually let it slide when someone is talking about, say, Pat Robertson, because it still basically makes sense in those circumstances.  However, it absolutely does not make sense when you’re talking about an Arab.
What I’m saying is that Rashid Khalidi can no more be anti-Semitic than fire can be anti-heat, or I can be anti-cool. If the closed minds out there absolutely must use fancy words, they should at least take the trouble to find out what those words mean first.

Happy Birthday, Virginia Leith

Today, brothers and sisters, is Virginia Leith’s birthday. I hope everyone is as excited as I am.
Wait, what’s that? You don’t know who she is? Well, lemme tell ya about a little movie called The Brain That Wouldn’t Die. Or, possibly, The Head That Wouldn’t Die (it’s listed as the former in the opening credits, but the latter in the closing credits…surprisingly, they don’t seem to have put very much thought into this movie).
This is one of the real Trash Classics. There’s actually a sort of plodding, grotesque grandeur to it, and though it isn’t majestically awful on the same level as “Manos” The Hands of Fate, it is one of those that I felt compelled to actually own on DVD. Not the Mystery Science Theater 3000 version, either. The actual, unedited, original film. It’s terribly delightful.
It’s a pretty simple movie. I won’t go into too much detail (you really should see it for yourselves), but here’s a quick synopsis: A brilliant young surgeon, Dr. Bill Cortner, has developed a revolutionary new technique for transplanting organs and limbs and generally working medical miracles, but the scientific community looks down upon his work for some reason never fully explained (his own father, also a doctor, tells him in one memorable scene, “You shouldn’t experiment until you KNOW the results!” which, as MST3K pointed out, indicates that Dad isn’t too clear on the meaning of the word “experiment”). So he works at his country house, conducting his experiments in the basement along with his assistant, Kurt (who works for Dr. Bill in hopes that his shriveled arm can be healed). Pretty standard mid-century mad-scientist set-up, really.
Just as Dr. Bill is about to go away for a romantic weekend with his nurse/girlfriend, Jan Compton, he gets a panicked phone call from Kurt that something has gone terribly wrong. So he and Jan race out to the country house. Problem is, Dr. Bill is a less than perfectly skillful driver, and in one of the worst celluloid imitations of a car crash ever, he loses control and sends the car rolling down a hill. Tragically, Jan is killed in the crash, though Dr. Bill is thrown clear and escapes injury.
The car is on fire and Dr. Bill can’t save Jan…entirely. So, he cuts off her head and takes it with him. Hey, don’t judge the man ‘til you’ve walked a mile in his shoes, okay?
Next thing we know, he’s keeping Jan’s head alive until he can find a body for it. He does this by leaving it propped up in a saucer of dark liquid with lots of tubes running in and out. And for the rest of the movie she just sits there, whispering (no lungs, you see) in a vaguely threatening way at poor Kurt and repeatedly (and famously) pleading, “Let me die.”
Meanwhile, the search for a new body for the love of his life inevitably leads Dr. Bill to a strip club (well, a burlesque hall...it WAS 1962, after all). ‘Cause, I mean, where else would you go, right? Two of the dancers get into a catfight over him, which scene is probably the whole reason they made the movie, so he leaves and instead chooses a nude model that he used to know years ago in some way the movie is far too lazy to make clear. They head back to the summer house, and of course hilarity bone-chilling terror ensues.
The movie is notable for two reasons. First (SPOILER ALERT as if anyone cared) it has probably the greatest death scene in the entire history of motion pictures. When Kurt’s arm is ripped off by the monster in the basement closet (the result of the spectacular failure of an earlier experiment), he takes a full five minutes to die (trust me, it seems longer). He staggers around the basement, spraying and smearing blood everywhere and moaning. Then he wanders upstairs into the living room, staggering and moaning but inexplicably leaving no blood (a few minutes later, when Dr. Bill and his chosen victim show up, she sits in the chair Kurt had recently collapsed into and doesn’t realize anything is up). Then he goes back into the basement, staggers around a little bit more, slumps into a corner, moans for another minute or so, and finally dies. And while all this is happening, of course, his arm is clearly visible tucked inside his lab coat. Words can’t do this scene justice; you have to see it (it is inexplicably not up on YouTube, but if I can figure out how, I’m gonna fix that).
The scene is legendary, and has had homage paid to it by many filmmakers since, including Joss Whedon himself in the original Buffy the Vampire Slayer. It is impossible that the filmmakers didn’t realize how ridiculous this scene is. They must have decided, “Well, we wanted to make a good movie whose popularity would last for decades, but we clearly haven’t managed that, so let’s just put in a death scene at once so mind-numblingly tedious and jaw-droppingly bizarre that we’ll be remembered for that instead!”
Worked.
The other thing that makes this movie notable, though, is Jan herself. She’s become a Trash Classics icon, known as “Jan in the Pan” thanks to the riffing of the MST3K boys (and this film, the first of the Mike Nelson era, provided one of the best episodes ever; if you have Netflix, I urge, nay, beg you to rent it here). She is equal to Ed Wood’s Criswell or the inestimable Torgo. Her face (and only her face) is on T-shirts and posters, her name is a running joke among a certain subsection of our society, and the actress has drawn adoring crowds at horror conventions across the country.
That actress, of course, is Virginia Leith, and as I said at the beginning of this entry, today is her birthday (where else but here could you get information like this?). She’s 76 and still plugging away, so raise a glass to her tonight for the forty-plus years of joy she’s provided bad movie fans everywhere. Happy birthday, Virginia. I hope your next 76 years are as good as the first 76.

Bartlet for America

I can’t believe I didn’t remember this before. This is what I get for going so long without watching my beloved West Wing.
Do you remember, waaaaaay back in the first season, that President Bartlet had a Navy major as his personal physician? He died not too far into the series, but before he did, he and Bartlet had some excellent conversations. A lot of it was the non-soldier Bartlet trying to seem cool and tough before the military man, and one exchange in particular seems relevant right now, for reasons that might possibly suggest themselves to you:

Bartlet: It’s not like I’m totally without experience. You’re talking to a former governor. I was the Commander-in-Chief of the New Hampshire National Guard.
Morris Tolliver: You guys get into a lot of tough scrapes, did ya?
Bartlet: We didn’t have to. We’d just stand on the border and stare you down. Then we’d all go for pancakes.

Allegory

So, as you all know, I moved recently. My new building has a laundry room. It’s good to have it, but I haven’t done anything with it yet. I go out to Mama’s every weekend to do my laundry. It’s a reason to spend a little time with her and the biscuits, and an excuse to drive a good distance at a time when gas prices have made driving for pleasure a luxury beyond my means.
The Palin, as governor of Alaska, was technically Commander-in-Chief of the Alaska National Guard. The GOP is pushing this as further proof that she’s ready to be VP and possibly President, if the need arises. They say she has experience as CIC, even though she never once in her 18 months on the job gave the Guard a single order.
Still, it’s technically true she has experience of being CIC, in the same sense that I have experience of the washer and dryer in my building: I’ve never actually used them, don’t really know how they work or how much they cost, but I’ve seen them, and it’s nice to know they’re there, I guess.

Working to make the world a better place=stupid

This is the thing about Republicans: they appeal to the worst bits of us. They appeal to everything that’s ugly in us, and we just keep going for it.
It 2000, Dubya ran on the “dumbass frat boy” platform. His whole campaign was based on being the smirking guy in the back of the class who didn’t get it, but made himself feel better by making fun of the kids who did.
Now there’s Sarah Palin and her big laugh line about a small-town mayor being like a community organizer, only with “actual responsibilities.” She used it at the convention, of course, and now she’s using it in her stump speeches. The Palin wants to make fun of community organizers who, among their many accomplishments, are the only reason she has the right to fucking vote.
Barack Obama got his start as a community organizer, of course, which is why she targets them. She doesn’t want to admit that these people do good work, because if she did, she’d be forced to face the fact that, while she was off winning beauty pageants, Obama was working hard on the Southside of Chicago, helping working people (those same working people that some inexplicably believe he’s “afraid” of) who had been ruined by the failed steel industry to salvage something and rebuild their lives.
But there is another reason for this line of attack.  See, there are still community organizers (of every political stripe) all across the country trying to do what politicians only pretend to do, which is to change the world and make it a better place. These are the people The Palin wants to turn into a national joke. Of course she does. She doesn’t want you to organize, because organized people rock the boat. She doesn’t want the boat rocked. She wants you to spend money and do what you’re told.
Dubya spent the 2000 campaign laughing at his intellectual superiors, and America laughed along, and he won (sorta). He proved that we’re stupid. Now The Palin is laughing at her moral superiors. She wants to prove that we’re not only stupid, but mean. Are you gonna laugh along?

Worst Warning Sign Ever

Sign outside a local contruction site: CAUTION—LASER IN USE
Shouldn’t a warning sign make you not want to go in? ‘Cause I saw that, and I started looking for an open door. I wanna see that goddamned laser. Who wouldn’t?
I wonder what other, equally ineffective, signs they had up. Maybe a WATCH FOR FALLING BEER sign, or one that reads WARNING: BOOBIES.
 

UPDATE (11/10): Heh. Got drunk last night, memory is a bit hazy. Woke up this morning to find the sign on my wall. Must've gone out and stolen it in the middle of the night. Ah, I feel like a kid again.

He was a baaad mother-(shut your mouth)

Augh! Isaac Hayes just died. What? How the hell did that happen?
That means that pretty much all the cool in the world (except, you know, for what resides in my own body) is gone.
Wasn’t Isaac Hayes too cool to die? I mean, seriously, you’d think Death would walk in and Isaac would go, “Hey, baby, don’t wreck the groove, dig?”
“But I’ve come to take you to the other side,” Death would say, somewhat nonplussed by his total lack of fear.
“Just have a seat while I dim the lights, baby. Care for a drink?”
“I really shouldn’t…” but Isaac would put Hot Buttered Soul on his record player, and the cool would overwhelm it, “well, okay…maybe just one…”
And a couple hours later, Death would walk out of the house empty-handed with a big smile. Death’s driver would say, “Ummm…so where’s this guy we came for?”
“Whoah,” Death would say, “step off a brother, a’ight? He’s cool.” And then Death would go off to bother, say, Andy Dick.
The man has great personal significance for me beyond just being super-cool. He was a huge part of my courtship with Rhonda. She had never listened to him before. At the time, she was a big fan of Stealing Beauty, which has one of the best soundtracks ever, and we used to listen to it while we were out driving. It features a song called “2-Wicky” by a band named Hoover, which samples “Walk On By” very heavily. I told her the origin of the sample, and later played Hot Buttered Soul for her, and she loved the record, and...well, let’s just say that LOTS of sex was had with that record playing in the background, okay? So, everybody thinks of sex when they listen to Isaac Hayes, but maybe I think of a little more sex than most.
Speakin’ of which, I’m gonna put Hot Buttered Soul on right now, and when that’s over, I’m gonna watch Shaft (which, of course, I own on DVD...I mean, come on). And maybe later I’ll go hang out with Mama’s cat, who is pretty much Hayes’ avatar amongst the common folk.

Walk on by, walk on by,
Make believe that you don’t see the tears
Just let me grieve in private
‘Cause each time I see you
I break down and cry
And walk on by

I just can’t get over losing you
So if I seem broken and blue
Walk on by

 So long, brother.

Oh How I Hate

I’m still adjusting to having to drive to work every day. I’m used to waking up at Time X, spending Time Y getting ready, and then leaving at Time Z. Everything has to happen a little earlier now. Only about five minutes earlier, but for a creature of habit like myself, those are five big minutes, and I’ve been late a couple of times since the move because of them.
I was a few minutes late today, but not because of this. No, today I left the house on time. Unfortunately, the streets were full of Ohio drivers this morning. I had to wait forever while the first one worked up the courage to turn left across Eighth Street. Then I got stuck behind one on Seventh Avenue, stridently driving five mph below an already unreasonably low speed limit. I cut over onto Sixth Avenue to get away from him, only to find a third Ohio driver waiting for me there, who managed to make us miss a makeable light at Sixteenth Street. Then there was a fourth ahead of me at the light on Twentieth Street and Fifth Avenue, who apparently either didn’t realize that the light had changed, or saw it but wasn’t sure what the significance of a green light where a red light had been moments before might be.
I try not to have too much hate in my heart, brothers and sisters, because it isn’t good for me; but I can’t not hate Ohio drivers. It is beyond my strength. Ohio drivers are the worst drivers in the whole country, and I say this as a person who has wide experience of driving styles from across our great nation.
I’ve been saying this for years, ever since I actually lived in Ohio in the late 90s. Some Ohio drivers are better than others, but even those are still just the best of a bad lot, and when they cross state lines they automatically become the worst drivers on the road. People from Ohio (especially men) tend to take offense when this fact is brought up, which I guess should surprise no one. Every man wants to believe that he’s a good driver, just like he wants to believe that he’s a competent lover, or that he has an engaging sense of humor. He continues to believe these things about himself in spite of mountains of evidence to the contrary. And since some of my readers are from Ohio, let me apologize for my frankness right now and offer some constructive criticism.
“Well, Rick,” you may be saying, “I’m from Ohio, but I would like to develop the skills required to not make other drivers crazy in neighboring states. I would like someday to be welcome in another state.  Any other state, anywhere, ever. Can you give me some tips on areas I should be trying to improve?” Well, if you’ve got an Ohio driver’s license, then you have two principal problems while driving:
First, you do everything wrong.
Second, you do it verrrrrrrrry slowly.
But, the first step towards recovery is admitting you have a problem. Good luck! If there’s anything else I can do to help, just let me know.
 

Done. Gone.

Well, this is it. My last-ever post from 1324. Everything is packed up except for a very few things in my closet, most of which will be thrown away, and my posters. So I’ll be back once more tonight, but I’m taking the computer now.
I’m gonna kind of miss this little place. I mean, the windows don’t open, and there are no drawers in the kitchen, and the kitchen itself is too small to cook anything fancier than macaroni and cheese in, and it’s drafty and cold as hell in winter, and it’s too close to Frat Row, and the bathroom floor is collapsing. It has its problems, is what I’m saying..
But it’s got a nice front porch, great for sitting and reading on, or holding court.  It’s close to most of the places I like to go, and it’s completely sheltered by the surrounding buildings so that it’s always in shade and doesn’t get very hot in summer. Even right here in 4 ½ Alley, downtown and two blocks from campus, it’s isolated and peaceful.  And it’s tiny, but I liked that it was tiny. I don’t have much in the way of possessions, and I’m not claustrophobic. In fact, I’m a claustrophile, or whatever the opposite of a claustrophobe is. When I was little I used to sleep under my bed rather than in it. I liked the enclosed space. If I could afford it, I’d buy a coffin to sleep in, and I would sleep with the lid closed. A cramped apartment suits me, as long as it has a decent kitchen.
And I’ve got lots of good memories of the place. I mean, I’ve lived here longer than I’ve ever lived anywhere in my entire life, and the memories are thick and far-reaching at 1324. Amy and Gerlach and Mrs. D have spent a lot of time here, of course, and they’ll be around for new memories over at 704. But there are memories of folks who’ve gone away, like Katy and my Dooleys, and other folks that I don’t know any more, like Christy and Sheila; those memories had substance here, but in the new place they won’t even be ghosts. It’s too bad.
I like the new place a lot. I’ve stayed there the past two nights, and it’s pretty awesome (except that I haven’t yet figured out how the shower works). I got my first piece of mail over there today (an MST3K episode from Netflix). I think I’m gonna be happy there. I’m not sad, really. It isn’t hard to walk away. But I am kinda gonna miss this cheap, dirty, silly, crappy place. It was a good home.
 

I admit, it's getting better, a little better all the time.

Well, in case anyone was worried about yesterday’s difficulties, here’s an update. It contains both good news and bad, so we’ll do the bad news first.
I talked to a friend at VCU about whether they were really serious about that ridiculous law against hiring people who never registered for the draft. It turns out that yes, they most definitely are serious. There’s no way around it, no appeal process. They’ll see that on the application and throw it in the trash without reading further. So, that’s out.
Many folks advised me to simply lie on the application. I appreciate your interest in my efforts, but I just couldn’t do that, for three reasons:
First, lying about that is tantamount to turning my back on the beliefs that led me to make that decision in the first place. It would be like a Christian denying Jesus to get a job, or a scientist pretending the Earth is only 6,000 years old. There’s just no way I can do that. I wrestled with it last night, but I’m clear on it now. I’m not going to lie about it.
Second, even if I did lie, I’d be found out. The job I was applying for is a classified position. That sounds funny, ‘cause it’s not like I’d be privy to nuclear secrets or anything. However, I would have access to the records of everyone who works or attends classes or has recently attended classes at the school. That’s all in the system. I would be able to, for example, steal someone’s Social Security number. So, before they hire someone for the position, they do a pretty thorough security check on them, and among the things that would certainly come up is that old problem with the Selective Service.
Third, even if I could somehow get through the interview process, there are at least two people at the school who know my status. If I got hired, they would either have to turn me in, or ignore it and hope nobody else finds out, since they’d then be in trouble for not reporting me. I don’t want to put them in that position.
So, VCU is out. It’s too bad, but I’m gonna move on from that. I still might move back home. I would like to. I might take a week in the fall and go down on a job hunt. But for right now, I’m staying here in Huntington.
You’ll remember that the other problem was not having a place to live after Wednesday. Well, I’ve solved that one, so now we’re in the good news portion of the update.
I found a place. It’s at the corner of 10th Avenue and 7th Street, which is kind of outside the area I want to live in, but not too far. It’s not conveniently located to the library, in that I will not be able to walk to and from work unless I leave really early, but it’s closer to Amy, Gerlach, my brother, and the park, so that probably all evens out. It’s a little more a month than my current place, but not much, and given that everything is included (even electric) it will actually come out to be less than this place, in winter at least.
It is MUCH larger than 1324, also. It’s probably at least three times the floor space. It has a real kitchen with ample cabinet space and room for a microwave, coffee machine, and toaster all at the same time (I’m amazed by this, after four years of unplugging and storing the toaster every time I want coffee) and a full-sized stove. The refrigerator, unfortunately, is the same cheap, skinny piece of crap I’ve got now, but I can live with it.
It is partially furnished, so I’ve got a table to eat at and a bed for guests and shelves built into the wall. It has a desk. It has a bathtub, in a bathroom with porcelain tile on the floor. And there’s a washer and dryer, which is just an unimaginable luxury.
It is not perfect. There is not yet a door on the bathroom, though I’m hoping that will be fixed by the time I move in. They do not allow cats, and I don’t know yet if Jeannie and I will be able to get around that. Parking might be a problem at night; we’ll have to see about that.
But it’s much nicer than I’m used to, and it’s affordable. And I won’t be on a lease. I’ll be paying month-to-month, so if I decide to move out of town (I really do have my heart set on leaving town), I’ll be able to just pack up and go. I’m really excited about it. I promise pictures once I’m in, and figure out how to use the camera the Cat Lady sent me.
So, good news and bad news today, but I’m feeling pretty positive generally, and most of yesterday’s despair is gone. Love and peace to all.

They never forgive you for not believing what they want you to believe.

As some of you may know, I was something of an idealist as a young man. I still am, I guess, though as I’ve gotten older I’ve honed an ability to see both sides of most serious arguments, and as a result, there are fewer things I believe in now than there used to be. But I’m pretty fierce about the things I do believe in, and no less then than now.
Among those things are these two truths: first, that war, although occasionally necessary, is wrong (duh); second, that the people who run our country are not interested in moral or ethical questions, but rather are motivated purely by self-interest, the lust for power, and (to a lesser extent) by narrow ideologies that, once they’ve reached office, they never seem to question.
I was outraged by injustices perpetrated by the United States government, and they made up a litany that I chanted in the dark years of Reagan’s Eighties. I looked at Polk’s war with Mexico, at the unjustifiable (and ultimately doomed) entry of the U.S. into World War I, and the desperate fiasco of Vietnam. I read about how we overthrew the peaceful, democratically-elected governments of Iran, Guatemala, Chile, and a host of others, and of the human disasters wrought by the right-wing dictators we replaced them with. I learned that our government is capable of great evil.
So, when I turned 18, I was aware that at some point my country might need me to take up arms in its defense, and I was prepared for that. If Russian ships had sailed up the Chesapeake Bay and landed invasion forces in Virginia in 1989, I would have been right there on the front lines, fighting them off. But I knew that historically it is very rare that soldiers are called upon to defend their country. For the most part, they are called upon to destroy other peoples’ countries in the service of the narrow self-interest of the wealthy and powerful.
In other words, I was going to decide for myself whether something was worth fighting, dying, or killing for. I was NOT going to allow that decision to be made for me. I didn’t know anyone else who could be trusted. And so, I refused to register for the draft.
That’s illegal, of course. I suppose they put you in jail for that, though I don’t know the details. How long do they keep you? Do they keep you until you register? If you never register, do they keep you ‘til you die? I should have researched this, really. But being idealistic, and a bit naïve (and then as now a little dramatic) I was willing to go to jail when they came for me. I may also have been calculating how much my success with the hippie chicks would increase after such an arrest. Going to jail for what you believe in…what’s more American than that?  What could possibly be sexier?
They did come for me, of course. By happy coincidence, when they came to my house, I was already in jail for something else (something distinctly non-idealistic, but that’s a story for another time). I suppose they made a note to come ‘round again after I got out, then filed me away while they dealt with the other recalcitrants, and eventually forgot about me. They never came back. I slipped through the cracks.
It’s a strange fact about human nature that, once you’ve convinced yourself that you believe something strongly enough to go to prison rather than recant, it’s a little disappointing if you never, in fact, go to prison for it. Nevertheless, I never did register for the draft, and I’m proud of that.
It has caused me some problems in my life. When I was an International Affairs major, I discovered that I can’t hold any sort of federal job. Not only can I not be, say, Attorney General, but also I can’t be a low-level clerk at the Justice Department. Given my major, the State Department would have been the obvious employer to seek out after graduation. Even if I didn’t plan to make a career out of it, that would be the place to get experience, make contacts, get my foot in the door. However, in order for me to have even a minor position working for the Federal Government, there would have to be an actual Act of Congress. I’m pretty sure I’m not important enough to debate on the Senate floor, you know? So, there was nothing to be done about it, and after considering various options, I quietly decided to go for a different degree.
Degrees, actually, have been a much bigger problem in general. See, not only am I not eligible for government work, I’m also not eligible for federal money. None at all. The only program that I’m legally allowed to take part in is Social Security. Everything else is closed to me, and that includes every kind of Financial Aid available. None of the big government programs for student aid are open to me. I can’t even get student loans that are backed by Federal money. The main reason I still don’t have a degree is financial; you have to work full-time just to live, and if you’re doing that and going to school full time, that’s pretty stressful. But if you aren’t getting any sort of financial help, you have to have another part-time job (at least) to pay tuition and costs. There just isn’t enough time. If I work enough to pay tuition I can’t go to school, and if I have enough time to go to school I can’t afford tuition.
There are other problems, too, and they never go away.  There is no statute of limitations on this offense; once you’ve reached 27 (the age at which you can no longer register), you can never be forgiven.  Still, I don’t regret the decision, even after all these years. I believe still that I was right, and if there’s been trouble from it, it hasn’t been anything I couldn’t handle. I have lived an interesting and full life. I’ve been everywhere and done everything. I’ve grown tremendously as a person, if I do say so myself. I’ve learned so many wonderful and fascinating things, and known so many wonderful and fascinating people, and I’ve always had fun, always.
I’m not even sure that the lack of a degree has hurt me. I mean, yeah, maybe I would have had a more “respectable” job, making more money. Maybe so. But maybe I would have been less happy as well, because I would almost certainly have been less free. The absence of a degree hasn’t kept me from getting a lot of jobs that I’ve enjoyed. And now, of course, there’s the job at VCU, which doesn’t require a degree and for which all of my recent experience qualifies me. This is sort of like a dream come true, really; I’m perfect for the job, and the job is perfect for me. After all the miles and all the years, I’ll get to go back home. If you’ll forgive me for quoting T.S. Eliot:

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.

Yeah, exactly. What could be more exciting than that?
The job has been posted finally. I feel like I have a pretty good shot at it. I have fixed up the nicest résumé I was able to without actually lying and sent it along. I have been (indirectly) in contact with people who will be involved in the hiring process, and they’ve been encouraging. I’ve told my landlord that I’m leaving, and notified the people I work for that I might be gone at the end of the summer. The only thing left to do is fill out the online application and schedule an interview.
So I was filling out the application, and I came across this:

Section 2.2-2804 of the Code of Virginia prohibits any board, commission, department, agency, institution or instrumentality of the Commonwealth from employing a person who is required to present himself and submit to the federal Selective Service registration requirement and failed to do so. If you are/were required to register for the Selective Service, have you done so?

And now I really don’t know what I’m gonna do.

UPDATE (5:38): Pretty momentous day. I just found out that I have to move. Which, yes, I was planning to move anyway, but not ‘til sometime in August (regardless of what happens with VCU). I discovered just now that I have to be out of my apartment by July 31. So, I need a new place, that isn’t too expensive, and won’t tie me to a long-term lease. Any suggestions?

I only kill to know I'm alive.

I’ve got no problem, generally speaking, with life imitating the movies. However, it seems like life never imitates the right movies, you know? It’s never Amélie or anything sweet like that (I would love to spend the day running all over town solving puzzles, especially if the last one would lead me to Audrey Tautou). No, for some reason, when the screen world bleeds into the real world, it’s always something kinda scary.
They’ve got a new warplane. It’s a little computerized drone that flies around on its own, blowing things up, without a pilot. Now, I hear you saying, “But they’ve already got drones like that, and they’re using them in Iraq and Afghanistan.” No, they don’t. The ones in use right now are remote-controlled. They have cameras and “pilots” sitting safely in a bunker somehow guiding them to their targets. Whatever those things do, an actual person makes them do it. These new planes, though, are completely automated. You tell them what to destroy, and then they go off and destroy it on their own. Tell me that isn’t a recipe for disaster.
Anyway, the new plane is named the Reaper, which just proves again that irony is dead, but I prefer to call it the “Flying Death Machine.” Several thousand of them are currently under construction at Wright-Patt in Dayton, Ohio, which is now reason #41,356 I’m glad I don’t live in Ohio anymore.
That isn’t the scary part, though. See, I said “you” tell them what to destroy, but that isn’t true. “You” don’t. Even if, by some chance, “you” are the President or the Secretary of Defense or the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (it would be awesome if any of those people actually read my LJ), you don’t tell it what to target. No, that job has been given to a super-computer. That’s right, a fleet of thousands of Flying Death Machines are under the control of a computer which, I’m sure, will never become self-aware and turn on its human overlords. I mean, the scientists who designed the thing would make sure that couldn’t happen, right?
Sure they would. I am confident that they put some sort of “do not become self-aware and turn on your human overlords” switch on it.  I mean, these are serious scientists, the best and brightest.
Oh, and by the way, would you like to know what these genius scientists named their insurrection-ready computer? Think for a moment; what’s the best possible name you could give a computer like this? What name would signify that you really are absolutely not trying to court disaster, and don’t have your hopes set on the worst possible outcome? Science fiction fans are probably waaay ahead of me here: they named it SkyNet. For those of you who aren’t fans of science fiction, “SkyNet” was the name of the computer in the Terminator movies.  You know, the one that became self-aware and turned on its human overlords. And subsequently destroyed all life on Earth.
Remember the words of Kyle Reese:  It can’t be bargained with. It can’t be reasoned with. It doesn’t feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And it absolutely will not stop, ever, until you are dead. “Excellent,” says science.  “Let’s put it in charge of the Flying Death Machines! With that attitude, what could go wrong?”
This is one of those movies that life way the hell definitely does not need to be imitating.
Our only hope now is that silly action movies will continue to make the transition from screen to reality, and James Bond will be sent after these people, and their SkyNet Instant Armageddon Generator and their Reaper Flying Death Machines, before it’s too late. Keep your fingers crossed.

East is East, West is West, two different colors on the map.

Three young people walk into a pizza place, two boys and a girl. They are fresh and lovely, and all three are foreign; even though the driver can’t really hear what they’re saying, their heavy accents are obvious. He is not sure where they are from, though there is an air of Southeastern Europe about them.  The driver’s opinion is that they are from somewhere in the Balkans, but they could be from anywhere.  They might even be Israeli.
They are at the cash register, talking to the cashier, trying to decide what to order for dinner. Wherever they’re from, they are apparently either Jews or Muslims, and are unable to eat pork. Their accent is charming if a bit obtuse, but their vocabulary is somewhat limited, and among the words they have not yet learned is “pork.” So they are going over the menu with the cashier, trying to ensure that they don’t accidentally order “pig meat.” The cashier is unable to understand them, however. His imagination is maybe a little too vivid, or his knowledge of foreign cultures might possibly be derived too much from comic books and Eli Roth movies. He hears “pig meat” as “Pygmy.”
So when they ask him, “Is this made from pig meat?” he tries to cover his horror with an affronted politeness.  “I’m sorry,” he responds, “but we don’t eat people in this country.”
 

Ex-PFC Wintergreen told Colonel Cargill that there was no record at 27th AFHQ of a T.S. Eliot

I’m listening to the audiobook version of Joseph Heller’s Catch-22. This is my book. It is, in my opinion, the finest American novel. It’s funny and insightful and disturbing and bizarre and mesmerizing and sorrowful, and while other novels can be those things too, no other has all of them at once, in such great profusion, coming at you in wave after wave. Reading the book is a brilliant and draining experience.
Things in the book happen fairly randomly. I mean, I say that and I know it’s not true…it took Heller 20 years to write it, and I’m sure quite a few of those years were spent organizing the incidents into their present order, which must have been a massive job. But they can sure seem random. For those who haven’t read the book, it jumps around crazily and apparently haphazardly between events, reporting them out of order, separated by arguments between the characters and flashbacks to events that happened, sometimes, decades before.
Also, things happen repeatedly. Incidents are introduced early in the book in brief outline form, then a few chapters later the book goes back to them with a little more detail, and then a few chapters later it does it again, and finally at the end of the book everything gets explained in full detail (the death of Snowden is the principal event that’s treated this way). I’m convinced that Quentin Tarantino based his editing of Pulp Fiction on the patterns in this book. I’ve read it easily a hundred times, and although I have a general sense of what came before what, I don’t believe I could sit down and write you a timeline showing the events of the book in chronological order. I’m not sure that Heller himself could do that.
So I report without shame that I listened to my new audiobook version of Catch-22 today for more than an hour before I realized that my iPod was set on random, and was playing the chapters out of order.

Idiots Rule

Oh, man, creationists piss me off.
It isn’t that they’re stupid. They are stupid, of course. Believing that the Earth is only six thousand years old is just plain stupid. To believe that, you have to believe that recorded history is older than the Earth. I’m serious: Sam Harris points out in his wonderful Letter to a Christian Nation that creationists believe that the Earth was created about a thousand years after the Sumerians invented glue. Square that one for me, would ya?
So, yeah, it’s stupid, but people are allowed to be stupid. Stupid isn’t against the law, generally speaking. The thing is, they want to make our kids stupid, too. And, see, that’s kind of a problem.
So, they’re debating whether or not to send Texas schoolchildren straight to hell (poor Texas schoolchildren…they’re always the test subjects in these ridiculous episodes) by teaching them evolution in the schools. You know, again. A court in Pennsylvania (yaaaaaaay, Pennsylvania!) just ruled that teaching creationism in the public schools was unconstitutional, seeing as how it’s really just fanatics trying to impose their religious beliefs onto scientific education. So Texas has had to start from scratch in their efforts to return to a Stone Age that they, of course, believe never existed.
Some moron named “Dr. McLeroy” who is the Chairman (yes, the Chairman, saints preserve us) of the school board was quoted as saying during the debate that he believes the Earth is only a few thousand years old. When it was pointed out to him that this belief is ludicrous (presumably in more polite language), he responded, “I believe a lot of incredible things. The most incredible thing I believe is the Christmas story. That little baby born in the manger was the god that created the universe.”
Leaving aside the temporal anomalies implied in that statement, he has a right to believe that if he wants. Personally, if it was me, I would have phrased that in a way that made me sound less like a nut, but hey, it’s his business. Note, however, that his religious beliefs clearly inform and justify his creationist beliefs. The juxtaposition of the young Earth and the Christmas story demonstrates that beyond any reasonable doubt.
And then, minutes later, he says, “My personal religious beliefs are going to make no difference in how well our students are going to learn science,” which perfectly contradicts what he’d said only moments before. This goes to show why this battle, although completely ridiculous, is also so important: obviously, a lack of understanding of scientific principles leads to certain cognitive disorders. It can cause an inability to speak logically, for example. It contributes to the erosion of the capacity for rational thought. The failure to understand that words actually mean something, and that when one bunch of words means the exact opposite of what another bunch of words means, they shouldn’t be used by the same person in the same conversation, there’s a good one.
I know that there’s a lot of crazy in Texas. They’ve got crazy piled up two feet deep from one end of the state to the other, and brothers and sisters, it’s a great big state. But how crazy does a state have to be to make someone like this the CHAIRMAN OF THE SCHOOL BOARD? This guy does not belong on a school board, or anywhere near any school, ever. Why can’t we at least agree on that?

We come in the age's most uncertain hour and sing an American tune.

Compare these two recent events in Oklahoma, and tell me if you figure out the punch line before I get to it: 

Case #1: The sweeping new immigration law in the state has become something of a sick joke nationally, since it includes things like making it a felony to give an immigrant a ride (imagine being sentenced to a year in prison ‘cause you stopped to pick up a guy whose car had run out of gas on the highway). But there’s nothing funny at all about it, because among its many provisions (many, many provisions) is a regulation making it illegal to provide medical care to any immigrant, even a child or an infant. Think about that for a minute.
There was basically no resistance to the bill. Combining the votes in both Houses, it passed 129-15. This means that 89.6% of the elected representatives chosen by the citizens of Oklahoma supported this bill.
Case #2: As a peace offering, the Ethnic American Advisory Council, a state agency, sent copies of the Koran to each and every state legislator in celebration of the state’s 100th birthday (earlier this year, the Baptist General Convention sent “Centennial Bibles” in the same spirit). Many GOP folks, however, refused to accept the gifts. One of them, some halfwit named Rex Duncan, explained, “Most Oklahomans do not endorse the idea of killing innocent women and children in the name of ideology.” 

Brothers and sisters, this is clearly not the case. 89.6% of Oklahomans endorsed that very thing this past Election Day.

Ch-Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes

Okay, this is the kind of story I love.
Thirty years ago there were these scientists, see? And they were conducting experiments on lizards. I don’t know why. It doesn’t matter. But they took five mating pairs of a particular kind of lizard (the Italian Wall Lizard, which is a good name) from the little island that they were indigenous to and put them on another, nearby island named Pod Mrcaru (that is not a misprint), just off the Croatian coast.
The lizards weren’t supposed to be there long. Unfortunately, right around this time, the Croatian War of Independence broke out. And, you know, suddenly, everybody had more important things on their minds than ten lizards in a strange place. And they just kinda, I don’t know, forgot about them.
So, I guess somebody recently remembered and went back for the lizards. And, man, Pod Mrcaru was crawling with the little bastards. They completely took over and drove all the island’s native lizards to extinction and now the place is pretty much wallpapered with the interlopers. Which I’m sure you expected. That’s how stories like this always end: new species is introduced into an environment and grows out of control. God knows it happened back home, both with ladybugs and kudzu. I don’t know what folks were thinking when they brought kudzu to the Commonwealth.
Anyway, but that isn’t the whole story. The scientists found, when they examined the lizards, that they weren’t the same any more. For one thing, the source species eats mostly insects, which are easy to digest. But these lizards were eating mostly plants. It turns out that they have grown new organs specifically to help them digest plant matter! They grew something called a “cecal valve,” which is musculature between the stomach and intestines that holds food and essentially allows it to ferment, so that their digestive system can break down vegetation. Their heads got bigger, too, allowing for a stronger bite (presumably for tearing leaves). And their social structure changed; the new lizards aren’t as territorial as the original species, and they apparently mate somewhat more freely.
And all this happened in thirty years! According to Duncan Irshick, a biology professor at UMass, that’s like humans spontaneously growing a new appendix in a couple of centuries. Who knew it could happen so fast?
So, anyway, yeah, and the point is this: the next time some fundamentalist wacko tells you evolution is a myth and that there’s no evidence for it, ask him, “Say, have you heard about the Croatian lizards?”

Got info from the National Geographic …check it out!
 

The Time Machine

It’s early spring in Dayton, Ohio. I’ve just arrived in town, and I don’t plan to stay, but I’m gonna rest a while and save up a little money. I’ve found a job, working at the local gas station-slash-convenience store. I’m a night person, and they’ve hired me to work second shift, 3-11 PM. These are perfect hours; I arrive late enough to sleep in, and get off early enough to go to the bar after work. But for training I have to come to the store in the morning for the first two weeks. At seven o’clock in the morning, to be precise. This is torture.
Belly’s second CD has just come out, and because their first is one of my all-time favorites, I’ve bought the new one on the day of its release, even though I can’t really afford it. The fifth song, “Super-Connected,” is the first to really catch my attention. It starts off very downbeat, with a slow, heavy-reverb bass line. Tanya Donelly sings the first verse in a tired-sounding, off-key sort of groaning whisper. She sounds, in fact, like me when the alarm goes off at six AM.
When that verse is finished her voice trails off, and the guitar starts up. It’s a rising-and-falling, grinding, aching sound. It sounds angry. It sounds unhappy to be alive. That’s me, too, as I struggle to sit up, to throw off the covers. I’m hung over, and I haven’t had enough sleep, and the arthritis in my knees has locked them in place during the short night, so that it’s painful to move my legs. I am outraged that I have to go to work.
But then a strange thing happens. Donelly returns, singing the next verse, but now her voice is stronger, more awake, as if she is becoming more sure of herself. She sounds defiant, though she’s still struggling. Now she means business. She faces the meanness and bitterness of the guitar, and she shoves it aside, and goes on.
And then she reaches the chorus, and suddenly there are harmonies, and the guitar stops grinding and begins to shimmer and pulse, and her voice soars. It is not a beautiful voice, but it means what it says, and is everything it wants to be. She is transcendent, otherworldly. She is the sun rising above the clouds, and she sings to me, and she takes me with her.
After that, each verse is stronger and stronger, and each chorus flies higher and higher, until the song achieves escape velocity and shoots off into space. It ends abruptly, except for a ringing echo of the exhausted drone from the song’s beginning. But now that sound is forlorn and abandoned. She has shaken it off. She is finished with it now, and has gone off to get busy living.
I can’t smoke in the house. Every morning I get up, and I get a cup of coffee, and I shuffle into the garage for a cigarette. I’ve put a stereo out there, and I play this song compulsively, over and over, every single morning. Early spring in Ohio is still winter-cold. Although it’s dawn, the sun hasn’t really risen yet, and there’s no heat in the garage. I sit shivering, nearly sightless in the dusty grey, having the first smoke(s) of the day, heaving great shuddering coughs and coming to life painfully but steadily, listening. It’s one of the greatest early-morning songs ever.
That was long ago, and though I still love the song I don’t listen to it as often as I used to. But sometimes, when I do, I close my eyes and I’m back there. It’s strange that some songs have the power to carry you through time, isn’t it? I love songs for lots of reasons, because of their great beauty or because they’re silly and they raise my spirits, or because they have an irresistible energy that I can draw from them. But the ones I love best are the ones that have an anchor in time and memory. It doesn’t even have to be a happy time that they’re taking me to. There was absolutely no reason to love six AM in Dayton, and I don’t miss it. I guess it’s the trip itself that’s important, rather than the destination.
I sit now and listen to “Super-Connected,” and it’s a time machine. I’m smoking the day’s first cigarette, standing in the freezing grey light of an Ohio morning in March of 1995. Everything is so clear, it can’t be a trick of my mind. I’m really here, and it’s amazing.

Murder is the sport of the elected

Well, I’ll be damned. You’ve heard of the “Clinton Body Count,” right? That’s the list that the craziest of the crazy right-wing bloggers started keeping of all the people the Clintons had murdered, either because they stood between him and the White House, or to cover up scandals during his terms as Governor and President. Well, it turns out I’m on it, Richard Winters, partway down the page.
Yes, that’s right. In case you don’t want to check the link, here’s the story: you see, there were these two guys named Kevin Ives and Don Henry. They stumbled onto some drug-running operation masterminded by the Clintons, but before they could talk, they were killed by a train on August 23, 1987. Except, it turns out, they were killed first and then their bodies were placed on the tracks. Which, I gotta say, doesn’t seem like the best way to commit a murder to me. I mean, it seems a little clumsy and haphazard, plus pretty damned pointless. And my opinion counts in this, because apparently I’m the guy who killed them!
And then a whole bunch of people “had information” on those murders (when you’re dragging two bodies along a train track, you’re gonna get noticed, even in Arkansas), so I killed them, too, one by one. And it really was a WHOLE BUNCH of people. I’m not sure how none of them managed to fill out a police report or talk to the press before I got to them, but hey, I guess luck was on my side while I was hunting them down over the next two years.
My favorite was James Milam. I decapitated him, but arranged the crime scene in such an expert way that the coroner ruled he died of natural causes. I wish I could disclose how I did that; suffice it to say that I’m The Man, and that The Man got mad skillz. There was Keith Coney, who died in a motorcycle “accident” (there were “unconfirmed reports” of a high-speed car chase…I’ll admit, that bit does sound like me). There was Jeff Rhodes, who was tortured, mutilated, shot in the head, put in a dumpster, and set on fire (yikes! like I have that much energy). There were other boring ones, too, shotgun blasts and stabbings that I won’t bother going into.
And then I was myself killed in a “robbery” in July of 1989, only of course it wasn’t really a robbery, it was an assassination made to look like a random crime. I guess I’d asked for a little hush money from the Clintons, so they had to silence me for good; or maybe they were wondering how, even after I’d killed a half-dozen or so potential witnesses, there were still so many people who “had information” on the Ives/Henry murders. I mean, hell, they still had another five or six of ‘em to bump off after I was gone! (Incidentally, they managed to kill one person via a bout of viral pneumonia; man, their skillz are even madder than mine!)
I am very distressed to learn that I’ve been dead for the last 19 years. I’m wondering why death hasn’t saved me from suffering through, for instance, the death of my father, or the end of my relationship with Bonnie, or seven-plus years of being ruled by a mendacious, war-mongering sociopath. Where’s my goddamned sweet oblivion?
On the plus side, I suppose this means that I can drink and smoke all I want, and eat lots of fatty foods.
Oh, yeah, and vote Obama. He doesn’t have a list yet.

naked, rude, inaccesible, and cheap

Whew, the last few days have been eventful. I’m not gonna write about everything right now, because I kind of hate to have more than one subject in an entry, and also because I haven’t yet decided which bits I’m gonna write about at all. But I will tell you this particular bit from last night, because it’s funny and made me feel good:

Okay, as you folks know, I deliver pizza for Husson’s. And, like people who work any job where they have to deal with the public, we have certain regular customers that we hate. Husson’s Enemy #1 is this guy named Ayers who lives on Wilson Court. In the first place, I just don’t like Wilson Court. I don’t want to drive there. It’s a narrow, hilly, poorly-paved (even by local standards) deathtrap, and it wrecks Rosie’s suspension. Even if I was fond of him, I’d be unhappy about delivering to that place.

But really, I’m not likely to feel any fondness for him. In the first place, of course, he never tips. Ever. That’s bad enough, but he’s also very rude. He answers the door in his underwear, which I hate, a pot-bellied man in his mid-fifties standing there in his boxers and socks, no shirt. But more than that, he never says anything. I ask “How are ya doing?” Nothing. I tell him how much his food costs. He gives me the money (exact change, of course) but says nothing. I tell him I hope he enjoys his food and has a good night. By the time I can finish this statement, his door is already shut.

So last night I had to go out there. I had plenty of time, picking my way out to Wilson Court, to simmer, and I was angry by the time I got to his house. But when he opened the door, I was still all polite smiles.

“Hello,” I said. He just stood there.

“Hellooooo,” I said again. Still, he made no response.

And, it just pissed me off. I just decided that I was tired of his behavior. So I said, “Look, I’ve been coming out here a couple of times a month for a year now, and you’ve never said one word. I’m a human being and I deserve to be treated with respect, and I’m not giving you this food ‘til you say hello to me!”

He stood there for a second, and I was really just about to take his food and go back to the store, but he finally mumbled a grumpy “hello.” Didn’t hurt, did it?

“Thank you,” I said. “That’ll be $14.56.”

So when I got back to the store I asked Phil, the manager, whether he’d called to complain. Phil said no, but asked why I thought he might. So I told him and Anthony, the other driver, the story. And they laughed, and Anthony said I was his hero, ‘cause EVERYBODY at Husson’s hates this guy, it isn’t just me, and then Phil got on his cell phone and started calling the rest of the crew, all the people who work there but were off last night, to tell them the story.

So now I’m accidentally a Husson’s legend, which is pretty cool. But mostly, it just felt really good to tell Ayers off. I had a big smile on my face the whole rest of the night.

You're no URNOJFK

Some of you young folks may not remember much about the 1988 Presidential election. It went badly. But it did boast one beautiful moment, one iconic, pop-culture incident that stands out. It came in, of all places, the Vice-Presidential debate. Dan Quayle (remember him?) was trying to deflect criticism that he was too young and inexperienced to be the VP. He said at one point during the debate that “I have far more experience than many others that sought the office of vice president of this country. I have as much experience in the Congress as Jack Kennedy did when he sought the presidency.” Which, incidentally, wasn’t true, but we’ll let that go.

Anyway, Lloyd Bentsen responded with an all-time great line: “Senator, I served with Jack Kennedy; I knew Jack Kennedy; Jack Kennedy was a friend of mine. Senator, you're no Jack Kennedy.”

And the crowd went wild, and we all went wild. It was really the only bright spot for the Dems in that campaign. (The GOP had their own iconic moment, of course; remember the Snoopy helmet?)

So, there was this person in Richmond back then who went out and got a personalized plate put on her car that read “URNOJFK.” Mama spotted it first and told me about it (I can’t remember now if the person in question was a friend of hers). And a little while later I happened to come across it on one of my late-night walking, thinking, singing and drinking sessions. For the next few months I brought all my friends by to look at it. I never got tired of it, you know? It was a welcome voice of defiance during the Daddy Bush presidency. Every time I’d pass that corner, and she was home, it would make me smile.

She kept it throughout his mercifully short term. She kept it when the Clintons came to power, too (and after the election results were final in 1992, my friends and I went out and toasted the license plate in the middle of the night). For ten years or more, that license plate was a standard tourist stop for me. Every time I went home, I would be sure to stop by the apartment, near the meeting of Elwood and the Boulevard, to see that car. Dude, it just never got old.

This past time, when I was home, I went by to see it, just before leaving town. And it wasn’t there! I was heartbroken. There was a car parked in her old space, though, that had a plate on it saying DEMOCAT. D’ya think it’s maybe the same woman? If it is, I wish someone would tell her that this is much less cool.

Unconvincing

You can never, ever, trust anything the government tells you about illegal drugs. You just can’t. They lie like crazy, ‘cause if they were ever honest, we’d all immediately demand an end to the drug war, and they really like the drug war, ‘cause it costs lots of money and provides an excuse to do all sorts of horrible things to people. Plus, it gives every politician an opportunity to look “tough on crime” by demonizing a segment of the population that is largely inoffensive but is also unchampioned and defenseless.
Fifty and sixty years ago, when most folks didn’t know anything about marijuana, they pretended that it turned people into psycho-killer sex fiends (they still say this about other drugs, of course), and many people believed it. But by the seventies, when I was a kid, everybody knew this was ridiculous. Pot doesn’t drive you to Clockwork Orange-style ultraviolence. Pot makes you sit on the couch grinning ‘til your face hurts. It makes you talk about stupid shit and listen to Pink Floyd records and giggle. Stoners are many things, but one thing they clearly aren’t is dangerous.
So the government needed some new scare tactics. One of these was the idea that marijuana was a “gateway” drug, that it would lead to the abuse of harder drugs which people still believed stupid things about. Insofar as this is true (and I am not convinced), I always figured the obvious reason for it was that, to get pot, you often had to go to seedy and dangerous places where harder drugs were also in use. If you could buy a box of Js down at the 7-11, this wouldn’t be a problem.
Well, there’s been a new study that might possibly indicate that marijuana is, in fact, a gateway drug. The study didn’t track marijuana users to discover if they also got into LSD and cocaine, which is the obvious way to do it. Instead, they got some rats hooked on drugs.
What they did was, they gave a group of rats injections of THC every day for three weeks. The rats got used to feeling good, of course. Then they put those rats, and also a control group of non-pothead rats, into cages where they could push a lever and get heroin whenever they wanted it. I don’t know how they came up with a rat-friendly form of heroin, but I would have liked to have been there.
Anyway, so both groups discovered the heroin at the same time, and both really dug it. But it turned out that the stoner rats liked it more (that is, got it more often), by about 25%, which is a non-trivial number.
Still, I’m not convinced that this experiment proved anything. In the first place, it doesn’t indicate that the pot-rats are more likely to use heroin (which was supposed to be the point), only that they use more of it. The doctors who conducted the study aren’t convinced, either. While saying that the results are interesting, they pointed out that more studies would have to be done before anything definitive could really be said on the issue. Among other things, they would have to try the test using different baits for the rats. One doctor’s comments amounted to, “Maybe they just got used to feeling good, and were happy to find something else that could make them feel good. Maybe the results would have been the same if we’d been offering them sugar. Maybe the test rats would have been 25% more likely to go for Froot Loops or something, too.”
And my point is this: please tell me they aren’t gonna conduct experiments to see whether marijuana use increases the desire for Froot Loops. ‘Cause, dude, I can answer that question for you right now and save everyone a lot of time and expense, okay?